Matthew 16:13-28
13 When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”
14 So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. 19 And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
20 Then He commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ.
21 From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.
22 Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!”
23 But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”
24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
27 For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works. 28 Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”
Introduction
If someone asked you “what is the church?” What would you tell them? Well it’s a building where we worship. No, it’s not a building, it’s a people. Well, both are true, but what kind of people are they, or rather what is the end, the goal these people exist for? Why is there a church? Why is important? Why does it matter? What is even the point of the church? These are the kind of questions we will peer into here.
What is the church? And even more importantly, why is the church?
The Global Dominion of the Son of Man (v. 13-17)
Jesus and His disciples come to the region of Caesarea Philippi. Reading this, it just sounds like that city is a Bible-y sounding name. For us, 2000 years later it has very little meaning. But if there was a city called “Tim Walz’s Bidenia” that would have a lot of significance to us. Caesarea was a city named for the Roman emperor, and it was called Philippi for the Herod that ruled it. Despite being on the very northern edge of Israel’s territory, it was a very Gentile city. A very Greek city. It even had a shrine where the Roman god-man, the emperor was worshipped. That this place is the setting for this scene is not merely incidental. It gives us the backdrop of the world into which Jesus came.
Here they are in the city of the Roman god-man and He asks His disciples who they say men say that He, the Son of Man, is. This title that Jesus uses for Himself also has quite a bit of meaning. If you grew up in church and heard the Bible a lot, you hear “Son of Man” and recognize that just as one of the many titles Jesus goes by. It means Messiah or something, right? Well, like most of the New Testament, the meaning of something is found in the Old Testament. That name “Son of Man” was used in Daniel 7. And what is Daniel 7 about? In a dream, Daniel sees four beasts come up out of the sea, and these beasts were the kingdoms that were given dominion over the earth, first the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks, and finally the Romans. And as the Ancient of Days sat on His throne in judgment over these beast-kingdoms, this happens:
“I was watching in the night visions,
And behold, One like the Son of Man,
Coming with the clouds of heaven!
He came to the Ancient of Days,
And they brought Him near before Him.
Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,
That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
Which shall not pass away,
And His kingdom the one
Which shall not be destroyed.
Daniel 7:13-14
Earlier in Daniel, Daniel had interpreted the Babylonian king’s dream and it was of a man made of different metals that corresponded to these four kingdoms. And a stone comes and smashes all of them, and that stone turns into a great mountain which covers the entire earth. That is the kingdom of the Son of Man.
So Jesus using this phrase is a big deal. He is identifying Himself with Daniel’s Son of Man who will come with glory and whose kingdom will have dominion over the entire world and never be destroyed.
In the conversation with the disciples, who the people say that Jesus is, He gets different answers. People think He is John the Baptist, presumable raised from the dead, or Elijah who has returned, or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. But Jesus presses the issue further. He asks them flat out, but who do you say that I am? Peter acknowledges Him as the Christ, God’s anointed deliverer of His people, whom the prophets foretold. And Jesus responds to Peter’s answer with praise. Jesus tells Peter this is not something man has revealed but God. God reveals His Son to us, not man. No one can will themselves into belief. No clever argument or emotional appeal got Peter to believe that Jesus is the Christ. God revealed who Jesus is to Peter. God’s Word simply did its work. This is how God operates with us. His Word is powerful and does not return void. He is a God who speaks and He does not speak in vain.
The Citizen Assembly of Christ’s Global Empire vs the Gates of Death (v. 18-20)
Jesus continues on in His praise of Peter, calling him by his nickname, Rock, and on this rock He will build his church. We will get to what this means for the Apostle Peter in a moment, but we should first look at this word Jesus used for a moment. This is the first time Jesus has used the word “church” in Matthew’s Gospel. It is such a common word for us that we don’t think about it that much. That’s the place you go on Sunday to worship. True enough. But it is a Greek word, packed with meaning. Ekklesia in the ancient Greek world was not a religious word but a political one. If you lived in ancient Athens or Thebes or Corinth, when they were independent city-states, and you were a citizen, you would be called to the ekklesia to deliberate on important issues that would decide the fate of your city. It was a citizen’s assembly. It was a ruling body.
The Son of Man, whose kingdom shall have dominion of all the nations of the world, a dominion which shall never end, is telling the apostles that His kingdom will have an ekklesia. It will have a citizen’s assembly, a place where they will deliberate important things, where they are given keys (authority) and decisions to make (binding and loosing) that has an effect on the unseen world (the heavens). And this council of citizens of Christ’s global empire has an enemy: Death. Jesus tells them the gates of Hades, the Greek realm of the dead, shall not stand against His kingdom.
Often this gets mistranslated as Hell, but Hell is Gehenna, the Lake of Fire, the Greek Tartarus. Hades is less specific, it is broader, more general. It is the Hebrew Sheol, the place of death, the underworld. Death itself is the final enemy, a point the Apostle Paul repeatedly makes in his epistles. He shall reign until He puts all His enemies under His feet, and the last enemy is death. And Hades has gates. We think of a gate as simply the way in and we imagine Christ’s invading army at the entrance to the underworld laying siege to it, with battering ram at the gates.
But there is also another meaning to the gate. In the Ancient Near East, the gate of the city is where the ruling council of elders would meet. You see this all over the Old Testament. The gate of the city is synonymous with what? The ekklesia, the ruling council of a city. Jesus is setting his ruling council against the ruling council of Hades.
THAT is what we have to understand the church as. It is not a building. It is not just a random group of people gathering to worship. It is a body that participates in the rule of heaven and earth. When we gather here to worship, we are not coming here to sing some songs or hear an absolutely gripping and fascinating talk on the Bible. Those are good things, those are things God wants us to do, but that is not what we are doing. We are gathering before the throne of the Son of Man, as He holds dominion over both the unseen world and all the nations on earth, and we participate in His rule with Him. He cleans us up as we go into His presence, enrobes us with His righteousness, instructs us, and then hears our petitions to Him, and then we feast at His royal table, as He sends us out to realize His reign and rule in His world more and more. That is what the church does. That is what you are, you are citizens of an empire that rules the globe, and you sit in the assembly before its King.
But at this point in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus still does not want word to get out that He is the Christ. Remember, He is keeping it from Israel as a judgment upon Israel. Israel has rejected Him. And He is making it less clear who He is to them.
Membership in Christ’s Global Dominion Requires Total Devotion (v. 21-28)
Jesus goes on to tell them what must happen. Israel has rejected Him and He must suffer and be killed and raised again on the third day. Peter, who Jesus has just praised, now begins to rebuke Jesus. He does not think this is what is supposed to happen to the Messiah. He has read Daniel, he knows that the Son of Man is a king who will rule the planet. How can He go and die? And Jesus calls him Satan and to get behind me. You are an offense to me. Jesus’s rebuke is that Peter is only looking at it from the perspective of men and not of God. God’s purposes are more than merely setting up a human kingdom that can rise and fall. He is setting up a kingdom where man’s true enemy, death, will be destroyed. And to do that, you need a king who has personally defeated death.
Jesus goes on to tell His disciples that if they wish to follow Him, they must do the same. Deny yourself. Take up the instrument of your own bloody, excruciating execution, and THEN you can follow Him. Christ’s kingdom is one of total devotion. If you want to be part of ekklesia of His global dominion, you better be ready to die. If you count your life cheap for Christ’s sake, you will find true life. The entire world is not worth what Christ offers. For a member of Christ’s ekklesia, the entire world could be offered to you, and you would not renounce your loyalty to Him.
And it is at this place Jesus gives a window into what will happen very soon. The old world, the original creation is very quickly coming to an end. Judgment according to works is about to happen. The giant stone from Daniel is about to come crashing down. The Son of Man is about receive glory and honor and dominion. And Jesus says something right at the end here that is interesting, some of the disciples will not taste death before this happens. People have been puzzled over this for millennia. The end of space and time has not happened yet. The resurrection and final judgment is still in the future. So how can some of the disciples not taste death until the Son of Man comes with His Kingdom. Some have tried, extremely weakly, to say this is merely a metaphor or something. Others say “He’s talking about the Transfiguration” but that happens six days later. Did Jesus expect some of them to die in those six days. The most satisfying answer is that this coming of the Son of Man in His Kingdom is when He comes in judgment on the Old Covenant order. Some of the disciples really did not see death until that event took place. It makes the most sense that the dominion and rule of the Kingdom of Christ would be confirmed by the destruction of the old order that opposed Him and his ekklesia.
Conclusion
You are part of that ekklesia, that church. Just as all of what Jesus said to the disciples here took place in the shadow of a city named for two wicked pagan rulers, Caesar and Herod, you stand as an assembly of citizens of the empire that truly rules the world. You stand at the gate of heaven, before the throne of the King of Kings, and weekly gather before Him to honor Him, and receive good things from Him. And you stand as this assembly of the true world empire, despite it often not looking like He rules over very much. As the Apostle wrote to the Hebrews, “but we do not yet see all things put under Him.” These things are a promise to us that it will happen. That lives devoted to Christ, even unto death, are lives devoted to making this reign and rule a reality.
Far too often we have this idea that God is going to snap His fingers and Christ’s dominion over the world will happen and then the end will come. That is not how God’s people have lived the last two thousand years, and it is not how we should now. God’s people built entire civilizations, and however imperfectly, the reign and rule of Christ spread over large swaths of the planet. He has set before His people that hard work of building and growing His kingdom like leaven in a loaf. This happens slowly and deliberately. But it is good and glorious and something you must devote your entire life to. And not just your life, but the lives of your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. You are members of the assembly that rules heaven and earth. The lives we lead throughout the week, in this world that Jesus Christ owns, are in light of that fact. So go, take up your cross, and conquer. In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
"He is setting up a kingdom where man’s true enemy, death, will be destroyed. And to do that, you need a king who has personally defeated death. "
Interesting parallel to David vs Goliath. David personally defeats the worst representative of the enemy of the People of God. This seals the fate of the Philistines as their power is broken at that point and never recovers.