Being a Kingdom Church
Matthew 16:13-20
Almost sixty years ago, our nation was shocked by the sudden death of our president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. We all remember the somber pageantry and mood in our nation Ronald Reagan died. But this was far more momentous because our nation was in the darkness of World War II and our leader was suddenly taken. The vice president, Harry Truman, had only been in office a few months and was not proven in the least.
Because of Roosevelt’s declining health, Truman rarely spoke to or even saw the president. Truman came to the presidency not even knowing about the “Manhattan Project,” that is, the atomic bomb. Commenting on his swift entry to the oval office, Truman said, “I felt like the moon, the stars and the planets had all fallen on me.”
President Truman had to be brought up to speed quickly on the bomb. Then he had to go through the agonizing process of deciding whether or not to use the bomb to bring the war to an end. We know of course that two atomic bombs were detonated over Japan in August of 1945. Much of what we know from this period has come through declassified information; documents that were once top secret but are now available to anyone who wants to see them.
When Jesus walked the earth, he had a number of what you might call high level secret meetings with his disciples. Thanks to the gospel writers some of these events have been “declassified” and are available to us. Today we’re going to be looking at a transcript, or perhaps a partial transcript, of one of those secret meetings. Matthew recorded this meeting in chapter sixteen of his gospel, and it concerns his kingdom coming on earth. If you have your Bible, please open it to Matthew chapter sixteen. We will read verses thirteen through twenty, and I’ll be reading from a fairly new translation, the English Standard Version:
[Read text here]
In this passage, Jesus told the disciples that the kingdom of heaven would advance on earth through his church. Before I continue, I have to tell you that this passage presents a number of interpretational difficulties. Godly scholars across the ages have disagreed on some of its precise meaning. Today I want to give you what I understand this to mean after a rather lengthy period of study, meditation, and prayer.
One of those differences in interpretation concerns whether Jesus was only talking to Peter, the apostles, or all of us. I happen to believe the latter, that Jesus was talking to us as well as them. Jesus has given us the glorious privilege of participating in his kingdom, and seeing that kingdom’s influence right here today. We must be clear on this point, though: the church is not the kingdom, but it is the vehicle through which the kingdom is advanced.
If you were to ask people what the church is, you would get a variety of answers. To some, the church is a building. To others, it is a club whose meetings may or may not be enjoyable. To some, it is an outdated social convention. Still others look on the church with scorn and contempt, believing that the church is only there to ruin everybody’s fun.
Many of our wrong ideas about the church can be corrected by returning to what Jesus intended it to be. He intended the church to be the primary agent of bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth. Since Jesus did not talk an awful lot about the church while he walked the earth, this passage can’t tell us everything that’s true about the church. Even so, this passage gives us a number of RECOGNITIONS of the church in advancing God’s kingdom on earth.
1. We advance the kingdom by recognizing that Jesus is God.
You’ll notice in verse thirteen that Jesus begins this meeting with a question. Now Jesus wasn’t asking to learn. He who created everything and everyone didn’t need to learn anything. No, he wasn’t asking to learn, he was asking to give his disciples an opportunity to show themselves and each other what they were learning about their master.
Notice the question: “Who do people say that the Son of Man Is?” Jesus wasn’t working with a focus group, he wasn’t taking a poll. He wasn’t trying to craft the message according to what people wanted to hear. Jesus was getting ready to tell his disciples something important, but before they could hear it, they had to know exactly who Jesus is.
Now, look at the answers they gave. They complimented Jesus by keeping the answers positive. They had probably heard cynical people in the crowds saying that Jesus was a drunk, or a friend of prostitutes and tax collectors, or just plain crazy. My guess is that they sensed Jesus was leading to something important and chose to keep the conversation on a high plane.
In verse fourteen, the disciples name three individuals who would have been very important to any first century Jew. John the Baptist had been a wildly popular desert preacher who had attracted a wide, diverse audience. In John’s gospel we learn that people went from Jerusalem to where John was preaching. That trip today is a bus ride that takes something like four hours! Now don’t get confused here, John the writer of the gospel and Revelation and John the Baptist were two different people.
Some people mistook John the Baptist for the Messiah, but he made it abundantly clear that he was only the forerunner, or a preview of the Messiah. Even so, John’s message of faith and repentance won him a large loyal following among the people of his day. He was six months older than his cousin Jesus, and this may be why he was more popular than Jesus for a little while. But when John the Baptist’s disciples mentioned that the crowds were leaving him to go over to Jesus, he gladly said that Jesus was to increase, and that he was to decrease. But now that John was dead, many Jews must have thought that he continued to live on in Jesus.
A second answer was Elijah. The Old Testament prophet Malachi said that Elijah would return before the Day of the Lord, and that prophecy was fulfilled in John the Baptist. But Malachi’s prophecy was, and is, taken seriously by many Jewish people. Even today in many Jewish homes at Passover, an empty place is set at the table, just in case Elijah returns to share in that Passover.
Jeremiah also earned a mention here. The one known as the “weeping prophet” who wept over the destruction of Jerusalem may have come back to finally throw of Roman oppression and return Jerusalem to her former glory.
While all these answers were good, complimentary answers, they fell short of the mark. Peter may have picked this up when Jesus said, “But what about you?” The “you” is emphasized in the Greek. It’s as if Matthew wrote that word in big capital letters with bright red ink.
Look at Peter’s answer in verse 16: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” In calling Jesus “the Christ” he was saying “Messiah” or “God’s anointed one.” To many in that day, Messiah was expected to be a victorious military conqueror who would deliver the Jewish nation to an era of earthly peace, prosperity and freedom.
But Peter’s answer goes beyond this nationalism when he adds “the son of the living God.” With that clause Peter is saying the Jesus is God Himself, not just His messenger. Think about it, a “son” has to be the same substance as his Father. A human being cannot have a son that is a dog; a horse can’t give birth to a bird. By saying “Son of the living God,” Peter was saying that Jesus is God.
Unfortunately we live in a time when it is unfashionable to preach this truth. When we read Jesus’ words in John 14:6 which say “No one comes to the Father except through Me,” some get nervous and rise up to defend other religions and their claims. We live in a pluralistic world where people say “All roads lead to the same place,” or, “As long as you’re sincere it doesn’t matter what you believe.”
While this sounds polite and kind, it simply is not true, nor is it biblical. In several gospel passages, Jesus made it clear that he is God. C. S. Lewis sums all this up by saying that Jesus is a liar, a lunatic, or Lord. Those are the only options. Blithely nodding the head and saying that Jesus was a great teacher or a good man is simply not one of the options.
Let’s look at this from another angle. Would you agree with me that Jesus knew the Ten Commandments? Would you also agree with me that Jesus obeyed them? The first two commandments make it clear that we are to worship God and God alone.
In John chapter nine, Jesus healed a man who had been blind from birth. This man ended up being thrown out of the synagogue because he professed faith in Jesus. When Jesus found the man later, verse 38 says the man worshiped him. In chapter 28 of Matthew’s gospel, we’re told that disciples worshiped Jesus after his resurrection and moments before his return to heaven.
Here’s the point: If Jesus were not God, he would have dutifully refused this worship. He would have said something like, “Get up! On your feet! Don’t do that, you’re only supposed to worship God.” This is exactly what happened to John when he saw the events recorded in Revelation. In Revelation chapters 19 and 22, John tells us that he fell down to worship the angel who was showing him the Revelation. When he did, the angel said, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” The angel refused the worship that Jesus gladly received.
2. We advance the kingdom is by recognizing that Jesus owns the church.
After Peter gives his answer, Jesus commends him by saying “Blessed are you!” Jesus goes on to say that he would build his church. A lot of people get caught up on exactly what Jesus meant by the “rock” in verse 18. Yes, Peter’s name means rock, or stone. But when Jesus said “On this rock I will build my church,” he used a slightly different word that means a large rock, as in a cliff. Comparing the stone, Peter, to the rock on which Jesus is building his church is like comparing a little stone that you skip across the lake to the Rock of Gibraltar.
Jesus was not referring so much to Peter the man as to Peter’s faith behind his truthful statement that Jesus is God. The Rock on which the Church is built is Christ himself. In the Old Testament we read of Moses bringing water out of the rock for Israel to drink in the wilderness. In First Corinthians 10:4, Paul says “For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.”
Not only is the church built on the Rock of truth that is Jesus, but our text makes it clear that Jesus is the one doing the building, not us. The church belongs to him, not us.
Here in Virginia we’re fortunate to have many museums devoted to history and historical figures. In Norfolk you can see the memorial museum dedicated to the great Army General, Douglas MacArthur. In Charlottesville you can see Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello. Just up the road in Mount Vernon you can see George Washington’s estate with many of the rooms set up as if he just stepped away minutes ago.
Have you ever noticed that these places are filled with very ordinary items like pens, kitchen utensils, garden tools, and other items common to the day? These ordinary items are extraordinary, though, because of who owned them, or used them.
In the Yorktown Visitors Center you can see the bicentennial proclamation celebrating the 200th anniversary of Washington’s victory over the British general Cornwallis. Under the glass with that proclamation is the pen Ronald Reagan used to sign the document back in 1981.
Suppose I were to approach the center’s director and ask if I could use the pen to make out a grocery list. He would probably look at me with a combination of amazement and disdain, saying that the pen was a valuable museum piece not to be used in a frivolous way. Suppose then, I say something like, “Okay, let me buy the pen. How much?” I guess he’d say something like, “Look, it’s not for sale. That’s the pen President Reagan used to sign a very important document. It’s very valuable and it can’t be replaced.” Then, he might call the security guard over to show me to my car.
Now this makes sense to us when it comes to museum pieces, but how often do we use the church for our own ends? Some people participate in church to make business contacts. I know of a building contractor who transferred his membership to another church in hopes of meeting more people interested in building a nice house. Others see the church as a tool to gain some respectability in the community. Some single adults attend church in the hopes that they will meet someone to date or marry. None of these situations are bad in themselves, but that is not the purpose of the church!
The church is here as the body of Christ to be his influence in our world. Here’s one small example of how we can do this: Write a letter or make a phone call to the offices of our United States Senators, George Allen and John Warner. Did you know that the Senate is getting ready to debate a marriage amendment to the United States Constitution that would define marriage as one man and one woman? Did you also know that conservative watchdog groups say that comments from the public to their senators on this topic are very light?
I have to think that if every church member who loves Jesus were to write, call, or email their senators asking them to support the marriage amendment, the Senate would have little choice but to vote for the amendment and send it to the states for ratification. Yes, it’s tragic that we have come to the place where we have to actually say this in our constitution, but with several states leaning toward the legalization of same-sex “marriage,” it is quite necessary. If you haven’t written or called our senators about this, I hope you’ll do it very soon. I know that we have to be careful about not mingling the church’s agenda with man’s political agenda, but this is a rare opportunity for Christians to unite and say that marriage should be defined in biblical terms, as it has been for most of recorded history.
3. We advance the kingdom by recognizing heaven as the ultimate reality.
At the end of verse eighteen Jesus mentions a competing kingdom to the kingdom of heaven by saying, “…and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” In some of our English translations word “Hades” is used and that is the very word that Jesus used. “Hades” means the place of the dead, not the place of eternal punishment for people whose names are not in the book of life.
The kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of life. The kingdom of Hades is the kingdom of death. Jesus was not saying he was going to challenge death, but conquer death. If you look ahead to verse 21, you see that Jesus predicts his own death and resurrection. The fact that Jesus died and rose from the grave never to die again gives us hope and courage.
From our limited vantage point, death looks like the end. But in the kingdom of heaven, physical death is the door to resurrection and glory. Our loved one laying the casket appears to have been defeated by death. But if he or she was a believer in Christ, then we know that they are joining in Christ’s eternal victory over death.
But we don’t have to wait until we die to join in the kingdom. In verse nineteen Jesus says he is giving us the keys of the kingdom to bring the kingdom here and now. Now when it comes to the binding and loosing, we may get tripped up in thinking that Jesus was only talking to the apostles but not us.
Here’s why I believe that Jesus was talking to us as well as the apostles. There is only one other time when Jesus talked about binding and loosing, and that is in Matthew 18:18. In fact this is just about a word for word duplication of what we see in 16:19. Matthew 18 is a passage that is at the root of church discipline, and we do not have time to unpack it all. Now I’ve never heard anyone say that only the apostles had the authority to exercise church discipline. So, I have to conclude that the binding and loosing applies to all Christians.
In the original language, it says “whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.” This is important because Jesus is saying that what is and is not allowed in heaven is what is and is not allowed here. This is consistent with the Lord’s Prayer where Jesus prays, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
In other words, Jesus is not saying, “Hey guys, whatever you set up down here is the way it’s going to be up there.” No, he’s saying, “The way it is in heaven is the way it will be here, and that will happen as you use the keys that I give you.”
A key is that which unlocks something. If you go to my house right now, you won’t get in, because you don’t have the key. While the “keys” here could have a variety of meanings, at the very least it is the good news of Christ’s death and resurrection that gives a person entrance into the kingdom. The glorious gospel of Jesus dying for our sins and being raised to life for us to be pronounced “not guilty” before God is the key that gains us entrance into his kingdom.
But we aren’t given the keys to use as we see fit, but as God sees fit. If the only purpose of the gospel were to get people in heaven instead of hell, then God would just take us on to heaven when we got saved. No, he left us here to advance the kingdom of heaven on earth, but we have to follow his agenda for that to happen.
Some time ago, our daughter had just turned 15½ and received her learner’s permit. Once she did that, I actually handed her the keys to my car and let her in the driver’s seat. Suppose she had said something like, “Now that I have the keys, I’m going to drive the way I want to. First, I’m going to ignore that brake pedal, it just slows me down. As for red lights, sitting there with my motor running is a huge waste of time. And who says I need to stay on just one side of the road, I want it all!”
I’m glad to say that nothing like that happened, she’s a good, careful responsible driver and will be getting her license later this month. But she got to be that way by recognizing there are rules and principles she must follow in order to drive well. In the same way, we must follow the precepts of the kingdom of heaven if we’re going to advance the kingdom on earth. It’s all too easy for a church to focus on itself and lose the larger kingdom perspective. That can lead to us being like selfish, irresponsible drivers who want to act as if they are the only ones on the road.
Seeing heaven as the ultimate reality hits close to home for our family. Some years ago I realized that God wants me to be a pastor. Even though I was already a minister of the gospel, the shift from music ministry to preaching was huge.
I would never say that all preachers have to go to seminary, but this one surely needs to! Now I’m at the age when financial planners say I should excel in my career and earn the big bucks to save for the kids’ education and our retirement. Instead we’re making the sacrifices to go to seminary and make this shift in ministry. From a material standpoint what we’re doing makes no sense, but from heaven’s standpoint it makes all the sense in the world.
My vision for Cardinal Baptist Church is that she be a church that advances God’s kingdom by focusing on what God wants, not what we want. God wants people to get saved and grow into the image of his Son. We realize that we cannot do this alone, and that is why we’re part of various other groups like the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia and the Southern Baptist Convention. While we want this church to grow, we also want churches to grow around the world.
At the Southern Baptist Convention last month, I was amazed and challenged when the Dudley Shoals Baptist Church in Granite Falls, N.C., was presented with the M. E. Dodd Cooperative Program Award. This is a small, rural church with Kingdom vision. This growing church has developed two worship services in their expanded worship center. They recently purchased an additional 15 acres for future expansion. At the same time, they helped plant several churches in West Virginia. What makes this an exceptional story is that this church gives 25 percent through the Cooperative Program. Pastor Don Ingle says the church decided early on that they could not expand the local ministry without an equal commitment to a worldwide ministry. They simply refused to pay for local growth by taking from the resources they had committed to missions overseas.
In a recent Baptist Press article, Ken Hemphill, the SBC Empowering Kingdom Growth Strategist said, “It does appear that when a church gets a global vision and makes a Kingdom-focused commitment, it energizes the local ministry.” But some church members will ask, “How can this make sense? Get real,” they may say, “our budget’s already stretched to the limit. We just can’t afford that kind of giving.” Folks, when we do God’s work God’s way, he supplies all we need. Put another way, someone has said the light that shines farthest from home shines brightest at home.
This is what we mean by recognizing heaven as the only reality. When heaven is our ultimate reality, we don’t look around to see what’s up; we look up to see what’s around. We look to heaven through prayer, and we hear from heaven through God’s Word. When we do this, and we see the world for what it really is, not what it appears to be.
People who do this are sometimes criticized with the saying, “He’s so heavenly minded that he’s no earthly good.” But the opposite of this is true. C. S. Lewis put it this way: “If you read history, you’ll find that the Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought the most of the next world.”
For too long, too many churches have been stuck in that Sunday-to-Sunday mentality, just surviving from one week to the next, perpetuating themselves through meetings, activities and long-held traditions. The challenge today is to use God’s keys to do what God wants to bring glory and honor to his name, not ours. The keys of the kingdom have been given to us not for a holy joyride but to bring people to Jesus, and God’s kingdom to them.
This passage closes in verse 20 where Jesus gives orders that they are not to tell anyone who he really is. Scholars have come up with dozens of reasons for this, but I believe the reason is quite simple. Many times in the gospels, the writer says something like “Jesus’ hour had not yet come.” Other times Jesus himself says, “My hour has not yet come.” This “hour” was his crucifixion, which was to occur at a particular moment in time. If word got out that Jesus was calling himself Messiah, he knew that he would be killed for it. Jesus knew that he was supposed to minister publicly for a few years before going to the cross. By silencing the disciples for a time, Jesus delayed his crucifixion. Jesus was crucified at the time of God’s choosing, not man’s.
But now the need for secrecy is long past. Just as it would be foolish for any government official to declare the “Manhattan Project” a secret, so it is foolish for us not to recognize that Jesus is God, that he owns the church, and that heaven is the only ultimate reality.
But can we do this just by deciding to do it? No. When Peter rightly identified Jesus, Jesus said Peter hadn’t figured that out on his own, but that God revealed it to him. Likewise, only God can give us what it takes to faithfully follow him. Being a part of Christ’s church means that we come to Jesus as God, and acknowledge his ownership of all that we are and do.
A church can only do this if the individuals in it have done it in a personal way. Please understand that being in the church does not mean you belong to Christ. It’s the other way around; belonging to Christ is what puts you in his church.
Will you acknowledge Jesus as the living Lord who was put to death for your sins? Will you turn from your sins and acknowledge him as the rightful owner of your life? Then will you follow him in obedience by learning to see your world from heaven’s perspective?
