[Note: The title of this series is "The Stony Path." Each sermon has a theme or uses the image of a stone. As the people come into church, they are given a stone to hold during the service. At the end of the service, they are asked to place their stones at the foot of a wooden cross at the front of the church. Over the course of Lent, they see the pile of stones getting bigger but on Easter Sunday morning, when they come in, the stones are gone.]
Close your eyes for moment. Seriously, close your eyes for moment. Feel anything?
Believe it or not, the ground beneath your feet is moving right now. You may not feel it but trust me … every house, every church, including this church, every building in this area is slowly sliding downhill. The scientific term for this imperceptible movement of the soil is … “creep.” Makes sense. The ground or soil beneath our feet right now is creeping downhill under the influence of gravity. Some of you have had to learn about “creep” the hard way, amen? Becoming aware of the problem only after discovering cracks in your walls because something’s gotta give … and that’s your walls … a very expensive and very labor-intensive process to fix … one, that if left untreated could destroy your home or this building over time … a long, long time, perhaps … but still … like time, gravity marches one … pulling us, pulling everything down … which is a good thing, right? Because life on this planet couldn’t exist if it weren’t for gravity holding us and everything around us down.
Here, we have creep due to the slow movement of soil downhill … in the Middle East, they have two things … rocks … lots of rocks … and lots of sand … so the people listening to Jesus’ parable about building on rock or sand were, shall we say, very familiar with the difference between building your home … or any building for that matter … on shifting sand versus solid rock. They didn’t have to go to architectural school or study geology to know the truth of what Jesus’ was saying … but Jesus wasn’t talking about actually building a home on rock or sand, was He? He was, however, talking about the winds and storms that constantly buffet our hearts and minds and he is challenging his listeners and us to examine how we withstand these constant assaults on our faith and on our belief.
Now … Jesus had, in fact, put His listeners in a very curious position. You see … most … if not all … of His listeners believed that God was going to send a deliverer … a savior … in the form of a messiah or a king … like David or Solomon. This was a deeply held and powerful belief of the people in Jesus’ day who were hanging on to the hope that God would one day send them someone to deliver them from the oppressive hold of the Roman Empire. In fact, their only hope of deliverance would have to come from God.
What they didn’t expect, however, was for God to send them the son of a common laborer. And yet, when they heard Jesus speak, again their impressions were challenged. When Jesus had finished speaking, “the crowds were astounded at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28-29). Was their faith in God strong enough to accept the fact that Jesus was not only the messiah, the long awaited king, who would deliver them, but that He was in fact, THE Messiah … the king not only of Israel but THE King of Heaven and earth. Would their faith in God be able to withstand the dramatic shift that Jesus’ very presence, His message, His purpose would demand … that He came to deliver them, not from Rome, but that He came to deliver them from forces and powers far, far greater than Rome. The question wasn’t whether they believed in God. The question wasn’t whether they had faith in God. The question was how far did their trust and faith in God go? They were being asked to believe in a pretty fantastic thing. They were willing to believe in a God who could do some pretty fantastic, amazing, incredible things … but just how fantastic was their belief in a fantastic God, amen?
None of this was on Peter’s mind when he set out with his brother to fish the morning that he met Jesus and his life changed forever. Just another day of loading up nets, heading out in the Sea of Galilee. It was not the first time that he and his brother had come up empty … part of the risk of being a fisherman … still, very disappointing. And then it happened. Matthew and Mark say that Jesus called out to Peter and his brother, Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Matthew 4:19) and they immediately left their nets and followed Him (v. 20). Luke gives more detail. Peter and Andrew were cleaning their nets, listening to this “teacher” who showed up on the beach, when Jesus asked them to put out a ways so that He could stand in their boat and speak to the crowd. When He was done, Jesus asked them to put down their nets … which they had been washing and getting ready to put away when Jesus showed up … so that they could catch fish. “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing,” Peter protests, but he puts down his nets anyways and, well, we all know what happened. Their nets were so full that they had to ask for help hauling them in. It was at that point that Peter fell to his knees and declared that Jesus was LORD … if not the very Son of God certainly someone who had very special abilities and powers that must have come from God. He probably wasn’t sure who Jesus was at this point but the foundation of his faith was being laid. Again, we hear that Peter and Andrew left everything and followed Jesus (Matthew 5:11).
At this point, Peter’s faith was based on his relationship with Jesus, the rabbi … but that faith … along with the faith of the other Disciples … and those who heard Him and followed Him like the Disciples did … would be constantly challenged … not only by disbelievers and those who opposed Jesus’ movement … but by Jesus Himself.
Peter and the Disciples saw Jesus do incredible, fantastic things … heal people of leprosy and a host of other diseases … restore the sight of the blind. They saw Him drive out demons. They heard Jesus command the wind and waves to stop during a storm … and they did. At one point, Jesus took a boy’s lunch of five barley loaves and two fish and fed five thousand men and their families. Another time, he fed four thousand.
It was during one storm that we see the proof of Peter’s faith … and the effect that spiritual “creep” can have. Having just fed the five thousand, Jesus commands the Disciples to get in a boat and cross the Sea of Galilee and He will meet them on the other side. He didn’t tell them how He was going to get there, so they assumed that He was going to walk there … on land, not over the water … which, he did, much to their surprise and terror … thinking that Jesus is some kind of ghost. When Peter recognized that it was Jesus and not a ghost, he called out to Jesus: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water” (Matthew 14:28). Listen carefully. You’ve probably heard this before. Peter didn’t just hop out and begin walking towards Jesus on the water. He knows that the only way that he can walk on the water and join Jesus is how? If Jesus “commands” him. If Jesus commands him, then Jesus will give him the power to do as he commanded … just as God will give us the power … or whatever else we need … to do as He commands us, amen?
We can no more walk on water under our own power than Peter could … and we see what happens when Peter realizes that. He notices where he is … he realizes that he’s in the middle of a storm … he sees the waves ... and he realizes that what he’s doing he knows he shouldn’t be doing … and down he goes. We so often concentrate on Peter’s failure … his lack of faith … but we must realize that he, of all the Disciples, is the only who asked to go to Jesus. He was the only one who got out of the boat when Jesus said “Come.”
Now, I want you to think about this for a moment. “Come.” When Jesus met Peter on the beach that morning, he said to Peter, “Come” … “Follow me” … and Peter left his fishing boat, his nets, and his life behind … as big a step of faith as when he stepped out of the boat during a raging storm and walked on water. And just as Peter looked down and saw the waves and plunged into the sea, he would do something similar a number of times during his time with Jesus and beyond. When the rains and floods would come … when the winds of life would beat against his faith … he would have a moment of doubt … would the house of faith that he had built stand? Or was his faith built on sand? But here’s the beautiful part … he would never know if his faith would stand when the rains or flood came and the wind blew if the rains and floods never came or the wind never blew … and neither would we, amen? He would never know if he could walk on water until he got out of the boat … even if it were only for a few amazing, fantastic steps … and neither would we.
I doubt that Jesus ever heard the phrase “measure twice, cut once,” but as a carpenter, He no doubt knew to check the quality and integrity of His work as He went along … and so, on one occasion, He decided to check on the progress of His Disciples. One day, Jesus asked His Disciples: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13). Did you listen carefully? He asked who do the “people” say that the Son of Man is. “Well, Jesus, some say that you are John the Baptist come back to life. Some say that you’re Elijah, whom God declared through the prophet Malachi, would return one day to ‘turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents’ before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes and He strikes the land with a curse” (Malachi 4:5). “Others,” say the Disciples, “think that you may be one of the other prophets, like Jeremiah, come to life.”
When Jesus asks you or I to tend His sheep, it’s probably a pretty good idea to know what the sheep are thinking, amen? At the same time, it’s probably a good idea for us to know what the shepherds who are tending the sheep are also thinking, amen? “But who do YOU say that I am?” Jesus asks His Disciples (Matthew 16:15; emphasis added). In a flash, Peter’s hand goes up [raise hand]: “O! O! I know, I know, Jesus!” And without waiting to be called on, he blurts out: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Remember … Jesus asked who the people thought the “Son of Man” was … Peter acknowledges that Jesus is the “Son of the living God.” Wow! “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 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” (Matthew 16:17-20).
Why did Peter step out of the boat during the storm? Because Jesus commanded him to. How did Peter know that Jesus was the Son of the living God? Because God revealed it to him. How was Peter able to walk on water? Because of his faith and trust in Jesus. Why will the things that Peter bind on earth be bound in Heaven and why will the things that Peter turns loose on earth be turned loose in Heaven? Because Jesus will give him the “keys of the kingdom” … another way of saying that Peter will be able to do all these things in the future … not by his own power … not by his own will … but by the power and authority given to him by Jesus, the Son of the living God.
“From that time on,” says Matthew, “Jesus began to show His Disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Matthew 16:21). Pay attention, my friends. It says “from that time on.” We don’t know if what happens next between Peter and Jesus happened a day or a week or a month after Jesus declared that Peter was going to be the rock on which He would build His church. We don’t know how many times Peter heard Jesus say that He was going to be arrested in Jerusalem and killed by the elders and chief priests and scribes. Maybe once. Maybe a dozen times. But at some point, Peter felt that he needed to say something. Taking Jesus aside, Peter began to rebuke Jesus, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you” (Matthew 16:22). Jesus’ response is well-known but telling. “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Matthew 16:23). We tend to focus on the Satan part of Jesus’ response … and I’ll return to it in a minute … but for now, let’s think about what Jesus is saying when He accuses Peter of having his mind on human things and not divine things.
Remember … at the beginning of the sermon I talked about “creep.” The Israelites, the Judeans that Jesus was preaching to believed in God. They believed that God would one day send a messiah … lower-case “m” … a king … a human king like David or Solomon … who would liberate them from the oppression of Rome and make them the great and powerful and independent nation that they once were. That was looking at the scriptures with human eyes. That was listening to the prophets with human ears … so Jesus, who was speaking in a divine sense … the Messiah with a capital “M” … was speaking to people who didn’t lack faith … they simply lacked the ability to understand and envision what Jesus was trying to explain to them.
When Peter listened to Jesus talking about how He was going to be arrested … undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes … and be killed … well, those were things that could be understood in human terms. Everyone of the Disciples, everyone of Jesus’ followers, knew exactly what Jesus talking about and could imagine the horror of it in their minds. They had seen people beaten with whips and rods. They had seen people tied or nailed to crosses.
The part that slid by them was the “third day” part … the part where Jesus said that He would be raised. And that’s understandable. We have the gift of hindsight. They had no clue what Jesus meant. They heard that He was going to be arrested … which meant being thrown into a dank, windowless pit or prison cell. They heard that He was going to suffer … they could only imagine the horrors that that would entail. They heard the killed part … that was pretty clear. But “raised”? What did that mean? They had no idea what that meant. Raise up where? How? Were the elders, priests, and scribes going to nail Jesus’ body to a cross three days after He was dead? Were they going to hang His body from a tree or from a roof three days after they killed Him? Why would they ever think that He was talking about being raised from the dead and returning to His Father in Heaven? And if they could catch that meaning, what had they to pin it on? Nothing like that had ever happened in the world before. Even now, we believe in the Resurrection … with a capital “R” … but if we were to get honest, we can’t really explain how that happened or what it looked like when the Disciples saw Jesus ascending into Heaven. Nor, as the Apostle Paul points out, do we have any idea what our resurrection will be like. We know that it will happen but when? Immediately after we die? Or will we remain asleep until Jesus comes and we rise to Heaven, the living and the dead, at the same time? And what, as Apostle Paul asks, will our new resurrection bodies look like, be like … if we will even have “bodies” at all?
And now, let’s spend a little time looking at how Satan operates. When Jesus tells Satan to get behind Him, was He calling Peter “Satan?” Perhaps He was actually talking to Satan … the one who was whispering in Peter’s ear or grieving Peter’s heart … who was using Peter to grieve Jesus’ heart.
When Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden, he did it by planting a tiny seed of doubt in their minds. “Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?’” (Genesis 3:1). Satan knew the answer to that. “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’ But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:2-5). Up until this point, Adam and Eve never questioned God or His motives. He loved them and they loved Him. But now … well, why doesn’t God want us to eat of the two trees in the middle of the Garden? Is the serpent right? Why doesn’t God want their eyes to be open? Hum?
When Satan tries to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, the temptation might not be what you think. He points out that Jesus is probably hungry … He’s fully human after all, right? And now He suffers from the actual pain of hunger just like a regular human. But He doesn’t have to, does He? He has the power to turn the stones into bread. The temptation is to encourage Jesus to use His power to overcome His suffering … to point out that Jesus’ suffering is pointless and unnecessary. “Why suffer like them? Why suffer for them, Jesus? They’re not going to understand. They’re not going to appreciate what You’re going to do for them! In fact, they going to reject You … plot against You … make You suffer the worse kinds of things that human beings can suffer.”
When Satan offers Jesus the kingdoms of this world, he knows that what he is offering to Jesus is not his to give. It has always belonged to Jesus and always will. He knows that Jesus will never worship him but, for all that Jesus gave up, for all that Jesus would go through for us, would we worship Him? Or would we, unlike Jesus, be tempted to worship the kingdoms of this world and what they have to offer instead of worshipping Jesus?
And then he tempted Jesus with the very thing that upset Peter … death … or the power to avoid death. “Throw yourself from the highest pinnacle of the Temple and God’s angels … Your angels … will catch you. You won’t even have to stub your toe, let alone die.” As the Apostle John pointed out, Jesus always was and always will be. Death entered the creation because of our sin. It was our punishment. Why die for the very people who will kill Him? All of this suffering and death is so unnecessary … especially for them!
Luke says that when all of Satan’s temptations failed, he left … for awhile … only to return to tempt Him again … using Peter to remind Him of the pain and suffering of being fully human, the pain we experience when our pain and suffering causes others pain and suffering. Jesus wept … His heart hurt to see the pain that Lazarus’ death was causing his family and friends. When Judas and the Temple guards came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus could have stopped them. “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and He will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53). But He didn’t. Though He was God, says the Apostle Paul, He did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited … something that Satan was tempting Him to do. Instead, He “emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8).
Why?
When Satan tried to tempt Jesus, Jesus quoted scripture. What is the Bible? What is God’s Word … with a capital “W”? It is God’s love letter to us. Jesus Himself is the answer to the question “why?”. Jesus is God’s love incarnate. The foundation of Jesus’ ministry … His sole reason for coming to earth and suffering the horrors that He did … was for our sake. He had all the wealth … period! He had all the power … all the knowledge … all the wisdom … period. Jesus’ incarnation … His suffering and death … were the ultimate expressions of His love for us, His children, His creation. He took on flesh and came to us … to teach us the way back … to put us on the right track … to heal our broken relationship by sacrificing Himself for our sin. He came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Jesus said that Peter was His rock … the rock upon which He would build His church. He didn’t say, “Peter, go build me a church.” He didn’t say, “Hey, Peter, I’ll help you build a church.” He said that Peter was the rock but that He … God … would be the one Who would build the Church … with a capital “C” … one that the gates of Hades would never prevail against. Do you think that Peter was strong enough to prevail against the gates of Hades by himself? He could no more do that than He had the power to walk on water. The power that would build the Church … the only power that could prevail against the forces of Satan is Jesus. Peter is not the foundation of the Church … Jesus is. You and I are not the foundation of the Church … Jesus is. Jesus is the foundation … the bed rock … not only of the Church but our faith. Our faith looks down and sees the waves … and doubt creeps in. Our faith denies Jesus when it is threatened or challenged. It was the faith, the wisdom of God that allowed Peter to see who Jesus truly is. It was Peter’s faith in God that gave him the strength to stand up to the Sanhedrin and continue to profess that Jesus is the Son of the living God right up to taking his last breath. It was the forgiveness of God that called him to give up fishing again and return to ministry.
Peter is not the Rock of the Church. Peter is not the Cornerstone. But his confession is the first in the Bible that professes that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. His statement of faith is the first stone that was laid in what would become the Church. Faithful people of every age have stood up and professed Jesus as their Savior and their Lord because of the foundation of their faith … the love of God as shown to us by His Son, Jesus Christ, becoming another stone laid atop many other stones … all resting upon Jesus, the foundation of their faith.
In your hand you hold another stone. The first stone we laid at the cross reminds us of God’s eternal power and love written in the stone tablets of the Law. The second stone serves as a monument … pointing us to our eternal hope and salvation. The third stone represents the stones of judgement that we use to punish others and that others want to use to punish us. The fourth stone represents our hearts of stone. And this stone reminds us that Jesus is the Rock upon which He built His Church … and that we are the living stones that Jesus is using to build that Church. So long as our faith is built on the Rock of Jesus Christ and not the shifting sands of the world, we don’t have to worry about “creep,” amen?
As we come forward to break bread together and share a cup, remember that Jesus is the Living Bread and that His blood is the atonement for our sin. When we lay our stones at the foot of the cross, may we remember that the Gates of Hades did not and cannot … and never will … prevail against us or against Christ’s Church, amen?
[Communion]
