The Promised Messiah

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Matthew chapter 16 this morning. Matthew chapter 16. As important as we like to think they are a lot of times, our opinions and positions on a great many things don’t matter so much when it comes to eternity.

Even though we like to make them as though they’re of life and death importance. I remember back during this election we just had. Y’all remember that?

Or have you tried to block it out of your minds? which one they all run together 2016 I heard people I I read even christians on the cesspool of social media talking and it really is sometimes talking about donald trump and I heard two sets of opinions you know and I’m not talking about the people in the middle who just said we’re going to make the best decision we can one way or the other. There were people on the extreme on one end who said, if you’re not 100% for Donald Trump, you must want Hillary, you must want abortion, you can’t really be a Christian if you don’t love Donald Trump.

And I thought, wait a minute, that didn’t sound right. And then there were people on the other hand who said, he said this about women, he said this about minorities, he said this, he’s done that, you can’t be a Christian and love Donald Trump. I thought, wait, that didn’t sound right either.

And by the way, I’m not in either of those camps, so I’m just telling you. That doesn’t sound right either. I don’t recall in the Bible it’s saying that our standing with God or our status as Christians depended on how we thought about Donald Trump.

It doesn’t matter, our standing as believers doesn’t come from how you felt about Barack Obama. Your standing as a Christian doesn’t come from how you feel about the Kardashians or whether you care about them or not. you know what you can think all sorts of things about me there may be people in this room who like me there may be people in this room who don’t I know before the kids got up and went to children’s church I had one child who was happy with me and the other who was not it doesn’t make a difference the Bible doesn’t teach that what you think about me or the president or this group or that group it doesn’t teach that your your thoughts toward them as far as whether you approve or not or what you are, whether you think that person’s good or bad, it doesn’t teach that any of those things affect whether we are a Christian or not.

And yet Jesus said in John chapter 8 verse 24, telling the people that unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. He was telling a group of Jews and his followers who had gathered there and talking about his relationship to the Father, that unless, when you read that whole passage in context, that unless we believe that he is the Son of God, that unless we believe he was sent by God, we will die in our sins. You see, our Christianity, our standing before God, our status as believers, these things are not affected by how you feel about anybody other than Jesus Christ. What you think about Jesus Christ is incredibly important.

And this morning we’re going to look at this passage in Matthew chapter 16, where Jesus begins to examine his disciples about how they felt about this. Jesus was all the time asking questions that he already knew the answers to. He did this with his disciples all the time.

I used to be puzzled by the fact that Jesus would ask questions. Wait a minute, Jesus is God, he knows everything. And what I see is most of the time in the Gospels, Jesus is not asking questions because he wants to know the answer, but he wants us to see what our answer is.

I really believe that a lot of times that was his motivation for asking questions so that we would see what our answer was. So that when the answer came out of Peter’s mouth, Peter would realize, wait a minute, that’s what I really think, that’s what I really believe. And so he says, starting in verse 13, it says, When Jesus came into the coast of Caesarea Philippi, He asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?

And he’s kind of giving them a hint a little bit there. Son of Man, in contrast to Son of God, means that he is man. As we study through some of these basic Christian teachings, things that we should have nailed down, one of the things that we’ve talked about is the nature of Jesus Christ, that he’s God in human flesh.

That God the Son took on human flesh, And so he’s both fully man and fully God in a way that is impossible for us to comprehend. Yet it’s what the Bible teaches. So when the Bible says he’s the son of man, it means that he’s human, but it means more than that.

There are places in the Old Testament where the Messiah was spoken of using that term. And so he’s not only talking about his humanity. He’s not only being humble here saying I’m just a man.

He’s identifying himself with the Messiah. The answer is in the question if they’re paying attention. So he says, who do people say that I, the son of man, am?

And they said, notice here, they are quick to answer. They said, some say that thou art John the Baptist. Some say Elijah and others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. So he sort of transitions into, he’s talking to them and he transitions into what he really wants to know by starting out with this question or really wants to ask by starting with this question, what do other people say?

And we are so quick as human beings to tell what other people think. We are so quick to throw everybody else under the bus. I hear this in church all the time.

I haven’t heard it here, I don’t think. I don’t think I’ve heard it here, but I’ve heard this a ton of times in church. Well, what should we do about this?

Well, you know what everybody else says, preacher. And what that usually means is this is what I think, but I don’t want to be the one to take responsibility and say that that’s what I think. Well, I’ve talked to a lot of people who just think that you preach too long.

Okay, that may be true, but I don’t think you’ve really taken a poll. I think that you’ve taken a poll of yourself, and 100% of you, yourself, think that I preach too long. Well, everybody hates the color of this carpet.

Yeah, everybody, you’ve asked, which means you. So we’re real quick to put it off on everybody else. So when Jesus said, what do people think about me?

They are so quick to answer. I mean, it’s just right there on the tip of their tongues. Some people think that he’s John the Baptist, which is bizarre to me.

At this point, John the Baptist has already been executed. Some people think that he is the reincarnated John the Baptist, that he is the spirit of John the Baptist, which again is bizarre because Jesus and John the Baptist existed at the same time. John the Baptist baptized Jesus.

How could he baptize himself? I don’t understand that. But some people thought that.

other people thought he was Elijah you know there were prophecies in the Old Testament that talked about somebody coming back in the spirit of Elijah I think that was fulfilled by John the Baptist but they think okay he’s Elijah come back other people thought oh you’re Jeremiah some people think you’re Jeremiah and they said still other people think you’re one of the other prophets you know maybe you’re Isaiah maybe you’re Malachi maybe you’re Ezekiel you’re one of the prophets so as he asks these questions what they come around to is this sort of consensus that the people think that Jesus is a prophet. In other words, they think he’s a good man. They think he speaks for God.

They think he is indwelt by the power of God. The people have some respect for Jesus. The people have quite a bit of respect for Jesus, as a matter of fact.

The problem was just they didn’t know what that meant or what to do with him. You know, we think he’s great. we respect him, but we don’t quite know where to put him or what to make of him.

And that same thing is true in our world today. By and large, you wouldn’t know it from watching the way people act or hearing the way people talk, but most people in our country admit to having some respect for Jesus Christ. I saw a recent poll, now I can’t remember the numbers, a recent poll that they did in the UK in England that said that the vast majority of people loved Jesus and felt a connection to him. And this is across all religious spectrums. Because Christians, obviously, we’re supposed to believe that he’s the son of God.

In Islam, they believe he was a prophet. They believe he was not the son of God. So it’s not the same view of Jesus at all.

In Hinduism and Buddhism, some groups of thought within those religions, They think that he was an enlightened teacher. So across all these spectrums, there are all these views of who Jesus is, but they can’t quite figure out what to make of him. We think well of Jesus, and we’re not sure what that means.

And in our country, too. I’m sure if you ask people out on the street, especially here in Bible Belt America, what do you think of Jesus? I’m sure for the most part, you would get respectful responses.

And they may be spitting out curse words like a sailor the minute before, but yeah, I like Jesus. I think he had some good ideas. But they’re not quite sure what to do with him, where to put him.

Is he a good man? Was he a miracle worker? Was he the son of God?

See, these people have respect for Jesus, but they didn’t really know what to do with him. We know he’s a good guy. We know he’s somehow connected to God, but we don’t know in what way.

So Jesus turns it back on them, and he says to them, verse 15, he saith unto them, but whom say ye that I am? Whom say ye? Who do you say that I am?

He asked them that question. Who do you say that I am? And folks, this question, who do you believe Jesus is, is a question of utmost importance.

Because as I started out with, you can believe a lot of things about me, you can believe a things about yourself. You can believe a lot of things about our political leaders. And in eternity, your opinion doesn’t matter.

Okay? And I’m not trying to be ugly, neither does mine. I’m not going to stand at the, I’m not, I’m not going to stand at the gates of heaven or at the, at the, the mercy seat of Jesus Christ and have him ask me where I stood on school choice.

Okay? It just doesn’t matter. Here it does, there it doesn’t.

But what I say about Jesus matters more than Where I stand on who Jesus is matters immensely. It is of the utmost importance. So it’s not good enough for Jesus to ask the disciples and say, Who do other people say I am?

He turns it back on them when they were so quick to answer and says, But who do you say that I am? And you notice, as he’s digging a little deeper with them and saying, Who do you say that I am? We don’t have an abundance of opinions coming forth in the next few verses.

if you look at verse 14 where they were asked what do other people say it says and they said I don’t know how many they were out of the group of 12 who were with him I don’t know how many of they spoke up but there was more than one probably everybody had an opinion of what other people said but when he cross examines them and says let me question you a little deeper who do you say that I am we see that Peter is the only one who speaks up. And in my mind it’s always kind of played out to where they look at each other in uncomfortable silence. The Bible doesn’t record this.

It’s one of those things that as I picture what would real people do in these circumstances. Not to say that they weren’t real people but people that I know and myself included knowing the way that we act what would we do if put in this situation? I see uncomfortable silence kind of like when I ask you all a question on Wednesday nights and you think it’s a trick question.

Uncomfortable silence. And silence does get uncomfortable, doesn’t it? It can be used as a weapon.

Sometimes I’ll call the kids in to the living room. Benjamin, Madeline, get in here. And I’ll just sit there and look at them and say nothing.

Until one of them tells me what happened. They get so uncomfortable, they crack. We don’t like silence.

It makes us uncomfortable. So he asked this question. And again, I don’t know that this is what happened.

That’s just my imagination running with the story a little bit. But I imagine they all stood around and looked at each other until Peter, who seems to be the impetuous one. We know this from the stories of the Gospels.

He’s the one who rushes to open his mouth and sometimes opens it and inserts his foot. But Peter is tellingly the first one to speak up here. And he says to Jesus, verse 16, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

He confesses Jesus, whereas all they had been quick to say what others thought about Jesus. Peter finally speaks up as the lone voice to say, You’re the Christ, the Son of the living God. Now to make sure we understand the magnitude of what he’s saying, we have to understand the words here.

Christ is not his last name. I went to school with kids who thought it was his last name. And they’d heard their parents use his name as a swear word so many times that they thought he had a middle initial. Christ is not his last name.

Christ is a title. Christ comes from the Greek word Christos, which is a translation of a Hebrew word, Mashiach, meaning Messiah. So when he identifies Jesus as the Christ, you’re the Christ, it’d be real easy for us the way we use his name to gloss over that and think, okay, you’re Jesus, you’re Christ. That is not an insignificant statement.

Peter is saying here, you are the Messiah and the Son of the living God. That is near revolutionary talk. Because they didn’t talk about anybody having a son.

As a matter of fact, they didn’t talk about God having a son. As a matter of fact, when Jesus was on trial, when he was about to be crucified, one of the biggest things that they had against him was that he claimed to be God’s son. In their understanding of God, that was blasphemous.

Now, it wasn’t really blasphemous. Because Jesus was the son of God. God revealed that.

But they thought it was. It totally messed with their understanding of who God was. And so Peter is saying here something that had never been spoken quite so confidently and quite so concisely.

That you are the Messiah and that you are God’s own son. Not just the son of a God, but you are the son of the God of Israel. Verse 17.

By the way, Jesus, as somebody who loved God and as a teacher of God’s word, if Peter had gotten this wrong, Jesus would have corrected him. Right? If Peter had said something blasphemous, don’t you think Jesus would have said, Whoa, hold your horses there.

I am not the Son of God. Perfect opportunity to correct it. But he didn’t.

What he says in verse 17 is, Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon bar Jonah. Simon Peter, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. He said, you didn’t figure this out with your own human mind.

He said, my Father in heaven opened your eyes and gave you this little glimmer of insight into who I am. And he said, verse 18, and I say unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. and some have taken this and the verse that follows as signs that Peter was the foundation of the church, and we’ll find that teaching quite a lot in Catholicism, but what Jesus is doing here, if you look at the Greek, is a play on words.

He says, you’re Peter. He gives him that name. That word there is Petros, P-E-T-R-O-S, the way we would spell it.

Petros, meaning a small rock, a pebble. And he says, on this rock, Petra, P-E-T-R-A, I will build my church. Now, some people have also taken that to be Peter’s confession, being the foundation of the church.

I don’t find a lot to dispute with that, because that confession is at the basis of Christianity. One of the first things that takes place as we become Christians is an acknowledgement that Jesus is the one that God sent to deal with the problem of sin, that he is that Messiah that God promised. Even if we don’t know all the Old Testament stuff about the Messiah or even the word Messiah, in trusting Christ as our Savior, we’re acknowledging that that’s exactly who he is.

That confession is at the foundation of everything. But I think this means something else. Because when Peter writes about Jesus later on in his letters, he refers to Jesus so many times as the rock, the Petra, the foundation.

So I’m not necessarily going to break fellowship with people who say that the confession is the foundation of the church, but I believe what Jesus is talking about here is himself. You are Peter. You’re the pebble.

And on this rock I will build my church. The church is built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. The confession itself has no value without Jesus being exactly who he is. So he says, on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

That ought to charge us up to go and serve him. To realize that, you know, individual churches may come and go. Now the seven churches that I talked about shortly after I came here, that we talked about from the book of Revelation, They’re long dead and gone.

The gates of hell have never prevailed against the churches of Jesus Christ. That gospel witness, we are still here meeting 2,000 years later, recognizing his death, burial, and resurrection and proclaiming his message to a dying world. And whatever has been tried to stamp out that message of Christ and the work of the church, the gates of hell, have never prevailed against it and will not because the church is built on the rock of Jesus Christ. and he says I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Now this verse, this verse, a thorough explanation of this would have to be for another time, just for time constraints.

Because this verse just like the one about the rock lends itself to people misunderstanding. I had a friend years ago who told me that her church taught that because of this, Peter had the right to devise a new plan of salvation. And I just, I can’t, I can’t.

We can’t discuss this right now. Binding and loosing was a term that was used in Jewish law. They would have understood what he’s talking about.

To bind something means to forbid it. To loose something means to allow it. And the way the sentences are constructed in the original language, I won’t get into all that right now.

But he’s saying, whatever you bind on earth will have already been bound in heaven. And what you loose on earth will have already been loosed in heaven. And he’s saying, he tells Peter, you’ve got the keys.

Well, Peter did have the keys, the gospel, to go and open the doors to heaven for first the Jews, then the Samaritans that he preached to, and then finally to the Gentiles. And as far as this binding and loosing, the church still has that authority today when we speak on God’s authority what His Word says. When we say this is what it is, this is what God says, when we say it, it’s already been settled in heaven.

And that’s an important truth for us to understand as we go forward when the world doesn’t like it when we speak out against sin. And I don’t care what the sin is, whether it’s homosexuality, abortion, divorce, drunkenness, gossip, whatever these sins are that the world says, well, who are you to say? Who are you to judge?

I’m not judging. I’m just telling you what the judge has already settled. And by the way, that judgment goes for me too because he looked at my sin and judged it as well.

So he’s telling Peter, what he’s telling him is with this confession, go out there and preach the gospel and tell people what God has already decided. Tell people that there is sin and that there is judgment and that God will judge sin and that there will be consequences for sin, but that Jesus Christ has opened the doors to heaven. So it’s really a commissioning, a giving of authority here, not to change the plan of salvation, not to save people by his will or condemn other people by his will, but to say, go out and proclaim the truth that God has already spoken.

Verse 20, but then he charged, then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. Not that they should never. Okay? Don’t think you get off easy that, oh, he told the disciples to go tell no man, so I don’t have to do that scary witnessing thing.

Yeah, you do. That was for, this is not your get out of jail free card. That was a temporary thing because it wasn’t time yet.

It wasn’t time yet. But they all came with this understanding of what Peter said, Jesus is the Messiah. what the Messiah means what it means that Jesus was the Messiah God spent 4,000 years 4,000 years preparing the world for the Messiah for Jesus to come and deliver them so when Peter identifies Jesus as the Messiah what he’s saying is you are the one that was talked about all through the Old Testament you’re the one that God has spent 4,000 years about.

You’re the one that God spent 4,000 years preparing us for and you’re the one who’s going to come deliver us. What does that mean to be delivered? It means to be rescued.

It means to be saved from something that we cannot save ourselves from. I’m not a strong swimmer. I can kind of tread water a little bit, but if I were to get sucked out to sea by one of those riptides or something, or just shipwrecked and I had to swim toward land, I’d probably be in trouble.

Probably would not be able to swim a couple miles to shore to get myself rescued. I would be totally and utterly dependent on somebody to come and rescue me. That person would be my deliverer.

So with the problem of sin, we cannot rescue ourselves because we see, oh, I’ve committed a sin. I’ve disobeyed God. And we think, well, I’ll just do some good to make up for it.

It doesn’t erase that sin that’s already there. If I’m baking a chocolate cake, which y’all probably don’t want to eat anyway. My wife is the baker in the family.

But if I’m baking a chocolate cake and I start with a half a cup of dirt from the garden, it looks like chocolate. It looks like cocoa powder when it’s dry, doesn’t it? Kind of.

Might look like the off-brand cocoa powder. Work with me, people. If I start with a half a cup of dirt, and yeah, there you go, some food coloring, some sugar, and then I think, well, not everybody likes the taste of dirt.

And I go add some chocolate. Are you going to want to eat that cake? No.

What if I add more chocolate? What if I add a bunch more chocolate? There’s still dirt in that cake, isn’t there?

Folks, that’s how sin is. I can add a bunch of good works to my life. Didn’t change the fact there’s still the dirt.

And so when I stand before God, I’ve got that dirt in the cake. I’ve got that sin on my account. And all the good I can possibly do doesn’t erase it.

It has to be punished. See, we need to deliver. And God spent 4,000 years preparing us for the Deliverer to come, for this Messiah to come.

And what he did was take responsibility for the sins so that it could be wiped clean. Our slate could be wiped clean and that he could give us his righteousness. So Jesus comes and does something miraculously that if we’re talking about that cake, it’s like he was able to remove every molecule of that dirt bit by bit until it was all gone and all the befoulement from everything it had touched was gone and he put chocolate there in its place.

And it was like the dirt was never there. By Jesus taking responsibility for my sins and yours on the cross and shedding his blood and dying for us, he paid for every sin that we ever committed. And his righteousness was put in our account.

And the Bible says God chooses to remember our sin no more. It’s like it never, ever happened. Could you do that for yourself?

No. That’s why we needed a deliverer. That’s why we needed a Messiah.

And as I said, he spent 4,000 years preparing them. They all knew that they were expecting a Messiah. Now many of them misunderstood what that meant.

They were looking for a king. They were looking for a military leader. But the signs were all there.

There were prophecies all throughout the Old Testament. I’ve given you an example of each of these things in your notes that I’m going to talk about. There were prophecies.

And just one example is from Isaiah 7. 14 where he says, and this will be a sign to you, a virgin will conceive and bring forth a child. I’m paraphrasing here.

But go look it up for yourself, Isaiah 7. 14. He says, here’s one of the signs of the Messiah coming.

Here’s something you don’t see every day. A virgin will conceive and bring forth a child. And I know some people like to say, well, that’s a mistranslation.

That word in the Hebrew can mean young woman. It doesn’t necessarily mean virgin. I’ve told you before, I have no respect for that argument.

Because young women give birth every day. That’s not much of a sign. As I’ve said before, if you see a 70-year-old giving birth, that’s probably going to end up in the National Enquirer.

Because that doesn’t happen every day. Young women give birth every day. That’s most of who gives birth.

But a virgin giving birth, now there’s you a sign. That’s just one of the many prophecies. There are other prophecies about where he’d be born.

The prophet Micah said he’d be born in Bethlehem. There were prophecies about him riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, which he did. There were prophecies about not a single bone of his body being broken when he was crucified.

The prophecies are all there. So he’d been preparing them for 4,000 years with prophecies. Here’s what’s going to happen.

He’d been preparing them for 4,000 years with promises. And if you go at some point and look up 2 Samuel 7. 16, where God is making his covenant with David, He talks about some things that are going to happen immediately in David’s life and then in Solomon’s life right after that.

But he talks about David’s seed, David’s descendants, sitting on the throne of Israel forever. And the Bible teaches that that’s fulfilled in Jesus Christ, that he is the king of the Jews that was born of the seed of David, and he’s the one who will sit on the throne forever. It was a promise from God.

And if you look at it just for an earthly fulfillment, It looks like David’s descendants quit sitting on the throne around the 500s BC until you realize there’s a spiritual fulfillment to this prophecy. And one day we’ll see the physical fulfillment of this prophecy when Jesus personally returns in power and glory to set up his eternal kingdom. And God spent 4,000 years preparing the world through pictures.

And these are some of my favorite things to look for in the Old Testament here the last couple of years now that I’ve realized that they’re there. and the one that I’ve written down for you was in Leviticus 17. 11.

I talked about this just a little bit on Wednesday night where it talks about the slaughtering of the bull. First of all, the blood sacrifices. Well, this is a different passage.

It talks about the slaughtering of the bull. In this passage in Leviticus 17. 11, it talks about the life being in the blood and being used for atonement in sacrifices.

That unless they shed blood on altars, There was no atonement. There’s no bull, but we read further, there’s no bull, there’s no goat, there’s no sheep, there’s nothing that can take away our sins. And yet it wasn’t without reason that God had them sacrificing animals for these thousands of years as sin offerings.

Those bulls and those goats and those sheep and the pigeons and whatever else, folks, they didn’t take away sin. what they were was a picture of the once for all sacrifice that Jesus Christ would make. See, if Jesus just showed up and died on the cross and shed his blood, and I said, that was a sacrifice for you, and you came from a culture that didn’t have a history of blood sacrifice, you’d say, what does that mean?

But folks, after 4,000 years, it was ingrained in who they were. They understood blood sacrifice. They understood the idea that the innocent died for the sins of the guilty.

See, God spent all this time preparing them for Jesus to come and be a sacrifice for their sins. So when Peter acknowledges that Jesus is the Christ, that he’s the Messiah, they know exactly what that meant, that he’s the one who God had spent 4,000 years talking about that was going to come deliver them. And then Jesus, in verse 17, which we’ve already looked at, Jesus said that it was God who made Peter understand this.

it was God who made Peter understand this the plan of salvation was not man’s idea we are not smart enough to figure that out we’re just not for 2,000 years the gospel has been preached and most of us as mankind are still trying to figure out how to tip the scales in our favor by good behavior we’re just not smart enough to figure this out acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah means acknowledging him as the God given Savior that this wasn’t my idea this wasn’t my plan God came up with this plan God executed this plan God sent the perfect sacrifice God raised him up from the dead God took our sins and put them on him God did all of this there’s nothing for us to boast about or think well I’m better than I’m better than everybody else because I’m a Christian doesn’t make us better doesn’t give us anything to brag about that we realized how sinful we were and simply believed in God’s offer of forgiveness.

He’s the God-given Savior. We acknowledge that. And when we acknowledge that he’s the God-given Savior, it means we throw ourselves on his mercy and ask God to forgive us because of what Jesus did.

But he told him in verse 18 that because of this confession, he was changing his name to Peter, the little rock. And that he, Jesus, was the rock that he’d build the church on. but folks it all started with this confession it all started with this confession I’ll say it again Jesus is the rock that the church is built on but this whole conversation this whole blessed are you Peter I’m giving you a new name started with this confession the confession of Jesus Christ as the Messiah lies at the very heart of Christianity you can believe a lot of things but as Jesus said in John 8 24 unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

You cannot be a Christian unless you believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. That’s the heart of it all. And a

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