The Keys to the Kingdom

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This evening, I was going to start out by telling you a story about taking Benjamin hunting last year. But the way we do it, it’s not really hunting. It’s more like wandering around in the wilderness, completely surrounded by all the no deer.

I don’t know if we scare them away or what. But we had gotten kind of tired of some of our usual hunting grounds where we weren’t having any luck. So we decided to try a new one where we wouldn’t have any luck.

And we went down to some private timberland in southeast Oklahoma, down around Batiste or Bethel, if you know where that is, some of the most remote areas of Oklahoma. And on these lands, you have to buy, they’ll let people on there, but you have to buy an access permit. You have to spend much dollars, as I told Benjamin, to get an access permit to this land.

And he was really worried about the fact that we went into the land without paying. we didn’t stop now I’m not telling you a story about us poaching or trespassing he kept saying why why are we not paying why why are we not doing this I said we don’t have to but you said people have to pay I said they do but you see we have this little piece of paper from the tribe in the choctaw nation that is our hunting license and it’s our land access permit it says we get to go on that land without having to pass it otherwise for all the deer I know we’re not going to catch we wouldn’t be paying that amount of money to go on there, but we can, so let’s do it. But I kept having to reassure him, we’re not doing anything wrong.

We can be here, but we didn’t pay. No, it’s fine. We have authority.

We have this little piece of paper. We’re good. We had this little piece of paper with us that gave us all the authority in the world to be where we were and to be doing what we were doing, which was pretending like we had any hope of catching deer.

But that’s important because if we had been without that piece of paper, not only could we have gotten in trouble with the game warden because we didn’t have permission from the government to be hunting deer, you can get in trouble for that, but also we could have been in other legal trouble for trespassing on this private property. We had to have authority from somebody else to be where we were and to be doing what we were doing. And tonight, that’s sort of what I want to talk to you about in Matthew chapter 16.

I told you this morning that we were going to look at this passage twice today. That we were going to talk about it and we were going to come and take a look at it from a different, not really a different angle, but we were going to look at a different verse and focus in on a different verse tonight than what we did this morning. So if you would turn with me to Matthew chapter 16, we’re going to read about some of the authority that Jesus gave to His followers to go where they were going and do what they were doing.

And once you get there, if you would stand with me, please, and we’ll read together from God’s Word. Matthew chapter 16, starting in verse 13, and we’re going to read through verse 20 again. It sounds familiar from this morning.

That’s because we read it this morning. But it says, 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? And so they said, Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

He said to them, But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered and said to him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

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. 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. Then he commanded his disciples that they should tell no one that he was Jesus the Christ. And you may be seated.

So just to recap what I shared with you this morning, there on the way to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus was talking to the disciples, and he asked them, what have you heard about me? And so they began to spill their guts about all the rumors going around town about who Jesus was, who everybody thought He was. He’s Jeremiah.

He’s Elijah. He’s one of the other prophets back from the dead. He’s John the Baptist. And Jesus finally then zeroes in and says, but who do you say that I am?

And it was only Peter that answered and said, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Which in and of itself is an astonishing statement. I think this morning I called it a revolutionary confession.

Something that would have been shocking to anybody who had never heard it before, as much as we rush right past it in the Scriptures because of what we know, this was, as far as I can recall, as far as I have seen, it’s the first time recorded in Jesus’ ministry that somebody recognized Him publicly as the Messiah. And a step further, Peter didn’t just say, you’re the Messiah, you’re the one that has been promised because as I told you this morning, they were expecting a human Messiah. They were expecting a political leader They were expecting a military leader.

They were doing what so many people in America do, we’re waiting for the right guy in government to come and save us. They were doing that thing that always works out so well. And instead, God was sending somebody who was more than just a political leader, more than just a military leader.

God was sending His own Son. And so for Peter, he didn’t just say, you are the promised one in the sense that you’re a human being who’s sent here to do great things. He said, he went a step farther and said, you are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

And he identified Jesus there as God’s Son and as Israel’s Savior. And you would think if what so many people say is true, that Jesus was just a good moral teacher, just a nice guy that he’s a good example to us, nothing more than that. If Jesus was a good moral teacher but not God, he would have taken the opportunity to correct Peter over this horrendous misunderstanding, but he didn’t.

He went the opposite direction. And instead of saying, no, you’re wrong, He said, you are so right that there’s no way you got this just from human opinion. This is something that my Father, God Himself, has revealed to you.

Because you couldn’t have just figured it out based on human understanding. Jesus admitted that it was true. And He commended Peter for having the insight into God’s truth, but also having the guts to be the one to say it.

And He followed up Peter’s confession by commissioning him and those around him to go out and serve him. I said there were two things this morning, two commissions, two things that he said to them in response to this confession. And the first was that on this rock I will build my church.

And we talked about some of the implications of that. We have to be very careful with this passage because if you’re not careful, there have been so many false ideas. So many ideas built on this that contradict the clear teaching of Scripture elsewhere.

And this morning I shared with you that some people say the rock Jesus is referring to is Himself. I think that’s a good conception of it, but I think you have to read into the text a little bit to get there. Some would say it’s Peter.

That’s entirely possible. Peter as the one confessing that. That in no way, though, makes Peter the head of the church.

The scriptures say that Christ is the head of the church. He said it’s my church. That in no way makes Peter the head of the church, and it in no way makes anybody who claims succession from Peter the head of the church.

With all due respect to our Catholic friends. That’s a gross misinterpretation of what Jesus was saying there. I lean toward it being the confession he’s talking about as the rock.

Told you about the play on words there, Petros and Petra. the big rock and the little rock. But whether he’s talking about himself, whether he’s talking about the confession, whether he’s talking about Peter, the point is there was something important about this confession that made a huge difference.

Now, another error, another place where we can go off the rails with this is misinterpreting the part that we’ve read again about the keys. When we get to verse 19, that’s what we’re going to look at tonight, this idea of the keys to the kingdom and the binding and loosing. We’ve got to be very careful that we don’t read into it meanings that are not there.

I had a friend in high school, a very good friend, that we could not discuss religious matters because our other friends would have to get in between us and they got tired of that. And that’s difficult because, you know, so many people were told don’t discuss politics or religion. That’s all I like to discuss, okay?

That and, you know, working outside. But those are my favorite things to talk about. And we would talk about those at the lunch table and it would cause such a ruckus because my friend had been taught by the church that her family attended that this idea that so many of us had of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone was unbiblical. And I said, where do you get that it’s unbiblical given the clear teaching of Scripture in so many areas?

And she said, well, there’s that verse in Matthew 16 that said Peter was given the keys to the kingdom and he was given the authority to bind and loose. And she said, and so Peter got to come up with the plan of salvation as he saw fit. Okay, I love you as my friend, but that’s a level of crazy I’ve never imagined.

I don’t know how you get from point A to there. We’ve got to be very careful with it. First thing we need to understand as we read through this and try to understand the keys to the kingdom and binding and loosing and all of this, that Jesus was giving to Peter and by extension to the other disciples.

There as He’s talking about building His church, the very first thing we need to understand so that we don’t go off the rails is that Jesus here did not bind God or God’s kingdom to the apostles’ authority. Instead, He gave them the authority to go out and serve as He called them, as He commanded. Now what I mean by that is there have obviously been.

I have not heard of a lot of people believing what my friend believed. But there are people who believe that we can sort of obligate God, that we can manipulate God, that we can make God do things for us. And if you think I’m making that up, go turn on some of the religious TV channels.

Actually, I’d rather you didn’t, but if you really just don’t think I’m telling you the truth. Go turn on some of the religious TV channels. And there are people who teach something called the word of faith doctrine, who believe that words are essentially like containers, and with the active force of our faith, we can bend God to our will.

And if we say it, if we believe it, if we profess it, then He’s obligated to follow through. Folks, I don’t want to worship a God who is subservient to me. Okay, I know me, and if I can manipulate God, that’s not God I want to worship.

This passage in no way puts God under the apostles’ authority as though they could bind God or loose God as though they got to call the shots and God had to fall in line and say, oh, okay, then that’s what we’ll do. Instead, when he’s talking about giving the keys and he’s talking about binding and loosing, he’s talking about giving the authority on his behalf to go and serve as he We called them. Kind of like if somebody wandered in to where we were hunting and said, who gave you permission to be here doing what you’re doing?

We could hold up that piece of paper and say we have every right to be here. Doesn’t mean that we suddenly own that land. It doesn’t mean that we’re suddenly in charge of the state fish and wildlife department.

It doesn’t mean that we’re suddenly in charge of the tribe. It just means we are authorized to do what they tell us that we can go do. And nowadays, people like to say when we share the gospel, when we talk about Jesus Christ, when we talk about needing to believe in Him, who are you to tell me what I ought to believe?

Who are you to tell me what’s right? Who are you to say this is how I should live my life? Listen, it’s not us.

We’re just acting in His authority. He’s the one that told us to go. He’s the one that told us what to say.

He’s the one who told us how to live. We’re just here with His keys following His lead. So He said, I will give you the keys in verse 19.

The keys are a symbol of authority. If you have the keys, there’s the presumption you have the authority to be there. And so when he said, I’m going to give you the keys to the kingdom, that has nothing to do with Peter or any of the other disciples getting to lock and unlock the doors of heaven as they see fit.

And by whatever means they see fit, it’s a picture of authority. In a prison, who has the keys? I wish Miss Linda was here to make sure I was telling you the right story.

But in prison, if the inmates have the keys, you’ve done something wrong, right? And things can go awry pretty fast. The only people who should have the keys are the jailers. The ones who have authority over opening and shutting.

And really, it’s not even their authority. They act on behalf of the people and the Constitution. The keys are a symbol of authority.

And so he was sending his followers out in his authority. And they were going to be confronted. Even these disciples were going to be confronted in their day as they went out preaching Jesus and His death and burial and resurrection.

They were going to be confronted with people who said, what right do you have to come in preaching this? What right do you have to come in turning things upside down, telling people these things are true? Who gave you the authority?

The answer is Jesus Christ. And by the way, the same thing is true for us today. As we preach, as we teach, as we talk to others about what He’s done for us and what He can do for them. What gives you the authority to tell me anything about what’s true?

Jesus. He gave them the keys. And he said, and whatever you bind, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

I think the reason we get so off-kilter on this is because Greek is really hard to translate sometimes. I took two courses in Greek when I was working on my master’s degree. and I complained to Charla every day as I was doing my Greek work that Greek was the hardest thing I have ever done until the next semester when I started Hebrew.

And I only took one semester of Hebrew. I told the dean of the Bible department, I’m not doing any more of that. I’ll just look to others who can speak Hebrew.

There are some things in Greek that are just a monster to try to translate. And there are some places where there’s no easy way really to convey it in English. all the meanings, all the implications of what it means.

The way this is phrased in Greek, it wouldn’t make a smooth read to try to translate it this way. But the most literal way I know to translate what it says in Greek, if memory serves, is that whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.

The way it reads in our translation, it sounds like our binding comes first and God’s binding comes second in response to what we’ve done. But in the Greek, if we could read that, it’s clear that when we act, when Peter was to bind and loose, God’s binding and loosing had already happened. This is not God giving Peter the opportunity to say, well, I’m going to make up the rules as I go along and God’s going to fall in line and do what I say.

This was God, this was Jesus telling Peter that as you go out and you’re obedient to me, you can trust me to do what I’ve said I’m going to do, and I’m going to back you up. He wasn’t going to leave Peter hanging out to dry. I remember when Benjamin was in first grade, and I went to public school, he would come home periodically with bruises and other marks on himself.

And I told you all this morning, I’m not a confrontational person, but I’m also, I’ve been described as a Papa Grizzly, a little protective of my kids. And I was ready to go tear some little children limb from limb, like a bear would do in the Bible, you know, when the children were messing with Elisha, and he called down the she-bear. I got tired of it.

I talked to the teacher. We had other issues with that teacher. I talked with the principal. Didn’t get any help there.

So finally, I had had enough. After several weeks of this, I had had enough of him coming home with bruises every day, and me taking pictures to document, and getting nowhere. I had enough, and so I told Benjamin, that I believe what the Bible says about turning the other cheek.

I said, but that passage is about revenge, not self-defense. And so I told him, you know, I’m not in favor of violence. Sometimes you’ve got to do something to stop the violence.

I said, so if they come and they kick you and they hit you, they bite you, do whatever they were doing, I don’t even know. I said, you try to get it to stop. I said, you try to talk with them.

You try to reason with them. Try to make friends with them before it starts. If that doesn’t work, try to reason with them or try to talk to a teacher.

If that doesn’t work, do everything in your power to get away. I said, but if they pursue you, you try to get away and they pursue you and it keeps happening, I said, you turn around and you make sure they never touch you again. And I think he was a little shocked by that.

He said, what are you saying? I said, you go for the throat, you go for the eyes, I don’t care what you do. At that point, he said, I’ll get in trouble.

I said, over my dead body, because that principal already knows I’m not around. By the way, that was our last year in public school. So I know they have zero tolerance policies about things like that, but I didn’t know what else to do.

He said, I’ll get in trouble. I said, no, you will not. I said, and if you get in trouble with them, you will not get in trouble with me and I will defend you.

He said, will you? Absolutely. My son needed to know.

I know some of you may be thinking, well, that’s still wrong, telling him to hit. Listen, it’s not something I arrived at lightly. But here’s the point I’m trying to make with this.

My son, in order to go about his life and do what he needed to do and get through the school day without being made miserable, he needed to know that his father stood behind him and that he could trust that when he acted in accordance with what I had told him, I wasn’t going to hang him out to dry and change the rules on him and go in and say, well, I know I said that, but here’s what I’m going to say to them. No, he needed to know that he could trust me. And as I read what Jesus said here to Peter about whatever you bind on earth or loose on earth will have already been bound or loosed in heaven.

That’s how I understand that passage. That Jesus was telling Peter that as you go out and you faithfully serve and you do the things you’re supposed to do, you’re going to get into some sticky situations. You’re going to get into some situations where people don’t believe what you’re saying, but understand your father’s not going to move the goalposts on you.

Your father’s not going to be like Lucy in the Charlie Brown comics moving the football when you least expect it. He’s not going to hang you out to dry. When you say, God says this, God’s not going to say, well, no, Peter says that, but that’s not what I meant.

No, God, as you go out and you serve Him, God’s got your back. God’s not going to change what He has said. We need to understand, this is not us binding and loosing God.

This is us acting in the authority of God’s Word. And all of this was meant so that they could use the keys of the kingdom, not to decide who was in and who was out, but to throw open the gates of the kingdom by preaching the gospel. Because what was so important about this moment?

Just like this morning, you go back to the confession. This whole conversation started because of the confession. Jesus went down this road of talking about the unconquerable nature of the church and then going into the discussion of the keys of the kingdom, because Peter was willing to confess the truth about who Jesus Christ was and is that the Father had revealed to him.

It all came back to the confession that Jesus Christ is God’s Son and man’s Savior. And so he says, you’ve been given the keys to the kingdom. Peter and the other disciples had the distinct privilege of being able to throw open the gates of the kingdom as they went out acting in the authority of God’s word and proclaiming the message that He sent them to proclaim, they got to be the ones who threw open the gates to the kingdom so that others could come in.

Now, they didn’t do anything to save anybody. They just took to them the saving message. The message that could save them.

That Jesus Christ had come as God’s Son to save them. Now, not one of us in here is an apostle. We don’t fit the biblical qualifications.

Nobody alive fits the biblical qualifications of an apostle. But an apostle is an ambassador. It’s a spokesman.

And God’s Word says that we are ambassadors for Christ. So I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that we have the same responsibility here with this confession. And the gospel message, this confession about Jesus Christ, that had the power to throw open the gates of the kingdom, as they faithfully proclaimed it 2,000 years ago, still has the capacity to throw open the gates of the kingdom for people today. And as I talked about this morning, we worry about so many things.

We worry about the hostility growing around us. We worry about the changes in the culture, and we worry what’s going to happen to the church. We worry what’s going to happen to our families.

We worry what’s going to happen. Do we still live in a time and a place when people will respond to the gospel? Folks, Jesus has called and empowered us to change lives by proclaiming the good news.

That message still changes lives today. I think it’s harder today to proclaim the good news of the kingdom than it was in their day. Nobody’s feeding us to lions at the moment.

You don’t have the emperor Nero using Christians as human torches to light the way to the Colosseum. People were just as hard toward the gospel then as they are now, and yet the gospel then had the power to change lives. It still does today.

This message of who Jesus is gives us the keys to throw open the gates of the kingdom. The world wants to challenge our message and wants to challenge our right to proclaim it, but we have to be confident in our confession. I told you this morning about how frustrated I get with Christians as a whole and myself at the front of the line about how we are so often beaten down by society into this posture where we just react to everything.

We’re constantly on the defensive. Like we have to apologize for what we believe. Like we have allowed the skeptics to take the dominant place in culture where it’s just assumed that if you believe in Jesus Christ, you must have something wrong with you.

You can’t be all that smart. We have allowed ourselves to get into this position where we’re just always fighting defense. And the Gospel calls us to advance.

Talked about that some this morning with the gates of hell. Gates don’t move and they don’t attack. They are on defense.

The church has been given authority. Not authority from the government, not authority from the permission of popular culture, the authority of God’s Word to go and proclaim that message. We have nothing to be afraid of.

We have nothing to apologize for. We can be confident that the gospel is not merely our opinion. Sometimes I don’t.

I always have opinions on everything. You can ask my wife. But I don’t always like to share those opinions because some of them may be wrong, especially if I haven’t had time to research them.

The gospel is not our opinion. It’s God’s Word. We can be confident that He empowers our message.

We don’t go in our own power. We don’t have to figure it out. We don’t have to make it work.

We just have to step up and be obedient and open our mouths and let Him work it out. We can be confident that it’s not our job to fix people, but simply to tell them what Jesus has done and let Him work in their lives. Sometimes as Christians we get frustrated with our friends and our neighbors and our co-workers because we see where they’re in error in their lives and in their beliefs and we can’t fix them.

Listen, it’s a full-time job just trying to fix myself. And I assume it’s probably the same way for a lot of you. It’s a full-time job just taking care of this.

I can’t fix you. I can’t fix them. But it’s not my job to.

My job to tell them about the one who can. And then what he does is up to him. We just are supposed to be faithful and be confident that all we have to do is our job.

And we can be confident that the gospel still throws open the gates of the kingdom. It is still possible to see people’s lives changed today by the message of Jesus Christ. I have heard interviews with people from people involved in Islamic terrorist groups who came to Christ and their lives were transformed to people who were living a transgender lifestyle and came to Christ and their lives were transformed I’ve seen it on a smaller scale with my children who were not bad children but I just saw a change in their attitude after they trusted Christ and I’m telling you whether it’s in big things or in small things the gospel still transforms lives today and we can be confident in that fact because the same God who did it then is the same God who’s at work now. I’m tired of playing defense.

And I feel like that’s what we did all through 2020. Just reacting. And where’s this new thing going to take us?

What’s going to happen to us now? I’m tired of it. And I’m not saying that to get on to you all.

I’m just saying for me, I’m tired of sitting back waiting to see what’s going to happen. I need to look for the opportunities to make the same confession that Peter made and go in the authority of God’s Word and let that message throw open the gates of the kingdom. I’d ask you tonight, who there is in your world that needs to hear about the hope that we have in Jesus Christ?

Maybe who is there in your world that needs to hear again? Start praying for them now. Start praying for God to give you the opportunity to open that door either for the first time or for the 100th time.

And it’s time instead of falling backwards into opportunities whenever they may just happen upon us, We go out and start looking for the opportunities to advance and do what He’s called us to do.