In this sermon, the preacher discusses the blessedness of Peter and the significance of his confession that Jesus is the Messiah. The preacher explains that the blessedness lies in the revelation that Peter received from God, the fulfillment of the prediction made by Jesus, the mission that was inaugurated as a result, and the function given to Peter. The preacher emphasizes the importance of the church's role in bringing people out of bondage and into the kingdom of God. The sermon also explores the concept of death and the church's destiny in the unseen world.

We are turning once again this morning to the passage that, in part, we considered together last Lord's Day, last Lord's Day morning, namely, the event that is associated with Caesarea Philippi, the record of which you will find in Matthew chapter 16, commencing with verse 13. We are coming this morning to the part of the passage that begins with verse 17, actually, and we shall be looking at verses 17 to 19. Now, before we come to that, let us remind ourselves that here we have one of the most important episodes, not only in the ongoing experience of Simon Peter, but really in the ministry of our Lord here upon earth. It is a turning point in the ministry of Jesus Christ, even as it was a turning point in the experience, the spiritual experience of the man whom we have been speaking of as Simon, but whom we shall henceforth be addressing as Peter, Simon Peter. Now, I had arranged to look at this entire passage in terms of three main divisions, two of which we have considered. The setting arranged for the vital question, and we saw last Sunday morning how very remarkably astute our Lord had been, how careful, how observant of detail in the setting of the scene for this question of all questions. Whom say ye that I, the Son of Man, am? Secondly, we were concerned to look at the substance of the reply given to that question by Simon Peter. We have already covered that. Now, this morning we come to the third main section here that I would like to speak of as the sequel to Simon's confession, and that comprises verses seventeen to nineteen. Let me read those words then at this point. And Jesus answered 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 tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell, or of death, or the powers of death, as those words are translated in the RSV, the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Now, with such words then did our Lord Jesus Christ, who had earlier spelt out to the people at large the terms and the qualifications of true bliss and true blessedness in the words of the Beatitudes, with such words as we have here, our Lord Jesus Christ, who uttered the Beatitudes recorded in Matthew chapter five, now looks into the face of one man, Simon Peter, Peter the confessor, and says to him, Not only you will be blessed, not you may be blessed, blessed art thou. In other words, the Simon of yesterday, the Petros of today, has moved into the territory of true and genuine blessedness, and that is the burden of this passage. Our Lord Jesus Christ goes on to speak of the incredible bliss into which Simon Peter has now entered. Now, it seems to me that this passage is really one whole. It's like a seamless garment that, if you begin to tear it to pieces, you destroy it. Now, it's not everyone will agree with this, but I must acknowledge to you and say to you how I see it. I see this whole passage, which is the basis of our text this morning, the basis of our remarks, as one whole. And therefore, I understand it as, first of all, the declaration of the blessedness, which is Peter's, and then the elaboration of the significance of that blessedness, the explanation of it. Wherein does the blessedness lie? And I think you will find that it lies in a fourfold experience. One, in the revelation that occasioned it. Two, in the prediction fulfilled by it. Three, in the mission inaugurated in consequence of it. And fourthly, in the function given to Peter on the basis of it. Now, we look at these as far as we can this morning without my depriving you of your lunch. Now, first of all, the revelation that occasioned it. Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood does not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in hell. Simon's blessedness is here directly traced to God the Father's gracious action in condescending to reveal to Simon the truth about God's Son. Jesus is telling Simon that he has not simply stumbled across the key to an understanding of his person and of his work, his messiahship and his sonship. Neither, indeed, has he simply thought his way through. Now, that does not mean to say that he did not use his mind. But whatever measure of research and of reasoning there was involved on the human plane, the thing that brought Simon to this point was wholly divine. Or, should I say, to be strictly accurate, primarily divine. Blessed are thou, Simon Barjona, for however much you sought for it yourself or talked about it or reasoned with other people, it was not the reasoning of others nor your own that's brought you here, but my Father which is in hell. Now, I want to bypass a multitude of issues that might arise from that statement, and I simply want to come to this preciousness that lay at the heart of it. Can you see the picture? Here is a man who was a simple Galilean fisherman, a rugged, rough, uncouth man. Now, we're not doing him despite. He was a man who was as great a sinner as any of us. The record will go on to tell us that. Even when he's had all the privileges that the physical presence of Jesus could endow him with, even so, he's a man who can curse and swear and deny his Lord and so forth. And yet, the omnipotent Lord, the God of all creation, comes down to this one sinner man, son of a monentity, and opens his eyes and discloses to him what is hid from the wise and the prudent, and he sees Jesus for who and what. He bypasses your Herods and your Roman Emperors, your Scribes and your Pharisees, and the Lord of all creation comes down to this sinner man and gives him to see, and gives him to understand that standing before him in flesh like his flesh is none other than Messiah, Son of the ever-living God, the only Savior. And I say to you, there can hardly be any blame, because therein lay salvation, and hope, and glory, and peace, and joy, and faith. The revelation that occasioned it. The prediction fulfilled by it or in it. Again, I can only touch upon this. Jesus passes from the primary truth, which stressed the Father's action in revealing his Son to Peter, to something else. Jesus now, in fact, is reminding Peter of something that had happened much earlier on. He says to him, Thou art Petros. Now, if you're careful readers of the New Testament, and if you remember some of the things we've been meditating upon, I know it's quite a number of weeks ago now, I would say that almost instinctively our minds should go back to that episode in John chapter 1 and verse 42 and 43. Because there, when Andrew brought Simon to his first contact with the Lord Jesus Christ, in that very first confrontation of Simon and the Savior, Jesus turned to Simon and said, Ah, so you are Simon, the son of Jonah. You shall be called Kepha, which is just the Aramaic for Petros, Peter. You shall be called Petros. What a remarkable thing. To tell the son of Adam, fluttering, feeble, frail, foolish, uncertain, to tell him that he's going to become an entirely different man, a man who will bear the name Petros or Prok, a man of stability, a man of strength, a man of character. I think I remember saying on that occasion, I wonder how Simon felt. Is it not too good to be true? Who can change the son of a fluttering dove, moving hither and thither with the wind, perching on this branch, then going to the other, moving, you know, without much rhyme or reason? Who can change a man like that and make him stable and strong? And Jesus made that prediction, and that prediction was a promise. And now, we have entered into the area where that prediction has become, in dawn, a reality. Jesus says, thou art, not thou wilt be anymore, thou art Petros or Cephas. Now one word about that. When Jesus said that, of course, he did not mean to say that there was no more change necessary in Simon Peter. We know from the record that he needed merely a touch, and he needed merely a word of challenge and of reprimand. He needed much instruction, but the point is this, you see. The man is no longer now what he was. He is no longer Simon, the son of Jonah. He is a new man. And even though he be but a babe and will need an awful lot of training and an awful lot of care, he is a new man. He is Petros. Petros is born. Oh, the blessed Messiah. Can I repeat? The son of a nobody. This man who was as great a sinner as myself or as you good people sitting in Knox Presbyterian Church this morning, this man, hears the Savior say to him, Look, Simon, you're a new creature. What I promised you a long time back, which then seemed too good to be true, has now come to the point where it has actually happened. The new day has dawned. You're a new man. Thirdly, now points three and four are a little longer than that. Wherein does the blessedness of Simon Peter lay? Thirdly, in the mission inaugurated on the basis of his confession. And I tell you, said Jesus, you are Peter. And upon this rock I will build my church. And the powers of death, the gates of Hades, literally, shall not prevail against it. Now with these words, Jesus inaugurates an entirely new era. Some people have doubtless erred in splitting up the ages into such watertight dispensations or eras, or call them what you like, that they have thereby made the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the gospel of God a message that contradicts itself in the several ages. And not only that, they have so divided the ages into dispensational eras that the people of God in all the ages are split up. But even though that is an exaggeration, which points to the fact that there is a distinction between the past and that which he is now about to inaugurate. He says, upon this rock I will build my church. But something's beginning, something's to start, something new is going to take place that has never taken place exactly like this before. I believe, without my elaborating that, that dear old Matthew Henry, I suppose he's one of the most and best loved of all the old expositors, he puts it in a nutshell as some of these men could. Not all of them, some were very verbose, but Matthew Henry could. He puts it like this. God had a church in the world from the beginning, and it was likewise built upon the rock, the rock of the promised seed, Genesis 3.15. Can I interject there? This is not in his translation. You see, it is a rock because it is a divine promise. And every promise of God is a rock you can build upon. That's what he's getting at, continuing with the quote. But now, that promised seed has come. It was requisite, therefore, that the church should have a new charter, as Christian and standing in relation to a Christ who has already come. Now, says Matthew Henry, here we have that new charter. You couldn't put it better. Standing, therefore, before the first person to confess his Messiahship and his Sonship. Jesus says, upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. Two matters of supreme importance concerning the church that Jesus pledges to build require at least to be mentioned. First of all, we must say a word about the church's foundation. What did Jesus mean when he announced, upon this rock I will build my church? It needs to be appreciated that our Lord repeated one word here, which he's already mentioned, already used. And it is in the repetition of this word that we have, probably, the key to what he meant. Now, it needs to be understood that Jesus was speaking these words originally in Aramaic. Not in English, not in Canadian. I distinguish, you notice. Perhaps that's not very fair, is it? Nor in Welsh, for that matter. But he was speaking in Aramaic. Now, in Aramaic he said this, Thou art not Peter, nor Petros, but Kepha. That word Kepha is sometimes transliterated in our Bible. It's not a translation, it's a transliteration, Cephas. Because the Aramaic word for Petros or Peter was Kepha. And Jesus said, Thou art Kepha. And then he goes on to say, quite literally, and upon this same word, Kepha. I will build my church. Now, you see, when we have our authorised version, or any other version, it seems to be a mere play upon words. It's more than that. Jesus did not say, Thou art Petros and upon this Petra I will build my church. But Jesus said, Thou art Kepha and upon this Kepha I will build my church. It's the one and the same word. Now, I'm a little bit bewildered when I hear some of my best evangelical and fundamentalist... My friends, it does not do us good to evade what an objective reading of Scripture requires us to understand. Whatever the truth is, we need the truth of Scripture. And don't let's quibble about it. The moment we begin to quibble with Scripture, that very moment we are not on a rock. We've moved away from the rock. This is what Jesus said. Now, well, this is terrifying. I can almost hear some of you saying in your heart, if that is so, well, then the Roman Catholic Church must be true in what they say about Peter. Well, now, hang on a moment. But that is true. Evidently, in the first place, Jesus meant thereby to indicate that somehow or other there is an intimate relationship between Simon Peter the confessor and the foundation of the church. It's not a remote one. It's not a second-grade relationship. It is a most intimate relationship. Thou art Kepha, upon this Kepha I will build my church. Somehow or other, he saw Simon Peter right there as in some sense the foundation of the church. Now, whereas that is self-evident to any objective reader of the Gospels and Epistles, in what sense are we to understand this connection to obtain? Now, that's the major question. Again, it is evident that Jesus is here distinguishing between Simon, son of Jonah, the man as he was by nature, and Peter, the man as he is by divine revelation and divine grace. And he says not about the old man, Simon, the man of flesh, but about the new man, Petros, the confessor. By that he means, of course, Peter as the recipient of the Father's revelation, Peter as the confessor of the Son's Messiahship and Sonship. Upon him, in that sense, he is building his church. Now, all right, if that is evident so far, we still have a most important question to face. How does this make him anything like a foundation of the Christian church? Now bear with me, because this is a little technical, but it is necessary, I think, to elucidate it. In replying to that question, it needs to be said in the first place that the New Testament speaks of the foundation of the church in more ways than one. And this is really the key to an understanding of this statement. The word foundation is used in different senses. One, actually and redemptively, there is only one foundation of the Christian church, and that is God's anointed Messiah, Son of the living God, Jesus Christ. We've sung the hymn this morning. Not all hymnology is necessarily sound theology, but that one is. The church's one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord. The church is built upon what Jesus Christ was in his person and therefore was able to do his work, his person and his work. Now, you don't need to take my word for that, you must take the Apostle Paul's, and indeed Simon Peter's in different places. But let me quote Paul, who was very conclusive. In 1 Corinthians 3, he says this, For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, will you please notice the word, or the words, than that which is laid. Says Paul to the Corinthians, I did not lay the foundation of the Christian church. But surely he did, he did the preaching. Yes, he did the preaching. He did the evangelizing, yes, but he did not lay the foundation. Says Paul, the foundation of the church was there already. It had been laid. Who laid it? The omnipotent God. Who is the foundation? It is Christ Jesus and him alone. Therefore, redemptively, actually, the church can only be built upon the person of Christ and the work of Christ. Now, that must be clear. And that is one and the major sense, of course, in which the word foundation is used in the New Testament. But now, speaking from a different point of view, the same apostle, and whatever you say about the apostle Paul, he was too astute a man to contradict himself. Even if you don't believe that he was inspired, I do, of course, but even if you don't, there is one thing that you must believe about Paul if you know anything about him, and that is this, that he was a man of a mind and an intellect, second to none. And this man would not so contradict himself as to suggest one thing here and another thing there that contradicted it. Now, speaking from a different point of view, however, and I speak of it as mediatively, the same apostle finds no contradiction of the statement we've just quoted when he tells the Ephesian church that the church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. Now you notice what he's done. He said something which superficially appears to contradict, but it doesn't contradict at all. What he's doing is this. He's using the word foundation in a different sense. Now, the question, well, before I come to the question, will you please notice that even there, Paul does not say that the church is built upon the foundation of one apostle. Or of one prophet. But upon the foundation of all the apostles and all the prophets. That's the significance of his statement. But now, in what sense were the apostles and prophets foundations or a foundation of the church? Now, the answer to that is quite simple. When you come to think of it, and don't become too glued to the text, that you can't see the panoramic whole. In what sense are they indispensable? Are they the foundations? Well, in this sense. You and I can only come to Jesus Christ via the apostles and the prophets. How do I come to repose faith upon the Christ whom God has given? Well, there is only one answer to that. And that is this. I can only come to the Christ via the testimony and the preaching of the apostles in the New Testament and the corresponding testimony of the prophets in the old. I only recognize Him by the Spirit of God when I read what the Old Testament said was going to happen and when in the light of the New Testament I see what has happened. I only come to the Christ whom God has laid as the foundation when I accept the truths and the doctrines and the teaching and the witness of the apostles and prophets. Therefore, in a secondary sense, the apostles and prophets are the foundation of the Church. We may also speak of the practical and experiential foundation upon which Christ builds His Church. And that aspect is perfectly represented in the new man, Peter. Now, on what is the Church built in terms of human experience? I don't think I need labor at this point. Whenever a man enters the Church, there is a certain experience involved in the New Testament. Now, unfortunately, this is not so in the ecclesiastical setup of the twentieth century. Very often, when people join the Church, they come and they say, well, now I like the look of these people or of this building or I like the choir. Some would even say they like the minister. And they say, I'd like to join this group of people. And unfortunately, they're accepted just like that. That's not the Church of the New Testament. Whenever men became members of the Church of the New Testament, it envisaged something had happened to them. Something had happened in their hearts. Something had happened in their minds. Something had happened in their souls. They had been born again of the Spirit of God. Simon had become a Peter, in other words, in each case. Now, the Church is built upon a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. In terms of experience, this is the foundation of it. The Church is built and the Church grows only where men and women individually come exactly where Simon came. To know that Jesus is the Prophet, Priest, and King, the Anointed One of God. And to know it because God reveals it. And having known it, believe it. And in believing it, confess it. And therefore, the foundation of the Church in this third sense is this. It is Christian experience. Christian experience defined, forgive me for repeating myself, Christian experience defined in precisely this way. A sinner who is blind by nature has a revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Who beholds the glory of God in the face of His Son by the Holy Spirit. And when he sees Christ to be the only Savior of men, he flees to Christ for refuge. He believes in Him. He trusts in Him. And then he confesses Him. So you have three senses in which we may speak of the word foundation. We conclude, therefore, that Jesus had this latter in mind so that He was looking upon Peter as something akin to a foundation member of the Church. I think this is the key to it. If you disagree with me, well, you must come to me some other time. Not foundation in the sense in which Jesus Christ is foundation. There is no other man who can do that. You need the anointed of God to be there. A God-man, the one mediator. I believe that our Lord Jesus was thinking of it in this sense. And in this sense, you see, Simon was the first foundation member of the newfound Church. He was the first brick in the building. And all the other bricks are built either upon him or around him. And they have to be linked to him. This is the picture. It is as if we're going to build a new edifice here. Can you imagine somebody putting a new brick over there somewhere? Why did I choose that side? I don't know. Where would they put the new brick? Well, anyway, they're going to put the first brick down, the first stone. That's Simon. He's the foundation member. Now all the other bricks are going to be around him, linked to one another, but all around Simon Peter. And Simon was the first confessor of Jesus, Son of God, Messiah. He's the foundation member. The Church's foundation. One word about the Church's future. That Church that Jesus has pledged to build upon that foundation is a Church concerning which he goes on to say this, And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. The gates of Hades. Now that is metaphorical language, pictorial, and we cannot dogmatize as to its significance. It can mean one of two things. It can either mean, it can either refer to the Church's ministry or to the Church's destiny. The way I refer to it indicates that I believe that it probably refers to the Church's destiny, the Church's future. But it could also refer to the Church's ministry. Let me explain. This concept of the gates of Hades, the gates of death, it suggests the picture of a fortress. You know, death has become Satan's main fortress. It is by means of death that he keeps so many people under his control. He is the prince of the power of the air. You read the epistle to the Hebrews, for example, chapter 2, the end of chapter 2, and you see there how all men are subject in some measure to the fear of death, if they're still thinking at all. And he that has the power of death holds men in subjection to himself. Death, you see, is a kind of citadel, a kind of fortress. This is his strong place, and from here he can frighten almost anybody, apart from the saints of God who know him and know their word, the Bible. Now, the picture might be this. It is the picture of a church, the church built upon this rock. The church built upon a personal revelation of who Jesus is, and the personal confession of it as token of faith. It may mean that this church is now to be considered as an army, moving into the territory of spiritual death and darkness to rescue the perishing, to snatch the airing, to bring the prisoners of Satan out of his kingdom and bring them into the kingdom of God's dear Son, the kingdom of light and of life. And if that is so, then what our Lord is saying is this. All right, I send my people out who've received the revelation, who've made the confession, and to whom I give authority, which is our next point. I send them out, and the very gates of the devil's bastion shall not prevail against them. They will gather my elect from the four corners of the earth. Wherever they go, they will bring their sheaves with them, rejoicing in due course. The gates of the enemy shall not prevail. Now, whether that is the truth here or not, it is a truth in the New Testament. One of my fellow countrymen comprised a hymn, a lovely hymn, and one verse, and it goes like this. It's based on that understanding. He's praying a prayer, and this is the prayer in one stanza. Free my soul from sin's foul bondage. Hasten now the glorious dawn. Break proud Babel's gates in sunder. Let the massive boats be drawn. And then he pictures the answer to his prayer. Forth, like oceans heaving surges, bring in myriads, ransomed slaves. Host on host, with shouts of triumph, endless, countless as the waves. Move into the territory of the damned and the dying. Rescue the perishing. Bring them out. And that's the task of the church. That's your business, my friend. That's mine. This is why we're here. But now the reference could also be to the church's destiny. Believers and unbelievers alike pass into the unseen world through the dark gateway of death. Now, have you ever been puzzled by this? I'm sure some of you have. Here we are this morning. We are, many of us, I trust all of us, believers in the Lord Jesus. We've received the revelation. We've believed it, and we confess it. He is our Lord. We believe he is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And on that we stake our all. But now look. You have to die. I have to die. We all die. Every one of us. You know, I'm a little bit annoyed sometimes. Forgive me for using that word. But I hear some preachers on the radio here. When I go home late at night, I sometimes switch the radio on. And it's amazing what you hear on the radio. And I hear some people talk as if they can cure every headache and every toothache and every ill to which the frail body of our humanity is heir. You know, it's a lie. Did you know any faith healer that never died? Now, I believe that God hears our prayers for the sick when it pleases him. And I not only believe that, I have seen it with my own eyes. So I'm not denying that fact. But what I am denying is this. It is not always God's will, and even men who preach this so-called gospel, die. I don't know a faith healer that has not been ill and died. Do you? And yet we believe so many of them. You know, we've got to put our thinking caps on. These people, some of them are not worthy of our support. They're propagating a lie. They have to die. They grow old, and their bodies wither and wilt sooner or later, just as yours do, just as mine will do. It is appointed unto men once to die. This is the normal thing. God may step in, in certain cases, and put his hand of mercy and power upon this brother or that sister. And he does it. But we must never convey the impression that in every case God does this. It's not part of the program. Now, I have wondered. It would seem, if that is not so, that all the gospel promises are null and void. Because saints and sinners suffer. Saints and sinners die. And the spirit goes out to the body, as in the case with the one, so in the case with the other. And then the body is probably taken to the grave and buried, and so much earth put on top of it, and it's left there, perhaps on a cold, miserable day. And all is winter and dark. Oh, my good friend, hear the word of our Lord. Concerning this, his church, built on this foundation, the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. In the language of the New Testament, full of revelation, the trumpet shall sound. And the dead in Christ shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. In other words, there is a resurrection. And not all the powers of Satan can withstand this church's arriving at the destiny appointed by the head and the builder and the house. What a blessedness for Simon Peter. Jesus tells him face to face, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjon. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father which is in him. And I say to you, just as you said to me that I am the Son of the living God, now I'm turning it back on you. I want to tell you something. Upon this rock, upon this cathar, I will build my church. I'll gather around you as a man a multitude of bricks, a multitude of stones, as Peter speaks of them in his first epistle. One built onto another and along with the other, built up into a spiritual edifice by the Spirit of God. And the gates of hell shall not stand against this church as it marches through death into deathless life and glory. I won't weary you with my last point this morning. But please, we'll come back to it sometime. May I close in asking, Do you thus trust Jesus Christ as your Savior? Men and women, have you a conviction that he is the Son of the living God, the Messiah, the Savior? And such a conviction as brings you to him, and you hurl yourself upon him, and you rest confidently, not in your own good works or your membership of any earthly church, but fundamentally in him. I say to you in this morning hour, if you've never done that before, and if the Spirit of God is working in your heart this morning, and you are hearing more than the feeble words of a frail man, then this may well be your morning, a dawn of a new day. Trust him. Rest upon him. Confess him. When you have truly embraced him with the arms of faith, go to someone, nay, go to many if the opportunity arises, and tell them of him. You thereby belong to a church that the pause of death does not frustrate from entering the glory where the head of the body is already. Glory be to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, that to us, sinners as we are, such good news are declared. Let us pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank thee for thy holy word, and we find that the mind is so deep that however far we go down, we never touch the bottom. And however much we think, and however high we soar, we can always go further. Grant, our Lord, that some of these exceedingly rich aspects of divine truth may come to us today in the power of the Spirit, that thy true church may be extended around the foundation members, the first of which was thine apostle, Peter. And may that church be so enlarged that when at last the day dawns and the trumpet shall sound, not a seat will be vacant in the heavenly Jerusalem, and all of us shall be there. Hear us in Jesus' name. Amen. Let us conclude this morning by singing our closing hymn, No. 301, Onward, Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War. We'll sing verses 1, 2, 4, and 5. No. 301.