Matthew 16: 13-20

I Will Build my Church

Introduction:
Missionaries with the houses with doors to nowhere.
-A lot of people started with grand plans that never got finished for a variety of reasons.
They changed their plans, they got too busy, and they ran out of money…

This morning, I want to talk about a building project that was started a long time ago and has
continued on throughout the ages despite some incredible obstacles.

Main point: Jesus is going to continue building his church and nothing is going to stop that from
happening.

If you have your Bible, please turn with me to Matthew chapter 16.
We have been doing a series on the promises of God.

Read 2 Corinthians 1: 20
Perhaps the greatest promise of God that finds is Yes in Jesus is the promise that we will look at
today: Jesus promises, “I will build my church”

Read Matthew 16: 13-20

Point One: The Church’s Foundation

Read Matthew 16: 13-18
We are going to see that the foundation upon which the church is built is Christ.
He establishes the church, and builds it upon himself, and we, like Peter participate in the
building of the church when we confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
Vs. 13
I want to begin this morning by sharing a bit of the context of this passage.
It is going to have huge implications as we understand and apply this text in our lives.
-Caesarea Phillipi- gentile territory, idolatry, out of Herod’s Jurisdiction
-Jesus just rejected by religious leaders, John Baptist killed
-This is a low point
-Disciples have been with Jesus for something like 2 ½ years and are still a homeless band of
misfits wandering from one rejection to another.
The disciples are discouraged and exhausted, nothing has been working out for them: Does this
sound familiar to you. It sounds like where we are right now.
And Jesus picks this time to reveal himself in a powerful way to his discouraged disciples.
It is in this context that one of the greatest statements of all time is uttered by Peter.

A Unique foundation
Vs. 14
Jesus poses a question to the disciples and the answer to this question will determine the rest of
your life.
It’s really interesting to ask people who Jesus is. You get a lot of different answers.
Just like now, in Jesus time, people responded to Him in a variety of ways.
Herod- had a guilty conscience because John the Baptist had called him out on his sexual sin. He
was afraid that Jesus might have been John the Baptist come back from the dead to haunt him.
Others saw prophetic tendencies in Jesus and associated him with one of the prophets.
And yet every one of those options misses the mark.
Jesus is not content to be just acknowledged as a good man, a positive force, an inspiration.

You see it’s not too hard anymore to get people to admit that Jesus was a real person.
What is hard is for people to admit He is the Son of God.
Pilate said, “I find no guilt in Him”
Napoleon said, “I know men, and Jesus was no mere man.”
A lot of people get so close, and yet they are so far away.
An unlikely Foundation
Vs. 15-17
Simon Peter- you got to love Him
The life of Simon Peter is so descriptive of the human experience.
We tend to be hard on him, because he alternates between extremely bold faith and then total
despair the next moment.
Peter is outspoken and so he serves as one of the spokesmen for the disciples.
So speaking for everyone- He confesses Christ as the Son of God.

What’s interesting about this is that humanly speaking, no one would come to this conclusion.
What do I mean by that? Jesus did not meet people’s expectations!
“Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you”
Humanly speaking, Jesus didn’t measure up.
Let me explain

At this very moment, Jesus didn’t look very much like the Messiah.
Remember they are in a sort of self-imposed exile, in gentile territory of all places.

The Pharisees and Sadducees were looking for someone who was a little better at following
rules. Ironically, you might say, the religious leaders accused Jesus of not being very “Christ-
like” and so they missed it.
The crowds of people wanted Jesus as a political deliverer from the military bondage of Rome.
At times they were ready to take Jesus by force and start a coup
The disciples even wondered about Him at times, because he didn’t meet their expectations.
John the Baptist before his death questioned if Jesus was the messiah.
Matthew 11: 1-3
When Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and
preach in their cities.
Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and
said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”
So my question for you is this:
What are your expectations about Jesus?
Are you hoping for a Jesus who brings only political reconciliation, socio-economic stability or
are you looking for the Jesus of the Bible?
We get disappointed and disillusioned when Jesus doesn’t meet our expectations and that’s when
we miss the point, we fail to see how God is working.

A stable Foundation
Vs. 18
There is a lot of debate about who the Rock is in the verse.
Is it Peter, Is it Christ, Is it the truth of Peter’s confession.
I think to get tangled up in that is to miss the point.
So here’s a few brief thoughts that will guide us.

There is an element to which each of those is true, but I think primarily the passage is saying that
Christ is the foundation of the church and we get participate in His building project when we,
like Peter acknowledge Christ as our Lord and Savior.
Peter- Foundational in the early church, Preached a message and 3,000 people get saved.
Play on words, “peter is small stone, this rock is a large stone”
But elsewhere we read,
Ephesians 2: 19-20
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints
and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,

Peter later writes himself

1 Peter 2: 4-5
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and
precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy
priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ
Then he talks about Jesus Christ being the cornerstone.
Jesus doesn’t change
-Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
The foundation is Christ, and we get to participate in building the church as we share in the
mission of the church by spreading the gospel.
Jesus is the foundation of the church. He is unique, unlikely (doesn’t meet our expectations), but
He is stable.

Point Two: The Certainty of the Church

Read Matthew 16: 18
Jesus is the one doing the building.
It is his church. He is going to do it.
Stats confirming church growth.
There is an organization called “The Traveling Team” and the collect and record Data about the
growth of the church.
Here are some of their findings published in 2015:
-The number of people who are being presented the plan of salvation every day is now at least
260,274. That’s a quarter of a million people!
-Every day now the average number added to the body of Christ worldwide averages 174,000.
-In one baptismal service in the ocean on the coast of Angola in Southern Africa, 10,000 were
baptized in one day.
-In a single summer in Mombassa, Kenya in East Africa, 56,000 Muslims came to faith in Jesus
Christ.
-In China, there are now about 80 million evangelical believers - growing at a rate five times that
of the general population.

It would be really easy to look around at the churches in America, with taped on pews and hand
sanitizer dispensers where the coffee used to be and conclude that the church is dying.
The reality is though, that while we may not see it, the church is exploding worldwide and the
gospel is going forth.
When we are faithless, He remains faithful
God made a unilateral covenant with Abraham.
1 Kings 19: 10, 18
He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have
forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I,
even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”
Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every
mouth that has not kissed him.”

We are not responsible to make the church grow with good programs, or catchy phrases.

1 Corinthians 3: 6-7
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who
waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.

God will give the increase.

No matter what, Christ will build his church.

It’s not always humanly measureable.
“My Kingdom is not of this world”

What God does promise? “I will build my church”

What God doesn’t promise “I will never let anything happen to you?” (Ex. Nemo)

Point Three: The Invincibility of the Church

Read Matthew 16: 18-20

God uses Hardship to build His church

Vs. 18
“The gates of Hell will not prevail against it”
This has long been understood to mean that Hell will attack the church but be repelled.
And while that is encouraging, that’s probably not what is in mind here at all.
Gates are for keeping people in, not waging an offensive.

The thought is more likely that the gates of hell, are not able to stop the church. When someone
gets saved, they are been rescued from the realm of death. They have been taken from the
kingdom of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of God’s beloved son.
So what Jesus is saying is that even death itself doesn’t have enough power to stop the church.

It’s important that He says this because He is on the way to the cross and the disciples needed to
know that even the death of the Messiah could not ultimately thwart God’s plan. In fact, death
was a means of life for those who believed.
All the disciples but John were likely martyred…and yet that didn’t stop the church.
A couple examples of how God uses Hardship to build his church.

Corrie Ten Boom- A brave woman from Holland who was imprisoned for helping hide her
Jewish friends and neighbors during the Second world War.
-Prison camp, wooden shelves for beds 1,400 women crammed into a space designed for 400,
and fleas. Betsie insisted thank God for fleas. Corrie gave in and thanked God for fleas. Later
learned that’s why late night Bible studies never interrupted by guards. The guards couldn’t
stand the fleas.
If God could use an over-crowded, unfurnished barracks crawling with fleas to protect his
children and spread the gospel thereby building his church, what can he not use?
Can he use the hardship in our lives to grow his church? Absolutely.

Ravi Zacharias tells the story of a man he knew.

-In a communist prison camp, losing faith in God, decided not to pray. That day assigned to
clean toilets. Found Romans 8 in waste bin that had been used as toilet paper.

Vs. 19
Keys to Kingdom
When we declare God’s truth on earth we are declaring what has already been decided in
Heaven.
Peter uses the keys to the Kingdom to release 3,000 people from the gates of Hell so to speak
when we preaches a powerful sermon on Pentecost.
Some of the same people who had rejected Jesus a short time earlier, came to believe in Him as
their personal Savior.

Vs. 20
This seems like an odd verse. It seems to counterintuitive to what we just talked about.
It seems backwards! Wouldn’t Jesus want people to know He was the Messiah?
The answer is yes, and no!
He wanted people to recognize Him as the Messiah but there were a lot of misconceptions about
the Messiah that were keeping people understanding who He really was.

Christ “Messiah” was a nationalistically loaded term that could prevent people from seeing who
Jesus really was.
When we hear the word “Messiah”, what comes to mind? Baby Jesus, Christmas Carols, Snow,
Christmas lights? For us the word Messiah is a nice word but it probably doesn’t evoke strong
emotions.
For the people in Jesus time, the word Messiah was supercharged with political and socio-
economic significance.
(Ex. Growing up hunting on the Bureau of Land Management.)
Now the acronym BLM stands for something entirely different.
The Pharisees missed it, The Crowds missed, even the disciples missed it sometimes.
Have we missed it?
Jesus probably hasn’t met your expectations this last year…and you know what?
Praise the Lord He hasn’t! Because He has something much better in mind.

We want to be delivered from our current discomfort meanwhile, Jesus is at work building His
church.

Jesus fulfills all the promises of God and He was rejected because He didn’t meet people
expectations about what the Messiah would be like.
Jesus is the foundation, he promises with certainty that He will build his church, and the church
is invincible!

Conclusion
I alluded to Romans 8: 28 earlier.
It says this
Romans 8: 28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are
called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be
conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
We usually stop there, but I want to read the next verse as well, verse 29.

God is building his church, one of the ways that He does that is by working on us.
So when you feel lost and hopeless and you wonder what is God doing? The answer is that He is
building his church, He is working on us. He is making us look more and more like Jesus.

The most dangerous thing you can pray is: “God, make me more like Jesus, whatever the cost”
God, build your church, and start with me. Do a powerful work in my life.
Being conformed is a painful process but we serve a mighty God who has our best interests in
mind.