Who Do You Say That I Am?

Jason Freyer

Questions • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

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The core question to our faith, "Who is Jesus to us," has an interesting answer.

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Transcript

Introduction/Scripture

Are you done with the questions series yet? :)

This is our last one, and together in the last 8 weeks we’ve really covered a lot of questions!

Who is our neighbor?

What belongs to us?

What is truth?

Who is the greatest?

Why are we afraid?

How should we pray?

And then last week I said we were rounding the corner on the only two questions that really mattered:

Truth be told, I almost switched the order on these two a bunch of times, they’re almost questions that we have to answer at the same time.

Do we love Jesus? Do we really? More than anything else?

And then today’s question, which comes from Jesus himself:

The New Revised Standard Version Peter’s Declaration about Jesus

13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” 14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 19 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.” 20 Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Background and Interesting Things

Pan

Sometimes in the Bible, it feels a little bit like real estate: location location location.

There is a reason that Matthew mentions that this whole story takes place in Caesarea Philippi.

Caesar gave this city to Phillip, who in turn named it after Caesar and himself.

By the by…if you get whole cities for your birthday, that’s the definition of power.

Before that though, the city was called Paneas, named after the Greek god Pan.

Pan was an interesting god!

Kind of a fawn-like creature, half man half goat.

He was known as the god of wild things, sort of the playboy frat kid of the Greek pantheon.

In the city of Paneas, as you might expect, there was a temple to Pan carved in to a cave in the city.

In that temple, there was a fountain that came from a natural spring.

Since this was a fountain that literally flowed from beneath the earth, they saw it as a kind of underworld thing.

So they called the fountain the gates of Hades.

But wait, there’s more!

Pan is also largely the only Greek god on record to have died.

Anthropologists researched and discovered that Pan died somewhere around 1-2 BC.

So right around the time that Jesus Christ shows up on the scene in Bethlehem, there is a visual reminder that the Greek gods are on their way out.

This is the stage that Jesus chooses for this pivotal moment.

Question One/Wrong Answers

Jesus starts with the first question: What are people saying about me on twitter?

What’s the read of the room?

Three answers come back:

John the Baptist

A recent political player.

Everyone around them knew who John was.

Jesus reminded them a lot of John.

They essentially start by holding up a figure of their culture, and saying “You remind us of this guy!”

Elijah

An ancient prophet of Jewish lore.

Never died, but instead was swept up to heaven.

Was promised to return at some point, so this guess makes sense.

Outside of David, this is the person most of Isreal looks to when they want to remember the “Good old days.”

Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.

Jeremiah was another interesting character in the OT.

Sort of like a shock artist, always taking things just a wee bit too far to make a point.

Also always at war with the political class of his day, which would have resonated with occupied Israel.

Or if not that guy, at least some kind of prophet. You speak for God, right?

For what it’s worth, I think these are the same three answers that much of the world is giving about Jesus today.

Do we hold up the leading figures of our culture, either the super spiritual ones or even just the ones we like the most, and saying that Jesus must have been like them?

Do we dream of days gone by, of some sort of golden age for the church, and assume that Jesus would have been just like that, just like the pastors or spiritual leaders we grew up with?

Or do we kind of say that Jesus was a good teacher, he had a lot of interesting things to say about God, but we don’t actually have to listen to any of that.

Those answers to Jesus’ question are alive and well.