Sermon Tone Analysis

*What is the Church?

(Matthew 16:13-18)*

/Preached by Pastor Phil Layton at Gold Country Baptist Church on December 30, 2007/

www.goldcountrybaptist.org

/ /

Last week I asked the very basic question “what is salvation?”

What are we saved from?

Saved from what?

 

Today, we’re going to look at another foundational question – what is the church?

A related question is who or what makes up the church?

That should be pretty basic, but based on how many different answers are being given to these questions in our day, even within evangelicalism, I think this study is very timely.

There’s a lot of things we could study together, at the start of this next year there’s nothing more important this New Year than renewing our understanding of Jesus Christ and His Church – what His church is, what it’s not, what it is supposed to be.

So we’re starting a new series this morning that we’ll be continuing for many weeks focusing on Christ’s church.

What is the Church?

The /Concise Oxford English Dictionary/ defines “church” as:

1      a building used for public Christian worship.

2      (Church) a particular Christian organization with its own distinctive doctrines.

3      institutionalized religion as a political or social force: the separation of church and state.

That’s how man defines the church, but it’s totally different than how Christ defines His church, or how God’s Word speaks of God’s church.

This building you are in is not the church.

The N.T. never uses the word “church” for a building.

A Christian organization is not a church.

The church in biblical times was not “institutionalized religion as a political force”

 

Some of you in this room are in the church, and some of you are not.

I don’t mean the auditorium.

I don’t mean involved or not involved.

I don’t mean membership at GCBC – I’m sure we have people who are members here and not really in God’s church, and I know many of you are in the true church of God spiritually although you’re not members here on paper yet physically.

We need a biblical definition of the true church and who’s in it.

Where do we go to define the church?

Why not the first place the word “church” appears in the Bible?

/TURN TO MATTHEW 16./

 

Matthew is the only gospel that uses this word church, /ekklesia,/ which literally means “called out.”

It was used of an assembly, or a convocation or congregation, but Jesus speaks of “My church” and He gives it new and fuller meaning.

This /ekklesia /would be His and it would be based on His ministry and His teaching and it’s something He would build in the future.

/Matthew 16:13 //Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”// \\ Matthew 16:14 //And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”//

\\ Matthew 16:15 //He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”// \\ Matthew 16:16 //Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”// \\ Matthew 16:17 //And Jesus said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.//

\\ Matthew 16:18 //“I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it./

\\ \\

In the first 12 verses of this chapter we encounter the Pharisees and the Sadducees, who Jesus rebukes as undiscerning (v. 3) and part of an evil and adulterous generation (v.

4).

He then privately teaches his disciples to beware the leaven of the Pharisees (legalism, externalism, works-based, hypocritical, self-righteous religion, etc.).

It is on this backdrop that we see the highlight between false religion and the true Christian faith as shown by Peter.Peter’s confession of faith in Christ in v. 16 is the bottom line defining characteristic of the church.

The true church is made up of those who have the right understanding of who Jesus is.

This is so basic, or at least should be, that the only people who are truly members of Christ’s church are those who have made the right confession of Christ, who truly believe who He claimed to be.

But there’s a lot of people who profess or claim a part of Christ’s church who give little evidence of understanding this basic truth.

I read an article this week discussing the results of a Newsweek survey:

seventy percent of evangelical Christians believe that a person can be saved and go to heaven apart from any confession of Christ.

Extensively these are people who call themselves Christians and who identify with the church … they do not affirm necessarily the absolute foundation of God's people being this confession.

According to a survey some years ago, one of George Barna’s surveys, fifty percent of evangelical Christians do not believe in absolute truth.

That is, they have been affected by the society in which they live, the culture and the thinking of our time, so as to say there's no such thing as absolute truth, absolute moral truth.

There's your truth and my truth and everybody else's truth and everybody's entitled to their truth therefore the Bible might be true for me but not necessary for you.

That's a few years ago.

In a more recent survey, very recently, students were surveyed in evangelical schools, evangelically identified students said, ninety-one percent of them, "There's no such thing as absolute truth."

… So you're going to find all kinds of places that call themselves churches and accommodate these kinds of people [who are not true Christians] … In a true church there is the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ as the only Savior and the Lord of the church.

And there is willing and eager obedience to everything revealed on the pages of holy Scripture and an understanding that it is true and that it is authoritative.

Christ is enthroned and Scripture is exalted.

Christ is preached and the Word of God is exposited, or explained.

That's foundational to a church and these are the words of our Lord.

… [John MacArthur writes] I can go in a church and I can tell you in a few minutes whether it’s a real church or whether it’s just a church in name by their attitude toward Christ and their attitude toward the Word of God.’[1]

It all has to do with Christ and what says.

*/OUTLINE:/*

*1.

The Church is Built on Christ, v. 13-16*

*2.

The Church is Built from Christ, v. 17-18*

*3.

The Church is Built by Christ, v. 18*

* *

*/First,/*

*1.

The Church is Built on Christ, v. 13-16*

*Matthew 16:13 **Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” \\ \\ *

It all starts with a biblical understanding of who Jesus is.

Without the fullness and glory and sufficiency of Jesus embraced as Lord and Savior, you do not have a true church because you do not have true Christians.

It doesn’t matter what the sign outside the building says, it doesn’t matter even if /we /say the right things about Jesus but do not really believe those truths and bow before them.

There are many things people say about Jesus.

There are many different views of Jesus, as we will see his disciples answer in the next verse, and there are certainly more views in our day.

Verse 13 mentions Caesarea Philippi, which is an area about 25 miles North of Galilee, at the base of Mount Hermon.

Philippi was renamed Caesarea because Caesar Augustus wanted people to remember him and worship him as a deity so there was this massive temple built there to this god Caesar.

It had become a center of Greek and Roman culture and idolatry, a place filled with idols and false religions of the pagans as well as the corrupted religion of Judaism, and it is right here that Jesus chooses to clarify once and for all who the real people of God are, and who the real Lord of all is.

Jesus asks “who do people say the Son of Man is?”

This title refers to himself, as is clear by parallel in v. 15, the disciples knew this was how Jesus referred to Himself as he had several times already in Matthew’s gospel.

“Son of Man” has been called the most frequent title Jesus used for Himself.

Some would say the title emphasizes his humanity whereas “son of God” emphasizes deity, although Daniel 7:13-14 uses the title as Messianic as the King and Lord before the Ancient of Days.

Jesus starts by asking what the people say about him as a lead-in to the real and all-important question which is “who do you say that I am?” What were some of the 1st century ideas and opinions of him?

*Matthew 16:14 **And they said, “Some say John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”*

\\ I believe John the Baptist had already been executed at this point, and Herod and company were saying that maybe this Jesus was John the Baptist come back to life, probably because of the way He preached against sin and against the Pharisees.

Why would others say Elijah?

The Jews were looking for Elijah to come again.

Even today during some Jewish Passover celebrations there’s an empty chair reserved at the table for Elijah, in the hope of his one day coming to announce the Messiah.

When Jesus was dying on the cross in Matthew 27, the people thought he was calling for Elijah, and they said let’s wait to see if Elijah will save him.

When John the Baptist began preaching in John 1, the Jews are asking him if he is Elijah, or is he the prophet.

John identifies himself as the voice crying in the wilderness (the fulfillment of the Isaiah 40 prophecy).

The Jewish scholars taught that Elijah would come before Messiah:

Matthew 17:10 And His disciples asked Him, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”

Matthew 17:11 And He answered and said, “Elijah is coming and will restore all things;

/[Jesus either quotes the teaching of the rabbis or paraphrases an O.T. prophecy – the parallel of Mark 9:12 says “Elijah does first come and restores all things”]/ \\ Matthew 17:12 but I say to you that Elijah already came, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they wished.

So also the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.”

\\ Matthew 17:13 Then the disciples understood that He had spoken to them about John the Baptist.

\\ (/Notice this comes right after Elijah’s appearance at the Transfiguration in the same chapter/)

 

Notice also the last line of O.T.:

Malachi 4:5 “Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord.

\\ Malachi 4:6 “He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.”

\\ \\

Matthew 11:13 “For all the prophets and the Law prophesied until John.

\\ Matthew 11:14 “And if you are willing to accept it, John himself is Elijah who was to come.

\\ \\

John the Baptist fulfilled the prophecy, but he was not Elijah reincarnated or resurrected.

This is what the angel told John the Baptist’s father before he was conceived:

Luke 1:13 But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your petition has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will give him the name John.