September 11, 2022

Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek

Scripture Reading

Matthew 16:13-28

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, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

21 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. 28 Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Just now you probably noticed that we’re not in the gospel of John anymore; our sermon passage today comes from Matthew 16. What’s that about? At the start of the summer, I said we’d get through John 4, and we did. I didn’t say it then, but I’ll tell you now, we’re pausing the series through John until January. And between now and then we’re going to hike some new trails. These trails will challenge us, but they will also offer you the chance to behold breathtaking panoramic vistas of redemption that we hardly notice in the Christian life—or at least do not notice as fully as we ought.

This morning we begin a twelve-week sermon series on the local church. We’re calling it “I Will Build My Church: God’s Antidote for an Anxious and Apathetic Age.” What this series will be and why we’re doing this series and how we believe this series will be a great blessing to you, we’ll have to explain as we go along. But let’s begin in prayer.

“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”

There’s a line in one of the New Testament letters about the gathering of the local church. The line says, “through the church the . . . wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10). I’ll read it again. “Through the church the . . . wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

This line tells us that through small and seemingly insignificant groups of believers in Jesus, what we call local churches or the bride of Christ, God is actually putting on a spectacle not only to the watching world but to what the author calls “the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” That phrase about rulers and authorities in the heavenly places refers to both good and evil angels—God’s angels and Satan’s angels, which we call demons.

So, again, in this verse God is saying that, although we cannot see angles and demons, angels and demons see us, and in seeing the gatherings of the local church, they see the wisdom of God, wisdom of God to redeem sinners—to redeem the weak, wounded, and wayward—and to see the way God is re-shaping the fabric of the universe toward grace and godliness. Oh that we had eyes to see the church as she is, or as she will be one day.

Which is to say the gathering of local churches is not insignificant. Which is to say the gathering of local churches is significant.

But this breathtaking and panoramic vista is one we hardly notice in the Christian life. We might believe the church matters, but we don’t often see the bride of Christ in her glory. Our picture of the bride of Christ—the beauty of what God is doing through people who don’t deserve his love and could never earn it—this picture can seem as unspectacular as any old picture we just scroll past on our phones.

Few, if any, of us got up this morning in the awareness that your attendance here is part of God’s display of the wisdom of his gospel to heavenly audiences. We’re largely unaware and indifferent to what God is doing in the church. Today, statistics tell me that the committed churchgoer in America now attends somewhere between once and twice a month. Which is a way to say, regarding how we view the church, we live in an apathetic age.

And for those who do see beauty and radiance in the church, we can be fearful that her beauty is fading. Maybe the church was great once upon a time—maybe in the first century or in some other year and in some other generation and some other part of the world—but now she’s not so great. Or, the church might still be great, but the greatness of the local church currently teeters precariously on a ledge, or we might say a slippery slope. Things may turn out alright or they may not; it’s hard to say, many think.

And surely there are, indeed, many obstacles stacked against the church. On the one hand, there are those who see enemies of the church in lockdowns and secular agendas and liberal churches that don’t even believe Jesus actually rose from the dead or that he’s alive today. That’s a problem. And on the other hand, there are churches who wed together prosperity and health and political power. And there are some churches and denominations awash in sexual scandal. All this causes many to fret over the future of the church. And not only the future of the church, but our country and schools and government and race relations, and so on. Which is to say, we live in an anxious age.

The Passage with the Promise

Into this context, Jesus says, “I will build my church.” To read the full quote, let’s read again Matthew 16:13–19, and I’ll make a few comments here and there as we do.

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, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

So, first Jesus is getting a sense of what others might think of him. Then he narrows in, not to what others are saying but what his disciples believe. Hear this question from Jesus not as something ancient but near: What do you think of Jesus?

15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah!

[“Bar” just means “son.” Some translations will write, “son of Jonah.” Then Jesus says,]

For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

This line about ‘flesh and blood not revealing this’ is a way to say that something supernatural has happened to Peter. His eyes have been opened to see the beauty of Jesus in a way that could never happen apart from God working. It’s what we read about in John’s gospel this summer when Jesus spoke of being born again.

18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

The Context of the Promise

I said a few moments ago that it is into our apathetic and anxious age that Jesus makes his promise. The reason I see this promise speaking to our anxious and apathetic age is because all the same problems we have, in many ways they had too. You may feel like our day is uniquely anxious and apathetic, but it seems to me that the context into which Jesus first spoke has too many parallels with our day to say we are unique.

When Jesus began his public ministry, the religious landscape was fractured into many pieces. There were some in the first century who had overlaid their religious hopes with their national hopes to such an extent that they confused the two. In other words, there were religious people who more pro-government than they were pro-God. They were called the Zealots. That was a problem.

But also in the first century there were some religious leaders who didn’t teach or even believe important doctrines in the Bible, such as doctrines about the resurrection from the dead. These religious leaders thought the Bible was something they could pick and choose from as they saw best, heavily influenced by cultural fads. They were the Sadducees.

I won’t list all the major religious groups, but I will also mention that there were, I assume, those who didn’t really fit in any of the groups. There were those who really wanted to care about God’s people and wanted to be expectant about when God might send the Messiah, but God’s timing was just so slow and the group of faithful believers felt so small that I’m sure some were disillusioned and wondered what the point of even caring was. I’m not sure what we’d call this group. Maybe we’d call them “nominal believers,” that is, believers in name only.

If these sentiments sound familiar and could map onto our day, it’s because they can. The church has often been seemingly teetering on a ledge because in different ways every age is an anxious and apathetic age.

Think with me for a few moments about our own day, say over the last twenty years or so. Specifically, think with me about just two of our recent presidential elections. It doesn’t take a political scholar to see a certain brilliance behind the campaigns run by both President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump. You might like one of those presidents more than the other. In fact, you might strongly dislike parts of either one of both of those presidents. That’s not my point. I’m not so much talking about their presidencies as I want to mention the brilliance of their respective campaigns.

After eight years with the Republican president George Bush—who just so happened to be the son of a former president—and after a long war in Iraq and all sorts of what some perceived to be apathy, President Obama ran on the promise of change. Things would be different. He was different. His presidency would be different.

Now, again, I’m not commenting on whether you liked the change he brought; I’m merely saying that’s what he promised, and many found that promise of change compelling. Just as many found the promise to “make America great again” compelling. The brilliance of that slogan is how it implies so much in such a short phrase. The promise to make America great again plays into our anxiety and fear. There was a day when America was great, but now her greatness is in decline, the phrase implies. Now, there are enemies that would seek to keep America weak and subordinate and dependent, but with the right leader, we as a country could move into new levels of greatness.

Now, again, I’m not saying whether you thought the kind of greatness that President Trump wanted to bring or kind of change President Obama wanted to bring were good things. I’m merely saying that part of the brilliance of their slogans was in the way that each campaign scratched itches common to the human experience. We’re all looking for leaders to bring us out of apathy and out of anxiety. We’re all looking for a leader who will bring us into something meaningful and solid.

In Matthew 16:18, we have something of a slogan, except to call it a mere slogan would be to cheapen it. To call “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” a slogan is to bring it to the level of propaganda, when it’s not propaganda. It’s a promise from the one who conquered death and now sits on the throne of the universe. The one who promises to build his church is also the one who bends the arc of the universe toward to his will.

The Misunderstanding of the Promise

Look again at Peter’s confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:17). And upon this, Jesus says, he will build his church. Jesus is not saying Peter himself is a rock, even though in Greek the words for rock and Peter are similar. You have to only read the rest of the passage to see how Jesus says Peter’s acting like Satan to know that Peter can’t be The Rock in and of himself. Let me read this section.

21 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” 23 But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” (16:21–23)

The way Jesus builds his church is through power, but not the kind of power that demands respect and prestige, but the kind of power that enables one to lose their life for something greater. Look at vv. 24–25.

24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (16:24–25)

Jesus builds his church by taking up his cross. To use a phrase from earlier this summer, the cross is messy ministry, even bloody ministry, but the cross is the way to find life. These words of Jesus are more than propaganda because they are part of the great story of redemption.

The Greater Context of the Promise

In our series about the church, we wanted to set the context in two ways. With the sermon this week and next week we wanted to tell the story of redemption in two different ways, what we might call the cosmic story of redemption this week and the individual story of redemption next week. It’s in both of these stories that we see the significance of the church.

Speaking of the “cosmic story of redemption,” perhaps you’ve heard the four-fold designation of “creation, fall, redemption, and consummation.” I thought about how I could, in this first sermon, creatively re-tell you the big story of redemption. And then I remembered, we’ve already done that. Most of you don’t know that, though. We moved to this building four years ago, but before we did a member of our church (Cindy Todoroff) made four large tapestries to tell the story of redemption. And we hung them for several years in our sanctuary in the old building. When we moved, we displayed them downstairs our prayer room in the basement.

Because we can’t all go downstairs to look at them now, I printed pictures of each one and included the words we put alongside them. We put a handout in the pews.

Look at the first picture. What do you notice? I love the way it looks like Harrisburg. The sign reads, “Creation, The Progress of Redemption, Part I of IV. The following tapestries tell a story. Or, perhaps, we should say The Story—the story of which we are all a part, the story of beauty and brokenness, the story of ruin and restoration. / Once there was a world. It was a good world. In fact, it was ‘very good.’ God made it that way. We were created for such a world, and therefore our hearts continue to long for it. / ‘And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.’ - Genesis 1:31.”

Look at the second picture, Fall. What do you notice? What changes about the trees? They’re broken. It’s hard to see in the printing, but the colors become more drab. I won’t read that for the sake of time.

Then, look at the third picture, Redemption. What do you notice? The trees are healed or, I should say, healing. And the colors start to brighten again.

Finally, look at the last picture, Consummation. What do you notice? Not only do the colors get brighter, but the mountains get bigger, and so do the trees. Not only is all of creation healed, but it’s better than it ever was. Let me read that one. “For now, we live in the in-between time—a time when sin is defeated, but its effects have yet to be fully put away. And, that makes life hard. / But one day, Jesus will come back to this world to establish his eternal kingdom. What a glorious day that will be for his children. It will be a day with no more darkness, no more decay, no more death—only perfected life with God . . . forever! / ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.’ - Revelation 21:3, 4.”

The Application to Us of the Promise

The promise of Jesus to build his church doesn’t mean our own church will always thrive, especially when understood in the typical metrics of thriving of more people and more dollars. Our church won’t always be here. Someday, Community Church will be gone. And I don’t know what place the American church will have amid the global world. As is already the case, some countries will continue to send Christian missionaries here, not just us sending missionaries out there.

But, if this is the big story of the universe—the story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation —then the promise of Jesus doesn’t seem so out of place, so much like propaganda, but instead it seems the way it should be, as the rock-solid guarantee of a forever future that’s really bright.

Maybe I could end by talking for a bit about our church. While I don’t know what will happen to Community Church in a decade, I do think this promise is meant to encourage us today. The church that confesses Jesus as Christ is God’s antidote to an anxious and apathetic age. And to be candid, it’s God’s antidote to my anxious and sometimes apathetic heart. I also feel so much of what might cause you to be anxious and apathetic.

For example, I’ve been regularly considering the recent changes to our volunteer pastors we have here: one left our church, two went on sabbatical, and one potential elder felt called to another ministry within our church. Those all four changes happened within six months.

In those same six months, we made the decision to resurrect our plan to plant a church in the city. In truth, that plan originated over twenty years ago in the minds of those who planted this church. The prayerful plan from those who left Hershey was to leapfrog from Hershey with one church plant toward Harrisburg and then to plant again within the city of Harrisburg. So people have been praying about this for years and years, but that doesn’t make it easy.

And related to the church plant, some of us will be working on fundraising for that. Related to that, when Pastor Ben leaves to plant that church, we’ll want to replace his position, but we’ll actually want to do it much sooner than when he leaves so that he can be freed up to plant the church well.

What will that new role look like and who will we hire? I don’t know. Our leaders are doing a lot of thinking and praying about that now. We’d love it if you were praying with us about that.

And I’d love to tell you more, but where is the space to do that? If everything feels like it’s moving fast to me, I’m sure many of you feel the same. I desperately want you to feel involved? But how do I share all that information with you? How do I bring you in to the process? I’m not planting a church. Ben is not planting a church. The members of this church are planting a church, and raising funds, and hiring a pastor, and so on. How do we do that well? I don’t know yet. But I’d love your help to see how Jesus builds his church among us. We’re doing this together or we’re not doing this.

As we close, for a moment put aside all the Community Church stuff. What about your life? I don’t know what this passage means specifically for your marriage or career or what college you’ll attend or how your sports team will do this fall. I don’t know any of that. But I do know that if Jesus is building his church, and you are a part of his church through faith (saying, I’m a sinner and Jesus is my savior)—if you, like Peter say that Jesus is the Christ, the savior of the World—then your future is bright.

And 10,000 years from now, for you, there will be no more tears or crying. Because the day is coming when the dwelling of God will be among us, and we will be his people, and he will be our God. But until that day, we have a role to play—together.

Let’s pray . . .

A Promise for Our Disillusionment