A Purpose for Our Presence
November 27, 2022
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Matthew 16:13-23
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.”
Next week we’ll begin our Christmas sermon series. We’ll be preaching slowly through Psalm 46, a psalm famous for the commotion and turbulence within the psalm, yet also famous for the line, “Be still, and know that I am God” (v. 10). Our Christmas seasons tend to have plenty of commotion—not unlike the first Christmas. But our Christmas seasons should also have moments of stillness with time to know that God is God, just as the first Christmas also had. But that’s next week. This week we finish our twelve-week sermon series on the local church. I want to start with four pictures of buildings. Let’s see if you can recognize any of these: [Picture 1: US Embassy in London], [Picture 2: US Embassy in New Delhi], [Picture 3: US Embassy and consulate in Lagos], and [Picture 4: McDonald’s in Jakarta]. We gave the sermon series the subtitle, “God’s antidote for an anxious and apathetic age.” This morning, as we look at this passage, we’ll see how the metaphor of the local church as an embassy teaches how God makes his church an antidote for anxiety and apathy. Let’s pray. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
It’s possible for a husband and wife who love each other to get so wrapped up in doing one important job that they can miss other important jobs. I think of the phrase “empty nesters,” which describes parents who have poured themselves out to raise the children God gave them, and now they have an empty nest. Sometimes when that happens the couple can look at each other after more than twenty years of raising children and think, But who are we now? Like, as a couple, who are we? Sometimes they don’t just think it. Sometimes they say it out loud. And they should. But it’s also a question they could have been asking each other five years before the nest was empty, maybe ten years. A clearer picture of what marriage is for might even help them raise those children better.
I bring this up not to talk about marriage and children and empty nesters, but to talk about us, to talk about our church. We have given much time this fall, especially over the last month, to talk about launching a church. And I think we should be talking about it. Church planting requires tremendous effort and years of work. But I don’t want to get to next year or the year after when the church has been planted, and we all look at each other and think—and maybe say out loud—Who are we now? What are we here for?
In fourteen months, after Midtown Community Church launches, Lord willing, there will still be a church here called Community. We need to discuss who we are and what God has put us here to do. Without a sense of God’s purpose for us, we’ll flounder. God calls our church—and for that matter, Midtown Church and all churches—to be an embassy of the heavenly kingdom. God calls us to be an earthly outpost of the heavenly kingdom where the rule and reign of God is cherished. We’re called to be a place that, when you step inside among the people of our church, you’re stepping out of Susquehanna, out of Harrisburg, out of Pennsylvania, out of the United States of America and into heaven. That’s how an embassy works. You may be in London or New Delhi or Lagos, but when you walk into a U.S. Embassy, you’re in the U.S. In the same way, to walk into a Christian church in any country—whether in the U.S. or England or India or Nigeria—is to enter the heavenly kingdom. And in this way God makes us an antidote for anxiety and apathy. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
God invites us to experience the safety and sweetness of the local church.
Let’s go back to the passage. I’m going to be building toward v. 19 to show that God invites us into the sweetness and safety of a local church. But let me get there in context. I taught this passage on the first Sunday of the series, so I won’t resay everything. I’ll start in vv. 13–14 and mention a few things along the way.
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.”
Jesus does not ask who he is because he does not know who he is. Jesus is not wondering, Who am I?He knows. This first question—Who do people say that I am?—sets up the next question. Look at v. 15. “He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’” You’ll have to decide this too. It might be helpful to consider what The New York Times says about Jesus or what your schoolteachers say about Jesus or what your favorite pastors and authors say about Jesus or your friends or spouse or parents say. But eventually the question comes, “What do you believe?” Look how Peter answers in v. 16 and how Jesus responds.
16 . . . “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.
Jesus affirms Peter’s answer as true. He is the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of God’s people. And upon Peter and Peter’s role as a rock in the foundation of the early church, Jesus built his church. And he still is. That’s what we covered in the first sermon. Eleven weeks ago I said we’d come back to v. 19.
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.”
Here is where I get the metaphor of an embassy. I confess that most of what I know about embassies comes from movies. In fact, a year ago, I watched a movie that took place in a European country, and it seemed like the whole movie was one giant journey to get to the United States Embassy. The idea was that if the character could get there, everything would be okay. Outside of the embassy, bad guys could be chasing after the main character, and people outside could be protesting, burning flags, and shooting rockets, but inside, there would be safety.
I was talking about this the other day with some people from church, and one man told me about the time he was in Romania in the early 90s to adopt children. There had been massive upheaval in the government in the preceding years. On the morning he went to the U.S. Embassy there where a few hundred people gathered trying to get inside, but only those with the right identification were permitted to enter. The man held up his U.S. passport, and a guard grabbed him by the forearm and pulled him through the crowd, inside the gate, and into the embassy. Let me re-read v. 19.
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.”
Do you see how the metaphor of the embassy works? Wherever the church is, it is an outpost of the heavenly kingdom. And that church has the keys to bring people inside the gates and to exclude those on the outside. What are the keys? From the passage, the keys are proper confessions of who Jesus is. “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks. Peter says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” To call Jesus more than a man and to call him Christ, is to call him your savior. It’s to say, “I can’t get to heaven on my own but need the savior of the World, the Son of the living God, to bring me in.” This is the key that opens the doors of heaven. And Jesus gives Peter the ability, through his preaching of the gospel, the message of Christ, and upon a person’s embrace of that message, to allow entrance into the Christian community, into local churches. Hence the lines about binding and loosing.
Here the imagery is positive. But later in this gospel of Matthew, Jesus explains to the religious leaders his frustrations with them about this very issue. Listen to one of the critiques that Jesus levels against the religious leaders. It’s another passage that helps us understand what Jesus means. “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus says. “For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in” (Matt. 23:13).
You can see the idea of binding and loosing has to do with entrance to the heavenly kingdom experienced here on earth. Peter is to do it rightly, and the religious leaders were doing it wrongly. The religious leaders say that the “key” that opens the gates of heaven is a person’s good works. If you follow enough rules, that is your entrance into the kingdom of heaven, they say. Jesus, however, calls that shutting the door of heaven in people’s faces. Which is why it’s so wonderful that Jesus told Peter something different. The key that opens the gates of heaven is a treasuring of Jesus, confessing him as savior—all revealed by the grace of the Father. Two very different keys: bring your good works or call Jesus your savior. One opens heaven; the other doesn’t.
Now, I’ve been saying the church is an embassy, but thus far, it’s only Peter who is something of an embassy unto himself. In fact, all the “you’s” in this passage are singular, meaning “you, Peter.” So why would I say this is true of the whole church?
There are only two places in the gospels where the word church is used. This passage and one in Matthew 18. Please turn there. It will just mean flipping a page or so. I’d like to read Matthew 18:15–18. The context is how Christians should handle being sinned against by another Christian. Jesus tells the disciples that a Christian should try to address sin, first, one on one. Then in a larger group. Then, finally, you tell it to the church. As I read, look for the same “binding and loosing” language.
15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
There’s much we could say about this passage if it were our sermon text. But I’m bringing it up only to make one point. In v. 18 we read, “Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” It is almost identical to what Jesus said to Peter. “Peter,” Jesus says, “whatever you bind and loose, whoever you admit or exclude, based on confessions of faith, then heaven does the same.” But here, in this passage, the “you’s” are plural, meaning the church. “Church,” Jesus says, “whatever you bind and loose, whoever you admit or exclude, based on confessions of faith, then heaven does the same.” When you put these two passages alongside each other, you see a widening out. Through gospel preaching, Jesus gives the binding-loosing role to the church.
Now, that’s a lot of teaching. But what does it mean for us? I’ll go back to where I began. The local church is the sweetest and safest embassy in the whole world. And it’s for everyone and anyone who wants in, as long as when they come, they come through Jesus. I’ll mention two practical applications of this. First, we put the names of potential new members in our church bulletin. We’re doing it this week, for instance. And we’ll do it next week too, leading up to our congregational meeting in a few weeks. We do this because our pastor-elders have listened to their confessions of faith and we are presenting them to you so that you, as our church membership, can admit them into fellowship in our embassy. We’re not making them Christians, but we are affirming their citizenship in the heavenly kingdom. Second practical application: This is why we don’t have a United States flag in our sanctuary. I love this country. It’s such a wonderful place. But when our church gathers each week, preaching the Word, baptizing sinners, and feeding saints the Lord’s Supper, we are not doing so mainly as people in a country called the United States of America. We are doing so as citizens in the embassy of the heavenly kingdom. Outside our church, someday there could be protests and chaos and hatred and burning of Christian flags, killing and destruction and carnage and blood. But inside?Inside, with the preaching of the gospel and fellowship among the citizens of heaven, there is safety and sweetness.
It may be that Hershey, Pennsylvania, claims to be the sweetest place on earth. They are wrong. Now, I’m deathly allergic to dairy, which makes Chocolate World, for me, the “most frustrating place on earth.” I don’t mean this, though. I say Hershey, Pennsylvania, is not the sweetest place on earth because it is the church—when she is what she is supposed to be, when she is a place of joy and hope and fellowship and healing; when the church is what the church should be, an embassy build on grace—then the church is the sweetest place on earth. In this way, the church is, as I said before, an antidote for an anxious age. Where the world is anxious, the church is calm because she’s built on a rock.
God commands us to represent the safety and sweetness of the local church.
That’s my first point: God invites you to experience the safety and sweetness of the local church. Let me come to my last point. It is very short. And it comes from the other aspect of the metaphor. I’ll say it like this, you and I must rightly represent the safety and sweetness of the local church. It’s a big responsibility.
I mentioned I watched a whole where the character spends like 90 minutes stumbling toward through Europe to find the United States embassy. Outside it was crazy. People were trying to kill him and whatnot. But inside, he’s safe. Or is he? Plot twist: the bad guys are running the embassy. He’s not safe. Now, it is a silly movie. But what happens when bad guys run a church? Some of you have been there. Indeed, many people in our cultural moment feel themselves there. How does Jesus feel about bad guys running the church?
We don’t have to guess. I’ll read Jesus’s words from Matthew 23 again. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” Jesus says. “For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in” (Matt. 23:13). Does Jesus sound happy? Is he pleased when those who have the real keys to heaven and throw the key of grace away and make their own keys of works that makes it hard for people to enter the kingdom of heaven? Jesus is not pleased. The whole chapter those verse come from is a rebuke to these religious leaders.
Again, my last point in this sermon and my last point in this whole series is very simple: God commands us to rightly represent the safety and sweetness of the local church. And here is an antidote to apathy. To be apathetic is to be indifferent. It’s to have no cares or concerns about how things go because nothing is at stake. If things go wonderfully, great. If they go badly, well, who cares because it doesn’t matter anyway.
Not so with the church. Great things are at stake. The church has a purpose for our presence in this world. Your participation in our particular embassy will either make us more like the heavenly kingdom or less. Your participation matters.
Yes, there are great privileges of walking into an embassy, and enjoying its sweetness and safety. But that embassy is responsible, and those dignitaries and ambassadors are responsible for representing their country well. If ambassadors at a U.S. embassy act poorly, do you think it reflects merely upon them? It does not. An embassy represents her country and her president. And local churches represent heaven and her King.
This responsibility would be too much were it not for the hope in this passage. Look how it ends.
20 Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.
That’s strange. Why would Jesus tell them not to tell others? Keep reading.
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.”
Jesus told them not to tell others because they couldn’t understand, at the time anyway, that the Messiah should first suffer and die so that all our sins can be forgiven. And he would rise again to show the gates of hell had not prevailed over him. At the time, they didn’t understand that the Messiah should suffer first. That’s why they were told not to tell anyone. But that instruction to remain quiet was only for a very specific time, the time before Christ’s death and resurrection. Now is the time for churches to arise and proclaim Jesus as the key to heaven. Now is the time of evangelism, the time of discipleship, the time of baptism, the time of planting churches. Now is the time for more and better embassies to expand among every nation, from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth, outposts of heavenly kingdoms.
I’ll close our twelve-week series reading the last words in Matthew, words that Pastor Ben preached a few weeks ago, words that are a fitting end to our three months of reflection upon the local church.
18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
I’ll invite the music team forward so we can have a time of response through singing. Let’s pray. “Dear Heavenly Father. . .”
Sermon Discussion Questions:
As we come to the last sermon in our series, what truths stood out to you from the whole series? Something about Jesus or perhaps about pastor-elders or baptism or the Lord’s Supper or church planting?
Have you ever been to another country? What kind of documentation did you have to bring to get in and out of the country? Do you have any stories from visiting an embassy or a military base?
What is the “key” that the religious leaders thought would get people into heaven? What is the true key that opens the door of heaven?
What ways has God shown you that you could be participating better in our local embassy of the heavenly kingdom?
