Anniversary Message
Anniversaries are a good thing.
§ They are a time of celebration.
§ A time to look back,
§ a time to take evaluate the present,
§ and a time to look ahead.
It is not uncommon for a married couple to take out their wedding pictures on their anniversary to reminisce about their wedding day. They will laugh and point out how thin the bride was, or how much hair the groom had. They will look thru the pictures of the guests and see people who have died or people with whom they have lost contact.
Other pictures will bring to mind how tall some of those same children have grown; or how some of the older folk have aged. Some of the smiling couples pictured in their album might be divorced. All this reminiscing will inevitably lead some one to utter the words “if I knew then, what I know now”.
§ “if I knew then, what I know now”: I would have saved more money.
§ “if I knew then, what I know now”: I would have studied more.
§ “if I knew then, what I know now”: I wouldn’t have taken that job.
§ “if I knew then, what I know now”: I would have insisted…
But we don’t know it all.
Eccl 8:7 says,
7 Since no man knows the future,
who can tell him what is to come?
And in the New Testament, Paul puts it this way
1 Cor 13:12
12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
God rarely gives us a view of the big picture.
When Pastor opened the door of this church 7 years ago,
§ she couldn’t have imagined that it would look the way it does today.
§ She hadn’t met all the people who are sitting here this morning.
§ She couldn’t imagine that some of those who prayed for the doors of this house to be open wouldn’t be here to celebrate with us.
She didn’t have the whole picture. The thing that I admire most about my pastor is that she is the first person to admit that she doesn’t know everything. She’ll pray on it and do some research, ask questions, and keep on looking until she finds the answer.
But everyone is not like that.
Turn to Matthew 16:
We know that Jesus ministry took him thru Galilee and into the Gentile regions. At this point he has just ministered to & fed 4000 Gentiles. Afterwards he gets in a boat and crosses the Sea of Galilee. I think that he’s probably tired.
When is the best time to attack someone? When they are weak, tired…
16 The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven.
Why were they testing him?
Did they really want to know if he was the Messiah?
No, the wanted to show the people that they had all the answers. That they could trap Jesus into saying or doing something that would show him to be a heretic.
2 He replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,’ 3 and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.
In other words, you claim to be able to interpret and predict the weather – something you have no real knowledge of – and yet you who have been trained in spiritual matters, you who are waiting for messiah to arrive, haven’t got a clue.
4 A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Jesus then left them and went away.
What is the sign of Jonah? Something he told them already. Flip over to Matt 12:39
39 He answered, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here.
Hello, it’s me!!!
Back to Matt 16
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi,
This is some time later. They are about 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee.
he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
In the New Testament the term “son of man” is how Jesus referred to himself. Doctrinally we believe that he did this to emphasize that while he was on earth, he was fully human. However, the apostles did not have the New Testament. And so their answers would be limited by their knowledge. In other words they didn’t know it all. They didn’t have the whole picture.
14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
These are actually good answers. David refers to himself as the son of man 3 times in Psalms. And when the angel of the Lord appears to both Ezekiel & Daniel, he calls them son of man. Isaiah also uses the term to describe the Messiah.
15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Sure, ask the fisherman. After all he went to seminary, right? He was a Pharisee, right? No, he was just an average Jew.
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, [or Messiah] the Son of the living God.”
Now the term “Living God” is an Old Testament term. The Hebrew word here would be Elohim.
This is it! This is the answer the Pharisees and Saducees should have had. The guys who were supposed to see the big picture didn’t, but Peter did.
How?
17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.
How did Peter know? God told him.
God gave him another piece of the puzzle.
Anyone here work jigsaw puzzles? I do. I really enjoy them. I’ve even made up my own little rules about how to enjoy them more.
1. The puzzle has to be 1000 pieces or more.
2. I never start with the borders.
3. I am not allowed to look at the picture on the puzzle box when I’m working it.
I basically put the pieces together by joining colors.
So when the brown pieces become a cow, or the white pieces become a boat, I begin to see the bigger picture.
It’s the same way with Peter. It was as if God had strolled by, picked up a puzzle piece and laid it in exactly the right place so that Peter would see the big picture. He didn’t have all the pieces to the puzzle connected, but he did have the one in place that would make connecting all the rest easier.
18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
That verse didn’t make sense to me.
§ Why would Jesus tell Peter that he was Peter?
§ What rock?
§ Why did Jesus have to build his church?
§ Wasn’t man created to worship God?
§ Didn’t they already have synagogues & temples?
So I looked at the literal translation. In Biblical Greek there are no punctuation marks. All the words run together. And without getting to technical, the way you would translate words is to look at the word endings. If you studied a foreign language in school, you know what I’m talking about. Also in Greek, some times they use articles like a, the, this and sometimes they don’t. So many translators either add them or omit them as redundant. Are you still with me?
Literally this passage could be translated:
And I tell you this because you are Peter,
Makes more sense already. We know that Jesus taught using parables when he minister to groups of people. But when he was with his apostles, he spoke plainly so that they could understand. Peter had just said something so profound that it may have shocked him. Especially after Jesus told him that God himself had revealed it to him. So, because this was Peter, his faithful follower, Jesus was about to give him more revelation.
And I tell you this because you are Peter,
on this rock,
Jesus was not talking about a piece of gravel here, We are talking about a boulder that was used in laying the foundation of a building or a wall. It is a play on words. Peter is Petros and rock is petra. What he is saying is:
And I tell you this because you are Peter,
on this foundation,
What foundation? What piece of the puzzle?
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, [or Messiah] the Son of the living God.”
And how do we get saved?
9 That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
And I tell you this because you are Peter,
on this foundation,
I will restore my church,
OK there are 2 things we need to look at in that phrase and the first doesn’t make sense without the other.
The word for church here is Ekklesia.
Ekklesia is a noun formed by adding the preposition ek to the verb kaleo. Literally it means “those called from” or “those invited”. In English, we would say a “gathering” or an “assembly”. How that assembly becomes a church is when Jesus added the possessive pronoun here of my.
And I tell you this because you are Peter,
on this foundation,
I will restore my Ekklesia,
The other thing we need to look at in that phrase is restore.
Jesus didn’t need to build the Ekklesia. God already did that. For thousands of years before Jesus came to earth, God has been calling mankind to him. And for thousands of years a faithful remnant of mankind has been gathering or assembling to worship him. Some of those faithful were even saved by faith in the Messiah.
If you flip over to Hebrews 11
:4 says, by faith Abel
:5, by faith Enoch
:7, by faith Noah
:8, 11, 17, by faith Abraham
and it goes on
So you see God had already established his Ekklesia. So why did Jesus need to restore it?
You know the answer to that. When Adam & Eve sinned, they were separated from fellowship with God. Sin entered the earth and unleashed all kinds of corruption and disease. But that was never God’s plan.
And I tell you this because you are Peter,
on this foundation,
I will restore my Ekklesia,
and the doors of Hell will not overcome it.
Hades can also be translated as death. We know that Jesus conquered death in the resurrection.
And I tell you this because you are Peter,
on this foundation,
I will restore my Ekklesia,
and the doors of death will not overcome it.
What does the restored Ekklesia look like?
19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
At the beginning of this lesson I said anniversaries were
§ A time to look back,
§ a time to take evaluate the present,
§ and a time to look ahead.
I believe God is telling us to be Ekklesia.
Let us remember where we came from,
how far God has brought us,
and let us be the people of faith, God has empowered us to be.