Mt. 16:13-18
Bob Weniger
Have you noticed that sometimes the definition of a word as found in a dictionary does not always match reality? For instance, take the word flashlight. Webster’s dictionary defines a flashlight as a portable electric light, usually operated by batteries. That’s not what it is in our house! In our house a flashlight is a metal or plastic cylinder used for storing dead batteries. At least, that is what I find when I go to look for one!
Or consider the word toe. Again quoting Webster’s, a toe is any of the five digits of the human foot. Almost, but Webster didn’t quite get it right. In reality, a toe is that part of the foot used for finding furniture in the dark!
What I would like to do today is to focus our thinking on the definition of the church. Regardless of how Webster’s dictionary might define the church, and in spite of how people on the street might describe the church, in reality what is the church called to be? Whether we’re talking about this church or any other church, just what is the church? As the saying goes, “If you aim at nothing, you will probably hit it!” It’s so important that we discern just what we are to be as the church, so we can then direct our time, resources, and energy toward fulfilling that purpose. In the coming weeks we will deal with some specific aspects of the church such as evangelism, our relationship to the world, our life together and so on. But today I want to speak about the church in a more general sense. So to begin I would like us to look at our text for today, Matthew 16:13-18.
When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
“Well,” they replied, “some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
Then he asked them, “Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being. Now I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.”
Jesus told Simon Peter, and us as well, that He was going to build His church and that not even the powers of hell can conquer it. The first thing to observe is that whatever the church is, it belongs to Jesus. Jesus did not say, “I will build the church,” and He certainly didn’t say, “I will build your church, but rather He said, “I will build my church.”
In one sense we speak of this being our church because this is where our membership is or this is where we attend. But we do not own this church. It is His church, and thus it must conform to His vision, His purpose for the church.
Secondly, Jesus said that He will build His church. Whatever it is that God would call us to do and be, we are not left on our own to accomplish that. It will not and cannot happen solely through our own efforts. Jesus promised that He would build His church. To be sure, He uses us in that process. We have to give ourselves first of all to Jesus and secondly to that vision and mission He has for us. But we need not shrink back in fear or write off the vision as being too demanding for us, as something which it beyond our means. Jesus has promised the He will build His church and not even the powers of Hell will conquer it. But when Jesus said He would build His church, just what is it that He was promising to build? What is the church? Maybe the place to start is with a few things the church is not, although sometimes the church is depicted in these ways. Each of these images contain a bit of truth, but taken by themselves they are narrow, limiting, and even destructive.
First of all, the church is not a club. A club is a place where place where people gather with like-minded folk, with those who share a common interest in order to have a good time. If you belong to a book club you meet with other people who enjoy reading. During the month you all read the same book, and then you meet together to discuss it. If you belong to a gardening club you meet with other people who share this interest in gardening to talk about gardening and share new insights into this common hobby. Certainly some clubs are involved in some kind of community service, but basically clubs exist for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own members. They offer like-minded people the chance to meet and have a good time around their common interest. This is not the church.
Secondly, the church is not a health spa. Now, probably you have never thought of the church as being a health spa. But while we maybe have not used the term “health spa” in our thinking, nevertheless we may have conceptualized the church according to that image. In so doing we think of the church as a place where we can relax, where we come to receive comfort and be made to feel good. There’s a lot of stress out there in the world, and the church is where we go to get away from it all. We don’t want to hear about the complex issues in our society or about the shortcomings in our lives, we don’t want to be challenged to bring our lives under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We just want to comforted, uplifted, encouraged so we might leave feeling better about our lives than when we arrived.
Thirdly, the church is not a fort. This idea develops when fear invades the church. It’s a threatening, hostile, evil world out there. It’s values are so different than ours and what we want to pass on to our children. We don’t know how to relate to it and we don’t want to relate to it. And so rather than live as the salt and light in the midst of that dark and threatening world, we choose the easier route and retreat to the safety of our fort. True, we won’t be making any impact on our society, but at least we can enjoy the safety provided by our church walls. And so we become irrelevant to a needy world.
And then the church is not a movie theater specializing in the old classics. When I was in seminary there was a theater nearby that showed only the old classics from about the 1930’ through the 1950’s. There were some good movies made back then, and some wish that the church would resemble that that era, or one earlier than that. Now there is a lot of good in having meaningful traditions. But if we make that the sum total of the church so that we just do the same things in the same way we always have, we will find ourselves living in a bye-gone era. We will be out of touch with the present.
Nor is the church an institution. When Jesus promised to build His church He was not thinking of an institutional organization with big budgets and lots of committees and organizational flow charts and so forth. The institutional church as we know it is a form that God may raise up and use at a particular time, but that is not the essence of the church.
Now as I said, there is a bit of truth in each of those images. The church is a place where like-minded people come and have a good time. The church is a place to come and receive comfort and encouragement as your needs are met. The church does provide a place of shelter from a world bent on evil. The church is a place that values meaningful traditions and a glorious heritage because the Truth never changes. The church has by and large taken on an institutional form over the years, which believe it or not, the Spirit can work through. But when any of those images come to be what really characterizes a church so it becomes that and little else, then that church has missed its calling. So if the church is none of those things, then just what is the church? What is it that Jesus is building?
When Jesus said, “I will build my church,” the word translated “church” in this passage from Matthew is the Greek word “ecclesia.” Basically it means “people.” But it is not just people in general but a specific group of people who have been called out or summoned to an assembly. That’s what it means in the original Greek, and in Greek society the ecclesia was the assembly of the citizens of a particular city who gathered together at various times, usually at the edge of the city, to conduct the business of the city. They were called out of the city and away from the routines of the day to meet together to do business.
And so the church is the people who have been called out to do the business, or the work of the kingdom of God. The church is the people of God. It is not buildings or structures or programs or services, but the people. In that sense we can never go to church, for we are the church. Rather we go to the place where the church assembles.
Now there are some specific characteristics about this people God has called. First of all, just like the ecclesia in Greek society was called out to the edge of the city, so also we have been called out. I Pet. 2:9 reads, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” As the church, that is as the people of God, we have been called out of darkness. In Scripture darkness is a metaphor which simply means to be separated from God Of course, there are a lot of implications of that in terms of what it means and how it looks. To walk in darkness is to live apart from God and to ignore His instructions for living. It’s to take the path that leads to destruction, both in this life as well as the next.
But by God’s grace we have been called out of that darkness of ignorance of God and separation from God, and we have been called into His wonderful light. Having been called out of darkness we are invited to a new way of living under the Lordship of Jesus Christ. With Jesus Christ, the light of the world, illuminating the way, we can walk on the path that leads to life in all its fullness.
Then as the church we are “called for,” that is, we are called for relationship with God through Jesus Christ. God doesn’t call us out of darkness simply so that we can live by a new set of rules. No, God calls us out of darkness so that we can live with Him – our Creator, Redeemer, and Savior.
Jesus said to His disciples, “You are my friends.” That implies relationship. When Jesus called the twelve disciples, it says in Mk. 3:14, “He appointed twelve…that they might be with Him.” God offers Himself to us every moment of every day of our lives. The God of all creation gives Himself to us so we can live with Him, so we can know Him as our protector, guide, healer, counselor, shepherd and friend. Isn’t that incredible!
We are called out of darkness, out of life separated from God, and called for relationship with God so we might live in His love, be directed by His Spirit, be filled with His joy, and experience a certain hope for our eternity. For this living, dynamic relationship with God exists not only now but throughout eternity. In John’s vision of the new heaven and new earth, he heard a loud voice from the throne saying (Rev. 21:3), “Now the dwelling of God is with people, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” As the church, we are called for relationship with God, that we might forever be intimately related to the One who gives meaning to our lives. So we are called out of darkness and for relationship with God, that we might know Him and experience His presence and love everyday.
Thirdly, we are “called together.” In America we are big on individualism and some of that individualism has crept into the church. But that idea is foreign to Scripture. The call of God is not a purely private affair. The very meaning of the word “ecclesia,” is the people of God who have been called out and into an assembly. We are called together.
As we see in our text today, when Peter confessed Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus did not respond by speaking to Peter of his personal walk with God. No, Jesus immediately started talking about the church. This was the first time someone acknowledged Jesus as the Savior sent from God, and right away Jesus started talking about building His church. Today, especially in America, we find people who feel they can believe in Jesus – just me and Jesus – but ignore the church. Not so in the mind of Jesus. Listen to how Charles Colson puts it:
When Peter made his confession, Jesus did not say, “Good, Peter. You are now saved and will have an abundant life. Be at peace.” Instead, He announced the church and established a divinely ordained pattern. When we confess Christ, God’s response is to bring us into His church; we become part of His called-out people. When we become followers of Christ, we become members of His church – and our commitment to the church is indistinguishable from our commitment to Him.
When the church was born on the Day of Pentecost, it says in Acts 2:42 that these first Christians “devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship.” These early disciples met together as the church to listen to the teaching of the apostles. As followers of Jesus it is crucial that we understand correctly just who God is, what God is like, all He has done for us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and then how we are to live as His people in response to His grace. The more we understand about God the more enthralled we will be with God and the deeper our faith and firmer our commitment to God will be. So we come together as the church to learn together, for no individual on their own could possibly mine the depths of Scripture.
In addition to being devoted to the teaching of the apostles, the early church members were also, it says, devoted to the fellowship. They were devoted to one another, for they knew they needed each other if they were to live authentic Christian lives and experience all God had for them.
Jesus prayed in Jn. 17: 20-21 that all who believe in Him would be one. And He commanded us to love one another even as He loves us. That speaks of deep relationships with one another. We are to be committed to one another, encouraging one another in the faith, bearing one another’s burdens so that the whole body of Christ will be built up in love. Jesus, in building His church, builds us together. There is no inkling in the New Testament of a church member being someone whose name is on the role but never or rarely gathers with the community of faith nor participates in its corporate ministry. We all need each other, and we all have a role to play as members of the community of faith.
And in speaking about community, we must not confuse that with activity. There may be a lot of activity going on, but that in and of itself is not community. Community depends on right relationships, where we are learning to love one another, forgive one another, encourage one another, and put up with one another. I will speak more of this in a future sermon, but for today the point is simply that we are called together. That is the only way God calls us. So as we seek God’s vision for this church, this is something we all must enter into. True, we will all have different ways of contributing toward the fulfillment of that vision since we all have different gifts, but we all must be a part of it.
And finally, we are called “into.” After His resurrection, Jesus told the disciples in Jn. 20:21, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” Jesus was sent into the world to reveal the Father and demonstrate His love. And so Jesus calls us out of the darkness, out of a world that ignores God and rejects God, and then He calls us to go back into the world even as He was sent into the world. We are sent as His representatives to proclaim and demonstrate His love for all people.
As we saw in the verse earlier, I Pet 2:9, we are called out of darkness that we may declare the praises of Him who called us. To whom do we declare those praises? To one another. No, but to the world which has yet to hear and respond. Being called out of the world is not an escape from the world. Rather we are called out that we might experience new life from our Heavenly Father, be strengthened and encouraged by one another, so that we can go back into the world with a new sense of direction and new power to be a witness of God’s transforming love.
When Jesus said that He would build His church, He was not implying that He would build an organization or an institution. Rather He meant that He would build a people. First He would call them out of the darkness of life without God. Then He would lead them into a deep, life-sustaining relationship with God. Then He would bring them together to live with one another and grow together as a community of faith. And then, having been transformed and given a new sense of purpose, He would call them to go back into the world to live as His representatives. Jesus is not nearly as concerned about an institution as He is about His people – how are they living? How are they growing? How are they serving? What impact are they having?
In all this we see the amazing grace of God. Just think, the all-powerful Creator of the world, the Lord of all eternity invites us to be a part of His church, His own people. How gracious God is! You know, there are a lot of clubs, organizations, and institutions in this world that would never allow me to be a member. For some of these, you have to have the right connections to join, and thus they will never allow me in because I don’t have those connections. For others, you have to have certain amount of wealth to join, and I know I will never have enough wealth to meet their entrance requirements. For some you must display certain skills, abilities, or experiences, and I lack those, and so I’m left out. Then there are some exclusive clubs for which their members must have the proper ancestry; they need to be able to trace their family tree back to a certain person or group of people. I don’t have the right family lineage to get into those groups. In short, there are a lot of groups that simply would not have me as a member, and I’m guessing the same is true for you.
But the one, true, eternal God, the One who is perfect in every way and who alone is deserving of all praise and glory is delighted to invite you and me to be part of His church. Talk about affirming our value, our sense of worth. It doesn’t matter our race, our gender, our wealth, our intellect, our connections, our status in the eyes of the world, or even our past sins. In His love and grace God calls everyone out of darkness, out of the despair of not knowing God.
And then we see God’s grace even more in that through inviting us to be part of His church, He is also inviting us to know Him deeply. We have the opportunity to experience life with God, just as Jesus called the disciples that they might be with Him. Every moment of every day, we can have the assurance that the almighty and all-loving God is with us – leading us, protecting us, comforting us, encouraging us, using us, for we are members of His church.
And there is more grace for us to experience, for we live life not only with God but also with one another. Being a part of His church means we are members of one another. It means there is a place where we will be loved, supported, and encouraged. It means there is a place where we can learn from one another and grow in our faith together. It means that we can become more and experience life at a deeper level than we ever could on our own.
And there is more grace still, for being a part of God’s church means that we have the chance to really make a difference in this world. For as His redeemed people, as those who are becoming new creatures in Christ, God sends us back into the world that still is mired in darkness so that we can be God’s instruments of healing, wholeness, and reconciliation. We can direct others to the God who has saved us. We could never do all of this if we were left on our own trying to live out our faith, but together as His church and empowered by God’s Spirit, we can do the work of God in the world.
As we explore our identity and purpose as a church, these are some of the things we need to keep before us for Jesus would continually build us and strengthen us in these areas – our relationship with God, our relationships with one another, and our service to the world. And in all of this, we experience the grace of God. I hope, church, that you will be thinking and praying about this in the coming weeks and that together we will be fully surrendered to the Master Builder and His mission for us, so we can be the church He created us to be.