Jesus is the Rock
Matthew Chapter 16: 13-20 (continued)

“When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, ‘Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?’ So they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’  He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered and said, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’

“Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.  And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ Then He commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ.”

Two weeks ago we talked about the danger of doctrines coming in and choking the life out of the truth.  Men love their traditions, and it is so easy for traditions to come in and become more important than the Word of God.  We men like to think that we are important, and so we like to make rules that bind people, or even more sinister, we make rules that we claim clarify God’s rules.  Soon, we spend more time enforcing our rules at the expense of the Bible.

Today we will deal with the importance of one particular foundational doctrine.  This may seem trivial to many in the church world today; but like any home, if the foundation is weak, then the whole house is weak.  The NT churches around the globe and in North America are under attack and will continue to be under attack until Jesus comes.  The only way that we will withstand the stormy future that is coming upon us is if we have a sure and secure foundation.

Who is Jesus? Verses 13-16

This is the dividing line in the sand for true Christianity versus false doctrine.  This is the question that I ask people who tell me that they are saved in Christ.  I ask them, “Who is Jesus?” A true Christian will know this.  The Spirit of God in them will identify to them who Jesus is.  A small child may not know everything about life, but they will know their parents: their voice, their feel, their smell and even their heart beat.  They can identify who the parent is.

There are all kinds of explanations as to who Jesus is: a good man; a prophet; some in that day even thought he was John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah who had come back to preach to Israel.  But Jesus puts the questions of His identity squarely in Peter’s lap:

“But who do you say that I am?”

This is an important step in salvation.  One must take responsibility for one’s beliefs about God.  It does not matter what your parents did, that they took you to Sunday school or that Dad was a preacher, a deacon or a missionary.  “Who do you say Jesus is?” This is the proverbial ‘shoe hits the road’ moment.  You and I must take responsibility for our beliefs about Jesus.

There is a doctrine out there that teaches that God has chosen a select group to be saved and all others will perish.  It is the doctrine of Calvinism.  However, the Bible teaches that man was designed with the ability to choose God or to reject God.  From the very creation, God gave man choices.  Adam was allowed to eat from every tree of the Garden, but not the ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’ (Genesis 2: 15-17).  The tree was put there so that they could have a choice.  God is not interested in robotic allegiance; He wants someone to choose Him, to choose to worship, obey and love Him.

Peter makes this statement in verse 16, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”  In this he was surmising the total ministry and person of Jesus.  The word Christ in Greek comes from the word Christos, according to Strong’s Concordance. This word can be translated as ‘anointed.’

If we were to research the OT scriptures, we would find that only two offices in Israel were anointed: the office of High Priest and that of King.  Anointing was the act of pouring oil on a person to signify God’s choice and blessing on their call to either the office of High Priest or King.  In Leviticus 8:12 we find Aaron being anointed as High Priest, and in 1 Samuel 16:13 we find David being anointed as King.  Jesus is the fulfillment of both of the offices.  He is our High Priest and He is our King.  More accurately, He is the rightful King of Israel, from the tribe of Judah.  In Hebrew 4: 14-18, he is called our High Priest.  But further beyond that, Peter identifies Jesus as the Son of God.

We had established back in chapter 3 that God has called Jesus His Son, and we learned in John 5:18 that when Jesus identified himself as the Son of God that the people took up stones to kill him for blasphemy, since claiming to be the Son of God made Him equal with God.

So here we have the complete summation of Jesus made for us: He is our High Priest and King, and above all that He is God.

As our High Priest, only He can approach the Mercy Seat of God for the atonement of our sins.  Thus it is pointless to pray to Mary or any of the Catholic saints.  They are dead and they cannot hear you.  Only Jesus is our High Priest and only He can approach God for you.

Also important for us to understand is that there are religions that call Jesus Lord, BUT they add to Him as well.  They have other people whom they worship, be it Mary, or Peter, or the Pope, or Joseph Smith, or anyone else.  There is NO OTHER!  It is Jesus and Jesus alone.  This same Peter, when questioned by Jesus about whether he would leave Him like some of the others, made this enlightened statement in John 6:68:

“To whom else shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”

Jesus and Jesus alone is the “author and finisher of our faith.”

As our King we can be assured that He is in charge of everything that is happening, whether it appears to be ‘good, bad or ugly.’ As our King we can be assured that He cannot be defeated. What appeared on the surface to be a defeat, the Cross, was and is the greatest military victory in the history of man.  In man’s war the generals send the foot soldiers out to fight, and they live. In this war the General went to the battle for us, was killed and then was raised from the dead by God to give victory to all the soldiers.

As the Living God, we can be assured that nothing in this world surprises Him.  He is all knowing and all powerful.  He created this earth and only He can destroy it, no matter what Al Gore or David Suzuki think.  Man cannot destroy what God has built.  We can rest in the security of this verse:

“If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).

God the Father reveals this to us, verse 17

There is certain clarity that comes to us when we allow the Holy Spirit to come in and take over.  We begin to see the world in ways that we simply could not have before.  One of the ways that our eyes are opened is that we see and understand who Jesus is.  We understand and believe that He is God, and that belief is fundamentally unshakable.  With the exception of Judas who betrayed Jesus, all of the apostles, including Paul (who began by hating the people of Jesus), died for the cause of Christ.  They went to the grave, some by very painful methods, attesting to the fact that Jesus is God.

Now we live in a world of fanaticism.  We see it every day in the news: men and women who blow themselves up for the sake of a religion.  They are promised some great reward in eternity; the men get 72 virgins, and I am not sure what the women get since their religion despises them.  But the apostles and the millions, who have died for the name of Jesus, only had the Promise that they would be with Jesus wherever He is.  Thus they died trusting that their greatest reward was simply to be in His presence.  That is faith.

God gives us this kind of faith. We see in Ephesians 2:8 that it says we are saved by grace through faith, and that faith is a gift from God.  God does the saving; He extends the grace to us and He gifts us the faith to believe.  Salvation is designed by, sustained by, provided by and gifted to us by God the Father.

Jesus, the Rock of the NT Church, verse 18

Since Jesus is our High Priest, He is our King and He is God in the flesh, then He and He alone can be the foundation of the NT church.  There is a very large religion, that of Catholicism, that would have you believe that Peter is the rock of the church.  He is not.  Jesus is the Rock against whom the gates of Hell cannot prevail.

Folks, in a few chapters, not far from where we are reading, we will see where this very same Peter betrays Jesus; he is afraid of some servant girl, and denies Jesus.  He is NOT the rock of the Lord’s church.  Jesus is that Rock.  In 1 Corinthians 10: 4, Jesus is called the ‘Rock’ that followed Israel in the wilderness.  In Isaiah 28: 16 we find these comforting words:

“Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.”

In Acts 4: 10-12, we find these powerful words:

“Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by this name this man stands here before you in good health.

“He is the STONE WHICH WAS REJECTED by you, THE BUILDERS, but WHICH BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone. And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”

In Ephesians 2: 20-22, Jesus is called the cornerstone upon whom the whole building is fitted together.  Jesus is the very foundation, the Rock and the Cornerstone of all that we have in God.  In Jesus you have it all and without Jesus you have nothing.  It truly is that simple.  We should stop confusing people and should not tolerate those that do.

We are not talking about some innocent mistake; we are talking about denying Jesus as the only means and way of salvation.  This is from Hell.

Think of all the people, some 1,000,000,000 worldwide who adhere to the Catholic religion— many who claim to believe in Jesus, yet they still worship the saints and Mary. They treat Mary as an equal with Jesus, but she is not; she was just a lost sinner who needed to be saved just like you and I.

These people are lost and without Christ.  This perversion is spiritual murder, and we need to be diligent not to fall for it, nor encourage it.

In this age of the ‘COEXIST’ movement led by the Pope, the Lord’s NT churches need to stand up and make it clear that Jesus is the only way!  No exceptions, no excuses, and no apologies.

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me’” (John 14:6).

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

Sean Gooding, Pastor

Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

The Highest Form of Worship is Obedience
Zechariah Lesson 15, Chapter 7: 1-7 (continued)

“Now in the fourth year of King Darius it came to pass that the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, on the fourth day of the ninth month, Chislev, when the people sent Sherezer, with Regem-Melech and his men, to the house of God, to pray before the Lord, and to ask the priests who were in the house of the Lord of hosts, and the prophets, saying, ‘Should I weep in the fifth month and fast as I have done for so many years?’

‘Then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, saying, ‘Say to all the people of the land, and to the priests: ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months during those seventy years, did you really fast for Me—for Me? When you eat and when you drink, do you not eat and drink for yourselves? Should you not have obeyed the words which the Lord proclaimed through the former prophets when Jerusalem and the cities around it were inhabited and prosperous, and the South and the Lowland were inhabited?’”

Jesus is the King of the Jews, the King of the Universe and the King of kings. These truths were clearly established in the previous chapter. Today we are going to build on the fact that Jesus is King.

We hear a lot about the word ‘worship’ in the modern church. We hear about worship services, and people say they are going to ‘Sunday worship.’ Many Christian concerts are billed as worship events. Some types of music are classified as worship music. We often hear the older folks lament that we don’t sign the old worship hymns, and the younger complain that we need more modern, upbeat worship songs.

Sadly, many people do not know what worship is. We get our idea of worship from the world. It is a kind of dreamy, almost entranced experience when we see our favorite rock star (Christian or not), when our favorite actor and actress comes close, or when we get posters of our favorite artist of the month, so to speak. We look up to them, dress like them, buy the products they buy, and identify with them.

If we were to look up the word ‘worship’ in a dictionary, we would find words like reverence, adoration, obeisance, and others like these. However, according to www.Theopidia.com, the root meaning of the word is to ‘depress or prostrate oneself.’ It can be translated as ‘bow down,’ ‘fall down,’ ‘make to stoop’ or ‘humbly beseech.’ Notice that these are all actions. They cannot be separated from the inner person.

I was once told that the act of a dog licking the master’s hand was the idea of worship. It was an acknowledgement that the master was just that—the master.

The Bible is not opposed to emotional responses; God gave us emotions and Jesus expressed emotions. He cried, He became angered, He sorrowed, and He was at times frustrated. These are the normal emotions of men and women. The problem, as I understand it, is that many of us do not get past the emotions; and once they fade, the idea of honest and truthful worship fades as well.

Being a Christian is awesome! It can emotionally charge you. You know, you get saved; the Holy Spirit moves in; and, man, it is just awesome! You are overrun with emotions. Some people cry, some laugh and smile, some get quiet, some can’t shut up, and on and on. But eventually the emotions subside, and the act of living the new life becomes mundane.

Like all babies, you have to learn to crawl, walk, fall, get back up; trip, and get back up. If you get hurt, you have to get back up, and on and on. In response to this a lot of people just settle for the cheap emotional rush. They go to a worship service and they sing a few songs. Don’t get me wrong; they sing heartily. They put their all into it: they smile, laugh, say amen a lot, get this glow on their faces, and fall in love with everybody. But then the music stops and they stop too.

Their worship has no effect on their lives; they just like the rush. It is like a drug, and churches are the suppliers. They don’t stay at churches long because they need a new rush often: new music, new sound; they are looking for something deeper, they would tell you.

These persons are not involved in the Lord’s work. They are takers, not givers. They are always receiving but there is never output.  They never volunteer to serve, never speak of Jesus outside of the ‘worship’ on Sunday or Saturday night, or whenever they went. This idea of worship just becomes a habit; it is just something we do, but it is not who we are.

Rituals are Empty to God, verses 1-6

In the first six verses, we find a discussion about the ritual of weeping while in captivity in Babylon. In the fifth and seventh months, the people would send the priests to pray before the Lord and to weep before the Lord. Even after the return of the people to Jerusalem, they were still doing this ritual.

We see in verse 1 that it was the fourth year of Darius. The new Temple was built, and now the people were sending the priests to weep in the Temple and to pray before the Lord.

One of the men dares to ask the question, ‘Should we keep doing this?’ He had been accustomed to doing this for many years, and he wanted to know if he was to continue. God (His word through Zechariah) steps right up to the plate to offer an insight and to challenge the man and his Jewish brethren. The question was and is today, ‘For whom did you weep? Who were you weeping for all these years; seventy, we are told. You said it was for the Lord, but who was it really for?’

In the end of verse 6, God points out that they did everything for themselves. They were not sorry for their sins, and they were not sorry for their transgressions before a Holy and Righteous God. They felt sorry for themselves that they were in captivity. They were not sorry about why they were in captivity.

It is so easy for us to get this way; Woe is me! But we forget that we are the recipients of the rewards of our own sinfulness. We disobey God and are surprised that we get a discipline from God. We are like the teenagers that disobey their parents repeatedly and seem astonished that there is a consequence. They get mad that they got caught, not that they disobeyed their parents; and the broken trust often takes a long time to restore.

I was certainly this way; I know for sure that I broke my parent’s hearts often with my selfish and absolutely disrespectful behavior.

As a bit of an aside: Earlier this year the Lord helped me to teach through the verses in 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 about love. The very first observation we get in verse 4 is this: ‘Love suffers long and is kind.’ Most of us can deal with the ‘suffering long,’ but it is having to be kind as well that hits deep and hard. We love to talk about our suffering; we wear it like a badge of honor, but we rarely talk about how we were kind to the ones that hurt us and caused us to suffer.

For seventy years, the people of the nation of Israel – not all of them obviously – but a vast majority of them lamented their state in life as captives in Babylon, but did not think that they had ‘hurt’ God.

They, like we do, had taken advantage of His grace, his kindness, His love, His mercy and His patience. They, like we do, put on a good show of remorse and repentance; but that is all it ever was—just a show. Yet, God, in His genuine love for the nation and the people, delivered them. He gave them protection and helped them return to their homeland. He helped them begin to flourish. He made the kings of the world supply their needs; and He showed them that, even as they made Him ‘suffer,’ He was still a kind and loving God.

God calls us to authenticity. If you claim to be a child of God and call Him Lord, then live this way. If not, then live that way, but stop walking on the fence. God can see through your façade, so you might as well live like He wants you to.

Obedience is the True Act of Worship, verse 7

God asks a simple question: If you are so sorrowful and find it so important to enter the Temple and weep, why not just obey me? It did not have to come to this; it did not have to come to death, destruction and captivity. All the nation had to do was to obey. All anyone has to do is to obey the Lord. Yes, we are sinners and we will fail. But what really began the journey down to captivity was idolatry.

The people of Israel simply refused to stay away from false gods. They followed after idols, killed their babies, and inter-married with pagan people. They turned their backs on God, called on other gods to save them, and assigned God’s victories to others. Eventually, God just became a bystander to their lives. All worship became a mere ritual with no meaning, just tradition.

We see this every day in a practical sense with the Queen of England:

She is the monarch legally. She lives in the palace. She wears the crown, and people do obeisance to her in the form of bowing or standing when she enters a room. But in reality she does not have any real control over them. She is, for all intents and purposes, just a really rich figurehead.

For a lot of Christians, that is all that God is, a really rich figurehead. He is ‘brought’ out for special occasions like Easter, weddings, funerals and Christmas, but then He is shelved away until we bring Him out again.

As we get back to the idea of what worship is, we can then truly understand what God expects. He expects us to be physically and spiritually humbled: bowed down, prostrate, face down before Him. He wants us to be truly sorry for our sins and truly repentant.

We are a dual-natured people, those of us that are saved. We have the old nature of sin and the new nature of righteousness fighting inside of us. We will fail; and yes, thank God that we will win as well. When we fail, God has asked that we confess our sin—that simply means to agree with God that we have sinned. We do not seek to excuse or justify our sin, but we humbly agree with God that we have sinned, and He will forgive us. This is true worship.

God asks that we obey Him. Jesus said, “If you love me keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

There is no ulterior motive here, just a plain explanation of what worship is—obey me.

There is no point in singing loud and long, no point to all the instruments and all the practice, no point of getting together if we have no intention of obeying God; if we have no intention of acknowledging that He is our King, and as such, has put certain rules, boundaries and precepts in place that are not up for negotiation or question. They are simply there to be obeyed. The Bible clearly lays these out and we need to be familiar with them.

Obedience requires submission; this is an act of worship. Obedience requires humility, another act of worship. Obedience requires deliberateness and knowledge of what we are obeying; these are also acts of worship.

You see, once we have these things in place, then we can sing worship songs. But if we sing without obedience we are fooling ourselves; we are obviously not fooling God. Come, let us determine, like Joshua and others to serve the Lord. Let us obey, let us submit, let us bow down, let us fall at His feet, and let us obey. Let us honor our Heavenly Father with obedience.

Deuteronomy 11:1 “Love the LORD your God and keep his requirements, his decrees, his laws and his commands always.”

John 15:14 “You are my friends if you do what I command.”

Luke 11:28 “He replied, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”

James 1:25 “But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”

These are just a few of the verses that make it clear that obedience is what the Lord requires. I fail—man do I fail! I thank my God that He is merciful to me, a sinner. He will be merciful to you as well.

Missionarybaptistchurch76@ yahoo.ca