8/27/2023
Text: Matthew 16:13-20
SN: 0028
Proper 16A
A Righteous Rock of Refuge
When I was in college, I spent a summer working for a construction company. I distinctly remember one particular project. We were renovating a lake house. We redid the kitchen, added a fireplace, and turned the garage into a master bedroom suite. We also added a huge deck onto the house that overlooked the lake. I remember digging the holes to set the corner posts for the deck. We had these cement pucks that would go into the holes to serve as a foundation for the post to rest on. Because we were so near the lake, the posts filled with groundwater after only digging down a few feet. I remember dropping the cement puck into the hole and watching it disappear with a blurp. I’ve never been back to that house to see how the deck we built held up, but I can assume that by now, it’s probably crooked because it wasn’t built on a firm foundation.
Anyone who has ever worked on a house or a building knows how important the foundation is to the structure of the building. If the foundation is weak, the whole structure is compromised. Think of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was built on a poor foundation. Nothing built on a poor foundation will endure. The same is true of faith. Any faith not built on the firm foundation of Christ, our righteous rock of refuge, will fail. The picture I used for my sermon theme is of Edinburgh Castle. Just look at its foundation. That is a firm foundation of solid rock because the builders of that castle knew they needed a strong foundation to resist the attacks of enemies. As Christians, our faith is built on a far stronger foundation. This is the faith that Peter confessed and the faith we confess: Jesus is our righteous rock of refuge. He is the Christ, the Son of the Living God who destroyed the gates of hell and saved us from our sins.
Our Gospel lesson today comes toward the end of his public ministry. Jesus had been teaching and preaching for some time and now asks his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” The disciples responded with a variety of answers they had heard. Some claimed that Jesus was John the Baptist, others Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. These answers reflected the disappointment that many felt about the ministry of Jesus. He did not meet their expectations. They were looking for a savior who would be the heir of David. This new king would throw off the oppressive power of the Romans and make them a great nation again. Jesus preached the coming of the kingdom of God, a kingdom not of this world. This was not the Savior the people were looking for, but it was exactly the Savior they needed.
This same attitude still exists today. Many people, if not most people, cannot correctly answer Jesus’s question. They don’t know the truth, and they don’t know who he is. They think that Jesus was a great teacher, like many other great teachers and philosophers, or that he was simply a very good person who gave us an example to follow. They don’t believe that he is the Son of the living God who came to suffer and die for the sins of the whole world. And without faith and knowledge of the sacrifice of Christ, there is no salvation. In Romans 10, Paul describes the only way to salvation this way, “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.”
Jesus next asks his disciples who they think he is. The disciples had been with him throughout his ministry. They had heard his teaching and seen his power. They were beginning to understand, so Peter boldly confesses that Jesus is the “Christ, the Son of the living God.” Peter made this bold confession when he was alone with the Lord and the other disciples, but we know that Peter was not always rock solid in the face of opposition. He doubted that Jesus would protect him when he walked on the water, he rebuked Jesus for speaking about his death and resurrection, and he denied that he even knew Jesus on the night before our Lord’s death.
But before we get too critical of Peter, we need to examine ourselves. It is easy to proclaim our faith and praise our Savior within the walls of this church, surrounded by fellow believers, but how well do we confess our faith to the rest of the world? How boldly do we confess Christ when we are out in the world? Do we confess Christ by not engaging in gossip or crude humor with our co-workers, or do we go along with the crowd? Do we confess Christ by submitting to the authority of those God has placed over us, or do we grumble, complain, and rebel when we don’t get our way? Do we confess our faith by boldly proclaiming the truths of God’s Word, or do we hide, knowing that many of God’s truths are not popular in our society today?
Dear friends, we know that we have not always boldly confessed Christ. We have not made the most of every opportunity to share our faith. We have not confessed Christ when we have fallen into sins of habit again and again. When we have found it easier to break God’s commandments than to keep them. Our faith is not a solid foundation. Praise God that the strength of our own faith does not save us. Unfortunately, our faith is sometimes like that mushy sand where I built that deck. But Christ, the Son of the living God, is our cornerstone. He is our solid ground and sure foundation. He is our righteous rock of refuge.
This is why Jesus tells us to look to the example of Peter, not as a man, but to the truth he confessed. Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ. The Anointed One, the Savior from sin God had promised to send after Adam and Eve had sinned in the Garden of Eden. Jesus the fulfillment of every promise that God made to his people: to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Peter also understood that Jesus was both true man and true God. He was the only begotten Son of the Living God.
This is the Living God who appeared in fire and cloud to the children of Israel on Mount Sinai and proclaimed to Moses that he is “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and overflowing with mercy and truth, maintaining mercy for thousands, forgiving guilt and rebellion and sin. He will by no means clear the guilty. He calls their children and their children’s children to account for the guilt of the fathers, even to the third and the fourth generation.” Our God is holy and just. He demands that everyone live perfectly, one hundred percent of the time, according to his holy will. But we all have been born in sin, and we daily sin much. All of us deserve God’s wrath and punishment.
But our God is also a God of mercy who wants to forgive his people. He wants to shower his love and compassion on us. But the debt of our sin must be paid. So, God, in his rich mercy, sent his Son to suffer and die for the sins of the world. This is the truth that Peter confessed. This is the truth that we confess: Jesus offered his perfect, sinless life as a sacrifice to pay for our sins. That by his death, we have been washed and cleansed. Our sins have been removed from us as far as the East is from the West, and God remembers them no more. We have been fully and completely forgiven by the blood of Christ. By his resurrection from the dead, Jesus destroyed the power of death and shattered the gates of hell.
Jesus praised Peter for his confession and proclaimed that his church would be built on the unshakeable rock of Christ. Even the very gates of hell would not be able to overcome the church because Christ had defeated them. Satan can no longer accuse us because when Christ died, he made full payment for our sins. Christ crushed the head of the old serpent and liberated us, his people, from the chains of sin. Christ rose from the dead and marched victoriously into hell. He shattered the gates of death and hell. Death has no power for those who trust in Jesus’s name. We know that our righteous rock of refuge crushed the power of death and opened the gates of eternal life for all who believe in his name. This is why we can boldly and loudly sing in our hymn, In Christ Alone, “No guilt in life, no fear in death this is the power of Christ in me.”
Only believers can proclaim this foundational message of truth and salvation. We have the only answer to the question Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am?” We boldly confess, like Peter, that he is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and the only way to salvation and eternal life. We proclaim the entire truth of God’s word, the Law and the Gospel. These are the keys that Christ has given to his people. We use the binding key when we proclaim that because of our sins, we are enemies of God and condemned to eternal death. No one can satisfy the demands of God’s law. This is a message that the world does not want to hear. People don’t want to hear how their lifestyle choices are offensive to God. They don’t want to hear how the constant pursuit of wealth and pleasure is contrary to the will of God. We don’t do this maliciously or with a sense of superiority. Instead, we speak the truth of God’s law in love so that we can lead others to Christ. We, too, do not want to hear how we have daily sinned and failed to keep God’s commands. But the law reminds us of our sins and shows us the need for our Savior, who alone could keep God’s law perfectly.
We use the loosing key when we proclaim the sweet joy of the Gospel. That Christ has fully and completely paid for the sins of the entire world. This gift of forgiveness is ours through grace and not because we have done anything to earn or deserve it. Salvation is a free gift. That sounds so contrary to our natures. We instinctively believe that it can’t be that easy. We need to do something to earn God’s love. But this is the sweet joy of the Gospel: whoever believes in Christ will be saved. Because we love our God and want to show gratitude for this amazing gift, we live our lives according to his will. We share the joy of the gospel with others. We practice forgiveness in our own lives by graciously forgiving those who have sinned against us. We see this in action when a father forgives a child, a wife forgives her husband, and the pastor announces the forgiveness of sins to the congregation each week.
Dear friends, we have a righteous rock of refuge. We cling to Christ as we face life's fiercest droughts and storms. Our own faith is, at times, shaky ground. We know that we ourselves are not a firm foundation. But Christ is a solid rock who crushed the head of Satan and shattered the gates of hell. Our faith is built on nothing less than Jesus’s blood and righteousness. We cling to the confession of Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. We cling to the certainty that Christ has paid our debt and removed our sins. We have been saved, and nothing in all creation can move the solid rock of our Savior. Amen.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither things present nor things to come, nor powerful forces, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen