This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

[Music] I want to welcome you to day two of our look through Matthew chapter 16.
Let me set the stage for the verses I'm about to read. In the north of Israel,
above the Sea of Galilee, is the region of Caesarea Philippi.

That region is beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful parts of Israel. It's
got great greenery, trees, streams, mountains.

It's got some caves into some cliffs that are there. Just a beautiful place.
This beautiful place, however, happened to be also a place of great idol worship
for thousands of years.

In those caves, you could find scratchings in the caves. You could find markings
in the caves. You can find idols in the caves.

It had been a place where people had gone for many, many years to worship false
gods. In this beautiful place of God's creation, but also this place where for
many years people had worshiped false gods. In a time when many people are
beginning to talk about Jesus, who is he?

Why has he come? The disciples are hearing this all around them. Jesus, at this
moment, has a question.

Listen to what happens beginning in verse 13. When Jesus came to the region of
Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?
" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others
Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

" "But what about you? " he asked. "Who do you say I am?

" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. " Jesus
replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you
by man, but by my Father in heaven. 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.

And I will give you the keys to 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. " And then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the
Christ.

Now we're going to look at Peter's faith in just a moment, but I want you to
notice with me that it began with a question. Jesus asks a question, and out of
that question comes this great moment of faith. It's very important to
understand the place of questions in our lives.

When it comes to the spiritual growth in my life, in your life, there are
questions that come into our minds. Sometimes Satan asks questions of us, and
sometimes God asks questions into our minds. The questions that Satan sends, and
he could send it through our fallen nature, he could send it through the world
around us, he could send it through a temptation.

Satan's questions are always there to produce doubt. He questions us in order to
produce doubt. The most famous of Satan's questions is the first of Satan's
questions, Genesis 3.

1. "The serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God
had made, and he said to the woman, 'Indeed, has God said you shall not eat from
any tree of the garden? '" So all questions are not good.

The ones that Satan puts into our minds, the ones that Satan puts into our
culture, they are evil. They are there to produce doubt, and you see here in
Genesis the number one question that Satan uses to produce doubt. "Has God
really said?

" Really, did he say that? Really, did he mean that? It's the same kind of
questioning that Satan used when he tried to tempt Jesus.

Let me just put it this way. If you've got a question in your mind, and that
question in your mind as you're struggling with it is producing doubt, you know
where it's coming from. It's coming from Satan.

Every question in our minds does not come from us. It comes from the world
around us, the spiritual world around us. We'd like to think it comes just from
ourselves, but the truth is we're influenced by our culture, influenced by the
spirituality of the world around us.

We're influenced by Satan's work and God's work in this world. Questions get
sent to us. We don't come up with them all ourselves, and the ones that Satan
sends, however he addresses them, however he gets them to us, they're there to
produce doubt.

God also questions us, and the questions he asks, they're there to produce
faith. You can see this also beginning all the way back in the book of Genesis.
Right after Adam and Eve sinned, the Bible says in Genesis 3.

9, "The Lord called to the man and said to him, 'Where are you? '" That was more
than just a location question. That was a heart question, and he's asking the
question to produce faith.

God wants to produce faith in our lives, and when you study the questions of
Jesus through the New Testament, you see that Jesus always asks questions to
produce faith. "Do you want to get well? " he asks someone.

That's to produce faith. Here, Jesus is asking a question to produce faith. "Who
do you say that I am?

" Not, "Who do they say I am? " Who do you say that I am? And Peter responds
with this great moment of faith.

He's the one who says, "You are the Messiah. You are the one. " Now, you have to
understand that the people of Israel had been waiting for the Messiah for
thousands of years.

So, to say that someone is the Messiah, the one they've been waiting for, this
is one of the greatest steps of faith, statements of faith that a Jewish man
could make. You are the Christ. That's not Jesus's last name, Jesus Christ.

Christ is a title. It means Messiah. It means chosen, promised one of God.

He is the promised Savior. Peter is saying, "You're the one. You are the one
we've been waiting for.

" And Jesus looks at him and says, "Blessed are you, Simon. " This wasn't
revealed to you by man. God revealed this to you.

And then he affirms Peter's faith in three specific ways. And when you look at
your life, how God's working in your life, and you're able to say, "Jesus, you
are the Christ. You're my Savior.

" There's some affirmations of faith you need to hear based on that. Now, there
are many. There are actually hundreds of them.

But let's not miss the first three that Jesus gave to the first person, Peter,
who affirmed that he was the promised one, the first person amongst his
disciples. Let's not miss those. When you say, "Jesus is my Savior," here's some
affirmations of faith you need to hear.

Jesus says, "Based on that kind of faith, number one, I'm going to build my
church. Number two, the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And number
three, I'm going to give you the keys to the kingdom.

" Let's look at those, or at least two of those today and one tomorrow. First, I
will build my church. When you have faith to believe in Jesus as the Savior,
first place he goes is, "I'm going to build a church out of that.

" It's not just about you. It's about other people and what God wants to do in
other people's lives. And it's not just about now.

It's about what God wants to do through the hundreds and thousands of years that
he's going to let the church be in this world. Jesus says, "I will build my
church. " Jesus intends to build his church.

He didn't just say, "I'm going to create a church. " He is building a church.
That means the growth of a church, the building of a church, that's God's will.

It is God's will to build a church, to bring new people in, to know Christ. It's
God's will to build a church, to bring people up in the church, to get growing
in Christ. It's God's will to build a church, to send people out from that
church, to reach the world around us.

Jesus is building the church. And when you say he's the Messiah, you're saying,
"I want to be in on that building project. " He goes on to say, "The gates of
hell will not prevail against it.

" This is a tremendous picture of the kind of life that God wants us to lead,
the kind of victory that God wants us to enjoy. Many times when we think of the
church, people picture the church as some fortress. And that fortress is what
we're protected inside of in this world.

The world around us is evil, and the church is in this protected fortress. But
that picture does not fit with what Jesus is saying here. He says, "The gates of
hell will not prevail against it.

" So the church actually is attacking the fortress of evil here. The church is
not inside the fortress, they're outside. We are attacking.

We're going to be victorious. We're going to break down the gates of evil, and
the church is going to be eternally victorious. It's a great picture of the kind
of life you're to lead in Christ.

The picture is not that you lead a life of cowering in some fortress against
evil until Jesus takes you to heaven. The picture is that the church is marching
against evil. You and I as believers are marching against evil.

We're overcoming evil with good the rest of our lives in this world until we go
to heaven. And the gates of hell aren't going to prevail against us. The church
is going to win.

Now I know in any single moment it looks like maybe that evil is winning. I can
understand that. I've felt that in my life personally.

I've seen that in society and in culture and history. We've all seen that. But
you've got to take the larger view.

The larger view is in your life as you head towards eternity, victory is going
to be yours. And in history, victory is going to be God's. Evil will not win.

Good is going to win. And we get to the rest of our lives take the offensive
against evil because we know that we're going to break down those gates. The
affirmation is based on this kind of faith.

Jesus is my Savior. I want to be part of this church that Jesus is building. I
want to be part of the victory that Jesus is heading toward.

And then a last thing. He says, "I'll give you the keys to the kingdom of
heaven. " Now this last one is the hardest to understand.

So obviously we always spend the most time discussing it because we want to
understand what's hard to discuss. So tomorrow we're going to take a look at
this last one because today I want us to focus on these two that were easier to
understand and to pray that God will help us, challenge us, encourage us to live
this kind of life. The kind of life that's building the church.

The kind of life that's marching with Jesus in victory. The kind of life that's
looking forward to all that he's going to do in his kingdom. Will you pray with
me about this?

And Lord, as we pray today, we want to say along with Peter, you are the Christ.
You are the promised one. And we want to hear what Peter heard in our hearts.

That you're building your church. Let us be a part of your building project.
That that church is going to march against evil and be victorious.

Let us be a part, we pray, of your victory today in one small way. In something
we do, something that we pray, a decision that we make. Let us live out your
victory, we pray, in our lives.

And when it seems like maybe evil is winning, we pray that these words will be
an encouragement to us. Help us to remember God that in the end you are going to
be victorious. We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen. Join us tomorrow. We're going to talk about the keys to the kingdom.