THE COMINGS OF MATTHEW SIXTEEN

Sermon of the Week #200733 – August 19, 2007

Matthew chapter sixteen has a list of various comings in the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.

PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES

First, the Pharisees and Sadducees came and trying Him, asking Him to show them a sign from Heaven. People are always looking for signs. Sometimes if there is a warm winter or a cold summer, someone will write, and want to know where that prophecy is found, about the days will come and you cannot tell the difference of the seasons, except by the leaves on the calendar. The words of Moses in Genesis 8:22 should be answer enough, “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.” There is no such prediction.

But this is not the first time they had asked for a sign from Heaven. In Matthew 12 they had asked for a sign from Heaven, and Jesus had told them the same thing he told them this time, “There shall no sign be given, but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”

Sometimes the Lord would use a statement in one sermon, and then repeated it in another. He evidently thought that some things were so important that they needed to be repeated.

They asked for a sign, and the sign was standing right before them, and they missed it. Jesus had already told them in John 6, “I am come down out of heaven.” Jesus was the sign, and the only sign they would get from Heaven. If people insist on a sign, there are several connected to His suffering on the cross that cannot be missed. How about the sign of the Lord’s Day, the sign of the existence of the Lord’s Supper, the sign of the Church, the sign of baptism? People who look for signs will never be satisfied, and He left them and departed. The Pharisees and the Sadducees came.

THE COMING OF THE DISCIPLES

Next in line is the coming of the Apostles to the other side of the lake, and they forgot to take bread. Jesus told them to take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They thought He was talking about forgetting bread. Jesus reprimanded them for their lack of faith by reminding them of the feeding of the five thousand, and the feeding of the four thousand. They knew He could feed five thousand, and they knew He could feed four thousand, but they thought feeding twelve Apostles was a little out of His league.

He said, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Then they got the message. It was the teaching of these people that they were being warned about. Jesus preached a positive message, and a negative message. He not only told the people what was right, He also told them what was wrong; we need both. If you try to turn the lights on by all positive, and no negative, you will not get any light. All positive in the sound system, and no negative will not produce any sound.

In the message of the Word of God we need to use just as much negative preaching as positive, or people will not get the true picture. Take heed and beware.

Many today are afraid to preach a negative message. Everything has to be positive, so people live on in ignorance, for the sake of a larger crowd. If Moses had felt that way, he would never have given the world that negative message God gave him, called the Ten Commandments.

THE COMING OF JESUS TO CAESEREA PHILIPPI

Next is the coming of the Lord to the parts of Caeserea Philippi, and there He asked the Apostles saying, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” Notice that He said Son of man. Jesus liked to call Himself the Son of man to identify Himself with us. He used that term Son of man over eighty times in the four gospel accounts. So He identified Himself with us when He sat on a well and asked a woman to give Him a drink, and when He fasted forty days and hungered, even though He could say, “He that believeth on me shall never hunger and thirst.” He was like us when He fell asleep in a boat in the midst of a choppy sea, even though it was He who poured all the rivers, lakes, and oceans into their places, and then hung the Big Dipper in the sky. He was like us when He said, “Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head;” like us in the very fact that He was born just like us, and was upheld in the arms of His mother even though He Himself upholdeth all things by the word of His power. He was like us when He died, and tasted of death once for every man; like us when tempted in all points like as we are, and yet without sin; like us when as a child He increased in stature daily and in favor with God and man. And because He was like us, Paul could tell us in Acts 17:31, “God hath appointed a day when he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all the nations in that he hath raised him from the dead.” We will see a man at the second coming. Jesus said, “Ye shall see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Remember on the Judgment Day, according to Matthew 25, the Son of man will sit on His throne, and no one will be able to say, “Lord, you didn’t know what it was like to live on earth, poor, persecuted, a member of a minority race.” To this, the Son of man may say, “O yes I do; been there, done that.”

Who do men say that the Son of man is? The Apostles told Him who the people said He was. “They say you are John the Baptist; some Elijah, and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” The only way the people could explain Jesus was by calling Him by the name of someone who had been raised from the dead.

Then Jesus asked the Apostles who they thought He was, and Peter said, “Thou art the Christ the son of the living God.” Someone asked me one time why I referred to Jesus as the Son of the living God. I call Jesus the Son of the living God because in this case everyone was saying He was Son of someone who had been dead, or gone for hundreds of years, and Jesus is not the Son of a dead man; Jesus is the Son of the living God; the only begotten Son of the living God.

Jesus then said, “Blessed art thou Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.” There is a big difference in flesh and blood answers, and the answers of God. One great flesh and blood answer to the question “what must I do to be saved?” is, “just bow your head and tell the Lord to come into your heart.”

That is not exactly what God said. Actually there is a double-whammy to flesh and blood answers. It was Doctor Joseph Gobbles, the propaganda minister of the Nazi in World War Two, who said, “If you tell a lie over and over again, people will believe it as the truth.” That is the first whammy of flesh and blood answers; and the second whammy is what Jesus said in John 12:43, “They loved the glory of men more than the glory of God.” If millions of people hear popular preachers say, “The Jack of Diamonds is a greater prophet than Isaiah,” they will believe it, if said over and over, because they love the glory of men more than the glory of God.

Then Jesus, in answer to the God-given answer that Peter made said, “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”  The debate goes on: What is the rock on which the Church is built? Let us ask Peter himself, he ought to know. Peter referred to Jesus in his first epistle chapter two, verses four through eight as a living stone rejected of men, “And we also are living stones, built up a spiritual house.” Then Peter referred to Jesus as the chief corner stone elect and precious.

Listen again to Paul in Ephesians two as he declares, “We are fellow-citizens with the saints and the household of God built upon the foundation of the apostles, and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner stone.” Hear Paul again in 1st Corinthians 3:11, “For other foundation can not man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

Then there is a further word from Jesus in the last of Matthew 21 as he referred to Himself as the stone the builders rejected, and said, “Whoever falls on that stone shall be broken in pieces, and on whomever it falls it will scatter him as dust.” We are reminded of this in Revelation 6, “When many will call upon the rocks of the mountains to fall on them, and cover them from the face of him that sitteth on the throne.” The rock that falls on them at that time is the Rock of Ages that will grind them as dust.

Then after it was established that Jesus was the Christ the Son of the living God, the Lord gave them the bad news. He, the Son of the living God, would be rejected and crucified. It was Peter again, who was the first to speak. He said, “Lord, this shall never be unto thee.” This time Jesus said to Peter, “Get thee behind me Satan, for thou art a stumbling block unto me, for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men.” When Peter said, “You shall not go to the cross”, he was preaching the gospel of the Devil; that is what the Devil said through the chief priests when Jesus was on the cross, “Come down from the cross, and we will believe on thee.”

Peter may have thought of that later when he warned all rejecters of the blood of Christ of being, “A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; for they stumble at the word being disobedient.” It is ironic that Peter, who many think was the rock, should himself stumble on the rock. “Lord, this shall never be unto thee.”  Many a preacher has been advised by the Devil, who tells them, “Don’t go to the cross. Don’t go to Jerusalem.”

Then Jesus reminded the Apostles that we also have a cross when He said, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever would save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what shall a man be profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Sometimes we want as much of the world as we can get. If we get a car, and lose it, we can get another. If we lose a credit card, we can get another, if we lose our coat, we can get another, if we lose our house, we can get another. But if we lose our soul, it is gone for all eternity.

Someone has expressed it well in these lines, “If you make your goal in riches, what then? If you dress in pinstripe britches, what then? If your checkbook has six figgers,  when the reaper calls by jiggers, what then? When your glory is diminished, what then? When the doctor says you’re finished, what then? When the passing moments tell, like the echo of a bell that you are headed straight for hell, what then?”

COMING IN HIS KINGDOM

There is yet another coming mentioned in Matthew chapter sixteen in the coming of the kingdom. Jesus said, “Verily I say unto you there are some of you that stand here that shall in no wise taste of death until they see the Son of man coming in His Kingdom.” This coming of Jesus would happen during that generation. In Mark 9:1 he says it this way, “There are some that stand here who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God come with power.” Then Luke in 9:27, “They shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.”

This coming of Jesus would be the coming of the Church on the Day of Pentecost. Judas would be dead, Jesus would die, and be raised, others, perhaps, would be dead in that crowd that were there that day, but most would be alive. Whatever Jesus was talking about had to happen before that generation passed away. Jesus had said, “Upon this rock I will build my church,” and called that church a kingdom. Just before He ascended, the Apostles asked when the Kingdom of God was to appear. He said, “It is not for you to know the times and seasons which the Father hath set within His own authority, but you shall receive power not many days hence.”

Ten days later the Kingdom was established on the Day of Pentecost. Peter preached the first gospel sermon, and when they asked what to do, he told them, “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

As Peter preached this sermon the Lord was sitting at the right hand of the Father. He turned to God and said, “It looks like Peter is binding this command on earth, we will have to make it binding up here. It looks like Peter is loosing people from their sins by this means on earth; we will have to do it up here.” Perhaps you may ask, “How do you know that?” Remember a few moments ago how the Lord said to Peter, “I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven: whatever you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven?” Seven years later, Peter would open the doors of the Church to the Gentiles, and after that no one has had any use for the Keys of the Kingdom. For all I know, Peter threw them away. The Keys of the Kingdom are nothing more and nothing less than the terms by which the Lord will allow you to be a part of His Church; to come to His Kingdom. The prophecy was fulfilled that Jesus made, “There are some of them that stand here who shall in no wise taste of death until they see the Son of man coming in His Kingdom.”

Up in Pittsburgh, the Ohio River is formed when the Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers join together. Years ago, I had a revival meeting back up at the headwaters of the Allegheny. I stayed on a farm that week that lay by the banks of that river. I asked the farmer if he had ever drunk of that water right out of the river. He said as a young man on a hot day he had drunk right out of the river. It is possible to drink from the river where it is clear, but if you come down to Cincinnati, and drink of that river, it will kill you. Somebody has polluted the river. Somebody has thrown in the sewage, and the chemicals of religious flesh and blood answers for many centuries, and the water is no longer pure.

As we think of the water of life, the only way to be sure you are getting a drink of the pure water of life, is to go back to the headwaters where the water first gushed clear as crystal out of the rock on the Day of Pentecost; because the water of life is no longer fit to drink, unless you run it through the filter of the Word of God. Go back, go back, go back, to the Day of Pentecost and drink freely. Pass it on to others until that day when we shall all drink from that river that John talks about in the book of Revelation, “The River of the water of life that flows by the throne of God.”