Speaker 1: 0:06

Hello, welcome to another episode of the Pure Faith Podcast, where we discuss all things Bible. I'm Michelle, this is Mitchell. Hi, again, we thank you for joining us. I'm not sure where this is going.

Speaker 2: 0:22

So this is just an intro, okay, so since the last time we've recorded anything, I've done three sermons here at church, yep. So we're going to record the intro for those three. So this particular intro is for Matthew 16, 13 through 20. And that is where Jesus takes the disciples to Caesarea Philippi.

Speaker 1: 0:50

Okay.

Speaker 2: 0:51

And they. I go in a lot of detail, but it's where Jesus says, or tells Peter that, well, tells Simon that your name is now Peter, which means rock, and on this rock I will build my church. I talk about that a little bit. But, more importantly, I go into what I think is even more important than that, which is the location and the meaning of the location, where this is all taking place.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Okay.

Speaker 2: 1:22

So that is everything you will see in this sermon and hopefully you enjoy it.

Speaker 1: 1:26

Enjoy the next video.

Speaker 2: 1:29

Alright, is everybody ready for this roller coaster? So things are going to be. I don't know how things are going to go today. To be honest, I don't have all my notes done. Our family was, I feel, tapped pretty hard the last few days Sickness and everything else. I tried to sit down to work on my notes, had a crying kid. Don't wear infections. Birth to Ephraim, no, eli, it just it is what it is. So my notes aren't as complete as I'd like them to be, but just for a little peek behind the curtain. I typically procrastinate when it comes to writing my notes. I'll spend the entire week, two weeks, whatever studying, but I won't actually write anything down because I like to have all this information and then, kind of last minute, compile it all together and organize it and, honestly, my notes are just more like guidelines. Anyways, it's just that way, if I get too far down a rabbit trail, I can find my way back. It's my main point, so they're not super critical.

Speaker 1: 2:52

What's going on?

Speaker 2: 2:52

with this thing. This isn't going to be fun.

Speaker 1: 2:59

God really does want you to wing it today.

Speaker 2: 3:00

Probably so. Yeah, it just shuts off really fast for some reason. I'll make sure I'll help you. So the main thing that I want to be talking about today is basically history and how everything and everyone has a history. So question with this thing. For example, this building I'm in right now. This building has history. It hasn't always been a church. I remember when I was younger, this building used to be a candy store that happened to sell prescription and over-the-counter medications, but I typically didn't come here for that. I came here because about right in this area here was an aisle full of candies you could get for a penny, and that was my favorite time, my favorite reason for a penny, and that was my favorite time, my favorite reason for coming here. I do remember coming here to get medications when I was sick. Mom brought me here to get meds.

Speaker 2: 4:13

But my favorite part of this place was the candy. But that just I mean, and I'm using that as an illustration, because there's a lot of places like that throughout, even our own town. Things aren't always what they are now. They were something different. One of my favorite things to do is to listen to Paige's grandpa Jinker and just talk about the history of this town. And you know him, he knows everybody and everything and he can tell you where all the different like there's multiple tractor or implement dealers here in this town. There's multiple gas stations. There's a whole bunch of stuff that happened in this town. I mean, even my own grandpa built tractors in this town way back in the day. So what I'm trying to say is that if you come into this town, you look at it the way it is now. That's not the way it was, that's the way it is everywhere, and that's one of the things that I want to highlight in the message that I'm bringing today, and the passage that I am going to be bringing is Matthew 16, 13 through 20. And let me open this up for a fifth time, and this reads Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked the disciples who do people say that the Son of man is?

Speaker 2: 5:42

And they said some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them but who do you say that I am? Simon? Peter replied you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, and Jesus answered him Blessed are you, simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh of blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father, who is in heaven, and I tell you you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. So before I get into if we even get to what my main point is for this, what I really want to share, that I find the most powerful, there's some other things that I want to cover first, just so we have all of our bases covered.

Speaker 2: 6:47

And first let's talk about the fact that, right off the bat, jesus asked who do people say that I am? So he's curious about. You know, disciples, your apostles. You're out amongst the people. Who do they say that I am? And that's where they come back with you know John the Baptist, elijah? They're just giving him all these other possibilities, but they're not coming back with Messiah, with Christ, with the Son of God. They're giving them all these other possibilities. And so then Jesus asks well, who do you say that I am? Those that are closest to me, those who spend most of their time with me, who do you say that I am? And that's where we get a powerful response from Simon. And Simon says and this is powerful he says that you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Normally we just read that and we're like Okay, you know, yeah, he's just saying he's Christ. But that has so much more, much more meaning than what we understand coming from our English translations, and I'm going to dig into this deeper once I get into my main topic of discussion, because it has a lot to do with where they're at and why they are there. So keep that in the back of your mind.

Speaker 2: 8:30

Something else that's I would like to talk about is the fact that this contains one of the most controversial verses in the Bible, that's verse 18, where Jesus tells Simon that you are now Peter and on this rock I will build my church. That little segment right there has been a segment of controversy for 2,000 years, so I'm not going to dig deep into it, because I think there's something more powerful here than that, because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you believe as far as what Jesus is saying here, but some of the day, it doesn't matter what you believe as far as what Jesus is saying here, but some of the most common arguments. Obviously the Catholic Church uses this as one of their bases for saying that Peter was the first pope and this was the start of the papacy. So there's that. There's others saying that no, this isn't saying that, yeah, it's saying Peter is the rock. I pull in different verb usages in Greek of the word rock, just as a Greek verb reveal Typically the way they would say rock.

Speaker 2: 9:56

They would use the word petra, but Peter is given the name Petros, which is a masculine version. Petra is a feminine version, but they overlook the fact that you're not going to name a man. They're using Peter, which Peter at that time was not a common name for a person. I mean today it is, then it was unheard of. It's not a person's name. You don't name somebody a Rob. So you're naming a man a Rob where you can't give him the feminine version of that name because it's masculine. So they use Petros. But then they start arguing well, petros doesn't mean Rob, so controversy, controversy around the scripture.

Speaker 2: 10:44

Then there's others that say, well, this rock isn't necessarily a person at all and it's more of a location. And none of these arguments are what I would consider completely accurate, because if you actually look at this verse in context, it is just saying yes, he's calling Peter a rock, and then on this rock he's referring to Peter. He's one of Noah's church. What he's talking about is the fact that in the early days of the church he's referring to Peter, he's going to build his church. What he's talking about is the fact that in the early days of the church, he is going to use Peter as the foundation of the church. But let's remember this church isn't a physical structure. Yes, we often say we're going to church and we are representing the church building. This building is not the church. We are the church, the people are the church.

Speaker 2: 11:43

So whenever he's saying that Peter is a rock and that on that rock he is one of those churches he is basically establishing Peter, as he's a leader of equals. He is going to be the leader of the apostles, but he is not giving any more authority over the apostles than all the other apostles have, so he's still equal. He's just going to be the leader of equals, if that makes sense. So as we get into verse 19, the following verse, that is where so in verse 18, he tells Peter that I am going to build my church on you, but then in verse 19, he kind of tells him how. And this is where he talks about the fact that he is going to be given the kingdom of heaven, the keys to the kingdom of heaven, and basically whatever he does on earth is going to happen in heaven. That's basically what it says.

Speaker 2: 12:49

But this isn't saying that Peter is going to have the authority to establish rules and regulations in heaven, to have the authority to establish rules and regulations in heaven. This is saying that Peter, and it's similar to the way we view the Bible. We view the Bible as the inerrant word of God. Well, as the inerrant word of God, we're not saying that the people were perfect. The authors of those books are perfect. It's just that those words are divinely inspiring.

Speaker 2: 13:18

Well, peter is in the same position. Yes, yes, he is going to be in a position to write and establish the rules of the early church. So, as the church is building and growing, he is going to be an integral part in writing the rules and regulations for that church. But he's not coming up with those rules and regulations. They are being divinely inspired to him by God himself the rules and regulations for that church. But he's not coming up with those rules and regulations. They are being divinely inspired to him by God himself. So hopefully, that makes sense. So, yes, he is an integral part, he is a foundation for the church, but he is the foundation of the church. That's not establishing a papacy that is going to carry on from person to person forever. It's just he is where it is going to stem from.

Speaker 2: 14:06

So I think I said way too much about that for being a quick overview. But why does Peter have this authority? Peter has this authority because it was given to him through the keys, through the gates of Hades. So what does this mean? What is the gates of Hades? This is where I want to start getting into what I really want to talk about and that is the location. And there's two main locations mentioned in these verses and I don't know if you caught them. The first one is obviously Caesarea Philippi, and I know that's not the actual, proper way you say it, but that's how most people say it. But if you go over there, don't say you're going to Caesarea Philippi, because they will know what you're talking about, but most scholars that's the way they say it. So that's how I'm saying it and it rolls off the tongue better than the actual way to say it. So Caesarea Philippi is the first, but then the other one is Hades and Hades and Hades is. It's almost like a round.

Speaker 2: 15:26

Whenever we think of Hades today, in our modern thinking, whenever somebody says Hades, we often quickly think of heaven. Hades is not heaven, hades and in the Old Testament was Sheol, in the New Testament it's Hades. They mean the same thing, just different translations, different words. But Sheol or Hades, it is just a place where people go and they die, not just the bad people, everybody. So in one respect the Catholic Church does kind of get this right, where they have a similar place that they call purgatory. It's just a place where everybody goes. The Catholic Church believes that you're stuck in purgatory forever, whatever. That's not necessarily true, but everybody goes to Hades whenever they first die and from Hades is where you will go, wherever you're going to get there. So the key thing to understand about this is that Hades it's not hell.

Speaker 2: 16:31

Yes, whenever Jesus went to the cross, he died on the cross For those three days. He went to Hades to conquer death. He didn't conquer the devil, he didn't go and fight evil or anything else. He just went into Hades and took the keys from those who were in control of Hades, basically saying, he took control over death. So death no longer has any power over us. Whenever we die, we no longer necessarily go to Hades. We now have direct access to God in heaven. So this is an important thing to understand, because at that time, when Jesus, whenever Jesus was giving us this passage, whenever he takes his apostles to Caesarea Philippi and he says, hey, this gives us message. Who do people say I am? It is important to understand also where he's at, because the people of that time thought that the location of Caesarea Philippi was the literal location to the gates of Hades, like you could go there and if you go in that cave, you're going to Hades. They thought this was a literal place for that, but they have a lot of reason for that. And that's where I want to get into the history of this location Caesarea Philippi.

Speaker 2: 18:08

It wasn't always known as Caesarea Philippi. It was named Caesarea Philippi by the Tetrarch Philip, who would have been a son of Herod the Great. Whenever Herod the Great died, he had multiple sons. His land that he was a part of got divided up among his sons. Well, his son, philip, got the moment that this location is at and he renamed it Caesarea Philippi over Caesarea for Caesar and Philippi over his own name.

Speaker 2: 18:42

Well before that, long before that, whenever this, this area, was first established I won't even answer this, I'm kind of winging it to this point so before Caesarea Philippi, it was known as Bashan in the Old Testament. And another interesting fact is Bashan is also the location of Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon, it is also the starting point of the Jordan River at that time. Well, that area of Bashan. Whenever the Israelites came in and took over that area and inherited that area and took off all the people that were there, it was given as the inheritance to the half tribe of Manasseh, so at that time, halfbe of Manasseh, so at that time, the half-tribe of Manasseh they settled in that area. And so 22 BC is when the Assyrians came in and took the northern kingdom off into exile. At that point, whenever they took the Assyrians off, or once the Assyrians took the Israelites off into exile, other people came in and settled that area. Whenever the people that came in, they were Hellenistic, they were pagans, they were not Israelite people, and so the culture of that area quickly changed and became more of a pagan area and at that point, well, something else, and became more of a pagan area. And at that point, well, something else. Whenever the Israelites came into concrete, those who were there right before them were the Amorites, and the Amorites were considered to be descendants of the Malachites and the Anakim and the Rephaim, so these were known to be giant clans. And so now we have to go.

Speaker 2: 20:57

We are going to go to a little bit of extra biblical text, to go to the book of Enoch, which Enoch is actually mentioned in the New Testament. It is just not part of our canon in the Bible. But in Enoch there's a story of the watchers. Has anybody heard of the watchers. So the watchers were angelic beings that came down. Long story short, they took human women as wives and decided to have children, and those children were giants of different, varying sizes, different kind of different weird stuff going on.

Speaker 2: 21:40

Well, these giants were the Amorites, the Reptilians refining, the amalekites, all these different, different races where, whenever you hear or if you ever wonder why god would tell the israelites to go into canaan and kill off all these people, it's because they were all son of evil. There were all these giant clans or offshoots of these giant clans, and so there was a lot of evil and bad stuff going on among them. So that was God's way of wiping them off. That's why the flood happened to begin with. The flood happened because there was no good people on the earth, because of what happened with the watchers. They came down and had all these giants and there's a lot of corruption and evil, and so the Lord had to wipe it out, but he saved those who were good, so it would have been Noah and his children. Well, they came back and they did it again, and so that's why God went through and wiped out all these clans at that time.

Speaker 2: 22:47

So this area, and in the book of Enoch. They said whenever the watchers came down and made a pact to do this evil thing, it was on Mount Hermon, the mountain that's right next to this area, where Jesus is saying on this rock I'm going to build my church. So you have in the old days a mountain that is known by the Israelites of that time to be the starting ground for the giants, where it all started. But then you also have the Israelites, who believe that this location is the literal gates of Hades, that after it was the city was Arios taken into exile. Those Hellenistic and pagan people that came in. They renamed that city to uh Panaeus and there they became the central location where they worshiped the, the half goat, half man demon, god of of Pan Um. So he was a satyr, and it wasn't until later on that it was eventually renamed to Caesarea Philippi and it actually tried to have its name changed a few times after that, but it kept going back to Caesarea Philippi.

Speaker 2: 24:20

So if you have to put yourself in the position of the Israelites at that time, this was also an area that Israelites didn't go to because of the reasons I just mentioned.

Speaker 2: 24:33

They don't want to be a part of any of that demon worship and all these false gods and all this other stuff went on there. So they didn't go there. So why would Jesus bring them there? Why would Jesus force them off 25 miles north the Sea of Galilee to this base of Mount Hermon? To just ask them the question who do people say I am and to make this proclamation that I am the Messiah and that the gates of Hades will have no power over what I'm doing? To make this proclamation that I am the Messiah and that the gates of Hades will have no power over what I'm doing? He's basically walking to the front steps of evil, to the front steps of Hades, and saying you have enough. That's what he's doing, he is. He is literally walking up to the doorstep of evil and the doorstep of evil and he's saying you can't stop me, you have no power over me.

Speaker 2: 26:06

And the other interesting fact is a lot of people will say that Mount Tabor is the site of the transfiguration, where Jesus went up on top of the tall mountain and where he was changed. The mountain was the Elijah and Moses and God came down and and saying this is my son, but do you know how mount to board got that reputation? It was the mother of some english noble person that just came over and said yeah, I think this is the side of the transfiguration. I won't make this hearing here. It's nowhere close to the actual site. Mount Tabor is in the middle of Israel. It's not even that tall For that region. It would be like us going to Heritage Park and going on top of the big hill. That was not the tall mountain that the transfiguration took place.

Speaker 2: 27:01

Most scholars actually believe that transfiguration took place on Mount Hermon, right there where they are. And if you look at it in Matthew, it's in Matthew 17. So it's in the next chapter, right after this passage that we're covering today. So this area is just it's full of history, is just it's full of history, and I don't know it's getting here this way, but it is. But yes, so it's hard. So that's the biggest thing that I wanted to get across today was it's hard. That's.

Speaker 2: 27:47

The biggest thing that I wanted to get across today was when we're reading scripture, it's easy to just read it, just take it at face value and just keep going. But when you actually dig in and study, there is so much more depth. And Jesus didn't do anything. For Jesus had a purpose behind everything that he did, every place that they went, every person that he healed, everything had a plan behind it. It was part of a bigger plan and that's what this was here, which is part of a bigger plan. Saying evil, you got nothing. Gates of Hades, you got nothing. I am going to do what I'm going to do and you can't stop me. And because of that, we have the freedom that we have today. We no longer have sin holding us down. We no longer have death to hold us down. We are truly free through the blood of Christ and everything that he did for us. So I think that's all I got. Is that enough?

Speaker 2: 29:02

Well, we really hope you enjoyed that sermon that Mitchell gave in regards to the rock and you got some information on the location and other details that he gave and everything else that was involved in that, yeah, so hopefully we were able to take something out of that, and I may have got a little choked up at the end, but that's how powerful it was.

Speaker 1: 29:22

That's right. Sometimes those messages do do that to you. We do hope that you enjoyed it. We thank you for joining us for this one and we look forward to seeing you again next time.

Speaker 2: 29:33

Have a blessed day everybody.