Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: Building the Body (Matthew 16:13-20)
Date: August 20, 2023
I remember a season growing up when my dad would make monthly trips to Hutchinson, KS. He went there to attend the board meetings of Collins Industries, a small bus and ambulance manufacturer, for whom he had done some legal work over the years. Now, Hutchinson is located in the middle of nowhere Kansas. I’ll grant you that’s most of the state, but Hutchinson really earns the title. Normally, kids probably wouldn’t have any interest in going to the middle of nowhere with their dads for a business trip. But Hutchinson had one really cool thing going for it: a world class space museum.
One summer, things finally worked out for the whole family to go with him on a trip so we could see the museum in person. I remember a few details about it—including the SR-71 Blackbird perched in a dive around which they had built one of their newest (at the time) buildings. But one of the things I also remember from that trip didn’t have anything to do with the museum at all. Lee Ediger, one of the other board members, lived there in Hutchinson and had an old Ford Model T that we got to go for a ride in. That was pretty cool. What I remember most about it, though, is Lee’s telling us about how he had taken the car apart all the way down to the nuts and bolts, cleaned each part, and rebuilt it from there all by himself. Having done that, I think it’s fairly safe to say that absent perhaps the original designer of the car, Lee knew more about how it worked than just about anyone else in the world.
Indeed, one of the best ways to understand anything is to take it apart. That’s why you occasionally hear about things being reverse engineered. The folks tinkering with whatever it is are taking it completely apart in order to figure out how it works. The same basic concept is expressed with the idea of knowing something backwards and forwards. This kind of thinking applies even when we think we’re familiar with something. Take, for instance, the average cell phone. Unless you happen to be a super techy person, how exactly that device on which you rely so thoroughly to get through your day works is a complete and total mystery to you. You know there’s something about microchips and microprocessors and other tiny things, but that’s about it. The rest of it might as well be magic. If you really want to get your mind around how the magic of this little device actually happens, you need to get with someone who can walk you through taking it apart down to the teeny, tiny screws and solder that hold it all together, explaining the operation of each part as you go. (You’ll want to take this particular learning journey with an old device, though, because you probably aren’t going to get it back.)
This morning we are going to begin a new teaching journey together. New though it will be, it is going to flow out of the journey we’ve been on together this summer. For the next few weeks we are going to be talking about the church. For many of you, though, the church is something you’ve been around for a long time. You know what the church is and how it’s supposed to work. You don’t need to spend more time talking about it. You’d much rather talk about something, you know, related to the Scriptures and what Jesus said for how we’re supposed to be living our lives. For others of you, the church is still a relatively new concept, but while you’re giving being here a fair chance, you’d rather talk about the Jesus stuff too. Spending too much time thinking about the church will bring to light some of its more…unsavory…history, and you don’t need that. Let’s just stay focused on the good stuff.
And yet, here we are. We’re at church. We’re in church…. We’re gathered with the church? We’re doing church? Hmm… It’s almost like as much as we know what it is we’re doing, we don’t really know what it is we’re doing. We don’t know with total certainty why we’re doing it. I mean, the whole community connections and worship thing are important and are worthwhile goals (I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say something along the lines of, “I just don’t know how people make it through something like this without a church family.”), but is that it? And while we’re on the subject, as I just pulled back the curtain on this a second ago, we don’t really even know what to call what it is we’re doing. We use the same word for multiple different things. We use it as a noun, a verb, and even occasionally as an adjective. And if we don’t know exactly what it is we are to be doing, much less what to call it, maybe having a conversation about it isn’t such a bad idea.
For the next few weeks, in a brand-new teaching series called, Nuts and Bolts, we are going to do just that. We are going to be having a conversation about what exactly the church is, what it is for, and what it looks like to be the church together. We are going to talk about how the church was designed to work and reflect together on just how well we are falling in line with that original design. Some of what we talk about in the coming weeks is going to be new information for just nearly all of us. Some of it is going to be review. There will be at least a little bit of it that may be pretty challenging. After all, when we’ve been doing a thing as long as some of us have been doing this thing, going back to the nuts and bolts may help us see some things that we need to be doing differently than we’re already doing them or even doing some new things entirely. And we all know how well churches like change…
Still, though, thinking we are going to have a conversation about what the church is and how we should be doing it feels a bit ambitious. There have been literally hundreds of books written about that very thing. Well, that’s true, but all that really means is that we are not going to address the matter exhaustively over the course of this series. There are all kinds of nuances and details we are going to completely ignore. What we are going to do, though, is to work our way toward some basic answers to a handful of big questions that we need to have in place if we are going to have a prayer of getting it right.
Well, if that is why it is worth our time addressing the idea of the church generally, is this really something we need here at First Baptist Oakboro? This is a great church. I’ve said so myself many times. I’ve said it to you from this stage. If I wasn’t lying when I said that (and I don’t at all think I was or I wouldn’t have said it), then wouldn’t that suggest we are doing a whole lot of things right? Absolutely it does and absolutely we are. But even in seasons when things are going really well, rarely does that mean everything is going perfectly. If we aren’t willing to keep growing together, we’re setting ourselves up for the growth to stop sooner rather than later.
Let me give you another reason this conversation matters so much and is actually going to touch on something we’re going to talk a whole lot more about in a few weeks. As a church, on paper, we have nearly 600 members. I’m going to say something about that number that may get uncomfortably close to stepping on toes. That’s ridiculous. We don’t have anywhere in the remotest vicinity of that many members. We have folks who haven’t yet become official members who function a whole lot more like members than most of our official members. What this means is that membership at First Baptist Oakboro doesn’t really mean all that much. And while many folks in the room may protest that statement because their membership means the world to them, membership meaning a lot to you and membership meaning a lot in general aren’t the same thing. And indeed, when the great majority of our members haven’t darkened the door of the building in more than six years, that says something about membership here that we ignore at our own peril.
But should it? Should membership mean something? Should it be something that is clearly defined and comes with expectations attached to it for which we are held accountable? A lot of churches today don’t think so and structure themselves accordingly. Yet from everything we see in the New Testament, while “membership” per se is not ever mentioned, the idea of being a vital part of a local body of Christ is mentioned and fairly often. In fact, every time one of the New Testament authors talks about following Jesus faithfully, he does this with the context of the church in mind. In other words, for guys like Paul and John and Peter and James there’s no category for a believer who is not actively engaged with a local expression of the body of Christ (that is, a church) in a manner we would call membership today. If we are going to get that right, then, we need to know what we are talking about when we talk about the church. So then, for the next few weeks, we are going to get back to the nuts and bolts of the church so we can make sure we’re on the right track with this thing to which so many of us have given our lives.
Well, if we are going to be having a conversation about the church, it seems like the best place to start is with what the church is in the first place. And if we are going to start with that question, the first place we need to turn to in the Scriptures is where we are first introduced to the idea of the church. If you have a copy of the Scriptures handy, find your way to Matthew 16. Matthew 16 is one of those passages that is more foundational than we realize at first read. It’s one of those where the longer we sit with it and reflect on what we find, the more we can see just how profoundly important it is. Take a look at this with me starting at v. 13.
“When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’” Perhaps some of you have heard this story before. You already know what’s coming next. This is the part where Peter announces Jesus as the Messiah for the first time. It was one of those pivotal moments in Jesus’ ministry. Let’s not rush through this though. Context matters. This whole story takes place when Jesus was on a little retreat with the disciples. His kingdom-proclaiming work never really stopped, of course, but He was trying to get them out of their normal environment and even out of their comfort zone so they could focus a little more fully on what exactly it was they were doing. Caesarea Philippi checked off several of those boxes. Jesus and the guys had been traveling through the far northern and Gentile parts of Galilee for a few weeks now and they had seen Him do some pretty amazing things including the second mass-feeding event they got to witness. On top of this, His reputation was spreading pretty quickly in the region. There was more and more talk focused on who this mysterious and amazing Rabbi was who was clearly a prophet and a miracle-worker of the highest order. The guesses ranged far and wide. Jesus being Jesus, though, He didn’t just ask this question in order to find out the latest output from the rumor mill. He didn’t need the disciples for that. He wanted to know where they were in their understanding of who He was. So He asked.
“When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist; others, Elijah; still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’” In other words and as I said, there were all kinds of different opinions on who exactly Jesus was. Everybody knew He was somebody, but nobody was sure who that somebody really was. The disciples, though, had gotten an insider’s perspective to which very few others were privy. They had not only been there for all of His miracles—including several that no one else saw—but they had been treated to explanations of what these meant. They had gotten commentary on the various parables Jesus told that the crowds never received. They were in a position to understand who He really was. Jesus wanted to see how well they were getting it.
Verse 15 now: “‘But you,’ he asked them, ‘who do you say that I am?’” This was one of those pop quizzes we occasionally get in life that are really important to pass. Being Jesus, I suspect He would have been pretty patient with them had Peter answered in some way other than He did, but I also don’t suspect He would have asked the question unless He already knew the answer He was going to receive. “Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’” They got it. They grasped what very few others had even suspected because of their cultural and religious blinders. Jesus had helped the disciples expand those out a bit so they could see what really was. And they were seeing. Now, they did not even begin to understand what it really meant that Jesus was the Messiah—the Christ, in Greek, as some of your translations may put it here—but at least they understood this much. He could do something with this.
As a matter of fact, Jesus intended to do something with this. What He did is one of those world history pivot points. After Jesus said this next thing, nothing about human history would ever be the same again. If you think you’ve wrapped your mind around just how big this next thing proved to be, let me assure you that you haven’t. I haven’t either. No one has. It’s that big of a deal.
With the words of Peter’s bold confession still ringing in their ears, Jesus smiled at them and said, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father 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 will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven.”
So, that’s it. If you can believe it, those words changed the world. The reason for this is simple: those words brought into existence something that hadn’t existed before. This thing is the church. And once the church was unleashed upon the world, the world has never been the same.
And yet, what is this thing called “the church”? Today, most people associate that word with a building of some kind. When you tell someone you are going “to church,” what you are conveying is that you are going to a physical place. This is because the word church has linguistic roots that go back to a German word, “kirche,” which is a word for “building.” Tracing its roots back even further takes you to a Greek word, “kruiake,” which means, “of the Lord.” A church, then, is literally the building where the people of the Lord meet to do whatever it is they do. Yet, as you know all too well, the church is far more than merely a building. As the modern cliche goes, “the church is the people, not the building.” And that’s true not just because we have been trying for years to change people’s basic perceptions of the church, but because it’s a better fit for what Jesus actually says here.
When Jesus tells Peter that He is going to build His church, the word He actually uses in the Greek is not the word kuriake, but the word ecclesia. In the ancient world, an ecclesia was not a building, and no one thought about a building when they heard the word. An ecclesia was a gathering of people. It was a gathering of people who had been called out for a specific purpose. There’s more. The specific purpose for which they had been called out was a significant one. They were being called out to solve a problem. It could have been a cultural problem that needed a group of citizens to address it. It could have been a political problem the group needed to debate and solve. It could have been a military problem and the called out group was a council of war. The ecclesia was a group of people brought together to do something. So, Jesus tells Peter that on his confession of Jesus’ lordship, He was going to build a gathering of people called out for a specific purpose. This, though, just raises an obvious and important question: what is this purpose?
Jesus said He was going to build this gathering of people on the basis of Peter’s confession of His identity. So then, understanding Jesus’ identity is going to give us a clue as to what this gathering might be for. Okay, so who is Jesus? Exactly who Peter proclaimed Him to be: the Messiah. Yes, but what does that mean? Well, the word had a rich history in the Hebrew culture and envisioned someone who would come and save God’s people from all forms of oppression whether external (foreign persecution) or internal (their sins). He was going to be God’s emissary on earth to see His purposes finally accomplished. During His ministry, Jesus would identify those purposes as the building of a kingdom. So then, if the reason this people was going to be called out was to be connected with His identity as Messiah, then it would be only natural to assume their primary function would be advancing His identity as Messiah. Advancing His identity as Messiah, though, necessarily meant working to advance this kingdom He was building. In other words, from the very beginning, the church was designed to be a people called out for the purpose of continuing Jesus’ work of building God’s kingdom on earth. And because we are doing the things Jesus would have been doing if He were still here physically, it is a reasonable description to call the church His body. We are the body of Christ. This is what the church is. The church is the people of Jesus called out to be His body on earth.
Fine, but again, what does that mean? What does it mean that we are Jesus’ body on earth? It means just what it sounds like it means. It means we are to be doing the things Jesus would have done if He were still physically here. And what are those things? He proclaimed the Gospel. He engaged with people with the love of God. He healed diseases and brought relief to personal suffering. He challenged people to leave their sin behind and follow Him into eternal life. He taught people about the kingdom of God and what life there was like. He built a loving community around Him that saw the dignity of all people honored and where people who came from wildly different backgrounds could nonetheless be united together in their pursuit of His higher purpose. Should I go on? If we are going to truly be His body, these are the things we need to be doing. The church is the people of Jesus called out to be His body on earth.
And here’s the thing: If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a recipient of this call. No one who follows Him is exempt from it. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are called to be a part of His body, playing a crucial role in the advancement of His kingdom on earth. Let me see if I can make what I’m saying here just a bit clearer: If you are a follower of Jesus, being a fully connected member of a church is not an option for you. The reason for this is simple: If you profess to be a follower of Jesus and you are not a fully connected member of His body, then you aren’t actually following Him.
Well now, Pastor, are you saying you can’t be a Christian if you don’t go to church? Yeah, I suppose I am. Let me caveat that: going to church is not what will save anyone. Period. You can accept Jesus’ offer of salvation by faith through grace even if you’ve never darkened the door of the church. As the apostle Paul said, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. There’s nothing about the church hidden in those words. But once you are following Him, to not be connected with His body by way of membership in a local church is to be living in direct disobedience to His call and command. By such disengagement you slowly but surely reveal your claims to follow Him are empty. The church is the people of Jesus called out to be His body on earth. If you are one of those people, that includes you.
So then, let me give you one thing you can do even today in response to this message. What this all means is that you need to be a member and not just an attender of a church. If you feel like you are connecting or even connected here, that’s great. Let’s talk this week about how to make that formal. There’s no reason to keep waiting. Until you get that fixed, you are actively slowing down the kingdom advancing work Jesus wants to accomplish through you by way of your connection to His body. If you’re feeling like you’re really more connected with another church, great. Get connected there. Wherever it is you feel like God is calling you, plant your membership flag there and do it as soon as you possibly can. The church is the people of Jesus called out to be His body on earth.
Knowing what the church is is good. That’s important. Knowing what the church is for, though, is even better. If you’ll come back next week we are not only going to talk about that a bit, but we are going to experience it together in some really cool ways. You will not want to miss this. Then, in the weeks after Labor Day we are going to get into some of the details of how this whole thing was designed to work that you will not want to miss either.