Bible Passage: Matthew 16:13-20
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: August 23, 2026

Bulletin – August 23, 2026

In the name of, and to the eternal glory of, Jesus,

There’s a difference between playing along with Jeopardy at home and taking the semester test in history class with 50% of your grade riding on how you perform.  When you sit at home and watch Jeopardy you can throw out wrong answers and criticize the contestants when they incorrectly answer.  It is just inconsequential diversion.  But when you are taking a semester test that counts for 50% of your final grade, now you’ve got “some skin in the game.”  Now your answers matter a great deal!

Our text today shows a similar movement.  The disciples will move from being “observers” and “reporters” of what others are saying to being those called upon to give an answer.  To give THE answer.  The question before you does not ask you to recall some historical detail that matters very little.  The question is all-important and the answer determinative of where a person will spend eternity.  The question is “Who is Jesus?”  Today, Jesus looks at you and asks:  What About You?  What’s your answer?  Do you have the answer? Do you thank God that you have the answer?  Do you grasp the significance of the answer?

Jesus at this time is spending some time away from the pressing crowds.  He is spending time with the disciples shoring them up for what will take place in about six months on a Passover weekend in Jerusalem.  It is approaching the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry.  It is time for assessment.  Jesus puts the question to the disciples, Who do people say the Son of Man is? (v. 13)  Jesus uses the term he used most often for himself, “the Son of Man.”  It is a peculiar term that both concealed and revealed his identity as the Messiah.  Jesus is asking the disciples what the scuttlebutt is on the street.  “What about them?  What are they saying?”

Some interesting answers are given.  Some say John the Baptist. (v. 14)  By this time John had been beheaded by Herod.  Some said Jesus was John-come-back from the dead!  Others say Elijah. (v. 14)  The LORD had said through the prophet Malachi in the Old Testament that before the Messiah would come Elijah would appear. John the Baptist was the prophetic “Elijah” foretold by Malachi.  But people were saying maybe Jesus was the pre-Messiah Elijah.  Others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. (v. 14)  What’s interesting about all these answers is, while they seem to honor Jesus as someone special and unusual, they all come up short!

That reminds me of something C.S. Lewis once wrote in this regard.  He wrote:  “I am trying to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about [Jesus]:  ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’  That is the one thing we must not say.  A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.  He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the devil of hell…Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.  You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.  But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to. “ (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

It accomplishes very little to sit and speculate about all of “them out there.”  Time to get in close and personal.  But what about you?  Who do you say I am? (v. 15)  It’s interesting that Peter would go on to write, Be ready always to give an answer (1 Peter 3:15).  And on this day, he was!  Peter answers, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God! (v. 16)  This was no “patronising nonsense”!  “You are the Christ.”  Christ is simply the Greek for the Hebrew Messiah.  Jesus is the Messiah, God’s Anointed One!  The One promised who would make right what went so dreadfully wrong in the Garden of Eden!  The One whose death would atone for the entire world’s guilt!  And Jesus is the very Son of this Living God.  He is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity in flesh!

What about you?  Is that your confession?  And I am being careful here to say “confession” and not just “answer.”  Confession is what I believe.  Confession lives in my heart.  It resides in my bones!  An answer can float on the top.  In a church like ours that values “catechesis,” instruction, we must be careful that we don’t slip into thinking this is all about having the right “answer.”  I sometimes think about that when our youth are confirmed.  Do some believe confirmation is about having the right answer?  A mere “parroting” of words they have come to learn?  Satan can correctly answer the question, “Who is Jesus?”  But he cannot CONFESS it!  We CONFESS it!  We confess it because we BELIEVE it!

The Lord Jesus went on to say this to Peter, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.  And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overpower it. (v. 17-18)  This confession is a sturdy confession!  You can build a Church on it!  And Jesus did!  His Church, the Holy Christian Church on earth is not built upon men and personalities and charisma.  The Church is built on Jesus Christ crucified and risen!  This is the truth that liberates POW’s of the war that began in Eden so long ago!  Every time a baby is baptized in the name of Jesus Christ another one slips through the devil’s hands!  And there is nothing he can do but watch!  On the basis of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, the Church possesses the Keys of the Kingdom of God in this world!  What does this mean?  We are able to proclaim to the penitent an unlocked, open Kingdom!  Sadly, to the person who rejects Christ, the Son of the Living God, we must proclaim the door of the Kingdom has been locked.  Such is the power in this confession!

Peter believed Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God.  He confessed it.  He proclaimed it to others.  And when the time came, he died trusting in it.  What about you?

Amen.