Introduction
‘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 Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, 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. I will give you the keys of 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.” Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.’ Matthew 16:13-20
Caesarea Philippi
Situated twenty-five miles north of the Sea of Galilee and at the base of Mount Hermon, Caesarea Philippi is the location of one of the largest springs feeding the Jordan River, Matthew 16:13 / Mark 8:27.
This abundant water supply has made the area very fertile and attractive for religious worship. Numerous temples were built in this city in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
Known as Baal Hermon and Baal Gad in the Old Testament period, this site later was named Panias after the Greek god Pan who was worshipped here.
There is no record of Jesus entering the city, but the great confession and the transfiguration both occurred in the vicinity of the city, Matthew 17:1-8 / Mark 9:2-8 / Luke 9:28-36, then known as Caesarea Philippi.
But it was no accident that Jesus took His disciples to a place called Caesarea Philippi. Jesus deliberately chooses to take them to Caesarea Philippi, because He knew he would get that much-needed, quality time alone with His disciples.
But Jesus took them to Caesarea Philippi for another reason. When you went up the hills of Caesarea Philippi, there was not only beautiful views, but there were the ancient Syrian temples which were used to worship Baal.
But not only were the Syrian gods worshiped there, but there was also a cavern nearby that was said to have been the birthplace of the Greek god Pan, the god of nature.
But that’s not all that Jesus and the disciples could see up on the hills. Another huge temple would have stood there in Jesus’ day, built out of white marble by Herod the Great and dedicated to the worship of Augustus Caesar.
In other words, Caesarea Philippi was like a one stop shopping supermarket for religion. It was a cross-section of the religious claims of Jesus’ day.
Jesus stood in this place which was literally crowded with temples dedicated to the worship of Syrian, Greek, and Roman gods and He asked His disciples, who they believed Him to be.
I believe Jesus deliberately set Himself against the background of the world’s religions in all their history and splendour and demanded to be compared with them and to have the verdict given in His favour.
In other words, with this setting as a backdrop, Jesus forced His disciples to wrestle with vital questions like, “Who is the real God?” “Who is worthy of adoration and worship?”
I can imagine Jesus saying, ‘Listen, look around at the magnificence of all these temples, to all these ‘gods’ and then look at Me. Who is right? Who is the truth, Me or the ‘gods’ of one of these temples? Do you see the importance of this moment?
Coming here helped force the disciples to deal with this issue, an issue they needed to deal with. All the things Jesus had said and done over the past two ½ years had been in preparation for this moment.
We could say that this question Jesus posed at Caesarea Philippi was in effect, the disciples’ final exam, an exam that consisted of only one question, ‘who do you say I am?’ which we will get to in a moment.
Jesus asked what the public thought about Him, Matthew 16:13 / Mark 8:27 / Luke 9:1, but He’s not asking this question because He doesn’t know the answer. Jesus knew the answer to this question, He knew what people were saying about Him.
But He wanted the twelve to think carefully about those popular perceptions as a way of building a foundation for their own conclusions. When Jesus asked this first question, He didn’t ask it to find out how He stood in the public opinion polls. No, it was a probing question designed to determine the extent to which His students had discovered the true nature of His ministry and His message.
I believe there would have been a moment of pause, when Jesus asked them, ‘who do the people say I am?’ Matthew 16:13 / Mark 8:27 / Luke 9:1. I can imagine the disciples thinking to themselves, ‘we’ll we all know what the people are thinking and it’s not all good.’
Remember Jesus had been called a wine-drunkard, a glutton, a blasphemer, a false prophet and even a mad man working for the devil. So, I can imagine them thinking very carefully before they answer this question.
The disciples didn’t share any of these negative reviews with Jesus and so they exercised some sensitivity and only told Him the compliments which people were paying Him.
The disciples reported varying opinions, including John the Baptist, Elijah, etc, Matthew 16:14 / Mark 8:28 / Luke 9:19. One disciple pointed out that many believed Jesus was John the Baptist reincarnated, Matthew 16:14 / Mark 8:27-30 / Luke 9:19.
They believed that John had come back from the grave to continue his ministry of announcing the Messiah while criticising the hypocrisy of the scribes and Pharisees, Matthew 14:1-3.
Another disciple shared the fact that many people believed Jesus was Elijah, Mark 8:28 / Matthew 16:14 / Luke 9:18, considered by some Jews to be the supreme Old Testament prophet, Matthew 17:10 / 2 Kings 1:1-12 / Mark 6:15.
The Book of Malachi, Malachi 4:5 says, ‘See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.’ And so, some thought this Jesus was Elijah, fulfilling the prophecy of Malachi.
And even today, in modern Jewish Passover celebrations, there is an empty chair reserved at the table for Elijah, in the hope of his one day coming to announce the Messiah’s arrival.
Another disciple shared that some people said Jesus was Jeremiah but why would they think He was Jeremiah? Matthew 16:14. They held this opinion because according to 2 Maccabees legend, Jeremiah had taken the Ark of the covenant and the altar of incense out of the temple and hidden them both somewhere on Mount Nebo in order to preserve them from desecration and destruction by the Babylonians.
Some Jews thought that before the Messiah returned to establish His kingdom, Jeremiah would return to earth and restore the Ark and the altar to their proper places in the temple.
So, the people who said these things were paying Jesus wonderful compliments by comparing Him to some of the greatest prophets and teachers God had ever sent. They were giving Jesus high praise, but not enough high praise because, in their minds, none of these three prophets were the Messiah.
Nothing has changed today concerning who Jesus is. A lot of people still speak highly of Jesus, but they don’t recognise His Deity and His Lordship.
Most people in our day will admit that Jesus was a great teacher, but they won’t concede that He was the Christ, the Son of God, the only Way to Heaven.
Some admit He was a prophet and an ‘admirable Jew’ but not as the Son of God. So, the opinion of the multitudes of Jesus’ day, isn’t that different from the opinion of many people today.
In Jesus’ day, the people thought that John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah were just a few of the Messiah’s forerunners who had come back to life with God-given miraculous powers. They thought that Jesus was great but not great enough.
At first glance, it looks like the disciples hadn’t realised who Jesus was. Maybe when they mentioned John the Baptist, Elijah, or Jeremiah, they thought that Jesus was going to say, ‘yes’ to one of those suggestions, and say, ‘your right.’
But Jesus must have answered without saying a word, and I can imagine there would have been an uncomfortable silence before Jesus spoke again. This isn’t about the multitudes’ opinion anymore; this is a personal question.
These twelve men were more qualified than anyone else to answer the question. Unlike the multitudes, they had been with Jesus 24-7 for two and a half years.
They had heard Him teach, they had seen all His miracles, they were the star witnesses of Jesus’ life up until that point. Over the past two ½ years, at times He had shocked them, at times He thrilled them, at other times, He filled them with awe and wonder.
The time had come for them to confess their opinion as to what kind of man He was. It was time for them to take a personal stand. Jesus looked each of His students in the eye and asked this all-important final-exam question.
And I think that when He did, while the other disciples were still processing the question like scared schoolboys, Peter spoke up and answered the question. Peter boldly responded, ‘you are the Messiah,’ Matthew 16:15-16 / Mark 8:29 / Luke 9:20. Matthew adds the words, ‘the Son of the living God’, Matthew 16:16. It was a brilliant insight.
And when He said this, I imagine a glow of pride would have showed on Jesus’ face. I can imagine Jesus saying, ‘yes! correct! you got it right Peter!’
Peter moved to the head of the class and got it right that day, he said the right thing, at the right time! He gave the correct answer because he confidently expressed two foundational Christian truths.
1. He identified Jesus as the Messiah, Matthew 16:15-16 / Mark 8:29 / Luke 9:20, the One Who was to reign forever on the throne of His great ancestor David.
2. And even more important, Peter identified Jesus as divine, the ‘Son of the living God!’ Matthew 16:16.
Literally his words can be translated like this, ‘You are THE Christ, THE Son of THE God, THE living One!”
When Jesus calmed the stormy seas of Galilee in Matthew 8, the disciples proclaim, ‘what kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!’ Matthew 8:27.
When Jesus walked upon the waters of the Sea of Galilee the disciples proclaim, ‘truly you are the Son of God’, Matthew 14:33. Now, Peter proclaims the deity of Christ.
Jesus tells Simon, son of Jonah, John 1:42 / John 21:15-17, that he is blessed, Matthew 16:17. The word ‘blessed’ in Greek is the word, ‘makarios’, which is used in the beatitudes at Matthew 5:3-10, and it means happy.
How did Peter know that Jesus was the Christ? God revealed it to Him, Matthew 16:17. Peter had witnessed all the Lord’s miracles and heard His teaching and preaching, John 3:2 / John 5:36 / John 10:37-38 / John 14:11 / John 20:30-31.
When anyone proclaims deity and then backs that claim up with sure miracles there is no denying it, Matthew 15:21-28. Peter and the apostles believed that he was the Christ due to divine revelation.
After stating that Jesu was the ‘Christ, the Son of the living God’, Matthew 17:17 / Matthew 14:33 / John 6:69 / John 11:27. Jesus now responds to Peter’s confession by saying that ‘upon this rock, I will build my church’, Matthew 16:18.
Peter’s name, ‘Petros’ is a Greek word that is masculine in gender, the word means a stone or rock, John 1:42. The gender of this Greek word, ‘petra’ is feminine, and so, doesn’t refer to Peter whose name is masculine.
The rock here is the fact that Jesus is the Messiah and Son of God. The rock or foundation that the church will be built upon will be the fact that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God, 1 Corinthians 3:11 / Ephesians 2:20.
Note that Jesus said, ‘I will build my church’, indicating that it had not been built or established at the point of this conversation. This is the first mention of the word ‘church’, which is ‘ekklesia’ in the New Testament. The Greek word means an assembly of the citizens regularly summoned, to call an assembly.
When the Lord’s church was built Jesus said that ‘the gates of Hades will not overcome it,’ Matthew 16:18 / Daniel 2:44 / Daniel 7:13-14. The gates of ancient cities were the most vulnerable part of the city and so, when a city was attacked by an enemy, the enemy attacked the gates.
If the gates fell, the city fell. The word ‘gates’ became a metaphor meaning power or strength. Hades is actually hell, Matthew 13:41-43 / Matthew 25:41 / Luke 16:22-23.
There is power in sin and that is death, Genesis 2:17 / 1 Corinthians 15:55-56. This power, however, couldn’t hold Jesus when He was resurrected from the dead, Revelation 1:18 / Revelation 6:8 / Revelation 20:13-15.
When Jesus rose from the grave, he went on to establish His church that all others may have power over sin and death through his blood sacrifice.
The Lord proclaims to Peter, ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven’, Matthew 16:19. The word ‘keys’ is the Greek word, ‘kleis’ which means that which serves for closing, a bar or bolt.
Notice that Jesus says keys not key, Peter used one of those keys to open up the way to heaven to the Jews in Acts 2 and He used the other key to open up the way to heaven for the Gentiles in Acts 10.
Keys are sometimes used as a metaphor which refers to privilege or authority, Isaiah 22:22 / Luke 11:52 / Revelation 1:18 / Revelation 3:7 / Revelation 9:1. The word ‘bind’ means to bind, tie, to put in bonds and the word, ‘loosed’ means to loosen, unbind, unfasten.
In other words, the apostles would be given the Gospel message of repentance and forgiveness of sins through the blood sacrifice of Jesus.
Those who received this message would be loosed from the bondage of sin, yet those who rejected the message and would not repent remained bound in chains to their sin and destined for an eternity of torment. The ‘keys’ given to Peter and the apostles are clearly the Gospel message.
Jesus tells His disciples not to tell anyone at this time that He was the Christ, Matthew 16:20 / Mark 8:30 / Luke 9:21 / Matthew 8:4 / Matthew 17:9, because it was not his time to die yet, John 10:17-18. Jesus still had much work to do, therefore He didn’t want any unnecessary hindrance from those who tried to kill Him.
Notice that Jesus teaching to His disciples up to this point was mainly about His identity but in Matthew 16:21 / Mark 8:31, Jesus’ teaching ministry changes. He focuses on His upcoming death, burial, and resurrection.
This event took place around two ½ years into Jesus’ earthly ministry, which meant the cross was around six months away.
The real question is, who do you claim Jesus to be?
