Since we live in a visible world where technologies and things can be of some assistance in help, you can start the machine. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for your great grace, for your unimaginable and unspeakably great grace. We can't even begin to plumb the depths of it. Every time we think we have it figured out, there's a new layer, there's a new color, there's a new hue, there's a new dimension to it. It is an overwhelmingly wonderful thing for us to be able to consider that our brother has gone ahead of us and is with his elder brother and ours, the Lord Jesus, who has gone ahead of us all. Into the very presence of God, there to work for us as a great high priest who pleads himself in our behalf and who receives his beloved people to himself. Father, thank you for this. And I pray that our hearts would be encouraged, I pray for Eve and for Bill and Bob and Janice and their families, that they would not lose hope, that they would not grieve as those who have no hope, but grieve knowing that the outcome for their father and husband is an unspeakably glorious outcome. Lord, be with us as we consider your word, and may we be encouraged that we have been numbered among that innumerable host of those who will one day with our heads raised up and our eyes wide open. We will behold you in all of your glory and brilliance and blessedness, and in that we will know unspeakable blessedness. Thank you in your name. Amen. I almost feel like I should pronounce the benediction. We're at week two in this course on the church and what, as I mentioned last week, we're going to do for these next three weeks is look at what God has done, and this is in the outline, the course outline. Look at what God has done in gathering of people for himself, to himself, and by himself. And we want to look at the first of those ideas this morning, the idea that God has gathered of people to himself. Now, I really am anxious for us to have some of these pictures impressed on our minds. I want myself so much to wake up in the mornings and think of myself as a member of Christ's church in these ways, and I want you to think of yourselves as members of Christ's church in these ways. Last week I gave you one picture, but it's only one picture, and it doesn't cover the whole of the canvas, if you will. We are Israel in the midst of Babylon, but that's not all that there is to be said. That picture encourages us to remember that we are where we are because God has brought us to the place where we are. It encourages us to live faithfully before God, maintaining our distinctives and convictions as a people set apart. That picture encourages us to seek the peace of the city. In other words, to take this blessedness which we know as a people set apart by God, out into the marketplace. So that we become a leaven, a leavening influence in the world. Those are the kinds of things that we are reminded of by that image, but there are others. I know it's juggling as hard, I have juggled a little bit in my past, and it takes practice to keep all those balls up in the air at the same time. And a similar thing is required of us intellectually, if you will, as we try intellectually to keep these pictures all in front of us at the same time. The picture from Jeremiah is one, but we are going to look at a couple of others, actually one other one this morning, as we consider this idea that God has gathered a people for himself. And that's what the church is, a people gathered for God. Now, again, I want you to ask yourselves, how are we to think about the church? What are we to think about the church? And I want to suggest to you, I hope with all proper humility, and I hope accurately, that the state of things, as you think about the church, in our particular cultural and historical moment, isn't particularly good. Now, it's probably been worse, but it's also been better, and it's always the better that we long for. Now, why do I say that it's worse? Well, I didn't put together a whole lot of statistics, and I don't want to bore you with all of that stuff, but I will just make a couple of observations. Number one, a hundred years ago, there were 27 churches for every 10,000 people in the United States. We didn't think of this as a time when the church has gotten a lot of press. You know, it was only a handful of years ago, 10 or so years ago, that time magazine declared, I don't remember what year it was, 84, 85, the year of the evangelical. It was on the front of time magazine, and maybe it was even earlier than that. And we had a Christian president, we thought, we learned later, that he was more interested in civil religion than he was real spirituality, and his wife was interested in astrology, which is sort of an interesting mix. But nevertheless, he quoted the Bible, read from the Bible, and we thought the Messiah had written into town on a white horse. I think many of us were disappointed, but anyway, over the years, we've had this idea that evangelicalism is this proliferating, expanding, exploding kind of a thing, and I suppose in some senses, it is, but a hundred years ago, there were 27 Christian churches in this country for every 10,000 people. Today, near the end of the second millennium, there are 12 churches, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Christian churches, Christian in name, for every 10,000 people. So the sheer ratio is less than half what it was a hundred years ago. Now, you all know the theological landscape well enough to know, because as I look around this room, I know that some of you have experienced the crucible of having to leave a denomination. You all know that the theological landscape is also much different in 1997 than it was in 1887. If you were to go back to 1887 and visit any 27 of those churches, it is quite probable, quite likely, that in the overwhelming majority of cases, you would have run into a church, you would have encountered a ministry which embraced the basic tenants of historic orthodoxy. You can't say that about the 12 churches that you might run into in the United States. Many of them have abandoned what we would understand to be the basic tenants of historic Christian orthodoxy. But even in evangelicalism, and this is the second thing to observe, there is a sense in which evangelicalism maybe visibly has never been more popular, has never gotten more attention, but has never been less relevant. There are a number of reasons for that. Individualism, a privatized view of faith, this wall that has been erected between personal conviction and practice in the marketplace, where people say it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you believe it sincerely, keep your religion out of the public arena, that kind of thing. There has been that kind of a separation, but there is another reason, I think, a real irrelevancy, even though there is an apparent increased popularity. And that is because we just don't know anything. We don't know anything. There is a very high level of biblical and theological illiteracy in the culture. Now, I don't want to be accused of having a basket full of rotten tomatoes and just tossing rotten tomatoes at everybody and leaving a big stink. I don't want to do that, but I want us to have some context for thinking about how it is that we should think about the church. And the context right now, our particular historical moment, for lots of reasons, I've suggested a couple of them, is a moment in which it seems to me it's tremendously important that we think about these things. Just to illustrate how illiterate we are, I suspect you've heard this, I've used this illustration before, but a couple of years ago, at the religious booksellers convention, the Christian booksellers association has this big convention where hundreds and thousands of authors and distributors and editors and owners and that kind of thing come together and they hawk their wares and everybody sees what everybody is doing. Michael Horton, who is always at that thing with a couple of his associates, did an informal sort of conversational poll of the delegates, talked to many people and asked them three questions. Name five of the ten commandments, nobody could do it. Now these, nobody, that's my understanding, nobody could do it. Name five of the ten commandments. The second question is, what is the gospel? One person answered by saying, well, it's the hope that Jesus is going to come again. Well, that's part of the gospel. It's kind of chapter 13 of the gospel, you know, and then people were asked to define justification by faith and nobody could provide an adequate answer to that question. Couldn't name five of the ten commandments, couldn't articulate the gospel other than in very personal experiential terms or with a reference to the second coming of Christ, which is a great hope. Boy, I'm ready, you know, and couldn't define what has been central to evangelicalism for almost 500 years and that is this doctrine of justification by faith. So I don't like to be a naysayer and a doom and gloom kind of guy, but I just don't think the landscape is particularly good right now for lots of different reasons. And so I think it's very important that we think about ourselves that we try to understand what it means to be the church. Now what we want and what we're about here at St. Paul's, we are about the business of building bridges. It's interesting, I learned from a friend of mine recently that it wasn't Bill Clinton who coined the idea of building a bridge in this last campaign. You know, do you remember that wanting to build a bridge to the future? It was actually Bob Dole who early in the campaign used that image but used it in the reverse direction, wanting to build a bridge to the past. Now, you know, my friend who told me this said the problem is that Bob Dole, he didn't know where to build the bridge and he didn't know what direction to put it in because he's a politician. He's been a, you know, he's been a, what do you call it, you know, what's the word? He's been a deal maker, a deal cutter, you know, for so many years that it was a great idea, but he just didn't pull it off. And my friend observed that Bob Dole in all probability could have swung that thing around pretty significantly if he had used imagery of building a bridge to the past to things which this country has stood for for a couple of hundred years and then built a bridge into the future and said to the electorate, this is what the implications of building a bridge to the past will be for us as an increasingly pluralistic and multicultural kind of a nation. Well, I want to tell you that we at St. Paul's are in the business of trying to build bridges, build bridges to the past, tapping into the things that have served the church for decades and centuries and now millennia, wanting to tie into those things, historic understandings of things in order to build a bridge to the future. The work out the implications of things that have been cherished for generations among Christians, working those things out in our day and one of those things is a right understanding of the nature of the church. What is the church? It's not a social organization, it's not an agency for change at the political level, it is a people gathered for God. There are all kinds of ramifications, all kinds of things that get worked out because we are a people gathered for God, but that's what's at the heart of this thing. We are a people gathered for God. Look at Exodus 19, we're going to have to race, but this is wonderful imagery. The context here, of course, in Exodus 19 is what? The Exodus, from where to where, from Egypt to the promised land. It is deliverance, but there's this event that occurs after they come out of Egypt and it occurs at Mount Sinai and it's described in the beginnings of it or described for us in chapter 19 of Exodus. In the third month after the children of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on the same day they came to the wilderness of Sinai for they had departed from refidine, had come to the wilderness of Sinai and camped in the wilderness. So Israel camped there before the mountain. Have you ever noticed how the scriptures repeat things? They camped, they camped, they camped, they camped, they camped there, they were there and they were tense, they camped, they were in the wilderness, in the wilderness. They had come out, they had come out, they had come out. That's all there to underscore this idea, these ideas. They have come out of Egypt, they have left a place of oppression, a place where they were abused, where they were opposed, where God had shown himself faithfully. self-faithful because the nation had multiplied. You remember one of the reasons that the Pharaoh wanted them out of his land is because they had become so numerous. God had blessed them. Okay. And they come out of the land and before they come out of the land, what did they do in Egypt? They plunder the Egyptians. Remember, they took all their stuff with them. Gold and precious stones and fabrics. They came out also with trades and skills. Okay. So they come out of this land of oppression where they are opposed and hated and treated badly and they come into the wilderness and then they camp and they camp in the wilderness of Sinai at the base of this mountain. Now you must know this. Whenever there is repetition in the scriptures, it's a kind of a heads up. Something significant is going on here. Okay. You're to remember these things. You're to keep this in mind. Verse three, Moses went up to God and the Lord called to him from the mountain saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the children of Israel. Okay. You have seen what I did to the Egyptians. What did God do to the Egyptians? Drowned them. Right. Trashed them to use the vernacular of middle schools and high schools. Before that, we're all the plagues. Okay. Now what is God demonstrating in doing that? His judgment upon Egypt, his power, his faithfulness to promises that he's made in the past. I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Okay. Who brought you? That's in chapter 20. Right. That's okay. That's right. Okay. We're coming to that. The first thing that he's done is remind them really that he is the king of the kings and the Lord of the lords and the gods of Egypt, the princes of Egypt, the powers of Egypt are no match for me. Now where are these people? See, they camp, they camp, they camp in the wilderness and the wilderness and the wilderness. Where are they? They're in the wilderness. Where do you get food? Where do you get water? Where do you get, where do you get anything in the midst of the wilderness? When you're surrounded by pagan nations who would just as soon squash you like a bug as look at you. You see, the first thing God does and there's so much pastoral counsel in this, the first thing that God does when he brings these people to the mountain and camps them there is remind them of his own character. He reminds them what he is like that he is faithful, that he is the king of the kings and the Lord of the lords. He has squashed the gods of the Egyptians. Okay. He has power and he has authority and even if they're in the midst of the wilderness he will take care of them. He will take care of them. He has power to do that. Okay. In the first place this is a word that's fallen into a disrepair in our day. The people of God are reminded that God is awful, that he is awful, that he is full of things which inspire awe. He is majestic. He is glorious. He is powerful. He is great. Okay. That's what that little phrase is intended to convey to these people. You've seen what I did to the Egyptians. Don't forget who I am out here. How I bore you up on Eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant in this, then you shall be a special treasure to me above all people for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you shall speak to the children of Israel. Don't forget who I am. Remember my might. Remember my power. Remember what I have done. But if you keep my commandments, if you keep my covenant, you will be to me a treasured possession, a special possession, a kingdom of priests. There is this wonderful juxtaposition of ideas always in the Scriptures. When you juxtapose two things you put them side by side and they are always there, that God is on the one hand majestic and awful or awesome. But that God is extraordinarily tender. Look at what he has done for his people. He has delivered them and he has brought them to himself and has promised to them that of all the nations of the earth, they will be to him a treasured possession, a treasured possession. What do you think of when you think of treasured possessions?
Care, love, I think about relationships. I think about other people. I think about Harold. I think about my wife. I think about my children. It is interesting that other treasured possessions, things that we value, take on significance. Think about this and see if it isn't true. They take on significance, material kinds of things, take on significance or become valuable, not because they have a value in themselves necessarily. There are those kinds of things, but things that take on real value and real significance are things which we associate with treasured relationships. We have got this picture in my living room. Barb hates it. It is a picture of a peasant. Why is it hanging in our living room? Because it was my grandfather's and my grandfather was the first real gentleman I ever met. He was a tender, compassionate man. The kind of guy who when he would come and visit would ask me if I had anything in my pockets, he'd say, you got a penny and I dig around in my pockets and see if I could find a penny and I said no granddaddy, but I'll go back to my bedroom when I find a penny and I'd bring it out to him and he'd replace it with a silver dollar. Right? He did that kind of stuff all the time. Now, that picture, if you look at it and you say, what's this thing doing here hanging in the middle of the room? Well, it's because of my grandfather. There's another picture. It's the picture of a caddy. He's a Scott. You can tell he's a Scott. He's lighting up a cigarette. What in the world does a Presbyterian minister have a picture of a caddy lighting a cigarette hanging in his family room? It was my grandfather's. It was my grandfather's. And I associate my grandfather with these things. Okay? Folks, that's what's at the heart of this thing in Exodus. It's those kinds of associations. It's relationship that we're talking about here and the rest of this passage as you work through chapter 19 and then into chapter 20. There is all of this Cecil B. Demil kind of stuff. All of this dramatic display of power. You see it at the end of chapter 19 where they're beginning it to verse 18. Now Mount Sinai was completely in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire. It's smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace and the whole mountain quaked greatly and when the blast of the trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder. That trumpet blast by the way is the voice of God. That is the coal Yahweh, the voice of God. It's not a bunch of angels blasting their trumpets. The sound that terrifies and we're going to have time to go into this. Just trust me. The sound that terrifies and causes the earth to shake underneath your feet is the voice of God when he speaks and when God comes down in fire his voice proclaims his coming. His voice announces his arrival, his advent. It is the voice of God that causes the ground to shake. By the way, you know that passage in 1 Kings, the still small voice thing that Elijah hears in the mouth of the cave. We can talk about this some other time but I don't think it was a still small voice. I don't think it was the whisper. I really think based on some exegetical studies that it was the voice of God and if you read the text, Elijah covered his face with his cloak as he went out to the mouth of the cave. Now why do you cover your face when there's a whisper? Think about it. Just go back and read that. So this trumpet blast is the voice of God and the earth quakes and God answers him by voice and the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai on the top of the mountain. The Lord called the Moses to the top of the mountain and Moses. Boy, what courage went up? Went up. Now you have this throughout this passage. You get more of it in chapter 20 verse 18. All the people witnessed the thundering, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking. And when the people saw it, they trembled and stood far off. Folks, the church must never, ever lose sight of who it is that is summoning her to himself. He's a God of power and majesty. He is threatening. He is intimidating. He makes noise when he shows up.
I've included in the outline a reference to Acts chapter 5. I'm reading through the book of Acts. Now I'm sort of thinking that after Easter I might do a series on the book of Acts. Just kind of in keeping with trying to figure out what it means for the church to be the church. You remember what happens in Acts chapter 5? Look, this is at a time. This is at a moment in the church's history where people are being converted left and right. Peter's preached two sermons. How many people have been added to the church because of those two sermons? 5,000. 3,000 on the first day was less affected the second day and he only got 2,000. 5,000 people added to the church. The grace of God is exploding all over Jerusalem. Priests are being converted. Jews from every part of the world. Gentiles are being converted in chapter 6. You see there's a conflict between the Hellenistic Jews and the Palestinian Jews. They're getting converted from everywhere and right in the middle of it. As the grace of God is exploding and people seem to be forgiven and there's a liberty and an enthusiasm and a freedom. What happens? Ananias and Sapphira. Don't trifle with the Holy God. Don't trifle with the Holy God. He is the God of extraordinary grace and tenderness and mercy, but the church must never lose sight of the one to whom she is summoned. He is the God of glory. He is the God of glory. And that is kept before Israel throughout this whole thing, but he is the God of tenderness and a God who delights in Israel as his treasured possession, not in the way that you delight in a piece of gold, but the way in which you delight in relationships which are precious and tender and characterized by love and caring and mutual delight. And what you have at Sinai is the establishment of this covenant. You'll just read through the rest of Exodus and you see how this gets worked out. You see in chapters 30 and following that even when Israel plays the harlot, 32 and following, even when Israel plays the harlot, God displays his grace yet again. I mean his majesty isn't compromised. His integrity isn't compromised. His holiness isn't compromised. The people play the harlot and there is a price. There is a judgment which is executed upon them, but God doesn't cast them off forever. He renews the covenant. He renews the covenant. So what you have here in Exodus at this point and from here on is the establishment of this covenant relationship where the Lord gathers this people to himself. He brings them to himself out in the wilderness. He brings them to Sinai and he establishes a relationship between himself and them. God marries Israel. God weds Israel to himself. He delivers her and then he weds her to himself. That's what the significance of that covenant thing is. It is God establishing this relationship with Israel, bringing them to himself, that he might have a people for himself. So God is throughout awful, majestic, awesome, glorious and tender, tender, redeeming his people, wooing his people and bringing them to himself, that he might wed Israel to himself. Now there's another thing to see in this. If you look at Deuteronomy 32,
Deuteronomy 32 is near the end of Deuteronomy obviously and it is a song actually that Moses sings in the midst of Israel. And what this is is a recapitulation again of what God has done for Israel. I just want to read the first four verses and then we're going to skip down a few verses. Deuteronomy 32, Givero heavens, and I will speak and hear OEarth the words of my mouth. Who's his audience? Anybody in anything that will listen? Anybody in anything that will listen? I mean the whole cosmos, I mean if there's life on other planets, which I don't think there is but if there's life on other planets, I'm singing to you. I'm singing to the nations. I'm singing to the created order. Anybody anything that will listen? Give ear and hear. This is I want to tell you what God has done for my people. I want to tell you what God has done for my people. And I make this observation periodically about passages in the scriptures. Recognize that it's not a narrative at this point. It is a song and people sing when they have joy in their hearts. It's a song that Moses is singing in the midst of Israel and to anybody who will hear. That my teaching drop is the rain. My speech distilled is the dew as rain drops on the tender herb and as showers on the grass. For I proclaim the name of the Lord. Now that term I think probably all of your versions have the term Lord in all capital letters. That is a reference to the specific and personal name of God, the name by which his nature and being are expressed. I am who I am. I will be what I will be. He is the self-existing and self-defining one. I will speak. I will proclaim the name of the Lord. Ascribe greatness to our God. He is the rock. His work is perfect for all his ways are justice. A God of truth and without injustice, righteous and upright is he and then flipped down to verse 7. Remember the days of old. Consider the years of many generations. Ask your father and he will show you your elders and they will tell you when the most high divided their inheritance to the nations. When he separated the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord's portion is his people. Jacob is the place of his inheritance. Those verses are a reference to the first days after the fall or the first centuries after the fall. When the names are divided and the peoples are divided and God sets apart a line for himself and that line eventually finds its issue in Jacob or Israel, the 12 tribes. It goes all the way back there, all the way back to the beginning. Then verse 10, he found him in a desert land and in the wasteland a howling wilderness. He encircled him. He instructed him. He kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its young, spreading out its wings, taking them up, carrying them on its wings. So the Lord alone led him and there was no foreign God with him. Those verses, 10, 11, and 12 refer to the Exodus. The God finds Israel in this wilderness place. Now you know enough about God to know that God never lost sight of Israel. They didn't get lost in the wilderness. He knew where they were all the time. It is in the metaphorical way of speaking and what it communicates again is God's tenderness with respect to his people. It communicates the helplessness and the need of his people and it communicates God's interest in his people and concern for his people. And the imagery of the eagle stirring up the nest and hovering over its young, spreading out its wings, that's all language of protection. That's what eagles do for their young. They hover over them. They protect them. They care for them. They carry them on their wings and lead them to places of safety. There is this wonderful picture in the Hobbit. I don't know if you've read the Hobbit, where Bilbo has been in the bottom of the mountain and they're trying to escape from the bottom of the mountain and the orcs and all those other ungodly beings are chasing them out of the mountain and they're trying to and they see a light up at the end of the lead. There's a light at the end of the tunnel and they see it and they race up and they get to the caves of the opening, the end of the mountain and they find themselves on a ledge on a precipice and there's no place to go. They can't go back because of all of the orcs and the goblins and all of these other demons that are after them and they panic and then they look out in the distance and they see these dots, these dots in the sky and the dots come closer and closer and closer and they see them and they're the eagles and the eagles come to them in their moment of desperation and they gather them up and they carry them away to Rivendell to a place of safety. God says that he bore Israel, he saw her, he had compassion on her, he had mercy with respect to her and as an eagle comes to deliver like in that wonderful picture, God comes and bears Israel up and carries her away to a place of safety but there's a second thing in this passage that's just it's wonderful imagery. In verse 10 Moses says he found him Israel in a desert land and in the wasteland a howling wilderness. Now that little phrase howling wilderness in the Hebrew is the Tohu Wabohu of Genesis 1. He looked back at Genesis 1 and you get the same phrase.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and the earth was without form and void, without form and void. Tohu Wabohu, that's the Hebrew you can go and press your friends. The howling waste, the place of formlessness and emptiness no shape to it. Deuteronomy 32 is the first place after Genesis 1 that that phrase appears. It doesn't appear very often at all in the Old Testament but this passage Deuteronomy 32 is the first place that that phrase appears again. What happens in Genesis 1? Look in the next verse. The earth was without form and void, darkness was on the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The same language, same imagery. The spirit of God hovering over this formlessness, this waste, is now applied to God as he comes in redemption and deliverance and hovers over Israel herself, formless and a wasteland. And what does the spirit do in the creation? He creates a thing of beauty. The spirit hovers over this formless, chaotic mass of stuff and by the end of the creative activity of God, God looks upon it all and says, this is very good, right? And you remember my story about the steps? Have I told you my story about the steps? See, the idea of goodness is not just that it has some aesthetic quality, right? Like a meal. You have a good filet mignon and you say, well, that was good. Like there's something aesthetic about it or you see a film or a painting or a piece of sculptures and you say, that's good. It's bigger than that with respect to God. What it means is that it conforms exactly to his character and what it is that he intended to do. When God says something is good, he looks at it and he says, that's exactly what I had in mind. That is consistent with what I had in mind, okay? And when God takes a step back from it and says, behold, that is very good. He is expressing his delight in the thing that he's made. Now the steps. We lived in Indiana. We had this backyard. We wanted our children to be able to go out in the backyard, but they had to go out the side door around the driveway and then they had to climb up this flagstone wall. It was about this tall. And Barb said, would you build some steps? Being the carpenter that I am not, I sought advice and counsel. I sort of sketched out a little diagram. I talked to a carpenter. He gave me some tips about how you make the the stringers, you know, the things that the steps go on and how you measure everything just right so that when you get done, the step is at the height you want it to be. You don't want it to be half an inch low. Those little children can trip and hurt themselves if they stub their toes. It's got to go right up to the top of the flagstone. So I followed all the instructions. I had this picture in my mind. I cut the lumber. I nailed it together. I put those steps up against the wall and it was perfect. Wasn't it? Wasn't it? The steps were perfect. They were perfect. And I took a step back from the steps and I just stood there like for 15 minutes just looking at my steps. This is great. This is wonderful. In the creation, the spirit hovers over this formless void and fashions a thing of beauty. And it corresponds exactly to the being and character of God. And God takes a step back from it and says, this is beautiful. This is very good. You see the same imagery is being used here of God's delivering Israel and hovering over Israel. He's not just there as a protector. He is there as a recreator. A recreator. Sin has ravaged the people of God. Sin has left them in the wilderness, destitute and helpless. And God comes to them in awfulness and in tenderness and hovers over them to reshape them and remake them after his own image, to recreate them. And he gently, carefully, tenderly fashions them into a thing of beauty. That's what God is doing. That's the image that you want to have. The Lord gathers a people to himself and the Lord fashions that people after his own image. Now you've got to flip ahead here to the New Testament and Matthew 16.
But I'd like you to keep your finger at Deuteronomy 32. Maybe you don't have to do that. Just remember the end of verse three, ascribe greatness to our God. Matthew 16. This is a passage we're going to come back to so we don't need to exhaust it right now. We're going to look at it some more next week. Verse 13. When Jesus came into the region of Cessaria, Philippi, he asked his disciples saying, who do men say that I am? So they said some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah are one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus answered and said to him, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father, who is 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 shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. The reason I wanted you to keep in mind Deuteronomy 32 and make the connection to Matthew 16 is because of the use of personal pronouns. Moses, when he sings this song about God and what God has done, uses a personal pronoun. I proclaim the name of the Lord ascribed greatness to our God. Jesus, using a different personal pronoun, says I will build my church. See, the imagery is the same. The church is a people which God gathers to Himself and for Himself. He doesn't just gather people and say that's enough. He gathers a people to Himself or Himself. Jesus says, I will build my church. The church is my possession. She belongs to me. Martin Luther has said Christianity can be understood in terms of personal pronouns. Read the personal pronouns, our father, who are in heaven. Jesus says, I will build my church. So that's what the church is. And Jesus also, we'll look at this Isaiah passage at another time. You might refer to it. But Jesus also promises in this passage the same kind of thing that you see God doing for Israel in the Old Testament. He promises protection. She will last. She will be permanent. Kings and princes may rise and fall, nations may come and go, but the church, the precious possession of Jesus Christ, will not fall, will not fail. She is permanent. So you think about the church. What are we to think about the church? We've got the Jeremiah thing in mind. But here we're to think of ourselves as a people who God has gathered, gathered from Egypt, gathered out of the midst of the nations. He has gathered us to Himself, which we're going to look at more next week, but He has gathered us for Himself, that we might be a treasured possession. What is Jesus Christ doing right now? He's doing the same thing. He is building His church. And He is building His church for Himself. And just as God was pleased to descend and dwell in the midst of Israel, pleased to have His glory dwell in the midst of the tabernacle first and then the temple. As God was pleased for His personal existence to inhabit the temple. Jesus Christ, as He builds this church, as He gathers this church to Himself, is pleased to dwell in their midst, is pleased to inhabit them. I think that's incredible. Incredible stuff. There's this story that just occurs to me. There's this story that's told this minister was driving home with his daughter and she was young and in the sermon the minister had talked about the need to receive Jesus and she was a little perplexed and she said to her father, how big is Jesus daddy? And he said, oh, He's big. He's really big. And she says, well, if somebody receives him, won't he kind of stick out? Yeah, you know, God gathers a people to Himself, for Himself. He is pleased to dwell in their midst. And Jesus builds His church, gathers His people for Himself and is pleased to make His people His tabernacle to dwell in their midst. The glory of God is here in the midst of His people. Okay? All right. Let me stop there. Any comments or questions?
You are the church, yeah.
We're going to come to that. You going to be here next week? Great. We're going to come to that next week. The question is, how do we understand the Roman Catholic understanding of the Matthew 16 passage? What do we think about that? What is the rock that's being referred to? And I will just say that there's all kinds of stuff that's tied together there. You can't separate Peter from his profession of Christ. You also can't separate Peter from the other apostles because the argument runs that Peter is given the keys, the papacy is given the keys, but a little bit later in chapter 16, the same keys that are referred to, the same keys are referred to and they're given to all of the apostles, not just one. So you can't separate Peter from his confession. You can't separate Peter from the other apostles. And you got to ask the question, what is this? You can't separate Peter from the rock. Okay? But it's interesting that Peter is referred to as a rock here, but in just two verses he's referred to as a stone of stumbling. He's referred to as a rock twice. And one time he's a rock of offense and doing the deeds of the devil. The other time he is the rock of confession, but when he is the rock of confession, he doesn't confess because of anything intrinsic or inherent. He confesses because the father has revealed to him what the truth is about Christ. So all of that stuff is tied together. We'll unpack it a little bit more next week. I don't know if that really answers the question, but entirely.
Okay. Anything else? All right. So how are you going to think about yourselves this week? Let's pray. Father, thank you that you're still hovering. Thank you that you are still gathered over this nest as a mighty eagle protecting and defending and caring for us, your children. Thank you that you are still hovering over us as the spirit hovered over that primordial chaotic mass. Thank you that you are reshaping and refashioning us after your own image that we might be a radiant beauty, a bride without spot or wrinkle or blemish. Thank you that because of your great commitment to us, we will one day present be presented to the Lord Jesus as a radiant beauty to be received by Him to enjoy Him throughout eternity. Lord, sustain us with these things and I do pray that these images would be burned into our consciousness so that when we think of ourselves, we would think of ourselves first in these ways. Be with us now as we come to worship and we pray that you would come and meet with your people, encourage our hearts, lift us up, give us a taste of the glories that await us. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.