The backdrop Jesus chose for announcing the building of his church was a cave called the “Gate of Hades (or Hell)” carved deep into a cliff in the Roman administrative centre of Caesarea Philippi. It was a totally Gentile area, dominated by a great white marble temple built by Herod the Great to the godhead of Caesar. A Jew, therefore, would feel defiled just being there, but this is where Jesus took his disciples to ask them the question: “Who do you say I am?”
He’d saved the question until the closing days of his ministry, by which time God had made it clear to Peter that Jesus truly was “the Christ,” Matthew 16:16, the promised Messiah and “Son of the living God” sent by God to set up his kingdom on the earth – that for centuries his chosen people Israel had never been able to do, having endlessly succumbed to pagan gods and their vile religious practices, including child sacrifice.
How fitting then, that at this gateway to the hellish practices of the demonic world, Jesus could now give his disciples, his budding church, “the keys to the kingdom of heaven” (19), that would open up the gates of heaven.
What a moment that must’ve been for Jesus, therefore, when Peter blurted out, “I know who you are, you’re the Christ,” because that was the crucial key his disciples needed. “No one comes to the Father except through me,” Jesus made clear in John 14:6. It was on that “rock” of belief in him, therefore – pictured by that solid rocky cliff looming above them – that Jesus then said in Matthew 16:18: “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”
And Jesus said it with the “Gates of Hades” cave just a stone’s throw away, to get the point across to his disciples that the church he was about to build, starting with them, would become a real power on the planet, unlocking the gates of heaven to “open people’s eyes and turn people from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18). His church, therefore, would have the power to dismantle the darkness pictured by that cave. And no matter what evil did in its attempt to destroy the church, Jesus’ church would prove to be stronger.
But what did Jesus mean in Matthew 16:19, when he also talked about his disciples “Binding and loosing”?….(next blog)
Buck To Basics 