OAKRIDGE BIBLE CHAPEL

The Most Important Question Ever Asked (Matthew 16:13–20)

There are many significant questions one may ask and seek to answer in life. Why am I here? What should I do now that I am here? How shall I spend my time? Am I lovable? What is truth? Will you marry me? Where should I focus my abilities and attention? Questions like these are of great consequence and, thus, worthy of great consideration.

But of all the weighty questions we can and should ask ourselves, there is onethat eclipses all others in import. How one answers this single question—and all do answer it, knowingly or otherwise—is eternity-defining and reality-shaping. The question is this: Who is Jesus Christ? Matthew 16:13–20 presents the answers of people who lived during the years of Jesus’s first advent and, ultimately, forces us, thousands of years later, to consider our own response.

SERMON MANUSCRIPT

There are many significant questions one may ask and seek to answer in life. Why am I here? What should I do now that I am here? What is truth? Will you marry me? Are these berries poisonous? These are questions of consequence.

But of all the weighty questions we can and should ask ourselves, there is onethat eclipses all others. How one answers this single question—and all do answer it, knowingly or otherwise—is eternity-defining and reality-shaping. The question is this: Who is Jesus Christ? 

And it’s not a new question. People were faced with it in the first century just as we are in the twenty-first, and that’s what we find in Matthew 16. We’re going to read how they answer it—people in general and the disciples in particular. And then we’re going to be faced with the same question ourselves: Who is Jesus Christ?

What Do the People Say?

Jesus opens by casting a wide net with this all-important question. “Who do people say that the Son of Man is” (v. 13). The Son of Man being one of his favourite titles for himself, Jesus is essentially asking, where have the masses landed on the whole is-he-or-is-he-not-the-messiah thing? What’s the public opinion on my identity? Jesus asks his disciples, What do the people say?

The disciples respond with the results of their informal poll in verse 14. Notice the supernatural element to their answers. For Jesus to be John, Elijah, Jeremiah, or another of the prophets, it’d mean they’d come back from the dead. The people, in other words, recognize that, in Jesus, something special is going on. That, when he speaks, it’s not merely the words of men and that his appearing is connected to prophecy because the OT says that one like Elijah would come.

So, these people are not only open to the supernatural, to fulfilled prophecy, and to Israel’s restoration, but they see similarities between Jesus’s works and words and what they’ve been expecting.

But they’re also wrong. Jesus isn’t John or Jeremiah. The people have failed to connect the dots properly and, instead, have rejected Jesus’s true identity. And that leads to judgement in verse 20. Just as responding in faith to God’s revelation brings more revelation, so rejecting God’s revelation leads to the removal of revelation (see 13:19–23).

Who is Jesus Christ? It’s the most important question ever asked. What do the people say? They admit he seems to be special—maybe a prophet, a wiseman, a spiritual man. But, that’s where they stop.

Nothing has changed in two-thousand years. Today there are still wide-ranging opinions about who Jesus was and is. In their 2020 State of Theology report, Ligonier Ministries asked American participants to respond to this statement: “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.” Over half agreed. This is what the people say.

Whether someone claims Jesus was a great teacher, a radical zealot, a nice guy, or a figment of humanity’s collective imagination, the net response is the same: Rejection. [Name] And, in a world desperate to label Jesus as anything but what he claims to be, there is a hardness that progressively shuts itself off from light of revelation.

Nothing has changed in two-thousand years. Jesus asks his disciples, What do the people say? And the news isn’t good. But, Jesus isn’t deterred and, re-aims this important question at his disciples which, I get the sense is what he wanted to do in the first place.

He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

Matthew 16:15

What Does Peter Say?

We’ve already asked What do the people say? Well, What does Peter say? We find his response in verse 16: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Feel the contrast between the people and Peter. Uncertainty versus certainty. Ignorance versus conviction.

Peter knows Jesus isn’t just a teacher, a zealot, a spiritual man. No, he’s the Christ; the long-awaited, much-needed Anointed One. He’s not just one of the prophets but the one the prophets predicted and ached for. And, while the OT makes it clear that Messiah, when he came, would be more than just a man (Isa 9:6; Jer 23:5–6; Mic 5:2), Peter leaves nothing to the imagination, declaring that Jesus is the Son of the living God. He’s unique., he’s other, he’s deity. That’s how Peter answers the most important question ever asked. And the rest of this passage celebrates the truth Peter just announced.

Peter’s is a blessed answer (v. 17a). He was a fortunate recipient of God’s special favour. He was blessed!

Why? Because his was a revealed answer (v. 17). Peter’s got a father. His name is Jonah. (That’s what Barjona means.) And Old Jonah may have taught his son many things: how to fish, not to lie, how to handle money. But one thing he didn’t teach him, one thing that flesh and blood did not pass on, was Peter’s answer to the most important question ever asked. No, what Peter just announced came from Jesus’s heavenly Father not Peter’s earthly one; from Jehovah, not Jonah.

This is still true today. That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, is a spiritual reality, communicated by a gracious Heavenly Father. This is not a truth any person comes to via the scientific method, logical inferences, or pietistic living (see, for example, 1 Cor 2:12–14).

Peter’s answer was as blessed from above as it was revealed from above. And those of us who can triumphantly say, along with Peter, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, we do so with gratitude, knowing we are a blessed people who have discerned an awesome truth on God’s initiative and with God’s help.

As we keep reading the celebration of Peter’s answer, we see his is also a foundational answer (v. 18).

Peter’s name in Greek is Petros and the word for rock is petra. You are Petros, and upon this petra I will build my church. Jesus is not promising to build upon Peter but upon the truth of Peter’s confession, his blessed and revealed answer to the most important question ever asked: that Jesus is Messiah and God.

As we’ve seen, the whole point of the passage is Jesus’s identity. That Jesus as Messiah and God is the rock reality, the foundation, upon which the church sits, works, and grows (see Rom 9:33; Eph 2:19–22).

A church built atop such an eternal, unshakable foundation can never topple, even when the greatest enemy of all, death itself—Hades— attacks. More specifically, Jesus is going to build his church and even his own looming death will not stop construction.

The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord. She is his new creation by water and the Word. From heav’n he came and sought her to be his holy bride; with his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died.

This is the first mention of the church in all of Scripture. And, notice that, here, it’s still future. I will build my church. But it’s also a certainty. I will build my church. Notice it’s also Christ’s church. I will build my church. Oakridge is not Josiah’s church, the elders’ church, or your church. It belongs to him who is building it. We are living stone in the build, as Peter puts it (1 Pet 2:5); pieces of drywall, lumber, and concrete being fashioned by an all-powerful, all-knowing Builder upon a foundational truth that cannot fail.

Finally, as we come to verse 19, we see that Peter’s was a rewarded answer (v. 19). Notice the shift from church to kingdom. Those two things are not the same though many confuse and conflate them. Jesus was talking about the church he’s going to build atop the truth of Peter’s confession, but now he shifts to describing Peter’s eventual role in the millennial kingdom when it inevitably arrives.

We know from other passages that the disciples were often concerned about their eventual roles in the coming kingdom (see 19:27–28; 20:20–23; Mark 10:35–37). With this on their minds it would make sense that after Jesus introduces this novel church concept that he would turn back to the topic of the kingdom to education, comfort, and assure his disciples that that original program has not been abandoned. 

In fact, Peter’s going to be rewarded in the kingdom for his blessed, revealed, and foundational answer to the most important question ever asked. The reward? Authority. That’s what keys represent. Peter’s going to be rewarded with the authority of binding and loosing, or forbidding  and permitting. This seems to carry a judicial role. Peter is given authority to adjudicate on earth in a way consistent with heavenly courts. And, in many ways, we find this rewarded authority on display in the book of Acts as Peter uses these keys to open up doors for the gospel.

Jesus, in verses 17–19, is celebrating and commending Peter for his answer to that most important question ever asked: Who do you say that I am? His answer is blessed, revealed, foundational, and rewarded.

What Do You Say?

So, two questions in this text: What do the people say? and What does Peter say? The former was unanimously incorrect, the latter wonderfully correct. But leaves us with one final question: What do you say?

How do you answer the most important question ever asked? Who is Jesus Christ? Do you respond like the people or like Peter? Contrary to popular opinion, there are only two possible responses. There’s the right response, that he is the Christ, the son of the living God, and there’s the wrong response, everything else. 

So, what do you say? How do you answer the most important question ever asked: Who is Jesus Christ?

To those who have never believed, you are faced with a binary choice at this moment, a moment that can shape eternity for you. Is Jesus what Peter confessed or what the people guessed?

To those who have believed but feel unloved or unlovely; you’ve trusted Christ, answered the question well, but, whether because of sin struggles or worldly influences around you, you don’t always feel worthy of a relationship with God. Be reminded today that your answer is a blessed answer. You are blessed because of your confession of faith (see John 20:28–29).

Brothers and sisters, that’s us. We are blessed, favoured of God, because of our faith in the person and work of the Son. That’s a fact, whether I feel loveable or not.

To those who have believed and are proud. If you’re honest, maybe you look down on those who don’t yet believe. There’s an arrogance that comes in theological conversation, a condescension that lingers in your thoughts about people trapped in other ideologies and faith systems. Be reminded today that your answer is a revealed answer (see John 6:44).

Brothers and sisters, that’s us. What we know we know because God took steps to make himself known. It’s hard to be proud when we understand that.

To those who have believed but feel insecure; you’ve answered like Peter but, as time passes and life happens, you can feel like the ground is shifting under your feet. Am I really saved? Am I part of something significant? Am I part of something meaningful? Do I have purpose? Be reminded today that your answer is a foundational answer. That, as soon as you believed, you passed from death to life, were baptized into the body of Christ, became a living stone, a member of the body, part of the church that will never fail, and your spot was secured in eternal glory (see Eph 1:13–14).

Brothers and sisters, that’s us. We are part of something more glorious and everlasting than we can comprehend.

Finally, to those who have believed but weary, tired, discouraged. Be reminded today that your answer is a rewarded answer. We don’t all have Peter’s reward but—then again, we didn’t live the life Peter lived—but there are rewards for faithfulness (see 1 Cor 9:24–27). Lift your heavy head, straighten your weary back, brothers and sisters. There are rewards ahead. 

It’s the most important question ever asked: Who is Jesus Christ? Every human being responds this question with one of two possible answers, that of Peter’s or that of the peoples. We either answer, Jesus, you are the Christ and the Son of the living God, or we’re wrong. But for those, by God’s grace, who answer correctly, it’s a blessed, revealed, foundational, and rewarded confession.



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Josiah has served the Oakridge Bible Chapel family as one of its elders and one of its pastoral staff members since September 2018, before which he ministered as an associate pastor to a local congregation in the Canadian prairies. Josiah's desire is to be used by God to help equip the church for ministry, both while gathered (edification) and while scattered (evangelization). He is married to Patricia, and together they have five children—Jonah, Henry, Nathaniel, Josephine, and Benjamin.

Josiah Boyd

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