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Great truth here in the book of Matthew chapter 16 tonight. Father, I just pray that you would speak to our hearts and that you would stir us up, dear God, and help us to learn what you'd have us to learn out of this chapter. Holy Spirit, I just pray that you'd fill me as I preach tonight and be with my throat tonight. It's a little bit sore, dear God. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. All right. Now, in chapter 16 we pick up the same theme that we've been seeing over the last three chapters, 14, 15, 16, of Jesus continually going back and forth with the Pharisees. They keep coming to him and attacking him, trying to prove him wrong, trying to find something wrong with him. It says in verse number 1, The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came and tempting desired him that he would show them a sign from heaven. And he tells them, of course, that a wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign. He said, look, it's wicked of you to not just have faith in God's Word, is what he's saying, where you actually have to see something before you're going to believe it. He said, look, the Bible says faith is seeing the invisible. When we learned about Hebrews chapter 11, we talked a lot about how 11 times it directly uses the word see or seeing or see in Hebrews 11. When it's talking about faith, I think it mentions faith 17 times. And so throughout that chapter you see that faith is seeing something that you haven't physically seen, but something that God has told you is there and you can see it. The Bible says that Moses endured as seeing him who is invisible. And it says that they had not received the promises, but seeing them afar off, they were persuaded of them and embraced them because they'd been told by God that they would receive things and they just saw it in their mind, they believed it. But the Pharisees are saying, we want to see a sign from you. And he's saying, look, an evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign. He said faithlessness and sinful life and wickedness and adultery, so they go hand in hand. He said faith is based on not seeing but believing what God has said. Now look, and you'll see this theme play out a little more. Look what Jesus says in verse number six. Then Jesus said to them, take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. Now what is leaven? Let me explain it to you. You probably know that leaven is yeast. The word leaven in the Bible is our modern word, yeast. Now keep your finger there and flip back to Matthew chapter 13, verse number 33. And I'll show you a few things about leaven here. Matthew 13, 33, just probably one or two pages back in your Bible there. And the Bible says, another parable spake ye unto them. The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. Now the key characteristic of leaven in the Bible and in real life is that when you put leaven in something, it leavens the whole lump. The Bible says a little leaven leavened the whole lump. And so the attribute that we find here is that a woman is cooking. She puts leaven into one of the three. What does it say exactly? One of the three measures of meal. You know, she puts leaven in, and pretty soon the whole thing is leavened. And it's interesting, when I was growing up, I remember my mom had a recipe for bread where she would take this dough and she would mix in some different things with it and she would take about, I think it was like three-quarters of the dough and cook the bread with it, and she'd leave the other part sitting on the counter. And then next week you'd add more ingredients to that dough, you know what I mean? And you'd add it to it and it just went on forever. You'd never have to use any more leaven because the leaven just lived on in this dough. And you could just take this one little amount of leaven and you could make bread just till infinity. And people would pass it around, like they'd give a chunk of it to somebody and then they could start it in their house and it would just go on and on and on and on. Now leaven is something that you just get a little bit of it and it grows. Now in Matthew chapter 13 he's talking about the gospel, he's talking about the kingdom of heaven. You can just have one saved person, they win somebody the Lord, and then those two people win somebody the Lord and they can just multiply exponentially the same way that bacteria multiplies. Bacteria, and see you have to be able to learn God's creation and science. You know, why do we learn about science? Why do we learn about math? Because if you learn about science and math you can learn truths of the Bible. And you see bacteria multiplies exponentially, which means that it doubles and doubles and doubles and doubles and doubles and doubles. And literally you could take a teaspoon of bacteria and if it were to grow and multiply unchecked, nothing were to stop it, it didn't ever die, there was no outside external influence. I've heard scientists say that it would fill the entire universe in like less than a year to where it would just be wall to wall bacteria. And so bacteria multiplies exponentially, it doubles and doubles and doubles. Well God says that's exactly the way the kingdom of heaven is in Matthew 13, 33. He says it's like leaven, it's like bacteria because that's what leaven is, it's a bacteria that grows and bread. And so this bacteria multiplies and multiplies and grows and grows and grows and grows until the whole lump is leaven. That's God's plan for the kingdom of heaven, it's for us to multiply and wing people to the Lord and train them to win people to the Lord. And we can multiply and multiply and multiply, but that's not what he's talking about, he's talking about the opposite. He's talking about the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. Now what is the leaven of the Pharisees? Well you go down a little further and he says in verse number 11, He says, How is it that ye do not understand that I speak not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. Now the word doctrine means teaching. You've heard of a doctor, you've heard of a doctorate that somebody learns. The word comes from a Latin word, doctore, which means to teach. That's what the word doctorate means, that's what doctor means. It's a teacher, originally the word doctor meant teacher. And so doctrine is teaching. He's saying the teaching of the scribes and of the Pharisees is a negative kind of leaven that once it gets in somewhere, it multiplies and multiplies and multiplies and it will destroy you. It could destroy a church, it could destroy a group of people and he says that's why you have to be so careful to watch out for the doctrine of the Pharisees because it will spread. Now this leaven, this doctrine, what is it? Now when we think of doctrine, you know if you grew up in church especially, you think of doctrine. Most people refer to doctrine as like the fact, you know they'll talk about the deity of Christ, you know the fact that Jesus is God, that's doctrine. Or they'll say, you know the fact that the blood of Jesus Christ saves, or the fact that there's a trinity, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, these three are one. Or the doctrine that there's a literal hell, or the doctrine of the second coming of Jesus Christ. You know that's what they usually think of as doctrine. But the Bible does not limit doctrine to just those type of just spiritual issues. You know spiritual issues like whether Jesus is God or not, which of course we know is. Eternal security is doctrine. That kind of thing. God has a little bit different view of doctrine. Look if you would at Titus chapter 2. Titus chapter 2, go forward in your Bible there. Right before Philemon, Hebrews, Titus there. Look at Titus chapter 2, the Bible says, but speak thou the things which become sound doctrine. Now he's talking about doctrine, but notice he's not just going to bring up the deity of Christ, eternal security, there's a literal hell. He's not going to bring up the fact that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, the atonement, the blood atonement, the bodily resurrection, the vicarious death. Look what he brings up, that the aged men be sober. Sober, great, it's not that they're serious, that life's not just a big joke to them. He says temperate, that means they have themselves under control. Sound and faith and charity and patience. The aged women likewise that they be in behavior has become of holiness. He says look, sound doctrine is when you preach that men should be serious, that they should be sound in what they believe, that they should be able to control themselves. He says that women, this is doctrine, that women be holy, that they're not false accusers, that they're not talking too much and bad mouthing people behind their back, gossiping. He says that they be not given to much wine, he says not drinking alcohol is doctrine. Teachers of good things, that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet. He's talking about not dressing in a flashy way, not talking about inappropriate things that you shouldn't be talking about, that should be reserved for the bedroom. He says to be discreet, chaste, he's talking about physical purity, keepers at home, good obedience to their own husbands, that the word of God be now blasphemed. Young men likewise exhort to be sober minded. Now five times in there, I believe it's four or five times, he says sober or grave. He says all four categories, the only thing that he mentions for all of them, you know, aged women, younger women, aged men, younger men, all four of them he says be sober. He says slap yourself awake and pay attention to what's going on and be sober, don't live life in this dream world where everything's just a joke to you, where you just la da da da da. He says look, be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil walketh about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He says you need to just be awake, you need to be focused on what you're doing, you need to be serious about life, you need to make an effort, you need to decide what you're going to do in life. Don't just float through life. You see people all the time, you ask teenagers, what are you going to do with your life? Whenever I talk to teenagers or young kids or anything, what do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want to do with your life? Where are you going in life? What's your plan? What's your goal? What's your direction? I don't know. All they're thinking about is the next video game, the next TV show, they're thinking about the next comic book, the next amusement park ride. But that's exactly the opposite of being sober. Being sober is the opposite of being drunk, let's face it. Now obviously it means more than just absence of alcohol, but he's saying look, when you're drunk you're unaware of your surroundings, you don't really care what's going on. And that's probably the first thing that happens when people get out of the influence of drugs and alcohol. In my experience is that they just have this I don't care attitude sometimes. And I'm not talking about my personal experience of taking drugs and alcohol, I'm talking about being around people. Being around people that smoke pot and they say, they're just like, man, whatever, you know, they're just really laid back. That's the opposite of being sober. Sober is where you care what's going on, where you're alert, you're sharp, you're acute to what's going on. When something bad happens, you know if something's bad, you know what's right and wrong. Your senses are sharpened to detect things that are right and wrong. You can see what's going on, you see where you're going in life. He says be sober, that's doctrine. Doctrine is when you don't drink, doctrine is when you dress right, doctrine is when you're holy, doctrine is when you control the words that come out of your mouth. I mean look at the things that he's talking about here. Doctrine is all they say, discreet chase, keepers at home, good obedience to their own husbands, that's doctrine. And so the leaven of the Pharisees was not just some kind of a spiritual doctrinal issue that they had wronged from the Bible. It was a sinful ungodly lifestyle that they had. That's why he said they were evil and adulterous. Now you don't think of the Pharisees as being adulterous maybe. You think of them because people have taught you your whole life maybe that they're just the ones that are just these stickler fuddy duddies that were just so strict. Look, Jesus is constantly accusing them of committing adultery. Jesus is constantly saying that they're evil, that they don't obey God's commands. He's constantly accusing them of being loose with what God says. Now look if you would at 1 Corinthians 5. Flip back to 1 Corinthians, I'm going to show you this again. 1 Corinthians 5, the Bible reads in verse number 1, it is reported commonly that there is fornication among you and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles that one should have his father's wife. And you're puffed up and have not rather mourned that he that had done this deed might be taken away from you. And then if you go down a little bit just for sake of time. Look at verse number 6. Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven that ye may be a new lump as ye are unleavened. Now look at this, for even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. So you see throughout the Bible, all the way back, the book of Exodus, all the way throughout the New Testament, leaven pictures sin. That's what it pictures throughout the Bible. Leaven is a picture of sin. Now it's saying here, look, the sin of this fornication of a man with his stepmother, a man fornicating with his stepmother, he calls that leaven, and he says if you don't get that out of your church, it's going to leaven the whole lump. It's going to destroy the whole thing. Now, and then he says for even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. See, Jesus Christ the Passover, you remember the Passover was to be eaten with unleavened bread? The whole picture of that, remember Jesus at the Last Supper broke the bread, and he said take, eat, this is my body which is broken for you. That unleavened bread that he broke and gave them pictured the broken body of Jesus Christ with no sin in it, the sinless broken body of Jesus Christ. And so leaven is a picture of sin. What God's trying to teach us about the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, later on he says they say and do not, he says they don't obey the Bible, they're ungodly. What he's trying to teach us is that sin will leaven your whole life if you just have one sin. That's what he's saying. Now, I'm not talking about being sinlessly perfect. I mean, good night. None of us is ever going to be perfect to where we have no sin. But if you have a certain sin in your life, a certain pet sin that you just will not deal with, and you just willfully, and obviously, look, I mess up in sin every day. I'm sure you do the same thing. But I'm talking about where you just have this one pet sin where you say, I know it's wrong, but I've got everything else taken care of. It's just this one thing that I'm just going to refuse to get right with God on. And God's just going to have to deal with it, okay? I mean, good night. God's just going to have to deal with it. I mean, good night. Am I supposed to be perfect? And if you ever try to bring up somebody's pet sin to them, that's what they'll say. Well, good night. I mean, nobody's perfect. You know, am I supposed to be perfect? Am I supposed to be like Jesus Christ or something? You know, am I supposed to be a sinlessly perfect person? Oh, hey, there's nothing I just know not one. Look, that's not the attitude that God wants you to have. Yes, we sin, but God talks about people sinning willfully after that they've received the knowledge of the truth. And that kind of a sin that's just a willful disobedience to God, that kind of a sin will cause God to chastise you because God is not mocked and God is not impressed with his child saying... I mean, think about Solomon, my son here. Okay, let's say he said, Dad, you know what? I obey you 99% of the time, but, Dad, I refuse to go to bed tonight. I'm just going to stay up. You know, that's the big thing with little kids. That's the big sin. You know, with these little kids, for some reason they hate going to bed. And I don't understand it. I mean, when they wake up, it's not like they have to go to work. They're going to wake up and do the same thing they've been doing all day. I don't know why it's so horrible to go to bed for them, and they hate going to bed. Solomon was thrilled because I told him the other day, I said, when you go to heaven, you'll never sleep again. You'll just be awake forever. And he loved it. That's the best part about heaven for him right now is that there's no night there. You never sleep. And so think about this. He just says, you know what, Dad? Listen, Dad, good night. Look how I've been obeying you all day. I'm going to just do my own thing for a while, Dad. So you and Mom, you go do what you've got to do, but I'm just having the run of the house tonight. I'm not going to bed. I'm going to do what I want to do. Now look, yes, Solomon makes mistakes throughout the day, but isn't that going to go a little more against the grain where he says, look, I know you said I'm going to go to bed, but I don't care because this is my one thing that I've reserved for myself. Look, it's not going to work. And what's going to happen? He's going to get disciplined, and you know when I'm going to stop disciplining him? When he's in bed. I mean, do you think I'm just going to finally just, well, I spanked him three times, and he's still up. Can you imagine that? I spanked him five times, and I just don't know what to do. He just won't go to bed. No, I mean, I'm going to spank him until he's in bed. I'll spank him all the way to the bed, okay? And so that's the same thing with God. God, there's something about where you have this attitude toward God that says, you know what, God? No, I'm not going to do it. Do something about it, and he will do something about it. Now, and a lot of people don't understand how God works. God is slow to anger, the Bible says. God is slow to anger and of great mercy. This is how God is. He's like this time bomb, okay, that's just ticking and ticking, and he just gives you another chance, and he gives you another chance, and he gives you another chance, and he's slow to anger. And he gives you another chance, he gives you another chance, and he gives you another chance, and then finally he just explodes all over you, okay? And so you can't misinterpret God's mercy and say, look, God's being merciful to me. I mean, good night, I've been doing this for so long, nothing's happened. You better watch out because it's coming eventually. It will come because God will judge sin, and he says he will judge his own people. God shall judge his people. Now, obviously, he's never going to take anyone's salvation away from them, but he will judge them in this life, and he will cloud up and rain on you if you have some kind of a pet sin that you're harboring. Now, look, you say, well, what are you talking about? Are you talking about my pet sin? If that's what you're thinking right now, then I must be. Because, look, the one that you're thinking of right now, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Because we know if we have something like that, then we know what it is. I mean, good night. We don't need the pastor to even preach on it before we think about what God's speaking to our spirit, saying the one thing that I just refuse to get right with God on. No, look, you can't play with it because what happens is sometimes one little sin can leaven your whole life. One little sin, and you can try to keep it under control, but, boy, it will start spreading, and it can destroy life. I could give you example after example of people who had everything together in their life, but maybe it was just their music was the only thing that they just refused to get right, and you could just watch that music just go... until it led to other things, until it leavened the whole lump. And so, look, none of us is going to be perfect, but you better watch out for the leaven of a sin that's just in your life that you just refuse to get rid of. Because you remember what the Pharisees did. They justified their sin. That was their whole thing. They had it all figured out in their little tradition why it was okay for them to do certain things that God had commanded against, and they justified it and justified it. And, see, the Bible says, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. He said, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. Now, look, all of us have sin in our life, but if there's iniquity in your heart, if there's injustice, that's what iniquity means in your heart, where you say, you know what? I've got sin, but I'm just going to stick with my sin. And you won't confess it to God? Then God's not going to hear you. Now, look, I want God to hear me because there's some things that I need from God. So when I pray, I want God to hear me. And so I don't want God to say, look, I'm not listening to you right now. You're refusing to obey me. And so I can't listen to you right now because you won't obey me. And so I want God to hear me. I want to purge out the old leaven. I want to do surgery on myself constantly. I have to find the leaven. I have to find the problem and remove that cancer before it defiles my whole body and defiles my whole life. See, you can't play with sin. You take coals in your lap. The Bible says you're going to be burned with them. And he talks about a man who is messing around with somebody else's wife. He says he's playing with fire. He's going to be burned. It's going to destroy his life. And so the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees is the sin that they permit. It's the sin that they allow. It's the doctrine of the sin that they allow. It's their lack of faith. It's their adultery. It's their evil lifestyle. But whatever it is that he was exactly referring to, any of it can creep in and destroy you if you let it fester. But on into the chapter, he explains to them, he says, Look, why do you have no faith? Oh, you have little faith. He says, Remember ye not? He says, I don't remember the five loaves of the five thousand, how many baskets ye took up, neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, how many baskets ye took up. He says, Look, I don't have any shortage on providing for you. Don't worry about the fact that you don't have any bread. Don't worry about the fact that I may not have any bread tonight. But he says, Look, if you don't have any bread, that's not the problem. The problem is your doctrine. The problem is what you believe. The problem is what you've been taught. The problem is what you've learned. Now, we'll see a little later where they got it. But the Bible says in verse number 13, When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, so he finishes up this discussion with them about the leaven of the Pharisees, and he says in verse number 13, When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist. They thought he'd come back from the dead. We saw that in chapter 14. Some say that thou art John the Baptist. Some, Elias. And others, Jeremiah, are one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood is not revealed underneath of my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Now look, this right here is the proof text for the Catholic Church that Peter was the first pope. I'm going to explain this to you and explain to you why it's wrong. This is the verses that they will point to and say, See, Peter was the first pope of the Catholic Church. This is where the Catholic Church started. This is what they believe. And Peter was the first pope. And God here, look at verse number 19. He says, first of all in verse 18, they say, See, he's saying he's going to build his church on Peter. And then in verse 19, I'll give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be this in heaven. They're saying, look, I'm going to build my church on you, Peter, and you get to decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. Now this is what the Catholics believe. And they say this is where the pope's authority comes from. He was the first pope. The whole church was going to be built on Peter. And he was going to have the keys of heaven. He can say, that's it. You're not going to heaven. Let's say God said it to me, right? And I said, listen, Amanda, you're not going to heaven. You pushed it too far. I'm through with you. You can't go to heaven. I'm going to tell God right now that you're not allowed. And then I can decide that somebody else can go to heaven. And that's what they believe. They believe that the pope has the power to what's called excommunicate somebody. And if the pope excommunicates you, you're going to hell, buddy. I mean, that's what they believe. And a Catholic who gets rebaptized, for example, a Catholic who gets baptized by immersion is technically excommunicated from the Catholic church. They're going to hell. That's what they believe. You're going to hell, honey. My wife is a Catholic. She was born baptized, raised Catholic. She got rebaptized according to whoever the stupid pope is right now. According to him, she's going to hell because she's been rebaptized and he has the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Now, let me explain to you quickly and show you from the Bible why this is not true. How do we know that Peter was not the first pope? Well, number one, because Peter was married. Now, they believe that the pope cannot be married. They believe that the priest cannot be married. Let me show you quickly from the Bible that Peter was married. Put your finger there and flip back to Matthew chapter number 8 and verse 14. I'll show you in a couple places here that Peter was married. Matthew chapter 8, verse number 14, the Bible says, And when Jesus was come into Peter's house, he saw his wife's mother laid in sick of a fever. And he touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she rose and ministered unto them. So there we see Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law of a fever. So he's married. He has a wife's mother. Then if you keep your finger there again and go keep your finger in Matthew 16 and flip over to 1 Corinthians chapter 9. And while you're turning there, I'm going to read you a different verse. In John chapter 1, verse 42, this is when Jesus is first meeting Peter. This is their first meeting, John chapter 1, verse 42. And he brought him to Jesus. This is Andrew bringing his brother, Peter, to Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him, he said, Thou art Simon, the son of Jonah. Thou shalt be called Cephas. Okay, so Jesus gives him a new name. He says, Simon, I'm going to give you a new name of Cephas, which being interpreted is a stone. Okay, so the word Cephas means a stone. So he gives him this new name of Cephas being a stone. Now look at 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verse number 5. It says, Have we not power... This is Paul speaking because he was a single man. Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles and as the brethren of the Lord and Cephas? He says, Look, don't I have the right to get married just like the brethren of the Lord have been married? You know, just talking about James and Jude and Joseph. And he said, And look, Cephas is married. And later on he's saying, Look, I work my own job. He says, I'm not even married. And he's listing off these things. He said, I could be married. I could be supported by the church, whatever. And so he's saying here, of course, that Cephas is married. Peter was married. Now, notice what I read to you in John chapter 1. He said, Your name is going to be called Cephas, which is a stone. Now, the word there, a stone, is different than a rock. A rock in the Bible, throughout the Bible, a rock is a giant, big foundation. Like, remember, the wise man built his house upon the rock. And see, you have to let the Bible define itself. Look up the word rock throughout the Bible. Look up the word stone throughout the Bible. It's a little different. A rock is like, upon this rock I will build my church. Like, the wise man built his house upon the rock. Then a stone is like David went down to the brook and gathered five smooth stones. You see what I'm saying? And a lot of people say, well, you have to go back to the Greek in Matthew 16. And if you go back to the Greek, you'll see that the word Peter means a little pebble, like a little stone. And the word rock that he uses there is like a big, giant rock. But look, you don't have to go back to the Greek to see that. You can just study the word stone in the Bible. You can see that the word stone is talking about a small stone. And that the word rock in the Bible is talking about a big, giant rock of a foundation. Now look, remember, let's go to the example. Matthew chapter 7, where it talks about the foolish man who builds his house upon the sand, and the wise man builds his house upon the rock. Look, start at the beginning of that parable. He says, Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, that's talking about the word of God, Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which build his house upon a rock. See, Jesus said, upon this rock I will build my church. He's not saying I'm going to build my church on you, Peter. I mean, why would he build his church on a man? Why would he build his church on a sinner? It doesn't even make sense. Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I'll build my church. Look, if he's going to build his house on the rock, it's probably the same rock that he was talking about in Matthew chapter 7, when he said, Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man to build his house upon a rock. He says, I'm going to build the church upon this rock, he's saying about himself. I'm going to build it on Jesus Christ. I'm going to build it on the word of God. In 1 Corinthians 3, and I won't have you turn there, but it says, For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is the only foundation that God is going to build anything. In 1 Corinthians 3, he's talking about the church of Corinth being built on Jesus Christ. He said, It's not built on a man. Because they said, Well, I'm of Apollos. They said, I'm a follower of Apollos. I'm a follower of Paul. I'm a follower of Cephas. He says, Look, Cephas didn't die for you. Paul didn't die for you. He says, This church was not built on a man. This church was built on Jesus Christ. He's the foundation. And so no Peter was married. No Peter was in fact married. Peter was not the first pope. The church was not built on Peter. And then the next thing, if you want to see what he's actually saying to him, he's saying, Look, I'm going to build my church on this rock. Now, who's going to do the building? Is Peter going to build it? No, he said, I will build my church on this rock. So it's all three times about Jesus, right? He's saying, I'm the rock that the church is going to be built on. I'm going to build it, and it's my church. Look, look at the next verse. He says, The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Verse number 19, chapter 16. He says, And I will give unto thee. Now we're talking about Peter, okay? The is a singular word. He's saying, I will give unto thee, Peter. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Now, what does that mean, that he can have the power to say, You're not saved. You're going to hell. You're saved. Yes, you're going to heaven. No, look, this is what it means. He's saying, Look, I'm going to build an institution called the local church. It's going to be built on me. It's going to be built on my word. I'm going to build it. You're not going to build it, Peter. You're not going to build it, James and John. I'm going to build it, but I'm going to give you something different. I'm going to give you a different privilege. I'm not going to give you the right to build this church. He says, I'm going to give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. I'm going to give you the power, yes, to determine whether people go to heaven or hell. Now, just by saying, Well, you're not going to heaven. You're not going to hell. No, he's saying, Look, you have the ability to determine whether people go to heaven or hell. Look, I have the ability to determine whether people go to heaven or hell every week when I decide whether I'm going to go soul-willing or not, you see. And you say, Well, I don't believe that. I just believe that whoever's going to get saved is going to get saved anyway and whoever's not going to get saved, well, they're not going to get saved no matter what happens. Look, that's garbage. Think about the illustrations throughout the Bible of people, you know, that's for salvation. Like, for example, think about the boat, where they're on the boat and he says that they're fishing and he says, I'll make you fishers of men. And if you remember, they cast in the net and they couldn't catch anything. They toiled all night and caught nothing. And then Jesus came to them and said, Cast your net on the other side of the boat. Well, when they cast it on the other side of the boat, remember they brought in that huge draft of fishes and the net break? Look, that's a picture of soul-willing. That's why he said, From henceforth thou shalt catch men. Because soul-willing involves you throwing out the net and catching people, getting them saved. Catching men, the Bible says. Now look, who is the one who's deciding whether people go to heaven or hell? Now look, does God decide? That's Calvinism. That says that God decides who's going to heaven. Look, does God decide who's saved? Look, God said, I'm not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. God said, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Look, God wants everybody to be saved. God died for everybody. He said, Whosoever will may come and take the water of life freely. And so we know God does not decide. Because God has already decided, yes, for everybody. He looked at everybody and says, I'll save everybody. So he's already made his decision. See, there's three decisions involved. His decision has been made, yes. Then there's my decision whether I'm going to throw the net out and where I'm going to throw the net. And then there's the person's decision of whether they're going to choose to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. So there's three decisions involved. There's God's decision, it's a non-issue because he's already made it for everybody, yes. And then there's my decision whether I'm going to preach the gospel. And then there's the sinner's decision of whether they're going to believe on Jesus Christ and be saved. So look, we're so flippant and so casual about soul winning or talking to people, talking to a friend on the job, talking to a relative. We're so flippant about it, ah, do I feel like it, do I not feel like it. But what we don't realize is that God has given to us the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And he says, look, you are in charge of making sure that people get saved. He said unto you is committed the ministry of reconciliation. He says it's your job, Jesus was reconciling the world to himself on the cross, the Bible says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5. But it's you that he's committed to you, the ministry of reconciliation, of getting people reconciled to God, of winning people to Christ. He says it's your responsibility, that's why the verse that we read on Saturday, woe is me if I preach not the gospel. Woe is me if I preach not the gospel, because it's our responsibility that's on our shoulders to get people saved. Now look, let me ask you something. You know, I won somebody the Lord a couple weeks ago on the job. Look, if I had chosen, you know what, not today, I don't feel like talking to this guy. I don't feel like opening my mouth and ah, preaching the gospel on the job to a, and it was a totally appropriate time to do so. I realized that you shouldn't preach the gospel on your employer's time and steal from the company and stuff like that. It was a totally appropriate time to do so. What if I would have decided, you know what, not today. You know what, that guy, let's face it, that guy probably would have went to hell. You say, oh he would have got saved some other way. Look, let's come back to reality for a little while, okay, because there aren't a whole lot of people out there that are soul winning. You know, I mean, there are a lot of great churches across this country. And in those churches, there are usually several people in each church that are a soul winner. But look, compared to how many people there are in this world, there's not a whole lot of soul winners. And if God brought somebody along and gave them an opportunity to get this guy the gospel, I mean, how many opportunities is this guy going to have to get the gospel, just a clear presentation? And so look, I have the keys right there to decide, am I going to let this guy come to heaven or not? Now look, that's a chilling thought, to think that we have the opportunity to actually maybe be somebody's last chance on the way to heaven. And we're the only chance that they've got. And so you can't just casually and flippantly say, ah, go soul winning, not go soul winning, talk to my neighbor, not talk to my friend. Look, you've got to just decide that you're going to do it because you're the one who's determining whether people can get saved or not. And then you say, well, you're a heretic because you believe that you have the power to influence whether somebody goes to heaven or not. Look, if I didn't have the power to influence whether somebody goes to hell or heaven, then I don't even know what I'm doing in the ministry. Okay, that's the whole point. The whole point, why would I even be going soul winning? The whole point is to change somebody's eternity. That's the whole point. The whole point is to take somebody that's on their way to hell and, as the Bible says, to pull them out of the fire, so to speak, by winning them to Christ, says in Jude, verse 23. And so, yes, Peter was given the keys of the kingdom. Was Jesus trying to teach here? He says, look, Christian, it's not your job to build a church. He says, only I can build a church. It's my church. I'm the only one that's going to build it. It's not going to be built on you. It's going to be built on me. But your job is to win people to Christ. So look, did God command me to build a church? No. Did he command you to build a church? No. What did he command us to do? To go ye therefore into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. And so my responsibility is to win people to Christ. And you say, well, you know, okay, the two people that you won in the Lord last time, you're not soul winning. Where are they? Look, get mad at Jesus if you want to know where they are, because he's the one that said, I will build my church. Now, look, he may not be building it exactly at the rate that we want him to build it at. He may not build it with the exact people that we thought he was going to build it with. Hey, that's up to him. And that's where the faith comes in. That's why he talks so much about faith. Because you have to have the faith to say, look, it's not my responsibility to go in the place of God and do God's job. It's my responsibility to do my job and to wait for God to do his job. Now, if I'm not doing my job, then I can't really expect God to do his job. But if I'm doing my job, if I'm winning people to Christ, that's all I need to worry about. And that's all you need to worry about. You just need to ask yourself, am I winning people to Christ? Am I a soul winner? That's the question to ask yourself. Think about the sermon on IVF a few weeks back. It's the same thing. It's a person saying, you know what, I did what I'm supposed to do, and it ain't happening. You know, I'm not having kids. And so I think I'm just going to do it for God. And I'm going to go and do all the perverted things that are in IVF. Of course, you're the sermon. But it's the same thing of a person who has a lack of faith, and so they say, I'm going to step into God's territory because he's not acting fast enough for me. So I'm going to start doing what God's supposed to be doing instead of just worrying about making sure that they do what they're doing and leave the results with God. Here's a perfect example. Abraham and Sarah. Think about Abraham and Sarah. He's 87 years old. She is 77 years old. And he says to himself, God has been promising me that I was going to have this giant family. He said, look up at the stars, and if you can count the stars, that's how many kids you're going to have and descendants you're going to have. He says, count the sand by the seashore. If you can count that, then you'll be able to count your offspring. He gets to be 87 years old. His wife is 77. He says, this is insane. I don't even have one kid. I don't even have one child. Think about how ridiculous this is. He's an old man. He has no kids. And God says he's going to make of him a great nation. So what does he do? He says, I'm going to take it into my own hands. And he takes that maid Hagar, the handmaid from Egypt. He sleeps with her. He has a child by her, Ishmael. And that child, Ishmael, is the father of the Arab nations today. And look at the trouble that Ishmael and Isaac have today. I mean, it's in the news every day, isn't it? Hezbollah, that's Ishmael. And then, you know, Lebanon and all these places, they all come from Ishmael. And then Israel, they're still fighting each other. They're still killing each other. It's always been that way for thousands of years. Because one man said, and we're talking about a man of great faith, but he had a lapse of faith and said, you know what? I'm not going to wait on God. God's taking too long. I've done everything I'm supposed to do. God will not keep his end of the bargain. God is not telling me the truth. And so I am just going to take it into my own hands. That's where you get a liberal church, where they say, you know what? We're going to get people in. Our way. You know, we're going to get people in with the rock music. We're going to get people in with the lame-down dress standards, where just anything goes. The halter top, the miniskirt, come on in. They say, we will build our church. And it's amazing how as soon as they step into God's role and say, I'm going to build the church for you, God, then it's amazing how they stop doing their part. You know, they stop the soul-willing. And it's just all them doing God's part, and then they're not even doing their part at all. But see, we've got to understand that God has given us a certain keys to the kingdom of heaven, which is, I mean, that's a big responsibility. And so let's just worry about that responsibility. That's a big enough job for us to worry about getting people saved, getting people out of hell. That we don't have to step into God's arena, and this could go for any area of life. Have faith in God, and do what God has told you to do, and leave the rest with God. But on and on it says, then charge these disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ, because his time had not yet come. He was waiting until he would be killed and raised from the dead, as he says in verse 21. From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples that he must go into Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Now in verse 22, here's our first pope again, Peter. Peter, the first pope. Look at this. Then Peter took him and began to rebuke him. He starts to just tell him off, straighten him out. Rebuke means tell him he's wrong. Then Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee. But he turned and said unto the pope, he turned and said unto Peter, Now remember, the Catholics would have you to believe that he just told Peter that he's going to build this whole church on him. He's going to let Peter decide who goes to heaven and hell, and then look. But he turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan. So four verses later he's telling him he's Satan, after he just told him he's the pope. That doesn't make any sense, does it? So he ordains him the pope, and then four days later he says, Get out of here, Satan, you stinking devil. He says, Thou are an offense unto me, for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. See, this is one of the three times in the Bible when God speaks indirectly to Satan by speaking to another person, but calling them Satan and referring to the fact that Satan is the one that is behind what they're saying. You know, he's saying that's what Satan believes. He's saying you're talking like Satan. The other two are in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, we talked about on the sermon on music, where he's talking to the king of Tyre, but he's actually talking to the devil in the Garden of Eden and so forth. And so he says, Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou are an offense unto me. He just rips into him because he's saying that Jesus is not going to die on the cross and raise him from the dead. He's preaching against the gospel, Peter is. And he says, For thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Now let me just close with this. What do you savor? Now what's the word savor mean? Savor is like just picture putting a bite of food in your mouth, just your favorite food, and just kind of moving it around in your mouth, just savoring the flavor. You know, somebody just takes an ice cold Pepsi or whatever they like to drink, you know, and just, ah, that's savor. Savor is when you're just enjoying the flavor of something. And God's saying here, Look, Satan, look, Peter, your problem is that you savor things that are of men and not the things that are of God. Now you'll see how consistent this is throughout the whole chapter, throughout the whole book of Matthew. He's constantly drawing a contrast, have you seen this, between what man is teaching, what the Pharisees are teaching, their traditions, and what God is teaching in the word of God. And he says, Look, what do you enjoy? The leaven of God's kingdom or the leaven of the Pharisees? He says, What do you savor? The things that be of God or the things that be of men? Look, what is it that you really enjoy in life? I mean, what is it that you get your most enjoyment from? Is it something that's of the world or is it something that's of God? I mean, do you enjoy more picking up your Bible and reading it, or do you enjoy more watching a movie? Do you enjoy more picking up the Bible and studying the Bible and praying to God, or do you enjoy more fellowshipping with just friends on the job? Do you enjoy sitting around in the break room talking to somebody just about nothing, just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, just shooting the breeze, whatever, with your buddies at work? Or do you savor shooting the breeze with God when you pick up the Bible and read it? And so you have to be careful that you're savoring the right thing. Remember in Psalm 1, he said, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. See, what do you delight in? What do you savor? What do you enjoy? Is it something that has to do with God, or is it just something that has to do with the world? And so when you get your taste buds to where they like the world more than they like God, he says that's where Satan is. That's where you're getting into the realm of following Satan. Because Satan wants you to enjoy all the fun and all the frills more than you enjoy the things of God. See, you should come to the place where you enjoy the Bible more than you enjoy eating a good meal. You should try to strive and come to the place where you enjoy talking to God more than you enjoy talking to your friends. See, David said that the words of God were sweeter also than honey of the honeycomb. He said, Taste and see that the Lord is good. He said that the words of God were more sweeter than honey to him. And so he said, More than my favorite food, more than my favorite meal, I just enjoy the Bible. And so try to set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth as the Bible says. Try to keep your heart right to where you love the things of God more than you love the things of men. Because what happens, as soon as you start loving the things of the world, your doctrine changes. And this is what the whole chapter is saying. From start to finish, Matthew chapter 16, it starts out by saying, You're evil and adulterous because your doctrine's wrong. And then he says, You don't savor the things of God, Peter. You're so into the world that you don't understand the doctrines of Jesus dying on the cross and bearing rose again. And you're telling me that I shouldn't do that. Now look, there's a correlation between your doctrine and the sin in your life and whether you love the things of God or whether you love the things of the world. Look, if you start living a sinful life, your doctrine will change. If we started having rock music and we said we're going to have everything else the same, and this goes back to a little leaven, leaven and the whole lump. If we said nothing else is going to change in this church, but we're just going to change the music and have a very carnal, fleshly, worldly music. Well look, the doctrine will change. It would be impossible for the doctrine not to change. Because the two are related. The leaven of the one will leaven the other. And he says when you start savoring the things that are not of God, when you start savoring the things of the world, watch out, because pretty soon you're going to be anti-gospel. You're going to be anti-the things of God. You're going to be anti-soul winning. You're going to be anti-people getting saved. You cannot just keep on soul winning, keep on believing, and by grace through faith, salvation. Keep on believing that the King James Bible is the word of God. Keep on believing that Jesus is going to build his church. Keep on believing that God is going to come through for you. And you're still hanging on to that sin of rock music, or whatever it is, or something that's worldly that you enjoy, or some kind of a DVD that you enjoy. You say, I'm going to read by myself and watch this DVD. Hey, I still believe the King James Bible. Hey, I still believe the blood of Jesus Christ saves. Hey, I still believe eternal life. Look, your doctrine will change. And you see churches that are straight down the line, they change the music, they change the dress code, and pretty soon they start believing goofy doctrine. Pretty soon they start talking about repentance. Pretty soon they start talking about how people who don't get baptized aren't really saved. Pretty soon they start coming up with this garbage. Why? Because they let in the leaven of the worldliness. They stopped savoring the things of God. They started savoring a little bit of worldliness, a little bit of worldly clothing, worldly music, worldly entertainment. And what happened? It leavened their doctrine. And that's what happens. And so, savor the things of God. You say, wow, I just don't savor it. Pastor Anderson, what do I do? I mean, I read the Bible, it just doesn't taste good to me. I just don't like it. Look, if you eat something enough, you'll like it. I remember, you know what my favorite juice is? Cranberry juice. And one time, I used to hate cranberry juice. One time I got sick, and for two weeks the only thing I could keep down was cranberry juice. And I had to dilute it in water because I hated it so much. By the end of those two weeks, cranberry juice is my favorite juice. It's my favorite juice ever since. Because if you drink something enough, you'll start to like it. You'll acquire a taste for it. Savor the things of God by consuming the things of God. Quit with the things of the world and pretty soon they'll start tasting back to you because you're not used to them. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. God, thank you so much for the teaching of the Bible. And thank you for the warnings that you put in the Bible for us because you love us and you want to keep us straight, dear God. And Father, help us to never get to the place where we savor the things that be of man more than the things that be of God. Help us never get to the place where we savor some devotional book more than we savor the Bible. Help us never get to the place where we savor some TV preacher or some kind of a cassette tape that we listen to more than we actually savor reading the Bible, dear God, and getting it straight from you. God, help us to savor the things that are of God, not the things of the world, not the things that are of man, dear God. And please just help us to be patient and to wait for you to have faith in God, to stay the course, and to wait to see our loved ones saved, to see our friends saved, to see this church grow, dear God. Please just help us to stay in the fight and to wait on the Lord.