which is our sermon text this morning. Just before we get started with the message, one announcement. Next week, I'm going to be wearing something different when preaching. I'm going to be wearing a Geneva gown, which is the traditional Presbyterian minister garb. Normally, that's something when you finally get a building of your own, a lot of Presbyterian ministers begin to wears. So we've been in this new building for a few weeks, and I didn't want to spring too much new stuff on you. But if you have any questions about that, you're welcome to ask me afterwards. I was tempted to preach a message, what's with the robe, but I decided not to. But if you have any questions, you can ask me about that afterwards. My goal this morning is for us as a church to bask in the grace and the kindness of God. My prayer and my hope this morning is that we can bask in the grace and the kindness and the mercy of God towards me, towards you, towards his church. When you think about it, you know, as we read the horrible news headlines right now with what's going on, for example, in Israel, It is a reminder that anything good that happens in this life is a miracle of grace. Man left to his natural self is not a pretty picture. You know, just think about I mean, think about the miracles at play here. I mean, look around at one another. I mean, where do we all come from? You know, what are the odds? What are the odds that, you know, some folks from Indonesia and America and Estonia and Poland and South Africa and Norway would meet here in Stavanger? on this 15th of October, 2023. It's really kind of rather strange, isn't it? It's a miracle. But how much more when we start thinking about our own lives? I mean, what was your estate when God saved you? What are the things in your life that you are most ashamed of? You know, what was your estate before God found you? That we're sitting here together as a church family is a miracle of grace. We certainly know that the enemy hates the church. We can see very clearly as we're reading news headlines today that the enemy hates the biological Israel. I had the privilege to fly home and spend a few days with my folks in the States this past week, and I was talking with my dad. I'm like, is there any people in the history of the world, my dad loves history, that has suffered more than the Jews? We couldn't think of any. And now there's a number of reasons for that, including God's own judgment, and that would be a sermon for another day. But how much more of the church does the enemy hate the church when we think about the tremendous persecution of God's people around the world today, as well as throughout church history? And so much so that we get this picture in Revelation 6 of the souls that were slain on behalf of Christ, under the altar, crying out, how long, oh Lord? As we sing the biblical psalms as a church family, how many of those are filled with tears of grief and sorrow? How long? That the church on earth exists at all is a miracle of grace. I had the privilege to attend a Lutheran church in my hometown back in Minnesota this last Sunday and just wanted to go to a church I wouldn't normally go to. The gospel was preached and I was ministered to. There's an evangelical minister in this very liberal Lutheran denomination, but I was very thankful I was ministered to. But I looked around and there's a lot of gray heads and not many young You know that there's anybody sitting in churches still today. It's a miracle of grace. And sometimes you wonder, will the churches be filled with the youth again? Or are we dying out? That we're here at all is a miracle of grace. And how about when you start thinking about your families? Maybe brothers or sisters that have walked away from Christ. or just situations in your life that feel like there is no hope. There is no fix. And only you know what those things are. We still today need miracles of grace. And on that topic, that brings us to Matthew 16. And this is where I want us as a church family and as visitors and guests this morning to find hope in our God who does miracles and in our God who will achieve the victory for us. We begin with the miracle of faith itself. Look at Matthew 16, 13. Matthew writes, now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven. Here we see the bedrock hope of the church, of our salvation, and that is the miracle of faith. Look at this. Jesus is walking with his disciples. They're still figuring out who is this guy I'm following. Who's this rabbi who's teaching us all these amazing things, who teaches not as the scribes, but as one who has authority. Who is this person? And Peter ever to be the first to respond. gets it right this time. Because you see, others are conjecturing all sorts of things. You know, they're reading the Old Testament, the Scriptures. They wouldn't view it as the Old Testament, it would just be the Scriptures. But they're like, OK, is this Deuteronomy 18? Moses said there's going to be a prophet who comes after him. Is this a prophet? Malachi says Elijah's coming back. Is this Elijah? So you can just get a feel, it'd be like the, you know, the Christian community chattering about something, right? But the Old Testament people of God, they're chattering. Who is this person causing all this controversy? Doing these amazing things and yet, for some reason, taking off the religious leaders. Who is this guy? And they don't know. They don't know. Is he John the Baptist risen from the dead? Is he Elijah? Is he Jeremiah or one of the other prophets? You know, and Jesus turns to them, to the disciples and said, but who do you say? Who do you say that I am? And Peter gets it right. When he says in verse 15 or verse 16, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Peter understood who Jesus was. He's the Messiah. He's the one long foretold prophesied in the scriptures. He is the son. Of God. But what did Jesus say to him? Did Jesus say, good job, Peter, you got lucky. You know, you really pulled that one out. You're really smart, Peter. You really got it together. Now, what does Jesus say to him? Verse 17, he says, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah. That's Peter's other name. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father. who is in heaven. Here we see the miracle of grace and that the father in heaven gave Peter the ability to see Jesus for who he is. Jesus says that his father in heaven blessed Peter so that he could know who Jesus truly was and who he is. The principal hope of our salvation and of the salvation of the church is that it is God who gives the eyes to see. It's God who gives faith. It's God who pours out the blessing that saves us. I can sit here and preach, I can scream, I can shout till I'm blue in the face and I can't change your stone cold heart. I can teach it to you, but I can't understand it for you, right? There has to be a new work in you done by the father. To help you see Jesus for who he is. Brothers and sisters, if you see Jesus for who he is. God has done a miracle in you. Our father in heaven has blessed you. With the miracle of faith. It might as well be Jesus saying to you if you see him saying, blessed are you, Deborah, Penny, Sigva. Blessed are you, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. So if you see Jesus, you know who he is. bask in the grace of your Father in heaven, who has given you the eyes to see, the mind to understand, the heart to believe. In John's gospel, he opens up with a similar theme when he says, but those who did receive him, who believed in his name, They were born not of the will of man or the will of flesh, but of God. If you're a member in Christ's church, it's a miracle. Because you've been born of God. Let's look at a second miracle of grace in Matthew 16. The second miracle of grace is that he uses dumb people like you and me. I'll explain this in a second. What does Jesus say in verse 18? And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. The Lord uses dumb people like me and like you to build his church. Now, why do I say dumb? Well, first of all, Peter's usually the one to stick his foot in his mouth. These apostles were not chosen because of their virtue. And the reason I say dumb is in a mere few verses. Look at verse 23. What is Jesus going to say to Peter? He got it right. He said, you're the Christ, the Son of the living God. What does he say to Peter in verse 23? Get behind me, Satan. I mean, you're going from A plus to an F. Right? The disciples, what do we read about them in the Gospels? They're quarreling and fighting with one another. They're like, who's the best? Who's going to get to sit next to Jesus in the kingdom of heaven? They don't get it. They're stupid. They need a lot of help and a lot of sanctification, just like you and me. How many times did we sauntered in, you know, to church? I'm not just saying this as a preacher because I was along a big part of my life. I wasn't a preacher, but you saunter into church. You like, I got this. I know everything. There's nothing I need to learn. You know, I look back at some of the things I used to think, and I was stupid. I think there's a difference between ignorance and just kind of hard-headed stupidity, right? I needed softening. I know I gave some of my preachers a real hard time. I needed work. The disciples need work in their flipping back and forth between getting it and not getting it at all. Getting it and not getting it at all. And even though God chose them and adopted them, there's sometimes where it seems like they're playing for the other team. Back in Minnesota, my dad loves football, so I've just been thinking about old memories coming back from my visit. But the Minnesota Vikings, we've got all these Norwegian ancestors that moved to immigrants, that moved to Minnesota, and now we've got the American football team, the Minnesota Vikings, and they're always losing. It's just Minnesota sports are discouraging. They're just always losing. But back in the 70s, the Minnesota Vikings went to the Super Bowl four times. But sadly, they lost every time. And we've not been to a Super Bowl ever since. But there was one football player in the Minnesota Vikings back in the 70s who was called Wrong Way Marshall. The other team fumbled. He picked up the ball. and ran it into the wrong end zone. He scored them a touchdown, the opposite team, and lost the game. Wrong way, Marshall. And I think God could say that about each one of us from time to time. We think we're helping God. We think we know what we're doing, and yet we run the wrong direction. And we're accidentally playing for the other team. Get behind me, Satan. And with all of that being said, is it not a miracle of grace that Jesus says to Peter, I'm going to build my church through you? With all of Peter's faults, he says, I'm going to build my church through you. On this rock, I will build my church. Isn't that amazing? And as we think about the broader witness of the New Testament, that God gives us spiritual gifts to build up the church. He does it through hard hearted people like me and you who need a lot of help and a lot of grace and a lot of sanctification. You know, we often construct the church more like a toddler constructs a Lego building than a skilled architect designs a building. But in God's wisdom, he's chosen to use us. Isn't that amazing? To build. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church gets this text wrong when they view Peter here speaking as the first pope. Because, of course, we know in Ephesians 2, for example, Paul says that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, not the apostle Peter. And, of course, we know that Christ is the cornerstone. We also know from Peter's own witness in his first letter, 1 Peter 5, he refers to himself as a fellow elder. A fellow elder. He does not call himself the chief elder or the supreme elder. He speaks as a fellow elder. And here we see that Jesus builds the church through fallible people and fallible elders like myself, like Peter. Like others. And he uses fallible people in the church to love and build up. And somehow in God's wise plan, all of that is according to his perfect wisdom. A wisdom that Paul tells the church of Ephesus is a plan for the fullness of time. To shame the enemy and to shame unbelievers. And a quote from First Corinthians to use that which is weak in the world to shame the proud. To use that which is foolish in the world to shame the wise. And that God is glorified in this miracle of grace when he uses fallen people yet redeemed like you and me. To do his work of planting his church. And that gives me a lot of hope as I look at our small church family, as we seek to be a witness with our other brothers and sisters in this country to the gospel. And when it seems like the odds are so much against us. And when we look around, it feels like, well, there's not always it doesn't seem like we have all the gifts we could want or use. And yet God is perfectly perfectly wisely using you, using me, using us, using his people scattered throughout this country and scattered throughout the world to build his church. That's a miracle of grace. So we've seen the miracle of grace in terms of God giving faith. We've seen the miracle of grace in terms of God using hard-hearted, sometimes obstinate, sometimes misguided people like you and me to build his church. And thirdly, we see a miracle of grace in that the kingdom of hell won't win. The kingdom of hell shall not prevail. Jesus says in Matthew 16, 18, and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." You know, when we think about just the atrocities being committed in Israel, and we know that God is not done with biological Israel, but it just seems sometimes like who can stand against such evil? When you see the erosion of truth in our universities, when you see churches that should be preaching the gospel, preaching messages of man and calling what God calls evil good and what God calls good evil. It sometimes feels like, is there any hope? We can take heart in these words at the gates of hell. shall not prevail against Christ's church. What do you think of when you think of gates? This is kind of an interesting image that Jesus uses here of gates. It's likely that Jesus was speaking on top of a cliff that was known as the gates of hell or the gates of Hades. which was a site of pagan worship. And there was like a cave and a place to worship the pagan gods. And it was viewed as like the pathway to the realm of death. So Jesus is using something that he's seeing with his disciples to make a point about the gates of hell not prevailing. But when you think about gates, if gates are locked, you can't get in or out, right? So if like you go to the local jail or prison, you might not be an inmate, but you can't get into that jail cell without keys, right? And that prisoner can't get out of that jail cell without keys. So that gate not only keeps people from getting out, but it also keeps people from getting in. And what Jesus is talking about here is the destruction of those gates. Hades in the ancient world was the realm of the dead. And as it was then, so it is now, if you go to the realm of the dead, you you're not getting out. There's nothing you can do to escape death or get out of it. Likewise, death being the last enemy, as Paul will call it in 1 Corinthians 15, there's nothing that we can do to stop it by ourselves. That death will come to all. You know, the physicists and astronomers say that our whole universe at one point will wind to a halt. We can't stop the second law of thermodynamics from order to chaos and from life to death. We can't, by our own power that is. And yet here Jesus says, the gates of hell shall not prevail against his church. So what does this mean then? I think it means, I will argue it means two things. Number one, hell cannot hold Christ in. Hell did not succeed in holding the Holy One in the ground. For on the third day, Christ rose from the dead, shattering and breaking the chains of death. giving us our own hope of our resurrection, that the last enemy to be destroyed will be death. Our hope of a resurrection is intimately and directly tied to Christ's resurrection. Death will not hold us. Whether you die in your bed at a comfortable old age, or whether you die as a martyr on the stake, At gunpoint or whatever it is? Or being raped to death? The gates of hell, the kingdom of darkness will not prevail because it will not be able to hold us in. Though we fall, yet shall we rise. But likewise, the second meaning of the gates of hell not prevailing is that the gates of hell will not withstand the assault of Christ and his church. As the gospel goes forth, as we wage war, not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers of darkness in the heavenly places. It will not withstand the gospel charge. We, of course, have that picture in Revelation 19 where Jesus is at the head of the army and he goes forth to slaughter all of the enemies of God. And I don't know exactly what our participation will look like on that day. But we are told that those who persevere in faith, who conquer in faith, we will rule with Christ, with the rod of iron, that we will judge angels. Isn't that remarkable? So we have this twofold picture of the gates of hell. It's not going to keep, it's not strong enough to keep us in. the realm of the dead, and it's not strong enough to keep Christ out from rescuing his people and from destroying the kingdom of darkness. That's a miracle of grace. So I don't know what our days as a church will be like. You know, we feel very vulnerable. It feels very vulnerable, right, to be in a small new church, it feels very vulnerable for a lot of us here to be in a foreign country. We really don't know what tomorrow will hold. But we know three things that give us a lot of encouragement in this passage. That my faith and your faith, your children's faith, Your loved one's faith, your friend's faith is dependent on the mercy of God to reveal it. And so we can go to him and pray and plead. When we look at ourselves in the mirror and don't see what we want to see. When we struggle with one another when we're not how we want one another sometimes to be. When we're building the church and we feel like we're not doing it as good as we can be, we can rest in hope knowing that Jesus has promised to use fallen people like you and me to build his church. When the world looks at us as foolish, we can just rejoice saying, well, God's gonna get the last laugh on this one. He's going to shame the proud and the wise. So it's not such a bad shake for you and me. Right? That miracle that God will use us to do this eternal work of building a church. That's a profound hope. That even if we're held at gunpoint, Or our children are slaughtered before our eyes. As has been the case many times in church history. Or you're told we can't or die. Or we live to an old age and we see the church rise and fall for a time. Whether it's a lot of young people in the church or a lot of old people in the church, we'd like to see both. We know that Satan will not win. We know that he will not win. Whatever the enemy may be saying to you to discourage you in the dark hours of the night, he's just a bully and a boogeyman. He knows he's losing. So he just wants to make your life as miserable as he can on the way. But don't give him the satisfaction. Hope in God, who gives you faith. Hope in God, who is meaningfully, truly using you for the gospel and to build his church. And hope in God, who will preserve you, come what may, to the end. Oh, church, put your hope in the miraculous grace of our Father in heaven, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places through our Lord Jesus Christ, and who will preserve you and me to the end. Let's pray.