Well, let's pray. Father, we thank you for the testimonies that we've just heard from Jansen and Grace. And what a testimony, Father, to your grace in their lives, your undeserved kindness to them, your free kindness to choose those two. We thank you for these kinds of young saints who have come to you. We thank you for the means that you used in their homes to bring them to this place. Thank you, Father, for your Holy Spirit's work in their life. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, this morning we have a few minutes still. I'd like to get further in our Orthodox Baptist Catechism. We are in the questions 88 to 90, and this is called the keys of the kingdom. What are the keys of the kingdom? I did bring them out as kind of a object reminder But I think Jansen and Grace really prepared us for this because they talked about grace that's been extended to them in their lives. And what we're talking about in this part of the catechism is how God is extending grace to the world, extending grace to all of his churches, how he's been doing that ever since Christ rose from the dead. So just to begin this part, I'd like to go to John chapter 20 where we first get, we can get a glimpse of the keys of the kingdom. So John chapter 20, I'll put it up here, part of it. So this is when Jesus has risen from the dead. And it was the first. First day of the week in the evening, a lot of amazing things happen in the evening in salvation history. That's when Adam's sin was revealed in the garden. That was when Jesus' body came down from the cross and Joseph of Arimathea asked for it so that he could be buried in a rich man's tomb. So this is evening on the first day of the week, the day of Jesus' resurrection, and he came to appear before his disciples in a locked room. They were afraid of the Jews still. So he appeared to them, he showed them proof that he was alive. He showed them his hands and his feet. He said, peace be among you. And then he gave them a very amazing brief kind of great commission. This is what he said to them. Peace be with you. As the father has sent me, even so I am sending you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. So Jesus, as soon as he's raised from the dead, he immediately wants to go to his disciples and tell them how he's gonna extend his grace throughout the world. He said, as the Father has sent me, I'm sending you. So the disciples are becoming, disciples, which means learners, or those who are learning, they're becoming those who are sent. He's gonna send them out into the world to preach his gospel. He then says to them, receive, for that power that they needed to receive is from the Holy Spirit. He breathed on them. Of course, in biblical languages, to breathe is the same word as spirit. So he imparted the Holy Spirit to them, and the Holy Spirit would be poured out much more than this on them, even in 50 days on the day of Pentecost, when he poured out his spirit on the church. So he's empowering them. And then he also delegates to them in this amazing way. He says, receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. So we're gonna look at that part in this lesson today, which is about the keys of the kingdom. And you see the amazing delegation of the Lord to his apostles and by extension to his church. that he gives them. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld. I think Jansen and Grace mentioned this a couple of times, that God uses means, uses instruments, and that means people, even really flawed and broken people. He uses all those instruments. He used the disciples to preach forgiveness and to basically bring that forgiveness. Now, I don't, of course, we don't wanna say that forgiveness starts with the disciples. Of course, it always starts from God, but he wants to use these 11 men at this point to bring the gospel to the world. So he spoke like this before in his ministry. This is in Matthew chapter 16. So this is Peter's great confession of who Jesus was. You may remember this story, how Jesus took his disciples up far north to the town of Caesarea Philippi. And when they were there, he came to them and at one point he asked them, who do people say that I am? And you know, they, They gave him some of the typical answers. They say you're the prophet, they say you're Elijah, things like that. Then he said, who do you say that I am? And at this point, Simon Peter said, you are the Christ, the son of God, the son of the living God. So that confession is the foundation of Christ's church. So there's a little bit of wordplay here because he says, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven. This was revealed to Peter by God. Here's the wordplay. He says, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. Of course, Peter is the kind of a word for a rock. But he's comparing this rock on which Jesus will build his church to this great confession. So Peter wasn't, He didn't think this up, he didn't come to this by deduction, it was revealed to God, by God, and he said, Peter, on this rock, I will build my church. So that's what Jesus had planned from the very beginning in his ministry, that he's gonna send these men to build his church. Peter standing in for the apostles, they became the foundation of the church. The church is built on the foundations of the prophets and apostles according to Ephesians chapter two. I will build my church. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. So Jesus' church is powerful. It will not be overcome. And honestly, we can still see that in the world today. Christ's church is still advancing. It will never fail. Here's Jesus' message to Peter here. He says, I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, this is the delegation of authority to Peter, and by extension, to all the apostles, and then to the church in the time of the of the last days that we're in right now. Okay, keys, what do they signify to you? This was my little object lesson. Opening things and closing things, very good. Jesus said, yeah. Jesus, of course, said, I hold the keys of death and Hades. That was in the book of Revelation. So Jesus can close any door, he can open any door. It says in the book of Acts that the Lord opened the heart of Lydia so that, just like he's done for many of us here in Jansen and Grace, the Lord opened their heart to receive his word. Keys also show authority. They show a sense of, not ownership, but really stewardship or management. If you have the keys, well, I don't know if you, when you were a young person, did your dad or your mom ever give you keys to the car? Did that mean you owned the car? Maybe not. At least that was in my case. But it gives you really something that you can do. It gives you a sense of responsibility. I'm giving you the keys of the car. Please bring it back. So the keys of the kingdom are a little bit like this. So if you give your neighbor your key and they come into your house and water your plants when you're not at home, that's really okay, right? So God is giving the church the keys of the kingdom. That is authority and responsibility to spread that kingdom throughout the world. Okay, I got a few historical notes here. throughout the Bible, this was not actually a new expression for the disciples. In the book of Isaiah, there's another discussion. This was a time when Jerusalem was in a lot of moral degradation. This is where the phrase, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die comes from. It's mentioned in this part of Isaiah. The people were degraded. They were being besieged by enemies. There was an unjust steward or an unfaithful steward there. God told Isaiah that he's gonna get rid of that guy, bring in a new guy. Eliakim actually was his name. And at this point in Isaiah, it says, I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. So that, again, that's leadership, that's stewardship, that's management of what God wants to do in Isaiah, or in Israel, in Jerusalem, in the time of Isaiah. It says, he shall open and none shall shut. He shall shut and none shall open. Now, at the time of Jesus, The nation of Israel had continued throughout the centuries and was again in a time of great degradation. And you know that in the ministry of Jesus, the issue with the Jewish religious leaders and the Pharisees was always the same, right? What was that? Authority. He said, I have that you might know that the son of man has authority to forgive sins. It says that he taught with authority. not like the scribes. So Jesus had the authority. He went into these verbal battles with the Pharisees about authority. They said, by which authority do you do these things? How can you say this? He healed on the Sabbath. That about drove them crazy. They wanted to kill him after that, kill him on the Sabbath of all things. He cleansed his own temple. And then, of course, they said, how can you be doing these things? So Jesus had authority. He finally, in his last week, he told them the parable of the tenants. And I don't know if you remember this parable, but basically, the net of it was that he said, this vineyard, or that is, this nation, of the people of God is being taken away from you, you Pharisees and Sadducees and temple leaders, and it's gonna be given to others. Well, who are those others? It's a ragtag, basically, a small group of 12 men, his disciples, that Jesus would give the kingdom and its leadership to. During Jesus' ministry, he talked to these Jewish religious leaders, he said, woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves and you hindered those who were entering. So, Christ's main focus in this statement is just to show the ineffectiveness and the unfaithfulness of the leadership of Israel. He was the king. He was the Messiah, the king of Israel, and all Israelites, all the people of God need to follow him. That was his point. So in the book of Acts, of course, Peter went to wield that key of the kingdom. Peter preached to the Jews in Jerusalem. He opened the doors to all those people who basically killed Jesus or approved of his death. He said, you've killed this one, and God has named him both Lord and Christ. God has appointed him. That doesn't maybe sound like the gospel, just to be accused of murder and proven of murder. But then, of course, he had the gospel for them, too. They were cut to their heart. They said, what must we do to be saved? Or they were cut to their heart, and he said, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, and God will give you the gift of the Holy Spirit. So God opened up the grace of his salvation through the apostles. Apostle Paul, later on after his first missionary journey in Acts 14, he went back and reported to the church in Antioch, and he and Barnabas declared all that God had done with them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. So going back to the keys of the kingdom, yes, the keys are there to close and to open. And that's what Christ is doing through his church. Okay, question 88. What are the keys of the kingdom? So I hope I've shown you so far some of the background on this. This has two parts to it, too, actually. There are two parts, and the first one is that the preaching of the gospel is the keys of the kingdom. That's how God opens the kingdom. to people. The grace of God has appeared to all men, teaching us to renounce ungodliness and wickedness, as it says in the book of Titus. The preaching is central for opening the kingdom and also ecclesiastical discipline, which I don't think we're gonna be able to get to today. That's church discipline. And that is the area, or in both of these ways, heaven is open to the believers and is shut to the unbelievers. So that is the keys of the kingdom. Let's look at the first part here where it talks about the preaching of the gospel. This is question 89. How is the kingdom of heaven opened and shut by the preaching of the gospel? Answer. There's two ways. The kingdom of heaven is opened when, by the commandment of Christ, it is publicly declared to everyone who believes that all their sins are pardoned by God due to the merit of Christ, as they embrace by a lively faith the promise of the gospel. But to the contrary, the kingdom of heaven is shut when it is announced to all infidels and hypocrites, infidels meaning people who do not have faith, hypocrites meaning actors or fakers, that as long as the wrath of God abides upon them, they perish in their wickedness according to which testimony of the gospel God will judge them in this life and also in the life to come. So it's very clear that the gospel has always produced a dividing line between people. Jesus said he did not come to bring peace, but a sword. to divide people from each other. That's the nature of the gospel. In the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. So again, two kinds of people, those who are being saved and those who are perishing, they have a very different experience of the preaching of the gospel and the word of the cross. Later on in 1 Corinthians, Paul writes similarly, we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. So you see, back in those times, the Jews would divide up the world into two kinds of people. You got the Jews and you have the Gentiles, two kinds of people. Paul says, no. And he says, to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, all can be called by God. Christ is the power of God. So the world is not separated in that way. It's separated between those who are being saved and those who are perishing. So this preaching here is a function of the church, of church elders, of church members. And it's very important that church elders preach the gospel. It's not just preaching the scriptures, that's very important, but it's preaching the good news of Jesus Christ, what he came, what he accomplished on our behalf. I believe that we're gonna have a... fantastic gospel sermon coming up. I saw the title of that, Pastor Nick printed for us. So please, if you haven't heard the gospel, please stay for the next hour. We will hear a message on the gospel of Jesus Christ, which I will not be able to cover in my few minutes here. But definitely the gospel is very simple and we can't make it over complicated. It's a very simple message and it's given to all. There's room for everyone who will repent. Christ said to go out to the highways and byways, compel them to come in. The gospel is for anyone who believes. So if you haven't made it to that point of trusting the gospel, I just urge you to please stay for the message that's coming up and hear the gospel and receive it. It will be your salvation. Forgiveness of sins is offered to anyone who trusts in the gospel. I know I've heard that some church members today are going to go to a witch's market of all things. I remember farmer's markets. Now there's going to be a witch's market in Kirkland. wielding these keys. I hope when they look at their keys, they look at that and consider how the kingdom of heaven is opened when it is publicly declared that anyone who believes that their sins are pardoned due to the merit of Christ, Christ only earned this. Embracing it with a lively faith, a living faith, the promise of the gospel. It's a reception of the gospel that brings men salvation. On the other hand, and this might happen at the witch's market as well, there may be people who just say, it's just not for me, or I'm just not interested today. At that point, this may even come up, that the wrath of God will abide upon them. And the result of that is perishing in wickedness. So I think I will close at this point. Next time we're going to get into the church discipline, which is the other part of the keys of the kingdom. The church and the church leaders welcome people into the church, but upon sad occasions when people are turning away, it's also important to keep the church clean and to ask people who are in sin to repent and put them out of the church in that sad situation. Again, these kings in both senses are the grace of God. This is where we are in the catechism right now. We're still in this section on grace. It's how God extends his grace, how God keeps his church pure, and how he encourages us who are his disciples that we can be assured of his salvation as we worship him in a sound church and according to right doctrines. Are there any questions? I have a minute or two about the keys of the kingdom. All right, well, yes, Chris. Yeah, that'll be more in the church discipline section. Yes, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, the binding and loosing is very important. You probably know that there are teachers in the Christian world today who make much of binding and loosing. And they say that we should bind the devil or bind demons or things like that. That's not at all what this is talking about. This is about the function of the church in terms of its membership and yeah, Restricting people from the church if they need to be restricted, but definitely loosing, forgiving them when they come back in. Yeah, so we're not talking about binding and loosing as it's so commonly used today. Good point. All right, let's go to prayer together as we prepare for our service. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you how you are extending grace to people in this world 2,000 years after Christ has spoken these words. We praise you for how you've empowered us to do that. As church leaders, we pray that you would make church leaders more faithful, elders, pastors in your church. We pray for church members, that they can go out in the power of your spirit and spread the gospel. Father, we thank you how your Holy Spirit's going before us to empower us. Father, we thank you for the grace that we've received in Jesus Christ, Wretched sinners all, we have been forgiven as we trust in him who has bought us with his own blood. Father, we worship you. We praise you, Lord Jesus Christ. In the Holy Spirit, amen.