It’s an expression that finds itself in a wide array of
applications. It’s used to express the
deepest human emotion. You find it in
literature. You find it in song
lyrics. When you want to speak of
touching a person in the core of their being you say, “It was enough to make a
grown man cry.”
One of my first memories of seeing a man cry was in my
teenage years. The man had returned from
a six-month Naval exercise in the Mediterranean, and he was standing before the
church in a Sunday evening service. At
first, everyone thought he was there to thank the congregation for their
prayers or to give a testimony to the Lord’s sustaining power. But once he opened his mouth we all knew it
went far deeper than that. By the third
sentence he was speaking from the depth of his soul. He said something like this: “When I was away
I did something that I could never have imagined doing. At our last port of call I met a woman in a
club and before the night was over we had gone to bed together.” And as he laid out the details he
sobbed. But what struck me was not that
he was crying. What seized my attention
was that nearly every man in the place was weeping – even the minister. By the time he finished confessing his sin he
was surrounded by his wife, his closest friends, and the minister – who through
tears said to the church, “This is revival!”
Though I didn’t know the depths of those words then, with
many more years under my belt and a lot more opportunities for grace, I do
now. The word revival comes from the
Latin word vita or “life”. When that clergyman said, “This is revival,”
he meant that new life had come not only to the man who was confessing his sin,
but to those who heard it and loved him in the midst of it.
We all know stories just like this. In the recently released movie, “Saving Mr.
Banks”, the author of Mary Poppins,
P.L. Travers, is vivified by the persistence and the compassion of Walt
Disney. (Last week I received a tip from a couple at Hebron to go see it,
because it makes good fodder for the Forgiveness Series. I saw it and thoroughly agree. Keep the tips coming, I love them!) Stories that illustrate the power of
forgiveness to bring light out of darkness, freedom out of bondage,
abound. They are right before our eyes
if we’re able to see them.
Have you ever thought about why the act of forgiveness
creates new life? Have you ever analyzed
why it is that forgiving someone not only frees the forgiven but also the
forgiver? Those are the questions we
seek to answer this week as we turn to Matthew 16 and the first human
acknowledgement of Jesus’ identity.
For two weeks we have examined the foundation for
forgiveness – the human heart (Mark 7) and the heart of God (Genesis 15). In simplest terms – we need it and God
necessarily gives it. But what we will see
this week is that God’s ability to forgive is extended to any believer. Indeed, that is exactly what Jesus is talking
about on the heels of Peter’s confession.
He says it this way, “I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of
God. Whatever you bind on earth will be
bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
It’s the first Greek verb every student of Greek must learn
– luo – “to loose”. How appropriate, for the first name given by
the angel for the God-man is Jesus – Savior – “for He will save (loose) His
people from their sins.” In other words,
He comes to wield the keys of the kingdom.
He will forgive, and in doing so, set the captive free. And what’s amazing about Matthew 16 is that
He gives to us, His church, that same mission and same power.
In preparation for Sunday’s message and communion, you may
wish to consider the following:
- Why does Jesus wait until Matthew 16 to “pop” the question?
- Why does He do it in Caesarea Philippi?
- Why do “the people” believe Jesus to be John the Baptist, Elijah, or Jeremiah?
- What points of commonality run between those three men?
- What does Jesus mean when He renames Simon to Peter?
- In what way does Jesus found His church upon the rock?
- Do you think there’s a correlation between the gates of hell and the keys of the kingdom?
- What does Jesus mean when He declares that He will give the keys of the kingdom? And to whom does He give them?
- Can you find any other Scriptures that relate to what Jesus is doing here? (Think identity and mission.)
- Does this text give you any clearer insight into why He forgave you?
See you Sunday as we feast on His Word and gather around His
table.
