August 2, 2026
"Keys of the Kingdom" (Matt. 16:13-20; 18:15-20)
Series: Heidelberg Catechism Scripture: Matthew 16:13–20, Matthew 18:15–20
Hear now the word of the Lord from Matthew 16, verses 13 through 20. 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. So 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 Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 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.
I will 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. Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Now turn with Me to Matthew 18, verses 15 through 20.
Jesus says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. That every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.
And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.
This is the word of the Lord. Please be seated.
And as we are taking our seats. You are taking your seats. Let's join our hearts together tonight in prayer. Father, we pray that you would indeed bless us as we study your word tonight. That you would reorient us to the place that you have set for your church, which is the kingdom of God in this world.
And so, Father, we do not confess that the church is infallible. But we do confess that Jesus Christ the King is infallible. And he has entrusted his work to his church. Although we thank you that you have not left us alone in this task, but that your Son Jesus has poured out from heaven the Holy Spirit. And that by the Holy Spirit you guide your church, you Correct her errors, you press her on through persecutions and pain and difficulty, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against your church.
And so we pray that your spirit would give us hearts to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear all that is contained in the good news of the gospel of your son, Jesus Christ our Savior. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Well, this morning, as we looked at the story of the Holy Spirit getting Paul and Silas out of prison, we saw a story of the clash of kingdoms in this world. We saw, on the one hand, the kingdoms of this world, the kingdoms of this world that are opposed at every turn to the kingdom of God.
The proclamation of the king, who is Jesus, who is lord over all. And that was indeed the confession they called the jailer to make. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. We thought also about the fact that this is a battle that's been going on. Joseph faced the oppression of the kingdoms, not only as his brothers turned against him, but also the Pharaoh of Egypt.
We again saw the Philippian magistrates today versus God's kingdom. And in the passage there was a really interesting point, how the earthquake not only opened the cell doors, but also unfastened all of the bonds of those who are in the prison. And yet, in our passage today, we are reading about keys that bind not only on earth, but also in heaven, and keys that move in the opposite direction, loose, not only in earth, but also in heaven. These are keys that Jesus Christ entrusts to his church for the building up and the exercise of the authority of his kingdom. And what we are going to see in this passage is that Jesus has a particular place for his church that is carved out in these two passages that again, cuts against our very individualistic conceptions of life.
We look at everything according to the individual. In our culture, the individual is so informed, infallible, and authoritative that an individual can declare something that does not accord with reason or nature. Like for a man to declare that he's a woman, or vice versa. Or for someone to declare that they can transgress the laws of God in a number of ways. And because they feel it in their hearts.
Our culture says that's something that we should cheer and celebrate and encourage people on in their way. However, the authority of King Jesus is the authority of a king, a king who is reigning from heaven, but a king who, from a distance, as he sends his spirit into this world, asks his church to administer the reign or the rule of his reign. In this world. Again, I've talked about this a little bit in the past, but the word minister, we think about that exclusively in a religious sense. But that's because we're Americans.
If we were in countries that had a king like England, they have ministers, the foreign minister, the domestic minister, they had the prime minister. And the jobs of those ministers are to establish the rule of the king's reign. The king does not get involved in politics directly. He establishes ministers to establish the rule of his reign. And we are doing exactly that in the kingdom of Jesus in his church.
Our theme tonight then is this, that Jesus administers his kingdom through the ministry of his church. Now, that has a special role for the elders of the church. But as we are going to see, that is something that involves the entire church. And so we're going to look at the two keys that we talked about and confess in the Heidelberg Catechism. First is called the key of doctrine.
And that's what Jesus talks about in Matthew 16. And then the key of discipline, which Jesus talks about in Matthew 18, verses 15 through 20. The key of doctrine and the key of discipline. Now I want to note that in these two passages there are two things that hold these things together beyond just the repeated language of binding and loosing. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.
Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. One is the fact that it is here and here alone in the entire Gospels, in all of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, where we find in each passage and only in these passages the word ekklesia or the word for church. All of the Gospels transpire. You read all of the Gospels and you find the word church in exactly and only two places. And it's here in Matthew 16.
And also then in Matthew 18, we are reading about Jesus discussion of the kingdom of heaven and how this kingdom is going to be exercised. But it's in connection with the church. And it's only here that Jesus directly speaks about the church that he is building. But then second of all, and I guess I didn't mean in addition to this, this is the other thing that binds these two things together is that Jesus here in both places talks about the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Now you only use the word keys in Matthew 16, verse 19, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
But then he goes on to explain what those keys do. And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth should be loosed in heaven. And that language Jesus uses once Again, to describe the key of discipline in Matthew 18. Whatever you bind on earth should be bound in heaven.
Whatever you loose on earth will be loose in heaven. And Matthew 18, verse 18. So we are seeing here that Jesus is talking about the exercise of authority in his church, authority that binds together the functioning of heaven and earth. But we are going to see that both of these keys operate in different ways. The first key that we are looking at in Matthew 16 is what theologians call the key of doctrine.
1. The Key of Doctrine (Matthew 16:13-20)
The key of doctrine. This is what the church confesses, what the church preaches, what the Church teaches. And it's very interesting that in verse 13, what Jesus asks of his disciples is not a question. It is not simply, who do you think? Or who do the people think I am?
Or who do they suppose I am? It is very specifically, who do the people say that the Son of Man is? Who do they say? And what commentators note is there's a really interesting dynamic in this passage, that it's all about what people say about Jesus. What do they say about Jesus?
He's going to ask what others say about him. He's going to ask his disciples what they say about him. And then Jesus himself is going to say something that we need to listen to. This is important because relationships consist more than we realize in what we say to each other, in what we acknowledge out loud. In your families and your marriages, it's not a formality to say I love you to your spouse or to your children.
That's a really important thing to say, that it's not enough just to feel it and never express it. We need to say these things to our families. What we declare, what we bind ourselves to in promises and vows, the marriage vows. There's a reason that marriage can't be just sort of a. A rubber stamp on a form somewhere.
But we actually have the couple come forward and say things to one another and make promises to one another. Because again, our words shape the relationships. Especially when Jesus had said in Matthew 12, 33, 37, that our words are the fruit growing up from our hearts. Our words give expression to our. Our innermost thoughts.
And so what we say about who other people are, or especially what we say about Jesus and who he is, is extremely important. Now look at what the others say. Verse 14. And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Now, in this, they all have different ideas, but all of these are positive ideas, even that they think that Jesus is some kind of a prophet.
And indeed, really, everyone at that Time had positive views of Jesus, except, of course, the religious leaders who recognized that he was too much and that they could not contain him or control him, and he was a threat to their power and so hated him on that basis, which is, in a sense, sort of a compliment. But Calvin notes in his commentary that all of these positive ideas, as far as they rise, he's one of these prophets. They fall very far short of the reality of who Jesus actually is. And therefore all of these people need some kind of revelation from heaven to discern exactly who Jesus really is. And so in verse 15, Jesus said to them, but who do you say that I am?
What's your confession about me? And. And here we see Simon Peter in his shining moment in the Gospels. Of all of the times when Simon steps forward boldly to put his foot straight into his mouth, this is the time when he speaks with clarity and precision and accuracy. A confession that the Church still depends upon where he says.
We read that Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. This is a profound statement. We're still wrestling with the implications of what Peter confesses about Jesus here. And so let's break it down both parts of this. First, he says, you are the Christ, the word for Christ in our New Testaments, it reflects the Greek word Christos.
So it's very close. We're seeing almost the same word just brought from Greek into English. But that's a Greek translation of the Old Testament word messiah or mashiach. And both of those words in Hebrew and Greek mean anointed one. Now, there were three anointed offices, three kinds of people that were regularly called messiahs.
Little m. Messiahs. In the Old Testament, you had prophets who were anointed. We read about Elisha being anointed to be Elijah's successor. Priests were anointed. You read Leviticus.
How were priests anointed to their office? Were part of it and elaborate procedure with sacrifices and blood. But part of it was the anointing with oil. And then also kings. We read about oil poured on the head of Saul.
And then the Holy Spirit rushed upon him for a time until it departed him because of his sin. And then we read the oil poured on the head of David to anoint him as king. And again the Holy Spirit rushed upon him from that day forward. And when he did sin with Bathsheba, we read in Psalm 51, him pleading, Take not your spirit from me. Because that anointing with oil was always meant to point to the work and the office of the Holy Spirit, to empower these little M Messiahs to do this work of standing as mediators between God and his people.
As Jesus has come into the world, he is the final prophet. He is the final priest. He is the final king. He is not one more prophet in the line of John the Baptist and Elijah and Jeremiah and all the rest. He is the final prophet in these last days.
God has spoken to us by his Son, the author of Hebrews says, and he is the king and he's the final priest to lay down the final sacrifice of nothing less than his own life. But what's important is that all of these anointed ones, all of these messiahs, including the capital M, Messiah, Jesus, all of these were human beings indeed. You cannot be a mediator between God and his people unless you are a human being who can stand between God for the sake of other human beings whom you personally represent. So what Peter is confessing, first of all, is that Jesus is stepping into the role of every great anointed Messiah of the Old Testament. And that this is not just one more Christ, not just a Christ.
This is the Christ, the long awaited Messiah.
But then he goes to the second part of this and says, you are the son of the living God. He is not less than human, but he is far more than human. He is the blessed Son of Almighty God, God in human form. God who is no less God, but yet has added to himself, taken to himself a human nature. And Peter perceives this, understands this, confesses this, And Jesus answered him.
Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah. Simon, son of Jonah. And then he says, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. Again, all the others perceive something about Jesus, something great about Jesus. A good teacher, a great prophet.
Prophet, Something along those lines. But it's revelation that bridges the gap. It's revelation that teaches and trains Peter in what to say about who the Son of man is. Flesh and blood didn't reveal this. This wasn't Peter teasing out this in his own mind.
This was God revealing this to Peter. And So in verse 18, we read what Jesus says. He says, and I tell you, you are Peter Petros. And on this rock, Petra, I will build my church. There's the first instance in the entire Gospels in the New Testament of that word for church.
I will build my church. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Now, this verse 18, if you understand the Roman Catholic claims that Peter was established here as something above the other apostles, understand that is not what the ancient church taught about this passage. That is not what the Scriptures teach here. However, to go into that question would run far longer than I probably will run anyway.
Forgive me in advance, I do want to say that I've made available for you some sermon notes from a time that I preached at this in my former church. And they're out there and out there. And I deal with that question in depth, including quoting ancient church fathers that insisted that this cannot be Peter above the other apostles. This is absolutely Peter on behalf of representing the other apostles, Peter with the other apostles, not Peter exclusive as the Pope of the Church. And that was very well understood.
In fact, there was one of the so called popes, at least the Bishop or the pastor of Rome, Gregory the Great, who says that if any church were to ever set itself up as the great sea over all the other churches, that's the precursor of the Antichrist. That's a so called Pope saying that about the sea at Rome. He says this is not the greatest church in all the world. Anyway, I don't have time to go into that right now. It's very important to understand.
You can read more about those issues in my sermon notes. So I'm going to press forward into what we're looking at tonight because now in verse 19 we get to this question of the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus says, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Now this binding and loosing and again the word church are only here in Matthew, in Matthew 16 and then again in Matthew 18.
And this idea of binding and loosing is reflecting what a key does. A key locks and a key unlocks. It binds and it looses. It opens and it closes. And we are seeing in each of these passages that the keys of the kingdom.
What binds and what looses are different aspects of the ministries that are properly committed to the Church. This one is the key of doctrine. That is, this is the office of preaching and teaching within the Church. And the office of preaching and teaching necessarily involves words. It involves what the preachers and teachers appointed within the Church say, and particularly what they say about who Jesus is.
This is why every week from this pulpit, I, or whoever is called to preach up here, proclaims Jesus Christ and him crucified. Whatever the sermon is about, whatever passage we're preaching from, it is always spoiler alert. But you still have to come back. All of these sermons are about Jesus being the Christ and And the Son of the living God. And the whole Bible is telling that story, but filling out the contours of the rule of his reign in this world.
And what Jesus is saying here is that this confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, this is the message that his church is commissioned to proclaim. And particularly officers of this church protect, particularly the elders, but very particularly those appointed to the office of teaching elder or pastor or Minister.
Heidelberg Catechism 84 says there's two aspects of the exercise of this key. One is opening. First, the kingdom of heaven is opened by proclaiming and publicly declaring to all believers, each and every one, that as often as they accept the Gospel promise in true faith, God, because of Christ's merit, truly forgives all their sins. So this is the opening of the kings of the kingdom. This is why we preach Christ and plead with sinners to turn to Christ in faith.
Because in preaching this is a key that unbinds the chains. Just like that earthquake we read about this morning that left all of the prisoners unshackled as it fell to the ground. The Holy Spirit, week by week, Lord's Day by Lord's Day in the church. And through the week, as preachers go through the city squares and preach to the people, calling them to repentance and faith, the same earthquake of the Spirit of God is loosing the shackles on the souls of lost sinners. And when the shackles fall off, they come to believe in Jesus just like that Philippian jailer did.
He was the one who had put them in chains, but he had been, up to that point, the one who was in true chains that were released by the same Holy Spirit that shook the foundations of the jail.
But the keys of the kingdom also closed the doors of the kingdom, not arbitrarily. I like you, but I don't like you. I'm pointing to no one in particular, but the idea of closing has to do with the kingdom of heaven is closed, however, by proclaiming and publicly declaring to believers, excuse me, to unbelievers and hypocrites, that as long as they do not repent, the wrath of God and eternal condemnation rest on them. Again, this is the other side of it. If you do not believe, the wrath of God remains on you.
If you do not believe, Hell awaits you for all eternity. And the preaching of the Gospel is always to to open the door of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and to close it to those who turn away from living faith in the living Messiah. So what kind of Power, what kind of authority is this? When Jesus says that what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. This isn't the tail wagging the dog.
The church is not sort of given power and Jesus is. I imagine I remember this with my parents, especially one of my parents, and I love her very much without naming her name, but one of my parents in particular had a very hard time driving next to me when I was driving. And you know, that's when they have to sort of delegate the authority, but they're, you know, just freaking out. I am sure that I will be this parent with my children. So children, you may want to go with your mom when you're driving, learning to drive, but this isn't the kind of authority that Jesus gives over to the church, gives the keys to the car to the kingdom and says, go ahead and drive.
And he's just, oh, what are they going to do? They're going to scratch something, they're going to run over somebody. The keys of the kingdom do not bind Jesus. Rather what Jesus has given us in his word binds the church as we exercise the keys to the kingdom. This is why I do not come on Sundays and preach whatever is in my heart to in my thoughts for the week.
It's grounded to the text of Scripture. It preaches and proclaims Christ from the scripture because this is the constitution, this is the charter. This is our only source of truth, the Word of God. And Jesus has given us this. And we are called then to preach him from it, as we call sinners to faith that they might be saved.
And so we read In Heidelberger Catechism 84, God's judgment both in this life and in the life to come is based on this Gospel testimony. Now in 1 Timothy 3:15, Paul writes that the church of the living God is a pillar and buttress of the truth. It is not the source of truth as though the church were infallible, but it is a divine institution that upholds, holds the truth. Test all the teaching of this church against scripture. We're actually coming up very soon on the classic passage of that when Paul is ministering in Berea, and the Jews in Berea were more noble minded than those of Thessalonica, for they searched the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.
Search everything I say according to what the Scriptures teach. Don't take my word for it. Go back to the source. If you think I've missed something, please come talk to me. Let's go back to the Scriptures together and look at what Jesus is teaching.
Because I am not the authority Christ is through his Word. But I am called to exercise the key of doctrine by preaching Christ crucified for you to hear and repent and believe. But the key of doctrine is not alone. You think if we just had a teaching church where we all just sort of shuffled in and heard a sermon and then shuffled out, is that where the end of it? You think about how much hypocrisy would grow and fester in the church.
I'm called to preach to you and preach Christ to you. But then I and the other elders, and this is really where the ruling elders come into play. We are called to oversee the people, and we are called to seek the fruit of the preached word from the people. This is why your elders try to check in with you and to see how you were doing. This is why we come alongside you if we see that you are not showing up.
2. The Key of Discipline (Matthew 18:15-20)
This is why we come alongside you when we see sin emerging in your life. And this brings us to Matthew 18 as we see the other key, the other instrument that binds and loosens. And that's the key of discipline. Now, this brings us to Matthew 18, verses 15 through 20. But it's actually important to look up at the previous parable that Jesus preached that leads into this passage where Jesus is preaching about the 99 that a shepherd would leave to go seek the one sheep that had wandered astray and to get that sheep and to bring that sheep back into the fold.
Well, if you want to know what this looks like, not just with a parable about shepherds and animals, but what it looks like in the church. This is what we see in Matthew 18, verses 15 through 20, where the sheep is your brother or sister. And we read in verse 15, if your brother sins against you, you go. It's a singular imperative. You and you alone go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
And if he listens to you, you have gained your brother. Now, here's where I want to note. I talked about the office of particularly the teaching elder to preach Christ week to week from the pulpit. I've talked a little bit about the role of the elders, especially in exercising this key of discipline and some of the later stages in this. But I want you to see that this starts actually with you, that every member of the church is commissioned by Jesus himself to play this role in starting the exercise of the key of discipline in the church.
The elders don't see everything that Goes on. And when you see your brother sinning, especially when your brother is sinning against you, you don't come gossip to your neighbor and say, do you know what this person did to me? You don't even do sort of the pious gossip move where you say, we need to pray for so and so because he's really not living the way that he should. That's gossip by another name. Jesus is forbidding gossip here.
There's a. Actually a German phrase that I loved. I had to learn some German. And there's a German phrase that translates, translated means a matter that is under four eyes, like underneath my eyes and your eyes. Four eyes.
I love that. Not glasses, but two eyes and two eyes of you and him alone. I love that idea. That's what Jesus is talking about here at this stage. Don't even bring this to me.
I do want to give the qualification. I'm not talking about danger or abuse. Do get help those situations. But that's not what is being talked about here. This is a passage where your brother sins against you.
And rather than going and talking to a whole bunch of people, we're called to go straight to the brother who has offended us and to try to win that brother back. Remember everything Jesus said about removing the log in your own eye before going to talk to your brother about the speck that may be in his. But if he listens to you, and this is the heart behind it, not to berate your brother and tell him what a bad person he is, but to gain him back, to win him back, to use the keys of discipline, to bring a wandering sheep back into the fold. And this is something that you are called to do just as much as I am.
The second step is in verse 16. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you. That every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. Sometimes your brother may not understand what you tell him alone. Sometimes you may be the only one who has seen this behavior.
And it's important then to bring other people along so that every charge is not just one person, but versus one person. He said, she said, kind of a situation it is. Rather, every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. Now, it's language like this, but it's scattered through the entire Bible, including the New Testament. That tells us that much of the work of the church, especially the courts of the church, like the session, is considered a court of the church.
Why? Because a lot of what we deal with is discipline cases. Discipline Cases that if they get this far, they will require actual trials where evidence is presented and witnesses are brought forth to establish charges against people. And this is Jesus again giving us a constitution for how his church ought to operate. This isn't something Presbyterians made up.
This is what Jesus himself is commissioning us to do. The second step of going and. And again, the goal is to win back your brother. That's why you're bringing these witnesses. Not to build a case against him like a prosecutor, but to win back your brother.
But step three, verse 17, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. Now, I want to be very clear. When we do our prayer time here, telling it to the church would not be you raising your hand and sharing what a bad, bad person, something someone else is in the church. That's not what it means to tell it to the church. Because the word church is not actually first and foremost a New Testament word.
There's a Greek translation of the Old Testament, and the word church shows up all over the Old Testament to refer to the nation of Israel and the assembly of Israel. And often it refers to the assembly of Israel and then it's talked about as the elders of Israel. So in Deuteronomy 31, verse 28, Moses says, Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers, that I may speak these words in their ears and call heaven and earth to witness against them. But then two verses later, in Deuteronomy 31, verse 30, we read then Moses spoke the words of this song in the ears of all the church, all the assembly, all the ekklesia, same word here of Israel. Israel was the church of the Old Testament, and her officers were in some sense considered.
The word church could be go by the word church or assembly, because the word in the Old and the New Testament can have different meanings. Sometimes it's just a, just a statement for a general civic assembly of people out in the marketplace. Sometimes it's the whole congregation like this. Sometimes it's the elders of the church who are gathered together in church discipline kinds of settings. But when you tell it to the church and what Jesus is saying here, that means you actually need to bring charges.
You need to bring charges against someone who will refuse to listen. And if that individual still refuses to listen, even to the church, verse 17, let him be to you. As a Gentile and a tax collector, part of what the elders do is to judge on the basis of the evidence if there has been a violation of what Christ has commanded in Scripture. And if so, and if that person is unwilling to repent, the ultimate censure is a censure of excommunication, where that person is turned out from membership in the Church and considered as no more a part of the Church than. And those Gentiles.
Gentiles are those tax collectors which were clearly seen as outside the pale of the Church. But this is not something we do alone. In verses 19 and 20, Jesus says that where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. The Spirit of Jesus is with his Church. As they do this difficult work of church discipline.
Our Heidelberg Catechism in question 85 talks about how the key of discipline then closes the kingdom to the unrepentant. Those who, though called Christians, profess unchristian teachings or live unchristian lives, and who, after repeated personal and loving admonitions, refuse to abandon their errors and evil ways, and who, after being reported to the Church, that is, to those ordained by the Church for that purpose, fail to respond also to the Church's admonitions. Such person the Church excludes from the Christian community by withholding the sacraments from them. And God also excludes them from the kingdom of Christ. Again, it's not the tail wagging the dog.
It's not that what we do. Then God says, well, I. I guess I have to do it. It's not like handing the keys over to a teenager while you're sitting there and just hoping they don't wreck it too badly. What Jesus has declared is these are the basis and the terms for membership in his kingdom. And if you do not repent and believe in Jesus, whether for the first time or whether it turns out through the course of your life that you never really believed it in the first place, and that's made manifest by unrepentant sin.
Jesus himself is shutting you out from the kingdom until you repent. But also this key of discipline opens the kingdom again. Heidelberg Catechism 85. Such persons, when promising and demonstrating genuine reform, are received again as members of Christ of His Church. So we see here a place for the Church.
And I want to just give this just very brief application. Again, we live in a very individualistic culture, one that does not honor authority. Many see the church as a voluntary association and a free society, where the church is something that's valuable so long as I deem it necessary. But so as soon as I deem it necessary, no longer I'm free and can walk away and can move along. Indeed, a lot of my pastoral ministries I Think about a lot of the most difficult conversations I've had wrestling with people.
A lot of times these are people who are, who do value their relationship with Jesus. And I think that's true most of the time. But they don't exactly understand how they're supposed to relate to the Church. And I don't begrudge them that. I understand this is just so counter cultural.
But Jesus actually establishes the rule of his reign in His Church. He appoints ministers in His Church to establish the rule of the King from heaven, not by our own authority, but by the authority of the Holy Spirit who speaks through Scripture. We're not allowed to create new doctrines. Jesus Christ is the only lawgiver in Zion. We are not allowed to willy nilly excommunicate whoever we want based off of personal grudges.
Every charge must be proven according to the Word of God. But when the Church is declaring the Word of God and ministering the Word of God, then the Church exercises the keys of the Kingdom of God himself, of Jesus Christ Himself. To be sure, the Church can err. It has erred. It will continue to err.
But that does not change the authority of the Church. Misused or abused authority must be corrected. But that does not negate the authority or make it optional that Christ is committed to His Church because rightly used authority does not undermine Jesus authority, but it establishes Jesus authority. And so I'd ask you to consider your relationship in your heart toward the Church and toward the officers of the Church. And I'd especially ask you to pray for those who are appointed to the task of exercising this authority.
I've preached a long sermon now, and I am very mindful of this. And always of James 3, verse 1. Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.
And yet I recognize that I am called by Christ as an instrument that Christ will use, God willing, in his own ways and purposes and timing as he builds his kingdom. I am utterly unimportant in this. But the task of proclaiming Christ is at the heart of how Jesus builds His Church. Let us then all live together as we ought to behave in the household of God, in the Church which is a pillar and buttress of the truth. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we pray that you would give us joy in Jesus, our King, to submit to his authority as he has established it in His Word, and as he has commissioned His Church to declare and to minister particularly about Jesus Christ and Him crucified, and particularly in the shepherding of sinners toward increasingly greater conformity to the image of Christ. And so in this life together that we have in the church, we pray that you would give us joy in it. It's sometimes hard. We pray that you would give us encouragement in it. We face seasons of discouragement.
We pray that you would build us up together to the full stature of Christ in his body. The church reaching up to heaven, where our head is seated at your right hand. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.
other sermons in this series
Aug 9
2026
"Walking in the Spirit"
Preacher: Luis Muñoz Scripture: Galatians 5:16–26 Series: Heidelberg Catechism
Jul 26
2026
"Lord's Supper: The Tests"
Preacher: Wybren Oord Scripture: Hebrews 9:24–28 Series: Heidelberg Catechism
Jul 12
2026
"Delivered to Us" (I Cor 11:23-26)
Preacher: Rev. Jacob Gerber Scripture: 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 Series: Heidelberg Catechism