Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text on which this morning's message is based comes from our Gospel lesson (Matthew 16: 13-20) read earlier.

When you think of great building projects, what typically comes to mind? We might think of great buildings that were built centuries ago that still stand today. The Great Wall of China as we know it today was built in the 15th and 16th centuries and is over 4,000 miles long. The main construction of the Taj Mahal took 20,000 workers 11 years to build and the whole project spanned 22 years. Sometimes these projects took several decades to complete. Herod's temple, the one of Jesus' day destroyed in 70 A. D., took over 80 years to build. Construction on St. Peter's Basilica in Rome began in 1506 and was not completed until 109 years later in 1615. But as spectacular as any of these are in the eyes of man, there is one building project that far eclipses all of them. Its design is so spectacular that it couldn't be drawn by even the best architects. It has been under construction not for decades or centuries, but for millennia, and it still is not finished. Its size is not mere acres or square miles, but encompasses all parts of the earth. What is more amazing is that this building has no steel, bricks, concrete, or windows. Its construction is with very unique, precious stones called "living stones" (1 Peter 2: 5). Unlike all of these other projects, this building will not fade with time. In fact, it will endure forever. What is this greatest of buildings? It is the church, God's master project. (modified from Chris Bayack: Christ Will Build His Church)

In today's text we are at the beginning of that construction, the laying of the foundation, if you will. God had been preparing for the construction for centuries, by freeing his promised people from the hands of the Egyptians and bringing them into His promised land. He had given them judges and prophets and kings. But that had all been preparatory. Here today we hear one of the first confessions of who Jesus truly is, made by those who were following Him, who believed He was someone very special. That profession of faith, that confession of trust is the foundation of Christ's church, his assembly of true believers all over the world.

Who is this Jesus? "You can speak of Jesus as prophet, holy man, teacher, or spiritual leader, and few will object. But speak of Him as Son of God, divine, of the same nature as the Father, and people will line up to express their disapproval. A billion Muslims will say: "Prophet, yes. God, no!" Millions of Jews scattered around the world will say: "Teacher, yes. Messiah, no!" Billions of Liberal Protestants and Hindus and Buddhists and secularists of various stripes will say: "Exemplary man, yes. Divine, no!" Who do you say Jesus is?" (modified from Richard Dresselhaus, Sermon Titled: Behold the Son!) We the church, God's chosen assembly of beloved children, all respond with the first church, Peter and the apostles: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." This simple confession of faith seems so straightforward to us, so common, that we might think it a natural occurrence. But just as it was revealed to Peter by God alone, it is revealed to us by God alone. Those of us who were baptized as infants did not go seeking God's grace on our own, but He brought us that love and grace personally through those waters. Those of us who were baptized later or still are waiting for baptism, we didn't search out God on our own, but He revealed Himself to us through His Word, either spoken by someone to us or given to us to read in Scripture. His Word, powerful enough to create the world and all we see, also creates the church and the faith that we all have within us. To us all, he continues to reveal Himself to us, feeding us through His Word like an umbilical cord feeds a helpless fetus in its mother.

God will give us opportunities to confess Christ's name to others. We simply have to wait for those times to help continue the building of Christ's church. Even those in the world who deny that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, will be led by the Holy Spirit at times to wonder and ask of Him. Once at a dinner at the White House, Billy Graham discovered that he was to be seated next to Mrs. Gorbachev, the wife of then leader of Russia. Dr. Graham asked the Russian ambassador how he might make conversation with Mrs. Gorbachev, what her interests were. The ambassador replied, "You know what she is really interested in? Religion. Like me she claims to be an atheist, but we're all interested in the supernatural." That evening Graham discovered the ambassador's words were true. "Mrs. Gorbachev asked questions about what I believed, what the church taught, and finally she said 'You know, I've always believed that there's something up there bigger than us. Bigger than me.'" (From Billy Graham "Who is Jesus?" in Ten Great Preachers, edited by Bill Turpie.Grand Rapids: Baker 2000, p. 74).

She was right. There is something, someone up there bigger than us. But that is not the most amazing thing. The most amazing thing is that He made himself, for a little while, smaller like us, fragile, able to suffer human pain and human death. When Peter, Rocky, the Stoneman made his bedrock confession, he still didn't fully comprehend what he was saying. In the next verses after this confession (21-23): "Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. 22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!" 23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." The "petra" the bedrock on which the church would be built would not be the size and power of Jesus. The "petra", the bedrock of the church would be the love He would show the world through his suffering and death and resurrection.

The bedrock of his little assembly of 12 men started that day with Peter's confession. Since that time God has continued his greatest building project of all time, building his church of 1000's and millions of believers. He has even given keys to this great building, keys described right here in our text. He has given these keys to the apostles and to pastors and to his church as a whole. With keys come great responsibility. To penitent sinners, those who confess their sins with their lips and with their deeds, to these penitent sinners, Christ has given the keys to loosen, to open wide the doors to the kingdom of heaven. We have the great privilege, pastors and members, to announce the grace of God in Christ Jesus to all who will listen and respond in repentant faith. To those who do not repent, in word and deed, to those who will not confess their need for a forgiving Christ and a forgiven neighbor, we also have the grave responsibility to retain sins (also see Matthew 18: 17-18 and John 20: 23 and the Small Catechism section on Office of the Keys). To those who are impenitent, we who know God's Word must, according to Christ's word here, warn of the judgment of God.

An example: If a Christian came to me as a pastor and confessed that he had embezzled a few thousand dollars from his employer and asked for forgiveness, I could and would cheerfully absolve him, i.e., announce Christ's forgiveness. But my next question would be "How and when do you plan on telling your employer and paying him back?" If that Christian responded with "Oh my pastor, I'm not paying him back. I need that money." I would have to announce to him that he had not truly repented and was still guilty of breaking the 7th commandment not to mention the 1st, 4th, 8th and 9th. I would have to warn him of the judgment of God against unrepentant sinners and plead with him to "repent and believe the Gospel" (Mark 1: 15).

But the wondrous Good News is that Christ has touched so many of us with his Word. Millions of sinners have repented and believed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He has built us into the greatest building of all time, his construction the Church, and continues to build each of us individually and bind us together in Christian love. He has convicted us of our need to turn to him, to trust and confess in the suffering, death and resurrection of the Son of the Living God for us. For a time, He warned his disciples not to tell anyone he was the Christ because the timing was not right. But for us today He instructs us to "Go and make disciples, baptizing and teaching them to follow everything" He has taught us (Matthew 28). We do with the simple rock-solid message of who He is for us "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." The grace and peace of the rock solid Christ be with us always. Amen.