2018 Weekly Devotional - Week 38

Week 38

Matthew 16:15-18

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter,[b] and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades[c] will not overcome it.”

    I pastored a church in east Texas that had a unique situation. I had recently been called to be the church’s pastor and was getting a tour of the facility. Every room was shown to me and I was given an explanation of its purpose. The last room shown to me was behind double doors and centrally located within the small church. In this room which was about six feet wide and four feet deep was a massive safe. The monstrosity had to have been over six foot tall and five feet wide! It had belonged to a local bank and was somehow acquired by the church and moved to its location but no one knew exactly how or when. The safe was still in use but only a small portion of it that held some paperwork. I asked as to why it was still in use and was told that because it was so big, heavy and extremely difficult to move they decided to work around it. So as the church grew and different rooms were re-tasked the safe was simply framed in and the rest of the building built around it. The folks in that church simply did not want to spend the time and effort to move that safe even though it was in an inconvenient place.

    A couple of lessons come to mind. First, do you have something in your heart that seems too big and too heavy to move? It weighs on you. It is there all the time. It is a burden. You’ve continued to build your life but this burden has always been an impediment. Won’t you cast that burden on Christ and let him extract it from your life? Second, our Bible passage tells us that Jesus’ church is built on the confession that he is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Whenever the church builds on (or around) something other than this we cannot be assured that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. When the church builds on tradition, the dictates of man, consumerism, or entertainment, it opens itself to apostasy, humiliation, and impotence. At one time having a giant safe seemed like a great idea. But over time that great idea had become so entrenched that the church was unwilling to move it. The living and active word of God teaches us that as a part of the church universal, as we continue to build on the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, we can be assured that the very stronghold of hell will not prevail against Christ’s church!

In Christ,

John