if you'd open your Bibles again
to Matthew chapter 16. Now in my religious background, there never was a great deal
of attention put on this idea of the keys of the kingdom. I honestly don't ever remember
hearing a message on that subject. But evidently, It's a pretty
serious issue or matter in this area and among these churches.
I found it interesting. One of the ways I study is if
I can find someone that's got a message on the particular text
of scripture I want, I'll look on Sermon Audio and listen to
others, try to benefit from their study. because I may study hard
and long and all that and still miss something. So it's beneficial
to listen to others. And so I put in the search bar,
keys of the kingdom. Well, of course, there's over
a million sermons on sermon audio. So it didn't surprise me that
there's page after page of sermons on that topic. But I did find
this interesting. Of course, the first page is
going to be those that have the most, that people have listened
to, you know, just like when you look for, you know, Google
something. They have a way of organizing which ones you see
first. And that first page, which probably had 25 sermons listed,
at least 75% of them were preached in Reformed churches. And that
doesn't entirely surprise me because I guess that they're
told what subjects they're supposed to preach on. They have a week-by-week
kind of thing, so they're going to get to it. But I listened
to one of those and listened to a sermon by our brother and
friend, Henry Mahan. This was after I'd done some
study on it also, you know. As we look at this matter of
keys of the kingdom, he said to Peter, and at this point it
was only to Peter, because when he says, here I will give to you the keys
of the kingdom, that pronoun you, it's in the singular. So
he'd been talking directly to Peter. Now a couple of chapters
over, he says the same thing to the rest of the apostles.
But at this point, he's only speaking to Peter. But when we
approach this subject of the keys of the kingdom, our interest is likely going
to be drawn to such questions as what are those keys and who
gets the keys? And probably for a lot of people,
the more important question is, who gets them? Why? Well, keys are a symbol of authority
of some kind. My daughter has begun working
at the school, the elementary school where her boys attend.
And she works in the kitchen, but at one point, the school
had to let go one of the maintenance people, cleaning people, and
so they asked her to do some work there in that department.
And Bonnie, when we were visiting here over the holidays, Bonnie
went over to the school so Mary could show her around. And Mary,
she got a set of keys to every room in that place. Now, they
don't just hand out those keys to anybody. And so when we hear about keys,
we think of privilege, authority. We want to know who gets them. And these are legitimate and
important questions. In fact, there's nothing written
in Scripture that we should not seek to understand. And when
I say seek to understand, I mean that just that way because We're
not ever going to understand everything that's written in
the scriptures. Do you know that the Apostle Peter admitted to
having a difficult time understanding the Apostle Paul? He says, as our beloved brother
Paul writes in all of his letters, some things hard to be understood. Now, if the Apostle Peter could
struggle with what the Apostle Paul wrote, don't be surprised
that we run into scriptures and we just, I'm not sure. But we
should try to understand. It's good and profitable to ask
God to give us an understanding. For there's nothing in here that's
worthless. Nothing in here that's useless. However, not everything written
in the scriptures is on the same level of importance. And just
as a good example, it's not nearly as important that you understand
the genealogies spelled out like I believe it's Genesis 5 and
10 or 11 or whatever, you know. If you never saw those, you'd
probably do okay. Now that's not to say they're
worthless. There's some things, there's some tidbits you can
pick out of there that might enlighten another scripture a
little bit. But if you never saw them, you're not gonna fall
short of the kingdom on that account. So as important as the questions
of what are the keys and who has them, there's a more important
question. And this question must be answered
before we can properly investigate the other two questions of what
are the keys and who has them. The truly important question
when it comes to the keys of the kingdom is this, where did they come
from? Who gave them? I've pondered this issue for
several weeks, actually, and it surprises me. You know, I've
been preaching for, as humans count time, a long time. And it kind of surprised me how
long it was before that particular thought occurred to me. Because
I've known for at least 40 years of my preaching, everything in
the Bible is about Christ, one way or another. And before you
try to figure out anything else, try to see how a passage relates
to Christ. Because it's only going to be
that in a scripture's relation to Christ that you're going to
be able to understand that scripture in relation to anyone else or
anything else. Until you see how Christ is in
it, you're not going to properly see how anything else is in it. And if we answer that question, I posed
it two ways, where did the keys come from? Or the same question
would be, who gave those keys? Knowing the answer to that question
will restrain us from a lot of the abuse that is heaped upon
the people of God by a misuse of the idea of the keys of the
kingdom. The simple answer to where did
the keys come from or who gave the keys, it's this, Jesus Christ,
the son of the living God. That's where the keys came from.
That's the one who gives the keys. Now, if there's any, we can make
an application right away here. Only he gives the keys. Only him. No one else has ever
been given the authority to give the keys to someone else. Keep that in mind. It'll mean
something here in a little bit. He said to Peter, I will give
you the keys to the kingdom. Now, if the keys that a preacher
thinks he has, or a pastor thinks he has, was given to him by the
church, he's got the wrong keys. If it was passed on to him from
someone else, who presumed to have the keys, and his term of
office is over, so he's going to pass the keys on to somebody
else, you're getting the keys from the wrong person. These keys to the kingdom, are
given by Christ and only Christ. This entire conversation that
the Lord had, which led to this matter of the keys of the kingdom,
it starts here in verse 13. And he says, when Jesus came
to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples Who do
people say the Son of Man is? Now, there can be no more important
question for us to learn the answer to than this. Who is Jesus
of Nazareth? Really. Because if you don't
know that, You don't understand anything else. You know, the various religions which have
come to the world through Abraham, and there's three main ones,
and that would be Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All of them are Well,
they came about through descendants of Abraham. And all of them have
different answers to the question, who is Jesus of Nazareth? Now understand, when I say Judaism,
I mean Judaism as it's practiced in the world, not Judaism as
it's described in the scriptures. But the Jews, modern Jews, that
is religious, you know, Jews who still practice the traditions
of their Jewish ancestors, they don't know who Jesus is. If they did, they would leave
off their Judaism and lay hold of Christ. Islam does not know
who Jesus is. And the truth of the matter The
greater part, I would say, of the people who claim to be Christians
don't know who Jesus is. Now, they can recite the right
answer. You know, if they're being catechized or going to
Sunday school or whatever it is, they may learn this answer
that Peter gave and be able to say, you know, if the teacher
says, okay, who is the Son of Man or who is Jesus? A little
kid can go, he is the Christ, the Son of the living God. They
know that answer. but they don't know what it means.
They don't know its significance. They have not understood it with
their heart. They have not been changed by the knowledge that
they think they have. The entirety of Scriptures is
about Christ, so it's only reasonable to conclude that knowing who
he is takes paramount importance. A lack of understanding in this
area breeds unbelief. The less you understand of who
Christ is, the weaker will be your faith. Now, none of us understands
him perfectly. Understand that, but what I say,
you know, we must understand who Jesus is. None of us has
understood it perfectly. I don't know that we'll ever
be able to. Because it involves understanding God. And that's,
as according to the famous saying, a little above our pay grade,
isn't it? We can't reach that high. But the less that a believer knows
concerning who Christ is and what that means, the weaker their
faith will be. Remember one time they were crossing
the lake in a boat, the disciples and the Lord Jesus, and the Lord
Jesus is asleep in the back. And a storm comes up, and I understand
that that's common there on the Sea of Galilee. And just a squall
comes up, you know, lots of wind. Well, those fishing boats weren't
very big, and you get some good-sized waves going. Even a bunch of
men who are accustomed to being out there, particularly if they're
out in the middle of it, they get scared. And they were, they
were afraid. And the Lord Jesus is in the
back of the ship, and he's asleep. And so they go wake him up. And
they said, don't you care that we perish? Wow, what a thing
to charge the Son of God with. You don't care? But still, they
did not understand it. He stood up, and it says he rebuked
the wind and the waves. And everything just went calm. And do you know what the disciples
said in response to that? The men were amazed and asked,
what kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves
obey him. See, their problem was they didn't
understand who he is, who he was. And therefore, they trembled
in the midst of the storm. not realizing that he could calm
that storm, and even going a little farther, realizing that one of
the reasons he could calm that storm, he's the one that brought
it up in the first place. Can you think on that? Now, to the skeptic. That makes,
you know, they kind of mop God on that, you know. Well, why
are you thanking God for calming a storm that he started in the
first place? Well, because he had every right
to start it and no obligation to stop it, that's why. And so
it's a gracious act on his part that having started it, he didn't
kill anybody with it, and then he stopped it before anybody
got hurt. The Lord begins by asking his
disciples, all of them that are there with him, who do others
say that he is? Our Lord was well known in the
area of Palestine. That area was called Palestine,
my understanding is it was called that first by the Romans, Palestina
is actually what they called it, and that's derived from the
Philistines. So it was Philistina, but I don't
think that Latin has the PH sound, so it was just Palestina. And as our Lord went around preaching,
the leaders, the religious leaders of the Jews followed him around.
I mean, they saw that he was gaining popularity and they were
envious of him because he was taking the attention of the people
away from the religious leaders and toward him. So they're thinking,
we gotta put a stop to this. And so they followed him around.
watching, waiting for him to do something that they could
accuse him of and discredit him with so that people quit listening. And even went so far as they
would get together and say, we got to come up with a question
maybe that he won't be able to answer. Trip him up. Yeah, right. Try tripping up God. I don't
think you're going to get that done. They thought they could do it,
and they tried. They knew about him. They saw
what he was doing. They saw his miracles. They didn't
deny his miracles. They heard his teaching. They
knew about him, and they had some things to say about him.
And then there were the common people who followed him around
and observed his miracles. Most of them, unfortunately,
were following him because they hoped to gain some benefit from
his miracles that relieved suffering in this present life and seemed
not to have a whole lot of interest about what he said concerning
the life to come. But the people knew him. And
it's unavoidable then that, you know, after he left town, there's
gonna be people, man, who is that guy? And they came up with
a lot of answers. The disciples replied to the
Lord, said, some say you're John the Baptist, others say you're
Elijah, and others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. When
men get together trying to figure out the Lord Jesus Christ, you're
gonna get a lot of answers. Why? Because they have no way
of figuring it out. When we say that people don't
know who Christ is, it's not as though we're thinking that
they just don't care. What we're saying is that they,
and the same is true of us in our natural condition, they don't
have the faculty necessary to figure out who the Lord Jesus
Christ is. What did our Lord say to that
woman at the well? If you knew the gift of God and
the one who has asked you for a drink, you would ask of him,
and he would give you water such that you would never thirst again.
So here's this woman at the well, and he says, give me something
to drink, and she says, you're a Jew, why are you talking to
me, a Samaritan? He said, if you knew who I was,
you, a Samaritan, would start asking me, If you knew who I
was and what the gift of God is, you'd be asking me for that
water that God gives, which if a man drinks it, he'll never
thirst again. People do not worship Christ. They do not trust him
as they ought. They do not believe him. They
do not bow to him because they do not know who he is. Some say
he's John the Baptist, which is kind of silly. saying that
John the Baptist is dead. But then again, they also supposed
it might be Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.
This they knew. He was a remarkable person. He was a prophet of some
kind. That they could figure out. But that says more about what
he's doing than who he is. And then the Lord asked, but
what about you? What about you guys? You've told
me what everyone else thinks. What about you guys? You, whom
I have chosen. What do you say? Now, we may look at this scripture
and enjoy somewhat, you know, talking about how the world doesn't
know who he is. But our Lord will never allow
us to point his word away from ourselves, as though it is to
be applied to others. He says, well, you told me what
everybody else thinks, what do you think? And you guys, you know, you've
been listening to me for a while, and you may be, you know, agreeing
with me up to this point, you know, the world doesn't know
who he is. Who do you think he is? Who is he to you? Well, Peter, as was his custom,
spoke up. Now, that wasn't always a good
thing. Just a little bit farther, Peter spoke up to the Lord, and
the Lord said, get behind me, Satan. But this is one of those
times that Peter was quick to give an answer, and it was a
good one. It was a good one. Peter says this, you are the
Christ, the son of the living God. There's a lot in there. First
of all, he says you are the Christ. Later on, Peter would stand on
the day of Pentecost and say, be it known unto the whole house
of Israel that this Jesus, whom you crucified, God has made,
that is, he's declared to be Lord and Christ. Christ is the
Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah. It means the anointed
one, which indicates that he is one chosen by God, enabled
by God, and sent by God to do the work of God for the people
of God. That's what Messiah was. And the Jews had been looking
for Messiah for a long time. And there were some of them who
understood from the prophet Daniel that it was about time he showed
up. And there were some that were
coming forth in that day claiming to be that Messiah. But they were a lot different
than our Lord Jesus Christ. They came thinking they would
lead rebellions against Rome and free the nation of Israel
from Rome's yoke. And actually they were able to
attract the attention of the people precisely because they
thought that's what Messiah was going to do. Even after our Lord was crucified
and rose from the dead, was about to go back to heaven, the disciples
said, okay, is now when you're going to restore the kingdom
to Israel? And I don't know that the Lord
did it, but I would have gone. But you know why they didn't
understand? The Holy Spirit had not yet been given. And the only reason you and I
understand is because the Holy Spirit was given. And what did Simon Peter, when he gave that
answer, and it was a good answer, Jesus replied, blessed are you,
Simon, son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man,
but by my Father in heaven. He said, you're right, Peter,
but you didn't figure it out on your own. The rabbis didn't
teach you what this was, or teach you the right answer. He says
the Heavenly Father revealed this to you. It's only because of the Father's
gracious work, Peter, that you realize that I am Messiah. I am the Son of God. The Son of God, the Jews understood
that if anybody claimed to be the Son of God, that he was claiming
to be God, because that's exactly when the Jews brought accusation
against him to his face. They said, you call yourself
the Son of God, making yourself to be God. So Peter, the Lord
asked the question, who do you say the Son of Man is? Peter
says, well, he's the Christ. He's the Son of the living God. He's God in human flesh. When we hear or read of the Lord
Jesus Christ, when we learn about Christ, we're learning about
God. In fact, that's the only way
to learn about God. In John 14, Philip says, show
us the Father and that's enough for us. The Lord said, Philip,
have I been with you so long and you don't yet realize? He
that has seen me has seen the Father. I and the Father are
one. Whatever it is you're ever going
to know about God, you're going to learn it by knowing Christ. Because He is revelation of God. He's the express image of God's
person. And if you do learn that, it'll
be because God taught it to you. As it is written, they shall
all be taught of God. That's part of New Covenant,
as God describes it. They shall no more say every
man to his neighbor, know the Lord, for they shall all be taught
of God. And everyone that has heard and have learned from the
Father comes to Christ. They come to Him because they
know who He is. The Father has pointed out. The Father's taught
them who this Jesus is. So He says to Peter, good answer
and blessed are you for knowing it. And it's a blessing, not something
you can take credit for. Something you can rejoice in
that you know it, but you can't go around patting yourself on
the back, Peter, because you figured this out. You're blessed
because the Father revealed that to you, and while this is unspoken,
it's why it's called a blessing. He said the Father revealed that
to you. He doesn't reveal that to everybody. And there's no
knowing it unless the Father reveals it. Now, do you know
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? I mean,
not just know it as a point of orthodox doctrine, but actually
in your heart that you believe Him to be that. Blessed are you, because God caused that to happen,
and He doesn't cause that for everybody. And then the Lord goes on and
he makes a statement that is abused by a lot of others. He
says, and I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I
will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome
it. Now, he says, you are Peter,
and virtually every translation puts that as a name. And it is
a name, but it's a name based on a common word. In fact, it's
just a common word that was used as a name. The word petros. Now, we find it. It comes into
our English language. You're familiar with the word
petrify. And that's when a living thing gets buried, and after
a certain amount of time, there's an exchange of molecules, and
you end up with a rock. that looks like it's in the shape
of the thing that was buried. Or petroleum, which actually
means oil from the rock. It comes from this word petros,
but petros means just, you know, an individual detached stone. A stone you might pick up and
throw, or at least be able to pick up with a piece of machinery
and move from one place to another. You know, whenever our Lord gave
names to his apostles, they were never flattering names. I know that people, I think it
was James and John, our Lord gave to them the nickname Sons
of Thunder. And people think that's an honoring
name. Okay, these are powerful. What is thunder? A big bunch
of noise that doesn't accomplish anything. Scares people. Rattles the windows, but nothing
happens. And who knows, those two may
have been kind of bombastic guys, and when they went out preaching,
you'd think it was thunder. But for all the power that it
seems thunder has, it doesn't accomplish anything. And so I
don't think he was elevating them by saying, sons of thunder.
He says, you're nothing but a big bunch of noise. You know, don't
get a big head about this. And when he said, you are Peter,
he was not exalting Peter to be the head of the church. He
said, you are just a rock. You're hard-headed and you're just a small thing
that can be picked up and moved. And then he says, And on this
rock, and there he changes the word, Petra, not Petras, small
rock, Petra, massive bedrock, immovable. Remember when our Lord said the
wise man builds his house on a rock? He digs down deep. That's the kind of rock he's
talking about here. He says, on this rock, and saying Petra,
Instead of Petros, when he talks about the foundation of the church,
he's saying, Peter, you're a stone. You aren't the foundation. The
foundation is me. I am the rock on which the church
shall be built. And you think about it now. Would
you like the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to be built on the
apostle Peter? Think about what he's going to
be doing here in just a little while. The Lord's been betrayed. He's
been arrested. He's been taken to the home of
the high priest. And Peter's out there in the
courtyard of the house of the high priest, you know, because
the high priest was a rich man. He had a really nice house. And
he's standing there, he's warming himself by the fire, and Jesus
is in there, they're abusing him. And somebody says, hey,
weren't you one of the disciples? No, no, I don't know this guy. Another guy, somebody else comes
up, wait, wait, you were among those disciples. No, no, you're
mistaking me for somebody else. And then it says, a little girl.
Now this is fisherman Peter. This is the guy who a couple
of nights before had said, I'll go to the death with you. And a young girl, 12, something
like that. He comes up and says, wait a
minute, I saw you, you were in the group with him. And he began
to call down oaths and curses and said, I don't know the man. Trembling in the presence of
a little girl. You want the church built on
that guy? I'm sorry, I want something more secure, don't you? Petra,
Christ. Paul said that rock was Christ. And he says, I'll build my church,
and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. King James says
the gates of hell, and people think of that. Understanding
what the words mean. Hades just means the region of
the dead. That's all it means. It doesn't mean hell is a place
of punishment. It means just where everybody
goes when they die. And when it says that the gates
of Hades will not prevail against it, it does not mean that the
church is going to storm the gates of hell or Hades or whatever,
and the gates of hell won't be able to resist it. What it means is this. We will be in the region of the
dead. The church, everybody in it dies, but death will not be able to
prevail against the people of God. Though it's a high wall
with heavy gates that are locked up. Our Lord is called the breaker. He's gonna come and he breaks
the doors down. And those gates are broken and
the people of God walk out. not even death is going to be
able to prevail over the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. They're
coming out from death to life. Then, having explained or has been
revealed who Christ is, what he's going to do, build his church,
and that the church is going to be triumphant in this sense
that none of them shall be abandoned to the grave. Then our Lord says,
and he says at this point to Peter and Peter alone, 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
will be loosed in heaven. Why does it get easier to answer
the questions about the keys of the kingdom once you understand
who gives them? Well, if it's the Christ, the
son of the living God, who's going to build his church, and
none of them will be lost, not even death is going to be able
to hold them. And if the one who's accomplishing
all of this is going to hand someone a set of keys. There's
one thing you can know for sure. He is not handing them the keys,
giving them the authority to say who's in the kingdom and
who's not. He's not giving them the authority
to say, well, you've acted so bad. Out you go. Or you're good enough, you're
in. In fact, if you read this, these
keys are not keys to a door. They're not keys to a gate at
all. They're keys to shackles. In fact, in reading the commentaries,
virtually every one of them, commentaries of men who understand
the gospel, and done a lot of study on this, they say this
loosening and binding was a common phrase that the Jews used to
describe when the religious authorities would make laws. And if they
bound something, that meant you weren't allowed to do it. And
if they loosed something, it meant you were allowed to do
it. Well, our Lord is saying to Peter
and then later to the other apostles, in a sense, those guys don't
have the keys. They don't have it. I'm going
to give them to you. Now, he never said that those
keys would ever be given to anyone other than Peter and the other
apostles. And it's my belief nobody alive
today has the keys of the kingdom. In other words, he's instituting
the apostolic office, an office that was over when the last of
the apostles died. There's never been another one.
It speaks in the book of Revelation of that city that came down from
heaven, and it says it's built on 12 foundation stones of the
apostles. So there's only 12 apostles. And they died probably before
the year 100 A.D. came around. What was he saying to these fellas?
He's saying, I've chosen you, and you and you alone are my
apostles. And when I'm gone, I will give
to you the keys of the kingdom, and I will give you my spirit
and work in you so that As you go out, you are going to determine
or show others what's right and what's wrong, what's true, what's
false, what's permissible, and what's not. Now virtually every
translation puts it this way, that whatever you bind will be
bound in heaven. But some of them, we'll put a
note at the bottom, it could be translated another way. And
I don't know why they just don't go ahead and translate it that
way, because that's what it says. He says, whatever you bind will
have been bound in heaven. It's not like God gave authority
to Peter so he could go out there and make a rule or establish
a doctrine and everybody up in heaven say, OK, that's it. Now
we'll write it down. No. All that Peter was ever going
to bind or loose was already bound and loosed in heaven. And
all they were going to be doing is being the authoritative declarers
of what is true as opposed to what is false, what is right
as opposed to what is wrong. And then God inspired them to
write the things down. All of the scriptures were written
either by an apostle or someone under the direction of one of
the apostles. So these books came with apostolic
authority. And when the last book was written,
the canon was closed. And since that day, no one on
earth has the right to bind or loose in any way that differs
from what the apostles bound and loosed. See, it's not talking
about binding and loosing people. It says whatever is bound. Don't need to go in a lot of
detail, but just let me point a few things out. Paul says, for it is by grace
you have been saved through faith. He loses the doctrine of salvation
by pure grace. Not of works. He binds that doctrine
that says by our works we gain the favor of God. Now that's some keys. And I'm glad he loosed grace. And of course he did it because
God had already loosed it. He's already loosed in heaven.
Peter was, I mean Paul was just declaring what God had already
done. And then he bound it. And you know what? He bound it. He locked works. And it doesn't
matter what anybody else says. Salvation, brethren, is not by
works. It's by grace. This is the commandment which
you have received from the beginning, says John, that you love one
another. Love, as a law, loosed. Hate, selfishness, bound. Now we could mention a lot of
other things in there that they said, but here is what it brought to
us. We are free of the authority
of any man who does not speak according to what is written.
Because the last people that had the keys wrote them down. And we are not allowed to add
or take away from what they said. Now these things are not true
and right because they said they are. They were already true and
right, but God enabled the apostles to set up the church according
to truth, according to what's right, what's proper. Paul described it this way, as
a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation. So if anybody ever says to you,
well, I have the keys to the kingdom. And if you don't do
what I say, you're out. Just say to him, well, I'm pretty
sure you aren't 2,000 years old, you've never seen the risen Christ,
and he never gave you the keys, so I don't think you have them.
But I know this, you can't keep me out of the kingdom because
those keys never did open the door to the kingdom. The one who had the key to the
kingdom, He said, if the Son shall make you free, you are
free indeed. Nobody can bring you in bondage
again. That one, that single key which
opens the single door, is carried by a single person, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he said, I have opened for
you a door, and no man can shut it. So, while it's important to understand
who has the keys, the apostles did. They were given to them
by Christ. What can they do with them? Well,
they were gifted and authorized to describe for everybody afterward
what is the truth of God, what's the truth of the gospel, and
how should we conduct ourselves in this world. And then, the
book was closed. And the keys are back in the
hand of the one who made them. And you and I live with a blessed
privilege. We've got a book in our hands.
Now, I stand up here and preach, and I preach according to the
gift God's given me. I'm not always right. And I try
to be careful to distinguish between that which I believe
is just clearly a statement of Scripture and that which is just
my best understanding of it. But I know this. I have no right
to bind you or bind anything or set it free. I have all my
authority. It goes this far and no farther.
What's in this book, written by the true holders of the keys,
I can preach that. I can press that, but nothing
else. And neither can anybody else
alive today. Our Savior knew what he was doing when he says,
I give to you the keys of the kingdom. One last point, I intended
to make it earlier on, and it kind of guides my thinking on
this. You can be sure that God has never entrusted the dispensing
of his eternal blessings into the hands of a sinful man. Never. So if anybody ever acts as though
he can withhold some blessing of God for you or give it to
you, well, you read that article in the bulletin about that priest
that came to that old woman who was about to die, said, I'm here
to absolve you of your sins. He said, what do you mean? I'm
here to forgive your sins. He said, let me see your hand.
And she was kind of old, but she looked at it real close.
She says, you're an imposter. Well, you know, he's pretty much
a big shot in his own eyes. I said, what do you mean I'm
an imposter? She says, the man that forgives my sin has nail
prints in his hand and you don't. Our Lord has never entrusted
the giving of his blessings into the hands of sinful people. Well,
I hope this has been helpful, and I hope it's not only maybe
cleared up some matters of what it means just as a practical
matter, but it's made us see the glory of our Savior a little
better, and be so glad. He's got the key into the kingdom. And only for a little while did
he allow those 12 apostles to hold those keys by which they
were authorized to tell us what to believe and how to conduct
ourselves as believers in this world. And then the keys, they
all went back to be with the one who gave them the keys.