And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. -- Matthew 16:18 (KJV)
Some Sundays you drive home from church with a list. A class still needs a teacher. A family has stopped coming. There is a funeral Thursday for a woman who prayed for half the congregation, and you wonder who will pray like that now. Loving a church means carrying its people, and some weeks the whole list seems to rest on you.
Right after Peter's confession, Jesus tells him, "I will build my church." This is the first time the word church appears in the Gospels, and Jesus puts "my" in front of it. Jesus is the builder. The church is His.
His Church
In the next verse Peter receives "the keys of the kingdom of heaven," real authority given by Christ. When God laid "the key of the house of David" on His servant Eliakim in Isaiah 22, the servant held the key and the house stayed David's. Peter's keys come from Christ, and the church stays His.
Then Jesus speaks of death. "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Matthew's word for hell here is Hades, the grave, the realm of the dead. Death takes the saints who built our congregations and taught us to pray. It will not prevail against the church Jesus is building.
That promise is about His people. Buildings get sold and small congregations merge, and the church He gathers goes on.
Your part of that list is real. Make the visit, prepare the lesson, and apologize for the sharp word in the hallway. Pray by name for the family that stopped coming. Carry the whole church yourself, and you will soon be keeping score of who is not helping. Leave the building of it to the One who said He would do it.
The church will bury one of its saints on Thursday, and Jesus will go on building.
