As we pick it up in Matthew 16, the disciples are starting to truly understand who Jesus is and what Jesus is about more and more and more.
They are connecting the dots.
They are putting the pieces together.
They are beginning to recognize who this man Jesus truly is.
It’s still not a perfect understanding, but more and more their understanding is beginning to come together.
They’re realizing that he is not just a great prophet.
He is not just an earthly king.
He is not just a great teacher.
He is the Son of God.
Jesus Is the Son of God and the Son of Man
“Son of God” is a title that means that he rules with God’s authority.
When they call him the Son of God, they’re using a common ancient Jewish term.
They’re using a common Old Testament term that is talking about one who rules with the authority of God, the great Davidic King from the line of David that God promised to send one day, who is going to rule not just as a great human king but as a God-King, as the one who rules with God’s authority on earth.
Number one, they see he is the Son of God that we have been waiting for.
But number two, even more, they are realizing that he is the Son of Man that they have been waiting for.
This is a commonly misunderstood term.
A lot of times, you hear people, preachers, teachers, and so forth, say that when Jesus calls himself the Son of God, he is referring to the fact that he is divine, and that when he calls himself the Son of Man, he’s referring to the fact that he is human.
That is not what this is about at all.
That is not even close.
The term “Son of Man” comes from Daniel chapter 7 and a handful of other places in the Old Testament prophets.
The Old Testament prophets prophesied that this coming Savior was going to be one like a son of man.
They call this coming Savior the Son of Man, and they say that the Son of Man is God, our great Judge.
They say the Son of Man is God the Judge, and the Son of Man is God coming as a kind of great general, a great heavenly army general, that the Son of Man is going to come on the clouds with an army of angels.
The Son of Man is going to conquer the forces of darkness, and the Son of Man is going to judge the world with justice.
The Son of Man is going to usher the kingdom of God into our fallen and broken world.
The Son of Man is going to bring God’s rule and God’s reign into our fallen and broken world because the Son of Man is the God of the kingdom.
And so in Daniel 7, when Daniel talks about the Son of Man, he is talking about God himself coming on the clouds with angel armies to finally put right everything that we made wrong, to finally fix everything that we broke, to heal everything that we made sick, to turn the world right-side up again, to destroy the devil and the forces of darkness, to crush the head of the serpent, to raise our world out of the pit.
He is talking about God himself coming back on the clouds to redeem humanity and restore the world.
So his disciples are finally beginning to understand that he is the Son of God who rules with God’s authority and the Son of Man who will come on the clouds with God’s angel armies and destroy the forces of darkness and redeem humanity and restore the world.
They are finally coming to get a clearer understanding of who Jesus truly is.
“On This Rock I Will Build My Church”
And that realization, that understanding, that light bulb where we begin to understand who Jesus truly is, and then we throw ourselves at his feet and say, “Jesus, be my King and rule me. Jesus, be my God. Jesus, be my Savior and redeem me,” that is the foundation rock that God’s church is built on.
Peter says:
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
—Matthew 16:16, WEB
And Jesus says, “Okay, yes. On this foundation rock, I am going to build my church. On your proclamation of faith and submission and repentance, I am going to build my church.”
God’s church is built on this proclamation of faith that Jesus is our Savior and King and God.
He says:
“On this rock I will build my assembly, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
—Matthew 16:18, WEB
And since Peter was the first one to truly get it out of his disciples, he says, “Okay, your name is not just Simon anymore.”
That was his birth name.
He says, “I’m going to call you Peter.”
That’s why we call him Peter.
It’s a name that Jesus gave him.
He says, “I’m going to call you Peter because that word Peter is almost identical to the word Petros, which means rock.”
So he says, “On this truth, this realization, this faith proclamation that I truly am the Savior and King and God that we have been waiting for, that is the foundation that my church is built on.”
What Is the Ekklesia?
Now, that word “church” is very important.
Jesus didn’t make up that word “church” here in this passage.
When we say “church,” we are translating the word ekklesia.
Now, that is a word that first-century Jews used to describe something very specific and very important.
When they said the ekklesia of God, they were talking about the remnant of Israel.
Israel had fallen away from the Lord.
They had begun to worship other gods.
They had begun to reject his will and his ways.
Israel was in rebellion against the God of the universe.
But he promised, “One day, there will be a remnant of Israel who will truly follow me and worship me and serve me and submit to me, and they will be redeemed and restored.”
The remnant of Israel is the true Israel.
God says throughout the Old Testament, “One day I am going to gather the true Israel to myself. I’m going to gather the remnant of Israel to myself.”
And it is not about being ethnically Jewish.
It is not about being Jewish as a racial marker.
It is not about being physically descended from Abraham.
True Israel is about having faith in Abraham’s God, following Abraham’s God, submitting to Abraham’s God, worshiping Abraham’s God as your Savior and King and God.
And Abraham’s God is Jesus.
So when you recognize and then proclaim that Jesus truly is the Savior and King and God that we have been waiting for, and you throw yourself on his mercy to be saved, and you submit yourself to him as your King, and you lift him up in worship as your God, you become part of the remnant of Israel.
You become part of the true Israel.
So right now, there is a geographical nation that calls itself Israel.
There is a geographical nation that, back in 1948, the UN said, “Okay, we’re putting a bunch of ethnically Jewish people here, and we’re naming this Israel.”
Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, those guys, they said, “Okay, so this is going to be Israel from now on.”
No, it is not.
Israel is everyone who serves and worships the God of Abraham, and that God is Jesus.
That means that the nation that our maps refer to as Israel is filled with people who have nothing to do with God’s covenant, and yet your local church that is filled with people of all races, all ethnicities, all backgrounds, all cultures, they are filled with people who are part of the true Israel of God, the remnant of Israel, the ekklesia.
Because the ekklesia consists of everyone who throws themselves on the mercy of Jesus, submits to him as their King, and worships him as their God.
What does that mean for us?
That means when we are gripped by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit casts the seeds of the gospel in our heart, and those seeds are planted in our heart like good soil, and they create repentance and faith within us so that we embrace Jesus as our Savior and our King and our God.
We embrace him as the Son of Man and the Son of God.
We become part of the true Israel, the remnant of Israel, the ekklesia of Israel, the church, alongside Peter and the rest of the disciples.
Storming the Gates of Hell
And as the true Israel, we do a few things.
Number one, we storm the gates of hell, and we will defeat it.
Jesus has called us into his kingdom work.
As the true Israel, the remnant, the ekklesia, the church, we are sent out in God’s kingdom work, on God’s kingdom mission.
And when we go out and obediently carry out God’s kingdom work and mission in the world, we are storming the gates of hell.
This is not defensive.
This is not Jesus saying, “The devil’s going to attack you, but he won’t be able to destroy you.”
That is true, but that’s not what he’s saying here.
He says, “You’re going to attack the devil, and you are going to kick his freaking teeth in. You’re going to storm the gates of hell.”
Where are the gates?
The gates are at the entrance, right?
Hell’s not coming to us.
We are heading there, and we are storming the gates, and we are knocking them over, and we are curb-stomping the forces of darkness through the power that Jesus has given us as his kingdom workers.
Our calling as the church, the ekklesia, the remnant, the true Israel, as his disciples and kingdom workers, is to go to war with the forces of darkness in every way that the Lord puts in front of us.
The Lord is relating to us here as a general in wartime, sending out his troops into battle.
One, we storm the gates of hell.
The Keys to the Kingdom
How do we storm the gates of hell?
There’s a long list of ways, but one of those ways is by opening the doors to God’s kingdom and ushering people in, by inviting them to come and be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ.
He says:
“I will give to you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.”
—Matthew 16:19, WEB
Don’t get caught up in all the tiny little details here.
Take a step back.
Look at the big picture.
So what do you do with keys?
You open up a door.
You open up a gate.
We open the gates of the kingdom, and we gather people in by introducing them to the God who wants to redeem them and restore them.
They become kingdom workers alongside us.
They become disciples alongside us.
They become part of the remnant, the true Israel, the ekklesia, the church, alongside us.
And then they turn around, and we go from the gates of the kingdom over to the gates of hell.
We storm the gates of hell, and through our preaching and teaching, through our kingdom work, through the ways that we lift people up, through the ways that we break people out of the cycle of poverty, through the ways that we bring healing to people, we pull them out of the pit, and so on and so forth.
Through the ways that we bring them into contact with God so that he can redeem and restore them and then turn their lives right-side up again into obedience and flourishing, we are knocking over the gates of hell.
We are storming and curb-stomping the forces of darkness.
That is the calling we have been given.
That is the mission we have been sent on.
So when we go out into the harvest to harvest the fields for souls, we are storming the gates of hell.
When we go out and we fish for people, we are storming the gates of hell.
When we bring people into relationship with the redeeming and restoring God, we are storming the gates of hell.
So this is yet another metaphor that Jesus gives us for the mission that he has given us.
The mission is a harvest.
The mission is a fishing expedition.
The mission is an all-out war where we storm hell’s gates and we win.
That is who we are as God’s people.
The Obstacle Within Us
But we have a problem.
We have an obstacle, and that obstacle comes from within us, not from outside of us.
That obstacle is our fallen and sinful human hearts.
Why?
Because our fallen and sinful hearts are obsessively, desperately, self-destructively determined to pursue our own goals and desires instead of God’s goals and desires.
Our fallen and sinful human hearts don’t want to storm the gates of hell and open the gates of heaven.
Our fallen and sinful hearts want to pursue our own little worldly obsessions.
And we get three examples of what that looks like here in Matthew 16 and 17.
The Pharisees: Pursuing Religious Tradition Instead of God
Number one, the Pharisees.
The Pharisees are so obsessively, desperately determined to pursue their own goals and desires that they keep on saying, “We won’t believe you until we see one more sign.”
So Jesus will perform a sign, and they’ll say, “Okay, very nice, but actually, we still won’t believe you until we see yet another sign.”
So he’ll perform another sign, and they say, “Okay, well, you know what? We still aren’t going to believe you until we see another sign.”
And then he’ll perform another sign, and they still won’t believe.
And so we come to this point here in Matthew 16, and once again the Pharisees demand a sign.
And this time Jesus says, “You’re not getting anything.”
He says:
“An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and there will be no sign given to it, except the sign of the prophet Jonah.”
—Matthew 16:4, WEB
He says, “The only sign you are going to get is the sign of Jonah.”
He says, “I’m going to go into the earth just like he went into the belly of the fish, and then on the third day I am going to come out. That is the only sign you are going to get, and when you see that sign, you better believe it.”
Why are the Pharisees so determined not to believe Jesus?
Why do they keep demanding more and more and more signs?
No sign is going to make them believe him.
They’re not asking for signs because they’re trying to figure out if he is the Messiah.
They are asking for more signs as a way of getting an excuse not to place their faith in him, not to become his followers, not to become his kingdom workers, not to join the mission to storm the gates of hell and open the gates of heaven.
Why are they doing that?
It’s because their hearts do not desire God’s goals and desires.
Their hearts desire their own goals and desires.
What are their goals and desires?
They want to pursue their traditions.
They are obsessed with their traditions.
They are obsessed with their religious traditions.
They’re obsessed with their religious system that they created.
They are so in love with all the new rules they created, all the new rituals they created, all of that stuff.
They are so in love with that that they have completely lost sight of the God that those rules and rituals are supposed to be serving.
And so their concerns look religious, but they’re not.
They look spiritual, but they’re not.
It’s another form of worldliness.
Their religious obsession is actually a form of worldliness.
Their fundamentalism is actually a form of fleshiness.
They’re pursuing their human traditions so powerfully that they don’t have any room for the God their traditions supposedly serve, even when he comes down from heaven and introduces himself in person.
That’s number one, the Pharisees.
The Sadducees: Pursuing Political Power Instead of God
Number two, the Sadducees do the same thing.
The Sadducees say, “We won’t believe you until you do one more sign. Okay, well, you know, we still won’t believe it until you do yet another sign. Okay, we still won’t believe you until you do a third sign.”
Jesus says, “You’re not getting anything but the sign of Jonah,” because once again, they’re not asking for signs because they’re seeking the truth.
They’re asking for signs as an excuse not to believe him.
Why don’t they want to believe him?
Why don’t they want to follow him?
Why don’t they want to join his kingdom work and his kingdom mission?
It’s because they are so enslaved to their pursuit of political power.
The Sadducees were very different from the Pharisees.
The Pharisees were religious nuts.
The Sadducees were political nuts.
Unfortunately, today, a lot of people in the pews and churches are somehow both religious nuts and political nuts.
It’s not a good combination.
But the Sadducees were relentless in their pursuit of political power.
They were constantly riding the coattails of powerful politicians and rulers and leaders who could elevate their political status and so forth.
Jesus is a threat to their political status.
Following Jesus would rob them of any political status they could ever have.
Consistently obeying Jesus’s will and his ways would prevent them from being able to do any of those things that enable us to amass political power.
That same thing is true for us today.
It is extremely difficult to acquire political power in our fallen and broken world while faithfully following Jesus.
I think that we actually should seek out positions of political power so that we can do good in the world.
But we have to understand on the front end that very, very few of those are going to succeed because our fallen and broken system is designed to keep godly and wise people out of power.
And so it is going to be an uphill battle.
But the Sadducees see that.
They see that following Jesus, faithfully living according to his will and his ways, that will screen them out of political power about nine times out of 10, and they are not willing to let go of that.
And so they make excuse after excuse not to follow him.
They say, “One more sign. One more sign. One more sign.”
And finally Jesus says, “No more signs. Okay? No more signs. You’re either in or you’re out, and right now it sounds like you’re out.”
Beware the Leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees
So Jesus turns to his disciples and he says:
“Take heed and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
—Matthew 16:6, WEB
Why?
What is he talking about?
What is their leaven?
Their leaven is their obsessive desperation to pursue their own goals and desires instead of pursuing God’s goals and desires.
He says, “Do not be like them. Do not be influenced by them. You cannot follow me the way that they claim to follow God because their whole lives, their whole religious system, is ultimately just a tool to pursue their worldly, fleshly, human goals and desires.”
The Pharisees have invented an entire freaking religious system so that they can make new rules and rituals and stuff like that that they get off on.
The Sadducees have created an entire religious system where they can claim to be following God but literally just be climbing the ladder of political power.
You cannot do that to follow me.
You have to take my goals as your goals.
You have to take my desires as your desires.
You have to take my purpose as your purpose.
That’s number two, the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
Peter: Pursuing His Own Desire Instead of God’s Mission
But there’s a third example that we get in Matthew 16 and 17, and that is Peter.
Because we find out here that Peter is tempted in exactly the same way as these Pharisees and Sadducees.
He’s not necessarily obsessed with religious tradition.
He’s not necessarily obsessed with political power.
But Jesus gathers the disciples together and he says:
“The Son of Man must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up.”
—Matthew 16:21, WEB
And when Peter hears that, he goes ballistic.
He revolts.
He says, “No, I will never let that happen to you. I will never let anyone near you.”
Later down the line, when Jesus is being arrested, he cuts the dude’s ear off.
Peter says, “I will never let you be arrested and crucified. I will never let you be executed. I will defend you to the day that I die.”
What’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong is that Jesus just told him he needs to die.
Jesus just told him that dying is part of the plan.
Jesus just told him that his purpose is to be arrested and crucified.
But Peter doesn’t care about that.
All Peter cares about is protecting his friend and his teacher.
He’s more concerned with his friend and teacher dying than he is with the reason for his friend and teacher’s death.
He’s more worried about preventing his friend and teacher from dying than he is about the redemptive mission that his friend and teacher is on in the process.
He cares more about protecting someone he cares about than he does about God’s redemptive work in the world through the death of Jesus to redeem humanity and restore the world.
And so Peter is also pursuing his own goals and desires instead of God’s goals and desires.
And so Jesus says:
“Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men.”
—Matthew 16:23, WEB
Jesus rebukes Satan for trying to steer Peter off course, and then he corrects Peter, and by extension, he corrects us.
Deny Yourself, Take Up Your Cross, and Follow Me
He says:
“If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.”
—Matthew 16:24–25, WEB
What is he saying here?
He’s not saying that you should deny yourself absolutely everything you want.
He’s not saying that you can’t try to pursue good goals that you care about.
He’s not saying that you have to live a life where you just don’t allow yourself to enjoy anything or have anything.
That is not what he’s saying.
He’s saying that we have to make his redemptive mission, his kingdom work, the absolute center of our lives.
He says that following him means we let our old lives effectively die.
We deny ourselves absolutely anything that stands in the way of his kingdom work.
That means we have to be willing to let go of our political goals if they get in the way of his kingdom work.
We have to be willing to let go of our traditions and the things we hold dear if they get in the way of his kingdom work.
And we have to let go even of our desire to protect ourselves, protect our friends, protect our families, protect the things we care about in this world, if that stands in the way of his kingdom work.
You need to be willing to literally die for the sake of his kingdom work.
He calls that dying to yourself, denying yourself.
He says his kingdom work and mission must be the absolute center of our lives.
The Disciples Are Slow to Understand
But like all of us, his disciples are slow to learn, slow to understand.
We are slow to understand, aren’t we?
We are slow to grasp what God is trying to tell us, and that same thing was just as true of the 12 disciples as it is of us.
So if you struggle to fully wrap your head around God’s will for you, don’t panic.
So did the disciples.
That doesn’t mean you’re a bad Christian.
It doesn’t mean you’re a fake Christian.
It doesn’t mean you’re not a real follower of Jesus.
It means that you are exactly like the original followers of Jesus.
His disciples were slow to understand, and we see that in just a handful of ways.
Number one, when Jesus tells them that he is going to be arrested and crucified and then rise again, they are unbelievably distressed.
He tells them yet again in chapter 17.
He repeats himself.
He says, “You need to understand this. I’m saying this again because I don’t think you’ve got it yet. You need to get this. I’m going to be arrested and killed just like John the Baptist was arrested and killed, but I am going to be raised on the third day. This must happen. This needs to happen. Do not try to stop it. Let it happen. Submit to the process.”
But once again, they are distressed.
Matthew says they were deeply distressed.
So one, they have not learned how to have peace with God’s redemptive plan.
They are still holding on to their personal goals and desires even when they conflict with God’s goals and desires.
The Transfiguration
Number two, Jesus takes Peter and James and John up to the mountaintop, and there God transfigures him.
God reveals the fullness of the glory of Jesus to Peter and James and John.
He ceases simply to look like another human.
He starts glowing.
His clothes become a dazzling white.
His face starts shining.
He is radiating the presence and glory of God right then and there in front of them.
He’s reminding them:
“Hey, don’t forget. I am who you said I am. Don’t forget. I am the Son of God who bears God’s kingly authority on earth, and I am the Son of Man who will come on the clouds in glory with an angel army, who will judge the earth with justice, who will destroy the darkness, destroy the forces of darkness, destroy the devil, crush the head of the serpent, fix everything that’s broken, heal everything that’s sick, make absolutely everything right again, pull our world out of its fallenness and brokenness, redeem and restore humanity. Don’t forget. That is who I am.”
The Lord’s voice comes down and once again says:
“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.”
—Matthew 17:5, WEB
He gives them a reminder of what they’ve been coming to realize piece by piece.
And yet Peter sees Jesus, he sees Moses, he sees Elijah, and he says, “Here, I’ll make three tabernacles: one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.”
What’s the problem with that?
He’s treating the three of them like they’re equal.
He’s treating the three of them like they’re all just prophets.
Two of them are just prophets.
Moses and Elijah are just prophets.
But Jesus is so, so much more than a prophet.
And so Peter has lapsed.
He’s gone backwards.
He’s regressed.
He’s gone from fully recognizing and testifying to who Jesus is to once again just treating him like he’s another Moses, like he’s another Elijah.
But he is so much more.
They have lost sight of who he is.
And as a result, they have lost sight of who they are.
Remember Who Jesus Is—and Who You Are
And so Jesus once again reminds them.
He says, “You need to understand that I truly am the Savior and King and God that you’ve been waiting for, and because that is true, as my followers, you are sons of God. You are adopted by God. You are citizens in his kingdom. You are workers in his kingdom. You are fishers of people. You are harvesters. You are soldiers in God’s army to go chase back the darkness and storm the gates of hell. You are out on my kingdom work and kingdom mission as my brothers and as sons of the Father. That is who you are.”
And he reminds them of this reality in a really weird story where he goes to the temple and he says, “Out of curiosity, who do kings raise taxes from? Who do kings raise tariffs from? Do they raise taxes and tariffs from their own sons in the royal palace, or do they raise taxes and tariffs from strangers, from foreigners, from taxpayer subjects?”
They say, “Well, he raises taxes from subjects.”
He says, “Yes. So I don’t owe any temple taxes because I am the God of this temple. I don’t owe any temple taxes because I am the Son of God and Son of Man. I don’t owe any temple taxes because this temple is about me. This temple points towards me. This temple is a visible symbol of the presence of God with his people, and yet I am the presence of God. So I don’t owe any taxes. But for simplicity’s sake, go out to the lake. There’s going to be a fish. It’s going to have exactly the right amount of money that we owe for the temple tax. Go grab that money out of the mouth of that fish, bring it here, and then we’re going to pay it just to avoid any unnecessary conflict.”
He’s saying:
“I am the God, the Savior, and the King that we have been waiting for. I have God’s kingly authority to heal the blind, to restore the deaf, to raise up the paralyzed, to bring back the dead, to cast out demons, to control the weather, to control the fish, to make a fish put a coin in its mouth and then give it to you, and to forgive sin. I have God’s kingly authority to do all of that because I am the God with the kingly authority to do all of that. And you are my sons and my brothers, and you have access to my kingly authority. You have the keys to my kingdom to open up the gates of my kingdom and usher people in, and you have the keys of my kingdom to storm the gates of hell and win.”
But again and again and again, just like you and I, the disciples forget who he is, and they forget who they are.
Where Their Power Comes From
Because as they come down from the mountain, several of his disciples are trying to cast a demon out of this demon-possessed boy, but they can’t do it.
They keep trying, but the demon won’t leave.
The demon doesn’t respect them.
The demon won’t listen to them.
The demon isn’t doing their thing.
They’re failing.
They’re coming up to the gates of hell, smacking their teeth against the bars, and falling back unconscious.
Jesus says, “How much longer do I have to deal with this crap?”
He casts out the demon, and then he says this really strange sentence that is frequently misinterpreted:
“This kind doesn’t go out except by prayer and fasting.”
—Matthew 17:21, WEB
Now, some ancient manuscripts of Matthew have this line.
Some ancient manuscripts of Matthew do not have this line.
This line is in several of the other accounts of this story, like Mark chapter 9.
It tells this story, and it includes that line, so we know that Jesus did say it.
We just don’t know for a fact whether Matthew recorded it in particular.
But Jesus says:
“This kind cannot be cast out except by prayer and fasting.”
Some people take that to mean that if you pray enough, God will give you the power to cast out demons, that if you fast enough, God will give you the power to cast out demons, that if you pray and fast enough, he’ll give you the supernatural power to heal the sick, to give sight to the blind, to raise the dead, and so on and so forth.
That is not what’s happening here.
What’s happening is this: the disciples forgot where their power comes from.
The disciples forgot that their power comes from the kingly authority of Jesus.
They forgot that their power comes from his kingly authority as Son of God and Son of Man, as Savior and King and God.
Jesus works through us.
We are his hands and feet.
We have no authority in ourselves to cast out demons, to heal the sick.
But Jesus does.
We don’t go out and work for Jesus.
We work with Jesus.
And prayer and fasting are a signal of our submission to Jesus and of our seeking his power and strength.
When we pray and ask the Lord to heal people, we are admitting we don’t have the power to heal.
We need his power to heal to come and work through us.
When we fast, we are saying:
“I do not have what I need to be able to do what you have called me to. I am not full. I am not complete. I am empty and incomplete. I need you to come and complete what is not complete and full in me. I need your power to work through me because I don’t have it.”
The point is not they didn’t pray and fast enough.
The point is they were trying to cast out demons in their own strength.
They had gotten it in their heads, “Hey, since I’m connected to Jesus, since I’m a disciple of Jesus, I’ve got the power to cast out demons and heal.”
No, they don’t.
Jesus has the power to heal.
The Spirit has the power to heal, and he works his power through us.
So when he sends us somewhere to go heal, we can do it.
When he sends us somewhere to go cast out a demon, we can do it.
But we have to seek his power and authority working through us because that is how it works.
Powered by His Authority and Spirit
As his kingdom workers, we are powered by his authority and Spirit.
As his fishers of people, we are powered by his authority and Spirit.
As his harvesters, we are powered by his authority and Spirit.
The power to storm the gates of hell and win comes from his authority and Spirit.
The power to usher people into the gates of heaven comes from his authority and Spirit within us.
We are weak, powerless beggars who have been empowered by the Spirit to do above and beyond anything we could ever ask or imagine.
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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