Why Jesus Took His Disciples to the Gates of Hell | Matthew 16 Explained

**Chris Frankie** (0:00)
We also see Jesus go to a new location this week in Matthew chapter 16 So if you have your Bibles in your laps or your apps open till Matthew chapter 16, we're gonna be in 13 through 20 today. This week, Matthew takes us into a new location. It says that Jesus leads his disciples into Caesarea Philippi, which was a Gentile region at the base of Mount Hermon.
This place, for those of you who've never seen it on Google or never been there, this place has got beautiful countryside. There's hills all over the place. But the countryside today looks a little bit different, not completely different, because there are still ruins and temples to Diana and Artemis and all these different gods and Greek influences and everything else. But at this time, that whole hillside was an epicenter of a pagan religion. It was massive cliffs that had towered over this landscape, and there was temples and shrines that were dedicated to Greek gods and Roman emperors all over that place. It's almost kind of like the irony of this. It's like, well, if I were to put a shrine to my god here, then somebody would come along and say, well, my god is higher, so I'm going to go up the mountain a little bit more and put another one. And they would try to raise, I guess, apparently, the higher you got, and we didn't learn from the Tower of Babel, the higher you ended up putting your idols up there, apparently, the more powerful your idols were. And this is the landscape of where Jesus is engaging with his disciples today. I also want to point out that the word hell is in the Bible and I'm going to use it a little bit today. So for those of you who have not instructed your children that there is an okay time and place to use that when you're talking about deep dark places, I'm sorry, I'm going to introduce them to that today, but it is in the English text. At the base of this cliff was a deep cavern that many in the ancient world had associated with powers of death that was called the Gates of Hades, the Gates of Hell. It's here surrounded by the idols and gods that Jesus asks important, one of the most important questions in Matthew's Gospel. When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea of Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do you say the son of man is? It's one of the most important questions in the Bible. Because if Jesus is not God, if Jesus doesn't claim to be God, if Jesus is just another prophet, if Jesus is just another wise man, if Jesus is just another king or an emperor, well, we have all kinds of them that come and go throughout the scripture. Israel doesn't have exactly the greatest track record.
70% of the kings or the rulers of Israel are considered in the Bible to not be great. They're to be evil, bad, maybe they were subpar, depending upon what adjective you wanna use there. So if Jesus is not God, then he's just one of these other kings, rulers, wise men of Israel. And then he should just be counted in the same likes of Moses and Deborah and David and the other people who have come before. But yet here, Jesus asked his disciples, not, who do you say I am first? Who do people say? Why? Why is this important? Because the disciples have been traveling with Jesus. Jesus is doing ministry all throughout Matthew's gospel. He's healing, he's raising, there's miracles happening. The people who can't see are now seeing. The people who can't hear are now hearing. Jesus is doing all kinds of work, and people are testifying about who Jesus is. Even though multiple times in Matthew's gospel, Jesus says, don't go tell anybody what has happened here, they are going and telling. They are testifying what they believe about Jesus. And so Jesus starts with saying, what are the people saying?
Who do they say I am? What does social media say I am?
What does your family say I am? All these things, that's what he starts with. And they replied, well, they replied, some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah are one of the prophets. The crowds that had witnessed the miracles and the ministry of Jesus, they had opinions. Some of them thought Jesus was a prophet. Some of them thought that he was a political reformer. Some of them thought he was just a messenger who had been sent by God. You know, there had been those, Jeremiah was one of them, you know, Zephaniah. There's all kinds of prophets who were messengers sent by God. But Jesus wasn't interested in their public opinion. Why? Because he turns them immediately and he asks, then he asked them, but who do you say that I am?