Jesus asked His disciples one day who they thought He was, and it was Peter who answered the question.
When He asked, “Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” the disciples answered, “Some say that Thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.” For people then were very like people now, and some said one thing about Jesus, and some said another.
But when Jesus asked, “But whom say ye that I am?” Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus had called Himself the Son of Man, and He was indeed Man; He had come into this world as a baby, and He had grown up into manhood as a Man among men, the Son of Man among the sons of men; but Peter knew that He was the Christ, the Messiah for whom they had been waiting, God’s chosen and anointed Man, truly Man — and yet, the Son of the living God.
Peter had not found this out for himself; he had been with Jesus and seen the wonderful things He did. He knew that He could command the fishes of the sea, that He spoke to the winds and waves and they obeyed His voice; His hands could feed five thousand men with a few loaves and fishes; He healed the sick, He raised the dead but even so, Peter could never have known that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God, if it had not been revealed to him. Jesus said to him, “Blessed art thou, Simon [son of Jona]; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.”
And then Jesus said to him, “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.”
Peter’s name meant a stone, and Jesus tells him the wonderful secret that He is going to build His church, not with stones, like those men use in building, but with stones like Peter himself, with men, women and children who confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. A rock is that which cannot be moved, and as you grow older and read your Bible from one end to the other, and even now, when perhaps you have only read part of it, you will notice how very often in the Old Testament God is spoken of as a Rock. It would be worthwhile to count how many times Moses uses the word Rock, even in one chapter (Deut. 32). And when we come to the New Testament, and Paul is writing about the rock from which the Israelites drank in the wilderness, he says, “That Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:44And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ. (1 Corinthians 10:4)).
When Jesus told Peter He was going to build His church upon “this rock,” He went on to say, “And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Do you remember how, long before, when Samson was judge over Israel, his enemies thought they had him safely shut up in the city of Gaza? “And they . . . laid wait for him all night in the gate of the city, and were quiet all the night, saying, In the morning, when it is day, we shall kill him. And Samson lay till midnight, and arose at midnight, and took the doors of the gate of the city, and the two posts, and went away with them, bar and all, and put them upon his shoulders, and carried them up to the top of an hill that is before Hebron.”
That gives us a little picture of what Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, has done with the gates of hell. Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it. He went down into death, He died, and it looked as though Satan had gained the victory, as though the Rock of Ages had been overthrown. But the power of hell was broken by Jesus’ death, and on the third day He arose.
He arose, He arose!
With a mighty triumph over His foes,
Hallelujah! Christ arose.
He rose from the dead, and ascended up into heaven and sat down at God’s right hand as the mighty Victor over death and Satan’s power.
This is why the gates of hell can never, never prevail against the church which He is building on the Rock.