Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #53 of Genesis, chapter 24, and we are reading Genesis 24:60-61:

And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them. And Rebekah arose, and her damsels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man: and the servant took Rebekah, and went his way.

I will stop reading there.  In our last study we were looking at the last part of verse 60 when Rebekah’s brothers (and maybe there were sisters, too) said, “Thou art our sister, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.”  We saw that this was similar to Genesis 22:17:

That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;

Of course, this was the promised seed to Abraham, and God made a special point of letting it be known that the “seed” was singular.  I will read it again, in Galatians 3:16:

Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.

And then it says in Galatians 3:29:

And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

The promised “seed” was Jesus.  And the way that God looks at the seed is the “stars of the heaven,” and they are all those in Christ or all those that Jesus would save.  The whole company of the elect are counted as the seed in Him.  Therefore, when we read, “Let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them,”  it refers to Jesus in the first instance, and to all the elect children of God that are in Him.  We, likewise, possess the gate of those that hate us, because the “gate” or the “door” is Christ.  He is the door of heaven, and He is the door of hell; that is, He can bring someone into heaven through the Word of God, as Christ is the door and the Word is exactly the same because He is the Word made flesh; or the Word can lock someone out of heaven, which locks them into “hell” or the grave.  Christ does both.  He has the keys of hell and death, as we read in the book of Revelation.  He is the one that opens the door or shuts the door and, so, too, are His people.  The ones He has saved also possess the keys of hell and death, or as it says in Matthew 16:15-19:

He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. 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. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

First, we have to clarify something because there is the Catholic Church that tries to make some claims concerning Peter.  They like to use this verse to say that Jesus had given Peter the keys of heaven, because it said in verse 18: “That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”  They also tie in verse 19 with that, where it says, “And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”  And that is why Popes that lead the Catholic Church are said to be “after Peter,” with Peter being the first Pope given power and authority on earth, and establishing a line of succession.  But, of course, it is all wrong.  It is just natural-minded men making a mess of what the Bible says.  They are erring, which is very commonplace in natural-minded, sinful men when they come to the spiritual Book, the Bible, and they do not know how to understand the Word of God.  They do not even know how to understand the way of understanding; that is, they lack understanding of the proper methodology that God has placed in His Word, the Bible, for understanding.  We must compare spiritual with spiritual, and that means “Scripture with Scripture,” so God is calling all Scripture “spiritual.”  When we compare spiritual with spiritual, we come to conclusions, and those conclusions must fit and harmonize with everything else the Bible says.  We must know that Christ spoke in parables so we might reach the proper type of conclusions.  We do not compare spiritual with spiritual to find plain, literal understanding or explanation of Scripture.  God wants us to compare Scripture with Scripture to find the deeper spiritual meaning to unravel the mysteries, the hidden truth He has hidden in His Word.

But these people do not understand any of that, and they see that it says, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock,” and they say, “Oh, hey, the name Peter means “rock,” so it must mean that Peter is the rock and Peter was the first Pope.”  But they are wrong from the start.  The word “Peter” is “pet-ros” in the Greek and the word “rock” is “pet-ra.”  It is a different word.  The word “pet-ra” is feminine.  If they did take the time to look up the word “rock,” they would find numerous references to the fact that our God is a “rock,” as it says in Deuteronomy, or that Jesus is the foundation “stone,” and a “stone” of stumbling, and the chief cornerstone.  There are many references that point to Christ as that foundation or rock upon which everything must be built, and not upon disciples, Apostles or Peter or any other man.  It is only the Lord Jesus Christ upon which God will build His church.  It is obvious for anyone that has eyes to see and ears to hear regarding what God is saying here, but, again, the problem is that there are vast numbers of professed Christians that reach positions of authority and become popes, bishops, cardinals, priests, ministers, and so forth.  They may have advanced in man’s worldly religious system, but they have not even begun to start in the spiritual realm, which begins when one is born again.  And if they are not born again, they cannot grow and mature and come to a right understanding of anything in the Bible, so they go astray, and they lead the masses that are like them astray. 

God worded this verse in a way that allows them to stray from truth: “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”  God has written the Bible as a testing program, and He has placed many snares within it, and it is like trying to “follow the shell,”  a game where a person has three or four shells, and he puts a pea under one of them, and then he starts moving the shells quickly with his hands.  That is what the Lord has done by first referring to Peter, whose name was “pet-ros,” which could identify with a rock or stone, and then adding, “upon this rock I will build my church.”  Of course, everything else in the Bible demands that the “rock” be Christ, and not Peter.  But these people are not good at following the Word of God.  We must follow carefully, and we must follow through very diligent Bible study.  And since they fail on those points, they are easily led astray and they go off track, coming to all kinds of wrong conclusions.  It is just like those that have drawn the wrong conclusion concerning “the pillar and ground of truth,” where it says in 1Timothy 3:15:

But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

Again, the church leaders should know better, as the Lord pointed out to Nicodemus: “Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?”  It is a basic truth.  It is a very ground level bit of understanding to realize that God builds His church and He is the foundation, the Rock.  So, here, again, God sets up a testing program to see if those who profess to be Christians and followers of Christ have that basic level of understanding.  Again, it says, “that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God,” and this would identify with the churches.  By the way, it is interesting that if you ask people in the churches and congregations what it refers to, they will say it is the church.  So they do understand that the house of God does identify with the church, and not with the Jewish temples, so they understand it when they want to do so.  But when it says in 1Peter 4:17 that judgment begins at the house of God, then they come up with another way of explaining what “house of God” means there.  But it means the same thing as it does here in 1Timothy 3.  It refers to the corporate church.  Again, it says, “…that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth,” and they say, “You see, it is the house of God, the church, that is the pillar and ground of the truth.”  They sort of omit the part about “of the living God.”  And this is more of a Protestant error, so there are those that would understand that Peter is not the rock the church is built upon, and they would have known that the Catholic Church and the Pope are wrong because you do not build the church upon Apostles or disciples.  I think that most Protestant theologians acknowledge that the “rock” must be Christ, and, yet, God also set a testing program for those that would point the finger at the Catholic Church.  And God, as it were, said, “OK, you passed the test of Matthew 16:18, but what about this?”  And there are congregations and whole denominations that insist, “We are the church, the pillar and ground of truth.”  You see, it is an appealing and very alluring idea for those that rise to levels of authority within churches and congregations.  And they were being tested in this way, just as the Catholics, and the Protestants have failed, overwhelmingly, this same test in believing that the church as a whole is the pillar and ground of truth.  They fall into the same trap.  No – it is not Peter who is the rock the church is built upon, and it is certainly not the corporate church that is the pillar and ground of the truth.

What a nightmare it would be, if that were true.  If you had ten churches that were all part of the “house of God,”  none could say they have sole claim.  The Presbyterians cannot claim it over the Episcopalians, the Lutherans or the Independents, and say, “We are the one true church.”  They all do that, but then they present their doctrines that are all different from one another on point, after point, regarding baptism, how to become saved, and everything the Bible teaches – it is all doctrine.  And this church differs from that church, and that church differs from another church.

So, we could ask, “You say you are the pillar and ground of the truth, so what is the truth?”  Then they proceed to say, “The truth is what we believe and what our denomination believes, and it is written in our confessions and creeds.”  Then another church claims the same thing, plus thousands of others.  Again, what a huge mess it would be (if the churches were the pillar and ground of the truth), but thank the Lord for His wisdom in not giving that kind of power and authority to the corporate church.  There was no way.  He reserved that power and authority for Himself, the “living God.”  The Lord Jesus Christ is that Rock and foundation that the churches are built upon, according to 1Corinthians 3.  And I will read it just to remind us, in 1Corinthians 3:9-11:

For we are labourers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building. According to the grace of God which is given unto me, as a wise masterbuilder, I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed how he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ must be the foundation.  He must be the “rock” that Matthew 16:18 refers to, and Jesus Christ must be the pillar and ground of the truth, when we put everything together in the Bible.  Grammatically, it is permissible in the statement in 1Timothy 3:15 to refer to the “living God” as the pillar and ground of the truth, and not the church.  Then we have harmony and agreement with all that the Bible says.

So going back to Matthew 16:18:

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church…

We know that God is the builder and the maker.   He is the builder of the house, according to Hebrews 3, and Hebrews 11 tells us of the city whose builder and maker is God.  He builds the church.  Then it goes on to say in Matthew 16:18:

…and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

The gates or door of hell shall not prevail against the church.  Is that true of the corporate church?  What we have to do is to define “church” because so many that are part of the corporate church…and, by the way, we use the word corporate church to describe those churches we see on so many street corners in our nations and in many nations of the world.  There are churches of various denominations and the churches have been around since 33 A. D., so it has been almost two thousand years.  But as I indicated earlier, we have learned that judgment began at the house of God.  We have been learning over the last couple of decades that God is finished with the churches.  It is totally ruined and brought to desolation.  Not one stone is left upon another.  He ended the church age and called His people to go out into the world, and that is where you would find true elect children of God now.  There are none in the churches.  They are out in the world. 

So the people within the corporate earthly churches say, “You are blaspheming!  You are erring greatly because Christ said He would build His church and even the gates of hail cannot prevail or be victorious over it.  You are claiming that Satan was loosed and took his seat there, as God abandoned the churches, and that the churches were defeated by Satan and destroyed.”  But that goes contrary to what it says here because, once again, they are failing to properly understand the Bible.  The Bible will not permit the conclusion that when we read the word “church,” it is always the outward physical representation that we can see with our eyes.

But when the Bible uses the word “church” it can also be a reference to another body, a “church” that is a spiritual body.  It is a church that consists of everyone that God has saved, and that church was built by God.  It is a temple made without hands because when God saved individuals, He added them to the spiritual structure.  This is why we read in 1Peter 2:4:

To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,

The “living stone” refers back to Jesus Christ.  Therefore, it also carries the idea of Him as the rock and foundation.  Then it says in 1Peter 2:5:

Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

So we are also “lively” or “living stones” in Christ’s spiritual house.   So if the house of God is the “church,” as declared in 1Timothy 3:15 (which it is), then what is a “spiritual house” that is made up of living stones?  It is a spiritual church – it is the church of those that are saved, God’s elect.  It is that one eternal church, which is spiritual, and everything that is spiritual is invisible to the physical eye.  God is Spirit.  Can you see Him?  No.  Satan is a spirit.   Can you see him?  No – he is a fallen angel and angelic beings are spirits.  And we cannot see spiritual things.  Can we see the spiritual house that God has built up?  No – because it is spiritual.  When God saved Abel, he was part of that church, as well as Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the saints of the Old Testament, plus all those that were truly saved over the course of the New Testament church age.  And all the great multitude that God saved out of Great Tribulation have been added to that house, as living stones in a spiritual house.  And the structure was complete on May 21, 2011.  It was all built upon the Rock, the Lord Jesus Christ.

And what did God do when He had completed the house?  He put it to the test to see if the gates of hell would prevail against it; that is, God shut the door of heaven and turned the world into “hell,” and, therefore, the gate of hell has shut upon the elect that are alive and remaining on the earth to see who will be victorious.  We will have to discuss this in more detail, Lord willing, in our next Bible study.