I know this will surprise you but when I was a kid, I talked a lot. I still like to talk a lot which is a good thing for a preacher. But my mouth doesn't get me in as much trouble as it did when I was a kid. I've got a better sense of what to say and when to say it. That was my problem as a child. I was the kid who wanted to blurt out the answer in class or the one who wanted to join adult conversations.   I would just say whatever was on my heart and sometimes, that was really good and other times, even when I was being honest, I embarrassed myself. My father, who had the patience of Job, worked and worked with me about learning what to say and when to say it.  I can still hear his voice saying to me, “Randy, put your brain in gear before you put your mouth in motion.”

There was a first century father by the name of Jonah who, had he known about gear shifts and cars, he would have used the same expression. “Simon, put your brain in gear before put your mouth in motion.”

If there is a universal description of Simon Peter, it is the one who opens his mouth and says what's on his heart. We'll see this week that his mouth got him recognition and it got him in trouble. We know he does learn what to say and when to say it, to be careful about just blurting out what's on his heart. Peter becomes a powerful preacher who brings 3,000 to Christ in his very first sermon. He is one of the two major voices of the early church so his mouthy nature served the cause of Christ well.

Peter serves as a model for Christian discipleship which is why we are spending these weeks before Easter looking at his life. For those of you who are just joining us and by way of review, let me share quickly the first three principles of Peter's life.

The first Peter Principle has to do with capacity. Even though we might not have picked Peter to be the leader of the church, Jesus did because he saw within him a God given capacity to be far more than just a mouthy fisherman. God sees the same in each of us and a relationship with Jesus allows you to flourish and grow, to become the very best you. That's the first Peter Principle.

The second is the call to become that very best you which happens on the path of discipleship. It begins with friendship, moves to apprenticeship and finally emerges in leadership. Peter and his fellow disciples are following Jesus, learning the craft of being Christians. We travel the same path and as we do, our faith grows. That doesn't mean that we don't doubt. Doubt helps our faith grow.  That’s the third principle.  Like Peter, we get caught in between doubt and faith, wavering between belief and disbelief.  Embracing doubt allows for faith to grow.   These are the first three principles we learn from the life of Peter, the first three coming during his apprenticeship.

His apprenticeship has two distinct locations, Galilee and Jerusalem. The Galilean ministry took place for as long as a couple of years while Jesus built his following, healed and performed miracles and taught his disciples. It started innocently with crowds thrilled by the power of Jesus to heal both their bodies and souls. But with recognition and popularity came conflict with the religious leaders and concern by the Roman government. It was dangerous. Jesus and his disciples knew well that it was dangerous because they grew up seeing the problem with popularity. They lived during the tax revolt of Sepphoris.

Sepphoris was the capital of southern Galilee. It was a cosmopolitan city of great wealth and beauty, located halfway between the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean. It was perched on a hill with a panoramic view of southern Galilee. Four miles to the southeast of Sepphoris was the little town of Nazareth, the town where Mary and Joseph reared Jesus. There was a 4,000 seat amphitheater built likely during the time when Jesus was teenager. There is good reason to believe that this is where Jesus learned and used the word “hypocrite”, from the Greek actors who were hypocrites, performing the great Greek plays while “acting under a mask.”[1]

When Jesus and his disciples were children, perhaps around the age of 10, a popular Galilean named Judas led a tax revolt and raided the arsenal in Sepphoris. Varus, the Roman governor of Syria retaliated, marching his army from Antioch to regain control of Sepphoris. His troops burned Sepphoris to ground. They rounded up the rebels and crucified 2000 men in and around Sepphoris. Crucifixion was used as a political deterrent. Bodies were left to rot on the crosses as a reminder of what happens when you threaten Rome.  The Jewish historian Josephus said that the stench of 2000 rotting corpses polluted the air as far away as Nazareth where Jesus was growing up.

With Sepphoris still smoldering, Herod Antipas immediately began to rebuild the city. He called for carpenters and craftsmen to come from all of Galilee to work in the shadow of these 2000 crosses. While there is no written evidence of it, it doesn't take much imagination to see a carpenter and his son from four miles away helping rebuild the capital city.  Without a doubt, Jesus, Peter and the disciples knew what was at stake if the authorities began to consider Jesus a threat to create political unrest. As children they saw the horrible crucifixions and experienced the burned capital of Galilee.[2]

It's not surprising then that Jesus and his disciples travel north to Caesarea Philippi to get away from the crowds and perhaps let things cool down.  Caesarea Philippi is twenty-five miles north of the Sea of Galilee and was famous for a massive rock from which flows one of the streams that form the Jordan River. The rock had long been associated with worship, first of the Greek God Pan and then, for a temple built by Herod the Great, to worship the Roman Emperor Augustus.

It may well have been that in front off that sheer cliff, the rock upon which so many worship centers had been built that Jesus asks about the crowds. He wants to know what people are thinking.

 “You guys are spending a lot of time working the crowd, rubbing shoulders with the people who are coming to hear me. What are they saying, who do they think I am?” “And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” (Matthew 16: 14)

 “They said.” It's a class answer. We don't know who is reporting, it's lost in the 'they' but we can assume that several are answering at the same time. So Jesus asks the entire class their opinion.  “He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’” (Matthew 16:15) Before the class could answer collectively, Simon mouths off. He doesn't raise his hand. He doesn't wait for his brain to be put in gear before his mouth is in motion. He blurts out what's on his heart. “Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’” (Matthew 16:16).

If Jesus was surprised at Peter's answer, he doesn't reveal it. Instead, he blesses Peter with a “barocha”, a traditional blessing of Jewish rabbi. Jesus reverts to a formal title:  “And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church,’” (Matthew 13: 17-18b).  There's a picture there and it is very powerful. Standing in front of the rock of Caesarea Philippi, where people over the centuries have built places of worship, he says, “You're like this rock with all these temples. On you Peter, I’m going to build my church.”  I think it is remarkable that Peter didn't blurt out, “What's a church?”  It would be months before the church was launched at Pentecost. It didn't exist. Whatever it was, Peter was going to build it because he answered the question. 

Then Jesus “ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah” (Matthew 13:20). I may be wrong but I suspect that Jesus was looking right at Peter when he said this.  He knows Peter. He's saying, “Don't go mouthing off to people about who I am. You don't really know what that means yet.  You've got to grow in your understanding of who I am.”

This is the fourth Peter Principle. We grow into an understanding of our profession of faith.  We have to live into our understanding about who Jesus is.  We have to practice our answer over and over again, expanding our understanding of who Jesus is. Sometimes we answer the question right, expanding our understanding of who Jesus is.  We practice our faith well. Other times, we practice badly, getting the answer wrong because our understanding is too narrow and our definition is wrong.  Almost immediately, Peter learns this. Jesus tells them what Messiah means. He has to go to Jerusalem, be arrested, suffer and die on a cross, just like those 2000 rebels crucified in their childhood.  Peter mouths off saying, ‘“God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.’  But he turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me;’” (Matthew 16:22b-23a). Stumbling block? Just what is a stumbling block, it's a stone, it’s a rock.  Years later, Peter must have been thinking of this moment when he wrote: “…a stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall. They stumble because they disobey the word,” (1 Peter 2:8a). The word was “don't go mouthing off until you understand what kind of Messiah I am.” You can be either a living rock or a stumbling stone and the awful truth is, sometimes you can be both at the same time. At that moment in Caesarea Philippi, Peter was both.[3]

Peter got the answer to the question right; he just didn't know what it meant. That can happen with a test. You can come up with the right answer but not really know what you are talking about. Peter needed to live into his profession, to really discover who Jesus was. It would require completing the apprenticeship. It would require mouthing off about loyalty and then, abandoning Jesus when he was arrested.  It would require accepting the definition of the Son of Man being nailed to a cross. And it would require a lifetime of being the rock upon which the church was built and practicing his profession that Jesus was the Messiah, that Son of the Living God. 

“Who do you say I am?” is not a question that can be answered once. It's not a one and done test.  It's a question that is asked over and over, with the answer being refined and expanded and fleshed out. It takes a lifetime to build the answer. Peter describes it this way:  “like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood… God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:5a, 9b).  We proclaim him again and again. It's not a question that can't be answered once.

And it's not a historic question. “Who do you say I am” is a timeless question, a question that   has been asked throughout the ages and is asked again this morning. Just who do you say he is?  At the risk of sounding paternal, “put your brain in gear before you put your mouth in motion.”  Too many of people take Jesus as their Savior and then stop answering the question, they stop expanding the definition about what that means. Following Jesus requires that we answer the question continually, daily, practicing our answer over and over again. And like Peter, as we grow in our discipleship, moving from friendship to leadership, the answer expands. We know that as Peter practices his faith, his answers expanded each time he responded. “Who do you say I am?” You are Master, Lord, Immanuel, Lamb of God, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, The Good Shepherd, the Light of the Word, the Way, the Truth and the Life.  You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. It took a lifetime of practicing, of understanding his profession of faith.

Many years ago there was a famous Polish pianist, Paderewski and there are many legendary stories about his artistry and his character. One story comes to mind with this fourth Peter Principle. A mother wanted to encourage the progress of her young son at the piano and so she bought two tickets to a Paderewski performance. When the night arrived she found their seats near the front of the concert hall and they eyed the large Steinway parked by itself on the stage. Soon the mother found a friend to talk with and she did not notice the boy slip away. When 8:00 p.m. arrived the house lights dimmed, the spotlights came on, the Steinway was bathed in light, and only then did this mother notice that her son was seated at the piano bench, where he began innocently to plunk the keys in a rendition of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. The audience roared, his mother gasped, but before she could retrieve her son, Paderewski himself appeared and moved quickly towards the keyboard. "No, don't quit, keep on playing," he whispered to the boy. And reaching past him with his left hand the Master began improvising a bass part, and then with his right hand, he reached around on the other side of the boy to add a running obbligato. The crowd was spellbound and the piece concluded in thunderous applause as the boy announced, "I didn't know I could do that."  Now that you've started, don't quit. Practice, again and again. Keep practicing; keep playing for the rest of your life and you'll build something lovely and beautiful.

“Who do you say I am?” You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.  Keep practicing and grow into your profession of faith. That’s the fourth Peter Principle.  Keep practicing, mouthing off if you like and you'll build something quite lovely, a life in Jesus that is rock solid.