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Through the Bible with Les Feldick
LESSON 1 * PART 1 * BOOK 78
CHRIST AS THE ROCK OF SCRIPTURE
Various Scriptures
Okay, it’s good to see everybody in this afternoon. For those of you joining us on television, again we want to thank you for joining us. We have just come back from a rather long trip. And you know, the thing that just rings in our ears when we get home is the word “every.” They all say the same thing – we watch you every morning. Well, you know we love to hear that. And a couple right here just told us the same thing. That tells us that there’s a hunger. You’re not watching it just to kill half an hour from time-to-time, but to really get hooked on the Word of God.
And as one of my listeners I was talking to last night said, “I never had an interest in this before, but now I just can’t get enough.” Well, that’s as it should be. You know, just as soon as that new baby is born, it starts crying. What triggers the cry? Hunger. They want to be fed. And that’s the way it should be with a new believer. So those of you out in television, again, we just thank you for your response. We thank you for your kind letters and your financial help and everything that makes this possible.
All right, we’re going to start a new book today. It is book number 78. We finished our review of Genesis to Revelation in the last taping. I’m going to be looking at something new today. We’re going to look at the many times in Scripture that Jesus Christ is referred to as the Rock or the Stone. And there’s a lot of confusion of that simply because of one verse. The studio audience already has it, so those of you in television go with us to Matthew chapter 16. We’re going to drop in at verse 13. These are verses that we’ve used many times, but we’re going to comment when we get down to verse 18.
Matthew 16:13-17
“When Jesus came into the borders of Caesarea Philippi, (up there in Northern Israel) he asked his disciples (the Twelve), saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? 14. And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. 15. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? 16. And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 17. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven.” Which, of course, is the normal way of enlightening people. Peter isn’t the first nor the last. Now here it comes in verse 18. Jesus is speaking.
Matthew 16:18
“And I say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; (And remember, the word is always ecclesia, so it was a called-out assembly. Not necessarily the Body of Christ Church, but it would be a Jewish called-out assembly.) and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
I’m not a Greek scholar, but I went into some of my Greek dictionaries and I didn’t find anything that I hadn’t heard before. And that is that there’s a play on words here. They’re pretty much the same—the Rock or Stone. One of the Hebrew words, or the Greek, is Cephas—from which we get Peter’s other name—which is the word for rock or stone. The only difference is that when He says, “Thou art Peter,” it’s in the feminine, if I’ve got it right. But when He speaks of the other, “upon this rock,” then it’s masculine. Then I went to a couple of the other commentaries and they both maintain that, yes, indeed, He was speaking to Peter as the “little stone,” but upon Himself as “the Rock, I will build my church.”
And then I was really shocked when I got into Augustine. You know I’ve been rather critical of Augustine, because after all he became the father of Roman Catholicism. Yet even Augustine maintained that the Rock on which Christ was speaking was Himself—not Peter, but Himself.
Of course, we are all aware that Roman Catholicism stresses the fact that that’s why Peter became the first pope, because of this statement right here. But the Roman Catholics aren’t alone. There are a lot of other Protestant groups that adhere to the same thing. That when Jesus said “upon this rock,” He was speaking of Peter. And I’m going to show, hopefully from Scripture, contrary to the tradition of Christendom, that the Rock in Scripture is always Jesus Christ. He is the Rock. He is the Stone! We’re going to chase them down and see if we can make sense.
Now, before we go back and look up our Old Testament reference to that, I want you to go ahead with me to Romans chapter 15. I think it’s either verse 3 or 4—verse 4. This is the basis for our study today.

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