The Gates of Hades

Mat 16: 13 – 20

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.  And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Frist we need to understand this: Gates are not an offensive weapon, they are a defensive barrier. And the praying church has authority in the name of Jesus to shake hell.

The enemy is on the defence against the church. When we pray we loose things in heaven and Hell cannot withstand it. If only we accepted that more when we pray, we’d pray differently.

But I believe there is also another meaning here too. We are given something to target our prayers and our efforts at – we are given a glimpse of what we are fighting against:

The culture in which we live.

We are specifically given the location that this conversation with Peter happens. That’s not something we always get, but here we do.

Ceasera Phillipi.

(Not to be confused with Ceaserea – it’s a different place.)

This is the only recorded trip Jesus took to this place or near it. Why are we specifically told the location of where this happened?
When Matthew included this detail, was telling us about another layer in this statement? Did Jesus take this trip to make a statement? Because when Jesus said what He said at this place, he was saying a lot more than just that the church would stand up against the spiritual powers of Hell.

He was describing how he saw his church and how it will contrast with the world around it and how it would not be overcome by the society and culture it’s in, no matter what that culture is.

What was Caesarea Philippi?

It was the Roman name given to a place called Banias, or Panias. It was build near the Banyas spring, one of the sources of the Jordan River. Today it’s part of a national park.

It was also known as Baal Hermon – named after the false god worshipped there and took on the name Panias, named after Pan who was worshipped there by pagans and later dedicated it to him. Pan was an import from the Greek influence in Israel. The remains of the temple to Pan are still there today.

Now this is important to understand: Pan was still worshipped there at the time of Jesus. The statues to Pan would have still been there when Jesus was at this place.

We need to understand what kind of a place this was.

Pan’s cult … was a celebration of fertility. That the celebration readily took on forms
of plain orgy is suggested by Pan’s most characteristic features: a head decorated with horns, a leery and lustful smile, and the prancing legs of a goat.
We get the word panic from the worship of this false god, because as well as a god of lust he was also a god of fright.

Lust and fright. We will come back to that.

Caesarea Philippi was in short, not a place where good Jewish boys went. It was not really a Jewish town. It was too Pagan, too unclean. It was the Las Vegas of the area.

Can you imagine the disciples going there with Jesus? Young Jewish lads going to this place? The disciples were young guys.
It was the sort of place where you could imagine them thinking, I hope my mum doesn’t find out we’ve been here.

To some this place would have been quite alluring. To some quite frightening. It was a place of unbridled lust as an act of worship.

Yet Jesus took his disciples there. Jesus went to preach the gospel there. There is nowhere we cannot take the gospel. It’s for everyone. The worst of the worst places and people still need Jesus to be there.

But there’s more about this place. In Hellenistic times it was believed that the cave here led directly into the underworld, or Hades. It was so deep back then that if you threw a stone into it you wouldn’t hear the splash.

One part of the pagan ritual that took place here was throwing animal sacrifices into the hole into the water. The presence of the blood further downstream was seen as a sign that pan had accepted the offering – they’d even drink this contaminated water.

However their worship was also accompanied by appalling decadence and dissipation, which included child sacrifice..

By the time of Jesus the Greeks had put an end to the infant sacrifices and the Romans had brought the rest to a close.

However the people of the area continued to worship the fertility gods of the Greeks, particularly the Pan, god of animals and forests (Banyas is derived from Panyas ). They had carved niches for their idols in the side of the cliff, several of which are clearly visible today. They were called the rocks of the gods.

The place – the pit where they’d throw the sacrifices… it was known as the Gates of Hell.

And it was here that Jesus said, “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell[c] shall not prevail against it.”

It’s no accident that this statement was made at this particular place.

Now clearly Jesus was saying that the spiritual forces of Hell will not stand up against the church. That Hell should be afraid of a marching church. But he’s also saying more than that. He says this in a place that is known as the gates of hades and where there was an area known as the rock of the gods.

When Jesus made that statement – in that place, then those who heard it would have understood it in a way that today we don’t.

Whenever Jesus spoke of Hell he used the word Gvenna. It was a place of torment for those who don’t follow him. It was a rubbish tip in Israel – it was a cursed place where Children had once been sacrificed to Molech. Whenever he spoke of this, those listening would immediately have an image of a horrible place that they wouldn’t want to end up in.

But here he uses a different word. Hades. The word used to describe the underworld, the word used here in this place. Jesus only referred to Hell as Hades twice. Clearly he had a reason.

He said that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church. When people in Israel spoke of the gates of hell, the first thing that would come to mind was this place would be this pagan, hedonistic place.

In the midst of a place full of the things that today we think are taking over. Hedonism, selfishness, lust, partying. All the things that it feels that the church is sometimes sinking against – Jesus said, this place – this way of living, it won’t stand up to the church.
The world is getting seriously off track… the world culture around us sometimes seems overwhelming. But jesus is telling us that it is not!

We live in a world that calls good evil and evil good. Where To object to homosexuality, or transgenderism or even Islam is seen as a thing bad people do. The world is totally upside down. The world’s culture, is faster and faster spinning out of any sense of moral control.

It’s a world controlled by panic. A world controlled by hyped up media that makes the slightest thing seem like disaster – a world where lust and self control politics and government.

The enemy is behind it, but let me tell you – mankind is doing it’s own very good job of distorting and perverting the truth.
Sometimes you turn on the news and you wonder where it is all going to end.

But Jesus made this statement in the most perverse, idol worshipping, child sacrificing, pagan, sex obsessed place around.
it can’t stand against the church. It can’t stand against our prayer. It SHALL not prevail.

They traveled a long way to go to a pagan temple simply for Jesus to ask the disciples a question He could have asked them anywhere. He did it here because even the worst of places – even the most lost of cultures… it cannot stand against the church.

The church is an offensive weapon. And sometimes we are just not offensive enough.

The gates of Hell shall not prevail. But that means we need to attack the gates.