"How is Jesus David's Son?" Matthew 22:41-45 Sunday Evening Worship Service

So here's a Bible riddle for you.

I'm sure you've heard all the cheesy Bible riddles.

Who's the shortest person in the Bible?

Nehiemaiah, there you go.

Yeah.

The uh the first motorcycle in the Bible, of course, is Joshua.

He entered the valley on his triumph.

You know these things, right?

Uh the first car in the Bible, the disciples in the upper room were all in one accord.

There's many, many more.

There's a whole class on these in seminary.

But here's one for you.

Here's more of a riddle than a bad dad joke.

Whose son is also his Lord?

That's the riddle of the ages, and that's what Jesus presents to the disciples tonight.

So the question of the day, and we're gonna chip away at the answer to it tonight.

When I said in my prayer before the message that all the tensions in the Bible are met in this, it's not an exaggeration.

I mean, this question that Jesus has for the disciples really is where all the chords of the Bible tie together.

And there are tensions in the Bible.

Going back to Genesis 3, how will the Savior crush the head of Satan and yet have his heel stricken by him?

And there's a defeat, and there is a defeat.

The person who's the victor is bit.

That's an odd turn of phrase.

You see this in Psalm 89, where Psalm 89 declares that God's covenant is eternal and everlasting, and he'll never take it away from Israel.

And then three verses later, that the covenant has been broken off and cast into the wilderness.

You see this with all kinds of prophecies in Isaiah about the Savior.

That it pleased the Lord to crush him, to crush his son, though he had done nothing wrong.

He'll see no end of days, and yet he'll be buried with a rich man.

I mean, how do those things even begin to hold together?

That he'll have eternal life and yet be buried, that death won't touch him, and yet he'll go to the grave.

There are just countless of those tensions in the Bible, more than I could give you tonight.

And they're all resolved.

They all come together and they all resolve in the person of Christ.

The person of Christ makes sense of all of them.

How can the Savior be powerful and immortal and eternal and yet be born as a baby in a manger, ignored by the world?

I mean, all of this comes together.

You don't understand the Old Testament.

You can't put together the prophecies together.

You can't put them all together in a way that doesn't contradict itself.

And then you meet Christ and it all resolves.

That doesn't mean there's not still tensions in the Bible.

Of course they are, but all those tensions are resolved in Christ, even when we can't fully understand them.

And that's why Jesus goes here at the end of this day of questioning from the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin.

Remember, the day started with them showing up.

This is likely Tuesday of Passion Week.

The day starts with them showing up, trying to trap Jesus.

They lay it trap after trap after trap for Jesus.

They are not going to fight him on their terms, they're going to fight Jesus on his terms.

Jesus is a wordsmith, he's holding court in the temple, he's got the massive congregation there hanging on all of his words.

And so these Jewish leaders are going to take Jesus on in his own home court.

He is the Word of God.

He's a master of words.

He's using his words to teach.

He's known as the teacher, going back to the Sermon on the Mount.

He's been known as the teacher, his whole ministry here.

So they're going to engage with him on that level.

They want to, in their mind, they want to expose his hypocrisy.

They want to show the world that Jesus is all smoke and mirrors, no substance.

You know, he's all hat and no cattle, the Texans might say.

That's what they're after with him.

They want to show that Jesus doesn't have the goods to back up.

I mean, they're offended by him.

He's teaching in the temple as if he owns the place.

He's driving them out of the temple.

Remember back on Sunday, he's turning over tables, he's running them out of there.

And so now they're back to go toe-to-toe with him.

Now, they have three questions for him.

Jesus dodges all three of them.

When I say dodge, I don't mean he refused to answer them.

No, he answered all of them head on, but he dodged their trap.

He saw their trap, he saw their hypocrisy, Matthew says.

He looked into their hearts, he knew they were hypocrites.

Remember the first question asked by the Herodians, the party of Herod, is it lawful to pay taxes to Herod?

You know, these people, again, are raging hypocrites.

These are the people that are supporting the Roman Empire, are trying to get Jesus to also support the Roman Empire, with the idea that if the Jews hear him say that, the Jews will turn against him.

Jesus, of course, responds by having one of the Herodians render a coin to him and then say, Give unto Caesar what is Caesar and to God what is God's.

He condemns them because they're unwilling to give God the worship God deserves.

They thought the coin, the trap was about Caesar.

Jesus answers that and then goes to their heart and says, You're refusing to give to God.

What belongs to him?

The next question, by the Sadducees, who don't even believe in a resurrection, by the way.

Here's a woman who's married, you know, a bajillion times in the afterlife.

Who will be in heaven?

Who will she be married to?

Who will her husband be?

Again, they're such hypocrites, they don't even believe in the resurrection.

Jesus answers that question head on.

He says, Your problem, this is what he tells the Sadducees, your problem is you don't even know what the Word of God says.

You're the experts in Scripture, you're the teachers of Israel, and you don't know the basics of heaven.

So he confronts them.

There is no marriage in heaven.

There are spiritual relationships.

We looked at this a few weeks ago, but there's no marriage in heaven.

Spiritual relationships, of course, remain.

You'll know your spouse in heaven.

That's not what the question was, though.

And then thirdly, the Pharisee, the expert at dividing the law, the expert at putting the jots and the tittles in the law.

His question: What's the most significant command in the Bible?

What's the most important?

And Jesus answers that head on to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, to love your neighbor as yourself.

The Pharisee endorses the answer and says, You've answered wisely.

That's the first and second table of the law.

We talked about that this morning.

And then Jesus responds to the Pharisee, Oh, you are not far from the kingdom of heaven.

Yowzers.

So now he swatted away all three shots.

The first one by the Herodians, smacked to the cheapseats.

The second one by the Sadducees, totally squashed.

The third one by the Pharisees, just batted away like it was nothing.

And he hid it away in a way that exposes their hypocrisy.

Mark says at this point in Mark 12, after he answered that third question, none of them dared to ask him any more questions.

You're going to see that verse again tonight at the end of Matthew 22.

Mark puts it before this exchange.

It fits in both places, of course.

But it's so fascinating.

Think of all that you would give to be able to ask Jesus one question.

And it's one of the reasons we look forward to heaven.

To get some mysteries resolved.

But that's because we have faith.

Like we want to ask Jesus questions not to trap him.

We want to ask Jesus questions to learn from him, to have some of the mystery explained.

They weren't interested in that.

They didn't want to learn.

They wanted to trap.

And so once they could tell they were outmatched, outwitted, Jesus was more of a master of the Word of God than they were.

They determined to be silent, but Jesus is not going to let them off the hook.

He has a captive audience.

I mean, there's a massive crowd.

Hundreds of thousands of people have come to Jerusalem for this event.

There's tens of thousands, if not a hundred thousand, pressing at the temple right now, listening to this.

Jesus is not going to let them escape.

So Jesus turns the tables on them.

They've asked him questions all day long.

Now he's got one for them.

In typical rabbinical style, he leads in.

The first question is not the real question.

The first question is the trap question.

And that's why Jesus didn't fall into it.

The Pharisees were doing the same thing to him.

Jesus didn't fall into the trap.

But now Jesus is turning the tables.

He's using their game against them.

He's going to ask them a question to lure them in, and then he's going to spring the trap.

And they fall headlong into it.

They don't have the skills that Jesus did.

They bite this hook, line, sinker, they are caught on the jaw, the whole thing.

They're toast when it comes to Jesus here.

Well, the Pharisees were gathered, verse 31.

41 says, Jesus asked them a question.

Say, what do you think about the Christ?

And that's just the word Messiah.

What do you think about him?

I mean, isn't that a great question for Jesus to ask?

What do you think about the Savior?

A whole sermon could be preached just on that question.

That is the most important question you will ever be asked, by the way.

What do you think about Jesus Christ?

What do you think about the Messiah?

Like it peels everything away.

Not what sport team do you like, not what politics do you like, not what movies do you like.

Peel all that nonsense away.

The most basic thing about you is the answer to this question.

What do you think about Christ?

That's the most significant question you can be asked.

That's what Jesus asks.

What do you think about the Messiah?

He follows it with this clarifying comment.

I don't want to spend too much time with what do you think about the Christ, because there's a lot there, but I want to keep moving here.

Whose son is he?

So Jesus narrows it.

Because he knows their hearts.

It's obvious what they think about the Messiah.

They're not interested in Jesus.

Now Jesus clarifies it.

Whose son is the Messiah?

This is a very basic Old Testament question.

This is one of those, I was talking about them earlier tonight, one of those John MacArthur kind of questions when he preaches where the answer is easy and you feel excited about it.

Whose son is the Messiah?

Everybody knows this.

He's David's son.

That's like the slam dunk Old Testament answer.

And they get it right.

At the end of verse 42, they said to him, Well, he's the son of David.

Of course, they've got to be thinking, what kind of silly juvenile question is that?

Of course he's David's son.

He sits on the throne of David.

There's so many Old Testament prophecies about this.

This is not a hard question.

Here's where the hard question comes.

By them answering the question, they fell into Jesus' trap.

Alright, he's David's son?

Great, Jesus says in verse 43.

How is it then that David in the Spirit calls him Lord?

Saying, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.

If David calls him Lord, how can he then be David's son?

Boom.

Mic drop.

Do you understand the question?

If David calls the Savior Lord, how can David also call him son?

How can it's just a chronological, it's as simple as a chronological question.

The Lord made David, David's son comes after David.

You see the chronology problem here?

If the Savior is David's Lord, that means he predates David.

And if the savior is David's son, that means he post-dates David.

How can both be true?

It's a very basic Old Testament riddle that the Pharisees had not contended with.

Jesus backs up his riddle with the citation of Psalm 110.

Psalm 110 is what verse 44 is quoting.

Just before we go into the actual wording of the Psalm, notice in verse 43, how does David in the Spirit call him Lord?

In the Spirit is a reference to the writing of Psalm 110.

Notice that when Jesus says it, this is massively important.

When Jesus says that David wrote that in the Spirit, Jesus is authenticating that the Psalms are Scripture, and more than that, that Scripture is inspired by God.

So that means that it's inerrant, that means it's infallible.

Jesus is authenticating here that everything that is scripture is breathed out by God.

So that means it has no errors.

When David writes, he's writing in the Spirit.

This is even more important for Psalm 110 because Psalm 110 is a conversation between Trinitarian persons, a conversation between the Father and the Son in eternity past.

How can anybody know what the Father and the Son said to each other before they created the universe?

There's no witnesses to that, this is before the angels.

There's no witnesses to that conversation.

How could David possibly know what the father and the son said to one another before time?

Well, when I said there's no witnesses to that conversation, that was a little bit of fudging there.

There's one witness to the conversation.

A conversation between the father and the son before time has exactly one witness to it: the Spirit.

And here the Spirit reveals it to David.

When people talk about predestination or the covenant of redemption or the Father and the Son planning redemption for mankind, a question, probably the most common question I get asked about that, is what about the Holy Spirit?

The Father and the Son are planning redemption.

What about the Holy Spirit?

Well, he is also planning redemption, but he's witnessing the planning as well, and he's communicating the planning.

Titus 1, for example, calls the plan of redemption a promise that God made from the Father to the Son.

What about the Holy Spirit?

Well, how do you think Paul knew about this?

The Holy Spirit is revealing it to him.

Or Hebrews 6, a covenant that was made in ages past.

How would the author of Hebrews know about that?

The Holy Spirit's revealing it to him.

The same thing is true in Psalm 110.

Jesus says it's true.

How would anybody know, especially David, about a conversation between the Father and the Son in eternity past, and the answer is the Spirit reveals it?

That's not true, not just of Psalm 110, but of all of Scripture.

It is breathed out by God in the Spirit.

All Scripture is Trinitarian.

The Father is the source, the Son is the Word, the Spirit is the witness.

Consistently.

And this works backwards too, at the baptism of Jesus.

The Spirit witnesses the Father's love for the Son.

The voice from heaven authenticates the Son, the Spirit's the witness to it, and bears witness at the baptism.

This is how the Trinity functions.

The Father is the source, the Son is the Word, the Spirit reveals it and seals it.

Jesus declares that here in verse 43.

David writing about Psalm 110.

This is before the Messiah is born.

The Jews may not have understood the Trinity, but Jesus did.

Amen.

And here he's he's leveraging it to explain this pre-temporal, eternity past conversation.

The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand.

Now, I want you to turn to Psalm 110.

So leave your finger in Matthew 23, because Psalm 110 is just a massively important psalm.

In a sense, it was like the Israelite national anthem.

It was a psalm that was designed to be a coronation psalm.

It would be sung at the coronation of a king.

It was written by David, Judah's first true king.

Saul, in a sense, was you know their first king, but David is the first true king.

Saul was from Benjamin, David from Judah.

Yahweh says to my Lord, and Yahweh is important there.

All caps in the Isfi, it's indicating that it's Yahweh in the Hebrew.

Yahweh says to my Lord, there it's the word for Adnier, the king.

So it's a conversation between Yahweh and the king of Israel.

Sit in my right hand and still I make your enemies a footstool.

So the king of Israel will be God's vice regent, and God is going to subject the enemies of God to that king of Israel.

So this cannot possibly right away you're realizing this is not an earthly king.

It's a song sung at the coronation of an earthly king, but there's stuff going on in here that is way beyond an earthly king.

It reminds you of Psalm 2, the nation's rage and plot a vain thing, but the one enthroned in heaven laughs and says, I'm going to install my son on my holy hill, and you will kiss him, or you will be sent to hell.

That's Psalm 2.

This reminds you of that.

The Lord Yahweh speaks to the king of Israel and says, Have a seat at my right hand side.

Be my vice regent.

Nobody is Yahweh's vice regent except the Son.

And so that's this is a Psalm about the Son.

Yahweh sends forth from Zion a mighty scepter.

This is a prophecy.

Rule in the midst of your enemies, that the Messiah will be established in Jerusalem.

He'll rule over the nations.

Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power and holy garments.

In other words, it'll be a kingdom of priests.

It won't be the Levites that are sanctified.

It'll be all followers of this Savior who will be priests.

This is the priesthood of all believers.

This is the new covenant promise.

They will offer themselves freely.

There's no compulsion.

You're not a follower of Christ because you were baptized into the covenant or circumcised into the covenant.

Everybody is there, is following freely when he is established.

From the womb of the morning.

That's an expression that's also used in Psalm 89.

From the womb of the morning means from the gestation of light, literally.

From the place where light gestates.

In other words, before light came into the world, before Genesis 1, verse 2, you've got Genesis 1, verse 1, in the beginning, nothing.

Genesis 1:2 Genesis 1:1

It's back then this conversation takes place.

When light was still stored up inside of God, light was still gestating.

That's when this happens.

The dew of the youth will be yours.

In other words, back then he's still the youth.

Here is an image for sonship.

He's still the eternal son.

Yahweh has sworn.

Remember, the swearing of Yahweh takes place before time in the gestation of the light.

Yahweh will never change his mind.

What is God swearing?

What is the Father swearing to the Son?

What is the Father promising the Son?

The answer is verse 4.

You're a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Again, I don't want to get too bogged down on Psalm 110 because there's so much here I want to move through it quickly.

But you're a priest forever.

This is an eternal promise because it predates time.

Melchizedek was not a priest in the line of Levite.

Melchizedek walks onto the pages of scripture with no genealogy.

Abraham pays homage to him.

All of the Jews are underneath Melchizedek in that sense.

They're underneath him.

He predates them.

That's what Jesus is like.

All of the true faithful Jews will submit to him.

Not because he's a Levite, because he's an eternal priest.

Verse 5, the Lord, here's the word for Adonai King, is at your right hand, speaking to God.

He will shatter kings in the day of his wrath.

He will execute judgment among the nations.

This is second coming kind of language.

This is day of the Lord kind of language.

He will pour out his wrath.

The king, this king will pour out his wrath.

He'll shatter chiefs over the wide earth.

He'll drink from the brook by the way, and he will lift up his head.

That's another very strange expression.

This eternal king who's going to rule the nations is going to drink from the brook.

It's talking about his humility and his lowness.

It reminds you of Judges, where all the Gideon, where all the men had to drink from the brook.

The king will be like that.

He'll be the eternal son of God from before dawn.

And yet he'll need water.

It's an incredible picture.

This song was sung for every king.

And I'll give you a quick outline about the Psalm 110 here.

First of all, it's a song fit for a king, and I'll put that on your screen for you.

It's a song fit for David's king.

David wrote this, David believed it.

It was written for his king.

And I'll tell you what, this song was sung every coronation for kings.

It's a musical way to attest the fact that the kings who reigned over Judah was a vice-regent of God himself.

That's how the Israelites or the tribe of Judah and Benjamin, anyway, looked at their king.

He was their vice-regents.

That's what the song is about.

He'll have the glory that Abraham gave Melchizedek, their king will have that.

Verses 2 and 3 of the Psalm, which we read earlier, describe the joy of the people having a king so powerful.

Verse 4, his kingdom will never, never end.

Verses 5 and 6, he'll have military victories.

So through the lens of Christ, you see this as second coming, day of the Lord kind of language.

When the Jews sang this, they sang this just as hopefulness.

Hyperbolic hopefulness, like their king will rule the nations, kind of kind of language.

It describes the peace that will come under his leadership.

I mentioned it.

You know how many kings you had?

Twenty-three.

Plus one queen, one very wicked queen.

Twenty-three kings.

One very wicked queen.

This song got sung 24 times.

Never worked out, huh?

Just apostasy after apostasy, really.

So, what is the song doing after they they lose kings?

They lose the whole promised land.

They get kicked out of Israel, banished to Babylon.

70 years there.

Then they can come back and resettle Israel.

When they resettle, you know what's missing?

A king.

They come back, they resettle under Ezra, Nehemiah, they repopulate the lands, they rebuild the temple.

Ezra gets that temple back up.

High fives to Ezra, but no king.

They rebuild the temple.

They don't rebuild King David's house.

That's gone.

So what does Psalm 110 mean then?

When you don't have a king, what do you do with the song about the king?

Well, you just nationalize it.

You take it for your whole country.

And we have a similar, I'm going to explain to you this way.

We have a similar concept.

The Star Spangled Banner.

That's our national anthem, right?

It was written about our war with England.

No, not that war with England, the other war with England.

It was written in 1814 about the war of 1812.

People sang it for a while, but then the war's over.

So what does that song mean when the war is over?

There's no Rockets Red Glare anymore.

They're done fighting.

We won.

Even though we tied a few days ago.

We won the wars that counted, okay?

So after that, the Navy took the song and made it the song of the Navy.

That's neat.

Then President Hoover in the 1930s made it the national anthem and declared that it should be sung at sporting events.

Great.

And here we are to this day.

Praise God for D.C.

Washington, right?

It's a song that was written for a context that became nationalized.

That's what happens to Psalm 110.

They don't have a king anymore, so now they nationalize the hope of the psalm and say one day God will give us this kind of person.

We don't have a king, but one day it's going to come, and when that guy comes, he'll be the Messiah.

It's not the next king, it's the king, the king of all kings.

That's who we'll have.

So it's a very pro-Israelite psalm that their king will rule the nations.

That's how they took it.

And it's supposed to be a good thing for them.

Their Messiah will be at God's right hand.

So they all love this psalm because it's a psalm fit for David's king, and they're saying it's going to be the Messiah, the Savior, who will also be David's son.

That's the second point.

It's a song fit for David's king, but it's also a song fit for David's son.

The exile happens, they lost their king, they hold on to their song, and they say that it will be a descendant of David who will be the Messiah.

That's what's behind Jesus' question to the Pharisees.

Whose son is the Messiah?

They think back to Psalm 110 and they, it's gotta be David's son.

They know that one.

Even 2 Samuel 7, God promises David that one of his offspring would be the Messiah.

Very basic, foundational, fundamental promise in the Old Testament.

David wanted to build the temple, God said no, but said, I'll build a house from you.

You're not gonna build a house from me, I'll build a house from you.

Your descendant, your seed, your offspring.

He'll be the savior.

And that's repeated all over the Old Testament.

David wanted to build a house for God, God said no, I'll build a house out of you.

This is Isaiah 11, verse 1.

Isaiah 11:1

I'll put it on the screen for you.

A shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse.

A branch from his roots will bear fruit.

Yahweh's spirit will rest upon him.

So there's trinitarian implications.

God's making this guy grow, but he's grown out of David.

He's a human grown out of David, but God's spirit will come upon him.

It's a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, and the fear of Yahweh.

There's a lot going on with him.

Jeremiah 30, verse 9 says, after exile, Israel will return and they will have their saviors.

Jeremiah 30:9

This is the new covenant part of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 31 is the new covenant.

Before that, Jeremiah 30, verse 9, they will serve Yahweh, their God, and David their king.

Jeremiah 30:9

Jeremiah is long after David.

Jeremiah is prophesying the exile.

You're going to get kicked out of Israel.

Jerusalem's going to burn.

That happens.

Remember, Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations about it.

They lose their capital.

Jeremiah says, but even after that, David, their king, will be raised up.

It's not a reincarnation of David, not David resurrected.

They didn't believe that.

They believed that the new king, the Messiah, the Savior, would be descended from David.

Ezekiel 34 describes the bad shepherds that God is going to give Israel, the bad, wicked shepherds.

We've looked at that passage a lot.

And they're going to fleece the sheep and eat them.

And God says, I'm going to come and be the good shepherd.

But when I do that, Ezekiel 34, verse 23, I will be the good shepherd, I will set over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will feed them.

Ezekiel 34:23

So when Jesus identifies himself as the good shepherd, he's claiming Ezekiel 34 for himself, that he's fulfilling it, and he's claiming to be in the line of David.

I Yahweh will be their God, my servant David will be prince among them.

The language prince, and we don't have time to go into this tonight, but later on in Ezekiel, that's used for the Messiah.

At a second coming, he'll establish the temple, the whole ocean coming out of the temple, kind of language there, and it's David who's reigning there.

There's a million other Old Testament passages about this, but jump to the New Testament.

It's foundational in the New Testament, Luke 1, verse 32.

Luke 1:32

The angel told Mary, don't be afraid, you're going to have a baby.

You will name him Jesus.

And then this, he will be great, and he will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David.

That's the prophecy.

So Mary knows she's going to have the Savior because he's going to be reigning on David's throne.

Paul begins his book to Romans, his letter to Romans the same way, saying that he was going to write about Jesus the Messiah and our Lord, quote, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh.

That's why Matthew begins his gospel that way by tracing David's genealogical connection to Jesus.

2 Timothy.

When Paul's closing out his earthly ministry, he reminds Timothy to be faithful to preach two truths.

This is 2 Timothy 2.8.

First, keep in mind Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descended from David.

Those are the two things you've got to hold on to.

You don't know anything about Jesus, Paul tells Timothy.

If you're going to forget everything, you hit your head and you forget everything in the Bible.

Remember these two truths.

Jesus resurrected from the grave, and he's descended from David.

So these are critical, critical truths.

But even all of that pales in comparison to how Psalm 110 was used in the New Testament.

Psalm 110, listen.

Psalm 110 is the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament.

33 times it's quoted in the New Testament.

I'm not even talking allusions.

I'm talking citations, basically, like we see here.

That's because of how foundational that song was for the Israelites.

They knew their Savior would be David's son.

So it was a song not only fit for a king, but fit to be sung for the Messiah as well.

Now there is a problem with that.

And the problem is this by calling the Messiah David's son and saying he'll be a king like David, doesn't that imply that David is greater than the Messiah?

That's the problem.

And, you know, a political analogy from the U.S.

would be helpful.

I remember when a recent president was inaugurated in his inauguration address, he talked about how he hoped to be a president like Abraham Lincoln.

And it remains to be seen.

Your mileage may vary on this.

If you think he attained to that, if he became a Lincoln-like president, some would say he did, some would say he didn't.

Whatever, the point, though, is in when a president says that I hope to be like Abraham Lincoln.

Notice how it's an elevation of Lincoln.

Like I hope to be as good as him.

And even if you meet that mark, that means you're as good as Lincoln was.

But he's still the standard.

So when you say the Savior will be a king like David, even if he reaches that, even if he stands on his tippy toes and reaches it, he's still only a king like David.

So that's the problem.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, everybody would grant that Psalm 110 is a Psalm about the Messiah.

But they didn't wrestle through that problem.

Is the Messiah less than David?

If he's David's son, it would seem to be that way.

And so people have no problem calling Jesus a son of David, even blind Bartimaeus.

Remember, blind Bartimaeus outside of Jericho is, son of David, have mercy on me.

I mean, it's a common way Jesus is addressed, but the problem hanging over that, Jesus takes it as a compliment, I'm sure, but the problem hanging over that is if David was pointing forward to the Messiah, is the Messiah less than him or greater than him?

It's a forward verse backwards kind of thing.

President looks backwards to Lincoln, that elevates Lincoln.

David looks forward to the Messiah, that elevates the Messiah.

Forward versus backward.

How do the tensions resolve?

They resolve in Christ with the third point.

The Psalm 110 is a song fit for David's king, a song fit for David's son, and finally a song fit for David's Lord.

A song fit for David's Lord.

The Sanhedrin thought the Psalm 110 meant that the Messiah would strive to be like David and attain his glory.

And Jesus says, if that is true, if he's supposed to try really hard to be like David, you can almost picture a glean in Jesus' eye when he asks this.

If I'm supposed to try really hard to be like David, Jesus is asking, then how come David called me Lord?

That's the question.

And where does David call the Messiah Lord?

Well, back at the beginning of Psalm 110.

Not an obscure passage.

It's practically the national anthem of Israel.

The Lord said to my Lord, Yahweh, Adonai, David is writing it.

So it's Yahweh speaking to my Lord.

David is writing it.

How come David calls the Messiah Lord?

That's the question.

Why doesn't David call him son?

Why doesn't David said, Yahweh said to my son?

That's what the Davidic covenant says.

David goes beyond the Davidic covenant here, under the inspiration of the Spirit.

Yes, sons are supposed to be inferior to fathers in many respects, but not this son.

This son is the Lord of his ancestor.

It's a chronological problem for sure.

And it's a chronological problem that Psalm 110 hits head on by saying that this conversation happened before light entered the world.

Nevertheless, light does enter the world, people enter the world, sin enters the world, Israel enters the world, David enters the world, and God says, I'm going to tie all those chords together.

Sin runs around the world, the Savior will come to the world through Israel, through David, and the Savior will be David's Lord.

He'll be from David's line, but he'll be David's Lord.

How can that possibly be?

How can the Savior be David's son and David's Lord?

The answer is the arrows point in two directions: eternity past and to the future.

Eternity past and the future.

The Savior is going to sit.

Look at verse 43 if you're back in Matthew 22, Matthew 22, verses 44.

Matthew 22:44

The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand.

Nobody would sit down in God's presence.

That's absurd.

There's absolutely no way you would go into God's presence and take a seat.

You know, if you entered the oval office for the president, you wouldn't sit down unless you were invited to.

You're not going to walk into God's presence and sit down.

But Jesus does.

He sits down next to God, the Father and the Son relationship on full display.

The priests don't even have a chair in the Holy of Holies.

The priest wouldn't sit down in the Holy of Holies, making a sacrifice, sprinkling blood on the altar, but Jesus sits down in God's presence.

This really reveals the two natures of Jesus, I think.

That he will be human, he will drink from the water, he will be David's son according to the flesh, is Paul's language.

And yet he'll be divine.

He's the eternal Trinitarian Son of God.

Both things are true.

One person, the person Jesus Christ, with two natures, one eternal and one human.

That's how all of this gets resolved.

Jesus holds that the Messiah will be descended from David, but that he'll be greater than David.

Jesus affirms both of those are true.

The Pharisees understand one of them that he'll be descended from David, and it didn't occur to them the problem that posed until Jesus calls him out on it.

Look at verse 45.

If David calls him Lord, how is he David's son?

Come on, pay attention.

Look at verse 46.

They're not able to answer the question.

They've got him standing in front of them, and they're not able to answer the question.

And so here's where Matthew tells you, from that day forward, no one dared ask him any more questions.

They're like, all right, we're done.

We're out.

They couldn't navigate Psalm 110.

How are they going to do the Levitical law?

How could they keep up in the Sermon on the Mount if they can't do Psalm 110?

If David called in Lord, how is he his son?

I hope you remember that game, Smarter than the Fifth Grader or whatever?

I hope you are smarter than a Pharisee tonight.

How is the Savior David's son and David's Lord?

The answer is he has two natures.

He's the eternal God of the universe, the Son of the Father, and He also is human, born in the line of David, drinking water from the brook, thirsting, crying on the cross that he's thirsty.

He says that on the cross, that he's thirsty.

But he addresses the Lord as his as his father from the cross as well.

It all comes together in the person of Christ.

They tried to trap him about tax rates.

I mean, that's insane.

They tried to task trap him with a story from the Apocrypha about a woman with six husbands.

They wasted their question on that.

They tried to trap him with a question about ranking the hierarchy of the law.

That was the best of the three questions.

It was nothing compared to this.

How can one person have two natures?

It's the mystery of Christ.

He's the true and better Adam, and he's the eternal Son of God, the one who made heaven and earth.

Because of that, he can be the perfect mediator.

He can be the atonement for sin.

He can give us grace and mercy in our time of need.

God, we're grateful that this mystery of Psalm 110, like all mysteries of the Bible, resolve in the person of Christ.

Okay.

Truly God and truly man.

The eternal Trinitarian nature is the image of God, veiled in human flesh, as the song says, put on display for us to see through Scripture.

The God man, the very God man.

We're grateful that the Savior is David's son, which authenticates him.

He's from the line of David, he's from the tribe of Judah, from Abraham's seed, and yet he's also the eternal Son of God.

There's no other substitute.

If he could not be a sufficient mediator for our sin, then there's nobody else.

There's no second savior that can come.

There's no other son in heaven for the Father to send.

There's only Christ.

So, Christ, we're thankful for you.

Truly God and truly man.

We give you thanks for the gospel.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.