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He said unto them, How then does David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, sit down on my right hand Amen.
As we gather this morning to look in your word, we pray Lord that you be present with us in the power of the Holy Spirit. Help me Lord that in the words I will say will be yours Lord.
And I'll give all of us ears to hear. Give us hearts of boldness to walk in obedience to it. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. I invite you to follow along in your Bible.
1 Corinthians 4 and also Matthew 22. Those are the two texts we'll be in this morning. Now, although the epistle for the day is always read before the gospel, and usually, as you note as a tradition, and usually considered first, we know that in reality, it often refers to events which took place long after those recorded in the gospel.
Right? So Paul's letters, the 1 Corinthians, took place long after the gospel events that we read as well. But it's often proper to look at the epistles first, because in many ways it's beneficial for us, because the epistles reflect the truths of the gospel reading itself.
It serves either to confirm the gospel's truth and to unfold its practical implications. Such is the case today. How wonderful are the words of our brief epistle in 1 Corinthians 4, when we see them as a fulfillment of the mystery of which our Lord referred to in the gospel reading.
Jesus spoke of David's prophetic words, which were then a mystery to the Jews. Yet, by the time St. Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians, the meaning of that prophecy had been gloriously revealed.
The Lord, now exalted to the right hand of God, and beheld by faith, as poured out his gifts upon the church, and displayed his power in the hearts of believers.
So, some 25 years after this event, after the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord, 25 years after these events, Christ's words were spoken, rather, in our gospel reading, Paul, the apostle Paul, wrote a letter to the Corinthians, reminding them of their own experience, and saying to them, I give thanks to my God, always for you, that is the Corinthians, because of the grace of God that was given to you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him, in all speech, and all knowledge.
Imagine that, to be enriched in God, in all speech, and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking, that he's writing to the Corinthians, you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless, in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, you read that, you listened to it read, and I've just read it again, I said, Paul is writing to the Corinthian church, but I think he's also writing to this present church, here in Onondaga Hill, I give thanks to my God always for you, because of the grace of God, that is the grace that precedes and follows us, in all our doings.
You are not lacking in any gift, as you wait, what are we waiting for? For the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you, and what will this grace do?
Even as we wait, it will sustain us to the end. Well, the church of Corinth, was especially rich in spiritual gifts.
Outward signs of divine power, was known among them, yet all designed for their spiritual growth, for their preparation for the Lord's return in judgment.
That is what the spiritual gifts were for. It's for their growth, spiritual growth, not just individual, but collectively, as a body, to grow into Christ, and to continue to be prepared for the Lord's return, as He returns in judgment.
And so, at the beginning of his letters, Paul gives thanks for them, or rather, he gives thanks to God about them, for these blessings that God has bestowed upon them.
And he, in part, acknowledged the many privileges that is theirs. And then he proceeded, as he later does, to correct the way they misused these gifts to direct their hearts towards the greatest of all graces.
And what is that greatest of all graces that was theirs? Also a gift from God. Well, it is charity, love, that holy charity which embraces both the love of God and the love of neighbor.
And this is why Paul first starts by giving thanks for the graces that they had. And then goes on to say, you're not living fully in that grace because there is no love among you.
Well, do you notice Paul's intent to ground everything about the Christian life in Christ? Their past. Their coming to save in faith. Their presence.
The ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in assigning gifts to his church and sustaining them. Their future. The hopeful expectation of his glorious return. All of this is granted in Christ.
All these are ours in Christ. Paul tells them. Past, present, and future. We have all we need in Jesus Christ. This past, present, and future blessedness is true of us here too in the 21st century as it was for those in the 1st century in Corinth.
We have all we need in Christ. None of it has been earned, mind you. Of course, it is the result of God's saving grace and the benefits that flows from that saving grace.
But yet, it is ours. Free gift of God to us. We have, I want to say it again so you hear it, brothers and sisters. We have all we need in Christ.
Isn't this wonderful? Think on it. You are enriched in Christ. You lack nothing in him. It is by his grace given to us that it is so.
And so, our thanks are to who? Christ. The glory is to him. The praise is to him. Such abundant testimony powerfully answers our Lord's question and illuminates David's prophetic words spoken by the Spirit.
And now, let's turn to the Gospel reading this morning. Because you may wonder, where is the connection here? But to understand the great depth and importance of this Gospel reading, we must first recall the context in which this encounter with Jesus and the Pharisees took place.
It was during Jesus' final public teaching to the Jews. This was the last week before his death, his crucifixion.
And this is, in fact, this account in Matthew is his last discourse in the temple. Only a few days before his crucifixion.
So, we're told by Matthew that when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Now, the Pharisees and the Sadducees are different factions.
They're not friends. They heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, and so the Pharisees gathered together. What happened in the case with the Sadducees is that our Lord had just confounded them, that that is the Sadducees, by showing them that the doctrine of the resurrection is in fact true.
The Sadducees denied the resurrection from the dead. And Jesus showed them that even through the writings of Moses, showed them how the resurrection is a fact.
And so, for a moment, this defense of Jesus may have softened the Pharisees' posture towards Jesus, because they hated Jesus, but they also hate the Pharisees, and they believe in the resurrection, the Pharisees do.
And so, to hear that Jesus supported them is on their side, and made it full of the Sadducees, maybe their hearts were a little softened towards Jesus, so they come to him, because he had just defended the truth they themselves supported.
So they began to chatter among themselves in the temple courts concerning this victory, and among them, among the Pharisees, one of the learned scribes, a lawyer, among them, a desire to test Jesus further, to test the wisdom of our Lord, and he puts a question that they had long debated among themselves, he puts it to Jesus.
This lawyer, an interpreter of the law, asks Jesus a question. Again, putting Jesus to the test is not always a very good thing when the Pharisees do it. What they're really doing is trying to say, okay, well, you passed that one test, you believe what we believe, let's further test you, let's see what you know, let's see whether you fully, so what are they doing?
Here is the Lord of life, the word incarnate, before them, and they choose to do what? To sit over him, to judge him, rather than sit under him, and be judged, and listened, in humble obedience to him.
That's, that's always the Pharisees' posture towards Jesus, and this is to their ruin. So they come to Jesus, and he asks, master, that is rabbi, which is the greatest, which is the great commandment in the law?
That's the question he puts to Jesus. And Jesus replied, thou shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with us, what else?
With all your mind. And Jesus says, this is the first and great commandment. Now, is Jesus making this up? If you're a student of the Bible, where is this from?
Is it from the New Testament? It is there. This is one of, this is the beginning of the Ten Commandments. And then Jesus added, in summary, this is the first and great commandment, and the second is like unto it.
Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. But by this, our Lord didn't mean that these two commandments were to be set apart as something higher or better than the rest of scriptures.
Right? Rather, what Jesus is doing here is he's saying that he's declaring that all other commandments in the Bible, all of God's commandments, are contained within these two great commandments.
That to love God with all your heart and soul and mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself, within that is contained all of God's commandments.
So, he says it to them, even, explicitly. God, to love God and to love our neighbor is to fulfill the whole law. And without this love, no commandment is truly kept.
Now, on these two commandments, Jesus says, hangs, depends, all the law and the prophets. That's what he means by that. On these two depends all the law, that is, all of the Torah and all of the prophets hang on these two.
The St. Mark, in his gospel, had, that the scribe, their response to Jesus' answers, that they greatly admired the wisdom of Jesus' reply.
Our blessed Lord, seeing this lawyer's understanding, now says to the lawyer, you are not far from the kingdom of God. That is, you're not, you're not far from grasping the truth of the gospel and receiving life.
And why was he so near? It's because he recognized, that is, this lawyer that is talking to Jesus, he recognized that the love of God and the love of man is the very heart of the law.
That is, it is the heart of all scripture to love God and to love others. In this, this lawyer seems to have a true spiritual insight.
Yet, tragically, something still prevented him and prevented others like him from fully believing because he didn't believe. He left this interaction.
Still an unbeliever. so close yet so far. What is this thing that keeps him, that kept him really from fully grasping and believing?
The Pharisees and the scribes did advance so far as to know that the love of God is everything. They know this to be true, but they fail to see that Christ himself is God and that here before them is love personified.
That here before them is the one whom scripture spoke of as divine, the Messiah who has come to set on liberty the hearts of men so that we can truly, truly love God and truly love our neighbor as ourselves.
They failed to grasp that last most important insight about the person of Jesus Christ. And that's why they were so near and yet so far.
They knew that the Messiah was to be the son of David. They knew. They read their scriptures and thus they expected him to come. This Messiah, this son of David, this great David's greatest son, they expected him to come in earthly majesty as a conquering king and a prophet after the likeness of David himself.
They expected him to be a conquering hero destroying all of Israel's enemies. Putting his foot at the neck of the Roman Empire and setting liberty the nation of Israel.
That's what they expected. A political leader. A great king. They did not understand that the Old Testament revealed him this Messiah as the eternal son of God in Psalm 110 whose kingdom is not really earthly but it's spiritual.
Not physical but spiritual. Not earthly but heavenly. Not just temporal kingdom but an everlasting kingdom. Their blindness, this blindness that they have did not arise from lack of learning.
These were the greatest students of the Bible. If the scribe were to come back from the past and be among us we would all sit at his feet because his knowledge of scripture will be so expansive.
So, their blindness isn't because they lack learning. Rather, their blindness is from oddness of their hearts. had they truly longed for eternal life with God they would have seen that before them is the greatest gift of God.
They would have seen that the greatest gifts that God can give are not temporal glory or power but what? Forgiveness of sins and reconciliation to God himself.
And that's what Christ has come to offer. The greatest need of the human heart. The greatest need that you and I have is that our sins will be forgiven.
That there will be peace with God because we are rebels. We are enemies of God. And we needed somebody to come and save us from the wrath of God.
Here is this Messiah who has come to do that and yet they didn't see it. I hope you will have eyes to see it this morning. They looked downward to earthly greatness instead of looking upward to the heavenly kingdom.
And so when the scriptures so when they read the scriptures rather they didn't recognize that the promised Christ was meant to be a divine figure. They didn't recognize that his enemies were the spiritual enemies of the soul.
And what are those spiritual enemies of the soul? Do you know that you have the same spiritual enemy? It is sin. It is death. It is evil itself.
It is your very flesh that inclines you towards those evil. And so in his final discourse, in his final engagement with the Pharisees, Jesus posed one last question to them.
And these were his final words of teaching to the Jews. And even when later the question, when later Jesus was questioned by the high priest, what does he refer to? If you read your gospels, you read Mark's gospel or Matthew's, during the interrogation at Caiaphas' house, Jesus referred back to the same scripture that he is referenced here, confirming in his own solemn declaration, his divinity, his identity, as David's Lord, David's God.
As David grew greater than David. And this question then may be considered as Jesus' last appeal to his own people, by that I mean his own people, the Jewish people.
A question that in a sense remains, I think, with the Jewish people, even to today, as they're dispersed throughout the world. As a people, they're still unable to answer this divine challenge of Jesus.
And history itself will one day conclude in Christ's own answer to his own question. When he will appear in glory to judge the world, everybody will know without a shadow of a doubt the answer to that question.
So the question Jesus puts to them is this, what do you think about the Christ? Jesus asked the scribe. What do you think about the Christ? The Christ means the Messiah, the anointed one.
Whose son is he? And they answered, the Pharisees answered, well he's the son of David. We know our scriptures. We know that the Messiah, the promised Messiah is going to come through the lineage of David.
The great Messiah is the son of David. And this was the response that Jesus wanted. And they were right to say so. For it allowed him to draw them deeper into the truth.
So, I'm referencing Mark's gospel. In Mark's gospel, he asked, Jesus asked them, I'll say then that the scribes I'll say then that the scribes that Christ is the son of David.
How is it that the scribes teach that Christ is the son of David? Because that is what they taught. And it was true for them to teach that. But it was not the whole truth.
The very prophecy that called the Messiah, the son of David, also revealed him as far greater than just the son of David. In it, there was something that could not be explained unless the Christ were more than man.
And this is referenced in Psalm 110. So, Jesus asked them, how is it then, in Jesus quoting Psalm 110, how is it then that David, in his prophecy, in the spirit, calls this son of David, calls him Lord, saying, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.
That is David, the great king, saying, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. He's not the one, David isn't the one sitting at God's right hand. Lord, Jesus then asked them, if then David calls him Lord, how is he then his son?
They would have understood this, right? To be father means to be greater. How is it then that the son of David is greater than David? It was as though he was saying to these Pharisees, I'm leaving you, I'm about to leave, this is my final word to you, consider Psalm 110.
Consider Psalm 110 because it speaks of me. And it speaks about what is about to be fulfilled. You think the Messiah will be a mere descendant of David.
That's what they thought. They thought the Messiah would just be a mere temporal king of Israel. But in that son, David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, calls this Messiah Lord.
Attributing divine prerogatives to this Messiah. The Lord said unto my Lord, the same sacred title is given to both the Father and the Son, Yahweh.
The psalm speaks of the Messiah's existence in heaven, of his exhortation to the right hand of God. To be at the right hand of God is to be on par with God.
Neither of us, none of us here, can be at the right hand of God. No angel, no matter how great, can be at the right hand of God. Only God can be at the right hand of God.
And this is what the psalm speaks of. It speaks of Jesus being exalted. That is the Son being exalted to the right hand of God and of his triumph over his enemies.
Christ was, at that moment, rejected by these heresies. But soon, soon, he will die, he will be buried, he will be vindicated and raised from death, and he will ascend in power and glory into heaven.
And there he will sit at the right hand of the Father. And all who believe in him will see him there with the eyes of faith, interceding.
What is he doing there in that place of power and authority? He's interceding for you and for me as a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
Think about that for a moment, brothers and sisters. Christ exalted, having dominion over all things and all powers. What is he doing?
He's praying for you. He's praying for me. What greater comfort as we walk this program journey to know that our Lord sees us and intercedes for us.
He's our advocate. And so, Jesus says to them, see this truth.
Believe this truth about who I am. Believe it and come and have peace with God. But refuse to believe and you will one day behold him, this great king, not as a humble man about to go to the cross as you see me now, but you will see this same Jesus.
If you refuse to come to him now, you will see him as the judge of all. Coming in glory with his only angels, fulfilling the prophecy as he says, hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven.
So, upon this interaction that we see in our gospel reading, our Lord closed this teaching. The gospel records in verse 46 of our gospel reading, Matthew 22, and no one was able to answer him a word.
They were dumb thongered. They were still unbelieving, but they were never able to answer him a word. Nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. And as we noted earlier, the words of Apostle Paul in the epistle stands as a striking confirmation of this truth that we've just seen in the gospel.
from that day even until now, it is no longer a matter of question, but a matter of fact. Christ, our risen and ascended Lord, is seated at the right hand of God.
Christ is seated at the right hand of God. God what is he doing there? Exercising divine power and dominion. He is great David's greatest son.
He is David's Lord, to whom belong all power and all authority. His church bears witness to this manifold grace, his manifold grace, that he's poured out upon you.
And some of those gifts, as you look around you, are outward and visible. as in the days of the apostles, and others of those gifts, are inward and spiritual, as in the gift of holy love, the love that glorifies and beautifies everything that we do in the household of faith.
And still, Christ remains and reigns in the midst of his enemies until they have made his footstool. you were once Christ's enemies when you walked after the manner of your flesh in rebellion against God.
But you have been brought to him by the blood of the lamb. Your sins have been forgiven.
You've been made sons, not only slaves or enemies of God, but sons of God. all of us, if you're indeed in Christ Jesus, if you accept him as Lord.
So the church now, as St. Paul writes, has the testimony of Christ confirmed. We have this testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ confirmed in us as we wait for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
that is his second coming. And he comes in glory and power to judge the living and the dead. And I want to again refer to Psalm 110.
In that psalm, the psalmist says, David, in the power of the Holy Spirit says, your people, speaking of the people that belong to the Messiah, the people that belong to Christ, your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments.
This is that being presented guiltless, blameless before the Lord. That day hasn't come yet. We are still waiting by faith, in faith, for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But as we wait, what should be our posture and our attitude? As we wait, withstand temptations of the world, withstand temptations of the flesh and the devil, in the midst of warfare, what should be our posture as we wait?
We must wait with pure hearts and with pure minds to follow after God. That is the greatest commandment. Remember, there is a reason why we say that at the beginning of our Lord's Day service, worship service, to remind ourselves, what is the law of God?
What is the standard? it is to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.
This is the standard. Now, let's be honest with one another. That is the standard, that is the law, where is the gospel? Because how many of us can meet that standard?
None of us can. None of us can. But the gospel attends right after.
Christ, your Lord, your champion, your Redeemer, has met that standard. This is the problem with the Pharisees. They didn't come to Jesus.
Through whom they can have peace with God. Let that not be your problem, brothers and sisters. If you're here this morning and you're close to hearing the gospel, don't be so close and yet so far.
Believe in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is your advocate and mediator. He has made peace with God by his shed blood on the cross. Just trust yourself to him.
Believe in him. And he will change you from the inside out. He will give you this heart to love God. God and to love your neighbor as yourself.
And then those of us who believed, let us walk in that love. Let us continue to rely on that love of God that binds us to God and binds us to one another.
Let us know that even as we do so, our Lord, sits reigning over all things and interceding for us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.