[0:00] Let's turn now to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 20, reading at verse 41. The Gospel of Luke, chapter 20, and at verse 41.
[0:17] Following on from the last passage we looked at, where Jesus addressed the question of the Sadducees, which, remember, dealt with the subject of resurrection and Christ verifying the reality of resurrection.
[0:33] Immediately then we read that he said to them, How can they say that Christ is David's son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
[0:51] David thus calls him Lord, so how is he his son? Remember that these passages before this dealt with a series of questions that were put to the Lord, some of which he answered in the form of a question, but it's really a series of questions that he was asked, many of them trying as the last time to catch him out, and to accuse him of wrong or of not knowing the answer to what they were asking him.
[1:28] But this last part, which has a question, is in fact a question that Jesus himself is posing. For this final one, it is Jesus who is asking the questions.
[1:41] And there is something in that that reminds us that whatever questions are asked of the Lord, the Lord will always have the last word and will always have the last question.
[1:56] This is Jesus, the Saviour. This is the Lord. We don't come to the Lord in such a way that expects that we will have the last word over him.
[2:08] He will always come back at us and he will always ensure that his word presides over ours. And when he does ask a question, it's a question which requires an answer.
[2:25] It's not to try and catch us out. It's in order to actually test us in our relationship with himself. Here he is, turning the tables, as it were, on his questioners.
[2:40] And the question is actually about his own identity. And how well that fits with what we've seen of Luke's Gospel so far, as we've seen this question, who is this man?
[2:52] Who is the Lord? What is his identity? Different ways that that's been brought across to us. And we've again and again seen how that's an important facet of Luke's Gospel.
[3:04] But here is the Lord himself, at this occasion, asking this question of those who are listening to him. Who is the Son of David?
[3:15] Or how can the Son of David actually be his Son as well as his Lord? He quotes from Psalm 110 that we sang a minute ago, where the Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, Till I make your enemies your footstool.
[3:32] And then the question that's posed is, David thus calls him Lord, so how can he be his Son? Of course, Jesus was not setting out to get them to choose between one or the other, as if one of these was not true and the other was.
[3:51] What he was really saying is, these two things are true at the same time. David did speak of him as his Lord, and yet he is also David's Son.
[4:06] So how can it be that the Christ, by that he is the Messiah, and of course when he's using that word, he's not just thinking of himself, he's setting us to the mind of the people, as they expect the Messiah one day to come.
[4:24] This is the build up through the Old Testament, that these people of Israel had been listening to, and building up in their own expectation. For all of these generations, the Messiah was one that they expected to come, to be their leader, to be their king, to be their deliverer.
[4:41] And that's the question Jesus is now posing. When David spoke about the Messiah, he spoke about him being his son. God promised him that his son, or those descendants of his, that would sit upon this throne, that God would establish his kingdom forever.
[5:02] As we read in 2 Samuel. How then did David also say, my Lord of this Messiah? How is he both the son of David, and the Lord of David?
[5:17] And one thing that we know just in passing, though it is itself quite significant, is the depth that you find in the book of Psalms.
[5:29] The depth that we sing from, when we sing from the book of Psalms, we are singing from the theological depths that God himself has actually set out for us in this inspired record of the book of Psalms.
[5:43] And when you sing Psalm 110, you cannot but be actually singing of the depths of Christ's person, of Christ's own identity, of the way that he is the king that David mentioned there, and the priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
[6:06] And just reading recently a book on the Psalms, one of the points that was mentioned that's very powerful is that when we sing the book of Psalms, we are effectively, one of the things we're doing is actually making a confession to God, because the truth of that Psalm, as we sing that Psalm, becomes our confession.
[6:31] We use these Psalms in worship, in the worship of God, and as we use these Psalms in the worship of God, wherever you find David confessing himself to be the Lord's servant, confessing the Lord to be his Lord, such as in this Psalm 110, you're making that confession, we together are making that confession ours.
[6:56] And that's one of the beauties of the Psalms, that you have these great depths to them, not just theologically, but also in terms of what we confess of God and of ourselves in relationship to him.
[7:11] And indeed you can go as far as to say that some of the Psalms are in fact, when you're singing them, you're actually vowing certain things to God that you're pledging yourself to, and you're pledging yourself to do, or pledging yourself to be.
[7:28] Where God has given us these words to sing in the full knowledge that he would regard them as our confession and our vow of us being his people.
[7:39] And so many other things about the Psalms, but you see here is Jesus going to this particular Psalm, knowing that it was about himself, knowing the depths of that Psalm with regard to his person, and the way that he is both David's Lord and David's son.
[7:58] And it's from that that he draws this great question, which in fact, as we'll see, he just could not answer. There's just silence at the end of the passage.
[8:11] Well, first of all, we notice that Christ believed the scriptures to be reliable. The scriptures that were then in place were the scriptures of the Old Testament, the scriptures that were read in the synagogue every Sabbath day, the scriptures that Jesus knew very well himself from the time that he was born into the world, the scriptures in chapter 4 that he read when he found in the scroll of Isaiah, where it was written about himself that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him.
[8:41] He frequently refers to the Old Testament as scriptures that he believed. You see, you never find Jesus, whenever he quotes from the Old Testament, whether it's about an event or a person, something that happened or someone that's mentioned there, the Lord never actually mentions it speculatively or doubtingly.
[9:06] You don't find Jesus at all questioning whether Noah existed or not, whether there was a flood or not. You don't find him asking, I wonder if Job was a real person.
[9:18] You don't find him questioning the account that Genesis gives as of the creation of man and of the creation of woman and therefore of the creation of marriage. You don't find Jesus questioning whether that, in fact, was the case or not.
[9:34] You don't find Jesus actually in any way looking at these issues with a doubtful mind. Whether it's Job, Noah, Adam, marriage, the flood, the passing through the Red Sea, whatever all of these events that he mentions in the course of his ministry, he takes them as fact.
[9:55] He takes them as historically real events, real people. Now that's important. Because many people will tell us today that you shouldn't any longer believe in the historical accuracy of such passages that you find in the Old Testament or even some of the ones in the New Testament, but especially the ones in the Old Testament.
[10:21] There is a film, I understand, that is now called Noah. You maybe find reviews of it where films are reviewed. But it's actually, I have never seen it and probably will not see it, but it apparently sets out to be the story of Noah and of the flood.
[10:38] But those Christians who have reported on it will tell you that it's actually completely away from the account that you have in the Bible. Not completely away from it, but there are so many features of the film that are simply distortions or additions to stuff like that to the story in the Bible.
[10:58] And that all helps to actually bring into doubt. You see, a lot of people will say, well that helps us to understand the Bible. That helps people to come to grips with the text of Scripture.
[11:09] It doesn't if it distorts it. If it actually calls it into question. If it puts it in such a form as it makes a great film, but it wasn't really an actual event, then that's not getting people to relate to the Bible.
[11:25] People spend millions and millions of dollars in trying to analyze how the creation, how the universe that we belong to and exists around us, how did it begin?
[11:39] It costs you very little to buy a Bible and read the first few chapters of Genesis. It tells you how it began. But because we present that and indeed the Bible presents that as the work of God, the miraculous, all-powerful work of God, and then from then on all the way through the Bible, God is the one in charge, God is the one who demands our attention, God is the one who demands our obedience.
[12:09] Of course, people don't like that because it means they have to bow to someone else's authority and they don't like bowing to the authority of a God that they cannot see.
[12:22] They don't mind bowing to the authority of speculative scientists or evolutionists or whatever. What we're saying is that Jesus believed the scriptures of the Old Testament that were then current in his day to be reliable.
[12:40] And that is important for us too. This is the Son of God. If he believed in the flood, then I have to believe in the flood. If he believed in these things of the Old Testament, that's good enough for me.
[12:53] If the Son of God believed them as fact, then we don't need any other authority to believe in them ourselves. Secondly, Christ believed himself to be the Messiah.
[13:08] It's clear from this passage itself that he was conscious of speaking about himself. that he was presenting himself as the one over whom these questions had to be asked.
[13:22] And he believed himself to be the Messiah firstly as the Son of David. How is he the Son of David if David calls him Lord?
[13:33] Well, the Messiah being the Son of David was a major aspect of Old Testament revelation, a major aspect of the expectancy that God gave to the Jewish people for their Messiah to come to them.
[13:51] Sadly, when he came they didn't recognize him. As John put it, as we mentioned this morning, he came to his own, to his own people, but his own people did not receive him.
[14:03] 2 Samuel, the passage that we read in the Old Testament, very clearly God specifying to David how when David was concerned to build a house for God, to build a temple for God, for the ark of God was dwelling then in a tabernacle and a tent, God stopped him doing so.
[14:26] It was going to be Solomon who would build that temple for him, but you see the promise to David went much further than Solomon, because even Solomon's glorious reign came to a close.
[14:39] And what David was promised was that his descendants, of his descendants, God would actually bless the kingdom of one who would have a kingdom without end, a throne without end, a reign without end.
[14:57] And you cannot fit that into any Old Testament kingship. you have to say that is a property of the Messiah, a property of the Christ, a property of Jesus himself as the fulfiller of all of these promises in the Old Testament.
[15:14] Remember recent studies in the second book of Chronicles, that gallery of kings, and we finished it off by looking at how the Old Testament, the last word of the Old Testament in the arrangement of the Hebrew books of the Bible, in the second Chronicles, the final verse of second Chronicles, whoever is among you of his people, let him go up.
[15:34] We saw that there is a space in the gallery of the Old Testament, a space for another portrait to be hung there, and now it has actually come to be occupied. The gallery has no longer a space in it, because Christ has come, the Messiah has arrived, he is the Son of David.
[15:52] In other words, in terms of the genealogy of Jesus, the Son of God, who took out human nature to himself, that genealogy of his human nature is traced all the way back to David, and even further back than that.
[16:09] But he is the Son of David too, in the sense that David is in many ways the great king of the Old Testament. Solomon was a great king in all his splendor and glory that was his, but in many respects David is the great king of the Old Testament.
[16:27] and the Messiah would rightly be called a son of David, a descendant of David. And literally, according to the human nature of Christ, that's exactly what you find.
[16:42] The genealogy records that you have in Luke and in Matthew show that the line of Jesus goes back through David, indeed right back to Adam himself.
[16:53] That's why you can find you find the beginning of the letter to the Romans where Paul is concerned to emphasize that the gospel he is going to keep declaring and the gospel he has declared since he became an apostle is the gospel concerning the Son of God.
[17:16] And who is he? He was descended from David according to the flesh. That is the first stage of his messiahship in the world, of fulfilling the promises of the messiah's coming.
[17:32] He is the Son of David. You remember back in chapter 18 in Luke we saw how Jesus healed the blind man outside of Jericho and how when that blind man asked what the reason for all the stir of the crowd was around him he was told Jesus of Nazareth is passing by and then you find that immediately when he cries out after Jesus of Nazareth he didn't say Jesus of Nazareth have mercy on me he said Jesus son of David have mercy on me he recognized him as the messiah around him were people blind to the reality of who Jesus was and yet there is a poor beggar a man that you would never expect to be ahead of such people as were learned theologians of the time in the religious leadership of the people but there he is he is putting them to shame he is showing them up he is actually calling
[18:33] Jesus his rightful title the son of David he is there at that point declaring him to be the promised messiah he is come he is passing by he has just come to be beside me he cries out after him so he is the son of David in respect to being a descendant of David but a descendant to in a royal sense that he comes in the messiahship he comes as a king but then he is also the lord of David David of himself says in Psalm 110 the lord said to my lord sit at my right hand there is the other side of the issue because at the time that Jesus was speaking here the political the leadership the religious leadership there were also of course political leadership too but the leadership and many of the people had come to expect that the messiah when he would come would be a political leader for them that he would lead them from under the power of the
[19:42] Roman Empire that he would deliver them from the yoke of Rome that he would actually lead them to be again a powerful independent people who would actually destroy this power of Rome from their necks cast that aside and through the strength of God and the strength of the messiah the christ when he came that's the kind of king they would have that's the kind of messiah that they were expecting by that stage but of course that's not what the christ was to be and jesus in various places made that evident even when he was before pontius pilate in john chapter 18 when you have an account there of his being quizzed by questioned by pilate are you a king that pilate says rather annoyedly are you a king then what is true about you and then jesus answered my kingdom by which he said yes i am a king effectively that's what he saying my kingdom is not of this world if it were of this world then would my servants rise up and fight my kingdom is not of this world this king this messiah this christ his kingdom is a spiritual kingdom his spiritual has much greater kingdom than any kingdom of this world it's a universal kingdom it's a kingdom in which every human being is actually going to be ruled some of them willingly some of them actually against their will but christ is lord christ is king king over all things and that's important for us too because many people will argue that while they reject jesus in a personal sense and maybe don't even believe that jesus still lives and don't believe in such things as a resurrection from the dead they'll still say yes but he left us a superb body of teaching and he is a brilliant example a great example of what a human life should be how we should live there's a philosophy here there's something here that we can actually apply to a political and social sphere and in these applications of it yes you can come to christ and he is a king in that respect we have to say against that that is not the kind of messiahship the kind of kingship that we associate with christ in a proper understanding of the bible he is a king to save leader or to give a social philosophy to us he has come to seek and to save that which was lost that's the most important aspect of his messiahship that he came as the son of
[22:44] David and as the lord of David to give his life a ransom for many now you notice in this quotation from psalm 110 that David said the lord said to my lord in other words he's saying on the one hand the lord that's god god said to my lord and my lord is my messiah my christ the promised messiah god saying to the lord and that again takes us into the wonders of the trinity doesn't it we mentioned this morning as well and how often you find it coming through in such passages as these there is the lord there's god but there's the lord also in the messiah the god man the second person of the trinity the lord jesus christ and that's what you have here the lord god saying to my lord to his christ his seven sit at my right hand till i make your enemies your fruit stone and that's explained in the new testament by the relationship that exists between the father and the son because coming to sit at god's right hand is the thing that's specially mentioned there so how is the messiah david's lord well he's his lord in terms of being firstly the lord over death sit at my right hand is are words which really describe the end of a process it's not quite the final end because the final end is when he comes to judge when his enemies will be visibly seen to be his foot stone but it's the end of the process in the sense that sitting at god's right hand is the conclusion if you like of what had happened in his ministry on earth having accomplished the death that he died having risen from the dead having exalted or being exalted to glory god says to him sit now at my right hand their words which indicate that everything which went before again again we mentioned this morning is perfectly acceptable to god the father it's the the the seating or the session as it's usually called in theology christ's session christ being seated at the right hand of god is itself a testimony to the fact that not only is this work here on earth finished in paying the price of our sin but it is also a work that will forever be acceptable on behalf of his people he is lord over death because sitting at god's right hand has been arrived at through a process of coming to take human nature dying on the cross rising from the dead then being exalted the end of the process is him being seated at the right hand of god he is lord therefore over death and it's really interesting how when you find elsewhere in the new testament these words of psalm 110 being quoted the two places that i'm going to mention there firstly in act chapter 2 verses 29 to 36 we're not going to read the whole passage through act chapter 2 verses 29 to 36 remember that's the great event of the day of pentecost but
[26:45] this is what peter says as he preaches on that occasion brothers i may say to you with confidence about the patriarch david that he both died and was buried and his tomb is with us to this day being therefore a prophet and knowing that god had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his resurrection of the christ that he was not abandoned to hell or to death nor did his flesh see corruption this jesus god raised up and of that we are all witnesses and then all the way through there he continues to speak about that then he says for david did not ascend into the heavens but he himself says the lord said to my lord sit at my right hand until I make fruit stone citing again psalm 110 the same you can say we won't go into it but you can follow it out later on in your own personal studies read hebrews chapter one hebrews chapter one is about the supremacy of christ over everyone else including even moses and including the angels but in demonstrating the supremacy or superiority of jesus christ the writer to the hebrews actually quotes psalm 110 again just as you find here in luke the lord to which of the angels did he ever say the lord said to my lord sit at my right hand till i make your enemies your fruit stone so you can see in that he is lord over death he is david's lord because he is the master of death and of sin through the process that he has followed in his life he has conquered death and brought life and immortality to light for his people he is lord also of david in the sense that he is lord over his enemies god said to him sit at my right hand until i make your enemies your fruit stool right now we're very aware of people laughing at our beliefs laughing at the fact that we believe that god instituted marriage that marriage was not a human invention or convention right now we're laughed at by people who don't believe in such things as miracles or in resurrections from the dead when we say that we believe christ jesus actually literally rose from the grave but you know that's already prophesied about this laughter this derision this antagonism against god against his truth long long time ago that was prophesied about in psalm 2 why do the heathen rage and the people imagine vain things laughing at the idea of god being in control of their lives they're saying about this let's cast off these bands let's live independently of this god we don't want this god to live over us we don't want to be subject to this god we laugh at the idea of god being sovereign we laugh at the idea of god even existing but you remember what psalm 2 says he who sits in heaven shall laugh that's one thing to laugh at god another thing to be laughed at by god because
[30:47] when god laughs what he does is hold people in contempt in derision the laugh of god is a laughter of judgment laughter of condemnation it's not funny it's not a joke it's a reality it's his eternal fire that burns against sin and against human antagonism and arrogance and there's a day coming when that's going to be revealed all its wonder and intensity sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool what a great day that's going to be when this king returns and when this king returns in the splendor of his majesty in his greatness in all his authority to exercise his judgment to exercise his sovereign rights there'll be no human rights at that day that will take precedence over the rights of Jesus Christ because his enemies will be made his footstool what do you do with a footstool you put your feet on it every part of a footstool is beneath your feet it's for resting your feet on it you're in total control of that footstool you're governing it not it you what God is saying is that
[32:18] God is going to make his enemies a footstool for his Messiah for his Lord that's why Paul in Philippians 2 put it this way after speaking about the death that he died the death of the cross him being obedient unto death wherefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name remember this morning the name means God and the attributes of God and the reputation of God that's tied to that he has given him a name the name that is above every name what is the name that's above every name it's the name of God himself he has given that to his ascended Messiah and our human nature as it's united to himself is involved in being given that name in him well I wonder but you see he's saying he has given him a name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess not just the knees of his people his redeemed people not just the tongues of the people who sing his praises who love him and can't get enough of singing his praises it's not just some tongues that will actually confess that
[33:38] Jesus Christ is Lord every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord every single tongue that has ever been created and lived and used to speak with in this life when it comes to the return of the king in his majesty every single one of these tongues will look at that king and they will not have the slightest doubt as to who it is they will confess this is king Jesus I will make your enemies your food store what a day that will be when everyone will confess Christ as king some not because they love doing so but because they have no option God gives them the freedom in this life to use this option that they have taken to themselves to dispense with the idea of
[34:41] Christ being their king there is a day coming when they will have no option and when this great glorious king will actually come to bring that confession from them he is the king he is the lord he is the governor he is the one to whom I am answerable but then you see he is not just the lord of David as lord over death not only lord over death and lord over his enemies what about lord over you and I you see there is no response given as we mentioned to the question that Jesus posed how can you say they say that the
[35:42] Christ is David's son David thus calls him lord so how is he his son silence they can't answer it there is no response to it they are confounded but surely it is part of Luke's purpose in writing this and in recording this that those who read his great gospel would actually fill in the blanks themselves you have to make your response you have to make your confession just as I have it is important as you read and think about this passage that you need to add then your own confession your own obeisance to him your own homage to him that he is your lord too there is a rather amusing story and I am not saying it because it is amusing because I am making a serious point from it a story of a canon meadon who was in the episcopal church in
[36:56] Stornoway and very frequently the bishop would or sometimes the bishop would actually come to visit and needed to stay in Stornoway and he would stay with canon meadon who was the person in charge of the episcopal congregation there and canon meadon had lots of interest in clubs such as the club scouts or cadets and had a contribution to the cadets and he would take some of the cadets to actually serve to help in the manse as we call it to actually serve the bishop food and to help him on all the duties and he would teach them what they needed to say to the bishop and how they needed to address him properly and the words that they should use when addressing his lordship as of course the bishop was known and especially when it came to carrying breakfast in the morning and he told this boy that he was next on duty for taking breakfast up to the bishop in the morning he said you will not go into the room you will need to knock the door first of all you will wait for the response from the bishop before you go in and then when you hear him then you are allowed to go in and when you knock the door you will say to him it's the boy here my lord well this young lad apparently got very flustered and when it came to knocking on the door of the bishop's room he blurted out it's the lord here my boy instead of it's the boy here my lord now that's a very amusing story it's a nice story but there's a serious point to it because there's a day coming when there'll be a knock at your door and it will be the lord a knock at the door of your life and mine and the voice on the other side will say it's the lord here my boy and you and I will need to answer it we'll need to respond to it what are you going to say to him what is your response going to be how will you feel when that knock comes to the door of your life maybe it'll come much sooner than you or I think how will you feel when that voice says it's the lord here and more importantly than what you will say to him what will he say to you how will he find you on that momentous occasion will he find you as one of his enemies to be placed in his food store or one of his friends to be placed in his company as he rules from heaven as he is accompanied by his people will you be part of his food store forever under his condemnation under his feet or will you have a seat at his marriage supper the marriage supper of the
[40:38] Messiah the Christ the son of David and the Lord of David let's pray oh lord our gracious god we give thanks for the solemnity of your word that it brings us face to face with solemn and eternal realities we thank you for this oh lord we thank you that as we do so we realize the importance of your truth and the importance of our own response to it we pray gracious lord that you would help us to carry forth into our lives and into our hearts this night this great message that you are the lord of the universe that there is no lord besides you and that you are coming yet when you are not expected to be the judge of this earth gracious lord we pray that we may be found accepted of you at your coming and we pray that we may be welcomed by you and that we may welcome you as you come to bring your people home bless to us your truth again this night we pray and as we consider the greatness of your lordship we pray that our response will be that we will willingly be your servants that we will say as another said lord here i am send me we pray these things confessing our sin seeking cleansing for jesus sake amen