You know, when you encounter someone great, a great person, usually you kind of walk away saying, man, that person was something else.
And you walk away a little changed.
Maybe it's a teacher or a coach or a boss or someone like that.
When you come into contact with greatness, it usually leaves you changed.
Tomorrow morning, you're going to show up somewhere.
You're going to walk into the front doors of a school.
You're going to walk, get into your car.
You're going to show up at work.
You're going to be somewhere.
And tomorrow morning, when you show up somewhere, are you going to be thinking about Jesus?
You need to.
This morning, we're going to get a big dose of the greatness of Jesus.
We're going to see his greatness on display in how he teaches.
But that greatness of his teaching is going to point to an even greater greatness that he's David's greater son.
My prayer for you this morning is that come this Friday, you will be savoring David's greater son.
And it will be having a formative effect.
You'll be thinking something like this.
I'm living for him today.
As we turn in our Bibles to Matthew chapter 22, we're going to be looking at verses 15 through 46.
We've got a big swath of scripture to look at this morning.
But I just want to remind you, it's Tuesday of Passion Week.
They're in the temple.
Jesus is in the temple in Jerusalem.
And he's just gotten done speaking some parables to the leaders.
And they're a little bit scathing.
Basically, he's saying there's a new sheriff in town.
In this passage that we're going to look at this morning, verses 15 through 46 of chapter 22,
we're going to see four exchanges.
Three attempts by the Jewish leaders to discredit Jesus publicly in the temple.
And then the last exchange is where Jesus turns the table on his inquisitors,
and he asks them a question.
And what we're going to see is that the attempts made by these Jewish leaders to entangle Jesus in his words,
look at verse 22, verse 15.
They're trying to entangle him and discredit him.
It doesn't work.
Look down at verse 46.
And here we read,
And no one was able to answer him a word.
So what Jesus' enemies, his adversaries, set out to do to entangle him,
Jesus turned completely around on them,
and he, with his words, silenced them.
What you're going to see this morning is Jesus in his teaching greatness.
He is the greatest teacher of Israel.
But what you're going to see more is that his greatness of teaching shows us who he is.
David's greater son.
David called him Lord.
And so let's dig in.
Let's start off in the first exchange Jesus has with some Pharisees and some people called Herodians.
And we see that in verses 16 through 22.
So let me read that for you.
Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his talk.
Jesus has just spoke these parables.
They're like, let's get this guy.
And so they're going to entangle and try to entangle him.
And they sent their Pharisee disciples to Jesus along with Herodians saying,
Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully.
And you do not care about anyone's opinion for you are not swayed by your parents.
They're laying it on thick right there.
That's flattery.
They're laying it on thick.
And then they say, tell us then what you think.
Tell us what you think.
Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?
But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, why put me to the test, you hypocrites?
Show me the coin for the tax.
And they brought him a denarius.
And Jesus said to them, whose likeness and inscription is this?
They said, Caesar's.
And then he said, therefore, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God.
When they heard it, they marveled and they left him and went away.
The tax is the poll tax.
It's a specific tax that the Pharisees and the Herodians are asking Jesus about.
And basically what it was is a payment of one denarius for every Jewish adult in Israel at the time.
So whether you're a man, female, or a servant, a slave, you would have to pay to Rome for being under Roman rule one denarius,
which was one day's wage for labors.
And so what you need to understand is Jesus is getting being pulled into a very hot political potato right now.
And so if you are among the Jews and you're like thinking poll tax, are you serious?
I got to pay one denarius to the very people who've come in and are oppressing me?
I'm paying them to oppress me?
And so you've got one side of the debate, kind of your everyday Jew who's saying, man, seriously, a Roman tax just beyond the Roman rule?
And then you have another group of people called the Herodians.
Did you notice that in verse 16?
And they sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians.
Who are these Herodians?
Well, they're most likely those people who were supporting Herod's pro-Rome regime.
Remember, Herod's the guy that killed John the Baptist.
He's in power, exerting influence.
And he's kind of a Roman puppet exercising authority on behalf of Rome.
So the Herodians would have been supporting the poll tax because the poll tax is supporting Rome and Rome is supporting them.
It's politics.
It goes back thousands of years.
What we experience today is not new.
And so what these guys ask Jesus in verse 17 is, is it lawful, is it right to pay the poll tax to Caesar or not?
You see what they're doing?
Okay, Jesus, teacher, is it right or wrong to pay the poll tax?
They're kind of trying to squeeze Jesus into a decision.
One or the other, Jesus, let's have it.
They're trying to force Jesus to choose sides.
So here's the deal.
If Jesus answers yes, it's right to pay the poll tax, it will cast his approval ratings really low with the Jewish people at that time who think they're being politically oppressed by Rome.
But if he says no, it's not right to pay the poll tax, he risks offending the people in power in his hometown of Galilee, the Herodians.
So what is Jesus going to do?
Is he going to just leave?
He says no, it's not right to pay the poll tax.
That's not our Jesus.
This is the Messiah.
He's got something to say.
Look at verse 18.
This is how he answers.
He says,
Why put me to the test, you hypocrites?
Remember, they just flattered him, and Jesus just reads through the flattery.
He knows their malice.
He knows they're not trying to make him look good.
He knows they are trying to discredit him.
So this question that they're asking, it's hypocritical.
They don't really want to know.
They're trying to discredit him.
He knows that they're trying to make him look bad.
And so in verse 19, he says, show me the coin for the tax.
He's talking about the denarius.
And again, the denarius was equivalent to one day's work.
Do you remember the parable of the laborers in the vineyard in Matthew chapter 20?
That's the parable in which there's this vineyard owner, and he goes out into the marketplace,
and he hires a bunch of workers for one denarius for a full day's wage.
And then he keeps on coming back to the marketplace until the 11th hour.
He's like, can you guys go?
And then he pays everybody a denarius.
One full day's wage.
And what you need to know about a denarius is it's Roman coinage.
It's printed on behalf of Rome.
And it would not have been used in the temple because of what was on that coin.
There was a profile of Tiberius Caesar.
You know how like on a quarter you have a profile of George Washington?
On a denarius, it was a profile of Tiberius Caesar with a garland around his head.
And the inscription read this.
Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus.
And on the other side it says, high priest.
And so for a Jew to read something like this, a claim of divinity with a corresponding image of that God,
it would have been highly offensive in the temple.
So when Jesus says, hey, go get me a denarius, it's because there's not a denarius in the temple.
The image on that denarius represented a claim.
This coin belongs to this emperor.
His image.
Tiberius Caesar.
This coin belongs to the emperor.
Now when you hear those words likeness and you hear words being thrown like divinity around, God around,
where does your mind go?
Could it go to Genesis chapter 1?
Being made in the image of God?
Now we're getting into Jesus' argument.
When you read those words, hear those words image and divinity,
we with our minds start thinking, okay, God has a claim on me as his image bearer.
In verse 21, Jesus kind of concludes by saying, whose image is that?
It's Caesar's.
Therefore, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.
Render to the things of Caesar that bear his image.
And render to God the things that belong to God that bear his image.
And so what Jesus is saying is he's cutting a line here that would have been amazing at the time.
He's saying to these Jews, he's saying to pay a tax to Caesar and to give tribute to God,
they are not incompatible, but they're compatible.
You can do both.
And Jesus is putting in perspective.
You just give one of those little coins to Caesar.
It's just a little day's wage.
But you give all of who you are as an image bearer to God.
So instead of this either or business, Jesus just does this both and action.
And he's saying, hey, being under Caesar's rule and being under God's rule, that's not incompatible.
It's compatible.
You just give to each their due.
It just so happens that God's due is your entire life.
Because you're an image bearer of him.
So give Caesar his poll tax and give God all that you owe him.
Every aspect of your life.
Now here's what this means for us today.
Because we're image bearers of God and we're followers of Jesus, we pay our taxes.
That's a simple application.
We give to our government what our government is due.
I mean, Jesus paid his taxes.
Do you remember the whole shekelfish thing back in Matthew 17?
What if you have a moral objection to a tax?
You work within the system.
You make your objection known.
If you want to learn about more how a Christian is to walk within our culture at this time under the government, Romans chapter 13, 1 Peter chapter 2.
It's based off of what Jesus is saying here.
So let me ask you this question.
At this point in this story, did Jesus, these Pharisees, did they catch Jesus in his words and entangle him?
No.
Did they discredit him?
No.
We're left in verse 22 with the guys that ask him the question.
They're actually marveling at his answer.
They're marveling.
And then they walk away.
This passage here shows us that Jesus is the greatest teacher in Israel.
But that's not the only reason it's here.
We're eventually going to get to see that Jesus is David's greater son.
So the Pharisees walk out.
And then who walks in?
Look at verse 23.
The Sadducees walk in.
The same day the Sadducees came to him who say there's no resurrection.
And they asked him a question saying, teacher, Moses said, if a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up children for his brother.
Now there were seven brothers among us.
The first married and died and having no children and left his wife to his brother.
So to the second and third down to the seventh.
After them all, the woman died.
In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be?
For they all had her.
Now, here we have another exchange, another question being put to Jesus in the temple.
And they're essentially asking him a question about the resurrection.
Now remember, Matthew tells us right in verse 23 that the Sadducees, they were Sadducee because they didn't believe in the resurrection.
They thought once you die, you die.
You become kind of worm food.
There's nothing left beyond that.
But what else you need to know is that the Sadducees only recognized the first five books of the Bible as authoritative.
So Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, those were their books.
And they also didn't believe in angels.
Another thing you've got to realize is that the Sadducees, they would have been the aristocratic class in Jerusalem.
These guys are the high-end guys.
They held positions of power and influence.
And many of them were high priests.
Many of them were elders in the community.
And so when we talk about the Sanhedrin, which is going to be playing a bigger role as we move through this week,
the Sanhedrin was the Jewish ruling body in Jerusalem at this time.
And it was comprised both of Sadducees and Pharisees.
Pharisees believed in the resurrection.
And so what happens between Pharisees and Sadducees is this ongoing debate.
Is there a resurrection or not?
And these Sadducees are trying to pull Jesus into that.
They're trying to make this the issue.
And they're asking this very interesting question, this situation that they present.
It's a very interesting way of trying to disprove the resurrection.
So what we see happening in verses 24 through 28 is that these Sadducees try to make their point that there's no resurrection by this very interesting situation.
They appeal to this passage from Deuteronomy chapter 25 about, it's called the law of leveret marriage.
It was when a brother of a man who's died and married, and that brother's wife didn't conceive any children.
That brother was then obligated to go into his sister-in-law and conceive a child so that that dead brother's family name would continue on.
When we hear that in our ears, we're like, what?
I've never thought about my sister-in-law that way.
This is really strange.
Does this in play now?
I don't know.
And so it raises all sorts of questions, and we're not going to go to those questions right now.
We don't need to because that's not why this is here.
They're using this situation to try to make a point.
And the point that they're trying to make is that there's no resurrection.
So here's their logic.
Okay, Jesus, there's this guy, and he dies, but he's married, doesn't have a kid, so that wife goes to the next brother, and then the next brother, and then the next brother, and then the next brother, and then she dies.
And the resurrection, there's going to be like seven grooms for one bride.
Whose bride is she?
And their point is, because it's so ridiculous, there must not be a resurrection.
That's the logic.
Now, despite the exceptional nature of this law, when you start to see how they're trying to use it in order to prove that there's no resurrection, you start realizing, I wonder how Jesus is going to respond to this.
What is he going to say?
Well, in verse 29, we see how Jesus responds to these Sadducees.
He says, you are wrong.
You are wrong.
Literally, in the Greek, that means you have been misled.
You're missing it.
They're making a theological hobby horse into something it was never intended to be.
They're using this, their theological position, to try to force an understanding on a particular scripture.
When it's the opposite, all the scriptures should be informing our theology.
And so Jesus says, you guys are misled because one, verse 29, you don't know the scriptures.
And two, you don't know the power of God.
So here is Jesus in the temple, say, responding to a bunch of guys saying there's no resurrection.
And in verse 30, he tackles this first issue of their misuse of the Bible.
He's saying, you have misunderstood marriage altogether.
In verse 30, we read this.
Jesus is like, first things first, guys.
You've got the wrong understanding of marriage in the resurrection.
You've got the wrong idea of marriage.
The Sadducees were doing something like this.
If there is a resurrection, then there must be marriage in the resurrection.
And what Jesus is doing is, your assumption's wrong.
Their whole argument depended on marriage being in the resurrection.
And so Jesus goes after that and then proves them wrong.
Jesus is saying, there's no marriage.
There's no marrying or giving in marriage.
We're going to all be like the angels in heaven.
And angels in heaven don't procreate.
They don't have babies.
They don't have children.
There's no Mrs. Angel Gabriel.
There's no Mrs. Angel Michael.
There's no marriage among angels.
And we've got to ask the question, why isn't there marriage in heaven?
When my wife and I talk about there's no marriage in heaven, we kind of look at each other and we're like, aww.
Seriously?
Well, biblically, marriage is God's provision for carrying out the creation mandate in Genesis 1.
To be fruitful and multiply.
But in the resurrection, there's no more multiplying.
In the resurrection, there's a set number of people who will populate heaven.
They're the elect of Matthew 24.
And so there's no more need to make babies.
And therefore, there's no more need for marriage.
There's no sex in heaven.
And if you're a follower, amen?
And if you're a follower of Jesus and you're like hearing that for the first time, like, well, I'm done.
You don't realize how glorious Jesus is.
So Jesus is saying, hey, you got it wrong.
There's no marriage in heaven.
Now, this might be tough for us married folk to imagine.
Like I said, when Jenny and I talk about this, we're kind of like, aww, man.
Seriously?
And what we're saying there is this.
We hear the words of Jesus that there's no marriage in the resurrection.
And then we think something like this.
Well, that means that the resurrection will somehow be less than our experience now.
Our experience is good.
And if this experience we have isn't the same experience in heaven, then somehow it's going to be less.
But it's not less.
It's more.
Your experience of relationships in the resurrection are going to supersede the greatest relationship you have with anybody on earth right now.
It's going to go beyond it.
You think you've got great friendships now?
They're going to be even more glorious in the resurrection.
It eclipses the best marriages.
It's not going to be less.
It's going to be more.
Jesus is exposing these Sadducees' misuse of Deuteronomy 25.
You guys are using it to make a case for the resurrection?
Are you serious?
You don't know anything.
There's no marriage in heaven.
And then he turns his attention to resurrection itself in verses 31 and 32.
And Jesus makes this amazing case for the resurrection from Exodus chapter 3 verse 6.
It's phenomenal.
Remember the Sadducees?
They didn't believe.
They only believed the first five books of the Bible.
They didn't believe in the other authority of the other books of the Bible.
So Jesus could have gone to Daniel chapter 12 verse 2 and made a splendid case for the resurrection to the Sadducees.
But they would turn with like, well that's out of play because we don't believe Daniel is authoritative.
And so Jesus skips that step and he goes right to the book that they would know the best.
Exodus.
Exodus 3 verse 6 is where Moses is encountering God in the burning bush.
And where God says to Moses, he says, I am the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.
So here's what you need to see Jesus doing here.
Jesus is making an argument for the resurrection on a verb tense.
I am the God of Abraham.
Not I was.
The God of Abraham.
Jesus is making a case on a verb tense that shows you how he thinks about the authority of the Bible.
Every word matters.
So the patriarchs would have been dead at this point when God spoke these words to Moses.
But somehow God is saying, even dead, he is still their God.
I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
How can this be?
How could God be in a present relationship with these guys who are supposed to be dead?
They must somehow be alive.
There must be life after death.
Their living after dying is dependent upon the living God.
The great I am.
Jesus is saying this.
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob aren't dead.
They're still alive.
That's why God says, I am their God now.
So what he's doing is he's using Exodus to disprove the Sadducees, thinking that there's no resurrection.
They would have never heard this argument before.
It would have totally flabbergasted them.
They were wrong.
They didn't know the scriptures, nor did they know the power of God to raise a dead person to life.
And if they had been following Jesus for the last three years, they would have seen him do that a couple times.
You know what this means for us?
Here's what this means for us.
We, for us who are Christians, who bow the knee to Jesus, who are following after him by faith in God's grace,
we're in a better covenant now.
We kind of walk in through Jesus into this great promise.
It's like God is saying of us, I am the God of Mike Salvati now.
And after I die, he'll still be saying that.
Because though I'm dead, yet will I live because Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
So in verse 15, remember the goal of the leaders has been to entangle Jesus.
But in verse 33, we read that the crowd listening to all this is astonished.
They're shocked.
They're amazed.
Like, where did that come from?
That's awesome.
Verse 34, literally, Jesus silenced the Sadducees.
It's a word that means to muzzle something.
Like muzzling a Rottweiler.
They try to entangle him.
He ends up flippant on them and silencing them.
And helping us to see what the scriptures really teach about marriage and resurrection.
So we can look at this passage and say, Jesus is just stinking amazing when it comes to teaching.
He is God incarnate in the temple and he's bringing it.
He's totally exposing these leaders of the time who would have been the Ivy League professional thinkers of Jerusalem.
And he's exposing them.
You don't know what you're talking about.
We could walk away saying, oh, he's an awesome teacher.
But that's not ultimately why this is here.
We're going to see that Jesus is David's greater son.
And so by the end of this sequence, here's the Messiah standing in the temple, silencing his adversaries.
And then the Sadducees leave with their tail between their legs.
And we now come to the next question in verse 34 through 40.
Question three.
One man asked Jesus a question about the law.
A Pharisee.
The Greek word is namikos.
He's an expert in the law.
Professional.
The Pharisees would be like, all right, let's bring out the big guns.
Let's do the stuff that we know we can do.
We're experts in the law.
Let's bring it.
Let's put him on the spot.
Let's do it.
Let's expose him.
So they've huddled up in verse 34.
And they say to one of them, one of the Pharisees, let's just say his name is Hezekiah.
Hezekiah, you go and bring this question to the quote unquote teacher.
Let's see how he handles it.
And so in verse 35, we read one of them, a lawyer, asked Jesus a question to test him.
Teacher, what is the great commandment in the law?
A little background.
Among Pharisees, there was a debate.
Which are the weightier commandments and which are the lighter commandments?
And there was debate.
And so what commandments you thought were weightier would have an influence on what commandments you thought were lighter.
And there was debate among the Pharisees of that time.
And so what they're saying is, what's the most important commandment of all the 613 commandments of the Mosaic law?
All of those 613, what's the most important one?
And so Jesus, you tell us, experts in the law, which one is the most important?
And so in verse 36, we see this man refer to Jesus as teacher.
It's the third time this has been used in this section.
Saying it with a little tongue in cheek.
Which is the greatest commandment of the law?
Which commandment is the weightiest of them all?
Another way to ask it is this.
Which commandment commands all the rest of the commandments?
Which is the commanding commandment?
And Jesus responds in verse 37.
And you've got to notice how he responds.
The command that commands all the commandments doesn't start with a to-do list.
Doesn't start by saying, okay, get your to-do list out.
Let me just kind of rally him through and you can just check him off.
What he does is this.
He responds by saying, love the Lord your God.
The first word in Greek is not you shall.
It's love.
Love.
What is the greatest thing?
The greatest commandment?
Jesus says, love your God.
Now when you hear that word love.
You need to instantly be thinking in terms of relationships.
Relationships.
What is to mark our relationship with God is a loving relationship.
And when you think about in terms of loving relationships, it's devotion.
It's commitment.
I'm going to do what's best for you.
Love is committing to seek the good of another person.
That's what love is, biblically speaking.
And so here what Jesus is saying is this.
The command that commands all the commandments is to seek out God's good first and foremost.
To seek out his glory among all else.
To live for his renown, his fame, his honor, his reputation among the nations.
His agenda, his will is always first priority.
That's in a nutshell what Jesus is saying.
You love God first.
Did you notice all the alls?
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.
We could kind of debate the nuances of those different words.
But what you need to see is that heart, soul, mind.
They are all within you.
All of who you are.
For all that is within you, love God first.
Psalm 103.1.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me.
Bless your holy name.
The command that commands all 613 commandments is to seek God's glory with all that is within you first.
Now, at the risk of being Captain Obvious, the command that commands all commands is not love yourself with all that you are first.
It's love God with all that you are first.
When you become a disciple of Jesus, when you are confronted with the glorious grace of God,
what happens is he completely reorients the aim of your life from living for yourself to living for God.
Seeking God first.
You know what's ironic about this?
It's that what Jesus is saying here, love God with all that you are, it is a repeating of the Shema.
Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 through 5.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.
So you love him with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your mind.
A pious Jew would have been repeating this twice in Jerusalem a day.
And so Jesus is saying, you already know this.
Love him with everything you got.
This is the first and greatest commandment.
But it's not the only commandment.
In verse 39, Jesus speaks of a second.
If to love God with all that you are is the king commandment,
the second commandment is the queen commandment.
And they are to rule together.
If the love of God is the first, loving your neighbor as yourself is the second.
In Matthew 5, Jesus helps us understand what he means by neighbor.
Jesus redefines neighbor.
In Matthew 5, 43 through 47.
He redefines it from those who are like you and like you to include those who are unlike you and may not like you.
All of them are your neighbor.
Do you remember Luke chapter 10?
Jesus speaks the parable of the good Samaritan.
And he's speaking that parable in order to teach what it means to love your neighbor as yourself.
And so by the end of the parable, he asked the lawyer who asked him the question,
which of these do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?
And that lawyer answered, the one who showed him mercy.
And then Jesus says, go and do likewise.
That informs this second great commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.
The love your neighbor as yourself is to show indiscriminate mercy to those who are like you and like you,
as well as to those who are unlike you and may not like you.
You show mercy to them all.
Because all of them are your neighbor.
We seek the good of someone else.
It starts with God and his glory and ends with showing mercy to our neighbor, broadly defined.
So Jesus says that the king and queen commands are the commands that command all the commandments.
And that they are outworkings of love.
Love God, love your neighbor.
And this would have been very new to all that were listening to him.
They tended not to think about obedience to God quite like this.
In verse 40, Jesus goes on to say that on these two commandments, the king and queen depend, literally hang, all the law and the prophets.
And here's what he's saying.
Not only do the 613 commandments hang on this, all of your Old Testament hangs on these two commandments.
Love God, love your neighbor.
You know, has anybody been to the Brooklyn Bridge?
Brooklyn Bridge?
It's that iconic suspension bridge that was finished in 1887.
And it spans the East River.
It's 1,600 feet long.
And it connects Brooklyn to Manhattan in New York City.
Now, there are two massive stone towers that hold up the entire span.
And those massive stone towers are established on the very bedrock underneath the East River.
Remember, these two towers, they hang on them, the 1,600 feet of cable and Bethlehem steel and now asphalt.
And everybody that walks across it, all of it hangs on those two towers.
Here's the point.
All of God's word can be summed up by love God with all that is within you and love your neighbor as yourself.
It is, for those in the kingdom, very basic and real rules to live by.
We can sum it all up with those two.
Jesus didn't come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill it.
And here he's saying how.
We love God and others.
That's the summation of the entire Bible.
So here's what that means for us.
No matter where you show up this week, no matter what you're doing, you find yourself in a situation, you're like, what do I do?
You can ask yourself two questions.
Will this bring glory to God and will this show mercy to my neighbor?
And if you find out how to do that, you're fulfilling the law and you're pleasing God.
Matthew leaves out the response of the Pharisees.
And Mark, actually, the lawyer's like, whoa, very impressed by what Jesus has to say.
But Matthew doesn't record it.
Our best sense is, though, it's just consistent with what's been going on.
Silencing his critics.
He has summed up the Old Testament commandments like no one who's gone before him.
And what we're left saying is, man, this is Israel's greatest teacher.
There's nobody like him.
And you know what happens next?
Jesus turns the tables.
Verse 41.
Now, while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, what do you think about the Christ?
Whose son I mean?
Jesus isn't done.
The Pharisees, Sadducees thought they were done.
Jesus wasn't done.
Before you guys leave, I have a question for you.
What do you think about the Christ?
Now, we know who the Christ is because we've been going through the Gospel of Matthew.
We know that Jesus is talking about himself.
Not so with those who've been inquiring of him.
When he asked them, who is the Christ, they respond immediately, the son of David.
Because 2 Samuel 7 would point to that.
There's going to be a man, a descendant of David, sitting on his throne in Jerusalem forever.
And so, what everybody's agreeing to here is the Christ is the son of David.
The Old Testament points to that.
So, they're right.
The Pharisees are right.
He is the son of David.
What Jesus wants to help these Pharisees see is that he's more than who they think he is.
They have an inadequate view of the Christ.
They're thinking about the Christ as just someone else like David.
Another king.
But what Jesus wants to help them see is he's greater than what they think.
And the way that he does that is by pointing to Psalm 110.
And so, when he says in verse 43, he said to them,
How is it then that David in the Spirit calls him the Christ Lord,
saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet?
If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?
And no one was able to answer him a word.
Here's what you need to see in this Psalm 110.
It's who's who.
So, it's a Psalm of David inspired by the Holy Spirit.
It gives its authority.
And what Jesus is saying,
The Lord said to my Lord,
That first Lord is God.
And God is saying to my Lord,
Sit at my right hand,
A place of honor and power,
Dominion, kingdom,
Rightful reign,
Until I put your enemies under your feet.
So, God is saying to someone,
Sit at my right hand.
And we got to ask the question,
Who's he talking to?
Well, David says,
The one who he's talking to is my Lord.
David is the my.
God is saying to David's Lord,
Sit at my right hand.
So, who is the Lord?
The son of David.
The Messiah.
And so, what is amazing about this,
Is that Jesus is bringing together two things.
2 Samuel 7,
The promise of one sitting on David's throne,
And this one who will sit on David's throne,
Is greater than David,
Because David calls him Lord.
He's David's greater son.
And so, all of this whole sequence,
Of Jesus responding to his adversaries,
It comes,
It lands right where Jesus wants it.
On him.
I'm David's greater son.
He's the Lord.
He is a great teacher,
The greatest in Israel,
Because he is David's Lord.
David's greater son.
He's not just,
The son of David.
He's the son of God.
In Matthew 26,
Jesus is going to be questioned,
By the high priest Caiaphas,
And Caiaphas is going to demand,
That Jesus answer this.
Tell us,
Are you the Christ,
The son of God?
God,
We know the answer.
He is.
God incarnate,
The rightful king,
Is standing in the temple,
In Jerusalem,
Saying,
Talking about how he,
Is the fulfillment,
Of Psalm 110.
He's not just the greatest teacher in Israel.
He's David's Lord.
So how do we respond to this?
Let me just first,
By saying this.
If David,
Called him Lord,
So,
Must,
You.
If he's,
David's Lord,
He must be,
Your Lord too.
And the way to respond,
To someone who's great,
Is to humble yourself,
Before him,
And declare him,
Who he is.
You're my Lord.
And so if you're here this morning,
And you have not spoken to Jesus,
The risen Christ,
And said,
Lord Jesus,
You are my Lord,
I submit myself to you,
You have full reign over my life,
That's the step you take today.
You call on him,
As Lord,
Just as King David,
Called on him,
Lord,
As well.
When you take that step,
When you call Jesus,
Lord,
Here's what happens next.
You pay your taxes.
You rest assured,
That your name,
Is on his mouth,
When he says,
I am the God,
Of the living.
He's your God.
Jesus is the resurrection,
And the life.
If you believed in him,
When you die,
You will live.
So you can be assured,
Recognizing who Jesus is,
Believing in him,
That your life,
Will go on beyond the grave.
Finally,
If you call Jesus your Lord,
You will seek God's glory,
And the good of others,
Because all of the law,
Depends on that.
You will live that way.
You will trust him that way.
You'll be constantly,
Asking yourself,
God,
Does this glorify you?
Will this bless this other person?
Will this show mercy to them?
Oh God,
Is this the thing,
That will bring glory,
Most glory to your name right now?
No,
I'm not going to do it.
Yes,
I'm all in.
That's how we live.
So when we recognize Jesus,
For who he is,
Lord of all,
David's greater son,
We just follow suit with our lives.
Jesus is the greatest teacher,
Because he's David's greater son,
God incarnate.
May you savor that,
Let's pray together.
God in heaven,
Would you take little fish,
And bread,
And multiply it,
And God,
Would you help us,
Live this week,
In light of David's greater son,
Who's living,
Who's risen and living,
He's at the right hand of the father,
Reigning on high,
As father,
You are bringing all things under his feet,
And you will one day,
He's coming back,
And he'll make all things right.
God,
We look forward to that day,
And we joyfully say,
We will follow you.
You are worthy,
Lord Jesus.
Amen.