Whose Son Is The Messiah? Matthew 22:41-45

Open your Bibles with me to Matthew 22:41. We are going to look at six verses here that are fairly short.

There is, as it were, not a tremendous amount of depth here, but that's a little misleading because we have to understand that within the Old Testament context it is always important when we go through Matthew to take the time when we have these quotations, these references to Old Testament prophecies and promises in various passages, that we go back to the Old Testament to understand what is being said, why it is being said, and how it fits into the picture of identifying who this Jesus of Nazareth is.

The New Testament didn't just sort of drop out of the sky without a context, but the context goes back to the creation, to Genesis chapter one. And if are going to identify who Jesus is we need to start with Genesis 1 and not start with Matthew or Luke or John. This becomes more and more true today in our culture as we live in a world that is more and more biblically and historically illiterate. I don't say that in any kind of a judgmental count, it just to reference the fact that they are not knowledgeable of the Bible. They don't know the Bible. In previous generations you could pretty much assume that if you mentioned or talked about Jesus they had a fairly good idea of who Jesus was; they would have a fairly good idea of what Christmas is all about, that it celebrated the birth of Jesus. They may not really understand a whole lot about the plan of salvation or the gospel or some of the spiritual truths related to that, but they had just from cultural understanding and knowledge about certain things about the Judeo-Christian worldview.

But we don't live in a kind of a world anymore and I want to encourage you that if you are a Christian and you're trying to communicate the gospel with somebody not to assume that they know these facts. In fact, probably for much of our lives that has been true. I remember with some shock back when I was in the seventh grade my English teacher mentioned something related to the Bible into the picture. It may have been a story related to Christmas and she told the class I taught my class later in the day that she had had a student earlier in the day say, "Well what who is Jesus, I never heard of him before". Now that was a few decades ago, so if that was true of the one or two people in Houston Texas several decades ago it's probably now even more true of numerous people. Maybe 40-60% of people who live in Houston don't have any idea of who Jesus is, even if we live in part of the Bible belt.

So when were explaining the gospel to folks it is helpful to really identify people. But you can just start off with Jesus in Matthew, you have to start off with talking about the Old Testament and how the Gospels fit into that, and they understand something about this, so that they have a sense of who God is. And you can talk to people about who God is and we live in such a multicultural and diverse city now that you can talk to people about who God is and they may not have any idea who the Judeo-Christian God is. You can't just assume because they say they believe in God that what they mean about God is what you mean about God. So we need to start with the beginning so that they have some idea who God is, and that gives meaning to gives meaning to an understanding of what sin is and eventually who Jesus is and why he had to die to die on the cross.

I titled this lesson, 'Whose son is the Messiah?' because that is the focal point of Jesus' question to those who are challenging him.

Now let's just go back a minute and remember the context of little bit. This goes back to a time when Jesus is just entered into Jerusalem. It's the last week before the crucifixion is entered into Jerusalem. He was recognized and praised by many of his followers and people from Jerusalem as He is entering into Jerusalem. He is he is praised as the King and He is welcomed as the King. They understand that He is the one who has come to offer the kingdom to Israel and they are singing praises from Psalm 118, indicating that they clearly understand who He is.

The next day is and the couple days following as He came into Jerusalem, He is confronted by the religious leaders—by the Herodians, by the Pharisees, by the Sadducees—and each group was challenging Him. We saw in Matthew 21:28 down through 22:22 that you have these parables that are ultimately parables of judgment. Each one of them develops and answered to the question about Jesus authority. The Pharisees asked, "By whose authority do you do this?" They're asking this in a condemnatory fashion, they do not believe He has authority to say or do the things that He is been doing.

We went through these parables. Each one involves the father a sign or signs and the rejection of the father's authority. It became very clear to the Pharisees that he was that Jesus was talking about them, and Matthew 21:45 we read how when the chief priests and Pharisees heard His parables, they perceived that He was speaking about them. They understood already that He was talking about a judgment that was going to come upon them, and that leads to a reaction. He was speaking to the Pharisees, to the crowd, and is and making clear that they have rejected God, they rejected God's plan. They rejected Him as Messiah; they will come under judgment. Each one builds a case for God's rejection of the religious leaders of Israel, even as they are rejecting Jesus as His son. And they are already beginning to conspire against Jesus and order to seek His death. In Matthew 21:46 it says, "When they sought to lay hands on him, they feared the multitude, because they took him for a prophet".

And then they decided to this set up some questions to try to trap Him. The purpose is either to get Him to commit to a position that would violate the laws of Rome, and therefore He would be arrested, or to get Him to say something that would cause the crowds the multitudes to reject Him. They asked these three sets of questions. First of all, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? The second question came from the Sadducees, and this is interesting. The Sadducees and the Pharisees in this particular situation have come together and allied themselves against Jesus.

Now I have been doing further reading and studying upon this. I pointed out the hostility that existed between the two, but I ran into some information is last week that we just don't grass quite grasp the depth of the hostility that existed between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Both of these groups developed after the Israelites had returned from that 70-year captivity in Babylon. In that context there is the rebuilding the temple, they completed the temple, there is a desire on the part of Ezra and the other leaders, leading up to the time that Nehemiah, that they need to teach the people the Scriptures so that the people do not fall into the trap of idolatry that they had, which led up to the defeat and divine discipline by Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar.

As they returned they developed a couple of different religious groups within Israel, and they have different approaches as to how to accomplish this. There were the conservatives with the Pharisees, and the liberals were the Sadducees. But then as you kind of fast-forward to the period where the Jews have revolted against the Syrian leaders in the Antiochene leaders out of Syria and then establish their own kingdom to the Maccabean revolt, there were many leaders who are extremely corrupt and they've allied themselves. They are priests but they have made themselves kings. This is really angered the Pharisees because in Israel there is a separation between the priesthood and the kingship. That is part of the background for what were what we see little bit in and our passage. They had merged these together so you have one group, the Essenes, who decided that they were just fed up with the whole process. They decide they're going to go live in the desert, and there is a belief that the Essenes were the background for the people who lived out in the desert at that at Qumran. But the Pharisees are still present in Jerusalem and they are just hostile to the Sadducees.

They would go to festivals and they would throw rotten fruit at the priests in the middle of the services. That really endeared them to that to the Sadducees, so much so that at one point the Sadducees had 90 Pharisees arrested and they hung them all. But before they hung them they killed their children in front of them so that the last thing they saw before they died was the death of their children.

By the time you get to the two the time of Jesus things had calmed down somewhat because of the power of Rome. Rome was not going to put up with all of this religious conflict that had been going on for 100 years or more and that brought a level of stability. But there is no love lost between these two groups.

When the Sadducees come along and asked this question about the resurrection and whose wife is this woman going to be after she has gone through seven different husbands, one brother after another according to the levirate marriage laws Jesus just shut them down to that question so that they didn't have an answer.

The Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees and they gathered together they are rather gleeful that this has happened. They are just as just happy as they can be because their enemies are shut down. Now that think they can shut down Jesus and so we saw the third question: What is the greatest commandment of the law? First of all, to love of the Lord your God with every ounce of your being: with all your soul, mind and strength and then secondly, to love your neighbor as yourself.

Now there is an implied condemnation there from Jesus because of the way He develops this. We went through the good Samaritan, a parable last week, the way Jesus has presented himself as the Messiah—and He is clearly not a Samaritan, so He is obviously their neighbor even know that the Samaritan was a neighbor. He is also Jewish, so therefore they should love Him as they love themselves; but they're plotting to kill him. So there's this undertow there of condemnation against the Pharisees, because He is pointing out that they are not loving Him as they should, according to the Law.

Furthermore, if He is the Messiah and is who He claims to be, and He is God, then they're not loving God either; they have violated the covenant. There is this very definite undertone of condemnation in the Pharisees that continues in this interchange and it will only intensify when we get to this counter question that Jesus asked in Matthew 22:41-46: "Whose son is He?

The Pharisees are gathered together to challenge Jesus to try to trip Him up and now He has basically shut them down. The Mark parallel says that after the interchange about the greatest commandment, once again the Pharisees were shut down and they did not know what to ask Him or what to say, and they no longer would ask Him anything.

While they are there, Jesus asks them—I think a better translation of this is "When the Pharisees had gathered together", because that the while "gathered" is a participles, SUNAGO which is the verb form of SUNAGOGUE, (synagogue), a place of assembly, the place where people come together. It's a perfect participle—completed action, so it's not "while", that indicates Paul something is going on. It is after, or when they had fully gathered together. So apparently they after that last interchange they sort of get among themselves and they trying to figure out what they can ask. They can't come up with anything. Then Jesus is going to ask them a question. He is going to begin to interrogate them with just one clear, precise question that will expose their rejection of the truth of the Old Testament. It will expose their rejection of God and their rejection of what the Torah taught about the Messiah.

He asked the question: "What do you think about the Christ?" Now the word Christ is a transliteration in the English of the Greek word CHRISTOS, which means the "anointed one". It has the idea of someone who is anointed or set aside or appointed for a particular task. It is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word mashiach, which has the same meaning: the anointed or the appointed one. So in Hebrew when we talk about Jesus Christ, the Hebrew is Yeshua ha Mashiach, Jesus the Messiah. It is important to emphasize that that is what were saying when we talk about Jesus Christ, as we are making a statement that Jesus is the Messiah; He is the promised anointed or appointed one from the Old Testament.

So He asked this question: "What do you think about the Christ; whose son is He?" We get a little bit of an insight into how Jesus talks here. We also do from the Gospel of John the Gospel of John, and for different reasons. Jesus would say things in different ways. So He will ask the question, then he would ask it again using a different language. Sometimes He would say things one way, repeated it, and say just a little differently—which any good teacher will do—to make sure people understand what He says. That is why you see some minor differences between the Gospels. It is not that that the Gospel writers putting something Jesus said into their own words or summarizing it, but because when Jesus said something He didn't just say it one way, He would say it and repeat the question using slightly different language to get the point across.

The reason I say that is because of part of what we will see in just a minute in this passage is that this passage is also an important verse for understanding some of the issues related to the debate over the inspiration of Scripture, the source of Scripture. The Scripture has its ultimate source in God and its ultimate source in man, and today we are living in a new era or new stage in the battle for the Bible. When we talk about the battle for the Bible we are talking about the battles that have gone on, especially the last 250 years or so related to the authority the inspiration the origin of the Scriptures. And about every generation we go through this battle again. This is going to be the topic of our Chafer pastors' Conference next March.

Many of us who were in seminary or out of seminary and ministry in the late 70s were familiar with the very extensive document that was put together by a group of theologians and pastors and Christian leaders of 300 of them gathered together in Chicago for a period of time and crafted an extremely extensive doctrinal statement on the inerrancy of Scripture that has become the platinum standard for defining the doctrine. And yet today many evangelicals who give lip service to their belief inerrancy and infallibility don't actually believe that when you push them. Many of the ways that that this is exposed is in some of the some of the ways that these sayings of Jesus are challenged: Well, Matthew wrote in one way, Mark wrote it another way. Yet scholars say the historiography in the first century wasn't as precise as it is today so, so this is fine for there to be these minor, contradictions. They don't really challenge inerrancy. Yes they do.

This is becoming more dominant at almost every major evangelical seminary in the country. You have faculty who have sort of watered this down. It indicates a somewhat low view of Scripture and we really can't put up with that; that is what the battle for the Bible is all about.

Another dimension of that has to do also with is the reality of messianic prophecy: does the Old Testament really have genuine messianic prophecies? It may surprise you that there are many faculty members in some of our favorite evangelical seminaries who do not believe that there are any specific, narrow messianic prophecies in the Old Testament; it is all just typology. We get into some very important doctrines that underlie a study of this particular passage.

Jesus asked the Pharisees, "What you think about the Messiah, whose son is he?" And they said to him, "The son of David".

Now they all believe that the Messiah would be a descendent of David. David was of the tribe of Judah. This is the King David of the Old Testament, the same David who fought and killed Goliath in the valley of Ela, and so they understand that it is this David, the King David of Israel who is that progenitor of the Messiah; the Messiah would become directly from his line. That would emphasize the humanity of the Messiah as well.

Jesus is in disagreeing with them as far as it goes, because they're right. But their only partially right because the Messiah is going to be more than just a sign of David, and that is what Jesus is focusing on in this particular passage. When they reply, the son of David, Jesus is going to ask them another question that is going to put them on the horns of a dilemma. Because He is going to bring out in this that what David said in the Old Testament is to refer to the Messiah as the Lord, putting Him on the level of deity that Yahweh has. That shows that the Messiah is not only a human son of man, but He is also expected by Old Testament promises and prophecies to be fully divine. That was something they were willing to accept and they know that this is part of what Jesus has been claiming, that He is the son of God as well as the Son of Man. And if they admit, yes, David indicates that the Messiah is going to be God, then that would give legitimacy to Jesus' claims. That is the dilemma that they face. If they agree with Jesus, then that's going to undercut this opposition that they have to Jesus.

Matt 22:43-45 He said to them, “Then how does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying, ‘THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, “SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I PUT YOUR ENEMIES BENEATH YOUR FEET”? “If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his son?”

How could he be his son if David is addressing this messianic King as Lord who is his who is his descendent?

A couple of things we need to recognize that are going on in this in this passage here as something of backgrounds. First of all, when Jesus introduces this in verse 43, he says, "How then does David in the spirit call him Lord", and that brings out two things. First, that Jesus is affirming that Psalm 110 (where the quote comes from) was written by David.

This may surprise you but there are a number of these evangelical scholars who reject that any form of messianic prophecy in the Old Testament, who claim also in order to come up with their alternate explanation of this passage, say that this wasn't written by David, it was written for David or about David. But the phraseology in the Hebrew says a Psalm of David. The Hebrew letter lamedh at the beginning is called the lamedh of authorship. Over 80 times in the Psalms is this introductory statement, "A Psalm of David". Now these writers and scholars will agree that in most of those other passages it means that David wrote the psalm, but when you come to Psalm 110 have a problem with their theology, so they say that David didn't write it.

This is important because Psalm 110 is the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament. Psalm 110:1 and Psalm 110:4 are quoted several times. This is a critical psalm and the New Testament writers and Jesus clearly affirmed Davidic authorship and that this Psalm is about the Messiah. It is sort of interesting that a lot of people who may reject a narrow tight view of messianic prophecy in the Psalms will be forced to admit that if there is a messianic prophecy in the Psalms, it is Psalm 110. I don't think that that there is a single faculty member at Dallas Theological Seminary who affirms that this is a messianic prophecy in the narrow sense, and that has been true for a number of years.

The New Testament clearly states that Jesus says that David wrote the Psalm, and he did so under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We have to be reminded a little bit about some of the statements that are made in the Scripture. For example, in 2 Timothy 3:16, 17, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God". That says that all Scripture is breathed out by God, "… and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness". The fact that it is God-breathed tells us two things: one, that the origin of Scripture is ultimately in God, and secondly, that He writes through human agency and is able to somehow override the sin nature and the weaknesses and problems of human being, so that he can guarantee that the outcome is without error. We also know that it is through God the Holy Spirit that this process of inspiration takes place.

2 Pet 1:20, 21 ^NASB "But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is {a matter} of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God."

So it is critical for us to understand the importance of divine inspiration here. So when we go back to our passage, Jesus said, "David by the Spirit called him Lord". This is emphasizing that as David wrote this song that he is writing under God's direction by means of God the Holy Spirit, even though that is not mentioned in the text. When Jesus brings this up He then quotes from Psalm 110:1 and says, "The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool". This is an extremely important passage to understand, and so were going to have to stop here and look at Psalm hundred and 10.

He is making a point that the way that Old Testament passage reads is you have the first Lord, which is identified in Hebrew as Yahweh is speaking to a second person, and if you read through the Psalm it becomes clear that the second person is someone who is also divine but is the messianic King who will be sent from heaven to the earth in order to destroy the enemies of God. That implies that this second Lord is someone who has a divine nature, and David calls him "My Lord".

Remember, David is a Middle Eastern patriarchal king. That means that there is nobody over him; there was nobody higher than a potentate in the ancient world in the Middle East. There was no one to whom they would turn for greater authority. And yet David is saying that this person to whom Yahweh is speaking is his Lord, is in authority over him, is at power over him, and that indicates that it would not be any human being because there was no human being, that would be greater than king David.

Just the fact that that Yahweh is speaking to someone else who is an authority over David indicates that this second person also would have to be developed divine by implication. And then what he says is, "Sit at my right hand". The right hand is a position of honor. It doesn't inherently mean that the person who sits at the right hand of the king is of the same nature as a king. Some people have made that claim. But at the beginning of Solomon's reign he had a throne set up for his mother, Bathsheba. She was not equal to him, but he put her there as a sign of respect and to express her in her position of honor in the kingdom. So it is not an expression that the person at the right hand is equal to the person on the throne, but that they are in a position of honor, a position of respect, a position of some authority.

This indicates that the this second Lord is standing because he is told to sit, and that standing position was implied that he's coming from somewhere. Now he is told to sit. Then there is a time duration put on that command to sit: "Until I make your enemies your footstool". Now this kind of grammar in the Hebrew indicates that you are going to stay in this seated position, which is a position of passivity, not a position of action, until some circumstances change. So God is going to defeat these enemies of Christ to these enemies in such a way that they will become subordinate to this second person and then something will happen.

Now we fit that into our understanding of what God what the Scriptures predict about the future. In Daniel chapter 7 we have a similar situation where you have the Ancient of Days was on his throne, God the father. Then Daniel says he saw one like the Son of Man. That is the Old Testament background for understanding that term that Jesus use the many times. "One like the Son of Man" comes to him and it is at that time that the Ancient of Days gives him the authority to go to the earth, and to destroy the kings of the earth. And so that's the picture here.

The Father (Yahweh) is going to bring history to a concluding point. Until then, the Son is waiting until He requests of the Father and the Father grants His request to give Him authority over the kings of the earth. But the only point that Jesus is making here is verse 45: "If David calls him Lord, how can he be his son?" The Pharisees can't answer.

But there's something else that is that is going on here. Remember as talking to the Pharisees in the exchange about what the greatest commandment is, Jesus talked about loving your neighbor as yourself. There is an implied criticism or judgment there because He knows what that for plotting to do. They are plotting to arrest Him and kill Him. Jesus is saying that this is a great commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, so how is what you're planning to do loving? How are you fulfilling this command, you who think that you are following the law all the time? And the Pharisees already know from listening to the parables that Jesus is talking about them and is announcing their judgment.

And here again, He announces judgment because if Jesus is who He claims to be then they are the enemies of the Messiah, and He has just quoted that God is going to make his enemies. God is going to bring judgment upon them. It not is as clear or overtly stated in the text but what Jesus is continuously doing is needling them and reminding them that if He is who He claims to be they are going to come under intense divine judgment.

Matthew 22:46 ^NASB "No one was able to answer Him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask Him another question." They cannot respond from that day on.

We need to spend sometime in Psalm 110 because it is such an important psalm. We need to understand everything that goes on there. It is more than just Psalm110:1. Remember if you were Jewish—the only divisions of course were the Psalms because each song is an integral unit—you identified the Psalms by the first phrase or the first verse. That's very typical today. If there's a pronouncement and official document that comes out of the Vatican, the title comes from the first three or four words in the first sentence of the document. This was the way the ancient world would title things. Look at the Old Testament. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". That is Genesis 1:1. What is the title of Genesis in the Hebrew? Bereshith, "in the beginning". So this was typical.

So when Jesus is referring to Psalm 110:1 here, He knows that the Pharisees know the whole thing; they have it all memorized. They think they understand everything that is in it. So He is not just challenging them in the light of that first verse, there is an implied challenge in relationship to everything that is taught in that messianic Psalm, Psalm 110:1. He is making essentially the same claim that people like CS Lewis, Josh McDowell, and numerous others have made, that when you're confronted with Jesus you have basically three options, two of which are illogical and irrational. You say that Jesus is a good teacher, a moral teacher, but that doesn't really fit because if you're good and you are moral you are not going to tell people that you are the only way to heaven, that you are the life and no one can come to the Father except by you. The claims that Jesus made counter the claims that if He is not telling the truth, that He can be just a good moral teacher, if He is not telling the truth. He was an evil deceiver.

The second option would be that He would be crazy. He was just deluded. He was psychotic and He just assumed these messianic pretensions. But nothing that we know about Jesus fits that, so the place of refuge that many people go in order to give themselves some sort of protection from rejecting Jesus is totally stripped away, and that is what Jesus has done with the Pharisees; He stripped away any pretension and left them angry. They have examined Him as per the examination of the Passover lamb. He has defeated them in every one of these examinations. He has not succumbed to any of their tricks. He has in fact turn those tricks back on them and exposed them for what they are, and we know from human behavior that whenever people are exposed and whenever people's oppositions are destroyed that their reaction is anger, and that's what their reaction is going to be.

What will see after we look at Psalm 110 is that Jesus is going to ratchet it up even more and His condemnation is going to get on steroids. In chapter 23 and He will pronounce a series of woes against the Pharisees that will lead them completely exposed, and it is at that point that they decide that something must be done immediately to get rid of this Jesus of Nazareth.

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