Springs Lighthouse Church

Pastor Brian Michaels: All right, turn with me to Matthew chapter 22. Matthew chapter 22. If I could enlist the help of the front row, if I fall asleep during my sermon, just throw something at me and wake me up. I did work that concert last night. I didn't see any of you there. Usually, I work those Air Force Academy games and I'm running into people all the time, and they're like, "Pastor Brian!" No Deputy Michaels.

In this situation, I didn't see a single person that I knew at the Bruno Mars concert. It was funny because everybody in our unit, our reserve unit, skews a little older and everybody was like, "I've never heard any of his songs. I don't even know who this guy is." At least I knew because I have a 20-year-old granddaughter. I was kind of up on things, but it was fun, but it was exhausting.

Matthew chapter 22, we came as far as verse 41. Let's pray and jump in. Father, we thank you for your amazing grace this morning. Thank you that your mercies are new each and every morning. We pray that whatever you have in store for us for this day, for the coming days, the coming weeks, Father, that you would prep us for them as we study your word today. We don't know what's coming, but you do.

Lord, we pray that you would prepare our hearts, prepare our lives, just draw us close to you so that we'd be in a position to continue to cling firmly to you, to hold fastly to you. You are our God and we desire to walk in relationship with you. So teach us by your Holy Spirit as we dive into your word. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

We are going through this section where Matthew is pointing out Jesus' conflict with the religious leaders of his day. Judaism by this time had become quite corrupt in its religious leadership. It had turned into a thing where the religious leaders were more concerned with their power, their prestige, and their position than they were with anything else. Jesus, in their minds, is a threat.

It was not because they're concerned with what he's teaching. Certainly, they were unclear on a lot of things that he was teaching. He's giving them some new understandings and many of them are not willing to hear it. But there was a jealousy factor. There was a concern that he had crowds that were following him and the people were more interested in who Jesus was than what the religious leaders were saying.

Jesus comes along with a message of hope, a message that they can come to him if they're burdened, if they're heavy laden, and he would give them rest. Instead of the burden that the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the lawyers and the scribes were laying upon the people and not lifting one finger to help them with that burden, Jesus says, "Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls."

The religious leaders have been challenging Jesus. It is in this last week of his earthly life and ministry before he goes to the cross. He began the week by coming into the temple and overturning the tables of those who bought and sold and those who were exchanging money. The religious leaders come challenging his authority. "Where do you get this authority? By what authority do you do these kinds of things in the temple?"

Then came a series of questions, each of them designed to entrap Jesus. Each of them designed to try and back him into a corner where no matter how he answers, he offends someone. That was up until the last question that we looked at last weekend, where a lawyer comes to him and says, "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment?" We know from Mark's recounting of that event that it actually was an honest question.

It was the first one of the whole bunch that wasn't designed to entrap him. Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love God with everything you've got. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second greatest commandment is similar to it: love your neighbor as yourself. Love God, love each other, and you'll fulfill all the law.

You don't need to have lots of lists of rules and regulations. If you're loving God and loving your neighbor, you're going to do what God wants you to do and you're going to be kind to one another. If I'm loving God, I'm not going to be worshipping another god. The way the Bible lays that out is called spiritual adultery. God doesn't allow us to have a sidepiece God. It is him and him alone that we worship.

If I'm loving him supremely, I'm going to worship him only. If I'm loving my neighbor as I love myself, that means I'm probably not going to murder him. Likely. It means that I'm not going to steal from him. It means that I'm not going to covet his things. It means I'm not going to sleep with his wife. It means all of those things. Love God, love each other.

Jesus acknowledges that man's answer in a very positive way. He doesn't go through "Thou shalt not, thou shalt not, thou shalt not." He says, "This is positive: love God, love each other." He tells that young man, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." Now Jesus turns with the multitude standing there and the religious leaders in front of him. He turns now to challenging the religious leaders himself. He goes on the offensive.

Verse 41 says, "While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?" Jesus goes on the offensive now and he says, "I've got a question for you guys. What do you think about the Christ, the Messiah?" All of Israel was waiting for their Messiah. They're celebrating Passover, which is a celebration of deliverance from bondage, deliverance from slavery.

The celebration of Passover came out of God delivering them from slavery in Egypt with all of the plagues. Every Passover, they're wondering, "Could this be the year that God delivers us from this Roman oppression?" Apparently, a number of them have been reading what we know of today as Daniel chapter 9, where Daniel prophesies when Messiah the Prince would come. They're all out there waiting to see who it is, see what's going to happen.

That's why they're out there on the Mount of Olives laying palm branches in front of Jesus and shouting, "Hosanna," when he comes into the city in his triumphal entry. You've got this scenario now where he says to all of the religious leaders there before him and all the multitude standing there listening to this, "What do you think about the Christ?" Christ is from the Greek, it's the same word as Messiah from the Hebrew, the anointed one.

What do you think about this coming deliverer? Whose son is he? This becomes very important in the Jewish mind because the prophecies foretold specifically that Messiah would come from the tribe of Judah, the kingly tribe, and that Messiah more directly would descend from the lineage of King David. He's going to challenge them. "What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?" because the religious leaders had rejected him as the Messiah.

Apparently, some were examining his claims. There were some that were searching the scriptures, hearing the things that Jesus said, and going back and going, "Well, that makes sense. I've got to see what the word of God says." It's interesting to note Joseph of Arimathea, who was on the council, and Nicodemus, who we were specifically told was a Pharisee. Last week we talked about them coming to Christ.

These two guys made a profession of allegiance to Jesus after his crucifixion but before his resurrection. They had come to an understanding of who Jesus was not because they saw the empty tomb, but they saw the prophecies being fulfilled. So they're searching. A couple of these people are actually questioning with an honest heart. What Jesus is doing is exposing the gaps in their understanding on who the Christ was.

This is the heart of Jewish theology. Looking for their deliverer, he says, "About that deliverer, what do you think about him? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." This was important for them because here's where they really got caught up in misunderstanding Jesus. Jesus was claiming to be equal to God. They were not looking for Messiah to be the son of God. They were looking for Messiah to be a man.

They said the son of David. He's coming descended from David. They did not understand how it could possibly be that Messiah could be fully man and yet fully God. He's David's son, but we also know he's God's son. He's David's son. And he said to them in verse 43, "How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord? saying: The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool'?"

This is going to be a little bit technical as we dive into this, so try to bear with me because it will help you in all of the remainder of your life studying the scripture. Number one, understand that Jesus is taking them back to what we would know as Psalm 110. It is a Messianic Psalm. It is a Psalm that is written by David talking about who the Messiah would be, what he would look like, and what he would do.

Notice first of all that there's no question that David wrote it. Critics are always trying to challenge, "Well, we don't really believe that David wrote that one." Jesus did. Jesus didn't have all the understanding we have today as scholars, and you just want to wring those pencil necks, but we love them with the love of Jesus Christ. See how I turned that around?

You've got these people saying things like, "We don't believe David wrote it." Jesus clearly said David wrote it. But he also says David was inspired by the Spirit. It means that the Holy Spirit led David to write the things that he wrote. The Holy Spirit revealed the prophetic things that he was saying about the coming Messiah. When you hear about the scripture being inspired by the Spirit, the way the New Testament puts it is, "It is God-breathed."

It is given to us by God. Men wrote the words, but don't think that the Spirit came upon them and they went into a trance and their arm went and they couldn't stop it. It wasn't anything crazy like that. It was just the Holy Spirit speaking through these men, speaking through their character, their personality, but speaking the truths of the things of God. Psalm 110: "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool'."

The thing I want to focus on in that little passage from Psalm 110 is the first line: "The Lord said to my Lord." That's an awkward grammatical construction for us in English. But we need to understand if you look at the way that that is in your biblical text, we use one English word twice: Lord. But in the original language, they are two very different words.

The way that the translators try to help us understand that there's a distinction between the first Lord and the second Lord is the typeface that they use. If you look at the word Lord the first time, it is in all capital letters. The O-R-D is probably, it's likely, in a smaller font, but it is still capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. As opposed to the second usage of Lord, which is a capital L but a lowercase o-r-d.

Do you see that in your text? All that is saying is that first usage of the word Lord is not a title. The English were big into Lords, right? Lords and ladies. We don't use that terminology very much anymore. It means master, it means sovereign as a title. You call someone Lord if they were in that position of authority. That's the second Hebrew word that is translated Lord. That's Adonai in the Hebrew.

The first one is the covenant name of God. It is called the tetragrammaton. It's the indication that it is the name of God. It has all the vowels removed, believed to be so that it became unpronounceable. They so revered the name of God they didn't want to speak his name out loud with our sinful lips. Unfortunately, the name of God, we don't actually know for sure how that ultimately would have been pronounced.

Most scholars today would read it as Yahweh. Some would say Jehovah, but there's not even a J in the Hebrew language. So even that would be Yehovah. Yahweh is probably the most acceptable pronunciation of it. Understand, that is the covenant name of God. So what is David then saying in Psalm 110 as Jesus is quoting it here? Yahweh said to my master. So God the Father is speaking to my master.

Here's the problem from a Jewish understanding, and it's the thrust of Jesus' question: verse 45. "If David then calls him Lord or master, how is he his son?" David is recording the Father speaking to the Messiah. As David says this, God the Father spoke to the Messiah, my master, and he said that, "I will make your enemies your footstool." God the Father said to my master.

Why was this a problem? We don't understand the patriarchal Jewish culture of that day. We understand today it's commonplace for a son to excel beyond their father in business, in prosperity, in wealth, and in position. Most fathers in our culture, I think, would prefer to see their sons do better than they did. Amen? That's our goal, to try and help our boys especially to excel beyond where we came. That should be the heart of a loving father.

In that culture, even if it happened, which it did with King David, didn't it? Didn't David exceed his father Jesse? Oh, by leaps and bounds. David became one of the greatest kings that Israel ever had. David's son Solomon exceeded David, didn't he? In wealth, in wives—bad move. Sorry, that just came to me. In position, in the peace of the nation, largely because David set him up for that success.

David wasn't allowed to build the temple, but he prefabbed the whole thing. He drew up the plans and left it all in Solomon's lap for him to build that lavish temple. David's son excelled beyond him, but David would have never called Solomon master. David would have never called Solomon Lord. Jesse would have never called King David his son, would have never called him Lord. It just wasn't done in that context, in that culture.

Jesus is doing is taking them back to something and challenging their understanding. If the Messiah is David's son, David would never call his son master unless he was so far beyond him like being God in human flesh. If the Messiah is in fact not just the son of David but the son of God, then David would call him master. So what do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?

Well, he's David's son. Then why does David call him master? Why does David say, "The Lord said to my master," unless he understood that there was something different about the Messiah that was coming? And the response, verse 46: "No one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question him anymore." Love it.

You're laughing because you know Matthew, Levi, who had turned his back on everything that those men stood for that are standing in front of Jesus, he's loving this. He is loving it as Jesus challenges them and they're standing there red-faced and gritting their teeth and they've got nothing left to say and big veins poking out on their forehead. They're angry, they're frustrated, and Matthew loves it. It's great fun.

What's the point? What interests me about this is I know there's something more to this than just don't mess with Jesus. There is that, right? Don't mess with Jesus. What I love about this is they've been challenging him and Jesus had all the answers, didn't he? Jesus always has the answers. He has all the answers. Jesus even has all the questions.

He's got it frontways, backways, up, down, front, back, it's all about Jesus. As Matthew records this, this is amazing. Matthew, coming from the priestly tribe, turning away from all of that, becoming a hated, traitorous tax collector for the Romans as he turned his back on his people, turned his back on his religious system, seeing the hypocrisy, frustrated with it all, and he throws in his lot with Jesus. But here's what he knew.

When the Passover lamb was brought—and that's going to happen in just a couple of days from these events Matthew is recording—when the Passover lamb was brought, you as an offerer would bring your lamb. By the way, this has all been fulfilled in Jesus. Please do not come back here next week with lambs. It's all been fulfilled, the sacrificial system is done.

When you brought your lamb, you brought it to the priest and the priest inspected it. Why? Because the scripture said it had to be without spot and without blemish. And we know why that was. It's because God knows us. God knows us. If you were a sheepherder, shepherd, if you had a flock of sheep and it was time to bring one to the Lord for your Passover offering, wouldn't you be tempted to look out over the flock and go, "I've got 50 nice lambs. They're going to fetch a good price at market."