Latest / Reformed Thinking / David’s Son and David’s Lord: The True Identity of the Messiah (Matthew 22:41–45)

Transcript

David’s Son and David’s Lord: The True Identity of the Messiah (Matthew 22:41–45) · Reformed Thinking

0:00
Right now as you listen to this, nearly half of self identified
0:04
American evangelicals sitting in pews believe Jesus was a great
0:09
teacher but not God. That is a staggering statistic.
0:13
I mean, it really highlights a catastrophic theological failure
0:17
within the modern church. It really does.
0:19
So welcome to reform thinking. Today we are taking a deep dive
0:22
into the source material surrounding Matthew chapter 22,
0:26
verses 41 through 45. Yes, and we must establish a
0:30
solemn, exalted tone from the very beginning of this
0:32
discussion. Right, because our mission today
0:34
is to uncover the most critical question in the universe, which
0:37
is what do you think about the Christ?
0:39
Precisely, we are dealing with a matter of eternal life or death.
0:43
This is not some academic exercise.
0:45
No, not at all. We are exposing the staggering
0:48
danger of a small, manageable Jesus.
0:51
I mean, think about that opening statistic for a second.
0:53
It is terrifying to be honest. Yeah, half the people sitting in
0:56
modern church services have fashioned a savior in their own
0:59
image. They look at the text and they
1:01
see a good man, a moral guide, or maybe even a political
1:04
revolutionary. Right.
1:05
Someone they can emulate, but they entirely miss the Sovereign
1:10
Lord of the Universe. And a wrong thought about Christ
1:13
is a wrong thought about God himself.
1:15
The text we are examining today demands our absolute reference.
1:19
Yeah, and you know, this modern crisis is not actually modern at
1:23
all. It connects directly to the
1:24
Pharisees in the 1st century. That is spot on.
1:27
Both groups completely miss the core identity of the Messiah.
1:31
They hold a partial truth right, and that partial truth acts as a
1:35
deadly veil over their eyes. Yes, blinding them to the
1:38
absolute reality of the ones standing right in front of them.
1:41
Their religious elite in the 1st century possessed the vocabulary
1:44
of faith. Right, they knew all the words.
1:46
They knew the scriptures intellectually, yet their hearts
1:48
were entirely devoid of spiritual life.
1:50
Wow. Yeah, they constructed A savior
1:52
who fit their political aspirations, someone who would
1:56
vindicate their national pride rather than crush their sin.
2:00
And so when we approach Matthew 22, we are stepping onto holy
2:03
ground. We are witnessing the Lord of
2:06
Glory diagnosed the fatal error of a generation.
2:09
It is a huge moment, right? And if you reduce the Savior to
2:13
exclusively a human teacher, well, you lose the only mediator
2:18
capable of bearing the infinite wrath of God.
2:20
That is the core issue. A savior who is exclusively a
2:24
man cannot bear the weight of divine justice, right?
2:27
And a Savior who is exclusively God cannot die or represent
2:31
humanity. As our High Priest, we require
2:34
the God man. We absolutely do.
2:36
We must grasp the dual majesty of Christ as both David's Son
2:40
and David's Lord. And the authority of this
2:42
message rests exclusively in the inerrant, infallible scripture.
2:45
Yeah, so as we move from everyday distractions into
2:48
focused engagement with God's Word, we must recognize that a
2:51
diminished Christ cannot save anyone.
2:54
Amen. We have to see him as he truly
2:56
is revealed in the text. So to grasp the monumental
2:58
weight of Christ's question, we first need to place you, the
3:01
listener, right there on the ground in Jerusalem.
3:03
Context is absolutely vital here.
3:05
It is. Let us step back into Passion
3:07
Week around 8030 or 33. We have to understand the sheer
3:10
hostility hanging in the air. The atmosphere was an absolute
3:13
powder keg. Picture the Temple Mount on
3:15
Tuesday of that final week. The sun is beating down on the
3:18
Whitestone. Hundreds of thousands of
3:21
pilgrims have flooded the city for the Passover feast.
3:23
And the Roman Garrison is watching everything from the
3:26
Antonia fortress. Where they have their hands on
3:28
the hill to their swords, just waiting for a riot to break out.
3:31
They. Were on high alert, certainly.
3:33
And this Pacific Tuesday is widely known as the day of
3:37
controversy. Jesus is standing right in the
3:40
epicenter of the nation's religious life.
3:42
He is surrounded by the most educated, legally minded man in
3:46
Israel. The tension is just palpable.
3:49
I mean, for hours Jesus has weathered A coordinated sequence
3:52
of vicious attacks. The religious elite have been
3:55
trying to catch him in a trap and they are sending their
3:58
absolute best minds to do it. Yeah, they really are.
4:01
First, the Pharisees tag teamed with the Herodians.
4:04
Which is fascinating because those are two groups who usually
4:06
despised each other. Oh yeah, the Pharisees were
4:09
religious purists and the Herodians were political
4:12
compromisers loyal to Rome. But they united over their
4:15
shared hatred of Jesus. The enemy of my enemy is my
4:18
friend, basically. So they asked him a highly
4:21
politically charged question about paying taxes to Caesar.
4:25
They figured he would either incite a riot against Rome by
4:27
saying no, or commit treason against God by saying yes.
4:31
It was a lose lose situation, or so they thought, but he silenced
4:36
them. He asked for a coin and told
4:39
them to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what
4:43
is God's. A.
4:44
Brilliant, perfect response. And then the Sadducees stepped
4:48
up. These were the wealthy
4:49
aristocrats who controlled the temple.
4:51
Yes, the ones who denied the resurrection and only accepted
4:54
the first five books of Moses. Right.
4:56
They came with this ridiculous hypothetical scenario about a
4:58
woman who had 7 husbands trying to make a mockery of the
5:01
afterlife. And he silenced them too.
5:03
He proved the resurrection straight from the burning Bush
5:06
narrative in Exodus, which are the very books they claimed to
5:09
reveal. Is just incredible.
5:10
And finally, an expert lawyer tried to corner him on the
5:13
greatest commandment out of the 613 individual laws in the
5:17
Torah. And once again, Jesus left them
5:19
completely speechless. He summarized the entire law in
5:23
the commands to love God and love your neighbor.
5:25
Right. So all of that just happened.
5:27
And then the narrative shifts right at verse 41.
5:30
The Pharisees are gathered in this defensive huddle.
5:32
They are probably whispering frantically, trying to figure
5:35
out their next move. Exactly.
5:37
I mean, yes, that is precisely it.
5:39
Suddenly, Jesus takes the offensive.
5:42
He moves from being the interrogated to being the judge.
5:45
The interrogator becomes the judge of all the Earth.
5:47
Yeah, imagine a high stakes legal deposition.
5:51
You have a witness sitting at the table taking hours of
5:54
grueling questioning from a team of highly paid prosecuting
5:57
attorneys. They are throwing every trick in
6:00
the book at him. Right.
6:01
And then, out of nowhere, the witness flips the script.
6:05
He leans across the table, takes absolute control of the room,
6:09
and starts grilling the prosecutors with a question that
6:12
completely dismantles their entire case.
6:14
When that witness leans across the table and takes control of
6:17
the room, the entire legal standing of everyone present is
6:20
reversed. Yeah, that is so good.
6:23
We must recognize the vast covenantal shift occurring in
6:26
this precise moment on the Temple Mount.
6:28
A covenantal shift break that down for us.
6:31
This is the transition from the dispensation of the law to the
6:34
inauguration of the New Covenant in his blood.
6:36
OK, wow. For 15 centuries, the nation of
6:40
Israel lived under the Mosaic Code.
6:42
That law was designed as a tutor, a pedagogue intended to
6:46
lead the people to Christ. Right, by exposing their
6:50
inability to attain righteousness on their own.
6:52
Yes, it was a mirror showing them their absolute need for a
6:56
savior. However, the Pharisees turned
6:59
that divine standard into a comprehensive system for self
7:02
justification. They thought they could earn it.
7:04
They believed they could earn their standing before God
7:07
through meticulous adherence to external regulations.
7:10
But here the true King is presenting himself to the
7:13
covenant community, and they are in the active process of
7:17
corporate rejection. They really are.
7:19
The Pharisees are blind to the reality that the types and
7:22
shadows of the Old Testament are meeting their substance in the
7:25
person standing right in front of them.
7:26
That is a massive point. So Jesus is publicly exposing
7:31
their bankrupt theological system.
7:33
He ceases answering their manufactured dilemmas and
7:36
instead places their entire religious framework on trial.
7:40
The leaders of Israel thought they were evaluating a rogue
7:43
rabbi from Nazareth. In reality, they were being
7:46
weighed in the balances of divine justice and found
7:49
entirely wanting. Wow, so this is the definitive
7:52
end to the season of Christ's public interrogation.
7:55
It is from this point forward he dictates the terms of the
7:58
engagement. They had the oracles of God, but
8:01
they entirely refused the God of the oracles.
8:04
Their minds were locked in a system of earthly merit, and
8:07
they could not comprehend the grace standing before them.
8:10
Well, because Jesus has entirely dismantled their political and
8:13
legal traps, he now forces them to address the only issue that
8:17
actually matters. The true identity of the
8:19
Messiah. Right, he asked this penetrating
8:21
question, and the Greek phrasing here is incredibly specific.
8:24
It really is. The phrase is T Hyman Ducaip
8:27
Perry to Cristo. Which translates to What do you
8:30
think about the Christ? Yes, he is not asking for a
8:34
quick opinion or a hot take. He is targeting their minds and
8:38
their affections. It is a massive summons to a
8:40
heart searching appraisal. Jesus is moving the crowd past
8:44
the everyday distractions of taxes, resurrection
8:47
hypotheticals and legal arguments.
8:49
Right into focus, theological engagement, he is cutting right
8:52
through the noise. And then he follows up with a
8:54
specific laser focused question. He asks whose son is he?
8:59
Which is testing their grasp of biblical theology and the
9:02
Davidic covenant. Absolutely.
9:04
You know, as I read this, I try to put myself in his shoes.
9:07
If I am the creator of the universe in human flesh, and I
9:10
want these people to know my true identity, my first instinct
9:14
would be to just state it plainly.
9:15
Just come right out and say it, yeah?
9:17
I would stand up and declare I am the Lord.
9:20
So I look at the Socratic method and I have to wonder about his
9:24
strategy. It is a very deliberate
9:26
approach. Why approach it this way?
9:27
Why phrases as Whose son is he instead of a direct declaration
9:31
of his divine identity? It is a diagnostic tool.
9:34
Right. It feels like he is setting a
9:37
trap of his own. He knows they are going to give
9:39
a specific answer based on their genealogical records.
9:43
He is baiting them into stating their theological position out
9:46
loud so that everyone in the courtyard can hear it.
9:49
So he frames the inquiry this way to draw out their their
9:55
one-dimensional view of the Messiah.
9:56
He is diagnosing their theology in public.
9:59
If he simply declares his absolute deity at that exact
10:02
moment on the Temple Mount, they will immediately cry blasphemy.
10:06
Oh absolutely. They'll try to stone him right
10:08
there. We see this reaction clearly in
10:10
the Gospel of John, where Jesus makes direct statements about
10:13
his eternal existence and the immediate response is violence.
10:17
Right. So by asking whose son is he, he
10:20
forces them to articulate their own incomplete theology out
10:23
loud. He brings them to state their
10:25
understanding of the Messiah's relation to David before the
10:28
entire crowd. And the Pharisees were
10:29
exceptionally well versed in the historical details of the human
10:33
ancestry promised to the Messiah.
10:35
They knew the covenant promises found in Second Samuel Chapter
10:38
7, which guaranteed an eternal throne for the line of Jesse.
10:42
So Jesus knows they will answer based on their limited earthly
10:45
framework. He requires them to lay their
10:47
theological cards on the table so he can expose the fundamental
10:51
deficiency of their system. Because their understanding of
10:53
the Anointed 1 was restricted entirely to human lineage.
10:57
They had no category for a Messiah who is anything more
11:01
than a biological descendant. Wow.
11:03
So the master teacher asks the question not to gather
11:07
information, but to reveal the vast gap in their scriptural
11:11
comprehension. He is making them confront the
11:13
reality that their current theological categories are
11:16
vastly insufficient to contain the true nature of the Messiah.
11:20
That is a supreme act of grace, really.
11:23
He is offering them a mirror to see their own spiritual
11:26
blindness before the final judgment falls upon the nation.
11:29
He is dismantling their pride by showing them that the very
11:32
scriptures they claim to master actually testify against their
11:35
limited expectations. So prompted by Jesus, this is a
11:38
specific question about lineage. The Pharisees supply an answer
11:41
that is technically correct but fatally incomplete.
11:44
They respond with absolute confidence, they say, the son of
11:47
David. Now we have to look at why they
11:50
love this answer so much and what was going on in the
11:53
historical and political reality of the 1st century.
11:55
The political context is inescapable here.
11:58
Israel was a vassal state crushed under the iron fist of
12:02
Roman occupation. You have to imagine the daily
12:05
humiliation they. Had to pay heavy taxes to a
12:07
foreign emperor. Right.
12:08
Their ancestral land was occupied by Pagan soldiers.
12:12
Their political independence was completely gone.
12:14
The Pharisees, the zealots and the general populace were
12:17
groaning for a political Liberator.
12:19
Yeah. And if you look back at their
12:20
history, just a couple of centuries prior, they had the
12:24
Maccabean revolt. The Maccabees were these fierce
12:27
Jewish warriors who threw off the oppression of the Seleucid
12:30
Empire. They cleansed the Temple and
12:32
gave Israel a brief period of independence.
12:34
And the Pharisees wanted a second Judas Maccabees.
12:37
They wanted a hero of the flesh who would do the very same thing
12:40
to the Romans. They desired A ruler who would
12:43
ride into Jerusalem on a warhorse, restore Israel's
12:46
geopolitical dominance, crush the legions of Rome, and set up
12:50
an earthly Kingdom right then and there.
12:53
They were completely not looking for a Lord of the Spirit who
12:55
would crush their own sin. No, not at all.
12:58
Let us think about what this looks like in practical terms.
13:02
Imagine your house is entirely engulfed in flames.
13:05
A terrifying scenario. The roof is caving in, the walls
13:08
are burning and you are trapped inside.
13:10
But instead of calling the fire department, you hire a political
13:13
campaign manager to help you run for City Council.
13:16
That perfectly illustrates the fatal misalignment of their
13:19
priorities. You are focused on a temporal
13:22
earthly ambition while completely ignoring the
13:25
immediate lethal danger right in front of you.
13:28
In that burning house, the Pharisees are not just ignoring
13:31
the fire, they are standing in the flames admiring their own
13:34
robes of self righteousness. Wow, that is such a vivid
13:37
picture. Their theological bankruptcy was
13:40
staggering. Their answer was a shell without
13:42
the kernel, a body without the spirit.
13:45
They grasp his biological descent, but they were utterly
13:48
blind to his divine nature. Their messianic expectation had
13:52
become strictly horizontal, focused on geopolitics and
13:56
National Liberation, completely stripped of all vertical
13:59
reality. They desired a king who would
14:02
flatter their nationalistic pride rather than a savior who
14:06
would confront their spiritual depravity.
14:08
And we see this precise error replicated in modern times.
14:12
Oh absolutely. The Pharisees partial answer is
14:15
the direct predecessor to modern liberal theology and various
14:19
cults. Such as the Jehovah's Witnesses,
14:21
for instance. Right.
14:22
These groups strip Jesus of his absolute Co equal deity with the
14:26
Father. They will gladly acknowledge
14:28
Jesus as a brilliant ethical teacher, a social revolutionary,
14:32
or the pinnacle of human morality.
14:34
They have the right vocabulary. They use the name of Jesus, but
14:37
they present a completely different nature.
14:39
Having the correct biblical terminology while being
14:42
spiritually dead is a terrifying reality for many churchgoers
14:45
today. It really is.
14:46
To accept Jesus as David's son while rejecting him as David's
14:50
Lord is not a minor theological oversight.
14:53
It is a fatal rejection of the only Christ who has the capacity
14:57
to save. Yeah, because a savior who is
14:59
exclusively human, no matter how politically or morally elevated,
15:03
offers no redemption from the wrath of God.
15:05
The Pharisees held 1/2 truth and half truths often veil the
15:09
hardest of hearts. The danger of the partial answer
15:13
is that it inoculates a person against the full truth of the
15:16
gospel. It allows people to feel
15:18
religious and secure while remaining under divine
15:21
condemnation. Well, because the Pharisees
15:23
answer is restricted entirely to human lineage.
15:26
Jesus introduces a text from their own scriptures that
15:30
shatters their earthbound framework.
15:32
He pulls out the ultimate checkmate move.
15:34
He does. He quotes Psalm 110, verse one.
15:37
The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your
15:40
enemies under your feet. This.
15:42
Completely flips the board upside down.
15:44
To understand why this is such a monumental blow, we have to look
15:47
at the cultural paradox here. Think about the social hierarchy
15:50
of ancient Israel, or really any ancient Near Eastern culture.
15:54
It is an honor and shame culture.
15:56
Right. In that world, a father or a
15:58
patriarch is always superior to his descendant.
16:01
The ancestor holds the honor, the authority, and the
16:04
reverence. The descendant owes the ancestor
16:06
respect, always. So for David the great King, the
16:10
man after God's own heart to look forward through the
16:12
centuries and call his own great, great, great grandson
16:16
Lord, well, it subverts the entire social and religious
16:19
order of the day. It breaks their entire paradigm.
16:22
So as a listener, try to reason through this.
16:26
How is it logically possible for a son to outrank his ancient
16:30
patriarch in a society built entirely on ancestral
16:34
veneration? It is a massive theological
16:37
Riddle for them. If the Messiah is just a guy in
16:39
David's bloodline, a political rebel leading a physical army
16:42
against Rome, why on earth is the great King David bowing down
16:46
in the text and calling him master?
16:48
The Pharisees are suddenly trapped by the very scriptures
16:50
they claim to have mastered. They have no category for a
16:53
descendant who is greater than the patriarch.
16:55
This unanswerable dilemma requires us to unpack the
16:58
linguistic brilliance of the text Jesus employs.
17:00
OK. Let us break that down.
17:01
In the original Hebrew of Psalm 110, the phrase is Nam YHWH.
17:07
Let Donnie. So two different words for Lord.
17:10
Yes, the first Lord is Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, God
17:14
the Father. The second Lord is Adani, the
17:17
sovereign Master of David. Wow, OK.
17:19
When this was translated into the Greek Septuagint, which was
17:23
widely used in the 1st century, both words are translated as
17:27
curious. Right, so he always speaks to
17:29
the Sovereign Master. The logical trap Jesus presents
17:32
can only be resolved in one specific doctrine, the
17:35
hypostatic union. The Hypostatic Union.
17:39
Let's talk about that. This is the truth, that the Son
17:41
of God took upon himself man's nature, so that two whole,
17:45
perfect and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood,
17:49
were inseparably joined together in one person.
17:52
So God and man perfectly united. We must understand understand
17:55
how this operates. The divine nature and the human
17:58
nature do not mix to create a third substance.
18:00
Right, it is not a hybrid. They remain distinct, yet united
18:03
in the single person of the sun. Jesus is David's descendant
18:06
according to his humanity, and he is David's creator according
18:10
to his deity. He is the root in the offspring
18:12
of David. The Pharisees theology had no
18:14
room for the hypostatic union. They could not conceive of the
18:17
God man. By bringing this specific Psalm
18:19
to bear, Jesus demonstrates that the Old Testament itself demands
18:24
a Messiah who possesses dual majesty.
18:27
Let us consider the necessity of this union.
18:29
OK, Yes, if the Messiah is exclusively God, he has no human
18:33
blood to shed, no human life to offer as a substitute.
18:36
God cannot die. That makes total.
18:39
Sense. And if he is exclusively a man,
18:41
his death is finite. It could only pay a finite
18:44
penalty, completely incapable of covering the sins of a multitude
18:48
against an infinite internal wrath.
18:50
So the humanity of Christ guarantees He can stand as our
18:54
representative, fulfilling the law in our place.
18:56
And the deity of Christ guarantees his sacrifice
18:59
possesses the infinite value required to satisfy divine
19:02
justice. Without both distinct natures
19:04
united in one person, salvation is entirely impossible.
19:07
The checkmate is absolute because it relies on the very
19:10
scriptures the Pharisees claim to venerate above all else.
19:13
Proving that their understanding of their own text was
19:15
fundamentally flawed. Well, in the entire weight of
19:18
this theological checkmate depends on one crucial fact that
19:21
David was actually speaking divine truth, not just writing
19:25
human poetry. Inspiration is the linchpin.
19:27
Here Jesus explicitly states that David called him Lord in
19:31
the Spirit, or in the Greek in Numati.
19:34
This phrasing is essential. Let us think about a house
19:37
again. This phrase is like a load
19:39
bearing wall. A great analogy.
19:41
If you take out that central load bearing wall, the entire
19:45
structure collapses. It absolutely does if.
19:48
David is just writing a nice song.
19:49
If he's just expressing his own human feelings, the whole
19:53
argument falls flat. If you remove the inspiration of
19:56
the exact words of the Old Testament, the entire New
19:59
Testament argument of Christ comes crashing down.
20:01
Right. Jesus builds his entire case on
20:03
a single pronoun, my Lord. If the Holy Spirit did not
20:06
inspire that specific word, if God did not breathe out that
20:09
exact phrasing, then Jesus's argument is completely invalid.
20:13
Which completely destroys modern critical scholarship.
20:16
Today you have scholars who try to deny the Davidic authorship
20:19
of the Psalms. Or they claim the text is just a
20:21
collection of ancient Near Eastern myths that evolved over
20:24
time. But Jesus verifies the divine
20:27
authorship right here. He stakes his identity on the
20:30
fact that the Holy Spirit spoke through David.
20:32
The analogy of the load bearing wall perfectly isolates the
20:35
structural integrity of Christ's argument.
20:38
If that wall crumbles, everything built upon it
20:41
shatters. We are dealing with the doctrine
20:43
of verbal plenary inspiration. Yes, the instrumental date of
20:47
construction of Anumati confirms that the Holy Spirit is the
20:51
Divine Author utilizing David as the human instrument.
20:55
Every single word of Scripture carries the full weight of
20:57
divine authority. Jesus stakes his entire
21:00
Christological claim on the absolute inerrancy of the Old
21:03
Testament. This dismantles any academic
21:06
attempt to separate the historical Jesus from the
21:09
theological Christ, or to suggest that the Old Testament
21:11
is just a human record of religious evolution.
21:14
Moving to the concept of the Sovereign session, the command
21:16
to sit at my right hand indicates supreme honor,
21:19
authority, and royal participation in divine rule.
21:22
The Messiah is enthroned beside God.
21:25
The word until signifies a period of sovereign
21:28
administration culminating in total victory.
21:31
So Christ currently rules in the midst of his enemies, governing
21:35
all things for the sake of His Church.
21:37
He is actively subduing his enemies, turning hearts of stone
21:40
into flesh and restraining the forces of darkness.
21:44
Yet, you know, as we noted, this reality was a monumental
21:47
stumbling block for the Pharisees.
21:49
They demanded an immediate, visible political Kingdom that
21:53
aligned with their worldly desires.
21:55
Because they refused the suffering servant, they
21:57
forfeited the glorious King. This judicial hardening is a
22:01
terrifying warning when individuals demand that God
22:04
operate according to their own preferences.
22:06
When they insist on a Savior who conforms to their cultural
22:09
sensibilities, they invite spiritual blindness.
22:12
The Pharisees had the very author of the Scripture standing
22:15
before them, offering the greatest theological exposition
22:18
in history. Yet their hearts remained
22:20
entirely impenetrable because they loved the praise of men
22:23
more than the glory of God. Confronted with this irrefutable
22:27
scriptural logic and the reality of the God man standing right in
22:30
front of them, we finally look at how the Pharisees reacted.
22:33
And how you, listening right now, must react today?
22:37
Look at verse 46. It says no one was able to
22:39
answer him a word that is chilling.
22:42
It was not the silence of adoring worship.
22:44
It was the hardened silence of defeated pride.
22:47
They were outmatched out, argued and exposed, but instead of
22:51
falling on their knees, instead of saying Lord, we were wrong,
22:54
open our eyes, they just shut their mouths and plotted his
22:58
murder. This brings us to a theological
23:00
concept called the first use of the law.
23:02
The law acts like a mirror. It exposes our absolute
23:06
inability to save ourselves. It exposes our tendency to
23:09
fashion a small Jesus who fits our cultural agendas.
23:12
Maybe you treat him like a life coach, a Mystic friend who just
23:15
gives good advice, or a political mascot for your
23:18
referred voting bloc. The mirror of the law shows us
23:21
that we fall infinitely short of God's holy standard.
23:24
We have to repent of pragmatism. We have to repent of seeker
23:26
sensitive trivialities that water down the gospel to make it
23:30
more palatable. But this begs the question of
23:32
justification by faith. Why do you need the God man?
23:36
We touched on this earlier, but it is vital.
23:39
As David's son, as a man, he can represent us.
23:43
He can step into our place and die for us.
23:45
As David's Lord, as God, his sacrifice possesses infinite
23:50
value to satisfy infinite divine justice.
23:53
But I want to ask, how do you, the listener, measure your own
23:57
life today? That is the application we have
24:00
to reach. How do you?
24:01
Look at your own heart and ensure you are not treating
24:04
Jesus the exact way the Pharisees did.
24:06
How do we avoid treating him like some inherited tradition or
24:09
just a neat piece of historical trivia?
24:11
How do we avoid that hardened silence?
24:13
The answer lies in understanding the third use of the law, which
24:16
functions as the rule of obedience for the believer.
24:19
To evaluate your own life, you must ask yourself whether your
24:22
theology produces glad submission to the lordship of
24:25
Christ. The first use of the law drives
24:27
us to Christ for justification. 3rd use guides us in our
24:30
sanctification. If Jesus is David's Lord, he
24:32
must be your Lord. True obedience is never a
24:35
desperate attempt to earn salvation.
24:37
Rather, it is a response of immense gratitude for the
24:41
justification you have already received by faith alone.
24:44
The Pharisees treated the scriptures as a tool for self
24:47
promotion. You must treat the Word of God
24:49
as the absolute authority that defines your entire existence.
24:53
If you recognize Christ in his dual majesty, the God Man who
24:57
lived perfectly, died, sacrifices officially, and
24:59
reigns sovereignly, you will find massive comfort in his
25:02
rule. This is not a burdensome
25:04
legalism, it is a liberating reality.
25:07
If the sovereign Lord of the universe, the one who sits at
25:09
the right hand of the Father, is your Savior, you have no reason
25:13
to fear the shifting politics, the economic instability, or the
25:17
physical trials of this world. You belong to a Kingdom that
25:20
cannot be shaken. You ensure you are not acting
25:22
like the Pharisees by constantly subjecting your mind to the
25:25
scrutiny of Scripture. You abandon any view of Christ
25:28
that reduces him to an exclusively human example.
25:30
You worship Him as the exclusive mediator, relying solely on His
25:34
imputed righteousness for your standing before a holy God.
25:37
You must continually bring your thoughts into captivity to the
25:40
obedience of Christ. Means actively analyzing the
25:44
theology you consume, the songs you sing and worship, and the
25:48
functional beliefs that drive your daily decisions.
25:51
Do they elevate the Sovereign Lord or do they cater to a human
25:55
centered religion? This has been an absolutely
25:58
staggering shift in perspective. We have gone from viewing Jesus
26:02
as a biological descendant of an ancient king to recognizing him
26:07
as the sovereign creator of that very king.
26:09
We have seen how a partial truth can completely blind a person to
26:12
the glorious reality of the God man.
26:15
We have covered the day of controversy on the Temple Mount,
26:18
the unanswerable dilemma of Psalm 110, and the crucial
26:21
necessity of the hypostatic union.
26:23
We have seen how the Pharisees were looking for a political
26:26
manager when their eternal house was on fire.
26:28
So I want to leave you with this final provocative thought.
26:32
Imagine possessing all the correct theological vocabulary.
26:35
Imagine attending all the right religious gatherings, reading
26:38
all the right books, and being able to quote the ancient
26:40
promises perfectly. Yet imagine staring the God of
26:43
the universe right in the face and refusing to yield your life
26:47
to Him. If half truths are the most
26:50
effective veils for a hardened heart, what partial truths about
26:53
Jesus do you need to abandon today so you can worship Him as
26:57
the absolute Lord? Think about your own prayers
26:59
recently. Are you asking God to fix your
27:01
temporal political circumstances, or are you
27:04
focused on the eternal reality of His Kingdom?
27:06
That is the ultimate question we must all answer.
27:09
Thank you for joining this deep dive on reformed thinking.