The sermon 'What Do You Think of Christ?' by Scott Brown focuses on the pivotal question posed by Jesus in Matthew 22:41-46 about Christ's identity and authority. The sermon stresses the importance of understanding Jesus as the Son of God, not merely a descendant of David, as the Pharisees believed. It challenges believers to reflect on their perception of Christ, urging them to recognize Him as the sovereign King and Priest, ruling over all creation with authority. Using Psalm 110, the sermon illustrates Christ's divine authority and dominion, emphasizing that He is not just a political savior but the eternal ruler and mediator. The sermon also critiques various misconceptions and false views of Christ, drawing contrasts with the true biblical understanding of His nature and role. It encourages believers to see Jesus as both King and Priest, highlighting His eternal priesthood in the order of Melchizedek. The sermon concludes by calling believers to humble themselves under Christ's dominion and to acknowledge Him as the true Savior and Lord.

Good morning. If you could open to Matthew 22 verse 41 to 46 and follow along as I read the scripture for today. While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? They said to him, the son of David.

He said to them, 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? If David then calls him Lord, how is he his son? And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare question him anymore. Let's pray. Father, we are so thankful for this time of worship.

Father, I pray that you help us to complete putting aside the things of the week and fully focus on you For the remainder of our worship service as we hear the word spoken We are thankful Lord for the diligent time spent this week in preparation with Scott Lord Father we pray that you would just be with him. Give him strength, Lord. Give him boldness as he speaks your word. We praise your mighty name, Jesus. Amen.

And what we've just read is the most important question that anyone can ever ask or anyone can ever hear. And it is the question, what do you think about the Christ? Because there's no other name under heaven and earth by which man can be saved. And at the name of Jesus Christ, every knee shall bow. So there really is no other question that's more pivotal in any person's life.

And my prayer today is that we would somehow be able to think great thoughts of Christ, maybe even greater thoughts of Christ than we had when we walked in here, That we would be so aware of His power, of His glory, of His position, of what He's doing right now on the throne. And I pray that all of us here can see everything going on in our lives, absolutely everything. From the top to the bottom of your life, every thought you have, every threat you have, everything under this great question. What do you think about the Christ? What do you think about what He's doing?

Who is He? Because That's what this whole passage is all about. Here's the problem. We often are so beset with such dinky, childish, unbiblical thoughts about the Lord Jesus Christ. I was really reminded of this when we were in Africa, and an African evangelist by the name of Shadrach Wame was preaching, a powerful, mighty preacher who was really used of the Lord back in the 70s and the 80s to bring about a great revival in that nation.

And his amazing style was waxing eloquent about chickens. And he was talking about how when you take chickens to the marketplace, you bind up their legs. And if you go to Malawi, you'll see them, you know, maybe a hundred chickens bound up on a bicycle going to market, you know, with their legs tied up like this. And Shraddhakwami is going on and on, and you know, visually, physically, with his hands, his mouth, his facial, every part of his body is telling the story of chickens being bound up on the way to the marketplace. And he tells the story of the chickens being bound up and when you take the binding off of their feet, they just lay there.

They don't run. They don't peck. They just lay there like this. And he was accusing Christians of being like those chickens. They've been bound up all their lives, and then when they're sent free, they just lay there.

Because they have no idea what has actually happened. That Jesus Christ is ruling on His throne with His Father. He's interceding for His people. He's set them free from the power of sin and death. They are free!

He has dominated His enemies. And He's saying, why do we have to poke you? Why do we have to make you go? He says, just consider here this morning that I'm poking you. This is because when you poke a chicken, once he's been bound up for a while, he'll move and then he'll start acting like a chicken.

So he was really appealing to the crowd to act like chickens, to act like they are actually free. And here the Lord Jesus Christ is presenting Himself as the conquering King who set His people free, who has His foot on the neck of all his enemies really from the moment of the resurrection until now, meaning today. Today there's that freedom, there's that power. It's operating today and so often we are so caught up in our little problems and issues and things that concern us that we completely forget about that. I pray that somehow we can see that He is that conquering King and ask ourselves, do I have a little Savior?

Do I have a dinky Jesus? Is he a cartoon Jesus? Who is this Jesus that I walked in here thinking about? And I just want to submit this, if your problems have just seemed so gigantic walking in here, then it might actually be possible that you have a dinky cartoon Jesus. And when in fact he is the conquering king.

I don't know what all of your family problems are, your work problems are, your money problems are. But there is something here to hang all of your problems upon today. And that is upon the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ sitting on the throne with his Father, ruling and reigning every single nanosecond of history and every single inch of the globe and this is your God who is presented here in this passage of Scripture. He has put all things under his feet. He has set your sins as far as the east is from the west." Well, the Pharisees, in contrast, they had thought the Messiah would simply be an exemplary man, another ruler, a fantastic military king who would come in and take care of all of their sort of physical problems to get rid of the Romans, to have domination, to have success.

In some ways they were like the prosperity gospel wants. They really, they wanted a better life, they wanted more power, they wanted to have it all in this world. And their problem was a problem of Christology. They did not understand Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is the one who puts his enemies' necks under his foot.

And he will chop off the heads of his enemies, as Psalm 1 10 says, and he will hold up their heads like this. That's your Jesus Christ. But what we recognize here is that nothing can destroy the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And to reduce Him as the Pharisees were doing is to make Him your buddy, your shoulder to cry on, your counselor, your example, the best of men. The Pharisees believed in a man-centered Messiah, and it has, when you believe in a man-centered Messiah, then it has an impact on your life.

It's a false messiah. It's the messiah of self-improvement. But here, this Christ that is spoken of here is the true Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there are many views of Christ. There is the legalist's view of Christ, that Christ is simply a guide for a way of living and being.

There's the Christian science Christ, who is a divine idea. There's the Christ of Freemasonry, which He's a man like us. There's the Hare Krishna Savior. He's your guru. There's the Christ of the Mormons, the procreated Son of God the Father has children from one of his holy wives and Jesus Christ is a procreation of that union.

It's interesting today to me that we're in this passage about Christology when we actually saw a Mormon promote himself on the National Theater, as a candidate for president. But according to Mormon theology, God dwells on a planet with his spirit-wise, producing spirit children who await to inhabit physical bodies so that they too will ascend into Godhood. And Jesus is believed to be the firstborn son of this Elohim. But Jesus is not really all that unique from the rest of mankind. The difference between Jesus and a man is not really a difference of kind, but a difference in degree.

Jesus is just a little bit farther ahead Than you are and someday you will have if you're a male you will have your your universe to Run and to save And that's why the Mormons refer to Jesus as their elder brother. But in Christianity, Jesus is God who made Himself man, not man who makes Himself a God. And how easily we degrade him. We have a presidential candidate who apparently believes that he is a man who someday will be a god. I don't know if that is concerning to anyone.

But this is the denigration of the person of Jesus Christ. It's the same program of Jehovah's Witness. He's a created being. It's just a different version of it. But all false religions can be traced to their view of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And of course, the religion of the Pharisees did not include this view of the Lord Jesus Christ. They thought Son of David meant that he was an earthly son and not God in flesh. So the question that we are faced with here is, who do you think Jesus is? What do you think of Jesus Christ? And Upon that question hinges everything in your life.

And it determines who you are and it determines where you will be for all eternity. And what the Lord Jesus Christ does with the Pharisees is he gives them a vision of heaven. He takes them to the end. He takes them from where they are and he gives them a vision of heavenly glory and his throne and what it looks like there in order to illustrate for them who this Jesus is. The major Christological doctrines are here.

Edward Reynolds, who was born in 1599, contended that this psalm contained the knowledge of the sufferings of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the ascension, the intercession, the communion of the saints, the last judgment, the remission of sins, and life everlasting. He believed that it really contained, It contained pretty much the corpus of the doctrine of Christ. And so there really is much here. You know, as I've thought about this passage coming out to today, I just prayed that God would give us such a fresh vision of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, that we would see Him as He is, and that we would understand everything is going through our minds now or going through our lives or our families through this proposition that he is giving to us about who he is. And I've just been reflecting on who He is.

He is my Maker in Isaiah 54. He is my husband. He's my well-beloved in the Song of Songs. He's my Savior in 2 Peter 3. He's my hope in 1 Timothy 1.

He's my brother in Mark 3.35. He's my portion in Jeremiah 10.16. He's my shepherd in Psalm 23, verse 1. He's my all in all in Colossians 3.11. He's my Lord in Matthew 22.

When we were meeting together on Tuesday, the preacher who was speaking to us brought us to Revelation 19 verses 16, verses 11 through 16, which says, And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse, and he who sat on him was faithful and true. And in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns, and he had a name written that no one knew except himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies of heaven clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed him on white horses.

Now out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should strike the nations, and he himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he has on his robe and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So I pray somehow that our vision of Jesus Christ today would be like that. We would see Him.

We would feast upon Him. He would be like food to us, like medicine, like water, like light to us, standing with an open door as He is the door. So, let's relish ourselves in the name and the nature and the beauty of Jesus Christ. Well, verse 41 introduces what is happening here. While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them.

Jesus probes the Pharisees with three questions, three distinct questions, each one building on another, each one devastating along the way. And then finally, the punchline is a final destruction of their argument. Now, the Pharisees have been in an attempt to discredit the Lord Jesus Christ with their questions. They've been trying to brand the Lord Jesus Christ as either an insurrectionist with a political question or as a heretic with a theology question. And so they ask him a question about the resurrection to make him look like a heretic.

They ask him about the greatest commandment in order to trap him in a theological debate over which parts of the law are heavy and which parts of the law are light. And so after having spent a significant amount of time answering these questions in the temple as he's spending this extended day just answering questions, it's the day of questions, our Lord now he flips, he turns the tables and He's no longer receiving the questions. He is now going to ask a question, and it's a very pivotal question. And it begins with the question, what do you think of Christ? And then he proceeds to give more detail to help them understand what he is trying to say.

Now who is gathered here? These are the scholars, the Pharisees. They're wearing their white robes. They have very distinctive dress. They're not looking like the common people.

They have long white tassels around their robes. When they would go through the city, people would rise. There were these catchphrase, respectful greetings in the marketplaces that they were always receiving. They were called rabbi, which means my great one. They were the elegant royalty, the intellectuals of the day.

And everyone treated him that way. And the Lord Jesus Christ now is dealing with them on their level. He is turning the page to their own argument in order to say what's true. And you know, when we move into chapter 23, we'll be spending a significant amount of time talking about the Pharisees, because the Lord Jesus Christ addresses them very directly. When we get there, what we will see, as we see with these Pharisees here, is that they teach us.

They teach us about our own frailties. They teach us about our own self-centeredness, our own outward performances. They teach us about our own frailties. They teach us about our own self-centeredness, our own outward performances. They teach us about our own deadness of heart.

They teach us about our own desire for praise. They teach us about all the theological wrangling that happens without love. They teach us about our blindness. We'll see all these things and more in chapter 23, so get ready to see yourself in the mirror of those who you would rather dismiss. So the Lord Jesus Christ is teaching these Pharisees.

And the Lord Jesus is the Questioner. There are these three questions that are kind of a logical pile up. And the first is in verse 42, whose son is he? The second is in verses 43 and 44, if he is David, then why does he call him Lord you see this They the Pharisees are forced to answer a question and they say well if if that is true Then what about this and then thirdly? The third question is is in verse 45, you know since he is Lord then how is he his son?

So there are these three questions that the Lord Jesus Christ takes them through to help them understand who he is himself. So all the questions center around Psalm 110, verse 1. This is the most quoted, the most highly referenced Old Testament text in the New Testament. It's either directly quoted or indirectly referenced about 22 times. It's all over the New Testament.

It's in Mark, it's in Luke, it's in the book of Acts, it's in Romans, it's in 1st Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, and it's several times in Hebrews. So it's a very, very popular, the most popular individual Old Testament text in the New Testament. And it's always helpful to see how the gospel writers and the apostles used the Old Testament. And here we have in front of us another instructive moment for how you treat your Old Testament. And the basic proposition is, treat it the same way that the Lord Jesus Christ is treating it.

Now, the Lord is also answering a question that was asked, you know, quite a while ago. Hopefully, our minds have not become disconnected with this question, as we've spent several weeks on this chapter. But he's answering the question, by what authority are you doing these things? The whole scene is about authority. Every question toward Jesus is an attack on His authority.

And here we get to this last question that the Lord asks, and it is about authority. It is about a king sitting on his throne with his foot on the necks of his enemies. Jesus Christ is proclaiming His absolute authority as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the only Savior of the world. And so it's all about authority. It's about the fact that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." Now in this questioning, I want us to get something that's very interesting here.

And it is this. You how absolutely precise Scripture is. And this passage shows you that you can rest your whole life on a single jot or tittle or word of Scripture. And this is such an amazing example. And remember, in the previous text, the Lord Jesus Christ rests his entire argument on a single verb tense in the book of Exodus.

Now here, he rests it on a single word. This is the Lord Jesus Christ's view of scripture. He views every single word as authoritative. He's already said in Matthew chapter 5 that not one jot or one tittle will pass away from the law until all is fulfilled, until heaven and earth pass away. The law will not be taken away.

And he will uphold them until heaven and earth passes away. And here the Lord Jesus Christ very precisely goes to a single word after having gone to a single verb tense in order to prove his argument. So we have the Lord's first question. While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?

And they respond with certitude and apparently speed, David. Whose son is he, David? That's what they say. It's obvious. The whole scripture says that.

And so the Lord has now established a Conclusion from this first question and it establishes a really a new premise And it's meant to lead them to another question. And the Jews were waiting for a political savior. They had an erroneous opinion about the Redeemer, and that the Redeemer would be one of David's earthly sons and successors who would bring along with him nothing more than, as Calvin said, an elevated human nature. And so the question was designed to expose that they were thinking wrongly about the Christ. You know, how easy is it to think wrongly about the Christ when you get all wrapped up in your religion?

When you get wrapped up in all of the things that you're doing that you somehow lose touch with Jesus Christ. Now, these had completely stripped him of his divinity. Now we do that in really in practical ways. You might believe in your mind that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he is holy, that he is everything in his perfections that the Bible says, but you don't treat him like that in your life. You have it in your mind, but you don't have it in your life.

And there's a big difference, often. And so this is what had happened to the Pharisees. It was that perhaps they had a basic structure, but it was defective in their minds and and their answer is the Son of David and they wanted and expected this this earthly king. It's interesting that you know even the Gospel of Matthew starts out with this whole idea whose son is he in the genealogy. In fact, the very first fact that you find in the Gospel of Matthew is the fact, at least of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is the son of David.

It's the first fact that you learn about Jesus. This is the first fact that Matthew wants his Jewish friends to understand. And so from the very beginning of Matthew, you see this. And then you find people crying out, oh Lord, son of David, have mercy on me. So this idea that the Savior is the Son of David is established and the Pharisees established that as well.

Even the children, you know, crying out in the temple, remember what they were crying out? Hosanna to the son of David and it enraged the Pharisees because they knew that these children were proclaiming him to be the Messiah. He was the son of David. So this phrase was very common. You see it in 2 Samuel chapter 7 verses 8 through 29, Psalm 89 verses 3 through 9, Isaiah 9 verse 27, Ezekiel 34, 23 through 24, Ezekiel 37, 24, Psalm 132, 11, Jeremiah 23, 5 and 6.

I know you won't be able to write that quickly. I just want to establish that there are many other places that this phraseology occurs in the Old Testament in a context that speaks of the coming Messiah. And so the Pharisees were right, but they were only partly right. Because their desire, Their vision was for an earthly king from an earthly lineage for an earthly kind of success. And the Messiah was there to grant you powers over your enemies.

The point that Jesus is making is this. He is more than an earthly son. He's more than that. How easy it is to make Jesus an earthly son. He's your buddy, he's your friend, he's your counselor.

But is he reigning and ruling on high? Have you, you know, are the fears of your life, the problems so overwhelming to you that you have an earthly, controllable Jesus who's just a shoulder to cry on. No, he's more than that. He's a king who has his foot on the necks of his enemies and he's taking their heads off and holding them up and showing them to you that he has ruled and reign over everything that contradicts his glory And that's your Jesus. The Pharisees had a different understanding of the Messiah.

And so God in his kindness sends his Son to teach them, to take them back to the words, the phrases, and even the verb tenses that would prove to them from their own writings who he really was. And then our Lord asks the second question in verses 43 through 45. He said to them, 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? It amazes me to observe the Lord Jesus Christ in action. You know, He is dealing with men who want to kill Him, and He's walking them patiently, maybe slowly, graciously, through a thinking process that they can understand.

And he's walking them through the Scriptures by asking them questions. They have been asking him. Now he has turned the tables. And he's now quizzing them. And the dialogue here is between David and his son.

The Lord said to my Lord, Jehovah said to Adonai. And what's strange about this is that you have a sovereign who is speaking to his son and referring to him as a superior. That doesn't make any sense. Your son is not your superior. When you are king, You are the superior and your son is the inferior.

That's the way it works. But here in this psalm, a superior is speaking, a sovereign is speaking to a superior. And so how does David, an earthly king, speak to his son as a superior? And that's the idea. And the argument rests on one word, my, my Lord.

My Lord. That's it. My. And you see how precise the scripture is. How the Lord Jesus turns his argument on a single word of scripture.

Not one jot, which is an apostrophe, or one tittle, which is a way that you show in Hebrew how to pronounce the word will pass away. So this is a dialogue between King David and his son. The Lord said to my Lord what... Here's one thing that we learn here. Every letter in this psalm of David, Psalm 110, is inspired.

Every Psalm 110 is inspired. Every single word. And the possessive yod at the end of Adonai, as it comes to be mine. It makes it possessive. It's the same thing that Mary said when she said, Rabboni, my Lord.

It was, And there's only one person whom David ever really calls Lord, and that is the Messiah. But how is he worshipping his own descendants? And the reason is because he's not just another man. And David calls him Lord because he understands, whether he completely understands it's himself, he is absolutely saying that he is under the authority of this Lord. He is saying Jesus is Lord.

He's confessing with his mouth that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is Lord. And of course, If you've ever thought about the authorship of the Psalms, the various Psalms, there are all kinds of theories about who wrote what Psalm. Well here's what you learn about this. Jesus believed that David, number one, wrote Psalm 110. Okay?

Jesus believed it. If you say, well we don't know who wrote Psalm 110, you've just contradicted Jesus. And the second thing is that Jesus believed that it was inspired, because it came from the Spirit. That's what Jesus believed about that Psalm. And you may say, well, the scholars say different things about the Psalms.

Well, believe Jesus Christ and what he said about the Psalm. But the heart of the argument here rests on this one single word. And the psalm is inspired down to the letter. Here we have the doctrine of the inspiration scripture that God uses earthly authors. He breathes His word and they, through their own thinking and historical context and boundaries, they write what was God breathe.

And that's what we find right here in this statement of the Lord Jesus Christ. But there's more. With the second question, our Lord emphasizes another aspect of His authority. In verse 44, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. Here is the authority of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is, remember, He's answering that question by what authority. And He is setting Himself as the greatest of all authorities. That He rules over everything. His enemies are His footstool. You know, there's so many things that the Bible says about the rulership and the authority of Jesus Christ.

In Joshua, He's the captain of the host of the Lord and in Hebrews 2 he's the captain of our salvation in Hebrews 12 He's the author and the finisher of our faith in Isaiah 55 for he is a leader in Isaiah 54 again, He's a commander in Micah 5 2. He's a ruler in Matthew 2 6. He's a governor in Romans 11 26. He's a deliverer in Revelation 5 5. He's the lion of the tribe of Judah in the song of Solomon 5 10.

He's the cheapest among 10, 000. In Isaiah 49, he's a polished shaft. In Psalm 84, 9, he is a shield. He's the king of kings in Revelation 17. He's setting himself up as the exalted king, ruler, sovereign.

Use any word you can come up with that indicates absolute authority. He's the Messiah. He's the Prince. He's the Prince of life, he's the Prince of the kings of the earth. He's the glory of the people of Israel.

He's the one that fills all in all. In Acts 17, 31, he's the judge. And he is crowned with many crowns in Revelation 19. So that's the basic idea. His authority is being disclosed.

This is your Jesus. This is the one that you pray to. He is in absolute sovereign control over absolutely everything. And so his authority is disclosed here, his posture, is he's sitting, he is sitting. It's someone said on Tuesday it's a strange way for to rule sitting, But he's sitting with his foot on the necks of his enemies.

Imagine that. He is a cool, sovereign king without disturbance of any kind, completely in control. And when is this rulership? Peter says that it was fulfilled after the ascension of Christ And it's a fulfillment of your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. His enemies are his footstool now.

They are under his footstool now. It may not appear to the observer. And He waits quietly until that day of judgment, when it will become apparent to every person who's ever been born in the history of the world. And every knee will bow. And every tongue will confess.

At this moment, every knee is not bowed, But he is ruling on his throne. And then the Lord's third question is in verse 45, if David then calls him Lord, how is he his son? So again, it's that same idea. How can you be a Lord and son at the same time? And so these three questions are piled up to lead to the conclusion that He is the Son of God and He is the Son of man.

He is not just the Son of man. So this is the summary of the argument that Matthew gives in chapter 22. Now he quotes a little bit of this psalm, but I'd like for us to walk through psalm 110 so you can see the thrust of it. The Lord Jesus Christ is quoting Psalm 110 to carry forward its meaning. And he just quotes a phrase.

But I think that it's important that we see this argument that is in Psalm 110. Now the Psalm begins with the person of Christ on the throne at the right hand of God. A Psalm of David, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies a footstool. He's not a baby in a manger. He's not hanging on the cross.

That's not how you should see him. Stephen saw him seated at the right hand of God in Acts chapter 7. In Revelation chapter 1, when he's seen, they fall down like they are dead. And then you see the participants, verse 2, that he's with his enemies. The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion, rule in the midst of your enemies." And then thirdly you see the people's participation.

Your people shall be volunteers, verse three, in the day of your power, in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning you have the dew of your youth." So in this kingdom, no one is... Volunteers are not dragged kicking and screaming. They are volunteers. They are willing. They serve out of love.

They're those people whom it said, if you love me, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. In the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, this is a this is this is kind of resurrection and new life kind of language. You have the dew of your youth, a new life, a new name, a new heart, a new birth. This is the nature of the volunteer. And you have the same heart that Isaiah expressed when he said, Lord, here am I.

Send me. It's the heart of a volunteer who desires in his heart to love the Lord Jesus Christ, because a desire has been placed in them, because no one comes to the Father except the Son draws him. And then there's the Lord's unbreakable oath in verse 4. The Lord has sworn you and will not relent. You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek." So here we have now the introduction of this person, Melchizedek.

He's mentioned in three places in the Bible, in Genesis 14, in this Psalm, and then in Hebrews he's mentioned eight times. But the main story is in Genesis 14 where Abraham rescues his nephew Lot from his five kings. And on the way back with the spoils of battle, Abraham comes and he tithes on his spoils to Melchizedek, this person that we've not seen anywhere in scripture from before. He was a priest of God. And Melchizedek blesses Abraham and then Abraham gives him a tithe and he's called the king of righteousness and he's lineages, he's without beginning as it says in Hebrews chapter 7 verse 3.

He is a priest forever. Now in Israel no one could be a king and a priest at the same time. It was against the law of God to do that. But here there's something so unusual about the Lord Jesus Christ, because He is a King and a Priest at the same time, which is what Jesus is telling the Pharisees. He is both a King and a Priest, and He is divine, and He's a conquering sovereign.

And so, God is appointing Jesus after Melchizedek, not after Aaron. And Jesus is using this psalm to instruct them about his nature, about his role as a priest and a king at the same time. He is a prophet and he is a priest and he is a king. This is your Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Lord has gone back to Solomon anderton to explain to them the details about how he can possibly be a priest and a king at the same time.

He's telling them that he is their high priest And he is telling them that he will replace the current high priest by quoting Psalm 110. And then after establishing his role as priest and king after the order of Melchizedek, then in verse 5 he speaks about this domination again. The Lord is at your right hand. He shall execute kings in the day of his wrath. And he uses this term adonai again.

He is going to execute the kings in the days of his wrath, and then in verse 6 he judges the nations. He fills the places with dead bodies, and he executes the heads of many countries. And then he drinks of the brook by the wayside, and therefore he shall lift up the head." So he's presented as this king over all the kings of the earth. You might ask me, what does Jesus have to do with political powers? Well, he is going to cut their heads off and hold their heads up.

That's his relationship with wicked kings of the earth. You should never hear an earthly king because Jesus Christ is the King over all the kings of the earth and their hearts are like a water course in his hand. But here's this whole picture of there's a power in the world that cannot be resisted. And there really are only two choices in the world for any human being and that is either to sit under him in submission or be subjugated with his foot on your neck, to be crushed, to be torn in for all eternity. So he is the son of God and the son of man.

He is a ruler, he is a priest, he is a king. Now, it's also a spiritual kingdom that has an earthly effect, because the earthly effect is over the real kings of the earth. So we don't want to over-spiritualize this and just exclusively make this a spiritual kingship, because it's not. Because the very hearts of the kings are in his hands. It is also an earthly kingship.

And so it just leads us to The thought, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. He has dominion. Place yourself under His servitude. The timing of this is clarified in Acts chapter 2, verse 33-41. Therefore, being exalted to the right hand of God, this is Peter preaching, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he poured out this which you now see and hear.

For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool. Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ." So Peter is saying that this happened at the resurrection, at the ascension. This rulership and domination has a point in time that Peter identifies here in Acts chapter 2, verses 33 through 41. And in verse 37, the response of the crowd was, they heard this and they were cut to the heart and Peter and the rest of the apostles said, and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said to them, Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

For this promise is to you and to your children and to all those who are far off, as many as our Lord God will call. And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, Be saved from this perverse generation. Then those who gladly received his word were baptized, and that day about 3, 000 souls were added. So the timing of his rulership is established with precision by Peter by quoting Psalm 110. Now here's the reality that everyone under heaven should consider.

You are either his friend or his footstool. Matthew 10 is set down. You're either known by him or he never knew you. He is either in you or you are entered. He is either your shepherd or you are lost.

There are other places where his Dominion is declared, the timing of it, Ephesians 1, 20, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in heaven and places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the ages to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." Here Jesus Christ's rulership is established at the resurrection and is being seated at the right hand of God and he uses his church to extend his rulership in the world. That's what Ephesians 1.20 through 23 says. It is both a present and a future dominion. They have various characters of each.

They each have their own kinds of rulership. In Philippians chapter 2, verses 9 through 11, you've heard this text, every knee should bow and every tongue confess. It starts like this, therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name. That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, every tongue confess, of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. So we don't want to deny the physical aspects of his rulership and we do not want to deny the spiritual aspects of his rulership either because he is King of kings and Lord of lords and both.

And then finally we have the reactions of the crowd. There are two reactions. One is recorded in Matthew and the other is recorded in the Gospel of Mark. The scribes and the Pharisees react one way and the people react in a completely different way. The scribes and the Pharisees, no one was able to answer.

The term that Matthew uses means they had no capacity, they had no strength, they had no ability, they had no desire. It just, there was nothing existing in them that would make them answer. And this is also the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Some are not able to understand even though they are walked through carefully through Scripture. You can open your Bible to them.

You can read the whole Bible to them. You can cite it. You can speak of it. And it falls dead on ears. And that's what happened to the Pharisees.

It fell dead. They could not, they were not able to hear. Some people are just not able to understand them. We know people like that. And we should be patient with them.

We should have mercy on them. Our hearts should break for them. We should not be angry with them. We should not get frustrated with them. We should continue to speak the Word of God to them.

Who knows? Who knows when God might make them able and give them a new heart? Who knows? Don't give up. You know, how many times do you have to tell someone the gospel?

How many times? God is in charge of how they'll respond. As for us, it shouldn't matter to us how many times. And we shouldn't say, well, they'll only respond this way. That's not right.

The Word of God is powerful. It has spiritual power. So we should never ever give up. Even though we might think, oh they'll just respond that way. You're just acting like God when you say that.

Are you now God? Are you now the judge of all the hearts of men? You've now determined that there's someone who is just so that way that they'll never ever be able to turn? No! God is so far greater than men's hearts.

But they could not understand. They did not have any way to even dare to ask another question anymore. Remember, it's Tuesday, some say it's a Wednesday on Holy Week. Christ will be killed on Friday. And from this time until His death, they do not engage Him this way at all.

And then the crowds, the crowds however, Mark says this, therefore he says, the common people heard him gladly. They heard him gladly. The whole crowd didn't have knives, just the Pharisees, the religious people, the law keepers were the hard-hearted ones in this story. But the common people heard him gladly. They heard Him with pleasure.

They loved the gracious words that were falling from His lips. They were words of light. It was food. It was medicine. It was light.

It was a door. It was help. It was what they needed. It was the sound of a shepherd's voice. It was His love raining down upon them.

They heard it with pleasure. They were like those who would say, He's my nape, He's my husband, He's my well beloved, He's my savior, He's my hope in Titus, 1 Timothy 1, He's my brother in Mark 3.30 poem. He's my portion in Jeremiah 10.16. He's my teacher in John 3.2. He's my shepherd.

He's my keeper. He's my feeder. He's my leader. He's my restorer in Psalm 23. He's my resting place in Jeremiah 50.

He's my meat in John 6, he's my drink, He's my Passover in 1 Chronicles 12. He's my peace. He's my wisdom. He's my righteousness. He's my sanctification.

He's my redemption. And in Colossians 3 and 11, he was my all-in-all. So what do you think of Christ? The Lord Jesus Christ takes the Pharisees and the crowds of heaven, and they cannot understand it. But there are those who take pleasure in that heavenly vision.

And they love the sound of their master's voice. And they see him high and lifted up with the heads of his enemies and his feet on their necks, lifted up in control of absolutely everything. And they love him and they desire to follow him in their hearts. They love his water, they love his life, they love his food. They love his discipline, They love his medicine.

They have a Savior. I just want to close with the words of the confession of faith from the 1689 London Confession under chapter 8 of Christ the Mediator. It pleased God in His eternal purpose to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, His only begotten Son, in accordance with the covenant made between them both, to be the mediator between God and man, to be prophet, priest, and king, the head and savior of His church, the heir of all things, and the judge of all the world, to the Lord Jesus He gave from all eternity, a people to be His seed. These in time would be redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified by the Lord Jesus. This office and duty of mediator and surety the Lord Jesus undertook most willingly.

Behold your Savior, the Son of God and the Son of man, who rules and reigns. And that should have everything to do with the way we think about everything happening in our lives right now. Right now. Oh Lord, we are so thankful that you would give us a vision of the way things really are in the midst of the dust and the mire of this world when we so easily forget. Oh Lord, I pray that if there are any people here who have not died, that you would open up their hearts, that you would warm their souls, that you would give them A voice in their heart that is true that says, Have mercy on me and send it.

O Lord, take me into your kingdom, make me a son. Put my sins as far as the East is from the West. Justify me, wash me, sanctify me. Set my feet upon a rock, put a new song in my heart. I delight to do thy will.

Oh Lord, give that breath to them. Amen.