David’s Son and LORD

The Pharisees have made their effort.

The Herodians have made their effort. The Sadducees have made their attempt, all of them unsuccessful, all of them exposed by the wisdom, the clarity and the power of our Lord's response. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. C. S. Lewis once said he wanted to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing people often say about Jesus, that he's a great moral teacher, but he's not God. And of course, people are still attacking the deity of Christ, even where you would not expect.

That said, how should you respond if someone in your church claims that believing in Christ's deity is not essential to Christianity? Keep that question in mind today as John MacArthur continues his study called, How to Talk to a Heretic. And now here's John with the lesson. Luke chapter 20, coming to the conclusion of this rich 20th chapter. We are now late in the day on Wednesday of the last week of our Lord's life. On this Wednesday, He has spent the entire day in and around the temple area teaching the large crowds and being confronted by the religious leaders.

They have done everything they can on this day to publicly discredit Him. The Pharisees have made their effort. The Herodians have made their effort. The Sadducees have made their attempt, all of them unsuccessful, all of them humiliated, all of them exposed by the wisdom, the clarity and the power of our Lord's response. Luke says in verse 40, they didn't have courage to question Him any longer about anything.

Now it's His turn to ask the questions. And in verse 41, we read this, and He said to them, how is it that they say the Christ is David's son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, the Lord said to My Lord, sit at My right hand until I make Thine enemies a footstool for Thy feet. David therefore calls Him Lord. And how is He His Son? If I were to title this message, I might simply title it, David's Son and Lord.

That in itself is a startling title. No Middle Eastern father would ever under any circumstances call his son Lord. That would be to turn honor and respect on its head. And yet, David's son is also David's Lord. The nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, the essential nature of Jesus Christ has been debated since He was on earth to this day.

And it will be debated throughout all of human history. And it comes down to this, was Jesus God? Is He God? Or is He merely a man?

The general consensus in the world is that Jesus was a man, lived and died, noble, insightful, wise, devout, religious, compassionate, sacrificial, well-intentioned and whatever other adjectives you would like to fit in, but a man. That's consistent, of course, with Satan's agenda because if Jesus is merely a man, then He is not God, He is not the Savior, the Bible is not true. Christianity is not genuine. It is a false religion. If on the other hand Jesus is God, if He is God, then He is the sovereign, He is in charge, the Bible is true, Christianity is genuine.

This is the critical issue. If you're going to reject Christianity and deny its truthfulness, you have to reject the deity of Jesus Christ. Jesus cannot be God, or if He is God, then this is the true religion.

So the target of false religions is always going to be the person of Christ. There are other errors than this among apostate so-called Christians who get other things wrong like salvation by grace and faith alone, but it is consistent with Christianity that Jesus is God. And anything less than that in terms of defining His nature makes it a non-Christian religion.

Having said that, I need to say that there are apostate Christians, we might call them liberal Christians who call themselves Christians and deny that Jesus is God, but that's not Christianity. The Jews today and throughout history and at the time of Jesus did not acknowledge Him as God. They did not acknowledge Him as Jehovah incarnate. They did not acknowledge Him as God, the second member of the Trinity. In fact, they didn't believe that the Messiah would be God. They believed that the Messiah was to be merely a man.

No more. Notable man, powerful man, influential man, a man who was all that a man could possibly be, a man endowed by God with everything that would be the epitome of humanity to accomplish by the power of God greater things than any other man, but still a man. The Messiah was to be human. He was to be a human who came into the world, became the ruler of Israel, reestablished the Kingdom of God, subjected all Israel's enemies and ruled the world of nations from Jerusalem and brought to fulfillment all God's promises to Abraham and to David. They did not see the Messiah as God, Son of God, or the Savior of sinners.

They saw Him only as a man. That was obviously what the people believed because that's what the leaders taught them. When Jesus claimed to be God, He became immediately a blasphemer. He committed the most heinous sin that they could conceive of in their religious system. To claim to be God was madness. In addition to that, He then began a fiery assault on their theology, on their power, on their influence, on their position, on their false righteousness and even on their temple operation. And that was at the very beginning of His ministry and it occurred all through His ministry and again at the end, even in this week. He cleanses the temple, confronts their corruption, exposes their hypocrisy and escalates their feverish desire to get rid of Him. The true Messiah, they believed, would be a man, nothing more.

And Jesus claiming to be God, coming in, wielding this authority, cleansing the temple, condemning their theology, their self-righteousness and their religion were crimes worthy of death. So they tried this week to confront Him unsuccessfully. And finally, as we read in verse 40, their mouths were shut. It's now His time. This is His last time to engage the religious leaders of Israel, the influencers.

It's His last time. It's His last conversation. What might you imagine that conversation would be? Well you would assume that if His conversation with them is the last one, He is going to discuss what is the most important matter.

And He does. And He asks them this question, verse 41, He said to them, how is it that they say the Christ is David's son? Let's call that a discerning question...a discerning question.

It gets right to the core, penetrating, provocative, a discerning question. How is it that they say the Messiah is David's son? Now just a reminder, Matthew has an account of this question by Jesus. Mark has an account of this question by Jesus. And Matthew and Mark's accounts enrich this one, as we see so often in these synoptic gospels.

And if we go to Matthew and Mark, we get a few things that kind of help us. The first one is to ask the question, why is Jesus bringing this up? Isn't He aware at this point that they have fully rejected Him? What is the point of going back to clarify who He is again?

What is the point of that? They are fixed and resolute in their animosity and their hatred and their vitriol. They want Him dead and every moment that goes by, they want it more desperately.

Why is He bringing up this issue of His identity again? And the answer comes from Mark 12, 34, He knew of some who were not far from the Kingdom. That would include, for example, one of the leaders by the name of Joseph from Arimathea, who you meet later as the one who provides a tomb for the Lord. This then, believe it or not, is one final evangelistic effort. Even after all the hatred expressed by these leaders, all the superficial interest of the fickle and indecisive crowd who are being led around ultimately by the nose, Jesus in spite of all of that is still the compassionate evangelist. He is still down to the very last conversation, inviting sinners headed to hell to know Him for who He truly is, to cease their open rejection, to cease their indecision. Yes, He has confronted them with the strongest rebukes, He has publicly shamed them for their corruption and lies, but He still manifests enough concern to speak one more time the truth, for He, as God, has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. His joy is in the salvation of sinners.

His sadness is in their destruction. Back to chapter 19, verse 41, when He first approached Jerusalem, at that triumphal entry on that Monday, a couple of days earlier, He saw the city and wept over it. He is the weeping Savior.

And so one more time He calls them to the truth about Himself. And this, dear friends, is absolutely essential for salvation. No one will go to heaven who does not believe Jesus is God...no one...no one. This is the clear, unmistakable, unambiguous testimony of Scripture. John 5, for example, 37, and the Father who sent Me, He has borne witness of Me. You have neither heard His Word at any time nor seen His form and you do not have His Word abiding in you, for you do not believe Him whom He sent. If you don't believe the truth about Christ, you have no relationship with God.

The Apostle Paul put it this way, if anyone does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, affirming Him to be who He is, let Him be damned. In 1 John chapter 2, verse 22, who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father. The one who confesses the Son has the Father also. You have no relationship with the Father unless you confess the truth about the Son.

So once more, the Lord Jesus affirms and asserts His divine nature as God and thus offers Himself even to those who despised Him. Go back to chapter 15 for a moment, all the way back to chapter 15 to that incredibly rich story that we know as the story of the prodigal son, really a tale of two sons and an amazing father. You go back to that story, you remember the prodigal came back, the father embraced him, reconciled him, kissed him, put a ring on his finger, a robe on him, shoes on his feet, had a celebration. In the middle of the celebration, the older brother appears. Verse 25, he was in the field, he approaches the house, he heard music and dancing, he summoned one of the servants, began inquiring what these things might be. He said to him, Your brother has come, your father has killed the fat and calf because he's received him back safe and sound.

He became angry, was not willing to go in. His father came out and began begging him. The older brother, you remember, represents who? The Pharisees, the scribes, the legalists, the religious leaders. The prodigal represents the outcasts, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the riffraff, the sinners.

They were coming to God, they were coming to Christ and being loved and being forgiven and being embraced. And it outraged the self-righteous legalistic Pharisees who are seen in this older brother. And what was the father's response to this? He began entreating him, verse 29, but he answered and said to his father, Look, for so many years I've been serving you, I've never neglected a command of yours, yet you've never given me a kid, a goat that I might be merry with my friends. And when this son of yours came who has devoured your wealth with harlots, you killed the fat and calf for him? And he said to him, My child, you've always been with me, all that is mine is yours.

I offer it to you, I've always offered it to you. Here is Jesus, back to Luke 20, confronting an older brother, confronting the Pharisees, the scribes, the religious leaders again who have complained over and over and over that He embraces sinners, prodigals. And Jesus here gives an invitation to them once more to consider who He is and to receive the blessings that He will willingly give, a repentant hypocrite. And so the Lord asks them the pertinent question. But I have to take you back to Matthew...Matthew 22, 41.

This is where the conversation really starts. Remember, Matthew, Mark and Luke record the same incident and they all give us little details. Matthew 22, 41, this is how it began.

Here's what Jesus said first. What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is He? What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is He? And they said to Him, literally one word, David's.

And that's exactly what He expected them to say. What do you think about the Christ? What's your view of Messiah? Let's talk about the nature of Messiah. Let's talk about the essence of Messiah. Whose son is He?

What nature does He bear? And they respond immediately with the conventional Jewish answer, David's. Now you come to Luke and you read that Jesus said, how is it that they say the Christ is David's son?

How did you come to that conclusion? He questions their common answer and it was their common answer. They believed that the Messiah would be merely a man but the best of men, the noblest of men, the most gifted and blessed of men and a son of David. And I remind you again that the fundamental question of Christianity is the nature of Jesus Christ. If He's just another man, then the Bible lies, He's not God and you can forget Christianity. And they were convinced that the Messiah would be merely a man. So you have this very direct and very pertinent and very essential and important question placed before them. I called it a discerning question because it discerns to the core of where a person is spiritually.

It is followed by a deficient answer...a deficient answer. Their answer was David's, as I read you from Matthew 22, David, son of David. Was that true?

Yes. In Samuel 7, 12 to 14, prophesies clearly the Messiah will come out of the line of David. Read Psalm 89, you'll find it there five, six times. Messiah will come out of the loins of David, Amos 9-11, Micah 5-2.

He's going to be in David's line. Now this is commonly believed by the Jews of Jesus' day. It's so obvious in the Old Testament, they all believed it. For example, Matthew 9, 27, Jesus passed on, two blind men followed Him, crying out saying, Have mercy on us, Son of David. Not only was the Messiah to be a son of David, everybody knew that, but Jesus was in fact a son of David. He was in the Davidic line and apparently the people not only knew the Messiah would be a son of David, but they knew Jesus was a son of David. In fact, this was a common expression in the twelfth chapter of Matthew and verse 23, after Jesus healed a demon-possessed man who was blind and dumb, the multitudes were amazed and began to say, This man can't be the son of David, can he? So again, indicating their understanding that the Messiah was to be a son of David. Matthew 15 verse 22, a Canaanite woman came out from the region of Tyre and Sidon and began to cry out saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David, my daughter is cruelly demon-possessed, chapter 15 verse 22, that was. Chapter 20 of Matthew and verse 30, a great multitude from Jericho, two blind men again and they say, Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David. Then when He entered into the city, Hosanna to the Son of David, Matthew 21 verse 9.

So everybody understood that. Luke 18, 38 and 39 also refers to the Jericho expression by the blind men, Have mercy on us, Son of David. It is true that He was in the Davidic line. Genealogy of Matthew 1 establishes that He's in the Davidic line. The genealogy of Luke 3 establishes that He's in the Davidic line. His father, Joseph, was in the Davidic line. His mother, Mary, was in the Davidic line.

Both lines converge, of course, in Him, by blood through His mother, by right through His father, even though His father was not His father in terms of actual human birth. Nonetheless, He is the Son of David. And by the way, if He were not a Son of David, it would have been waved in His face fast because the scribes and the Pharisees as well as the Sadducees kept very, very careful genealogical records, all of which were destroyed in 70 A.D. in one of the greatest losses to the Jewish people. It could be easily checked. It was checked, I'm certain, and they knew, in fact, He was the Son of David. It is a correct answer, it is just a deficient answer.

Not wrong, incomplete, inadequate. In fact, when the people called Him Son of David, Son of David, the leaders reacted negatively to that because they knew that they were not calling Him Son of David just to identify His family, but they were calling Him Son of David as the Son of David who would be the Messiah. That's what they resented. There were tens of thousands of offspring that came out of the loins of David. It was fine for Him to be one of those, but not the Son of David with an uppercase S indicating the Messianic title. So the Davidic dynasty and Davidic descent was, in fact, true concerning Jesus.

But that is not sufficient. It's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. His current study on Grace to You is called How to Talk to a Heretic. John, as you're describing how Jesus took on false teachers, we see Him being aggressive and deliberately provocative and sometimes even militant. I mean, He began and ended His ministry by cleansing the temple. And none of those things are politically correct today, so what lessons would you say there are from Jesus and the way He dealt with false teachers that should apply to us?

Is there a formula to follow, or is there an easy line to draw? I think, as we've talked about on other days in this series, first of all you have to start with an understanding of sound doctrine so you know who the heretic is and who the error is coming from because you have the knowledge of the truth. But I would say the most direct place to go to find out how Jesus confronted error would be to go to the book of Matthew and go to the 23rd chapter of Matthew where He confronts the false leaders of Israel. I mean, it is a diatribe without a parallel in the New Testament. And He pronounced woe after woe on them, which literally He cursed them.

He pronounced a curse on them. That was the culmination. You know, by the time you get to the 23rd chapter of Matthew, you're at the culmination of everything. Chapter 23, He literally devastates the leaders of Israel in this confrontation. Chapter 24, 25, He speaks about His second coming, and then you're at the end of the Matthew, and they crucify Him. So His whole ministry culminated in the most fierce words that ever came from His lips as recorded in the New Testament in His confronting those false leaders.

I think that people are—well, maybe they find it easier to confront a sort of godless sinner, a sort of irreligious evil person than they would a religious leader. It is the religious leaders who received the worst scathings from the lips of Jesus. And theirs will be the severest punishment in hell. There will be degrees of punishment.

We know that. How much greater will be your punishment, He says in the book of Hebrews. So, yeah, I think that is the ultimate illustration. When you've talked about the truth and you've confronted the truth and they're still obstinate, they're the most dangerous people in human society, those who are the purveyors of false religion. And they need to be confronted the way Jesus confronted them. And He did it with fierceness, but that doesn't mean that He didn't love them, because Scripture is pretty clear that He loved the world.

That's right. Well, thank you, John. And, friend, if you'd like to dig deeper into how Christ confronted error, that's the subject of John's new book, Jesus Unleashed. It will show you a side of Jesus that's not often talked about, expanding your understanding of who He is and deepening your worship. To order Jesus Unleashed, contact us today. This book is reasonably priced, shipping is free, you can call our toll-free number at 800-55-GRACE to order, or you can purchase Jesus Unleashed at our website, GTY.org. And before we put the finishing touches on today's broadcast, I want to tell you a little bit about a listener named Ron. Recently, he told us that God used one of John MacArthur's sermons on YouTube to draw him to Christ. And then Ron started praying for his family, and the Lord saved his father. When you support Grace To You, you help get the gospel to people like Ron, as well as businessmen, homemakers, students, all kinds of people. And if you'd like to partner with us, donate online at GTY.org, or you can donate when you call 800-55-GRACE, or you can write to us at Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. And to purchase John's new book called Jesus Unleashed, call us today, 800-55-GRACE, or go to GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson inviting you back when John looks at practical ways you can defend the essential doctrine of the deity of Christ. Don't miss the next half hour of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.