David Foretells the Messiah

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All right, I don’t know if any of you have ever looked in job listings, classifieds. They used to be in the newspaper, but now they’re online and in various places. But I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at them and thought, good luck with those requirements.

Right? They always seem, or a lot of jobs, they seem to want people with qualifications that just don’t exist. Like, they’re not qualifications that normal people have. Because of the field that I’m in, I’ve seen a lot of listings for pastors.

Don’t worry, I’m not looking. Or maybe don’t get excited, I’m not looking, whichever the case may be. A few years ago, I saw in a denominational paper from a state out west, I don’t remember why I was even looking at it, there was a small church, they were, I don’t know, 10, 12 people, and they were advertising looking for a pastor.

It’s not unusual. They said the salary was $12,000 a year. So we’re talking bivocational. Keep in mind, there’s really no such thing as part-time pastoring. It’s just full-time pastoring with a different job that pays full-time.

So they’re looking for a bivocational pastor, $12,000 a year. They don’t offer a parsonage. They say this in the ad.

They cannot provide relocation assistance financially. they’re looking for a minimum of a master’s in divinity, but doctorate preferred, somebody with a minimum of 20 years experience. And I’m looking at this thinking, good luck.

I mean, you know what? God can call anybody anywhere he wants to. And I will say this, the minute a man looks at a ministry and says, I’m too big and too important to go wherever God’s called me to go, he’s no longer being obedient to the call of God.

But at the same time, and so God could absolutely send somebody that meets those qualifications, but I’m looking at it going, that’s interesting that the church, from their mindset, they’re obviously thinking along earthly lines because they’re looking at the qualifications rather than who God has called, and they think somebody with those qualifications is going to come for what they’re offering. It just didn’t make sense. And it made me think of the old joke among preachers that churches are always looking for somebody about 35 years of age with 40 years of experience, two and a half children, married and has all the free time in the world.

I mean, these things just don’t go hand in hand. These are impossible qualifications. That’s not just for people in ministry.

I just know that because that’s my frame of reference, but I’m sure many of you work or have worked in fields where you think your boss has impossible expectations of you, or you’ve applied for jobs where, you know, on paper, the requirements they have, nobody meets that. What you really come to find out is that’s their wish list, and sometimes you just apply anyway and see if they’ll settle. But these are impossible qualifications to meet on paper, especially the 35 years of age and 40 years experience in ministry.

The math doesn’t work out there. I don’t know if you realize that. Impossible qualifications.

As we continue our study through the book of Mark, we’re going to see that the office of Messiah has impossible qualifications. It has qualifications that the Pharisees who were expert in this thought they understood, and Jesus confronts them with the Scriptures, and they begin to see that the qualifications for somebody to be the Messiah, the requirements that it would take for somebody to be the Messiah, are impossible for anybody to meet from a human standpoint. As a matter of fact, when we look at what the Old Testament teaches just in this one passage about who the Messiah is and what he came to be, the qualifications, the bar for entry there is so high that the job of Messiah could only be filled by one person.

And so we’re going to look at what Jesus said when he comes to them and says, really, he begins to ask them questions, you don’t even understand what the qualifications are for the Messiah. But let’s talk it through. And so he takes them to the Old Testament.

So we’re going to be in Mark chapter 12 this morning. At each of the entrances here and there, there are printed grids that compare Mark’s text with Matthew’s as well. If you want one of those to look at and see the way the Gospels complement rather than contradict each other, pick one up on your way out.

It looks like we’re out over here. So if you did not get one and want one, let me know. We can print some more.

But we’re going to look at what Mark says, what Mark records that Jesus says about this. It’s just a couple of verses here. Mark chapter 12.

If you don’t have your Bible, it’s on the screen. If you would stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, y’all are so good. Y’all knew where we were going as soon as I mentioned Mark chapter 12.

We’re going to start looking at verse 35, going through verse 37 of in this morning. It says, then Jesus answered and said, while he taught in the temple, how is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? For David himself said by the Holy Spirit, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Therefore, David himself calls him Lord. How is he then his son? And the common people heard him gladly, And you may be seated.

So in the past few sections of text we’ve looked through in the book of Mark, the Pharisees, the Herodians, the Sadducees, they have all been coming to Jesus trying to trip him up with these questions where they’re trying to back him into a corner where they think there are only two options and neither one of them are good options. They’re going to trap Jesus no matter what he says. And Jesus typically either says there’s an option you haven’t considered because you actually don’t understand the word as well as you think you do, or Jesus posits another question that they can’t answer, and then goes ahead to answer the question that they asked.

Either way, he has put them to shame, and now we’re to the point where they are very hesitant to ask Jesus any more questions, because this has backfired on them spectacularly. I’ve never been a lawyer, I’ve never played one on TV, but you hear about, you know, don’t ask questions you don’t already know the answer to. They would have done well to learn that principle.

because they come in trying to trap Jesus, and they don’t understand what’s going on as well as they think they do, and so they’ve been put to shame every time. Jesus now goes on the offensive and says, it’s my turn to ask you some questions. And so coming to them, Matthew records that he brings up the whole matter and says, the Messiah, whose son is he?

And by the way, when you see here Christ, we think of it as part of Jesus’ name. Christ is a title. Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah.

So when we read, who is the Christ? Whose son is he? What do you think about the Christ?

Jesus is not saying to them in an in-your-face way, what do you think of me? Although we understand that’s the implication behind it. But to them, he’s saying, tell me about the Messiah.

And so Matthew records that he starts this by saying, whose son is the Messiah? And they answer and they say, he’s David’s son. And then both Matthew and Mark record the question that Jesus asks next about how is it possible for the scribes, for the experts in the law, to call the Messiah the Son of David because of what David said about the Messiah in the Psalms. What we discover here through the Pharisees and through the scribes is that the people had a fundamental misunderstanding of the Messiah.

They did not understand who he was. The religious leaders said there in verse 35 that the Messiah was the son of David. Matthew, as I said, records that he asked the question, whose son is he?

They said the son of David. They were not wrong in that answer. You know, sometimes the Pharisees actually got it right.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, as the old expression goes. Sometimes the Pharisees actually got it right. But even when they got it right, they didn’t get it all the way right because they didn’t think through the implications of what they had gotten right.

whose son is the Messiah? Well, he’s David’s son. They were correct in this understanding.

They took it from 2 Samuel chapter 7, where God is making a promise to King David, and he says, when your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, in other words, after you’ve died, I will set up your seed after you who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. I will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son.

If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the blows of the sons of men. But my mercy shall not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I removed from before you, and your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.

Now we look at this, and they, in David’s day, they understood that this prophecy was going to be fulfilled in King Solomon and David’s immediate line after that. But not everything in there was fulfilled by King Solomon. Not everything in there was fulfilled by those who came after.

At this point, they are looking at the house of David not being on the throne. So they concluded that either God was mistaken, which they understood and we understand cannot be the case. Either God was mistaken, or this will find its final fulfillment in the Messiah, who will come from the house and lineage of David.

He will be called the son of David, not because David is his actual biological father, but because David is a biological ancestor, okay? They weren’t as precise about this as we are, that I would be son of Bart, that’s my dad’s name. I would also be son of Louis, my grandfather, son of Ledger, my great-grandfather.

Y’all don’t need to hear my whole family tree, but, you know, going back a ways. So what this means is that the Messiah, they understood rightly from the Old Testament, was going to be a son of David and was going to be the fulfillment, the ultimate fulfillment, of the unfinished parts of what was prophesied in 2 Samuel chapter 7. So they’re not wrong in answering that the Messiah was going to be the son of David.

What they got wrong was they didn’t go far enough with that. Their understanding of who the Messiah is was limited to the idea of him being a son of David. They were expecting a regular human king to come as a descendant of David and do the things that they expected the Messiah to do in terms of being a political or military leader who would throw the Romans out, who would restore this golden age to Israel.

They were looking for somebody who was going to make all their dreams come true in the here and now because they were looking for an earthly leader. But the scriptures give a higher view of the Messiah than what they held. So Jesus takes them back to the Psalms and draws their attention to something that David said about the Messiah himself.

And we see this in verses 43 and 44. It says, he said to them, how then does David in the Spirit, meaning under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, there’s a little clue for us too that Jesus viewed the Old Testament as the inspired Word of God, because he says David said in the Spirit. How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right until I make your enemies your footstool.

He said, how is it then that David says, the Lord said to my Lord, meaning the Messiah, come sit at my right hand. So he’s drawing their attention back to Psalm 110. They all agreed that this described the Messiah.

Jesus, the Pharisees, the Herodians, they all understood that this Psalm described the Messiah. And Jesus looks back at it and points that in that psalm, referring to the Messiah, David called the Messiah his Lord. Now, this is not as clear in the New Testament as it is in the Old Testament.

I’m not an expert in the original languages. I took some Greek. I took enough Hebrew just to be dangerous and got out of there with the grade I had and said, I’m never taking that again.

I know a few words is what I’m telling you. But looking at the Greek, it’s the same word for Lord all throughout there. And so it really doesn’t tell us much about the distinction here, but if we look at the Old Testament, if we look at the original text in Psalms, there are two different words here for Lord.

The Hebrew text here of Psalms shows us that Yahweh, that’s the first Lord, Yahweh said to Adonai, sit at my right hand. Adonai is a title. It means master.

It means Lord the same way it would be used in the New Testament with the Greek word kurios. But Yahweh is the personal name for God. Whenever you’re reading through your Old Testament and you see the word the Lord there in all caps, that indicates that in the Hebrew is that word Yahweh.

If you’re saying, I’ve never heard that before. Somewhere along the line, we anglicized it. We made it more English or German sounding, whatever it was, to the word Jehovah.

But that’s what we’re talking about, the personal name of God, when God says, this is my name. And so in the Hebrew, we see that the God of the universe, David’s not just talking about any Lord. He’s talking about the sovereign king, the ruler of the universe, God himself.

And we understand this to be God the Father. God the Father says to Adonai, says to David’s Lord, come sit at my right hand. And they understand that Adonai there is referring Messiah.

Now that’s telling in and of itself because when you’re the king of Israel, you’re God’s anointed. And yet you’re looking to somebody else and saying, yeah, he’s my superior. He’s in charge of me.

So already we’re looking at something that doesn’t make sense from a human standpoint because everybody, if we’re just talking human kings, everybody would have looked back at David. All of his descendants would have looked back at David and said, he’s greater than we are. We’re just emulating David.

I mean, just like there’s never going to be another George Washington. They’re all playing second fiddle to George Washington, right? No matter who becomes.

. . No, there’s never been another one.

There’s never another David. They would all have looked at David, their ancestor, and called him their superior. But David is looking at his descendant and calling him master, calling him Adonai.

But not only that, we have the fact that God is calling Adonai, is calling this one that they understand to be the Messiah and saying, come sit at my right hand. Now, what regular mortal human being gets to come sit at the right hand of God? Who gets to come sit on the throne with the God of the universe?

Not me, not you. Sometimes we need to be reminded of that, that none of us sit on the throne of the universe, but none of us get that privilege. And to say, come sit at my right hand, that was the position of honor.

No mere man could occupy that place. And so David, the greatest king of Israel, is looking at his descendant and saying, he’s my master. He’s greater than I am.

He’s fit to go and sit at the right hand of God. He’s describing somebody who is not simply a human being, not simply an ordinary man. But at the same time, with the Messiah being David’s son, he is describing somebody who’s a man.

And this is where I say, Being the Messiah, according to Psalm 110, has some impossible qualifications from a human standpoint, from the way our minds understand it. The Messiah, in order to be the son of David, has to be a man. But the Messiah, in order to be David’s Lord, has to be God.

And suddenly we have narrowed the candidate pool for the Messiah down to one. We can take all the other resumes and throw them in the trash. And Jesus, by bringing this up, he is claiming to be the Messiah.

and he’s claiming to be the Messiah in everything that that means. He’s claiming to be a Messiah who is both God and man. This is why he says in verses 45 and 46, if David then calls him Lord, how is he his son?

And it says no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare question him anymore, which comes from Matthew. The people heard him gladly, but the religious leaders were looking at each other and maybe looking at their copies of the scriptures and saying, wait, what just happened? When we read this, if he calls him Lord, how is he his son?

Jesus is not saying it’s impossible. Just like when they say, when they call him good teacher, good master, and he says, why are you calling me good? There’s none good but God.

Jesus is not saying I’m not good, and he’s not saying I’m not God. He’s saying, are you thinking through what you’re actually saying here? Do you understand the point that you’re making?

Here, he’s not saying that the Messiah is not David’s son or that he’s not David’s Lord. He’s saying, Do you understand what this means? How is this possible?

There’s one person who can fit the bill here. The Messiah as David’s son is a man, and they recognized this. They understood this.

That was the kind of king that they were looking for. But the Messiah as David’s Lord has to be God, and that’s what they missed. And they couldn’t comprehend how both of those things could be true.

Sometimes we still struggle with comprehending how both of those things can be true. But as I shared with you out of the book of Mark last week, truth is not determined by what I can explain. That is not a test for truth that we use anywhere other than theology.

Like nobody’s walking home today because they can’t explain the internal combustion engine, so therefore it doesn’t exist. And so there are going to be things that we look at in God’s Word and He says, this is true and this is true, and we can’t explain how both of those things fit together. Why do we discard things there just because we can’t explain them? The only way this is true is in the person of Jesus Christ. I don’t have to be able to explain to you how an infinite God becomes finite man without losing his godness.

I think in order to explain that, I think in order to understand that completely, I would have to be God. So that’s off the table. I don’t have to be able to explain how it works.

I just understand that that’s what God tells me about himself. That’s what Jesus revealed about himself. And so I accept it.

But the only way this could be true was in the person of Jesus Christ. The only way somebody could fit the bill for being Messiah, according to the Old Testament, was to be God in human flesh. And that’s exactly what Jesus claimed to be. And so he’s not questioning the idea that the Messiah is the son of David.

He’s challenging them to think through the implications of what the scriptures say. And we need to do that as well, because sometimes I think it’s very easy for us to fall into the same mindset that the Pharisees had here. They were looking for an earthly Messiah, as I said, that was going to come and fulfill their agenda, was going to restore Israel, was going to kick out the Romans, was going to do all these things that they wanted in the here and now.

They were looking for a Messiah who was going to come and make all their dreams come true. Basically, a Messiah who, even though he ruled over them, worked for them. And it’s easy to fall into that mindset where that’s how we look at Jesus.

We want him to bring us peace. We want him to bring us prosperity. We want our marriages in good shape and our children well behaved.

We want him to do all of that. And other than that, we really call the shots, but he’s so much more. He is the one that David looked at and said, that’s my Adonai.

That’s my Lord. That’s my master. He is the one who is so high and so mighty that the God of the universe, the father said, you and you alone have the honor of sitting on my right hand.

He’s the one that we bow the knee to. He’s the one that our tongues confess as Lord. And he’s uniquely suited to fulfill the description of the Messiah because he did claim to come as God and flesh.

And one of the things that I have loved about this study of Mark, I didn’t realize we were going to see this quite so much when we started this study, but we are regularly told by skeptics and progressive scholars that the book of Mark presents Jesus just as man. And the idea that Jesus is God, it came later. So the view of Jesus kind of evolved, and that’s why John is so much more open about it.

I don’t buy that. I never have bought that. But as we’ve taken Mark piece by piece and step by step, we see how Jesus is building a case slowly but surely and pointing people to the fact that he is God until he finally reveals it.

And all the masks come off and they crucify him, which was God’s plan all along. And he’s claiming for himself this mantle of Messiah that’s taught in Psalm 110. And Jesus is uniquely suited to be the Messiah that they didn’t realize they were getting, but the one the scriptures call for.

And I want to show you two things real quick that it says about who this Messiah was going to be, because they point us to how we need to understand Jesus as our Messiah today. Psalm 110 verses 5 and 6 say, the Lord is at your right hand. He shall execute kings in the day of his wrath, and he shall judge among the nations.

This same psalm about the Messiah identifies him as a judge, identifies him as somebody who is going to uphold the justice of God, somebody who is going to call us to account for our sins, somebody whose standard of right and wrong is unchanging. That’s our Messiah, not somebody who bends to what we want him to be, but somebody who is who he has been since before time began, holy and righteous and just. But it also tells us in Psalm 110 verse 4, the Lord has sworn and will not relent. And here this is Yahweh speaking to Adonai, you are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.

And the job of the priest was to be a mediator, was to stand in between sinners and a holy God, and to bring peace and reconciliation between the two. Folks, because of God’s justice, because God is absolutely holy, and we transgress that holiness daily, we fall short of His holiness daily, there is a separation between us and a holy God. And we will face the justice of God.

Thankfully, though, there is a priest of the order of Melchizedek, the Messiah who came to mediate, to reconcile, to bring peace between us and a holy God. And Jesus Christ did that. The book of Hebrews goes on for chapter after chapter after chapter about Jesus being our high priest and comparing him to Melchizedek and explains that in ways I never could in the limited time we have left.

But Jesus Christ did that by offering the ultimate sacrifice for sins. We don’t need bulls and goats and sheep anymore. Jesus Christ offered himself.

He was both the priest and the sacrifice that was offered. And he took responsibility for our sins. And he was nailed to the cross.

And he shed his blood. And he died as the once for all payment for sin so that you and I could be forgiven. So that our slate could be wiped clean with a holy God.

So that we could be reconciled to him and experience the fellowship with God we were created to have. I don’t know about you, but that’s much better in my book than somebody who came 2,000 years ago to bring some restored kingdom. And he’ll do that one day.

But we don’t need a political leader. We don’t need a military leader to save us. We need somebody to make us right with a holy God.

And that’s exactly what he came to do. I’ve never paid much attention to this passage. Not that I didn’t believe it.

It’s a short little thing with questions that I never understood until I started teaching through this book and thought, oh great, now I have to understand it because I have to tell them what it means. But when you dig into what he’s saying about himself, this is an incredible little passage of scripture where Jesus makes clear to anybody paying attention what he came to do for us. And if you’ve never trusted him as your savior, as this sacrifice to have died in your place, as the one who can make peace between you and God, it’s very simple this morning.

Understand that you’ve sinned and cannot be right with God because of anything you’ve done. If we were going off what we could earn or deserve it would be hell every time. Jesus Christ came and paid for your sins.

Paid for him in full when he died on the cross. And if you believe that and believe that he rose again from the dead three days later to prove it, then this morning you can ask for the forgiveness that he offers and you’ll have it. Not because I said so, not because the church says so, but because Jesus bought and paid for it and he promised it.