If you turn in your Bibles to
Mark chapter 12, where we resume our journey with the Lord Jesus
in these last few days of His earthly ministry. And here we have the Lord Jesus.
Mark's gospel portrays Him as the servant. the servant who
is keen, the servant who is God's anointed. the servant who is
the true sacrifice of God, the servant who is the true tabernacle
of God, the servant in whom in his person is the place where
God meets with man, and man can commune and meet with God in
perfect peace. And so, to go back through some
of Mark's Gospel, he began his earthly ministry with the proclamation
from the Father, You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And then he declared the Gospel
in baptism, picturing the redemption of his people in himself. as
He died for them, and as He was buried for them, and He was raised
to newness of life. And they are in Him, with Him,
dead, with Him buried, with Him raised. And the Lord Jesus, through
Mark's Gospel, has continued the ministry of proclamation
of that Gospel, proclaiming who He is as God's Messiah, proclaiming
and preaching the Gospel, the good news, gathering the lost
sheep. And so often we have seen them
to be people who are powerless, helpless, hopeless, rejected
sinners, overcome by Satan and the world, outcasts from society,
rejected by the religion of the day as sinners, just a bit like
us. And the Great Shepherd gathers
and gathers and gathers by preaching the Gospel. And then as we've
just seen, he comes to Jerusalem to that climax of his work. He comes to Jerusalem as a triumphant
king and he ordains, creates and accepts the praises of the
people. Psalm 118 is the psalm that they
were proclaiming as he rode triumphantly into Jerusalem. He rode in there
as the king of Israel, not to be made king. He rode there as
king. Psalm 118 verse 19 says, from the Lord. Open to me the
gates of righteousness and I will go through them. I will praise
the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord
through which the righteous shall enter. I will praise you. Jesus is the door. Jesus is the
gate of the Lord. For you have answered me and
have become my salvation. The stone which the builders
rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord's
doing and it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day the
Lord has made. We will rejoice and be glad in
it. Then that song they sang, Hosanna,
save now, I pray, O Lord. O Lord, I pray, send now prosperity. Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord. Blessed is he who comes in the
name of the Lord. The Lord Jesus came to that temple
to cleanse that temple, his house, to prepare for his sacrifice. Psalm 118 talks of His sacrifice. God is the Lord. He has given
us light. Bind the sacrifice with cords
to the horns of the altar. And this is the place where the
Lord Jesus comes to glorify his father's name. For this purpose,
he says, he's come to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Glorify all of the character
of who you are as God. And the Father replies in remarkable
words to the Son. He says, I have glorified it.
I glorified it in eternity. I glorified it in the Incarnation. And then He says, I will glorify
it again after these events in Jerusalem in these next few days.
The Lord Jesus will be glorified again by the Father in resurrection
glory. But here in this place, where
the Lord Jesus should have received the praises of the men who claim
to be Israel's true sons. the place where the law of God
went out, the place where God had revealed himself so clearly
in the temple. Here he is in the midst of these
men who ruled the temple, who controlled the religion of the
day. And he is attacked by them again
and again and again. And we must remember that they
had three years of preparing these questions and these attacks.
But every time he was attacked, our great Saviour, our great
Defender, not only repelled their attacks, but took every one of
them as an opportunity to preach the Gospel. These men came with
deceitful questions. The intention was to kill him. The intention was to shame him
before people. These were men. who were knowledgeable
in the scriptures. These were men who were zealous,
they thought, for the glory of God. These were men who were
morally upright. These were men who were respectful
of the traditions the religious traditions around them. And we
must bear in mind that they were only ever exposed by the Gospel
being proclaimed. As Simon said earlier, the Gospel
declared and proclaimed exposes people. Are you prepared to be exposed
before God? We must, if God will allow us,
to come to Him not hiding anything of ourselves, come to Him with
the honesty of who we really are, just sinners in need of
a Saviour. And we need to be mindful of
where these men have spent the last 2,000 years. These men who
came with these questions have spent 2,000 years contemplating
in hell the tragedy of playing games with God. This is serious business. They
came to Him with questions which were really questions of trivial
nature often, weren't they? Whose authority do you claim
to have to clean this temple? They should have cleansed the
temple themselves. They were the ones that had turned
it into a marketplace and a den of thieves. They are the ones
who claim to have authority. They were just exposed for not
exercising their authority and criticizing Jesus. in 1214, a
question about paying taxes to Caesar. They knew full well that
they had an obligation to pay taxes to Caesar. It was a trivial
question. And then a trivial question from
the Sadducees. First wife, will she be in the
resurrection? They'd concocted a fancy tale
just to ask a question which is trivial. May God protect us
from playing games with trivial things. But here the Lord Jesus
follows up the questions that he asks. Just think about those
questions that they asked of him. And what were the questions
that Jesus asked of them in 1130? He says to Baptism of John, was
it from heaven or from man? The question is, what is God? What has God done in your midst? You claim John to be a prophet. Was he really God's messenger? Was he really declaring the gospel? And then he challenges them about
the scriptures. And he quotes from Psalm 118,
which we've just read. The stone the builders rejected
has become the chief cornerstone And this was marvellous in our
sight. It's the Lord's doing. The question
is, have they not read the scriptures? These guys knew the scriptures
off by heart. Had they understood from the
scriptures what God was doing in their midst? Then he challenged
them in 1215, why do you test me? Why do you tempt me? And then he finally comes to
these scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees. All of them
have the same problem as the Sadducees. Are you not therefore
mistaken because you do not know the scriptures nor the power
of God? It's one thing to know what is
written in God's Word. It is a vastly, vastly different
thing to know the God who is revealed in the Scriptures. And
so here we are in Mark 12.35, Jesus answered. Finally now it's
Jesus' turn to question them. And he questions them again.
Jesus' questions are always about deep, serious, spiritual things
to do with God. And he said, while he taught
in the temple, how is it that the scribes say that Christ is
the son of David? And here we come to the very
heart of the problem of these teachers of Israel. They knew
only of an earthly messiah bringing an earthly kingdom to a physical
nation and to bring that nation to be rulers of the world. They
were all expecting a great day around the corner when they would
be the kings of this world. And they never saw the spiritual
nature of the kingdom of God. They never saw the spiritual
truths revealed in the Old Testament about God's kingdom. They never saw that God was supremely
in charge of all things for the saving of His people. They believed
in election for themselves and they believed in so many conservative
doctrines, but they saw them all through carnal eyes. Which is why when the Lord Jesus
said to the paralytic man, Son, your sins are forgiven, There
they saw a man, and they couldn't reconcile with their theology
that a man could be God. So the scribes were right about
Christ being the son of David, but they'd lost sight of this
fact that's so clear in the Scriptures, that Christ was going to be both
David's son and David's Lord. They never saw what I pray the
Lord would continue to show us, the two natures of our Saviour. That He had to be 100% human,
as the scriptures declare Him to be. And He had to be 100%
God, as the scriptures declare Him to be. He's God in human
flesh. He is God, born of a woman. He is the God who gave the law
at Sinai. And He is God, born of a woman,
born under that law. And the scriptures are very plain
in declaring the fact that this Messiah, this son of David, is
going to be one who has an everlasting kingdom from God. They knew it
in the stories of their scripture as well as the plain statements
of scripture. It just shows you how far people
can go in religion and how far people can go in understanding,
as it seems to them, this book that we hold dear and not have
a clue about its central message or the true character of He who
the scriptures speak about. Nathan came to David with words
from God. He says, When your days, David,
are fulfilled, and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your
seed after you who will come from your body, and I will establish
his kingdom. He shall 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. Your kingdom shall be established
forever, David. Your throne shall be established
forever. And here we are a thousand years
later, and whose throne, whose throne rules Israel? You go and talk to Caesar about
who rules Israel at the time. You go and talk to Herod about
who's the boss of Jerusalem. We've never been slaves to anyone,
says the Jews. We've never been. The blindness,
isn't it? It's just ridiculous blindness. Here they had standing before
them God in human flesh, proclaiming himself to be God, living out
all of the fulfilment of all the prophecies of God. Here was,
as Isaiah 9 says, here was the child given, a son given, a child
born, and his name will be called. Wonderful. counsellor, mighty
God, a baby who is God, everlasting father, prince of peace, of the
increase of his government and peace there will be no end, upon
the throne of David and his kingdom, to order it and establish it
with judgement and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the Lord at host
will perform this. It was just so plain in their
Scriptures. All through their Scriptures, it was plain. And
the scribes were right. They were right to declare Christ
as David's King. And they were so, so wrong in
dishonouring Him. And many have the same problem
today. They talk a lot about Jesus. They call Him Lord. As Matthew 7 says, they might
call Him Lord or Lord. but they really have no notion
of what it is for Him to be both Messiah and God. Someone who
is God doesn't come to this earth to try and do things. Someone
who is God doesn't have his hands tied behind his back. Someone
who is God is not beholden to the whims of the will of man. Someone who is God operates as
God. God's heaven-born children are
taught these truths through the Gospel. And these truths become
living things in their lives as they meet God and continue
to meet Him in the face of the Lord Jesus. The people of this
world and so many religious people get so upset. What on earth is
happening? Look what's happening in the
Eurozone. Look what's happening with America.
What a mess Afghanistan is. What a mess almost the whole
continent of Africa is. Look what's happening, look what's
happening. God's people rest in the fact that God is doing
it all. God sits on a throne. We don't have and we don't worship
here a Messiah who creates possibilities. We don't worship a Messiah who
makes offers to people. We worship a Messiah here who
is God and has finished His works. Finished them. And this is where
the Lord Jesus leads these people to see. Things have not got out
of hand. You guys look as if you rule
Jerusalem. You look as if you are the religious
leaders. You control the temple. You control
this nation. You have millions coming to sacrifice
here all the time. You are the ones that look as
if you're in control. But God is in control. And this is the message of Scripture,
isn't it? The message of Scripture is about
Jesus Christ. For Him to be Christ is for Him
to be God. And so the Lord Jesus takes these
people to a psalm which they knew of by heart. As he quoted
these couple of verses from it, they knew the rest of it off
by heart. They knew it so, so well. For David himself said, David's
great son is quoting his father, father in the flesh. And said
by the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus is instantly showing them
that this book that we have before us is a word from God. It is a word written by the Holy
Spirit. David's hand might have controlled
the pen, and written things that reflect something of David's
character and David's experiences. But once the Word is written,
we know that God the Holy Spirit is written. So it's a Word from
God and it's a Word that has spiritual truths in it. This psalm that he quotes, Matthew
Henry has a wonderful statement about this psalm. He says, this
psalm is pure gospel. It is and wholly concerning Christ,
the Messiah promised to the fathers and expected by them. And the
Jews understood it, always declaring it to be a psalm about the Messiah. The Lord said to my Lord, sit
at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. It's the most quoted Old Testament
verse in all of the New Testament. I'll just give you some of them
quickly. It's just remarkable how often the Holy Spirit caused
people to go back to this. It's quoted in Matthew 22, Matthew
26, to show from the Lord Jesus' lips that there was someone here
greater than David. It's quoted in Hebrews 1.13 to
prove that the Lord Jesus is higher than the angels. It's
quoted on that great day of Pentecost. to show that the Lord Jesus is
Lord as well as Christ. It's referred to in Hebrews 10
as declaring that Jesus has finished what He came to do. He's accomplished
on earth one sacrifice forever, and now He's expecting till His
enemies be made His footstool. It's quoted in 1 Peter, Revelation,
Philippians, Ephesians, 1 Corinthians 15. All through the scriptures
in the New Testament is this psalm declared. And the reason
is simple, because it declares who Christ is and declares what
Christ has done. So let's just turn in our Bibles
to Psalm 110. The Holy Spirit takes us there
so often. It's a beautiful psalm. Let's
just look at it just briefly. And so here we have remarkable
insight into a communication in heaven between God the Father
and God the Son. God the Father addressing God
the Son, who is both the mediator, the surety, and everything in
the covenant for his people. The Lord Jehovah said to my Lord
Adonai, at my right hand till I make
your enemies your footstool." You've got to remember and go
back to Jerusalem and think of the context of this. There are
these people who finally got him in Jerusalem after three
years of plotting and scheming. They now have come to the point
where their plots and their schemes and their enmity against Him
is enraged. They can't trap Him by deceitful
questions. They can't trap Him by the things
that He has done to show that He is God. They can't deny His
miracles. They can't deny His teaching. They only have two things before
them. You either bow to him or you declare yourself to be his
sworn enemy and kill him. That was what was in their hearts,
wasn't it? Enmity against God. Sit at my
right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Sitting
obviously is a picture of something that's finished at the end of
the day, isn't it? It's just so nice after working
all day and being on your feet all day, to come home and to
sit. And some of us might sit in those
beautiful armchairs at Norman Bethko's, electric ones. We just
press a button and the footstool just moves up magically for you. And you can just adjust the footstool
to exactly where you want it. and you take a cool drink or
a warm drink or something, at the end of the day you are at
rest and you are finished. And the footstool normally is
just a little thing, isn't it, that you can sort of push around
with your feet and just get exactly where the weight's taken off
your feet. And you are at peace. That's a great picture of our
Lord Jesus, isn't it? He sits in heaven right now at
peace. And the enemies that rise up
against him, which we think are big things, aren't they? Islam,
a million followers. Hinduism, I'm sorry, a billion
followers. Hinduism, Catholicism, a billion
of them. Pentecostals, 500 million. We
think, oh dear, oh dear, where's God and how's he going to win?
He moves this world sitting in his chair, and all of it is like
a footstool. As Isaiah says, this great nation
America, this great nation China, this great nation Western civilization,
Europe, they are but dust on the scales. He can just move
the footstool to a place of comfort. He is the one that is moving
everything. That is the message of the psalm. That is the message of scripture.
He's not moved by things in this world. He moves the things of
this world. And here he is talking to his
son. You sit down and I'll make your
enemies your footstool. And so the footstool just displays
the easiness of Christ's victories. It also displays the order and
beauty of the finished work that is done. It's an act of justice, orderly justice. The enemies,
as the footstool Enemies had the victors come and place their
foot on their necks to show their absolute dominion of them. Enemies,
instead of standing, are shamed. Enemies, instead of prevailing,
will be made to bear the burden of the weight of the Lord upon
them. And the enemies will receive
just recompense. They have trodden down His Word. They have trodden down His people. They have trodden down His comfort. And He will reign. Verse 2 says,
The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion, rule
in the midst of your enemies. And so in verse 1, we have a
declaration of Jesus as a king. In verse 2, we have a declaration
of Him as a prophet. The Lord shall send the rod of
your strength out of Zion. The Lord will send His gospel
word. The power of the Lord is the
gospel. As Simon reminded us, we are
to defend the Gospel, to proclaim the Gospel, trusting God's Gospel
to do God's work. And we dare not manipulate it. We dare not change it to please
people. It will be sent out from Zion. And it is God's strength. And
it is God's way of ruling in the midst of your enemies. And then a wonderful description
of the gospel of grace as it impacts people. Your people shall
be volunteers. Your people shall be willing
in the day of your power. In the day of God's power, they
will come to the Saviour. They will be made willing to
bow to His rule. They will be made willing to
bow to this Word. They will be made not just mercenaries,
but volunteers. They will be willing. They shall
come in the beauties of holiness from the worm of the morning.
They will come as a result of God's eternal covenant purposes. And you have the Jew of your
youth, verse 3. Like the Jew, it comes down from
heaven. Born of God, unknown to this
world, The spirit blows where it wishes. We don't know where
it comes from. We don't know where it goes to.
It just comes and does its work. And like silent drops of dew
in the morning, it appears and appears in beauty from a place
that we don't understand. Not by might, nor by power, but
my spirit. says the Lord of hosts. And then we have this wonderful
declaration of the Lord Jesus as priest. The Lord has sworn. This is serious business, isn't
it? When God himself swears, when
God himself commits and makes promises, Lord has sworn and he will not
relent. He has absolutely no need to
change. You are a priest forever according
to the order of Melchizedek. He's a king. He sits on a throne. He is a priest. He is God. As Zechariah says, thus says
the Lord of hosts, behold the man whose name is the branch. From his place he shall branch
out and he shall build the temple of the Lord. Yes, he shall build
the temple of the Lord. He shall bear the glory of it
and shall sit and rule on his throne. And he shall be a priest
on his throne. And the council of peace shall
be between them both. The council of peace in the covenant
between God the Father and God the Son. The council of peace
between God the Father and us as we are one with the Son. So
here we have this psalm declaring that Messiah will be a king and
Messiah will be a priest. Never in Israel's history was
the priesthood and the kingdom mixed together. They were completely
separate. But what a priest he is, in the
order of Melchizedek. At your leisure go home and read
those wonderful chapters in Hebrews 7 and following that describe
this priest and this amazing work that he's done. He's an
eternal priest. a priest forever. He's a priest
who is God. He's a priest who is a man. He's a priest who bears the sins
of his people. He's a priest who rules over
his enemies, the enemies of all his people. He's a priest who
achieves everything that he aimed to achieve. So there's one object
that the psalmist has, and the one object the New Testament
has, is to declare the Lord Jesus in His glory. He's a priest who is at God's
right hand. He shall execute kings in the
day of his wrath. He shall judge among the nations. He shall fill the places with
dead bodies. He shall execute the heads of
many countries. God rules. He shall drink of
the brook by the wayside. And the commentators have lots
to say about drinking of the brook by the wayside. But there's
a wonderful picture that our friend Robert Hawker gives of
this, is that on the Lord Jesus' way to Gethsemane, he crosses
the brook Kidron. And the brook Kidron is where
all the waste and the awful and all the Filth from the sacrifices
went. And Corker likened it to the
fact that he drank a cup filled to the brim. of all that the sacrifices ever
represented. He drank a cup full of the wrath
of God, because that's what the sacrifices represented. As those
men took that sheep, and took a knife and held that sheep and
put their hand on the sheep, they were saying to that sheep,
as I cut your throat, this is what my sin deserves. As they
tore the head off the dove, they were saying, this is what my
sin deserves. when the Lord Jesus drank from
that brook. He drank the wrath of God for
all of his people. He drank the wrath of God until
the wrath of God was satisfied because the justice of God was
satisfied and the holiness of God was satisfied. And he drank
it until God said, enough, it is finished. Therefore, the psalm
finishes, he shall lift up his head as he drank that bitter
cup and suffered that wrath and his head was bowed in death,
the death that we deserve because of our sin. Therefore, he shall
lift up his head because his work is finished. He was raised
again because of our justification. At that one moment, before all
this world, before Satan and all the demons of hell and before
all the angels of God, God's people are justified. God's people are right and fit
and proper entrance into Heaven. It's been manifested before this
world. Justice is satisfied, holiness
is satisfied. God then can present us, our
Saviour can present us, holy, spotless and undefiled before
Him. With joy shall He lift up His
head. He lifted up His head in victory,
His enemies defeated. This is our Saviour. This is where our Saviour leads
those who are about to have Him killed in these couple of days
before His death. Therefore David himself calls
Him Lord. How then is His Son, verse 37,
It was a higher honour to have Christ for his son than to be
a king. Yet David doesn't say that Christ
was his son. David rejoiced that Christ is
his Lord. David rejoiced that he was Christ's
servant, far more than he did as king of Israel. And to these things the scribes
did not have an answer. They couldn't answer, they couldn't
untie the knot that they had created by their wicked disobedience
to the Saviour for these three years. Holding on to traditions,
turning the Word of God into something meaningless to people,
taking away and shutting out people from the Kingdom of God
and not entering themselves. As Matthew says, and no one was
able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare
question him anymore. They have no answer anymore. All they can do is plot maliciously
his death. In fact, they set out, the Scriptures
say, to destroy him. destroy him who had come with
such an amazing testimony from God. But let's finish on a brighter
note. In Matthew, in Mark 37, it says,
and the common people heard him gladly. Are there any common
people here today? Not scribes, not Sadducees, Not
priests, not people who come parading things that they have
done, common people. They heard him gladly. The common
people heard him sweetly. The common people heard him pleasantly. It's wonderful to be a common
person amongst the many of God's common people. And I might just
finish by going to Psalm 109, and I commend you to go and read
Psalm 109 and 110 and just read that section of Psalms. Psalm 109 finishes, Help me,
O Lord my God, O save me according to Your mercy, that they may
know that this is Your hand, that You, Lord, have done it.
Let them curse, but You bless. When they arise, let them be
ashamed, but let Your servant rejoice. Let my accusers be clothed
with shame. Let them cover themselves with
their own disgrace as with a mantle. I will praise the Lord with my
mouth. Yes, I will praise him among
the multitude. For he shall stand at the right
hand of the poor to save him from those who condemn him. Let's remember our Lord's great
victory. Let's remember our Lord sitting
on a throne. Let's remember our Lord as our
prophet who tells us words from God, as our priest who gives
every moment to intercede for us, as our king who rules this
world and this universe and the hearts of his people for his
glory.