Well, good morning. Welcome to
our continuing Bible study in the Gospel of Luke, where today
will be our last lesson in chapter 20. And my way of context, remember that
at the beginning of chapter 20, we found Jesus was in the temple. teaching the people and preaching
the gospel, it says in Luke 20 verse 1. And he's still there. Below these many months later. Then we find all these religious
folks that came to him with schemes and trickery, and the chief priests
and the scribes were recruiting people to try and subterfuge
on the Lord, and they ask Him all these silly questions. Well, the Sadducees, they didn't
believe in the resurrection, but they said, well, what about
this trick question from the Old Testament regarding marriage
and the resurrection? So he took care of that one,
and then he took care of the one that said, what about taxation? Should we
give tribute to Caesar or no? And that didn't work out. So
anyway, they try all these different things, and that takes us to where we will
be today in chapter 20 and in verse 41. And after they quit
asking him questions, he asked them a question. He said, here's
a test for you. And the simplicity of it is,
without the revelation of the Spirit, you just don't have any
understanding. So in verse 41 of chapter 20,
and he said unto them, how say they that Christ is David's son?
And David himself said in the book of Psalms, the Lord said
unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand till I make thine
enemies thy footstool. David therefore called him Lord.
How is he then his son? And there's no reply. There just
isn't any. They don't even record In the
last question that they dealt with in chapter 20 verse 40,
it says, And they durst not ask him any more questions after
that. So they were just silent. They were just taken aback because
there was nothing they could say back to the Lord God Almighty
regarding this. They just had no knowledge, no
understanding of it. So as we look at this block of
Scripture, then he deals with these folks with this question
that again came, as Norm pointed out, comes from Psalm 110. And
we sang that hymn. Boy, Isaac Watts had a really
great understanding of that block of Scripture. and how it applies
spiritually, and what it means to the people that have been
redeemed by the Lord. In just a paragraph, he just
summed the whole thing up. So after he issues that question
to them regarding Psalm 110, In front of all those people
that he just closed their mouth with this question, he looks
over to his disciples and said, don't be like these guys. In
the audience of all the people, he said unto his disciples, beware,
beware of these guys, beware of the scribes. And there were
some scribes standing there and he said, beware of the scribes,
they like to, They like to walk in long robes and look religious,
and they love greetings in the markets, in the highest seats
in the synagogues, in the chiefest rooms at the feasts, in the devourer
of widows' houses, and for a show make long prayers, the same shall
receive greater damnation." And so he's making a clear distinction
between those that had a spiritual understanding of Psalm 110 and
those that were just making a religious show for their own purposes. And so it kind of comes down to this
basic question. He looks at those scribes and
Pharisees and those people that were plaguing him with the ridiculous.
What think ye of Christ? That's what it comes down to. So they're trying to test him
with all these Old Testament questions. He says, well, I have
an Old Testament thing I'll give you. Let's go to the Psalms and
take a look at that. One of the things that I was
talking to Norm about this morning was that in this King James translation,
the capital, in verse 42, says, David himself
say in the book of Psalms, the Lord, and as Norm's always pointing
out, that's capital OL, capital O, capital R, capital D, and
it signifies Jehovah, the self-existent, eternal, And he said, the Lord Jehovah
said unto my Lord, and the small, the capital L, small O-R-D, is
in the Old Testament, that's Adonai. the Almighty, the Sovereign,
the Controller, the Ruler. And so it kind of loses something
in the translation there because it doesn't emphasize these different
aspects of God. And as Isaac Watts summed that
up, he says, here we have the Father speaking to the Son. and
regarding the redemption of the church. And so, and we'll look
at that scripture here in just a second, but he gives them this
question of this so important. What did they think of Christ?
And there was no wrangling over things that didn't have any eternal
consequence, no marriage, no tax questions. And why is, who
is the Messiah and why as he called David's son, and at the
same time, David's Lord. And so those that questioned
him, who boasted in their knowledge of the Old Testament, the Old
Testament clearly declared the coming Messiah, and they were
all familiar with that. And the Messiah means the sent
one, the anointed one, the one who is set apart to accomplish
that purpose, and that name is translated to Christ in the Greek
in the New Testament, and that that one would come from the
lineage of David. There's just a ton of scripture
in the Old Testament that tells us that. All these things, these
false religionists who had no discernment of it, no understanding,
no spiritual knowledge, and in fact they rejected the very fulfillment
of it that was standing right in front of them, in their very
midst, and they preferred instead, as the Lord points out, they
preferred to walk around being religious and pretending that
they were holier than thou. And they loved to appear religious,
so people would have them in admiration. And they would look
at them and say, oh, look how he dresses. He's so religious.
He's got the long robes on. And I see that guy all the time. He's always down at the marketplace
praying and making a big show out of praying, and telling what
a wonderful person he is, and how I fast twice a week, and
I give tithes of all that I have, and I do this, and I do that. He says, watch out for those
guys. They like to wear the religious trappings. They love to be recognized
as religious wherever they appear. while all the time they're maltreating
the people." He says, they're saying, peace, peace, when there
is no peace to them, they're saying all these things that have no
basis in truth in the gospel. And he says, they don't enter
in, Christ says, they don't enter in. And they hinder those that
would enter in from coming in. He says, they're not helping.
Don't be like them. It serves no purpose. It turns
out they love the things of the world more than they love Christ. They didn't love it at all. So concerning his question on
how can the Lord be both the Son of David and at the same
time David's Lord, they couldn't look at it with the same viewpoint
that David had. David was one of the Lord's redeemed. David was a prophet. And how
he saw that affected how he viewed everything. And that's so critical. We can't have people that have
no view of Christ talking to the people and trying to fob
off on them religious stuff. So, David recognized that the righteousness
of God could only be satisfied through Emmanuel, God with us. When the fullness of time was
come, Paul wrote, God sent forth a son made of a woman, made under
the law, to redeem them that were under the law that we might
receive the adoption of sons. And it goes on through the Old
Testament that he would come from Bethlehem and out of Bethlehem
afraid, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah,
yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler
in Israel whose goings forth have been from old. from everlasting,
come forth to me." All these dialogues that we have between
the Father and the Son, but clearly there was no understanding of
that. We should probably take a quick
moment and just run over to Psalm 110 and read this scripture that
you're probably all familiar with. It's been the subject of quite
some number of messages here of late. It's a short psalm, seven verses
long. And all the time we're reading
this, we remember that David was a prophet. of God, and I
want you to pay especially close attention to kind of the overall
aspect of this. A psalm of David, and he says, you know, a pen
of a ready writer. He was being directed by the
Holy Spirit. The Lord Jehovah, The Almighty God said unto my
Lord, my Adonai, my Sovereign, my Controller, sit thou at my
right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. So clearly
this speaks to God Almighty, the Father, God the Father, and
God the Son. And all the scriptures testify
to this that we find in the scriptures. The Lord, Jehovah, shall send
He's going to do this, shall send the rod of thy strength
out of Zion. Isn't that a powerful statement
about the Son? I'm sending the rod of my strength
out of Zion. Rule thou in the midst of thine
enemies. That's what's going to happen. Thy people shall be
willing in the day of thy power. How powerful is that? He said,
I'm going to send my rod of my strength to my people, and when
he exerts that power, they will be willing. In the beauties of
holiness from the womb in the morning, thou has the dew of
thy youth. I like what Isaac Watts wrote
in that hymn at the end. He says, like the dew, you wake
up in the morning and the dew is on everything. Every leaf
has a bunch of drops of dew on it, and you look around and it's
just an uncountable number of them,
and it's everywhere. The Lord, verse 4, the Lord has
sworn, Jehovah, he has sworn and will not repent. Thou art
a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord at thy
right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. And he shall judge among the
heathen, he shall fill the places with dead bodies, he shall wound
the heads over many countries, he shall drink of the brook in
the way, therefore shall he lift up the head. Many of those parts
of the scripture we've looked at in previous lessons, so we're
not going to spend time on them today. But today we're primarily
focused on the portion has to do with what the Lord quoted
in Luke here at the close of the chapter and primarily in the first couple
of verses. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right
hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. And then His power
going forth and His power exerted over His people and how that
brings them redemption. Isaiah 11.1 says, There shall
come forth a rod, the rod of... Jehovah says, this is the rod
of my strength. the staff of my strength. There
shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse." Such beautiful
allegorical writing here that he brings to this mental image. And a branch shall grow out of
his roots. I don't know how many times Norman
brought messages on the righteous branch, Christ the righteous
branch from the Old Testament. And a king shall reign and prosper,
and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth." Now, as
we look at this block of Scripture, you have these two segments of
people. You have the redeemed of the Lord, the church, and
the ones that are represented by David saying, I know who this
is talking about. The Old Testament said he's going
to come through my lineage. But he's accomplishing what was
written in Genesis chapter 3. Thy seed shall bruise his head. So he had a clear understanding
that the Son of God must come in the likeness of sinful flesh,
and for sin, take care of it. So we have this moving from eternity
to time that begins in Genesis there in chapter 3 verse 15 and
goes on through David's time. He had a clear understanding
of that. You know how that comes? That
comes by revelation. As Jesus said in the New Testament,
He says, flesh and blood did not reveal this to you. But why? Because it can't. He just can't. It's not possible. He says, but
my Father in heaven, and when He reveals it to you, it makes
perfect sense and it becomes your true and your heart. I like what Norman had a quote
from Henry Mahan there in the bulletin today. Man does not
come to Christ because He's dead in sins and trespasses. And it's
just a question of ability. And one of the other notes, I
think it was from Gary Shepherds, says, I just as well expect a
person to get up out of the coffin and go to the kitchen and get
a drink of water as I would expect a dead person in dead and trespassing
sins to react and come forward and say, I'm coming to Christ. They can't
until they've been made alive. They just can't. And at that
same time, they're made aware of where they were. They said,
man, I was dead. That's what Lazarus said when
he got up from that. He said, man, I still see the
outline of the dust around me. Where I was laying there on that
slab, I was dead, dead, dead. And now I've been made alive. So it takes this spiritual knowledge,
this spiritual understanding for one to say, the Lord said
unto my Lord. to understand the relationship
between the Father and the Son and the covenant of grace and
the purpose of Him coming to subdue all of our enemies. And
the worst one we have is us in our natural condition. And He says, when He exercises
His power, great things are going to happen, wonderful things are
going to happen. And in comparison, you have those
that love to be in the long robes and make the long fake prayer
and pray and show up in the conspicuous places and pretend to be religious. So as we look at this, it was
so well established in the Old Testament that Christ would be
raised up to sit on David's throne. In Luke, when our very first
chapter in Luke, years ago, Luke 1.32, Luke 1, 31 and 32, And behold,
this is the angel speaking to Mary, Thou shalt conceive in thy womb,
and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. And verse 32 says, He shall be
great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord
God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. That's what
the angel said to him. And you know what? He's just
quoting the Old Testament. He's just quoting 2 Samuel, Psalm
132, Isaiah 9, Isaiah 16, Jeremiah 23, 5, Ezekiel 37, just quoting
in Genesis. He's just quoting the Old Testament
to her. This is what was recorded from all time. And it says he's
going to reign forever. So clearly it wasn't just talking
about a mortal human that was going to come and throw off the
yoke of the Roman Empire. And I was telling Norma, when
that was written, originally Rome was nothing. Rome wasn't a factor then. And
they were in bondage to somebody else at that time. So it's quite interesting that
we have all these scriptures that talk about how the Messiah
was going to come through the lineage of David, and it was
well known in the Old Testament. And many of those folks that
he was actually talking to probably had these very verses committed
to memory. We were saying this morning that
even though the Samaritan woman at the well knew some things
about Messiah, or thought she did, she said, well, we know
that when Messiah comes, He'll tell us all things, and He'll
do this, and He'll do that. And he said, well, I'm here. And what you thought is not.
not what's happening. So the fact that it was so well
established in the Old Testament that God would raise up Christ
to sit on David's throne is the subject of many sermons even.
We find in Acts chapter 2, if you would like to turn over to
there, And here lately, Mike Richardson
has been bringing some lessons from that Acts chapter 2 regarding
Pentecost and those things. So Peter's preaching this sermon
here in Acts chapter 2, and in verse 30, he's talking about
David and bringing the gospel out in this sermon that he's
preaching. He says, therefore, in Acts 2.30,
Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with
an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins, according to the
flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne." And of
course, he's speaking about that part in the latter part of Psalm
110 that's quoted in Hebrews several times regarding thou art a priest forever after
the order of Melchizedek and he seeing this before spake of
the resurrection of Christ that his soul was not left in hell
neither his flesh did see corruption this Jesus hath God raised up
whereof we are all witnesses and therefore being taught or
therefore being by the right hand of God exalted and having
received to the father the promise of of the Holy Ghost, he has
shed forth this, or issued forth this, which you now see and hear. For David's not ascended into
heaven. But he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit
thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool.
Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God
hath made the same Jesus whom you have crucified, both Lord
and Christ." And here we have this dividing line again where
some that heard it said, They were pricked in their hearts.
They said, what should we do? And Peter said, repent and believe.
And it goes on to say then there were added unto them about 3,000
souls that day at the close of that block. But one of the things
that I wanted to bring forth was that this David, he saw some things. He's seeing this before. And he didn't just see it with
a crystal ball physical eye thing, but he saw it with more than
just the physical items that he was equipped with. He saw
it. It was in his heart. It was in his soul. It was in
his revelation that God gave him about his Savior. and how
he was going to operate with great power and overcome. And
surely David knew a lot about what it was going to take to
overcome some of the things that he was involved in, certainly. So he, seeing this before, spake
of the resurrection of Christ, he said. He saw that this resurrection
was going to be an assurance that God was satisfied with His
sacrifice that He would make on behalf of all of His people.
And this same Jesus hath God raised up. He saw this like a
long time. Job wrote about it. It's quite
frequently written about in the Old Testament there. Job said,
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and I'll see Him later. So sit thou at my right hand,
this Jehovah and Adonai, the Father speaking to the Son. talking
about his almighty power that he would exert, and thy people
being willing in the day that that power is exercised. And
if it's not exercised, then nothing happens. It takes that divine
power to be exercised, scriptures we believe, according to the
working, of His mighty power which He brought in Christ when
He raised Him from the dead. That same almighty power that
is talking about here in Psalm 110. The same power that raised
Christ from the dead is needed to cause people to believe that
very thing, to believe the gospel, to believe that their sin has
been taken care of, to believe that It's not something that
they can control, that they can exercise. They're like that one
that Henry wrote about, the dead can't jump up and say, I'm going
to come to Christ now. Because they can't. Because they're
dead. Spiritually dead. And the natural man cannot receive
the things. He cannot. Neither can he know
them. Because they're spiritually discerned.
So this language in Psalm 110 intimates that David was made
privy to an... And this is the part that just
struck me. He was made privy to a conversation,
an almighty conversation between the Father and God the Son. He got to listen in. Isn't that
cool? He says, the Lord, where did
he get that from? The Lord said unto my Lord. What
an awesome thing to be able to tune in and hear. And we have
that given to us in the scriptures. Once God works a great work in
us, we can look at that and say, oh yeah, we got to listen in
to back in the Old Testament. And then more than that, we got
to see it, the fulfillment of it. As we move through Luke,
we're seeing all these things come into play. He shall strike
through kings. He uses every... I keep trying to bring this out
in all of our Bible classes that the Lord, everything is under
His Jehovah's power and control, and He uses every single thing
to accomplish the redemption of the church. He strikes through
kings sometimes to accomplish that. He caused the people to
be in power at the time that Christ was there to accomplish
His purpose that was written before the foundation of the
world. He sets up kings and rulers, and by Him they reign and rule. I like that lesson that Norm
brought from Darius and Cyrus the Persian. being commanded
by God to do certain things in relationship to the Jews and
to fulfill those things. They were heathen guys. They
weren't much interested in that kind of thing, but he caused
them, and he even had their name written down ahead of time, who
was going to do what. So it's quite interesting. So
here we have David. He both saw and heard in acts
that he's seen before. He had a vision of this conversation
and what was going to take place. And so we have this record of
him seeing and hearing the word of the Lord regarding these truths.
And that was completely out of the scope of those folks that
he was talking to, because it was just words and scrolls to
them, words that they turned and used to their whatever devices
and schemes that they were working. So we read from Ephesians 1,
19 and 20, we're talking about the exceeding greatness of his
power to usward who believe and therefore in Acts 2, 30 being
a prophet, knowing that God had sworn an oath to him, Hebrews
1.3 says, who being the brightness of his glory and the express
image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his
power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on
the right hand of the majesty on high." That tells us a little
bit more about what occurred before the Lord said, sit thou
at my right hand. He was the Lamb slain from before
the foundation of the world. All this was accomplished in
this eternal covenant that they had. In verse 13 of chapter 1
of Hebrews says, Which of the angels did he say at any time,
sit thou on my right hand? It was only going to be accomplished
through Christ. Hebrews 10, 12, but this man,
this one who is at the same time Adonai but was the root and offspring
of David, the branch, the rod out of Jesse, This man, after
he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on
the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting until his enemies be
made his footstool." They had a clear understanding of this
whole process. Hebrews 12, 2 says, "...looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy
that was set before him endured the cross, despising his shame,
and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Sit
thou on my right hand, the Lord said unto my Lord. Sit thou on
my right hand. I really enjoyed that we had
in one of our lessons when Norm was gone, we had read from Isaiah
8, 18, and I believe I said, imagine God the Father, and imagine Christ
coming to him and saying, Behold, I and the children whom thou
has given me. That's another conversation that
we get a privy to. Behold. I've got all of them. He doesn't say, well, behold
me and all the people that didn't reject me or all the people might have came. He says, Behold,
I and all the children whom thou hast given me are for signs and
wonders. We're here. I'm here. And God
the Father satisfied. Sit thou at my right hand. Sit
thou at my right hand. What a wonderful thing we have
to be able to look into all that and by His power have some smidgen
of understanding about what He did for us and the exercise of
His almighty power in redeeming His people. So in the final analysis,
in spite of all the records, in spite of all the evidence,
in spite of all the writings that they had, the Lord to them
remains an enigma, a thing hidden, a thing that can't be known unless
revealed. And as he said later on, flesh
and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which
is in heaven. So we'll stop there and that'll
be our end of our scriptures from Luke chapter 20 and then
In chapter 21, we find He's right where we left Him, in the temple,
teaching the people and preaching the gospel, and we go into the
widow's mites. You can buy those, you know,
online. I think that word means, if it was Greek or Latin, it
means leptis, it means the thin one, the smallest coin, the thinnest
one, the one that's physically worth the least amount. So, until
the next time, thank you for your attention. As always, be
free.