Once again, Mark chapter 12 and
verse 35. And Jesus answered and said while
he taught in the temple, How say the scribes that Christ is
the son of David? For David himself said by the
Holy Ghost, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right
hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool. David therefore
himself calleth him Lord, and whence is he then his son? And the common people heard him
gladly. And he said unto them in his
doctrine, beware of the scribes which love to go in long clothing
and love salutations in the marketplaces, and the chief seats in the synagogues
and the uppermost rooms at feasts, which devour widows' houses and
for a pretense make long prayers. These shall receive greater damnation. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. The ease with which the Lord
Jesus refuted and confounded his opponents in the temple clearly
reflects the Lord's wisdom. But it also provides for us a
testimony to the power and the superiority of the gospel over
the world's best religious theories and philosophies. The top debaters and the top
apologists from amongst the enemies of the Lord brought their best
arguments and all to no avail. In the Old Testament, we're reminded
that all of Scripture speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
prophets spoke of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the Old Testament
prophecy of Isaiah, in chapter 29 and verse 14, we read these
words. Behold, and it is God who is
speaking, behold, I will proceed to do a marvellous work among
this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder. For the wisdom
of their wise men shall perish, and the understanding of their
prudent men shall be hid. Now the Apostle Paul picks up
that theme in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. But here we see Isaiah speaking
about a marvellous work and a wonder. And this marvellous work which
Isaiah is speaking about was the incarnation of the God-man,
the coming of God into this world as a man in human form, joining
himself together with his creation. And the wonder of which Isaiah
speaks was the death of the God-man, the death of the Son of God,
of his bearing and becoming a curse for us. of His bearing our sin
and becoming sin for us. That was a wonder which had never
been seen or heard of in the history of the world. It is a
marvellous work and a wonder, says Isaiah, that God himself
should come into this world and that the Son of God should die
upon a cross. Lord Jesus Christ was about to
lay down his life in order to deliver his people, to ransom
his elect and to accomplish all that the prophets had spoken
about him. Daniel was another one of the
prophets and in a sense Daniel might be called upon to provide
us a summary of what the Lord Jesus Christ was going to do
because in chapter 9 of his little prophecy in verse 24 there's
a beautiful little verse and it says this, that the Lord Jesus
Christ had come to finish the transgression and to make an
end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision of prophecy,
and to anoint the most holy. These are amazing phrases and
we could take them one by one and we could spend endless sermons dwelling upon
them. But this was the marvellous work
and the wonder that Isaiah had been speaking of. This was what
the Lord Jesus Christ in his coming was here to perform. To finish the transgression,
to make an end of sins, to reconcile his people and to bring in everlasting
righteousness. To bring all these prophecies
to their conclusion and to their fruition and to anoint the Holy
God. in all his accomplishments. The
incarnation and the crucifixion of the Son of God is the very
wisdom of God personified. And the wise men and the prudent
from amongst the Jews, they came to disprove the claims of the
Lord Jesus Christ there that day in the temple, and the Lord
confounded them all. And part of the beauty of the
Lord's success here in his refutation of these men and their questions
and their approach was just the masterly exhibition of deep gospel
truth and biblical theology that the Lord Jesus Christ set before
his people and left for our consideration upon the pages of Holy Scripture. In all the Lord's answers, and
then in the question that His answer entitled Him to give back
to His enemies, He gently set out the gospel of truth for the
comfort and the instruction of His people, and to the outrage
and confusion of His enemies. Every word that fell from the
lips of the Lord was momentous and meaningful. And not least
when he shamed these self-righteous charlatans and drove them in
their hatred and their rage to plot his murder in the coming
days and deliver him into the hands of Pilate to be crucified. Now we're going to compare a
couple of the passages here, as it were, and draw some phrases
from Matthew particularly, because Matthew tells us that the run
up to the Lord's words here in Mark, which we read together,
was a question that he asked of the Pharisees. He then turned
to his people and said, why do the Scribes say that the Messiah
will be the son of David? Well, he'd already asked this
question of the Scribes and Pharisees, and that was what he turned to
his followers to speak about. But the question he asked, Matthew
tells us, was this. What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? What think ye
of Christ? Whose son is he? Now the Messiah
was certainly expected. That word Christ there means
Messiah. Messiah means Christ. And when
he says the Christ, he is speaking about the Messiah. That the Jews
had a great expectation was about to be revealed. There was great
religious excitement and anticipation in Israel at this time, especially
because of the presence of the Roman army in Israel at that
time and the hope for return of David's kingdom with David's
son on the throne and the fulfilment of the covenant promises of the
Old Testament. And indeed, much of that religious
excitement, that fervour, was focused on Jesus. Remember, this
is Tuesday. It was only two days before that
the Lord Jesus Christ had entered... I know it seems a lot longer
because there's so much happened on this Tuesday, but it's only
two days before, on the Sunday, that the Lord had entered Jerusalem
to the crowd cheering. He'd come on the back of the
colt, to the crowd's cheering. and had been called by the people
the Son of David, called a prophet by the whole city. Let me just
also remind you that a few weeks previous to that, when the Lord
had fed the 5,000, we're told in John chapter 6 on that occasion,
verse 15, Jesus perceived that the crowd of people would come
and take him by force. Why? For this reason. to make
him king. To make him king. Therefore he
departed into a mountain himself alone. But you see the point
was that there was this great earnest desire to see in the
person of Jesus of Nazareth, this one who would be the king
and who would establish the Davidic kingdom in Israel. The Son of
David was a common title for the Messiah amongst these religious
Jews and amongst the common people. And it was a name that had been
frequently applied to the Lord Jesus. In Matthew 9, verse 27,
we read there of two blind men that followed him, crying and
saying, Thou Son of David, have mercy on us. And furthermore,
to just aggravate the situation as it were, as far as these scribes
and Pharisees are concerned, when Christ cast out the devils,
those devils often acknowledged Him as the Son of God. So here
was this huge amount of interest and excitement swirling around
the Lord Jesus. The Pharisees knew that this
question that he asked, what think ye of Christ, was a loaded
question. And therefore they refused to
answer it except superficially to say, well, everybody knows
that he's the son of David. But this wasn't a random question
that Jesus was asking and I keep coming back to this and reminding
ourselves of this. that the Lord Jesus Christ here
is using the opposition of these scribes and Pharisees, these
Jewish religious leaders, as a means to tutor his own disciples
and his followers. He is continuing his disciples'
apostolic preparation by giving them the gospel doctrines that
they will need in his absence in their preaching and leadership
of the church post-Pentecost. So in answering the scribe as
the Lord Jesus did with respect to the question on the law, where
Jesus taught about the unity of God and the glorious mystery
of one eternal and divine Lord existing in a three-fold character
of persons, what we call the Trinity, Now, as a foremost revelation
of God, now the Lord is going on to state the second wonderful
mystery of the Godhead. That God was manifest in the
flesh. What Isaiah had called this great
wonder. God manifest in the flesh. by showing that he was the Messiah,
by showing Christ the Messiah was both David's Lord, God and
David's son by human descent, the saviour was very beautifully
proving the doctrine of the incarnation and doing so from the Old Testament
scriptures that the Pharisees were physically holding in their
hand at that moment. And not only that, he was doing
it in the very temple. before his followers and in the
company of these enemies. The Lord, as it were, was gathering
together the various threads of messianic testimony. The promises, the history, the
scriptures, the prophets, the miracles, the doctrine. And he
was drawing all these strands together and joining them, uniting
them into a single undeniable conclusion. that he himself, Jesus of Nazareth,
was indeed the Son of God and the Son of David. the Son of
Man, that He is Christ, the Messiah. And by making the Pharisees complicit
in this declaration, by using their questions against them
in this way, He used their very own words to exalt His own person
and their opposition. their anger, as it were, to praise
his name. And let me make a personal application
here, if I may. The Lord's question was, what
think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? And I think
it's worth noting that the Lord doesn't ask the Pharisees their
opinion of him, himself. He didn't say, what's your opinion
of me? He said, what's your opinion
of Christ? He was speaking, as it were,
abstractly about the revelation of Christ in the Old Testament. He was speaking about the promised
one of God. He was speaking about the one
who would be sent to deliver his people, to establish the
kingdom and to bring in everlasting glory. He was saying to these
Pharisees, what do you think of him that is promised? And that's important. You see,
many people claim to believe in Jesus. It's an extremely common
phrase. We hear people talking about
it in religious circles all the time. Do you believe in Jesus?
Do you believe in Jesus? I believe in Jesus. But that's
not the question. That's not the question. Nor
indeed is it the answer. The question is, what think ye
of Christ? Whose son is he? It is only when
we know Jesus to be the Christ, the promised one, that we begin
to understand the person, the purpose, and the significance
of what happened at the cross. And this is why the Apostle Paul
uses the phrase according to the scriptures, when he speaks
about the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He uses the phrase
according to the scriptures. He uses it in 1 Corinthians chapter
15. This is what he says. Moreover brethren, I declare
unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have
received and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved. So
this is the gospel of salvation. If ye keep in memory what I preached
unto you, unless ye have believed in vain, For I delivered unto
you, first of all, that which I also received, how that Christ
died for our sins according to the Scriptures. and that he was
buried and that he rose again the third day according to the
Scriptures. Now what Paul is saying here,
and it is so important because we might get this entirely the
wrong way around. We might think because that's
what was written in the Scriptures. No, that's not what he's saying.
He's not saying I've drawn this from the Scriptures. He's saying
that the way in which Christ died was the way that was specified
in the Scriptures. the one in whom we believe is
Christ according to the Scriptures. And we believe that Jesus of
Nazareth is the Christ of the Bible, the Son of God, the Son
of Man, who came and fulfilled all the things that were ordained
for him to accomplish according to the covenant purposes of Jehovah
and all the obligations that were laid on him in his mediatorial
capacity, in his mediatorial offices. Jesus Christ according
to the scriptures. So the question is, What do you
think of Christ? That is God's Christ, the messenger
of the covenant, the anointed one, the sent one, the acceptable
sacrifice, the Lamb of God. For unless we properly understand
the person and work of Christ, in his twofold nature as God
and man, and the purpose for which he was sent, namely to
redeem the elect, we cannot ever believe in Jesus. We cannot ever
trust in Jesus for salvation. The phrases have no context,
they have no meaning, apart from God's revelation in the Bible. or as Paul says, according to
the scriptures. So that in this one question
that the Lord asks these men, what think ye of Christ? Whose
son is he? There are many more questions
bound up as to the nature and the work and the person and the
accomplishments of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we can't begin to
think about all of the attributes of this nature and character
of the Messiah here today. But let me just quickly say this.
It would certainly include the understanding that Christ, what
think ye of Christ, that that Christ is divinely God in order that he might ably carry
our sin. And he must be wholly man to justly carry our sin. He must himself be perfect and
without sin. He must himself be able and willing
to bear our sin and our guilt and our punishment. He must be
united to us in our humanity and yet retain complete divinity
in order to represent us and intercede for us on our behalf
in the presence of God. He must be a prophet to declare
God's revelation to us. He must be a priest to offer
a sacrifice before God. And he must be a king in order
to rule in his kingdom. And he has to succeed. He must
accomplish all that he wills to do. He must fulfil all that
he is given to do. The salvation that he supplies
must be a full salvation, a complete salvation. It must be an atonement
that satisfies God's holiness. It has to propitiate God's wrath. It has to reconcile God to men
and women, and boys and girls. and it must enable God to justify
sinners and yet honour his law and maintain perfect justice. he must fulfil all his covenant
obligations and actually save his people from their sins. Not
merely make salvation possible or provisional so that it requires
some other act on the part of men and women to work or to complete
or to make effectual that work which he performed. He must do
all the work and He must have all the glory. And His death must satisfy for
all for whom He died. His blood must pay the price
for every sin that was laid to His charge. He must be holy,
spotless, and perfect in Himself to be the Lamb of God. and also to be admired and loved
and trusted by his people as the head of the body, the church. And he must be effectually able
to make men and women holy, spotless and perfect by the things that
he does because he cannot be the holy head of a sinful body. He has to be preeminent as our
Redeemer. He has to be unique as our sacrifice
and intercessor. And he has to be approachable
as our friend and companion. Is this the Christ you think
about when you think of Jesus of Nazareth? Is that the Christ
that you think about when the question is posed, what think
ye of Christ? What do you think about living
without ever knowing Christ? What do you think about dying
without ever knowing Christ? Paul tells the Ephesians in chapter
four, verse 20, but ye have not so learned Christ. Well, let
me ask you the question, how have you learned Christ? What
do you think of him? We're told here that the common
people heard him gladly, heard Christ gladly. They enjoyed his
doctrine. when Christ spoke, they admired
his wisdom and no doubt they relished his beating, his superiority
over these other religious sects and the power and the force of
his words against them. And yet interestingly We are
not told that either the common people who heard him gladly or
indeed the scribes or the Pharisees ever gave an answer to this question
that the Lord Jesus Christ posed. They were listening. The common
people heard him gladly, the scribes and the Pharisees, they
were growing with rage and malice against him. The gospel always creates division. It must, it's a two-edged sword. But I like to think that this
unanswered question from the Lord still stands waiting for
every man and woman to respond to it. So that a preacher like
me can say to a congregation like you today, what do you think
of Christ? Can you live without him? Can
you die without him? Turning to his disciples and
his followers again, the Saviour warned them to beware of the
scribes. The scribes. The scribes were
Bible teachers who did not teach the Bible. They were works lawyers,
legalists who did not preach grace. We mentioned yesterday
in that little introduction that I sent around that there are
a whole list of woes that are recorded by Matthew and are much
fuller than the few verses that we have here from Mark with respect
to beware of the scribes. And there in Matthew, the Lord's
judgment and his language is fierce and condemning and severe. But the conclusion is the same.
There is greater punishment, greater damnation for false teachers
and blind leaders in this life, in this world and in hell because
of the deception and the hypocrisy in spiritual matters. that offends
the poor in spirit and disturbs the peace and joy of the church,
the Lord's little ones. Let me say something about this
greater damnation because what the Lord is pointing to here
is what we sometimes call degrees of punishment in hell. And I
want to just say something about these greater degrees of punishment
in hell. There's many kinds of wickedness
in this world. And God keeps a tally of it all. Be not deceived, he tells us.
God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap. But above all the sins in the
world, God hates religious hypocrisy. and there is a greater punishment
in hell for those who lead the Lord's sheep astray and those
who rob the Lord's sheep of their peace in believing. And that
robbery, that theft takes place when works righteousness intrudes
into a preacher's doctrine and when faith in Christ is demeaned
by calling upon sinners to look elsewhere, to look to themselves
rather than to looking to the Lord Jesus Christ exclusively
and to the blood of Christ alone. The scriptures are clear. There are no degrees of reward
in heaven. There are no degrees of reward
for God's elect. There's no effort-based merit
system for believers founded upon our works, whether they
are good or whether they are bad. There can be no degrees
of reward for those who are justified because there are no degrees
of righteousness. There's no degrees of purity. There's no degrees of holiness.
Holy is holy. And all justified men and women
are perfect men and women in the sight of God. They are God's
elect, they are God's redeemed, justified and sanctified people
and they are holy in Christ and therefore there are no degrees
of reward based upon our works because we're all holy and perfect
before Him in His love for us. However there are degrees of
punishment in hell. because there are greater degrees
of evil and wickedness. And those who sin against greater
light will receive greater condemnation. And here the Lord speaks about
this greater damnation upon these men who corrupted God's revelation
of grace, his gospel, in order to serve their own lust and pride. The whole of the Old Testament
scripture spoke about the coming Messiah, what he would do, what
he would accomplish and these men were heirs of that whole
body of truth and they did not recognise Jesus Christ when he
came. On the contrary, they put him
to death and there is greater damnation awaiting them than
for all the sin in all the world. It's a warning to all who presume
to speak or to preach for God and direct men and women in spiritual
matters. Those who make a lie of the truth
will give an account before God. and the leaders of false religion
will suffer by degree according to their works for making merchandise
of men's souls. The warning to the Lord's disciples,
soon to be his apostles and leaders within the Church of Christ,
could not therefore be more timely. Beware of the scribes, beware
of such men as these, and do not follow their example of hypocrisy
by laying burdens on men and women that you yourselves cannot
bear. And do not bear. Preach grace. Preach the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Preach Jesus Christ crucified
as the only way of salvation and let that be your singular
message. And there is again a warning
here against self-righteousness and works-righteousness and legal
observances, all which tend to pride and were characterized
by the scribe's doctrine. It tends to deceive and to distress
the souls of the tender-hearted sheep. Peter, James and John, Be careful not to imitate. Be careful not to listen. Be careful not to tolerate these
scribes. And I say to you the selfsame
thing. Be careful not to imitate. Be
careful not to listen to them. And be careful not to tolerate
them. Ultimately, judgment is the Lord's. but let us not give ear to those
who do not properly explain or teach the gospel of free grace
and the gospel of imputed righteousness. The gospel that saves is the
gospel of Jesus Christ crucified. The doctrine that saves is that
Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. that he was
buried and rose again the third day according to the scriptures. The faith that saves is faith
in the blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses us from all sin
and from all unrighteousness. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us today and encourage us in this gospel. Amen.