Podcast appearances and mentions of messiah lord

In this episode, we dive into the scene in Matthew 22:41-46, where Jesus poses a question to the Pharisees that challenges their understanding of the Messiah. Asking, "Whose son is the Christ?" Jesus draws attention to their incomplete view of the Messiah as merely the Son of David. By referencing Psalm 110:1, where David calls the Messiah "Lord," Jesus reveals a deeper truth about the identity and mission of the Christ—one that the Pharisees had failed to grasp. Far from deconstructing the idea that the Messiah is the Son of David, Jesus exposes the Pharisees' shallow and inaccurate understanding of what that truly means. Their expectation of a conquering warrior king who would crush Israel's enemies through military might was shaped by a selective view of David's life, emphasizing his victories while neglecting his suffering and rejection. Jesus, however, understood his own identity as the Son of David in a fuller sense. He walked not only in the footsteps of David's triumphs but also in the path of David's suffering and rejection—fleeing from Saul and enduring betrayal by Absalom. The brillilance of Jesus' question and response to the Pharisees is that it creates room for a broader, much larger point of reference for what the Messianic profile entails - both suffering and victory. Yet, this path of suffering was not devoid of battle. Jesus engaged in a profound struggle, not against the external enemies of soldiers and swords, but against his own flesh and human nature. Like David resisting the temptation to kill Saul and take the throne by force, Jesus faced the temptation to choose a self-centered path free from suffering and death. His internal battle was a struggle to remain faithful to God's mission, overcoming evil not through violence, but by refusing to let it provoke him into a violent response—even in the agony of his trial and crucifixion. We conclude by exploring how Jesus' understanding of the Messiah as both a suffering servant and a conquering king reshapes what it means for Jesus to walk in the footsteps of David. By choosing the non-violent path of suffering love, Jesus demonstrates that the true victory over evil—a victory not of force, but of faithful obedience to God - must first take place internally. This challenges us to reevaluate our own understanding of what it means to follow the Messiah and to trust in the power of God's redemptive plan. Key Passages: Matthew 22:41-46 Psalm 110 Key Resources: For an example of a scholar who casts doubt on the Masoretic vowel pointing system, which can have implications for casting doubt on their decision to vowel point the Hebrew word Adon in Psalm 110:1 to indicate a human rather than a divine, figure, see the comments of John Sailhamer in The Expositor's Bible Commentary on Genesis, Revised Edition, page 185. Explainer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Video⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on how to use ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.biblehub.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.blueletterbible.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Leave us a question or comment at our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠website podcast page⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. * Intro Music: "Admirable" Carlos Herrera Music --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/onelifenash/support

Jesus questions the Pharisees about the Messiah's identity, pointing out that David calls the Messiah "Lord," which challenges their understanding of His lineage. He then criticizes the scribes for their pretentiousness and exploitation of their positions, warning that they will face severe judgment.

Text: Mark 12:35-37 ESV 35 And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? 36 David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, “‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.”' 37 David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?” And the great throng heard him gladly. - Mark 12:35-37 ESV CHRIST IS THE SON OF DAVID Jesus asked the scribes for what reason the scribes in the past say that the Messiah is the son of David. These scribes directly started to refer the Messiah as the son of David 500 years before Jesus was born. Jesus quoted unto them Psa 110:1 wherein David called the Messiah Lord. Then, how is He his son? Jesus doesn't contradict this scribal teaching but explains more fully what it means. He shows how two seemingly contradictory statements can both be true. It was a common belief in Judaism that the ancestors should outrank all his descendants. One example is the priesthood of Melchizedek . He is pre-eminent over the priesthood of the Levites because Abraham, the great-grandfather to Levi, gave tithes to Melchizedek (Heb 7:1–10). Similarly, the Messiah, who would be the descendant of King David, would be subordinate to David (1 Chr 17:11–14; Jer 23:5–6). Thus, their tradition would state that while the Messiah would be lesser than David. However, contrary to cultural assumptions of the time, David acknowledges that his "son" outranks him despite being his descendant. Yes, Jesus is the physical descendant (Luke 3:23–31) and legal descendant (Mat 1:6–16) of David. And, He will rule Israel in a similar manner someday. Yet, He is not solely defined by this subordinate relationship to David. It is because Jesus is also a priest in the order of Milchezedek. Therefore, he has a claim to priestly authority over Aaron's descendants (see Hebrews 7) Thereby, Jesus receives the authority to reign as king from God, not from David. Just as the spiritual priesthood of Melchizedek supersedes that of Abraham's descendants, David understands that God's spiritual kingdom has supremacy over Israel. This has been what Jesus trying to teach the disciples for the last three years. He has not come to rescue Israel from foreign threats like Rome during His first coming. He came first to fight the spiritual battle for the souls of humanity. He came to be the Savior of the world from sins.[Mat 1:21]. He came in order to reconcile the world to God. Is He your Savior and Lord? ------------------------- Visit and FOLLOW Gospel Light Filipino on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram

In this Bible study of the Gospel of Luke chapter 20 (Part B), listen and then ask yourself whether the Lord Jesus is your Cornerstone? This Bible study will help you to better understand the Lord Jesus as The Messiah- Lord and Savior! Click Links Below For More Bible Teaching Resources: Dr Ruth's Testimonial Book www.DrRuthHealingTestimony.com Website For Donations: www.DrRuthTanyi.org/Donate E-Bookstore www.DrRuthTanyi.org/Bookstore Website www.DrRuthTanyi.org Are You Moving Forward W/ Jesus? www.AreYouMovingForward.Com Zelle Donation Telephone #: (+1) 909-501-9031

In this episode: Augustus, Emperor, Bethlehem, Shepherds, Tower, Migdal Eder, Tower of flocks, Genesis 35 connection, Mishnah, Temple Lambs, Angel of the Lord, saviour, Good news, saviour, Messiah Lord in Jewish and Roman contexts. Become a supporter and get unlimited questions turned into podcasts at: www.patreon.com/theologyandapologetics YouTube Channel: Theology & Apologetics www.youtube.com/channel/UChoiZ46uyDZZY7W1K9UGAnw Instagram: www.instagram.com/theology.apologetics Websites: www.ezrafoundation.org www.theologyandapologetics.com

Sermon preached by David Fullerton on May 5, 2024 at Arlington Baptist Church in Arlington, Virginia.

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you, the God of love, the living and loving God, sent your son Jesus Christ to live the life that we were supposed to live, he did it in our stead, and to die the death that we deserve to die for our law breaking. Jesus, we thank you that through your resurrection on that third day, on that first Sunday, the first resurrection day, you triumph over Satan's sin and death. The greatest enemies, our greatest enemies were placed as a foothold under your feet. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the life and the resurrection. You promise that whoever believes in you, though he die, will pass into eternal life. We thank you for the promise of the resurrection, that in the resurrection we will rise with glorified bodies, transformed bodies. We pray, Lord, that you continue to establish us by the power of the Holy Spirit in your will in obedience of faith.We thank you for the Holy Scriptures, Lord, and as we meditate on how Christ read the Scriptures, how he revered the Scriptures, how he submitted to them, I pray that you make us some people who love the holy Word of God and make us some people that long to be truly devout, sincere in our faith, knowing that your opinion of us is the one that matters most. Lord, make us the people that hate hypocrisy, hate hypocrisy within ourselves, that distance between what we show to the world and what we are inside and make us the people of integrity, integrated within loving you with all of our heart, with all of our strength, with all of our mind and strength. Lord bless our time, the Holy Word. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called the Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom, Kingdom Come. The title of sermon today is Love God and Hate Lies. You've seen the yard sign, "Hate has no home here." Well, then God has no home there because God hates, and that sign hates God. God hates because God is love. Because he is love, there are things that he hates. In Proverbs 6:16-19 it says, "There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are in abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers."Our God is a God of perfect holiness; therefore, he must hate evil to remain in perfect holiness. And our God is a God of infinite love; therefore, he must hate that which destroys the object of his love lest he isn't loving. To love is to hate. To love God is to hate Satan. To love good is to hate evil. Proverbs 8:13 says, "The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance in the way of evil and perverted speech I hate." Or Romans 12:9, "Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good." So to love truth, we must hate lies.Psalm 119:163 says, "I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law." To love God's word is to hate any perversion of it, any adulteration of it, and to love the Gospel is to hate any false gospel. Galatians 1:8-9, "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed." Strong words.A false gospel dishonors the person and the work of Christ, and Christ is the supreme object of God's love, the supreme display of his infinite goodness, and the one who accomplishes God's ultimate purpose to display his glory. In false gospels, they lead people away from Christ and the gospel by which they may be saved and enjoy forgiveness of sin, new life, and eternal happiness with God. God's love for people leads him to a place where he does hate that which leads them astray, which destroys them. And that's sin. God hates sin. In addition to its ugliness and opposition to the beauty of his holiness, sin ruins people. Therefore, loving God who loves people, he hates that which ruins them. True love hates that which hurts the object of God's love. To love sincerity is to hate hypocrisy. That's what we see in our text today, that Jesus hates hypocrisy. To conform to the image of Jesus Christ is to love what he loves and hate what he hates. Jesus loves God's Word; therefore, we are to love God's Word. Jesus loves the bride, the church; therefore, we are to love the church as Jesus did.Today we're in Mark 12:35-44. Would you look at the text with me? "And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, 'How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?' David himself and the Holy Spirit declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I your enemies under your feet. David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?"' And the great throng heard him gladly. And in his teaching he said, 'Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.'And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins which make a penny. He called his disciples to him and said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.'" This is the reading of God's holy and errant and fallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.Three points to frame up our time. First, love the Scriptures like Jesus; second, hate hypocrisy like Jesus; and third, love sacrificial devotion like Jesus. First, love the Scriptures like Jesus. Having vanquished his opponents in a series of verbal duels against the synagogue, the Sanhedrin, the scribes of the Sanhedrin, we see this in Chapter 11, Chapter 12, he silenced the crowd. He silenced the religious establishment, the religious leaders. We know that through entering Jerusalem to the adulation of the crowds who cried out "Hosanna!" Then by entering the temple courtyard and driving out the merchants and the money changers, Jesus is throwing down the gauntlet. "Sanhedrin religious leaders, what are you going to do with the one who claims that he is the son of David, with the one who claims that the Messiah is here?"Through his actions, Jesus is messing with the support and the cash flow of the Sanhedrin. So they confront him publicly, and privately they plot to kill him. Jesus overturns their tables, and now he turns the tables against them. After a day of them questioning him, now he questions them with the question of the day. And the question is, "Is Jesus Lord? If Jesus is Lord, Sanhedrin, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to submit to Christ as Lord?" This is Verse 35, "As Jesus taught in the temple, he said, 'How can the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of God?'" In the Greek where it says, "He taught in the temple," it says, "He answered," meaning, he's answering their silence. He has silenced them. They should have then humbled themselves and said, "Lord, we humble ourselves underneath your authority and the teaching of Scripture," But that's not what they do. So he now answers their proud silence by asking them a question.Jesus had already entered Jerusalem in triumph. He has been hailed as the vanguard of David's restored dominion. This is the Messiah. He's here. The people have accepted him. Now Jesus is asking, "How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?" He used the word Christ, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for messiah, the one who is anointed to be king. Jesus had accepted the Messianic praises. He is the son of David. But by asking this question and by starting this conversation, what Jesus is getting at is, is the messiah only the son of David? Because if the messiah is only the son of David, then the messiah is only king of Israel. That's what they thought. That's what Israel thought that the messiah is going to be. Because David was the greatest king Israel ever had, the messiah is David's son; therefore, the messiah is going to be a king just like David, a king of only Israel.This is where they wrongly assumed that God was the God of only Israel, that God was the God of only their people, only their nation. So Jesus here is expanding the definition of the messiah by asking, "How can the messiah be only David's son?" What the people could not see is that while Jesus came as Israel's Messiah, he didn't come to save Israel from Rome. He didn't come to save them from the occupying forces. He didn't come to restore Israel to their former glory. He came to save them. He came to save them from their sins, but not just them, also people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Their expectations were not too high for the Messiah. They were too low. The scribes of Jesus' day interpreted the messianic prophecies to mean that Israel's messiah would be a biological descendant of David and a great king to return Israel to its greatness.This makes all the more surprising what happens next. Jesus goes on the offensive, not against pagans, but against Jewish scribes who teach that the messiah is simply the son of David. So Jesus in Verse 36 says, "David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet."'" Here King Jesus quotes Psalm 1:10, which was authored by David, but Jesus doesn't say, "David himself declared." He says, "David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared." Here Jesus is revealing how he viewed Scripture, how he viewed the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, as we call it, that the Holy Spirit is the one that penned the Scriptures through David, through the authors.Here we see the Holy Trinity. The Spirit is writing through King David, and then it says the Lord, that first Lord in the Hebrew is Yahweh, that's God the Father, and the second Lord is Adonai, which is Lord, which is Jesus Christ. So God the Father says to God the Son, "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." We have the Holy Trinity right there in that text.But how does this inform your understanding of Holy Scripture? Do you view Holy Scripture as Jesus did that it was written by the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. 2 Peter 1:16 says, "For we do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was born to him by the Majestic Glory, 'This is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased,' we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns in the morning, star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."I find J.C. Ryle's comments here extremely relevant. He says the following, "Let us learn in the first place from these verses how much there is about Christ in the Old Testament Scriptures. Our Lord desires to expose the ignorance of the Jewish teachers about the true nature of the Messiah." He does it by referring to a passage in the Book of Psalms and showing that the scribes did not rightly understand it. In so doing, he shows us that one subject about which David was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write was Christ. We know from our Lord's own words in another place that the Old Testament Scriptures testify of Christ, John 5:39, "They were intended to teach men about Christ by types and figures and prophecy until he himself should appear on Earth."We should always keep this in mind in reading the Old Testament, but never so much as in reading the Psalms. Christ is undoubtedly to be found in every part of the law in the prophets, but nowhere is he so much to be found as in the Book of Psalms. His experience and sufferings as first coming into the world, his future glory and his final triumph as second coming are the chief subjects of many a passage in that wonderful part of God's word. It is a true saying that we should look for Christ quite as much as David in reading the Psalms.Let us beware of undervaluing or despising the Old Testament. In its place and proportion, the Old Testament is just as valuable as the New. There are probably many rich passages in that part of the Bible which have never yet been fully explored. There are deep things about Jesus in it, which many walk over like hidden gold mines and know not the treasures beneath their feet. Let us reverence all the Bible. All is given by inspiration and all is profitable. One part throws light upon another, and no part can ever be neglected without loss and damage to our souls. A boastful contempt for the Old Testament Scriptures has often proved the first step towards infidelity.So as Jesus quotes Psalm 110, one thing to note is that the New Testament quotes Psalm 110 more than any other text from the Old Testament. 33 times it quotes Psalm 110. I'll read the whole passage of Psalm 110:1, "The Lord says to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.' The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, 'You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.' The Lord is at your right hand; he shall shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he shall shatter chiefs over the wide earth. He will drink from the brook by the way; and therefore he will lift up his head." So the same Lord that is referred to in Verse 1 is also referred to in Verse 4. There we read, "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek."So we see here that not only is the Lord on the throne, not only is the Lord the King, but he's also the priest. He's not a priest according to the order of Levi. He's a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. So whoever this Messiah is, yes, he's the son of David, but he's so much greater. His dignity is so much more profound because he is eternal. He's an eternal priest, an eternal king. "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." The messiah was thought to be a biological ancestor of David. Yet, David here is saying, "No, the Messiah is greater than I am, much more exalted than I am." Possesses a far greater dignity than David's own. In fact, David calls the Messiah, "My Lord," and Jesus' question is here, "How is the son of David called Lord by David?"That's the question of Verse 37. "David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son? And the great throng heard him gladly." The logic seems to be that no father calls a child or calls a son Lord. Therefore, if David calls the Messiah Lord, is it appropriate to call the Messiah just the son of David? How can the Messiah fulfill these prophecies about an eternal Messiah if he is simply David's son? This is what Jesus here is questioning. He's not denying his physical descent from King David. No. Jesus is from the tribe of Judah. He is the Lion of Judah.What he's saying is, "I need to expand your definition of the messiah." He's not just the son of David. He's not just the messiah for Israel. He's also the Son of God. That's why David calls his son Lord. By asking this provocative question, Jesus is letting the people know he's the Lord. He's the Lord that David referred to. Yes, he's the son of David. He's also the Son of God. If he is David's Lord, then his messianic mission cannot be limited simply to restoring the nation of Israel to its former greatness.Jesus' kingdom is not of this world; therefore, his kingdom is for the whole world. Jesus isn't just king of the Jews. He's not just king of Israel. He's not just king of Christians. He is king over everything. The question is, are we going to submit to him here and now and say, "Lord Jesus, I'm yours. I want to serve you. I love you. What would you have me do?" or do we wait until all of the enemies of Jesus Christ will be placed under his feet, including those who reject the gospel in this life?The irony is that David's Lord and descendant is standing in the very same temple which was designed to point Israel to Jesus Christ, and they don't recognize him. Although the people were amazed at his words, they definitely didn't fully understand what Jesus is saying. If they had, in a few days they would not have cried out, "Crucify him!" They heard him greatly. They received him gladly. Romans 1:3-4 makes this clear that Jesus is both the son of David and the Son of God. "...concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of in by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord."In the next passage, Jesus will impugn the characters of the scribes in the Sanhedrin, accusing them bluntly of oppressing and of their hypocrisy. Meaning, they mouth the words, "Yes, Lord. Yes, you're Yahweh. Yes, you're Adonai," but deep inside they had no love for the Lord, and therefore, they were hypocrites. Jesus shows us how much he hates hypocrisy. In point two: hate hypocrisy like Jesus. Psalm 97:10, "O you who love the Lord, hate evil! He preserves the lives of his saints; he delivers them from the hand of the wicked." One of the greatest forms of evil is hypocrisy because hypocrisy is evil masquerading as good. It's lies masquerading as truth. It's wolves in sheep clothing. How odious is the sin of hypocrisy in the sight of Jesus, so he says in Verse 38, "Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts."This is the irony of ironies that those who claim to love God the most, who claim to love the law of God the most, who view themselves as the guardian and defenders of the faith didn't know God. They didn't want the blessings of God as much as they wanted the trappings that came with religious service. They claimed to be zealots for God, but they devoted themselves entirely to presenting themselves as righteous, presenting themselves as holy. These men may strive to please God in some sense, but they love the perks of holiness. They love walking around in their flowing robes, receiving the greetings of the people, taking the seats of honor, talking as if they know the Lord when they don't.Then Jesus exposes that they're actually using this front, this façade, this posturing as a means to evil gain. When Jesus says, "Beware of the scribes," he's not just saying, "Okay, beware of those religious people out there." He's saying, "Beware of the same hypocrisy in their heart, beware of that same hypocrisy in your own." Hypocrisy is so dangerous because it's lies that people begin to believe themselves. It's self-delusion. If you think you're right with God, if you think you're righteous, if you think you're a good person, you start to begin believing that, and you want to be around people who think you're righteous. This is exactly what these people were doing. In an honor-conscious, Greco-Roman society, these distinctions about the robes and the seats and the positions of honor and the greetings, there were important signs of status. What Jesus is saying that that's what was most important to them than the delight of God the Father.Then Mark 12:40, "... who devour widows' houses and for pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation." They were devourers of the good of the poor saying they did so on the grounds of justice, but in reality they were destroying those on the fringes. Here Jesus rips off the scribes' mask of respectability to reveal the brutal, even demonic reality underneath. We see this in the words, "They love to be at feasts," where there was civilized dining, and then when no one's looking, they're devouring the houses of the widows. The same word for devour was used only one other time in Mark, in Mark 4:4 where Satan comes like the bird to eat the Word of God, the seed of the Word of God. These very pillars of society, men distinguished as such by dress and universal acclaim, they're revealed to be demonic abusers of the helpless, and then they use prayer as a means of veiling their assaults.To add insult to injury, in the book of Deuteronomy, the Levites were included along with the widows, the orphan, and the resident aliens as people who require societal support. So the Levites, they didn't own land, and because they didn't have land ownership, they relied on the people and the gifts of the people for their sustenance. But instead of relating to the widow and the orphan and the resident alien, they betrayed a sacred trust. They violated it and defrauded them. This is particularly heinous in the eyes of the Lord because God loves the widow, and he loves the orphan, and he loves the resident alien.The widow's house was often the sum total of her inheritance. That's all she had. What these scribes did was they would go to the widow and they'd say, "Well, have you paid your tithes to the temple? Oh, we see you have not." Then through their legalese, they would take the house away from the widow, and they would say, "We're giving it to the Lord." How does the Lord view this? He said they're going to receive great condemnation. They're going to receive God's justice. If you do not repent of your sin, justice will come down upon you for this law-breaking, for this heinous crime. The Old Testament often threatens with judgment those who oppress widows, orphans, and other helpless persons.The Lord hates defrauding. He hates robbing. If you've ever been robbed, if you've ever been defrauded, you know that feeling of violation. I was actually surprised by this. A neighbor ran up to me a little while back. He said, "Have you seen my daughter's bicycle?" They had parked it in the back of the condominium association, and then someone came and just took the bicycle. This is a very established, even-keeled gentleman. I will never forget the look of disgust as if he was violated. It's just a bicycle. Well, people defraud all the time, that we live in an evil world. The Lord sees and the Lord will bring justice. We as believers, we are to be thankful to the Lord for that, that the Lord hates evil and he will judge it. The question we got to ask, is there evil in my life, in my heart that the Lord hates, that the Lord wants to condemn? If so, I need to repent.That's how you battle hypocrisy. You battle hypocrisy by saying, "Lord, yes, I present myself as a follower of Christ, but when I get on my knees, I know my sin, I know my evil and you know it as well. Lord, forgive me. Lord give me grace and help me put this evil to death." These were people that used evil as... They used the excuse that good will come or we'll take the houses. We're going to build up the temple. Saint Paul writes in Romans 3:8, "Why not do evil that good may come? As some people slanderously charged us with saying, 'Their condemnation is just.'"Isaiah 10 makes this practice of the scribes as they oppress the widows clear. Isaiah 10:1, "Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil and that they may make the fatherless their prey! What will you do on the day of punishment in the ruin that will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help and where will you leave your wealth? Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain. For all this, his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still."The oppressors are said to defraud their victims with evil writs or iniquitous decrees or documents, documents that would come from a scribe. They would seize the property because they said, "Look, according to our documents, you haven't paid the tithes, so we're taking it." Jesus Christ, he hates this hypocrisy, he hates this injustice, he hates this evil, and above all else, he hates the fact that these people presented themselves as righteous and they're using their pseudo-righteousness as a cover for evil.The Lord reserved his strongest language, his strongest and heaviest denunciations against hypocrisy. Yes, it's bad enough to be led away and captive to open sin and to serve diverse lusts and pleasures, but it's even worse to pretend like you're having a living faith, but in reality, you serve the world. So we as believers, we have to be aware, "Beware," Jesus says, "of falling into this abominable sin, beware of ever putting on a cloak of hypocrisy." Let us be real, honest, thorough, and sincere in our following of Christ. We can trick people for a little while, but we will never trick God. God is not mocked. He's the discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart and his all-seeing eye pierces through the varnish, the tinsel which cover the unsound heart.Having predicted judgment of the scribes who devour widows' houses, Jesus now turns his gaze to an impoverished widow. He's sitting there watching as she gives, and he commends her for her generosity. The two passages are meant to be taken together. They're an illustration of the age-old motif of the two ways. There's two ways. You can either pretend to be a follower of the Lord but deep down inside it's just corruption and sin, or the path is offered to be like this widow where she is serving the Lord. No one sees, she thinks. It's all hidden, and her poverty is matched by her generosity. So we are to be careful to, yes, believe the right things but also live our lives in a way that our lives adorn the doctrine of Christ.This brings us to the third point: love sacrificial devotion like Jesus, Verse 41, "He sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums." It says he sat down, and the sitting could be significant, especially after Jesus just claimed to be the Lord sitting at the right hand of Yahweh, and he sits opposite the treasury. Most exegesis say this treasury is part of the Woman's Court that had 13 brass receptacles shaped like trumpets. You would come up to the brass receptacle that's shaped like a trumpet, and you'll put your coins in. There was no paper currency at the time. So when people threw the coins in, the more coins, the bigger the coins, the heavier the coins, the more noise they made.When this poor widow brings her money, there's not much noise. Verse 42, "A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny." This is the least valuable of the Roman coins, the smallest coin in circulation. She's giving all she has, but it's not much. Jesus is there. He's watching and he's sitting. Verse 43, "He called his disciples to him and said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box.'" All those contributing, Jesus is using that phrase collectively, that this one widow gave more, according to Jesus, than everyone else combined.Why? Because of Verse 44, "They all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." All she had to live on, that phrase is even her whole living. The word bios is used. It literally means life. She's given all she has. She's given her life, everything she had for her life. The crucial thing we learned is not the quantity that gives, but the scarcity from which one gives, what's subsequently left over. It's more commendable to give out of poverty than out of abundance, according to the Lord.I do want to point out that the Lord notices. The most sacrifices that we make for the Lord, no one sees, but the Lord does see, and the Lord does notice, and the Lord does keep track. The depth of the widow's sacrifice is emphasized by the repetition at the end. "She gives everything she has." When the rich young ruler came to Jesus Christ and said, "How can I obtain eternal life? How can I inherit eternal life?" Jesus says, "Go sell all that you have, all that you have." Here she gives all that she has.One thing to point out is, on the one hand, Jesus excoriates the Sanhedrin and the temple and the institution in this corruption. On the other hand, he points to this precious soul within the institution that doesn't know about all of the corruption. She's giving out of her love for the Lord. We see this example all throughout the Scriptures. In the Book of Luke, we see Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, all who go to the temple to pray as expressions of their piety. But then also in the Book of Acts, we see Stephen get up and preach a sermon in which he excoriates the temple and predicts its destruction by God.So it is possible to recognize the corruption of an institution, the venality of its officers, at the same time to admire the piety of the simple souls who devote themselves to an innocent faith. Jesus' point is that what sinful men and women regard as piety like the scribes did, well, Jesus doesn't really care about that. The scribes had their robes and they had their seats and they had their greetings. They thought they gave a lot to the Lord. But the Lord is saying he cares more about the precious state of the heart of this woman. When the kingdom of God comes in power, God reverses everything sinful. Yet, religious people think about what God expects.This week I celebrated my birthday. Someone asked me, "What'd you do?" I said, "I did my favorite thing. I did nothing." That's my favorite thing. I went for a walk. Then we had Raising Cane's with my girls in the evening. It was a very nice. Raising Cane's shout out with the secret sauce. Then my daughters gave me a little gifts, little note cards. My youngest daughter gives me this card that she drew. It's beautiful. "Dad, you're the best dad ever," thank you, thank you, and a big picture, beautiful, we're holding hands.Then I open it up. There's a dollar bill inside. I was like, "No way!" I was like, "A dollar bill?" I'm looking at it, I was like, "It's a dollar bill. Baby, do you know inflation? Come on. It's not worth anything. You can't buy a thing." Maybe that's why she gave it to me. "Dad, I know inflation." No, she's in the first grade. She doesn't know about that. It's all she had. This is like her greatest treasure. "I'm six. What can I get my dad? I'm going to make him a card, and I'm going to give him my net worth. Here you go, a dollar." I'm never going to spend that dollar. I've got it on my mantle. I'm never going to spend it. It's so precious to me.That's what the Lord is saying. God looks at the heart. God notices not how much, but from how much. God does not look at the size of the gift but the dimensions of the sacrifice behind it. God looks at the heart of the giver. The depth of the widow's sacrifice is emphasized by the repetition at the end. "She gives everything she has, even her whole living all of her life." The widow is a fitting conclusion to the Lord's public ministry and is called to discipleship. Jesus said, "This is what it means to follow me. You take up your cross, deny yourself daily, and follow me." Here she is, a true disciple because she's lost her life for his sake, as Jesus says all true disciples will do.He, like her, will also give everything he has for the temple, but not the second temple, but the third temple. With his sacrifice on the cross, he's redeeming for himself a new people. Through those people, he creates a temple of the Spirit of God and a sanctuary not made by hands. This combination of self-sacrifice and eschatological construction will confound human ways of knowing. Jesus raises this contrast not to encourage us to give all that we have away, but rather to make the point that true piety, true faithfulness, true following of the Lord will often go unnoticed. True devotion will often go unnoticed because it's unassuming, because it's private.True piety is not a matter of mere external conformity to the law. Rather, true piety results from that faith to trust God to provide no matter what because he is a good God. But as Jesus insists, true righteousness isn't a matter of just outward demonstration. It's all about the heart. Then ultimately, we don't... Even with this widow, even this widow needed a righteousness that is not her own. She needed someone to die for her sins, to ransom her from the condemnation that we deserve. That's exactly what Jesus will do on the cross.So who is the Lord? Well, he is David's son, and he is also David's Lord. In other words, our Lord Jesus Christ here is saying that he is the Lord that demands that we love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. In the previous text, the scribe says, "What's the greatest commandment?" and Jesus says, "Here O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind." In our text, Jesus says, "I'm the Lord. Yahweh says to me, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.'"So what Jesus here is saying is that he is the ultimate object of worship. The fact that Jesus of Nazareth was and is Almighty God is the single fact that unlocks the secret of your existence and the secret of the existence of every human being. It is the single reason why we as Christians have every right, not just right, every duty, obligation, we have every right and duty to say that every human being must become a Christian, every human being must become a follower of Christ. It's for this reason that Jesus, the first century man, has no rivals. He has no successors. His life is unique and it is final.If you make the crucial discovery that Jesus is God, you can't avoid the conclusion that all of the other religions are not true. That Islam, which regards Jesus just as a prophet, but not even the ultimate prophet, that Islam and, for that matter, Judaism or Buddhism or any other human religion or philosophy is wrong at the very key point. They may be right about many things, but they're wrong about the most essential point. It is the fact that Jesus Christ is God that makes the Christian faith true and all the other religions and philosophies false at the bottom.In this text, we have two mysteries for the price of one. We have the plurality of the persons within the unity of the Godhead. We have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and we have the union of the Godhead and the manhood in the person of Jesus. He is the son of David; therefore, he is fully man. He is the Son of God; therefore, he is God himself. But mysterious as all this may be, the logic is clear and the logic is irresistible. If Jesus is God and died for the sins of the elect and obviously that and only that is the way of salvation, Jesus is the only way that we can be reconciled with God.For someone who has embraced Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the fact that he is both God and man makes him unquestionably deserving of our absolute and unquestioning loyalty. There's only two ways. Either you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind in this age, either you love Jesus Christ; or you are his enemy and you will be placed under his feet for all eternity. If you're not sure, today we urge you, we plead with you, turn to Jesus Christ in your heart of hearts in prayer and say, "Lord Jesus, forgive me for my sins. You are Lord. I am not. I have sinned. And Lord Jesus, forgive me. Give me grace and make me a person that is fully devoted to you no matter the sacrifice."1 Corinthians 12:3, "Therefore, I want you to understand that no one's speaking in the spirit of God ever says 'Jesus is accursed!' and no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord" except in the Holy Spirit." Then the concluding words of 1 Corinthians 16:22, "If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen."Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this text and we thank you that you are a God who loves us; therefore, you hate sin. On the cross, Lord, we see both your love for us in that you sent your Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for our sin. We also see your hatred of sin as you pour out your wrath on your Son as he bore our sins, the penalty for our sins. Lord Jesus, we pray that you continue to make us the people that love you, love your word, love the truth, and hate lies. Make us the people who long to be sincere in our walk with you. Make us the people who hate hypocrisy, beginning with the hypocrisy that's so close to our hearts. The Holy Spirit, continue to build us up as your church, the church of Jesus Christ. Continue to draw the elect and continue to use us powerfully as a witness here in the city. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston, or donate to this ministry, please visit mosaicboston.com. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you, the God of love, the living and loving God, sent your son Jesus Christ to live the life that we were supposed to live, he did it in our stead, and to die the death that we deserve to die for our law breaking. Jesus, we thank you that through your resurrection on that third day, on that first Sunday, the first resurrection day, you triumph over Satan's sin and death. The greatest enemies, our greatest enemies were placed as a foothold under your feet. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you are the life and the resurrection. You promise that whoever believes in you, though he die, will pass into eternal life. We thank you for the promise of the resurrection, that in the resurrection we will rise with glorified bodies, transformed bodies. We pray, Lord, that you continue to establish us by the power of the Holy Spirit in your will in obedience of faith.We thank you for the Holy Scriptures, Lord, and as we meditate on how Christ read the Scriptures, how he revered the Scriptures, how he submitted to them, I pray that you make us some people who love the holy Word of God and make us some people that long to be truly devout, sincere in our faith, knowing that your opinion of us is the one that matters most. Lord, make us the people that hate hypocrisy, hate hypocrisy within ourselves, that distance between what we show to the world and what we are inside and make us the people of integrity, integrated within loving you with all of our heart, with all of our strength, with all of our mind and strength. Lord bless our time, the Holy Word. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.We're continuing our sermon series through the Gospel of Mark called the Gospel of Mark and the Secret of God's Kingdom, Kingdom Come. The title of sermon today is Love God and Hate Lies. You've seen the yard sign, "Hate has no home here." Well, then God has no home there because God hates, and that sign hates God. God hates because God is love. Because he is love, there are things that he hates. In Proverbs 6:16-19 it says, "There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are in abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers."Our God is a God of perfect holiness; therefore, he must hate evil to remain in perfect holiness. And our God is a God of infinite love; therefore, he must hate that which destroys the object of his love lest he isn't loving. To love is to hate. To love God is to hate Satan. To love good is to hate evil. Proverbs 8:13 says, "The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance in the way of evil and perverted speech I hate." Or Romans 12:9, "Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good." So to love truth, we must hate lies.Psalm 119:163 says, "I hate and abhor falsehood, but I love your law." To love God's word is to hate any perversion of it, any adulteration of it, and to love the Gospel is to hate any false gospel. Galatians 1:8-9, "But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed." Strong words.A false gospel dishonors the person and the work of Christ, and Christ is the supreme object of God's love, the supreme display of his infinite goodness, and the one who accomplishes God's ultimate purpose to display his glory. In false gospels, they lead people away from Christ and the gospel by which they may be saved and enjoy forgiveness of sin, new life, and eternal happiness with God. God's love for people leads him to a place where he does hate that which leads them astray, which destroys them. And that's sin. God hates sin. In addition to its ugliness and opposition to the beauty of his holiness, sin ruins people. Therefore, loving God who loves people, he hates that which ruins them. True love hates that which hurts the object of God's love. To love sincerity is to hate hypocrisy. That's what we see in our text today, that Jesus hates hypocrisy. To conform to the image of Jesus Christ is to love what he loves and hate what he hates. Jesus loves God's Word; therefore, we are to love God's Word. Jesus loves the bride, the church; therefore, we are to love the church as Jesus did.Today we're in Mark 12:35-44. Would you look at the text with me? "And as Jesus taught in the temple, he said, 'How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?' David himself and the Holy Spirit declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I your enemies under your feet. David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son?"' And the great throng heard him gladly. And in his teaching he said, 'Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows' houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.'And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins which make a penny. He called his disciples to him and said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.'" This is the reading of God's holy and errant and fallible authoritative word. May he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.Three points to frame up our time. First, love the Scriptures like Jesus; second, hate hypocrisy like Jesus; and third, love sacrificial devotion like Jesus. First, love the Scriptures like Jesus. Having vanquished his opponents in a series of verbal duels against the synagogue, the Sanhedrin, the scribes of the Sanhedrin, we see this in Chapter 11, Chapter 12, he silenced the crowd. He silenced the religious establishment, the religious leaders. We know that through entering Jerusalem to the adulation of the crowds who cried out "Hosanna!" Then by entering the temple courtyard and driving out the merchants and the money changers, Jesus is throwing down the gauntlet. "Sanhedrin religious leaders, what are you going to do with the one who claims that he is the son of David, with the one who claims that the Messiah is here?"Through his actions, Jesus is messing with the support and the cash flow of the Sanhedrin. So they confront him publicly, and privately they plot to kill him. Jesus overturns their tables, and now he turns the tables against them. After a day of them questioning him, now he questions them with the question of the day. And the question is, "Is Jesus Lord? If Jesus is Lord, Sanhedrin, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to submit to Christ as Lord?" This is Verse 35, "As Jesus taught in the temple, he said, 'How can the scribes say that the Christ is the Son of God?'" In the Greek where it says, "He taught in the temple," it says, "He answered," meaning, he's answering their silence. He has silenced them. They should have then humbled themselves and said, "Lord, we humble ourselves underneath your authority and the teaching of Scripture," But that's not what they do. So he now answers their proud silence by asking them a question.Jesus had already entered Jerusalem in triumph. He has been hailed as the vanguard of David's restored dominion. This is the Messiah. He's here. The people have accepted him. Now Jesus is asking, "How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David?" He used the word Christ, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for messiah, the one who is anointed to be king. Jesus had accepted the Messianic praises. He is the son of David. But by asking this question and by starting this conversation, what Jesus is getting at is, is the messiah only the son of David? Because if the messiah is only the son of David, then the messiah is only king of Israel. That's what they thought. That's what Israel thought that the messiah is going to be. Because David was the greatest king Israel ever had, the messiah is David's son; therefore, the messiah is going to be a king just like David, a king of only Israel.This is where they wrongly assumed that God was the God of only Israel, that God was the God of only their people, only their nation. So Jesus here is expanding the definition of the messiah by asking, "How can the messiah be only David's son?" What the people could not see is that while Jesus came as Israel's Messiah, he didn't come to save Israel from Rome. He didn't come to save them from the occupying forces. He didn't come to restore Israel to their former glory. He came to save them. He came to save them from their sins, but not just them, also people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. Their expectations were not too high for the Messiah. They were too low. The scribes of Jesus' day interpreted the messianic prophecies to mean that Israel's messiah would be a biological descendant of David and a great king to return Israel to its greatness.This makes all the more surprising what happens next. Jesus goes on the offensive, not against pagans, but against Jewish scribes who teach that the messiah is simply the son of David. So Jesus in Verse 36 says, "David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet."'" Here King Jesus quotes Psalm 1:10, which was authored by David, but Jesus doesn't say, "David himself declared." He says, "David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared." Here Jesus is revealing how he viewed Scripture, how he viewed the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, as we call it, that the Holy Spirit is the one that penned the Scriptures through David, through the authors.Here we see the Holy Trinity. The Spirit is writing through King David, and then it says the Lord, that first Lord in the Hebrew is Yahweh, that's God the Father, and the second Lord is Adonai, which is Lord, which is Jesus Christ. So God the Father says to God the Son, "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." We have the Holy Trinity right there in that text.But how does this inform your understanding of Holy Scripture? Do you view Holy Scripture as Jesus did that it was written by the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. 2 Peter 1:16 says, "For we do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was born to him by the Majestic Glory, 'This is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased,' we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns in the morning, star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."I find J.C. Ryle's comments here extremely relevant. He says the following, "Let us learn in the first place from these verses how much there is about Christ in the Old Testament Scriptures. Our Lord desires to expose the ignorance of the Jewish teachers about the true nature of the Messiah." He does it by referring to a passage in the Book of Psalms and showing that the scribes did not rightly understand it. In so doing, he shows us that one subject about which David was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write was Christ. We know from our Lord's own words in another place that the Old Testament Scriptures testify of Christ, John 5:39, "They were intended to teach men about Christ by types and figures and prophecy until he himself should appear on Earth."We should always keep this in mind in reading the Old Testament, but never so much as in reading the Psalms. Christ is undoubtedly to be found in every part of the law in the prophets, but nowhere is he so much to be found as in the Book of Psalms. His experience and sufferings as first coming into the world, his future glory and his final triumph as second coming are the chief subjects of many a passage in that wonderful part of God's word. It is a true saying that we should look for Christ quite as much as David in reading the Psalms.Let us beware of undervaluing or despising the Old Testament. In its place and proportion, the Old Testament is just as valuable as the New. There are probably many rich passages in that part of the Bible which have never yet been fully explored. There are deep things about Jesus in it, which many walk over like hidden gold mines and know not the treasures beneath their feet. Let us reverence all the Bible. All is given by inspiration and all is profitable. One part throws light upon another, and no part can ever be neglected without loss and damage to our souls. A boastful contempt for the Old Testament Scriptures has often proved the first step towards infidelity.So as Jesus quotes Psalm 110, one thing to note is that the New Testament quotes Psalm 110 more than any other text from the Old Testament. 33 times it quotes Psalm 110. I'll read the whole passage of Psalm 110:1, "The Lord says to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.' The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, 'You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.' The Lord is at your right hand; he shall shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he shall shatter chiefs over the wide earth. He will drink from the brook by the way; and therefore he will lift up his head." So the same Lord that is referred to in Verse 1 is also referred to in Verse 4. There we read, "The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek."So we see here that not only is the Lord on the throne, not only is the Lord the King, but he's also the priest. He's not a priest according to the order of Levi. He's a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. So whoever this Messiah is, yes, he's the son of David, but he's so much greater. His dignity is so much more profound because he is eternal. He's an eternal priest, an eternal king. "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." The messiah was thought to be a biological ancestor of David. Yet, David here is saying, "No, the Messiah is greater than I am, much more exalted than I am." Possesses a far greater dignity than David's own. In fact, David calls the Messiah, "My Lord," and Jesus' question is here, "How is the son of David called Lord by David?"That's the question of Verse 37. "David himself calls him Lord. So how is he his son? And the great throng heard him gladly." The logic seems to be that no father calls a child or calls a son Lord. Therefore, if David calls the Messiah Lord, is it appropriate to call the Messiah just the son of David? How can the Messiah fulfill these prophecies about an eternal Messiah if he is simply David's son? This is what Jesus here is questioning. He's not denying his physical descent from King David. No. Jesus is from the tribe of Judah. He is the Lion of Judah.What he's saying is, "I need to expand your definition of the messiah." He's not just the son of David. He's not just the messiah for Israel. He's also the Son of God. That's why David calls his son Lord. By asking this provocative question, Jesus is letting the people know he's the Lord. He's the Lord that David referred to. Yes, he's the son of David. He's also the Son of God. If he is David's Lord, then his messianic mission cannot be limited simply to restoring the nation of Israel to its former greatness.Jesus' kingdom is not of this world; therefore, his kingdom is for the whole world. Jesus isn't just king of the Jews. He's not just king of Israel. He's not just king of Christians. He is king over everything. The question is, are we going to submit to him here and now and say, "Lord Jesus, I'm yours. I want to serve you. I love you. What would you have me do?" or do we wait until all of the enemies of Jesus Christ will be placed under his feet, including those who reject the gospel in this life?The irony is that David's Lord and descendant is standing in the very same temple which was designed to point Israel to Jesus Christ, and they don't recognize him. Although the people were amazed at his words, they definitely didn't fully understand what Jesus is saying. If they had, in a few days they would not have cried out, "Crucify him!" They heard him greatly. They received him gladly. Romans 1:3-4 makes this clear that Jesus is both the son of David and the Son of God. "...concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of in by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord."In the next passage, Jesus will impugn the characters of the scribes in the Sanhedrin, accusing them bluntly of oppressing and of their hypocrisy. Meaning, they mouth the words, "Yes, Lord. Yes, you're Yahweh. Yes, you're Adonai," but deep inside they had no love for the Lord, and therefore, they were hypocrites. Jesus shows us how much he hates hypocrisy. In point two: hate hypocrisy like Jesus. Psalm 97:10, "O you who love the Lord, hate evil! He preserves the lives of his saints; he delivers them from the hand of the wicked." One of the greatest forms of evil is hypocrisy because hypocrisy is evil masquerading as good. It's lies masquerading as truth. It's wolves in sheep clothing. How odious is the sin of hypocrisy in the sight of Jesus, so he says in Verse 38, "Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts."This is the irony of ironies that those who claim to love God the most, who claim to love the law of God the most, who view themselves as the guardian and defenders of the faith didn't know God. They didn't want the blessings of God as much as they wanted the trappings that came with religious service. They claimed to be zealots for God, but they devoted themselves entirely to presenting themselves as righteous, presenting themselves as holy. These men may strive to please God in some sense, but they love the perks of holiness. They love walking around in their flowing robes, receiving the greetings of the people, taking the seats of honor, talking as if they know the Lord when they don't.Then Jesus exposes that they're actually using this front, this façade, this posturing as a means to evil gain. When Jesus says, "Beware of the scribes," he's not just saying, "Okay, beware of those religious people out there." He's saying, "Beware of the same hypocrisy in their heart, beware of that same hypocrisy in your own." Hypocrisy is so dangerous because it's lies that people begin to believe themselves. It's self-delusion. If you think you're right with God, if you think you're righteous, if you think you're a good person, you start to begin believing that, and you want to be around people who think you're righteous. This is exactly what these people were doing. In an honor-conscious, Greco-Roman society, these distinctions about the robes and the seats and the positions of honor and the greetings, there were important signs of status. What Jesus is saying that that's what was most important to them than the delight of God the Father.Then Mark 12:40, "... who devour widows' houses and for pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation." They were devourers of the good of the poor saying they did so on the grounds of justice, but in reality they were destroying those on the fringes. Here Jesus rips off the scribes' mask of respectability to reveal the brutal, even demonic reality underneath. We see this in the words, "They love to be at feasts," where there was civilized dining, and then when no one's looking, they're devouring the houses of the widows. The same word for devour was used only one other time in Mark, in Mark 4:4 where Satan comes like the bird to eat the Word of God, the seed of the Word of God. These very pillars of society, men distinguished as such by dress and universal acclaim, they're revealed to be demonic abusers of the helpless, and then they use prayer as a means of veiling their assaults.To add insult to injury, in the book of Deuteronomy, the Levites were included along with the widows, the orphan, and the resident aliens as people who require societal support. So the Levites, they didn't own land, and because they didn't have land ownership, they relied on the people and the gifts of the people for their sustenance. But instead of relating to the widow and the orphan and the resident alien, they betrayed a sacred trust. They violated it and defrauded them. This is particularly heinous in the eyes of the Lord because God loves the widow, and he loves the orphan, and he loves the resident alien.The widow's house was often the sum total of her inheritance. That's all she had. What these scribes did was they would go to the widow and they'd say, "Well, have you paid your tithes to the temple? Oh, we see you have not." Then through their legalese, they would take the house away from the widow, and they would say, "We're giving it to the Lord." How does the Lord view this? He said they're going to receive great condemnation. They're going to receive God's justice. If you do not repent of your sin, justice will come down upon you for this law-breaking, for this heinous crime. The Old Testament often threatens with judgment those who oppress widows, orphans, and other helpless persons.The Lord hates defrauding. He hates robbing. If you've ever been robbed, if you've ever been defrauded, you know that feeling of violation. I was actually surprised by this. A neighbor ran up to me a little while back. He said, "Have you seen my daughter's bicycle?" They had parked it in the back of the condominium association, and then someone came and just took the bicycle. This is a very established, even-keeled gentleman. I will never forget the look of disgust as if he was violated. It's just a bicycle. Well, people defraud all the time, that we live in an evil world. The Lord sees and the Lord will bring justice. We as believers, we are to be thankful to the Lord for that, that the Lord hates evil and he will judge it. The question we got to ask, is there evil in my life, in my heart that the Lord hates, that the Lord wants to condemn? If so, I need to repent.That's how you battle hypocrisy. You battle hypocrisy by saying, "Lord, yes, I present myself as a follower of Christ, but when I get on my knees, I know my sin, I know my evil and you know it as well. Lord, forgive me. Lord give me grace and help me put this evil to death." These were people that used evil as... They used the excuse that good will come or we'll take the houses. We're going to build up the temple. Saint Paul writes in Romans 3:8, "Why not do evil that good may come? As some people slanderously charged us with saying, 'Their condemnation is just.'"Isaiah 10 makes this practice of the scribes as they oppress the widows clear. Isaiah 10:1, "Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil and that they may make the fatherless their prey! What will you do on the day of punishment in the ruin that will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help and where will you leave your wealth? Nothing remains but to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain. For all this, his anger has not turned away, and his hand is stretched out still."The oppressors are said to defraud their victims with evil writs or iniquitous decrees or documents, documents that would come from a scribe. They would seize the property because they said, "Look, according to our documents, you haven't paid the tithes, so we're taking it." Jesus Christ, he hates this hypocrisy, he hates this injustice, he hates this evil, and above all else, he hates the fact that these people presented themselves as righteous and they're using their pseudo-righteousness as a cover for evil.The Lord reserved his strongest language, his strongest and heaviest denunciations against hypocrisy. Yes, it's bad enough to be led away and captive to open sin and to serve diverse lusts and pleasures, but it's even worse to pretend like you're having a living faith, but in reality, you serve the world. So we as believers, we have to be aware, "Beware," Jesus says, "of falling into this abominable sin, beware of ever putting on a cloak of hypocrisy." Let us be real, honest, thorough, and sincere in our following of Christ. We can trick people for a little while, but we will never trick God. God is not mocked. He's the discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart and his all-seeing eye pierces through the varnish, the tinsel which cover the unsound heart.Having predicted judgment of the scribes who devour widows' houses, Jesus now turns his gaze to an impoverished widow. He's sitting there watching as she gives, and he commends her for her generosity. The two passages are meant to be taken together. They're an illustration of the age-old motif of the two ways. There's two ways. You can either pretend to be a follower of the Lord but deep down inside it's just corruption and sin, or the path is offered to be like this widow where she is serving the Lord. No one sees, she thinks. It's all hidden, and her poverty is matched by her generosity. So we are to be careful to, yes, believe the right things but also live our lives in a way that our lives adorn the doctrine of Christ.This brings us to the third point: love sacrificial devotion like Jesus, Verse 41, "He sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums." It says he sat down, and the sitting could be significant, especially after Jesus just claimed to be the Lord sitting at the right hand of Yahweh, and he sits opposite the treasury. Most exegesis say this treasury is part of the Woman's Court that had 13 brass receptacles shaped like trumpets. You would come up to the brass receptacle that's shaped like a trumpet, and you'll put your coins in. There was no paper currency at the time. So when people threw the coins in, the more coins, the bigger the coins, the heavier the coins, the more noise they made.When this poor widow brings her money, there's not much noise. Verse 42, "A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny." This is the least valuable of the Roman coins, the smallest coin in circulation. She's giving all she has, but it's not much. Jesus is there. He's watching and he's sitting. Verse 43, "He called his disciples to him and said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box.'" All those contributing, Jesus is using that phrase collectively, that this one widow gave more, according to Jesus, than everyone else combined.Why? Because of Verse 44, "They all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on." All she had to live on, that phrase is even her whole living. The word bios is used. It literally means life. She's given all she has. She's given her life, everything she had for her life. The crucial thing we learned is not the quantity that gives, but the scarcity from which one gives, what's subsequently left over. It's more commendable to give out of poverty than out of abundance, according to the Lord.I do want to point out that the Lord notices. The most sacrifices that we make for the Lord, no one sees, but the Lord does see, and the Lord does notice, and the Lord does keep track. The depth of the widow's sacrifice is emphasized by the repetition at the end. "She gives everything she has." When the rich young ruler came to Jesus Christ and said, "How can I obtain eternal life? How can I inherit eternal life?" Jesus says, "Go sell all that you have, all that you have." Here she gives all that she has.One thing to point out is, on the one hand, Jesus excoriates the Sanhedrin and the temple and the institution in this corruption. On the other hand, he points to this precious soul within the institution that doesn't know about all of the corruption. She's giving out of her love for the Lord. We see this example all throughout the Scriptures. In the Book of Luke, we see Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, all who go to the temple to pray as expressions of their piety. But then also in the Book of Acts, we see Stephen get up and preach a sermon in which he excoriates the temple and predicts its destruction by God.So it is possible to recognize the corruption of an institution, the venality of its officers, at the same time to admire the piety of the simple souls who devote themselves to an innocent faith. Jesus' point is that what sinful men and women regard as piety like the scribes did, well, Jesus doesn't really care about that. The scribes had their robes and they had their seats and they had their greetings. They thought they gave a lot to the Lord. But the Lord is saying he cares more about the precious state of the heart of this woman. When the kingdom of God comes in power, God reverses everything sinful. Yet, religious people think about what God expects.This week I celebrated my birthday. Someone asked me, "What'd you do?" I said, "I did my favorite thing. I did nothing." That's my favorite thing. I went for a walk. Then we had Raising Cane's with my girls in the evening. It was a very nice. Raising Cane's shout out with the secret sauce. Then my daughters gave me a little gifts, little note cards. My youngest daughter gives me this card that she drew. It's beautiful. "Dad, you're the best dad ever," thank you, thank you, and a big picture, beautiful, we're holding hands.Then I open it up. There's a dollar bill inside. I was like, "No way!" I was like, "A dollar bill?" I'm looking at it, I was like, "It's a dollar bill. Baby, do you know inflation? Come on. It's not worth anything. You can't buy a thing." Maybe that's why she gave it to me. "Dad, I know inflation." No, she's in the first grade. She doesn't know about that. It's all she had. This is like her greatest treasure. "I'm six. What can I get my dad? I'm going to make him a card, and I'm going to give him my net worth. Here you go, a dollar." I'm never going to spend that dollar. I've got it on my mantle. I'm never going to spend it. It's so precious to me.That's what the Lord is saying. God looks at the heart. God notices not how much, but from how much. God does not look at the size of the gift but the dimensions of the sacrifice behind it. God looks at the heart of the giver. The depth of the widow's sacrifice is emphasized by the repetition at the end. "She gives everything she has, even her whole living all of her life." The widow is a fitting conclusion to the Lord's public ministry and is called to discipleship. Jesus said, "This is what it means to follow me. You take up your cross, deny yourself daily, and follow me." Here she is, a true disciple because she's lost her life for his sake, as Jesus says all true disciples will do.He, like her, will also give everything he has for the temple, but not the second temple, but the third temple. With his sacrifice on the cross, he's redeeming for himself a new people. Through those people, he creates a temple of the Spirit of God and a sanctuary not made by hands. This combination of self-sacrifice and eschatological construction will confound human ways of knowing. Jesus raises this contrast not to encourage us to give all that we have away, but rather to make the point that true piety, true faithfulness, true following of the Lord will often go unnoticed. True devotion will often go unnoticed because it's unassuming, because it's private.True piety is not a matter of mere external conformity to the law. Rather, true piety results from that faith to trust God to provide no matter what because he is a good God. But as Jesus insists, true righteousness isn't a matter of just outward demonstration. It's all about the heart. Then ultimately, we don't... Even with this widow, even this widow needed a righteousness that is not her own. She needed someone to die for her sins, to ransom her from the condemnation that we deserve. That's exactly what Jesus will do on the cross.So who is the Lord? Well, he is David's son, and he is also David's Lord. In other words, our Lord Jesus Christ here is saying that he is the Lord that demands that we love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. In the previous text, the scribe says, "What's the greatest commandment?" and Jesus says, "Here O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind." In our text, Jesus says, "I'm the Lord. Yahweh says to me, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.'"So what Jesus here is saying is that he is the ultimate object of worship. The fact that Jesus of Nazareth was and is Almighty God is the single fact that unlocks the secret of your existence and the secret of the existence of every human being. It is the single reason why we as Christians have every right, not just right, every duty, obligation, we have every right and duty to say that every human being must become a Christian, every human being must become a follower of Christ. It's for this reason that Jesus, the first century man, has no rivals. He has no successors. His life is unique and it is final.If you make the crucial discovery that Jesus is God, you can't avoid the conclusion that all of the other religions are not true. That Islam, which regards Jesus just as a prophet, but not even the ultimate prophet, that Islam and, for that matter, Judaism or Buddhism or any other human religion or philosophy is wrong at the very key point. They may be right about many things, but they're wrong about the most essential point. It is the fact that Jesus Christ is God that makes the Christian faith true and all the other religions and philosophies false at the bottom.In this text, we have two mysteries for the price of one. We have the plurality of the persons within the unity of the Godhead. We have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and we have the union of the Godhead and the manhood in the person of Jesus. He is the son of David; therefore, he is fully man. He is the Son of God; therefore, he is God himself. But mysterious as all this may be, the logic is clear and the logic is irresistible. If Jesus is God and died for the sins of the elect and obviously that and only that is the way of salvation, Jesus is the only way that we can be reconciled with God.For someone who has embraced Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, the fact that he is both God and man makes him unquestionably deserving of our absolute and unquestioning loyalty. There's only two ways. Either you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind in this age, either you love Jesus Christ; or you are his enemy and you will be placed under his feet for all eternity. If you're not sure, today we urge you, we plead with you, turn to Jesus Christ in your heart of hearts in prayer and say, "Lord Jesus, forgive me for my sins. You are Lord. I am not. I have sinned. And Lord Jesus, forgive me. Give me grace and make me a person that is fully devoted to you no matter the sacrifice."1 Corinthians 12:3, "Therefore, I want you to understand that no one's speaking in the spirit of God ever says 'Jesus is accursed!' and no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord" except in the Holy Spirit." Then the concluding words of 1 Corinthians 16:22, "If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus. Amen."Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this text and we thank you that you are a God who loves us; therefore, you hate sin. On the cross, Lord, we see both your love for us in that you sent your Son, Jesus Christ, to pay the penalty for our sin. We also see your hatred of sin as you pour out your wrath on your Son as he bore our sins, the penalty for our sins. Lord Jesus, we pray that you continue to make us the people that love you, love your word, love the truth, and hate lies. Make us the people who long to be sincere in our walk with you. Make us the people who hate hypocrisy, beginning with the hypocrisy that's so close to our hearts. The Holy Spirit, continue to build us up as your church, the church of Jesus Christ. Continue to draw the elect and continue to use us powerfully as a witness here in the city. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

"The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!" Luke 2:11 Catch a Christmas greeting from Pastor Greg Laurie. — Listen to the Greg Laurie Podcast Become a Harvest PartnerSupport the show: https://harvest.org/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week, for the third week of Advent, we hear from, Pastor Phil on joy and the Song of the Angels from Luke 2.8-20 Sunday, December 17, 2023   Sermon Audio:   Sermon Video: Sermon videos will no longer be available. Please reach out to info@nowalls.org for more information. The post Savior, Messiah, Lord appeared first on Church Without Walls.

John Piper | When Jesus asks the Pharisees how David calls the Messiah “Lord,” they refuse to answer. What made that seemingly simple question so incendiary?

The disciples later came to a conclusion on who exactly Jesus was after resurrection. The opinion of the majority in Israel did not matter to them anymore and neither did anything else. What is/are the basis of your conviction?

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth — who was sent here when the fullness of time had come, the Son of God born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons — and thus fulfill our holy calling to which God has called us according to his own purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel…This is the gift of Jesus to this world — he is the gift we've just celebrated during Christmas, and of course our celebrations don't stop now but they continue throughout the whole year because Jesus is still the gift — not who had been given but who is being given in this exact moment. There is not just a Christmas Day and a Christmas season, but we are in the Christmas age of world history. And untold peoples for untold years in untold ways have longed for such a gift in such an age. Because apart from God, we abound in darkness and we are deprived of hope. Apart from God, every human soul is fully lost and meaningless. And deep in each of our persons we know what that's like. We know what it's like to be distant from God and we want so badly to bridge that distance. Whether it's the pursuit of worldly pleasure or the embrace of man-made religion, the whole story of this world, from one angle, is our desperate attempt to find God. We want to experience the happiness that would be in God's presence; we want to know the purpose that would come from God's design. We all want that, and collectively, we as mankind have searched for that down a trillion dead-end roads, and we never find what we're looking for. And then God comes and says here. Here is all of that! And he gives, which is why it's a gift, and the gift is Jesus. Jesus is the voice of God to us, the way of God for us, the reign of God in us and over us. And he is new, in that no gift like him has ever been given before; and he is final, in that no gift like him will ever be given again. Jesus is the ultimate, definitive, world-changing, history-defining gift and he's right here, standing in front of your heart's face. Now I don't know if you've ever imagined your heart as having a face, but think about that for a minute, and imagine that Jesus is standing right there. Jesus is right in front of the deepest part of you. And what are you gonna do? You gonna try to go somewhere else? Why would you go somewhere else?Welcome to the Book of Hebrews.For most of this entire year on Sunday mornings we're going to be in this book, and it is a book of Jesus in your heart's face. Historically, the Book of Hebrews has been considered a letter, although it's not like the other letters in the New Testament, because it doesn't start like a letter at all. There's no sender or addressee mentioned; there's no greeting; the book just starts with the Jesus, right here in your heart's face.According to some clues later on in the book, most likely Hebrews was actually a sermon for the early church (if you were to read the entire book out loud it'd take you 45 minutes — which is a solid sermon length). The prose here is careful; the arguments are beautiful; the repetitions are strategic; and Jesus is front and center throughout the whole thing. What we read about the glory of Jesus in these first four verses echoes through the rest of the book.And we have the whole year to see this unfolding logic of Hebrews, but as we get started today, I at least want to give a broad introduction to the book as a whole. I think we could summarize the overall message of Hebrews to simply be a solution to a problem. A solution to a problem.So what's the problem? What's the solution? Those are the two points of today's sermon. Here's the first:1) The problem is the possibility of our apostasy. Now, when I use that word apostasy I want you to think the opposite of endurance. If endurance means to press on and hold fast, apostasy means to turn back and fall away. Endurance is to persevere in faith; apostasy is to abandon faith. And abandoning faith is a real temptation for us in real-time. Now there are some deep theological waters we can get into here, and we're going to go there in this series. But briefly, when it comes to apostasy, we know plainly from 1 John Chapter 2 that those who fall away from the faith were never actually in the faith. If you end up abandoning Jesus you only prove that you never actually knew him in the first place. But if you do know him, if you are born again, if you are united to Jesus, then you are secure forever. Jesus himself says of his people, his sheep, John Chapter 10, verse 27: “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” Jesus is saying he's got you, and that's an amazing promise. So at a high level, the basics are this: If you fall away you were not actually in. If you are truly in, you will not fall away.Everybody get that?We have eternal security in the salvation of Jesus, and that is peace for us. We rest here. And, at the same time, we should be aware of ways that eternal security has been misapplied.I saw this growing up in church. Growing up in the church where I did, there was a teaching I heard all the time that said “once saved, always saved.” I'm not sure if that's a phrase you've heard before, but “once saved, always saved” is a big deal among Christians in some parts of our world, and it is absolutely true at face-value. Once you are saved — in that God resurrects you from spiritual deadness — if God does that you are always saved. God doesn't make you spiritually alive and then later reverses that. When you are saved, you are always saved. The mis-application of that truth, though, has to do with the meaning of being saved. In a lot of places “being saved” just meant that you had to walk down an aisle during an altar call and ‘pray' a prayer. “Being saved” was reduced down to basically doing a thing and checking the box, and then you could go live however you wanted and have nothing to do with Jesus at all.And I say this with a sickness in my stomach, but there are countless people in our country, where I'm from, who blatantly deny Jesus in how they live — they care little to nothing about Jesus; they're not actively involved in a church — but they and everyone around them thinks they're Christians because they repeated some words one time. They think that they were “once saved” and therefore, they think they're always saved.The “saved” part is what they get wrong, and it's a deadly error. It's one that we reject expressly through church discipline. If you say you belong to Jesus but your behavior repeatedly denies him and you don't repent, the local church is meant to help you by saying that we don't think you actually belong to Jesus.Remember that to be saved is to be saved to God. Saving faith in Jesus is to receive him as Lord, Savior, and Treasure; it means we worship him; we cling to him; we surrender to him as our only hope, and yes he forgives us, and unites us to himself, and we are in.And if we're in, we are secure, we won't fall away. But how do we know we're in?That's the question, right? How do we know if we're really saved. Well we know we're saved because God keeps us in that we believe. We press on. We hold fast. We endure in faith. We trust right now in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and the fulfillment of all God's promises.And that exhortation for us to trust, to believe, to hold fast — that is a vital on-going exhortation in the Christian life and its one that we see repeated in the Book of Hebrews. Because apostasy is a possibility. People have fallen away. People do fall away. So don't.The Pull of ApostasyAnd I wanna get to the solution as soon as possible, but I need to say one more thing about apostasy. I want to pop the hood on apostasy for a minute and show you more about how it works, and this is the way I want to summarize it: apostasy is always a pull from something else. I'll put it like this: nobody abandons Jesus because they pursued Jesus and found him lacking. People abandon Jesus because they suspect that they will have it better somewhere else. Jesus doesn't push people away from him; but people are pulled away from him by something else. For the original audience of Hebrews, that something else was Judaism. The first hearers of this sermon were Jewish Christians — they were Jewish people who had embraced the gospel, trusted Jesus as their Messiah, they had become Christians — but some of them had started to fall away back into Judaism. Most likely there was some kind of persecution going on. Christians were taking some heat. And apparently the pull away from Jesus was the short-sighted idea that “if I leave Jesus and go over there I won't get mistreated.” They thought: “Things will be better for me apart from Jesus and his people.” That was the pull.And you might think that's silly, but “pulls” like that still happen today. It's probably not Judaism for us like it was for this first audience, but there are “something elses” all around us in this world. And that “something else” doesn't encourage you toward Jesus, but it pulls you away from him. And they're not necessarily hostile things, sometimes it's just the stuff of life, what Jesus called: “the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desire for other things” (see Mark 4:19). Something elses. They're the kind of things that makes being a Christian seem uncomfortable or inconvenient.You know, in our language we use the phrase often of a “nominal Christian.” We mean someone who claims to be a Christian but isn't really serious about it. Where I grew up, they were called “backslidden Christians.” And I know what they're like because I used to be one. You just go through the motions and do all the external things.Well, look, in reality, whatever we name that category, the so-called nominal Christian is actually just a non-Christian who doesn't know it yet because they've not been tested. They've not been pulled. Following Jesus has not been uncomfortable or inconvenient for them, yet.But it will be. You're going to get pulled. And many of us know what that's like. Some of us are getting pulled now in our current circumstances. There are things around us that would persuade us to forsake Jesus. And that's a problem. All of this is a problem that is there all the time, and so what do we do? What's the solution to this problem?2) The solution is to hold fast to Jesus.And you might be thinking wait a minute… Hearer: So you're saying the problem is that we could fall away, and the solution is to hold fast? That's like saying the solution to falling away is to not fall away.Me: And that's right. I'm saying to do the opposite of falling away. Hold fast. Hearer: And hold fast to what? Me: Hold fast to Jesus and the hope that we have in him, which we do by remembering him. We must see him. That's the purpose of Jesus in your heart's face — which is how Hebrews starts. We're not first bombarded by the problem, but instead the Book of Hebrews starts by saying “Here he is! The Savior has come! Look at him! Look who he is! Look what he's done! Trust him!” That's what's going on in those first four verses, and it's absolutely glorious. In verses 1–4 we read ten facts about Jesus:He is the one through whom God has spoken He is appointed by God to be the heir of all things. He is the one through whom God created the world.He is the radiance of the glory of God. He is the exact imprint of God's nature.He upholds the universe by the word of his power.He made purification for sins.He afterwards sat down at the right hand of the Father.He is superior to angels.He has inherited a more excellent name. Historically, it was the Reformer John Calvin who first elaborated on the fact that Jesus as the Messiah means that Jesus serves in a threefold office —Jesus is the promised Messiah who has come — that's his office — but Calvin says that this office “enjoined upon Christ by the Father consists of three parts.” Jesus is Prophet, Priest, and King. And then later Reformed theologians developed this more. It's in all the Reformed catechisms, like our favorite, the Heidelberg Catechism: Question 31: Why is [Jesus] called “Christ,” meaning “anointed”? Answer: Because he has been ordained by God the Father and has been anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief prophet and teacher who fully reveals to us the secret counsel and will of God concerning our deliverance; our only high priest who has delivered us by the one sacrifice of his body, and who continually pleads our cause with the Father; and our eternal king who governs us by his Word and Spirit, and who guards us and keeps us in the freedom he has won for us. You heard the words there. The Catechism explains that Jesus is our chief prophet, our high priest, our eternal king. These are the three parts of his Messianic office and they give us a fuller picture of how Jesus is our Savior, and get this: we see all three parts in the Book of Hebrews (we actually see all three parts in these first four verses — right at the start). We see Jesus is the Prophet — God has spoken to us definitively in him (verse 2). We see that Jesus is the Priest — he has made purification for sins (verse 3). But the resounding theme we see here — the part that shines brightest in verses 1–4 is that Jesus is the King. We see his supremacy here. That he reigns.Just look at his preeminence — Jesus inherits all things and all things were made through him. That means he is the beginning and the end. “Radiance of God's glory!” That means he is the ray of light beaming forth from the perfections of God. This is why the Nicene Creed calls Jesus the Light from Light. “Exact imprint of God's nature!” That means Jesus is the precise representation of God's heart. It means God is Christlike, and in him there is no un-Christlikeness.Now look at his royal sovereignty — Jesus upholds the universe by the word of his power. Which means he is dependent upon nothing but all things are dependent upon him. What a king, right!?And then what makes the kingship of Jesus clearest here is in verse 3: “he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” And that's a really big deal because this phrase about Jesus sitting down at the right hand is an allusion back to Psalm 110, verse 1 when David writes, The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” You've probably heard that verse before. That is the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament. When the apostle Peter preached his ground-breaking sermon at Pentecost, in Acts 2, when the church was birthed, Peter concluded that sermon by quoting Psalm 110:1. That was the crescendo. Psalm 110:1 was also the verse that Jesus quoted to the Pharisees that finally shut their mouths. This is in Matthew 22. The Pharisees were altogether and Jesus asked them a question. He said: “What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” This is right — everyone knew the Messiah would come through the lineage of David.Verse 43, Then Jesus said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, Now where does David call the Messiah Lord? In Psalm 110. Jesus quotes it. Verse 44, The Lord said to my Lord,Sit at my right hand,until I put your enemies under your feet. Then Jesus says, Look…Verse 45, “If then David calls [the Messiah] Lord, how can [the Messiah] be his son?” And the Pharisees were speechless. Matthew tells us, “no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.” Why? Because Psalm 110 gets at the heart of who the Messiah is. There is an answer to the question Jesus asked. It wasn't rhetorical. Jesus asked how can David call his son, the Messiah, his Lord? The answer is that it's because the Messiah is not just the son of David; he is the Son of God! He is our divine Messianic King — that's what it means that Jesus sat down at the Father's right hand. It means he is our Messianic King who is reigning as God.The Unending VerdictAnd you know, if we take this all in — if we give honest attention to the testimony of Scripture about Jesus and if we look around honest about the world, we'd understand that Jesus is incomparable. He has no rival. He has no equal. But because there are pulls from something else, because apostasy is a possibility, the Book of Hebrews welcomes comparisons. Jesus is incomparable, but Hebrews says: Fine, give it a try. Put beside Jesus whatever you want. Compare him to whatever you want. The verdict is always the same. And that same verdict we first see here in verse 4 — this is the first time the word is used. It's the word translated here as “superior” — the Greek word kreitton — the word is used seven more times in Hebrews and it's translated as “better.” That's what it means. Jesus is better.And you know, if the main purpose of Hebrews is to encourage us to endure (to not fall away but to hold fast), and that means we must look at Jesus, which requires some level of comparison (of our seeing the superiority of Jesus to every possible alternative), then it's accurate, I think, to summarize this entire book in those three words: Jesus is better. Better than every something else. If you're going to hold fast to Jesus, you gotta know that. Take all the “something elses,” bring them altogether, put them side by side. Look at them all. Look at Jesus. Jesus is better.Do you believe that?The reason some of you have not surrendered your life to Jesus yet is because you don't think that's true. Jesus is standing in front of your heart's face and you're saying, “Yeah, I don't know.” What else are you looking for? What do you think could possibly be better than him?And that's a question for all of us, all throughout our lives, and what we need is what the Book of Hebrews does for us. This book shows us that Jesus is better by helping us to “see Christ exalted, bright and burning, full of power and purity.” Would that God do such a work in our hearts!Father in heaven, indeed, we ask that this year, through the Book of Hebrews, make us to behold your Son. Moses prayed and asked you to show him your glory, and we are asking the same thing when we pray for you to show us Jesus. Make us to see Jesus — our Prophet, Priest, and King. Make us to know that he is better. Make us to surrender everything that we are to him. For your glory, in his name, amen.

“One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, ‘What commandment is the foremost of all?' Yeshua answered, ‘The foremost is, “HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH” [Deuteronomy 6:4-5]. The second is this, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF” [Leviticus 19:18]. There is no other commandment greater than these.' The scribe said to Him, ‘Right, Teacher; You have truly stated that HE IS ONE, AND THERE IS NO ONE ELSE BESIDES HIM [Deuteronomy 6:4]; AND TO LOVE HIM WITH ALL THE HEART AND WITH ALL THE UNDERSTANDING AND WITH ALL THE STRENGTH, AND TO LOVE ONE'S NEIGHBOR AS HIMSELF [Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18], is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.' When Yeshua saw that he had answered intelligently, He said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.' After that, no one would venture to ask Him any more questions. And Yeshua began to say, as He taught in the temple, ‘How is it that the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself said in the Holy Spirit, “THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, ‘SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I PUT YOUR ENEMIES BENEATH YOUR FEET' [Psalm 110:1].” David himself calls Him “Lord”; so in what sense is He his son?' And the large crowd enjoyed listening to Him” (Mark 12:28-37, NASU). “But when the Pharisees heard that Yeshua had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?' And He said to him, ‘“YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND” [Deuteronomy 6:5]. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF” [Leviticus 19:18]. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets. Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Yeshua asked them a question: ‘What do you think about the Messiah, whose son is He?' They said to Him, ‘The son of David.' He said to them, ‘Then how does David in the Spirit call Him “Lord,” saying, “THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, ‘SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I PUT YOUR ENEMIES BENEATH YOUR FEET' [Psalm 110:1]”? If David then calls Him “Lord,” how is He his son?' No one was able to answer Him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask Him another question” (Matthew 22:35-46, NASU). “Then He said to them, ‘How is it that they say the Messiah is David's son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, “THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, ‘SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I MAKE YOUR ENEMIES A FOOTSTOOL FOR YOUR FEET'” [Psalm 110:1].' Therefore David calls Him “Lord,” and how is He his son?'” (Luke 20:41-44, NASU).

The Israelites continue to resist the Lord's correction, even attacking the justice and holiness of God. But their desire wasn’t for truth, only to be justified in their wrong actions & attitudes. Malachi mentions two messengers: John the Baptist and the Messiah. Malachi mentions two Lords: Yahweh God (LORD) and the Messiah (Lord). “Behold, He is coming, says the LORD of hosts.” We hear an additional word today: “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners...” (1 Timothy 1:15).

The Israelites continue to resist the Lord's correction, even attacking the justice and holiness of God. But their desire wasn’t for truth, only to be justified in their wrong actions & attitudes. Malachi mentions two messengers: John the Baptist and the Messiah. Malachi mentions two Lords: Yahweh God (LORD) and the Messiah (Lord). “Behold, He is coming, says the LORD of hosts.” We hear an additional word today: “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners...” (1 Timothy 1:15).

Kneeling to Know Him (Ephesians 3:14-21) Kneeling before the Father (3:14) It's been said that one of the best ways to discover a person's dreams and deepest anxieties is to listen to the content and the intensity of their prayers. So in Ephesians 3:14-21, we encounter the second of Paul's prayer for the local church at Ephesus. So we begin where Paul commences – on his knees before his heavenly Father. Kneeling is a posture familiar to the modern hearer. We invite penitent sinners to kneel before the cross, kneel at the altar, or kneel at their seat in prayer. However, the usual posture of worship in antiquity was standing. In Jesus's parable of prayer, both the proud Pharisee and the humble Publican stood to pray. If kneeling was unusual, why would Paul begin with such a posture? Over and over again, kneeling was a sign of submission and intensity. In the OT, God reminded Elijah that he was not alone for over 7000 prophets had not bowed the knee to Baal. Kneeling is a sign of allegiance and a posture of humility. Take-Home: How would you describe your posture before Yahweh right now? We have other examples in the Bible. In the NT, Jesus knelt with his face to the ground in the Garden of Gethsemane, a prayer so intense that Luke the physician described Jesus sweat' as becoming like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke22:44). Later, Stephen, the first Christian martyr, knelt before the Lord Jesus and prayed, “Lord do not hold this sin against them!” (Acts 7:60) Throughout Scripture, people knelt when uttering emotionally charged prayers. Take-Home: When was the last time you prayed and cried out to God from the depth of your soul? An emotionless faith is a shallow faith. The Staircase of Faith (3:16-19) As Paul kneels, with deep conviction, he begins to walk up the staircase of faith into the presence of His heavenly Father, an apostolic prayer that includes four steps: strength, love, knowledge, and fullness. When we pray, we must realize that God is no pauper as it would be foolish to ask an impoverished person to give you from his abundance. Instead, the riches of the Father are limitless. This is why we pray! Take-Home: Yahweh will never be impoverished by sharing his riches with his children. Ask freely. The first step in Paul's staircase of faith is strength. Strength is the word used for Ruth (1:18) when she is determined to stay beside Naomi even to the very end. You see, Paul is not praying that the Lord will turn every Ephesian into a body-builder. Instead, the strength of the Spirit is an inner fortitude forged by Jesus Christ dwelling in your heart. Paul is not addressing Christ coming into your life at the moment of salvation. Instead, the apostle's earnest prayer is that Jesus will be deeply rooted in the heart of all who call Messiah Lord. The word used for heart is the exact phrase used for a personal residence compared to lodging for the night. So when Jesus is at home in your life, and when the Spirit settles down in your heart, you will be strengthened with power in your inner being. Take-Home: Is Jesus “at home” in your life? Where the Savior reigns, strength resides. The second step of faith is that you would be rooted and established in agape love. Rooted is an agricultural term reminding us that every relationship with the Father begins with the soil of the Gospel. Established is an architectural term built on the Chief Cornerstone of Jesus. The love Paul describes is not your love to God, although a lofty goal. Instead, the apostle recounts God's love for you on display through His only begotten Son. Take-Home: Is your life rooted in the fertile soil of Jesus? Is your life built upon the foundation of Jesus' love towards you? The third step of faith in Paul's staircase is to know Christ: to comprehend and to know Christ's love that surpasses knowledge. To see the love of Jesus is to know Jesus Himself. To not know Jesus is not to know or experience His love. But don't think this is mere intellectual assent because this great everlasting agape surpasses knowledge. Love without Christ is hollow emotion. Knowledge of the Savior without love is legalism or fundamentalism. Take-Home: How can you know something that is beyond human comprehension? You experience it. When Paul personally experienced Jesus on the road to Damascus, his world changed forever. The fourth step of the Apostle's intercession is that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (3:19). At this point, we might throw our hands up in frustration and think Paul has lost his mind in solitary confinement. Yet, how can you be filled with the fullness of God? Indeed no human can aspire to such spiritual heights here on earth! From the very moment you receive the gift of salvation through faith, the Spirit begins to work, deep work, in your heart. God didn't save you to leave you where you were. Day by day, you are becoming mature and reaching the fullness that Christ already possesses. Just as Yahweh is perfect, one day, you will also be perfected through the blood of the Lamb. Take-Home: The Spirit works in every believer every day to complete God's full purposes in you. God is carrying you to completion ¬– > capacity Exaltation (3:20-21) I can imagine the Ephesians becoming short of breath as they walk up the staircase of Paul's prayer for the local church. These are not small requests. Yet, the prayer is not the end. Maybe you read this and think, “ this isn't possible, or this would never happen to me.” When you kneel before Yahweh and walk up the staircase of faith, you end in His presence with exaltation. The Father is able to do above anything that you can ask or think. The Word has a way of reminding us that there is nothing you can ask for or even conceive that is too big for the ableness of a Sovereign and Holy God. Take-Home: Yahweh's capacity for giving far exceeds your capacity for asking. For the child of God, there is no prayer you have ever uttered that went unheard. There is no prayer you have ever prayed that is too great for His riches. There is no worry in your life too overwhelming for His eternal peace. How did you respond to a God like this, the One True God? 21 to him be glory in the church and Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. Amen – praise of God uttered from the lips of a worshiper when something they heard was also an expression of their own heart. In Revelation, the last book in God's Holy Word, we find this title for Jesus Christ of Nazareth: Rev 3:14 “Write to the angel of the church in Laodicea: Thus says the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the originator of God's creation: Jesus Christ is the exact expression of God's own heart. He is the Amen, the faithful and true witness. What is the Lord's attitude towards you? Look at Jesus. Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day, he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty The love of Christ is broad enough to encompass all mankind, long enough to last for eternity, deep enough to reach the most degraded sinner, and high enough to exalt him to heaven. Now What? How do you respond to such a glorious Savior? You bow. As he knelt, Jesus' sweat poured out like drops of blood. As he knelt, Stephen was ushered into the presence of the Father. As he knelt, Paul's heart burst forth in praise – to him be the glory in the church and Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen. What would happen if the people of God knelt before a holy God? Yahweh's capacity for giving far exceeds your capacity for asking. Do you need to kneel and surrender your life for the first time and kneel before the King of Kings?

Alex Himaya - BattleCreek Church - 2021

Are you ready for some New Testament hype? My friend and colleague Dr. Matt Novenson is on the podcast. We have a bunch of fun. Matthew Novenson is Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh, where he is also director of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins. Check out his books: The Grammar of Messianism: An Ancient Jewish Political Idiom and Its Users Christ Among the Messiahs: Christ Language in Paul and Messiah Language in Ancient Judaism Paul, Then and Now Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are you ready for some New Testament hype? My friend and colleague Dr. Matt Novenson is on the podcast. We have a bunch of fun. Matthew Novenson is Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh, where he is also director of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins.… Read more about Matthew Novenson: Messiah, Lord, Logos, & Other Titles

Psalm 110 is perhaps the most important psalm of all 150. When Jesus asked the Pharisees, “Whose Son is He?” (Matt. 22:42), they replied that He is the son of David. Jesus challenged them and reminded them that David called the Messiah “Lord” in Ps. 110:1. “If David then calls Him “Lord,” how is He his Son?” In other words, the Messiah must be more than the son of David, He must be the Son of God.

Jesus confronts the religious leaders on his power and authority. We are reminded what it means to really declare Jesus Lord.

Alec Parkinson finds a lot in just two verses from Zechariah 9. There is a counter-cultural image of the king of peace on a donkey, but Alec challenges us to see both sides of the Messiah - Lord and Saviour.

Who was Jesus really? Narrated by Arline Pettway

NUMBERS 8-9:In Numbers 7, we heard about the gifts given by the leaders of Israel following the dedication of the sacred tent. PSALM 31:Psalm 31 is a desperate, yet confident, prayer for protection. This prayer models the secret of effective prayer— praying with full belief in the Lord. LUKE 20b:Yesterday’s reading in first part of Luke 20 showed how the Jewish leaders tried to confront and discredit Jesus. I remember reading these passages in the summer after 6th grade and being so impressed with Jesus' wisdom. GNT Translation notes:[Who it is who does the ‘waving’ in this ‘wave offering’ is variously interpreted in 8:13. And it could be taken simply as a presentation, because it would be rather hard to ‘wave’ this object.]Num. 8:13 [NLT  Then have the Levites stand in front of Aaron and his sons, and raise your hands and present them as a special offering to the LORD.//HCSB: … and you are to present them before the Lord as a presentation offering.//CEV: They will stand at my altar in front of Aaron and his sons, who will dedicate the Levites to me.//GNT: “Dedicate the Levites as a special gift to me, and put Aaron and his sons in charge of them.]====Ps. 31:21 [Let everyone] Praise the Lord!How wonderfully he showed his love for mewhen I was surrounded and attacked!23 [Listen, all his faithful people: Love the Lord!//Love the Lord, all his faithful people.]The Lord protects the faithful,but punishes the proud as they deserve.24 Be strong, be courageous,all you [who//that] hope in the Lord.====Luk. 20:27 Then some Sadducees, [the religious party] who say that people will not rise from death, came to Jesus and said, NLT Translation notes:Num. 8:13 [NLT Then have the Levites stand in front of Aaron and his sons, and raise your hands and present them as a special offering to the LORD.//HCSB: … and you are to present them before the Lord as a presentation offering.]]CEV: They will stand at my altar in front of Aaron and his sons, who will dedicate the Levites to me.] [Who it is who does the ‘waving’ in this ‘wave offering’ is variously interpreted.]====Ps. 31:21 Praise [you/the] LORD, for [you have//he has] shown me the wonders of [your/his] unfailing love.[You have//He] kept me safe when my city was under attack.====Luk. 20:8 And Jesus responded, “Then I won’t tell you [either/0] by what authority I do these things.”16 “I’ll tell you—he will come and kill those farmers and lease the vineyard to others.”[His listeners protested, “Oh, may such a thing never happen!”//“How terrible that such a thing should ever happen.”]19 The teachers of religious law and the leading priests wanted to arrest Jesus immediately because they realized he was telling the story against them—they were the wicked farmers. But they [did nothing because//0] they were afraid of the people’s reaction.23 He saw through their [duplicity/trickery] and said, 24 “Show me a Roman coin. Whose picture and title are stamped [here/0] on it?”37 “But now, as to whether the dead will be raised—even Moses proved this when he wrote about the burning bush. Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, he referred to the Lord d as ‘[the God Abraham worships//the God of Abraham], [the God Isaac worships//the God of Isaac], and [the God Jacob worships//the God of Jacob].’41 Then Jesus presented them with a [problem/question]. [“Note that there is a problem with the teaching that the Messiah will come as a descendant of David.”//”Why is it,” he asked, “that the Messiah is said to be the son of David?”]44 Since David called the Messiah ‘Lord,’ [it is clear that the Messiah cannot just be his descendant!//how can the Messiah be his son?]”

NUMBERS 7:Yesterday we heard how people had to follow through with God’s commands, and those with defiling diseases were expelled from their camp until such time as they could be declared ritually clean again. And we heard about cleansing for issues involving the conscience, and what a man might do if he suspected his wife of unfaithfulness. (A man would have to be a terrible jerk to do this to his wife if he didn't have good reasons for his suspicions!) The 6th chapter dealt with the Nazarite vow, and the ended with the famous Aaronic blessing. In today’s chapter 7 of Numbers, the GNT has done a beautiful job of giving the complete information in a way that is clear, precise, and that reduces repetition. PSALM 30:This is a wonderful song of thanks to God. LUKE 20b:Yesterday in the second half of chapter 19, Jesus triumphantly entered Jerusalem. While on the road he wept over Jerusalem because of the spiritual blindness of the leaders, and he cleansed the temple of commerce. GNT Translation notes:Ps. 30:4 [Hey, listen up, all God’s faithful people, sing praise to theLord!//Sing praise to the Lord, all his faithful people!]Remember what the Holy One has done, and give him thanks!7 You were good to me, Lord;you protected me like a mountain fortress.But then[, when] you hid yourself from me,and I was afraid.====7 So they answered, “We don't know where [his right to baptize//it] came from.”13 Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? [I know.] I will send my own dear son; surely they will respect him!’ NLT Translation notes:8 I cried out to you, O LORD.I begged [You, Lord,//the Lord] for mercy, saying,====8 And Jesus responded, “Then I won’t tell you [either/0] by what authority I do these things.”16 “I’ll tell you—he will come and kill those farmers and lease the vineyard to others.”[His listeners protested, “Oh, may such a thing never happen!”//“How terrible that such a thing should ever happen.”]19 The teachers of religious law and the leading priests wanted to arrest Jesus immediately because they realized he was telling the story against them—they were the wicked farmers. But they [did nothing because//0] they were afraid of the people’s reaction.23 He saw through their [duplicity/trickery] and said, 24 “Show me a Roman coin. Whose picture and title are stamped [here/0] on it?”41 Then Jesus presented them with a question. [“Note that there is a problem with the teaching that the Messiah will come as a descendant of David.”//”Why is it,” he asked, “that the Messiah is said to be the son of David?”]44 Since David called the Messiah ‘Lord,’ [it is clear that the Messiah cannot just be his descendant!//how can the Messiah be his son?]”

The closing verses of Matthew 22 (Matt. 22:41-46) contain one of the most intriguing exchanges in the Gospels. After successfully fending off a series of tricky questions designed rather more to trap him or demean him than to elicit the wise answers he actually gives, Jesus poses a question of his own: “What do you think about the Christ [i.e., the Messiah]? Whose son is he?” (22:42). Some Jews thought there would be two Messiahs — one from David’s line (the tribe of Judah) and one from the tribe of Levi. But not surprisingly, the Pharisees here give the right answer: “The son of David” (22:42). Now Jesus drops his bombshell: “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet’”(22:43-44).Jesus is citing Psalm 110, identified by the superscription as a psalm of David. If a mere courtier had written the psalm, then when he wrote “The LORD says to my Lord,” he would have been understood to mean “The Lord [God] said to my Lord [the King].” In fact, that is the way many liberal scholars interpret the psalm — which means, of course, that they must ignore what the superscription says. But if David wrote the psalm, then the “my Lord” whom he addresses must be someone other than himself. The explanation offered by many students of the Bible, both Jewish and Christian, over the centuries, is correct: David, “speaking by the Spirit” (22:43), writing what is called an oracular psalm (i.e., an oracle, a prophecy immediately prompted by the Spirit), is referring to the Messiah who was to come: “The LORD [God] said to my Lord [the Messiah].” And what he said, in the rest of the psalm, establishes him as both universal king and perfect priest.In days when family hierarchies meant that the son was always viewed as in some ways inferior to the father, Jesus drives home the point he is making: “If then David calls him [i.e., the Messiah] ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” (22:45).The implications are staggering. The Messiah from the line of David would, on the one hand, doubtless be David’s son, removed by a millennium from David but nevertheless in the throne succession. But on the other hand, he would be so great that even David must address him as “my Lord.” Any other conception of the Messiah is too small, too reductionistic. The Old Testament texts pointed in the right direction generations earlier. But there will always be people who prefer the simplifications of reductionism to the profundities of the revelation in the whole Bible.This podcast is designed to be used alongside TGC's Read The Bible initiative (TGC.org/readthebible). The podcast features devotional commentaries from D.A. Carson’s book For the Love of God (vol. 1) that follow the M’Cheyne Bible reading plan.

Jason invites students to ponder the amazing announcement of Jesus' birth in Luke 2.

Jason invites students to ponder the amazing announcement of Jesus' birth in Luke 2.

https://storage.googleapis.com/enduring-word-media/q-and-a/20180913.mp3   This week’s Q&A: Modalism (“Jesus Only” doctrine), advice for teaching on Romans 11, why David called the Messiah “Lord,” asking questions about the Trinity, how the law of Moses is a prophecy of Jesus, sacraments, and more! The post Live with Pastor David – Episode 21 appeared first on Enduring Word.

Your support helps us to continue to bring God's message of light to a dark world, I'm praying for Billions of Souls to come to Christ before we go home, please continue to help us through your prayers and financial support, Our going home is nearer then when we began our race, it is not time to give up but to continue to persevere through daily repenting and weekly fasting believing God's word, please join us every Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in our Corporate Fasting, servant of the Lord Jesus,,,Elvi zapata OUR web page click link  http://www.thelordshour.org/   Tonight Elvi Zapata will share with you what God has been showing him through dreams and visions regarding the end time, what is about to happen in Israel and around World   The Lord Jesus showed me in a vision that when people support this program, The Lords Hour'' He would bless them abundantly, he showed me blessings coming to people's lives from different directions, it was amazing to see what our God can do for his sons and daughters. by supporting this program, you also support, the Poor of Israel 

Jesus asked a question of the leaders of the Jews that they couldn't answer. The question was if David calls Messiah Lord, how is He David's son? Did you know there is an answer to this question? The answer is simple and yet hidden as well, but seeing it helps unlock much for our spiritual development.

Jesus asked a question of the leaders of the Jews that they couldn't answer. The question was if David calls Messiah Lord, how is He David's son? Did you know there is an answer to this question? The answer is simple and yet hidden as well, but seeing it helps unlock much for our spiritual development.

Jesus is the Messiah Lord who has double power and authority. He could use this power and authority completely for himself, yet he uses his power and authority completely for us. To give us Shalom. You can read the written sermon here: https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/7-christ-the-lord-allan-quak-sermon-on-messiah-235773?ref=SermonSeriesDetails

Brad Anderson speaks on Luke 2:11.

Brad Anderson speaks on Luke 2:11.

Dec 21st, 2014 - John Crosby - Savior, Messiah, Lord

This is a study of the birth of Jesus, the Christmas story, through the voices of a group that is particularly special to the story – the angels. Many know that the angels proclaimed the birth of Jesus, but few remember the what they proclaimed about his birth. In this study we are reminded of why the birth of Jesus was so significant. In being so reminded, our minds and hearts are drawn back to the only real reason to celebrate Christmas – the birth of Jesus.

This is a study of the birth of Jesus, the Christmas story, through the voices of a group that is particularly special to the story – the angels. Many know that the angels proclaimed the birth of Jesus, but few remember the what they proclaimed about his birth. In this study we are reminded of why the birth of Jesus was so significant. In being so reminded, our minds and hearts are drawn back to the only real reason to celebrate Christmas – the birth of Jesus.