Luke 20:41-44 | Digging In

The Gospel of Luke  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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Luke 20:41-40

41 And he said unto them, How say they that Christ is David’s son?

42 And David himself saith in the book of Psalms, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand,

43 Till I make thine enemies thy footstool.

44 David therefore calleth him Lord, how is he then his son?

Revised Opinion

Engage
Back at the beginning of the COVID-19 scare I made a comment on Facebook that people were over-reacting. I was quick to point out the W.H.O. had not even declared Cornovirus a pandemic and that people were worked up over nothing. I caught some grief for that comment from my cousin who insisted the evidence pointed to a real danger. Well, it wasn’t long after that new information came out of China over how widespread and how deadly the virus had become. Then we started getting reports of the impact the virus was having in Italy, and the W.H.O. did in fact declare Cornovirus a pandemic.
What got me to change my perspective is that I take a follow the money approach to predicting things that could be politicized. It seems that you can find a news outlet to tell you exactly what you want to hear with any political bias that you would like, but while money definitely lies, it isn’t political. So when everyone turns to their favorite news outlet to get predictions on a primary race or presidential race, I do something that is strange for me, since I don’t gamble and I turn to betting odds.
So, in addition to the reports from China and from Italy. And seeing that not only were large western corporations and sports leagues closing, but also factories in countries that have poor human rights records were closing. Organizations that were entirely driven be greed made decisions to halt their operations, so I had to revise my opinion. Clearly what was going on was serious
Winston Churchill once said:
Those who never change their minds, never change anything.
There is something called “Confirmation Bias” where we tend to hold to something, and regardless to evidence to the contrary we will dig in.
In a quote I read from the book Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) the authors wrote:
Indeed, even reading information that goes against your point of view can make you all the more convinced you are right. In one experiment, researchers selected people who either favored or opposed capital punishment and asked them to read two scholarly, well-documented articles on the emotionally charged issue of whether the death penalty deters violent crimes. One article concluded that it did; the other that it didn’t. If the readers were processing information rationally, they would at least realize that the issue is more complex than they had previously believed and would therefore move a bit closer to each other in their beliefs about capital punishment as a deterrence. But dissonance theory predicts that the readers would find a way to distort the two articles. They would find reasons to clasp the confirming article to their bosoms, hailing it as a highly competent piece of work. And they would be supercritical of the disconfirming article, finding minor flaws and magnifying them into major reasons why they need not be influenced by it. This is precisely what happened. Not only did each side discredit the other’s arguments; each side became even more committed to its own.
It is difficult to shake this bias. Some hospitals are employing “debiasing” techniques to get medical professionals in emergency rooms to not incorrectly diagnose patients based upon their initial assumptions. And we run into this regularly. We live in a politically charged culture that seemingly has two sets of facts on any given issue and we are dumbfounded as to why the other side won’t come around to our way of thinking on practically anything.
It should be that we are sensitive to God’s word. That when it is presented to correct us in some issue we have the heart of Jeremiah in Jeremiah 10:24

24 O LORD, correct me, but with judgment;

Not in thine anger, lest thou bring me to nothing.

We don’t want to bring our pre-conceived notions to the word of God, causing us to seek out any justification we can find to ignore the council of scripture
And so this morning’s message is entitled ‘Digging In’
Pray

The Wrong Idea

Tension
In the book of Matthew in a parallel account of our passage in Luke we find that Jesus prefaced this question with another question:

What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The Son of David.

He let them provide the answer that led him in the direction he was going. It was already established, and it was non-controversial that the Christ would be a descendant of David.
2 Sam 7:13-14 reads:

13 He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever.

14 I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men:

Jeremiah 23:5 says:

5 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.

And we could go on. But, these are scriptures that they were unquestionably familiar with. With a conclusion that is still held today in Judaism, that the Messiah would be the descendant of King David. The problem the Pharisee’s had really starts back at the triumphal entry which wasn’t long before this passage we are reading. As Jesus comes in to the city on Palm Sunday we read in Matthew 21:9

9 And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.

It is one thing to hold to a belief that the Christ, the savior of Israel would come from the line of David, but it is another for the people to be declaring Jesus as this Messiah as he enters the town. Through his adopted father Joseph in Matthew 1 and in flesh through Mary in Luke 3 we are given the genealogy that proves that Jesus was in fact the Son of David. But this wasn’t anything that they had to take Jesus word on. The Jews kept an extremely accurate records of genealogies lost during the sack of Jerusalem in 70AD. So you don’t ever hread of the Pharisee’s call Jesus out on his lineage, they knew that he had the pedigree to be the Christ.

One Step Further

Truth
But Jesus challenged their idea one step further. And it was a pretty colossal step, because now he was confronting them with the most controversial truth in all of history.
We know that today Jewish and Islamic people believe that Jesus was a prophet or a good man, not that he was God.
But this is a pretty common belief about Jesus. CS Lewis once wrote
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the son of God: or else a madman or something worse.
But what Jesus was doing here was challenging them with the most difficult to accept but most foundational question in all of the universe. Who is Jesus.
But before we get to that. Who is Christ. Well, We established that the Christ is a descendant of David. That is why he is given the title “THE Son of David” as if to say it’s not just any son of David, but That specific Son of David spoken of in scripture.
But now in Luke 20:41-42 we go a step further

41 And he said unto them, How say they that Christ is David’s son?

42 And David himself saith in the book of Psalms, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand,

How could it possibly make sense that in quoting Pslam 110, a passage universally accepted as talking about the Messiah. That it would have the father of the Davidic line, David himself referring to his descendant as Lord. Adon in the Hebrew…Master. We see a problem with this in our culture today, that a father would be in a lower position than a son, but it would be so much more so in Eastern culture. The whole concept is outrageous. But here it is in scripture.
Psalm 110:1 reads

1 The LORD said unto my Lord,

Sit thou at my right hand,

Until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

And it is the single most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament. Because of this, the Jewish leaders went to work in developing alternate understandings of this passage. That it spoke of Abraham and Melchizedek. Not of the Messiah. Yet in the commentary for Psalm 17:35 the Midrash states that the Messiah sits on the Right hand of God and Moses on the left.
But the rub here with the Pharisee’s doesn’t stop there. Whether you are reading Psalm 101:1, Matthew 22:44, Mark 12:35, our passage this morning in Luke 20:43 or when Peter uses this same argument in Acts 2:35 they all basically say: Until I make thy enemies thy footstool.
The Pharisee’s and Sadducee’s knew exactly who Jesus’ enemies were. We talked about that last week that before any of this exchange ever happened we read Luke 19:47

But the chief priests and the scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him,

They knew who the enemies of Jesus were. It was them. And if they accepted this line of thinking they had a major problem. If Jesus is the Son of David as the people say. And the Son of David is this - Lord - who is higher than David. Then anyone who is the enemy of Jesus, will come under the foot, of an All Mighty God.

The Opportunity to Revise

Application
You and I, over the course of time will no doubt hear any number of contradictory ideas about what God wants from us. I hear Isaiah 5:20 in my mind echoing back over and over as I observe the course of humanity.

20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil;

That put darkness for light, and light for darkness;

That put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

But when we are confronted with scripture that challenges us, we can’t be like these hypocrites who rejected Christ.

What We Believe

Inspiration
A.W. Tozer a Pastor and Author from the early half of the 1900’s wrote:
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.
For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.
We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God.
Jesus stood before the Pharisee’s and what came into their mind when they thought of him.
But Mark’s account of this exchange ends in Mark 12:37 with the phrase

And the common people heard him gladly.

It is sad that we see so often those in positions of power and influence in our society so strongly rejecting Jesus and with
Katy Perry said
I don't believe in a heaven or a hell or an old man sitting on a throne.
Kathy Griffin accepting an Emmy said:
A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.
And just recently New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said
Our behavior has stopped the spread of the virus. God did not stop the spread of the virus. And what we do, how we act, will dictate how that virus spreads.
It is very difficult for people of power and position to accept Christ. Paul doesn’t write for nothing 1 Cor 1:26

26 For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:

27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

​

In Charge of our Belief

Action
It’s easy to read about and to hear about celebrities and politicians using their platforms to speak poorly of God and to let it get us all bent out of shape. But in the article that mentioned Katy Perry, it also mentioned her parents. And her parents asked us to pray for her.
But, We can be encouraged that our God has a message for the common people, not just something to be kept secret among the elite of this world.
Jesus of Nazareth is THE Son of David. The Son of David is The Third Person of the Trinity, God made Flesh.
And let me end with Peter’s discussion of this truth in Acts 2:32-38

32 This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.

33 Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear.

34 For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand,

35 Until I make thy foes thy footstool.

36 Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.

37 Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

38 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

If you are struggling with this idea of who Jesus is, I can only tell you what Peter told the people in this passage

Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

I am going to try something a little different:
If you have something that you want to pray about — type pray in a comment and I promise I will pray for you, I may reach out privately and ask you for details. But I want to pray for you.
Secondly, If you want to know more about Christ, if you need to make a decision to follow him put a message in the comments below as well. I know It’s difficult to push past that Confirmation Bias we talked about earlier, but Jesus went through all of this because he loves you and he wanted to glorify the Father in demonstrating his love towards you.
Well, thank you for listening. If you want to support this ministry one of the easiest things you can do that makes a huge difference is to share this video and like the Harvest Baptist Facebook page. I personally would like to ask you to support Harvest Baptist in prayer as we prepare for launching in Ross, Ohio and pray about coming along side of us in this exciting ministry.
Pray
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