When I was going through the Old Testament book of Psalms, some of you might have wondered why I didn’t cover Psalm 110. Tonight, you find out why. It, like a few other passages, is a passage I wanted to save until I got to the New Testament. Now there is an aspect of this passage that will be saved until we get further into the New Testament, namely the book of Hebrews. The passage that Jesus quotes in tonight’s reading comes out of Psalm 110 and becomes the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament.
Speaking of the passage being covered tonight, ours is located in Matthew 22:
1While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, 42“What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?”
“The son of David,” they replied. 43He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,
44” ‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.” ‘ 45If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” 46No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Jesus has just answered a series of questions from his opponents. By the way, let’s keep this in mind. Jesus was a debater. He knew how to argue and he knew how to reason. While we will only cover one aspect of it in the future, in the next chapter, Jesus totally destroys our idea of him as Jesus meek and mild.
Jesus has answered all of the opposition and now he is going to turn the tables. He starts by asking a question that would be obvious. After all, these people were the experts on the Law. They knew it backwards and forwards and it is quite likely that some of them had it memorized. (And by it, I mean the whole Old Testament. There was even a rabbinic rule that you could not comment on a passage until you had memorized it.)
He wants to know whose son the Messiah will be. He is told that he will be the son of David, which is an obvious answer. However, at this point, Christ catches them on that obvious answer. After all, David was the king and was the highest authority in the land only subject to YHWH and what does David say about the Messiah?
‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.”
We do see two persons here which fits in just fine with a Trinitarian model, and this gets to the point Christ wishes to make. David says that this son of his is his Lord. How can he be a mere human being and yet at the same time be of a higher position than David is? His opponents have no answer.
Trinitarians do! Jesus is Lord by virtue of his deity. (I am aware of the Acts 2:36 passage my arian opponents and rest assured when we get there, we will see how that fits in.) Jesus is not just human after all. He is divine as well.
Tomorrow, we shall see what more we can find in Matthew on the Trinity and the self-understanding of Christ.
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