41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question: 42 “What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He?” They said to Him, “The son of David.” 43 He said to them, “Then how does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying, 44 ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Until I put Your enemies beneath Your feet” ’? 45 If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his son?” 46 No one was able to answer Him a word, nor did anyone dare from that day on to ask Him another question.
Turning the tables, Jesus took the initiative in the interrogations and in so doing, brought the “debating” to a close. He went for the core issue of His mission, the identity of the Messiah (“Christos” is the Greek form of the Hebrew term “Messiah,” English translators transliterate the Greek term into “Christ”). One’s heritage was important to the Jews, for it established one’s right to ancestral lands and to privileges among God’s people. In particular, the issue of the Messiah’s heritage was crucial.
So Jesus quizzed them about who the father of the Christ, the Messiah, was. The Pharisees responded with the standard answer: Christ would be the son of David. Every child in Israel would have known that. He then quoted from the messianic Psalm 110:1, a well-known passage, but added a penetrating question that baffled them completely. The essence of Jesus’ point was that how could the Jews reject Him as the Messiah when they were so ignorant about such a fundamental truth from a well-known prophecy?
The Jews held Psalm 110:1 to represent the Messiah as the one being referred to as the “Lord.” He is the one before whom all God’s enemies would bow, the one who would be a “priest” in the order of Melchizedek (Psalm 110:4). It is all about the Messiah. Jesus zeroed in on verse 1 (“The Lord said to my Lord”), where the original Hebrew reads literally, “Yahweh said to my Adonai….” The name “Yahweh” refers to the “The covenant God of Israel,” and “Adonai” means “God Almighty.” So this verse means “The covenant God of Israel said to my God Almighty….” So if Psalm 110:1 refers to the Messiah, the crux of Jesus’ argument asked how could Messiah be both the son of David and at the same time also be David’s God Almighty?
The Pharisees were stumped, and that brought an end to their jousting with Christ as a means of tripping Him up. Attempts to trap Jesus in self-condemning words were abandoned. From here, Jesus continues the offensive, launching into a blistering condemnation of those hypocritical leaders with a series of “woes.”
Lord, help me not to be so stubborn and proud that I turn a blind eye to what You want to teach me. I don’t want to be like those religious leaders.
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