Now please, in the Gospel of Mark, at the end of chapter 12. Mark, we're going to finish chapter 12 today. We're going to read from verse 35 to the end of the chapter. It's on page 849. Mark, chapter 12, reading from 35 to 44. Please give your attention to the Word of God. And as Jesus taught in the temple, He said, how can the scribe say that the Christ is the son of David? 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. David himself calls him Lord. So how is he a 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. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And 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. But 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. It can be dangerous to only know a piece of what Jesus has to say, because it can give you a mistaken sense of the whole. What I mean is, all through chapter 12, Jesus' enemies have been setting the agenda by hitting him with questions. They're trying to make him look bad. They're trying to make it so the crowd will desert him, and then they can grab him and get him. So they're setting the agenda with their questions. And Jesus, all through chapter 12, has been answering so brilliantly But not only does the crowd stay listening to him closely, but his answers have eternal value. They are recorded in the Word for us to learn from. Pay your taxes. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's. And the best question was the last one, to be sincere. What's the most important commandment? Love the Lord your God. No, I got it wrong, didn't I? The most important commandment is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and ye shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. And that's very valuable to know, the most important commandment. But, if the chapter were to end here, and we were to jump outside the Temple and get on with the story, we could be left with the impression that the basic picture is that God has commanded and stepped back And he's watching, and we've got to keep the commandments. And at the end of time, he'll step forward and judge us on how we kept his commandments. You could have that impression, if you leave it with, here's the most important commandment. And a lot of people think that's how it is. The term for that actually is deism. God must have made the world, and maybe God will judge the world. But in the meantime, we're kind of left on our own. God's just standing back with his arms folded. Again, it's not what Jesus said, but if you're just left with those questions and Jesus' answers, you could have that impression. So at this point, suddenly, they don't have any more questions. They're afraid. They've been trying to make Jesus look bad. They only make him look better. They stop asking questions, and now he gets to set the agenda. He gets to say, now this is what I want to talk about. He gets to say, this is the question that I want to ask. And of course, he doesn't just have questions. He's saying, here's where I direct your attention. That's the key point here. This is where we pivot from him dealing with incoming fire and dealing with it very well, but they're setting the agenda. Now he sets the agenda. And he does not go on with the commandments, which is striking because you can go a long way talking about the commandments. Instead, he says, now you all need to think about this. How can the scribes call the Christ the son of David? How can they say that when Psalm 110 has David calling the Christ, my Lord? Now let me just unpack that a little bit. Again, Christ is not Jesus' last name. When he went to school, he did not, well, he did a whole bunch of things wrong with this, right? But he wouldn't have been writing Jesus Christ across the top of his paper. He's Jesus from Joseph. He's Jesus from Nazareth. Christ is not his last name. So when he says it to them, he says, the Christ, which means the Messiah. Which is to say, the one that Jews who read their scriptures and take it seriously, they're looking for the Messiah, because God promised them a Messiah, a Christ. And so what do you think about the Christ? That is something. We had a backyard party some years ago, and I heard my Jewish next-door neighbor talking about Israeli politics. Not even the Messiah could fix it. So anyway, no, it's not a believing statement, but There's still something about the Messiah. There's still that sense that Jews should be thinking about the Messiah, hoping the Messiah could solve some problems. That's just a few years ago I heard that. But back then, they want the Christ. They want that Savior to show up. And so Jesus, who's been acting like he's going to claim this title, who came riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling a prophecy about the Christ, He raises the question of the Christ. And you can just imagine everybody goes, oh, what are you going to say about that? I hope you're going to tell us that you are the Christ. I hope you're not raising that to tell us that you're not like John the Baptist, who let us down and got his head chopped off. What do you have to say about the Christ? And you'll notice he doesn't assert something. He poses a question. How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? Now, the scribes certainly did say that the Christ would be the son of David. And that's because the Bible definitely says that the Christ would be David's descendant. It says it over and over again. We've already sung it in Psalm 89. I found David and I made the promises to him. Psalm 89 is drifting on 2 Samuel 7. where God makes a covenant. It was prophet Nathan's covenant with David. His descendant will always reign as king, which happened in the ordinary way for about 400 years, and then stopped happening in the ordinary way when the Babylonians crushed the city. Took the guys off to Babylon, said, we're in charge here. This is just the province of our empire, not a very big one either. And then you didn't have a son of David reigning in the ordinary way as king. And the prophet said, God is going to bring this back. God is going to send us a shoot from the stump of Jesse. David's father was Jesse. The picture is that David's line of this tree has gotten cut down. It's just a stump. It's all right. It's going to be a shoot coming out of the stump. That's Isaiah 11. It says in many places, right? Not just Isaiah, not just the Psalms, not just Exodus, but many places, that the Christ has to be from the line of David. That's why the New Testament starts in such an unpromising way with a genealogy. You're like, this is not an exciting beginning here, people. But it is, if you're looking for the Christ who's got to be a descendant of David. You want to demonstrate that Jesus is, in fact, a descendant of David, which is the first thing the New Testament does. It's a genealogy in Matthew 1. So, the scribes correctly knew that the Christ had to be the Son of David. And Jesus had been hailed on the way up by a blind man. Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me! And Jesus said, call on me to heal the man. When he rode into the city, they were saying, blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. And when the Pharisee said, Jesus, shush him, he said, I'm not going to shush him. So he knows that the Christ is the son of David. Doesn't deny it. But he says, so how can you say it in light of this other thing? Psalm 110, a psalm of David, the Lord, God, said to my Lord, so David's Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. And they knew that's about the Messiah, right? I mean, who else but Messiah, Christ, would have that position, sitting at God's right hand, his enemies under his feet, God fighting for him, that's the Messiah. But David's calling him Lord. Now here's a basic assumption that you have to realize is part of the thinking here. The basic thinking is that fathers are greater than children, because children came from fathers. Even if you are the crown prince, you don't get to sit on the throne until daddy's dead. So the father is greater. So the question is, if the Messiah, the Christ, is David's descendant, why would David be calling him, my Lord? Not only that, but what kind of honor is this to sit at God's right hand. He's sitting practically on God's throne. One commentator said, it's the highest possible place you could get without usurping God's place. Now Jesus camps out here for us, but it's not the only place in the Old Testament when you could start to say there's something funny going on. This Messiah, who obviously has to be the descendant of David, son of David, is also something much mysteriously greater than that. Daniel 7, Daniel gets to see a vision and it sees one like a son of man coming on the clouds to God the Father and receiving an eternal kingdom. And riding on clouds is not anything that anybody can actually do. And in scripture it's a picture of what God does. It's a divine you could say, right in power to ride on clouds, and one who seems to be human is going there to get an eternal kingdom that people can't have because we're mortals. And maybe strongest is in Isaiah 9. It says, A child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and his name will be Wonderful Counselor... Okay, that's fine. Mighty God... Wait! How can a child be born and his name be Mighty God? How can that be in the Bible? Isaiah says, there is one God. He doesn't give his glory to another. But a child's going to be born to us. His name is Mighty God and Everlasting Father. So Jesus picks up on this. Because, of course, the child is going to be born. The government's going to be at his shoulder. OK, well, that's the Messiah again. That's the Christ. So Jesus says, how can they say he's the son of David? He obviously is. But what about these other passages that say that we're going to have a child born who is mighty God. That there's going to be a kingdom given to a son of man, a human, who rides on the clouds. And why is David, who founds the dynasty and gets the covenant with God, why is he calling his descendant Lord? And they had nothing to say. Now what should they have said? What should the scribes have said? They should have said, I don't know. Teach us. They should have said, teach us, Lord. But the crowd listened, and the scribes did not ask. But we know. We know through the rest of the New Testament. You get it in John 1. It might be worth looking at. If you have your Bible out, pull over to John 1. Page 886. John Chapter 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light. of men. It is taught here that there is one who has existed from all eternity, who is here called the Word. And He is God, and yet He is with God. He is one with the Father and yet can be distinguished from the Father. He is one from all eternity. And as you look on to verse 14, it says, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen His glory, the glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. A little further on in verse 18, no one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side is He has made Him known. So again, you have this sense there's God, and this Word is God and yet is with God. He is God and is alongside God. But He's God. So you have this sense of unity and multiplicity, and it's hard to get your hands on it. So as you go through the Bible, you understand, oh, the one God has always existed in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's why Jesus said to baptize everybody in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And one of these divine persons, in time, took on our human nature, and the Word became flesh, and lived among us. This is what we can say now. If you want to see more of it, turn over to Philippians 2. Philippians at chapter 2. Let me encourage you to turn there. Philippians 2. It's on page 980. What you have here is characteristic of the New Testament. It tells you what to do, and then it ties it right into who God is. Philippians 2, beginning at verse 5. He's saying, have this kind of mind among yourselves, a humble mind. which is yours in Christ Jesus, and then he goes off telling us about Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God is highly exalted in him, and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. so that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the glory of God the Father. So we see here what's going on with the Christ. The Christ has to be a human descended from David. And the Christ has to be a mighty God, almost as a child given to us. He is mighty God and everlasting Father. He is David's Lord, even as He is David's Son. So Jesus, according to His human nature, is a descendant of David. And according to His divine nature, He is God the Son. This is a great mystery. And the scribes can be excused for not understanding it. They cannot be excused for not asking it. Jesus teaches us about our Savior, about Himself. And He does it with questions. Questions pointing to what God has already said that they understood God said in the Old Testament. He says, you might not want to take it out of my mouth if I just baldly said it. Look at what you acknowledge God has given you and read what it says. Psalm 110 line. That's a strange line. What does that mean? Connect it with Isaiah 9. Connect it with Daniel 7. Understand that the Christ that the Lord will send you will not just be human, although he will be human. He will be much more than human. He'll be more than angels. Because to what angels did God ever say, sit on my right hand? That doesn't seem to be what angels get to do. Angels are ministering spirits who serve God. Who is this Christ? Now the encouragement of that for us is gigantic if you can get your hands around it. Go back to what I said at first. He just told us what the greatest commandment is, and that's good for us to know, and you better keep it. But if we're alone to keep a commandment, to love God with all of our heart and soul, we're in trouble. Because we just don't do it very well. And if God is just standing back, watching us fail, where's the hope in that? But when Jesus says, well, here's where I want to direct your attention. Direct your attention to God's promises. That He promised to send you a Savior, a Christ. Think about that Christ. And how big a Christ is He going to be? He's not just going to be a great king. He's going to be a divine Christ. This is the kind of Savior that I have for you. This is the Savior that you need to be thinking about and looking for. And that's the encouragement of it. We're not dealing with a God who's standing back. We're dealing with a God who's entering the world Himself to come and save us. The Christ. In other words, there's one other thing here. along with giving us a sense of the identity of the Christ, of the Savior, that He's not just the human descendant of David, but that He will be God Himself come in the flesh. Along with that, Jesus gives them a warning. He didn't have to quote Psalm 110 so long. The point was, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. That makes the point about who Jesus is. Well, who the Christ is, and of course, Jesus is going to fill that in. He is the Christ. But he goes on to quote the next bit of it. Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. And that's a warning. That's a warning to those who are his enemies. That although it will appear in just a couple of days that Jesus is the loser when he is crucified, that nonetheless he will be the winner. Going back to the parable of the tenants. On the parable of the tenants, of course, the tenants kill the son and throw him out of the vineyard. Well, the son didn't win anything. Father's going to come and destroy him. Jesus went on to another psalm, 118, and he said, the stone that the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone. It's the doing of the Lord. He's already said, kill me, it won't be the end of me. The stone will be central. And here he says, And where will I be? I will be at God's right hand, while God makes my enemies my footstool. It's a great warning of where this is going. That after his seeming defeat, he will be victorious. So we've shown that the scribes have a rather large hole in their understanding. They can tell you part of what you need to know about the Christ, but they're missing this whole other section. He's given the people a warning, because he just praised the scribes. He just said to the scribes, you're not far from the kingdom of heaven. But less people think, OK, Jesus says the scribes are pretty good. We're going to go back to listening to the scribes. Well, the scribes have this big hole on who the Christ is. And then he goes on to say, and far too many of the scribes have got a whole lot of other things going wrong as well. He goes on to say, beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes, and like greetings in the marketplaces, and have their best seats in places of honor. And this has continuing value. He's saying, watch out for false teachers. False teachers then, false teachers now. You need to watch out for them. And beloved, you do need to watch out for false teachers. Because with a false teacher, the devil is coming at you with two prongs. First of all, if you fall for false teaching, the devil got you. If you fall for the Mormons, if you fall for Jehovah's Witnesses, if you fall for the prosperity gospel, if you fall for the Roman Catholics, hey, the devil's got you this way. Let the Lord preserve you. But, on the other hand, if you see through the fraud, and you are alienated, and you say, well, I am done with organized religion, I am done with the Church, I'm done with teachers, I'm just going to go off on my own, well, that's not what the Lord wants for you either. Because the Lord is building his church, and in his church he appoints some to teach. So the devil comes at you with two different angles of the false teacher. The false teacher comes at you and you can either fall for that or perhaps you go the opposite direction. So he gives us things to watch out for. Watch out for those who are in it for the honour. I don't think there's anything wrong with a long bathrobe, that's not the point. The point was, that in the Torah, it talks about having tassels. And so, back then, some of them would make really long tassels on the unbound up edge of the road. See how holy I am? Look how long my tassel is. And he said, who cares? They saw a pair of shawls, they had tassels on the end. Who cares how long it is? It's sort of like a very trivial way of saying, see my piety. I didn't cut these off. I have long tassels, like it says in Torah. And like greetings in the marketplace. I'll hit this again. What's my name? Yeah. If you're 18 and older, the name is John. If you're under 18 and your parents want you to, the name is Mr. Edgar. The term pastor is a biblical title, and it is what I am. So you can find it right in Ephesians 4. It means shepherd, actually. And you should remember that, yes, you've called me here to be the pastor of this church. It's not a bad term. We don't want to be running down into making it all about readings and honorifics. Matthew 23 goes on longer at this point. Matthew 23, 7 to 12. It says, watch out. Don't call people rabbi, don't call people father, don't call people teacher, and so on. A little back and forth. It's kind of humorous this week. Some of us got together. Hunter and Bruce were there. What did Hunter call you, Pastor Bruce or something? He was like, the name is Bruce. Pastor Hunter. Yes, the way to honor your pastor is by listening to the things I tell you. And that was just for the title. I can be John. And it was great yesterday. I went to Bruce and Joanne's 50th, and nobody gave me a special seat, which is great, because I don't need one. Colleen looked just fine in that chair. You can stay there, Father. There you go. You're older than me. Now, this does not mean that God is appointing you to keep Hunter humble by being a jerk to Hunter. That's not what that means. It means, let's take care not to overstep our bounds, either on the one side or the other, because if you really make being a pastor too cushy, people will want it for the wrong reason. I'm not saying make it really hard, but you don't want to make it too cushy. Fortunately, RP Church is not usually all that well-paid or that famous. But, you know, Some pastors are famous, which leads certain people to seek the fame. Some pastors are rich, which leads some people to seek the riches. And he's saying, watch out for those who are in it for fame, in it for riches, and so on. Look out for those who devour widows' houses. Then it really gets dark right there. There are people who are in it for the money and don't really care who they're taking the money from. And to take money from a widow who needs it, he says, you get greater condemnation from God for that. So watch out for those who are in it for the money, for the honor. And you want to fake the religiosity before a pretense to make long prayers. I'm not naming names, but I can think of somebody that, yeah, a real professional sounding prayer. But I don't know if I would trust you with money. So watch out for those who are in it for the benefits, not in it for sincerity. You've got to be aware of false teachers. Then he goes on to say, but watch out for your own heart as well. Because you can start to think, OK, it's not about how much loving God is something I have to do, but that's not the grounds. Maybe if I give enough money. I once spoke to a man who was outraged that he had cancer. How can I have cancer? My wife is sick. I called bingo from my church. Why do I have cancer? He just about put those thoughts together. I mean, it was really close. Putting aside bingo, that's not how it works. It's not that, Lord, I serve you in your church, I deserve a chance of free life. That's not how the Lord has promised us. He says watch out for your own heart. He's watching people put money into the offering box. One author says that they have 13 boxes. for your cash gifts, for in-kind gifts, they're called trumpets because they have like a big thing you can put it in, and they've got it down there so you couldn't use it and steal from it. All right, they have these 13 trumpets, these 13 boxes, and Jesus is sitting there, it's been a long day, and he's watching people put stuff in. And the rich are, I mean, this is Passover week, this place is packed, people are coming from all over, and they're coming in, and the rich are putting in large sums. You can probably see it, definitely hear it, it's going in. They're like, oh, that's good, we're going to keep this temple going. We see some widow come up and put in her two nickels. You could easily say, well, who's going to run a temple on two nickels? But Jesus said, that woman put in more than all of them, because all of them gave from their abundance. But she, out of her poverty, has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. I don't think the point is necessarily to put your two last nickels in the box. I think the point is, watch out what you think is important in God's sight. He doesn't condemn the rich for putting in their gifts. That's fine. That was good. But what the Lord is looking for is genuine devotion and genuine trust and really a connection to God that depends on him. This is the widow's song. I'm not doing anything wrong here. But don't think that those are the elite. Those are the ones God is close to, because they're able to put in a hundred thousand. That's good, but that doesn't make them close to God. It doesn't make God close to them. That widow was really relying on God. The Lord is close to her. We need to be aware of various things. judging things on a human scale, or based on trying to make the books balance? What is it that we need to know here? Well, again, Jesus had said to the scribe, who agreed about the two greatest commandments, you are not far from the kingdom of God. As I said, that's faint praise, actually, because we all want to be in the kingdom of God. And so as he redirects our attention to himself, redirects our attention to the Christ, to the divine and human Christ, whom the Lord sends for our salvation, we're to look to him. And we're to count on him. And put our trust in him. We want to ascend to God. But only one has ascended. He who descended first. You know that Jesus, he left his father. God the Father. He left his mother, the synagogue, to be one with his bride, the church, so that in his ascent to the Father we may ascend with him, for he is the head, and we are the body. If you wish to ascend to the Father, enter his body, the church, and ascend with Jesus Christ, the God. Be one with him. One with the Lord Jesus. He is the Savior, the God-Son. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you've given us such a Savior, your own Son, your only begotten Son, to walk and to teach, to suffer and to die, to rise and to reign. Help us, Lord, to submit ourselves wholeheartedly to you, to respond to you in faith. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.