Amen. Well, if you turn in your Bible to Matthew 22, Matthew chapter 22 verses 41 through 46 will be our text this morning. Matthew 22 verses 41 through 46. Last time we saw the final attempt by Jesus human enemies, at least in his earthly life, to try to catch him in his words. And not only did the Pharisees fail to trip up Jesus, but their appointed questioner was so impressed by Christ's answer that he was compelled into commanding Christ, correct answer, according to Mark's version of the story. And we looked at that. Well, in today's passage our Lord turns the tide on his antagonist. And he puts the question to them. Remember, unlike the Sadducees, the Pharisees believed and at least professed a hope in the promised Messiah. But did they really know from scripture the significance of who that Messiah was and therefore who they were and what God's kingdom would be? Well, in our text this morning, beloved, we have an interesting phenomenon that's happening and that you might not notice. It's the very last time that Jesus is going to have a dialogue, a conversation with the public at large. You have in your Bibles and you're open right now, and if you happen to have a red letter Bible, you'll see chapter 23 is almost entirely red, just the first half of the first sentences is just a description. And then the rest of the chapter 23 is all red because Jesus in chapter 23 is exercising the office of a prophet. He gives eight prophetic woes upon Israel. And so there's no give and take, there's no dialogue there. And then by chapter 24 he has left the city, he's sitting on the Mount of Olives and he's just with his disciples, he's no longer in public. This is the last public give and take between Jesus and a crowd in his earthly life. What was the one thing that Christ wanted the people to think, to know, and to consider about him? That is the topic of our text this morning. Let's pray as we turn to God's Word. Father again, we thank you for your Word. We just want to pause and prayer. We are about to hear your holy and perfect Word. Help us, Lord God, cause us to receive it with trembling, with love, with faith, that would issue insincere obedience. Lord God bless your Word to our hearts. We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Here now the Word of the Lord from Matthew chapter 22 beginning in verse 41. This is God's holy Word. While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, what do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? They said to him, the son of David. He said to them, how then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool. If David then calls him Lord, how was he his son? And no one was able to answer him a word. Nor from that day on did anyone dare question him anymore. May the Lord establish this Word in our hearts this morning, I pray. I want you to notice, first of all, the promise of the King. I want you to notice the promise of the King. While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, this is the way of God, by the way, throughout the Bible. God throughout the Bible allows his enemies to gather together, to consolidate their power, to be at their peak of strength and solidity and unity, and that's when our God, usually through lowly despised means overwhelms and destroys them. Consider God doesn't send an army or raise up an army to destroy Goliath. He doesn't even raise up an Israelite giant to oppose this great warrior. He sends a lowly shepherd boy who's not even a soldier, and that's how God completely obliterates the greatest warrior on the earth at that time. Consider when the Midianites covered the land like the sand on the sea shore, and they couldn't be numbered for multitude. God doesn't go and raise up some giant army to destroy them among his people. No, he goes to what is said to be the lowest man in the lowest house, in the lowest family of the lowest tribe of Israel, because that's how Gideon protests. God's choice of him. I'm the smallest and most inconsiderable man in the smallest family, in the smallest house, in the smallest tribe, and you're going to save Israel through me and God says, yes. And then after Gideon has tens of thousands of soldiers, God wills them down. You remember the story until there's only 300. And then God decimates the Midianites through Gideon's 300, so that even says, so that all would know that it's me by my spirit, by my might, not by you, not by your hand, that we would humble ourselves and look to God for salvation and him give him all the glory. And so Christ here in our text, he doesn't go and pick off the Pharisees one by one, overwhelming them with his superior intellect. He waits till they're all together, in all of their power, in all of their scheming, in all of their plotting. And then he asks them all this question in our text. And so it was verse 41, while the Pharisees were gathered together, that Jesus asked them, saying, what do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? Now they wanted to talk about the law, and that's important for us to know, especially for true believers, how we are to buy the law, know how to please God, know how to serve God. In every situation, it speaks to all of our lives. And that should be our purpose and everything to fulfill this beautiful, this lovely, this perfect law which shows us who God is. It's a picture of His character. We are to love the laws, the psalmist, the longest song in the Bible continually just sings this love song to the law of God, a great and important topic. Jesus answers the question, gives us this wonderful teaching on the law. However, the Pharisees for the most part are unconverted. The law is only a message of condemnation to them, though they don't know it, because they think they're righteous, because they believe in works righteousness, they perverted the religion of grace, which is what Judaism was, into a religion of works righteousness, so they think they can keep the law, and they ask about it. And it was a legitimate question. So Christ answered it, didn't review them, taught this wonderful teaching on the greatest commandment, the second greatest commandment, but they need to know God. They need to know the Christ. They need to be saved. And so Christ shifts to this question in this topic about the Christ, because it's through the Christ that God saves His people, and this is what the Pharisees had forgotten or never knew in the first place. And so Jesus asked in this question, what do you think about the Christ? Now, here we have to understand, and I know most of you are aware of this, but there may be some who don't know this, that Jesus, His name is not Jesus' first name, and Christ's last name. You know, go up to Jesus and say, you know, Mr. Christ or Reverend Christ or something like that, right? He is Jesus the son of Nazareth, if you wanted to know probably the way that they would have said His name in that day. But Christ is a title, just like Jesus is the Lord or Jesus is the son of God or Jesus is the Savior or Jesus is the salvation of His people or all these titles that were given to Him, son of David, while Christ is a title. Christ is the name, and in fact the Greek word is Christos. So you can see how we get our word Christ. And this Greek word in the Septuagint which is the Old Testament Greek translation that was present. In fact, that's what the disciples and most Jews read was the Septuagint because many of them couldn't read the Hebrew anymore, which is why it was translated into Greek about a hundred years before Christ is when that was finished. It took many years to complete it, but about a hundred years before they had the Septuagint, they had the Greek translation of the Old Testament and guess what? The Greek word Christos is in the Old Testament some 40 times. I counted 40. So it's at least 40 times in the canonical books of the Old Testament. So if you were a Jew, you understand the Christ, the Christos. That's all over the place in the Old Testament. Christ or Christos is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Machia, which is we get our word Messiah from. Now you probably don't see the word Messiah much in the Old Testament because the English translators have chosen rather than to take Machiaq and just make it Messiah, they have taken it and made it what the word means. The Machiaq can be a now, but it can also be a verb, and the verb means to anoint. The noun means anointed one. And so the Messiah, the Christ, Christos, Machiaq, Christ, all the same word Messiah, all the same word means the anointed one. Ah, so now you know what you see this in your Old Testament, right? The number one book where the word Christos or Machiaq occurs more than any other time in the Old Testament is for Samuel. Not a surprise is it. First Samuel is the book of the king. It's when God establishes the kingship among his people. You see the anointed ones in Scripture were occasionally prophets would be anointed, priests were anointed, but especially the king was the anointed one. Remember in first Samuel, when God anoints Samuel, sorry God anoints Samuel anoints Saul and Saul is their first king, do you remember when God repents, as it were, of choosing Saul and chooses a man after his own heart David, and then Saul tries to kill David. Remember what David does over and over again the way he speaks. I will not raise my hand against what? The Lord's anointed. I will not raise my hand against the anointed of the Lord. The anointed of the Lord was the king. Even though priests were anointed, occasionally a prophet, it was the king who was God's anointed, the anointed one. If you would say the anointed, they knew you were talking about the king. So all of David's sons were Messiah, in that sense. They were anointed. All of David's sons were Christos's or Christoy. They were anointed. They were Christ's. They were Messiah's little capital. We're not capital, lowercase Sam, lowercase C. Just as Moses was a mediator, lowercase Sam, type of mediator, Moses' mediation depended upon the true mediator who at that time was Christ. So also these Christ, these Messiah's were types. More and more in her history, Israel understood that there would be coming an ultimate Messiah, an ultimate Christ, an ultimate one anointed of God. What did that mean? Anointing. We have that saying a lot, maybe that's worth talking about. Anointing occurred physically. There was a certain kind of oil that they had to make. There was only a lot in the temple for the religious purposes. But there was another oil that they could use for anointing and anointing. You would anoint yourself. They would use it for healing. Or if it was a time of celebration, oil was a cleansing liquid. They understood that. But the king would be anointed with this oil. The prophet would go and pour the oil on his head and it was symbolic. It wasn't magic. Like you'll see a lot of times today. Why my oil and wonderful things will happen to you if you put it on you. Don't do that. It's not going to happen. But the oil was symbolic of the spirit. When God called someone to be king, it was a spiritual office. It was his kingdom. It was his king on his throne. And so God empowered them by his spirit. And we see that throughout the scriptures, right? When God would anoint Saul and Samuel anointed Saul with that oil. But then it says and then the spirit of the Lord mightily came upon Saul and he led them to victory. The anointing was a sign that God himself was going to give him the spirit. And so when God anoints think of a guy like Samson, the spirit of the Lord mightily came upon him, right? He was breaking bars of iron and carrying gates of cities up onto mountains because the spirit of the Lord came on him because he was the anointed one of the Lord. And so you see this throughout the scriptures. But this anointing was the symbolic picture that God will empower. That God will put his spirit on this one. And there is again this promise of an ultimate Messiah and ultimate Christ who would be anointed beyond measure. And he would bring to pass all of God's promises. And this is the hope of the Israelite people. In fact, I got online and I looked up just went to some rabbis page talking about their hope of the Messiah to this day that when he comes, world peace, right? And there's going to be prosperity and people are going to stop hurting each other and the Jews are going to give themselves to the Torah. But even the Gentiles are going to be interested in righteousness and things like that. And he's talking about all these things that's going to happen when the Messiah comes. They're still understanding it that way. And ultimate King is going to come. They're saying, well, they were saying it two thousand years ago. And so Jesus asked them about this one who is the Christ. He is the ultimate one that they're all waiting for. David wasn't the Christ. Solomon wasn't the Christ. They're waiting for the Christ to come. And this is why Jesus, who is that Christ, is constantly preaching and teaching and illustrating through parables. What's he always talking about? The kingdom of heaven is like. The kingdom of God, Mark and Luke say, but Matthew always hasn't said the kingdom of heaven because of the Jews' sensibilities to the saying God and not wanting to say that. The kingdom of heaven is like. The kingdom of heaven is like because it's his kingdom. That's what he came to do. And so he's teaching them about the kingdom that he as king is coming to bring again because the kingdom had been taken from them and they're subject by the Romans. And so he was sent to reign. And a king can only reign after he conquers his enemies after he secures the kingdom. How did Jesus do that in his life? Maybe you're not sure if he did. He did it. He completed it by dying on the cross. Colossians says that he defeated his enemies. He made a public spectacle of them dying on the cross. It was on the cross that he defeated the enemies of his kingdom in order that his kingdom was and is established. That means beloved. And this is what the Jews didn't get at the time, that the true enemies of the people of God were not wrong. Or Greece, or Persia, or Babylon, or Syria, or the Philistines, or the Egyptians. Those were not their true and ultimate enemies. And for us today, our true and ultimate enemies are not systems, not groups, not races, not wealth. We're all the things that the new do-gooders are telling us are the ultimate evils. Beloved, our enemies are sin and Satan and the last enemy death. And this is what Jesus defeated. He defeated sin by satisfying the wrath of God for all of the elect. He defeated death by rising again from the dead. Death and sin can't hurt the Christian. The Christian is forgiven of his sins. And Satan, the great accuser, he defeated him because he lost his hold on us so that when he accuses us, we can say, we are justified because of Christ. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with our Lord Jesus Christ. If God is for us, who can be against us? And so Christ defeated our enemies, death and sin and Satan and the collective sin which we call the world, all of those things have no power over us because Christ has won and has established his kingdom. And so Israel was right to look for a Messiah king who would conquer all their enemies, but they were wrong about who those enemies were. And that's because they were wrong about who the king was. So I want you to notice, secondly, the nature of the king. I want you to notice the nature of the king. We see the promise of the king, the promise of the Messiah, they got that. They got that Psalm 110 was about the Messiah. The rabbis all knew that. So when Jesus asked them a question about the Christ from that Psalm, they know that's proper and appropriate. The nature of the king, Jesus says again, what do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? They said to him, the son of David. Now, they were right. Sometimes interpreters look at this and it looks like Jesus corrects them and they're wrong. No, they were right. He was the son of David. He had to be the son of David. Jesus just accepted that title two days earlier. Remember, it's Tuesday in the temple. He's been teaching for some time. Two days earlier, he rode into the city on the donkey. And what were they yelling? Son of David, hallelujah, son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the king, the king of Israel. All these things are calling him son of David. And you remember at that occasion, the Pharisee, some of them said to Jesus, teach your silence, your disciples. Rebuke your disciples. And remember what Jesus said? If these were silent, the very stones would cry out. He accepted the title, son of David, ascribed to him from the crowds as they welcomed him, the king, into his city, Jerusalem. So Jesus isn't denying that this is true. Of course, the Messiah is the son of David. It was promised to David that he would have a descendant that would sit on the throne forever. And that's the promise of the Christ that all these sons of David's weren't. They were anticipation of the ultimate Christ who would, again, have ultimate victory, ultimate peace, bring all the promises to pass. But he was not just the son of David. He was not merely the son of David. This is what they didn't understand. They liked the son of David part. That's us, we're the Jews. This means we're the best, we're exalted. They didn't like that he has to be the son of God, which is Jesus is about to show them. Because that means that they can't do it, that they need God to come and rescue them just like everybody else, that one of their line, their king by his goodness, by his wisdom, by his power, no, it's not going to happen that way. It's only because he is also the son of God, that any of the promises are going to come, that even you are going to be saved oh Israel. And this is what Jesus is about to show them from this text again, whose son is he, they said in the son of David, he said to them, how then does David in the spirit call him Lord? That's not missed that. David in the spirit. Jesus believed that the Old Testament is the very words of God, that David didn't write this, that the scriptures are not man's word about God, man's thoughts, maybe someone enlightened. No, it's God's very word to us. David wrote the Psalm, but he wrote it in the spirit. The spirit inspires human authors to write his word perfectly without error, without a single mistake. And all of it is God's word, every word, every letter, every stroke. David in the spirit calls him Lord. Jesus hinges his whole argument to the very words of David, even the tiny little pronoun, my, which in Hebrew is just a single letter ending on at the nigh. And it becomes at the knee or adoni, my Lord. And David says that the Lord said to my Lord, David in the spirit calls this one whom the Lord is speaking to as Lord, his Lord. Now again, the rabbis all accepted this, that it was about the Messiah and they had no interpretation for it. There's something happening in the Hebrew that you need to see in verse 44. Verse 44 is a quote from Psalm 110 and we read the entire Psalm for our call to worship. That's all of Psalm 110. It is a Psalm of David as Jesus clearly to states here. So David calls him Lord in the spirit. Well, verse 44, the verse Jesus quotes is, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your foot still. Now if you have an English translation, you probably have the first Lord in all capital letters, right? Capital L, capital L, capital R, capital D. And then the second Lord, maybe you don't see this, but you need to notice it, should be capital L and then lowercase ORD. What's happening is that the translators are trying to give you an indication that there are two different Hebrew words behind the single word Lord. And that the first word all caps Lord is actually the proper name of Almighty God. It's the name that he reveals to Moses at the burning bush when he says I am that I am because I am is the same consonants, yodhe yod, or yodhe yodhe, and the name of God is yodhe bob hay. Those four letters, yodhe bob hay. Four consonants in the Greek is called the tetragrammaton if you want to know. And to this day, we don't know the correct pronunciation of it because the Jews were so a steer and not saying God's name unnecessarily that we've forgotten exactly how. And there are various theories. Some say Yahweh or Yahweh, the older way was Jehovah. It's the same consonants, yodhe bob hay. But it's the proper name of God, the Lord, the one who is the I am being. The one who says I am, I am being. That is my deafness and I'm the one who is. The Lord said to my Lord, and I've already told you it's at the nigh, which is simple word master or sir. Wise would often call their husbands Lord in that sense. Abraham's servant throughout Genesis, chapter 24, his faithful servant, who's a wonderful chapter. He said, read it if you haven't in a while, goes to find a wife for Isaac and he's constantly interacting with God as he does, asking God to lead him. And he constantly says when he's explaining what he's doing, that I'm here for my Lord Abraham, my Lord Abraham, wasn't idolatry. It was the proper name, my master, my Lord, my sir, you know, sir, would be another translation of Lord. And so David in the spirit is saying Yahweh said to my Lord, and yet the rabbis all held that this was about the Messiah. And what Jesus is pointing out is that David's son is nearly his son. It is in no way proper for him to call his own son Lord. His son would have to call him Lord. That would be a proper expression of the relationship in Hebrew culture. No way could the father call the son his Lord. And that's the questions Jesus points them. If David then calls him Lord, how is he a son? And of course we know that they're not able to answer that question. They didn't have an answer for it. David's Lord is sitting at God's right hand. Now you need to think about that. Sit at my right hand. The right hand of God is the place of all power and honor and glory. It's the symbol of God's reign. His right hand, the right hand is by which you act. This is the one, therefore, by which God acts. He's sitting at the right hand of God. This is where the sons of the kings would sit in empires in those days, showing that that son is the heir and the equal to the king. The one who's going to inherit everything of his father. He sits at his father's right hand as the heir. And this Lord is sitting at Yahweh's right hand and God tells him to. Do you see it's not enough to say, well, maybe this is somehow someone greater than David. It's not enough. This man is given this person, this being, is given equality with the father. That's the point. He's David's son, and yet he's David's Lord. How can this be? Well, there's another place where we see this. Isaiah 11 verse 1 calls the Messiah again a clear messianic passage. He calls the Messiah a shoot or a branch from the stump of Jesse. So you guys have all done this, right? You cut down a tree and you don't weedwack around it for a while and pretty soon, there's shoots coming up around the stump. The new tree wants to come up and you got to go cut those ones off too. Well, that shoot came from the stump. But Isaiah 111 says that the Messiah is a branch, a shoot from the stump of Jesse. The Jesse's would be the father of David and so for some descended from Jesse. And yet verse 10 calls this same Messiah the root of Jesse, the root of the stump. He's at the same time a branch coming out of the stump. The stump is the source. And yet he's at the same time the root of the stump. He's the source of Jesse himself. How do we understand this? Well, you know, it's interesting. The New Testament takes that same twin concept twice in the book of Revelation and describes it to Jesus. The last time as Genesis or Revelation 20 to 16, I Jesus have sent my angel to testify to these things in the church. Listen, I am the root and the offspring of David. Now how can that be? And the answer of course is in the incarnation. The doctrine of the incarnation that according to his human nature, he was the son of David. Christ's human nature did not exist until he was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of his mother, Mary, without a human father. Before that conception, there was no human nature to Jesus. It's crucial that we believe that. We don't believe Jesus' human nature somehow existed before conception. That would make him not human because every other human begins a conception. But at the same time he had a divine nature that always existed, that never had a beginning. There was always with the father from before the foundation of the world. This is what John the Baptist said when he said after me comes one who was before me. Even he was given this idea in a mystery. And so we have, for example, Romans chapter 1 verse 3 concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh. There's the son of David. Verse 4, and declared to be the son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead. There is the divine nature. And so we have two natures in one person. And this is what Jesus is calling their attention to, that their own scriptures are not satisfied unless this son of David also be the son of God, which is what he has been saying from the beginning. And we'll see later in Matthew 26, it's that statement that they crucify him for. He made himself the son of God and Christ is showing them that the scriptures have said so. And so thirdly I want you to notice the nature of the kingdom. I want you to notice the nature of the kingdom. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your foot stalled. Now the Jews understood this literally, physically temporally, that this is what the Christ would do, that Christ's kingdom is going to conquer the Romans and all the other kingdoms of their day. And there's going to be this temporal kingdom. Now again, there's an aspect in which they're right about that. The Messiah will bring and he must rule over all that is, over all people, over all lands, over all planets, over all atoms. He must rule over all because he's God and his kingdom is the kingdom of God. What they didn't understand was the spiritual reality of that kingdom in this world, while the salvation of the gospel goes out. That that final consummation where the Christ rules over all and puts down all his enemies, that doesn't come till his second coming. Right? We understand that. They didn't understand that. So they're putting everything together and they're looking for this conquering the sire who's going to conquer the world. And there is a sense in which they were right because he will. And yet, what I want you to see is that this spiritual reality of the kingdom was always the case. It was always the case that the true kingdom of God in this world is ultimately invisible and spiritual. And I'm including the whole period of Israel. You see how can that be? When David and his sons were on the throne in Jerusalem, yes, that was the physical manifestation of God's kingdom in the world. But that was not the ultimate kingdom. It was a shadow. It was a type. It was a picture. It was real. It was physical. But beloved, you could have been a citizen in David's kingdom and not have known the Lord. You recognize that, right? There were many unconverted Jews who were actually, therefore, not citizens of the kingdom of God though they were Israelites and paid their taxes and were part of the tribes and everything else. There are many examples of this. But let me just read the New Testament passage on it. So what I'm saying in here is that even during the kingdom of David, even when the typological kingdom stood, the true kingdom was still a spiritual kingdom in which only converted Jews were really the citizens. Only believing Jews were really God's children even when Israel stood as a kingdom. That was always the case. Romans chapter 2 verse 28, for he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, merely outwardly it means. Nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh merely outward, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men, but from God. Now Paul has to be talking about when circumcision was active then, because it wasn't when he's preaching the gospel. If I can even tell you the relation, you can't be circumcised, or you have to keep the whole law. So he's saying that it was always this way. It never mattered just that you had some of your flesh cut off. You had to have your heart circumcised. In other words, you had to be repented, believing, humble, person looking to God for grace, not thinking you could earn your salvation by your works. That was the gospel in Israel as well. Think of Romans chapter 9. They are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they children because they are the seed of Abraham. But in Isaac, your seed shall be called. That is those who are the children of the flesh, merely the flesh. These are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are kind of the seed. How many times do we see that in the history of Israel? Let me ask you questions. Was Esau a true Israel like son of God? Citizen of the kingdom of heaven. He was fully Jew. He's the twin brother of Jacob. Isaac is his father, Rebecca is his mother. He's the descendant of the Abraham. Is he a true Jew? No. The scripture explicitly says he will not get the covenant. What about Ruth, a Moabinus, not a drop of Jewish blood in her? Moabites were cursed to the 10th generation. Was Ruth a true Jew, a citizen of Israel, a child of God? You better believe she was. This whole book written about Ruth, the great great, maybe third great. I haven't counted it in a while. Grandmother of David. What about Rahab, a prostitute, a cane-and-knife citizen of the cursed city of Jericho? All of them were to be destroyed, a prostitute. Was she a child of God? Was she a citizen of the true kingdom of Israel? You better believe she was. She comes into the tribe, her and her family, and they disappear because they're just absorbed. They become Israelites because she believed in God. What about Ahab, fully Jew? Wicked King Ahab. Was he a true Jew? What about Ahab? What about the false prophets, real Israelites who counseled idolatry and tried to lead the Israelites astray? Were they real Israelites, citizens of God? You see what I'm saying? There was always a spiritual reality even in the physical kingdom of Israel. You had to be a believer or you weren't in this relate. You weren't a true Jew. You weren't a child of God. You were not a citizen of the kingdom of heaven over which David ruled in a typological manner as we've said. Galatians 36, Abraham believed God and it was a counter-dib for righteousness. Therefore, no, verse 7. Therefore, no, that only those who are a faith are sons of Abraham. That's always been the case. God mostly worked in the Jewish people for a time, but now in the New Testament, the gospel goes out into all the world and it's the same truth. You have to believe. It just doesn't matter if you're Jewish or not. The Israelites who are in the land right now and maybe they can even trace their line back to actual Abraham. If they don't know the Lord Jesus Christ, they're not children of God, they're not Jews. They're not citizens of the kingdom. Believing or being a Jew was never enough. You had to be a believing Jew and that's what Jesus is teaching. That's what John the Baptist ministry was about. He called the Jews to be baptized to repent. Why? Because it wasn't enough to be Jewish. In fact, he warned them about that. Do you not begin to say to yourself, we have Abraham as a father. For I say to you, God is able to raise children to Abraham from these stones. You've got to believe. You've got to repent. You've got to be converted and become a child of God and be grafted into the people of God. This idea that God has an earthly people, the Jews and a heavenly people, the Gentiles is just not in Scripture. If you're a believer, you're a child of God. Whether it's called Israel or the church at that time. And if you're not a believer, you're not a child of God. Whether you're in the church or in Israel, it doesn't matter. And so we have to look to the grace of God to be a member of the kingdom. And at that grace Christ purchases that was his mission. That's what he accomplished in establishing the kingdom. And so this understanding of the spirituality of the kingdom really is a corrective to those who would falsely abuse. You're hearing this today. If you're in the know and you're reading things, there's a lot of people even in our circles who like to say that the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, maybe you've heard that, maybe you've not. By that's this horrible doctor. That's brought all these abuses in. And we have to get rid of the notion of the spirituality of the church. Beloved, we've got two options. Either the church is God's spiritual kingdom or it's his physical. There ain't no other kind. Do you want to say it's his physical kingdom? That we're the new Israel on the earth with a government and all of those things. The church is not a physical kingdom. And the spirituality of the church is not a bad doctrine. It is a necessary good doctrine. And if some people have used that to do bad things, that's on them. The fact that the kingdom is spiritual by definition means what? That we don't judge anyone according to their aspects of their physical condition in this world. That's why scripture says in Christ there's neither male nor female. There's neither rich nor poor. There's neither Jew nor Gentile. Races, sexes, wealth, position. It doesn't matter. Do you know the Lord? That's because the kingdom is spiritual. It's a spiritual reality brought about by the Holy Spirit. What matters is is their faith in Christ in your heart. Are you hoping in him for salvation? Have you and are you looking for the grace of God to live out the Christian life and keep His commandments and grow in your love for God and love for man as you live out the spiritual reality that you have right now? And you believe and you're walking in that. The spiritual reality of the church, beloved or the spirituality of the church, rather means that we enjoy the kingdom right. Our king reigns. He's already defeated our enemies. He sat down at the right hand. He's been there for the last two thousand years. We are seated with him in the heavenly's by faith. We are citizens of the kingdom now. We serve the king now. He accepts our service now. He's promised us rewards someday for serving him now because he's raining and ruling now. And he has chosen not to destroy all his enemies yet, but that's that others could be saved. That's why that the mercy that fond us could find them. In the meantime, therefore, yeah, they're going to do bad things. But the kingdom is a spiritual reality now, beloved. Those who look to the temporal condition of man in this world, being improved somehow without conversion to Christ, that that's going to be the kingdom. They can only put forward a kingdom. I want you to think of it, which is entirely future. Someday we'll bring about the kingdom. When technology advances enough, when we all come together enough, when we all get a tolerance enough and accepting enough, someday we'll do it. Someday, 2000 years. We need more technology. We need more union. We need more niceness. Oh, we're going to do it by our collective efforts. We're going to do it. I think that's more and more the competition to the true gospel. Unfortunately, in the church, more and more. The only alternative of a present spiritual and eternal heavenly kingdom that we enjoy now by faith is a temporal, physical, mostly future and earthly kingdom that confuses and substitutes the world for the church and the works of God. They want to substitute with the work of man. Man's power for gods will do it someday. Christ has already done it all. There's not a single work left to bring in to establish the kingdom of Christ. He's sitting on the right hand of power. He's at rest. His enemies are slaying. This is the age where we go out and proclaim that truth and we live it out. There's nothing more to happen except he's going to come back and end the age of salvation and destroy his enemies, but he already rules. He already reigns. Judgment is what's next. And Jesus understood that the moment he sat down at God's right hand, his kingdom would be present in his church on earth, and he would empower them to witness the gospel of the kingdom during the age of mercy, the age of grace, to go out and gather the elect. And that's what he did at Pentecost. He poured out his spirit. He gave them the power to be his witnesses, and that witness has gone out into all the world and continues to go out. And that's the proclamation that we give. Repent, believe, enter the kingdom and live right now in the kingdom by faith for the king. Right now, not someday when we get good enough. We have that beloved, and that's the nature of the kingdom of God. Fourthly, in last year, I want you to notice the power of the word. I want you to notice the power of the word. The last verse is in Mark. It's in Luke and it's in Matthew in different places during these dialogues that he's having with these groups. But they all say this at a certain point, and no one was able to answer him a word from that, nor from that day on. Did anyone ask him a question? Can you imagine these? I don't even know how to say it. These geniuses think that they're going to outsmart and trap the incarnate wisdom of the infinite eternal omniscient God, and they're going to engage in a battle of wits with him. They don't even want to ask him anymore, because every time they ask him a question to trap him, he makes them look worse. It's like someone throwing spears at a target and every spear hits them instead, and that's literally what they're doing. Everything they do only makes his victory more complete, so they can only do one thing. They shut up and they stop trying. But really that's not the only thing they could have done. They could have humbled themselves when they saw his wisdom, when they saw their defeat, when they saw the power of his truth. They could have humbled themselves and said, forgive me. I'm a sinner. Have mercy on me, Lord. Obviously, you're the one. We've seen and heard about your miracles for years. You were healing people in here the other day. We saw your power from on high. We see your wisdom destroying all of us, not possible in the natural. We know that you're the Messiah. We know that you're the Son of God. Have mercy. Forgive us. There's not a single example of any of them doing that in the text. The word of God proved to be overwhelming. It proved to be powerful. They're conquered by the word, but they remain its enemies. They don't humble themselves. They don't bow to the Lord. They don't accept him as Lord and Savior, so they don't have him as king, so they don't receive the benefits of his kingdom and the defeat of his enemies is not their victory, because they're still his enemies. That's all I want to ask you this morning. What about you? Is Jesus Christ really your Lord? Is he really your Savior? Think of it this way. Is he really right now your king? I mean, you are actually thinking of him as your king who knows you, who sees you, who's service to him, your life is. Your life is about serving the king, glorifying the king. Do you live that way? And if you do, and you're rattled and you're struggling right now because the world seems to be having answers, seems to be troubling the gospel, read verse 46, meditate on it today. Whether you see the answer yourself, understand that the word of God, which for the last 2,000 years has vanquished every foe, will vanquished the arguments that might be troubling you. I would welcome you if you do have questions about God's word and doctrines that you're hearing in the culture today that seem to, to trouble your faith, come to me, come to past your apples and we would love to sit down and open God's word with you. But even if you don't recognize that the word will be is always and will always be seen to be victorious over every foe that comes against it. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for showing us your word, overcoming the wisdom of all of your enemies gathered together for the single purpose of tripping up our Lord. He vanquished them by their own weapons. He showed himself to be superior in every way and in doing so, he proved that he really is the one who was the son of David and who is the son of God. And we thank you, Lord Jesus, that right now you sit at the father's right hand, that right now you have all power, all your enemies have been vanquished and that we right now are in your kingdom by faith. And we live for you. Help us to do that more confidently, more boldly. And more God, how we pray that you would use us to bring others into your kingdom even as you have done for us. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.