On The Offensive

Luke chapter 20, we'll be looking particularly at verses 39 to 44.

I will start reading from our passage last week in verse 27 for context. When you have that, go ahead and stand for the reading of God's Word.

There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying,

Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.

Now there were seven brothers. First took a wife and died without children, and the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died.

Afterward the woman also died, and the resurrection therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.

And Jesus said to them, The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, where he calls the

Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.

Then some of the scribes answered, Teacher, you have spoken well, for they no longer dared to ask him any question.

But he said to them, How can they say that the Christ is David's son? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, The Lord says to my

Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

David thus calls him Lord. So how is he his son? Amen. You may be seated.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We ask that it would guide us today, that we would see the authority of Jesus Christ, it would shape our lives, that we would submit to him as we ought, that we would appreciate him as we ought, having joy in his kingdom.

Pray that you would equip us likewise to contend with every worldly philosophy that would oppose

Jesus Christ. In his name we pray, Amen. So in this chapter, we have repeatedly seen

Jesus' authority questioned in different ways. Initially, people had asked him directly about his authority, and he refused to answer because of the insincerity of their question and their unwillingness to answer a similar question.

Then he goes on to be asked about whether or not people should pay their taxes to Caesar.

They're asking him as one who has come into the city as a king about the nature of his kingdom, and his kingdom transcends the kingdoms of this world.

So you should pay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, you should give to God what belongs to God. And then the

Sadducees ask him about the resurrection. This is not unrelated. Once again they are challenging him, but they're also challenging the nature of his kingdom.

And he explains that his kingdom is not one that is like the kingdom of this world when it is fully manifest.

There will be different qualities to it than what you see in this world. And now at this point, people cease to challenge him and question him because they realize they cannot succeed in doing so.

So they want peace with him, at least a superficial kind of peace. And what is

Jesus' response to all this, to their silence? Oh good, they are no longer going to bother me.

No, he presses in on the offensive. He responds with a question and challenges them.

When they are done challenging him, he challenges them. What we should gather from this passage, as with each preceding week in this chapter, what we should gather is not only the doctrine that Christ is giving us of his lordship and the nature of his kingdom, but also we should understand the nature of opposition to Christ that you will face, and also how to respond to that opposition.

So there's three things, the doctrine that Christ is explicitly teaching on, the nature of the opposition, and then how we should respond to this.

And in this context, that has to do with the fact that Christ is lord and his kingdom transcends.

Christ is lord, that people will want peace, a false kind of peace, and third, that Christ wants conflict in the sense that he has come not to bring peace but a sword, and that he will press that all the way until the end, until he has subdued every last opponent.

That might be a surprising statement to you, that Christ wants conflict, but that is what he has repeatedly said, that he did not come to bring peace but a sword.

Now, once you understand the nature of his kingdom, that it transcends the kingdoms of this world, then you understand the nature of that sword.

The nature of that sword is to bring people's minds in submission to him as lord.

Our passage begins in verse 39. I know the ESV breaks this down so that 39 and 40 belong to the preceding passage, but you see that it is the scribe's silence that ends up prompting

Jesus' question to them, so it seems right to consider this as part of this next passage.

Then some of the scribes answered, Teacher, you have spoken well, for they no longer dared to ask him any question.

The scribes, like Jesus, believe in the resurrection. Jesus has answered the Sadducees' opposition to the resurrection well.

They are impressed by this. They're also impressed by the fact that he has responded to all their challenges. They know that they cannot oppose him and have any sort of success in argument, but they also realize that he could be a valuable ally in other ways, so they offer him this false kind of peace.

They say that he has answered well. They no longer dare to ask him any question, and what does

Jesus do in response? He asks them a question, what he said to them, but he said to them, how can they say that the

Christ is David's son? So he asks this question about the Messiah, about the

Christ being David's son. They believe that the

Messiah is going to come from the line of David, and he is asking them about the nature of that Messiah.

Do they truly understand this Messiah? They understand the context of what's happening. He's coming in as king.

He is claiming that title for himself, that he is the son of David. Do they even understand what this means?

Consider that they have been anticipating the wrong sorts of things. They've even asked him, should people pay taxes to Caesar, thinking that this is going to expose him, because certainly he is just a king like the kings of the world.

He is going to be a king even in the same way that David was a king. He is going to show to them that he is a king in a sense that is even greater than the way that David is a king.

How can they say that the Christ is David's son? When he says they say, you know, he's appealing to this anonymous third -party plural, speaking of basically the authority of the scribes, you won't say this.

This is the scholarly answer that the Christ is David's son, which is correct.

How can they say this? For David himself says in the book of Psalms, the

Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. So he challenges their understanding of David with a passage from David.

This is exactly what Jesus had done in the previous passage, if you remember. The Sadducees talked about the law of Moses and how the law of Moses necessitates that there can't be a resurrection and their understanding of the rules around leverate marriage.

And he responds to their false understanding of Moses by taking them to the text of Moses and saying even in the passage, the initial revelatory passage with the burning bush indicates that there must be a resurrection.

So he says, you've given me a false understanding of Moses, I'm going to respond with Moses.

And now he's saying, you misunderstand what the son of David is supposed to be. You misunderstand David, let me take you to David.

So he goes and he takes them to this passage. A couple of other things that you should notice about this.

First of all, Psalm 110 that is referenced here, the most frequently cited

Old Testament passage in the New Testament. It comes up a number of times, multiple times, twice in the book of Hebrews.

It comes up in other places too. This is a very frequently referenced Old Testament passage in the

New Testament. The passage starts off with the title of David.

This is a Psalm that is attributed to David. There are many people today, many scholars who will look at the different passages and then question whether or not the preposition in front of David in the

Psalms really means that he is supposed to be the author or if it just means that it's in the style of David or something else.

I think this is very good evidence when you have a later Psalm, 110, that is titled being a

Psalm of David and then Jesus himself is attributing it to David. I don't believe we have any reason to question that the

Psalms that are attributed to David as they would be in your English Bible typically, are actually

David. But it's very common that people will question whether or not they're really David's Psalms if they say they're

David's Psalms. There is ambiguity around the language itself, but Scripture itself here,

Acts 2, other places, lets you know that it really is David who is the author. It doesn't mean something different than that.

The next thing that you should notice about this quotation of the Psalm is that the people of this era, the scribes, the scholars, those who care about religion, understand that these

Psalms are messianic. When I was younger in the faith and I would hear preachers talk about the various Psalms being messianic, talking about the

Messiah, I did not know whether or not this was something that we can just say coming after the

New Testament that once we see it all put in place, we can see how, oh yes, this is messianic, because of course

Christ fulfills Psalm 22. Of course he fills Psalm 110, etc. Even the scribes at the time, even the scholars at the time, understood that these passages, like Psalm 2, like Psalm 110, are talking about something greater than David.

Even though David speaks in a way that is ostensibly about himself, they understand it to refer to something greater.

So this is not merely a Christian interpretation of the Psalms to understand them as messianic.

Even the Jewish understanding at the time of Jesus appropriately identified them as speaking of the

Christ. So this is not just something that's so veiled that it's only after Pentecost and the giving of the Spirit that you could understand that in any way.

Even then they understood this. So David is the author, the

Psalms are messianic, and Jesus takes them to task on their understanding of David with David.

So he says, The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Now it's worth covering who the speakers are. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

Now on one hand people would read this passage and they'd understand that in some sense

David is alluding to the victory that God has given to him. Yet he describes this person as my

Lord. This is someone else, this is the Messiah that he's ultimately speaking of, even if it's ostensibly framed and pictured in light of the victory that God has given himself.

Same is true with things like Psalm 2. I keep mentioning Psalm 2, you know, that's why. Why did the nations rage and the people's plot in vain, etc.

You are my son, this day I have begotten you. All these passages ostensibly about David, but ultimately pointing to the

Messiah. And so who is the speaker here when he says the Lord said to my

Lord? Well, the Lord here, if you look at Hebrew, it's the divine name and it's talking about God.

This is the Father speaking of the Son. He says sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

So do you understand the difficulty here which Jesus presses in verse 44? David thus calls him

Lord, so how is he his son? This is surprising. You would expect that if David's son is the

Messiah, that he would be either equal to or lesser than. It's not that he couldn't be a stronger king or greater in that sense.

Sure, some kings who come after are greater in terms of strength and that sort of thing, but he is willing to call him

Lord. A father calling his son Lord. What does that entail?

What does that entail? And they are not able to give an answer. They think that they understand the

Messiah. They think that they are aligned with the prophets and rightly waiting for the Christ, but the

Christ has come and they have rejected him. They do not accept him. And so he exposes that by taking them to task, showing that their understanding of the

Word of God is incorrect. Incorrect, that it is incomplete. They have not put it together.

Christ is Lord. Christ is Lord. Now, on one hand, we should see that he is

God. No doubt the scribes even understood that Jesus Christ, not

Jesus Christ, excuse me, Christ, the Christ, the Messiah that is to come, obviously they rejected Jesus as the

Christ, but the Christ is to come would be in some sense the Son of God. This is what many passages say,

Psalm 2 referencing that again. Also, 2 Samuel 7, 14 speaks of the son of David as being, that the father would be a father to him and that he would be a son to him, etc.

There are many different prophecies that speak to this. So they understand in some sense that he will be a son of God, but they do not fully grasp what that means.

If he is going to be both a son of David and a son of God, what that entails is not merely one who has a little bit of blessing of God, but one who is himself divine.

Jesus is God's son, not just in having some measure of blessing, having been anointed, but in the fact that he was born of a virgin, that he truly is the

Son of God, being conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we read in the Catechism question this morning.

There is something different about Jesus Christ. He is not just man, he is also

God. He is not just human, he is also divine. This is the sense in which they should be anticipating the

Son of God, or at least open to correction about what the Son of God is. But here he has arrived, and this is not what they are expecting.

They are expecting a king who is like the kings of this world. And it is interesting that Jesus continues in this psalm.

He does not just say, the Lord says, my Lord. He could have stopped there. That would have been enough to press his question.

David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son? But he continues on. Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

He is giving the answer in the quotation that happens. The Son will sit at the right hand of God himself.

What that indicates is that the throne that the Messiah is to sit on is a throne that is higher than David.

It is not just that he is higher than David. His whole kingdom transcends the kingdom of David.

There is a lineage that is happening, but there is a transcending nature to it such that it will not have the same character of the kingdom of David.

They are misguided, asking things about whether or not you should pay taxes to Caesar because they are expecting this to be like the kingdoms of the world.

They are expecting this to be like the kingdom of David, but his kingdom transcends. It is greater. And so Jesus, in pressing this point, is reinforcing everything that he said before.

What did he say at the beginning when they asked, who gave you this authority? He said, was the baptism of John from heaven or from man?

What is the implication? They know what he is getting at. His authority is from heaven. He is showing that he has a heavenly throne, at least one awaiting him as he will ascend.

And then when he says, give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, give to God what belongs to God, what belongs to God?

His people and whole, all things, belong to God. So all things are supposed to be oriented around Jesus as king.

And then later on when he talks to the Sadducees about the resurrection, what is the nature of their misunderstanding?

They misunderstand the nature of the kingdom of heaven. When it becomes fully manifest, they are expecting it to be like the kingdoms of this world, for people to be married and given a marriage, etc.,

etc. But no, it will be something different than that. Repeatedly, all these parties involved, whether the scribes and the elders, whether they are their spies, whether they are the

Sadducees, they all misunderstand the nature of the kingdom. And so Jesus presses this point and reinforces it and says, essentially, by this question, that you misunderstand the nature of the kingdom.

And that is why they are not able to accept him. This is not a kingdom that is simply different, when

I say transcendent, but it is a kingdom that is even higher. So many people are inconsistent about the nature of the kingdom of heaven.

They are inconsistent about the nature of the kingdom of heaven. They believe that they align with the

Christ. Even these people that we read about here, all of them are anticipating a Messiah.

They believe that they are on the side of the prophets and the coming Messiah, and that they are ready for him, but they are not ready to submit to him in the way that they ought.

That's what you see today as well. So many people believe that they are on the side of the Christ. I've met so many people who claim to be

Christian, and when you ask them about their faith, it is very little that is there, but they say that they think that they can call themselves

Christian because they believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Do you even know what the Son of God means?

Apparently you don't because you think that you can just give him what is outward and not render your whole life to him, that you can withhold from the owner of the vineyard the fruit of the vineyard when the

Son has come to take it. That's the parable that was given earlier in the middle of this, Jesus explaining the authority of the

Son. Now, these people were expecting a king to come and take taxes, etc.

People today, now that they understand it in some sense that Jesus' kingdom is not like the kingdoms of this world, they offer him even less.

They understand it as being like a kingdom of this world in that what they are supposed to render is outward, but then they don't even render outwardly what they would render to a king.

And so what they imagine is of the same dimension, something outward, but then something less than the kingdoms of this world.

Sure, maybe I'll give to him a little bit of my time, you know, show up on Christmas, Easter, maybe show up at a few other things, maybe

I will give him a little bit of my money, maybe I will, maybe I'll give him a lot of my money, maybe

I'll give him a lot of my time, but what they are imagining is that he is a kingdom that is like the king, that he is a king that is like the kings of this world that demand something outward when what he demands is something inward.

He wants the whole of you, the whole of you. All your life is to be oriented around the kingship of Jesus Christ because it is a transcendent kingdom.

Yes, you render to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar, but you render the things that belong to God to God. And that is everything.

Even when you give to Caesar, you should be asking yourself, how does this honor the Lord? Even after you would give directly to God by giving through your local assembly, you are supposed to ask about every last penny that you spend, how is this glorifying

God in the way that I spend it? Even after you would give your Sunday to the Lord, you're supposed to ask about every last minute of your time, how is this glorifying

God in the way that I would render it? All these things are to be oriented around God.

But people, even today, recognizing that he's not a king in all the senses, still think of him as a king in the same category, only requiring some outward submission.

No, he requires your whole life. He requires your whole life. This is good news.

Well, it's not that the obedience is good news, but the fact that he is a greater and higher king speaks to his goodness at a greater level.

If he were just like the kings of this world, what could he do? Defeat Rome? Defeat some political enemies?

And then he would still die in your sins and be miserable for all eternity? No, he is a greater king who will not only on that last day defeat all other kingdoms such that his kingdom will reign supreme in full manifestation, but likewise, he has destroyed the power of the accuser himself by suffering the penalty of death that is due to man in place of all those who would believe in him.

He has conquered in a greater way, and he has offered direction in a greater way.

His law is greater than the laws of the kings of this earth. His peace is greater than the peace of the kings of this earth.

His kingdom in all its glory is greater than the glories of the kingdom of this earth. And this is wonderful news, but the implications go much deeper because of that.

It is greater news, and it has greater implications. Those people who think that it has small, little implications for their life, they do not understand the greatness, the goodness of the good news.

It is much better than that. I would have you today also to consider the way that the world responds to Jesus in this circumstance.

People want peace. Now, this is not all the time. As you can see before this, a lot of times they are trying to subdue

Jesus, but when it becomes inconvenient for people, they will want a false kind of peace.

They won't want to set those differences aside because it is inconvenient to attempt any sort of conflict.

You will face this all the time as you try to advance the faith. It might be that talking about things of religion or talking about differences is too relationally difficult for people.

It is too relationally uncomfortable for people. Maybe these are friends and family who don't want there to be any kind of wedge between you as friends or family.

So they will try to put these things aside. Maybe it will be someone who is very timid and they don't like talking about things where there would be any kind of disagreement.

So they will try to put these things aside. Ostensibly, those seem like good goals, but if Christ's kingdom transcends, they are lesser goals than the goals that he would have for us.

It might also be because it is too difficult to contend. Just like the scribes, they realize that for all their intelligence, they cannot contend with Jesus Christ.

He has the answers. They do not have the answers. So it might be just too much.

So they will set it aside for that reason as well. Or it might be because they recognize that there is some value in having an alliance with you and not being on your bad side.

Maybe this is what the scribes had in mind too. Wow, Jesus is actually pretty useful when he is going up against our enemies like the

Sadducees. He understands the resurrection pretty well. This is useful.

You will come across this as well. If you ever join any kind of interfaith group, this is exactly how they will operate.

They will want to put aside all the differences and pretend that they don't exist and just focus on the things that they agree on.

There are a lot of cult -like groups. I say cult -like because they kind of have more of an exterior nature to them.

I am not able to articulate that well. They essentially are cults. You talk about masons or Scientologists, et cetera, where they will tell you, you can be a

Christian, you can keep your faith if you join us and you pledge this, pledge the secrecy that is contrary to the

Christian faith, if you affirm these truths about what is good that is contrary to the Christian faith, et cetera, as you would have in those organizations.

They will try to give you ways that this can all be at one and at peace because there's a valuable alliance to be had here.

You may also find this politically. There have been a number of times

I've found myself, you know, quote, unquote, shoulder to shoulder with Roman Catholics who are standing against abortion.

And there is a reason to want to have that kind of alliance where you would be standing against some great evil in our world and the temptation there is to set aside differences in order to stand against that perceived greater evil.

The problem is the soul is far more important than anything that could happen to the body.

And so ultimately there cannot be that kind of peace. Yes, there is grounds for partnering in secular causes in secular ways, but at no time can the differences that are greater, that are more important ever be set aside completely.

There was one time I went to an abortion clinic and there were Roman Catholics there and the leader of their group, this was many years ago, maybe 10 years ago, the leader of their group in a way of kind of offering peace to us tried to organize all of us to sing

A Mighty Fortress, you know, a very Protestant song. And then we'd all sing Ave Maria afterward.

No, this is not going to happen. We're not going to pretend that we're all the same. We have huge differences.

I'm thankful that you are opposed to abortion, but this is not, we do not have the same faith, all the same.

Now there are different kinds of tactics that people will use in order to get that false kind of peace, like you see here with the

Sadducees. They compliment Jesus. They speak to him as having done something good.

You have spoken well. So the first kind of way that they might accomplish this false peace is by giving you an out.

There was one time I was involved in a group that considered themselves very enlightened. It's not a religious group of any kind, but they considered themselves to be very intelligent people.

And one person was speculating that it was unlikely that there would be any Christians in this group because they were such an enlightened group.

I said, well, actually, I'm a Christian. He says, oh, well, you can't be the kind of Christian that would think that homosexuality is wrong or anything like that, right?

No, actually, I am. Just very direct, right? They will try to offer you an out.

Oh, but you're not that kind, right? You're not the mean kind, right? Don't take the out.

They will also compliment you, just as the Sadducees complimented Jesus. Teacher, you have spoken well.

One time I had a person say, you know, the thing I really appreciate about Christianity, as I'm trying to talk to him about the importance of submitting to Jesus Christ, the thing

I really appreciate about Christianity is the community. That's something that, you know, other groups just don't seem to have, that you all really support each other.

And I see my friends who are Christians, they have that, and I don't. So I really appreciate that. They will try to compliment you as a way of establishing some kind of friendly, superficial peace, a false peace.

They'll be saying, here's an olive branch. Go ahead, take this olive branch. Let's leave this alone.

They will try to change subject. There have been times where I've spoken to someone about the importance of some biblical truth.

This is someone else who all sensibly believes the Bible. And they will say, wow, you really know your

Bible well. How do you study? And then they will try to shift topics.

So you're pressing that they have misunderstood this important, critical truth in the Bible, and they will switch topics to something else, maybe by way of compliment, but try to transition elsewhere.

And they will offer superficial agreement. They will say things like, well, you know, we both believe in the resurrection, just like we have here with Jesus and the

Sadducees. Well, you know, we're really not all that different. We're really not all that far apart. And they will try to minimize the differences as a way of having some kind of false peace that cannot really be had.

There is a great danger. What's going on here is some kind of social reciprocity.

This is what happens in conversations where someone does one thing with the goal of either permitting or trying to solicit the same response.

When you ask someone about their hobbies, what are you trying to do? You're getting them to also ask you about your hobbies.

You might be doing it in a nicer way. You might be doing it in a way that is really just interested in yourself. There's all kinds of ranges, but that's usually the protocol in conversations.

You say, what kind of hobbies do you have? And then they're supposed to answer and then ask you, what kind of hobbies do you have? Or you might say something like, an older mom might say to a younger mom,

I had so much trouble when I was a young mom, et cetera. And so they're trying to be vulnerable to solicit vulnerability in return.

There's a reciprocity that happens there. Some of that's good. Some of that can be selfish. But the point is that people will use that in order to establish a false peace.

They will make a compliment. They will shift topics and they expect reciprocity. They expect you to lay down the sword when they lay down the sword.

But there is a danger in this. You cannot do this. James 4 .4 says, you adulterous generation, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

Whoever becomes a friend with the world makes himself an enemy with God. This is what happens when you are a friend of the world.

You become an enemy of God. His kingdom is above all the other kingdoms.

You cannot have friendship with the world when he is against the world.

In Exodus 34 .12, it says to the people of Israel as they're going to go into the land of Canaan, it says, take care lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst.

They're not supposed to make any kind of peace alliance with the people that they would go in with. We've read recently in Joshua about how they accidentally made a peace alliance with the

Gibeonites, and you've seen this at play a couple of times. They're not supposed to make any peace alliance with the people that they would go in with.

This is what the world is going to want you to do. When it becomes inconvenient for them to have that conflict, they will try to offer you an alliance.

And what did God say to the people of Israel? You cannot do this. This will undermine your ability to stand for the kingdom that I am giving you.

So it is with you. If you accept that false kind of peace, now you can be pleasant with people, you can be kind in all the ways that you should be kind, you can agree to the things that you should agree to, but if you lay aside those differences as though they are small things, then you are accepting that alliance that God has told you not to accept, lest it become a snare in your midst.

It will become a snare to you. It will not only undermine your ability to reach them, it will undermine you yourself.

You yourself, as you are not bold in that instance, are sacrificing courage so that you will grow in cowardice.

You are sacrificing a good conscience before the Lord so that you will not be able to go before Him with the same kind of boldness before the throne of grace.

There's all kinds of things that may happen to you if you make that alliance, just as there were all kinds of things that may happen to the people of Israel, if they would make those peace alliances with the people of the land.

Now moving on from the way that the world responds, how is it that Christ responds? Simple, memorable statement,

Christ wants conflict. Now I know that that could be taken in wrong ways, of course. Christ is bringing peace,

He is the Prince of Peace, but He is bringing it through subduing every last enemy. Either that enemy will be subdued and coming into His kingdom, or they will be subdued and being defeated.

Now that kingdom has not become manifest, and so there's no physical sword that is being wielded at this time.

This is not a religion like Islam, where the kingdom is like the kingdom of this world, where it is advanced by a physical sword, but it is advanced by a sword.

It is advanced by the sword of the word of the Lord. This is what Christ has said in Mark. In Mark, He said, do not think that I came to bring peace,

I came to bring a sword. He has brought a sword.

And so when we strategize about how we should respond to the world, we should look at Christ as our example.

He is not because of His greatness, because of His wisdom, because He Himself is

God. He is still an example to be followed. Many people would think that because He is so great, that His example should not be followed.

That, well, He is God, we can't necessarily do what He did. He is giving us, in this whole chapter, and the way that He responds to opponents, examples to follow.

Does He lay things aside? No. He presses the point. And a very simple way to do that is to ask questions that you know your opponent cannot answer because they have not put together the true things of God.

He asks them, how can they say that the Christ is David's son? David thus called

Him Lord. How is He His son? This is what you ought to do, is you ought to ask the difficult questions that can't be answered.

If you've ever heard the name Greg Bonson before, the way he would describe this is pushing the antithesis.

It's necessarily the case if God's word is true, everything else is false.

It's necessarily the case that it falls at some point, that is inconsistent at some point, either with the world around it or with itself.

And so you must push the antithesis. Okay, so Christianity is the thesis. The antithesis is not

Christianity, whatever that not Christian view is. You push it. So to push it is to take it to its logical conclusions.

This is what Jesus is doing. He's saying, you believe this, you believe this, you believe that there is a

Christ who will be the son of David, you believe that David calls Him Lord, tell me how you reconcile those things.

He pushes the antithesis. And, of course, they are not able to answer.

They are not able to answer Him. Maybe you have heard, there's all kinds of things that Christians will say that are out from this duty to engage in the conflict that Christ has called you to.

He is a king, you are a soldier in His army, He is taking you into war. There are all kinds of things that people will do to justify turning coat and running.

One of those things is they will say that it's impossible to prove religion.

It's impossible to prove religion, so you can't really prove anything. All you can do is maybe share your testimony or something like that, which, no doubt, that's an effective way of demonstrating that Christ is

Lord by what He has done in your life. Don't take that as a discouragement in sharing your testimony.

But do not accept any of these kinds of things to say, well, we're just going to have to agree to disagree because you can't really prove these things and they're totally justifiable for not believing the

Christian faith. No one is justified in rejecting the Christian faith. Those who have not heard of the

Christian faith, in Romans 1, it says that they are without excuse. They must submit to the Lord. Those who have heard the

Christian faith have no excuse for rejecting it. God has made

His truth evident. And so all that needs to be done in order to prove the

Christian faith is to expose the inconsistency of their own position because God has already demonstrated the truth of His.

God has already demonstrated the truth of His, so once you show that theirs is false, this is the alternative.

This is all you have to do. You do not have to worry about how intelligent you are. Yes, if you do not know the

Scriptures and you're not able to give the answers, you are going to, it is not going to be an easy task.

And you should learn the Scriptures in order that you can give these kinds of answers. Really dwell with the Scriptures, meditate on them in order that they would come to mind upon these circumstances.

If you ever find a situation where nothing's coming to mind with how to answer it, mark that down. Note that I fell in battle at that point.

I've got to figure out how to parry that move in order that I would be able to be a soldier in the

Lord's army. Now, I am also not encouraging a kind of engagement in defense of the

Christian faith that would be for your entertainment or for your enjoyment. Now, it should be a joyful thing to do so, but many people engage in apologetics, engage in defending the

Christian faith primarily for the purpose of entertainment. They enjoy it, they get a kick out of it. They're not really doing it out of submission to the

Lord or the sake of people's souls. Do it with seriousness, but that seriousness requires going and improving in areas where you have failed.

A lot of people would think, okay, well, if we're just doing it for the Lord, if it's not something where I'm just getting some jollies out of arguing with people, then

I don't need to go figure out how to argue better because that's not really my goal. No, you should know the word that you would be able to contend with opponents of Jesus Christ.

You are to contend for the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints. This is part of your duty as a

Christian. God has given people different capacities to be able to do so, but he has commanded each one of us to meditate on his word and that we should be growing in this task.

Don't hear me as laying burdens on you that God has not laid on you.

I understand that not everybody is going to be a deep scholar who's able to respond to every single scholarly statement, but he has called you to know his word in a way that can respond to opponents and to be able to press them for answers to the questions that they can't answer.

Learn to do so. Make note. Ask questions, either of me or of a more mature brother or sister who would be able to help you with these things as you encounter these issues.

Do not lay these differences aside. Several thoughts in closing.

First, do not be pacified.

Do not be pacified when people hand you an olive branch. Don't take the olive branch.

Take no olive branches. Swipe it aside. That sounds like the craziest thing to do. Doesn't sound like a very

Christian thing to do when I say that, but it is. This is what Jesus did. They offer him an olive branch.

He tosses it to the ground, and he says, and they ask him no question. He asks them a question.

Take no olive branch. Go on the offensive. Do not just be on the defensive where you're answering people's questions.

Ask people questions. Now, when I say go on the offensive, I don't mean be offensive in a way that's unkind.

You should still be pleasant with people, but go on the offensive in the sense of not being on the defensive.

Push the antithesis. Now this is true not only outside of the faith. This is true in some measure in the faith.

In the faith, you will encounter people who need to grow, and you have,

God has given you his word in order to help another, but they will find iron sharpening iron to be too difficult.

They will find truth uncomfortable. You must ask yourself what would

Christ have done in that circumstance? It's not the sword in the same sense because these are not enemies, but it is still the case that we don't pretend like there's no differences we're talking about.

I'm not saying that every time you meet anybody who disagrees with you, you make a huge deal out of it.

I'm not saying every time you run into a Presbyterian, you have to get into an argument about baptism. But I am saying that these matters are meant to be discussed.

God would have his children to iron sharpen iron. God would have his children to grow with one another, and that these things should not be set aside with some kind of false peace thinking that it's the absence of external conflict that is the real peace.

The real peace is when we agree in the Lord and we're united in him, growing closer to him.

Do not be intimidated by the world. No doubt these scribes are very intimidating people.

Jesus spent time with the Lord. He spent time with the scriptures. He was able to answer them.

I grew up being not explicitly taught, but the way I would hear people in church talk about folks like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons as people who really knew the scriptures well and they had so many things memorized.

I thought, oh wow, that's just really intimidating. I don't know if I'd be able to answer any of that.

And certainly the first time you come into a certain set of beliefs, you're not going to have necessarily every answer. It might take you some time to figure some things out.

But the reality is too that I was also by my parents taught to memorize many verses and I actually had a lot that I would be able to have given to someone who was in need of the truth.

So do not be intimidated. God has equipped you with his spirit. He's equipped you with his word. If you make use of the means that he's given you, including prayer, he will give you sufficient victory.

He will give you victory in the sense that he will help you to be faithful. He will help you to be faithful.

Likewise, do not be discouraged. Do not be discouraged.

It might be easy to see the difficulty of trying to persuade someone. Your goal is not to persuade.

The Holy Spirit persuades. Your goal is just to be faithful. The battle belongs to the

Lord. And sometimes it's the case that you would only be sharing these truths for some other purpose.

For some glory that God might receive in some other way. Either in a demonstration of the faithfulness of his children or maybe there are others that are listening.

And Mark, what it says in this passage is that the great throng heard Jesus gladly.

In other words, he's talking to the scribes about the greatness of the Son and how the Son is greater than David and the scribes are challenged but everyone else is just eating it up.

They love it. Sometimes you may be sharing things for the sake of others.

And coming back to this main point that Jesus is making, his kingdom transcends.

So do not fail. Give yourself wholly to him. His kingdom is not a kingdom that is of this world.

His gospel is not a good news that is merely mundane, that is merely of this world so that it would give you a few blessings in this life.

It is something that covers all areas. It transcends. That has implications that are extensive.

If you do not recognize the extensive nature of Christ's lordship over all things, then it means you do not understand the extensive goodness of Christ's gospel.

Submit to Christ. Submit to him. His gospel is excellent. He has died in place of all those who believe so that they would have eternal life and they would have the blessings not just of this life but of the life to come, of the glorious resurrection that was described earlier and having a glorious king who sits at the right hand of God who is the son of David but is likewise the son of God and sits at his right hand.

Amen. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for Jesus Christ, the son of David and your son.

We pray that you would help us to understand the goodness of his reign. We pray that you would help us in living in his kingdom to do so as we ought so that we might do so more joyfully and not at odds in him in any way but rather reaping the blessings that come from the goodness of his kingdom, from those things that he has earned through his perfect life and death on the cross that he might share with us the benefits of redemption.

We pray that none of those would be lacking from us and we ask that you would equip us by your word to respond to opponents that we would not desire peace with the world knowing that that is enmity with you but we would rather engage in the conflict that Christ has called us to being soldiers in his army, being faithful, marching onward.