The Lord Said unto My Lord

In Nomine Iesu!

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Sermon Text: St. Matthew 22:34-46

“Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, + Jesus asked them a question, saying, ‘What think ye of the Christ? Whose Son is He?’ They say unto Him, ‘The Son of David.’ He saith unto them, ‘How then doth David in the Spirit call Him Lord, saying, “The Lord said unto my Lord, ‘Sit Thou on My right hand, till I put Thine enemies underneath Thy feet?’” If David then calleth Him Lord, how is He his Son?’ And no one was able to answer Him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions.”

Prayer in Pulpit before Sermon:

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, Who hast given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness through the glorious revelation of the Gospel, cause Thy Word to dwell in us richly, we beseech Thee, and fill us with the knowledge of Thy will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, that we may know our sin, and Thy Son as the Savior from sin, and may walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; through + Jesus Christ, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior + Jesus Christ. Amen. 

My dear friends in Christ, the Pharisees and Sadducees are always asking the wrong question. This discourse that we have between the Pharisees, and our Lord + Jesus begins back in chapter Twenty-one. The Lord had come into the temple and immediately He approached by the chief priests and elders of the people demanding to know by what authority He was doing the things that He had been doing: healing the sick, casting out demons, curing the lame, giving sight to the blind, and restoring hearing to the deaf. The Lord responds with a question of His own: By Whose authority did St. John the Baptist do the things that he did? They refused to answer. Our Lord + Jesus responds to their silence with three parables against them and the Pharisees. The final parable is the one that we will hear in two weeks on Trinity Twenty, the parable of the Wedding Feast.

The Pharisees try once more to trip up our Lord with a different question. This one dealt with the taxes to Caesar, which is usually heard on the Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity Sunday. And which we will not hear this year because of the accordion-like nature of the Trinity season, in which we will skip to Trinity Twenty-five after Trinity Twenty-two (which falls on the Festival of All Saints this year). After the Pharisees are silenced once again, the Sadducees, who believe not in the resurrection of the dead, ask our Lord + Jesus a question about the resurrection of the dead. If a woman has seven husbands in this life, whose wife will she be in the resurrection of the dead. Our Lord + Jesus once again silences the Sadducees by pointing out that the Lord God is a God of the living, not of the dead. This is where our Gospel reading from the Apostle and Evangelist St. Matthew begins. The Pharisees, seeing that their enemies the Sadducees had been silenced, try once more to trap our Lord + Jesus with a question.

As we see from this brief walkthrough of the last half of the Twenty-first and beginning of the Twenty-second chapters of St. Matthew, the chief priests, scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees all ask our Lord + Jesus the wrong questions. Today’s question deals with the Law of the Lord God, the Ten Commandments. Which of the Commandments is the greatest? This question is meant to force our Lord + Jesus to pick one of the Commandments, so that they can argue for another Commandment. It is asked, we are told by St. Matthew, by a lawyer. Lawyers in the holy Scriptures were not like the lawyers of the today, which either serve to prosecute criminal behavior, or defend it. Lawyers in the Bible were those who were well-versed in the Law of the Lord God. They studied it intensely. They knew their stuff when it came to the interpretation of the Commandments.

That the Pharisees put forth this certain lawyer shows that he was at the top of the class. He was their best shot at catching the Lord + Jesus in His words. The fact that they use the Law reveals that they believe this is the means of salvation. This is the way it is with many in this world today, even among Christians. They confuse faith and works. Faith alone justifies, as we heard this week during the Office of Matins from the Full Declaration of the Formula of Concord, the Third Article on the Justification of Faith. Works, that is, the keeping of the Law, are never to be co-mingled with the article of justification by faith. Works never replace faith, as is the common teaching of the means of salvation in this world. The world believes we are saved by being “good people.” Works also should never stand side-by-side next to faith, as is often taught by the Papists and in a slightly different form among many of the Reformed Church bodies. This teaching goes something like this: “You have been saved by faith through grace, now you must do your part to complete it.” They place good works on a level with faith.

This false teaching destroys justification by faith through grace. For people are always willing to do good works to puff themselves up in their own pride, even as the Pharisees believed their works to be superior to everyone else’s. People who view their works in this way have placed their faith in their works, not in the Lord God, nor in the Son of David, the Lord + Jesus. They even make faith a work of their own. This is how they can preach that a person is saved by faith, because it is just one more work that they do to earn their salvation. The true teaching on justification by faith is that faith is a gift of the Holy Ghost, given to us by the pure preaching of the Word of the Lord God, and by the right administration of the holy Sacraments.

When one believes that faith has been given to him by the Lord God, he can trust fully that his salvation is secure because it is the Lord God Who is doing all the work. He is calling, gathering, enlightening, and sanctifying us in the one, true faith. He is the one keeping us in the faith by continuing to give us His holy Word and Blessed Sacraments in their pure and unadulterated form. When one firmly believes that their faith has been gifted by the Lord God, it is easy for him to cling in faith to the Son of David.

This is why the lawyer on behalf of the Pharisees is asking the wrong question. His focus on the Law is misplaced. It is not the means of one’s salvation, because our Lord + Jesus gives the right answer, the greatest Commandment is to love the Lord God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This implies a perfect keeping of the Law, for one must keep it with one’s whole heart, soul, and mind; one must love the Lord God with every ounce of his being and person without fail. If he fails in one part, he fails completely. And then, our Lord + Jesus puts the nail on our coffin, by also telling us that the second greatest Commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves. We have a hard enough time loving perfectly those neighbors with whom we get along. We fail miserably when it is revealed that even those we view as enemies are our neighbors, as we heard from the parable of the Good Samaritan earlier in the Trinity season.

Which is the greatest Commandment is the wrong question, even if it is only asked as a means to test the Lord + Jesus. Our Lord, however, shows His compassion and mercy for us, for all mankind, even the Pharisees asking Him the question to prove Him, for He asks the right question. The question is not about the Law, not about works, but about the Messiah; the right question is about faith. “What think ye of the Christ? Whose Son is He?”

The Pharisees answer quickly that the Christ is “the Son of David.” With all their knowledge of the Law, they failed to see the truth about Who the Son of David is. They viewed Him only as an earthly descendant of King David. They viewed the Christ as someone who would deliver them from their earthly enemies, especially the Romans. But our Lord teaches them that the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One of the heavenly Father is so much more than just the Son of David. He is so much more than mere man. He is also the Lord, for King David in the Spirit, prophesies that the Christ will be both his Son, and his Lord. “The Lord said unto my Lord, sit Thou on My right hand, till I put Thine enemies under Thy feet.” These enemies of the Lord are not earthly enemies, but they are spiritual enemies.

The enemies of the Lord + Jesus, the Son of David, are the devil and his angels. The world is also His enemy for the world seeks to kill and destroy the Church and all those who belong in it. Even our sinful flesh is our Lord’s enemy, because it wars against the New Adam which has been created in us by the work of the Holy Ghost. The Old Adam in us drives us to evil, sinful lust daily and often. It drives us to rely in our good works, and not in the Christ. The Old Adam deceives us into thinking that we can be our own masters, that we do not need the Christ at all. This is why the Old Adam should be drowned and killed daily through repentance and faith. We must daily deny our works, confess our breaking of the Commandments, and all our sins, look in faith to the only One Who perfectly fulfilled the Law of the Lord God on our behalf.

He loved the Lord God and us perfectly in that He obeyed His heavenly Father’s will and came down from heaven to take upon Himself our flesh, and fulfill the Law which we were unable to keep, so that He might offer up His life as a ransom for ours upon the tree of the holy cross. Upon the cross He put all His enemies under His feet. He defeated for us death, the devil, and sin and shame. Therefore, we need not ask the wrong question any longer. The question is not about our keeping of the Law, but rather it is about the Son of David, our Lord + Jesus, the Christ. It is faith in Him which justifies us. It is faith in His works and merits which justify us. Our good works do not justify us at all. They only serve to prove that faith is living within us. But our works should never be our focus. They should not be the question which we ask. Our question should be about the Lord of my Lord. For Him alone, we have forgiveness of our sins, eternal life, and salvation from all our enemies. If we have Him as the answer, we durst ask no more questions, for we have all the answers we will ever need in Him alone. In the Name of our Lord + Jesus, the Christ. Amen.

Prayer in Pulpit after Sermon:

Almighty God, be pleased to accompany Thy Word with Thy Holy Spirit and grant that Thy Word would increase faith in us; bring into the Way of Truth all such as have erred; turn the hearts of the unrepentant; and for sake of Thy Name grant succor to all heavy hearts and those who are heavy-laden, that they may through the mercy of the Lord + Jesus Christ be relieved and preserved so that they succumb not to the temptation of despair but rather that they gain the victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil; through the same + Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with the Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.

The Votum:

The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ + Jesus. Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!