Whose Son is the Messiah?
35 While Jesus was teaching at the Temple courts, he asked ‘ Why do the teachers of the law say that the Messiah is the Son of David. 36 David himself, speaking by the Holy Spirit, declared:
‘The LORD said to my Lord
“sit at my right hand
Until I put your enemies
Under your feet”’
37 David himself calls him ‘Lord’. How then can he be his son? The large crowd listened to him with delight.
Horsham: 17th June 2025
The action here takes place on the Wednesday of Holy Week. Jesus is having a busy day at the Temple. The religious and political leaders of Israel are provoking him. They want to arrest him. They want him out of the way. The knives are out. They want him dead.
Yet here is Jesus, out in the open, in the courts of the Temple, attracting attention. He is surrounded by this crowd who have witnessed his public humiliation of Temple Leaders, Herodians, Pharisees and Sadducees. This crowd love him. They are ‘listening to him with delight’ (v37). After all, who doesn’t like to see arrogant leaders slapped down once in a while!
Rabbi’s answer questions. That’s what they do. But sometimes, it is the rabbi who asks the question. In this case, the question he asks may sound strange to us, but it addressed a very familiar concept for the crowd. It’s drawn from Psalm 110. A Psalm of David. There’s a bit of a riddle in here somewhere. The crowd are keen to hear what Jesus thinks.
We need to look closely at the text of Psalm 110 as quoted here. Notice that the word ‘LORD’ appears first in capital letters. That means that in the Hebrew, the original word was ‘I AM’ – ‘Yahweh’. The second time it appears it is not capitalised. That means that the Hebrew word was ‘Adonai’. Adonai is also a name given to God, but is in some sense a lesser title. We might translated it as ‘Sovereign One’. So, we might think that in Psalm 110, God is talking to himself. That’s not the case. David, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (that’s Christ’s view – see v36), sees Yahweh inviting another, who also shares His Name, to sit at his right hand.
In this riddle, Jesus is saying to the crowd, ‘Who is this that God is calling to sit in the place of honour at his right hand?’ As a Christian, the answer is clear. The ‘Sovereign One’ is Jesus.
‘Psalm 110 is a prophetic Psalm, and David was saying by the Holy Spirit that when the Messiah had finished his labour in this world, He would be exalted to heaven and enthroned at the right hand of God.’ (Sproul, p294)
We can easily misunderstand the importance of King David to the Jews. He is a central and inspirational figure. He is their King. He was a renowned warrior, as well as a musician and poet.
There was a widespread acceptance that the Messiah would come from David’s descendants. There were, of course, many descendants – many ‘son’s of David’ – but only one was going to be Messiah. David was a successful warrior king, and there was a common expectation that the Son of David would be in the same mold. This fed the view that the Messiah would re-establish Israel, leading the nation to victory against Rome. Jesus did not deny that the Messiah would be of ‘David’s Line’ – people had started to call him ‘Son of David’ (eg, ) but he repeatedly confronted and rejected any sense that he was to be a warrior ‘Messiah’.
So, David is referring to one of his descendants, yet he calls him ‘my Lord.’ It’s true in most cultures that the ‘son’ should respect the ‘father’. In general, that’s how family relationships work. So here’s the riddle. Whilst we know who the LORD is, who is the Lord in Psalm 110, and why does David call him my Lord?
We naturally assume that a ‘son’ would show deference to his father. Yet David creates the image of himself, the greatest king of Israel, showing deference to one of his descendants – the one who is his son, even calling him his (ie David’s) Lord.
Jesus is born in the line of David (Matthew 1), into the household of Joseph. But Joseph was not his father. His conception was through the Holy Spirit. Whilst we don’t hear Jesus commenting on the title ‘Son of David’, he is saying that he, the one who people regard as the Son of David, is actually the Son of God. He is immeasurably higher, even than the greatest king of Israel, King David.
In the Psalm, David refers to the Lord – the Son of God. Knowingly or not, David is prophetically pointing towards, and acknowledging the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The Messiah.
End Piece
We view the Old Testament through a very different cultural lens to our Jewish friends. It’s easy for us to underestimate the critical importance of King David in Jewish culture. That’s because we know Jesus as the Messiah. For us, He is the important One. He is the Son of God.
Jesus had challenged the order of things, even trashing the market in the Temple. The theme of the questions was ‘Who do you think that you are.’ Time and again, because of their own preconceptions and in-grained cultural beliefs, the people in power misunderstood who he was. In reality, they completely misunderstood their opportunity for relationship with him.
When I talk to people about Jesus, the response is often similar. People are still asking the same questions. People have absorbed lots of misinformation about who he is. They trip up on their own cultural beliefs and completely misunderstand who this Jesus is. They completely misunderstand their opportunity for relationship with him.
Yet here we are, 2000 years later, still talking about him. Such is the power of God. That is the influence of the Holy Spirit. That is who Jesus is.
Yesterday, today and forever. Jesus Christ is the same (Hebrews 13:8). Unchanging (Malachi 3:6). Son of God (Mark 14:61-62).