I’m My Own Grampa
I’m My Own Grampa
Matthew 22:41-46
In 1947, Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe of the Jesters, released a song about a rather complicated family situation, “I’m My Own Grampa.”
"Now, many, many years ago when I was twenty-three/ I was married to a widow who was pretty as could be/ This widow had a grown-up daughter, had hair of red/ My father fell in love with her and soon the two were wed/ This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life/ My daughter was my mother 'cause she was my father's wife/ To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy/ I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy/ My little baby then became the brother-in-law to Dad/ And so became my uncle though it made me very sad/ For if he was my uncle, that also made him the brother/ Of the widow's grown-up daughter who of course was my step-mother/ My father's wife then had a son that kept him on the run/ And he became my grandchild for he was my daughter's son/ My wife is now my mother's mother and it makes me blue/ Because she is my wife, she's my grandmother too/ Now, if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild/ And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild/ For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw/ As husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa"1
This silly song may confuse us, but not so much, perhaps, as the Pharisees seem confused by Jesus in our text. Jesus challenges them with this question: “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” The question raises for us some difficult, but vital questions: Who is the Messiah? How will we know him when he appears? In some ways, it is an echo of Jesus’ earlier question to the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”
We have the benefit of hindsight and the text of the New Testament. We have the disciples’ answer. We have the gospel of Matthew, which focuses our attention on the Messianic prophecies. All through the gospel, Matthew has been “stringing pearls” for us, reminding us over and over both of the prophecies and of how Jesus fulfilled them. From the genealogy onward, Matthew has been answering the question for us. We also have the letters of Paul and the letter to the Hebrews, where the identity of the Messiah is spelled out for us. And I want for us to connect all the pieces.
To do that, we need to first of all understand what the Pharisees anticipated. When Jesus asked them, “Whose son is he?” the answer was obvious. Of course, he is David’s son, King David’s descendant. That was, after all the prophecy. Isaiah had promised, A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit (11:1). Jeremiah had said, “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land” (Jer 23:5), and Jeremiah 33:15 echoes that with a reference to a righteous Branch [that will] sprout from David’s line. Similar prophecies are found in Zechariah 3:8 and 6:12. There was also the promise to David, repeated to Solomon, that David’s throne will remain secure before the Lord forever (1 Ki 2:45). Isaiah 9:6 - Unto us a child is born ... is followed in verse 7: He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom ... from that time on and forever. Isaiah 16:5 - one from the house of David will sit on the throne of Israel. And Jeremiah 33:17 - David will never fail to have a man to sit on the throne of Israel. The prophecies were clear: the Messiah would be a descendant of King David; he was to be a “son of David.” And the Pharisees answered the obvious, “The son of David.” That was easy.
Not so fast.
How are we then to deal with Psalm 110:1? Let’s read the whole psalm –
The Lord says to my lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying, “Rule in the midst of your enemies!” Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy splendor, your young men will come to you like dew from the morning’s womb. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. He will drink from a brook along the way, and so he will lift his head high.
The Messiah is David’s son, and yet David himself addressed him as “my lord.” The son is not greater than his father in status, and even if the son is smarter, wealthier, higher politically, the father is still his senior, and still to be honored by the son, so, Jesus asks, “If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” The Psalmist gives us even more trouble. The writer to the Hebrews, showing that Jesus is greater than the angels, quotes Psalm 2:7 – to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father?” That writer also refers back to God’s promise to David in 2 Samuel 7 – The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. That is, the Messiah will not just be David’s son, but he will be God’s son. No angel, the writer says, was ever addressed this way. And quoting from the Septuagint, says that the Messiah will be worshiped by angels – Rejoice, ye heavens, with him, and let all the angels of God worship him (Dt 32:43). How then is he David’s son, if even the angels of heaven are called to worship him, considering that only God himself is worthy of worship (Ex 20:2-3; Dt 6:4).
Furthermore, Psalm 110 says of David’s “Lord,” – The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek” (110:4) The writer to the Hebrews quotes that twice (Heb 5:6; 7:17) to show that the Messiah, Jesus, is an eternal priest and has an eternal priesthood. To counter any confusion, the writer to the Hebrews tells us that the name, Melchizedek, means “King of Righteousness,” and that Melchizedek has no father or mother, no genealogy, no beginning or end, being a priest forever. He implies there that Melchizedek was at least a type for Christ, and we glean that there is only one such priest at a time, that the priesthood passes upon the death of the priest, and since Jesus is alive forever, he is the final and perfect priest, that there will never be another, for there is no need for another. It was to Melchizedek that Abraham, unsolicited, paid tithes (Gen 14:18-20).
By referring to Psalm 110, Jesus invited them to consider not just “David’s son,” but the implications of the rest of the psalm. We’ve already seen it a couple times, but it is not only a priest after the order of Melchizedek, but a priest forever. You see, David’s reign was temporary. He ruled approximately forty years. Then he died and was succeeded by his son Solomon. The difficulty with the Pharisee’s answer is that it was short-sighted. They wanted a king, a descendant of King David, to unite Israel, drive out the Roman occupiers, and make Israel a secure and prosperous nation. There is another question we would ask: And then what? What comes next after the Davidic king does all of that? Then he rules a certain number of years and dies. What happens then?
Well, then we’ll all be dead so it won’t matter anymore. Ah, so you’re only interested in your own lifetime and not about the generations to come. Will Israel still be secure? Prosperous? Free?
But by appealing to the prophecies about David, they are, by extension, appealing to the whole of the prophecy. And that’s not something they had thought about. Because their ideal Messiah was coming to set up an earthly kingdom, a rival to Rome. But that’s not what the prophecies were about. There’s that little problem of “forever.”
That can be explained, I suppose, in terms of an earthly kingdom. It’s just many years. The kingdom will last on earth as long as time exists. But the word used in the New Testament is aionion.. Now, we have a translation problem, because there is really no English equivalent for this Greek word. The first part is “eon”, which just means “ages” to us. And John 3:16 (KJV) translates it “everlasting.” The NIV and other translate “eternal”. But eternal is not “time without end.” It is something apart from time. Scientists tell us that space, matter, and time came into existence together, so time is tied to creation, and is related to the duration of matter. But what was there before time? And what will there be when time ends? Aionion - timelessness. What the Scripture is trying to tell us, what the prophets are trying to tell us is that the Messiah will reign in eternity (not for eternity), in that timelessness that is the presence of God, that is the kingdom of God. We sing it without really thinking about it – the chorus of “I Believe in a Hill Called Mt. Calvary” ends with this line: “And when time has surrendered and Earth is no more I’ll still cling to the old rugged cross.” When time has surrendered; when time comes to an end in the new Heaven and new earth, Jesus will still reign.
We go back to the beginning of what Matthew has been trying to tell us about the Messiah, and what Matthew has been trying to prove. The Messiah comes to establish the kingdom of God. Jesus is that Messiah, the Davidic king they were waiting for. So Jesus has come to inaugurate the timeless kingdom. All the prophecies say so.
Psalm 110:4 says he is a priest forever. The Hebrew is kohen le’olam. Anchor Bible says, “priest of the Eternal.” Adam Clarke renders it “priest forever – for futurity–for all time–till the earth and the heavens are no more.” It is an eternal priesthood. When Jesus calls himself the Son of Man, he is referring to Daniel 7:13-14, where one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven ... is given authority, glory and sovereign power; [and] all nations of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away.
In Matthew 26, Jesus is arrested and taken before the Sanhedrin, the ruling body of the Jews, composed of Pharisees, Sadducees, and priests. It is a religious body as well as civil, and it is made up of men who know the Scriptures. Jesus tells them, in v. 64, “From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” The high priest tears his clothing and cries out over what he hears as blasphemy. He knows Daniel 7, and he knows that this Son of Man will be given divine authority and the worship that belongs only to God. What he hears is Jesus claiming to be the one God worthy of worship. He doesn’t hear “son of David”. He hears a claim to deity, a clear violation of the Shema, and of the first command to have no other gods. This man is claiming to be God. The Lord says to my lord: “Sit at my right hand ...”
The writer to the Hebrews asks, To which of the angels did God ever say, “Sit at my right hand ...?” (Heb 1:13). Four times that writer tells us that after Jesus provided purification (1:3), endured the cross (12:2), and offered the perfect sacrifice for sin (10:12), and became our high priest (8:1), he sat down at the right hand of God. The Sanhedrin did not hear what they wanted to hear, that Jesus was the “son of David.” They heard that he was David’s Lord.
Here’s where the rubber meets the road for us – When we figure out who Jesus is, then we are responsible for what we will do about it. Read this last sentence of our text: No one would say a word in reply and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions. Ask yourself why. Why do we stop questioning? Only two reasons: We have our answer, or we don’t like the answers we get. We stop questioning because we don’t want the answer. “What must I do to be saved?” Do you really want the answer? “What must I do to enter the kingdom of heaven?” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” “Come, take up your cross daily and follow me.” The question is, what will you do with Jesus? When you discover that Jesus is the one and only Son and that eternal life is only possible through him ... When you discover that “no one comes to the Father except through” Jesus ... What will you do?
Jesus was not just David’s son; he was David’s Lord. Will he be your Lord, too?