35 While Jesus was teaching in 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. ~ Mark 12:35-37
In today's passage, we are given a brief conversation that the Lord Jesus had with the people in the temple. It was Wednesday of His final week on earth and He asked the people the most important question He could ask them. No one answered His question. His question was in response to the question the religious leaders had asked back in Mark 11:27, "By what authority are You doing these things? And who gave You this authority to do these things?"
In that question they referred to what He had just done the day before in the temple when He threw out those who were greedily making huge profit from the worship system that was there. Responding to them, the Lord Jesus asked yet another question which was a quote from Psalm 110:1 which reads, "How can the Messiah be David's Lord and still be his son?" In Hebrew it reads, "Yahweh said to Adonai." Both Yahweh and Adonai are terms for God, and, the literal rendering of this portion of the verse is: "God said to God."
David, according to the Lord Jesus, would never have called a mere physical descendant of himself his Lord. But, in Psalm 110:1, David called him his Lord. The Lord Jesus posed the obvious question, "Why do you call the Christ the Son of David when David called Him Lord?" Graciously, the Lord Jesus was showing the religious leaders that the Messiah is more than a physical descendant of David, that He is God Himself.
The answer to this question the Lord posed to the religious leaders, of course, is found throughout the Old Testament. It is not that God has not told us. All of the promises in the Old Testament regarding the Messiah are grounded in the Abrahamic Covenant and expanded in the Davidic Covenant. The problem was that the Jews assumed that the Messiah would be a human being and nothing more, and that He would use power that was beyond any king that the world had ever known. They did not see the Messiah as the Savior of individual souls, they arrogantly saw Him as the Savior of the Jews only.
The identity of the Lord Jesus is the most important thing in all of life. My mind goes to John 8:46 which reads, "Can any of you prove that I am guilty of sin?" In context, the Lord Jesus was having a heated conversation with the religious leaders and He asked them this question. Perhaps the loudest display of Christ' divinity is the silence of these men to this most important question from the Lord Jesus. And, of course, there are many other arguments for the divinity of Christ: the many prophecies He fulfilled, the many miracles He performed, and the fact that He rose from the dead.
Today's passage provides for us the final invitation the Lord Jesus gave to the religious leaders of Israel. This was one more moment in which the people could have ceased their open rejection of their promised Messiah. The Bible is very clear that the Lord takes no pleasure in the damnation of the wicked. In fact, in Luke 19, we read of the Lord Jesus looking out over Jerusalem and He wept because it had largely rejected His salvation.
Sadly, v.37 ends with, "The large crowd listened to him with delight." They didn't fall on their faces in the presence of the incarnate God. They were entertained by God and they missed Him and they ended up in hell. How sad are those words. The people there that day were so resolute in the darkness of their own sin that they couldn’t see the light when He was shining in front of them.
