Jesus Is Bigger Then You Think

[0:00] Well, most of us would treat something very differently when we realize its actual value is far greater than we initially thought.! Let's say, for example, you're helping a friend move their house, and you're taking down the paintings on the wall, and you're given a copy of the Mona Lisa, the famous painting by da Vinci.

[0:21] Right? Let's go with da Vinci. But you don't think too much of it. It's just a copy, so you just walk with it. But imagine as you're moving it, that you were told it's actually the original, which is worth something like $870 million.

[0:41] You would treat it very differently. Now you're not just banging it around, you're scared of dropping it. Well, something like that happened to me recently, not with the Mona Lisa, but with the propeller of a rubber duck.

[0:55] I was at a rubber duck garage recently for some reason, very nondescript rundown place, and I just randomly picked up a propeller to check it out.

[1:06] The owner, the kind of rough looking guy, looks at me and says, hey, don't drop that. I said, okay. He says, that thing is worth 100,000 rand. So then I nearly dropped it.

[1:19] And it turns out that this guy, in this nondescript place, is one of the best rubber duck drivers in the world. He actually helps U.S. Special Forces, and that propeller was designed for them.

[1:29] Could well be somewhere in Iran at the moment, but anyway. The point is, I treated that propeller with much more care when I realized what I was holding was of much bigger worth than I initially thought.

[1:44] In today's story, we learn that the Pharisees make the same mistake with Jesus as I did with that propeller. They had too small an appreciation of who he really is.

[1:54] By shrinking Jesus down to just the son of David, the Pharisees miss his true identity as Lord of heaven and earth. Someone who is exalted to God's right hand and who shares in the same status, authority, and majesty as Yahweh, the covenant God of the Old Testament.

[2:16] So we pick up the story in verse 41 and 42. While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?

[2:27] And so for the first time, Jesus is going on the offensive. Up until now, the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the various religious rulers have been coming to Jesus and peppering him with questions. To check on who is he?

[2:38] How come he says these things? In a sense, putting himself above him, and Jesus is finished with that now. He goes on the offensive. Okay, let me ask you a question.

[2:50] What do you think about the Messiah? Or the Christ? It's the same meaning. Whose son is he? Well, he's the son of David, they replied. And they're correct. He is the son of David. Matthew has gone out of his way to tell us about Jesus being the son of David.

[3:04] But he knows that they've got a too small a view of who he is. So he asks a follow-up question. Verse 43. How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him Lord?

[3:16] For he says, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.

[3:29] If then David calls him Lord, how can he be his son? Well, friends, so many people today make the same mistake by thinking too small of Jesus.

[3:43] They not only miss out on enjoying the full blessing of who he is, but they're in danger of being made his footstool. The Pharisees were happy to call the Messiah the son of David, a correct but limited idea of a human king from David's family line, which let them treat Jesus just like any other person that they could question, they could challenge, and they felt they could control.

[4:10] And so many people, including Christians, still do this with Jesus to this day. Many reduce Jesus to a good teacher, a moral guide, or some treat him like their personal ATM, their spiritual ATM machine.

[4:27] But this low view is dangerous, because what you're really trying to do is to keep yourself in charge of your relationship with Jesus, instead of submitting to him as Lord.

[4:40] We struggle with that in the modern world, because we don't have lords in our life anymore, do we? It would be slightly different if you were in England, they still have lords, not that anyone submits to them anymore.

[4:53] But this is who Jesus is, he's a lord, he's an authority figure. And the correct relationship or approach or response to someone who's in authority is to submit to them.

[5:06] The correct response to someone who is as high a lord as Jesus is to submit to him and to put yourself under his authority.

[5:19] And the reason you need to do that, because everyone who doesn't is going to find themselves being furniture for his feet. The psalm that Jesus quotes spells out what the job role is of this lord that sits at God's right hand.

[5:36] And it has to do with executing judgment and smashing skulls. So I'm going to read from Psalm 110 from verse 5. The Lord is at your right hand.

[5:48] He will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers or the heads of the rulers of the whole earth.

[6:02] He will drink from a brook along the way, and so he will lift his head high. This is a picture of someone who's ruling and dealing with his enemies in the way that they're meant to be dealt with. If they maintain and continue to be his enemies.

[6:14] In fact, he's not going to get tired of doing that either. When he does get tired, he's going to drink from a brook, from a river. He's going to get refreshed, and he's going to go on killing them until they're all dead.

[6:27] Now the strange thing about Psalm 110 is it starts off with saying that the Lord said to my lord, Sit at my right hand until I, Yahweh the Lord, makes your enemies your footstool. So God, Yahweh God, is going to make this lord just sit there and relax, and I'm going to go sort out your enemies for him.

[6:43] But then later on in the psalm, that same lord that's sitting at God's right hand is suddenly doing the work that God is doing for him. So there's this interesting relationship between the Lord, Yahweh, and this other lord that's sitting with him on the throne.

[7:05] We're going to unpack that in a little while. But so many people barely, just barely scratch the surface when it comes to knowing Jesus. They know something, but they really don't know anything.

[7:18] When asked about Jesus, most people, many people will mumble something about, Oh, Jesus, you're a good guy, I love your neighbor, turn the other cheek, or everyone's favorite, oh, you mustn't judge, you mustn't judge.

[7:31] And maybe you fall into that category. You know something, but you don't really know a lot. Well, that's the same problem with the Pharisees. In fact, compared to you, the Pharisees know way more about Jesus.

[7:43] They know he's the son of David, that he's a king, a promised king that they should submit to, just because he's the son of David. So if Jesus says that their knowledge of him falls far short, what does it say about what you know about him, if you don't really know anything about him at all?

[8:03] How do you think what you think about Jesus is going to stack up on Judgment Day?

[8:14] When all you thought he was is good guy, good teacher, and there you see him sitting at the right hand of the majesty in heaven, on the throne of God, and you suddenly realize, I got it all wrong.

[8:28] The danger is you can fool yourself into thinking that you try to live like Jesus. No, you don't. You don't try to live your life loving others, don't judge, turn the other cheek.

[8:43] No one tries to live their life based on someone that they don't really know, or care to know about. By being content with the tiniest, vaguest knowledge, or information about Jesus, you're selling him so short.

[8:57] But you're also selling yourself short, because you're missing out on the deepest, soul-satisfying richness of who he is, and what he can do for you.

[9:09] It's like you're contenting yourself with fool's gold. You know, fool's gold, it looks like the real thing, but it's actually worthless. You pick it up, imagine at a gold mine, and then all you bought out of that gold mine was fool's gold, and you went around saying, Oh, look at this, I got the fool's gold.

[9:25] Everyone would be like, yes. Yes. That's why they call it fool's gold. When the veins of real gold are waiting for you to dig, and uncover, and discover, and enrich your life immeasurably, and that's what happens when you find out who Jesus really is.

[9:43] And so Jesus wants you to know the infinite, the infinite height, depth, length, and breadth of his power, his majesty, his glory, and his love.

[10:00] For you, he wants you to get a much bigger picture of him than you do already. And so we want to think bigger of Jesus. We've looked at thinking small of Jesus, now we want to think bigger of Jesus.

[10:14] I know that is not good grammar, but that's what you get when you've got to put headlines on too. Power points? To get a bigger or greater understanding and appreciation of Jesus, we need to look at that small little phrase, seated at God's right hand.

[10:32] Because it's this that puts Jesus in a category that no one else in all of history, past, present, or future, will ever have but him.

[10:42] Now this doesn't mean we must only think of him as a Lord to obey, true though that is. We must trust him as the one who has the power to defeat every enemy we face and supply every need we have in order to live life for him, to live life victoriously in one sense.

[11:08] So let's take a look at that phrase, the Lord who sits at God's right hand, tells us about Jesus. And what helps us is that Psalm 110 is the most quoted Old Testament text in the New Testament about Jesus.

[11:24] So it's peppered all over the New Testament and it opens up and tells us what it means that Jesus is the Lord who sits at God's right hand. And the first thing I want us to look at is that Jesus is greater than any created being.

[11:40] Jesus is greater than any created being. Jesus is in the highest possible position for a human to be in. He's greater than David. He's greater than the angels.

[11:53] He is in fact a divine and human being. So Hebrews chapter 1 says this, The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word.

[12:13] After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. And so He became as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited is superior to theirs.

[12:34] Just like the rays of the sun are inseparable to the sun itself, Jesus as God the sun, radiates the glory and power of God to all who receive Him as Lord.

[12:49] Now we don't often think about how much energy the sun pushes out. I googled it. Here's a picture for us. There's the sun. On your right hand side is the earth.

[13:01] And that's one of those, you can barely see the earth there. A little dot. And that flame coming out of the sun, that happens all the time. Now, it's not to scale. I mean, the earth isn't that close to the sun.

[13:13] But that's how big the sun is. It pushes out. Did you see that big number up there? Anyone want to guess what the number is?

[13:26] I had to Google the number. How to say it in English? 384 quadrillion, 600,000 trillion megawatts every second.

[13:36] Okay, just in comparison, ESCOM sometimes pushes out 30,000 megawatts per day.

[13:51] Okay. And a tiny of that quadrillion megawatts per second hits the earth and gives us all the life we need and the energy.

[14:04] here's the thing. If you know Jesus as Lord, you know the guy that made that. In fact, what's more mind-blowing is that he knows you.

[14:27] And that he left the side of his father and he came to earth, allowed himself to be mocked and beaten and crucified precisely so that you could know the father of the one who made the sun.

[14:45] Just think of what that means. Jesus is sitting at God's right hand. We all felt, I'm just using an analogy now, I don't know if this is how it works, but we all felt Jesus dial up the thermostat on the sun the last few days.

[15:02] Boop! That's all it takes for him to boop! And the sun streams out hundreds of quadrillions of megajoules more, megawatts, whatever it streams out.

[15:17] And here's the other thing, after a few days when you were sweltering and dying and you're like, Lord, can we just please get it a bit cooler? Jesus goes, boop! And he turns it back.

[15:29] And we're having a nice moderate Sunday. The other thing it means is Jesus is quite literally sustaining you the same way as keeping the sun shining.

[15:44] Jesus is carrying you. He's enabling you to keep carrying on with whatever tasks he's given you to do. And so when you feel you don't have the power or the ability to do what God wants, what Jesus wants us to do is to remind yourself of where he is, seated at God's right hand.

[16:05] And he's got the power that he wields to help you. Jesus is greater than any created being. Jesus is greater than any enemy we face.

[16:18] He is greater than any enemy we face. Being at God's right hand speaks of the complete and total triumph of Jesus over every evil thing in the created order, both human and spiritual, including death itself.

[16:34] 1 Corinthians 15 says this, then the end will come when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, talking about Jesus, after he has destroyed all dominion, all authority, and all power.

[16:52] Those are all things that are in opposition to him. These are vast spiritual realities that we can't even begin to understand how powerful they are. He is going to destroy them all.

[17:06] For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

[17:18] Friends, there's going to come a day when every source of evil is utterly destroyed, including one of our greatest enemies, death itself. And we know this because of Christ's resurrection and ascension, because he's alive, sitting at God's right hand.

[17:40] He's already, in some sense, destroyed all the enemies that we're going to face. So when we're faced with fear and the pain of death, which we have to in this life, we know, we don't have to give in to the temptation of fearing it.

[17:57] It's been defeated already. So if it's been defeated already, if Jesus defeated the biggest thing we need to worry about, then surely we don't need to be overly worried about much smaller things that we feel threatened by.

[18:14] And when you are, and some things are not small, some things are pretty big that we've got to deal with, remind yourself where Jesus is, seated at God's right hand, destroying every dominion, authority, and power, including death itself.

[18:37] Jesus has already won the victory. He's already won it for you if you trust him as your Lord. So Jesus is greater than any human, greater than any enemy we face, greater than any sin in the world.

[18:57] Every religion has a system of sacrifice, a way to appease the gods and pay for sin and guilt. The problem with every other religion is that their sacrifices are ongoing.

[19:07] They don't really pay for anything. But Jesus does. This is from Hebrews 10. Day after day, every priest stands and performs his religious duties.

[19:21] Again and again, he offers the same sacrifices which can never take away sin. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

[19:43] For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. By sitting down at God's right hand, Jesus proclaims that he has made a full, a perfect, and a sufficient sacrifice for all of your sins.

[20:08] if you trust in his sacrifice. So that when you feel incomplete, when you feel not perfect, when you feel broken, when you feel that you've got something missing in your life, you need to remind yourself where Jesus is.

[20:31] That he's seated at God's right hand after making the ultimate sacrifice so that your sins are paid for. You do not need to hang on to them.

[20:46] He's paid the sacrifice. It's all been done for you. He has made and completed the finished payment for you.

[20:59] That's who Jesus wants us to get to know. This mighty Lord that sits at God's right hand.

[21:12] And to think less of him, you're going to miss out on all of these things. So how do you think of your relationship with Jesus?

[21:23] Well, many people love to have him as their friend. Do you love to have him as your Lord? Well, why wouldn't you? If you get all of these things along with him being Lord.

[21:39] And if you don't love him as your Lord, you don't get these things for you. You're saying that you prefer to try to get them for yourself.

[21:52] And you need to realize how completely inadequate that is and how inadequate you are to the task of providing for your own sins and paying for your own sins.

[22:04] Well, you can do that. But you're not going to survive the payment. You can try on your own energy to overcome everything that phases you in this world. It's going to crush you.

[22:18] It's like saying you don't need the sun because you've got a box of matches. How do you think of your relationship with Jesus? Do you love him as your Lord?

[22:31] One last question. Where will you spend eternity? The fact that Jesus is Lord leaves you with two options where you're going to spend eternity.

[22:43] Here's one from Ephesians 2. God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages he might display the surpassing riches of his grace demonstrated by his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

[23:10] If you're a Christian, in some way that we can't quite work out, God has raised you up with Christ and you are seated along with him next to the God of the universe with the Lord of the universe in the throne room of God, the most protected place you can be, the most close you can get to God and the place where he just has to turn and look and pour out the blessings that we've been speaking about.

[23:37] You're in direct contact with the God of the universe. If you don't have him as your Lord, there's another place you're going to spend eternity.

[23:52] It's still close to the throne but it's not in a good place. Jesus quoting Psalm 110 says, The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.

[24:09] Where you spend eternity will depend on whether you realize who Jesus is and whether you submitted to him willingly as Lord of your life. Can I pray for us?

[24:30] Lord Jesus, we are so small and frail and finite. When we realize, Lord, who you are, we are completely undone when we think, we realize we think so highly of ourselves and we think so low of you.

[24:52] Lord, there's so many things in our lives that we need help with and we treat you with contempt. We don't treat you with the honor, with the obedience, with the loyalty that you deserve.

[25:07] Help us, Lord, or forgive us, Lord. First of all, but help us to be reminded and to remember who you are and where you are.

[25:18] Our mighty Lord and Savior, seated on the throne of heaven and earth. Amen.