This sermon delves into the identity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, drawing from prophecies in the Old Testament that were precisely fulfilled in his life, death, and resurrection. It challenges listeners to consider the implications of who Jesus is and the decision they must make regarding their belief in him, emphasizing the eternal significance of accepting or rejecting Christ as the Son of God.

Let's turn now in our Bibles to Jeremiah chapter 23. Our scripture reading this morning will be the first nine verses of Jeremiah 23. Shall we stand as we read the Word of God? I'll read the first and the odd-numbered verses and we ask you to join together as you read the even-numbered verses. We'll be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, saith the Lord. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people, ye have scattered my flock and have driven them away and have not visited them. Behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doing, saith the Lord. And I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all of the countries, whether I have driven them, and I will bring them again to their folds, and they shall be fruitful and increase. And I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall they be lacking, saith the Lord. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise up unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely, and this is his name whereby he shall be called the Lord our righteousness. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say the Lord liveth that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but the Lord liveth which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country and from all countries whether I had driven them, and they shall dwell in their own land. Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets. All of my bones shake. I am like a drunken man and like a man whom wine hath overcome because of the Lord and because of the words of his holiness. Let's pray. Father how we look forward to that glorious day when your kingdom shall come, when your will will be done here on earth even as it is in heaven, where the Son of David, Jesus our Savior, shall rule and shall reign as is promised throughout the scriptures. And so Lord we pray that today as we study your word you'll open our hearts to the receiving of your truth and to the understanding. Speak Lord as your servants listen. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. May be seated. Well we're continuing our journey through the Bible tonight, Matthew 23 through 25, and so we encourage you to read it over and then join with us this evening as we journey through the word. Exciting chapters Matthew 23 to 25. Some interesting prophecies that are being fulfilled in our world today and we'll be able to look at them tonight. This morning we'd like to draw your attention to chapter 22 verse 42. It is something that we didn't really quite finish last week and so we want to go back to 22 42. And here we read, well this will go back to 41. While the Pharisees were gathered together Jesus asked them saying, what do you think of Christ or the Messiah? Whose son is he? And they said unto him, the son of David. And he said unto them, how then did David in spirit call him Lord? Saying, the Lord saith unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool. If David then calls him Lord, how is he his son? And no man was able to answer him a word, and neither dared any man from that day forth to ask him any more questions. It is interesting how that they were giving Jesus questions that they thought were going to entrap him and how did he seem to have a adequate answer for each one. And I think Jesus sort of got tired of it. He finally decided, I'll ask them a question that they can't answer. And he did and it just quieted them. Asking them concerning the son of David, the phrase, whose son is he? Son of David was one of the many titles in the Old Testament for the coming Messiah. For God had promised to David that there would never be a time when one of his seed was not sitting on the throne. With this promise, David recognized that the Lord was saying to him that from his seed, the Messiah would come. And this just overwhelmed David with the thought that he would be one of the progenitors of the Messiah. And as Jesus was entering into Jerusalem here in this chapter on the donkey, he was actually presenting himself to the nation as their Messiah. And the crowd was crying out, Hosanna to the son of David. And later in the temple as the children were exclaiming, Hosanna to the son of David, the Pharisees were upset. And they said to Jesus, do you hear what they're saying? And Jesus responded, have you never read the scriptures that out of the mouth of babes and nursing children, you have perfected praise? At this point, the relationship between the Pharisees and Jesus was becoming more contentious, and they were seeking to trap him again. And Jesus gave them one question to silence them. What do you think of the Messiah or Christ? Whose son is he? The scriptures are very clear that the Messiah would be a descendant of David. And this is the reason why the son of David became one of the titles concerning the Messiah. In Jeremiah 23, 5, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous branch, and a king shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. Ezekiel 34, 23 and 24, and I will set up one shepherd over them, he shall feed them, even my servant David. He shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David, a prince among them, I, the Lord, have spoken it. In Isaiah 9, 6, for unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The government will be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and his peace, there shall be no end. Upon the throne of David, to order it and to establish it in righteousness and in judgment from henceforth even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall perform this. So when Jesus asked, What think ye of the Messiah? Whose son is he? They rightly answered, The Son of David. So Jesus said, If he is the Son of David, how is it that David then calls him Lord in the Spirit? Saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool. If David called him Lord, how could he be his son? They had an extremely strong patriarchal society, and one in which the Father ruled until he died, and no matter how old he was, if he was still alive, he ruled over the whole family. And no father would ever consider calling his son Lord. That was just unthinkable. And so we read from that time on, they didn't ask him any more questions because they couldn't really answer that one. From a different angle, I want to ask you the same question. What do you think of Jesus Christ? Whose son is he? Now I know that Mary was his mother, but who was his father? And there's only one of two possible conclusions. He was the son of some unnamed young fellow in Nazareth that we don't know anything about. Mary was maybe having a illicit relationship with him, and she became pregnant and then tried to cover the pregnancy by making up some story of an angel coming to her and telling her that God had chosen her to be the human instrument to bring his son into the world. Or Jesus was exactly who Mary said he was, that he was the son of God. It is interesting, Luke was a physician. He was a companion to Paul. He had really never met Jesus personally, but he was a researcher, and he began to research and began to question those who were involved in the story of the birth of Christ, and his gospel reflects his opinions, his writings, and his conclusions from his examinations. And as he questioned Mary concerning the child that was born, he repeats the information he got from her in Luke 126, where Luke writes, the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, and to a virgin whose name was Mary, who was engaged to a man who was named Joseph, who was of the house of David. And the angel came unto her and said, Hail, you are highly favored. The Lord is with you. You are blessed among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and wondered in her mind, what kind of a greeting is this? And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for you have found favor with God, and you will conceive and bring forth a son, and call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then Mary said to the angel, How can this be, seeing I have not had an intimate relationship with any man? And the angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the highest shall overshadow you, and therefore that Holy One that shall be warned of you will be known as the Son of God. So what think ye of the Messiah? Whose son is he? According to the angel, he was the Son of God. The question is, do you give any credence to the story of Mary? Or is this just a wild story that she invented to sort of save herself from the embarrassment of becoming an unwed mother? I would like to point out to you that she does seem to be a deeply spiritual person. We read her beautiful response to her cousin Elizabeth as she told Elizabeth about this event. She said, this is Mary speaking, My soul does magnify the Lord. My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For he has regarded the lowest state of his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty has done great things, and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He has showed strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted them of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, and in the remembrance of his mercy. It is interesting that in the Bible records that God spoke from heaven when Christ was here on earth on two different occasions. The first one was when he was baptized by John there in the Jordan River. As he came up out of the water, there came a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And then later on when he was there on the Mount of Transfiguration, and Moses and Elijah appeared to him, and as the cloud went up and they disappeared, again as the disciples were looking up into heaven they heard the voice of God saying, this is my beloved son, hear ye him. And so again God declaring from heaven that Jesus was his beloved son. On many occasions Jesus himself claimed to be the Son of God, and was continually declaring that God was his father, and that God had sent him into the world, and if you had seen him, you had seen the Father. Peter declared we were eyewitnesses of his glory, but then he said we have the more sure word of prophecy. We were there with him on the Mount of Transfiguration. We saw him when he was transfigured. We heard the voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved son, but he said we have something even more certain than that. More certain than that what we saw or what we heard. We have something that is of greater proof or more positive than that. You see if Peter was just saying well we saw him and we heard this voice and so forth, people could say well you know you guys were just hallucinating, and it was all something you dreamed up in your minds. But he's declaring there's we've got a proof that is even greater than just our eyewitness that we were there and we heard it. And so the greater proof of course is the prophecies concerning Jesus that he fulfilled. So as Peter says, we have the more sure word of prophecy. In other words, looking at the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the Messiah, we read that he would make his entry as king into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Zechariah prophesied in 9.9, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! For behold, your king is coming unto you. He is just, and he has salvation, and yet he is lowly and riding on a donkey upon a colt, the foal of a donkey. So the prophecy of his making his triumphant entry into Jerusalem on the donkey. He would be betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces of silver. The silver would later be thrown down in the temple and it would be used to buy a potter's field. In the prophecies of Zechariah 11.12, And I said unto them, If you think good, give me my price, and if not, forget it. So they weighed for my price 30 pieces of silver. And the Lord said unto me, Cast it to the potter, a goodly price that I was prized at by them. And I took the 30 pieces of silver and cast them to the potter in the house of the Lord. The prophecy that was of course totally and precisely fulfilled by Judas Iscariot when he betrayed Jesus to the religious leaders there in Jerusalem. For 30 pieces of silver, later realized, you know, I was a fool. I shouldn't have done it. He brought the money back to them and offered it back to them, and they refused to take it because it was blood money. And so he just threw it on the floor and went out and hung himself. And they had a problem then. What shall we do with the money? We can't put it back in the treasury. And so they decided to buy a potter's field and make it a burial ground. And so here it is prophesied actually over 500 years before it happened in the Old Testament. He would be born in Bethlehem. The prophet Micah said, But thou Bethlehem, Ephrathah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me, who is to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from old, from everlasting. So Bethlehem would be his birthplace. He would be beaten beyond recognition. Isaiah 52 14. Many will be astonished at thee, for his face was so marred, you could not recognize him as a human being. He would be buried in a rich man's grave. Isaiah 53 9. He made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death. He would appear 483 years after the commandment was given to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. Daniel 925. Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem to the coming of the Messiah, the prince will be seven sevens and 62 sevens, and the street will be built again in the wall, even in troublous times. And after the 62 sevens, the Messiah will be cut off, but not for himself. And the people of the prince that shall come will destroy the city in the sanctuary, and the end thereof will be with a dispersion, and unto the end of the war, desolations are determined. What an interesting and fascinating prophecy by Daniel there in chapter nine of the book of Daniel. Notice that in this particular prophecy, it is declaring that after the commandment is given to restore and rebuild Jerusalem to the coming of the prince will be the 483 sevens, or actually putting it into days 1773 days from the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem to the coming of the Messiah, the prince. When Daniel was writing this, he was a captive in Babylon. The city of Jerusalem was a total waste. The Babylonians had leveled the city, and it was just piles of rubble when this prophecy was made by Daniel. But he prophesied of the day when a commandment would be given to restore and to rebuild Jerusalem, and that would be the beginning of this prophecy when that day took place. That day took place, March 14th, 445 BC, recorded in secular history for us when Artaxerxes, the Persian king, gave the commandment that they could restore and rebuild Jerusalem. So you've got this starting date, March 14th, 445 BC. 173,330 days would bring you to the date of April the 4th, 32 AD. What happened on April the 4th, 32 AD? This is the day that Jesus was entering into Jerusalem, the day that we're reading about here, when he was entering into Jerusalem riding on this donkey according to the prophecies of the Messiah. It is interesting that this is the first day that Jesus allowed any public acclamation of himself as the Messiah. There have been other times after his miracles that the people decided that he was the Messiah and they were going to hail him as such, but he would disappear from their midst. He would tell people when he would hail them, go your way, don't tell any man. He didn't want any public acclamation or recognition of himself as the Messiah before the appointed time. But on this particular day, not only did he acknowledge the fact that he is the Messiah, he is saying, you know, when the people were saying, you know, blessed be the Son of God who comes in the name of the Lord, and the Pharisees were saying, Lord, you better quiet your disciples. That's blasphemous. Jesus said, I'll tell you the truth. If they would hold their peace, these very stones would cry out. And as Jesus came in view of the city of Jerusalem, riding the donkey according to the prophecies, he began to weep. And he said, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if you only knew the things that belonged to your peace in this thy day, but they are hid from your eyes. And he began to prophesy the destruction of Jerusalem, even as Daniel had prophesied in the ninth chapter. And so we see him fulfilling these prophecies right down to the last letter. In Psalm 22, there was the prophecy that they would pierce his hands and his feet. Psalm 22, 16 says, for dogs have come past me. The assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet. Psalm 22 tells us that they would cast lots for his vesture. And we read there in Psalm 22, they part my garments among them and they cast lots upon my vesture. As we read the story of the crucifixion of Jesus, the soldiers who crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves. But when they came to his robe, because it was unique in that it was woven in a special way, they said, let's not tear it. Let's not divide it up. Let's cast lots for it. And so to this small detail was a prophecy from, you know, way back in Psalm 22, a thousand years before it actually took place and yet fulfilled completely in Jesus. So all of these fulfilled prophecies, as the scripture said, you know, we have, you know, eyewitnesses, but we have even something more certain. The more sure word of prophecy proves that he was indeed the promised son of God. And if this be so, then it's important for you to take a serious look at Jesus Christ. According to the witnesses in the Bible, your believing or not believing won't change anything about who he is. He is who he is and who he said he was, and that you're believing it or not doesn't alter the facts, but it does alter your eternal destiny. Jesus said, he that believes on the Son has everlasting life. He that believes not on the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. So we come back to the original question. What think ye of Christ? Whose son is he? As I see it, you have every reason in the world to believe that he is the Son of God and that he is all that he said he was, and you have absolutely no reason not to believe. You may ask, well, what difference does it make whether I believe or not? Well, the difference is between life and death. He who has the Son has life. He who has not the Son shall not even see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. So, leads you there to make your decision. What do you think of Christ? Whose son is he? If he is the Son of God, of which I am thoroughly and completely convinced, then the next question is, what will you do with Christ? Will you believe him? Will you surrender? Will you allow him to be the Lord of your life, or will you ignore him and just pass him by and just say, you know, I'm not interested, but it's your destiny that is being determined. Your belief doesn't change what he is, but it surely will change where you will spend eternity. And you better think that one over seriously. Father, thank you for the sure word of prophecy that we have concerning Jesus Christ, convincing us, Lord, beyond a doubt that he is indeed the promised Messiah, the one who came to save the world from their sin. And Lord, we thank you that through our faith in him, we have received the forgiveness of our transgressions and sins. And Lord, we just pray that today your Holy Spirit will work in the hearts and minds of those that are here as they ponder the question, what do you think of Christ? Whose son is he? And when they consider, Lord, that they really have just the one decision to make, you're either the Son of God, or you are a illegitimate son of Mary. Father, we pray that you'll help them to make the right decision today. And acknowledging that you are indeed the Son of God, may they surrender their lives to you and place their future in your hands. In Jesus' name, Father, and for his sake. Amen. Shall we stand? The pastors are down here at the front to minister to you today. And if you would like to receive Jesus as your Lord, a wise thing to do, then I would encourage you to come on down and just talk to them. If you have further questions, they'll be happy to answer them for you, that you might begin this beautiful life of living in fellowship with God and receiving Jesus as your Lord and as your Savior. So may the Lord lead and guide you and help you and strengthen you to make that wise decision today to surrender your life to Jesus Christ. The Lord bless thee, the Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. God bless you.