While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, ⁴² “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose son is he?”

“The son of David,” they replied.

He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’? For he says,

“‘The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.”’

If then David calls him ‘Lord,’ how can he be his son?” No one could say a word in reply, and from that day on no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Matthew 22:41-45

Jesus has sent three waves of frontal assault into headlong retreat; now His counter attack begins; it seems harmless enough, for He begins with a simple question about the Messiah’s paternity; the Pharisees who were there gave Him a clear and correct answer, at least from their point of view, the Messiah is the son of David.

By asking them this question, Jesus is actually giving them His answer to the authority question from 21:23, for what He is about to tell them is that He is much more than the just the son of David. He quotes Psalm 110, in which David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (“by the Spirit”) acknowledges this son as his Lord; how can that be if the son in question is merely David’s offspring?

That is the question that shuts everyone up, and as Matthew has pointed out in the text, no one dared ask Him any more questions, for in this quotation of David himself, is revealed the transcendent character of the Messiah, who sits at the very right hand of God Himself.

Jesus has come from God, full of the authority of God!

Of course, the Jewish religious leaders are now even more anxious to kill Him, because, whether they knew it or not, they were acting as the agents of Satan.

Next, I will give some background about what happens next in Matthew’s narrative, in which Jesus pronounces God’s judgment upon the religious leadership.