That Jesus never used the phrase “I’m God, worship me” is really irrelevant if we have tons of other reasons for believing that he is God and that it is appropriate to worship him.
For example, Thomas in John 20:28 calls him God. Did Jesus rebuke him and say “No, no, I’m not God”? No, rather Jesus affirms his belief.
Furthermore, Jesus said that all were to “honor the Son, just as they honor the Father” (John 5:23) and he is worshipped by angels in Hebrews 1:6 (also see Rev. 5:13 and 7:10 ) and Jesus said that persons could pray to him and that he would answer prayers (John 14:12-14).
The Jews understood that Jesus was making claims to deity:
John 10:33 The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God” (also see John 5:17-29).
John 1:14 says “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the
monogenes Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Monogenes is the Greek term used that some Bibles translate as "only begotten." A more accurate and literal translation of the term is "one of a kind" or "unique" Son of God.
True, other persons are called "children of God" and "sons of God," but Jesus is the monogenes (one of a kind) Son of God.
In Psalms 2:7 the Septuagint does not say David is God’s monogenes son, so you’re attempt to draw a parallel won’t work here. It uses a different word: γεγέννηκά (γεννάω
. Monogenes is not related to gennao.
So this entire thing about God having other "sons" can simply be ignored, since the point is not that God has no other sons, in whatever sense, but that Jesus is the Son of God in a unique (monogenes) sense.
Jesus unique Sonship points to sameness in divine nature, that’s how the Jews understood it and that’s why they tried to kill him for making himself equal with God. This is also why John almost immediately after recording Thomas’s confession of Jesus as “my Lord and my God” (20:28) says that these things have been recorded so that we may know that Jesus is the Son of God (20:31).
As B. B. Warfield says, “The revelation [of the Trinity] itself was made not in word but in deed. It was made in the incarnation of God the Son, and the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit. The relation of the two Testaments to this revelation is in the one case that of preparation for it, and in the other that of product of it. The revelation itself is embodied just in Christ and the Holy Spirit” (qtd. in Reymond. New Sys. Theo. of the Christian Faith. 209)
Reymond continues: “It has been often said, as the reason lying behind the determination of the divine wisdom to reveal the fact of the Trinity in this manner, that it was the task of the Old Testament ‘to fix firmly in the minds and hearts of the people of God the great fundamental truth of the unity of the Godhead; and it would have been dangerous to speak to them of the plurality within this unity until this task had been fully accomplished.’ But, as Warfield argues, it is more likely that the full revelation of the Godhead’s personal manifoldness was necessarily tied to the unfolding of the redemptive process, and that as that process materialized the revelation of the Trinity necessarily was disclosed as its corollary” (ibid 209-210).
Jesus' mission was his work as Messiah, his sinless life, his death, and his resurrection.
Mark 8:31 And he [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.
Paul is not opposed to Jesus’ teaching. He brings the same message:
Acts 26:22–23 To this day I have had the help that comes from God, and so I stand here testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.”