Psalm 110

Psalm chapter 110 is considered a Royal Psalm. It's a short Psalm of David. It speaks of God as ruler over all the earth, bringing to pass all that He determines to bring to pass for all of mankind in human history. We're also going to see that this Psalm is quoted in the New Testament. And the New Testament will help us to understand that as a Royal Psalm, this is a Messianic Psalm. All right. It goes like this.

Now I need to make you aware of the two references to Lord that are given in that first verse of the Psalm. You'll notice that the first “LORD” is in all caps. Right? Whenever you see the word, Lord in all caps, that is what we call the Tetragrammaton, or the name of God. It's YAHWEH, YAHOVAH. It speaks of the Lord, eternal God. For you and I, it would be God the Father, if you will, in a specific sense. But then the second reference to Lord is the Hebrew word, Adonai. It is literally translated, YAHWEH says to my Adonai: "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool." And without the New Testament, we might read this verse and go, huh, what exactly are we talking about here? Who is the... We know who's speaking here. It says, "The LORD…" And that any Jew would look at this and say, well, this is YAHWEH. YAHWEH speaking. But to whom is He speaking? "The LORD says to my Lord:" Well, interestingly enough, most Jews today who are still in Judaism, would interpret this verse to say, that YAHWEH is speaking to David, and calling him Lord. Which is ridiculous in several different ways, not the least of which, or not the least because, we have New Testament evidence that shows us to the contrary. This is quoted in a couple of different places. But it is quoted in the book of Hebrews when the writer of Hebrews is using this Scripture to talk about how Jesus is superior to the angels. And he asks the question: Hebrews 1:13 (ESV) And to which of the angels has he ever said, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?" "And to which of the angels has he (God) ever said, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?" Now, the context of Hebrews chapter one is Jesus Christ. Okay. And he's making the point: Jesus is superior to the angels. He says, "...to which of the angels did he ever” say this? Well, the answer is to none. But He did say it to the Son. And the writer of Hebrews is making that point. Now you might say, wait a minute. How does the writer of Hebrews have the right to just assume that God the Father, is talking to God the Son? How does he have that right?" Well, because Jesus actually quoted this verse too. And gave him the authority and the interpretive insight, as to, who this is all about. In fact, He used this verse while He was talking to the Jewish religious leaders about His identity as, not just the Son of God, but also the fact that He is, God the Son. And it goes like this. On the screen from Matthew chapter 22.

Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, "What do you think about (the Messiah) the Christ? Whose son is he?" (And) They said to him, (Well, it's easy. He's) "The son of David." (And) He said to them, (Okay, fine.) "How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, (Calls him Adonai? Adonai.) saying, The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet."? If... David calls him Lord, how is he his son? And (it says, that) no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. This, by the way, comes on the heels of Jesus being asked all kinds of questions. If you read the context of that passage, they are just peppering Jesus with questions because they're trying to get Him to mess up. They're trying to get Him to say something stupid. They're trying to get Him to say something inflammatory so they can use it as a charge, a basis of a charge against Him. They finally got done with all their questions. And Jesus said, all right, I want to ask you guys a question. And then He begins to say, what do you think about the Messiah? Whose Son is he? Aww easy, the Son of David. We're told that! And what they're saying, is we believe he is in the human lineage of David. In other words, he's a human being and nothing more. And that's what they're saying. Okay. He's the son of David. It's all He is. Jesus says, really? Then why would David call his Son Lord? David quotes the Lord, as, the Lord God is saying, the Lord YAHWEH says, to my Lord. His son is his Lord? That doesn't make any sense at all. He says, how is it that David then calls Him Lord? And they all went, I don't know. Because they just kind of buried it. It was in their Scriptures. It was theirs to uncover, and to look, at and to say, wait a minute. What does this mean? But you see their preconceived ideas of who Messiah was going to be, basically, blinded them from looking at that passage and saying, wait a minute, what does that mean? Why did David write that in that Psalm where he quotes: 'Yahweh is saying, the Lord says to my Lord? Or David says, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand..., and so forth. Why is that? Why did he do that? But they didn't ask those questions. And when Jesus asked those questions, they were unwilling to answer. And why were they unwilling to answer? Because they didn't know the answer? No. They didn't like the answer. That's why they refused. They didn't like the answer. If I don't like the answer, I'm just not going to say, I see you've kind of wedged me into a corner here and you're making me admit that I'm wrong. But I'm going to choose to be silent. Right? But you know, they're wrong anyway.

"The LORD says to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand..." The hand of power. "Sit at my right hand..." Verse 2, "The LORD sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies!" Again, this is as a Messianic Psalm. David is speaking out prophetically about the fact that Jesus Christ is going to rule and reign from Zion during the Millennial kingdom. And he says, "3 Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments; from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours." Look at this next one. "4 The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek." Melchizedek. Who is Melchizedek? Well, you have to have read through the book of Genesis to find out who Melchizedek is. But he was a high priest. A rather mysterious high priest, whom we know very little about, frankly. But an individual who was considered to be a priest of the Most High God, who lived during the time of Abraham. And he was a true priest of the Lord. And yet, he was not a priest from any kind of Jewish lineage, because Abraham is the father of the Jews. And there was no Jewish lineage yet to be from. The Jews had a priesthood that came from the line of Levi. And from that branch, from that line, it branched off from the house of Aaron, who was of course of the house of Levi. That branched off and only the sons of Aaron could be high priests. You've got the priests, the Levitical priests, and then you have the high priestly line of Aaron. Well, that all comes ultimately through Jacob. Right? Who is renamed Israel and has these sons who become the tribes of Israel, and so forth. Well, this is... Melchizedek lived long before any of those guys ever came onto the scene. And you say, to yourself, well, how in the world can he be a priest? Well, he was a priest of God. And he was a priest of God, as a prefiguration of the priesthood of Messiah. Right? Because, and this is one of the things that really confused the Jews, because they knew that Messiah was going to be of the lineage of Judah, one of the tribes of Israel. But they would come to a verse like this and they would talk about it. And it's like, wait a minute, he's telling him he's going to be a priest forever, but he's not in the line of Levi. He's born from the house of Judah. How is Jesus... (or they didn't say Jesus) how is Messiah going to be also a priest if he's from the line of Judah? That doesn't make any sense. So they had to just bury it. Yeah, well, we'll come up with some sort of an explanation..., sort of a thing. But what God is saying, here is "I'm going to make You a priest by a different order. Not by the order of the Levitical priest. Because you see there were limitations to that priesthood. I'm going to make You a priest, God says, "after the order of Melchizedek." And the thing we learned about Melchizedek is that he had no lineage recorded. Now, it doesn't mean he didn't have a lineage. People get that confused all the time. They go, "He just... And that's why people think Melchizedek was actually Jesus. I don't believe that. Melchizedek was Melchizedek. And they'll say, well, yeah, but he had no father or mother, no beginning or ending. It wasn't recorded. He had no recorded lineage. And the point was, that alone stood as a symbol, as a prefiguration of Jesus Christ, who has no beginning or ending. In that sense, Melchizedek prefigures the coming of Christ. And without that sort of a beginning or ending, God says, I'm going to make You a priest forever. Because remember the high priesthood ended with death. With death, the priesthood was over and then the next priest took over and so forth. But He says, "You are a priest (perpetually,) forever, after the order of Melchizedek." It's really a powerful passage. Did we put that passage up on the screen? It's from Hebrews chapter 5. You can actually take a look at it there, where it is actually quoted. Where the writer of Hebrew says, Hebrews 5:5-6 (ESV)

"So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, "You are my Son, (quoting now here from the psalm) today I have begotten you"; as he says also in another place, "You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek." There you go. Jesus Christ prefigured in the person of Melchizedek, from the Old Testament. And this Psalm ends with just the following 3 verses. It says, "5 The LORD is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. 6 He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. 7 He will drink from the brook by the way; therefore he will lift up his head." Speaking of the victories and so forth, conquests of Messiah to come.