Psalm 110:1–2
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
All right, there's an unfortunate typo on your bulletin, so I need us all to pull out your paper copy of the Bible to page 509, or if you have a phone, that's fine too. You know, sometimes we do this evening devotional and the verses we get are mercifully straightforward. Other times they're deceptively deep, and every now and again we get one of those mountaintop verses, you know, and Greg or whoever makes the invitations like, all right, have fun. You have you have 10 minutes, you know, don't mess this up. Tonight we have one of those, which is why you need to open your Bible, because even the capitalization in this verse will help us to understand it. Psalm 110, beginning in verse 1, I'm going to read Psalm 110, verses 1 and 2.
The Lord, hopefully you might see the typo, that should be all four capital letters in the version you're looking at. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies. So here's what I want to try to convince us of this evening based on these verses. Here it goes.
The risen Lord Jesus is righteously reigning from his rightful place. I'll say it again. The risen Lord Jesus is righteously reigning from his rightful place. I don't have like a follow-up sentence. I realize that's just a declarative sentence. So what are you supposed to do with that? I don't know. Believe it. Like, believe it. Let it settle into your bones. Three questions. We're going to answer fast, and then two encouraging reminders.
The first question is, who is talking to whom? Who is talking to whom? Perhaps you're familiar with the Abbott and Costello bit, who's on first? I'm not going to recreate it here. But I thought of it after reading this passage, because I'm just like, okay, who is saying what to who, and who is where, and what are they doing? So let me try to explain. Let's start with the first six words. The Lord, in all caps, said to my Lord. We've got to start here or it won't make sense. This is a Psalm of David written by King David. Just imagine for a second, it might help you understand, imagine for a second that David has a microphone in his hand, okay?
Imagine that King David has a microphone in his hand. And he is saying that the Lord, that is Yahweh, that is the covenant God of Israel, has something to say to someone that David, King David, is calling himself my Lord. The my there is David, okay? So the Lord has something to say to someone that David calls my Lord. David is the king. And so the fact that he is calling this person my Lord is a bit odd. I mean, who does the CEO call sir? Like, what are we talking about here? But we know that because the king is calling this man my Lord, that this person, whoever he is, must be, like David, the Lord.
It's a king. It's a title. It's a specific title referring to the king. And the king must come from David's line. That's how it works back then. Okay, so just like the hymn we sing, what's the name of it? I texted you about it. It doesn't matter. We sing a hymn that says, David's son, yet David's lord. We get it from this verse. This person in Psalm 110 that he's talking about is David's son from his lineage, yet also his lord. Half of that makes sense. Of course the king is from his line, his son.
Half of it doesn't really make sense. Why would the king sort of deferentially call him the Lord? So who is saying what to whom? Well, that's what it is. The king of kings, Yahweh, is talking through the king of David to one of David's sons, a future king. And he's about to give him a job to do. Okay, that's question one. Question two, what is he saying? What's the job for this David's son, yet David's Lord? Again, imagine that David has a microphone. Imagine that he puts that microphone to the lips of Yahweh. Yahweh's got something to say to this person and he gives him two commands.
The first one is this, sit down, sit down. Where do you sit down? You sit at the Lord's right hand, at the place of honor, the place set for the king. The second thing that the Lord tells this person to do is to wait. So sit down and wait. I understand the word wait's not there, but he's sitting down until something, Until the Lord says, I make your enemies a footstool. Which is a euphemism for saying, listen, sit down until I come back.
And I secure my victory on your behalf. In other words, the king of kings will come back and destroy this future king's enemies. And he will get all the glory. Now we get to verse 2. You'll notice the quotes stop. And so now the mic is away from the lips of Yahweh. And David is holding them on his own lips. This is now David speaking in verse 2. Still speaking to this person that he calls his Lord, his future king, his future son. And he says until then, and here's the third command, here's what you're supposed to do.
Rule in the midst of your enemies. So you understand there's like a time jump going on. There's a time where the enemies will be a footstool. And there's a time where this king will rule and the enemies are still all around them. But you must rule. Okay, that's the second question. Third question. So what? Like, okay, I think I kind of understand the basic questions, but so what? Now, most of our Bibles is, of course, the Old Testament. Your Old Testament is full of lots of promises. Some of those promises are fulfilled in the pages of the actual New Testament before Jesus ever comes on the scene.
Some promises in the Old Testament, let's just say, are not. I suspect that Psalm 110 and other passages, think of 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 2, other passages, I suspect those passages kind of kept Israelites up at night. I mean, they believed them, but they weren't sure exactly how it all would work out. They believed them because they trusted in the Lord with all their hearts. They did not lean on their own understanding. You know, just because a promise is unfulfilled for a while doesn't mean the promise giver is untrustworthy.
Some of you just need to hear that tonight. Just because a promise is unfulfilled for a while doesn't make the promise giver untrustworthy. It probably just means you or me or I is impatient. Okay, but so what? If you haven't figured it out already, based on what I said, the sort of main idea of this thing is, these verses are about Jesus. Now sometimes when we talk, sort of get from the Old Testament to Jesus, you know, we talk about how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament, it kind of feels like we do a series of sporadic laterals until Jesus randomly grabs the last one and runs it into the end zone.
And we're like, oh yeah, that makes sense. And I get that. But sometimes the line from Old Testament to Jesus' fulfillment is like a frozen rope. Thankfully, this is one of those passages. Psalm 110 is a beautiful pass that Jesus himself picks up. You don't have to turn there, but in Mark chapter 12, Jesus quotes this verse. And he basically says to his fellow Israelites, listen, we all believe that this person, that the Messiah, would be David's son. But what in the world does it mean when David calls him his Lord?
Now the beautiful thing is Jesus doesn't answer the question. He just asks the question. Because if you've been reading Mark's gospel, the answer is like thuddingly obvious. He goes, I'm the only one who sort of fulfills this, both David's son and David's Lord. I'm the only one who is in the Davidic line and who is God himself. All right, putting it all together. According to David, Psalm 110, verse 1 and 2, is about a future king in his lineage who is also his Lord. According to Jesus and other passages in the New Testament, Psalm 110, verses 1 and 2, are simply about Jesus.
They're about him. Okay, a few encouraging reminders, and then we'll get out of here. I think as Christians, we love to talk about what Jesus has done for us. And we should. I mean, he's done a lot for us. He's died on the cross for us. He's lived a perfect life that we should have lived for us. He rose again for us. I wonder, how often do you think about what Jesus is doing for us, like right now?
Like in this moment, March 17th, 2024. What is Jesus' day job? Well, thankfully, Psalm 110, assuming it's about him, and it is, Psalm 110 tells us. So just two things that it tells us about Jesus' day job, and then we'll go home. Number one, it tells us that Jesus is sitting down. In the summer of 2007, I mercifully left this out in my testimony.
Summer of 2007, I graduated high school. I worked for a few weeks at Camp Hi-Ho, at which point I was fired by Jennifer Lawrence's brother because I overslept. I deserved it. You know, and it was like I was about to go to college, so I didn't get another job. And so a few of my friends, we decided to enjoy our last summer before college by doing a lot of sitting. In fact, we called it the summer of sitting. We'd call each other. A call is like a text with your voice.
And so we'd call each other, and we'd be like, hey, man, what are you doing? And be like, nothing, I'm just sitting. Like, oh, cool, you mind if I come over? Yeah. So we'd sit. We'd play FIFA. We'd watch SportsCenter. We'd watch another episode of SportsCenter. We'd watch another episode of SportsCenter. You know, this is not, you understand why I left it out of my testimony. Nearly 20 years later, I can tell you now what I did not know then. Which is that my sitting was a 100% proof positive of my laziness. I love the Bible.
Here's what Hebrews chapter 10 says about Jesus. And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. And then it finishes out Psalm 110, applies it directly to Jesus. When Jesus sat down, as he is now doing, it is not proof of his laziness.
it is proof of his lordship of having completed the job that only he could do Jesus is sitting down not because the salvation that he's won for his people has been jump-started not because it's 99.9 percent done and we and we just need to add our 0.1 percent of belief no if you are following Christ friends and I hope that you all are then his work on the cross for you is finished you add nothing to it if you have trusted christ then his perfect righteousness has been credited to your individual account and no imperfect righteousness that you can offer can take its place it is it is the it's the best news you'll ever hear it's the best news you'll ever hear Jesus is sitting down if you're a Christian Jesus died for you
he died for you and so you are safe if you're here this evening and you're and you're trusting you're relying on anything else but Jesus's perfect finished righteousness offered to you if you're relying on your good family if you're relying on your good reputation if you're relying on your money or your social status or whatever, then I would simply encourage you to stop. Like, why would you reject Jesus' perfect, finished work and instead exchange your imperfect, in-progress work? I mean, that's a horrible trait every time.
Jesus is sitting down. He's sitting down because he's a better priest who offered the perfect sacrifice. He's sitting down because he doesn't have to give anything up again. He is sitting down, brothers and sisters, so we can settle down. Second thing Jesus is doing, if you flip back to Psalm 110, it's all right there. Jesus is waiting to come home. Now, I'm not going to lie to you. This is not true every time I come home, but sometimes when I come home, my beautiful children hear me coming, and they run to me and they scream, Daddy's home.
Right? That's true. They want to wrestle or shoot hoops or throw football or read Nine Marks books. No, I'm kidding. They don't do that. You know, when their dad's on the way home, they're happy. Fills their heart with joyous expectation. You know, our Lord is coming home. He's waiting. Now, for some of us, that news, it fills our hearts with joyous expectation.
Why? Because we love the person who's coming home. For some of us, if we're honest, that same piece of news fills you with dread. Because your relationship with the one who's coming home, it's in tatters. It's fake. It's actually more to prop you up than to worship him.
And so when you hear verses like, he is waiting to make his enemies a footstool, you secretly wonder, is that talking about me? Now, if you're a Christian, we read that and we think, praise God for the work of Jesus. Same piece of news. He's coming home. Our response to that news depends entirely on our relationship to the Lord.
Until then, Jesus is ruling at the right hand of God amidst his enemies. He's calling them even now to bend their knee to him. But again, for those of us who have already done that, We get to remember that he is right now reigning at his rightful place. We should just let that kind of settle into our bones. Let's pray. Father in heaven, you are so kind to give us your scriptures.
You're so kind to teach us about the work and person of Jesus. And I pray that all of us would consider who he is tonight and what he has done for us and what he even is doing for us in this moment. I pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.