Psalm 110 - Victory in Jesus
Live confidently in the midst of conflict knowing our Lord will be victorious!
PSALM 110
A Psalm of David.
1 The LORD says to my Lord:
“Sit at My right hand
Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”
2 The LORD will stretch forth Your strong scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of Your enemies.”
3 Your people will volunteer freely in the day of Your power;
In holy array, from the womb of the dawn,
Your youth are to You as the dew.
4 The LORD has sworn and will not change His mind,
“You are a priest forever
According to the order of Melchizedek.”
5 The Lord is at Your right hand;
He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath.
6 He will judge among the nations,
He will fill them with corpses,
He will shatter the chief men over a broad country.
7 He will drink from the brook by the wayside;
Therefore He will lift up His head.
Heidelberg Catechism
Lord’s Day 19
Q&A 50
Q. Having ascended back into heaven, why is Christ now “seated at the right hand of God”?
A. Christ ascended to heaven,
there to show that he is head of his church,
and that the Father rules all things through him.
Q&A 51
Q. How does this glory of Christ our head benefit us?
A. First, through his Holy Spirit
he pours out his gifts from heaven
upon us his members.
Second, by his power
he defends us and keeps us safe
from all enemies.
Q&A 52
Q. How does Christ’s return “to judge the living and the dead” comfort you?
A. In all my distress and persecution
I turn my eyes to the heavens
and confidently await as judge the very One
who has already stood trial in my place before God
and so has removed the whole curse from me.
All his enemies and mine
he will condemn to everlasting punishment:
but me and all his chosen ones
he will take along with him
into the joy and the glory of heaven.
Summary
In this week's Psalm, David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, gives us poetic insight into a divine declaration of victory. The first half is not necessarily a public declaration, although the LORD's people certainly are the winners in this victory. Rather, it's an intra-trinitarian conversation between our Father and His One and Only Son - between the LORD and the One David cryptically refers to here as simpy my Lord.
When LORD is rendered in the Bible with all-caps, it's refering to God Almighty - YHWH; when it only has a capital 'L', it stands for the Hebrew word ʾā·ḏôni, which can either refer to a superior, the way we might use 'sir' in English, or in reference to God. Psalm 110 is the most quoted psalm in the New Testament, and in one of those instances, Jesus points to Himself as the Lord being referenced by David.
We were reminded at the beginning of this year as we began reading through the Bible together that the first two psalms set the tone for the 148 that follow them. And here in Psalm 110, David unpacks and reinforces the victorious promises of Psalm 2. Notice that all of the pronouns in the first 4-1/2 verses are in the second person: the LORD telling our Lord (King Jesus) what He will do:
I will make your enemies a footstool...
I will stretch forth your strong scepter...
Your people will volunteer (NIV: your troops will be willing... these people/troops, by the way, are us!)
You are a priest forever...
I wish I was smart enough to have planned things this way, but I just stumbled into it by God's grace. Yesterday as we read Christ's 'Great Commission' for His Church, Jesus prefeced it by reporting that all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to Him. And now here today, in Psalm 110, we get an amazing extrapolation of exactly what that means!
Dig Deeper
The pronouns change in the second half of the psalm from second person to third. In otherwords, the LORD is no longer just speaking to our Lord Jesus. In a sense, He's now talking to all of us, His people, about what our Lord will do. These words are meant to give you confidence!
He will shatter kings and chief men over countries...
He will judge among the nations...
He will fill the nations with corpses (It's good to think of Jesus peacefully sitting with little children in His lap, but hold that image in tension with the vicious vengeance Jesus will unleash upon the unrepentant wicked when He returns!)
He will drink from the brook - a promise of the LORD's providence in the midst of battle;
He will lift up His head in ultimate victory!
It's so easy to get drug down by the continual conflict that life here and now gets mired in - both personal and local conflicts, as well as massive and never ending geopolitical and social justice battles.
But when these perpetual problems get the best of you, take a moment to read short psalms of victory like Psalm 2, and 110. Then, as the Catechism puts it so well,
In all your distress and persecution
I turn your eyes to the heavens
and confidently await as judge the very One
who has already stood trial in your place before God
and so has removed the whole curse from you.
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, who gave all authority on heaven and on earth to His Son and our Savior, Jesus Christ;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you'll live in the victorious confidence that Psalm 110 provides;
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
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