Our passage this morning, as I indicated, is Psalm 110, and we'll read the entire psalm. Psalm 110. It's certainly the most quoted Old Testament passage, that is, passage from Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures in the New Testament. Some count the allusions and quotations and references to be more than 20. There's arguments among the scholars, of course, as there must be. But no one doubts that it's the most frequently quoted. So if there's any passage in all of the Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures, broadly the Old Testament, that we should know and sing, it's the one about which or to which the New Testament writers and preachers gave most attention. Arguably, the book of Hebrews that we looked at last time when I was with you is a sermon on Psalm 110. So we'll give attention to the reading of God's word, if only because the New Testament is very interested in this passage. God's holy word. 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. 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. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses. He will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. He will drink from the brook by the way. Therefore, he will lift up his head. Thus far, the reading of God's word. May he write this word on our hearts and may he give us true faith to believe every bit of it. Congregation of the Lord Jesus, this psalm comes to us with a superscription that says a psalm or a song of David. We don't know with entire certainty about those superscriptions, but we don't have any reason to doubt it. And so we'll read the psalm in light of that superscription. And it's most likely a psalm in celebration of the royal accession of King David after the defeat of the Jebusites and the formal accession of the king. That is, the taking of his throne formally. And it uses language here. We're thinking now in history, we're at about 1,000. As Dr. Berksma taught me many years ago, when we both had more hair. He won't mind me saying that. There are photographs that have been published. that God in the history of redemption has worked in sort of 500-year periods. Think of Abraham, 2000 B.C. Children, if you want to get an idea of how long ago that was, well, here we are in 2012, that's 2,012 years. That means that we reckon our history as being roughly 2,012 years after the coming life, death, and the resurrection and ascension of our Lord Jesus. We are living in the year of our Lord, Anno Domini, the year of our Lord, 2012. So as long as it's been since Jesus was ascended, it was that many years before that that Abraham was around. And then, 500 years after Abraham, was Moses, give or take. Scholars, again, we'll give some different dates, sometimes the 1500s and sometimes in the 1200s. But we'll, just for round numbers, we'll say 1500s. And then David is a thousand. So every 500 years, there's a major event in the history of salvation. And we're in the third of those in that 500-year pattern. And David has defeated his enemies. If you remember back to 1 Chronicles 10, you don't have to go there. I'm just going to read some for you, and you'll forgive me. I'm going to read more passages today than I normally do, just because this passage, Psalm 110, is a little bit like a spinal cord in the Bible, and it has nerve endings that reach out all through Scripture. And if you don't follow some of those, you won't get as much out of the psalm as you otherwise might. In 1 Chronicles 10 and following, it says, 10.13 and following, So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord, that is with Yahweh, in that he did not keep the command of Yahweh. And he also consulted a medium, that's a witch, children. You know, that place on Broadway and just a little bit, what direction is that? South, maybe, of Mission, where it says palm reading or whatever it says. That's what it means. Those people who look at your palms and look at cards and try to tell you the future, or they look around at the intestines of chickens or whatever foolishness they do, This is what got Saul in so much trouble. He consulted one of those children, seeking guidance, because he didn't trust the Lord, you see. He did not seek guidance from Yahweh. Therefore, Yahweh put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David, the son of Jesse. And then in the next chapter, it says, Then all Israel gathered together to David at Hebron. It said, Behold, we are your bone and flesh. I want you to remember that. Who's saying that? All the children of Israel gathered together and said, We are your bone and flesh. In times past, even when Saul was king, it was you who led out and brought in Israel. And Yahweh, your God, said to you, You shall be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be prince over my people Israel. So all the elders of Israel came out to the king in Hebron, and David made a covenant with them in Hebron before Yahweh, and they anointed David king over Israel according to the word of Yahweh by Samuel. And so there we have the circumstances most likely of this psalm, and this is a celebration of the installation. Now, we're going to see an installation of a king, of a civil king, but a special king, a unique king, a king with whom and about whom God made a covenant, a promise, children. A covenant is a sacred bond. It's a promise by God with oaths attached to it and promises attached to it and usually conditions attached to it. We make covenants all the time, don't we? Your parents have made covenants. If they bought a house, they've made a covenant. They made a covenant with a bank. I will pay so much every month towards this house, and eventually, after all the interest is paid off, and the principal, in 30 or 40 or 50 years, we or my heirs will own this property, and we say to the bank, if we don't write those checks, and if those checks don't clear, the bank will come and take our house. We make a covenant with the government. Every April we pay our taxes and we say, may you come and take my car and my house and garnish my wages. If I don't pay those taxes, we make covenants with our neighbors. I won't put something really ugly on my house. Call those covenants, codes, and restrictions. I won't park a car in my front yard and take the wheels off and put it up on blocks because that will make it so that no one else wants to live in the neighborhood and make it hard for you to sell your house. We make those kinds of covenants all the time. God made a covenant with David that one of his successors would always be on the throne. God made a promise. Now, we make promises and we break them all the time. I don't know if your children still say this sort of thing, but we used to say, cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. Actually, that's an oath swearing. That's a covenant. Don't do that, children. You shouldn't take foolish oaths, by the way. We did it when I was a child, but I was an ignorant pagan. You're children of the covenant, so you know better. And, of course, it's foolish to make oaths about sticking things in your eyes. I hope I'm not a foolish pagan anymore. I don't think so, but I was. So we make these kinds of oaths. And in the ancient world, when David was being made a king, They used to make these kinds of oaths all the time. They made oaths quite like that. Very serious oaths. They made oaths with covenants with each other, just the way that nations make covenants. We call them treaties, but those are covenants. And we say, well, if anybody bothers you, we'll come to your defense. And if anybody bothers us, you'll come to our defense. Or we promise to leave you alone. If you promise to leave us alone, those kinds of covenants. And in the ancient world, we didn't just promise to make financial penalties, but in the year 1000 and in the years before that, they made promises that said they would cut up animals. Can you imagine that, children? You come home and there's a chicken, a bunch of bits of pieces of chicken cut up on either side and your mom and dad going between the pieces and saying, May it be to me as it is to this chicken if I break this covenant. If you see that, children, you should dial 911. It means something's gone horribly wrong. But in the ancient world, it wasn't so. That wasn't considered bizarre behavior. It was considered normal behavior, because that's the way the pagans used to make promises to each other. And, of course, you know that from the life of Abraham, don't you? Well, we have documents, actually, from this period, just a few hundred years before this period, from Egypt, in a place that still exists, Tel El Amarna, that give witness to the existence of these kinds of covenants and bonds and promises and oaths and curses and the like. And we have documents that go even beyond that, back behind that. And that's the context in which this psalm comes. And there are two figures in this psalm, and it's not entirely clear in your English Bible necessarily, unless you look and see that sometimes you see the word Lord in what are called small capitals. They're capitals, but they're not ordinary capitals. They're called small capitals. And when you see the word Lord in those small caps, that's a signal that it stands for the Hebrew word Yahweh. And some of you remember the old American Standard Version translation that used the word Jehovah. We sang that in one of our psalm settings. Jehovah is an awkward way of trying to get Yahweh into English. It takes too long to explain, and it's not worth the effort. But the Hebrew word is something like Yahweh. There's some doubt about how it's pronounced, but that's the way most people say it, so that's how we'll say it. So there's one figure, that's Yahweh, the sovereign covenant Lord who makes covenant with his people. And then there's another figure here who is also called Lord, but you'll notice his name is not in small caps. That's because it's a different word in Hebrew, and his name in Hebrew is Adonai. So those are the two words I'm going to use, just for clarity, Yahweh and Adonai. So if you look at verse 1, it says, Yahweh says to Adonai, sit at my right hand. So now you begin to see a picture here. You have a great king, just like we see in the tablets from Egypt and other records. Yahweh, who is the great king, sort of like the United States, says to Canada, our northern suburb. The great king says to the lesser king, this is how it's going to be. And the lesser king says, hey, as long as you keep sending us money, we're good with that. We'll do that. As long as you protect us and we'll be faithful, we will serve you. And so you have a great king, Yahweh, and a lesser king, Adonai. And the great king, Yahweh, says to the lesser king, Adonai, sit at my right hand. When and how long? Well, look at verse 1. Until I make your enemies your footstool. Yahweh is making a promise to Adonai that he's going to do something for him. He's going to give something to him. He's going to make something happen. And in the original context, this was understood to be a reference to David. That Yahweh was promising to David that he would sit, as it were, metaphorically, not literally, at God's right hand. The right hand is the place of power, is the place of distinction. It's the place of authority. Sit here at my right hand. Benyamin is the son of my right hand, the son of particular favor and blessing. Sit at my right hand and rule as my prince over your enemies. And the other thing that you need to know about this psalm is that it has not an unusual structure for a psalm, but it's probably not the way that you and I normally read texts. There is a call and response in this text between Yahweh and Adonai. Yahweh says, sit, and Adonai responds. And I don't know if it made it in. I forgot to look to see if it made it in the sermon outline. But there is a parallelism through here so that 1 and 5, verses 1 and 5, 2 and 6, and 3 and 7 match up. 1 and 5, 2 and 6, 3 and 7. And if you're paying attention, children, which verse did I leave out? If you're looking at your Bibles, you'll notice I left out a verse. 1 and 5, 2 and 6, 3 and 7. Don't shout it out, but I want you to notice which one I left out. Because I left out one, intentionally. Because it doesn't have a match, and that will be very important in just a minute. So in 1 and 5, 2 and 6, 3 and 7, Yahweh speaks, and Adonai responds. Well, look at verse 5. Adonai is at your right hand. He will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. And Adonai says, I'll do it. Well, in the original context, how did David do at his covenant keeping? Sit at my right hand and I will make your enemies your footstool. How did David do at conquering all of his enemies at the right hand of Yahweh? Well, pretty well. Pretty well. In fact, so well that when he died, how did the scripture describe him? Describes him as a man of blood, children, which means not that he... Sometimes he had blood on his hands literally because he was a mighty man of valor and actually killed people with a sword and with a bow and other things. He went to war. He was a soldier and he was a great soldier and he was a brilliant general and strategist. But even the best soldiers can't kill everyone and David didn't succeed in killing everyone. And so on his deathbed, he made plots with his son Solomon to take care of the ones that he forgot or failed to kill. In fact, David's hands were so bloody that he was not allowed to build the temple that so troubled him. Sit at my right hand, Yahweh says to Adonai, and Adonai says, I'll do it. If you look at verse 2, Yahweh sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies. You've conquered the Jebusites. And you've conquered Saul. Remember from 1 Samuel 20, verses 30 and 31, Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan because he knew that Jonathan was not with him. You son of a perverse, rebellious woman. Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother's nakedness. For as long as the son of Jesse lives on the earth, neither you nor your kingdom shall be established. So Jonathan was cut off. He's not going to be king as far as Saul is concerned. Therefore, send and bring him to me for he shall surely die. Saul even threw a spear. Saul was a big man, a powerful man. And he threw a spear at Jonathan It missed him intentionally, most likely, but it sealed his wrath. God conquered Saul. Saul died in battle, and David became king. You look at verse 6, He, being Adonai, will execute judgment among the nations, Filling them with corpses, he will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. You see how the promises of God are cast in this period, 1000 B.C. In terms of earthly conquest and blood and victory. It's like God is saying, and Escondido will conquer San Marcos and scatter them all over and you will possess all of San Marcos and all of Vista and Poway. and so forth. It's all about this world. It's all about power. It's all about earthly glory and conquest and blood. And you even see this in verse 3. This is all about subduing. Your people will offer themselves, look at verse 3, will offer themselves freely on the day of your power when you come into your kingdom in holy garments from the womb of the morning, the earliest part of the morning, the dew of your youth shall be yours. Well, this is poetic language, but this is poetic language about the renewal of strength and power. You know, the setting of Israel geographically is very much like the setting of Escondido. It's dry and hot, maybe a little colder in some parts of the year and a little hotter than others, but very similar. And you know how important water is here. Can you imagine if the people in Northern California ever got their wish and shut off the spigot and we didn't have any more water? Your parents can tell you what would happen. That beautiful front lawn they have, that would be gone. Some of you remember when those lawns were taken away and they were all replaced with rocks. In my neighborhood, you can walk around and you can kind of see which houses were here during the earlier droughts And the lawns went away and they got replaced with rocks because there's no water. Water is a symbol of youth and strength and power. And some of you know what it's like to be worn out and dried up. Literally, not just metaphorically, or you know people like that. So your people will offer themselves. And in fact, that's what we read. Remember, we read that earlier in First Chronicles. We will be bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. They will offer themselves. And then look at verse 7. There's the response. This is the promise in verse 3 and then the response in verse 7. He will drink from the brook by the way. Therefore, he will lift up his head. Again, this is poetic language. But picture now this great king, the lesser king, Adonai, the servant of Yahweh, has received his people. He's conquered the enemies, both internal and external. Saul is conquered. The Jebusites and the rest of them are conquered. They've taken Jerusalem. And it's now the city of David. They built up the city walls for protection. And all of that success is symbolized by the act of David turning his back, as it were, on his enemies. I don't know if you've ever been in a schoolyard fight. I hope you haven't. But in a schoolyard fight, one of the things you learn is don't turn your back on your enemies. Right? When it's still going on, because that might not go well for you. And so you have to keep your eye on the other fellow all the time. But when it's over, it's over, especially if you won, you could turn your back. And so David turns his back and he's able, as it were, to put his face in the cool, clear, clean water and to wipe the blood and the mud and the sweat out of his face and to take a drink after the exertion and the heat of battle. This is the imagery of conquest and success. You say, well, that's very well and good, Pastor. This is very interesting. One and five and two and six and three and seven. That's very interesting. But what about verse four? Well, verse four, you'll notice, doesn't have a parallel, does it? So much for subduing. Verse four is something else. That's about saving. Verse four says, Yahweh has sworn and will not change his mind. You, he says to Adonai, are a priest. after the order of Melchizedek. Well, that's very interesting. Here we've had all this military language, all this martial language about conquest and blood and sweat and violence. But in verse 4, it says, Yahweh has sworn and will not change his mind. When it says Yahweh, this means the God children who said in the beginning, let there be and there was. That same God has sworn. And when God swears, he doesn't swear vain oaths the way we sometimes do. When God swears, it sticks. It doesn't change. And will not change his mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. That must have been very puzzling to David. I mean, there were priestly aspects to his life. And it makes us think, for example, of Psalm 89.3. You have said, I will make a covenant with my chosen one. I have sworn to David my servant. So there are echoes of this elsewhere in Scripture. In 2 Chronicles 13, 4 and 5, Hear me, O Jeroboam and all Israel. Ought you not to know that Yahweh, the God of Israel, gave the kingship over Israel forever to David and his sons by a covenant of salt, meaning an everlasting covenant that will be preserved. 1 Samuel 21.6, though we begin to get a slightly, we get a hint of a slightly different aspect to this covenant. And so in 1 Samuel 21.6 we read that the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread but the bread of the presence. Where was the bread of the presence? Well, that was in the Holy of Holies, which is removed from before Yahweh to be replaced by hot bread on the day it's taken away. Who goes into the Holy of Holies? Who is able to eat the bread of the presence of the Lord? It's only the priests. But David ate the bread of presence. And this is because in some way he was not just a king, he was also a priest. And God had sworn an eternal covenant that he should be not just a king, but also a priest. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Well, what order of priesthood is Melchizedek? Well, he's not Aaronic. He's not Levitical. Well, what is he? Well, you remember, children, that Melchizedek is that fellow who kind of appears from nowhere. And Abraham makes him an offering. He bows down to him, and then he disappears. David is a priest after that kind of priesthood. But really, is that true? Well, it's true in a way. It's true in a temporary way. But it's not true in the ultimate way. You're saying, Pastor, that the word of God is not true? No, I'm not saying that at all. Every syllable of the word of God is true. But the New Testament helps us to understand what this passage really intends to say in all its fullness. Because if you know just a little bit about the life of David, you know that he really isn't the priest, the final priest. He's a picture of the final priest. He's not the final king. He's a picture of the final king. Because what happened when they put David's bones in the ground, children? where did they stay? Did they get up and move around? No, when he died, they put his bones in the ground and they stayed in the ground. Now, all these promises that were made, and particularly verse 4, that isn't repeated, and the reason verse 4 isn't repeated is because this is the Hebrew way of saying, pay attention, because this is really what I'm getting at. This is at the heart of what I'm trying to say to you. Repetition's important, but when it's not repeated and when it's right in the center of a psalm like this, then it says, pay attention, this is really significant. Yahweh has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. What does it mean? Well, our Lord himself explains it to us, beginning in Matthew 22. I have three New Testament passages that I want to go to to explain the significance of Psalm 110. Matthew 22, and these you can look up if you want. Matthew 22, verses 41 through 46. Now, while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question. And by the way, this is always a bad sign if you're a Pharisee and Jesus asked a question. The test is about to get really complicated. What do you think about the Christ? What do you think about the Messiah? What's your view, he asks, of the Messiah? Whose son is he? And they said to him, the son of David, right? Thinking of all the things that we've just talked about, all the promises that God made to Abraham. I have sworn a covenant and I won't break it, right? David is the king forever and his successors will always be on the throne. So that was a correct answer, so it seems. But listen to our Lord. He said to them, how is it then that David, in the spirit, calls him Lord, saying, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. That's Psalm 110, verse 1. If then David, Adoni, calls him Lord, someone else Lord, how is he his son? And no one was able to answer him a word. Nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. I bet not. All the time of our Lord's public ministry, they were coming up to him with smart-aleck questions. Can God make a rock so big that even he can't move it? Answer us that one. Foolish questions. In the resurrection, whose wife will be whose husband? Answer us that one. Lots of foolish questions designed to get our Lord to say something that was against the law of God. But now our Lord has asked a question to which they do not know the answer. And it shuts them up. But congregation of the Lord Jesus, I submit that this morning you and I know the answer. Who is it? Of whom is it true? But Yahweh has said to Adonai, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. How is David Yahweh's son? Well, David is only temporarily like a sermon illustration Yahweh's son, but not really, not ultimately, not finally. How do I say that? Well, because the Apostle Peter tells us and explains it even more clearly. In Acts chapter 2, Acts 2, if you want to look there, you can see it for yourself. Acts 2, verses 29 through 36. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence, this is Peter's sermon about the patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day, being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne. when he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, of the Messiah. It's not ultimately about David. It's only approximately about David. That he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, Yahweh says to Adonai, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Listen to verse 36. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified. Well, you get the picture. And then Hebrews 4, 14 through 5, 10, and I won't read all of it, but just to summarize quickly to say that the writer to the Hebrews has a great long explanation of this psalm saying exactly the same thing that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens Jesus the son of God he's the Adonai to whom Yahweh said sit at my right hand you say well that's all very interesting what does it mean? I'll tell you what it means you can trust the father because he kept his promise to the son when you are afraid when you're worried when you're scared you can trust the father who said sit at my right hand I will make you and I will make you a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek he did it it actually came true It happened. Jesus came. He fulfilled his priestly office. And not only was he the priest, but he was the sacrifice. And they even called him king. And they put it up over his head while he was on the cross. They meant it for evil, but God meant it for good because it was true. He's king of the Jews. He's king of all the earth. And how do we know? Because God raised him on the third day. And then after that he ascended. and he is at now literally physically at the right hand of the Father in his glorified human body. You can go to him. You can pray. He hears your prayers. He transmits your prayers to the Father. You say, oh, God would never listen to my prayers. Well, that's not true if you're going to him in the name of Jesus, the high priest and the king over all the nations. We know from Psalm 110 that Yahweh has promised and entered into an everlasting covenant with Adonai. That Adonai has access. This is why we don't call on saints and this is why we don't call even on the mother of our Lord. As holy as she is, we don't call on her because we have access to the Father through the Son. And the Son hears our prayers. And the Father hears our prayers through the Son. You can rest assured. You can sleep tonight. You can take a Sabbath afternoon nap and lay down and know that whether you live or whether you die, you belong to the Lord this day because the Lord Jesus came as the King and He laid down His life for you. And He came as the priest. The eternal priest-king. He has subdued the enemies, not the Jebusites and the Canaanites and all the otherites. He's subdued the greatest of all the enemies, the evil one and sin and death. He subdued it with his own death and his own obedience. He's conquered it. And you, if you've trusted in Jesus this morning, you are accepted with Yahweh. And it is this morning as if Yahweh has said to you, Christian, sit at my right hand in Jesus Christ. You are in Christ at the right hand. And that's what the Apostle Paul says. We are seated with him in the heavenlies. What a glorious gospel truth on which we can base our entire lives. That's what it means. We have a conquering king whose reign began on a cross. We have a savior priest who's interceding. And we have confidence that just as the father kept his promise to the son and raised him from the dead. So he will keep his promise to you, Christian, and hear you when you pray. Amen. Let's pray now. Lord Jesus, we are so grateful this morning that you make our prayers known to the Father and that you are with us and that you understand us because you are one of us and that you are also, being Almighty God, able to help and willing. Our hearts are filled almost to the point of bursting this morning with joy for all that you have done for us and given to us and all that you are for us. We bless you and praise you for the shadowy way in Psalm 110, all these things were promised. And in the glorious light of reality that we see in the new covenant scriptures, that we have a high priest. You, our Lord Jesus, we give you thanks this morning. Hear our prayer and accept our praise. For we ask it in your name. Amen.