“The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” Psalm 110:1
Psalm 110 is the most quoted Old Testament Scripture in the New Testament. Because of this I thought it would be good for the next several weekly meditations to go through this Psalm verse by verse. The fact that the New Testament quotes it so frequently makes it important for us to understand what it teaches about Jesus. What we get is a very different picture of Jesus and the Gospel than what has evolved in the teaching of the church today, broadly speaking. Our woke, emotional, and squishy culture is in desperate need to see the Jesus of Psalm 110.
Jesus Himself quotes Psalm 110:1 during the Passion Week in Matthew 22:24 to silence the Pharisees and Sadducees who couldn’t understand its meaning. After this, the Scripture says they dared not ask Him any more questions and immediately Jesus condemns them by pronouncing nine woes upon them. In Peter’s first sermon after Pentecost, he quotes Psalm 110:1 to show that God the Father is the LORD who says to David’s Lord, the Messiah, sit at My right hand until I put your enemies under Your feet. Jesus is the Messiah and is seated now at the right hand of the Father. And the Father is in the process of subduing all Jesus’ enemies through His church now empowered by the Holy Spirit to accomplish this purpose.
This is not the gospel commonly heard in today’s church. Jesus is King, He is ruling now, and the spread of the Gospel means the defeat of His enemies. Of all the images of Jesus that the church is promoting today none picture Him as a victorious King with His defeated enemies under His feet. But this is Jesus according to Psalm 110. This is the Gospel according to the New Testament. The spread of the Gospel is warfare. This is the Jesus our culture needs to see.
Next week we’ll look at Psalm 110:2, the enemies of the King, and more about how the spread of the Gospel is actually a war.
His mercy endures forever!
Pastor Flynn