The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): Why is Psalm 110 the most quoted portion of Old Testament scripture in the New Testament? And why is the question of Jesus being either David's son or David's Lord so critical to our understanding of who Jesus is?

Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Psalm 110 is important for several reasons. It's the greatest of the Messianic psalms. It speaks exclusively of the Messiah and makes no reference to any earthly king.

Let's join Dr. Boice as he begins to unpack Psalm 110 and shows us that it can only refer to a divine king, our judge and our priest, who sits at the right hand of God and who extends his rule in the world through his people.

Dr. James Boice: Very near the end of our Lord's earthly ministry, there was a time when his enemies were trying to trap him with trick questions, and Jesus turned the table on them by asking them a question that they weren't able to answer, which only shows how great folly it is to try to match wits with the all-wise God.

He asked them about the Messiah. He said, "Tell me about the Christ. Whose son is he?" Well, they thought the answer was easy. Most people who don't know much about the Bible or religion think all religious questions are easy, and so they gave the common answer. They said, "Well, the son of David, of course."

Then Jesus asked them this. He said, "How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him Lord? For he says, 'The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.' If then David calls him Lord, how can he be his son?"

Suddenly a very simple question became a very profound and searching question. Because if David called his natural physical descendant, the Messiah, Lord, it could only be because this one whom he was addressing is greater than he is. Otherwise, you wouldn't use that name for a mere earthly descendant. The only possible explanation of that is that the one to come, the one whom David was addressing, the Messiah, has got to be greater than a mere man. He has to be the Son of God as well as the son of David.

Which, interestingly enough, is exactly the answer that the Apostle Paul gives in that opening introduction to the great letter to the Romans. He's speaking of Jesus there, and he says that as to his human nature, he was a descendant of David, but through the spirit of holiness, he was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.

We have that story in several different places in the New Testament, in each of the synoptic Gospels, and the fullest one is from Matthew, which is what I was quoting a moment ago. But it's perfectly clear in all three of them that the text that Jesus is referring to is Psalm 110:1. By referring to it, he not only was teaching how that particular verse is to be interpreted but also giving a general approach to how Christians in this age can look at the Old Testament and see it as fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

The disciples loved to quote this psalm. As a matter of fact, they quoted it so often that it is the most quoted portion of the Old Testament in the New—the most quoted psalm, and verse 1 is the most quoted verse. You have it in this story in Matthew 26:44 and the parallels in Mark 12 and Luke 20. But it's also referred to three or four times in Acts. It's in 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians, many times in Hebrews, and also in 1 Peter.

The fourth verse, which contains a second direct word from God and we're going to look at in our next study, is also quoted in Hebrews at least half a dozen times. It's the dominating theme in those key chapters in the middle of the book of Hebrews. Now that makes us ask, why should this psalm, Psalm 110, be so important to the Christians and to the New Testament writers?

The answer really is a simple one. It's because this is the greatest of the Messianic psalms in that it is exclusively about the Messiah and it doesn't have any primary reference to an earthly king. There aren't a whole lot of Messianic psalms, that is those that have prophecies explicitly relating to Jesus Christ. Maybe half a dozen of them. Psalm 2 is perhaps the best known other than Psalm 110, but you have Psalm 22 that talks about the resurrection, Psalm 45, 72, and a few others.

In virtually all of those psalms, the Messianic elements are mixed in with other references that have to be taken as referring to a merely earthly king. It might, for example, refer to the king having to confess his sin. That doesn't apply to Jesus Christ. Psalm 2, right at the beginning of the Psalter, is the most explicitly Messianic, and maybe exclusively about Jesus, but it does seem to have to do with an earthly king too, at least exalting him to rule upon the holy hill of Zion and so forth.

That's not true of Psalm 110. This is exclusively about the Messiah. What it tells us is that he is a divine king who has been installed at the right hand of God in heaven; that he's presently engaged in extending his rule throughout the world through his people, described as soldiers enlisted in his army. It tells us that he is a priest exercising priestly functions, and at the very end, it also talks about his role as a judge.

Maybe that's not all. One of the great expositors of this psalm was a man named Edward Reynolds. He lived a long time ago, born in 1599, he lived to 1676, and he wrote that this psalm is one of the fullest and most compendious prophecies of the person and offices of Christ in the whole Old Testament. As a matter of fact, he said there are few, if any, of the articles of the creed that we all generally profess that are not plainly expressed or are evident by implication in this small psalm model.

What he found as he began to look at it was this: that it teaches the doctrine of the Trinity, the incarnation, sufferings, resurrection, ascension, and intercession of Jesus Christ; the communion of saints, the last judgment, the remission of sins, and the life everlasting.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon writes a great deal about the psalm, and he says that David is not the subject of it even in the smallest degree. Another commentator, a contemporary Baptist, Walter Chantry, has written a little book including a careful study of Psalm 110, and he divides it into four separate parts. He sees it this way: the powerful reign of Christ, verse 1; the spiritual reign of Christ, verses 2 and 3; the priestly reign of Christ, verse 4; and finally, the judicial reign of Christ, verses 5 through 7.

That's probably a good way of handling the stanzas as they're presented to us by the New International Version. In my notes over in the margin of my Bible, I divide the four parts of it up this way: the Messiah's place, the Messiah's rule, the Messiah's ministry, and the Messiah's judgment. By saying all of that and by those various quotations, what I'm suggesting is that this is a very comprehensive psalm and it has to do with Jesus Christ in his various roles. To study it is really to learn a great deal about him.

We start with verse 1, and it's very easy to see why verse 1 was so important to the New Testament writers. It's because in Hebrew, the first word for Lord is different from the second word for Lord in our translation. The first word is the word Jehovah. The way that's distinguished in most of our translations is by printing the word Lord with capital letters: a large capital L and then small capital O-R-D.

You notice later on in the same line, you have the same word Lord, but there it's upper and lower case. When they do that, when they print it in capital letters, it's a clue to us that what the word really is there in Hebrew is Jehovah, or Yahweh, as the scholars sometimes say. The second word is Adonai, and that's the word that is commonly translated Lord.

The first word refers to God himself; the second word refers to an individual who is greater than the speaker. If you call somebody your Lord, you're saying that he's your master and you're less important than he is. So here's a case of David citing a word of God, an oracle, in which God tells another personage who is greater than David to sit at his right hand until he makes his enemies a footstool for his feet.

That can only be the Messiah, a divine Messiah who is Jesus Christ. Now I should say, of course, that that depends on two assumptions. The first assumption is that the psalm really is by David. Because if it isn't by David, it could be by an underling in his court who is using this kind of language to flatter David. He would be saying, "God in heaven said to my Lord King David, sit upon my throne until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet."

That would be a gross exaggeration to imagine David sitting on the right hand of the Majesty on High. But you see the assumption, certainly involved in Jesus' treatment of it, is that the writer is David and so it's talking about the Messiah.

The second assumption, equally important, is that David wrote by inspiration. It would be one thing for David to say, "Here's God writing about the Messiah and he calls the Messiah a divine being," and perhaps be wrong. But there's the assumption that David, being a prophet chosen and inspired by the Holy Spirit, is actually writing down something that is true and that this is really an oracle from God.

Jesus made both of those assumptions when he spoke to the leaders of his day, didn't he? Because he said explicitly, "David, speaking by the Spirit." David was assumed to be the author by Jesus Christ and also assumed to be truthful because the Holy Spirit was guiding him in what he did. I only say that to point out that it's really astonishing that so many commentators, and unfortunately even certain evangelical ones, treat the psalm as if it's by some other human writer.

Some of the great conservative series of commentaries on the Old Testament have writers that treat this psalm as if it were simply by another human writer. That's a terrible mistake, and it causes a great misunderstanding of what the psalm is about. Derek Kidner is one who doesn't do that. He writes for InterVarsity and he's done a very good study of the psalms in two volumes, and I want you to see how he sees the issue.

It's really right: nowhere in the Psalter does so much hang on the familiar title "A Psalm of David" as it does here. Nor is the authorship of any other psalm quite so emphatically endorsed in other parts of Scripture. To amputate this opening phrase "A Psalm of David," or to allow it no reference to the authorship of the psalm, is to be at odds with the New Testament, which finds King David's acknowledgment of his Lord highly significant.

For while other psalms share with this one the exalted language which points beyond the reigning king to the Messiah, here alone the king himself does homage to this person, thereby settling two important questions: whether the perfect king was someone to come or simply the present ruler idealized, and whether the one to come would be merely man at his best or more than this.

Our Lord gave full weight to David's authorship and David's words, stressing the former twice by the expression "David himself" and the latter by the comment that he was speaking by the Holy Spirit, and by insisting that his terms presented a challenge to accepted ideas of the Messiah which had to be taken seriously. Then he points out that Peter too, on the day of Pentecost, stressed the contrast in the psalm between David himself and his Lord who ascended into the heavens and is exalted at the right hand of God.

Peter learned it from Jesus, and he preached it as it has been preached throughout the church to this day. Since we mentioned Peter, there is an interesting conclusion to that. Peter, preaching at Pentecost, used those three great texts from the Old Testament—and this was the last of the three—and when he talked about the Messiah, Jesus, being exalted to the right hand of God, sitting, waiting for the moment of judgment, he pressed the point home to his hearers, saying, "Therefore be assured of this: God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ."

What he called for was repentance on their part. They said, "What in the world should we do then?" And he said, "Brothers, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven." So at the very beginning when we study this psalm, this is what we have to say: this is a psalm that calls for repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. If you've never come to that point, that's what it's calling for from you.

Now this first verse also speaks of Jesus' present position at the right hand of the Father and of his lordship over all things in heaven and on earth. It's cast in the form of an oracle. I mentioned that a moment ago; there are two of them in the psalm, this one in verse 1 and then you have a second one in verse 4.

Here he quotes God as saying, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." We're familiar with that idea because in most Christian churches, at least those that recite the Apostles' Creed at all, we hear it every Sunday. The creed says he ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. It's from this psalm that that truth is derived.

What does it mean to sit at God's right hand? In the ancient world, to sit at a person's right hand was always to occupy the place of honor. For example, at a banquet, a person who is sitting at the right hand of the host is the person who has been granted the position of highest honor at the banquet. That much is true.

But when you take that a step further and talk about sitting at the right hand of God in heaven, or even sitting at the right hand of a king on earth, you're talking about more than mere honor; you're talking about sharing in the rule. Because the one that sits at the right hand of a king is the one who rules with the king, and the one who sits at the right hand of God is one who rules with God.

That's what Paul is talking about in Philippians, because this is the same theology you find all through the Bible. Paul writes in the second chapter of Philippians 9 through 11, talking about Jesus: "God exalted him to the highest place and gave him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

Just think what a tremendous gulf there is between the way God the Father has honored his Son Jesus Christ and the way Jesus Christ was treated when he was here on earth. When Jesus was here on earth, he was despised and rejected. He was harassed and hated. At last, he was unjustly arrested, tried, and cruelly executed. But God reversed all of that because God the Father raised him from the dead, caused him to ascend into heaven, and said, "Now sit here at my right hand, sharing my power, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet."

That's where Jesus Christ is today. He's at the right hand of God ruling with God over the affairs of the universe, and that includes all human affairs as well. It's God's doing. In other words, it's not up to us to decide whether Jesus Christ is Lord or not. Jesus Christ is Lord whether we like it or not. The only thing we can do is bow before that lordship willingly, hopefully, or we can resist it and end up being crushed beneath his feet.

I think many more of us need to think of Jesus Christ in that way today than probably do. When you talk to people today about their view of Jesus Christ, a lot of people think about him as the baby in a manger, which is what we talk about at Christmas. It’s a sentimental kind of view—touching little baby—properly reserved for Christmas and perhaps other sentimental occasions.

Other people picture Jesus Christ hanging on a cross. That’s sentimental too, though it’s sentimentality of a different pious sort. But Jesus isn't in a manger today, and Jesus isn't hanging on a cross today. Jesus is seated at the right hand of God the Father in power. That's the testimony that we have throughout the Bible.

When Stephen, the first martyr, died, he said, "I saw the Lord standing at the right hand of God." Apparently, what seems to have happened there is Jesus rose from a seating position in order to receive Stephen into heaven. And when John on Patmos saw him, he saw him as God himself with the attributes of God, and John said, "I fell at his feet as one dead," because he was so glorious.

We'd do very well to recover this understanding of who Jesus Christ is. It would make a great difference in many of our spiritual lives if we would think of Jesus Christ this way. Walter Chantry, whom I mentioned a moment ago and who’s done this excellent study on the psalm, says this: "Anyone who has caught a glimpse of the heavenly splendor and sovereign might of Christ would do well to imitate the saints of ages past. It is only appropriate to worship him with deep reverence. You may pour out great love in recognition of your personal relationship to him, but he is your Lord. You are his and he is yours. You are not pals. He is Lord and Master; you are servant and disciple. He is infinitely above you in the scale of being. His throne holds sway over you for your present life and for assigning your eternal reward. A king is to be honored, confessed, obeyed, and worshipped."

Then he adds that's exactly the response that is called for from us in the Gospel. It says in Romans, "If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

Now we go on, and the next part of this talks about Jesus sitting at the right hand of God. Sitting signifies rest, and we're going to see the significance of that when we begin to look at his work as a priest next time. But it doesn't signify utter inactivity. Because a king rules from his throne. And so Jesus sitting at the right hand of God does not mean he's doing nothing; rather, it means that he rules.

This is what the second section of the psalm is all about, verses 2 and 3. It tells us how Jesus directs his witnesses from Zion, ruling in the midst of his enemies. There are two phrases here I mean to look about because it's talking about how he rules through his people in human life and human affairs. The first of these phrases is the one I just mentioned: in the midst of your enemies.

If this were a merely human king, this is not the way you would write. Kings don't rule in the midst of their enemies. They rule over against their enemies. They make boundaries; they defend and extend their boundaries. They confront, they fight, and they overpower enemies. Here's a king who rules in the midst of his enemies. This can only mean that he is ruling in the midst of his enemies spiritually and in what we would call a nearly invisible manner.

Moreover, he exercises his rule indirectly, as it were. Because he is at the right hand of the Father in heaven, and the rule he exerts is not a personal presence, but rather his presence in us who are his people. It's we who extend his rule in the midst of enemies. This meant a great deal to Martin Luther, because of course he had a great many enemies and he was fighting battles in his day.

He was always asking himself, how are we to carry on the battles? At one point earlier in his ministry he writes very briefly about this psalm and he says, "If I were well, I'd write a commentary on it." Well, he got well and he wrote a big commentary on it, and there's about 120 pages in Luther's collected works just on this one psalm.

At one point he's reflecting on this matter: in the midst of Christ's enemies. He says it's not the meaning of this verse that we physically resist our enemies, which is part of the thinking of the Anabaptists and other rebels—they were revolutionaries in the day. "In his kingdom, Christ has nothing to do with secular power and government, nor are we Christians able to defeat and subdue the devil and the world by means of physical power or weapons. No, no," says Luther. "The weapons we have, the way that we're to fight is by suffering, by faith, and by the preaching of God's word."

Luther's right in that. The church has always gotten into trouble when it has tried to Christianize society by legislative means. We have a lot of people today that are trying to do that. They say we want to reclaim America for Christ, and America can never belong to Christ—you don't Christianize a secular state; it's always secular.

They want to do that. They say, "Well, what we want to do is pass laws to express our moral view of society, and if we can do that, then we can force people to act like Christians even if they're not." Now that is not what the church is to do, and when we do that we always get into trouble.

The weapons that we are to fight with are the ones Paul describes in writing to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 10:3 and 4: "Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does." Well then how do we wage it, Paul? He says, "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have power from God to demolish strongholds." He begins to talk about the preaching of the Gospel and the truth of the Word of God.

What are our weapons? Let me suggest three things. They all begin with P and so they're easy to remember. The first is participation. Sometimes you have Christians standing off on the sidelines, as it were, shooting at non-Christian people sort of unfairly. Christians are supposed to be in the world; we're supposed to participate. And that means we participate in law and government and politics and medicine and all the other fields, including education.

Secondly, persuasion. We participate, but we also do it by persuasion. That's the opposite of coercion. Persuasion means we want to talk about the truth; we want to urge people to do the things that are right. Those verses from 2 Corinthians that I referred to earlier go on to say, "We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." He's dealing with the thinking, you see; it has to do with ideas. That's the way we're supposed to wage war.

Then the third P is prayer. Why prayer? Because we know that even possessing the truth and arguing the truth, we're not going to have acceptance by non-Christians who are opposed to God unless God blesses the arguments. How could Wilberforce, by his arguments, possibly get the British Empire with all of the economic interests that were invested in the slave trade to abolish slavery? It had to be by the power of God. He could argue until he was blue in the face, and he almost did because it went on for an entire lifetime, but in the end it was successful because God chose to bless it.

So when we're carrying on this war on behalf of our Lord, in the midst of Christ's enemies, we're to do it by participation and by persuasion and by prayer. Walter Chantry says rightly that the world is in desperate need of a spiritual church using spiritual weapons to fight a spiritual war under the spiritual reign of Christ. It's always a tragedy when the church forgets that and tries to act like the world.

Well, one more phrase, the last one. It says, "Your troops will be willing." That's the final point because it's a way of saying that there are no mercenaries in this battle; there are no slaves that are pressed into the service of the king. This army is composed entirely of volunteers. Now it's true these volunteers didn't begin willing. They were hostile to God and his reign, just as everyone else still is. But they were made willing by the sweet operation of the grace of Jesus Christ, their Lord and Savior.

Having been made willing, having been regenerate, having their minds changed so now things that they formerly hated they love, and things they formerly loved they now hate, they count it joy willingly to serve with Jesus Christ. Which leads me to ask the final obvious question: are you willing? Have you presented yourself to Jesus Christ as a living sacrifice? He presented himself as a sacrifice for you. He won your salvation by dying in your place. Are you willing to give yourself to him and enlist in his service? That's what he requires of you if you would be a disciple.

I give you a great Old Testament example. Isaiah saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and lifted up—got a vision of God in his glory. And he heard a voice and the voice said, "Whom will I send? And who will go for us?" Because Isaiah had seen God in his glory, Isaiah could hardly do anything else but say, "Lo, here I am. Send me." Let's pray.

Our Father, we're thankful for this great psalm that it's been our privilege to study here briefly today. We pray that you would use it effectively in our hearts. It's been blessed to your people down through all the many hundreds of years since it's been written: Old Testament times, New Testament times, and even today as it's preached.

We don't want to miss that blessing, but we ask, we pray, we beseech that you will use it effectively in our hearts to draw people to Jesus Christ that he may be Lord and King and ruler for them and they might be effective in his service. We pray in his name. Amen.

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