5th Sunday of Easter
May 9, 2004
Psalm 110.
The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”
2The LORD will extend your mighty sceptre from Zion; you will rule in the midst of your enemies. 3Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy majesty, from the womb of the dawn you will receive the dew of your youth.
4The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”
5The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath. 6He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth. 7He will drink from a brook beside the way; therefore he will lift up his head. (NIV).
How to Be a Hero.
Today I want to make a very simple point. To have a great faith, you need a great God. Psalm 110 is about Jesus. He is a great God in whom we can have great faith.
The knowledge of a great God is common to all the heroes of faith in the Bible. Think of just a few of them.
Abram left Mesopotamia and went to Canaan when he was 75, not because he was a great explorer, but because the great God appeared to him and promised to be with him.
Moses went to Egypt and confronted the Pharaoh when he was 80, not because he had an army, but because the great God appeared to him in a burning bush. God sent him and promised to be with him. Later, as the people journeyed toward Canaan, the Lord said to him, See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. (Exodus 23:20-21. NIV).
Joshua had the courage to lead the men of Israel into battle in a land they didn’t know, not because he was such a great general, but because he knew the Lord was with him to fight the battles. Before the battle of Jericho, Joshua looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, "Are you for us or for our enemies?" "Neither," he replied, "but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come." Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, "What message does my Lord have for his servant?" The commander of the LORD's army replied, "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy." And Joshua did so. (Joshua 5:13-15. NIV).
David, probably only a teenager at the time, a shepherd armed only with a sling, slew a rather large, professional, well armed soldier named Goliath. The reason for David’s courage and success we learn from what he told Goliath before he killed him. David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD's, and he will give all of you into our hands.” (1 Samuel 17:45-47. NIV).
And so it goes on down through the Scriptures. The people of great faith, the heroes, had a great God! But this great God wasn’t an image in a temple or a book sitting on a shelf. No, they were aware of an awesome, powerful being present with them wherever they went.
Now I think that you, like me, would like to be a person of great faith, a hero. We would like to be strong people who do not fall before temptations to sin. We would like to defy and defeat the godless people, powers and prince of this world. But we can not do it without the great God who led David. Who is that God? It’s the person of whom David speaks in Psalm 110. It’s the Lord Jesus Christ!
Read Psalm 110.
That Psalm is very important. The New Testament quotes Psalm 110 more than any other passage of Scripture. And for good reason. It tells us who Jesus is! David saw a powerful heavenly being sitting at God’s right hand through whom God would subdue and rule the world. David saw his Lord, his shepherd who was with him both in the valley of the shadow of death and in military victory. Knowing that this person was with him, David had confidence and did heroic things.
What were the characteristics of David’s Lord? First, he is a heavenly being and a king. The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”
Many people pretend that this Psalm was just a song sung to glorify Israel’s king at his coronation. It might have been sung for or about David when he became king. In that case the sense would be that the Lord God says to the king, the writer’s lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” But that’s exactly what Jesus refutes when he quotes this verse to the Jews. After humbling the leaders in Jerusalem who tried to trap him with trick questions about taxes and the resurrection, Jesus asks them a question. “How is it that they say the Christ is the Son of David? David himself declares in the Book of Psalms: "'The Lord said to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet."' David calls him 'Lord.' How then can he be his son?" (Luke 20:41-44. NIV). The point that Jesus is trying to make is that the Messiah is not just a descendant of David, he’s a heavenly being that David saw at God’s right hand. The Psalm is not about king David, but about David’s Lord.
In other words, the Jesus we follow and in whose name we have been baptized, is not just a man. He is the eternal Word of God through whom all things were made. We do not face the opposition of the devil, the world and our own flesh by clinging to the memory of a mere man. Rather, like David approaching Goliath, we advance in the name of the Lord: the Lord Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead; the Lord Jesus Christ who said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20. NIV). That perspective makes all the difference. It turns shepherd boys into Davids, and Sauls into Pauls.
David’s Lord was also an eternal priest. The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”
This is the part that the letter to the Hebrews develops in chapters 7-10. It quotes this verse three times to make the point that what the priests who descended from Aaron could not do, this priest did. He made us perfect. He purified us from sin once for all so that we are acceptable to God. He entered not an earthly temple to appear before God, but into heaven itself in the presence of God himself. There he remains as our permanent advocate so that we might never again be separated from God.
If we cannot be separated from God, then we can be sure of his presence at all times and in all circumstances. No matter what we face in life, we are assured of God’s presence because Jesus is a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. That truth is what led Paul to say, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39. NIV).
There is one more point about David’s Lord. This priest-king will not fail to establish the Kingdom of God in the whole world. The LORD will extend your mighty sceptre from Zion; you will rule in the midst of your enemies. The Lord is at your right hand; he will crush kings on the day of his wrath. He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead and crushing the rulers of the whole earth.
When you know beforehand that you cannot lose you can be pretty bold, right? David could challenge Goliath, because he knew, so to speak, that the fight was fixed. Goliath could never beat God!
That is the theme that dominates the book of Revelation. We can be his faithful witnesses because Jesus, the risen Christ, the Lamb on the throne of God will return to conquer all the forces of evil. I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. . . . He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. . . . On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. . . . Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse and his army. But the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped his image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulphur. The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh. (Revelation 19:11-21. NIV).
Do you want to have a great faith? Do you want to be a hero like David or Deborah or Mary or Paul? Then you need a great God! Jesus is that great God. For to him the LORD has said, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” And to him the LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”