The Messianic King, Matthew 22:41-46

Open your Bibles to Psalm 110. This is one of the most significant psalms in all of the Scriptures; the most widely quoted Psalm, and most widely quoted passage from the Old Testament in the New Testament.

We studied this final interchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. They have ganged up on Him, along with the Sadducees to try to trip Him up and trap Him so that He would be discredited in the eyes of the people, and perhaps would indict Himself with some sort of legal problem in the eyes of the Romans.

They have been shut down because of His extremely sophisticated and simple use of argumentation and use of the Scriptures. Again, for all of us that should remind us that that it is the Word of God that has power, and just as Jesus turned back the temptations of Satan when He was tested in the wilderness, so we too can follow that example, using God's Word. But it presupposes that we know the word of God. As David said, "Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee".

As the Pharisees have finished questioning Jesus, they can't come up with anything else and they don't come up with anything else, Jesus then began to ask them a question in order to put them on the spot in terms of their understanding of who He is.

I want to set the context from Matthew before we go into Psalm 110.

Jesus asked them. "What you think about Christ (Matthew 22:42)?" CHRISTOS is the Greek word for the Hebrew word mashiach, for Messiah. So He saying, "What you think about the Messiah? Whose the son is He?" The Pharisees replied that He is the son of David. This is true, but it is only partially true.

Then Jesus, trying to get them to think a little more deeply about the Scripture says, "How does David by the spirit call him Lord, saying," and then he quotes from Psalm 110:1, ‘THE LORD SAID TO MY LORD, “SIT AT MY RIGHT HAND, UNTIL I PUT YOUR ENEMIES BENEATH YOUR FEET'? [2] “If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his son?”

When David writes this he refers to two people. The first is the Lord who is God the Father, Yahweh, and talking to someone else called My Lord. That second person is viewed as someone who is superior to David. But David is a Middle Eastern monarch, and there is no human being that is greater than he. So who is this second person? How do we identify him? How can this person be David's son, or be only David's son.

Let's look at Psalm 110. This is such an important psalm for a lot of different reasons and we need to understand it.

By way of introduction, just before the first verse use read the phrase, "A Psalm of David". That superscription is not something that's added by the English translators or the editors of the Bible. In the Hebrew text that is actually verse one. A lot of times when you look at that a commentary, something to do with the Hebrew text, it will have a verse and then another number in parentheses, because the number the number system in the Hebrew text is different from the English text many times. The English text doesn't count that as the first verse whereas the Hebrew text counts it as the first verse. So that is clearly inspired text. That is part of the Word of God telling us who the author of this text is.

Psalm hundred 110 is a Psalm that is understood to be a messianic psalm, even by many scholars today who don't think that there are any messianic psalms.

What we see in the explanations today among contemporary scholars is that they will look at a lot of the psalms, like Psalm 22, Psalm two, Psalm 110 as having a primary reference to some historical event at the time the song was written, and it is only technologically, secondarily as a picture of the Messiah. For them there is no psalm that is purely written as a prophecy, and even among those who would say that most of these messianic songs are our typology, most of them would say that Psalm 110 would be the only directly messianic song because it's very difficult to identify this as a to any historical situation in the life of David.

One of the foremost Old Testament commentarians writing today is a scholar by the name of Trevor Longman who says no song is messianic in the narrow sense. I think this is very tragic today that we have lost a sense of true messianic prophecy in the in the Old Testament. I believe that the Hebrew Bible is messianic, from Genesis through second Chronicles in the Old Testament. Second Chronicles in the Hebrew is the last book that is all messianic. It is all focusing on helping of the Jewish people, and everyone who reads the Old Testament, to identify who the Messiah would be when He came. It is not just a typology. There is typology there, but it's not that.

Herbert Bateman the fourth is a well-known Bible teacher. He's a graduate of Dallas seminary with his masters and doctorate. He wrote an article in Dallas seminary theological journal on Psalm 110 in which he says, "David did not speak the Psalm to the Messiah, the divine Lord". In his view David is writing about Solomon, and then the passages is secondarily applied in the New Testament to Jesus.

That would be in contrast to Dr. Tom Constable, who taught for many years of Dallas seminary. He said this is a prophetic messianic psalm that describes a descendent of David, who would not only be his son but his Lord. In his view, as in the view of the traditional view of most traditional Bible scholars, David is looking at the Messiah. He's not talking about some something that happens in his life, he is specifically portraying who the Messiah is; it is a prophecy related to helping us understand God's plan and purpose for this messianic King. So we have to understand that this is a messianic Psalm, a messianic prediction.

It is a fascinating Psalm. The language is profound and it's a little difficult in the Hebrew. There are some real challenges in not only translating but also interpreting the text. I will try not to get too bog down in some of those issues but it's important to understand them because they affect your understanding of the Psalm, and why things are kind of a mess today among the among some scholars.

The question that we should address first of all is, is this psalm messianic? Is there such a thing as messianic Psalms? Do we have genuine predictive messianic psalms?

We should go to 2 Samuel 23:1 for support. This is at the end of David's life. These are his last words and he is speaking about what he has written. In this passage as we read says, "Now these are the last words of David. David the son of Jesse declares, The man who was raised on high [Heb. al]…" The Hebrew word has a long a instead of a short a, and the vowel point is actually translated as if it were just a straight line by other MSS [not the Massoretic Text].

It is important to understand that the Hebrew Old Testament was written at a time when Hebrew did not have any vowels in the language. It just had consonants. The idea of putting in the vowels in the written language took place under a group of scribes called the Nazarenes. Their final edition of the Hebrew text is called the Massoretic Text. That is what is the official Hebrew text of the Old Testament. The problem is their insertion of these vowel points, because you change the vowel from, like a short a to a long a, and it actually changes the meaning of the preposition.

But there are much older Hebrew additions. For example, we have the Qumran text that was discovered with the date of from about 100 to 200 BC. The Massoretic text dates from 900 AD so you're talking about 1000 to 1100 year difference there, and the original text like that of Qumran has no vowel points

The contention is that by 900 AD the Massoretes have been dealing with 900 years of Christian assertions about certain Old Testament passages as being messianic. These are talking about Jesus. So, by simply changing the vowels without changing the consonants it would change the meaning of the word. For example, if you had the word stop in English and you took the vowel out, it would be STP. If somebody came along and said that should read STEP instead of STOP then it completely change the meaning of the word from stop to step.

This is what the Massoretes did in a number of places. By changing the vowels that are associated with that word from one idea to another it changed the meaning of the text, and in many cases it was designed to destroy the messianic implications of the prophecy. So the Massoretic Text is an interpretation in many places, and to present a non-messianic Old Testament.

The Hebrew preposition al is reflected in the Septuagint where they translated it as if it was al instead of all, and they use the Septuagint preposition at EPI, which means 'concerning'. Then the text would read, "Thus says the man raised up concerning the anointed, the Messiah of the God of Jacob, and the sweet psalmist of Israel". So it changes the meaning from "Thus declares the man raised up on high" to "Thus says the man raised up concerning the Messiah". This tells us that that David understood that when he wrote the Psalms, in many of these psalms he wasn't writing about his personal experiences that were just a shadow image of the Messiah, he was writing specifically about the Messiah. He understood that he was writing messianic prophecy, and that's very important to understand. It's not just typology.

When we come to this Psalm 110 it is also important for us to understand the context. The Psalms were inspired by God. The authors of the Psalms included David who wrote probably 70 or 80 of the psalms, maybe more. Moses wrote at least one Psalm, other Psalms were written by the sons of Cora or Asaph, or others; but David wrote most of most of the psalms. They were not organized until sometime later. I believe that even the organization of the Psalms was inspired by God. There is a reason and a purpose to why the psalms are organized the way they are.

If we look at the context of the surrounding psalms it's very interesting if you're at Psalm hundred 10. If you just turn back a couple of pages you will see that there is a division. The Psalms were divided into five books and each book has its own separate and distinctive theme. Book 5 covers Psalms 107-150. The three psalms that precede Psalm 110 have as a major theme a plea for God to deliver the nation. The three psalms that come after Psalm 110, Psalms 111, 112 and 113, they have as their focal point praise for deliverance. Psalm 110 fits in the middle of that as a transition, as the hinge that describes who the messianic deliverer was. So we have pleas for deliverance, then Psalm 110 that tells us about the delivery of the messianic deliverer, and then three psalms that talk about praise for having been delivered.

As we look at this psalm it is helpful to understand its structure. I've looked at a number of different ways that this psalm is been outlined. I think this is the best one because it focuses on the hinge of verse of the psalm, which is the fourth verse.

We look at the first three verses as the first idea all related to the messianic King: that the Messiah is a divine King, and that these three verses emphasize His royalty and His messianic royal role. So we could say that Yahweh will exalt the messianic King to His right hand where He will await the defeat of his enemies and the establishment of his kingdom.

Then we have the hinge of verse, which is Psalm 110:4 four where Yahweh vows to make the messianic King a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Here the messianic King is identified as also being an eternal priest. That is unusual in Israel because the priestly tribe is the tribe of Levi, and the tribe of the kings is the tribe of Judah. They separated the role of the king and the priest, but in the messianic King those roles of priesthood and kingship will be united. This is the centerpiece, the focal point of the Psalm.

In the third division we see that Yahweh will give the messianic King a mighty and glorious victory over His enemies. This is yet future. That is followed by a time of refreshment and exultation to a position of honor and dominion. There is going to going to be the time of a future victory over his enemies, a huge battle a huge war. That will then be followed by a time of unprecedented peace and glory, and the messianic King is elevated at that time to a position of honor and power as He rules over the earth.

That is such a perfect depiction of what is portrayed in Daniel and in Revelation, and a number the other prophetic books. There is this huge battle called the Day of the Lord that occurs at the end of the tribulation period, and this is when the Lord Jesus Christ returns to the earth and destroys the enemies of God at the battle of Armageddon. Then there is a judgment and punishment for the Antichrist, the false prophet, and for and for the unsaved. At that time coming of the tribulation they are sent to punishment. This is followed by the establishment of a 1000 year rule of the Messiah on the earth, called the millennial kingdom or the messianic kingdom, and that is when the Lord Jesus Christ rules, and there's going to be of no war. This will be a time when all the nations, all the Gentiles, come and worship God at the holy mountain in Jerusalem at the temple, according to Isaiah to another passage.

That third division is very important and it's helpful for us to get this little bit of a fore view, because as we're going through Matthew right now what were going to see in chapter 23 is this full-bore condemnation by the Lord Jesus Christ of the Pharisees. It is it is extremely strong and in there He announces the district coming destruction of Jerusalem and coming destruction of the Temple. That causes the disciples to ask this question: "Well, when these things going to be?" Jesus answers those questions in chapter 24 and chapter 25. That is known as the Olivet discourse. We are going to get back into this study of prophecy and the layout of the tribulation, and what is going to come about in the future. This very important and there are some challenging passages there to work through as well.

This Psalm is introduced by the phrase 'A Psalm of David". This is used over 55 times in the Psalms and indicates the Davidic authorship. The phrase itself is used over 80 times in the Hebrew of the Psalms but in terms of the ascription of authorship it is used over 55 times.

Alan Ross who was my one of my Hebrew professors at Dallas seminary specialize in Psalms. If you have the Bible knowledge commentary, he's the one, faculty member Dallas at the time, who wrote the commentary on Psalms. He has produced over the last few years an enormous three- volume commentary on the Psalms, and in his comments on Psalm 110 he notes that among most scholars today—not only most liberals, but also surprisingly a number of evangelicals—would, according to him, few would be willing to say that David actually wrote it.

See, there's this thing in scholarship that the Bible can't really be the Word of God. It's the word about man and if it doesn't fit our understanding of history are our preconceived notions, then it can't really be true. So this is a real challenge.

Jesus who is omniscient in His deity said that David by means of the Spirit wrote Psalm 110. Clearly He affirms the Davidic authorship. This is a very important to understand because as a pastor part of my job is to warn the congregation about false teaching, and about the way that the trends of the day are attacking the Bible. This is why the focal point of our Chafer Conference in March. It is going to be on the importance of the inerrancy and infallibility of the Scriptures. Jesus made it very clear that David authored this.

Many of the more conservatives who don't believe this is a messianic psalm do affirm that it is a Psalm of David. But they just think that there was a historical context where it referred to Solomon, this situation, that situation, or something else. But it's part of my responsibility to also warn the congregation about how these trends take place, and they have they have tremendous implications. So we need to be aware of that.

Then we read, Psalm 110:1 ^NASB "The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”

See the uppercase letters for Lord and that there is a difference between the first 'Lord' and the second 'Lord'. When you're reading through the Old Testament and you see that word 'Lord' and it's all upper case, that tells you it is translating the Hebrew word Yahweh, which is the proper name for God. It is sometimes referred to as the sacred tetragrammaton. The Latin word tetra means 'four', so it means four letters YHWH. Of course there are no vowels in the original and we know how it's pronounced because that first syllable YH is often found in various Hebrew words and Hebrew names. For example the word Hallelujah means praise God. Zechariah, Zephaniah, Hezekiah, are all names that included the first syllable of the name of Yahweh. So we know how that first syllable is pronounced and we can infer from that how the second syllable is pronounced.

This is God's proper name. It is known by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but it's significance is unknown until God calls Moses in Exodus chapter 3:14, 15. There we read, "And God said to Moses, I AM who I AM." Moses has asked God in the burning bush, "Who should I say has sent me?" God says, I AM who I AM, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent me to you." There's a Hebrew verb haya, which means to be, to exist, and this proper name for God is a form of that verb. It is describing God as the eternal or the self-existent God. He is not dependent on anyone else, He is the eternal God, and He is the one who rescues Israel from slavery in Egypt, and He is the one who enters into covenant with them. Yahweh is always associated with the covenant God who has entered into covenant with Israel.

Now this is a basis for the word that we run across in hymns, and we run across here and there, the word Jehovah. Now Jehovah has as its consonants, JH, VH, instead of YHWH. That is because a lot of scholarship was done by the Germans. You get this shift that takes place as you go from one language to another. In German you have the written J but they pronounce it like a Y, and you have the written W and they pronounce it like a V. That is where you get this shift that occurs between J and V and Y and W. It's just as it moves from German to English or from Hebrew to English they would write the Y as a J and the W as is a V. In Hebrew, the first letter is a yod; it is a Y. The third letter is waw, pronounced like it's a V by Hebrews, but Americans are try to always pronounce it like a W. I don't understand that.

So this is how that is written, but according to Jewish reverence for God, they would not pronounce the proper name of God. Today they sometimes will use the word hashem when they really see that name Yahweh in the text. But what happened when the Massoretes put vowel points in, because for much of the much of the time what the Israelites have done is to read Adonai, the word for Lord, which we find in the second 'Lord' here in this passage, they would read Adonai out of respect for the name of God. Instead of reading Yahweh they would read Adonai, so if the text says "Yahweh said to my Lord", they would read it "Adonai said to my Lord'. The Massoretes would put the vowels from Adonai under the consonants for Yahweh. So it's really a combination word. In the word Jehovah you have the consonants for Yahweh and the vowels for Adonai, so it's a made up word. Really God's name is not Jehovah.

The first time that the word Jehovah appeared was in late medieval times, 1520 is the earliest we know of, an Italian monk was the first to use this combination made up word Jehovah. It was introduced 10 years later by William Tyndale who translated it as Jehovah in the Pentateuch in his 1530 addition of the Pentateuch.

It was interesting that instead of spelling it JEHOVAH he spelled it with an I instead of the J. That's just the funniness of going back and forth between different languages. J and I were written almost the same up until the last hundred years or so.

This is the personal name of God, and it indicates the covenant God with Israel. So this first line here says Yahweh says something, and it's translated 'said' here and it's translated a word for 'said' in the translation. But actually the Hebrew word that used here is a significant word, it is the word neum, and neum means an utterance or an oracle, and when God is speaking it indicates divine revelation, as in Psalm 36:1. It announces a divine decree, an oracle or a revelation that is coming specifically from God.

So it should be translated, "An oracle of Yahweh to my Lord". Or it could be translated as "The prophetic word of Yahweh to my Lord". So there are two people mentioned here. The first person is Yahweh and He speaking to somebody else described by David as "my Lord".

Now this also gets a little technical, but it's very important. The word "my Lord", that we have here in the Hebrew is this word at adoni, and it ends with i. That ending of an i tells you it is a first person suffix. It is saying "my", that's the "my" part of Lord, versus adonay, which is the word Lord, the word when you're reading to the text that describes God as is the Lord. This is adonay. There is a very minor difference between the two.

Now some come along and say, well this really can't refer to a divine person because it is adonay that is always used of God. However, there are exceptions. These exceptions are important. In Joshua 5:14 and in Judges 6:13 adonai the first word, "my Lord" is used in reference to the angel of the Lord. This is very important to understand. It helps us to understand the deity of this individual and the deity of the Messiah. It's crucial.

In Joshua 5:14 we have a situation where the angel of Yahweh appears to Joshua as the commander of the Lords armies giving him direction to fight his battles against the Canaanites. "He said, 'No; rather I indeed come now {as} captain of the host of the LORD'.” So this is seen as a different person from Yahweh. This is the commander of Yahweh's army and Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped. Only God gets worship. Angels are never worshiped. Whenever somebody tried to bow down to an angel of the Scripture the angel said, "Get up, get up. I'm not God, don't worship me." So the fact that Joshua falls down and worships Him indicates that he recognizes that the angel of Yahweh is fully God. He says, "What does my Lord …" There's that same form of the word that we have in Psalm 110:1 "… have to say to his servant?"

So what this tells us is the angel of the Lord is divine and the angel of the Lord is called adoni, just as David addresses him as adoni in Psalm 110:1. Judges 613 does the same thing. The angel of Yahweh appears to Gideon and Gideon says to the angel of the Lord, "O my Lord [adoni]"—

the same word again. So in these two passages you have the form of the word that David uses. Adoni in these passages refers to the angel of the Lord. This implies that the adoni that David is addressing is fully divine. So the messianic King is not just a descendent of David as his physical descendent, but is also a divine King, a divine Messiah.

We know that the angel of the Lord is divine because in Judges 6:22 when Gideon saw that it was the angel of the Lord that appeared to him, he said to the angel of the Lord. "Alas, oh Lord God", Adoni Yahweh. God is translated as uppercase to show that is Yahweh. And he said, "For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face-to-face," indicating that the angel of the Lord is fully God.

Zechariah 1:12, the angel of the Lord speaks to this other personage in the context as the Lord of hosts—Yahweh Sabaoth, the Lord of the armies.

So again He addresses Him and says, "How long will you have no compassion for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which you have been indignant these 70 years". Zechariah 1:12 sees the angel of the Lord also is divine, but as a second personage in the deity. In Psalm hundred 110:1 we see that God the Father is speaking to someone who is viewed as superior to David. He is David's Lord, David superior, but is also a descendent of David. As an ancient Near Eastern monarch there is nobody in the whole world that is superior to David. So this can only mean somebody who's not human, somebody who is divine.

Now what this decree consists of is a command to sit at my right hand to "sit at my right hand". Now what does that mean? Again this is very important. It is a position of honor, a position of respect, but it is not something that necessarily indicates that the person sitting at the right hand of the monarch shares in all of the power. Some people will say that sitting at the right hand means that that person the right hand shares the essence of God. That doesn't mean that.

In 1 Kings 2:19 Bathsheba is told to sit at the right hand. She sat at Solomon's right hand. It is a position of authority, it is a position of respect and honor, but it does not mean that she has the same authority and power; she is not the same as Solomon.

So this tells us that Yahweh tells my Lord, the second personage, at this time that He has come to heaven to "sit at my right hand". It is not on the father's throne, but next to the father stone. It's not the Davidic throne either. Amillennials will say this is the Davidic, throne the throne of David. But that fits their scenario that we are living in a spiritual kingdom right now, and we are not.

In Revelation 3:21 Jesus is speaking, and He talks to the church and says, "He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne."

What this means is, Jesus is looking at his throne as something different from the throne He has when He sitting at the right hand of the Father. When He sits at the right hand of the father that is the father's throne. It's not Jesus' throne. Jesus' throne doesn't take place until He returns at the second coming.

This is important because this new aberration that has developed in dispensationalism, called progressive dispensationalism, takes the view that Jesus is now sitting on a spiritual throne of David in heaven and we are in some form of the kingdom. And that is not what the text says. The text says that Jesus is sitting on the father's throne. He sat down with His Father on His throne, not on His own throne, not on the throne of David. This tells us that the kingdom is completely and totally future. The next line in the verse says, "Until I make your enemies your footstool".

How do we know when this time of sitting occurs? This is referred to historically in theology as the session of Christ, session meeting an old word meaning to be seated. Jesus is seated until his enemies are made his footstool.

There will be this final battle that will defeat the enemies of God, and we see this described in verses like Psalm 92:9, "For, behold, Your enemies, O LORD, For, behold, Your enemies will perish; All who do iniquity will be scattered""—looking for to a time when God will totally defeat His enemies.

Then this also is an allusion to the same thing that's talked about in Psalm 2:2, "The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the LORD and against His Anointed …" And so we see this future battle. And the rest of the Psalm depicts how the Messiah will return and destroy these enemies of God. The text says that that's the turning point is when the enemies are made a footstool.

What does that mean? That pictures enemies being vanquished and under the foot of the person is conquered them. Joshua 10:24 depicts this. These kings are brought to Joshua. Joshua called for all the men of Israel and the captains of the men of war and said come near put your feet on the necks of these kings. And they drew near and put their feet on their necks. Their enemies were made a footstool for their feet.

Psalm 47:3 uses same imagery. "He subdues peoples under us And nations under our feet". What this depicts is what is described by Daniel in Daniel 7:13, 14. Daniel sees in this vision that there is God the Father on the throne in heaven, the Ancient of Days, and he said: "I was watching in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man …" This is not God the Father, the ancient of days, but the Messiah "… coming with clouds of heaven. I kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom, That all the peoples, nations and {men of every} language Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed."

So here is the scenario. Jesus ascends to heaven, He is seated at the right hand of God the Father to wait until a certain time comes, and it said that time that He comes to the Father, as depicted in Daniel seven, and all this time He is asking for the kingdom, asking for the kingdom, asking for the kingdom. And then the Father says, "Your enemies are ready to be defeated". Now is the time, and He gives Him the kingdom. That is pictured in Revelation chapter 5 when the scroll is given to the Lamb who comes to the throne of the Father, and that is when He begins to open the seals.

The first seal judgments are the initiating part of the first half of the tribulation, and then it develops from there as Revelation depicts, the Tribulation being a time when that God the Son is purging the earth to defeat his enemies at Armageddon, and then to return to the earth.

The point for us to take is that as we look out on the chaos of the world, no matter how crazy it gets, and no matter how insane the headlines become, and no matter how uncertain life is—it has been an uncertain many times in history for Christians—we know that Jesus is coming back, is going to establish His kingdom. It is going to be forever and ever and we don't need to sweat the small stuff. What ever happens today we will focus our attention on Jesus who will return, and we live today in light of eternity.

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