The Priest-King, Matthew 22:41-46

 

Open your Bibles with me to Psalm 110. This morning we will get to the fourth verse dealing with the prediction and the promise that God is going to elevate this messianic King also to a universal priesthood and the significance of that. One of the things that I've pointed out as we gone through Psalm 110 is that one of the things that we do as we study through Scripture is not only to come to understand what the text is saying, what Psalm 110 is saying, but how that fits within the overall context of Scripture. Psalm 110 is within the 150 Psalms that are recorded in Scripture. It is under certain classification of Psalm. It is a messianic Psalm, and one that is referred to in Matthew chapter 22 by the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus uses this prophecy of the Messiah to confound his enemies, the Pharisees and Sadducees who were attacking him, especially his claims to be Messiah. 

 

And so he raises the question with them. Who is the Messiah? Who is he the son of? Their reply was that he is the son of David. Then in verse 43 the Lord asked the second question—a typical rabbinic fashion of question and answer. He uses their own methodology against Him and asks, "How then does David in the spirit or by the spirit in terms of Revelation call him Lord?" How can David, who is a Middle Eastern potentate refer to this descendent of his as his superior, and then he quotes from Psalm 110:1, "The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool".

 

And then the Lord asked the question. "David then calls him Lord, how is he his son?" And no one was able to answer him from that day on, nor did anyone ask him any more questions. This is a conclusion of what probably took place in one day possibly two days where he is under a barrage of assaults by the religious leaders of Israel. This is the final interchange before Jesus will announce judgment upon the religious leaders in the next chapter.

 

But we're taking time to look at Psalm 110 because when Jesus brings this up it is understood by the scribes and Pharisees there that He is not just referring to the first verse, He is referring to the whole Psalm. In the ancient world that first verse was the title; they didn't have numbers. So that entire Psalm would come to their mind and as such, it would be clear to them that He was making a claim to be the messianic King, to be the fulfillment of the prophecy in Psalm 110, and that it was also a warning to the Pharisees that they would be defeated by the Messiah as His enemies as predicted in this particular psalm. 

 

We are taking time to look at the Psalm, and there is so much here. I've gone through it in a more superficial fashion but to really dig into this text it is profound in what it tells us about God's plan because it reflects back on something that was determined in the plan of God in eternity past. It tells us something about the fact that God through the Holy Spirit reveals Psalm 110 to David approximately a thousand years before Jesus comes on the scene, knowing in the omniscience of God that that this is going to be used by God the Son when he incarnates himself on the earth. And so there is a perfect plan here that this is revealed to say specific things and that is then going to be used by Jesus the Messiah when He comes to confound and refute the Pharisees.

 

What we see in terms of the outline is that in the first three verses, we see two characters. Yahweh is God the father, the covenant God of Israel, the first person of the Trinity, who is talking to God the Son, the messianic King who is being exalted to his right hand where He will await the defeat of His enemies and the establishment of the kingdom. 

 

We see that which happened in eternity past, then the prediction of this that will occur at the ascension of Christ after the crucifixion and resurrection, and then He goes to the right hand of God the Father in heaven where He is a awaiting the coming of the kingdom. He is, as we have seen through comparing with other Scriptures, actually asking the Father for the kingdom. Until the right time comes that kingdom is held off, so we see that the kingdom is yet future. 

 

In this in this passage were going to see a little structure of the outliner panorama of history. As part of this exultation to the right hand of God in the heavens we see a shift in topic in the fourth verse, which is the center point of the chapter, where Yahweh, God the Father, makes a vow to make the messianic King a priest after the order of Melchizedek. That is the fourth verse. The consequence of that in the last three verses is that Yahweh will give the messianic King, a mighty and glorious victory over his enemies, followed by a time of refreshment and exaltation to a position of honor and dominion.

 

The order of events that we see from this Psalm that will take place from the time of the ascension of Jesus to heaven, which is 40 days after the crucifixion, to the establishment of His kingdom, the future 1000-year messianic rule, we see summed up in several points. 

 

First of all, there's the ascension of Messiah to heaven. Second, He is seated at the right hand of God on what He refers to in Revelation 3:21 as
My Father's throne". Jesus is not on His throne. He is not on David's throne. He is on His Father's throne, asking for the kingdom, according to Psalm 2:8. Then according to Psalm 7:14 a time will come at the end of this present church age when He is granted the kingdom (Daniel 7:14) by God the Father, who is described, there as the Ancient of Days.

 

Then He returns a second time to the earth where He defeats the kings of the earth—also described in Psalm 2:9 and in Revelation 19:19-21—to establish His own kingdom. When He returns His power base will be extended by God the Father. We saw this in Psalm 110:2a that Yahweh extends the dominion of the messianic King from Zion. "The Lord shall send the rod (or the scepter)". It should be translated, "The Lord shall extend the scepter of your strength (or your power) out of Zion". Other passages that correlate with that are Psalm 2:9, Revelation 2:27, Revelation 12:5, Revelation 19:15, and Daniel 7:27.

 

The seventh thing that we've learned is that the messianic ruler will establish His righteous rule in the midst of His enemies. He will defeat his enemies. This is in Psalm 110:2b, where God the Father says to Him, "Rule in the midst of your enemies". Psalm 45:6, 7 says that He will rule by his righteous scepter, and that verse is quoted in Hebrews 1:8.

 

The eighth thing that we learned is that the messianic ruler will then judge the surviving Gentiles at the end of that seven-year period, which we usually refer to as the Tribulation. He judges the surviving Gentiles as well as the surviving Jews, but the point here is over the surviving Gentiles. That is also described in Joel 3:1-3 and Matthew 25:31-46. His kingdom is established in fulfillment of Daniel 7:27, "Then the sovereignty, the dominion and the greatness of {all} the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints É" That includes both Old Testament believers who are resurrected and return with the Lord, as well as church age believers who are resurrected at the end of the church age and spent the Tribulation period in heaven and then returned with Him, as well as those Tribulation believers whom were martyred during the Tribulation and will return in resurrection bodies with the Messiah. "É His kingdom {will be} an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey Him", as were told and Philippians chapter 2, "and every knee shall bow, in heaven and on the earth".

 

Now we come to Psalm 110:3, and what we see here is that when the King comes and as Yahweh extends His power, He will come with his servants. He will come with the saints, as we saw hinted at in Daniel. There will be the saints of the most high—He will come with them. Psalm 110:3 NASB "Your people will volunteer freely in the day of Your power; In holy array, from the womb of the dawn, Your youth are to You {as} the dew."

 

Now this is an interesting verse to try to understand because your translations may differ a little bit here and there because it's somewhat difficult, and I'll explain that when we get there. But the first thing to look at is this line: "Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power." "The day of your power" refers to when Jesus returns to establish His kingdom. "Your people" refers to those saints who will come with Him. This is described in Revelation 19:11-13

 

"And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it {is} called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages warÉ" Extending His scepter, the rule of iron from Psalm 2:9. "É His eyes {are} a flame of fire, and on His head {are} many diadems; and He has a name written {on Him} which no one knows except Himself. {He is} clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God." He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood. That is because He has come from the concluding the campaign of Armageddon and defeating his enemies.

 

Verse 14 goes on to say, "and the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed him on white horses". That will be the church age believers in those armies that have been enraptured and resurrected and taken to heaven. These are the volunteers that are those who are serving of free will that come with him and Psalm 110:3. Verse 15 says, "Now out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should strike the nations". That's a strong word having to do with defeating the nations of the Gentiles, which is probably a better translation—ETHNOS, meaning individuals, the Gentiles, and the enemies of Israel that have risen during the end of the Tribulation; "and He will rule them with a rod of iron (Psalm 2:9); and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty." That language speaks of the judgment of God upon the earth dwellers, the unbelievers, those who have rejected God and rejected Jesus as Messiah.

 

Now we go back and look at Psalm 110:3 and start looking at the language here, the first line reads, "Your people shall be volunteers", an the word there for volunteers is a Hebrew word [nedavah] that describes a free will offering. A free will offering was an offering the people brought out of their own desire, their own will, their own volition to God in the Old Testament. And it is a term that also is used to refer to is doing something voluntarily, or volunteering to do something. And so in this context it has to do with his people who are serving God voluntarily. 

 

That relates back to the fact that every person comes to salvation through his own free will. Every person has a decision to make at some point in his life. First of all are they going to believe God? And if they are going to believe that there is a God, then the next step is to find out how to have a relationship with that God, how to be with that God, how to serve that God. And Scripture says that the problem that keeps all human beings away from God is the problem of sin, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

 

Sin is a word that we often need to describe and define for people today because in the popular culture they think of sin is only some horrible egregious kind of action or activity—murder, some sort of betrayal; often it is defined in terms of politically incorrect actions or sins, or things of that nature today. But sin in the Bible is talking about anything that violates the character of God. It is an act of thought. It can be an act of speech. It can be physical actions such as murder or theft, but any action no matter how small or insignificant would be like eating a piece of fruit which Eve and Adam did in the garden. In the Garden of Eden eating a piece of fruit can violate the character of God because it disobeys him. They were told not to eat of that fruit. 

 

So sin in the Bible is defined through many different ways. It can involve slander, gossip, maligning. It can be mental attitude sin such as jealousy, envy, arrogance or pride; it can be overt actions. Anything that we think, say or do that violates character of God separates us from God and his righteousness. He cannot have a relationship with us, and because of that his justice must condemn us. We are all sinners; we are all born sinners.

 

Isaiah 53 says that that "all we like sheep have gone astray, every one of us to his own way". We got our own path, "but the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all". Which means that our sin was laid on this servant of Yahweh who is described in Isaiah 53, that is, the Messiah, who takes on the sin of the world, so that that He pays the penalty and we don't. He is judged for our sin, He who knew no sin. 

 

2 Corinthians 5:21 NASB "He made Him who knew no sin {to be} sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him".

 

We are saved not because of our own good works or righteousness, but the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And so we come to him on the basis of our own volition. If you reject God, if you reject the gospel, then you are not one of those volunteers, you are in the other classification, one of the enemies of God. That is where the Pharisees and Sadducees were, as those who rejected Jesus.

 

So those who come with the Messiah in the day of His power are those who have on the basis of their own volition trusted in Him, and are serving Him in "the day of your power". Now this is another interesting word. The Hebrew word here is the word chayil, which is not simply a word for power. It has to do with strength. Sometimes it refers to military strength, and sometimes it refers to economic or political strength. Here it is the coming of Messiah to establish His political, economic, military authority over the kings of the earth, and to establish his kingdom and dominion. So with the parallelism that we find here in "the day of your power", that is, when He returns and defeats the kings of the earth militarily, we see the parallelism between the volunteers in the first line and the military strength in the second line. This tells us this is talking about those saints who come with the Lord Jesus Christ when He returns. 

 

Now we get into the next three lines, which go together in the original text: NKJV "In the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning". Now we can come to a fairly good understanding of that in English as it's translated, but the next line says, "You have the dew of your youth". What does that mean? It is very important line to understand, but first we have to understand the flow of thought here. 

 

Remember, this is talking about what happens when the Messiah comes to establish his kingdom. And then we read the line "in the beauties of holiness".  The word translated "beauties" is the Hebrew word hadar, which means majesty or honor or splendor. So it's talking about when He comes and He establishes His power it is in the beauty, the glory, the splendor of the Majesty of holiness.

 

But there is a little bit of a problem here in terms of the original text and that is a question of exactly how the original text is to be read. Because there is a textual problem here, and I know that we have at least two people in the congregation who are still taking first year Hebrew now and they're trying to figure out this difference. This is the word hadar, the last two letters are a D and then an R. The difference between the two is just a very small tick on the right of the horizontal line at the top and you have to have good eyes to spot that. That is known as a tittle. Remember when Jesus said that no jot or tittle shall pass away until all of the law has been fulfilled.

 

That little tick there makes a difference between an RR and a DR, and hadar and harar are two different words. There are about 80 Masoretic manuscripts that have harar as opposed to hadar, and it's really easy if you are not looking clearly to accidentally see an R instead of the D. Neither word would make a tremendous amount of difference in our understanding of the text.

 

If it is hadar, which is the predominant reading and most manuscripts, then it would be translated "in the splendor", or "in the Majesty" of holiness, or in holy Majesty, or in holy splendor. If it is harar, then that is the word for mountain, and that would be translated "on holy mountains". Either one can make sense in relation to the other prophecy. Either it's talking about those who come with the Lord and they are arrayed in holy garments—and I think that is probably true. In Revelation 19 they're coming in white garments. They have been rewarded with these white garments as we study in earlier in Revelation chapter 2 and 3 and that's most likely. But they also do battle on the mountains of Israel with the Lord against the armies of the Antichrist at the end of the tribulation. So neither reading challenges a messianic interpretation or changes any theology; both of them are true. But I am going to take the position that this should be translated "in holy Majesty" or "holy splendor", referring to the garments and the dress of those who come with the Lord. 

 

Then we have the next line, "from the womb of the morning, you have the dew of your youth". Now this again is somewhat of a challenge to correctly or properly interpret because of what is in the text. We have this line, "you had the dew of your youth". I've read a number of commentaries and they all come up with some really creative solutions for this. The Septuagint, which was a translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek, has a very different reading here. It has the reading "from the womb of the Dawn I have begotten you", which is very different from "you have the dew of your youth".

 

The Masoretic Text is the official Hebrew text that underlies our Old Testament translations. It was preserved protected by the group of scribes called Masoretes. After the defeat of the Jews by the Romans in AD 70, as the Jews regrouped, they had to figure out a way to preserve what they believe, their religion, as well as to believe to preserve their text. It was this group of scribes them, known as the Masoretes, who preserved, copied the text.

 

Hebrew was originally written with consonants. There were no vowels, and so part one of the things of the master instead was developed a valve system called pointing and you can see under these letters, you have these funny looking little dots and lines. Those of the vowels, and they developed this so that they could preserve the correct pronunciation for future generations. 

 

But as time went by after Christianity began and after the destruction of Israel, more and more inroads were made among those in Judaism by Christians who were going to Old Testament messianic prophecies to show that Jesus fulfilled all these prophecies. There are over 100 prophecies in the Old Testament that were fulfilled by Jesus in His first coming, and the chances of just ten of these coming true at one time and one person is the same odds as filling the entire state of Texas about 2 to 3 feet high with silver dollars, and then put taking some red fingernail polish and putting it on one of those silver dollars and stirring it into all of those. Think of it—900 miles from Beaumont to El Paso and even more from Brownsville up to some place like Dumas up in North Texas! You have huge territory there with the chances of one person blindfolded selecting that one silver dollar. It would be easier to do that than for one person to fulfill just 10 prophecies, much less 100 prophecies.

 

So that Masoretes had a bit of a problem because they see all these prophecies that looks like it could be talking about that Jesus of Nazareth. We can't have that, so let's do something. And so in obvious messianic prophecies they would change the vowels and that would change the meaning of the word. Once you did that the word meant something else, and then the verse meant something else and no longer was messianic, no longer pointed to Jesus. 

 

If you take the word that's translated "your youth", it is yalduteyka. If you take the vowels out it is just yldtk. Now the Septuagint looked at that—no vowel points in 200 BC—and said that that is from the verb yld, and it should be translated "begotten you", because the verb yld means to give birth or to begat, and in fact it is the same word that is used in Psalm 2:7 where God the Father says to the Messiah, the anointed one, "Today I have begotten you". That is the exact same phrase.

 

And so if you look at Psalm 110:3, which is, due to chapter numbering differences in the Septuagint [LXX] it reads this way in the LXX: "And from the womb, before the morning star, I brought you forth"—in other words, "I have begotten you". The LXX and a number of ancient translations of the Hebrew text don't translate "from the dew of your youth". They translated it "I have begotten you", which is extremely messianic and connects that to Psalm 2:7.

 

The idea of begotten is not the idea of being born; it is the idea of being set forth as one's son. It is an official legal type of designation, the same word we find in John 3:16 where we read, "For God loved the world [in this way], that He gave His only begotten Son É" So this terminology of begotten goes from the Old Testament to the New Testament describing this unique individual who is referred to as the Messiah in Psalm chapter 2, and as one who is begotten, who is elevated to a position of power. Psalm 2:7, "You are my son, today I have begotten you". And there we have the word yelidtika, and the consonants yldtk are the same consonants you have in the word that is translated "of your youth" in Psalm 110:3. 

 

So this makes it clear that Psalm 110:3 is talking about when this Messiah comes, who establishes his kingdom as the one who has been declared the begotten one of God. And then the focus of the text shifts as we finish that first section, talking about the fact that the anointed one, the Lord who says to my Lord, sit at my right hand now is going to come in his kingdom. He receives the kingdom from the Father and then the Father swears an oath in relationship to this person's future role: Psalm 110:4 NASB "The LORD has sworn and will not change His mind, 'You are a priest forever According to the order of Melchizedek'.Ó

 

Now for those of you who might be less biblically literate and maybe a little more worldly wise, I'm not talking about a measurement of champagne. If you're not familiar with that there are a lot of different size bottles of champagne that you can get, the smallest one way down here on the left is your normal bottle of champagne, which is 750 ml. But somewhere in the mists of time it was decided to name these different sizes according to names of biblical leaders and ancient rulers. 

 

For example, Jeroboam, the ruler in the northern kingdom of Israel after the division. Jeroboam is equivalent to four bottles—3litres. Rehoboam was the king of the South, the king of Judah. That's six bottles. He's larger than Jeroboam. Methuselah is a designation for a 6litr bottle, which is equivalent to eight normal bottles. You can also have others, but the largest at the far right end is Melchizedek, a huge bottle that is equivalent to 40 regular bottles of champagne or 30 litres. 

 

I just thought y'all would need to be educated a little bit that this is not talking about an enormous container of champagne. It is talking about a specific order of priesthood. 

 

Now this begins emphasizing the fact that this is so important that Yahweh has sworn. This is God the Father. He swears something concerning this second person, the anointed one, the messianic King. He swears and there's nothing higher by which He can swear, so He swears by his own character. He swears by who He is. Then it says, "I will not relent". 

 

Now this is an interesting word. It is the word nacham, not common in the Hebrew. Sometimes it's translated "God repented himself". For example, in Genesis chapter 6 when the text tells us that the thoughts of man's heart were evil continually, God was going to judge the earth with the flood because He "repented Himself". It has connotations there of sorrow and regret, but this is a word that has a broad range of meaning and in certain forms in the Hebrew and contexts it emphasizes a change of mind. In some contexts it emphasizes sorrow.

 

1 Samuel 15:29 NASB ÒAlso the Glory of Israel [NKJV, "Strength of Israel] will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind.Ó

 

"Strength of Israel" is another title for God. It is not talking about sorrow in that verse, it is talking about the fact that God is not a deceiver, not one who changes His mind—"for He is not a man that He should nacham/relent or repent.   

 

The idea here is a change of mind. It's in anthropomorphism, that when it appears to us that while God was going in this direction and now has gone to plan B, that God changed His mind. God knows all things from eternity past. He is omniscient. God doesn't change His mind the way we do, but it just appears to us that He has changed His mind when He always knew that's what He was going to do because He knew what certain decisions would be in the human race. 

 

Now He says He will not change his mind. This is the oath that He swears. Speaking to the second person of the Trinity He says, "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." 

 

Now this is really developed all through Hebrews chapter 7, and Melchizedek was a priest in the Old Testament. We first run into him in Genesis chapter 14, the only places mentioned in all of the Old Testament. In Genesis chapter 14 it tells the story of how four kings from the Mesopotamian river valley invade and conquer what at that time was known as the as and as the Jordan Valley, or The Valley of the Salt Sea. Today we would call it the Valley of the Dead Sea, and it became known as that because of the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. They came down in this four-king alliance and defeated the five cities of the Valley and made them vassals, slaves.

 

After 12 years, in the 13th year, the Scripture says that they formed an alliance and revolted against these Mesopotamian kings. There is another huge battle, they are defeated, their cities are sacked, the people are taken as slaves, and off they go back to the north. They would take a circular route going up and around to get back to the Mesopotamian river valley.

 

Abraham in view of his mandate from God to be a blessing to those around him, gathers together his is 318 servants, all trained for war, and they start chasing the armies of these five kings because among those captives are his nephew Lot and his family. He meets up with them in the northern part of what we refer to as Israel today near what became known as the city of Dan in the far north. There he defeated them soundly, recovered all the captives and recovered all of the loot and the plunder that was taken. On his way back he stops in this town called Salem, a small village ruled over by a king who is a priest. It is the Gentile city that is populated by Jebusites. He pays homage to the priest-king of Salem whose name is Melchizedek. They have a meal together, which speaks of fellowship, because the king of Salem is a Gentile who is worshiping the same God as Abraham.

 

We are told that Melchizedek, the king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was the priest of God Most High, and he blessed him. That is, Melchizedek blessed Abram.

 

Gen 14:19, 20 NASB "He blessed him and said, 'Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your enemies into your hand.' He [Abraham] gave him a tenth of all."

 

What we see here is that this is a unique priesthood in the Old Testament. It is not a priesthood that the Jews developed that was from the tribe of Levi, or high priestly line descendents from Aaron, but it is a Gentile priesthood that predates Israel and the Levitical tribe.

 

We have to make some observations here. First of all as a descendent of the tribe of Judah Jesus was not qualified to be a priest.

 

A second point is that in Israel the priesthood was distinct from the kingship. They had a separation, as it were, of church and state, but the state was always answerable to the priesthood because the priesthood represented God. The prophets represented God and they bring judgment against the king if the King was violating the Mosaic Law, but there was always this distinction. Levi was the priestly tribe and Judah was the tribe of the king.

 

The third thing we should notice is that the only way that a descendent of David, who was of the tribe of Judah, could become the official high priest was for the order of Aaron, the high priesthood of Aaron, to come to an end. That happened at the cross. All of the ceremonial ritual law ends when Jesus dies for sin because the all those ceremonial ritual laws pointed to the need for redemption, a Redeemer, something a sacrifice greater than a lamb or a goat or a bull. 

 

Fourth, we learn that God will in the future unite these two offices of priesthood. He performs the action; therefore no one can overturn it. He is the one who chose the priests in Israel and He will choose the priest king who will rule over is Israel. Now there are some who come along and say that this idea that the kings didn't function as priest is not actually true. They go to an episode in second Samuel chapter six where David is finally having the ark brought into Jerusalem. He dresses himself in an ephod, a priestly garment, and he is dancing and singing praises to God before the ark as it is being taken into Jerusalem. So there are some who say that he's acting like a priest there, and some sense he is. 

 

However, what I have discovered in researching this is that while the linen ephod was a priest was priestly attire it was not the clothing that was required by the priest to wear when they're offering sacrifices. So David is not assuming to himself a high priestly role by wearing the ephod. 

 

Also, David did not offer the sacrifices himself at that time, but the Levitical priest did. And just as if you were an Old Testament believer you came to the temple to worship you would bring a lamb you would have some participation in the sacrifice. You would put your hand on the lamb and confess your sins, you would be responsible for bringing the lamb. The priest did the killing of the lamb but that doesn't mean that you as a worshiper had nothing to do with it. David is functioning within his rights as a king but he doesn't overstep his bounds. 

 

What we see here is that this future King will also represent the people before God and that He will be a priest forever. We read that in Hebrews chapter 7. So that when the messianic priest king inaugurates his rule, his subjects will become a kingdom of priests, this is what God said he was calling the Jews to be an Exodus 19:5-6. 

 

Heb 7:1-3 NASB " For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the Most High God, who met Abraham as he was returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him, to whom also Abraham apportioned a tenth part of all {the spoils,} was first of all, by the translation {of his name,} king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem, which is king of peace. Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest perpetually."

 

He's used as an analogy to understand something about Jesus future priesthood. He remains a priest continually. So what we see from looking at these two verses is that the, the Messiah will return. He will return with an army of saints who are arrayed in his majesty and splendor, He is. He fulfills the role and receives that which is his as the begotten one of God, the Messiah, and then he will take a role as the priest king over the nation of Israel after the order of Melchizedek and the impact of that for us is this is what we look forward to. 

 

This helps us to understand the glory, the majesty, the splendor of the Lord Jesus Christ who He is and who He will be when he returns at the second coming."

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