Operation Footstool: Crushing the Opposition, Matthew 22:41-46

 

One of the timeless problems that has been voiced by human beings is the problem of suffering, the problem of evil, the existence of evil. Those who are hostile to Christianity often think that they have somehow come up with a great argument against a loving and gracious, omniscient God by saying, "How can you explain the problem of evil? If your God is so loving, how can He allow for sin and evil and suffering to exist in the world? So if He does, maybe He is not so loving. And if He is omnipotent, and He continues to allow all of this, maybe He just doesn't have the power to stop it." And they think that they have found some great problem with Christianity, with the Judeo-Christian presentation of an Almighty, all-knowing and all-loving God.

 

The problem is that they have no leg to stand on. The best thing to do is say, "Well you know, that's an interesting problem. How do you solve the problem of evil? They have no answer, they can't even talk about categories of right and wrong and evil and good, apart from a presupposition that a wholly righteous God exists and there are absolute standards.

 

The Scripture gives us answers to this. And I think God in his mercy recognizes that this is an inherent problem for human beings down through the ages. The very first book that was written in that is in the Bible is not the book of Genesis. That was written approximately 1440 BC by Moses, but the book of Job was the first and the theme of the book of Job is how to understand unjust suffering.

 

Job loses his children, his home, his property, his cattle, his camels, his sheep, and Job loses his health. The only thing that Job doesn't lose is his wife who really isn't a treasure because she's the one who says, "Well just curse God and die". Lovely woman. How about having some of our nasty little statements recorded for all eternity in the Scripture!

 

Job was written to help us understand this because as Job finally is wrestling with this problem with his friends and they say, "Well Job, the reason you have all these problems is because you sinned", Job said, "I'm righteous". And as we see in the first few chapters of Job as we have the curtain drawn back on the heavenly scene where Satan and the fallen angels are gathered before God, God keeps saying, "This is my righteous servant Job. There's nothing wrong found in him. Job wrestles with this as his friends say, It's something you did, it's ultimately your fault, God just bringing the suffering in your life because you are unrighteous.

 

Job understands it's not so. But finally he challenges God and God shows up and gives him a lot of questions, rhetorical questions to get him to think. The bottom line is that God is saying, "You're never going to be able to understand the answer if I gave it to you. You can't understand all these different dimensions of my creation, and if you can't understand these things, which are much less complex and much less difficult in understanding why I allow evil to exist, if you can understand the lesser you'll never understand the greater, so you just have to trust me".

 

The timeless question that is voiced by the psalmist is how long, or Lord, will you let the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper?" The Bible teaches that there will be a resolution. Just as the first book talks about the problem of unjust suffering, what we see in the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, we understand how God resolves the problem of evil and unjust suffering and unrighteousness. And really, there are there are three things that that God does in history that brings a resolution to the problem of sin. The first is what he did on the cross. On the cross, Jesus Christ died, the just for the unjust, that He might bear in His own body on the tree, our sin, and that by believing in Him and Him alone we can have eternal life. It's a grace gift. We don't do anything to earn it. Scripture says He who knew no sin—perfectly innocent, the spotless Lamb of God—was made sin for us that the righteousness of God might be found in us. That's the first part of the solution. 

 

The second part of the solution happens at the end of the Tribulation. It is known as the battle, more accurately the campaign, of Armageddon where the forces of the world, the kings of the earth, all of the presidents and the princes and the kings and the businessmen, all of the powers that be are arrayed against God and his Messiah as depicted in Psalm two. Their goal is to destroy God in his Messiah and God will destroy them. That's the second part of the solution as God then establishes his righteous kingdom on the earth.

 

And then the third and final part of the solution occurs at the end of that thousand year perfect reign of Christ on the earth when the when Satan, who has been incarcerated in the abyss for that thousand years, is released and is able to gather to himself an army of malcontents and those who have rejected God and His grace, they are leading a rebellion against God and against Jesus. They are going to be destroyed with fire and brimstone, and all those who have rejected God and His grace are sent for sent to the lake of fire for eternity. That's the final part. 

 

What we are studying in Psalm 110 fits within the understanding of that resolution of the second part. We been studying in Matthew, and were taking a few weeks to look at the background to Matthew 22:43-45 which is a quotation that reflects upon Psalm 110. Psalm 110 begins with God the Father, Yahweh, saying to "my Lord", David's Lord, who is God the Son, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool." So this is operation footstool and in the last three verses, verses 5-7, which we are studying today, we see how God will crush the opposition.

 

The passage we looked at just focused on the first verse of Psalm 110, where Jesus is responding after three hostile questions from the Pharisees that sought to entrap him. He is going to trap them, and in a very in a very sophisticated manner uses Psalm 110:1. He says, "If David said this in the Psalm where he calls the Messiah, Lord—in the passage "the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand to make your enemies, my footstool"—"how can this Lord who is superior to David (by virtue of the fact that he calls Him my Lord), how is He His son?" 

 

So we've taken time to look at this Psalm in its entirety. As part of the background I want to just give you a prophetic framework here, a timeline. We are currently in what we call the church age, the age of grace that began on the day of Pentecost in AD 33, and extends until the rapture of the church. All those unbelievers who died during this period go to Hades and at the rapture of the church, which takes place at some unknown time in the future, all believers will be taken to be with the Lord. Those who are dead in Christ will be caught up together with Him in the clouds and then we who are alive and remain will be caught up as well. We will be taken to heaven. This is the rapture. There is going to be a short interval there, a transition period before Daniel's 70th week transpires. That is known popularly as the Tribulation. The tribulation ends with the campaign of Armageddon and the earth and humanity are saved from themselves, and Israel is rescued by the return of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will defeat and destroy the enemies of God. And then there will be great judgment. 

 

He will then establish His throne on the earth and institute a thousand-year reign on the earth, known as the millennium, or the millennial kingdom, or messianic kingdom. 

 

We looked at Matthew 22:42-46, and as Jesus quotes this He is making a claim to be the messianic King, the son of David. The Pharisees understand that and He is also by quoting Psalm 110, warning them that they will be defeated because they are His enemies, and they are therefore enemies of the Messiah, enemies of God, and He is telling them they will be destroyed. The Pharisees would clearly understand all of Psalm 110 when He just quotes the first verse. They understand the rest of it, and they know that they have been overturned in their hostility to Jesus, and that just makes them even more mad.

 

There three divisions. We studied the first two. In the first division we see that it is Yahweh, God the Father. If you look at your English text the Lord there when it says, "the Lord said to my Lord", that first Lord is in upper case caps, and that is always a translation of the personal name of God, Yahweh.

 

Yahweh will exalt the messianic King to His right hand where He will await the Messiah. The messianic King sits at the right hand of the Father in a position of passivity, awaiting the defeat of his enemies, and the establishment of His kingdom. In the second division Yahweh vows to make the messianic King a priest. That indicates His humanity because a priest is a go-between. First Timothy chapter 2 says, "There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus". So the fact that He is a made a priest indicates His humanity. Then in the third division Yahweh will give the messianic King, a mighty and glorious victory. That's what the promise was: "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool". 

 

So this is the focal point here. Now there's an order of events here. There is the ascension of the Messiah to heaven. That means that He has been on the earth. This implies is that he's been rejected, that He has come to the earth but been rejected. He ascends to heaven. He is then seated at the right hand of God, and Revelation 3:21 says that He is not seated on his throne, but on "my Father's throne". It is not His throne yet. 

 

Then under He asked for a kingdom (Psalm 2:8) and the Father says, "Ask and I will give it to you." So He is requesting that kingdom. Eventually, God the Father will give Him or grant him that kingdom. That is pictured in Daniel 7:13, 14 as the Son of Man comes to the Ancient of Days and is given dominion over man.

 

Messiah then returns to the earth and defeats the kings of the earth through the power of Yahweh working in and through Him, Psalm 2:9; Revelation 19:19-21. 

 

We then saw in verse two that Yahweh says that he will extend the dominion of the messianic King from Zion. That is Ground Zero for the establishment of the messianic kingdom. Zion refers to Jerusalem and it will spread out from there. Psalm 110:2a says, "from Zion"; Psalm 2:9 Revelation 2:27. These two verses say that it will be a rule of the of a rod of iron as He imposes the discipline of God upon the enemies of God. Also Daniel 7:27.

 

The messianic rural ruler will then establish his righteous rule. It is a rule of a righteous scepter (Hebrews 1:8) in the midst of his enemies.

 

The messianic ruler will then judge the surviving Gentiles. Joel 3:1-3; Matthew 25:31-46; and that's what's referred to also here in Psalm 110. 

 

Then (Psalm 2:3) the messianic ruler will return with an army of willing volunteers. These are those who have freely made their decision to trust in Jesus as Messiah. It is due to their volition that they are in the heavenly army. They will return with Him to conquer his enemies. 

 

We saw that the messianic ruler is identified as "the begotten one". You won't see that in your English text, but I went through the variant last week and pointed out that that is the more accurate version, and that the Masoretes who translated the text were anti-messianic prophecy, so they change the vowels in the words so that it would change the messianic significance of the passage.  

 

The messianic ruler is then designated a priest after the order of Melchizedek.

 

That gives a review and we are now at Psalm 110:5. We have some interesting things going on here and this is why I talk so much about the importance of really observing the text of Scripture. Often if you don't observe the text of Scripture very well you will misinterpret the text of Scripture and then you will misapply the text of Scripture. I believe that the role of the pastor is to take people through what the text says to help them understand what they are reading and what they are seeing. In Bible Study Methods we talked about the fact that you ought to spend about 80 to 85 per cent of your time in observation, and then you'll only have to spend about maybe 10 per cent of your time in interpretation, understanding what the text means. If you observe carefully the meaning will become very apparent, it will fall out very obviously. Then once you understand what it means to you it will become readily apparent and sometimes terribly convicting. We've all experienced that. 

 

But the problem is, as Howard Hendricks pointed out to us many years ago in Bible Study Methods and in his book on studying the Bible, most people spend about 1 per cent of the time observing the text. They then spend about 5 per cent of their time interpreting the text and then they want to spend all their time just talking about what it means to me. We are so self-absorbed. 

 

Sit around many churches and you study the Bible, and Sunday school, the Sunday school teacher is nothing more than a facilitator and says, "What does that text mean to you?" Nobody has ever studied it, everybody is just thinking of right off the top of his head, what their first thought is, and most of the time it's wrong. We have to think about the Word. I think that if we spend most of our time understanding what it says, what it means becomes pretty obvious and God the Holy Spirit takes care of making it clear to us how it should impact our own thinking in our own lives. 

 

We look at Psalm 110:5 and it says, "The Lord is at your right hand". Let me ask you a question. Who's the your? "The Lord is at your right hand, he shall execute kings in the day of his wrath". 

 

Now we look at this and we have obviously three people. We have Lord who in this case refers to Yahweh. The word there is Adonay. The text is not uppercase in your in your text, it is lowercase, and it's not the word Yahweh, but it refers to Him. That's why put that in there for clarification. "The Lord is at your right hand". Who is the your? Some people would think, Oh that means me. No, that it is not what it is talking about.

 

So I want to point something out in terms of this text. It's not too often we have a rather short Psalm. To get more than six or seven versus it is hard put the whole thing on the screen where people can read it, but I want to point some things out to you in terms of in terms of what this passage is saying. 

 

First of all, as we saw here in verse five, there is going to be a significant shift in the pronoun. It's going to shift from your in the first stanza of verse five to He, a third person singular pronoun. And as we see in this slide that lists verses five through seven, we see that it's He, at the end of verse five, He, He and He in verse six, and He and He in verse seven. Interesting, this shift. What does that mean? Ah, that's where you get into interpretation. 

 

Look at the beginning of the psalm. We notice in verses one through four that Yahweh is speaking to a second personage identified as "my Lord", someone superior to David. We have identified that second Lord as the messianic King or the messianic ruler. This is talking about the Messiah. So, "The Lord said to my Lord," and then He says something. So the first Lord is God the Father and He is speaking to God the Son, and He says, "Sit at my right hand". But sit is an imperative. It's a second person plural. And we never say this in English. You look at your kid and you say, "Stop doing that". What you're really saying is, "You stop doing that". But we never include the you. So when we have two imperatives here, sit and rule, they both imply you. "The Lord says to my Lord, you sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool." 

 

"The Lord shall send the rod of your strength out of Zion" (verse 2). That's another opening statement and then, and I added these quotation marks to make this clear because here again God the Father is addressing God the Son: "[You] rule in the midst of your enemies! [v3] Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power; in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning É" And then here I have given the correct translation É "I have begotten you". 

 

So the pronoun that we have from verse one through verse four, where he says, "You are a priest forever", is a second person singular pronoun—You, you, you, your, your, your. But all the sudden when you get to the last three verses it is He, He, He. 

 

Now it's really clear in the first four verses that the person that's being addressed is the second person of the Trinity. For effect and for emphasis, and to draw our attention to it, the end of the Psalm also addresses the second person of the Trinity, but addresses him as He—what He will do. The text is difficult to understand apart from that.

 

What we see here is that in terms of the general structure is a statement, a declarative sentence, and then you have these quotes addressed to the Messiah—

one in verse one, one in verse two, and then the third in verse four, "The Lord has sworn and will not relent". Then you have another statement addressed to the second person of the Trinity. 

 

What this tells us is that in verse five there is going to be unimportant shift. In verse one, "The Lord [God the Father] says to my Lord, sit at my right hand É" In verse five we have to identify who this Lord is because we have this another situation, referring to the right hand.  What we see in the first four verses is the beginning of operation footstool where the Messiah is told to sit and wait until the time comes when He will be given His kingdom and His dominion. So he is seated and waiting now. 

 

Then we come to verse five. "The Lord [Yahweh] É" I've identified this to let you know what it means. That's not the Hebrew. The Hebrew here is Adonay, but it's referring not to the son but to the Father [Yahweh]. We have to understand the contrast it's taking place here between verse five and verse one, where in verse one Yahweh says to the messianic King, "[You] sit at my you sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool". 

 

In verse one the Messiah is at Yahweh's right hand, but in verse five Yahweh, called Adonay, is at the Messiah's right hand. 

 

There's a shift in scene that takes place here, and that's very important. I tried to represent this graphically. In verse one we have the Father sitting on the Father's throne, and according to Revelation 3:21 the messianic ruler, the Son, is seated at the Father's right hand.

 

Then what we have in verse five is a shift in scene to the return of the Messiah to the earth to conquer his enemies. He is aided and empowered by the Father. Because remember in verse one, the Father, "The Lord says to my Lord, I will make your enemies your footstool." Yahweh is saying I am the one who's going to defeat them; I am the one is going to conquer them. I am the one is going to make that possible through you because the Father works through the Son. We have this shift that is taking place. Psalm 110:5 emphasizes the fact that it is Yahweh who is the one who empowers and enables the Messiah to defeat his enemies. It is Yahweh who is at the right hand of the messianic King.

 

The reason I say that is because, first of all, it must refer to Yahweh, God the Father, because the theme of the Psalm is that Yahweh defeats the messianic King's enemies. It's not the messianic King that's going to defeat His enemies of you take Adonay nine verse five saying it that Adonay is at Yahweh's right hand, then you're going to lose the significance of what is being said here. It fits the context best to understand this. 

 

Second, the spelling of the word Adonay here is different from the spelling in verse one, and it indicates that this too is a reference to Yahweh, God the Father. Remember, among Jews they never read the proper name of God as Yahweh. Whenever they see those consonants YHWH written in the text underneath it are the valid points for Adonay and they refused to utter the name of God out of respect and instead they will always read Adonay instead of the proper name of God. But here Adonay and is used to refer to God as it is many times in the Old Testament. 

 

Now what we see here, and it's something that is very important, is the very close relationship between the Father and the Son. We see the picture that it is the Father who said, "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool", and then when the King is set forth to take his dominion it is Yahweh who goes with Him to empower him. The executing agent of the conquest is the Son but the power, the ultimate authority, comes from God the Father. But remember, as the divine second person of the Trinity the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father. 

 

This takes us to important passages in the Scripture such as John 14:10, 11 were Jesus said to his disciples: NASB ÒDo you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves."

 

This is a word that you're probably not that all that familiar with, the word PERICHORESIS. It means in effect that what is attributed to one member of the Trinity is true of all members of the Trinity. This is why Jesus says, "I and the father are one" in John 10:30. "I and my father are one; we are unity". So what the Father thinks the Son thinks. What the Father is the Son is, and the Holy Spirit is. And so there are times when the text is a little ambiguous because all three members of the Trinity are present and active. 

 

When we read in Psalm 110:5 that "the Lord is at your right hand" and we think about the relationship of the Father and the Son as the Son returns in conquest we recognize that both the Father and the Holy Spirit are present because of the unity of the Trinity. 

 

We see also in Scripture this emphasis that Lord being at the right hand is, as we saw in the first verse when God the Father says to the Son, "Sit at my right hand" that it's a position of privilege, and it is a position of respect and a position of honor. But here it takes on a different meaning. It's the position of aid, the position of empowerment. 

 

We see this in Psalms like Psalm 16:8 where David says, NASB "I have set the LORD continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken." Being at David's right hand is the position to empower and strengthen David against his enemies. So when the Lord says, "I am at your right hand", and God the Father is at the right hand of the Son when he comes, it is that position to aid and strengthen against his enemies.

 

Psalm 121:5 says, "The Lord is your keeper; The Lord is your shade at your right hand". He is the one who protects. He keeps you, and He is the one who provides for you and gives you shade from the heat of the sun; He is the one who is at your right hand. 

 

So this phrase "the Lord" is talking about Yahweh, God the Father is "at you're right hand". It's addressing the Son. But then there's a break in action, and this is a literary device to shift our attention and to emphasize something. Because from this point on the writer of the Psalm is going to have six third person singular pronouns. He hasn't used a He yet. All of a sudden now he says He, He, He, He. Well who is the He? But that's the ambiguity that I'm talking about here; it's not really clear. Is this the Father or is this the Son? It could be either, but it's both. It's not talking about they. It is He the Son that is going to execute this but it is He, the Father who is the one who is in Him and who empowers Him to defeat his enemies. So that the text is clear again and again that it is God who is the one who is destroying his enemies. 

 

Now when we look at the second line, which is the first of the six statements. We see that this summarizes what's going to take place at the second coming of Christ in the campaign of Armageddon. The first thing it mentions is He, that is, the messianic King shall execute kings in the day of his wrath. The word there is machatz, which means to smash, to shatter to utterly destroy their power, to thoroughly wipe out their kingdoms. They will be smashed completely by the power of God the Son when He returns to the earth. And we know from other passages that this is the meaning of the fact that He will rule with this rod of iron. 

 

The word there that is translated "execute" is the word that is used in Judges 5:26 in that episode that's extremely violent where Sisera who is the general who has led his chariot forces against the forces of Deborah, and Barack and they have defeated him. Sisera has fled the scene and he has worn out from the journey, from the battle, and he seeks aid from someone he thinks will be an ally in the tent of Jael. She says come in and I'll feed you, take a nap, rest, and he goes to sleep. She grabs a tent peg and sneaks up on him while he is sleeping. The text says that she pounded Sisera, she pierced his head. That's the word machatz. She just pulverized his head and struck it through his temple. It's very graphic.

 

The language that is used here in Psalm 110 is graphic language. War is a violent; war is destructive; war is bloodied; war is horrible. That's the language the text used, and this is what Christ will do when He when he returns. The text says that that He will smash kings in the day of his wrath. This is another important term. When you go into the book of Revelation there are several significant uses of the term wrath. 

 

We have the use of the term wrath of the Lamb in Revelation chapter 6, which is early in the Tribulation. Revelation 14, approaching the endgame of the campaign of Armageddon, where it is about to begin and we are getting sort of a foreshadowing of that, were told in this very graphic picture that is described in the heavens that an angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathers the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God." 

 

What is that remind you of? It ought to remind you of Julia Ward Howe's apostate hymn, The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Now as a good Southerner I don't like the Battle Hymn of the Republic. But that's not why I have this opinion. I have this opinion because of her total misinterpretation and misapplication of Revelation to the American War Between the States, and she uses this imagery of the of the winepress and the wrath of God; and all this to apply it very wrongly to the American War Between the states. Never sing hymns that have bad theology. 

 

By the way, she was a great pacifist after the war and was the first person to come up with the idea celebrating Mother's Day, and it was all based on pure pacifism. Antiwar theology always had a problem with Mother's Day since I learned that.

 

Another great city was divided into three parts. Revelation 16:19 NASB "The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of His fierce wrath". This is the wrath of God the Father.

 

Revelation 19:15 NASB "From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty." That is that smashing of the enemies.

 

So treading out where the grapes of wrath are stored, in the language of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, is taking language that specifically and uniquely fits the end of the Tribulation and the campaign of Armageddon and applies it to some trivial event in human history. The reason I say it's trivial is because the Bible in at least three places indicates that what happens during the end of the Tribulation is a once in history event, an event that has never happened before. It's unlike anything that has ever happened. So to take anything that describes that end event and apply it to some trivial event by comparison, really does injustice to the Word of God, and it desensitizes people to the uniqueness of the Word of God. 

 

Psalm 110:5 NASB "The Lord is at Your right hand; He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath". Psalm 2:2 talks about the kings of the earth coming.

 

Revelation 6:16, which occurs about a year and half or two years into the Tribulation. NASB "and they [the kings of the earth, v.15] said to the mountains and to the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb' É" as they are being pulverized in what appears to be some sort of asteroid shower.

 

And here we have this picture that runs through the whole tribulation. The human leaders, the kings, the princes of power, the princes of industry are the ones who are shaking their fists. They know that the suffering they are enduring during that seven-year period is from God and from Jesus Christ. They are shaking their fists at Him, as they resist Him showing there their hatred of Him, and they are resisting the wrath of the Lamb. This is why Jesus needs to subdue them with a rod of iron.

 

This is how this is pictured in Zechariah 14. You ought to read through the whole chapter. Zechariah 14 describes what happens around Jerusalem at the close of the campaign of Armageddon. 

 

Zechariah 14:3 NASB "Then the LORD will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle." Again, this would include the Father and the Son.

 

Zechariah 14:9 NASB "And the LORD will be king over all the earth; in that day the LORD will be {the only} one, and His name {the only} one". Notice it's the second person who becomes King, but is referred to as Yahweh here.

 

That makes a lot more sense we look at in light of the gospel of John, where Jesus says. "the father and I are one," The Lord is one, "and his name one".

 

Zechariah 14:12 NASB " Now this will be the plague with which the LORD will strike all the peoples who have gone to war against Jerusalem; their flesh will rot while they stand on their feet, and their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongue will rot in their mouth."

 

I would imagine Hal Lindsay probably depicted this: that it is some sort of nuclear event. That's just reading a lot into the text. God can make that happen without a nuclear bomb go off because the armies of the saints are there. Israel has got to be preserved. This is not going to make a radioactive hole in the ground in the land that God is now bringing the Jews back to. So this is just talking about a divine judgment where the enemies of God are virtually vaporized and incinerate.

 

If you saw a Raiders of the Lost Ark you would have seen this great scene at the end where all of the Nazis and the bad guys are there and they open up and look at the Ark of the covenant, and the flesh just melts off their bones and their eyeballs pop out. It's very graphic. That's what is being described here.  This is what will happen at the Lord's return. 

 

Psalm 110:6 NASB "He will judge among the nations, He will fill {them} with corpses, He will shatter the chief men over a broad country."

 

The implication here is that He is going to fill the valleys with dead bodies. The death and destruction at the conclusion of the campaign of Armageddon is that Israel is strewn. The valleys around Jerusalem will be filled with the corpses of the armies of the Antichrist and the false prophet.

 

Then third, He will execute—that's that word machatz again. He will smash the heads, but it's a singular in the Hebrew. He will smash the head of many countries, which I believe is a reference to the Antichrist. 

 

So as we look at this it should also remind us—for those of you who remember the time we spent going through Hannah's Psalm of praise in first Samuel chapter 2—that God gave her the insight into the fact that her son Samuel would be born, and that he would have a significant role to play in bringing about a king for Israel, and the ultimate king who is the Messiah. And at the end of that psalm she says the adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces. She is prophesying about what will happen at the end of the battle of Armageddon, at the end of the Tribulation.

 

"The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces. From heaven he will thunder against them. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed." (1 Samuel 2:10)

 

What is the Hebrew word for anointed? "He will exalt the horn of his Messiah." 

 

So the first thing that is said here is He will judge among the nations. This is what happens to the surviving Gentiles. It's called the sheep and the goat judgment that occurs at the end of the Tribulation, described in Joel 3:1-3; Matthew 25:31-46.

 

Joel 3:1-2 NASB "For behold, in those days and at that time, When I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations And bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there On behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations; And they have divided up My land."

 

The nations refers to the Gentiles, not representative as nations but as individual Gentiles. One of the aspects of judgment is how they treat Israel.

 

He says He shall fill the places with the dead bodies. The campaign of Armageddon will be just beyond any battle that has ever happened on the face of the earth. Ezekiel 39:12 says it will take seven months to bury all of the corpses left over from the battle of Armageddon. Revelation 14:20 depicts that the violence, the bloodshed, is so great that the blood will go up to the height of a horse's bridle for 1600 furlongs all around Jerusalem. 

 

Psalm 110:6 NASB "He will judge among the nations, He will fill {them} with corpses, He will shatter the chief men over a broad country" [NKJV "He shall execute the heads of many countries"—literally "the head of many countries". This is the death of the Antichrist.

 

As the Lord comes back we are told in Revelation 19:19, " And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies assembled to make war against Him who sat on the horse and against His army." The beast is the antichrist. The kings of the earth, those who follow him and their armies are gathered together to make war against him who sat on the horse and against his army. That's the Lord Jesus Christ and the volunteers of Psalm 110:3 that come with him.  

 

Revelation 19:20 NASB "And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who performed the signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image; these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone."

 

Other passages say (Isaiah 14) that he is killed. So the Antichrist is killed. He is brought back to life so he's not going in his mortal body. And then either he is judged and sent directly to the lake of fire then, or this just telescopes the event and he will be sentenced to the lake of fire at the time everyone else is at the great white throne judgment.

 

In conclusion, in verse seven, we are given a very anthropomorphic view of the Messiah. 

 

Psalm 110:7 NASB "He will drink from the brook by the wayside; Therefore He will lift up {His} head." At the conclusion there is a time of refreshment, a time of rest, he shall drink of the brook by the wayside. It's a very human look at the Messiah. He is taking refreshment. He is resting. "Therefore he shall lift up his head". And this is a picture of how the millennial kingdom is pictured as a time of rest, a time of refreshment. It is depicted in Isaiah 35:6, 7

 

NASB "Then the lame will leap like a deer, And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness And streams in the Arabah. The scorched land will become a pool And the thirsty ground springs of water; In the haunt of jackals, its resting place, Grass {becomes} reeds and rushes."

 

One of the last pictures that we see of the millennial kingdom has to do with water and the free offer of water, which is a depiction of the free offer of God's grace to everyone.

 

Revelation 22:17 NASB "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' And let the one who hears say, 'Come.' And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost."

 

Whoever desires, whoever desires to be saved whoever desires. That's volition, the volunteer army that comes with the Messiah. Whoever desires, whoever wills, let him take the water of life freely. There is no cost to salvation. No one has to work for it. It is a free gift. This is one of the great verses of God's grace: that the water of life is offered at no charge. There's no condition, it is just accepted freely by faith alone in Christ alone.  

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