The Blessings of the Priest King (Morning)

We're looking at Psalm 110 this morning, which is a very complicated hard Psalm. And this Psalm, he pulls together, the themes that we've seen over the last couple of weeks. 2 of the major events in his life. He he pulls together where he danced before the ark, dressed in priestly garments. He threads together, if you will, this Psalm, Psalm 110.

This is the most important psalm that David will ever write. And I know you're thinking, well, what about, you know, Psalm 23, Psalm 51, all those other Psalms? No. This is the most important one he will write. It's the one that is referred to or quoted more than any other in the new testament.

24 times, Jesus loved, pointing to this song. Throughout the New Testament, the language that we have of Jesus sitting at the right hand of God, which is used over and over and over again, that comes from this psalm. So it's the most important Psalm that he has ever written. It's also one I've never preached on before. Mostly because in the middle of this Psalm, it's centered around this mysterious figure Melchizedek.

And I tell you what, Melchizedek, you read 5 different commentaries on him. You'll walk away with 10 different interpretations. He's a really hard person to figure out. Thankfully, you have me here, and I'm gonna answer every one of your questions this morning. We'll we'll see what we could do.

So that's what we have in store for you. But we are going to go into the deep end this morning. So we're gonna read the first four verses of Psalm 110, and then just a few verses from Hebrews 7. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter.

Rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments. From the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Go to Hebrews. We'll begin reading in verse 21. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever. This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.

The former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office. But He holds His priesthood permanently, because He continues forever. Consequently, He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. This is the word of the Lord.

It's to your heart.

You would pray with me. Father, I pray that through your Spirit, you would give us eyes to see and understand this text, that we might come to see you, Jesus, more clearly, that we might might grow in our adoration and worship of you, that we might come to look like you. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen. So before we dig into this text, like Tada, I want to be a little vulnerable with you. So I turned 50 in a few months, most of those years of ministry, the vast majority of them have been wonderful. I've loved every minute of it. Pastoring through identity politics, which has been so divisive, has been complete But on top of that, something else happened that really just knocked me sideways.

It was this. For the for the first time in my life, I was hit with doubt. I've never in my entire life struggled with doubt. There was a God. Never doubted that Jesus was the Son of God.

Never doubted any of those. Doubt just hit me. I didn't know what to do with that because I'm a pastor. Alright? Pastors aren't supposed to struggle with doubt.

There's not really anybody you could talk to about this. You just

kind of stuff those things down.

You just deny those things. You just kind of stuff those things down. You just deny those things. I didn't know what to do, so I just decided I'll go to the word. Because there's a whole lot of self righteousness in this.

But I've read the bible for more than an hour a day since I was 16 years old. But it has not been until, really, the last couple of years that the depth of it just the bottom dropped out. And just layer upon layer upon layer of glory, Thread upon thread upon thread upon thread just beautifully woven throughout scripture, all leading to Jesus. It blew my mind. And the Lord through his spirit just just began just just calming my doubts, getting rid of my doubts, and just leading me to him just through giving myself to his word.

And I say that for a couple of reasons. One, for those of you who maybe unexpectedly struggle with doubt or maybe have your whole life, give yourself to the word. Likely, one of the things that is happening is you're being bombarded with every voice under the sun. Everything is bombarded. And like, almost none of it's true.

And then all of a sudden, you you come to the word and you can hear the actual words that matter, and you hear God calling you to him. Clear as He can be. The second reason I tell you this is because I think David, through his life, found himself several times the same place I did, struggling with discouragement, struggling with doubt. And one of the things I know that David did was he went to the word. Actually, Psalm 10 really reveals this.

The level of depth that he went into the word was astonishing. David had to do this. If you remember a few weeks ago, I told you that any newly installed king was commanded by God in Deuteronomy 17 to write their own personal copy of the law of God in their own hand. That is a lot to write the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible, to write all of those in your own hand. It would have taken a long time to do, which was the point.

God wanted his leaders to labor under, to just pour under every word of the word of God to slowly work their way through it. And so King David would have done this. And I think when David did this, he began to see layer upon layer upon layer of glory, thread upon thread of thread being woven in scripture, all leading to a certain place, to a certain person. A couple weeks ago, we saw how David put on his priestly garments, made sacrifices, led the Ark of God into Jerusalem, leaping and dancing before it. And we talked about how in that moment, David saw some things clearly.

He saw how Israel needed for him to be more than just a king. At that moment, they needed both a king and they needed a priest, in order to lead them where God wants to lead them. But the only problem is this, did you know that's actually against God's law? To be both king and a priest, a Levitical priest. It's against God's law.

We actually saw as we're going through the life of David early on, in the first part of 1st or midway through 1st Samuel, King Saul at one point tried to act like a priest. Do you remember that? He made sacrifices instead of waiting for the priest Samuel to come and make sacrifices. Saul did those priestly duties himself and he got an enormous trouble for it, because a king was not supposed to do those priestly duties. David has read that.

David knew that. He knew what happened to Saul, Yet, he did not hesitate to put on priestly garments, make sacrifices, and to lead the ark and procession to Jerusalem. How? I mean, how did he not see that as a contradiction? And not only that, why was he blessed for doing that?

Well, it's because in this moment, David is not acting like a Levitical priest. He realizes that the priesthood that stemmed from the tribe of Levi, going back to Aaron, was flawed at the very start. David is hearkening back to a different priesthood. You know, when David wrote down the law of God, he would have certainly had to come to Exodus. And he would have seen the origin story of the Levitical priesthood, which comes from Moses's brother Aaron.

If you aren't familiar with that story, it's in Exodus chapter 4. It's when God calls Moses and tells him to go to pharaoh, and to, to speak to pharaoh. And Moses doesn't wanna do it. God's actually calling Moses in this point says, you're not just supposed to be the leader of Israel. I also want you to be the priest of Israel and act as this intermediary between me and pharaoh, between God and man.

Exodus 4 · chapter mention

You're to act as a priest. And Moses says, not gonna do it. Nope. Don't wanna do it. And he gives every excuse under the sun, just like we do often when God calls us to do things.

He makes these excuses. They're not gonna receive me. I don't know what to say. I'm not really a good speaker. And God calmly just goes through every one of his excuses and answers them.

After God answers us all all of them, Moses finally, he just does what we often do. He goes, but I just don't wanna do it. I just don't wanna do it. And it's the first time we have in scripture God getting angry. He doesn't get angry in Genesis.

He he gets angry here for the very first time. It says that the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. And He says, fine. Here's your brother Aaron. Let him come.

He'll be priest. So that's how the Levitical priesthood got started. What was right there out of a moment of God's anger conceding to Moses here and Moses's lack of faith. It wasn't part of God's original design here. And that that priesthood was flawed from the start.

I mean, the very first thing that Aaron does after he's been made priest is he makes a golden calf and bows down to it. If you get the origin story of of the priesthood, you're like, really? That's it? But things don't really get better if you follow that thread throughout the rest of your old testament. I mean, Aaron's sons, they're such corrupt priests that God strikes them dead.

Eli, his sons are so corrupt, God strikes them dead. Over and over again, you will find that there's the the priests aren't really ever presented in a good light in the Old Testament. And it actually culminates to the story we have of Jesus standing before the high priest in the gospels. And the high priest has him beaten to a pulp. And they discuss the meaning of Psalm 110.

If I get ahead of myself. But that priesthood, flawed from the start. And, of course, David is reading this and he's like, well, being a priest and being a king aren't in and of themselves wrong. Because that's what God was leading Moses to do here. It's just that I can't be that type of priest.

And so he begins to think through, is there another priest in which I could be in the order of? And he thinks back to Melchizedek. He goes back to Genesis. In Genesis 14, we read about Melchizedek. He's actually the first priest we have in the Bible.

Melchizedek. 400 years or 600 years before we ever get to the priesthood within Israel. Now, I grew up in a a baptist church going to Sunday school. My teachers hated me. Questions about who were the Nephilim.

I mean, how is it that the, you know, Genesis 5, the sons of God could come and mate with the daughters, you know, of of men. And then they have some kind of like super babies called the Nephilim. If you don't know that story's in there, go to Genesis 5 and tell me what it means. So I'm always asking my my teachers about the Nephilim, and always about Melchizedek. Was he an alien?

Was he the the pre incarnate Christ? On and on. And it didn't matter what they were teaching. They could be teaching on the 10 commandments. And I'd be like, Yeah.

But what about Melchizedek? His story begins in Genesis 14. Genesis 14 is about 9 different kings waging war with one another. It's 4 kings against 5 kings. Basically these these 5 kings were a little bit weaker, and they had to pay taxes to the 4 kings.

And and finally, they rebelled. And there's a whole lot of fighting going on. The the picture that we have here, and the reason it's recorded is the author of Genesis just wants you to know that this is what the kingdoms of the world are like. This is what kings do. They just fight with one another.

It's all about power. It's all about violence. There are no good kings in here. All of the kings are bad. They represent the kingdoms of this world.

Now, caught up in this power struggle is Abraham's nephew, Lot. He's captured by one of these kings. Could be because he had been living in one of these cities, and he was captured, and he was taken away. Abraham hears about this. And so he pulls together 318 of his men.

And they go and they travel over a 100 miles. They run over a 100 miles to go and bring Lot back. It lets you know that Abraham with 318 men I mean, he's he's a chieftain by this point. He's growing quite a large group. But they run over a 100 miles, then they fight, have a big battle, and then they bring Lot back.

It's it's an epic story there. Probably, you should make a movie about it. Tolkien, by the way, I know I have to get a Tolkien reference, completely rips us off with his 9 kings that he has. His 9 kings of of Mordor, and how Aragorn goes, travels, runs over a 100 miles, and goes gets the hobbits and brings them back. Anybody?

You know this? You should probably read Lord of the Rings. There you go. Thank you. Alright.

Biggest amen I get. Completely rip rips this off in a wonderful way. So that's what, you know, Abraham does. And he brings home Lot, and then he meets, with the king of Sodom. And it's here that he runs into this mysterious figure, Melchizedek.

And I'll just read to you from this. This is Genesis 14 verse 17. The king of Sodom went out to meet Abraham at the King's Valley. And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High.

Genesis 14:17

And He blessed him and said, blessed be Abram by God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand. And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. Okay. That's it.

That's Melchizedek's only appearance in scripture, the only story we have of him. Then he disappears and he will not be mentioned again until a 1000 years later by King David. So what do we learn about Melchizedek here? Well, we know that his name means king of righteousness. He's not one of those 9 other kings.

He's different. He wasn't part of those battles or those fighting. He's the king of righteousness. And he's actually The city where he is king over is the king of Salem. This is the ancient name for the for Jerusalem.

Jerusalem. So he's the king of the city that David will later be king of. He's also priest of God Most High. That's Abraham's God, God Most High. It's remarkable.

It's completely unexpected because God's just called Abraham. We know his story there. We know how Abraham came to know God, but But apparently, there's some other storyline that we know nothing about. Absolutely nothing about, but God had apparently appeared to this mysterious figure Melchizedek. And He has revealed Himself not just to Him, but to apparently the people who He's lording over because He's now a priest.

He's a priest of the same God as Abraham. Yet, we know nothing about that storyline. I find that utterly fascinating. And so he he comes and he appears to Abraham. They're worshiping the same God.

Once again, this is 400 years before Israel will ever have their first priest. So he's a king. He's a priest. He is serving in Jerusalem. Now, unlike the other 9 kings who are all squabbling and fighting one with one another, even fighting over the spoils after the war is over, this priest will have none of that.

This king priest, he comes forth and he brings bread and wine. I mean, Abraham had to be just exhausted. He and his 318 men after going over a 100 miles, fighting, coming over a 100 miles back, they're exhausted. And they meet this king, and he just prepares a feast before them. There's a lot of mouths to feed.

Here's bread. Here's wine. And then he blesses them in the name of God most high. Abraham is so impressed with this figure, He actually tithes to him. He recognizes him as a superior and he gives 10% of of all he has.

He he freely gives it to Melchizedek. Now when Melchizedek blesses Abraham, this is a huge deal. Because this is the first time we have in scripture anyone blessing Abraham. The reason that's a big deal is because you have to go back to Atlanta's airport of Genesis 12. Remember?

Genesis 12. You always gotta go through Genesis 12 if you won't go anywhere. That's when God called Abraham. And he called Abraham. He said this, I will make your name great.

I will bless the world for I will bless you. And those who bless you, I will bless. So whoever blesses you, Abraham, I will bless them. Then almost immediately after that, you have someone coming and blessing Abraham. And so as we're reading through, you're like, okay, so what happens?

Because because we're just told, like, whoever blesses Abraham is gonna they're gonna get their socks blessed off by God. Here comes Melchizedek, Blessing. Nothing happens. I mean, you you read it and you're like, Melchizedek just disappears. What what happens to him?

Absolutely nothing. It's one of the great mysteries of the old testament that you could just have that outline. Whoever blesses you, Abraham, I will bless you. I will bless them. Here comes somebody blesses.

But nothing happens. I mean, they should do like a you know, one of those Discovery Channel mystery things on this. I mean, what what's going on here? You guys with me? I mean, if this isn't fun to you, just go someplace else.

I mean, this is like this is so amazing, these threads. I realize we're in the deep end. But, man, follow with me. Let's go back to David. David who's thinking of this.

Can you see how when David brought the ark into Jerusalem, this story had profoundly shaped how he did it. It might even been the very reason that Jerusalem became his capital city. But David, now he enters into this priest King Melchizedek's old city. He makes it his capital city, and then he acts like Melchizedek. He becomes priest and king.

He makes sacrifices. He dances before the ark. And then he gives the people bread to eat, and then he blesses them. I mean, he's doing exactly what this previous priest king of Jerusalem had done a 1000 years earlier. This is the high point for Israel and concerning the way they celebrate and their joy.

This is the high point of them as a nation. They they will never be more happy than in this moment right here in which their priest king is coming before them. There's a feast. There's joy. There's dancing.

This is as good as it gets. And David is being shaped by all of this by Melchizedek. He has come to realize at this point, this is the type of leader that people need. They need a king and they need a priest. After David is thinking through all of that, of course, that's when God blesses him and says, hey, I'm gonna make you into a house.

You're gonna have someone sit on the throne and it's gonna be a dynasty that never ends. And then David, he begins chewing on both those things. Israel needs a king and they need a priest. God's making me into a king in my descendants and into a kingdom that will ever end. There needs to be a priesthood that never ever ends.

It can't be a Levitical priesthood. That was flawed from the start. It's gotta be the priesthood of Melchizedek, that first original priest. See how he's he's he's chewing on these things. He's trying to weave them together.

And then under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, he writes Psalm 110. I realize, this is a really long introduction to the psalm. We haven't even gotten to it yet, But you've got to see the threads here. You've got to see how David is stringing together all these things into this this glorious Psalm. So let's now look at Psalm 110.

We'll get this quickly. Verse 1. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. I'll stop there. David, through the spirit, is able to listen in on a conversation.

That's what this has had. It's a conversation between 2 persons. It's a conversation between the Lord, which is Yahweh. Anytime your Bible has the Lord in all capital letters, which is what you see there, Lord. That is Yahweh.

So it's a conversation between the Lord Yahweh and David's Lord Adonai, which says, the Lord said to my Lord. Those are the 2 persons. It's it's Yahweh speaking to the Lord. How is that possible? How can the Lord be speaking to the Lord?

That's the question. Jesus picks up on this puzzle. It's why he loved going to this psalm. In Mark 12, Jesus, he unpacks this a little. He asked, the scribes a question.

He says, how can the Christ or the Messiah be the son of David? Because David himself, in the Holy Spirit said, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. It says the question is this, David himself calls him lord. So how can this person be his son? That's about as clear as mud, isn't it?

I mean, it's one of those things, like, when you're going through your bible reading plan, it gets like, yeah. I'll figure that out later. Granted, it's Jesus's argument and the thought process, it it's not as impactful during our day. But it would have landed 2000 years ago. His point is this, in their culture, someone's son is never greater than their father.

Never. A son cannot be greater than their father. Well, we know the Messiah is a son of David, which means David should be the superior. Jesus' question is, so how is it that David calls his son his master, his Lord? Who can this Messiah be?

And Jesus, he would just riddle the people with this, and they they love listening to Jesus as he posed these questions. And of course, the answer is this, it can only be this if the Messiah is both the son of David and the son of God. The Messiah is both. He's both the Son of David, but he's more than that. He's divine.

That's why Jesus would go here. David, 1000 years before Christ already knows that He will have a son that will be greater than Him. A son that will be divine. And it's this son who's gonna sit on the throne at the right hand of God. That phrase, the right hand of God, will be picked up all throughout the New Testament.

It's used to describe the Ascension. It's when Christ ascends and he sits on the throne. I mean, over and over and over again, we read this phrase throughout the New Testament about how Jesus is at the right hand of God. This means that Christ is reigning. Now we come to verse 2.

The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments from the womb of the morning. The dew of your youth will be yours. Here we see that once the Lord has ascended and is on His throne, people are going to flock to him freely.

Freely. The picture we're given here is that when Jesus reigns, when he sits on his thrones, hearts are gonna be changed all over the globe. And people will, in their own free will, then come and worship and serve the Messiah. He's describing the church here, how our hearts will be transformed and changed, and we will follow Him freely. And notice what they'll be wearing, holy garments.

No longer will we be wearing filthy rags, but we will be clothed in righteousness as we freely follow our Messiah. Let's go to verse 4. The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind. You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. I know it's hard to to follow, but once again in this moment, David is pulling together all these threads.

He's realizing that the Messiah is not just gonna be a king. The Messiah has to be a priest in order to bring the blessings to the world. It can't be a Levitical priest. Must be a priest in the order of Melchizedek. The one who was blessed by Abraham and then we never realized what happened to him.

He's putting all this together. He says, this has to be a priesthood that last forever just like my throne is going to last forever. So you're probably thinking, okay. Thanks for the lecture. What does this mean?

I mean, like, what does this mean? Well, it means this. The the scene that we saw of of David acting as the king priest going before the Ark of God, dancing, rejoicing, giving a blessing and a feast to all of His people. And that unbridled joy that you see there which once again is the high point in the people of Israel's history. It's it's concerning joy and celebrations.

The high point. All of that. It's a foretaste. It's just the smallest foretaste of the true priest king who is to come and to bring those things in full. That's it.

That temporary joy that we see there, that flourishing, that blessing is just a blurry image of what awaits us as the people of God. What it means is this. Look at your last line in your worship guide. Hebrews 7 verse 25. I'm talking about the priesthood of Jesus.

Hebrews 7:25

It says, consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, that's Jesus, since he always lives to make intercession for them. Because Jesus is our forever priest, he's able to save us to the uttermost. If Jesus was just a king who reigned forever, It meant that if he reigned forever, we would have been eternally condemned. But because he is both a king and he's our priest, it means he's forever interceding for us. Meaning, that our sins are washed away.

And now, we have complete and total access and joy in Christ. And what he says is now we're saved to the uttermost. I love that word, uttermost. The author of Hebrews could have just said he could have just said, therefore, he is able to save those who draw near to God through him. And no one would have thought any anything about it if he just said, He's able to save.

But he doesn't say he's able to save. He says he's able to save to the uttermost. Why did the author of Hebrews add that phrase to the uttermost? It's because he knows you and he knows me. He knows that no matter how great things seem, like when we're thinking of the gospel, we're still thinking in the back of our minds.

Yeah. I know we're saved, but if if God really knew, if people really knew, if God really knew this this little bit of darkness that I've kept hidden in this corner here, if he really knew some of the things that I've done, I can't ever be fully saved. I can't be fully forgiven. And the author of Hebrews says, no. You're you're saved to the uttermost.

Every square inch of you is saved. And there's some of you who think, I mean, I I know we're saved, and I know we can have joy, but it's just just a little bit of joy. It's just gonna be a little bit better than now. The author of Hebrews says, no. No.

It's to the uttermost. Your veins are literally gonna be pulsating with joy. Every fiber of your being is gonna be alive with joy. You're saved to the uttermost. You think what King David was doing there was a celebration?

Just wait, my people. This is what the eternal priest king brings us. That's what it means to us. That's our future for all of those who have trusted in Christ. Let's pray to him.

Jesus, thank you for being our king. Thank you for being our priest. Thank you for saving us to the uttermost. And, Jesus, when we doubt, would you help us believe? Thank you that your hold on us is far greater than our hold on you.

We love you, Jesus. We pray this in the name of our present and our future King. Amen.