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Very much indeed for that kind welcome and warm, as usual. It is a pleasure to be back with you here in Broadway. Now, you have asked me to talk in these two nights on the fifth book of the Psalms. Let us begin by reading some extracts from that book and certain parallel passages from the New Testament. So, first of all, in Psalm one hundred and nine. Psalm one hundred and nine. we shall read there verses one to eight. Hold not thy peace, O God, of my praise, for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of deceit have they opened against me.
They have spoken unto me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred and fought against me without a cause. For my love, they are my adversaries, but I give myself unto prayer. They have rewarded me evil for good and hatred for my love. Set thou a wicked man over him, and let an adversary stand at his right hand. When he is judged, let him come forth guilty, and let his prayer be turned into sin. Let his days be few, and let another take his office.
Put our finger in the Psalms at that point, and for a moment turn over to the Acts of his brethren and said, there was a multitude of persons gathered together, about one hundred and twenty. Brethren, it was needful that the scripture should be fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost spake before by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who was guide to them that took Jesus.
For he was numbered among us and received his portion in this ministry. Now this man obtained a field with the reward of his iniquity, and falling asunder, falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the dwellers of Jerusalem, insomuch that in their language that field was called Akeldama, that is the field of blood. For it is written in the book of Psalms, let his habitation be made desolate and let no man dwell therein, and his office let another take.
Then Psalm one hundred and ten, please, and here we read the whole Psalm. The Lord saith unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The Lord shall send forth the rod of thy strength out of Zion. Rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. Thy people offer themselves willingly in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, thou hast the dew of thy youth. The Lord hath sworn and will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.
The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the nations. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall strike through the head in many countries. He shall drink of the brook in the way. Therefore shall he lift up the head. And alongside of that, putting our finger again in the place, let's read from Matthew's gospel, chapter twenty two. In verse while now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, what think you of the Christ?
Whose son is he? They say unto him, the son of David. He saith unto them, how then doth David in the spirit call him Lord, say? The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand till I put thine enemies underneath thy feet. If David then calleth him Lord, how is he his son? No one was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions. Then again, from the New Testament, the Epistle to the Hebrews and chapter seven. And inasmuch as it is not without the taking of an oath, for they indeed have been made priests without an oath, but he with an oath, by him that saith of him, the Lord swear and
will not repent himself, thou art a priest forever. Well, now then, and inasmuch as it is not without the taking of an oath, by so much also hath Jesus become the surety of a better covenant. They indeed have been made priests many in number, because that by death they are hindered from continuing, but he, because he abideth forever, hath his priesthood unchangeable, wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.
Then back to Psalm one hundred and eighteen. Psalm one hundred and eighteen. Verse nineteen, open to me the gates of righteousness, I will enter into them, I will give thanks unto the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall enter into it. I will give thanks unto thee, for thou hast answered me and art become my salvation. The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner.
This is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it. Save now we beseech thee, O Lord. O Lord, we beseech thee, send now prosperity. Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord. We have blessed you out of the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he hath given us light. Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the halls of the altar. Thou art my God, and I will give thanks unto thee.
Thou art my God, I will exalt thee. O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth forever. Then in the New Testament, once more the gospel by Matthew. Matthew twenty one and verse thirty seven. But afterwards he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But the husbandmen, when they saw the son, said among themselves, This is the heir.
Come, let us kill him and take his inheritance. They took him and cast him forth out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the Lord of the vineyard shall come, what will he do unto those husbandmen? They say unto him, he will miserably destroy those miserable and will let out the vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. Jesus saith unto them, did you never read in the scriptures? The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner. This was from the Lord, and it is marvelous in our eyes.
Then in chapter twenty and verse thirty seven, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killeth the prophets and stoneth them that are sent unto her, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and you would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, you shall not see me henceforth till you shall say, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. And finally, for the moment, Acts chapter four.
Acts chapter four and verse eight. Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost, said unto them, You rulers of the people and elders, if we this day are examined concerning a good deed done to an impotent man, by what means this man is made whole, be it known unto you all and to all the people of Israel, that in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even in him doth this man stand here before you whole. He is the stone which was set at naught of you, the builders, which was made the head of the corner.
And in none other is there salvation, for neither is there any other name under heaven that is given among men, wherein you must be saved. God give us good understanding of his holy word. Now you have given me the great honor and pleasure of coming and conducting your last two studies in the Psalms for this particular series. And you have given me book five, that is the last book of Psalms. Properly to deal, of course, with book five of the Psalms, I should really have needed to have been present in your earlier sessions, to make sure that in these two final sessions I don't needlessly repeat all the things that you have been learning, set out far better than I could set them out by your previous speakers.
And then, to be frank with you, I ought to have been at your previous session so that I know what to say in these two sessions anyway. Because doubtless you have been given the expert answers already to most of the problems that we shall meet once again in this final book of the Psalms. And it would have been a great help to me had I been able to be present and hear what the answers were so that I could now repeat them. Certain it is that it will be difficult to cover Book five— impossible in fact, in just these two sessions. Book five is, after all, the largest of the five books of Psalms, and we have just 2 sessions to think about them.
Let me tell you, therefore, what I propose to do. Tonight, what I shall do is to take out certain short passages from uh three of the Psalms that speak to us about the Lord Jesus. We know they do because the New Testament tells us they do. Whatever these psalms meant originally, as they were given by their original author, inspired by the Holy Spirit, nevertheless, in their fullest sense, they find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
So that tonight I want to deal with these passages that tell us of him. But after all, the Psalms, like all the rest of the Old Testament, they tell us of the Lord Jesus. He is their principal subject. And in all our worship of God, our deepest and highest and profoundest worship will be provoked by our consideration of the Lord Jesus. But as we think of him tonight, the question that will rise in our minds at the end of our session, I suspect, is this: well, how is it that these scriptures that speak so glowingly and clearly of the Lord Jesus, how is it that they come to be embedded in these particular psalms and in this particular book of the psalm?
Are they just arbitrarily put in, nothing to do with their context at all? Or is there some rhyme and reason why these particular prophecies of our Lord should spring out of this book five of the Psalms? Why are the Psalms in this book selected and put together? Do they have any common theme? And if so, what is that theme? That for next week, God willing. But for this week, these scriptures that speak to us about our Lord, for he is the key to scripture, and what is said about him we shall find to be very clear and very interesting and very practical, and thus will help us take our bearings in this large book of Psalms.
I shall proceed from the obvious and easy to the not quite so obvious and to the more difficult. We read then from three Psalms, Psalm one hundred and nine, Psalm one hundred and ten, and Psalm one hundred and eighteen. And the New Testament tells us that, uh, these three Psalms refer in part at least to three major incidents in the life of our Lord Jesus. Psalm one hundred and nine contains a verse, or a part of a verse, that refers to Judas Iscariot, the traitor who betrayed our Lord Jesus to gain his thirty pieces of silver.
We notice at once that it refers, therefore, to an incident in the life of our Lord Jesus, right late on in his life, just before he went to the cross of Calvary. It tells us how he got betrayed by Judas, who rewarded him evil for good. Says the Psalm one hundred and nine, let another take his office. This was the scripture, you remember, that Saint Peter appealed to when in the upper room with the one hundred and twenty awaiting the coming of the Holy Spirit, he suggested that they should choose another apostle from among those that had traveled about with the Lord Jesus right from the beginning, from the baptism of John onwards, until the resurrection, that the number of twelve apostles might be complete, as complete and adequate witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
So Psalm 109 refers then to Judas, so Peter tells us in Acts chapter uh one. As we read Psalm one hundred and hear David complaining about the experience that he in his lifetime suffered, when people rewarded him evil for good. A bitter, bitter experience that must have been. To have prayed for others, to have done his best to do them good, only to find them turn round upon him and reward him evil for good, and one man in particular committing base and foul treachery.
As we discern the hurt that David felt, that made him cry aloud upon the justice of God to deal with this foul, uh, behavior. We begin to perceive, perhaps, something of the sorrow and bitterness of our Lord's experience. When having chosen Judas to be his friend and companion and apostle, and fed him many times with his own bread, he found Judas at length lift up his heel against him and betray him for a paltry thirty pieces of silver.
That is all I want to say tonight about Psalm one hundred and nine. except once more to observe, if you will, how that it not only talks about something in the life of our Lord, let's notice the position in his life that it refers to. It refers to those days and hours just before his suffering at Calvary. Then there is, of course, Psalm one hundred and ten, a Psalm that our Lord quoted himself again. Notice when he quoted it in the last few days before he suffered at Calvary.
The psalm that read, the Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. And in those last days of Holy Week, our Lord finally silenced his adversaries by demanding to know of them what they thought of the Messiah and whose son he was, and himself finally answered the question by pointing to Psalm one hundred and ten. We shall come back to that in a moment. Say, we should notice here that that Psalm one hundred and ten, first quoted by our Lord Jesus, must have made a profound impression, not only upon the Jews who heard it, but more particularly upon the, the disciples.
For it is one of the, uh, verses in the Old Testament most quoted in the rest of the New Testament, so that if you get hold of this verse and this psalm, and you forget everything else you know, you will have a summary of all the more important Christian doctrines. Then Psalm 118, very interesting psalm because in the first place it was quoted by our Lord. Two parts of it quoted by him. First part in Matthew twenty one and the second part in Matthew twenty three.
The stone which the builders rejected, the same has been made the head of the corner, said our Lord to the crowds that were around him in Holy Week. Will you notice once more what part of our Lord's life it comes from? It comes from those last few days just before he suffered. He quoted it in his arguments and conversation with the Pharisees. And then the other bit, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Again quoted by our Lord Jesus, perhaps a day or two later, just before he suffered, just before he finally turned from the Jews and went to Gethsemane in Calvary.
Said he, O Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you, but you would not. Now your house is left unto you desolate, you shall not see me until you see, you say, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. This scripture too, referred to again in the rest of the New Testament, and notably by the apostles in Acts chapter four, and they have occasion to remind the Pharisees of our Lord's words and of this Psalm. This is the stone which you builders rejected, says Peter to the Sanhedrin, and God has made it the head of the corner.
From this fifth book of the Psalm, then, a cluster of Psalms approved prophetically and in their fullest meaning refer to our Lord Jesus, and in particular to what happened to him in those closing days of his earthly life, and what happened to him subsequently. Why they come in this fifth book, that I say again, we shall have to consider next week. But now let's turn to Psalm one hundred and ten. We've already seen how Judas was to betray him and did in fact betray him.
When our Lord, uh, quoted Psalm 110, he would, of course, already have known that Judas was to betray him. He was not taken by surprise. Now the nation as a whole was going to turn against him. The Pharisees and the Sadducees had got together to try the best they can, they could to prove that he could not possibly be the Messiah. Within a day or two, they were to to condemn him before the high priest, then lead him to Pilate and have him crucified by the Gentile imperial authority, and so, as they thought, for paid once and for all to his claim to be the Messiah.
So in these days of Holy Week, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were constantly around him, constantly questioning him, trying to prove to the crowd that this Jesus whom they were following in their thousands was not the Messiah. And finally, Matthew tells us, the Sadducees flung at him their last argument. Consider those scheming men. They were the leaders of the government in Israel, the leaders of the temple and the Jewish religion.
These were the men that finally would sit to condemn him and hand him over to the Romans to be crucified. About that they'd already made up their mind. They were going to crucify Jesus. And now they were going to add the last argument that would make his claim look absurd. For they got the impression from listening to him preach that this Jesus believed that there was going to be a resurrection. Hm. And that he was telling his disciples that even if the Jewish authorities crucified him and put him to death, he would rise again and be king.
So, of course, the Sadducees have got to try and scotch that one, haven't they? And they set about it, says Matthew. They came one day to our Lord Jesus, and in front of the crowd they asked him what they thought was the final question. Now they said, you believe in resurrection, don't you? Well, tell us, said they. You answer us this one. You say there's a resurrection. Well, now there was a woman once, and she had a husband. Nothing unusual in that, but the man died, you see. Well, subsequently another man married her. Alas, he died too. Well, after that she married a third, and the same thing happened.
Curious woman, I don't know whether she ever really exists. I think it must have been a made-up story, but it was part of their argument, you see. In the end, she had seven, dear woman. Must have been indefatigable to get married, I suppose. But anyway, she had seven, and at last the sins died. Now, said the Sadducees, with their final decisive argument, now, oh, come on, tell us in the resurrection whose, whose wife shall she be? For all seven had her. And they thought they had set him a poser. And finally proved that resurrection wasn't possible, and that therefore, if they crucified Jesus and put him to death, that was the end of his claim to be Messiah.
Poor little Sadducees. It was a stupid argument, wasn't it? But suppose it had been true. No resurrection. Do you suppose that they would have won, so to speak? It was Jesus claiming to be the Messiah, to be the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies, the very savior of Israel, and to prove that he was wrong and they were right, and to win the argument they were trying to prove there was no such thing as the resurrection.
Suppose there's no such thing as the resurrection. Then nobody's won, have they? Sadducees won? Well, yes, they kept their little political power for a few more years until they're seventy seven and a half, and they go into the grave and get eaten up of worms. Do you call that winning? With their Old Testament in their hands, talking of God's great salvation and all the glories of his redemption, here were Sadducees who wanted to prove that God's redemption doesn't go beyond the grave.
That all that God's redemption can do for you is to land you a corpse rotting in a grave, eaten up with worms and turning to dust. Well, if that's your idea of redemption, so be it. But that's a pretty poor, uh, redemption, isn't it? How many a man there is nowadays that has that view of life or wants to take that view of life? You've met him, haven't you? Talking over the garden fence when you've been hanging out the linen, uh, or down in the old cafeteria, wherever you go, the washitere, at the supermarket.
You've been talking to Mrs. Sykes or Mr. Jones and urging on him to trust the Savior. And he says, I don't believe this. I think with your head you're done for. And he thinks he's very clever. Poor little men. If there's nothing left for us but a grave. Nothing to shout about, is it? Hear, therefore, our Lord's argument. He summons their attention to Psalm one hundred and ten. And what's Psalm one hundred and ten about? Well, Psalm 110 is about God's program for Messiah and his ultimate victory.
God's program for ultimate redemption, how shall it be achieved? So let's notice the detail and then sum it up. Said our Lord Jesus to start with, if you will understand God's program of redemption, you must ask the question about the Messiah. Tell me now, he said, about the Messiah, whoever the Messiah is going to be. Old Testament talks about the Messiah, doesn't it? All right. Well, now, gentlemen, said he to the Pharisees this time, you tell me, what do you think about the Messiah, having read all the Old Testament's got to say?
What do you think about the Messiah? When he comes, whose son will he be? They said he'll be the son of David. Is that all, said Christ? Then how is it, he said, if he's only the son of David, how is it that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, then our Lord quoted Psalm one hundred and ten verse one— uh the Lord, that is God, Almighty God, Jehovah, said to my, that is to David's Lord. There is God talking to David's Lord.
Says our Lord, the Psalm was written by David. So here is David, King David, if you please, saying God spoke to somebody, and that somebody was David's Lord. And who was David's Lord? That must be the Messiah. So the Messiah is David's Lord then, according to Psalm one hundred and ten. That's perfectly so. Let's ponder that moment. If he's just his son, if the Messiah is simply David's son, how does David call him Lord?
And the point of that question would be clearer to a man living in Palestine than it would be perhaps a man living in Belfast. I don't know how you carry on, you gentlemen. Did you ever find yourself addressing your son, you know, Jim or or Tom, wherever he is. Did you ever find yourself addressing him, Lord? Lord, uh, where have you been tonight? Lord, no, you can't take the car tonight. Or whoever. Do you know you don't normally call your sons Lord, do you? I tell you what, a Middle Eastern never did. Because in the time of the Savior in the Middle East, fathers in a family were very dignified and exalted figures.
You didn't get the, the boys answering their father back. You certainly didn't. Children didn't rule the household then, even if they do now. In those ancient days, the father was the head of the house, and every son in the family was to reverence him. No Middle Eastern father would ever have called his son Lord, don't you think not? But David is calling Messiah his Lord. You just imagine that. When Father Jacob, you remember Father Jacob? When Father Jacob was eventually persuaded to come down to Egypt to see Joseph, he found Joseph, his own son.
He found Joseph head of all the granaries in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh, and everybody in Egypt bowed the knee to Joseph. Not Jacob, though. Not Jacob. Would you think not Jacob bowed to Joseph? He never heard of any such thing. Never would Jacob have considered bowing to Joseph, and not once does Jacob call Joseph Lord. Exalted though Joseph is. But David calls Messiah Lord. Then whose son is he, says Christ. And our blessed Lord, who asked the question based here on Psalm one hundred and ten, of course, himself eventually gave us the answer, speaking to his churches through the Apostle John in the last chapter of the Revelation, our Lord Jesus points out, I am the root and offspring of David.
The bright and morning star. In one sense, yes, the Messiah is to be son of David. He is the offspring of David. In another sense, he is the root of David. And that is marvelous and will help us in one of our s- uh, uh, uh, questions about the Psalms. How is it that many of the Psalms, many of the Old Testament passages come to be a prefigurement of the Messiah? Because the Messiah existed before they were written. The great plan of redemption that you find in that Old Testament scripture came from our blessed Lord in his pre-incarnate.
He was the word of God, the root of David. He designed that David should be. He moved in history until David came. He sustained David and made him the great conqueror and deliverer of Israel, that delivered Israel from her enemies and brought her to be one of the leading nations of the day. It was the word of God, the second person of the Trinity, who designed David and designed his history and designed it that in the end it should be a picture of a greater than David, David's greater son, the Messiah himself.
Question number one. Answer. We're going to think of God's plan of redemption. You must answer first the question, who is the Messiah? He's not simply a son of David. He is David's Lord. He is David's God. Second question that the psalm shall answer. What is God's program, therefore, for the redemption of Israel, for the bringing in of the glorious millennial kingdom of the Messiah? What is the program for it? The Sadducees and the Pharisees were going together to, to, to bring about the death of the Lord Jesus, and they thought that would put an end to his kingdom.
Then our Lord referred them to this psalm, for what was the program going to be according to the psalm? What was the timetabling going to be? Well, listen to it. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. Only a few words, but crammed full of meaning. Let's take them slowly, guided by the New Testament. God, the Lord Jehovah, said to my Lord, that is the Lord Jesus. He said, sit at my right hand.
What did he say that for? You know, if I came to your home one of these days, you were pleased to invite me home to give me a cup of tea or something. As I walked into the room, you would say probably, well, have a seat. And I should sit down, because I was standing, and then I sat down. But if you came in the room and I was already sitting there, I was already sitting down, you wouldn't say to me, sit down, would you, if I was already sitting down, because that wouldn't make any sense. When God says to the Lord Jesus, sit at my right hand, that must mean, mustn't it, that before then he wasn't sitting there.
So? How did it come to be that he who was the root of David, the word of God, who existed before the world began, began and was with the Father in the beginning? How did it come to be that he wasn't always sitting at the right hand of God and had to be asked to sit there? Come and sit. Well, you know the answer simply. Because though he was with God in the beginning, and all things have been made by him for our sakes and our redemption, he left the Father's side and came down to our world and was born in a manger.
And though he was in the form of God, he didn't think it a thing to be grasped at, to be on equal terms with God, but humbled himself and took the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and was obedient unto death, the death of the cross. Wherefore God also highly exalted him. And the Psalm is telling us that now God is saying to the Lord Jesus, who has been become a man, who's died, uh, God is now saying to him, sit on my right hand, come up and sit there. Early command, sit at my right hand, implies the incarnation, his life on earth, his death, his burial, his resurrection, and now finally his ascension to God's right hand.
See that? Sit right hand. Will you notice as we pass, then there is no explicit mention of his death in those verses? Those verses were beyond his death, beyond his grave, beyond his resurrection. We are now thinking of his ascension to the right hand of God. The point is, how is God going to bring in the great age of the Messiah? It's going to be the exaltation to God's right hand of him who from eternity was there, who for our sakes came down to earth, but has gone back to heaven.
Sit thou at my right hand. And what next? Well, says the verse, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. What does that tell us? Well, here's the program. The program for bringing in the great millennial age and to complete redemption is the ascension of Christ, followed by a period, here referred to by the preposition until, or the conjunction until. Sit there until I make thine enemies thy footstool.
Oh, so the enemies aren't going to be made the footstool straight off then, no. No, there's going to be a period, how long we're not told, between the time when he ascended and sat at the Father's right hand and his coming again to put down his enemies. There's going to be a period in between. Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. Why is it important to know that? I imagine, I suspect I've told you before, but forgive me telling you again, it's the privilege of old men to repeat.
Uh, you will when you get older, so don't you smile too much. Ah, do see. Uh, in my student days, I used to have a friend that was a Jew, and we were trying to learn Hebrew together, and he used to tell me, you see, says David, old boy, your Jesus isn't the Messiah. Couldn't be. I said, how's that? Uh, you will when you get older, so don't you smile too much. Ah, do see. Uh, in my student days, I used to have a friend that was a Jew, and we were trying to learn Hebrew together, and he used to tell me, you see, he says, David, oh boy, your Jesus isn't the Messiah. Couldn't be. I said, how's that? Because he said, you see, the Old Testament says that the Messiah, when he comes, will put down all evil.
He will destroy evil men. He will deliver his people. Your Jesus hasn't done anything of the sort, has he? Evil everywhere you look. And of course, my friend felt achy because he was born in Germany and his parents were gassed by Hitler in the concentration camp. Your Jesus hasn't stopped evil, he says, has he? How can he be Messiah? But then he added for good measure, there's no good for saying, ah, but Jesus is, he started a spiritual kingdom, you see. There's no good at all. The Old Testament doesn't know any- anything about setting up spiritual kingdoms.
It says that when Messiah came, he was going to put down his enemies, destroy the enemies of Israel, destroy evil from the face of the earth, and set up the great millennial kingdom, and your Jesus just has not done it. And you keep talking about, well, he set up a spiritual kingdom. That's only a yarn that you Christians invented to cover your disappointment when your Jews Jesus got crucified. That's what that is, he said. And of course, alas, I, I, I didn't know my Psalms in those days. I didn't know quite what to say. You would have known, wouldn't you? To have quoted the dear Jew, Psalm one hundred and ten, verse one.
For Jesus has not put down evil. Well, well, you didn't expect him to, did you? Not at once. Psalm one hundred and ten has the program, the timetable. Sit at my right hand, that's his ascension, until... he's not going to put them down at once, there's going to be a period of waiting, until his enemies be made the footstool of his feet. Oh, one day he shall come. One day he shall put down evil. Yet a little while he that shall come will come and will not tarry. His enemies shall all be put under his feet.
But until then we wait. Who is it referring to? I once asked another Jew about this. I said, what this says here, the Lord said unto my Lord, do see, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. Oh, he said, I, I tell you about that verse, who that verse refers to. I said, oh, go on then. He said, that's Abram. Abram. I said, I wonder how you get that to refer to Abram. Well, he said, you take the first reference in the Old Testament and that sentence, and the first time you read of my Lord in the Old Testament, that's Sarah talking. She said, Abram, my Lord. So that refers to Abraham here.
Funny little way of doing things, isn't he? Yeah. We wonder what the epistle to the Hebrews would say to her, to him, I mean. Abraham? To think not. Or to which of the angels did he said at any time, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet. God never talked like that to any angel. You just imagine it. Can you visualize it? It's God the Almighty, and he's speaking to somebody. He says, come and sit at my hand, right hand.
You're not completely comfortable? Let me get the footstool then, and I'll put it under your feet. Have you seen it done when some venerable lady has come into the meeting, perhaps, and her legs are not quite long enough to reach the floor, and elders, of course, that's what elders are for, or the deacons or somebody, they, all the young men get hold of a cassock and they, they put it under the dear lady's feet. Are you comfortable now? And of course, rightly so, she's a senior citizen and worthy to be treated honorably. And here is God Almighty getting a footstool and adjusting it under somebody's feet. Who is the somebody? Well, it isn't an angel.
God doesn't go around serving angels. Here is none other than the very Son of God. One day God get the footstool and put it under his feet, who made the enemies, his enemies, the footstool of his feet. Yes. Stop with that verse a little longer, couldn't we? Just a wee bit longer. Because once the, uh, Lord Jesus had pointed it out to the, uh, uh, disciples, they weren't slow in thinking about it, helped by the Holy Spirit. They said, you think of that verse, all the things we've got in that verse.
First, it tells us the deity of the Lord Jesus. Then it implies his incarnation, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension. And now he sits at the right hand of God. And it tells us there's going to be this in between period. And then it tells us he's coming again, and his enemies are going to be made his footstool. His first coming, his ascension, the present period, the second coming. Ah, yes, and did you notice what else they said? He said, sit at my right hand, not stand at my right hand, but sit at my right hand. What does that indicate? Well, said the writer to the Hebrews, that reminds us that his work is finished, his work of sacrifice perfectly complete.
For every Jewish priest standard daily offer in time the same sacrifices which can never take away sin, but this man, when it offered one sacrifice for sin forever, sat down. The work complete. No more sacrifice. He sat down and says Hebrews ten, henceforth waiting, waiting for what? Not for another installment in the sacrifice, no, no. Henceforth waiting simply for this, until his enemies be made the footstool of his feet. And since the work is complete and the sacrifice is finished and our Lord ascended and seated at the right hand of the Father, then, then your sins and iniquities are all forgiven, and you shall not remember them again anymore.
The completed work of Christ. Then the, uh, early Christians, I noticed another thing, I couldn't help sitting back for a moment and thinking about where he was seated. Seated? At the right hand of God? Where is that? Well, whatever it means, it means in the place of honor and power and glory. The believers, the Ju- the Jewish Christians, you know, many of them were poor, many of them were persecuted. They met where they could meet.
In the end, they got slung out by their fellow Jews. Their Jews went up to the great temple in Jerusalem to worship. The Christians had to worship where they could, very often in upstairs rooms and funny little pokey places, under threat of persecution. And the writer to the Hebrews, to comfort them, reminds them of these verses. Ah yes, the Jewish priests, they serve in that glorious temple, don't they? But you see, it's only a temple made with hands. Our Lord serves, not in a temple made with hands. He's passed through the heavens. He's on the right hand of the majesty on high. He serves and ministers in the true tabernacle that the Lord has pitched and not man.
And what's he doing meanwhile? Well, again, this Psalm will tell us. For this Psalm reminds us in verse four, the Lord hath sworn and will not repent, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Again, what an interesting part of the program it is. Messiah was to come to our earth, he was to ascend and go back to heaven. He was to wait there for this until period, until the enemies were made his footstool. And in that until period, he would be exercising a ministry as the great king priest, priest after the order of Melchizedek.
That's what he would be doing. Interesting, isn't it, from a prophetic point of view? And how well the early Christians learned to use it against the unbelieving Jew. The unbelieving Jew, you imagine if you got converted to to to Christ, you see, and you'd have gone home and talked about your great high priest, your mother and father, who weren't Christians, they were still, uh, Jews, you see, and went to the temple, and they got the rabbi along. You can imagine it, can't you? And here comes the rabbi to have a word, because mum and dad have asked the rabbi to step around so that they can have a word with their daughter Rebecca, who's got converted to these Christians.
The rabbi says, now, Rebecca, my dear, I feel you got caught up with these Christians. Yes. And is it so that, uh, you say that Jesus is your priest? Yes, sir. Dear, dear, this is terrible. Don't you know what the Old Testament says? What's that, sir? Well, that the only priest is after the order of Aaron. How come? What tribe did your Jesus come of? Was he a of the tribe of Levi? No, sir. What tribe was he? Of Judah. There you are, look. How can you say your Jesus is a priest when he didn't even come of the priestly tribe?
Mm, the rabbi would stroke his beard and say, now you should remember, shouldn't you, what happened in the book of Numbers? Do you remember that? No, sir. Oh. Well, in the book of Numbers, you know, when God appointed Aaron the high priest, there were some wicked men, Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who rose up against Aaron and disputed his priesthood and wanted to make themselves priests. You know what God did to them? Well, earth opened and swallowed them up. Now come now, what is the sense of your saying that Jesus is a priest, when he isn't of the tribe of Levi.
Hm. So the writer to the Hebrews helps his young converts by reminding them of this psalm. All that the program of redemption is, that with the coming of Messiah, his resurrection, his session at the right hand of God, there's going to come a change of the priesthood. The priesthood's going to be changed. When was Aaron appointed? Oh, you say you read about that in the book of Exodus and Leviticus, so you do. But this is Psalms. And the Psalms were written hundreds of years after Leviticus, weren't they?
Yes, God in Leviticus appointed Aaron, but God in the Psalms is saying there will come a time when Aaron's priesthood will be put aside, and the new part of redemption is going to involve another priesthood, priest after the order of Melchizedek. This is the program for the redemption that the Messiah shall bring. And before we leave it, we must just sit back a moment and and enjoy the implications, mustn't we? Our Lord appointed a priest after the order of Melchizedek.
Priest who lives forever. Our Lord. And notice what it says, the Lord has sworn and will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Yes, says the writer to the Hebrews, you see Aaron, when he was appointed, wasn't appointed with an oath, but when our Lord Jesus was appointed, God himself took an oath. The Lord swore and will not repent. I am a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Why did God swear such a big oath about the appointment of our priest? Well, for this reason, because you see, when our Lord Jesus was appointed priest, he was appointed surety of the new covenant.
Let's try and get all of that. Surety, what is a surety? Why, if you go down the road, want to buy a car, and you want to take the car, and you can't pay for it all at the time, the car shop may ask you for a guarantee. You can't guarantee it yourself? Oh well, oh, I see. But have you any friend that would guarantee to pay if you fail? Huh? He's a guarantor. So if you go stony broke and you can't pay, well then your friend stands in.
He's the guarantor, and he pays the lot. You know, when God appointed our Lord Jesus Christ to be our great high priest, he appointed him also to be the guarantor of the new covenant. That is to say, whatever it would cost to bring the believer home to glory at last, whatever it costs, Jesus Christ our Lord has gone Guaranteed. guarantor. Lovely, isn't it? Oh, there are some unfortunate people in life, you know, they want some new furniture, and they go out to the shop, and they see a lovely bit of furniture in the window, and the man is standing at the door to entice them in and encouraging them to buy this beautiful bit of furniture, do you see?
And he says, yes, a small deposit will secure any item in the shop. So in they go, and they put down a fiber, and they get a beautiful radiogram, and there it stands in their home, pride and joy in the best room. They can pay the money, five bob a week, paying off the radiogram, see. They've paid off about twenty quid of it, and the thing cost one hundred and five. They've paid about twenty, twenty quid of it when they come out of work, and they can't pay the rest. They can't pay the rest. And so the shop comes and takes it back again. Whew.
Hard lines, isn't it? Do you know it hasn't depended on my paying for it? Oh dear, dear, dear, whatever should I get? Here's the great messianic program of redemption for the future depended on my paying for it, I know what would happen. I should go bust. I couldn't finish the payments, and all God's great promises would have to be taken back. No good I have anymore. Why not? For Christ has been given to us not only as a high priest, but as the guarantor of the new covenant. He's going to pay the lot.
Good, isn't it? That's the program of redemption. Finally, Psalm one hundred And Psalm is very interesting because it's one of a small group of Psalms. Went out to Gethsemane in Calvary. It was doubtless one of these psalms, or perhaps the lot of them, that he would have sung with his disciples. The psalm that has those wonderful words, bind the sacrifice with cords, even to the horns of the altar. He Sang it before he went out as the great sacrifice of sin to die for us at Calvary.
Once more, if you read that psalm, you will find that the psalm, so far as being sorrowful and filled with pain and affliction, is full of rejoicing. It pictures a wonderful time of festival in Israel, perhaps one of the major festivals of the Jewish year. And you are to think in your mind, perhaps if you can visualize it, of the great festive occasion, all the people have come in from all over the dispersion, and the pilgrims have come up to Jerusalem to celebrate this great feast of the Lord. And at the festival, there lines up a vast procession of people.
There stand the priests, there are the people, and at the beginning of the Psalms, the priests lead the people in thanksgiving, and they say, oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. Let Israel now say that his mercy endures forever. Let the house of Aaron now say that his mercy endureth forever. Let them now that fear the Lord say that his mercy endureth forever. And doubtless, as the priests intoned those words at the head of the procession, and they said, let the people now say, the people made their response, their full-throated response, his mercy endures forever.
Then as the great procession moved on towards the wall, there stands out in front of them one prominent figure, and he's the king. And the king now, in the first person singular, begins to tell us something of his experience. Verse five: out of my distress I called upon the Lord. The Lord answered me and set me on a large place. Verse eighteen: the Lord hath chastened me sore, but he hath not given me over unto death. Open to me the gates of righteousness, and I will enter into them, and I will give thanks unto the Lord. What's happening when the procession is gradually moving towards the temple?
The king now steps out in front of the people and rehearses what God has done for him. Apparently, in the king's experience, there came his enemies, and they surrounded him on every side, until it looked as if he were utterly hemmed in, utterly defeated, and about to be destroyed, when God intervened and set him free from his enemies, set him free from them. So the king tells his great experience, and now they arrive at the temple gates, and the king says, open to me the gates, and I come in, your legitimate sovereign and king that has conquered the enemies that tried to put him down.
Then the king himself addresses God, I will give thanks unto thee, for thou hast answered me and art become my salvation. The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the court. Psalm, therefore, that was used perhaps at the yearly celebration of one of the great festivities in Israel as they processed towards the temple. It was from that psalm the Lord Jesus quoted. When did he quote it? Why in Holy Week? Why so? Because all his enemies have come around him, haven't they? Pharisees and Sadducees, and there was Judas plotting.
Have we read from Psalm one hundred and nine. There was Judas plotting. They were all around him. Our Lord just told the story of the vineyard and the owner of the vineyard who sent prophets galore, and they had been beaten and thrown out. At last, the owner of the vineyard sent his son, and the wicked husbandman took him and Christ- and killed him. Our Lord was talking about what they were about to do to him. His enemies were going to surround him and hound him to the cross, and it would look as if God had forsaken him. And our Lord points to this, this very Psalm.
What is indeed going to happen, gentlemen? What's going to happen is this, that the stone which the builders rejected is going to be made the head of the corner. As he spoke to his enemies. The doors of the temple shall be flung wide open as he enters in his triumph, and he is made the head of a quarter. Oh, it happened. They hounded him to death. It looked as if God had forsaken him, but God intervened and raised him from the dead, and the exalted Christ has approached not the doors of the temple in Jerusalem merely, but has entered in into the very presence of God in heaven.
The stone which the builders rejected made their head of the court. After the resurrection and ascension of our Lord, the gospel began to be preached. And the Sadducees tried to stop it. They got hold of Peter and John, and they put them in prison. Then they brought them out and stood before them, stood them before the court of the Sanhedrin. And they said, we're straightly charging you, you have not got to, uh, speak to anybody again in the name of Jesus. You can settle that yourself, says Peter, whether we obey you or obey God, but as far as we're concerned, we're going to obey God.
He said, he can't listen to you. Gentlemen, he said, you see, we've performed this miracle, we've, we've cured this lame man, we've made him walk, we've cured him in the name of Jesus, who was the stone set at naught of you builders. God has made him the head of the corner. Let's think about that now as we finish. There were the Jewish leaders of the temple, the chief priest, the high priest, the captain of the temple. They were responsible for running the temple and the temple services, to lead the praise of Israel.
They had rejected the chief cornerstone of the temple. And God had intervened to make that stone that they rejected the very headstone of all. That is God's plan for redemption. See that lame man at the temple? In the name of Jesus Christ, Peter and John gave him new life, and he went dancing into the temple. Yes, Peter. Let that be an illustration to you of what God is going to do one day.
For the times of the restitutions of all things are coming, and all things that have been spoken by the prophets should be fulfilled. The great day of millennial glory is come, and when it comes, it will come through this Jesus Christ. There is salvation in none other. There is none other name given among men whereby you must be saved. Three scriptures then from our book, uh, five of Psalms that talk to us about the Lord Jesus. And we should notice that they are all concentrating on that last period just before he died, his death, resurrection, and ascension, and the program for coming glory.
Perhaps it's no accident that they come in the last book of the Psalms. We shall find next week that whatever else it talks about, book five of the Psalms will concentrate our attention on God's bringing back the captivity of his people and bringing them at length to the glory and the blessing and the enjoyment of the Messianic age. Thank you for your enormous patience.
