[0:00] This is the morning service at Holy Trinity on the 26th of January 2003. The preacher is Paul Dudley.
[0:12] His sermon is entitled God's King Rules and is based on Psalm 110. Father, we do indeed thank you for your word.
[0:27] I thank you that you have revealed yourself to us through your son. Father, we pray now that as we come to your word that you will open our ears and our hearts and our minds to that, that you help us to live lives that bring honour and glory to you.
[0:42] We pray this in your son's name. Amen. It's great to be an Australian. I love being an Australian.
[0:54] Today is Australia Day. And there are many people throughout the nation affirming their allegiance to Australia. Australia, the great country.
[1:06] Australians, all let us rejoice. For we are young and free. Particularly, it's great to be an Australian when we kick the poms in the cricket.
[1:18] Isn't it great? We won. We beat them. Well, not me personally. But I tell you, I'm so proud to be an Australian when they kicked them last night.
[1:33] Well, it was almost a kicking last night, but we still won. We won. That's why we say it, isn't it? When there's something great that's happened of Australia. We affirm, we identify ourselves with that.
[1:46] We love being Australians. I love being Australian. It is fantastic. For most of us here, we would also affirm that we are Christians.
[1:59] That we follow Christ. We love being Christians. We identify with him. But who is it that you follow? Who is it that you follow?
[2:10] Who is this Christ? Who is this man Jesus? Well, in today's psalm, King David, although he had never met Jesus, he wrote about him some 1,000 years before Christ's birth.
[2:26] He wrote about the great Messiah, the great king that would come 1,000 years later. It was his great hope that the Messiah would come.
[2:39] If you open up your Bibles to page 490, that's in front of you, you can follow along as we work through this great psalm. This is one of the great psalms. It's alluded to more times than many of the other psalms in the New Testament.
[2:56] It is a fantastic psalm. Well, as you know, God made a promise with King David King David wanted to build himself the temple so that God could come and dwell there.
[3:10] But through the prophet Nathan, David was told that he would not build the temple. But God made a promise to David that he would have, there would be a kingdom that would never end and it would come through his offspring.
[3:26] There would be a king that would come. His throne would be eternal. And this would be the great Messiah, the king that would come. Well, many expected that it would be an earthly king, a king that would set up the nation Israel to rule for many, many years.
[3:46] But many of these kings were disappointing. This psalm seriously challenges the ideas that they had of the Messiah back then.
[4:00] The descriptions that we have here of this Messiah are just incredible. Let's have a look at the first three verses. For in those three verses we see that this Messiah would be a great king.
[4:13] Let me read the first verse. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. You notice right at the very beginning there, even before verse 1, it says, of David.
[4:27] This psalm is written by King David. But notice the way that King David describes this Messiah. The Lord says to my Lord.
[4:38] King David describes the Messiah as his Lord. He describes him as he is above him. It is like he is bowing down, worshipping this Messiah that is to come.
[4:56] We see there that he speaks the words from God. The Lord, Yahweh, says to the Messiah. So here is David uttering God's words about his Messiah.
[5:10] And what does God say about his Messiah, about the king? Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool. Here we see the Messiah is told to come and sit at the right hand of God.
[5:24] God exalts the Messiah. He puts him in a position of power and authority and rule. Close to the monarch. Close to God himself. He is to sit there exalted until every enemy is brought before him and made a footstool.
[5:43] Here we have an image of all the enemies. Israel's enemies being brought down and being brought before the king. As like if the king puts his foot on all the enemies.
[5:58] He is in control. He is the one with authority. But notice that it is Yahweh, God, who does this.
[6:11] He is the one that will make all the enemies the Messiah's footstool. It is like the two working together. And this is picked up in verse 2 and 3. The Lord sends out from Zion your mighty scepter.
[6:25] Rule in the midst of your foes. The mighty scepter of the king. A picture of his rule and authority. Who sends it out? The Lord sends it out.
[6:37] Yahweh goes before the king. Ruling in the midst of his foes. In verse 3 the picture continues of this great king.
[6:49] Verse 3 has been argued over in terms of what it actually means and what it says. If you go to the different translations you'll see how different people have translated it.
[7:00] Different commentaries pick up different points. It's quite a difficult verse. But in the end I think it's a picture here of the Messiah going out from Zion.
[7:13] Going out in holiness and glory. Going out in his rule. Establishing his kingdom. We see there his willing subjects following behind.
[7:27] Being sustained with the freshness of the morning. I don't know how fresh you feel this morning. I don't feel particularly fresh. It was quite a hot night. But where I grew up in the country up near Bathurst in New South Wales I would remember waking up early in the morning and there would be dew on the ground.
[7:49] It was freshness. It was alive. There was a lovely feel about it. This is the picture that we have here of the Messiah and his willing subjects going out with this freshness of the morning.
[8:05] Being sustained. And moving out. Well there's our first picture that David paints of the Messiah. He is a great king.
[8:16] A king who rules by the right hand side of Yahweh. In verse 4 we have the second office. The second role of this Messiah.
[8:28] That of priest. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Here we see that God is speaking again.
[8:42] Yahweh. This time he has sworn and he will not change his mind. And what does Yahweh say about his Messiah? About the king? You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
[8:56] We don't know much about Melchizedek. In Genesis chapter 14 Melchizedek was a king who came out to meet Abraham after Abraham had defeated many armies.
[9:10] But we find out as Melchizedek comes out that he is also a priest. So he is a royal priest. And he comes out and he offers praise to God for Abraham.
[9:22] And Abraham gives him some of the bounty that he has brought back. Here we see a great picture, a little picture of this priest Melchizedek.
[9:38] Here we see him as one. We don't see his birth or his death. And it sort of represents Christ, the Messiah, sorry, and his priesthood.
[9:50] One that would last forever. Not like the priests of Aaron who once they died that was the end of their reign. Not like the priests of Eli who sinned.
[10:03] He was a perfect priest. This was the Messiah. The perfect priest who would bring about a perfect salvation. This is the royal priest.
[10:17] In verses 5 through to 7 we have the third office that is described of this Messiah. That of divine warrior. That of a great warrior going out to bring about the promises in verses 1 and 2.
[10:35] Let me read 5 and 6. The Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter the kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses.
[10:47] He will shatter heads over the wide earth. Here we see a picture of the divine warrior going out in fierce battle, conquering all the enemies.
[11:02] But notice in verse 6, again, Yahweh, this time is at the right hand of the king, of the Messiah. The two again are acting as one as they go out to conquer.
[11:16] There we see the nearness of Yahweh and the Messiah. Two working together on that day of wrath. Notice the fierceness of the battle.
[11:28] As you know, we're about to send or we're sending some troops over to the Middle East at the moment for war. What could be war? We're not sure whether it will be or not.
[11:41] We're not sure whether it will bring peace or whether it won't. I guess it all seems so very much up in the air and it's dividing so many different people. But here, the judgment is very clear.
[11:54] Here we see Yahweh and the Messiah executing judgments among the nations, filling them with corpses, filling them, he will shatter the heads over the wide earth.
[12:08] Here we see the great king and the Messiah bringing about their victory. In verse 7, we see there that divine warrior stops only just to get some rest and provision from a stream.
[12:24] He will drink from the stream by the path. Therefore, he will lift up his head. Here we see the warrior renewing his strength so that he can complete the route.
[12:37] This is the picture that David describes of this great king, king, priest and divine warrior. This is the person that we follow, Christ.
[12:51] Christ. You see, as we look at this and we look at the New Testament, we can see that Christ fulfils this role. We see that Christ is greater than David.
[13:03] Acts chapter 2 verse 34 tells us this. In fact, Hebrews chapter 1 tells us that Christ, that Jesus is above the angels, that he is seated at the right hand of God.
[13:15] The New Testament paints this picture for us. Christ. We see that he is the eternal priest of the order of Melchizedek from Hebrews chapter 5 through to 7.
[13:27] We see there him providing a perfect sacrifice of himself, once offered for all to provide a salvation, an eternal salvation.
[13:39] salvation. We see that this priest intercedes for us, mediates for us between us and God, allowing us to speak directly to God in our prayers.
[13:55] Jesus is the divine warrior, conquering death upon the cross, conquering his enemies. Jesus is this great Messiah.
[14:10] As we look here, I want to say four things that are important for us to take away from this today. The first is, we can see that the Old Testament is important, it is important for us.
[14:27] It gives us the categories, it helps us understand who Christ is and what he came to do. Psalm 110 is alluded to some 25 times in the New Testament.
[14:38] It helps the apostles shape their teaching on the exaltation, the heavenly session and the royal priesthood of Christ. It enables us to see the way that God has worked throughout history, to see his plan of salvation.
[14:55] We should not avoid reading the Old Testament. We need to be reading it. It helps us in our understanding of seeing who and what Christ came to do.
[15:07] But we must be reading it in that light, trying to understand God's plan of salvation. The second thing I want to say this morning is, is that Jesus is King.
[15:19] He is seated at the right hand of God and he is waiting to all surrender to him. What does it mean that Christ is King? Well, this week we've been having a children's holiday program and it's been fantastic.
[15:35] One of the songs is Jesus is the mighty, mighty king. It's one of Colin Buchanan's songs. It's a great song. But one of the lines says is that Jesus is the mighty, mighty king because God made him the boss of everything.
[15:52] What does it mean that Jesus is the king? means that he is the boss of everything. Is Christ the boss of everything in your life?
[16:04] Of your money? Of your time? Is he just the boss here on Sundays or is he midweek the boss of your lives as well? In Australia we don't like authoritarians.
[16:19] We don't like this picture of authority. But here we are told that Christ is the boss of everything. The third thing is Christ is our great high priest.
[16:32] Christ is the one who mediates for us, who brings us salvation, an eternal salvation. Are we trusting in him? The fourth thing is, is the picture of a divine warrior there.
[16:48] Christ is the divine warrior. Which side are you on? Are you against Christ or for Christ? Because the picture that we have here of the divine warrior is very strong.
[17:05] He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses. He will shatter heads over the wide earth. later this year in May, Michelle and I are expecting our third child.
[17:24] I'm sort of hoping for a boy. I've got two girls, I sort of hope that it would be a boy. I've got my Thomas the Tank set all ready to go. My girls don't like playing with it very much.
[17:36] I love playing with it but they always wreck it. But it would be great to have a boy. When we look at a baby there is so much hope that we can see there. We have great hopes for this, this child.
[17:50] And living in this great land, Australia, we have so many things that we can offer for our children. All of us have different hopes.
[18:03] King David had a great messianic hope. He looked forward to a great messiah that would come, a royal priest, a divine warrior.
[18:16] Jesus has come and fulfilled that hope but we also wait for its consummation. Christ has come but we wait for his coming again.
[18:28] Therefore as we look back with this psalm we also look forward to when Christ will come again. We look forward to when Christ will put things the way they should be.
[18:43] Jesus is the Christ but we also say come O Lord.