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A Priest Forever - Psalm 119:4-7

⁴ The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind,
“You are a priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek.”

⁵The Lord is at your right hand;
    he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.
⁶He will execute judgment among the nations,
    filling them with corpses;
he will shatter chiefs
    over the wide earth.
⁷He will drink from the brook by the way;
    therefore he will lift up his head.

The biggest question for readers of this second half of Psalm 110 today may well be, “Who is Melchizedek?” As we saw in the earlier verses, this is a Messianic psalm, teaching us something about the person and work of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. It is the Messiah to come that the Lord appears to be addressing when He compares Him to Melchizedek, so the more we know about Melchizedek, the more we know about Jesus Christ.

Melchizedek first appears in Genesis. After a great battle with five kings, Abraham rescued his nephew, Lot, and many others who had been taken captive. Melchizedek, king of Salem (later, Jerusalem), and priest of God Most High, brought Abraham bread and wine and blessed him:

All we know about Melchizedek at this point is that his name means, “King of Righteousness,” and he is king of the city called, “Peace” (Hebrews 7). But how can he be the priest of God Most High centuries before God instructed Moses on Mt. Sinai about proper worship for God’s people? The writer to the book of Hebrews list additional mysteries about Melchizedek: “He is without father or mother or genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life (Hebrews 7:3).”

David’s Lord - Psalm 110

¹ The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”

²The Lord sends forth from Zion
    your mighty scepter.
    Rule in the midst of your enemies!
³Your 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.

Psalm 110 is another messianic psalm, a psalm that teaches us about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Jesus used this psalm Himself to teach about the identity of the Christ. The Pharisees knew that the coming Christ would be the son or descendant of David. And they were content with a human monarch, one who would be as great and victorious as David. But Jesus opened their eyes to something more.

“What do you think about the Christ?” He asked. “Whose son is he?”
They said to him, “The son of David.”
He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,
“‘The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at my right hand,
until I put your enemies under your feet”’?
⁴⁵If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?”

Who Brought You Out of the Land of Egypt, Out of the House of Bondage

by John Calvin

"I am Jehovah your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other god before my face." [Ex20:2-3. cf. Vg.]

The Response of the Redeemed - Psalm 22:22-31

²² I will tell of your name to my brothers;
    in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
²³You who fear the Lord, praise him!
    All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him,
    and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
²⁴For he has not despised or abhorred
    the affliction of the afflicted,
and he has not hidden his face from him,
    but has heard, when he cried to him.

²⁵From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
    my vows I will perform before those who fear him.
²⁶The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
    those who seek him shall praise the Lord!
    May your hearts live forever!

²⁷ All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before you.
²⁸ For kingship belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.

²⁹ All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
even the one who could not keep himself alive.
³⁰ Posterity shall serve him;
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
³¹ they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it.

Deliver My Soul - Psalm 22:16-21

For dogs encompass me;16 a company of evildoers encircles me;they have pierced my hands and feet—I can count all my bones—17 they stare and gloat over me; they divide my garments among them, 18 and for my clothing they cast lots.9 But you, O LORD, do not be far off O you my help, come quickly to my aid! 20Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog! 21 Save me from the mouth of the lion! You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!

These verses from Psalm 22 clearly identify it as Messianic. The details given correspond directly to events of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which took place a thousand years after David wrote the psalm.Verse 16 says, “they have pierced my hands and fee,” which is consistent with Roman crucifixion,” and “I can count all of my bones,” may refer to the posture of the victim, with arms spread wide above the height of the shoulders, exposing the ribs. That the soldiers attending the execution would “divide [his] garments among them,” would in itself be a particular detail unique to Christ’s crucifixion, but verse 18 also says, “for my clothing they cast lots.” John 19:23-24 indicates that Jesus’s tunic was woven of one piece of fabric, so rather than tearing it, they cast lots. That both of these details correspond to the crucifixion of Jesus is remarkable. Fulfillment of prophecies like these confirm our belief and trust in both the Old Testament Scriptures and the gospels, and with the gospels their testimony to the person and work of Jesus.

Rejected by Men, Remembered by God - Psalm 22:6-11

⁶ But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
⁷All who see me mock me;
    they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
⁸“He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him;
    let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

⁹Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
    you made me trust you at my mother's breasts.
¹⁰On you was I cast from my birth,
    and from my mother's womb you have been my God.
¹¹Be not far from me,
    for trouble is near,
    and there is none to help.

Psalm 22:6-11

Psalm 22 is not a cheerful, happy psalm. But ours is not always a cheerful, happy life, and it is encouraging to know that the Old Testament saints, and even Jesus Himself experienced the same rejection and alienation we sometimes suffer. Their words and their example teach us how to handle such circumstances, and give us hope when they happen to us, too.

Sensual vs. Scriptural - Psalm 22:1-5

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame. Psalm 22:1-5

We live in a sensual generation in a sensual society. This is true not just for the hedonistic, “If it feels good, do it,” crowd. It is a logical result of a materialistic world and life view. If there is no God, no truth, only the material world we live in, we will certainly tend to be more strongly influenced our five senses and the tangible, material things that they can see, feel, hear, smell and taste. And following on this, we will be more strongly influenced by feelings and emotions than by abstract philosophical concepts like truth or justice or love or beauty. Feelings and emotions are not concrete, either , but they just happen to us without our conscious effort, and so in that sense they seem more real to the contemporary mind.

Messianic Psalms - Psalm 2

¹Why do the nations rage
    and the peoples plot in vain?
²The kings of the earth set themselves,
    and the rulers take counsel together,
    against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
³“Let us burst their bonds apart
    and cast away their cords from us.”

⁴He who sits in the heavens laughs;
    the Lord holds them in derision.
⁵Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
    and terrify them in his fury, saying,
⁶“As for me, I have set my King
    on Zion, my holy hill.”

⁷I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.

Psalm 2:1-7

Final Words - 1 John 5:18-21

¹⁸We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.¹⁹We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.²⁰And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. ²¹Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

As John finally concludes his letter he reminds his readers of four key points: we don’t have to be the way we have always been, this world is not our home, truth is found in God and, anything that is not from God is against Him.

First of all, we don’t have to be the way we have always been. In fact, we should not be. “Everyone who has been born of God does not keep sinning (v. 18).” If we have experienced Christ’s love and abide in Him we will “walk in the way He walked (2:6),” and sinful patterns and practices from the past will not define us. God so wants us to live new lives that He personally protects us, from sin and from the evil one who would tempt us and who seeks to do us harm.

Faith or Obedience?

As Reformed believers we can rightly become very excited about discovering the depths of the biblical riches of God's grace. But as a result of wrong thinking about this, many of our churches avoid talking about obedience. One reason is that many have been burned in the past by legalistic churches or another is that they may be afraid of compromising the crucial doctrine of justification through faith alone. Those are good things to avoid but passages like Titus 2:12 teach "us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age." In fact the New Testament is full of divine commands or imperatives. True if taken in the wrong way, these commands could be construed as legalism or justification by works, but when regeneration is understood aright, the renewed heart, where the Spirit is at work, makes these commands part of our inner delight in living for Christ. We obey because the Spirit has united us to Christ and inclined our hearts toward holiness .... not in order to be saved but because we are saved. All obedience needs to be grounded in grace ... that is springs from Christ's work, not something we do in order to deserve Christ's blessing. Our motive for obedience shows whether we understand the gospel or not.

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