Today we look at another Psalm of David – Psalm 110 – which is the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament. In just a few verses, it declares and summarizes God the Father’s thoughts about his Son. It begins with the “LORD saying to David’s [and our] Lord, ‘sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet'” (verse 1). Here we see, foreordained, Christ’s offices of King and Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. In God’s eternal plan, the Father intends to put all the Son’s enemies under His feet. In the ancient world, a victor symbolically placed his feet on the neck of a vanquished enemy as a mark of his victory over his foe. Here, David sees prophetically the LORD enabling His Son as King to “crush kings and rulers and judge the nations and the whole earth” (verse 6). God will “extend Christ’s mighty scepter from Zion … to the midst of His enemies” (verse 2), expanding His rule over the entire earth from Jerusalem. We notice that “His troops are arrayed in holy majesty” (verse 3), establishing the truth that the holiness of God – and those clothed in it – will ultimately triumph over evil and Christ’s ultimate enemies – the world, the flesh, and the devil. “The LORD has sworn this and will not change His mind” (verse 4). It boggles my mind that anyone would dare to defy or deny the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our holy, righteous, and sovereign Creator over all things; thus He alone is entitled to our worship and our exaltation. I cannot imagine life without Him.
Isaiah 55-57 is equally rich in prophetic content about Jesus Christ. Here, we see through the prophet Isaiah, God’s personal invitation to all mankind to come to Him. He says, “Come, all you who are thirsty; come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy, and eat! Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good; and your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (verses 1-2). Whether we know it or not, God has so ordered our lives to be thirsty and hungry creatures. Physical thirst and hunger are pictures of a greater reality – spiritual thirst and hunger. In the same way that we labor and spend money for that which does not satisfy us physically, we do the same spiritually. Life apart from God is empty, and, as we saw in Ecclesiastes, life without Him is designed to be empty. So Isaiah warns, “Let the wicked forsake their ways” (55:7). Chapters 56 and 57 continue God’s invitation to find satisfaction for life in Him alone.
I appreciate the deep truths revealed in Ephesians 2. First of all, we were dead in our sins, but now we have been made alive in Christ (verses 1-5). Saved by grace, we are now God’s special “workmanship – created to do good works” (verses 8-10). Notice here that Paul describes life without God – formerly, Paul says – “we were separated by a dividing wall of hostility … excluded, foreigners, without hope, and without God in the world” (verse 10), but “now in Christ we are brought near, freed from the law with its commandments and regulations, reconciled, and at peace with God” (verses 13-17) – all because of Jesus Christ. We are “no longer foreigners but fellow citizens and members of God’s household” (verse 19). Indeed, Jesus makes all the difference in the world, and life with God is better than life without God.
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