Psalm 110 (King and Priest, Jeff Kliewer)

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Psalm 110 (King and Priest) Selected Psalms Jeff Kliewer

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The scriptures in Psalm 110 would accomplish a work in the hearts of every person who gathers here today, including my own
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Lord. I pray that you would show us again who you are, Jesus the
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Lord, the King, the Priest. We pray that we would see this truth more clearly than ever this morning, and it would change how we live, that we would go out to serve the
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King of Kings and Lord of Lords, that we would offer ourselves willingly for the day of battle.
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You would receive the due of your youth, God. Lord, we pray that you would change us by your
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Word, accomplish a purpose in us, and then out into the world. In Jesus' name,
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Amen. A young, excited evangelist named
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Daniel, when he first came to faith as a teenager, began to share the gospel around town, and one day with his buddy, he said, well, why don't we go share the gospel at the
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New Age shop? There's a witch there who sells New Age paraphernalia. Why don't we go in and share the gospel with her?
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I mean, greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world. We don't need to run from witches. We can run to witches and tell them about the power of Jesus Christ.
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So he and his friend went into the New Age shop, and there was nobody there. However, there was a back room, and in the front, next to the door, there was a grand piano.
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And so Daniel decided, I know what I'll do. I'll begin to play Amazing Grace, and we're gonna stir up a spirit here.
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And so he got on the piano and began to play Amazing Grace, and he had a good voice.
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He could belt it out. He sang Amazing Grace from the depth of his heart, and as he began to sing, a woman emerged from the back.
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Looking the part of a New Age shop seller, looking a bit like a witch, she did. She came to the front, and she stood by the piano, and she began to sing
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Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound. And she belted it out from her heart as loudly as Daniel was.
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Now this was not the reaction that he was expecting, but it shouldn't have been that surprising.
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It provoked him in his heart, and so he stopped playing, and stood up and began to share the very words of Jesus Christ.
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But he tells this story to say that, I learned a lesson that day. The lesson is this, everybody likes
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Jesus. Everybody's happy to sing Amazing Grace. Even witches can sing
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Amazing Grace. But here's the problem, the Jesus to whom they sing is a different Jesus.
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The witch could sing the words, but the Jesus that she served was not the king and the priest of Psalm 110.
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Rather, the Jesus that she knew was either a figment of her own imagination, or perhaps a demon that she had come to believe in, and given the name
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Jesus. I found this to be true in my own ministry. When I was young and energetic, I went out to Clearwater for a week and shared the gospel with Scientologists who were walking around, because Clearwater is a real hub of Scientology.
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And I found that to a person, they all said, oh yeah, we honor Christianity, we honor
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Jesus, we accept Jesus, we have no problem with Jesus, but you need to come and do this other thing over here.
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And they had these strange metal rods that they wanted me to grab, and as they would ask me questions, it would somehow measure the electric currents in my body, and they would be able to discern if I had some mental hang -ups in me.
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And so I refused to grab those things, and I just preached the gospel, moved on to the next person, went into a kind of a bookstore of a similar nature.
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It was a Scientology bookstore, kind of new -agey in the things they were selling. And I walked in and talked to the founder of the bookstore, who was in her own office, and she began to tell me about how for 30 years she's been operating clear, also called operating thetan, which
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I thought sounded a lot like operating Satan with a lisp. But she was operating thetan, operating clear for the last 30 years.
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She had rid herself of her reactive mind. Now she could operate clear without reacting, without ever getting angry, without wrath.
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And as I told her about Jesus, she kept her calm. And I said goodbye, because she didn't really want to hear the words of Scripture.
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And I saw a young lady who was shopping, and I began to share the gospel with her. Listening from the other room, this shop owner heard me tell about the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the
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Father but by Him. And after about five minutes of my sharing, this woman came running out of her office yelling at me, to which
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I wanted to say, whatever happened to that operating clear thing you were telling me about? Tell me that one again, that joke about how you don't have wrath or anger anymore?
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But I didn't say that. Shared the gospel as best I could and moved on. But the lesson remains.
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People say they like Jesus. People claim to love Jesus. Every religion claims to honor
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Jesus. And if you were to ask 99 % of the people in this culture, they would speak positively of Jesus.
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The question is, which Jesus do they worship? Psalm 110 presents us with a picture of Jesus which is very different than the understanding of pop culture in America.
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You guys can turn there to Psalm 110. This is the most quoted Psalm in the
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New Testament. In fact, the most quoted Old Testament passage. Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, they will all pick up on the story where Jesus goes to the temple and the end of Matthew chapter 22 verses 41 to 46,
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Jesus stumps them by asking the question, if the Messiah is David's son, how is it that David calls him
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Lord? So that's a very important turning point in the story of the Synoptic Gospels.
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Peter leads off in Acts chapter 2 by preaching from Psalm 110. The book of Hebrews in a very real way unfolds around Psalm 110.
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In Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3, Jesus is the radiance of God's glory. And we see him seated at the
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Father's right hand after what? After he has provided purification for sins, which is the language of a priest.
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The priest purifies. So today we're going to see Jesus as the king that was foretold in Psalm 110, but also as the priest of Psalm 110.
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This Psalm has been called David's Creed. We just sang a creed, didn't we?
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I believe in God the Father. I believe in Jesus Christ. I believe in the
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Holy Spirit. We sang that our God is three in one. We sang a creed.
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David sang a creed in Psalm 110 a thousand years before Jesus came.
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Here we are 2 ,000 years after Christ, but David was singing to the same Jesus that we know.
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He didn't have as much light as we have. He didn't have the fullness of understanding as those of us who have come after the cross and known about his crucifixion and resurrection and fully understand the revelation that was given in the
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New Testament. David had light though, and especially prophetic light, because we're told when he wrote these words in Matthew 22, we're told by the
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Spirit he said these things. What we're about to read is not just the mind of David.
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He is seeing things in Psalm 110 that are taught by God, that only the
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Holy Spirit could have revealed to him, that the Lord said to my Lord, that God the
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Father is able to speak to God the Son, a separate person, and say to him, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.
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He, the Father, is able to extend the scepter to the king and say, rule in the midst of your enemies.
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This is the creed of the church, that God exists as Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and the work of God.
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His priestly work in verse 4 we'll get to today, making atonement for sin. This is the work of the
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Messiah. So Psalm 110, Ralph already read it for us, David's Creed.
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The main idea, the same Lord who is coming to reign as king has already come as priest.
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This is what the psalm is about, it's about the King whose name is Jesus, who has come to be our priest.
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Verse 1 and 2, the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
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The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies.
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In the book of Genesis, we see the creation of the nation Israel to mediate blessing to the world, and part of the creation of this nation is that there would be a seed that comes from Abraham, and this seed is one in the same with the seed of the woman of Genesis 315.
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So at the fall of man, man is cursed with the ground no longer bearing fruit easily.
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Woman has the curse of childbirth pain and that she would desire to rule over her husband and find that a struggle, but the snake was cursed as well.
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In Genesis 315, the snake is cursed that there would be enmity, hatred between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman.
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The seed of the woman, the one who comes from woman, a human being would crush the head of the serpent, but the serpent, the seed of the serpent, would strike his heel.
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This promise of a coming seed to crush Satan, to break the curse, this is a theme that carries throughout the
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Bible. From Genesis 315, we then follow the righteous seed that goes through Noah and then
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Shem, and then you see in Genesis chapter 12, the calling of Abraham and through his seed, singular
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Galatian tells us, not plural, through his seed the world will be blessed. The seed of Abraham, but of Abraham who has two sons, to whom does the blessing flow?
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Isaac or Ishmael? Isaac. And then Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau.
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The promised seed does not come through Esau, it comes through Jacob, but Jacob has 12 sons.
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Of the 12 sons, which will be the ruling king? To whom does the scepter belong?
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Genesis 49 10, the scepter does not depart from Judah or the ruling staff from between his feet.
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So Judah is the chosen among the twelve for the seed to come through. By the time we get to the lineage of Judah, a great king arises.
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First of all, Saul, the people sought a king, they're looking for this deliverer, but Saul was not righteous in God's eyes.
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He's replaced by King David, and according to 2nd Samuel 7 13, David's throne is established forever.
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He is the coming seed. A son of David will rule forever.
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So now we see this ruling language. Look again at Psalm 110, the
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Lord says to my Lord. Whenever you see Lord capitalized like that, that's
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Yahweh, the tetragrammaton, the name of God, Y -H -W -H. He says to my
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Adonai, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
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The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. There it is, that's that ruling staff.
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And so you know we're looking for the Messiah, the coming ruler, the coming conqueror. Rule in the midst of your enemies.
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The coming Lord, the coming Messiah will rule and reign.
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He is the king. He is the coming ruler of the world. The world has not recognized him.
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We know that the Lord says to my Lord refers to the Father speaking to the
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Son. Sit at my right hand. Jesus knew that and explained it in Matthew 22.
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But I have a question for you. In this passage, who are the enemies? The Lord says to my
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Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. And again we see at the end of verse 2, rule in the midst of your enemies.
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Who are the enemies of God? Well, the knee -jerk reaction would be to picture someone like Adolf Hitler, right?
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Hitler is the enemy of God. And the great leaders that have killed so many people and the the horrible dictators of history, perhaps they're the enemies that are in view here.
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As we mentioned earlier, 99 % of all people in America think that they're going to heaven.
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Do you know that? 99 % of people if asked if they're going to heaven will either say,
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I hope so or I think so. They have an expectation that when they die they'll go to heaven. Who are the enemies of Psalm 110?
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Dogs are God -centered. Cats are man -centered.
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If you were to serve a dog food, the dog will gladly take the food and pant and thank you for it and consider you like God.
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Look how he provides for me. Look how he serves me. And they'll jump and love you and care for you and assume because of what you give that you are
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God. Now they mistake man for for God, right? They don't know God in the way that we can.
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But cats on the other hand, when you serve a cat, when you give them everything they need, they take that and they say, look how he serves me.
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I must be God. Dogs and cats are very different.
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Dogs are more God -centered, probably more man -centered. Cats are very cat -centered.
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The enemies of God are not just the Adolf Hitlers of the world and the
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Pol Pots and the Stalins. According to Jesus, anyone who has not repented of their sin and put their trust in Jesus is still at enmity with God.
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And here's what the world does. Rather than bowing the knee to the God of the
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Scriptures, they fashion a God in their own image. Cats assume that they're gods and people assume that they're gods.
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Rather than accepting the Jesus as revealed in Scripture, they fashion a
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Jesus in their own mind that looks exactly like them to be exactly who they are.
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You'll hear some people say, I'm not have a book telling me what to believe.
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I create my own truth. I determine my own truth. The enemies pictured in verse 1 and 2 are not just the
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Hitlers of the world, but all those who have exchanged the glory of the true God for images of birds and animals and idols and images made to look like them.
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Jesus is told, rule in the midst of your enemies. And this is bad news because it's an indication that the coming
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Messiah will crush sinful people. And yet all of us have the same problem.
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All of us stand here unable to judge one another, unable to say, I am better than you, because in the eyes of God we all fall short of his glory.
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And this is the problem. We are not born in righteousness and walk in perfection like Adam and Eve walking in the garden before the fall.
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No, we are sons and daughters of Adam who walk in sin and every commandment that God gives we break.
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Even at the level of the heart, thou shalt not commit adultery. We lust after those who are not our spouses.
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Thou shalt not murder. We have anger and wrath inside of us, and every time the
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Lord gives a command we break it. Lawbreakers are enemies of God.
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Truth inventors are enemies of God. We live in a culture that does not believe in absolute truth, but when we say that God is king and the
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Lord says to my Lord, rule in the midst of your enemy, he is the one who defines truth.
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He is the one that tells us what is true and what is a lie. And yet in our culture, people invent religion.
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They make a Jesus that fits an image that they have of what God should be like, according to their reasoning, their human judgment.
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The bad news of the Bible is that we are all sinners who fall short of the glory of God, and there is coming a day when
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God will judge the world in righteousness, with justice, and according to the truth that he has revealed.
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But brothers and sisters, Psalm 110 is good news, and here
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I want you to see in verse 3 and 4 the gospel that saves us. Even though the enemies of God abound, in fact it would be every fallen son and daughter of Adam, yet in verse 3 there is a people, your people, verse 3 and 4, your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power.
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In holy garments, from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours.
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The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.
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This is good news, but I must say it's a bit hidden. It's not good news on the face of it, because you may not understand who
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Melchizedek is. So we're going to take a moment to do that, but the first thing I want you to see, the good news is that Jesus is a priest.
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The same one who's coming as a king. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.
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He is coming as king, he's coming as Lord, but the first coming of Jesus was to do the work of a priest, and he remains a priest forever, our great high priest.
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Jesus is the priest, not just a king, but also a priest.
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Now what does a priest do? A priest stands between a holy God and a sinful man, and mediates between the two.
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He's an intercessor that brings the sinner to the holy God. Now this is the only way to come.
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There are some people that, in seeing their desperate condition, are rather reckless.
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They know they're sinners, they know they're lawbreakers, but they assume everything will be fine. I like the commercial,
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I'm not even sure what it's for, so I'm not endorsing the product, but there's some guy working on somebody else's brakes, and the guy is just completely haphazard, doesn't know what he's doing, and the guy driving who's going to get his car back is concerned, and the answer of the guy who's fixing the brakes says, if the brakes don't stop you, something will, and then kicks him out.
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Many people live their life before God like that. Hey, you know what, it'll work out.
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I'm just going to ride with it. When I die, I'll find out if I go to heaven. Other people try to negotiate with God, that if I can become good enough, if I can just help enough people and be religious enough, then
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God will accept me. I'm sure that my good deeds will balance out my bad deeds, and then on the day of judgment,
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I can hold my good deeds before God and say, look, look how I went to church. I was there every
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Sunday, Lord. Look how I helped people, so don't worry about my sin.
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I'm fine, because look, and they think they're going to negotiate something with God.
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One of my children is a very good negotiator. He's always looking for food, and he'll keep asking for things to eat and try to wear you down, and then even if he makes a deal, then once he's got that, he'll try to get a little bit more.
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I told him he should write a book called The Art of the Meal, because he's such a good negotiator, but you cannot negotiate with God.
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There's not going to be a day where you stand before the throne and plead your righteousness and say, look at my righteousness,
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God. This is not the God presented in Psalm 110. No. There's one way for sin to be removed from a sinner.
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It's not going to happen by happenstance, and it's not going to happen by negotiation.
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It can only be atoned by blood. The soul that sins must die.
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Either you give your life blood in death, and you go away from God, departing from God for all eternity, or the blood of another, the blood of a
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Messiah, intercedes on your behalf and stands in the gap between you and the
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Holy God, and that precious blood washes your sin away. That is the work of a priest.
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Without a priest, none shall stand before God. You cannot stand in your own righteousness.
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It's filthy rags before Him. You and I need the priest, and here he is.
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I'm going to show you that it's Jesus. We who believe in Him are the people who offer ourselves freely, willingly on the day of His power, in the righteousness, dressed in the holy garments of God, the righteousness of Christ.
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We, the womb of the morning, the dew of His youth, from the early days of the church, people rallied to believe.
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3 ,000 on the first day. Picture dew on the grass as we see snow laying on the ground.
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The dew in the morning, refreshing, watering the earth.
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So was the church from the beginning, and now spreading out to the ends of the earth. This is the reward, the inheritance of the priest, but I'm telling you that Jesus is this priest.
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In verse 4, the Lord has sworn and will not change His mind. In other words, He declares this with an oath.
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It's an unchangeable thing. You are a priest.
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Following the prepositions, you refers to the Lord. The Lord, God the
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Father, says to my Lord, this one who is Lord and King, you are a priest. How so?
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After the order of Melchizedek. Now you need to understand one thing. The descendants of Judah were kings, right?
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They were the kingly line, and only one king at a time, but they must come from the line of Judah. The Levites were the priestly line.
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Jesus did not descend from the Levites, so how then can He be a priest?
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He doesn't meet the qualification of being a Levite. Hebrews chapter 7 will answer that question, but now
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I'd just like to pull up some observations from Genesis chapter 14.
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When we're told that Jesus is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, we need to turn back to Genesis chapter 14 and find out who is
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Melchizedek. Turn with me, and forgive me for using so much scripture while preaching the
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Word. Nowadays it's anathema just to spend so much time in the
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Bible, but I say that's what preaching should be. Let's go to the Word. Verse 18, 19, and 20 in Genesis 14.
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This mysterious appearance of one called Melchizedek. Eight observations.
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And Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed him and said,
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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.
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And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. Now you say that's a little bit random.
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Where did that come from? In the story of Genesis 14, it does appear rather random. Abraham goes and rescues
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Lot from some some armies that had carried his nephew away. He's coming back with the spoils of the war.
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He's met by the king of Sodom, who's very glad for the deliverance. But then this mysterious figure named
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Melchizedek shows up. Three verses, gone, and that's it.
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We don't hear of him again until Psalm 110. And then finally in Hebrews.
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Three places in the Bible that this man appears. Eight observations about him.
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Number one, Melchizedek, in Hebrew, means king of righteousness.
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Melchi, king. Zedek, righteousness. Melchizedek is the king of righteousness.
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Number two, he was priest of God Most High. Do you see that in the text?
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We're told that in verse 18 parenthetically. Oh, by the way, he's a priest of God Most High.
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Number three, he comes from a place called Salem. Same root as we have in the
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Hebrew of shalom. It means peace. He's a king of peace.
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Very likely this becomes, after Jeru conquers it, this becomes Jerusalem.
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Jerusalem. But he comes at this time from a city called peace. Number four, he brings out bread and wine.
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An interesting thing. We're not told much about him, of what he does or brings, but we are told one thing.
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He brings bread and wine. Number five, he blesses Abraham. As Abraham is returning from war,
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Melchizedek blesses him. Number six, he receives a tithe from Abraham.
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Of this war spoil, Abraham divides out a tenth and gives it to this Melchizedek, who came from nowhere, in the narrative of the text.
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Number seven, we've noted he comes out of nowhere, just abruptly appears in the narrative of Genesis without any introduction.
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He's just Melchizedek. There he is. And then finally, number eight, he leaves the
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Genesis narrative just as inconclusively. He's just gone. After this, we don't see him again until a promise is made in Psalm 110.
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So if we had time to go through Hebrews 7, we don't now, but I am going to encourage you to read it on your own later. And for now,
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I'll summarize. That in every instance of those eight points, Jesus is the only fulfillment.
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He's the only possible candidate. Melchizedek very likely is
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Jesus. Just as Jesus was that fourth man in the fiery furnace, when
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Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown in, and it looked like they were doomed, but a fourth man was among them,
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Jesus. Perhaps Jesus was the one who wrestled with Jacob. Perhaps Jesus was the commander of the army of the
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Lord, who faced Joshua. Jesus, before his coming, before taking on flesh, making an appearance, that's possible.
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It is also possible that Melchizedek was a real person, a real priest, who lived in a city called
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Salem, and he serves as a prefiguring of the Christ. He's a type or a shadow of the coming
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Christ. Either way, the point remains that this Melchizedek was placed there, these three little verses in the narrative of Genesis, for our good.
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That when Jesus came, we would recognize him as our priest. Though not a Levite, he is the true priest.
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How so? King of righteousness. He is the righteous one, the only sinless one, who is the king of kings and Lord of lords.
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When he comes in Revelation 19, his robe is dipped in blood, the name of God, Lord of lords, king of kings, tattooed or on his sash of his leg.
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He comes as a conquering king, giving righteousness to those who have believed in him.
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He is king of righteousness. He is the great high priest. How so? He made an offering, a once -and -for -all offering, whereas the
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Levites would come time and again, day after day, into the sanctuary to lay animals down upon an altar that their blood would be shed for the forgiveness of sin, and especially on the
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Day of Atonement, once a year, the great high priest going into the Holy of Holies to offer blood on the altar.
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Jesus came once and for all, bearing the cross from Jerusalem outside the gate, up that hill called
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Calvary, laying down like a lamb for the slaughter, offering a sacrifice, his own body, not a separate lamb, his body the lamb.
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Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So he is the priest who offers it, and he is the sacrifice itself.
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This is our great high priest, a once -and -for -all sacrifice. He is king of peace, because he makes peace between a holy
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God and a sinful man like me. I cannot come to God without a priest. He is my priest, and I go to the
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Father because he has taken my sin, and now there is reconciliation between an enemy of God like me.
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I have been called a friend of God, John 15, 15, because of my priest and him alone. He is the king of peace.
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Jesus brought bread and wine the night before he was betrayed.
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He took bread and broke it and said, this is my body broken for you. And he took the cup and passed it and said, drink of this.
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This is forgiveness in my blood. And then going out, he was betrayed by Judas, and the next morning led out to the slaughter.
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His actual body, his actual blood given. Melchizedek pictured this by bringing physical bread and wine to Abraham.
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Jesus asserts superiority to Abraham by a blessing. As Abraham blessed,
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I'm sorry, as Melchizedek blessed Abraham, it was shown that Melchizedek is greater than Abraham, because without doubt, the greater blesses the lesser.
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And in receiving that blessing, in humbling himself before Melchizedek, Abraham is saying that Melchizedek is the greater.
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And within Abraham, as he did that, was the seed of Levi. And so the
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Levitical priesthood that would come from Abraham's flesh was submitted as being lesser to the priesthood of Melchizedek.
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And so Jesus is a priest, even though he doesn't come from Levi, he comes from a different priesthood altogether.
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And the greater Melchizedek is higher than the lesser Levitical priesthood.
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I know that's a lot to digest, that's fire hose right there, but here's the good news. It's all written in Hebrews 7. It's all there for you.
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Go back, kind of tying in with that. If the blessing is offered from the greater to the lesser, the tithe is given up.
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We give our tithes to God. Every Sunday morning, we come with an offering to give a tenth of what was given to us to the greater, because we humbly say we are the lesser.
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So it is that Abraham submitted himself to Melchizedek, Jesus.
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Jesus takes on a genealogy, but he was son of God from all eternity. So just as Melchizedek comes into the story out of nowhere, without genealogy mentioned, so it is that before Jesus took on the genealogy of being the descendant, born of a virgin, born of Mary, before the incarnation,
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Luke 135, when he's born of a woman, before that, he's already the Son of God. Having no beginning, coming out of nowhere, figuratively speaking, he has always been the
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Son of God. And so he departs from the narrative in the same way, showing that he will reign forever and continue with a priesthood that never ends.
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He doesn't die like Levites die. You don't have to replace him with the next great high priest, because he is the great high priest forever.
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So Hebrews unpacks that, and back to Psalm 110 now. We're coming in for a landing.
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In Psalm 110, when we're told you are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek, that promise, confirmed with an oath, declares that Jesus will never be replaced.
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There will be no priest to take over after him. Alert the Catholic Church, we don't need priests any longer.
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We have a great high priest. Read the book of Hebrews. He makes that offering perfectly.
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Key in on that word forever. Circle it, underline it, use a highlighter.
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You are a priest forever. The author of Hebrews will finish that astounding passage in the seventh chapter by reminding us that whereas the
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Levites got their priesthood from genealogy, they're born to the right family, Jesus's priesthood is confirmed by an indestructible life.
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Though his lifeblood was spilled out on the cross, he died the sinner's death, he rose again from the dead, and by his resurrection and his eternal life that goes from there, he is declared with power to be the
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Son of God, the priest forever. There will never be another.
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He is the great high priest. So finally, we move into the last three verses of the psalm, and this is why
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I began the way I did, talking about the witch who can sing amazing grace, the
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Scientologists who say they honor Jesus, and a majority of our culture that reinvents
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Jesus in their image. They haven't read God's Word to see who it is with whom they're dealing.
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They're imagining a figment, but this is the Jesus of the
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Scriptures. Verse 5 to 7 is a terrifying picture. We had some graphic imagery of the dew of Jesus's youth, we had this picture of the the enemies of Jesus being put under his feet like a footstool, but look at the graphic imagery of verses 5, 6, and 7.
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The Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter kings on the day of his wrath, shattering the great men of earth like they're porcelain chess pieces.
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The king's just shattered when he comes. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses.
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It's a humbling image. He will shatter chiefs over the wide earth.
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The coming of Jesus in judgment at the second coming is king. He will drink from the brook by the way, therefore he will lift up his head.
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This is a picture of a warrior in battle, and he stoops down to drink from the brook, and he rises up refreshed.
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The judgment of Jesus here doesn't even tire him. He finds refreshment at the brook, executing judgment along the way.
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A very different Jesus than the one presented by culture, but isn't it what the
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Bible told us? Read the first chapter of Revelation. Read the twelfth chapter. When the earth is falling on people, and they're crying out, hide us from his face and from the wrath of the
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Lamb. It's not just the Father's wrath. It's the wrath of the Son in executing judgment.
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Now you say, how does this square with, let's say, 1st Timothy chapter 2, where we're told, preachers, men, lift up your hands in prayer without quarreling and without any anger.
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How can God tell us to have no anger, to have no wrath in our heart, when we read that he shatters kings on the day of his wrath?
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Answer, we're not God. He's the judge of the earth.
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We're not. We're to love our enemies. When we're struck on one cheek, we're to turn the other.
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But that does not negate the fact of who he is. The true Jesus is a judge that's coming.
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Make peace with him while there's time. Come to him in faith. I'm sorry, but I think that the evangelical and church in America, by and large, presents
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Jesus as a pathetic figure that's soft and weak, even effeminate, and would never judge.
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But that's not the Jesus of the Scripture. In fact, I was listening to, you know, I'll name names.
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I was listening to Benny Hinn. By the way, in the New Testament, they name names.
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Alexander the coppersmith. There's times when we can call out names. Benny Hinn was presenting
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Jesus in a certain way. I wrote down, because I was listening, I thought, wow, it's not the
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Jesus I know. He was talking about why not everybody gets healed. And he said, the problem is, if they're uptight,
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God cannot get through that. If the person is too uptight, God cannot get through that.
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Healing only comes when they relax, and the presence of Jesus becomes more real than the disease.
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He presents Jesus as waiting on man to be able to humble themselves, and relax enough, and enjoy the presence of God, and then the healing will come.
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Implication being that if you can't do that, then you won't be healed. Listen, the interviewer who was talking to Benny Hinn, when he heard that, he said, whoa, as if something deep was said.
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I say, whoa, as in that's a different Jesus than the one I know. The Jesus I know is not constrained by man.
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He's not a pathetic Jesus just waiting. He is a conquering king, and if he wants to heal, he can heal like that.
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Speak the word and your servant is healed. He has a will that he's working in this world, and we, as his people, are called to live according to what he has prescribed for us in his word.
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But he's constrained by nothing. He is the king of kings. He has all power, and the picture of Psalm 110 shows him as judge, as Lord, as a true king.
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He can heal. He can save. He can do according to his desire.
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He's not constrained by man. Let's not have a cat -centered theology, but let's recognize with a
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God -centered theology that he is on the throne. Who can thwart his will?
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Nebuchadnezzar knew it, and Daniel 4. None can thwart his will. He's a powerful king, and so in closing, what do we make of this
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Psalm? How do we apply it? Come to him now as your priest.
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Perhaps there's some here that you've never repented of sin and turned to Jesus for the forgiveness of sin.
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Look, it looks harsh, and it looks scary to see
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Jesus as a coming king who will judge, but the good news of the gospel is that he already came to give his blood and atonement for sin.
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Come to him now. This is a time of grace where he's offering it freely.
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Come to him and believe. Maybe you've never turned from your sin. It's good news.
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He doesn't desire to judge. He's not delighting in judgment. We're told he doesn't take pleasure in the death of the wicked.
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He offers himself freely as the sacrifice, and if you'll but repent of your sin, believe in him, you will be saved.
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Call to him. He'll save you, and when he comes back, you will be waiting for him with joy. So now
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I say to the waiting. We're waiting for the second coming of the king, the one we know is our priest.
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Offer yourself willing in the day of battle. Let the dew of your youth, of his youth, be a prize for him that you in this life already see him as ruler.
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Rule in the midst of your enemy. How does that look in practical terms? It looks like Ignatius in the first century when he was being brought to Rome on charges of sedition and threatened with the lions' den if he would only confess that Caesar is
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Lord, and instead saying Jesus is Lord, and the Roman Christians having some clout able to rescue him, looking for avenues to get him out of death, he writes to them and says, don't do that.
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I'm going where I belong. I'm happy to face death for my king.
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I offer myself willingly, and he went to the lions in Rome. A martyr.
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That's the prize that Jesus has won, because Ignatius then would be resurrected to eternal life.
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When I was in seminary, I was in a missions tract, so I knew all the missionaries that were training there.
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I'll never forget this one from South Korea. Where are you going? North Korea.
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And the more you talk to him, the more you realize he knows he's going to die.
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It's only a matter of time, but he's training at Dallas Seminary with us to learn how to go and witness well, and how to die well, and how to live entirely for the
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Lamb of God. Offer yourself like that. I know there's a guy in Nigeria recently claiming the name of Christ.
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Boko Haram comes into his house. His father is a Muslim. This young man is a Christian, and they tell him, you will say
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Allah Akbar, or you will die. And every time they kicked him, they gave him a chance to say
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Allah Akbar, and every time he was able to gather breath, he said Jesus is Lord. And they kicked him, and they said say
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Allah Akbar, and he said Jesus is Lord, so they kicked him again. And every time they kicked him, his breath was getting weaker, until finally they kicked him to death as he said
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Jesus is Lord. That is willing sacrifice.
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That's giving all. Maybe in America we don't face that, but would you go out into the neighborhood and give your reputation to a people that think that you're bigoted?
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Listen, you're not judging them. Just share the Word of God, and say this is the
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Jesus of the Bible. Present the truth of the Scripture. Call them to faith. Be willing to bear the reproach of Christ.
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Be willing to suffer outside the gate. This is the reward that he deserves.
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We close again with verse 3, your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power.
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We're clothed in his holy garments. Let's pray. And worship team come on up. Father, we thank you so much for Psalm 110, because it shows us a picture of Jesus, which is true, and powerful, and compelling.
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Jesus, you are the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. Jesus, you are the priest that offers yourself to take away our sin.
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Jesus, we thank you for who you truly are. Help us to continue to see you in the
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Word, and not to create images in our own mind, but to believe the
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Scriptures, for in these we have life. Lord, I pray for this church to take
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Psalm 110 as a rally cry, to go offer ourselves freely in the world.
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Just so thankful for what you've done for us, Lord, we are so thankful. And Lord, right now my mind is drawn to any that don't know you.
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I ask, Lord, that you would reveal to them that this is the truth of God, the
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Jesus of the Bible, God in flesh.
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If there's any here that don't know you, Lord Jesus, I pray right now you would quicken their hearts. Do priestly work in them, overcome their unbelief, grant them repentance.
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Save, Lord Jesus, save. Draw people to yourself.
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In Jesus' name, amen. Guys, if you don't know the Lord, please come talk to myself or one of the elders.
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love to help you pray to receive Him, to turn from your sin. Let's all stand.