David’s Great Lenten Hymn about the Priest-King
Bible Passage: Psalm 110
Pastor: Joel Jenswold
Sermon Date: March 3, 2021
Do you have a favorite Lenten hymn? Maybe it seems a little out-of-place to speak of a “favorite.” There are so many good ones! To ask you to name your favorite is like asking which of your children is your favorite child. But we like what we like. From the time I was a little boy “Come to Calvary’s Holy Mountain” has been one of my favorites. Which ones do you like?
During these Wednesdays of Lent, we are looking at some “Lenten hymns.” We are looking at some of the psalms that appear during Holy Week. The book of Psalms in the Bible was the “hymnbook” and the psalms were the “hymns” of God’s people. Do you think the Holy Spirit has a favorite psalm? A favorite hymn? “Favorite” might be a poor choice of words, but the case could be made that our psalm tonight ranks right up there. Psalm 110, in addition to being inspired by the Spirit of God, was also quoted by the Spirit of God in the New Testament more than any other psalm! According to one tally, this psalm is referenced directly or indirectly 27 times in the New Testament! It must be important! It is. Martin Luther said this is the main psalm dealing with the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus himself quotes Psalm 110 during Holy Week. And so tonight we will spend our time with this Holy Week hymn, David’s Great Lenten Hymn about the Priest-King.
It’s important to keep David in the frame on this. That’s the only way we can understand the first verse: The LORD said to my lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” David first speaks of the LORD. Notice how it’s spelled. This is the great I AM. This is Jehovah-God. This is Yahweh. The covenant God of the Old Testament. The Maker and Keeper of saving promises. David says, “Yahweh/Jehovah said to my lord…” Who is David’s “lord?” Notice David uses a different word for lord. Here David used the word for “master.” In the psalm, David hears Jehovah inviting his lord and master to come up to throne-level to take the position of power and authority next to him. He is called upon to sit and reign. He is given a mighty scepter. David’s lord must be very great! His reign and rule are in the midst of and over even his enemies. And in the end, he conquers and judges them all. They all lie defeated and submissive beneath his feet. Indeed, such a one must be divine to live and reign and judge! Indeed, David’s “lord” is none other than the Christ, the Messiah!
That’s what makes Jesus’ use of this verse so interesting. It was Holy Week. The Pharisees were gathered together, watching Jesus like a hawk. Jesus asks them: What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he? The Pharisees answer: The son of David. Their answer was fine as far it went. They knew the Messiah was going to come from David’s family line. They were “safe on first base.” But Jesus wants to up the ante. And so he brings in David’s great hymn! How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him “Lord”? For he says, “The LORD said to my lord: Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.” If then David calls him “Lord,” how can he be his son? (Matthew 22:42-45)
It was kind of like a riddle. Typically, descendants defer to their ancestors as being greater. We respectfully call them great-grandfathers, and great–great-grandfathers. Using that logic the Messiah should be calling David “great-great-great…grandpa.” But in Psalm 110 we have David calling his descendant “my lord.” Things are reversed! Solve the riddle and you have the identity of the Messiah!
Jesus is the “son of David.” Jesus had the family DNA in his cells. Got it from his mother, Mary, who was from the house and line of David. But Jesus is also the Son of God, equal to the Father and the Holy Spirit. He is the one who sits on the throne in heaven and rules over all, and will one day serve as judge of all, because he is God.
Jesus confronted the Pharisees with this truth. He pressed on them to answer. “Will you say it? Will you admit I am God?” You see, the deity of Jesus is not an article of faith that is up for grabs. The identity of Jesus is not a matter where people “can agree to disagree.” Many people today want to honor Jesus, but they come up short of the honor really due to him! They will say he was a great teacher, an enlightened thinker, a champion of oddballs and outcasts, an agent of moral and cultural change, a “very spiritual man” (whatever that means). But they come up short confessing that he is God! They will not put him on the throne! To speak thus is to “damn with faint praise.” If he is just a man, however enlightened or influential, then his death was a tragedy. But, if he is God, then there must be more to this person and his work.
And that brings us to the second “verse” of David’s great Lenten hymn to the Priest-King. After David sees the Messiah ruling as a king, he sees him sacrificing as a priest. The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.” (v. 4)
Jesus is a priest in the order of Melchizedek. What does that mean? First of all we should remind ourselves that the priesthood God set up at Mt. Sinai was a “Levitical order.” All the priests came from the tribe of Levi. But in the Old Testament we meet this very interesting, very different priest named Melchizedek. We meet Melchizedek in Genesis 14 when he comes out to meet Abraham. He is both king and priest of God in Salem (the name of Jerusalem before it was Jerusalem). He’s not a Levitical priest since Levi wouldn’t be born for years! He is a completely unique priest-king!
So is Jesus! Jesus is not a Levitical priest; he’s from the tribe of Judah. Yet he is a priest. Completely unique. All those Levitical priests were busy and active at the Temple. Every day, busy offering sacrifice after sacrifice. Then home for the night. Next morning, do it all over again! They kept offering the same sacrifices over and over because they were a priesthood of “shadows.” The whole priesthood was a “foreshadowing” of Jesus. The priests themselves were shadows of Jesus. The animals they butchered and burned were shadows of Jesus.
It all pointed to that Priest of a different order, Jesus. He did not serve at the altar at the Temple in Jerusalem. He did not, day after day, watch as hands were pressed onto animal heads and sins were confessed and transferred, as it were, to the animal and then use the animal’s blood to make atonement. The Priest-King Jesus ministered at the altar that was outside the city wall, at the altar shaped like a cross. There the sins of the world were pressed onto his head, and then the knife of God’s justice made the fatal cut. And the Lamb’s blood flowed, just once, and for all! And we sing a Lenten hymn: (1) “Glory be to Jesus, who in bitter pains, poured for me the life-blood, from his sacred veins! (2) Grace and life eternal, in that blood I find. Blest be his compassion, infinitely kind!”
Is it any wonder David sang to his Priest-King? Is it any wonder that we do, too? David shows us the way on what makes a great hymn. Ever wonder what makes a great hymn? “Christocentricity.” Christ at the center. That little symbol on the cover of our hymnal says it all. It’s a Chi Rho. The first two letters of the word “Christ” in Greek. David’s son and David’s lord, the crucified, risen, ascended Priest-King, is why we sing at Lent, and Easter, and Ascension, and Pentecost, and Advent, and Christmas, and Epiphany. And our Priest-King will be at the center of our praise for all eternity in heaven!
Amen.
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