Keith Simons explains Psalm 110, addressing the question of why the Messiah, as God's perfect king, is not ruling the world now. He emphasizes that the King James translators maintained the integrity of the Scriptures, believing in their divine preservation, and thus translated difficult passages literally. The psalm reveals that the Messiah is currently seated at God's right hand, ruling in the midst of His enemies while awaiting the time when all enemies will be defeated. Simons highlights the dual role of the Messiah as both king and priest, and the ultimate victory over evil forces that will come in the future. The sermon encourages listeners to understand the significance of the Messiah's current reign and the promise of His complete rule.

You might ask, if the Messiah is God's perfect king, then why is he not ruling the whole world now? Well, today we're looking at Psalm 110, which provides us with the answer to that question. My name is Keith Symons. I'm a Bible teacher from England, and this is our podcast on how to understand the King James Version of the Bible. Today then, we're looking at Psalm 110. Psalm 110 in the King James Version also answers another question which is very curious, and it's this question. Suppose you are a Bible translator and you're translating the Old Testament from Hebrew to English, but you don't really understand what the Hebrew is saying. What do you do? Well, if you're a modern Bible translator, the approach that's taken is often to assume that there is some sort of copying error that happened in ancient times with the Old Testament text, and it's not unknown sometimes for them to, by altering a letter here and there, to try and construct a sentence where there's no manuscript evidence for the wording that they're proposing, but the end result is what they want, which is they have a nice, clear, easy-to-understand verse. Now, the King James translators didn't do that for two reasons. One is that they believed that the Bible is God's Word, so they were unwilling to change anything that was in it, and the second is that they believed in the miraculous preservation of the Scriptures to the current day. They saw how for hundreds of years the Bible had been under the control of people who were hostile to it, who didn't want people to read it, but God had preserved the Bible through that, and so for them to think in terms of ancient copying errors was most unsatisfactory. So instead, what they did when they met with something that didn't quite make sense to them was they translated it faithfully and literally out of the Hebrew into English words, and they left it to us, the English readers, to try to understand what was there. And we'll see that in Psalm 110, in verse 3 particularly, but also in verse 7. Verses that are difficult to understand, but nevertheless, the whole psalm is not difficult to understand because the psalm explains itself clearly. So let's take our usual approach and go through verse by verse and word by word. There is a simple heading for Psalm 110, a Psalm of David, and if you turn to the New Testament to Mark 12 verses 35 to 37, you'll see that Jesus also believed that this was written by David, and he based what he was saying upon that principle. Because there's an extraordinary statement in verse 1, a statement which could easily confuse us. It begins by saying, the Lord said unto my Lord. Who are these Lords? One of whom is saying something to David's Lord. Well, the first word Lord is in block capitals. That's the holy name of God in the Hebrew language. And that name, which the Jewish people do not pronounce, is the person who spoke there. And he's spoken to my Lord. And Jesus, in the passage I've just referred to, clearly believed that that referred to the Messiah, God's perfect King. And Jesus asked, if David called him my Lord, how can he be David's son? Because it was usual to refer to the Messiah as the son of David. And the answer Jesus was drawing attention to was that the Messiah was more important than David. Although the Messiah does come from David's family, and the prophecies are clear regarding that, yet nevertheless David recognised the Messiah as more important than him, because the Messiah himself is God. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. Okay, at my right hand means on the right hand side of me. Now, it was a custom at an ancient feast in Israel that you placed on the right side of the host the most important guest. So to sit at the right hand was to sit in the place of greatest honour, and everyone would see the person sitting there, and they would know that the person who arranged that feast gave the greatest honour to that person. So it's not just David who's giving great honour to the Messiah, it is Lord God, God the Father himself, who gives that greatest honour to the Messiah. But the Messiah is not yet being asked to rule all things, he's being asked to sit down, to wait. And we read in the New Testament that when Christ ascended to heaven, he sat on the right side of God the Father. He was given that place of greatest honour in heaven, and that is the reason for the ascension. Jesus rose into heaven, he didn't die again, he rose into heaven after his resurrection, and he took that place of honour. God the Father gave him that place of honour to show that he had accepted fully Christ's death on behalf of the sins of his people. And why did he sit there? Why is he waiting in that place of honour? Well, the psalm provides an answer. God the Father says, sit there until I make thine enemies thy footstool. Okay, the footstool is a piece of furniture which you rest your feet on when you're relaxing. It raises your feet above the ground. And the idea of making your enemies your footstool is a way to say they're defeated, they're under your feet. And that's the word picture there. No enemy would agree to someone putting their foot on top of them until they've been defeated totally and utterly. So what is God the Father saying here to the Messiah? He's saying I'm going to defeat your enemies totally. Satan, the devil, the evil spirits that oppose you, the evil spirits that are so powerfully controlling this world and doing evil things. In the course of time, in the future, their power is going to be utterly destroyed, so completely destroyed that they have no power whatsoever against you. But that's not immediate. That's not for the time of the resurrection or the ascension. That is for a future time. In the meantime, the Messiah receives the place of greatest honour in heaven. Verse 2. The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of the earth. The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of the earth. The Lord is the Messiah. Rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. It isn't that the Messiah, the Christ, is not ruling now. No, he rules in heaven. He rules over all things, even now in our present age. But he rules in the midst of his enemies. Like a king ruling successfully and having power over his country, but he's got enemy nations all around him. He rules in the midst, in the middle of his enemies. So it is for the Messiah, for Christ at this present time. He rules as king, but his enemies are still active. They're still working. They are controlled, but they are not. Their power is not ended. The rod of thy strength. The rod was a symbol, we sometimes call it the sceptre, that a king's held to show their authority. And if the Lord sends the rod of thy strength out of Zion, out of Jerusalem, that king doesn't just have power in Jerusalem, but from Jerusalem he has power over others. So we've now got a description of a day in verse 3, the day of thy power. And we've got a description of another day a little later on in verse 5, the day of his wrath. Now these passages both refer to warfare, and we could think that the day of thy power is the same day as the day of thy wrath. That the day when Messiah shows his power is the same day when Messiah shows his anger. But remember what it said at the beginning, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. So these passages are describing a period when Messiah waits at the right hand of God, and then a period when Messiah rules over his enemies totally. And so the day of thy power does seem to be the first of these, when Messiah is waiting for his enemies totally to be defeated. And is that not what we see in the world today? Yes, the devil still does have some power. Yes, evil forces still have some power. Yes, there are evil governments. Yes, there is great cruelty in the world, although Christ rules, although his kingdom has been revealed to those who are his people. Yet, nevertheless, it's not complete rule yet. It's a day when God is showing his power, a day when he is sending his people out, but not the final judgment against God's enemies, Messiah's enemies. So what happens, verse three, in the day of Messiah's power? Answer, thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power. Yes, Messiah is ruling over a particular group of people. Yes, he does have people who are loyal to him, and they are so loyal to him, they are willing to serve him, and they gladly serve him. They gladly work for him. They gladly fight in prayer for him. They gladly do his work in the even in the midst of hostilities, they are a willing people. Now we've got the difficult bit. In the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning, thou hast the Jew of thy youth. And many Bible commentators have written about this, and they have lots of different ideas, but let me give you two of them. The one is, maybe this is describing Christ's birth. From the womb of the morning, the beginning of the new day, at Christ's birth, he was holy. He was holy through all his life, and God gave to him the Jew of thy youth, young people who would be loyal to him, who would serve him, who would refresh the whole world with their service for God. And that gives us a clue to the second meaning, because maybe this womb of the morning is not referring to Messiah's birth, but maybe it's referring to the new birth of God's people. Maybe it's saying that God's people were born sons of the morning, they described in one of the epistles, like as if they're born into God's new day, and born into a life of holiness, of serving God, of obeying God. And like Jew, they fill the earth and they refresh the earth, they bring good news, the gospel across the earth. But what is Messiah doing while he waits? Not nothing, because God the Father has appointed him to something. Verse 4, the Lord hath sworn, the Lord hath sworn and will not repent, thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord hath sworn, in other words, he's made a promise. He's made a promise and he will not repent, so he will not change from that promise. This is something that God has decreed for all time. Thou, the Messiah, art a priest forever. A priest, the one who prays for your people, the one who brings the requests of his people before God the Father. That is what Messiah is doing at the right side of the Father. He's bringing his people's prayers to him. A priest after the order of Melchizedek. Well, you can find all about this verse in Hebrews chapters 5 to 7, which explains it at length, and you can find about Melchizedek, the King of Salem, in Genesis 15, verses 17 to 20. He was a king and he was a priest. He was not from Israel's people. He was someone, his name means the King of Righteousness, and in the same way, Messiah is the King of Righteousness. Israel's priests were not kings and its kings were not priests, but Melchizedek was both a king, the King of Salem, and a priest, and Messiah is a king and a priest. Verse 5. The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. We're now describing the final judgment of God's enemies. We're now reading about how Satan will be utterly defeated, how the devil and all his forces will be destroyed, so that Messiah will rule fully. And who will do this? The Lord at thy right hand. Does that mean the Messiah? In the view of the Bible commentators, it means God the Father, and therefore the Messiah and God the Father have changed positions here. God the Father has moved to the right hand of the Messiah, just as the Messiah was at the right hand of God the Father in verse 1. Yet what's he doing? Striking through kings. He's destroying the power of these evil people, just like you kill an enemy. So, I said evil people. I should have said evil spirits. The devil, the devil's angels, the evil spirits that subdue this world and cause so much evil in this world. They are the primary aim. They are the ones who must be destroyed so that Messiah can fully rule. He, God or the Messiah, shall judge among the heathen. In other words, he'll carry out his judgment against these, heathen means foreigners, against those who are so evil. And we now have a word picture for this judgment against these evil forces, these evil spirits. It's a word picture in the terms of an ancient battle. So, just as David went forth among the foreigners to carry out God's judgment against them for their evil deeds, so now God or the Messiah is carrying out God's judgment against the evil spirits. He shall fill the places with the dead bodies. He shall wound the heads, the rulers, over many countries. These spirit rulers who have done so much evil, their power will be utterly destroyed and they will be consigned to hell. Verse 7, almost certainly referring to the Messiah, says he shall drink the brook in the way, therefore shall he lift up the head. Again, this is a verse which has caused a lot of difficulty and there are dozens and dozens of possible explanations in the books. But there is a simple explanation that we can observe of this. He's completing the Messiah in this word picture of this battle against his enemies. He's completing this fight but he pauses for a moment. He pauses to refresh himself. He pauses as a stream because his army is so great that it marches alongside the places where water are and they don't rely on wells and springs. But with this great army, he pauses for a moment in the way, in the road he's taking, in the route he's taking to defeat and to chase after and to destroy his enemies totally. He pauses, he drinks, he is immediately refreshed and therefore he lifts up his head to finish this battle, to complete the battle because the enemies of God and of the Messiah, the evil spirits, every evil force in this world must lose its power. Every evil force in the spirit world must lose its power. God is to reign and his Messiah is to reign forever and ever and never be defeated and never be destroyed. Messiah's enemies must be made his footstool so that his total and complete rule, his rule of righteousness, of goodness over all things can truly and completely begin. Please write to me, my email address is 333kjv at gmail.com. That's 333kjv at gmail.com and if you could send me a quick email to tell me you've been listening, I'd love to hear from you. Now here's the whole psalm, Psalm 110. A Psalm of David. The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Sion, rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning thou hast the Jew of thy youth. The Lord hath sworn and will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through kings in the day of his wrath. He shall judge among the heathen. He shall fill the places with the dead bodies. He shall wound the heads over many countries. He shall drink of the brook in the way. Therefore shall he lift up the head.