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RE: Lord says to Lord
Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, "What do you think about the Christ, whose son is He?" They said to Him, "The son of David." He said to them, "Then how does David in the Sprit call Him "Lord," saying, "The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at My right hand, Until I put thine enemies beneath Thy feet?"" If David then calls Him "Lord", how is He his son?" (Matt. 22:41-45).
The debate was over. Jesus had decisively won (cf. 22:46). But, of course, this only solidified the opposition and brought the crisis to a head. The crucifixion was, in the minds of the religious leaders, to be their final response.
Our study has to do with Psalm 110, from which our Lord quoted in order to demonstrate that His claim to be Israel"s Messiah was consistent with Old Testament prophecy. Jesus" commentary on Psalm 110:1 sets the stage for our study of this psalm, for He has made three statements which we dare not overlook in our study:
(1) David is the author of the psalm.
(2) What David wrote was divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit.
(3) David was not writing about just any king, but about Messiah, who was to be his son and his Lord.
Jesus was not claiming to teach anything new when He taught the three things mentioned above. What He taught was a matter of record, in the psalm itself. The superscription named David as the author. Unfortunately, what was readily evident to the Jews of Jesus" day is not so apparent to us due to the translation of the word "says" in Psalm 110:1, which obscures a much more emphatic claim.
The Hebrew word ne"um, is a reference to a divine oracle. Perowne informs us that, "The word is used in almost every instance of the immediate utterance of God Himself, more rarely of that of the prophet or inspired organ of the Divine revelations, as of Balaam, Num. xxiv. 3, 15; of David, 2 Sam. xxiii. 1."
Kidner plays out the implications of this significant term: "The first line, after the title, runs literally, "The oracle of Yahweh to my lord". It is an opening which stamps the next words as God"s direct message to His king, ""
What Jesus said about this psalm would have come as no surprise to His audience. They, too, believed David was the psalm"s author, that he wrote by inspiration, and that he spoke of Messiah. What the religious leaders were unwilling to admit was that David"s Lord was both divine and human, that Messiah was both David"s Sovereign and his son.
Our Lord"s frequent use of Psalm 110 should therefore serve as a signal to us of the significance of this psalm. It is unique in that it is quoted more often than another Old Testament passage. It is also distinct as a directly Messianic psalm. Basically, Messianic psalms are of two types: (1) those which are indirectly (or typically) Messianic, and (2) those which are directly Messianic. In a typically Messianic psalm, the psalmist writes of his own experiences, but in words that go beyond his own circumstances and describe the experience of Messiah as well. Psalm 22 is an example of a typically Messianic psalm. A directly Messianic psalm does not refer to the psalmist"s experience at all, but speaks only of the Messiah to come. Such is the case in Psalm 110.
When David writes here, it is as a prophet and as a poet. As a prophet, he speaks beyond his own understanding and experience. He writes as the other human authors of Scripture, under the control of the Holy Spirit, yet maintaining his own unique style (cf. 2 Pet. 1:20-21). As a poet-prophet, David spoke of future things by the use of poetic imagery. These were deliberately employed "" brief but powerful figures, each of which is strikingly brief but extremely suggestive." In the light of this mixture of poetry and prophecy, we must be prepared to consider future things in terms that are more poetic than precise, and thus we must also take care not to press this poetry too far. This psalm, like God"s guidance, is to be viewed more in terms of a compass than of a map. Let us therefore be careful about the minutia and concentrate on the message of this great psalm.
The structure of the psalm has been understood in a variety of ways, but the simplest is to see a two-fold division. Verses 1-3 are David"s poetic expression of a divine oracle; verses 4-7 are his report of a divine oath.
Exerts taken from Aleph Bible College, Lessons in the messianic context 1985.
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"Blessed is He who Comes in The Name of The Lord"
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