Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 110 | Date: July 27, 2025 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

The Kingship Of Messiah

Psalm 110. Continuing to work our way through the Psalms, and I’ve been trying to do one message per Psalm, and we’re not covering all the Psalms at that, but a good many of them. But now with Psalm 110, we’re taking our time. This is the third in the series on Psalm 110. Today we’ll focus on verses two and three: the king and his army.

Psalm 110. The superscript tells us, this is a Psalm of David.

The Lord says to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies. Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments. From the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” The Lord is at your right hand. He will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses. He will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. He will drink from the brook by the way. Therefore, he will lift up his head.

Let’s look to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, we’re grateful for this wonderful psalm that has so much to tell us about the Lord Jesus. Its influence is massive in the New Testament and in our understanding of who Jesus is, and we pray that you will open our minds and our hearts to that this morning. Give us through this a greater appreciation for Christ and a greater appreciation for our own role in his army. We pray in his name, amen.

We’ve seen that the dominant theme, at least a dominant theme running through the entire Bible, is God establishing his rule in the earth. It’s a theme that runs through the Bible. It’s the theme of the Psalter as well. And it is particularly the theme of Psalm 110.

Psalm 110 is a high point in the Old Testament revelation of the coming Messiah and of God’s plan for history as it focuses on the person and work of the Messiah. We have in Psalm 110, particularly verse 1 and then again verse 4, but through the entire psalm, a specific explicit prophecy of Messiah. And as we’ve seen, this informs and it undergirds a large part of the New Testament teaching on the person and work of Christ.

Verse one: the Lord speaks to Messiah, and David overhears the Lord speaking to Messiah, saying, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” Now we’ve seen that in verses one through three, in particular, the theme is the kingship of Messiah. That theme will run through the psalm, but verse four then picks up on the priest-kingship of Messiah.

And in verses one through three, then, we’ve been seeing the Messiah’s kingship. We saw in verse one—and let’s look at this again, where the superscript becomes very important, telling us that this is David speaking—we learn of the transcendent nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. “The Lord says to my Lord.” David writes, “The Lord says to my Lord.” So David’s son is David’s Lord.

We saw how Jesus picked up on this in Matthew chapter 22 and asked his opponents about that. “You’ve heard about the Messiah. Whose son is he?” And that, of course, is an easy question: it’s David’s son. And then Jesus points back to Psalm 110 verse one, including the superscript, and says, “How then does David in the Spirit call him his Lord? If he’s David’s son, how can he be his Lord?”

And suddenly then it opens up this understanding of Messiah as divine. The question in focus is: whose son is he? He is the Son of God. He’s not only the son of David, he’s the Son of God. He’s both David’s son and David’s Lord. And we saw then how this opens up for us already then in the Old Testament what we find more explicitly unpacked in the New Testament, and that is, one, the deity of Messiah. But once we’ve said that, we see that the Messiah is God’s Son, and so there’s a distinction of personalities within the one Godhead of God. We have the basic elementary rudiments of the doctrine of the Trinity here. The Spirit is not mentioned here yet, but we have this distinction of personalities in the one God, and if we have that, we also have the doctrine of the incarnation, because the Son of God became the son of David.

And all of that is there in Psalm 110 in verse one, and Jesus points it out to his opponents. And of course they’re not about to acknowledge that, and so they’re looking in the face of the one of whom David wrote, and faced with the biblical warrant for understanding him in these terms as a divine Messiah, they rejected him to his face.

Now this week someone asked me a question that I think probably some of you others have asked as well, so I’m going to take a moment to expand on it a little bit. The question was, had no one seen that before in Psalm 110 in verse 1 before Jesus pointed it out? Hadn’t anyone noticed that before? And the answer is, it doesn’t seem so. And it’s the same with other Old Testament prophecies with regard to the deity of Messiah. David’s son will be the everlasting God. And language like “the mighty God, the everlasting Father.” Language like that: “his goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” There are plenty of passages in the Old Testament that speak of Messiah in terms of his deity.

And I think all we can say at that point is that for those before Jesus, before the Incarnation, these things must have been somewhat puzzling. They could understand that this is a figure to be reverenced. The Messiah is a glorious figure in some sense, and so to be reverenced. And so as we saw in Matthew chapter 22, or chapter 26 last time, where Jesus laid claim to Psalm 110 and Daniel chapter seven—the Son of Man, seated at the right hand of the Father—when Jesus laid claim to that, they said he’s guilty of blasphemy. So their understanding was that the Messiah is a glorious figure, worthy of reverence, but that anyone ever put it all together in terms of understanding a divine Messiah, multiplicity of persons in the Godhead, the doctrine of the Trinity, the incarnation—no one did that before Jesus.

But once Jesus laid his finger on this verse and explained it, at least in hindsight now, and then particularly in light of all that Jesus had to say about himself elsewhere in the Gospels as well, all of it becomes so clear. And it all unravels, and you say, “Well, there it was, hidden in plain sight, Psalm 110 and verse 1 and other places as well.” But however they understood the Messiah, they didn’t grapple with all of the indications of it until Jesus pointed it out.

Now that gives rise to another point that I want to explain as well, and that is that both Jesus and the apostles make a point to emphasize that the gospel of Jesus that they’re proclaiming was something that the Old Testament prophets told them about. Now that’s an important point for Jesus when he speaks to his opponents. For example, he’ll say things like, “Have you not read?” or, “Thus it is written.” And he points back to the Old Testament scriptures to expound some teachings about himself or about the gospel and so on. And Jesus even presses the culpability of his hearers. “You didn’t understand that? Haven’t you read the scriptures? Don’t you understand?”

And then when we come to the apostles, when we read in the epistles, for example, in the epistle of Romans, they explicitly ground their gospel in the teachings of the Old Testament. Paul says that at the outset of the book of Romans. He said he’s preaching the gospel of Christ. He says that was promised beforehand by the prophets in the scriptures. And so they’re insisting that the gospel that they proclaim was in the Old Testament prophesied.

But at the same time, both Jesus and the apostles affirm that this teaching that they are now given was hidden. The word in the New Testament is a “mystery.” Now in our newer translations it’s often translated “a secret.” It was something that was kept from people beforehand. And it’s now being revealed through the apostles. And yet, although it was hidden and now being revealed, when they now expound these teachings in the Old Testament, what they do to expound those teachings is point back to the Old Testament and see how it was prophesied by the Old Testament.

And Paul makes a crisp statement of this in Romans chapter 16, when he says that the gospel that he preached was a mystery kept secret for long ages. Now catch this: it was a mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been revealed through the prophetic writings. It’s been kept secret. Now it’s being revealed through the Old Testament prophets. And you put all that together and you say, “Okay, it was hidden, but it was hidden in plain sight.” And now Jesus comes with the full revelation of the Godhead in him. And then the apostles after him unpacking what Jesus had to say, you have to look back and say, “Well, there it was hidden in plain sight. It was there all along, but no one recognized it as such.” And then suddenly Jesus puts his finger on it and it all becomes clear.

And so what we saw in Matthew chapter 22, a couple of weeks ago, when Jesus puts his finger on Psalm 110 verse one, at least in hindsight, and in light of all the rest that he had to teach about himself, that became, theologically, a revolutionary moment. Much is being revealed about the person of Jesus. Now, we can look back at it all, and we see it; it all makes perfect sense. We understand the deity of Messiah. We understand that God is one in essence and in substance, but he’s three in persons and all of that. But as obvious as all that seems to us now, after the full revelation came in Jesus, no one before discerned it all and was able to unpack all of those details. The ultimate revelation came in Jesus, and then it was the church’s task, after the apostles unpack it as well, to further unpack that and how do we articulate that ourselves. Long and short: Jesus has brought a revolutionary moment to help us understand what was there in the text all along.

His Exalted Status

So first of all, we learn of the king, in verse 1, of his transcendent nature. And then we saw last time his exalted status. “The Lord says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'” God’s right hand. This is the position of authority, ruling at God’s right hand, administering his kingdom. This is the significance then, we saw, of Jesus’ ascension: his exaltation in glory. Having accomplished his saving work, he’s now installed as universal king over all, ruling at God’s right hand, administering God’s kingdom over the earth.

Now, in verse one, the prominent characteristic of the kingdom in view here is the universal triumph of the king. “The Lord says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.'” “Your enemies”—that expression elsewhere in the Old Testament almost exclusively refers to God’s enemies. And so here he’s administering God’s rule over God’s enemies in the earth. And he says, “I’ll make your enemies your footstool.” That’s the metaphor of complete subjugation. So the triumph of Messiah is in view, subjugating all who would oppose him. It’s one of the many triumph-of-Messiah passages that we find throughout the Old Testament.

So Messiah has completed his work. He’s been exalted. He reigns at the right hand of the Father, ruling over God’s kingdom in the earth. And he will do so until all of his enemies are subdued. Now, this is an important passage when it comes to the New Testament. I’ve said that before. And because of its importance in laying out not only what we see in the Old Testament, but the whole program of history as it’s expounded in the New Testament, I want to back up and see the big picture, and then we’ll focus today on verses two and three.

But first of all, let’s look at the big picture, see these verses in their whole-Bible context. In Genesis chapter one, God creates man, and he creates him as his vice-regent ruling over the earth. That was the intent of it expressed in Genesis 1:26-28. Let him have dominion and rule over the earth. So he is ruling under God over the earth. We find in Genesis 3, Adam failed in that, surrendered his rule to Satan, and God made a promise immediately that he will send a champion. He’ll stomp the head of the tempter, defeat him entirely, although at some cost to himself. He’ll bruise the tempter’s head; the tempter will bruise his heel. But at some cost to himself, this champion will come, defeat the tempter, and restore this rule.

God has established a man to rule over his kingdom in the earth. Adam failed. God promises another, the seed of the woman, who will come and succeed where Adam had failed. And then the rest of the Bible, we find an unfolding of that promise going over and again. God, throughout the Old Testament history—the whole drift of it all—is God reestablishing his rule in the earth. Now God has always been king, and he’s always been king over everything, but the kingdom that he has in the earth right now is being contested. And God is going about to reestablish his rule, and then particularly, ultimately, to succeed in having a kingdom of willing subjects.

That promise of this king who would come to subdue God’s enemies and to establish God’s rule in the earth has a high point, we saw, in 2 Samuel chapter 7, where God makes a promise to David that your son will rule on your throne. And that promise is picked up in the Psalms and in the prophets, and we see it over and again that David’s son will rule; he’ll rule over God’s kingdom in all the earth. And we see him particularly now in the Psalter being presented in his ideal terms. He’s just an ideal king in every way in terms of his character, in terms of his compassion, in terms of his success over his enemies, the gentle rule of the king over his own people. All of that we find—the king presented in his ideal in the Psalter. And not only the king, but his kingdom presented in its ideal. And we’re brought, as we’ve seen, the theme of the Psalter: the establishing of God’s kingdom in the earth. And we see that foreshadowed throughout the Psalms over and over again. The king will come and he will succeed. David’s son will rule over the entire earth.

All of that then, in not just the Psalter, but through the entire Old Testament, anticipates the arrival of this great king who will come. And so as you’ve heard me say many times before, the whole drift of the Old Testament can be captured in this: He’s coming. He’s coming. That’s what the Old Testament scriptures are looking toward. That’s what the Psalter foresees as well.

Well, then we come to the New Testament. In the New Testament, the great announcement that’s being given is: He’s here. His name is Jesus. He has established God’s kingdom. But very quickly into the New Testament, there’s a surprising turn. He’s announced as the king who has come. He has come to usher in the kingdom of God, and suddenly, the king is under arrest. He’s rejected. He’s put on a cross. He’s crucified. And what we find is that that strange, surprising twist in the storyline becomes the crux of all of history—the turning point. Because here now in his death, he establishes the kingdom of God. Here he deals with human sin, and the whole problem of human sin is answered. And by that, Satan’s rule over humanity—the whole ground of his rule—is removed because the whole problem of sin has been answered. And in vindication of his successful work, God raises him from the dead, and as a consequence of his saving work, God exalts him to his right hand. He takes place at the throne of the universe. Now he rules over all.

And in the words of Psalm 2, he returns to the Father and repeats the Father’s words to him and says, “You’ve promised me the nations as my inheritance.” And having been crucified for sin, being raised from the dead, exalted to the right hand, the Father says, “You’ll have them. You’ll inherit the nations.” That is the significance we saw last time of the ascension of Jesus.

But what we learn in all of that then—and this is another surprising twist when we come to the New Testament—is that the kingdom of God then does not come all at once. It doesn’t come all at once. There is what we like to say, the “now and the not yet,” or the “already and the not yet.” God’s kingdom has come in Jesus. He’s established his kingdom, but it has not yet come in its full consummate glory.

And so in the synoptics, we have this announcement over and over again—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—over and over again, that the kingdom of God has come. The kingdom of God is among you. The king is here, and so the kingdom is here. The kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom of God has come. That’s what John the Baptist preached. That’s what Jesus preached. That’s a great announcement of the synoptic gospels: that day to come has come. And yet, in those same synoptic gospels we’re taught to pray, “Your kingdom come.” And so we’re left with this to see that we have, in some sense, the kingdom of God has come. And in another sense, it has not yet come.

And so what we like to say: it’s been inaugurated. There’s an aspect of the kingdom in which it is here today. And yet it’s not come in its full consummate glory that awaits the return of Jesus Christ. Now Jesus spells all of that out probably the most clearly in Matthew chapter 13, and that’s the parable of the kingdom parables where he says he’s going to explain the mysteries of the kingdom. In the mysteries of the kingdom, he explains what this mystery phase of the kingdom is. And he says it’s like a sower going forth to sow his seed. And he reaches in the bag and he throws out the seed. And some believe and many don’t. But that’s what the kingdom is like in this age. It progresses through the gospel, through the spread of the gospel, but it progresses silently, almost imperceptibly. But it grows, and it grows through the gospel. And one by one, men and women are brought into the kingdom, believing. And God rescues them out of the kingdom of darkness and brings them into the kingdom of his Son.

Jesus tells another parable. It’s like this man who planted wheat in his field. And then at night, some enemy of his came and planted a bunch of weeds among the wheat to ruin the crop. His servants asked him, “Should we pull up all the weeds?” And the owner of the fields says, “No,” and here’s the critical point, “let them both grow together.” Well, who in the world foresaw that? That in God’s kingdom, evil and the gospel would both advance together? Oh, that’s the parable of the wheat and the weeds.

We also have the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the leaven. And again we have the gospel growing imperceptibly until it finally fills the whole world. He tells the parable of the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price. And here the kingdom of God is discovered in a surprising way. That’s how the kingdom goes in this phase of the kingdom. And then he tells the parable of the dragnet. A man throws out his net into the water, pulls in the fish, and they’re separated out, the one from the other—the ones he’ll keep, and the ones he won’t. And that’s the climax of the kingdom, when the good and the righteous and the evil are separated out.

So from all of that, what we find is that the kingdom of God now, in our day, this side of Jesus, the kingdom of God has been inaugurated, but it has not yet been consummated. God’s kingdom has not come in a sudden rush, as it might have been expected. He has not come forcefully to overthrow his enemies. That day will come. That day will come in his return. In this stage of the kingdom, it is just an inaugurated phase of it, and it grows being scarcely noticed. But it grows to the advance of Christ’s kingdom.

Now, that’s a surprising kind of thing we would have expected. In fact, it was expected, the arrival of the Messiah, to be more dramatic than that. And that will come, but not till his return. But this is the defining glory of the church in this age, that we find ourselves caught between two worlds. On one level we are in this present evil world and we feel it. we feel the down-drag of it. But in another sense, we are seated with Christ in the heavenlies. We belong to him and we reign with him in glory. We feel that even in our own experience—the tension being drawn, pulled upward and yet pulled downward at the same time. And what that tells us then at the very least is that the kingdom has not come yet in its consummated glory, but it is here in an inaugurated phase.

All right, all of that is the broad biblical backdrop to what we find now in Psalm 110. Psalm 110 alludes to all of that. There’s no question verse one looks toward the climactic outcome of the kingdom when his enemies become his footstool. He’ll pick that up in verses five through seven as well. He’ll scatter the earth with corpses of the enemies that have opposed him. And in fact, verse two can be read that way also.

The King And His Army

Here David now is speaking. Verse one, he overhears God speaking to David’s greater son, the Messiah, that “you sit here at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.” And now verses two and three, David speaks addressing his greater son. “The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the presence of your enemies.”

So David is reflecting now on the divine pronouncement of verse one, and it’s the language of warfare, and he calls—David now calls his greater son to exercise that rule that God has given him at his right hand. “The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies.” Zion here prefigures the heavenly Zion to which Christ ascended and from which he will come in his return. His scepter here, that’s the symbol of his authority. It’s a “mighty scepter,” speaks of its invincible authority, so the Lord sends it forth, extending the rule of Messiah over the entire earth.

But we have to look a little bit more closely at this to understand all that is going on. Verse one again: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” And let’s ask the question, what does that “until” look like? Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. How are we to envision Christ’s rule in this phase of the kingdom until his enemies are made his footstool?

Well, in some sense, verse two, Messiah himself is not carrying out his rule personally. The Lord sends forth from Zion his mighty scepter—presumably the work of the Holy Spirit. So we have the triune God at work here. More clearly, verse three: here, the king’s army goes out ahead of him. “Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power.” So his people, his army, they’re fearless, they’re faithful, they’re fearless in battle, and they offer themselves to go to fight on behalf of the king.

Now there’s an echo here of Judges chapter five, where Deborah, after her military victories—the judge, in her song, the Song of Deborah in Judges chapter 5, she writes. So there’s an echo of that here. But here the language is just a little differently. Instead of saying here, “your people will offer themselves willingly,” he says “your people will offer themselves freely.” And the word he uses there is the same word that’s used for the “free will offering” that Moses stipulated in the old covenant.

Now the free will offering was an offering that by definition was not something that was stipulated; it was not something you had to give, but it could be given voluntarily out of praise, out of worship, adoration, gratitude. For whatever specific reason, the worshipers under the old covenant could bring something to the temple. They could bring gold to give to the temple, money, silver, whatever, or they could bring a lamb or an ox or a goat and offer it in sacrifice, but this is voluntary. This is something they could give freely. And so it’s called the free will offering.

That sounds like, when he says that, your people will be a free will offering, so to speak. That sounds like Romans chapter 12, verse 1: we present our bodies a living sacrifice to God, a willing sacrifice to God. So it sounds like that. But it does not sound like the glory of the consummated king. Instead what we have is God’s people offering themselves as a living sacrifice to God, fearlessly entering the battle on God’s behalf, on their king’s behalf.

Here the recruits then in verse three are giving themselves—the military language, the metaphor of it—they’re giving themselves to the war effort. Now in ancient Israel, there was no drafting; there was no forced enlistment. It was an army of volunteer soldiers only. Moses stipulated that. Deuteronomy chapter 20 and verse 8 reads: “The officers shall speak to the people and say, ‘Is there any man who is fearful and faint-hearted? Let him go back to his house, lest he make the heart of his fellows melt like his own.'” So, in Israel’s army, it was only those wholly dedicated to the cause. Only they could enlist. It was a freewill offering of sorts. They entered willingly, or they did not enter at all.

And what we find here now in Psalm 110 in verse three, is that so also the soldiers in Christ’s army, they’re not conscripted by force. They’re not roped in against their will. They offer themselves freely. They’re volunteers, wholly dedicated to their king. They so love and trust their king that they give themselves joyfully to serve in his army and in his cause.

Verse three describes the army a little bit further. “Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments.” In holy garments. Now as you can imagine, this has been variously understood. Some say this prefigures the believer being clothed in the righteousness or the holiness of Christ. That’s the holy garments that they wear. Others have taken this to mean that this is the characteristic of God’s people: that they are holy. They’re righteous people. I don’t know how we can have the one without the other. I suspect both of those views are correct, and that that’s what’s involved here. The characteristic of God’s people is that, yes, clothed with the holiness and the righteousness of Christ, they themselves are marked by holiness. And that’s something the world around them notices as well. And in fact, it’s a point of resentment on the part of the world around them also.

And then he says in verse three at the end, “From the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours.” Even the Hebrew translation of this is questioned and debated back and forth. The interpretation of that translation, once you get it, is debated somewhat. But what’s clear about it, I think, is that we have here the imagery of youth and vigor and promise and strength. And so he’s saying that this army, endowed by God’s Spirit, engaged in the king’s battle, will never wear out. They’ll continue to fight. They will continue until they’re triumphant at the conclusion of the battle. They’ll never wear out.

Now, after you see all of that, we see again: this is not the climactic glory of the consummated kingdom. Christ is not yet moving to destroy his enemies, but he is ruling to the advance of his kingdom. Only he’s ruling in the advance of his kingdom through his voluntary army, who give themselves willingly.

Now, interestingly, the Apostle Paul picks up this military kind of terminology to describe the Christian’s role in this age. 2 Corinthians 2, verses 14 and following, Paul writes: spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. Here he changes the metaphor. First it’s a military metaphor; now it’s we’re going around with perfume, spraying it through the air of the world. “For we are the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved, and among those who are perishing. To one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance of life unto life.”

And so we are God’s soldiers marching our way through the world. Or, to change the figure, we are God’s representatives spraying this perfume around the world. It’s the gospel. And we spray this perfume, and to God, it smells good. And to the people of the world, well, there’s a mixed response there. To some, that same gospel that we preach becomes life unto life. They smell it. They hear it. And they grasp hold of it, and it becomes life. To others, they hear it—”Nah, I don’t want that”—and it becomes a savor of death unto death.

But this is how the kingdom of God makes its advance in this age. In the midst of this rebellious world, the Lord Jesus Christ rules. The world may be in rebellion, it may contest his rule, may want nothing to do with it, but there’s not one inch of this universe outside of the control of the king. He rules over it all. And out of this rebellious world, he tells us this king is enlisting an army of volunteer recruits. And they join his kingdom with vigor.

In other words, then, it’s Matthew chapter 13. It’s the mystery aspect of the kingdom. The kingdom makes its advance secretly, sometimes almost imperceptibly. It’s the rule of Christ inaugurated, but it hasn’t yet reached its consummated glory. In this phase of the kingdom, verse 3, in this phase of Christ’s rule, his people offer themselves freely for kingdom work. Often, often they offer themselves to kingdom work at great cost to themselves.

Last week we had our church picnic. Some of you met. A friend of mine came to Christ some years back. His family thought it was crazy. He was baptized, and that was it. “That’s really crazy, you’ve gone too far now.” They watch him: he goes to church, and he grows, and he learns the scriptures, tries to witness to his family. And over the years, the resentment has grown. Until finally they tell him, “Look, it’s either his church stuff or us, what’s it gonna be?” His heart’s broken, of course. But he has no choice. He’s given himself voluntarily, freely, willingly to the service of the king. He can’t give that up.

I read a story this week about a professor. He’s retired now. David Wells taught in New England for a number of years at seminary, taught systematic theology. Faithful man. I’ve known of his work. He’s written some influential books two, three decades ago. But I didn’t know his personal story until this week. He grew up in South Africa. His family—no kind of Christian at all—wanted nothing to do with that. Someone invited him to a gospel meeting, and John R.W. Stott was preaching. And he went and heard him, was thoroughly unimpressed. Halfway through, he left and went home. Some time later, a respected professor in the school that he attended, who was a believer, talked to him personally, led him to Christ. His parents thought it was crazy.

There were some other gospel meetings in town shortly after that. He went to one night, came back, and his parents threw a fit over it. “That’s it. It’s either that or us.” Next night he went to the gospel meetings, he came home, found the doors locked. Never saw his dad again the rest of his life. Saw his mother two or three times, but never any kind of reconciliation. Very young man at the time, went off to study theology, served the Lord faithfully.

There is very often, very often in the service of Christ, a real cost to it. And the people of God know it. It’s gonna bring reproach from the family, from the neighbors, from the people at work, and yet they open their mouth and give a witness for Christ. And if they’re blessed enough to live in some kind of Christian-esque environment where it doesn’t cost them in that way, it still costs work and energies and money. We give our energies and our resources to the advance of the kingdom. We gather together in this thing we call a local church; it becomes a base of an outreach in our community, a place where the believers together build one another up, and we give our money, our attention, our energies, our time.

And so verse 3 is really a bit surprising. They give themselves freely. Why would they do that? Why would they give themselves freely and volunteer so eagerly to the service of the king when they know it’ll cost them? And verse three gives the answer. “His people offer themselves freely on the day of his power.” That’s the day of the king’s enthronement. The day of the king’s rule.

Remember Christ’s first exercise of his rule when he ascended? He poured out his Spirit on the earth to advance his kingdom. He carries out his rule enlisting willing recruits, snatching them out of the kingdom of darkness, rescuing them and bringing them into the kingdom of Christ. Verse three: that is the nature of saving grace. God comes to us in grace and miraculously, supernaturally, powerfully makes us willing.

I’m sure you’ve heard it; I know I have. People outside of the Reformed camp have a misunderstanding of what we call effectual calling, effectual grace, or irresistible grace. “Oh, those Calvinists, they think people are going to be saved even when they don’t want to be.” “I don’t want to be saved.” “You’re going to be saved anyway.” “I don’t want to be saved.” It’s such a strange caricature of what the scriptures teach and, of course, of what we believe.

What we have in the scriptures is a lost humanity, all of us equally blind. We just don’t see it. We don’t see the glory, as Paul calls it in 2 Corinthians 4, the glory of God in the face of Jesus. He is glorious. He’s objectively glorious. The glorious, marvelous Redeemer. That’s objectively true. But we don’t see it. We’re blind to it. The god of this world has blinded their minds so they don’t see it. The Spirit of God comes and he does this repair work on the mind. He opens the heart and he opens the mind and suddenly we see Jesus differently. And we see in Jesus the glory of God. And we say, “We’re all in. This is for me.” We’re so taken with the glory of Christ that there’s no holding us back.

And so for all of the church’s failures and all of its inconsistencies and all of its black spots throughout the history of the church, the characteristic of the kingdom of God, the characteristic of the church, has been men and women who give themselves eagerly to the service of the king. The history of the church is adorned with men and women who are just eager to sacrifice themselves for his cause. They find themselves caught up with something bigger, more valuable than themselves.

John describes this in a graphic way with apocalyptic imagery, Revelation chapter 12. The dragon pursuing the people of God, chasing them out into the wilderness. They’re under persecution. And yet they overcame by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony because—because they did not love their lives even unto death. They found themselves caught up in something much bigger. They saw in Jesus the glory of God. They said, “There’s no holding back. Nothing else matters.” It is simply for the love of their king. They gladly take up their own cross and follow him to glory.

That’s verse three. Isn’t that why you enlisted? This is not abstract theology, is it? Didn’t this explain your enlistment? I’ve heard some of your testimonies. Talking to one of the men of the church just recently, we were out; he explained to me how he came to Christ. He was out in the world, had no time for this kind of stuff. And then suddenly, God opened his heart and everything changed. Actually it didn’t; he did. Why do you give yourself to the service of this king? Why is it you spend your time and your energies and your money? Why do you give up a significant portion of your income? Why do you give a significant portion of your time?

Frances Havergal captured verse three in her famous hymn that we’ll sing in a little bit. She was the daughter of a minister in early 19th-century Britain. And evidently, from what we can tell by her—don’t know much about her biographically, but we can tell from her hymns—he taught her very well in what we call Reformed theology, or particularly Psalm 110 in verse three. She asks the question that arises from verse three: “Who is on the Lord’s side?” And throughout her song, she answers it. “By thy call of mercy, by thy grace divine, we’re on the Lord’s side. By thy love constraining, by thy grand redemption, by thy grace divine, we’re on the Lord’s side. Joyfully enlisting, thou hast made us willing, thou hast made us free.” It’s Calvinism with a vengeance in that song.

And what I want you to see then is that Psalm 110 and verse 3 is both. It is at the same time a wonderful glimpse of the redemptive purpose of God in history and in this phase of his kingdom. But it is at the same time your testimony and mine. It is Christ ruling in the midst of his enemies, conquering our hearts by his love. And now he carries out his work through an army of willing volunteers, men and women whose heart is so aflame for Christ that they cannot not serve him.

And in fact, if we can just glance through the rest of the psalm, we enlist and we serve with an enormous sense of confidence, looking to the day when the Lord Jesus will return and exert his rule on a grand scale. He’ll exert his rule in such a way that the whole world will be brought to bow before him and acknowledge him as king. As we come to so many of these psalms, we end up singing, “Lord Jesus, come quickly, make it soon.” Amen.