Anchor Your Soul in His Majesty

I’ve been looking forward to preaching on Psalm 110 for a long time. It is a special psalm; you’ll see why. It is the most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament.

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.

I know Psalm 110 sounds hard to understand at the first reading. It’s Hebrew poetry from three thousand years ago. It is a masterpiece, but it’s not easily accessible without some help. But I think it is understandable with a little explaining, and it’s worth it.

Martin Luther said, “This beautiful psalm . . . is the very core and [heart] of the whole of Scripture. No other psalm prophesies as abundantly and completely about Christ. It portrays the Lord and his entire kingdom and is full of comfort for Christians.”

Hebrews 6:19 calls this psalm “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.” If you get Psalm 110, it provides powerful assurance. It gives us “strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us” in Jesus (Hebrews 6:18).

For those in the room who are not yet Christians, Psalm 110 is powerful evidence for the truth of Christianity. I saw an article just this week titled “An Overlooked Argument for Christianity: Why the Fulfillment of Old Testament Prophecy Still Matters.” Psalm 110 stands at the very heart of that argument. Over thousands of years, the Jewish people had varied, great expectations of the Messiah. One major stream of anticipation was that he was to be the anointed king like David. Another, that he would be the priest who offers sacrifices so that a sinful, unholy people can be in the presence of a holy God. And in Psalm 110, for the first time in Bible history, the kingship and the priesthood come together. Psalm 110 stands at the confluence of two massive Old Testament rivers of anticipation, as the messianic river of regal hope converges with another major river of priestly promise.

A powerful defense of the Christian faith for Christians, and a challenge for unbelievers, is how Jesus fulfills — in one person — thousands of years of such diverse expectations. And Psalm 110 is right at the center of it. I’ve heard it said, “You could sum up the New Testament as ‘Psalm 110 came true.’” That’s how profound Psalm 110 is; the New Testament is, in a sense, an expanded realization and narration of it.

Jesus Right Now

But more than assurance and apologetics, as Luther said, this is a great psalm full of comfort for Christians.

Cities Church, it’s been an unusual 2026. I really believe that God gave us what we could not have expected so that we might know his Son better. And here at the end of the summer, he gives us this spectacular vision of our Lord in Psalm 110. This is what we need most right now: a fresh vision of the majesty of Christ seated in glory and power, worthy of your confidence and full trust.

What God wants us to see this morning is that our Lord Jesus is infinitely great. And it’s one thing to say that and move on. It’s another to say it and then try to back it up with details from Psalm 110. To say it and linger over it. To make the general declaration “Jesus is infinitely great” and then explain it, explore it, and develop it. Give specifics. Get fresh glimpses and real tastes, perhaps ones we’re not used to talking about all the time.

So, let’s enjoy four sights of the majesty of Jesus in Psalm 110, right now, full of comfort for Cities Church.

1. Your Lord has conquered and is ruling.

Psalm 110 makes two stunning claims, both declarations from God himself to Jesus, his Son. The first is verse 1, right out of the gate:

The LORD says to my Lord:
     “Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.”

This is an enthronement declaration to a new king, from the mouth of God himself: Sit (on the throne) at my right hand (in the greatest possible place of honor), while I put your enemies under your feet. That is, God (the LORD) will not only defeat the king’s enemies but also make them serve the king, propping his feet up. The surprise is that David is the king, and we would think he has no lord other than God himself. What does David mean that he has a lord — “my Lord” — other than the LORD? We’ll come back to that.

The second surprising move comes in verse 4:

The LORD has sworn
     and will not change his mind,
“You are a priest forever
     after the order of Melchizedek.”

What’s so stunning is that in Israel, the kingship and the priesthood were strictly two different offices. They were expressly not to be joined. Kings, like David, were from the tribe of Judah, while priests, like Moses’s brother Aaron, were from the tribe of Levi.

Psalm 110 is clearly King David addressing a future king. And yet in verse 4, God does the imponderable: He declares to the king, “You are a priest.”

Which brings us to this strange Melchizedek figure. Outside of Psalm 110 and the book of Hebrews, he is only mentioned briefly in Genesis 14. In the days of Abraham, four kings from the east fought with five kings near the Dead Sea and took Abraham’s nephew Lot captive. So, Abraham gathered his trained men, pursued the four kings, overtook them, and defeated them. When Abraham returned home with all the spoils, this strange king-priest from Salem (later Jerusalem) brought out bread and wine and blessed Abraham in the name of God Most High. And Abraham acknowledged him and gave him a tenth (a tithe) of the spoils (Genesis 14:18–20). And that’s it. Three verses, and nothing more about this enigmatic Melchizedek.

Until David comes along a thousand years later, sitting as king in Jerusalem, and when he reads Genesis 14 he realizes there was once a king-priest who ruled over his city. David himself would not dare play priest. Saul had tried that and received God’s judgment (1 Samuel 13:8–14): His kingdom would not continue but be given to “a man after his own heart” (who would be David). Under the terms of the first covenant, under the order of Aaron, king-priest was strictly forbidden. Kings are kings. Priests are priests.

But David has received promises from God about his dynasty enduring forever and always having a son on his throne (2 Samuel 7:12–16). And in Psalm 110, David has a vision of a new day when one of his sons will be greater than him because of God’s promise. That son will not only be king ruling the people but priest making atonement for their sin, like this Melchizedek was. Which must mean a new covenant. (The New Testament book of Hebrews is essentially an extended meditation on this.)

The big deal about a king also being priest is that the heart of the priest’s work is offering sacrifices for sin. Making atonement for the people. Kings rule through making laws, enforcing justice, rendering judgments; priests serve the people by offering sacrifices to cover sin, so that a sinful people can have peace with a holy God.

What’s mainly in view in the king’s priesthood is his making atonement for sin. And the significance of the priesthood for Jesus is that his sacrifice is finished (John 19:30). At the cross, he made the perfect sacrifice once for all. And so with his work complete, the Father declares, “Sit at my right hand.”

So, Jesus has conquered. He has made the final sacrifice for sin as the great high priest, and he presently rules on heaven’s throne as the universe’s king.

Some of us especially love his kingship: his power and authority, his strategy and decisiveness, his wisdom and perfect justice as the Lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5). Others of us especially love his priesthood: his compassion and holiness, his sympathy and sacrifice as the Lamb who was slain (Revelation 5:12). We all need both. Amazingly, Jesus is both.

2. Your Lord never grows old or gets tired.

This is a wonder, and such good news. Look first at the second part of verse 3, which may be “the most obscure verse in the whole Psalter” (Psalms 101–150, 80).

From the womb of the morning,
     the dew of your youth will be yours.

Dew and morning, and womb and youth, capture the prime of life: youthful vigor, energy, and strength; the vitality and fresh hope of a new day. In other words, your Lord doesn’t grow old and frail. He doesn’t slow down with age. He stays in the morning.

One great irony in our fallen world is that when we’re young, we have energy but not yet our best wisdom, and as we grow our wisest, our energy begins to fail us.

My dad was a dentist for more than forty years. As he approached age seventy, his knowledge and experience in dentistry were at their height, and yet his energy was declining. His tank got empty quicker. All the knowledge was there and better than ever, but his energy was flagging.

And I know a great Christian counselor, here in our church, who was as wise and knowledgeable as he’s ever been, at the very top of his game in the counseling field, but as he approached seventy, he realized he could not keep doing what he’d once done for over forty hours per week. He’s now retired, and still one of the wisest men I know.

And I’ve known a great aging preacher, who knows the Bible and the human heart better than he ever has, and is as skilled in preparing and delivering sermons as he’s ever been. But at eighty, he does not have the same vigor and energy as he did at fifty. Every great leader grows old, often right when he’s at his best. That’s how it is in our fallen human age.

But Cities Church, this is not the story of your Lord. And it never will be. There’s no transition plan for Jesus. The dew of his youth is still his. It’s still morning for his reign, and two thousand years after he ascended to the throne, no evening is coming. He is full of wisdom, greater than Solomon, and full of vigor and life, greater than any Olympian or warrior.

Which leads to verse 7, the last line. We’ve seen Jesus as king and priest, but now we end with him as a warrior:

He will drink from the brook by the way;
     therefore he will lift up his head.

The picture is of a great hero who has expended himself in battle but still hunts down the retreating enemy. As he does, God gives him water on the way to refresh him and keep him going. The scene reminds us of Gideon, who “came to the Jordan and crossed over, he and the 300 men who were with him, exhausted yet pursuing” (Judges 8:4). Or Samson after he struck down one thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey:

[Samson] was very thirsty, and he called upon the Lord and said, “You have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant, and shall I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” And God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out from it. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. (Judges 15:18–19)

Echoing these scenes, Psalm 110:7 is a picture of Jesus hunting down the enemy and being continually refreshed by his Father to keep up the pursuit.

Some of us have been wearied in various ways by the challenges of 2026. Or in whatever ways you might be weary going into the autumn. We grow old and get weary; Jesus does not. It is a great solace for us to turn to the king-priest who doesn’t get weary. And in his ever-renewing strength he stands ready to renew ours.

3. Your Lord is God himself in our own humanity.

This truth is so spectacular that it almost cheapens it to put it into words. It’s the answer to some of the Bible’s most piercing questions. In the scene in the Gospels when Jesus calms the sea, the disciples realize only God himself could quiet the storm. And they ask, “What just happened? We know he’s human. We’ve seen him eat. We can touch his skin.” And so they say, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41). The answer is “God himself,” but it’s a truth almost too great to say.

Jesus highlights this truth in Matthew 22 (Mark 12; Luke 20), when he quotes Psalm 110 and challenges the Pharisees:

“What do you think about the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying,

“‘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 is he his son?” (Matthew 22:42–45)

Then verse 46 reports: “And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.”

Why is that? The missing piece for us is the assumption in the ancient world that a father is greater than his son. The father sired the son; father came first, and from his life and marriage came a son. So, the older generation is greater than the subsequent ones.

Yet what Jesus points out is that although David is speaking about one of his offspring, he calls him “my Lord.” How can that be? And Jesus leaves it at that. He doesn’t need to give the answer with his mouth, because he’s going to answer as he goes to the cross, rises again, ascends, and reigns. He’s going to embody the answer in himself. He is the living son of David and also the divine Son. (Calvin says it well: “There is something in Christ more excellent than his humanity, on account of which he is called the Lord of David his father.”)

“Our Lord is great beyond description, marvelous beyond our grasping for words.”

Jesus is so plainly human, standing before the Pharisees in human flesh and blood, in a body he will give to be broken at the cross and blood he will shed as a sacrifice to atone for sins. He is manifestly human (he drinks from the brook!). Yet he is so much more. This is God himself, the second person of the triune Godhead, among us as one of us. Which is why he is Lord of all, even King David.

Psalm 110 gives us an amazing coming together of God himself and his anointed king. See it first in verse 5:

The Lord [God] is at your right hand;
     he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.

In verse 1, in heaven’s throne room, the king was at God’s right hand. Now, on the battlefield, God is at the king’s right hand. And he (God or human king?) will crush kings on the day of his (God’s or the king’s?) wrath.

Verse 6 continues:

He will execute judgment among the nations,
     filling them with corpses;
he will shatter chiefs
     over the wide earth.

Is it God or the king who shatters kings and executes judgment, and fills unbelieving nations with corpses? The ambiguity is on purpose. The Lord God and Lord king act as one. There’s an intentional conflation of God and the coming king that only now we know is embodied in Jesus.

Especially significant is that last part of verse 6. Our translation has “he will shatter chiefs,” but the word for “chiefs” is singular and the same word as “head” at the end of verse 7. So, verse 6 could read, “He will shatter [or crush] the head.” Which sounds like God’s word of curse to the serpent in Genesis 3, that a coming offspring of the woman (and now offspring of David) “shall bruise your head” (Genesis 3:15).

Cities Church, the greatness of our Lord Jesus as God himself in our own humanity defies easy articulation. “Jesus is God” just doesn’t do it. It doesn’t capture the glory. We ache to say more.

The best language is the language of worship: to declare him great, to say out loud he’s worthy, to sing there is none like him. Our Lord is great beyond description, marvelous beyond our grasping for words.

Which is why our gathering here every Sunday to worship Jesus, despite whatever opposition his enemies throw at us, is the most important thing we do week in and week out. Oh, don’t take this gathering lightly. We are here to worship Jesus — God himself in our own humanity.

4. Your Lord shatters his enemies and thrills his people.

Finally, verses 2–3a:

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.

At the seam between verses 2 and 3 is the critical distinction between “your enemies” and “your people.”

We saw in verse 1 that God declares he will make “your enemies” a prop for Jesus’s feet. Now in verse 2: “Rule in the midst of your enemies.” And note that it is no flaw in Jesus that he has enemies; in fact, in this fallen, sinful world, it would be a flaw if he didn’t.

Those who reject this infinitely great person of Psalm 110 will not escape the day of his righteous wrath. Reject his priestly work, and there is no other sacrifice for sin; you will have nothing to shield you from what your sins deserve before the holy God.

The day is coming when Jesus will have the honor of executing perfect judgment among the nations. He will not err in righting every wrong. Which means no punishment for sin will be too severe; nor will it be too light. The only escape is to embrace the king of the universe as your own sacrifice.

And those who do embrace him as Lord “offer themselves freely” (verse 3a). In other words, no coercion. No arm-twisting. Jesus’s people do not declare him Lord through gritted teeth; they rally to him from the heart. They adore him. They obey from the heart, with overflowing joy.

Don’t miss this, Cities Church, as his people: Our joy really matters. Our offering ourselves freely plays a part in this vision of his majesty in Psalm 110. Vital to how the king-priest looks great is that his people “offer themselves freely.” He doesn’t force us. He wins us from the heart, and Jesus looks great in our joy in him. Our willing, glad service to him glorifies him.

Receive His Bread and Wine

And so, we come to the Table to receive bread and wine from our king-priest in the order of Melchizedek. The Lion is our king. The Lamb is our priest. He never grows old or gets tired. He is far greater than we can even say, and so we worship. We bow with joy to the infinitely great person of Psalm 110: Jesus, our Lord. And he is the one who thrills our hearts and has won our glad allegiance.