BaptistWay: Lord of All

 • The BaptistWay Bible Study for March 3 focuses on Psalms 2 and 110.

 • Download a powerpoint resource for this lesson here.

From ancient times when the Psalms served as the hymnbook of the temple until today, the faithful have sung and prayed to God the words of the Psalter. If the Psalms represent what worshippers say to the Lord, then one may ask, in what sense are they God’s word to us? Dietrich Bonhoeffer has suggested the Psalms are God’s word in the sense of being the words the Lord has given us to pray.

The Psalter is one of the Old Testament books most often quoted or alluded to in the New Testament, and Psalms 2 and 110 probably are quoted the most often in the New Testament of all the Psalms. Interpreters have placed these two poems in the category of “Royal Psalms,” whose purpose was to declare confidence in God’s anointed king.

Royal Psalms

Royal Psalms, like 2 and 110, are rooted in the Davidic Covenant promise of 2 Samuel 7. The passage speaks of God’s promise that the Davidic dynasty would last forever, and each faithful Davidic king will be called the son of God, and the Lord would be his father. From a New Testament perspective, we think of “son of God” as an affirmation of the deity of Jesus. However, in the Old Testament, son of God originally referred simply to the man who was the Davidic king.

Another Old Testament title for the king of Israel was “messiah,” which literally means “anointed one,” and whose Greek equivalent is “Christ.” The term arises from the practice of prophets to anoint Israel’s earliest kings. Thus, messiah originally designated a mortal whom God had chosen as ruler. In the New Testament, these two kingship titles, son of God and messiah, take on new meanings, reaching beyond the bounds of the Old Testament, to befit the reality of Jesus, the divine-human king of creation.

Psalms 2 and 110 deal with the question of where ancient Judeans could find power, especially in the face of violent enemies, according to theologian James Mays. The answer is that the Lord will provide for the people through the Davidic king, who will bring justice to the earth by crushing those enemies. Both psalms likely were employed for temple worship on the occasion of the coronation of a new king in Jerusalem.

Satirical description of nations

Psalm 2 opens with a satirical description of nations plotting against Judah and her messiah (“anointed one”). Their futile rebellion earns laughter from God, who has installed his powerful new king in Zion and has declared to him, “You are my son, today I have become your father.” The vocabulary of “messiah,” “my son” and “your father” echoes the Davidic Covenant promises that Judeans had counted on through the centuries. They also are words that took on new meaning when later applied to Jesus.

The language of Psalm 2 plays a prominent role in the New Testament, for at the baptism and transfiguration of Jesus, God himself echoes the psalm in declaring, “This is my beloved Son” (Mark 1:11; 9:7; etc.). This sonship language later is connected to Jesus’ resurrection (Acts 13:33; Romans 1:4). Acts 4:23-31 quotes Psalm 2, linking the psalm’s language of enemies arising against God’s people to the persecution of the early church. The quotation gave confidence to the early church to pray, not that God will crush their enemies as Psalm 2 envisions, but that the Lord will empower them to speak the gospel boldly and to heal the sick in Jesus’ name. Whereas Psalm 2, in an Old Testament context, called for trust in the military might of the messiah to subdue the nations, in Christ the use of power is transformed into a capacity to proclaim the gospel to the nations.

Psalm 110, like Psalm 2, likely was used at the temple to celebrate the coronation of a king and his anticipated victory over enemies. The psalm begins by declaring the king sits “at the right hand of God.” The New Testament repeatedly connects this language to Jesus, depicting his intimate relation to God and his eternal post-resurrection status.

Melchizedek

Psalm 110 also describes the Davidic king as “a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.” Melchizedek, the King of Salem, also was a priest who blessed Abraham (Genesis 14:18). To call the Davidic king a priest like Melchizedek, highlighted the location of the king’s reign (at “Jeru-Salem”) and his leadership role of mediating God’s will for the people. Hebrews 5 and 7 apply the allusion to Jesus, who is also a Melchizedek-like figure—the last king and the final high priest. Hebrews, however, transforms the image, for Jesus is a king who saves his people not by victory over enemies, but saves them from sin through his sacrificial death.

As the New Testament applies the language of Psalms 2 and 110 to Jesus, it depicts a monumental shift. Whereas in a former time God worked in the world through Davidic kings to subdue enemies militarily, God is working in Christ through the power of self-sacrificial love to save Jews and Gentiles from the power of death.

As with the kings of old, Jesus has been given dominion over the nations. However, for Jesus the goal of that sovereignty is not political subjugation, but worldwide discipleship. Likewise, while the subjects of the ancient kings were called upon to take up swords, the followers of King Jesus are called upon to share the good news to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:18-20), as Mays points out.