[Machine transcription]
The Lord said to my Lord, sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
You may be seated.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
Dear Saints, there are two or three great mysteries, great confessional, doctrinal things that
make us Christians different than the rest of the world.
Three things that we believe and teach and confess that draw the boundary between Christendom
and those who are outside of Christendom.
The second great mystery is the mystery of the incarnation, that the Son of the Eternal
Son of God came down and joined Himself to our own humanity, and in the unity of His
person is both God and man.
The third great mystery, if you’ll let me speak this way, the third great mystery is
the mystery of our redemption.
The fact that not only does Jesus bear our humanity, our flesh, but He bears our fallenness
and our sin and our guilt and our brokenness, and He offers Himself as the atoning sacrifice
for us.
But the first great mystery is our consideration this morning, the mystery of the holy and
blessed Trinity, God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Spirit.
This is the mystery that we confess, that there is one God, that the Father is God,
that the Son is God, that the Holy Spirit is God, and that the Father is not the Son,
nor is the Son the Spirit or the Spirit the Father.
Now one of the ways that we see this truth in the Scriptures is the fact that there is
It’s a conversation between the Father and the Son and the Spirit, but especially a conversation
between God the Father and God the Son.
This is one of, I think, one of the most amazing things in the Bible, that we get to listen
in to this holy and heavenly conversation, this counsel of God, and we get glimpses of
it here and there throughout the Old Testament and throughout the New Testament.
Here’s a shortcut to it, though, and if you want homework, instead of doing yard work
this afternoon, I’m going to give you something better.
You read Hebrews chapter 1, okay?
What Hebrews chapter 1 does is it goes through the Old Testament and it collects all of these
times where God the Father speaks to the Son.
It’s really quite beautiful.
Here’s a couple of them, starting in verse 5, and the whole context of the first chapter
is that it’s talking about how Jesus is greater than the angels.
And so it talks about how the Father speaks to the angels and how the Father speaks to
the Son.
So Hebrews 1, verse 5 says, for to which of the angels did God ever say, you are my son?
Today, I have begotten you.”
That’s Psalm 2.
And in fact, if you go back and look in the original Psalm 2, it’s quite amazing.
It’s the Son telling us what the Father said to Him, and this is speaking to the eternal
begottenness of the Son.
It’s one of these mind-blowing mysteries.
It says, today you are begotten.
In other words, the present reality is always in the past tense for the begottenness of
the Son.
There was never a time, 21 years ago, 22 years ago, I was not a father and I became a father
when Hannah was born.
But there was never a time, never a moment when the father was not the father of the
son, or the son was the son of the father.
That’s an eternal reality, psalm 2, you are my son, today I have begotten you.
Or again, I will be to him a father and he will be to me a son, verse 6, Hebrews 1, 6.
When He says, when He brings the firstborn into the world, He says, let all God’s angels
worship Him.
This is one of the simplicities of the Christian faith, is that we worship Jesus.
Whenever you’re talking to someone about what does it mean to be a Christian, you can simply
say that.
We worship Jesus.
God commanded it.
To the Son, He says, skipping down to verse 8, and this is an amazing verse.
This is from Psalm 45, verse 6 and 7.
It’s this place where God the Father calls Jesus, God.
Later He’s going to call Him, My Lord.
But listen to how the Father speaks to the Son, Your throne, says the Father to Jesus,
Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.
You’ve loved righteousness, you’ve hated wickedness, therefore, God, your God has anointed you
with oil of gladness beyond your companions.
He goes on to quote Psalm 102, more of the Father speaking to the Son.
And then at the end of the chapter, verse 13, it says this, and to which of the angels
Has He, God the Father, ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your
footstool?
That’s Psalm 110, verse 1.
That verse is the third most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament.
Sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
Now, I’ll tell you the other two because you’ll just be wondering about it the whole
time and won’t be able to concentrate.
The first most quoted Old Testament passage in the New Testament is Leviticus 19, love
your neighbors yourself.
And the second most quoted passage from the Old Testament in the New is Psalm 118, verse
22, the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.
Pretty cool.
But this one is quoted over and over.
In fact, Psalm 110 is quoted over 17 times in the New Testament itself.
We remember this verse first came up on Holy Tuesday.
Jesus was fighting with the Pharisees, remember they brought Him all these questions that
nobody else could answer?
About the woman who had five husbands, one after another died, and whose husband is she
going to be in the resurrection?
The question about who do you pay taxes to?
The question about what’s the greatest commandment?
Jesus answered them all beautifully.
And then Jesus says, okay, I have a question for you guys.
Whose son is the Messiah?
And they say, oh, David’s son.
And then Jesus says, well, why does David say, Psalm 110, verse 1, the Lord said to
my Lord, sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
How can he be both David’s son and David’s Lord?
And they couldn’t answer him.
He silenced them.
We know the answer.
He can be David’s son and David’s Lord because he’s both God and man at the same time.
David’s son according to his humanity, David’s Lord according to his divinity, God be praised.
This verse comes up again, this Psalm 110 verse 1, when Paul is talking in Ephesians
1 and 1 Corinthians 15 about the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, how He sits at the
right hand of the Father and rules and reigns until all His enemies are conquered.
It’s the last verse of 1 Peter chapter 3, which we were just studying in Bible study,
That Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father so that He can deliver to us a good conscience,
that He can cleanse us from all sin and from all unrighteousness.
That verse came up in Hebrews chapter 1 that talks about how Jesus is exalted above all
the angels sitting at the right hand of God, and Peter quotes this verse in this very first
sermon on Pentecost from Acts chapter 2, the epistle lesson that we read, explaining what’s
happening there.
Remember, they were all gathered around, they were all speaking in different languages,
and then Peter stood up and preached.
They said, are all these guys drunk?
And he says, no, this is the promise of Joel 2.
The Spirit is poured out.
And how can the Spirit be poured out?
Because God the Father has called Jesus to his right hand, and from there Jesus sends
forth the Spirit.
It’s beautiful.
And it describes what’s happening.
This verse is one of the key verses of all of the Old Testament.
The Lord speaking to the Lord.
The Father speaking to the Son.
Now for us, the attention that we have on it today is to recognize that God the Father
speaks to the Son, and the Son speaks back.
We have those verses too, like, well, what would be the most famous?
We have Jesus’ prayers in the New Testament, but maybe the most famous of all is Psalm
22.
Remember?
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Or, into your hands I commit my spirit.
Or, Father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.
Or, I don’t just pray for these, but those who believe through their word.
So we’re listening in on the conversation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
But even more amazing is not just that the Father and the Son are speaking with one another,
but even more amazing is what they’re saying.
Sit here, the Father says, at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
This is an old picture.
It’s an old royal regal kind of picture the you know we
Footstools for us are just indicate rest in fact
We’re so fancy nowadays that we build the footstool into the chair, and you access the footstool with a lever, right?
Boom the footstool comes out and it means I’m resting
I’m not working back goes the lazy boy and your feet are up like this and there’s something to it
But there’s something more to it than that in the ancient world the king would have a throne
throne, and then he would have a footstool where he would put his feet, and on that footstool
they would have the names, or even better, they would have the pictures of all the people
that that king had conquered.
In other words, if you’re the king of Assyria, and you go out and conquer the king of Babylon,
then you get your artists to put the king of Babylon’s face on your footstool, so that
But when you sit on your throne, you put your feet right on His face.
Now that preaches, right?
I mean, that says something, especially if that king is in prison and you have to bring
him in to sit before the throne and he sees his own face under the feet of the king.
There’s all these footstools they can find in the ancient world, and they basically have
all these armies that were conquered, and that’s where the king would put his feet.
That’s the picture that’s here.
here, the Lord says to Jesus, the Father says to the Son, you sit here at my right hand
and I’m going to paint the picture of your enemies under your feet.
Now who are those enemies?
And here’s where the good news comes in.
You are not on that footstool.
Jesus did not come to conquer you.
He says it to Nicodemus, really, you remember when he says that?
But He did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to save it.
He didn’t come to destroy us, but to rescue us, to redeem us, to deliver us from sin and
death and the power of the devil, and that is what is on His footstool.
Your sins, the commandments that you’ve broken, the laws that you’ve transgressed, the love
that you failed to do, Jesus tramples that.
He’s covered it with His blood.
Your death, your grave, your tombstone, your sickness and weakness and mortality, that’s
under the feet of Jesus.
The devil and all the demons that chase us around roaring like a lion, acting as if they
would devour us, the devil’s face is on the footstool of Jesus and his feet are on it.
So, that Jesus sits enthroned now as the conqueror for you, the Savior for you.
That’s what the Father and the Son are talking about.
God be praised.
So, listen to the text.
The Lord said to my Lord, sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
Now, let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him, Jesus,
both Lord and Christ, this Jesus, the crucified.”
May God grant us this joy and this peace, this confidence and this hope of hearing the
heavenly conversation and rejoicing in its benefits.
Amen.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has conquered and given
us His victory. Amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts
and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
