“Road to Emmaus: Jesus in the Psalms”
By Dayle K. Barrett
Sunday, May 18, 2025
Reading: Psalm 110
Happy hump day everybody. I said that because today marks the middle of a season called Eastertide, one that stretches all the way from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday. We often think of Easter as just a day, don't we? You know that one where you eat a lot of extra chocolate? But it's not just a day, it's actually the longest season in the Christian calendar. Longer than Lent. Even though Lent feels longer. This is the season when we celebrate the resurrection of Christ and think about what it means for us as Christians that Christ came and died and rose again.
This year we decided to do a series called The Road to Emmaus. It's inspired by a passage in the Book of Luke, Chapter 24 that was wonderfully preached by Joanne a few weeks ago. The highlight in this passage for this series is verse 27: “And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”
So, over the next few weeks, we are walking with the disciples, who follow Jesus on this road to Emmaus, and we're listening to the voice of Christ explain to us how in all the scriptures, Christ is revealed. We started with Jesus in Torah. Last week we had Jesus in History, and for the next three weeks, I will guide you through Jesus in the Psalms, Jesus in Wisdom Literature, and finally Jesus in Prophecy.
In this verse we find out that Jesus is all over the Old Testament. That's a bit of a strange thought, isn't it? I mean, rationally, he's only born in Matthew. So, what's he doing in Genesis? And in the Psalms? And in the wisdom literature? Well, here we're going to find something amazing, which will open up the Bible to us all.
I had a great conversation with somebody last week about faith and reading scripture, and she asked me, “Well, you know, there's an Old Testament and there's a New Testament. Which one do you focus on more?”
I said, “Both. Without the Old Testament, the New Testament doesn't make any sense. And without the New Testament, the Old Testament is rather incomplete.”
Since the beginning of these writings, since the people of Israel started recording what they knew about God, everything was pointing to the manifestation of God that we saw at the incarnation. It was all pointing to the fact that one day God would stand among us in the flesh, that he would bear our sins on the cross, and rise again to signal the beginning of a new creation.
So, in this journey through the scriptures, we stop today at Psalm 110 because I'm not sure exactly which scriptures Jesus expounded during these 40 days he spent with the disciples, but I'm pretty sure this was one of them because Psalm 110 is the most quoted chapter of the Old Testament in the New Testament.
This passage is directly quoted 21 times and there are many other allusions to it all the way through the scriptures. We'll see it in the gospels, we'll see it in the Book of Acts, we'll see it in Paul's letters, and we'll see it all over the Book of Hebrews. Martin Luther calls this chapter the crown of the Psalms and St. Augustine referred to it as the son of our faith.
In some ways, this chapter was like the creed before the creed, where David, a man after God's own heart, a king of Israel, looked forward into the future and was given a supernatural glimpse of all that God was planning for his people, not just his people Israel, but all who would call upon the name of the Lord. And so, the chapter begins with these words, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.’
And if you have a mind like mine, you immediately come up with this image of Jesus in your head: He's sitting on a great, grand, golden throne, the most amazing seat you could ever imagine, covered in jewels, his face glowing like the sun, the best hair ever with his feet up, right? His feet up on who? On his enemies. And, if you've got a vivid imagination, maybe you start to fill in who's under Jesus' feet. You imagine his heels resting upon the heads of Hitler and Mao and Stalin and Ryan Reynolds and your ex and the annoying neighbour that just got a brand-new stereo system but didn't spend any money on soundproofing.
Really quickly, we start filling in who we think God's enemies should be, don't we? Really quickly, when we read Bible passages about judgment, we place ourselves in the position of the judge. God should be angry at the same people I'm angry at. God should want to banish the same people that I want to banish. God should judge like I would judge. If we think that way, we often miss God's being active in the world because God doesn't always fight the same fights that we want to fight, does he?
This is exactly the same problem that the people of Israel had when Jesus came. It was difficult for them to recognize Jesus because what they were looking for was a mighty military son of David who was going to reclaim the throne of Israel. They were looking for someone to fight all the fights they wanted to fight; to defeat the people that were warring against them; to crush the powers that were causing them strife.
Jesus refers to this psalm in order to set things straight. Here's what he says in Matthew, Chapter 22, starting at verse 41:
While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call him ‘Lord,’ saying: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool”? If David then calls him ‘Lord, how is He his Son?” And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.
Why? Because Jesus gave them news that they didn't really want to hear. Everyone agrees, Christians agree, and Jews agree that Psalm 110 is about the Messiah. Unfortunately, we disagree about whether the Messiah is Jesus. But Jesus in front of all his Jewish friends that day pointed back to this psalm that everyone knew was about the Messiah and said, “Hey, if you read carefully, this can't just be about a son of David. This can't just be about a military king. This can't just be about reclaiming the throne of Israel. Otherwise, why would David, the king of Israel, call the Messiah his Lord?”
Here we gain an image of how strong and how powerful this Messiah is. Because this is the King to whom all kings will bow. Every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. One day, every power in this world, the ones you're most afraid of; the ones that make you want to pull your hair out; the ones that keep you from sleeping at night; and even the ones you think will save you. All of them will bow to the one King appointed by God, our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
What will this kingdom look like? If we go all the way back into the mind of David to see what he saw and hear what he heard, we notice that this kingdom is different than any other kingdom we'd ever seen before. Because even though the Lord sends the rods of his strength out from Zion, this king will rule in the midst of his enemies.
Who on earth would do that? Think through history. Some of you paid attention in history class. What king do you know of that rose to the throne and said, “Yeah, we'll just let the rebels live here. They'll be fine.” It never happens. A king rises to the throne, consolidates power, and then what does he do? Crushes his enemies. You route the bandits. You kill everybody who disagrees with you. That's how you establish your regime.
Except, the kingdom of God is not this earthly kingdom we were thinking of. The kingdom of God begins with Christ and Christ rules right in the middle of his enemies. Somehow, he maintains control of the entire universe even though many people refuse to bow to him. How is power consolidated under God? Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power, in the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, you have the dew of your youth. The kingdom of God will spread not by coercion, not by military might, not by crushing people, not by oppressing the vulnerable, but people will volunteer their hearts to this great King and Messiah because it is for their good.
When Christ rules the earth, he will rule because people will know that this King is different than any other power that has existed. On the day of his power, we will be so compelled by his holiness, by his beauty, by his glory, by his splendour, that we will willingly bow before the one God set up as Lord of all. The Messiah, Christ, is the divinely appointed King of the universe. He's not just a king. This passage tells us that he's different from every other king we see in scripture except for maybe one, because this king is also a priest. Verse four, “The Lord has sworn and will not relent. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
I'm going for really weird names during this series just in case you hadn't noticed.
Melchizedek isn't a person who's familiar to everyone in this room, is he? He's not exactly one of the great heroes of the Bible. In fact, if you search through the scriptures, the story of Melchizedek is only two verses long, but it gives us an amazing image of who the Messiah is. In Genesis 14, we hear this story about Abram and his encounter with a man called Melchizedek just before he makes his eternal covenant with God. This is Genesis 14 beginning of verse 18.
Then Melchizedek, king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was the priest of God Most High. And he blessed him and said: “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High who has delivered your enemies into your hand.” And he gave him a tithe of all.
That's it. That's the whole story that we get about Melchizedek. We don't know who his parents are. We don't know what he did. We don't really know much about what he believed. But if you look at what the Bible does tell us, we know that what we're getting here is an image of Jesus.
Now in the Bible, here's a nerdy tip for you. If you want to look more into any story you read in the Old Testament, a good thing to do is search the meaning of a name. The name Melchizedek means King of Righteousness. So, here's the story again. “Then the king of righteousness, king of Salem (Salem means peace), brought out bread and wine. And he was the priest of God Most High.”
It looks a lot like in the first book of the Bible, before Christ is ever born in Bethlehem, before God's kingdom is established through the incarnation at all, we see coming to Abram, the king of righteousness and the king of peace, as a priest of God Most High. And what does he bring him? He brings him bread and wine. The same things about which Christ told us, “This is my body broken for you. This is my blood poured out and shed for you.” Before any of these things happened in the life of Jesus, we see them in the life of this king and priest.
What does that tell us about the Christ? It tells us that not only does the Christ rule over all creation, not only will every knee bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, but it also tells us that for all time, Jesus is in heaven as our priest and intercessor. He sits at the right hand of the Father even now, holding back the wrath of God, which we all deserve, and saying to his Father the same words he said when we nailed him to that old rugged cross. He's saying: Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. Father, be merciful to them. They have no idea what's going on. Father, listen to their prayers. They're crying out to you, Father, save them. They need you now more than ever. I've walked among them. I've felt their pain. I've seen what they're dealing with. Father, Father. And he sits beside the throne of God as an intercessor, as a priest, bringing our prayers and our wants and our needs and our sacrifices before the throne. Grace.
“You are a priest forever” said God to Jesus Christ according to the order of Melchizedek.
So, Christ is a divinely appointed King and Christ is our intercessor and our priest. But then we get to the part that nobody likes. “The Lord is at your right hand; He shall execute kings in the day of His wrath. He will judge among the nations. He will fill the places with dead bodies.”
When we read this in Bible study, I asked people, “How does this chapter make you feel? What does it bring up for you?” And the number of people said that part makes them uncomfortable. That's not the God we know, is it? That doesn't sound a lot like Jesus. The first part does. We’re fine with Jesus the King and Jesus the Priest, but Jesus the Judge? That's a bit squirmy, isn't it? The idea that one day all things will come to an end and God will actually judge those who oppose him.
But I want to help you with this a little bit. Because sometimes I think the reason why we're so scared of the idea of final judgment is because we're worried that God will judge the same way we would. That God would just crush and destroy his enemies and anyone who opposed him the same way that we would. Because sometimes we place ourselves, like I said at the beginning, in the position of God. But if we think about it, we know that God is far more merciful and far more gracious than we could ever be. We get upset about the idea of final judgment as if we were gods, you know, if this was our universe, we would be so much nicer for so much longer, wouldn't we?
I'll speak for myself, I won't speak for all of you, but if I was God, I would have ended the world about five times last week. You wouldn't even have to worry about a final judgment. There would be an ongoing judgment and not really even over sins, just things that get on my nerves. That person who cut me off in traffic, fire and brimstone straight away, get out of here. I've got somewhere to be. You watch the news sometimes and see some of these petty conflicts going on. Scrap the universe. I'll start another big bang tomorrow. I've had enough of this.
And yet, God endures with us through every lie we've told, every time we've been mean to somebody, every time we fight and war with each other for no reason, through our anger and through our dishonesty and through our deceit, He sees through it all and loves us anyway. And what are we upset about? That after He's given us our whole entire lives, poured out grace after grace after grace, given us day after day after day to turn to him, painted beautiful sunsets in the sky and given us fields full of abundance that one day at the end of time, he's finally gonna judge the earth. How dare he?
God doesn't judge the world the way we do. We know that His mercy is endless, His grace is bottomless, and His love endures forever. We know that when He comes to judge the world, He doesn't just come to judge individual people for their sin, but He comes to judge the powers that hold you captive. He comes to judge sin and the grave and death itself.
As we sang in our first hymn, “He lives, that death may die.” And so, Paul reminds us of this in 1 Corinthians 15, where he says: “Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power, for He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.”
It's scary sometimes to think about the fact that God is judge. But actually, that's a really good thing. Because if God is judge, that means I'm not. That means you're not. That means our politicians and our leaders and the people who hold power in this world are not the ones who decide what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil. It means we have no right to judge each other.
We're all equally in need of God's grace. But if I'm going to be honest, that day scares me a little bit too. Because I know that when Christ comes again to rule the world in glory, I'm gonna have some serious questions to answer. Maybe one's like: Dayle, what did you do with the gifts I gave you? What did you do during your ministry? Did you tell them the truth? Did you tell them that I formed the whole world with the words of my mouth and that I made them with my hands and breathed into them the breath of life? Did you tell them that a kingdom is coming, and they don't have to worry every day because one day everything they're concerned about will be washed away and I will wipe every single tear from their eyes? Did you tell them that no matter who they are, no matter what they've done, no matter where they come from, no matter how they identify, no matter who they love, that I love them so much that I gave my body and my blood so that they could have communion with me? Did you tell them that I rose again? That I've conquered death? And that they can rise again with me if they just believe? Did you tell them that one day I'm coming back for every single one of those people I gave my life for and that all that I want is for them to come home with me?
I hope and pray that on that day I can say yes. Because I think you'll know if I'm lying, right? But I wonder what you're going to say when he asks you the same. When he asks you, will you volunteer on the day of my power? Did you bow your knee to the King of the world? Did you make your prayers to the Priest of the Most High? Did you submit your authority to that of the judge?
Here's something that is in our creed, friends: He ascended into heaven. He now sits at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead. But here's the good news. He gave us the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting to all who believe. So let us bow to the one and only who is King and Priest and the only true judge of all creation. Thanks be to God. Amen.