The Messianic Ruler, Matthew 22:41-46; Psalm 110

The focal point of Psalm 110 has to do with the future King, the messianic ruler, the kingdom that will be established, and His dominion and his power when He comes.

If you are watching news turning on the radio reading the paper talking to anybody looking at the Internet in the election season, everybody is a little, I think, distressed and tired of it by this time and just waiting for the election to be over with so we can go forward with whatever the new circumstances. But the problem that we often run into as human beings is that we fall into the trap of expecting that the election of a certain person or a certain party will somehow solve all the problems that this will fix everything, and that isn't going to happen this side of the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

While government is instituted by God, those who govern are fallen, corrupt creatures and they will rule for better or for worse. Often from our perspective it seems like it's for worse, but it all depends on their personal integrity, and that relates to a lot of different issues as we seen coming out of this election. But we will only have perfect government when we have a ruler who has perfect integrity. And that person who has perfect integrity is the one who is described in this Psalm as the messianic King, the one who will come and the one who will rule.

What is important about this is as we set up and why were studying this and looking at this is it gives us a tremendous appreciation for the plan of God in providing the Messiah. We often spend time looking at the first advent, and what the Lord accomplished on the cross. But as we look at passages like the ones were looking at now, that was simply setting the foundation for that which would ultimately be accomplished when He comes in His kingdom, established as the messianic King and the Davidic king.

This psalm that were looking at is the psalm that is the most quoted Psalm in the New Testament. At least 12 times this Psalm is quoted in the New Testament. It is alluded to, I think, in a few other places but that tells us that from the viewpoint of God the Holy Spirit that this is one of the most significant aspects of divine revelation. Therefore, it is important for us to really understand what is being said here.

I know that in the past I taught it in a more summary fashion but as I continue to study the word and continue to draw out in implications and applications of the text, sometimes I do what I did yesterday somewhat facetiously when I told a friend of mine that I would quit studying because I got back from the camp yesterday with five pages of notes to cover at least one of the verses and about eight pages of notes to cover the next three verses, and after studying and putting some things together over the next hour and a half I had ten pages of notes on the first verse. There is a lot there. There are a lot of implications in this particular verse as it talks about the Lord Jesus Christ and who He is, in terms of what He is going to do and what He is going to accomplish. And in view of the fact that this psalm of only seven verses is quoted so often and reference so many times in the New Testament is really important to understand what's going on here.

For those of you who are newer to the congregation, one of the things that I emphasize as we go through Scripture is that the word of God was revealed by God the Father through God the Holy Spirit, and penned by various human authors. The Word of God is not something accidental. It is not the experiential reflection of the individual writers of Scripture on their religious experience, which is what a lot of Christian denominations think—that it is good for faith and practice, but not so much for other things—but all of the Word of God as it was originally written and come down to us was envisioned instantly and eternally in the mind of God, who is omniscient.

Now I could spend a whole sermon just on a developing that last that last statement, but as Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 2:16, the Bible, the Word of God is the mind of Christ. Whether were studying some obscure passage in the Old Testament or some favorite passage in the New Testament it is all designed to edify us, to strengthen us spiritually, and to help us understand who God is, so that that nothing that is here is here accidentally. And as we look at the psalm and focus on what he teaches about the messianic ruler, I want to remind you for a few seconds of our context.

We are studying in Matthew and we come to this last situation in Matthew 22 where after being interrogated by the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Torah expert among the Pharisees, Jesus then and asked a question of the Pharisees: "What you think about the Messiah, whose son is He?" He is really going to twist them up right now because he wants to focus on and expose their misunderstanding of who the Messiah is.

They give a partially correct answer and say that He is the son of David, and at that point the Lord Jesus Christ quotes from Psalm hundred 110:1.

One thing I didn't point out is that when we understand what the Bible teaches about Jesus we understand He is the eternal second person of the Trinity. The triune God is equally omniscient, therefore all three members of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all have equally known the Scripture for all eternity. It is called the mind of Christ.

In fact John at the beginning of his gospel says in the beginning was the LOGOS, the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. Jesus is viewed as the living LOGOS, the living expression and revelation of God, so that that is equated in terms of His thinking to what is written in Scripture.

In approximately 1000 BC when David by the Holy Spirit writes Psalm 110, God the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ are intention intentionally inspiring David, breathing this passage out, because in their mind they know that in a thousand years when Jesus is incarnate He is going to be using this very psalm, this very verse, in order to confound the Pharisees. This isn't accidental. These correlations in the Scripture are not accidental or not something that students of Scripture just look at and say isn't that nice; this over here seems like this over here; let's just kind of string these pearls together and come up with something. These are intentional connections that are built and developed in the Word of God, so that as we study and as we reflect upon the word of God we can pull these different parts together and come to a fuller picture of God's Word, of His plan of salvation's ultimate plan of redemption, establishing His kingdom on the earth, and completely destroying the impact of sin in the universe.

Jesus quotes from this particular Psalm before the Pharisees, and as He does so the entire Psalm would come to their mind. He is focusing on the first verse, but we know that that within Judaism whenever you mentioned that, that was the title. They didn't have the Psalms enumerated likely we do. They just had titles, and the title was from the first line in the psalm. So the Pharisees wouldn't think just of the first verse, they would think of everything that is in the particular psalm, and as such they recognize that Jesus is making a profound claim to be the messianic King, the son of David. They have understood this more and more and more as they have gone through these challenges in the past two chapters, and they're already plotting to kill Him. It is crystallizing in their mind that He is committing blasphemy by claiming to be God.

But it is also a warning to the Pharisees that they would be defeated because this is a Psalm that pictures the defeat and destruction by the Messianic King of His enemies, and if Jesus is the messianic King then they are his enemies and He is announcing their destruction. This is more than just what appears on the surface of the text, and by that I don't mean we have, you know, some kind of mystical hermeneutic to understand the Scripture, but to realize that there is a lot going on here, other than the overt the overt challenge to the Pharisees.

David wrote the Psalm as a prophecy about the future Messiah as he describes in second Samuel 23:1. We've also seen secondly that the future descendent of David would be a king who would be greater than David, and as an ancient Near Eastern and potentate no one would be greater than he. But he recognizes that this figure called my Lord will be greater than he. He is David's Lord and He is the messianic King. We see, third, that the messianic King is seated at the right hand of God the Father. This is a position of power, a position of privilege, but He is seated, indicating that He is not taking action; He seems to be waiting for something. That is the fourth point, that the messianic King is awaiting victory that Yahweh will give Him and that is what we see in the next two verses, as Yahweh promises to give Him victory and extend His dominion. That is when He will receive the kingdom. He doesn't receive it when He is seated at the right hand of the Father. Then we see that the messianic King will come from heaven. This is consistent with the view that the messianic King is divine, and no purely human descendent of David would be coming from heaven.

There are three basic divisions in the in the psalm. In the first part we see that Yahweh, God the Father, will exalt the messianic King to His right hand where He will await the defeat of His enemies, and the establishment of his kingdom. It is that defeat of His enemies that is a key idea that we need to keep in focus.

Then there is a shift that takes place we get to the fourth verse, where Yahweh vows to make the messianic King a priest after the order of Melchizedek. He is going to be not just king but he is going to be a priest king. As a result of that Yahweh will give the messianic King a mighty and glorious victory over his enemies, followed by a time of refreshment and exultation to a position of honor and dominion.

As pointed out, when we look at these verses the first verse reads, "The Lord said to my Lord". The first Lord in caps is God the Father saying to my Lord – adonay, this is an in an implication of deity, but it refers to the second personage who is in heaven. "… sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool". We should note the use of the word "enemies" there.

Then in the second verse, "The LORD will stretch forth Your strong scepter from Zion, {saying,} “Rule in the midst of Your enemies.” There's the command rule in the midst of your enemies. Again, we need to make this connection between the enemies of verse one and the enemies of verse two. And then the third verse, "Your people will volunteer freely in the day of Your power; In holy array, from the womb of the dawn, Your youth are to You {as} the dew."

We look at this word "enemies". Remember, in Hebrew original text there were no vowels, there were just consonants. A lot of people wonder how can the world they could understand what was being written if all they had was consonants. If I took a something familiar to you, a verse of Scripture or something like the Declaration of Independence, or just some common saying, and took all the vowels out, and you read it, you would be able to understand what it means. You do this every now and then when somebody in front of you has a customized license plate and they have five or six consonants there. You look at it and you immediately figure out what they're saying. What I'm pointing out here is that the word enemy that we have here is this word that looks like an apostrophe, it is how you transliterate the aleph in Hebrew. It is aleph, yod, waw. Look at the word for enmity; it is the same thing. You have the apostrophe for aleph, a y for yod and the w for waw, and then you add a suffix.

It shows that these two words, enemy and enmity are cognates there. Enmity is just a form of the word enemy. In Genesis 3:15 we see this word enmity first stated in Scripture, where God says to the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed"—And that term looks forward to the redemption promise. In fact, this is the first indication of how God is going to solve the sin problem—"He will bruise your head and you shall bruise his seed". There is the picture from the beginning that the messianic seed is going to be involved in warfare to defeat to defeat Satan and those who are aligned with Satan. This is frequently a theme in the psalms, and we see in Psalm 92:9, "For, behold, Your enemies, O LORD, For, behold, Your enemies will perish; All who do iniquity will be scattered."

Then we see in verse in Psalm 2:2, another messianic psalm that is often and closely associated with Psalm 110, looking to the future when the kings of the earth will be aligned against Yahweh, God the Father, and His anointed, the Messiah. "The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying". We see these enemies of God. There is a going to be a future battle that will bring to a head the satanic rebellion, the human rebellion against God, and the Messiah will be notorious.

Psalm 47:1 talks about this. "O clap your hands, all peoples; Shout to God with the voice of joy. [2] For the LORD Most High is to be feared, A great King over all the earth." Notice the emphasis on the majesty and the power of the King. That is a focal point to keep in mind throughout this. Our attention is directed to the majesty and power of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. [3] "He subdues peoples under us And nations [Gentiles] under our feet." The nations are defeated by the Messiah. This is what is pictured. We keep going back to the passage in Daniel chapter seven where Daniel has a vision in which he sees the future kingdoms of man, and then their ultimate destruction by the one who is from the Ancient of Days [God the Father].

We live in a world today that wants to say that somehow were in some form of the kingdom. We are not. This really grows out of amillennialism. Post-millennialism came up with the idea that we could bring in the kingdom. That idea got secularized and brought into politics and so since the end of the 19th century liberal progressive ideology has been under the idea that they could bring in a kingdom. But by the early 20s or 30s in the 20th century it became a secularized version of the kingdom, a utopia and there cannot be utopia if man is fallen.

Liberals don't believe man is fallen. Liberals believe man is basically good, but the Bible says God created man, perfectly righteous in His image and likeness, but then he fell; he became corrupt. That doesn't mean he is as bad as it can be, but a means every aspect of his being has been corrupted by sin.

So today we live under the rule of God the Father, the sovereign King ruling over the world. That is to whom that Psalm is addressed. Jesus, because He is seated at the right hand of God the father is not going to come in His kingdom until sometime in the future. It is wrong to talk about Jesus now as the King; it is wrong to talk now, as if there is some form of the kingdom. This has become common language among evangelicals and it's easy to get infected with this. It's a loose, bad non-biblical language, and so we have to be careful, careful with that.

Daniel chapter seven shows that there is one like the Son of Man who is going to come with the clouds of heaven, and He comes to the ancient of days and in verse 14 we read, “And to Him was given dominion, Glory and a kingdom …" That is not until He returns to the earth. "… That all the peoples, nations and {men of every} language Might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion Which will not pass away; And His kingdom is one Which will not be destroyed." That is what we just saw in depicted in Psalm 47:3. "He will subdue the peoples under him and the nations of Gentiles under our feet."

So we see an order of events. The ascension of Messiah to heaven. This is when Jesus ascended to heaven in acts chapter 1.

Secondly, then He is seated at the right hand of God, as Jesus says, "on my Father's throne", not on His throne—Revelation 3:21.

Then he will ask the Father for a kingdom; that's in Psalm 2:8. The Father says, "Ask and I will give it to you".

The fourth point is He is granted the kingdom finally; that's Daniel 7:14 for the Messiah.

Then once He is granted the kingdom He returns to the earth and defeats the kings of the earth; that is Psalm 2:9 and Revelation 19:19-21 at the culmination of the campaign of Armageddon. Then at that time Messiah will establish His rule, He will have dominion over the earth, and that is when he becomes King of all the earth. Daniel 7:27 and Revelation chapter 20.

Daniel 7:27 says, "Then the sovereignty, the dominion and the greatness of {all} the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be given to the people of the saints of the Highest One; His kingdom {will be} an everlasting kingdom, and all the dominions will serve and obey Him." That doesn't happen until the second coming, at the conclusion of the campaign of Armageddon.

Now as we look at the verses two and three of Psalm 110, these describe the assets of certain aspects of the future rule of the messianic King. Here we see that when He returns at that time, He receives dominion over all. It's an everlasting dominion, according to Daniel 7:27 and all will serve him. Verse two tells us that at that time He will he will rule over His enemies, and verse three says His servants will willingly offer themselves to serve Him completely. Verse two focuses on the submission of his enemies and verse three the willing subjection of his servants to him.

Psalm 110:2 The LORD will stretch forth Your strong scepter from Zion, {saying,} “Rule in the midst of Your enemies.”

This is a very important passage that emphasizes that it is Yahweh, God the Father in context, who sends "the rod of your strength", your strong rod as we will see, out of Zion. It is Yahweh who is the one who is extending the dominion of the messianic King, God the son. So again, like many other things we see the different roles of the Father, the Son—the Spirit is not mentioned here, but He is included. Also in other passages where we see that the all three members of the of the Trinity equally involved in fulfilling these promises.

There is a lot here. You read this and you don't catch all the significance that is here. The verb to send and the idea of the rod. What is that mean? What does it mean, out of Zion? Then what does it mean to "rule in the midst of your enemies"?

The first word that we see in the Hebrew text is not Yahweh. The first word in the in the Hebrew text is the word for the rod. The word is a common Hebrew word which simply means a rod. Sometimes it refers to a shepherd's staff; sometimes it refers to a broader term. It can refer to the scepter of the king, and that makes a little more sense here, and is how it should be translated.

This is the first part of this is from the Tanakh, the Jewish publication Society translation of the of the Old Testament: "The Lord [Yahweh] shall stretch forth the scepter of your strength" … That is the messianic King … "out of Zion". It is the idea of ruling in the midst of your enemies. Psalm 2:9 is Yahweh speaking to the Messiah, "You shall break them with a rod of iron". Psalm 29 correlates, it is talking about the same rod, the scepter of the kingdom.

As we go through this I want you to realize it that this idea of the scepter of the Messiah is a critical idea that is strung throughout Scripture. So what we have a reference to in Psalm 110:2 is this idea that God is going to stretch forth this rod. And here the term rod or scepter represents His rule or His dominion.

Now what is that rule going to be like? In Psalm 2:9 we have Yahweh speaking to the Messiah and he says, "You shall break them". Who is the "them"? They are those kings that are united against God. He says, "You shall break them with a rod of iron", so the rule of the Messiah is going to be a rule that is strong, a rule that is powerful, a rule that will crush His enemies. He will break them with a rod of iron, very vivid, descriptive language. "You shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel". Just think about what it would be like to take some of your fine china and just drop it on the floor. That is how the Messiah is going to treat His enemies; He will crush them.

But this idea is picked up in crucial passages in the New Testament, for example, in Revelation 2:27. The context is a letter to one of the seven churches and is talking about the fact that that those who are over commerce will rule with Christ. Then he says, "AND HE SHALL RULE THEM WITH A ROD OF IRON, AS THE VESSELS OF THE POTTER ARE BROKEN TO PIECES, as I also have received {authority} from My Father".

The promise there for you and I is that we will be co-rulers with Christ in heaven and carrying out this dominion and this rule as those who co-reign with Him.

Revelation 12:5. Revelation chapter 12 gives that sort of a historical overview of the role of Israel in giving birth to the Messiah and the future reign of the Messiah. And so the woman that is presented there is Israel who gives birth to a male child who is defined as the one who is to rule all the nations with the rule of iron with a rod of iron.

Now this isn't sweet little Jesus, meek and mild, is it? This is the coming glorious King who is going to crush his enemies and rule mankind with a rod of iron, and is going to be righteous and just, but also gracious and merciful; but the rod of iron is particularly directed toward his enemies, those who would oppose him; and Revelation 19:15 depicts this as He returns.

Revelation 19 describes the return of Jesus on a white horse with his saints to defeat the armies of the Antichrist and the false prophet in the campaign of Armageddon, bringing the Tribulation to its conclusion, sending the Antichrist and the false prophet to judgment to the lake of fire. It is described in verse 15, that "out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should strike the nations". See how from Psalm 2 to Psalm 110 to the New Testament we have the same theme. The Bible is consistent with itself and we see that this thread runs all through Scripture so we come to understand the nature of the messianic rule. He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

The judgment picture from Revelation chapter 4 is that the Messiah must first come and rule and destroy and crush His enemies, and then establish His kingdom. We have this emphasis. It's called the mighty scepter, a scepter power and "the scepter of your strength" in Psalm 110:2. But in Psalm 45:6 it is described as a scepter of righteousness. "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; A scepter of uprightness is the scepter of Your kingdom." That is saying that "your kingdom will be characterized by a perfectly righteous rule", not like any of the kings that we've had in human history. It will be a perfectly righteous rule [7] "You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You With the oil of joy above Your fellows."

This is quoted when we get into Hebrews 1:8. In Hebrews chapter 1 what is going on is that the writer of Hebrews is demonstrating that it is Jesus Christ who is the messianic King and that this messianic King is greater than all of the angels related to his authority and related to his position. We must be reminded that authority without power is meaningless. So it starts off establishing His authority. But of the Son {He says,} “YOUR THRONE, O GOD, IS FOREVER AND EVER, AND THE RIGHTEOUS SCEPTER IS THE SCEPTER OF HIS KINGDOM." This is His authority that comes from God so that He can rule over His kingdom, and that is based on righteousness.

In Hebrews 1:7-14, the context of this quote, the writer of Hebrews is demonstrating that the King priest is superior to angels with respect to his power as well. So He is given authority from God, and then He is given power. Power without authority is meaningless, and authority without power is also meaningless. They must have the two; they must come together.

What's interesting is that an Aramaic translation in a 4^th century AD document called the Targum of Jonathan paraphrases this Psalm 45"2 and says, "Your beauty, O King Messiah is greater than that of the sons of men". So it is clear that even as late as the fourth or fifth century, rabbinic scholars understood that that Psalm 45 was a messianic Psalm, and was directly addressing the Messiah and his future rule and reign. This idea of his reign comes from the Davidic covenant.

I read the passage from second Samuel seven this morning. It's covered in second Samuel 7:12-16, Psalm 89, and 1 Chronicles 17:11-14. So what we see is that Psalm 110 connects this idea scepter over to Psalm 2:7. That is then quoted three times later on in Revelation connecting it to the rule of the Messiah and our role in that in that rule. I then connected this to Psalm 45 which is connected to an understanding of the power and authority of the Messiah in Hebrews chapter 1, which in turn connects us back to understanding the Davidic covenant: that the Messiah is not some accident but is the result of a promise covenant between God and David that He would be given this rulership. And God in the Davidic covenant promise David an eternal house, an eternal kingdom, and an eternal throne. Well only someone eternal can fulfill that responsibly so that David's son that is envisioned ultimately in 2 Samuel seven can't be purely human because He is the one who's going to rule eternally.

The only way you could have that promise fulfilled is either in an eternal succession of children, of sons who could fulfill that that role, or had that line culminating in someone who himself is eternal. So there is a connection between second Samuel 7:16—"your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you"—and Psalm 89:3, "I have made a covenant with my chosen I've sworn to my servant David", and Psalm 89:20. This all connects together and is also seen to be fulfilled in passages like Isaiah 9:7, talking about the Messiah, "Of His the of the increase of his government, and peace there will be no in upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this". The characteristic of that kingdom is described in Hebrews 11:4, "With righteousness He shall judge the poor". So this kingdom is characterized by righteousness. That is what we see in Hebrews 1:8.

So when we read this passage it is not just talking about the sending forth of a rod but that God the Father is going to extend the dominion of the Messiah out from Zion. This is what is depicted in terms of God's establishment of the Davidic King. This is the one that is referred to by David as "my Lord" in verse one.

The word "shall send" is the Hebrew word that means to send something, and it also has the idea of extending something that limits, especially when it's attached to something else. So the idea here is that Yahweh is extending the power of the messianic King. "The rod of your power" has the idea of "your powerful rod", or "your majestic scepter". It's extending "your dominion out from Zion", so the center is in Zion.

What we see when we study prophecy is that when the Lord Jesus Christ returns at the second coming, where he is defeating the forces of the Antichrist and the false prophet, the end of the campaign takes place in a location just there in Jerusalem. Many identify it with the Kidron Valley just below the temple mount, called the valley of Jehoshaphat. This is where that campaign ends. So He defeats the enemy there, that is ground zero for the establishment of the kingdom, and then God is going to extend it out from there, Zion being the center now.

Now what do we mean by this word Zion? The Scripture talks about the old city of David as Zion. Psalm 132:13 says, "For the LORD has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His habitation", and in that context is talking about the old city of David, which is just a small little promontory it seems, extending to the south from the temple mount, and it doesn't look like it's was very large at all. It was really rather small when David captured it from the Jebusites.

In Psalm 48:2 we read, "Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, Is Mount Zion {in} the far north, The city of the great King." So here we see Zion being expanded out to refer to the whole city of Jerusalem; not just the original part was the city of David, but all of the city of Jerusalem. It is also designated that way in Zechariah chapter 2:7 where it is extended to the entirety of the land.

Psalm 87:2, "The LORD loves the gates of Zion More than all the {other} dwelling places of Jacob." What is pictured there is the Zion gate going into the old city of Jerusalem. It's located on Mount Zion, which is just to the west of the city of David.

Psalm 133:3 says: "It is like the dew of Hermon Coming down upon the mountains of Zion; For there the LORD commanded the blessing—life forever." In prophetic passages Zion refers to Jerusalem as the capital of the messianic King.

We see this in Psalm 2:6, “But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain.” So we are told that the Lord, Yahweh, is going to extend the power, the dominion of the Messiah out from Zion to rule over the whole earth. And then He is told by God the Father to rule. It is a command. It is the same word that is used in Genesis 1:28 when God tells man that they are to rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle of the land; they are to rule over everything. That is given to the Messiah.

What we must understand is God created the human race to rule over creation, but that rulership, that dominion was lost when Adam sinned. The only way mankind the human race can recover it is through the perfect Man, the God Man who returns and establishes His kingdom. Only then will we fulfill that initial command of God to rule over creation.

Psalm 8:5 refers to this. "Yet You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You crown him with glory and majesty!" [6] You make him to rule over the works of Your hands; You have put all things under his feet". That takes us back to the idea in Psalm110:1 that the Messiah is to sit at the right hand of the Father "until I make your enemies your footstool". And at that point when operation footstool takes place is when the messianic King will rule and fulfill the initial mandate for the human race—Genesis 1:26-28.

So what we see here is that first of all, Yahweh will extend the messianic King's dominion and then He will command him to rule. And He will take over that that rulership over over the planet in the kingdom, and He will rule in the midst of his enemies. We have the picture of this in two passages. One is in Matthew 25:31-46, which is where Jesus talks about the judgment of the sheep and the goats. Sheep are the surviving Gentiles at the end of the tribulation; the goats are the other Gentiles who survive and they are judged.

It is also described in Joel 3:1-3. This is after the conclusion of the Tribulation, the battle of Armageddon. ^NASB “For behold, in those days and at that time, When I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem, I will gather all the nations And bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there On behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations; And they have divided up My land. They have also cast lots for My people, Traded a boy for a harlot And sold a girl for wine that they may drink." It is there that that the Messiah will judge the Gentiles.

He will punish his enemies— Psalm 2:9, the rod of iron. Also Zechariah 14:17-18 ^NASB "And it will be that whichever of the families of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, there will be no rain on them. If the family of Egypt does not go up or enter, then no {rain will fall} on them; it will be the plague with which the LORD smites the nations who do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths."

And then what happens? At the end of the millennial kingdom, at the end of that thousand year rule, we read in first Corinthians 15:24, 25 ^NASB "then {comes} the end, when He [Messiah] hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet". The final enemy is Satan and the revolt at the end of the thousand-year rule and reign. Verse 26 says, "The last enemy that will be destroyed is death".

So we get this panorama of the messianic rule just from the language that is used here in Psalm 110:2, which focuses on how God will eventually through the Lord Jesus Christ, destroy his enemies. So no matter what happens, we can take comfort in the fact that God is still in control and no matter what happens, we can have joy and peace and stability.

That is one of the major messages of the Old Testament prophets is that no matter how bad it got, even with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the scattering of the people, they could have peace and stability and tranquility, knowing that God was in control, and they could have joy in the midst of their circumstances wherever they were taken.

And the reason for that is because of the Lord Jesus Christ who has paid the penalty for sin, and because that has taken place and if we believe on him we know what our destiny is, and no matter what happens here on earth it will fade in comparison with eternal glory.