Day 11: Psalm 110

This week marks the week of Jesus’ resurrection, a historical event that showed the world that his claims to be the Messiah were true.

While we worship Jesus as our Messiah, we also listen to him as our teacher. Jesus was a rabbi, who came out of the Rabbinic tradition of his day, and his Jewish heritage meant that he lived and breathed what we would call the Old Testament Scriptures. Consequently, Jesus is always quoting from the Old Testament, or what he would call the Law and Prophets, and his most quoted reference? You guessed it - the Psalms. Jesus quotes the Psalms more than any other book.

When Jesus is questioned by Pilate in Matthew 26 he says,

“You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

This is a direct quote from Psalm 110,

“The Lord says to my Lord:

“Sit at my right hand,

until I make your enemies your footstool.”

We will look at this later this week, but when Jesus was on the cross, he quotes the Psalms. Why would the source of Wisdom, Jesus himself, quote from the Psalms? I think part of the reason is because everyone would have a cultural awareness of the book, so they would understand his reference. I think Jesus is also modeling for us how we should behave and what our source of wisdom should be.

Pontius Pilate represents many moments we face. How many moments have you had where you didn’t know what to say and you knew the person on the other side was acting unjustly? Think through those moments. What do you normally say? Here we have a scene of Jesus in such a moment, a moment of horrible uncertainty, and he is going to quote the Psalms.

Let the statement Jesus makes give us great hope. He is seated in a position of power, and no earthly king, circumstance, or virus can remove him. But at the same time, let’s follow his example and speak the Psalms into the face of the Pontius Pilate we face.

Jared