How do you picture Jesus in your mind’s eye? As the first-century Jewish rabbi who walked the streets of Nazareth and Galilee? That’s a good place to start. But if that’s only how we see Jesus, we will only have a limited picture. In this psalm David prophesies concerning Jesus the coming Messiah, and, just as a coin has two sides, here we see Jesus’ two sides: he is both priest, who ministers between God and man (v 4); and also conquering king, who wages war against all who oppose him (vs 2,3,5,6). 

We need a priest who can mediate between God and man and offer himself as the priestly sacrifice who atones for sin (1 John 2:1,2). But we also need a conquering king who will pursue evil and suffering, sin and death (Ephesians 6:12) until they are utterly destroyed and the rule and reign of his kingdom are established for ever. 

Jesus is our great high priest (v 4), the Lord of lords and King of kings (v 2). He makes you right before God, and one day, he will reign victorious over sin and death (1 Corinthians 15:55). 

What different images of Jesus have you come across? What aspects of Christ do these images reflect? 

This psalm is difficult. It is not always obvious who is speaking in it or who is being addressed, and its description of God as one who heaps up the dead (v 6) is uncomfortable.

For Jews of Jesus’ day, however, the psalm was clear and its message a positive one. They took it to be about the Messiah. They believed he would be a descendant of King David, who would crush their enemies through military victory.¹ It is not surprising, then, that Jesus would quote from this psalm when debating with the Pharisees about the Messiah.² However, rather than using the psalm to confirm the Pharisees’ beliefs, he used it to challenge their idea that the Messiah would be nothing more than a nationalistic military leader. He appears to have shared their belief that David wrote the psalm and that in verse 1 David is talking about the Messiah, calling him ‘my Lord’. He argues that if the Messiah was simply a descendant of David, then David would not have called him ‘my Lord’; there was more to the Messiah than that. As William Barclay says, Jesus was not just the son of David but the son of God too.³

Similarly, the reference in verse 4 to Melchizedek, the priestly king who blessed Abram in Genesis 14:18–20, is also used in the New Testament to heighten our understanding of Jesus’ nature and work.⁴ Melchizedek was seen as prefiguring Christ, being a priestly king who (because no reference is made to his birth or death) was believed to be a high priest for ever. The arguments follow a logic not easy for us to understand today. However, Jesus and the early church used this psalm to help us understand how unique and special Jesus is. How special is Jesus to you? 

List everything you love about Jesus. Then consider if there is anything important about him you have omitted from your list. 

¹ William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Vol 2, Saint Andrew Press, 1988, p279  ² Matt 22:41–46 ³ Barclay, 1988, p280  ⁴ Especially Heb 6:20 – 7:28