Psalm 110: The King Who Is Also a Priest

In just seven verses, this psalm manages to be one of the most quoted passages in the entire New Testament — and one of the most mysterious in the Old. "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand." David is speaking of someone greater than himself, a king who rules from the very throne room of God, whose people come willingly, who is somehow both warrior and priest — and not a priest in the usual way, but "after the order of Melchizedek," that strange and ancient figure who appeared from nowhere to bless Abraham and then vanished from the story. The psalm is dense as a diamond and almost as hard to look at directly. It speaks of a power that is not merely political but cosmic, a priesthood that predates and outlasts the Levitical system, and a victory so total that enemies become a footstool. Something enormous is being glimpsed here, through a very small window. One has the feeling of watching a curtain being pulled back just far enough to reveal that the throne room is much larger than anyone had imagined.

00:00 The Lord Said Unto My Lord
00:15 Rule in the Midst of Enemies
00:25 Priest After Melchizedek
00:40 Kings Struck Through
01:00 He Shall Lift Up the Head

Psalm 109: The Prayer We Are Afraid to Pray

This is one of the psalms that makes polite Christians nervous, and perhaps it should. David has been repaid evil for good, hatred for love, and the curses that pour from him are scalding — let his days be few, let his children beg, let no one show him mercy. We want to look away, or at least to explain it away. But before we do, notice two things. First, David does not take revenge; he prays it. The violence stays in the conversation with God rather than spilling into the street, and there is a world of difference between those two things. Second, notice where the psalm ends — not in fury but in the quiet confession of a man who knows he is "poor and needy," whose heart is "wounded within me," who fades like an evening shadow. The rage, it turns out, is the cry of someone who has been deeply, unjustly hurt and has nowhere to take that hurt except to God. "Let them curse, but bless thou." That single line contains the whole theology of the psalm: the final word belongs not to the one who curses but to the One who blesses.

00:00 A Cry Against Betrayal
00:40 Words of Hatred Without Cause
01:00 The Terrible Curses
02:00 Cursing as a Garment
02:30 Poor and Needy
03:00 Let Them Curse, but Bless Thou

Psalm 108: The Heart That Wakes the Dawn

There is something almost reckless about the opening of this psalm — "O God, my heart is fixed; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory." David does not wait for circumstances to justify his worship. He wakes the dawn itself with his singing, as though the sun were sluggish and needed a nudge. This is not the forced cheerfulness of someone ignoring his problems; the second half of the psalm makes clear that trouble is very real, that enemies press in, that human help is vain. But David has learned something that most of us spend a lifetime fumbling toward: praise is not the result of victory but the posture from which victory becomes possible. "Through God we shall do valiantly." Not through cleverness, not through strength of arms, but through the God whose mercy, astonishingly, is described as being "great above the heavens." One wonders what it would feel like to begin each morning not by checking the news but by waking the dawn with a fixed heart.

00:00 A Heart Fixed on Praise
00:20 Waking the Dawn
00:35 Mercy Above the Heavens
00:50 God's Sovereignty Over Nations
01:00 Through God We Shall Do Valiantly