Praying the Psalms: Psalm 110

While there’s the mark of Jesus and a host of verses that are cited in the New Testament running through 110, it’s verse 3 where I camped. It’s not that I’m uninterested in Melchizadech, it’s just that, in the light of verse 3, my ‘better high priest’, Jesus, finds even greater context.

Verse 3 says: ‘Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power, in holy garments, from the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours.’

What prompts the free offering of ourselves on the day of Jesus’ power? The pursuit of holiness…following after Jesus.

‘How truly beautiful is holiness!’, one writer penned, ‘God himself admires it. How wonderful also is the eternal youth of the mystical body of Christ! As the dew is new every morning, so there is a constant succession of converts to give the church perpetual juvenility’.

If all that got a little esoteric, let’s try and break it down. It’s the continual spreading of the gospel that keeps our eyes on Jesus and on spreading the good news about Him.

We have a tendency to complicate things. Perhaps to puff ourselves up, or perhaps it’s the product of a life lived inward. As Paul writes to Timothy: ‘the mysteries of Godliness are great’. Unfathomable. Yet the free gift of the gospel is like craved milk by a new born baby. Desired. Sought after. Hungered for.

I’ve discovered with our Band of Brothers/Band of Sisters programs at BT RunClub that there’s unfolding joy as people start running for the first time. This thing that they never thought might be their thing is gradually recovered as a foreign but natural joy. And for those alongside of them who may have been running for years, there’s a surge of excitement as we’re reminded of the joy that they’re discovering…and that we sometimes forget.

That’s a good picture of the ‘permanent state of juvenility’ that the commentator is describing, the ‘dew of your youth’ of which David writes. Sure, there’s an underbelly to the permanent stagnation in immaturity that can prevail in the church, but that’s not what’s going on here.

Want to recover your hope all over again? Recall the good news of Jesus. Share the good news of Jesus. Remember your first love, the grace in which you stand. Spread the good news of Jesus. And watch the Holy Spirit course adrenaline through your veins as others discover His free gift of salvation for the first time.

‘People will offer themselves freely on the day of your power’, writes David.

Freely is not a constrained or stingy offering of ourselves, but an unbridled, uninhibited gift. We willingly crucify the old flesh in the light of Jesus to put on the new man in Christ. The newness we put on is not dead life but resurrected, victorious life – worthy of our loosened grip on death, and our old way of living.

The exchange from offering ourselves is all gift: life for death, forgiveness for sin, righteousness for rags, grace for striving.

My desire to be part of the fellowship of the willing, a church not gathered to tick a box or do a job, but to be a people. Willingly believing, submitting and loving. Willing in receiving love, being showered and lavished with blessing. Willing in obedience, consecration and the leading of the Holy Spirit. No longer under the constraints of the law, but liberated by the Spirit of God.

The people who offer freely, put on holiness – the righteous perfection of Jesus. They go together.

I am redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, saved from sin yes I know I am. All my sins are taken away, praise the Lord!