Week 36: Memory Verse
Why This Verse
Psalm 110:1 is the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament — cited or alluded to more than any other passage from Israel’s Scriptures. It is a riddle embedded in an oracle: the LORD (Yahweh) speaks to one whom David calls “my Lord” (adoni). If the psalm is David’s, and the subject is David’s descendant, how can David call his own son “Lord”? Jesus himself will pose this question to the Pharisees — “If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matthew 22:45) — and they will have no answer, because the answer requires a king who is simultaneously David’s offspring and David’s God, born in time yet existing before time.
The verse commands this king to sit — to take the posture of completed authority — at God’s right hand, the position of supreme honor and executive power in the ancient world. The enthronement is not provisional. It endures “until” every enemy becomes a footstool, a metaphor drawn from ancient Near Eastern practice where a conquering king placed his foot on the neck of the defeated. The scope is total: not some enemies but all enemies, not temporarily subdued but permanently beneath the throne. This is the psalm that the royal psalms week orbits around, because it gathers every thread — divine sonship (Psalm 2), eternal reign (Psalm 89), universal dominion (Psalm 72), the king addressed as God (Psalm 45) — and weaves them into a single portrait of a ruler no human monarch could ever be.
Peter preaches this verse at Pentecost as the explanation for the resurrection and ascension: “For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool”’” (Acts 2:34-35). The psalm David wrote becomes the sermon Peter preaches. The right hand of God that David envisioned is the throne the risen Christ occupies. And the author of Hebrews builds three chapters on the verse that follows — “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Psalm 110:4) — demonstrating that the one seated at God’s right hand is also the one who “always lives to make intercession” (Hebrews 7:25). King and priest in one person. Throne and altar in one office. The riddle David posed finds its answer in Christ alone.
Connections This Week
- Day 1 — Psalm 2 declares the divine decree: "You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage" (Psalm 2:7-8). Psalm 110:1 reveals where this enthroned Son sits — at the Father's right hand, with every enemy destined to become his footstool. The two psalms together form the complete portrait of messianic enthronement: declared as Son, seated in authority, given the nations.
- Day 2 — Psalm 110 is the day's reading itself, and the memory verse is its opening line. The psalm goes further than enthronement: "You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" (Psalm 110:4). The one seated at God's right hand holds an office Israel's law kept strictly separate from the throne — priest and king united in a single figure whose priesthood predates Aaron, predates Levi, and has no end.
- Day 3 — Psalm 89 stacks the promises of the Davidic covenant with exuberant confidence — "I will establish your offspring forever" (Psalm 89:4) — and then collapses into lament: "You have defiled his crown in the dust" (Psalm 89:39). The unanswered cry "How long, O LORD?" (Psalm 89:46) finds its resolution in Psalm 110:1. The crown is not in the dust permanently. It is at God's right hand, and the one who wears it will never be removed.
- Day 4 — Psalm 72 envisions the messianic king's reign in edenic terms: "May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth!" (Psalm 72:8). The universal dominion Psalm 72 describes is the dominion Psalm 110:1 guarantees — a reign that extends until every opposing power is subdued, every nation brought under the scepter of the king at God's right hand.
- Day 5 — Psalm 45 addresses the king with a word no Israelite poet should have dared: "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever" (Psalm 45:6). The king is called *elohim*. Psalm 110:1 explains how such language is possible — the one David calls "my Lord" is more than a human descendant. He is the one the Father enthrones at his own right hand, the king whose identity bursts the boundaries of every merely human monarchy.