Christian, You Have a Conquering King

Psalm 110 reads,

The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit ay my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”

² The Lord sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! ³ 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. ⁴ The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

⁵ The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. ⁶ He will execute judgement among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter chiefs over the wide earth. ⁷ He will drink from the brook by the way; therefore he will lift up his head.

W.S. Plumer, in his commentary on the Psalms, describes the meaning of verse 7 in Psalm 110,

“Various and recondite meanings have been claimed as found here. To enumerate them all would be tedious and unprofitable. The true explanation is that as a conqueror in a great contest overcomes all opposition, and refreshes himself at the brook in his victorious march, and thus goes on conquering and to conquer, so shall it be with Messiah. This is a good sense, entirely consistent with the figurative language of the Psalm, wholly natural, and even suggested by the history of one of the Judges of Israel. After his great slaughter of his enemies Samson ‘was sore athirst, and called on the Lord, and said, Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy servant: and now shall I die for thirst, and fall into the hand of the uncircumcised? But God clave an hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived.’ Jud. xv. 18, 19. This agrees with the last clause: ‘Therefore shall he lift up the head, i.e., he shall not go drooping or faint to his work as a conqueror, but shall gloriously proceed in his conquest of the nations. Without a figure we have the same predictions in Isa. xlii. 3, 4; liii. 10-12. A thousand devices of man may fail; God’s word and oath make sure the glories of the Redeemer’s kingdom” (Plumer, 975-976).

In his Doctrinal and Practical Remarks, Plumer emphatically states,

“Gloriously does Christ advance his cause and kingdom among the heathen, the Gentiles. The little leaven shall yet leaven the whole lump. The grain of mustard seed shall yet be a tree, in which the fowls of heaven shall lodge. Compare Isa. liv. 1-3; Rev. xix. 6. Christ’s reward has not been half measured out to him. The brightest prospects are before him. And he has merited all that was promised him, and all that shall ever be given him” (Plumer, 977).