Psalm 110 is ascribed to David and was sung in the royal liturgy of Israel — a coronation oracle in which Yahweh addresses the king as adoni, "my lord." For Israel, this was already strange: David, the highest human authority in the land, names someone above himself to whom God speaks directly. By the first century, Jewish readers debated who this second figure could be. Jesus picks up that debate in Mark 12 and presses it. The Psalm was written for worshipers in the temple, but it was already reaching past them — toward a king whose enthronement is at God's own right hand.

From the writers we read together

BibleProject

Tim Mackie and Jon Collins, biblical theology teaching project (Portland, OR)

Mackie and Collins trace a thread that runs from Genesis 14 through Psalm 110 to Hebrews 7: the figure who is both king and priest. Israel's law kept those offices apart — Saul lost his throne for grasping at priesthood — but Psalm 110 quietly reunites them in the person David calls "my Lord." The early church did not invent a divine Messiah out of thin air. They read this Psalm and saw who had just risen.

What BibleProject keeps pressing is that the resurrection is not the end of Jesus' story but the beginning of his reign. Psalm 110 is what Pentecost is preaching (Acts 2:34-36). The ascension is not Jesus stepping offstage; it is Jesus taking the throne. That changes how you carry today. Whatever powers seem to be sitting on top of the world — political, economic, personal — they are not in the seat. Someone else is, and he is waiting for the footstool to be finished.