His Willing People

I spent several years of my academic life researching a Baptist minister from colonial Charleston, South Carolina, named Oliver Hart. One document he left behind was his sermon register, where he recorded in his neat, eighteenth-century handwriting all the texts he preached over several decades. Every preacher has his favorite verse, but I was surprised that Hart preached from Psalm 110:3 more than any other: “Thy people shall be made willing in the day of thy power.” Why preach from such an obscure verse? He saw in it a perfect description of what happens when Jesus saves us.

Here in Psalm 110, David overhears God the Father talking to Jesus, the coming King. God has summoned Jesus to sit at his right hand, until he puts all his enemies under his feet (vv1–2). At the end of the psalm, we’ll see that God will subdue many of Jesus’ enemies the hard way. But v3 describes a group who comes to the Messiah a better way: they “offer themselves freely.” These people recognize Jesus as the rightful king, so they lay down their arms and kneel before him as loyal subjects. They find him to be so good that they volunteer to serve him: they exchange their enemy uniforms for holy apparel. Literally, they “present themselves to the King as freewill offerings.” The Messiah’s devoted people are an amazing sign of his great power.

Oliver Hart understood that this is just what happens when Jesus saves us. Before, we are unwilling to submit to God. Paul develops this in Romans 6, when he pictures Sin as a tyrant who ruled our lives. Every day, we presented our bodies to Sin for service, and did whatever he told us to do. We didn’t think of it this way, of course; we thought that we were free from God’s control! But Sin was our slave-master, and the only wages he paid out for all that hard work was misery, shame, and death (Rom 6:20–23).

But all that changes in the day of the King’s power. Jesus sends his Holy Spirit into our lives, and we come “alive to God (Rom 6:11).” Sin’s chains fall away, and we suddenly don’t want to resist Jesus. We see that he is the rightful King, and that he died for us. We willingly turn to him in repentance and faith, and we volunteer to serve him. We “die to sin” and begin to “walk in newness of life” by the power of his resurrection (Rom 6:1–4). Now instead of daily presenting our bodies to Sin, we present our bodies to Jesus for righteousness, as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable (Rom 12:1). Unlike working for Sin, we find this King gives us freedom, dignity, joy, and eternal life. Christ’s former enemies are “obedient from the heart,” transformed by his power (Rom 6:17).

This is the picture Psalm 110:3 prophesies. It happened to 3,000 souls on Pentecost. It happened to Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus Road. It has been happening all over the world ever since, including in colonial South Carolina, and today. The King displays his power among the most unlikely people, even to me. How about to you?

Psalm 110:3 says the King never stops expanding his Kingdom until he returns. “From the womb of the morning, like dew your youth” is a poetic way of saying that he never gets old or tired. He keeps going from strength to strength, conquering hearts by his power, until there is a number so great that no one can number it, from every nation, tribe, and language, standing before the Throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God, a who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb (Rev 7:9–12)!"

FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT, SEE:

Article by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church