PSALMS 110


1 Yahweh said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.

Yahweh Elohim, He Who Shall Be Mighty Ones, the Memorial Covenant-Name, the glorious eternal purpose of the manifestation of God in a singing, rejoicing host of immortals.

The right hand is the position of favour, blessing, approval, strength, authority, honour, assurance, intimacy and fellowship.

All these aspects are involved in the conception of Jesus ascending to God's right hand-

"The saving strength of His right hand" (Psa. 20:6).

"Thy right hand is full of righteousness" (Psa. 48:10).

"The Lord hath sworn by His right hand" (Isa. 62:8).

"At Thy right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psa. 16:11).

Jesus is described as "The man of God's right hand" (Psa. 80:17) the man in whom is centered and embodied all these aspects of blessing and fellowship.

Bro Growcott - The beauties of holiness



"Until I make thine enemies thy footstool."

This seems out of place. It seems to be lowering the exalted tone of the Psalm to start out about vengeance on enemies. We should be inclined to think that the judgment on the enemies, though necessary, would be a very minor aspect of the Kingdom compared to its glories and blessings, and goodness and love.

Are we a little embarrassed by this apparent obsession with vengeance, as in various "cursing" Psalms, as something we feel a need to explain away in this modern age?

Let us not explain them away: let us learn by them. They are to emphasize what stands in the way of the manifestations of blessings and life-the terrible destructive seriousness of the problem of sin and evil and godlessness and natural fleshly mindedness.

"He must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet (1 Cor. 15:25).

That is his work and purpose (v. 26)-

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."

Sin is the great enemy from the beginning-the enemy of both God and man-that Old Serpent, the Devil and Satan. The first enemy is Sin-the last enemy is Death. Between them are comprehended all evil and sorrow and travail.

So with the so-called "cursing" Psalms. The more we realize the evilness and seriousness and harmfulness of sin-godlessness-the natural thoughts and motions of the flesh-disobedience and self-will, the more we shall understand, and REJOICE in these references to the enemies destruction.

We shall more wholeheartedly and fervently cry with Paul-

"O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" (Rom. 7:24).

God, in the patience and wisdom of His glorious purpose, has so long tolerated the ignorant, arrogant wilfulness of man that even God's own people are liable to lose some of the vividness of their recognition of the continually outraged majesty and authority of God in the earth-the dreadful curse of Sin-in-the flesh, the evil it creates, the good and joy it frustrates.

It is good to constantly be reminded of this vital truth. For all its surface pleasantness, the whole world lieth in godless wickedness.

Bro Growcott - The beauties of holiness



3 Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.

Christ's "people" are natural Israel...The great tragedy of Israel is that they were not willing in the day of his suffering.

... The redeemed are more than his "people"-they are his children, they are himself, they are the "dew of his youth" of the end of the verse...and at last, through and by means of the very tribulation they have upon themselves, all Israel shall be saved.

The beauties of holiness


One thing have I desired of Yahweh, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of Yahweh, and to enquire in his temple.


The great power of the way of Christ is its beauty-its utter contrast with the selfish, wilful ugliness of the flesh.

Bro Growcott - The beauties of holiness

The womb of the morning


"Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in

the morning" (Psa. 30:15).

And truly, even now, in this night of weakness, there are "songs in the night, but they are songs of faith, and hope, and joyful anticipation, like the songs of Paul and Silas in the dark Philippian dungeon.

Bro Growcott - The beauties of holiness



The dew of thy youth. 

I will merely remark here that " the poor and needy," whom David so amply characterizes, " poor in the world, but rich in faith," while strangers and pilgrims among the living, are

styled by Isaiah, " Yahweh's dead ones," and " His dead body." Concerning them, he says, " they shall live," " they shall arise."

They are to come forth from the dust of sheol ; in which, having been reduced thereto, they are considered as dwelling, as well as sleeping. Hence, the Eternal Spirit, who makes them live and spring forth by His power, addresses them prophetically in the words, 

" Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust."

They must awake in order to sing, which implies previous reorganization-the formation of their dust into bodies again ; for dust cannot praise in song, neither any that go down into the silence of " the land of forgetfulness " (Psalm xxx. 9 : Ixxxviii. 11-12 : cxv. 17).

I cannot dismiss this passage in Isaiah without inviting attention to the beautiful figure by which he illustrates the development of these singers from dust. He styles them " dew," and their evolution as its manifestations upon plants. Thus, addressing the Eternal Spirit, he is caused to say, " For Thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead " (Isaiah xxvi. 19) ; and in Psalm cx. 3, "in the brilliancies of holiness from the womb of the dawn, there shall be to thee the dew of thy birth."

The sleepers in the dust are styled dew, because of the resemblance subsisting between the

process of nature in the formation of dew, and the operation of the Eternal Spirit in the generation of living beings from dust. In comprehending the formation of dew, we are enabled to form some idea of the evolution of a living body from dust.

A dew-drop is a sparkling globule of water, secretly and silently deposited upon the leaves of

plants. The elements of which it is composed exist previously to its formation, free or uncombined, in the air of night. These are the invisible gases termed oxygen and hydrogen. But, besides these, there is the indispensable formative agent, styled electricity. Without

this, there could be no dew-drop visible or invisible. The gases might be mechanically mixed ; but without the invisible and silent operation of the electricity, they would not be chemically combined in the manifested product called a dew-drop.

This is a visible and tangible thing, generated from invisible and intangible latent elements.

According to the electrical law of its formation it is globular and light-refracting, or sparkling in the open brightness of the dawn. These refractions are the brilliancies, splendours, or glorious vestments of the dew. Before the dawn, the dew-drops are all in the womb of night; from which both they and the dawn receive their birth, begotten by the orb of day.

No figure can be more beautiful, no resemblance more complete.

ANASTASIS