Okay. If you were with us Sunday, I want to hand you back one word before we go anywhere. Just one. It’s the word that quietly connects Psalm 110 to the very first page of the Bible, and once you see it you can’t un-see it.
Verse 2 gives the King His scepter and one command: rule.
²The LORD sends forth from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies! Psalm 110:2 (ESV)
That word “rule” isn’t a throwaway. In Hebrew it’s רָדָה — rāḏâ — to have dominion, to rule (BDB). And it’s the same word, the exact same one, that God speaks over the first human He ever makes:
²⁸And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Genesis 1:28 (ESV)
“Have dominion” is rāḏâ. So when Psalm 110 tells this coming King to rule, it’s not a fresh idea. It’s reaching all the way back and picking up the job God handed humanity on day six. That’s the thread we pulled Sunday. You’ve already got it in your hands. Now let me take you where we couldn’t go in the room.
It was never just a king job
Here’s the thing. That dominion word is only half of Adam’s job description. Only half.
Flip over one chapter. God sets the man in the garden and gives him a second assignment:
¹⁵The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Genesis 2:15 (ESV)
“Work it and keep it.” Sounds like yard work, right? It isn’t. Those are two loaded words. The first is work / serve — עָבַד — ʿāḇaḏ — to labor, to serve (BDB). The second is keep / guard — שָׁמַר — šāmar — to keep, watch, guard (BDB). And here’s the part that gets me: that exact pair shows up again later, when God tells the priests how to tend the tabernacle. Serve the place, guard the place. Same two words (Numbers 3:7–8). Adam wasn’t handed a shovel. He was handed a priesthood.
So look at what Adam actually is when you set the two chapters side by side. Genesis 1: rule. Genesis 2: serve and guard the holy place. King and priest. One man, both offices, the crown and the altar together, in the garden, before anything breaks. That’s the office Psalm 110’s King walks straight into. And it’s not some new invention for David’s line. The scholar Matthew Emadi says it well: this priest-king office is “the restoration of an office given at creation.” The first human, he argues, “was made to rule and to mediate,” made to be a king-priest over Eden (“You Are Priest Forever,” SBJT, 2019).
Now here’s where I want to slow down
Sunday I told you Adam was made to inherit that king-priest mantle and “never inherited it because of his fall and his failure.” That’s true. But there’s a sharper way to say it, and the sharpness matters, so stay with me a second.
The frame we reach for is loss. Adam had it. A throne, an office. And he blew it. Flunked the test. Got fired. And if that’s the frame, then Jesus shows up as the repair guy: win back what Adam threw away, undo the damage, get us back to the garden.
But read Genesis again. Adam never actually gets installed. There’s no coronation, no moment where he steps into the office. Emadi says it flat out. The first human “did not enter into that office.” He was commissioned for it and never took it up. And look at what he’s doing by Genesis 3:
¹⁰…I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. Genesis 3:10 (ESV)
That’s not a king who lost his crown. That’s a man who never got installed in the first place: hiding when he was made to guard, scared when he was made to rule, ducking out of the very room he was put there to tend. The job was given to him. He just never stepped into it. And the honest word for that isn’t failure, exactly. It’s unfinished.
So what’s the King actually doing?
This is the whole thing. Stay with me.
If Adam just lost the office, then the King’s job is repair: get the throne back, hit undo, head back to Eden. But that’s not the shape of Psalm 110. Adam was commissioned and never installed. So the King who fulfills this psalm isn’t restoring a throne somebody sat in and lost. He’s finishing a job that never got carried across the line. He completes the thing Adam never completed.
That’s what we mean when we call Jesus the new and true Adam. Not “Adam flunked, Jesus aced it.” More like: the job humanity was built for, rule and mediate, king and priest, got announced over us at the very start, and then just sat there, unentered. And this King walks in and takes it up. He receives it instead of grabbing for it. He rules and He mediates, both at once, the way Adam was made to and never did.
Quick guardrail while we’re standing this close to the throne, because the church has tripped on this one before. Psalm 110 opens with “Sit at My right hand.” That’s enthronement language: a King installed and declared, out loud, in history. It is not the moment Jesus became the Son, or got promoted into being God. He always was who He is. The coronation announces what was already true; it doesn’t manufacture it. Declared, never became. Keep that straight and the whole psalm holds together.
What that leaves you holding
I’m not going to hand you five steps. I don’t think the psalm’s offering a technique, and it’s sure not offering feelings-management. It’s offering you a different place to stand.
Look at verse 3 one more time. The King’s people “offer themselves freely.” That’s a worship word. A freewill offering. Nobody gets drafted. You don’t get conscripted into this King’s army; you show up the way a worshiper brings a gift, because you actually want to. And that tells you where you stand in the story. You’re not the King. But you’re not stuck in the old failed order either. You’re a willing offering to a King who can’t be corrupted by the power He holds and can’t be beaten by any enemy He faces. The last one included.
And that unfinished thing in you, the calling you were made for and have never quite carried all the way, the room you keep half-stepping into and backing out of, that’s not a loss you’ve got to go recover on your own. It’s a job the true Adam already finished. And He hands it to everybody found in Him.
That’s the part Sunday didn’t have room for. The King in Psalm 110 isn’t cleaning up Adam’s mess. He’s finishing what Adam started and never got to. And if you’re in Him? So are you.