Psalm 2
Let’s read from Psalm 2 where
it says why do the nation’s rage and the people’s plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves
and the rulers take counsel Together against the Lord and against
his anointed saying let us burst their bonds apart and cast away
their cords from us As we make our way through it. We’ll read
little more bits and pieces as we come to them. But our title
tonight, the topic we want to speak of is trusting and obeying
the Messiah. This is Psalm 2, and we want
to connect it with Psalm 1, which we did a few moments ago as we
looked at Psalm 1, verse 1, that said, blessed are all those who,
how does it go? What is Psalm 1, verse 1? My
mind’s a little off. Blessed. Blessed is the man who
walks not, or sits not, or stands not in the way of sinners. And
then Psalm 2 verse 12 ends with, blessed are all who take refuge
in him. So there’s blessing in the love
of the law. and following it, and then there’s
blessing and submission, or we might say trusting and obeying
the Messiah. But we also want to connect Psalm
2, not with just Psalm 1, but connect it with the whole Psalter.
Remember, the Psalms are 150 verses. psalms collected together. And we look at it like a bouquet
of flowers, very specifically arranged, written over 1,000
years and probably put together in the form we have it by the
power of the spirit, by someone who compiled it. You might look
at it like a floral arrangement. Every flower, every psalm in
place, if one was missing or out of order, it just would not
look right. And so we recognize that Psalm
1 and 2 are almost like a gate helping us enter into the rest
of the Psalter. We want to obey the Word and
we want to obey the Son or the Messiah. And that’s going to
help us as we enter into the whole Psalm book. Also last week
we considered that Psalm 1 and 2 are like the keel of a boat,
that rib. along the bottom center of a
boat that keeps it straight. If a boat does not have a keel,
what will the wind do? It will drive it sideways. And
so a keel assists in keeping a boat on course. And so if you
want to keep your life on course, your worship, your emotional
life, your life among the heathen who rage and plot in vain, you
need a keel. And so you need Psalm 1 and 2,
so Psalm 1 and 2 will help us with that. So what we want to
see tonight is that while evil men are out creating chaos, the
righteous may hide in the Messiah’s refuge. This will help you as
you watch the news, as you read of more missile tests from, what’s
his name, old Kim Jong-un, whatever, Lil Kim, as they like to call
him now. or when China is digging up these islands and fortifying
them with missile defense systems, or if some of you like me lived
during the Reagan and Cold War era with mutually assured destruction. All the crazy things that go
on in the world, all that, we don’t even know the extent of
wickedness around us, but guess what we do know? We do know that
we may hide in the refuge of the Messiah, and that is important
for us. So if you walk away from tonight
and somebody asks you, what’d you learn at church tonight?
You can simply say this, Messiah wins, or Messiah reigns, he is
our ruler. So yes, all around us, there’s
chaos, there’s disorder, there’s anarchy, there’s hatred towards
God. We’re on our way from Babylon to Jerusalem, and God gives us
some help. And so here’s our main theme.
We want to understand this. When the world is falling apart,
we can trust and obey the Messiah. When the world is falling apart,
we can trust and obey the Messiah. And so we’ll look at it in four
ways. The first is verses one through three, which we’ve just
read. Wicked men plot in vain. And just keep your Bibles on
your lap and walk through this Psalm. It says, why do the nations
rage and the peoples plot in vain? Okay, that’s a question.
But it’s a question of ridicule. Why do they even bother? I mean,
what are they gonna do? What are they gonna plot against
God? What can they plot that will
stand against Him? Why do they plot all this turmoil
and this chaos? Why the missile test? Why the
persecutions against the church and against His people? It is
in vain. No weapon formed against us shall
Prosper that’s what the Old Testament teaches us God Always wins. It says the kings and the rulers
of the earth set themselves and they take counsel together This
is a comprehensive statement. This is not just the kings of
the earth. This is the rulers of the earth this is the this
is the governors and the mayors and the Aldermen and the the
town councils and the state senators and this is the judges. These
are all the rulers of the earth they set themselves Together
and they take counsel together against the Lord and his anointed
you think about all the the pundits all the all the threatening rhetoric
that is taking place in our world. You think about all the rejection
of Christ, all the noise that is made, all the saber rattling,
all the turbulence in the world, all the danger, the destruction,
and the oppression. There are people plotting in
vain against the Lord and His anointed, and guess what? It
says in verse 3, it says, let us burst their bonds apart and
cast away their cords from us. It’s a statement of rebellion. We will break their shackles.
This God, this Yahweh, this Messiah, He will not rule us. This is
a haughty statement. It’s a rebellious statement.
Kind of reminds us of Adam and Eve. Don’t eat from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. What did Satan come and
say? You won’t die. God’s just holding
back the goods from you. He’s keeping you from the buffet
line. He’s holding back what he’s enjoying just for you. And
so it may seem like little Adam and Eve aren’t like Kim Jong
or Saddam or whoever else has been wicked in history, Mussolini
or Hitler, whoever we could name, but it’s the same wickedness. It’s the same rebellion. It’s
the same fist shaking against God and saying, he won’t rule
me. I’ll burst his bonds. I will cast away his cords. I’ll
break out of his prison. I will escape his jail. You know, in this election season,
probably growing increasingly concerned about who may be on
the ticket and not just on one side or the other, but on both
sides. And I was thinking through this passage through Psalm two,
wouldn’t it be great in order to not have a Psalm two world,
to have a Psalm one candidate, to have a candidate who does
not sit or walk or stand with the wicked. But his delight is
in the law of the Lord and on it he meditates day and night.
And not only that, he kisses the son. He kisses the Messiah
and bows his knee to them. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? But
you know, even if we do get a crazy president, get a wacky person
in office, we’ve been there before. Most of us have lived through
several of them. We’ve seen some of their spouses before in some
cases. but we remember that we can take
refuge in the Messiah. And so it’d be a sweet thing
to have a Psalm 1 candidate and to have not the chaos of Psalm
2 in front of us, but the nature of the world is what it is. So what does it say? Wicked men
plot in vain, but secondly, it says the ruler of all laughs.
Look at verse four. It says, he who sits in the heaven,
laughs and the Lord holds them in derision. Can’t you just see
God on his throne? You know, we get these little
pictures of God that uses what we call anthropomorphic language. You know, God is a spirit, right?
We don’t see a big old fat guy sitting back in his lazy boy
chuckling so hard that he’s got tears in his eyes. I mean, that’d
be kind of sacrilegious, but it gives us a picture of a man
laughing. He who sits in heaven laughs and it’s a scornful laugh.
It’s not a, You know, that was a funny ha ha ha. It’s a loud,
scornful bunch of fools laugh. It kind of reminds me of in Genesis. Remember when the people at Babel,
they said, come and let us build a tower reaching to the heavens
and make a name for ourselves. And what does Genesis say next?
God looked down from heaven. He kind of peeked over the realm
of eternity. And he looked at that little
bitty old tower you know, as little and piddly as it was to
him, they thought it was huge in their sight. And he says,
I think I’ll go down there and see what they’re up to. What
a wonderful picture this is of our God. They have laughed at
him, but now he laughs at them. And his laugh is louder. His
laugh is full of scorn. His laugh is full of righteous
hatred towards their scheming. You know, you also have this
picture of Google Earth. Any of y’all ever Google Earth
your house? See what it looks like and then you realize the
bushes are from 2009 because the satellite hadn’t swung by
your house in a while. But you get this overview picture
and you can only go so far. You can only zoom in so close.
But we like to do that. We like to snoop on ourselves
and see down our chimney and that sort of business. But God
has an up-to-the-minute, moment-by-moment, perfect view and perfect knowledge
of Saddam’s and Mussolini’s and Hitler’s and Kim Jong’s, and
not just these world despots, but also of any who would intellectually
assault Christianity. He knows what lawmakers are doing,
and mayors, and aldermen, and judges. He knows every minute,
every moment, what they are up to. And so we can take refuge
in the Messiah for his father, our God, sits in the heavens
and laughs. My kids are still terrified,
at least I think they are, of the beginning of Oz. Isn’t that
the one? Oh, y’all are always terrified
when he says, I am Oz! You know, you hear that on the
beginning of the movie? Can you imagine something earth
shaking? Something that shakes the mountains. And what does
the Bible say? The deer, they give birth. The limbs and the trees shake,
the leaves fall off. And that is our God. It says
in verse five, he will speak to them in his wrath and his
fury because he’s jealous. And he will terrify them in his
fury, saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy
hill. This is a bit of divine intervention. God is saying to all the kings
of the earth, you think you rule. The real king is on Zion, my
holy hill. He has installed him, he has
placed him on Zion and ruled. We have been talking in our Wednesday
Ladies Bible Study as we make our way through Joshua. about
how all the little kingdoms of the promised land had to be cleaned
out, they had to be cleared out. And most of the kings, if not
nearly all of them, ended up hanging from the gates of their
little kingdom at the hand of Joshua and Caleb and the people
of Israel. God said to these, little ragtag
bunch of Israelites who fled Egypt and who grew up in the
wilderness and were now entering the promised land. He said, you
got to go and you got to fight and you got to clear the land
and you’ll live in cities you didn’t build. You’ll drink water
from cisterns you did not dig. You’ll eat grapes from vines
you did not plant. And this is the land I promised
your forefather Abram, but you gotta go and you gotta fight
and you gotta clear out the land. And you see all these little
conspiracies throughout the history of Israel as they’re taking the
land. All these kings get together and say, who are these puny Israelites? And they forget about Jericho
and they forget about Pharaoh and they forget about the Red
Sea parting or the Jordan River being held back as they entered
the land. They forget that the sun stood
still so that the element of surprise could continue as Israel
fought one of its great enemies. And so we must remember that
even though the enemies of God forget, we cannot forget his
strong hand and his mighty right arm that he does and will and
can fight for us. So he who sits in the heavens
laughs, but he has also set his king on his holy hill. And so that leads us to the third
section. What does Jesus have to say about
all this? We’ve looked at the rebellious
nations, the wicked men plot in vain. We’ve looked at how
the ruler of all laughs. Now this third section is the
decree of God as spoken through Jesus. This is Jesus in verse
seven. I will tell of the decree. So in eternity past, the Lord
said to me, God said to Jesus, you are my son. And today I have
begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the
nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them, meaning all these kings and rulers, with
a rod of iron. You shall dash them in pieces
like a potter’s vessel. Here’s Jesus. He is of David’s
line, he is of David’s throne, by birth and by promise and by
privilege, he is the son of God who rules and reigns. We just,
maybe in the fall, as we went through Hebrews chapter one,
realized that when it quotes these verses, when Psalm two
is quoted by the writer of Hebrews in the first chapter, we realized
that when Jesus finished his work on earth, ascended into
heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God the Father, he became
the ruling son. It was his inheritance, it was
his privilege, it was his right, it was the victory spoils of
the cross. And so there’s this declaration
in verse seven, you are my son, and today I have begotten you. Now God has said to another king
before you are my son, he said it to David, he said it to Solomon,
and he said it to every king thereafter. But when we get to
Jesus, That S in son, or that M in Messiah becomes capitalized. You are the son, the final son. You are the Messiah, the big
M Messiah. And there is no one greater than
you. And these things were affirmed
by God the Father at different points in Jesus’ ministry. Do
you remember when Jesus came up out of the water after John
the Baptist baptized him? What did God the Father say?
Behold my son. This is my son with whom I am
well pleased. Or on the Mount of Transfiguration,
there was Elijah and Moses and Jesus. Guess what? This is my
son. And after the resurrection in
Acts chapter 13, when the apostles are preaching, they quote Psalm
2 and say, by the way, this is Jesus. And so we have a Messiah
better than the previous Messiahs. We have Jesus, the greater son,
the greater David, the greater Messiah is our ruler. And notice
in verse eight, there’s a statement he makes. Ask of me and I will
make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
Do you remember when Solomon became king, God said to him,
Solomon, what is it you want? Ask it and I’ll give it to you.
And what did Solomon want? He wanted wisdom. And so there’s
an echo here. God the son is already wise. And so what does God grant him?
He gives him his inheritance. He gives him the nations of the
earth who will all bow down and worship him. They are his possession. And so we see the strength of
God’s promise being fulfilled. In verse nine, it says of Jesus
and his rule over these kings of the earth, you shall break
them. with a rod of iron, and you shall dash them in pieces
like a potter’s vessel.” God has given him a rod of iron,
it’s his scepter, it’s his scepter of rule. And with this thing,
he can rule the people, he can break the people, he can dash
them into pieces. And we see this fulfilled, we
see this carried forward in the book of Revelation, Revelation
chapter Chapter 2, chapter 12, 19, we see Jesus ruling and reigning
over the earth every Sunday, at least the ones where I use
Revelation 1 as our Trinitarian salutation before worship, where
God greets us. The one from Revelation says,
grace to you in peace from God our Father. No, how’s it go? Grace to you in peace from Him
who is, and who was, and who is to come, that’s God the Father,
and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, there’s
the Holy Spirit, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness,
the firstborn from among the dead, and what’s next? And the
ruler over all the kings of the earth. What a powerful statement
that is. Somebody rules over presidents
and kings. And what else do we have? What do they have over in Europe?
Monarchs, what do they have? A prime minister, he rules over
all of them, whether duly elected, or self-appointed, or tyrannically
taken, or through military coup, whatever, God rules over them. And so as we look at this Psalm
and say, we can find refuge in the Messiah when the world is
full of chaos and disorder, the righteous may hide in the Messiah’s
refuge. Well, the last section. The last
section, the fourth section, is simply this, wise up. There’s an element of a wisdom
psalm here as you get to the end. A lot of psalms tell us
to worship the king or they tell us to lament our own wickedness
or our own troubles. They do different things. Here
at the end, we get a little bit of a wisdom psalm. Notice how
verse 10 begins. Now therefore, O kings, And if
you go back up to verse 1, the ones who are raging, the ones
who are plotting in vain, the ones who are setting themselves
together and taking counsel together against the Lord and His anointed,
He’s saying to them, therefore, O kings, be wise. Remember this
morning, we talked about how being warned is an act of grace.
We don’t like to get our hands popped. We don’t like to be challenged
or encouraged to do the right thing. But He is even warning
the wicked kings of the earth. And we ought to see that as a
grace. Think about just reading verses 10, 11, and 12 to the
kings of the earth. Just get the G8 psalm together
and read Psalm 2, verses 10, 11, and 12. What a grace that
would be. Therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers
of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and
rejoice. with trembling. Kiss the son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is
quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge
in him. I don’t know why this is, but
I have this image of Mr. T, you know, Mr. T. You know,
he put his hands together and said, I pity the fool who rages
against the Lord and His anointed, something like that. But you
can just see the foolishness of raging against the Lord. But
here’s the wisdom. Be wise, be warned, O rulers
of the earth. You better stop and you better
assess the situation. You better pull down your missile
defense system. Take your manifesto against mankind and rip it apart,
throw it in the fire. You better stop your plans for
a wicked and worldwide regime. You better quit with your plans
to stomp out the church. Because guess what? The son will
take care of business. He will come with that iron rod
and he will dash you to pieces. He will take care of his business.
Now think of the Old Testament context. The ancient days we
had what was called a vassal and a suzerain relationship. A suzerain was like a king and
a vassal was like a servant. Some of y’all probably watched
Downton Abbey, I know. You start worrying when I get
long on Sunday nights. What’s that? Oh, is it not? What are they showing, like the
Mark Twain awards or something? Now y’all made me lose my train
of thought, but you know that you have your lords and your, what’s
that? The vassals, yeah, you have your
lords of the manor, but you also have the farmers and all the
peasants, that’s what they call them. But that’s what this situation
is like. And God is saying to the kings
of the earth, I am the king, and it’d probably be better if
you became my servant, because I don’t want to kill you. I won’t
have to dash you into pieces and take care of business because
of your wickedness and your conspiring and your plotting and your vain
planning to do evil against my people. You know, we’re living
in a time of self-rule, autonomy. We’re living in a time of narcissism
where we love ourselves. We’re living in a time of all
kinds of ideologies and beliefs. And it would be good for the
people of the earth to say, who is God? What is he like? And what does he want? And I
ought to fall in line with it and do it because it says, lest
you in his anger be destroyed. You perish for his wrath is quickly
kindled. I think something I will never
forget in my lifetime. I think I came home from, I guess I came home from seminary.
is at the time. And I turned on the television
and there was a group of Iraqis with a truck hitched to a statue
of Saddam Hussein and they were pulling the thing over. And then
what, just a year, maybe year and a half later, we see pictures
of that wicked, wicked man in a hangman’s noose. And what a
poetic picture of justice that was to see someone who had brought
so much tyranny on a certain part of the world brought to
justice. And you think of all the Christians
we know and love who are our brothers and sisters in Christ
who are facing persecution here because they work in a university
setting or they teach in a public school or because they are in
a class on religion and they’re the only Christian and they hope
to speak and be faithful. But how about our brothers and
sisters Iraq and Iran and Pakistan and Eritrea and other places
where the wicked leadership plots against the Messiah and his anointed
and says we will destroy his people. Where these people are
worshiping as quietly as possible so that their voices are not
heard. Can you imagine what it would be like not to sing? And
not to sing with all your heart and all your voice for fear that
someone will come in and not only shut down worship but may
end your life. And so there are others who must
take refuge in the Messiah in a way that we don’t have to,
but it can burden our hearts to pray for them. And so we look
at this final little statement here in verse 12. It says, blessed
are all who take refuge in the Messiah. We hope for his peace. We hope for his, his rule. We
recognize that peace does come in this life. We get periods
of rest. God promised David and Solomon
and others, I’ll give you rest from all your enemies. The promised
land was established at a point. Worship was held in Jerusalem.
And we have relative peace here and now, but that will end someday.
But where will we find peace? We’ll find it in heaven, where
the walls are high, the gates are thick, and all the wicked
are shut out. and where the dwelling place
of God is with men. And so every Sunday when we pray
the Lord’s Prayer, let me encourage you as you say it every week,
because that’s what we do. Look at how the shorter catechism
explains the Lord’s Prayer. But particularly in this moment,
think of thy kingdom come. When we pray that the kingdom
of God come, we pray that his kingdom of peace will fully and
finally enter into its completion and where the peace will rule
and reign and the wickedness and the chaos and the plotting
in vain and the frenzy of the violins as Handel interpreted
it in his music, that will all fade. In fact, it will stop and
God will usher us into an eternal peace. We pray that the wickedness
would end and that God’s reign of righteousness would fully
and finally be inaugurated. And so we thank him for Psalm
2, we must submit to the Messiah, trust and obey the Messiah, and
take refuge in him, even when the world is falling apart. Let’s
pray. And then to the tune of, Hark
the Herald Angels Sing, we’ll sing this. rendition of Psalm
2 from our ARP Bible Songbook. But let’s pray first. Our Father,
we thank you that you give us pictures of the rule and reign
of Messiah, not only in the early books of the Bible, like the
Psalms, but even the book of Revelation, which fully shows
us the reign of peace that is ours in King Jesus. And so we
pray that these things would comfort us and bless us. And
we do pray that all the kings of the earth, all the rulers
of this world, would kiss the sun, lest he become angry with
them. and destroy them. Give us trust
and hope, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen. Let’s stand as we sing
of the kingship of the Messiah. ♪ Shadows wait, hiding things beneath
the light ♪ ♪ Heaps of earth and lots of weight ♪ ♪ Others
are within the light ♪ ♪ Lost against the north-facing light
♪ ♪ God’s gift that pours away ♪
♪ We shall never since above ♪ ♪ God most high shall storm
them all ♪ ♪ There in anger, fears we prove ♪ ♪ Where in prayer
shall one man fall ♪ ♪ Yet according to my will ♪ ♪ Have I sent my
king to reign ♪ ♪ Yet once I have told thee here ♪ ♪ I am one till
I maintain ♪ ♪ Yet once I have told thee here ♪ ♪ I am one till
I maintain ♪ I am. ♪ One day I’ll pass away ♪