Great hymns. It's great to be
singing. And every time we sing in church
we need to remember a couple of important things. The heavens
are singing. They're singing songs of triumph
now, and they're singing songs to the Redeemer, singing songs
about the Redeemer. The other thing that's remarkable
is that last night, before the Lord Jesus Christ died, He sang
with them. We have a singing God, brothers
and sisters. It's good to sing His praises. That parable story the Lord Jesus
gave in Luke chapter 20, I suppose there is just one salutary warning
out of it, isn't there? That the Lord Jesus warns everyone,
no one goes to hell by accident and no one goes to heaven by
accident. those who meet God on the day
of the judgment outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. will find
that their destiny is their responsibility. Their mouths will be silent.
That's why we have before us in Psalm 2, and we'll just turn
your Bibles to Acts chapter 4 first, but in Psalm 2 the message we're
looking at this morning has this beautiful conclusion that says,
kiss the sun. Kiss the son, lest he be angry. What a remarkable challenge. Command from our God to bow down
and to pay homage to the Lord Jesus Christ. And then there's
a promise, isn't there, at the end of Psalm 2. Blessed are they,
are all they that put their trust in Him. Now the reason we're
looking at Psalm 2 is that if we go back to Acts chapter 4
verse 23, we'll see that here we have the church gathered for
public prayer together. It's the first prayer recorded
in the scriptures of the church together. And it's a prayer in
response to the first persecution that the Church had undergone. It has not ceased to have undergone
it ever since. But that window, that extraordinary
time of those days, possibly, where there was great peace and
a great outpouring of the Spirit, has now come to an end. And from
the rest of the book of Scripture and the rest of history, you'll
find that the Church of God is under attack all the time. So
in verse 23 of chapter 4 it says, and being let go, this is Peter
and John, they went to their own company and reported all
that the chief priests and elders had said unto them. And when
they heard that, they lifted up their voice to God with one
accord. I love that word, with one accord. They were of one mind and said,
Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the
sea, and all that in them is, who by the mouth of thy servant
David hath said, Why, and he now quotes Psalm 2, Why did the
heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? The kings
of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together
against the Lord. and his Christ. And so Psalm
2 is quoted as a prophecy of what happened, for a truth. This
is what's happened, isn't it? Against thy holy child Jesus,
whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate and
the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together.
The gathering of these people together was in verse 28, for
to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done. The heavens do rule, brothers
and sisters, the heavens do rule. And then they prayed, And now,
Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants that
with all boldness they may speak thy word. The one thing that
the Sanhedrin wanted them to do was to stop speaking about
the Lord Jesus Christ. And it was a glorious response
of the Holy Spirit. And when they had prayed, the
place was shaken where they were assembled together, and they
were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the Word
of God. with boldness, and the multitude
of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul." What
a remarkable thing when the Lord brings that to be the portion
of His people. This is, of course, the Church's
response to the first persecution. The first persecution of the
Church is to you be silent. Don't you speak about our God. Don't you speak about your God.
Don't you proclaim that Lord Jesus Christ. So we've been looking
at these opening chapters of Acts in light of the fact that
they are foundations. A foundation is laid for the
Church in terms of the proclamation of the Gospel The foundation
is laid for the church in terms of the gathering of the people
together and meeting and what they do in those meetings. And
there is now, of course, this foundation laid for suffering
for the gospel. And therefore, This psalm and
the response of these people, I trust the Lord would call this
to be our response to trying circumstances. When troubles
come upon us, we might be reminded that our
God reigns, that we might do it as these people did. You see,
they came together. They came together and they acknowledged
together. that their God sits on the throne
of this universe and He rules all things and everything that's
happening is exactly according to His determinant counsel and
full knowledge. So let's turn to Psalm 2. In
the time we have left I'd like to spend our time here because
it's a glorious psalm and the reason I'm looking at all of
it is when the psalms are quoted, verses of the psalms are quoted,
the people who quoted them and the people who heard them knew
them off by heart. And so they would have said one
line and the people would have automatically known all of this.
This would have been on their lips, on their minds. And Psalm 2. speaks and asks
the question, why do the heathen rage? And the people imagine
a vain thing. The kings of the earth set themselves
and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against
his anointed saying, let us break their bands asunder and cast
away their cords from us. And now this is heaven's reply. He that sitteth in the heavens
shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. Then he shall speak to them in
his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I
set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. And now the Lord Jesus,
the Son, proclaims, I will declare the decree. The Lord has said
to me, Thou art my Son. This day have I begotten thee.
Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance
and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou
shalt break them with a rod of iron. Thou shalt dash them in
pieces like a potter's vessel. Be wise now, therefore, O ye
kings. Be instructed, ye judges of the
earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and
rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry,
and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put
their trust in him. Why don't we ask the Lord to
guide us and direct us in His Word. Heavenly Father, we come
before you yet again wanting to acknowledge our complete and
utter dependence upon You to cause Your Word to be open to
us, for it to be living and active in our lives. And we praise You,
Heavenly Father, that we hear the words of warning, but also
we hear the words of command and the words of promise. And
we pray, Heavenly Father, that You might cause us to in the
light for who He is and what He has done, that we might be
caused to kiss the sun, that we might find ourselves taking
shelter and taking rest in Him from the wrath that is all around
us and the wrath that is to come forever. We praise You, Heavenly
Father, for such a great Saviour who saves His people to the uttermost. He saves the chief of sinners.
We do pray, Heavenly Father, that You might pour out Your
Spirit upon us and upon those who don't believe and may they
find themselves in delight and in wonder and in awe of who You
are. Just kissing the sun. We do pray
these things for your glory, Heavenly Father, and the glory
of your dear son amongst his blood-bought people. We are mercy-beggars. Feed us with your word, Heavenly
Father, this morning. Cause us to look to your dear
and precious son. Fully pray in his name. So the psalm begins with a question.
It is, of course, a question that only the Church is going
to ask. The heathen don't see it as rage. In fact, the Lord Jesus promised
that when they took the disciples and killed them, they thought
they would think as they did it they were doing service to
God. No doubt when they went home
from the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ and went back to
their quarters and gathered together, they would have thought that
on that day they had done a great service for God and for themselves
and for their nation. They preached sermons as they
burnt our forefathers just hundreds of years ago. They preached sermons. So they don't see it as rage,
but the children of God see it as rage. Why? Why do the heathen
rage? When there are questions in the
scriptures, they're not for God to gain knowledge, they're for
us to gain knowledge and to see things from Heaven's perspective.
In fact, why do the heathen rage? Why have they raged? They have
been raging. They've been raging since they
left the garden. Why have they raged? The commotion
had already begun. And the next part of that verse
says that people imagine a vain thing. It is an ongoing thing. It expresses its continuous. The people imagine a vain thing.
They imagine things in their minds that are empty. The Jews, these people, imagined
a vain thing that somehow, somehow they could stop Messiah's kingdom
by killing the Lord Jesus Christ. What vanity and emptiness. The response of the Jewish leaders
outside Jerusalem when Lazarus was raised from the dead, four
days rotting in a tomb, what was their response? Let's kill
him again. And let's kill the Lord Jesus
Christ. They imagine a vain thing, that
they could stand in judgement of the Lord Jesus Christ, that
they could, by their activities, ruin his reputation by mocking
him. They could take him to the place
where he was shamed beyond imagination. They could take him to a place
where he was mocked publicly and publicly shamed. They thought
that they could put his name away from them forever. They
thought that they could deny the truth of the resurrection
by paying the soldiers to tell lies. And it spread around Jerusalem
like wildfire, and Matthew records it. And they thought They thought
that they could prevent the preaching of the gospel by silencing the
apostles. It's a vain thing. It is a vain
thing. It is an empty, worthless thing
to stand opposed to God ever. The kings of the earth, verse
2. The kings of the earth, that's the secular rulers. set themselves
and the rulers, the religious rulers, take counsel together
against the Lord and against his anointed. They take counsel
together. They set themselves resolutely,
don't they? This is not something that happens
as an accident. They actually worked hard at
it, didn't they? One of the things that's remarkable
in Luke chapter 20, they actually wanted to trap the Lord Jesus,
and what they did is they sent someone to Him who pretended
to be righteous. So they thought the Lord Jesus
was righteous, and they thought if they sent someone who looked
like He was righteous, They could trap him in his words. They tried
again and again. They took counsel together. It was a deliberate activity.
The enemies are all joined together, don't they? They take counsel
together. Those who had been enemies all
joined hands together. The Sadducees and the Pharisees
were at each other's throats and had been so for generations
and continued so after this. But there is just one place where
that enmity is exposed. There is one place where the
enmity of humanity to God is exposed and that is against the
Lord and against His Anointed. See, the real enmity of man against
God is only ever revealed when the Gospel is proclaimed. You
can be great friends with people, do all sorts of things with them,
do all sorts of religious things with them, and you stand up for
the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified as He's declared in
these chapters that we've been reading here, declared throughout
the Scriptures, and all of a sudden people you had thought were your
friends Even your best friends, you will find, will turn against
you in various ways. They will want to silence the
word. There will be, in lots of cases,
some sort of friendship, but it will be shallow. The enmity
of man is always directed at the Lord Jesus Christ and His
crucifixion and what He achieved in that. And I suppose the point
is simple, isn't it? It is just so easy to get distracted,
brothers and sisters, isn't it? In all sorts of things that come
along in our lives, it is so easy to get distracted. This
is the one point of Satan's attacks on the Church, the one point
where he seeks to keep his people captive. is to keep them away
from hearing the Gospel. We must be careful not to get
distracted. It's so easy to go down and chase
rabbits down all sorts of burrows all over the place. We just stand
for one thing and we have one focus in mind. We want to talk
about the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We want, if the
Lord would enable, an opportunity to proclaim the Gospel because
it is the power of God. It's the only power The only
power the Church has is the proclamation of the Gospel. It is, of course,
the cross where the Lord Jesus Christ disarmed Satan and made
a public mockery of him. And it is, of course, that the
cross of the Lord Jesus set his captives free. He overcame the
strong man and now he plunders his house. And in Acts we have
8,000 who have been plundered out of Satan's house. No wonder
his friends, Satan's friends, are enraged against us. There
is an evil conspiracy. But the evil conspiracy that
matters, the only conspiracy that matters, is the conspiracy
of men against the Lord and against his anointed. So that's what
Satan did, didn't he, in his fall. He wanted to rid himself of God
as his ruler and he wanted to take that place. Adam fell in
the same way. These men tried it at Calvary
and the conspiracy continues and it continues right to this
day. And this is their boast, isn't it? This is their boast
in verse 3. Let us, these kings and rulers,
break their bands asunder. Let's break the bands of God
and His anointed asunder. the bans of God's sovereignty,
the bans of His judgement in the Garden, the bans of His law
from Sinai, the bans of His eternal covenant to bring salvation to
the Jews and the Gentiles, the bans of all of His promises in
the Lord Jesus Christ. the bans of His sovereign rule
over all things. His sovereign right to have mercy
on whom He had mercy. When He went back to Nazareth
in Luke 4, He preached that remarkable sermon out of Isaiah 61. And
he declared himself to be the Messiah of God. And when they
heard his message, they marveled at the gracious words that came
from his lips. And when he declared the fact
that God is God, and he will have mercy on whom he will have
mercy, and he will save a leper like Naaman and bypass multitudes
of lepers in Israel, and he will save a woman and leave a bunch
of widows in Israel, He has the sovereign right to rule. What was the response of those
people who had known him as a sinless man before them for 30 years?
When he declared God's sovereignty, they took him outside that hill
to throw him off that hill. I love what the Lord Jesus Christ
did in response to this gathering of people against him. What did
he do? He walked through them, brothers
and sisters. He walked through them. Our God
reigns. Let them rage. Let them rage. Let us break their bands together,
let us, as these Jews did. And you've got to remember the
context here, of course, is this Jewish religion, isn't it? These
people's enmity was stirred up because the Lord Jesus Christ
exposed their religion for the sham and the hypocrisy that it
was. These men, with all their religious
finery and all of the wonders of their temple and all of their
history, they look very, very flash to each other. And they
had a lot of people patting them on the back and telling them
how wonderful they were. And you must not think that these
were outwardly evil men all the time. If you had been with Nicodemus
as he played with his grandchildren, you might have been amazed at
how righteous he was, seemingly righteous. It's only in the presence
of the Lord Jesus Christ revealed that man is seen to be what he
really is. Without that, Without that, men
can create, can't they? They can create their religion.
They can create their own cause of righteousness, can't they?
They can create their own set of rules for Christian living.
And they can match up to the standards of them in the eyes
of other men. And everything is fine until
the Lord Jesus Christ turns up on the scene. It's good to remember,
isn't it, that nation, that religious nation, full of what were so-called
Christians, if you had taken the 8,000 on the day of Pentecost
and brought them back here today, prior to the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit, and you'd scattered them through the churches here,
they would have been esteemed. They would have been esteemed
for their knowledge of the Scriptures, for their religious zeal and
their devotion and the righteousness of their lives. And yet, when
Peter got up to speak to them, there wasn't one saved person
in front of him. They had all their religion.
Let us cast the bands of God's righteousness. Righteousness
that God accepts is perfect righteousness. God simply will not accept anything
from humanity except holiness, absolute perfection. He cannot dwell in the presence
of sin. His eyes are too pure to look
upon it. So any religion that causes men
to look to themselves and to think that anything they do themselves
is some contribution to their righteousness and some contribution
to their esteem before God is a delusion. Let's cast the bands
of God asunder. Let's break the bands. and cast
away his cords from us. As I said earlier, the cords
that he claimed, isn't it? The cords he claimed of his deity,
the Messiah. He claimed ownership of everything. He claimed lordship of everything. It was he who claimed lordship
of the law. It was his law. He gave it, he
was born under it, and only he ever kept it. He had rulership over sin. It was his right to declare someone
clean, forgiven of sins. He was God. He had the right
to declare those things. He had the right, as Graham showed
us earlier, to go into the temple and say, when he said, this is
my father's house, he's saying this is my house. I own this
place, this is all about me. I have the right to rule what
goes on in this temple. I have the right to rule everything,
and he has the right over the Word of God. I love what he said,
it's lovely isn't it? You have heard it said of others,
but I say unto you, when the Lord Jesus spoke, he spoke the
very words of God, because he was God. The yoke of the Lord
Jesus Christ, as we see in the Gospels, was intolerable to people,
and yet he declares that yoke, he says, my yoke is easy. Come to me all you who are weary
and heavy laden, weary of working out your own righteousness, weary
of working out your own way to heaven. My burden is light, says
our Lord Jesus Christ. Take my yoke upon you, he said. See, the Christian loves to be
yoked by the Lord Jesus Christ. I don't want to live independently
of him. I don't want to rule my life
in my own way. I want for his yoke to be upon
me. Someone said, I'm not sure who
it is, I didn't get their name, I'm sorry, but it is no more
burden to a regenerate man. This is the yokes of the Lord
Jesus Christ, his bands to us. It's no more a burden to the
saved man than wings to a bird. I love that. His bands are no
more than wings to a bird. And now, having heard what men
say, and it's what you and I say, It's what you and I have said,
and it's what you and I in our Adam flesh are saying all the
time. Here we have heaven's view of
things. It's one of the great wonders,
isn't it? It's a great joy in church, isn't
it? We just declare, our God reigns. And we actually come to have
our eyesight adjusted. Week in, week out, we need our
eyesight adjusted. Not from dodgy glasses like this.
If I take them off, all of you are blurry. Can't see anything
clearly at all. Can't read a word. I'll put them
on again. We come together, don't we, so
that we put on the glasses of Scripture. And when we put on
the glasses of Scripture, we actually see. And the only time
we ever see clearly is when we see from Heaven's perspective,
when God causes us to see His Word. Let's read verse 4. This is what's happening in Heaven.
He that sitters. This is God's response. He that sitteth in
the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision. So the men of the dust, the men
of this world, they are plotting and scheming and they are busy,
aren't they? They are busy in their religion. They are busy
in all of their activities. And God sits. He sits on the
throne of heaven. Men set themselves. In a determinant
way, they set themselves, and God laughs. God laughs at all
their schemes. Men take counsel together, and
the Lord has them in derision. It means confusion. You wonder
why this world is so confused? God has them in derision. That's
what he says. He has them in derision. And
he sits. It's very important for us to
see that he sits. He doesn't even need to take
the trouble to rise from his seat for his purposes to be fulfilled,
brothers and sisters. He doesn't even have to get up
from his seat. He sits. He laughs at them, he holds them
in derision. It's repeated so that we must
know, we come to see that it must surely come to pass. And
when he sits in the heavens, he sits above all of it. He sits above in rulership of
it all. And sitting above it all, He
sees it all. He looks down on it all. And
He can do with all of it as He wishes. There is a great contrast,
isn't there, and we see it in the Gospels, don't we? There's
a great contrast between the dignity and the quietness of
the Lord Jesus Christ as He went about His business on this earth
to proclaim His Father's glory and to reveal Himself as God's
Messiah, and the busyness that was going on around Him of all
sorts. There is a quiet, rested dignity about our God. He knows how absurd and how silly
it all is. Then after He has held them in
derision and after He has laughed, then shall He speak unto them
in His wrath and vex them in His sore displeasure. You see, our God only has to
speak. He only has to speak and they
are put down and put in their place. In 2 Thessalonians 1 it
talks of the Lord Jesus Christ returning in glory to gather
his own to himself. and he'll give his troubled people
rest when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with
his mighty angels in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them
that know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ. He'll just speak. He'll just
come. His word will come. All of their attempts to dethrone
the Lord Jesus Christ will prove and have proved fruitless and
always will. His name became more famous,
didn't it? His kingdom increased, and despite
all of the opposition, he just rules. There was an emperor in
the 3rd century called Diocletian. You've forgotten his name. I'm
pleased you haven't. You don't know about him, do
you? Diocletian. You don't need to know very much
about him at all. He disappeared from history. He emitted a coin.
And on the coin it says, the name of Christianity being extinguished. And there he was, this Roman
emperor, and he put two great monuments at either side, on
the east and on the west of the Roman Empire. And on the monument
was written, this monument is to him, and he talked about how
special he was, and he said, for having extinguished the name
of Christians who brought the Republic to ruin, and having
everywhere abolished the superstition of Christ, and having extended
the worship of gods, the Roman gods. You haven't heard all that
much, have you? Don't need to, do you? Our God reigns. He will speak to them in His
wrath and vex them in His sore displeasure. And this is the
Lord's response, verse 6. Look at it with me. Yet have
I set my king on my holy hill of Zion. So despite the malice,
despite all of your councils, all of your gathering together,
despite all of your human wisdom, despite all of the craftiness
of all of humanity gathered together in all of their religious power
and all of their secular power, yet I have set my king on my
holy hill of Zion. It's my king and it's my holy
hill of Zion. Of course Zion, we've seen it
in this last little while, Zion is just a picture of the Church
of God. It is a picture of the spiritual
Jerusalem. It means a monument raised up,
a monument to the Lord Jesus Christ, a monument to grace,
a monument to the everlasting love of God for His people, a
monument raised up for His Church. And that's where the Lord Jesus
Christ is enthroned, isn't it? His throne is in his church,
it is his headquarters, it is the place where he particularly
resides, and it's the place where he resides as a king. And God's
children love it that way, brothers and sisters, that he rules. He's a king. He's a king in his
church. He's a king over his enemies.
He rules over them with effortless ease and just laughs at them.
And he's the king of his people, isn't he? The kingdom of the
Lord Jesus Christ is a spiritual kingdom. And he rules in the
hearts of his people. And he rules over their wills
and their affections. He rules over their judgments.
He is, as he promised to be, the one who causes his people
to be willing, willing in the day of his power. And he is his
father's king. He rules over all things. Daniel 7 speaks of Him, and it
was given Him dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people,
nations and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an
everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom
is that which shall not be destroyed. Never. And the Son now, when
God speaks, it's always by His Son. Here we have the Son. Verse 7, Psalm 2, I will declare
the decree of the Lord. The Lord has said unto me, Thou
art my Son, this day I have begotten thee. To be begotten in the context
is just a reference to the fact that He is now manifest. He is
manifest to be the Son of God in power. He was always the Son
of God, but is now manifest to be the Son of God in power. He shall proclaim the decree,
the purpose. He will proclaim the eternal
covenant. There's no one better to declare
it than the one who is the mediator of it, the one in whom all the
blessings of the covenant dwell. They are called the sure mercies
of David. They are the everlasting arms
that held Moses. That is, that eternal covenant
ordered and secure in every detail that David rested his dying head
on. I'll declare the decree. I will
declare it because of my resurrection, the great victory I've won, that
I have brought in everlasting righteousness for my people.
Their sins are gone forever and it's a fit and proper thing for
God to dwell in his people and with his people because they
are like him, as holy as he is, justified Having never sinned
in the eyes of God, it ought to take your breath away, sinners,
to have that declared to you by our God. He declares the decree
because everything God ever does for a sinner is in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Everything He ever has for a
sinner is in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's all because of a union
with the Lord Jesus Christ. He that sees the Son, and believeth
on him, has everlasting life, and shall never come into condemnation. He is already passed from death
to life. The decree is proclaimed because
it is by hearing, by hearing the Gospel, that faith comes. This decree is so different from
the counsels and the wisdom and the enmity of men all gathered
together. And then in verse 8, ask of me,
ask of me, Ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine
inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Ask of me. God the Father says
to the Son, ask of me and I'll give you. Ask of me and I'll
give you what is promised to you. Ask of me and I'll give
you what is yours by right of performance, your obedience unto
death. Ask of me and I'll give you what
was promised to you in the eternal covenant of grace and mercy.
Ask of me and I'll give you every person that you came into this
world to represent and to die for and to save by your death."
Did the Lord Jesus Christ ask? John 17 normed it last week. The Lord Jesus Christ asked and
asked and asked. He asked on several occasions
in that great prayer. He made petitions to his Father
in his great prayer. He says in verse 5, And now,
Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self, with the glory
I had with Thee before the world was. He says in verse 24, Father,
I will, I wish that they also, whom Thou hast given me, be with
me where I am. He asks of the Father that they
may behold my glory which Thou hast given me, for Thou lovest
me before the foundation of the world. He asked, didn't he? He had a
right to ask. And he had a promise that his
asking would be rewarded. And it is. And his church is
his reward. And the place of his glory in
this earth. And it might, it might seem like
this persecuted, afflicted little cottage in a field of cucumbers.
It might seem like nothing to the world. But its power and its strength
doesn't come from worldly things. Its power and its strength comes
from He who is there with it. Our Almighty God dwells with
His Church. It's the habitation of God by
the Spirit. It's where He dwells on this
earth. It's where He meets with His
people as a King. but more than a king, as a brother
and a friend. He took on the name of his people
and they are named with his name. He took on their nature and he
became their glorious head and redeemer. And he makes them altogether
glorious. By a sovereign act of his power
he makes them as glorious as he is, perfectly fitted for eternity,
perfectly fitted to be in the presence of our great God. Ask of me and you'll have all
of these enemies for your inheritance. You'll rule over them you'll
rule over them effortlessly. Just read verse 9 with me. All
of those who stand in enmity against our God and stand in
opposition to the Gospel of His free and sovereign grace that's
declared so abundantly and so particularly in the Scriptures
and so clearly in the Scriptures, Those who stand in enmity, verse
9, thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash
them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Those who will not bend
will be broken. It is as simple as that. And
a potter's vessel is just a clay pot and you take a clay pot and
hit it with a steel rod again. Never be put back together
again. That's what the Lord Jesus said,
isn't it? He spoke of himself being that stone that's been
rejected. And he said, and whosoever shall fall upon this stone shall
kiss the sun, shall be broken. It will be a breaking of you,
a breaking of your self-righteousness. A breaking of you and exposing
of you to be what you are. A sinner. A real sinner. I love, I think it was Todd Narver
who gave the definition of a sinner, which is a great definition I
reckon. A sinner is someone who can do nothing but sin. That's
a great definition of a sinner isn't it? Because if you know by God's
hand that you are a sinner, then all of the rest of salvation
just flows perfectly naturally. You need a sovereign God. You
need particular redemption. You need irresistible grace. You need keeping and preserving.
It's only sinners that need those things. fall and be broken, but
on whomsoever it shall fall, if that rock falls, it will grind
him to powder. Therefore, verse 10, be wise,
now therefore are ye kings. Be instructed, are ye judges
of the earth. It's speaking of course of kings
and leaders and rulers because in some sense we're all sheep.
And we're all followers, we're all dedicated followers of fashion. We're dedicated followers of
people. So therefore the instructions are to kings and rulers. But
there is a sense, there is a real sense in which in the fall of
our father Adam we set ourselves up on a throne. And the only
problem with me being on my throne is that if you're on one as well,
I don't want you to be on a throne. There can only be one on the
throne at any one time, and that's me, thank you very much. I will rule, thank you. It's
what we all say, isn't it? Every time we give him some instruction
or give him some command to do something, immediately our fleece
will rise up and say, I will be the boss, thank you very much.
Don't we do it? Or is it just me? All the time. I will be the boss. Wet paint,
don't touch. What do you do? You can hardly
restrain your hand from reaching out. Dear, dear. We shall be
as God. This is a great crime, isn't
it? Be wise. Be wise. Be wise. It's just infinitely
wise. It's infinitely wise to bow to
the Lord Jesus Christ. What incredible folly it is to
stand in opposition to Him. Verse 11, serve the Lord with
fear, reverence, remembering who He is and who we are, with
humility. Humility. People in need of grace
are humble. Rejoice with trembling. Sutherland
wrote, Fear without joy is torment, and joy without holy fear would
be presumption. There is a mixture in all of
God's children, a sense of fear and a sense of trembling. has come to this lovely conclusion.
Kiss the sun. Isn't it remarkable that the
psalm calls upon us to kiss the sun. To kiss the sun. To make peace with him. To pay homage to him. To come
close to him. The Church's prayer you might
remember from the very beginning of the Song of Solomon. She has
this prayer, isn't it? Let him kiss me with the kisses
of his mouth. Let him kiss me with his word,
his word of promise. For thy love is better than wine. That's the prayer of the Church.
Let us kiss Him, that should be our endeavour. When the Son
kisses us in mercy, then we'll be able to kiss Him in love,
in response. See, it's a kiss of allegiance,
it's a kiss of belonging, isn't it? It's a kiss of homage, it's
a kiss of bowing down. It's a kiss of worship, it's
a kiss of affection and gratitude. to submit to God and to find
His cords and His bands delightful. to find His ways and His absolute
sovereign rule over all things, a delight and a wonder and a
comfort to our soul. To kiss the sun, it says, to
kiss the sun lest he be angry and you perish from the way.
Kissing the sun is the way to stay in the way. Kissing. If he's kissed you with his great
love and power, he must draw you close to himself. And if
he draws you close to himself, He must do that so that you can
kiss Him. And you kiss Him who is our Husband
and our Brother and our Saviour and our Lord. And the one desire,
the one desire of God's people is that embrace of affection
with the Lord Jesus Christ which we read about again and again
in the Song of Solomon. He took me in His banqueting
house and His banner over me was love. If that embrace of affection
has come to your soul by meeting him, then you'll want more of
it, brothers and sisters. See, carnal professors, those
in religion, can manage well in this world and they can look
at the Lord Jesus Christ at a distance and he can be an object to be
studied and examined. But all his blood-bought bride
will never be satisfied with that. They won't be satisfied
until they have him as close as a kiss brings. They'll never
be satisfied with unrequited love. Kiss the sun, lest you perish
when his wrath is kindled but a little. It is only a little
wrath of God to destroy this world. How unspeakable must his
wrath be when it comes fully upon people. Blessed are they
that put all their trust in him. Blessed are they that rely upon
Him and absolutely nothing else. Blessed, happy, in an enviable
position they are. Blessed are they, that word trust
can be translated, take refuge in Him, take shelter in Him,
shelter under His wings like little chickens do when the mother
sings that special clucking sound and they all come running. There's
always room for all of her chickens under her wings. Hide, brothers
and sisters. Hide in him. Hide in him. Believe. Believe and be at peace. Believe and be at peace with
His sovereign rule over absolutely everything in this universe and
His sovereign rule over the hearts and minds and the thoughts of
all humanity always. Our God reigns.