I really like the words, I wish
I knew the tune better, says the guy who picked the song. We can all do a little bit of
growing, I guess, in that. One of the themes we'll be looking
at is if you turn back over to Psalm chapter two, and like I
said, primarily that's what we're gonna look at. One of the themes
is, of course, God's King being installed, verse six. But as you think of
a passage like that, or the passage in front of us in a song like
that, can't help but be drawn to see the wider application
here. First of all, I guess note from
Psalm 2 that this psalm was written, and it's usually ascribed to
David, but we'll leave it without ascription here or saying 100%
we know it was David, but it was written about the promises
that God had made in scripture. If you think about salvation
history and you go back to Genesis chapter 3, what we know from
the promise in Genesis chapter 3 is that after the fall and
Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, one of the things
that God said was actually a promise as well
as talking about the curse and that was in Genesis 3 15 that
he would put enmity between you and the woman and between your
offspring and hers. He will crush your head. And here we have one of the earliest
promises in scripture to the coming of the anointed one or
the Christ or the Messiah. And then Genesis 12, if you were
to look forward there, you have the promise to Abraham and you
have the promise that he would be made into a great nation.
And then again in Genesis 49, when the children are gathered
together and the blessings are being given, Genesis 49 verse
10, We read that the scepter will
not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his
feet until he comes to whom it belongs. So then, as you go forward
in history, a king, the people desired a king, they chose a
king, and that king was Saul. Saul was not God's choice. I mean, ultimately God, had him come to the throne, but
David was the one who was God's choice. And if you were to look
in, and I want some of this as background, so I'm going through
fairly quickly, but 1 Samuel, if I have this right,
no, I want 2 Samuel 7. And we have this beginning in
verse one here. After the king was settled in
his palace and the Lord had given him rest from all of his enemies
around him, he said to Nathan the prophet, here I am living
in a palace of cedar while the ark of God remains in a tent.
Now Nathan not seeking God's Word before replying just said
to the king Hey, whatever you have in mind verse 3 go ahead
and do it for God is with you But God came back to Nathan and
said oh you need to you need to talk about This thing because
I don't intend for David to build a house for me and I don't want
to focus on that part and But if you go down to verse 12 of
2 Samuel 7, you read, well, we'll go back into verse, partway through
verse 11. The Lord declares to you that
the Lord himself will establish a house for you. When your days
are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your
offspring to succeed you who will come from your body and
I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build
a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom
forever. I will be his father and he will
be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish
him with the rod of man with floggings inflicted by men, but
my love will never be taken away from him as I took it away from
Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom
will endure forever before me. and your throne will be established
forever. And we read that verse 17, Nathan
reported to David all the words of this revelation. And then
we have recorded a prayer of David's. And this is not really
the only time there's several other Psalms that could be made
reference other than Psalm 2. Psalm 89 and some others make
reference to this promise to David, but when you think about
it, part of the question is, in what way is this true of David,
and what way is it not true of David? Certainly, God made this
promise that he would ensure that a descendant of David would
be on the throne forever. That goes all the way back to
even Genesis and the promises that are made there. But prior
to that, we have this promise that is made And we, I think if we are looking
carefully at this, have a difficult time understanding how this could
only apply to David. And historically, and we'll see
this in the New Testament passages, this psalm was seen, and these
promises were seen as applying to the Lord Jesus Christ. You
know, sometimes when people say, Well, all scripture points to
Christ. One of the criticisms that is
made is, I don't really see it there. I think you're pushing
this a little bit. I would submit to you that after
looking at some of the passages that are here, that it's hard
to see anybody other than Christ. It's hard to see, I would almost
put it the other way, how did this apply to David? Yes, his
son, David's greatest son, is of course Christ, so in that
sense it's fulfilled, but David didn't understand that, and Scripture
does talk to us about that sort of thing that the prophets, the
writers of Scripture, those whom the Holy Spirit gave these words
to, oftentimes they had to inquire what's meant by these words.
I know these are your words, but I don't understand them fully. So with that as a background,
I want you to just take a minute. We just take a minute here just
to look at Psalm 1 and 2 as they relate to one another. I believe
it's been well over a month now since I was up here last. But I believe that I talked then
about Psalm 1 and 2 as being arranged as a preface to the
entire selection of psalms. The psalms were written by different
men. at different times, but at one point in history, there
was an arrangement of these books, and these two Psalms were put
together at the beginning as a sort of preface to the entire
what we could call worship book or hymnal of the saints,
both the Old and the New Testament saints. And if you remember,
Psalm 1, which we read earlier and we looked at before, talks
about how blessed we are and how blessed we can be by not
walking in the counsel of the wicked. And part of the encouragement
that we see from this First Psalm is that God is the one who takes
his children and he is the one who provides for them. He plants
us by streams of water. He's the one who makes sure that
we don't have any leaves that wither and that whatever we do
prospers, and I believe it's talking about spiritually prospered.
But the wicked are not that way. They're blown away like chaff,
and they will not stand in the judgment or in the assembly of
the righteous. And ultimately, the reason is
that it is the Lord himself, verse six, who watches over the
way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Well, when we think about that in relationship to our lives,
and you make the mistake that I have lately and you watch the
news, I want to see a little more of the wicked perishing,
right? Not doing their thing out there as it were. And Psalm
2, I believe, is the second part of this. It raises the question
that I think is in the mind of everyone redeemed by God, and
that is, why is it, how ridiculous it is, the idea, but why is it
that nations conspire and people plot in vain, kings of the earth
take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord,
and you can say here, against his anointed one or his Christ,
his Messiah. And their chant, I was gonna say no king, and
they do say that, but the king that they're aiming at is a different
one. But their chant is, let us break
their chains, and throw off their fetters. So the first voice is
that of those who are in rebellion against God, those who say when
they hear about the promises of God, when they hear about
a righteous king, a righteous ruler who is going to judge righteously
is, I don't want this. I don't want those chains. Don't
tell me what to do with my body. Don't tell me what I'm supposed
to do. And they think that they have
the strength to rebel against God and his anointed one. And we know that This is applied
to Christ if you were to turn over to Acts chapter 4. Acts
chapter 4, this passage is actually cited by the apostles in Acts
chapter 4 and applied to their situation. So for context, Acts
chapter four, I'm just gonna look at the first couple of verses
to kind of give you the idea of where we're at here. If you
have headings in your Bible, you probably see that the believers
got together, they were fellowshipping, Peter heals, Peter is speaking
to people, and there's quite a commotion going on because
of how God is working in this situation. And in chapter 4,
verse 1 of Acts, the priests and the captain of the temple
guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they
were speaking to the people, and they were greatly disturbed
because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in
Jesus the resurrection of the dead. Now, we might not think
of that as a very rebellious sort of thing, but if you are
a, at least outwardly, religiously
Jewish at that time, you may understand that you need to be
looking forward to the Messiah, but to be proclaiming somebody
that the, Roman state that rules your country Condemned as a criminal
and that some of your religious leaders had conspired to Put
to death and then there here are these men out preaching that
Christ and saying he is who God has sent as the anointed one
and he is a His resurrection from the dead
is proof that he is going to come again and to restore God's kingdom, ultimately. Not the kingdom they were looking
for, but the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. And there's a lot
in the verses before verse 25, but I want to pick this up back
in verse 25. Verse 18, they called them in
and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of
Jesus. Verse 19, but Peter and John
replied, judge for yourself whether it's right in God's sight to
obey you, the nations conspiring, the people plotting in vain,
right? Those who are trying to throw
off his chains. Is it right for us to obey you
rather than God? For we cannot help speaking about
what we have seen and heard. And they didn't just leave him
alone. It says, verse 21, after further threats, they let him
go. They couldn't decide how to punish them because all the
people were praising God for what had happened. Popular opinion
was against them. It's interesting, those who are
politicians are the same throughout history. For the man who was
miraculously healed earlier that we didn't talk about was over
40 years old. Verse 23, on their release, Peter
and John went back to their own people and reported all that
the chief priests and elders had said to them. When they heard
this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. Sovereign
Lord, they said, you made the heaven and the earth and the
sea and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit
Through the mouth of your servant, our father David. And then we
have verses one and two of Psalm one. Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their
stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against
his anointed one. So when we think about this Psalm,
And we can think about the opposition that David had suffered. Certainly his own son rose up
against him and he had to retreat. David went through a lot, but
ultimately this is speaking about Christ. So when we see these
things happening, when we see people rebelling against the
truth, understand ultimately these affronts are against God
himself and against the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. It's against
God more than it is against us. We just happen to suffer minorly
some of the afflictions that are there. But the nations If
you want to see unity among the nations, the only way in this
wicked world there's going to be unity apart from worldwide
revival is there is going to be unity against the Lord and
against his Christ and against his gospel. because if you look
at what they said they were proclaiming in chapter 4 verse 2 they were
proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead it's a gospel that
people had their and their, can I say get your
Irish up? I think that's what people say
about that. I guess I have a little bit so I can get away with that
maybe. But they were inflamed and angry about this idea that
they even needed saving, much less that this man, Jesus of Nazareth was the one
who was raised and appointed by God to provide. So there's, in Psalm 2, there's
this astonishment that's given in light of the fact that God
is the one who is in charge of the entire universe. How is it
that people are going to rebel against him? And Psalm 2 goes
on in that vein, verse 4, I don't know who originally came
up with this outline, but I think that we in verses 1 through 3
see the nations united against God, but in verses 4 through
6 we see God the Father speaking. And we don't see God begging
and pleading with them to use their free will to make the logical
decision we see the one verse four enthroned in heaven laughs
that the lord scoffs at them and psalm 59 i'm not going to
turn there and psalm 48 also bring up this same sort of theme
of god laughing about it. And if you think about it, it's
a fairly, fairly easy association to make. I mean, God has his
timing. God has his plan in mind and people plotting
and conspiring against them is not of any significance. It's like a mosquito plotting
and conspiring against me. In fact it's less than a mosquito
because I don't always, I don't know about you, but you know
that one mosquito that makes it through the screen and is
in there all night buzzing in your ear usually is able to draw
a little blood. Well with the God of heaven, God the Father,
he has no risk whatsoever of anyone doing him ultimately any
harm. But we read here that the one
enthroned in heaven laughs and scoffs at them, he rebukes them
in his anger, and he terrifies them in his wrath, and then he
says something. What is it that Lends itself
to God the father saying my plan will be accomplished Well, it's
it's right here. It says I have installed my king
on Zion my holy hill It's interesting when you think about it, Zion
is not Mount Sinai. Zion is usually where God's promises
are spoken of. And Zion is also where Jerusalem
was. So God's city of promise, not
the city of the law, but the city of promise is where God
installs his king. So the rebellion of the nations
is answered by God the Father by not only his scoffing at them,
not only the fact that he has a holy wrath against them, but
he essentially says the answer to your rebellion is found in
Christ, the anointed one, the one that I have installed on
Zion. Then, beginning in verse seven,
I think this arrangement helpful, we have the Son speaking, verses
seven through nine, and the Son says, I will proclaim the decree
of the Lord. He, speaking of God the Father,
said to me, you are my son. And kind of an unfortunate translation
here with NIV, it literally is today I have begotten you. And that may be troubling because
we know in theological terms that God The son has always been
God. He was never begotten in that
sense, but we have one person, two natures, and God in his humanity
certainly was begotten, but what day is it that he was begotten? Not when he was born in Bethlehem.
No, I think it's better for us to see that when he was, again,
in keeping with the theme earlier, when he was raised from the dead,
when he was given a new body, one that would not see corruption,
that is the day that he was begotten. The resurrection is the key to
this passage. And this passage is mentioned
three times in the New Testament, this verse seven, and we'll just
briefly look at these. So if you want to, you can follow
along or you just listen, Acts chapter 13. Acts chapter 13.
And I will... Go back a little bit here. The citation is in verse 33 and 34. But if you back up, you have
in Antioch, Paul goes, verse 16, he's in the synagogue on
the Sabbath, and he says, men of Israel and you Gentiles who
worship God, listen to me, the God of the people of Israel chose
our fathers, and he made the people prosper, and he goes on,
and he gives a history lesson of Israel, and He brings it all the way up.
Verse 22 talks about removing Saul and making David their king.
And then he brings it up to John the Baptist preaching repentance
to all people, verse 24. In verse 26, he says, brothers,
children of Abraham and you God-fearing Gentiles, it is to us that this
message of salvation has been sent. The people of Jerusalem
and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him, They fulfilled the words of the
prophets that are read every Sabbath. Though they found no proper ground
for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed.
And when they carried out all that was written about him, they
took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead. God
is the one who caused him to be begotten again
or became his father in that way at that time. And for many
days he was seen by those, verse 31, who had traveled with him
from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are all witnesses. We tell
you, verse 32, the good news. What God promised our fathers,
he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus
as it is written In the second Psalm, you are my son, and then
as probably your marginal note says, today I have begotten you,
Psalm 2-7. The fact that God, verse 34,
raised him from the dead never to decay is stated in these words. I will give you the holy and
sure blessings promised to David. So we see that this psalm is
applied by the writer of Acts twice to the Lord Jesus. But not just there. If you want
to, you can turn over to Hebrews. And the book of Hebrews also
makes mention of Psalm 2 in the New Testament. There's a little
bit of, well, at least from what I read, a little bit of controversy
about what the most cited verse of the Old Testament is. If you
add all the passages that may be allusions to Psalm 2, I think
it might actually be the first primary one, but whether it's
first or second, it certainly is referenced a lot, Psalm 2
and Psalm 110. But in the book of Hebrews, which
talks about the superiority of the son to angels, to Moses and
to Aaron. In the book of Hebrews, chapter
one, verse five, when the writer of Hebrews is talking about how
the Lord Jesus is so much superior to the angels, he says in verse
five, to which of the angels did God ever say, you are my
son today, I have begotten you or again
I will be his father and he will be my son. Of course God never
said that to any of the angels and then Hebrews chapter 5 and
verse 5. I'll go back up a little bit
earlier than that. Every high priest is, verse one,
is selected from among men, is appointed to represent them in
matters related to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices. Verse four,
no one takes this honor upon himself. He must be called by
God, just as Aaron was. So Christ, verse five, did not
take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest, but God
said to him, you are my son, today I have become your father."
And then verse six is actually Psalm 110 being quoted, you are
a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. So we have the
voice of the nations in rebellion to God, we have God's laughter
about it, his answer being that of insulting his king, the son
saying, i'm going to tell you what god the father the lord
told me he said i'm his son and that he has begotten me and then
we interestingly enough we have the son quoting the father the
son says the father told him ask of me and i will make the
nations your inheritance and the ends of the earth your possession,
you will rule them with an iron scepter, and you will dash them
to pieces like pottery." Now, if that sounds familiar, it should
because I believe Tanner made reference to that last week when
he was giving his overview of Revelation. And I won't turn
there, but Revelation 2, Revelation 12, Revelation 19 all make reference
to this passage. So the world can rage against
the people of God, the world can rage against God, but in
raising Christ from the dead and placing him on his throne,
it's just a matter of time before God will fully Realize these
promises in christ and there's a future possession that will
happen And there is a future judgment that will happen that
the iron scepter against pottery is meant to depict the idea If
you're like me and you don't hold on to things very well clay
pot I don't need something made of iron to shatter one of those
things I guess I could look at it the wrong way and i'll break
one of Paula's pots that she has set aside. But if you can
imagine, you have a piece of iron, and I think Joe, when he
talked about this passage, talked about it, the latest technology,
iron, they learned how to make it, you hit that against a pot,
a clay pot, it's just gonna shatter. That's the authority that the
sun has. Well, that isn't where we want
to leave this. And in keeping with the outline
here, and again, I don't know who originally had this as an
outline, but I believe it is right to say the nations have
spoken and they're wrong. The Father has responded. The
Son has responded. Now we have the Holy Spirit.
I believe speaking to not only the wicked, but also to those
who profess the name of Christ, who trust in him. And in verse
10, there is an appeal, a threefold appeal, first to the mind, then
to the heart, and then to the will. Verse 10, therefore you
kings be wise, and be warned, you rulers of the earth. So while
he doesn't specifically answer why the nations conspire, other
than saying it's ridiculous, why they do, on this further
understanding, the word that is given to us, the exhortation
that's given is to be wise and to be warned. While a ruler may,
for a time, live and shake their fists at God, eventually, maybe
only in death, but eventually they will have to face their
maker, and the same is true with us. In verse 11 it says to serve
the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling, so not just think
about it, be wise and be warned, but also to serve the Lord and
to rejoice with him. In Philippians 2, 12 is a similar
passage to this. I don't know that the writer
Paul was thinking of this passage in particular, but Philippians
2 and verse 12. Paul says to them, as you have
always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in
my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear
and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and
to do according to his good pleasure. So the right response to understanding
that God is the sovereign of the universe and that he's put
everything under his son, and that he's given all into his
hands is to be wise and to serve him. And then in verse 12 it talks
about the will, it says, to kiss the son lest he be angry. Now
that's not a phrase or an idea that we would think of in our
day, but certainly in the days of the writing of the Psalms
and even further on, the idea of submission to a ruler would
be shown by kissing them. maybe on the hand or on the cheek,
but certainly you're showing submission to them. And maybe that is what Jesus
had in mind in John 5 when he said that the Father judges no
one, 522, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son that all
may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does
not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent them. So
this idea that there are people who, well, I don't really accept
Jesus as God, I don't accept his place, but I trust the guy
up in heaven, that doesn't work. We're called to submit to Christ,
to trust in him, And we don't tend to think about Jesus this
way. I was raised Roman Catholic and Roman Catholics have this
perversion of an idea that you can't go to Jesus directly, you
have to go through his mom, right? Kind of like a lot of human relationships
work is Jesus is always mad and mom will get you in if you can't
get in on your own. Well, while that's a wrong idea,
it is true of those who are outside of Christ. I think we've watered
down the holiness and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ when
we think of him as just going, oh, it's okay. No, for justice
to be served, somebody has to pay the penalty. And Christ did
pay the penalty for his people, but our response to him is not. Well, we're gonna just be buddy-buddy
and we're just gonna ignore the fact that we have this sin. No,
our response is to understand that it is only by the grace
of God, it's only by the work of Christ that we're able to
stand before Him. If it wasn't so, and what's true
of all those outside of Christ is they will be destroyed and
His wrath can flare up at any moment. But this last phrase here is
the encouragement we can all take away if we're not trusting
in ourselves. If we're only trusting in Christ,
it says, blessed. are all who take refuge in him. I was gonna list out all the
passages in the psalm that use this same word. I believe that
King James, New King James used this idea of trust, but trust
and refuge have the same idea. tons of passages in the Psalms
that have this, and of course, Scripture talks about this as
well. The right response to upheaval in this world, the right response
to evil in this world, the right response to seeing everyone around
us seemingly shake their fists at the king and say, I don't
want what your Christ has, I don't want your Jesus, I don't want
any of that, The right response is to tell them and to tell ourselves
that we need to take refuge in him. And I'm not 100% sure where
the quote came from, but this quote is spot on as a ending
for this message. There is no refuge from him. There is only refuge in him. A lot of people want to get away
from Christ. They want to get away from scripture.
They want to get away from the Bible. There's nowhere on this
earth, there's nowhere in this universe that you can go to avoid
the Lord. The only hope that I have and
the only hope that you have and the only hope our nation and
this world has in this day is to find refuge in him. All right, James.