We're gonna be in Psalm chapter
two tonight. If you wanna turn to Psalm chapter two, we're gonna
be going to the New Testament also. This chapter of Psalms
is quoted in the New Testament in a number of places, which
actually helps us to understand what it's talking about. So that
will be essential for us to understand what this Psalm is about. Let's
pray. Father, thank you for your mercy.
Thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, the one through whom
we can come to you at all times and trust you without any inhibitions
because of his precious blood and his obedience that you receive
us for his sake. We pray you'd be with these who
are dear to us, who are sick, like Martha and Mary prayed to
the Lord Jesus. that their brother Lazarus was
sick and the Lord Jesus loved him. So we pray for those that
we know the Lord loves and we trust that he will take care
of them in all that he does. Thank you for giving your word
to us. Thank you for inclining our hearts
to you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Psalm chapter two. Now the Psalms that we're getting
into the beginning here at least are very short, which is nice.
It fits nicely into the Bible study. This one has only 12 verses. So I want to read through this.
This Psalm is clearly about the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's spoken
of, it's a psalm of David. We know it's a psalm of David,
not because it says in the title that it is a psalm of David,
but because in the New Testament in Acts chapter four, the apostle
Peter said that it was, or the apostles at least, I'm not sure
if it was Peter who said this, but the apostles said that it
was a psalm of David. So because they credited the
psalm to David, we know that it is a psalm of David. And we
also know that this psalm concerns the Lord Jesus Christ, as we'll
see when we look at Acts chapter 4 and other places. But I want
to first just read through this with you. Verse 1, 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." Now, if you understand
the word anointed in the psalm is a name for the Lord Jesus
Christ. He is the anointed. In fact,
that's what Christ means is anointed. In the Old Testament, when the
priests were anointed, or the kings were anointed, it was always
with oil. But Jesus Christ was anointed
by God with the Holy Spirit, and so the Holy Spirit, like
oil, was poured upon him, and it was poured on him without
measure. So verses one and two, so far we see this psalm is about
Christ, the anointed. Verse three, this is what the
heathens say, this is what the people say, this is what the
kings of the earth say when they set themselves and the rulers
set themselves against the counsel of God and against the Lord Jesus
Christ. They say, let us break their
bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. And verse four
says, he that sits in the heavens shall laugh. Now, in this psalm,
I'm going to pause here. There's really four different
voices that are speaking here. And each of the three verses
is broken up into four different people or voices speaking, representatives. Here in the first three verses,
it's the, the heathen, or the people, the kings, and the rulers,
all those who oppose God's rule on them, and who also oppose
Christ, the Lord's anointed. Okay, so that's the first thing
we see here. The first voice we hear are the
defiant, God-hating, Christ-opposing people. And that's the first
three voices. Now the next, I'm sorry, first
three verses, And the next verse, verse four through verse six,
is the voice or the Lord, the Father, God the Father speaking.
It says in verse four, after the people, the defiant people
said all these things, they're trying to get out of God's sovereign
rule, this is what God the Father says. He that sits in the heavens
shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. Derision means confusion, and
put to nothing, made a mockery of them, like laughing at them.
Verse five, then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex
them in his sore displeasure. He's especially upset with them,
especially angry with them, and he's going to destroy them unless
they pay attention to what he's saying here. In verse six, he
says this, yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. The king is Christ, he's the
anointed. The holy hill of Zion is the place where Christ rules.
Verse seven, now here begins the words of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God. He says, I will declare the decree,
the Lord has said to me, thou art my son, this day have I begotten
thee. It's interesting that Jesus Christ,
speaking as a prophet here, and as the one anointed by God, says,
I will declare the decree, the decree of his Father. the decree
of Jehovah God. The Lord has said to me, thou
art my son, this day have I begotten thee. It's clear the Son of God
is speaking when he uses these words, when he says that his
father said to him, thou art my son, this day have I begotten
thee. And then in verse eight, he goes
on, the Lord Jesus Christ in this voice is speaking, He says,
this is what his father said to him, ask of me and I shall
give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost
parts of the earth for thy possession. The heathen are the Gentiles.
The uttermost parts of the earth refer to all the places where
his people are scattered throughout the earth. And then in verse
nine, It says, Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron. Thou
shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. This is continuing
what God the Father has spoken to His Son as the King, Christ. Then in verses 10, 11, and 12,
it's the Holy Spirit speaking to men. He says about, He's speaking
to men about Christ. Excuse me. Just a minute. He says in verse 10, 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 you perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. So here you
can see in these four cases, in each of these three verse
segments, the groupings of these verses as we've just outlined
them, is the people opposing Christ and God the Father first
speak. Then God the Father speaks His
will concerning Christ. Then Christ speaks what the Father
had told Him and given Him His decree to be the King and how
He would give Him the Gentiles for His inheritance and He would
also subdue the others who would put them down and break them
to pieces like a potter's vessel. And also, because of his rule,
which would be, his rule would be like a rod of iron, and he
would break those who oppose his rule, like a potter, like
a person with an iron rod would break a potter's vessel. And
then in verse 10 through 12, the Spirit of God is sending
forth a message of Christ, about Christ, as the anointed king,
anointed of the Father, who is the Son of God, and he instructs
all people everywhere to serve the Lord with fear, to rejoice
with trembling and to worship or to kiss the sun, lest he be
angry and you perish from the way." Okay? So that's an overview
of this psalm. And now, I want to go back and
read to you from Acts chapter four about this psalm because
there's several lessons here that we're gonna see throughout
the psalm, very important and fundamental doctrines from scripture. So first of all, let me go to
Acts chapter four here. Because in the New Testament,
whenever the Old Testament is quoted, we know we have the exact
interpretation of that passage, because obviously the Spirit
of God wrote both, and now he's explaining it in the New. So
in Acts chapter 4, what had happened was there was a man who couldn't
walk. Peter and John saw him. He was begging. Peter said to
him, we don't have silver or gold, but what we do have we
give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of
Nazareth, rise up and walk. And when the man who was lame
heard that by Peter, he leaped. He stood up and leaped. And he
began walking and going into the temple, walking and leaping
and praising God. So that's the setting. But when
the people saw this man walking and leaping and praising God,
and Peter began to preach, he told them in Acts chapter four,
that in verse 10, be it known to you all that, all the people
of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom
you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth
this man stand here before you whole. This, meaning Christ,
this is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which
is become the head of the corner. So you were like builders, but
you threw away the cornerstone. And so this is the one God had
chosen to be the cornerstone of the temple of God, the people
of God, which is called the church. Verse 12, neither is there salvation
in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given
among men whereby we must be saved. Now, that's the sermon.
But Peter and John were taken by the leaders there, and they
were commanded not to teach or preach in Jesus' name. And this
is through the next few verses. But Peter told them, whether
it seems good to you or not, you judge whether we're going
to obey God, not men. So that's in verse 19. Peter
and John answered and said to them, whether it be right in
the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge
ye, but we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and
heard. So they went out and they threatened them, not to speak,
but they went out and they let them go. And then in verse 24,
they told these things to the other people, the believers,
and it says in verse 24, when they heard that, I'm sorry, verse
23, and being let go, they went to their own company and reported
all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. And
when they, the people they told this to, heard that, they lifted
up their voice to God with one accord, and they said this. Now,
here is the explanation of Psalm chapter 2. It's going to quote
from there. He said, Thou art God, which has made heaven and
earth, and the sea, and all that in them is, who by the mouth
of thy servant David," this is the way we know, Psalm 2 was
written by David, By the mouth of thy servant David hath said,
Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing,
or vain things? Notice, the kings of the earth
stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the
Lord, and against his Christ. In the psalm it said anointed,
but here you see anointed means Christ. Verse 27, For of a truth
against thy holy child Jesus, so right now we know that Jesus
is the Christ, whom thou hast anointed both Herod and Pontius
Pilate, that would be the kings and the rulers, with the Gentiles
and the people of Israel, the Gentiles would be the heathen
and the people are the Jews, were gathered together for to
do, notice, whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before
to be done. Okay? So, Here you see that the
Psalm, in Psalm chapter two, is teaching what is easily identified
now as being the truth of God's absolute sovereignty, right? Because why were the people trying
to get out of the constraints of God's rule? because they didn't
like God's rule. They didn't want God to rule
over them. They didn't want Christ to be
the king on the throne of heaven, not over them. They didn't want
this man to rule over them. And so they tried to cast away
his bands and cords from them. And so what we see here is in
Psalm chapter two, as it's explained in Acts chapter four, Just a
minute. Sorry. The setting here is the
opposition. of natural man to the rule of
Christ and to God's rule through him. You see that? It's the opposition
of natural man to the rule of Christ and God's rule through
him. Now, this is common. The people
of Israel, the heathen or the Gentiles, the kings like Herod
and Pilate and the rulers like the Sanhedrin and the Jewish
political and religious community, those people opposed Christ.
And they were all gathered together to exercise their collective
wisdom and strength to take away the rule of Christ from them
and to put it aside. They didn't want God's judgments
on them. They thought they could avoid God's judgments. They thought
they could have a different king. They were happy with Caesar.
They were happy with Herod, they were happy with their Sanhedrin,
they were happy with whatever. They just didn't want Christ,
just like the natural man doesn't want any God to rule over him. I mean the true God to rule over
him, but is happy to have any other God to rule. So that's
the first thing we see here in the Psalms. The Psalm, chapter
two, is about God's sovereign rule through Christ and man's
hatred of that rule of Christ, okay? The second thing we see
here is that even though the natural man opposes Christ and
his rule, what do we see happen in chapter 4 of Acts? Acts chapter
4. What was it that took place because
of these men and their desire to get rid of the rule of Christ
over them? What did they do? Well, they
tried to kill him. They took him and they hung him
on the tree. That's what Peter is saying here. He says in Acts chapter four,
the kings of the earth stood up, the rulers were gathered
together against the Lord and against his Christ, for of a
truth against thy holy child Jesus whom thou hast anointed,
both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people
of Israel were gathered together, notice, for to do whatsoever
thy hand and counsel determined before to be done. So even though
Psalm 2 is teaching us the sovereignty of God and man's hatred of it.
What do we also learn? That even though men oppose Christ,
God's will is always done. Especially when it comes to the
work of the Lord Jesus Christ, His enthronement and His rule
in order to save his people, okay? So this is what the psalm
is about. Now this psalm was written 1,000
years maybe before Jesus was ever born, and yet it's telling
us exactly what would happen when he was put to death on the
cross. So the sovereignty of God, man's
hatred of God's sovereignty, God's ultimate triumph, he prevails
even though men oppose him. In fact, it says in Acts 4.28
that whatever these wicked men did, they did whatever God's
hand and counsel determined before to be done. Isn't that amazing? What is this teaching? God is
so sovereign that even the uncoerced actions of sinful men fulfill
His will. And we wonder how can that be?
Men do what they want to do and God's will is done. It boggles
our minds that God could accomplish his will by letting evil men
do the worst possible thing in all of history. They took God's
son and put him to death. And yet this is exactly what
God determined would be done working through their uncoerced,
uninfluenced, evil hearts. They did precisely what God's
counsel determined to be done before. So we learn here a lot
about God's sovereignty, don't we? God is sovereign. Christ
rules. God determined him to be king.
Men oppose his rule. They oppose his kingship. And
yet God accomplishes his will. He does set his king, Christ,
on the throne. And God even designed to do that
through the worst actions of men in all of history. Look at
Acts chapter two and verse 23. It says, In verse 22, you men of Israel
hear these words, being delivered by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken and by wicked
hands have crucified and slain, whom God has raised up, having
loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should
be holden of it. So here we see God's sovereignty,
man's opposition, God working to accomplish his will concerning
Christ and concerning his kingdom, and man's opposition to it actually
works in conjunction with God's exact purpose and plan. God has
a will. It concerns His Son. God's will
concerning His Son is the salvation of His people. God's will will
be done. God has a plan and He has the
power to put His plan into effect and to bring it to pass. And
this is what the Psalm is telling us. And when we read it, we can
see the beauty of how God speaks before of His absolute success
in the exaltation and enthronement of His Son as our King. So now
when we read it in verse 1 of Psalm 2, Why did 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 Christ, saying, Let us break
their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. You
can see that's the collective combined wisdom and strength
and will of man, and yet God absolutely uses that wickedness
to fulfill his own will. And so this should cause us great
comfort in our lives, shouldn't it? It should cause us great
comfort. Because when we see outwardly
the apparent complete failure And where could failure ever
be more evident than when Jesus, the son of God, coming to the
world to save his people, was actually taken and crucified?
It seemed like his life was complete failure at that point. That was
exactly what God intended to do, and that's how he would do
it. And so in our own lives, when we see what apparently seems
to be, in the course of history, a complete failure of all that
is right, and a success of all that is wrong, we have to go
back to God's word and say, aha, God said Christ would rule, he
rules absolutely, and he rules for the salvation of his people,
which we'll get into here in a moment. Therefore, if it were
true of Christ, it's still true of Christ, it must therefore
be true of his people. All things are working together
for God's, to fulfill God's will and for our good, for our salvation.
You see how it all, It not only exalts God's sovereignty, His
power and wisdom to bring His will about and to exalt His Son,
so it exalts the Lord Jesus Christ, but it also tells us in the work
of Christ, which is our salvation, we also are certain that He will
fulfill that work. It will be done. Alright, now
let's go to verse 4, Psalm 2 verse 4. Now this is the father speaking
concerning his son. He that sits in the heavens shall
laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. God is never never
even concerned about all of the designs of men, all of the opposition
of men. You just take any point in history,
take a slice of history and look at all of the intentions of men.
They've got all these devices and these inventions and their
political structures and their political designs and the corruption. and the misuse of their power
and their deceit and their hypocrisy and their falsehood. All these
things are exactly and precisely according to God's will to bring
about his purpose. And so God sits. He's not anxious. This is precisely the way he
designed it. And he laughs at them for thinking in their heart
they could take off his sovereign rule and upset his plans and
keep his judgments from coming upon them. He says, the Lord
shall have them in derision, utterly confused. He will thwart
their designs. He will not allow them to fulfill
their intentions, but he will always fulfill his own will.
Verse five, then shall he speak unto them in his wrath and vex
them in his sore displeasure. God is angry with those who are
against his son. In John chapter 15, Jesus said,
if they hate me, they hate my father also. And we can look
at that, but I won't take time. You can look at the handout I
sent out. It has that verse in it. So God the father, his wrath
is a holy wrath. He is a God of wrath because
He's a God of justice and righteousness and He will bring those who oppose
His Son and oppose His own rule, He will bring them to judgment
and they can do nothing about that. He will trouble them in
His sore displeasure. To be opposed to Christ is to
be opposed to our own eternal souls. To be opposed to God the
Father is the greatest folly anyone could possibly imagine.
We often use that word, unbelievable. Here's an unbelievable thing,
that men would be so stupid and so stubborn and so arrogant and
so self-righteous that they would oppose their own life by trying
to take off God's cords. God who created them, I'm going
to snip that cord, and God who rules over them, the only God
who can save them from their sins, and they're trying to chop
off those cords, those bands. There's nothing more comforting
than to know that God Almighty, who can save the worst of sinners,
even justify the ungodly. in the death of his son, who
can do all that and to act as if his rule is something we despise
and hate and want to be rid of. Okay? Now in verse seven, you
can see here the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God speaking. Now
this Psalm is talking a lot about the King, the anointed of God,
and that's who's speaking here, the one who is the mediator.
So the Psalm is about the Lord Jesus Christ as our mediator,
and it reveals that the one who is our mediator is actually the
Son of God. Notice in verse seven, I will
declare the decree." What is a decree? God's decree is whatever
God says is going to happen. I will declare the decree. Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, is declaring His Father's decree. What is
His Father's decree? The decree of the Father is this,
the Lord has said to me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten
Thee. Now there's a lot of mystery
tied up in this verse, because who is the Son of God? He is
God, one with the Father and with the Son. So how in the world,
how is it possible that God could say, this day have I begotten
Thee, as if there was a day when Jesus Christ, who is God, was
actually coming into being? But that's not what it means.
To be begotten of the Father in this way is unique. It's only
applicable, it can only be said of the Son of God. There's only
one who is in relation to God the Father as God the Son. Only
one. It's the Son of God. And that
to that one, he says here in verse seven, I will declare the
decree the Lord has said to me, thou art my son, this day have
I begotten thee. Now, we have to use scripture
to understand these words. This day have I begotten thee.
What day? First of all, what day? When
we talk about a day, we think of a 24-hour period of time,
don't we? The sun rises, the sun sets,
and the sun rises again, and it's all a 24-hour period of
time. But we're constrained by time, aren't we? Is God subject
to time? No, God is not a servant of time. God made time. He's not a servant
to his creation. God is outside of time. Look
at a few verses with me. Who is the one speaking here?
Jesus Christ, the son of God. What does he say? The Lord has
said to me, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee.
But notice this, in the book of Micah, which is at the end
of the Old Testament, right after the book of Jonah, so you might
be able to find it. Micah chapter five and verse
two, it says, but thou Bethlehem Ephrata, though thou be little
among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall come forth
unto me unto me that is to be ruler in
Israel whose goings forth have been from old from everlasting."
So this is talking about the one born in Bethlehem, Jesus
Christ, and yet the one born in Bethlehem who would also be
the ruler in Israel, how long ago is he? Of old from everlasting. Jesus Christ is from everlasting.
In Psalm chapter 90, it says this. Moses wrote this Psalm
in Psalm chapter 90, and he says in verse one and two, I'll read
it to you. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling
place in all generations. before the mountains were brought
forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even
from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. This is talking
about God, Jehovah God. And Jesus is who? Jesus means
Jehovah is salvation. Jesus Christ is Jehovah. He's
Emmanuel, God with us. In Revelation he says, I am Alpha
and Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the
last, saith the Lord. So all these things speak of
the Lord Jesus Christ. To him it was said, this day
have I begotten thee. So what is that day? What day
could it have been when the Son of God, who is from everlasting
to everlasting, it was said to him, this day have I begotten
thee? How could it be that he would be begotten on a particular
day? Well, it wasn't a day in terms
of time. It was a day in terms of eternity. It was an eternal day. It was
the day of eternity. In other words, it was always
the case that he was always the son, but in the revelation of
God, God made known that the one of whom he's speaking here
in Psalm 2, the Christ of God, is actually his only begotten
son. And that was made known in time.
So look at Acts chapter 13. because the Apostle Paul is quoting
from Psalm 2 in Acts chapter 13. And he says this in Acts
chapter 2, he says, we declare, in verse 32, Acts 13, 13, 32,
I don't know why he said Acts 2, Acts 13, 32, he said, Paul
in his sermon, we declare unto you glad tidings. how that the promise which was
made unto the fathers, God has fulfilled the same unto us, their
children, in that, here's the promise, he hath raised up Jesus
again, as it is also written in the second Psalm, thou art
my son, this day have I begotten thee. Now what did he do? He
raised him up. And what does Paul say, explains
or fulfills that? It was the promise made in Psalm
2, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. So even
though Jesus Christ is the son of God in his nature, which means
he has no beginning, no end, like in Hebrews chapter seven,
Melchizedek, it says, he had no father, no mother, no beginning
of days, nor end of life, but he was made like the son of God.
So the son of God has no end, no beginning of days, no end
of life. He doesn't have a posterity or an ancestry. He's uniquely the Son of God. As long as God the Father has
been Father, He had a Son, otherwise He wouldn't be Father. And as
long as Jesus Christ has been the Son, He alone stood uniquely
in relation to His Father as Son. But also, as a Son bears
the exact nature of His Father, Christ, the Son of God, bears
the exact nature of His Father. And there can be none other but
He that does so. Okay, so here we see that even
though he is eternal, there was a day in time that fulfilled
the eternal day, the promise of God in eternity, that Jesus
Christ would be made known to be the Son of God as the only
begotten of the Father, and that day would be at the resurrection
of Christ. So when we put it all together,
we see here that in verse 7, Psalm 2, verse 7, Jesus speaks
as the Son, but as the mediator, as Christ, I will declare the
decree, God's eternal decree, because God's word is from everlasting
and to everlasting, like God himself. And so he's declaring
God's eternal word, his eternal purpose, his eternal will, that
Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, would sit on the throne.
He says, I will declare the decree the Lord has said to me, thou
art my son, this day have I begotten thee. That was the resurrection.
But what was the resurrection? The resurrection was the completion
of Christ's work as Christ, the mediator to our salvation. Our justification was accomplished
when God raised him from the dead. He finished the work. He
was successful. He triumphed. And God therefore
raised him, and not only raised him from the dead, but set him
on his throne. So here we see the fulfillment of the atonement
in the resurrection of Christ, and coincident with that, God
declares the one who accomplished our salvation to be his only
begotten son. And so when I read this to you
in Romans 1, you'll be reminded of this and see that this is
the way God speaks in the gospel. In Romans 1, verse 1, he says,
Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated
unto the gospel of God, So we're talking about the gospel here.
Paul was an apostle to Christ, a servant of Christ, sent of
Christ for the sake of the gospel. He says, verse 2, that gospel
which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures
concerning his son. Jesus Christ, Jehovah's salvation,
the Anointed, our Lord, the One who reigns. You see, all that's
in His name. His Son, the Only Begotten, Jesus,
the Savior, Jehovah is our salvation, Christ, the Anointed, Prophet,
Priest, and King, our Lord. which was made of the seed of
David, according to the flesh, he was made as a man, and declared
to be, not made, but declared to be the Son of God with power,
according to the spirit of holiness, because he was raised from the
dead, that had to be a holy stamp of approval on all that he did,
the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. Christ
is absolutely holy in his work. He went into the grave, he was
buried, he died for our sins, but he was raised again because
he's the holy one of God and our sins were completely put
away. And so the resurrection of the dead was that time when
God spoke concerning the one that accomplished our salvation,
this is my only begotten son, the eternal God in our nature
accomplished our salvation and is now seated on the throne of
glory. Look at one more scripture in
the New Testament. Look at, or maybe two more, John chapter
17. When Jesus prayed to explain
this in John chapter 17, he says this in verse 1, The hour has come. So who is
speaking? The one who is a son to his father. Father, the hour has come. Glorify
thy son, that thy son also may glorify thee. Now, this is such
an intimate conversation. revealed to us by the Spirit
of God that this is communication between the Eternal Father and
the Eternal Son. And he says, verse 2, "...as
Thou hast given Him, the Son, power over all flesh, That's
like Psalm 2, right? He rules over all that he should
do what? Give eternal life to as many
as thou hast given him. That's sovereignty, isn't it?
And this is eternal life, that they might know thee, the only
true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. Verse 4, I have
glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which
thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou
me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee
before the world was. So here we have it, at the completion
of that work God gave him to do, Jesus Christ prayed, I've
finished the work, therefore now glorify me. In Mark chapter
14, I want to read this verse. In Mark chapter 14, the high
priest was very frustrated with Jesus. He was so angry he was
ready to kill him, but he's trying to find a reason he can use. So he says to him in Mark 14
verse 61, Jesus held his peace and answered nothing. Again,
the high priest asked him and said to him, Art thou the Christ,
the Son of the Blessed? There he is, the anointed, the
Son of God, right? In that one question, are you
the Christ, the Son of God? And Jesus said, I am. And you shall see the Son of
Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds
of heaven. And the high priest rent his
clothes. He was so fit to be tied. He couldn't contain himself.
He wanted to reach out and rip the life out of Jesus. But, of
course, he had to follow the whole script that God had in
place. Look also at John 6. In John 6, so Jesus is going
to be exalted both as the Son of God and as the Son of David,
the Son of Man, because he accomplished the work of our salvation according
to God's eternal will. John 6.62, look at this. And so in verse 61, or 60, it
says, many therefore of his disciples, when they heard this, heard Jesus
expounding how he was the bread of life and all who came to him,
he would give eternal life, but all who would not would perish.
He says, this is a hard saying, who can hear it? And when Jesus
knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said to them,
does this offend you? What and if you shall see the
Son of Man ascend up where he was before? And so you see, Jesus
Christ is the one who sits on heaven's throne because he always
sat there as the Son of God and now as Son of Man he would be
there. So, back to Psalm chapter two, verse seven. The Son of
God speaks, I will declare the decree, God's eternal will, God's
eternal word. It says in Psalm 119, and verse
160, I'm going to read this to you, you don't have to turn there.
Psalm 119 and verse 160, it says, Thy word is true from the beginning,
and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever. Remember what James said in Acts
15, known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the
world. And we know that Jesus Christ is the lamb slain from
the foundation of the world. So here Christ is saying, God's
will is eternal. God's word is eternal. It started
before the world began. God knew exactly what he was
going to do from everlasting. And in his eternal will, he had
an eternal purpose that he established in his son, and that decree was
to set his son on the throne. I've begotten thee, you're my
son. Verse 8, ask of me and I will
give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost
parts of the earth for thy possession. What is this? But a promise of
the elect of God given to Christ to be His people, His inheritance. The uttermost parts of the world,
wherever they are scattered. And now look in verse 9. Thou
shalt break them with a rod of iron. Thou shalt dash them in
pieces like a potter's vessel. This is speaking about the ungodly
who are not His people, who oppose His rule. It's not going to be
any sweat with him. Take a rod, a steel rod, take
a piece of rebar and strike it against a piece of pottery. It
just breaks it to powder. That's exactly how easily his
power over the unsaved will be. He will smash them to pieces.
The kingdom of Satan will not stand before the Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 10, now we have the Spirit of God speaking. In conclusion,
we have the opposition of man to Christ and to the Father.
We have the Fathers mocking them in their puny, ignorant arrogance
and self-righteousness to oppose their own salvation and Christ's
rule over them, which would be to their salvation. We have God's
eternal purpose to exalt His Son on the throne of heaven. to the salvation of his people,
which is verse 8, their, his inheritance, and he will possess
them, and yet he will subdue all enemies against them. And
then in verse 10, and this should be to our comfort, all that's
said before and all that follows now, verse 10, the Spirit of
God says to us, and all men everywhere, be wise now therefore, O ye kings. Kings are not naturally wise.
They have to hear the Spirit of God. Be wise now, therefore,
O ye kings. How can a king be wise? Only
one way. Be instructed, you judges of
the earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Serve the Lord. He's talking
about not only God the Father, but particularly His Son, because
to oppose His Son is to oppose God the Father, but to serve
His Son is to serve God the Father, because God made Him to be the the only one that we are going
to report to. We can't know God any other way.
All we ever know about God is known in Jesus Christ, and there's
no need to go no further, right? The fullness of the Godhead is
in Him. To know Christ is to know the Father. So he says,
serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. And verse
12, if you add this, kiss the son lest he be angry, and you
perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. So here God,
the Spirit of God, exhorts us, all men everywhere, each one
of us, me and you included, we need to be wise. How can we be
wise? Only if Christ is our wisdom,
we have to serve the Lord with fear, admiring Him, adoring Him,
respecting Him. He says, rejoice with trembling.
Now, to rejoice with trembling reminds me of this verse in Isaiah
chapter 45. Jesus says in Isaiah 45, 22,
look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth, for
I am God and there is none else. I have sworn by myself the word
has gone out of my mouth in righteousness and shall not return, that unto
me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. Surely shall
one say, in the Lord have I righteousness and strength, even to him shall
men come, and There's another group of people. So what causes
us to rejoice? Why do we rejoice? Don't we rejoice because Christ
is exalted to the throne of heaven, because he conquered death, rose
from the dead, defeated Satan, and put our sins away so that
our sins are no more there? Doesn't that cause us to rejoice?
But doesn't it also cause us to tremble? because we were among
those who defied and opposed and vainly thought to unseat
our Savior from His rightful throne by our sins. It was our
sins that put Him on the cross, wasn't it? he bear our sins in
his own body on the tree and so because we were thus offensive
to God he reconciled us to himself by the death of his son and because
unless he would have had sovereign mercy upon us we would be just
as those who are like the potter's vessel broken by the rod of his
iron so we see in here both the mercy of God towards us the pit
from which he has dug us from, out of, to save us. So there's
a combination of both joy, but also mixed with a trembling,
because God that we offended, and whose wrath is against us,
is the one who took our sins and bore them in his Son, and
saved us from that, and we would not know that if he had not had
mercy upon us. So we're like a trembling, happy
object of God's saving grace. We stand by faith, but that faith
is only given by grace, and so it's not a happiness that's without
an awe and respect, but we stand before God with this holy, sobriety, this respectful reverence
to God because He saved us from our sins, and there we were,
hanging over the eternal pit of hell, and were it not for
God's mercy, He would have saved us. We stand by grace alone.
Therefore, we're joyful, and yet we have this experience in
our life of being trembling. He says this in many different
ways in our salvation. John Gill said it this way, he
said, He says, trembling not with a
fearful looking for of judgment, but with modesty and humility,
in which sense this word is used with fear in Philippians 2.12,
where it says, it's God who is working you both to will and
to do of his good pleasure, so work out your own salvation with
fear and trembling. And so this fear stands in opposition,
John Gill says, to pride and haughtiness and arrogance, and
men should so rejoice in Christ as to have no confidence in their
flesh, or to assume any degree of glory or boasting in themselves,
or to have any cause in themselves for rejoicing, but only to rejoice
in Christ, giving all glory to Him for what they are and what
they have." So I'm paraphrasing what John Gill said. That makes
sense to me. We're happy. that God receives
us for Christ's sake, but that strips us of all of our pride,
it puts us in the dust of humility, that's the trembling part. We
stand only in Christ alone. Now, I want to get to this last
part here, verse 12. He says, kiss the son lest he
be angry and you perish from the way when his wrath is kindled
but a little. Blessed are all they that put
their trust in him. You see both sides here. First,
exhortation. You better worship the son of
God. God the Father has commanded us to do this. And secondly,
blessed are all they that do put their trust in him. This
is unrestricted. All they who put their trust
in Christ are blessed. Isn't that comforting, looking
at this psalm and seeing our natural, with the heathen and
the people and the kings and the rulers, opposition to Christ,
to find the great comfort that all who trust in Christ, the
one God has put on the throne, are blessed in Him? That's a
great comfort, isn't it? But I want to read to you from
Luke chapter 7 about a woman who kissed the Son of God. Because
this teaches us two things about this. First of all, when you
kiss somebody, what are you thinking? What are you thinking? You're
doing something, you're acting out, this kiss is a sign of your
adoration of them, you adore them, and your admiration, you
respect them, right? But when it comes to kissing
Jesus, it's a whole different thing. In Luke chapter seven,
in verse 36, he says, Jesus was in the house of a Pharisee
that wanted him to come and eat with him. And when he came to
the house, it says in verse 36, everyone knew it. When she knew that Jesus was
sitting there at meat in the Pharisee's house, she brought
an alabaster box of ointment and stood at his feet behind
him, weeping, and began to wash his feet with her tears, and
did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet,
and anointed them with the ointment." Now, this is kissing. This is what it means to kiss.
She came behind him. She didn't come presumptuously.
She was happy and weeping at the same time. Why was she happy?
Well, we'll find out in a minute. Let's keep reading. Now, when
the Pharisee, which had bidden Jesus to come or asked him to
come, saw it, he spake within himself. The Pharisee now is
thinking within himself. He said, hmm, if this man were
a prophet, he would have known who and what manner of woman
this is that toucheth him, for she is a sinner." Well, she was
well known to be a sinner, whatever that meant in those days. Probably
she was a prostitute of some sort, I'm assuming, because she
was well known for this, and men have a way of carrying the
negative reputation of a woman for doing that, but they don't
carry the man's reputation, so that's the way it works out.
And in verse 40, and Jesus answering said to him, the Pharisee, Simon,
I have somewhat to say to thee. And he said, Master, say on. Verse 41, Jesus says, there was
a certain creditor which had two debtors. The one owed 500
pence and the other 50. And when they had nothing to
pay, neither one of them, he frankly forgave them both. And
Jesus asked the Pharisee Simon, he said, tell me therefore, which
of them will love him the most? Simon answered, I suppose that
he to whom he forgave the most. And Jesus said to him, Thou hast
rightly judged. And he turned to the woman, and
he said to Simon, You see this woman, I entered into your house. You gave me no water for my feet,
but she has washed my feet with her tears and wiped them with
the hairs of her head. You gave me no kiss, but this
woman, since the time I came in, has not ceased to kiss my
feet. My head with oil you did not
anoint, but this woman has anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore,
I say to you, her sins, which are many, are all forgiven. For she loved much, but to whom
little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said to
her, thy sins are forgiven. And they that sat at meat with
him began to say within themselves, who is this that forgiveth sins
also? And he said to the woman, thy faith has saved thee, go
in peace. This woman believed that Jesus Christ had forgiven
her sins, therefore she came behind him, and she was weeping
for sorrow for her sins, but happiness because of the forgiveness
she received because of the Lord Jesus Christ. She could never
be happier, and she was so thankful that she came behind and she
was weeping and she poured it all that she had, this alabaster
box of ointment, on his feet and she took her hair and she
washed his feet with her tears and dried them with her hair.
What a sign of admiration and adoration, kissing his feet. But notice here also that Jesus
Christ allowed her to do this. The Pharisees said if he were
a prophet he would know what manner of woman this is. He would
not allow her to touch him. And yet he allowed her to touch
him. And so back in Psalm chapter 2, what we learn here is that
the Spirit of God is exhorting sinners seeing that God has exalted
His Son because He raised Him from the dead, having completed
our salvation, fall at His feet, kiss the Son, worship Him. He's the Son of God. He's the
one God has exalted. He purged our sins. He's therefore
sat down on the right hand of God. Rejoice with trembling like
this woman forgiven much. That's the best picture I can
find of this explanation. Blessed are all they that put
their trust in Him. What a precious promise this
is. I trust Christ to take and bear
all my sins, though it would be way beyond anything I could
ever imagine or presume to ask. God has instructed us by His
own Spirit to pray that God would blot out our sins by the blood
of His Son, to lay our sins on Him, to bear them and confess
them as His, and to receive from God a full expiation. They were all put away. He carried
them away. To God forgive them, for I would
remember them no more, and therefore we fall at His feet and kiss
the Son. And if we do not do so, then
he will be angry and we will perish from the way. But if we
trust him, then we are blessed. Isn't that a wonderful psalm?
God exalting his son and us who are sinners, who were in opposition
to him and his sovereign rule, are finding in his sovereign
rule, in his sovereign rule, our salvation by the Lord Jesus
Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for the Lord Jesus, our only Savior, and your only begotten
Son, the one you've exalted to heaven's throne from eternity,
whose blood was slain before the foundation of the world,
and whose sins, our sins, were laid on Him, and He owned them,
and obligated Himself to fully pay for them, and took them from
us, and confessed them as His. and bore them away, and obtained
our eternal redemption by His own precious blood, and this
was all set up from eternity. Help us now, Lord, give us this
grace. Enable us now to kiss the Son, and to, as this woman,
to pour out our happy, heartfelt thanksgiving and admiration and
adoration to the Lord Jesus Christ, who saved us, who were no better,
much worse than this prostitute, who need forgiveness beyond measure
and have found it in the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we
pray, amen.