Now let us begin in the gospel
according to Luke chapter 4. Luke chapter 4. Now my purpose
this morning, my plan is, you've heard what happens to the best
laid plans of mice and men, right? My purpose is to take our reading
out of Luke chapter 4, And then go to the Old Testament
in the second reading this morning under Psalm 2. So I think this
is how I'm supposed to go about it, but I could be wrong. I've
been wrong more times than I've been right. So chapter 4. Now here's what I want you to
look for. Most people's view of the Lord
Jesus Christ is that he would do anything in his power not
to offend you. Religion has so dressed up the
Lord Jesus in modern attire that it is absolutely criminal
to believe that he would actually insult people. I've chosen this
passage and the second psalm to set forth to every one of
us who Christ is. How does He operate? What does
He do? This is very important, more
important than I can communicate to you. If God doesn't communicate
it, it can't be communicated. And that is that you and I, in
order to believe and trust the Christ of Holy Scripture, We
must have a miracle of grace performed in our soul by the
Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Without that, we
cannot be saved. We will forever be lost unless
God comes down and works in power, the power of His grace in the
power of His Spirit. Now, of all places, we find our
Lord Jesus in Luke chapter 4. in the village where he spent
virtually all of the first roughly 30 years of his life. How much
time they spent in Egypt before he came back as a young child
or an infant, I don't know that anybody can figure that out,
and I'm not interested in trying. But for whatever the difference
was that the time spent in Egypt until Herod the king died, The
Lord Jesus lived and worked and played and worshiped and whatever
else he did in the village of Nazareth. And now that he has
just begun his public ministry, in Luke's gospel there's only
one verse describing, two verses describing what the Lord Jesus
was now doing, verses 14 and 15. Our Savior returned from
His wilderness temptations at the hands of Satan. He returned
in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and there went out a
fame of Him through all the region round about. And He taught in
their synagogues, being glorified of all." So in due time, seemingly
very early in his public life, he returns to Nazareth. He's
been gone now some months, perhaps even a year, and he's established
his home base on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, a place called
Capernaum, a city which saw the Lord Jesus and heard the Lord
Jesus and perhaps did more miracles in that one little town than
any other place that he went. And yet in chapter 20 of Matthew's
Gospel, the greatest condemnation that can be conveyed upon the
head of any man or woman is placed upon Capernaum and its residents. Our Lord said it will be worse
for you than for Solomon and Gomorrah. So now we come to Nazareth. I forget how many children Joseph
and Mary had. It seemed like there were at
least two brothers and two sisters. I don't know. My point is this,
that in this synagogue in Nazareth, the Lord Jesus had ten people.
He had people He grew up with. He had friends. Everybody knew
everybody else. And you would think if there's
any place on this earth that could truly welcome the Son of
God, the Son of Man, the Lord Jesus, it would be this town. Well, let's see how it plays.
Let's see how it works out. Verse 16, He came to Nazareth
where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went
into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read. which
is an honor to be allowed to be one of the readers, either
of the law or the prophets. And in our Savior's case, they
gave him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And there was delivered
unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. Let me make one comment
now about the way words are different than they are in the Old Testament.
I just go on and say just like it is in the Old Testament. basically the Greek rendering
of that name, and in the Old Testament we have the Hebrew
rendering of that name. So anyway, it's different, and
so are other Old Testament characters. Their names are sometimes, if
you're not pretty sharp, you might miss who it is altogether
when we find it in the New Testament. There was delivered unto him
the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when he had opened the book,
literally now this is a scroll, when he had opened the scroll
he found the place where it was written. My goodness, you'd think
the Lord Jesus would just open it and there it was right before
his eyes. There's not a single miracle
recorded in the New Testament that was simply for convenience
sake. Every last single one of them
was for the glory of God and the salvation of sinners. And
there ain't no other motives worth talking about. He found
the place where it was written. Here's what it said. Isaiah 61,
I believe. The Spirit of the Lord, the Holy
Spirit of God is upon me because He has anointed me to do what? To preach the gospel to the poor. Now listen carefully. This poverty
is primarily poverty of soul. Poor people are just as proud
of what they think they can do for God as the richest people
that walk the earth today. It is a myth that poor people
are humble. Nope. No matter where we are
on the spectrum of things, we are all proud. And this gospel
is preached to people that you cannot find living on this planet
unless God performs a miracle of grace that is poor in spirit. You're going to find out in everywhere
you go in this Bible that this is one of the primary reasons
that the Lord Jesus is so hated among men, to save the poor in
spirit. And there's none naturally in
such a state. They all have to be converted
from a state of pride to a state of humility. And then they go
the rest of their days confessing their pride, despising what they
see of it in themselves. Secondly, He has sent me to heal
the brokenhearted. And our Lord's not speaking of
two people in a in a relationship and they suddenly get mad at
each other. That's not the kind of broken heart we're talking
about at all. This is a heart broken over. The next one is
worse than all of them put together to preach deliverance to the captives. You know what a captive is. I
know you know. It is a person that has been
forced into some kind of slavery. And since we're on the subject
of spiritual things and the purpose for which Christ came into this
world and what the gospel says and who it says it to, when the
true gospel of Christ is preached, it's preached to sinners who
are in prison and who are under subjection to the devil and must
be delivered by none other than the all-powerful arm of God,
namely our Lord Jesus Christ." When somebody has the gall and
the backbone to tell us that we are born in this human race, we're all
born slaves of the devil. We do his bidding. until God
performs that miracle of grace in our soul. Oh, preacher, I
never did that. Listen, more of it goes on in
the church house than in the outhouse. Religious sins are worse than
immoral sins. You know why? Because we like
to rely on them to stand us in good stead with God. And that
makes them intolerable to God, it makes them in His sight an
antichrist because it is putting what we do for God in the place
of our Lord Jesus Christ. He doesn't think too kindly over
that. All right, we've got to hurry. Y'all are tying me down
too long here. Let's see. Preach the gospel
to the poor. He sent me to heal the brokenhearted.
to preach deliverance to the captives. You see why the Lord
Jesus was so popular? And recovering of sight to the
blind. This is spiritual blindness.
Our Lord cured physical blindness plenty of times in the four Gospels,
but it was simply a type and picture of spiritual blindness.
And to set at liberty them each the acceptable year of the Lord. Now what do you suppose the reaction
of these people from Nazareth? Don't you know they're elated
and thrilled that He's come back home? Our Savior closed the book,
gave it again to the minister, a deacon, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that
were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. We've heard about all
these miracles He's done. I wonder what He began to say
unto them. Those scriptures I just read
for you from Isaiah, this day is this scripture fulfilled. I am, he said, that Messiah and
that Christ of whom Isaiah prophesied. And anytime you hear anybody
talking about prophecy, I don't care what it has to do with,
Some character on TV now trying to sell you on an idea about
the American economy and it's all over the scriptures and all
of this stuff. The man's a liar. I ain't never heard him and he's
a liar. You know why? The testimony of the Lord Jesus
is the spirit of prophecy. And if you ain't preaching Christ,
you ain't preaching squat. I don't care who your name is
or where you live or where you've been or anything else. just pure
worthless junk. This day is this scripture fulfilled. And all bear him witness and
wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.
And they said, Is not this Joseph's son? Well, actually not really. He's his stepson. And our Lord
said unto them, You will surely say unto me this proverb, physician,
heal yourself. Whatsoever we've heard done in
Capernaum, do also here in your country." And he said, amen. I say unto you, no prophet is
accepted in his own country. And there's the best example
of the entire history of the world. Our Savior in Nazareth
refused, not accepted. So our Lord decides to do a little
preaching. Now they might have called it
something other than preaching. They probably called it meddling,
you know, dealing with subjects that He ought not to deal with.
But our Lord, perfectly infinite wisdom, gave them two examples
of what he had just read to them from the prophet Isaiah. Now
you understand, nobody picked out that text for him. He looked
through that scroll until he came to it. Not that that took
him very long, but not many people in that day had a copy of the
Old Testament scriptures, but this synagogue did. And I'm sure
our Lord had seen that roll get time in 30 years. All right. Verse 25, but I tell you of a
truth. Many widows were in Israel in
the time of Elijah. See the difference in spelling?
Elijah, the prophet, the Old Testament prophet Elijah. When
the heaven was shut up three years and six months, Three and
a half years without a drop of rain. Do you realize what would
die without rain in three and a half years? God sent that drought. Elijah announced it and announced
the end of it on Mount Carmel. When great famine was throughout
all the land. But unto none of them, the many
widows that were in Israel, Unto none of them was Elijah sent,
save unto Sarepta," except Sarepta, a city of Sidon, a Gentile city,
unto a woman that was a widow. He took the prophet in, and God
blessed her with, I forget how much oil it was, but it sustained
her and this prophet and her son And then he says in verse
27, And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet,
and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the centurion,
the general of the army of Syria. All they We love to make all's
mean everybody without exception. Well, help yourself on this one.
All they that were in the synagogue, whether his relatives or his
friends or his neighbors, when they heard these things, they
were filled with wrath and rose up and thrust him out of the
city and laid him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city
was built, that they might cast him down. headlong. He, passing through the middle
of them, in verse 31 he goes to Capernaum, the city of Galilee,
and taught them on the Sabbath day. Time to the second psalm,
please. Psalm 2. Alright, if you'll try
to hold on to those thoughts from Luke chapter 4, see it from a different perspective,
and yet the subject is virtually one and the same. Psalm 2. Let
us pray. Lord, as we read your word this
day, we may be puzzled as to why you put such things in this
book. Is it not to show us who and
what we are, who and what you are, and how the two can ever
be reconciled. And that reconciliation in a
glorious Redeemer who stands in our room place instead, takes
upon Himself our sin and grants to us in your precious gospel
that is all of grace, not only the removal of our sins, the
atonement of His blood on Calvary's It grants to every last one of
His people Old Testament, New Testament to the present hour
a perfect righteousness and standing before God the Father in eternal
glory. Lord, let us come to this second
psalm. If you would be pleased to speak
these words that we're about to read in power. If all we hear is a man's voice
or a woman's voice, nothing changes. We are left the same. Now the
treatment that was afforded our Lord Jesus in Luke chapter 4,
they physically took Him out to the edge of the cliff, the
same part of the mountain on which their village was built.
They cast Him down head first. And instead, he miraculously
walks right through the middle of them. Now here's what we have
to see. We've said man has not changed
one iota. We're the same. Human nature
is the same. We're born hating God just like
we're born liars. We come from the womb speaking
lies. But there ain't nowhere Any bigger liars can we be found
than what we think and say about the Son of God. We can't tolerate
this man another moment. He's not fit to live on the topside
of God's green earth. We're going to help God out and
get rid of him. And that is not an isolated incident
in the four Gospels. Still the same, right? God-hater to a God-lover. It
ain't got nothing to do with me and you being better than
someone. As a matter of fact, we could prove pretty easily
from the Scriptures that God saves the world. It's a much
greater testimony as to who He is and the power of His grace.
All right, Psalm 2. The psalm opens in the first three verses. The
psalm is dividable. It's not divided in our Bibles,
but it's easily divided. The subject matter divides itself.
into stanzas of three verses each. Well, four times three
is twelve, and that's how many verses in this psalm. Here's
the first three. Why do the heathen rage? Now, generally speaking, this
is not always the case. Generally speaking, the word
heathen, especially in the New Testament, refers to Gentiles. Why do the heathen rage? Oh,
you mean more than one race hates Christ? Oh, by all means, yes
indeed. And the people, referring to
the Jewish people, imagine a vain thing. Guess what that is that
we imagine? We actually think that if enough
of us get ourselves together, We can tear God off His throne
and put ourselves in His place. That is the issue from Genesis
chapter 3 unto this present. We don't like who God is or what
He does. We're going to do our dead level
best to get rid of it. In the same gospel that we read
from a little while ago, I believe this is in chapter 15 or 19, I can't remember. The
Lord gives a parable and in it He puts these words on our tongue
concerning Himself. We will not have this man, this
God-man, Jesus Christ. We won't have Him to reign over
us. You can imagine that the Lord
would be very upset and worried You know what God does in the
face of what we've just read in these three verses in Psalm
chapter 2? He's in a state of derision. He's laughing. Let's read the
second and third verses, and then we'll come to that statement
in verse 4. The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together. Against the Lord, that's the
Lord God Jehovah, you see all the capital letters. And against
His anointed, that word anointed is the Christ, the Lord Jesus,
the God-man. And here's what we say, both
the people and the heathen in verse 1 and the kings and the
rulers in verse 2, we say, let us break their bands asunder
and cast away their cords from us. And notice the plural pronoun,
T-H-E-I-R, is twice in that statement. That is, it's speaking not only
of the Father, but of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Let us
break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. Here is a description of God
in the light of such news that there's been such a revolt. He
that sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them
in derision. Now, I don't know the exact definition
of derision, but it's beyond laughter if you understand. It's
like your sides are splitting with laughter. Any man is going
to take God off his throne. Then shall he, the Lord, speak
unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure. And here's what he said. Of all
the things that God could have responded with in the light of
what went on in the first three verses in this psalm, And for
that matter, what went on in Nazareth when the Lord Jesus
went back to the synagogue after He began His public life and
ministry? They said, We won't have this man reign over us.
And they said to God, You can't elevate this man. We won't tolerate
it. We won't let you. Verse 6, Psalm
2, verse 6, Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion. You said I couldn't. Well, I've
already done it anyway. You know when this was done?
In old eternity, before this world ever was. Yet have I set
my king upon my holy hill of Jesus this morning. It's reigning
in eternal glory. And it's in a place called Zion. That's none other than the church,
our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. Children in heaven and those
that are still down here. Geography's got nothing to do
with it. So now we come to the third stanza, verses 7, 8, and
9. Here we find that it is the Lord
Jesus Himself who is speaking. He's the one that has excited
all this anger and determination and all these other things that
were described for us in the previous verses. So the Father
has spoken in verse 6, and now God the Son speaks in verses
7, 8, and 9, part of which He is quoting His Father's promise
to Christ Himself. I will declare the decree The
Lord Jesus is going to tell us what went on in God's eternal
decrees. What were they? What were they
about? I will declare the decree, the
Lord, the Lord God Jehovah said unto me, the Lord Jesus, you
are my Son. This day have I begotten you. Speaking of our Savior coming
to this earth taking on himself human flesh, these words in Psalm
2 were written over a thousand years before Christ actually
came into this world in that wonderful incarnation. Verse
8, the Father continues according to the Lord Jesus who informs
us of what was in that grand and glorious document. Ask of
me. You know, in the work of redemption,
God has allowed himself to be revealed in three persons in
this Bible. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And yet they are just one God. But each one is perfectly equal
in every matter whatsoever. They are one. They are one. To
help us understand this, they speak sometimes as though one
were inferior to the other. Watch here. The father said,
according to the Lord Jesus, the father said to him, ask of
me and I'll give you the heathen for your inheritance. I'll give
you the Gentiles. All you have to do is ask. Now
you understand that the Lord Jesus doesn't ask. when we talk
about His Godhead, His Godhood. But it is as the God-man mediator,
the Son of God and the Son of Man in that mediatorial person
of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so the Lord Jesus here speaks
as if He were just a man. Ask of me and I shall give you
the heathen for your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the
earth for your possession. The Lord Jesus has Everything
on this earth, everything in heaven, everything anywhere is
His. Verse 9, You shall break them
with a rod of iron. There's that word correctly spelled. You shall dash them in pieces
like a potter's vessel, like a clay pot. Not one word in those three verses. Could we use to say that the
Lord Jesus wants to do some things, but He can't do them because
we won't let Him? It ain't to be found. All right. Let's keep going. 10, 11, and
12. I tell you, this is a glorious
psalm. If a man is conquered by grace, he would hate it with
a passion. Be wise now, therefore, I take
this to mean that this is the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit
of God, who is now speaking in infinite wisdom to humanity. Be wise now, therefore, O you
kings. Be instructed, you judges of
the earth, you Gentiles and you Jews. Be wise. Be wise. Here's the wisdom of
God. concerning is to serve the Lord
with fear. Do you know today's religion
has no fear? Their God is too little. He has
their pity. Serve the Lord with fear and
rejoice with awe, with reverence, lest he be angry. You perish
from the way. is kindled but just a little
wrath. Blessed are all they that put
their trust in Him. What is this kissing the Son?
A kiss of gratitude? A kiss of submission? Lord, I'm Yours. You can do with
me what You please. Kiss the Son. lest he be angry.