Now, let's open our Bibles to
the Book of Psalms, Chapter 2. I don't know whether I will do
any good with this tonight, but I've got hold of something here
that's definitely not being said, whether
men do not comprehend it. If you can't comprehend or understand
to some degree a truth, you can't preach it. You can't preach what
you don't know. Or whether it be true that men
sort of somehow suspect that this is true, but do not dare
have the courage to preach it. But I'm going to set it forth
in the hope that God will be pleased to make it a powerful and understandable
truth, because I feel like it's at the very heart of what the
book is all about. Now, let me make a few comments
before I read the Scripture. Saul was king of Israel, and
Israel was a powerful political force, nation. Saul was the king. And God rejected Saul. You remember
the people of Israel kept clamoring for a king. They kept saying,
we want a king. We want a king. The other nations
have a king. We don't have a king. They had a king. It was God.
But they wanted a king they could touch and see, like the other
nations. So God gave them a king. And
because of Saul's rebellion and pride and disobedience, God withdrew
his spirit. He said, I've rejected Saul.
from being king of Israel. And God sent his prophet Samuel
down to the house of a man called Jesse, who had several sons.
The Lord always worked contrary to human thought, human wisdom,
and human understanding. And this man Jesse had several
sons. He had six or And when the word
came to him that the prophet of God Samuel was coming down
to his place to anoint a special leader from his sons, I'm sure
he gave some thought to the matter and decided which one Samuel
would anoint. He had his ideas. He and his
wife talked about it. They knew the boys pretty well.
I can hear Jesse now saying, well, anybody knows these boys,
I know them. And so he called his son David
aside and he said, now, David, there's not a possibility you'll
be the one chosen. So, son, why don't you just go
on out? And if he'd have known God, as we ought to know God,
he'd have said, David, stay with us, you're possibly the one God's
going to use. But he sent him out to take care
of the sheep. Samuel came down, and Samuel had his ideas about
which one God had chosen. And when the firstborn came by,
of course, they came by in order of age and so forth, because
back here in Old Testament days, age really meant something. The
firstborn was the tribal leader, spiritual leader, leader of the
home and so forth. The birthright went to the firstborn.
So he came before Samuel, and Samuel was just convinced that
God's anointed was before him, and I guess everybody else did
too. And he arose to anoint him, and
God said, that's not the one. He said, I've rejected him. Samuel
even made this statement, surely the Lord's anointed is before
him. That's what he said. God said, I don't see like you
see, Samuel. Man looketh on the outward countenance,
God looks on the heart. And he went down through all
those fellows until he got to the last one, and God had not
chosen any of them. And finally, he turned to Jesse
and said, Are these all your sons? And Jesse said, Well, no,
I've got another one. You see, this is how this thing
all started. David wasn't even accepted by his father and his
brothers as king. They didn't even set him apart
as king. That's where it all started.
And then when God obviously had his hand upon him, it created
jealousy, friction, division. His family, even his brothers,
you know, when he went down to fight Goliath, they didn't receive
him with open arms. There wasn't any brass band playing
Hail to the Chief. They made fun of him. Not only
the Philistines, but his brothers thought, what in the world? Who's
taking care of the sheep kid? What are you doing down here?
And that's the way it all was. That's the way it was. And even
when he killed Goliath, and the people talked about David has
killed his 10,000 and Saul his thousands, even then it didn't
sink in who David was. His family, his father, his brothers,
Saul, the princes, the captains, the generals, the army, the people,
they all turned thumbs down on him. And finally here you have
God's anointed, David. Out running the mountains like
a wild deer, Saul chasing him, trying to throw spears at him,
and trying to shoot him by the archers. And he just had 400
men with him, and they were all poor, ragged, folks in debt,
folks in trouble. And he's the king, he's the anointed.
God Almighty has anointed David king. David is going to be king. And God said that. Mine anointing
is before David is God's anointing. Now let me tell you something.
The elders shall serve the younger. That's what God said. And no
matter what you do or what Jacob does or what Joseph does or what
anybody else does, the elders are going to serve the younger.
God said the elders shall serve the younger. David is king. God
decreed it, God determined it, God anointed it, God called him,
and it doesn't matter who's against him and what they do, he's going
to be king. And that's what this psalm's
all about. And when you apply it, when you read it, in the
Word, referring to David, and when David wrote, he wrote about
himself. Primarily, he wrote about himself. In a figurative sense, in a typical
sense, he wrote of Christ. Everything here is Christ. But
I want to read it first as it refers to David. David, rejected,
hated by Saul, by all in a command, all in authority, had to flee
from his own people, had to flee from his life, had to seek refuge
in the mountains. His life was constantly in danger.
And you read this psalm with an eye to the literal David,
the meaning is obvious. Now look at why do the heathen
rage? The people imagine a useless thing. It can't be accomplished. David and Tom are going to be
king. And any man who raises his fist against God is going
to be crushed. It's a foolish thing. The kings
of the earth set themselves, Saul was a king, other kings,
that man is not going to reign in Israel. The rulers take counsel
together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
Let's break their bands asunder, let's cast away their cords from
us, he that sitteth in the heavens shall lie. The Lord shall have
them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them
in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure." God wiped
out the household of Saul. Tragically, sadly, oh, David
said how the mighty in Israel have fallen. He said, verse 6,
"...yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion." Of course,
we know Zion is a church, Zion is Israel. It's Israel here. I will declare the decree the
Lord had said unto me thou art my son this day have I begotten
thee ask of me I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance
and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession thou
shalt break them with a rod of iron thou shalt dash them in
pieces like a like a clay vessel made by the potter's hand now
be wise therefore ye kings be instructed ye judges of the earth
Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling, kiss
the psalm, lest you be angry, and you perish from the way when
his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are they that put their
trust in him." That's the first meaning. You say, but Brother
Mahan, these claims are too bold to refer to David. These claims
are too glaring to refer to David. They are not when you consider
that the Holy Spirit is writing through David, as David writes
of his position and his condition and his environment, his surroundings,
but he is also writing as a type of Christ who called himself,
Christ called himself the Son of David. That's what he called
himself. And the people called him the
Son of David. And when David is penning this
song, He is writing of conditions concerning himself as they exist,
but he's also writing of his Lord, his Lord. He's also writing of Christ.
Now, here's what I'm saying. God's purpose concerning King
David, as we look back here in history, we look at David. Samuel
came down to Naughty. God said, that's the king. That's
the king. David's going to be king. And
as we've read history, we're living on this side of all those
events, and we look back and David was king. David did become
king. God made of David's kingdom the
greatest kingdom on the earth at that time, and He established
that kingdom so that the Messiah would sit on David's throne.
The Messiah was the son of David. We know all that happened. Now
then, here's what I'm saying. God's eternal purpose concerning
the Son of David is going to be accomplished. Christ shall
reign. Christ has been anointed and
ordained King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and the most foolish
thing that any human being or any creature, angel, human or
devil, can do is resist the will of God that ultimately shall
be done. Christ shall reign. Christ shall
reign. He is king. He's not going to
be king. He's not begging you to make
him king. He's not exhorting you to let
him be king or let him have his will, just as David of old. God said Saul, David's the king. Samuel, David's the king. Absalom,
people, David's the king. All of you, David's the king.
Some people recognized it, some didn't, but David's the king.
That's what I'm saying. Christ is Lord. He is Lord. Now, let's read it with Christ
in mind. And this psalm, I'm going to
go verse by verse, it falls out into four parts, four definite
parts. Let me give them to you, and
you might want to just put a pen mark around them. Verse 1 through
3 is the first part, and that's the voice of truth. The voice
of truth, we hear the voice of truth. This is things as they
are, not as they ought to be, not as we think they are, but
things as they are. This is the voice of truth. The
second part is the voice of wrath, and that's verses 4 through 6,
the voice of wrath. And then the next part is the
voice of the King himself, verse 7 through 9. The King speaks.
The Lord Jesus speaks. And then the next part is verses
10 through 12, the preacher speaks, the voice of the preacher. Let's
go back to the voice of truth, verses 1 through 3. And the question
is asked, why do the heathen rage? Who are the heathen? Who
are the heathen right now? I'll tell you who the heathen
are. The heathen are all of Adam's race who do not know and love
Christ. They're heathen right here in
this auditorium tonight. I was in a meeting not long ago
and a pastor said, well, you're the only fellow I know that would
make a statement like that. Well, when we're evangelizing
and trying to reach people with the gospel, we need to make statements
like this. But a fellow laid in prayer and
he got up and he said, Lord, if there's anybody here tonight
that doesn't know you, we pray for them. And I got up and I
said, I'm a little weary. of hearing people pray if there's
anybody here who doesn't know the Lord. You can be sure there's
somebody here who doesn't know the Lord. Our Lord had twelve
and one of them was a devil. I'm sure our average is not up
to here. The thing I'm wondering about
when we pray, we ought to pray, Lord, if there is anybody here
tonight who knows thee, give him special grace. He needs it.
He needs it. The heathen, I'll tell you who
the heathen are. Christ said, he that's not with me is against
me. He that gathereth not with me
scattereth abroad. So everybody who does not love
Christ and know Christ and receive Christ and believe Christ is
a heathen, because he has a false god, Paul, a pagan god. That's right, he's a heathen,
because he worships not Christ, but a false god. He serves not
the king, but he serves his own god. You see what I'm saying?
He's a heathen. He's a heathen. I know we claim, oh, they're
all nice fellows. They're not nice fellows, they're
heathen. They reject the word of God,
they reject the gospel of God, they reject the reign and rule
of God, they reject the truth of God, they're heathen. Just
as much a heathen as the hot and tart in Africa. He that's
not with me, Christ said, is against me. You're against Christ,
you're heathen, you're pagan. It's what Brother Mews said over
at Pollard in 1954. He said, there are not but two
classes of people, Jews and Gentiles, that's Jews and pagans. Jews
and pagans. And any man who does not bow
to Christ, love Christ, receive Christ, is a pagan. His God is
his own belly. His God is the God of his own
choosing. And the heathen rage in anger
and madness against Christ. Christ said, they hate me. The
world hates me. And he says here, they imagine,
their imagination, they imagine a vain and useless thing. A vain
thing is a useless endeavor. It's an endeavor that our hands
cannot perform. We labor in vain when we war
against God. This is a sure thing. Christ
is king, God has made him king, and it's a sure thing, it's as
sure as the throne of God, it's as sure as the existence of God. So this is why the writer says,
why do the heathen rage? Why do they imagine? Why has
a thought even entered their mind? Somebody says, tackle the
hurricane with your bare hand, but don't war against God. Tackle the flood or the raging
sea with your bare hand and you'll come nearer to success than to
imagine that you can deny God his glory in Christ. That's foolish! Why do the pagan,
why do the unbelievers, why do the heathen rage in anger against
Christ? And why do they imagine, why
does it even enter their minds that they can resist and reject
him? who sits on his throne, by whose
very word they breathe." And read the next verse, "...the
kings of this earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together
against the Lord and against his anointing. And what is their
design? We will not have this man reign
over us. Let's break their bands asunder."
Let's throw out, cast away their coins. We will not have this
man reign over us. We will not bow to Christ. We
will not let him be God. Let us rid ourselves of his rule,
of his authority that started in the Garden of Eden. And it
exists till this day. Like Pharaoh said, who is the
Lord that I should serve him? I'll ignore him. I'll ignore
his word, I'll ignore his gospel, I'll ignore his day, I'll ignore
his church, and all that's associated with him, let's just cast off
his reign. Where have you seen this before?
Acts chapter 4, turn over there. In the fourth chapter of Acts,
the writer of the book of Acts quotes these very words right
here. In Acts chapter 4, listen to it. Now we're looking at verse
2, "...the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers
take counsel together against the Lord, against his anointed,
saying, Let us break their bands of sin." Now Acts 4, in verse 25, "...who by the mouth
of thy servant David hath said," Acts 4, 25, "...Why did the heathen
rage, and the people imagine vain things?" The kings of the
earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against
the Lord and against his anointed, his Christ, for of a truth against
thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, Herod, Pontius
Pilate, the Gentiles, the people of Israel." You say, you ought
not call the people of our day heathen. That's what Luke called
them right here. And he grouped them all together,
Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Jews, and the Gentiles, and he said
they're heathen. He said, they fulfill this scripture over here,
they rage against Christ. He said the same thing. And I'm
saying the same thing today. Herod, Pontius Pilate, religious
Jews and Gentiles, they're all heathen who rage against Christ. Now that's the truth. That's
the voice of truth. Why do the heathen rage? Why
do the people imagine such a useless thing that can never be accomplished?
Daring to say, verse 3, let's cast off God's reign, let's cast
off the rule of Christ, let's cast off His cords and His command. We'll not bow to Him, we'll just
ignore Him. The fool hath said in his heart,
what? No God for me. All right. Secondly, the voice of wrath. Now listen to this. He that sitteth
in the heavens shall laugh. The first thing I mark here is
the place of God's abode. He doesn't sit on this earth
upon a feeble, frail throne. He sits in the heavens. Our God is in the heavens, far
above all. The heaven of heavens will not
contain him, the earth is his footstool. He considers the inhabitants
thereof as grasshoppers. Turn to Isaiah 40. We're talking
about God in the heavens. Here, you know, when these people
resisted David, when they said, we just won't let him be king,
we refuse to allow him to be king, we refuse to obey him,
we refuse to bow to him, we refuse to submit to him, that was folly.
But even at that, even though David was God's anointed and
God's chosen, that was the utmost folly, but think about Saying,
we'll not let God be God. We'll not let Christ reign. God
sitteth in the heavens. Isaiah 40, verse 20. Listen.
Isaiah 40, verse 21. Have you not known? Have you
not heard? Hath it not been told you from
the beginning? Have you not understood from
the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the
circle of the earth. And the inhabitants thereof are
as grasshoppers, that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain,
and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in, that bringeth the
princes to nothing, he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity."
Verse 25, "...to whom then will ye liken me? or shall I be equal,
saith the Holy One?" Verse 28, "...Hast thou not known, hast
thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of
the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary, there
is no searching of his understanding? He giveth power to the faint,
to them that hath no might he increaseth strength." My friends,
do you know who we're talking about? He sitteth in the heaven. Now watch the next line here,
or the next word. He that does what? We mark his
place, he's in the heavens. Let me read you another scripture,
Psalm 115. Turn to Psalm 115. Psalm 115. And contrary to most preachers
today, I'm not presenting a weary, sad, forlorn, frustrated God
who's just hovering around hoping that somebody down here will
let him have his will and his way. He's crying his eyes out
because people won't let him fulfill the wonderful, beautiful
plan that he has for their life. God has a beautiful plan if you
just let him do it. I'm talking about the one who
reigns. in heaven, earth, and the seas,
and all deep places, who doeth according to his will in the
armies of heaven the inhabitants of this earth, who says, My counsel
shall stay. Who hath resisted his will? Look
at Psalm 115, verse 1. Not unto us, O Lord, not unto
us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth's
sake. Wherefore should the heathen say, Where is now their God?
Our God's in the heavens. He hath done whatsoever he pleases. Now watch this. He's in the heaven.
His position, he's sitting down. You know, this position, he sitteth,
and the Bible doesn't waste words. But God's not alarmed. If I were
sitting in my living room or den, reading, and I heard a noise
outside that alarmed me and troubled me, I'd get up, and I'd go to
the window, and I'd look, and I'd pace the flow. I wouldn't
remain over there. If Doris said, hey, I think there's
a prowler on the porch, I wouldn't just sit. Or if a group of men
had surrounded the house and were going to set it on fire,
I wouldn't sit, but God sits, Don. He's not alone. He that
sitteth in the heaven, with all the heathen raging, with all
the kings of the earth, with all the rulers, with all the
demons of hell, all of them shaking their fists, all of them gnashing
their teeth, all of them shooting out their lips, we will not have
this man reign over us, we will not bow, we will not submit,
we will not obey, we will not praise God, we will not give
thanks. God just sits in the heaven. He sits. And not only that, and this may
seem a little hard to you, but he laughs. He laughs. He laughs. Oh, I tell you, this
may seem a little hard at first, but really it's a source of humor
to see a pitiful, weak creature attempting to make war on God.
That's funny. God laughs at their folly. He
lands. He, the King. You know, listen
to this. I got to thinking about this
the other day. Old Pharaoh. Now, Israel had been in Egypt
400 years. Our God doesn't, the God of glory,
the God of heaven and earth, is not impatient. We talked about
the forbearance of God, the long-suffering of God. The wheels of God's providence
turn slowly, but they turn. They turn. His will shall be
done. And you know, we miss, we judge
God by ourselves. God said, thou thoughtest I was
altogether such a one as thyself. We're impulsive. We're hasty.
We're going to do it right now. Not God. Everything, all his
designs and purposes are fulfilled, then God acts. Always acts. The elder shall serve the younger.
He may be 40 years old. His mama may have to plan it.
His daddy may object to it. They may have to go through all
kinds of schemes and everything, but he's going to serve the younger.
The younger may go to another land and live for 50 years. He may marry two or three wives
and have a dozen children, but he's going to serve the younger.
And old Pharaoh, Israel had been in Egypt 400 years. That's how
long God wanted them there. And the Lord's going to raise
up a leader. He's going to raise up a champion.
He's going to raise up a deliverer. He's going to raise up someone
to set them free, right? Pharaoh said, no, he's not. I'll
kill every male child born in this I'll kill everyone." So
he set out to kill everyone. He was out there hacking up them
babies, and his daughter had God deliver, raising him in Pharaoh's
own house. In Pharaoh's own house! He was
paying for his education. He was his grandbaby. He was
raising his destroyer in his own house while he was out trying
to kill and keep God And you may be raising your own destroyer
in your own house, if God is going to destroy you. So you
go on taking all the pills you want to and all the health foods
and all this stuff. The instrument of death is already
prepared. God's judgment is rolling on time. God's providence is
on perfect schedule. He says Moses is going to lead
them out of Israel, and old mean, cruel, raging Pharaoh is going
to raise Moses in his own house with his daughter as the nursemaid.
and pay for his education and make him one of the most brilliant
men on this earth. God uses strange ways, his wonders,
to perform. That's the reason he said, "...sitteth
in the heavens, shall laugh." I'm going to do so-and-so. Yeah,
the Lord will you going to do so-and-so. And the Lord doesn't
will it. Well, I'll tell you what you're
going to do. You're going to do just what he wills to be done. the
Lord shall have them in derision." Derision. You know what the word
derision means? Ridicule. He that sitteth in the heavens
shall laugh, and he shall have them in derision. Ridicule. Listen. Then, then, O then, when
he pleases, then, you may be seventy-five or eighty, but then, But then, when he pleases, then
shall he speak. God will laugh. God will put
up with a man or woman. God will suffer it to be so.
But then he'll speak. And when he speaks, he'll be
in wrath. And he'll vex them in his sore
displeasure. William Plummer, one of the writers
of many years ago, made a study of the prominent emperors 20
or 30 emperors of the Roman Empire who were very bitter in their
zeal against Christians and against Christ and against the gospel.
He made a study of their lives, and this is what he found out.
Twenty of them. One went crazy, lost his mind
after several years. One was murdered by his own son.
One became blind and lost his kingdom. One was drowned. One
was strangled to death. Two committed suicide. Five of
them were assassinated by his own people, and eight of them
were killed in battle. God always pays his bills, always. Old Julian, there was a story
of another one Plummer wrote about called Julian the Great.
You may have heard of him. I don't know a great deal about
him. He just ridiculed Christ, ridiculed the gospel, ridiculed
the Church. He called Christ the Galilean,
and often he'd stick his dagger up towards heaven and laugh and
make fun of the Galilean. And Julian went out into battle,
and he was fatally, mortally wounded, and he was lying on
the sand, and he was in such torment and agony and pain and
blood flowing from his body and mingling with the sand. And the
historians tell us that he clutched a handful of sand, almost with
his dying breath, that sand that was drenched in his own blood,
and he threw it toward heaven and he said, You conquered, you
Galileans. And he will, Richard. Jim, he
will. He will. You Galilean, you conquer. Because God says in verse 6,
now listen to it, I have set my king. I did it by my decree. My king, I've set my king upon
the holy hill of Zion. Now, I'm going to in the millennium,
I've already set him there. I've set my king. And that king
is the king of kings and Lord of lords, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who has a threefold kingship. He's the Father's king. by design
and decree. He's his enemies' king, having
been given all authority over the living and the dead, over
the quick and the dead, and he's his people's king by purchase.
He died that he may be Lord. See that? He's the Father's king,
he's his enemies' king, for all authority is given unto me over
all flesh in heaven and earth, and he's his people's king. That's
what I'm saying, that's what I'm contending, and this is the
very message of this psalm and the word of God. God anointed
David king. Nothing in heaven, earth, or
hell can stop it. And that's where even David writes,
why do the heathen rage? Why do the people even think
or imagine such a useless thing as to resist God's king? God's
king. And they rage and gather themselves
together, and he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. He
holds them in ridicule. And he'll speak, he'll speak,
he'll speak in his wrath, he'll betch men when the cup of his
wrath fills up, their foot will slide. Because he said, I've set my
king in my holy hills. And I'm declaring unto you, I'm
not up here pleading the case of Jesus Christ. I'm trying to
plead your case. His case is set. I'm not pleading
his case. I'm not trying to make him attractive
to you. He's the rose of Sharon, the
lily of the valley, and the fast of 10,000, whether you see it
or not. I just hope God will open your eyes so you can see
it, and your ears so you can hear him speak, and your heart
so you can understand. I'm saying he's king, despite
all we can do. He's kicked. God said, I set
my king upon my holy hill of Zion. And there's no use resisting. There's no use imagining a foolish
thing. There's no use chafing against
it. There's no use grinding your teeth or clenching your fists.
Surrender. He's the king. By order of heaven,
he's kicked. Now listen, the king speaks.
The third text. Looking into the faces of angry
men. looking in the faces of self-willed,
self-righteous men, looking in the face of free-willers and
fundamentalists and Catholics and all the rest of the heathen,
he says, I, verse 7, will declare the decree. The Lord hath said
unto me, Thou art my son. This day have I begotten of thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee
the heathen for thine inheritance. and the uttermost parts of the
earth for thy possession. And thou shalt break them with
a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a clay vessel."
Our Lord Jesus Christ said, that's the decree. That's the way it
stands. That's the way it stands. I'll
give thee the heathen. I'll give you Jew and Gentile,
Russian, American, English, Indian, whatever. I'll give you the heathen
for your inheritance. Ask of them. Ask of them. Intercession. Our Lord makes intercession for
us. He cries. He pleads for us. He prays for
us. And God gives him what he asks
for. But he said, I'll tell you something else. You shall break
them with a rod of iron. Your enemies shall be dashed
in pieces like a potter's vessel. None shall stand. All right,
then the preacher speaks, and I'll close with this. The preacher
says, Be wise now, therefore. O ye kings, be instructed, ye
judges of the earth." Now, listen to this. Serve the Lord with
fear. You say, that's not what we're
taught. Rejoice with trembling. That's not what we're taught.
We're taught, smile, God loves you. We're taught not to fear
God. That fear went out with the old
Puritans and all this sort of thing. Well, let me give you
this. Joy without fear is presumption, and fear without joy is torment. And that's the reason the psalmist
said, you serve the Lord, you love the Lord, you embrace the
Lord, you lay hold upon the Lord, yet with fear. You love him,
yet you fear him. You love him, yet you hold him
in awe and reverence and fear. And you rejoice, you rejoice
with unspeakable joy, you rejoice in his mercy and truth and grace,
you rejoice in Christ, you rejoice that he's made Christ King, and
you see it and submit to it, but you rejoice, his glory is
so great, his majesty so magnificent, you rejoice, but we rejoice with
trembling, with trembling. Yes, I do know God. But to their thought of God's
awesome glory and presence and power sets me to trembling. I don't have that, let not arrogance
come out of your mouth. I don't have that pride and presumption
and arrogance and speak as if God depended upon me. He depends
upon none but himself. He gains nothing from us. He
gives us everything. The Son of Man didn't come to
be ministered unto but to minister and give His life a ransom for
many. God is infinitely rich and infinitely powerful and infinitely
holy and infinitely righteous. He needs no one. And before such
infinite glory and majesty, I tremble. And yet in my heart I know that
He has favored me. I don't know how to explain that.
And what scares me about our generation is the overwhelming
familiarity with God. A person so comfortable in the
presence of God must have a mighty small conception of God. Now
that's what I'm saying. A person that in all of our sinfulness,
our thoughts are so juvenile, our thoughts are so immature,
our thoughts are so foolish, our thoughts and our words are
so so pitiful and so fleshly. How we can feel even comfortable
in God's presence is beyond me. How we can speak his name. And
I say that we can't except in Christ. I say that we can't even
entertain any thoughts of God except in Christ, or any idea
of God except in Christ, or any feelings that God has any regard
to us except in Christ. And that's what I'm saying. If
your God is so puny and so unholy as to have association with you
in your awful condition, you've got a sorry God, a peanut God
I wouldn't have. And that's the reason he said,
you serve the Lord with fear. You serve the Lord with fear.
You rejoice, rejoice in the Lord. Again, I say rejoice, but with
trembling, with trembling. I know he's not going to smite
me because he smoked Christ, but he could, and that's the
reason I tremble. All God has to do is breathe
and annihilate me. All he has to do, back here it
says something about God, back here in verse 5, it says, Then
shall he speak to them in his wrath. One of the old Hebrew
writers mentioned something about God sitteth in the heavens. And
this word wrath has something to do with nostrils. Check up
on that, some of you. Now, you know when someone gets
angry, their nostrils flare? Did you ever notice that? They
don't say anything. You know, you can tell when a
fellow's angry. He doesn't have to say a word. But you say something
and his nostrils kind of do like this. I guess that's like an
old horse or a pig or something, you know. And that's what this
writer says that God, his nostrils begin to move. He doesn't even
have to take notice of who's doing the raging. But God sits patiently in the
heaven. He lasts, but then his nostrils
begin to flare, and that's it. His foot slides into the ground.
I tell you, if you can't tremble... Now, here's the last instruction
of the preacher. He said, kiss the Son. This is
not driving a bargain with him. This is not saying, I accept
Jesus. This is not having some kind
of religious experience. Brother, this is recognizing
the decree of God, the design of God, the authority of God,
the power of God, the crown rights of King Jesus. And you know what
a kiss is? A kiss is true affection. You can't even shake hands with
your enemy, but you kiss your friend. A kiss is true affection. A kiss is true submission. I
kiss his hand. I kiss his hand. And a kiss is
true worship. And a kiss is true identification. If someone kisses you, they're
being identified with you in a way that's unashamed. See what
I'm saying? They love you. They love you.
They genuinely love you. And this is what he's saying.
Kiss the psalm. kiss him, lest he be angry, and you perish from
the way when his wrath is kindled but a little." That may be the
word there that I was studying, but I can't remember. I read
a whole lot of things on these sometimes, but when his wrath
is kindled but a little, just a little, just a little, God
doesn't have to take notice of you individually, just a little,
his wrath kindled just a little. Oh, blessed are they who put
their trust in him. put their trust in him. Oh, what I'd give if Mr. Graham,
one of those fellows who get up on national television before
all the host of people in that prime time and quit begging sinners
to let God do something. Quit making a beggar, making
Jesus Christ a beggar. Quit talking about God's beautiful
plan for your selfish life. Won't you let him have his way,
let him make you a millionaire? You know, all this sort of thing.
And just get up there and say, God's made him king. Bow down! Bow down! God's made him king. He set him on his holy hill. Surrender! Kiss the sun! Lest his nostrils flood. Somebody gets shot. But that's
the message. That's the message. And I'll
tell you this, I'd rather be shot now than later. If I'm going
to be shot, I'd rather you shoot me than God shoot me. That's
right. But shall a man profit at gain,
the whole world lose his soul. He's king. And I'm glad. I'm sure glad. I'm just plumb
glad. I wouldn't have it no other way,
would you? I'm glad. I kissed the son. I'm glad he's
king. Our Father, we're glad. But we're
trembling, awesome, awesome, what a feeling. What a feeling,
what trembling, what awesome glory, holiness. We stand before
thee. Oh, if you should mark iniquity,
who should stand? But thank you for Christ. Thank
you for his blood that cleanseth. Thank you for his righteousness
that makes us whole. We're nothing. We talk about
ourselves unholy, evil, wicked, sinful, at our best state, nothing
but utter vanity. Thank you for Christ. The King,
thy King, the Heaven's King, Universe King is our King, not
only our King, but our Savior and our Lord, who loved us and
gave himself for us. Lord, we bow in word and heart
and thought. We kiss the sun in the glorious
anticipation of someday sitting at his feet, being made like
him. In his blessed name we pray,
amen.