Immanuel Sermon Audio
Psalm 2
You need a Bible this morning. If you have one, take it out. If you don't have one reach in front of you, there should be one underneath the seat in front of you. Open right to the middle to the book of Psalms. There's an outline in the in the bulletin. If you'd like to follow along, you can do that. I'm going to tell you up front. Our passage this morning is Psalm 2. And Psalm 2 is a little bit tricky. It's a little bit technical. There's some things we're going to talk about that you're really going to have to use your brain to follow along. But when we get to the end of it, if you'll track through all of it with me, I think we can make sense of it. And the payoff at the end is pretty, pretty great. So last week, Corey started us off in the book of Psalms and he looked at Psalm 1. And I think that's a fitting way to begin a study through Psalms, is to look at Psalm 1. When we wrap up in a few months, we're going to end by looking at Psalm 150. And in the middle, we're just going to sort of jump around and we're going to look at different Psalms individually. But since we started with 1, you kind of have to do 2 the very next week. Because these two go together. And so you need to know that right out of the gate. Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 go together. In fact, there's a lot of Bible scholars, many Bible commentators who would tell you that originally they may have even been written together. They may really, really go together. And they point out some parallels here. If you're looking in your Bible, you may notice that Psalm 1 begins with the word blessed. And Psalm 2 ends with the word blessed. So there's sort of what scholars call an inclusio there. You look at Psalm 1, it talks about meditating. We sang that this morning, meditating on the law of the Lord. And if you look down in Psalm 2, there is the word plot, Psalm 2 1, the word plot. Two different words in English. It's the exact same word in Hebrew. And you translate it differently depending on the context. It's to think over. It's to run through your mind. And in a positive sense, you're meditating on God's Word. In a negative sense, you're plotting or you're scheming or you're devising some sort of plan. But they both begin with the exact same word. And then if you look at Psalm 1 verse 6, it ends with the word perish. And if you look at Psalm 2, it ends with the word perish. So there's some vocabulary words that sort of tie these two Psalms together and connect them in that way. Even beyond just common vocabulary words, these two Psalms really do fit together in an amazing way. One of the things Cory talked about last week, in fact, maybe one of the most important things he talked about last week was the idea that there was only one person who has ever truly lived Psalm 1. And that's Jesus the Messiah. And when you get to Psalm 2, the whole thing is about Jesus the Messiah. You can easily call it a Messianic Psalm. Later I'm going to call it an inauguration Psalm and I'll explain that. But it is most certainly a Messianic Psalm talking about Jesus from beginning to end. And as we go through it, I'm going to point out some words to you. But I'll just do it right now at the beginning so you can see the flow of this. If you look at Psalm 2 in verse 2, there's the word anointed and it's a capital A. And if you like to make notes in your Bible, you could circle that. That's a person, the anointed, capital A. You can jump down and you can look at verse 6 and it talks about a king, capital K, king. You can circle that and draw a line between the anointed and the king. It's the same person. You can go down to verse 7 and it talks about a son, capital S. Same guy, the anointed one, the king, the son in verse 7. And then again in verse 12, the son, all the way through this talking about the Messiah. And so it flows nicely out of what we saw last week in Psalm 1. Here's how we're going to start. We're going to read it. And I just want you to follow along as I read Psalm 2. And then we'll talk about the context a little bit and then we'll break this Psalm down. So this is Psalm 2. What are the nations rage in the people's plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, "Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, "As for me I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree the Lord said to me, 'You are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage in the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now therefore, O kings, be wise, be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him." Let's pray. Father, help us this morning to understand this psalm. Help us to see Jesus in it. Help us to see truth about the Messiah and see and understand how it applies to our life. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. If you really want to make sense of Psalm 2, you have to go backwards to the book of 2 Samuel and you have to look at 2 Samuel 7. There's a story in 2 Samuel where David is beginning this process of thinking through what would it look like if I built a house for the Lord? He's been established as the king and God has done some great things for him and David says to himself, "You know I have built myself a palace and up to this point the ark of the covenant, the presence of God, the throne room of God is an intent and that doesn't seem exactly right that me, the human king, live in a palace and God, the true king, live in this tent and so he begins to make plans. I'm going to build a house for God and he's thinking through what that might look like and God comes and talks to David and he says something really surprising and I'll paraphrase it just a little bit. He comes and he says, "You know David, I appreciate you thinking of me and appreciate the sentiment and the idea but I didn't ask you to build me a house and quite frankly I don't need one. I've never lived in a house and I don't remember asking you to do this for me and David here's what's going to happen. You are not going to build me a house but in turn I am the one that's going to build you a house." Not exactly what David thought God would say to him. I'm going to do something great for God. I'm going to build this magnificent temple, this building and God just says, "Thanks but no thanks." There's going to be a temple but it's going to be on my time with the guy that I pick and I didn't ask you to do it and I don't need one anyways just to be clear. I don't need you David to do anything for me but David you need me to do something for you. Look at some of what God says to David here in Second Samuel, "Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house." He's talking about a dynasty, not a building but a dynasty from his family. "When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father. He shall be to me a son." Keep that in your brain right there. I'm going to raise up somebody from your family. I'm going to build a house. I'm going to make him the king. He's going to be the king forever. I'll be a father to him. He will be a son to me. When he commits iniquity, I'll discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men. But my steadfast love will not depart from him as I took it from Saul whom I put away before you. In your house, in your kingdom, shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever." That's an amazing thing to hear from God. David sets out to build him a house. God says, "I don't need a house. I didn't ask you to do that. I'm going to build you a house. I'm going to raise up someone from your family. He's going to be the king. His throne's going to last forever. It will never end. I'm going to be like a father to him. He's going to be like a son to me." You're reading this in 2nd Samuel and you're saying, "I thought we were looking at Psalm 2. What does this have to do with Psalm 2?" When David's descendants, David dies and first there's Solomon and there's Rhea Bohm and one after another they come. David's descendants rise to the throne of Israel and then later Judah. This Psalm, Psalm 2, was read at their inauguration. That's why I called it an inauguration Psalm. Every time a new king ascends to the throne, they stop and they read Psalm 2. There's just one small problem. All of the kings who heard Psalm 2 read on their inauguration day failed to live out Psalm 1 as king, all of them. Okay, we read in Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the wicked, stands in the way of sinners and or sits in the sea to scoffers. They all did that, one right after another, some worse than others, but they all did it. They heard Psalm 2 read on an inauguration day. You're the king and then they didn't live out Psalm 1 in their reign. And so you have Israel just waiting for a righteous king to come. They're just waiting and they think at first it's Solomon. Solomon's the guy. Look, he's so wise. He's the wisest person on earth. It's not Solomon. He was not the guy they were waiting for. And then the next one comes and maybe this is the one. It's not him. Maybe it's Hezekiah. No. Josephat. No. Asa. No. Just one right after another. They're waiting for this righteous king to come. And in the Old Testament, I hate to ruin the end of the Old Testament for you. He doesn't come. He doesn't show up. They're waiting and they're waiting and they're waiting and He doesn't come. And things get so bad in Israel that God punishes His people, kicks them out of the promised land and sends them into exile. And even in exile they're just waiting and they're just hoping the king is going to come. God said the king is going to come. A righteous king is going to come. We're waiting. We're waiting for this king. You know that eventually he came. You know that because the Old Testament isn't the end of your Bible. There's a New Testament that comes after him. And the New Testament begins with the birth of the king, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was the one man from David's line who lived Psalm 1, the one man. He's also the king, the anointed one, the son that we're going to read about in Psalm 2. It's all about Jesus. And so what we're going to do is we're going to take Psalm 2 and if you look in your Bible, look in between verse 3 and 4, you maybe have a little bit of white space. In between verse 6 and 7, a little bit of space. In between verse 9 and 10, a little bit of space. The editors are dividing it up for you and they're saying this stands a 1, this stands a 2, stands a 3, stands a 4. And so we're going to break it up like that and talk about each section. So let's talk about Psalm 1, 1 to 3. Excuse me, Psalm 2, 1 to 3. It describes the revolt of the kings of the earth. It's just this all-out revolt. The nations are raging, the peoples are plotting in vain, the kings of the earth are setting themselves and the rulers are taking counsel together against the Lord. You notice that Lord is in all caps. It's talking about Yahweh, not just a generic deity, but Yahweh, the God of Israel. They're setting themselves against Yahweh and against His capital A anointed, His Messiah. There's this revolt against God in His reign. This is the sort of thing you see at Babel. Okay, you can go back into the book of Genesis and humanity comes together and they have this this great masterful plan and it's set in direct opposition to God. They're not seeking God's glory, they're seeking their own glory. They don't want to be ruled by God, they want to be ruled by themselves. This is the exact sort of thing you see at the cross in the New Testament. In fact, when the New Testament authors describe what happened at the cross, they quote these verses. They talk about Pilate and Herod and all the religious leaders and the Jews who gathered together against Jesus in Jerusalem, they quote this and they say the people's plotted in vain. They set themselves, they took counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed. It's exactly what happened. You don't only see it in the Bible, you see it in church history, you see it in a man named Diocletian who was the emperor of Rome. Diocletian came along as emperor of Rome and he thought his mission as the emperor was to eradicate Christianity and to promote the worship of the Pantheon, the little G gods. And so all over Spain, when he conquered territory in Spain, he set up these images of himself. It was late in his reign and this is how he inscribed them with things like this. Diocletian, Jovian, Maximian, Herculius, Cesarius, Agusti, that's quite a mouthful for having everywhere abolished the superstition of Christ and for having extended the worship of the gods. That's the kings of the earth setting themselves against the anointed one. You see it played out time and time again. You don't only see it from kings and emperors but you also see it from philosophers. You've heard of Frederick Nietzsche, he wrote a book called the Gay Science. It doesn't mean then what it means today but the famous quote from that book is God is dead. That's somebody powerful and influential in this world, setting himself against God and defying him, shaking his fist at the heavens and saying, "We don't need you and we don't want you." That's what Psalm 2 is describing. It's the same thing that happens every day of the week in Odessa, Texas when you and I walk out of this room having heard from the Lord and we willingly and we knowingly sin. It's the exact same thing. You say, "Well, I didn't write a book saying God was dead and I'm not leaving inscriptions of myself all over Echter County saying how I've destroyed Christianity. I don't see how that's hardly the same thing." Biblically it's exactly the same thing. The biblical idea of sin begins right in the garden with Adam and Eve. Say, "Well, they didn't seem to defy God. They just sort of went sort of an in-round against what he said but what they really did, you understand this, they might as well have just looked God in the eyeballs and said, "We don't want you. We don't want to be ruled by you. We don't want you as our king. We want to be our own king." And I'm telling you, you and I do the exact same thing. You might as well be walking out of this room out into the parking lot, looking up to the heavens, shaking your fist at the sky and saying, "I don't want you to be the king over my life." That's what sin is. And so you read these verses and you're reminded of this revolt of these kings. You're also reminded about yourself. You're reminded of our rebellion against God. And let's just call it what it is. It's rebellion. It's treason. It's you looking at the God of the universe and having the audacity to say, "I don't want you to rule me. I will rule myself." So that's the first section. Second section in Psalm 2 is verse 4, 5, and 6. It just describes or you could say it details God's response to this revolt. And it's pretty funny, literally, because in verse 4 it says, "He who sits in the heaven laughs." Here's these mighty kings. They set themselves up together. They have their counsel together and they're planning and they're plotting and they're scheming and they're shaking their fists at the heaven and God looks down at it and says, "Are you kidding me? Are you serious? You think this has a chance of succeeding? Really? He laughs at their rebellion. And it's not so much a ha-ha that's funny laugh, but it's a that's ridiculous. You don't stand a chance." By my count I did some looking when I prepared this sermon. I find four places in the Bible where God laughs. Maybe others in reality, but in the Bible when it actually is talking about God, four places where it says that He laughs. One of them is here and He looks at this rebellion of these great kings and He just laughs at it. One is in Psalm 37, 13. It says that God laughs at the wicked because He knows their day is coming. That's not a good day, by the way. Another one is in Psalm 59, 8. It's almost exactly word-for-word what you read in Psalm 2. And then there's Proverbs 1, 26. One of my favorites. Proverbs 1, 26 says that every now and then in life there are wicked people who do wicked things and they reap the consequences of their foolishness and then they get real religious. They're not concerned that they've sinned against God. They just want God to get them out of the pickle they've got themselves into and they say, "God will you please get me out of this?" And Proverbs says, "He laughs at that." It's not a good thing for God to laugh at you in the Bible. Here's this great rebellion, this great defiance against God and Psalm 2 says He laughs at it. Not only does He laugh at it, but He installs a king, verse 6. He sets His king, capital K, king on Zion on His holy hill. Here's the takeaway. These verses remind us of God's sovereignty. Remind us of the sovereignty of God. Here's this great rebellion by the most powerful, influential people on the earth and God just laughs at it. It's not threatening to Him. He's not getting the angels together and planning some sort of counter-attack. He's not trying to figure out, "Well, I didn't see this coming. What are we going to do now? How are we going to respond to this? How are we going to handle this? Do you think they can take us?" He just laughs at it and he says, "It's ridiculous. It's foolish. It's stupid." And he sets his king, capital K, king on Zion. We're going to come back to that king. He sets his king on Zion. Next section is verse 7, 8, and 9. It announces God's decree concerning the king, the anointed king. And so you've looked up in verse 2 and you see the anointed one and you've drawn that line down to the king in verse 6. And now you draw it down to verse 7 to this idea of being a son. Before we read verse 7 you've got to use your brain. In verse 7 the anointed king son is talking, okay? The Messiah is talking and he's talking about something that God has told him, that the Lord Yahweh has said to him and just listen to what he says, "I will tell of the decree, the Lord said to me, 'You are my son.'" Today I've begotten you. I know that when you hear that you think it sounds like Jesus was born at some point in heaven like he wasn't and then all of a sudden he was. That's not the point. The point goes all the way back to 2 Samuel 7 when God says to David, "I'm going to raise up someone from your family and he's going to be what? My son and I'm going to be a father to him Testament, you look at the Gospel of Luke. Do you remember when Jesus was being baptized and he came up out of the water and there was a voice from heaven? What did the voice say? "This is my son." Are you putting the dots together? God is shouting. We don't we don't hear it because we don't read 2 Samuel. He's shouting, "This is the one. I told you way back when I talked to David that I was going to send a son. This is the one. He's here." You remember when we studied through Luke and Jesus was transfigured up on the mountain and Peter and James and John were there and Peter's talking he shouldn't be talking and God says Peter be quiet and listen and the voice from heaven God speaking says, "This is my son." It's him. You've been waiting for him. You thought it was Solomon. It wasn't him. You thought it was Hezekiah. It wasn't him. You thought it was Josiah or Jehoshaphat or Ace or any of them. It wasn't any of those guys. This is the one. He's the son. Psalm 2 says, "You're my son and look what the son gets." He gets the nations. All of them. He gets the ends of the earth. Every last square inch it's all his and he's going to rule as a king with a rod of iron and if you want a picture of what that looks like later today take your Bible and you go look up the verses that I gave you from the book of Revelation 1, 5, 2, 27, 12, 5, 19, 11 to 16. He talks about this exactly. John's not making stuff up out of thin air in the book of Revelation. He's saying all that stuff that God talked about in the Old Testament it's going to happen with Jesus. He gets the nations. All of them. He gets the ends of the earth. It's all his. Every last square inch belongs to him. He's the king over all of it. He's going to rule with a rod of iron. All of it right there in the book of Revelation. Sometimes I think we forget the weight of this, right? The weight of the fact that God is going to rule through the Messiah. We forget it. So I'll tell you a little funny text back and forth I had with Tyler this last week. Tyler's playing in songs for Sunday and he says what's the what's the chapter this week? And I said well it's Psalm 2. He says hmm. Well Stroup wrote us a song for Psalm 1. I don't have one for Psalm 2. And I said what? Wait a minute. You don't have a song about Jesus smashing people with an iron rod? Kind of worship leader are you? Need to learn some new songs. We don't write songs about that very often. We talk about Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Jesus loves the little children. Jesus loves me this. I know all these things they're sort of comforting to us. You read the Bible. The Bible says some kind of shocking things about Jesus and this is one of them. Did the Son of Man come to seek and save the lost? I hope you know by now that he did. And now the book of Psalms is coming along and saying don't forget. Don't forget. He's a king. He's not just a king. He's the capital K king. And the day is coming where he gets all the nations and he gets everything on this earth. It all belongs to him and he's going to rule with an iron rod. Let me tell you what that means. That's what you read in the book of Philippians where it says that every knee will bow in heaven above heaven under the earth on the earth all of them. Some are going to bow willingly and joyfully. I hope that's you. Some are going to bow at a submission because he's the king. He's not going to be a bow that saves you but you're still going to bow. And Psalm 2 says that king is coming. God is going to rule through his king, through his anointed, through his son. Here's the last section verse 10, 11, 12. It admonishes the kings to submit to the king. The little K kings need to submit to the big K king. He says be wise. He says you've been warned. He says you need to serve the Lord with fear. You need to rejoice but you need to do it with trembling. And this is a strange verse, verse 12. Kiss the son. Kiss the son. Remember growing up in reading through the Bible the first couple of times and reading that verse thinking what does that mean? Kiss the son. Kiss the son. Son sounds like it's Jesus. Sounds like he's this king. You want to kiss? It doesn't make sense to me. Go back today and read 1 Samuel 10. It's the story of when the prophet judge Samuel anointed Saul to be the first king of Israel. It's pretty simple. Says he walked up to this guy Saul who was going to be the king and he took some oil and he poured it on top of his head and then he leaned over and he kissed him. We don't do that in our culture very often. You do it once and you learn from your mistake. In this culture you pour the oil on his head. You anoint him. We've read about the anointed one here. You anoint this guy to be king and you kiss him and what you're saying is you are the king and I will bow before you and I'll do what you say. You're the boss, not me. I submit to you. That's what it meant in that culture and in that society. What God is saying here to all these kings to every last one of you and to myself who walk out of this room and we shake our fist at the heavens and sin against God is you better submit to him. You better submit. Kiss the son. Lest he be angry. Verse 12 is a great verse to end this song. It says, "Blessed are all who take refuge in him." And here's the takeaway from this last section. We can take refuge in the Messiah. So here's the deal. It's kind of a technical chapter. You have to look back a lot. You've got to go back to 2 Samuel. We don't read that very often. You've got to go forward to the book of Revelation which is kind of confusing at times and so you may be sitting there thinking, "Man, I could never figure all this out. I don't understand. It doesn't make sense." Listen, it's really not a complicated song at all. I want you to understand who it's talking about. I want you to understand how it all fits together. But just look at your outline and think through this with me real quick. Verse 1, 2, and 3. What's the point? The point is that we've rebelled against God. That's not rocket science. It's pretty simple. If you're honest with yourself, you know it's true of you. We have rebelled against God. Verse 4, 5, and 6. It says, "Look, God is not threatened by your rebellion. You may think you're some big deal, but it's not a big deal to him. He is still completely totally sovereign. In fact, he looks at this rebellion and he just laughs at it. He installs a king. He's in control." Verse 7, 8, and 9. What's God's response? Not only to laugh, but to send his son. The king, the anointed one, the Messiah. Then in this last section where you get to verse 12, you've got two roads you can take. Corey talked about that last week. You've got this road or you've got that road. Here's another parallel between Psalm 1 and 2. You get to the end of 2 and you've got a choice to make. Choice 1, you can perish in the way of the king. Don't submit to him. Don't bow before him. Don't acknowledge him as the king in your parish. Option 2, take refuge in him. He said, "What does it mean to take refuge in the king? It's really not complicated. It means you come to the king and you just say, 'I'm a rebel. I'm guilty. I've defied you in the emotions that I've felt, in the things that I've thought about, in the words that I've said, in the actions that I've done. I have literally looked to the skies and shaken my fist at you and said, 'I don't want you to be my king.' You confess that. And then you come to him and you say, 'Amazingly, I believe that you Jesus, the Messiah, the king, the son, the anointed one of Psalm 2, I believe that you never walked in the council of the wicked. Stood in the way of sinners or sat in the seat of scoffers. You never did it. And when you died, it wasn't for any of your sin. It was for my rebellion and my treason. And I'm coming to you now to take refuge in you, not to shake my fist at you, but to embrace you, to accept what you've done for me. Not coming as a rebel. I'm coming in submission. And those are your options. You can perish in his way. You can take refuge in the king. Let me pray for you. Father, we're grateful for Your Word and we believe that it's true and we believe that it's powerful. Father, I believe that if there are those here this morning who have never taken refuge in Jesus, I believe that Your Word can convict them, they can awaken them. Father, we believe that Your Spirit can change hearts. Father, I do pray for those in the room who are living in just a perpetual state of rebellion. And maybe they don't, haven't even realized it. Father, and I pray that they would see the folly of trying to rebel against you or revolt against you and that they would see the hope of the gospel that their king died to save them and that they would run to the cross and take refuge in Jesus. Father, forgive us when we sentimentalize Jesus in our minds and we only think about the things that bring us comfort. Father, help us to see Jesus as He as He is and as He will be as the king of all kings, as the one who will rule the nations with an iron rod. Father, help us to be wise and submitting to Him today. Father, be honored as we lift our voices and as we sing to the king of all kings. We pray in His name. Amen.