Well today, as Billy has mentioned, the Advent season begins and we are taking the opportunity to participate in a very ancient church tradition that meditates on various of the psalms as a guide to the meaning of the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we begin today with a look at Psalm 2, which is, as you may know, is one of the most frequently quoted psalms in the New Testament scriptures in reference to Jesus’ identity and mission. You can find Psalm 2 on page 448 of the church Bibles, and I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t mind turning there with me and keeping your Bibles open to Psalm 2.
Psalm 2 is, I think, a helpful place to begin in our Advent meditations because while it focuses our attention very clearly on God’s Messiah, the Lord Jesus, it does so in a way that is at once unflinchingly realistic about our world and yet enormously hopeful about our destiny. And that’s important to see because for lots of people today, holding those two attitudes together, realism and hope, proves to be an almost impossible task. Doesn’t it? Turn on the news and very quickly hope can seem naive. At best, perhaps, a fruit of ignorance or delusion. You just can’t have hope and be realistic about where we are in society at a time like this. That’s what the world says. It’s a tempting conclusion to reach, given how grim things sometimes can be. But Psalm 2 begs to differ. Psalm 2 is both realistic and hopeful.
Would you look at Psalm 2 with me for a moment? Notice how it’s put together, how it’s structured. It has four sections, each featuring a different voice, a different speaker. So in verses 1 through 3, the focus falls on the raging world, first of all. The raging world. And you can hear the voice of their jeering, rebellious kings speaking to one another in verse 3. The raging world. Then look at verses 4 through 6, the second section. The spotlight this time falls on the response of God the Father. He laughs in derision at their puny rebellion, and then He speaks and you can hear His voice in verse 6. So we have the raging world, the secondly, the laughing God. Now look at verses 7 through 9, the third section. There’s a third speaker. This time, the speaker is the voice of God’s own Son who has been appointed God’s King in Zion. Okay? So the raging world, the laughing God, then thirdly, the reigning Son; the reigning Son. And then finally, verses 10 through 12, there’s one more voice. It is the voice of the psalmist, sounding awfully like a preacher, summoning those rebellious kings and those rulers and those nations to submit themselves while there remains time, to the lordship of God’s Son. So do you see the outline, the structure of the psalm? The raging world, the laughing God, the reigning Son, and then finally the pleading word. The pleading word.
Now most scholars believe the psalm was originally used in a coronation liturgy for the Davidic kings. And in all likelihood, different sections of the congregation read or sang the different sections of the psalm so that you get to hear in the way the psalm is read, each of those voices speaking. And I thought since it naturally lends itself to that, it might be helpful for us to at least attempt to do the same this morning. So here’s how we’re going to read Psalm 2. I’m going to read verses 1 through 3, and then all of you sitting on my left and in the balcony too, all of you on my left, you will read verses 4 through 6. So be ready to read 4 through 6. And then all of you to my right, you will read 7 through 9. And then I’ll read the last section, 10 through 12. So we’ll get to hear each of those different voices. Everybody clear? So over here, 1 through 3 – I’m doing 1 through 3, excuse me. You’re doing 4 through 7, 4 through 6, excuse me! Then 7 through 9 – I’m really muddying the waters! One through 3, 4 through 6, 7 through 9, and then I’m doing 10 through 12. Before we do that, I think we’d better pray! So let’s pray!
God our Father, we bow before You. We thank You for Your holy Word. It is a light to our feet and a lamp to our path, sweeter by far than honey from the comb and more precious than fine gold. And by it, Your servants are warned. Help us as we hear Your Word to rejoice that You speak to us. Give us ears to hear a voice behind us in our ears saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” and then give us grace to believe and to obey for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
Okay, I’m doing 1 through 3, 4 through 6, 7 through 9, and then 10 through 12. Are you ready? This is God’s Word:
“Why do the nations rage and the peoples 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, and 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.”
Well done.
The Raging World
Let’s think first of all about the raging world, the raging world, in verses 1 through 3. Notice right away, the psalmist begins with a rhetorical question. Do you see it in verse 1? “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?” Do you see what he’s asking? “What’s the point?” he’s asking. “Can you think of anything more futile than attempting to rebel against God? It is absurd!” That’s what the psalmist is saying. And that’s vital to understand as we begin because the psalmist doesn’t actually start with the nightmare of human evil, plotting and scheming in all its malice. That is a terrifying prospect, as prone as anything I can think of to snuff out the flickering candle of hope. No, the psalmist doesn’t start from below, as it were, with the mess of a broken, sinful world. He actually starts from above with the one who presides over it all in unflinching sovereignty, and he anchors his hope there. And as he begins to consider the rage of the nations, knowing that God reigns, he sees the whole thing as patently ridiculous. He is already quite amazed by it – “Why do the nations rage?” Can you think of anything more futile?
And what we need to see is that that’s the perspective that enables the psalmist to face our twisted world with complete realism, and yet not lose hope. It’s only because he knows who is in control that he can face reality without flinching and not be overwhelmed by it. So let’s be sure that we keep that perspective firmly in place as we consider how the psalmist describes the nations now. Look at how he describes them. He says in verse 1, they are “raging” and “plotting.” They are conspiring together. Their kings, verse 2, “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 doesn’t sugarcoat things here at all, does he? Here is the human heart laid bare in all its ugliness and sin and malice for everyone to see. Incidentally, the word used for “the Lord’s Anointed” in verse 2 is really the word, “Messiah.” They’re saying about the Lord and His Messiah. In the words of Luke 19:14, “We will not have this man to rule over us.” That’s what they’re saying.
And it’s an all too familiar attitude, even to us today. Isn’t it? Let me give you a recent example from the news. I read this past week about the conservative Lutheran bishop from Finland, Juhana Pohjola, who is facing criminal charges in his homeland for hate speech. What was his terrible crime? He published a booklet outlining the historic Scriptural teaching to which all Christians have adhered for millennia on the topic of marriage and sexuality. Apparently, the local police interpretation of Finland’s legislation would make even publishing the Bible itself a hate crime. This isn’t the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin or China under Mao that we are talking about here. This is a modern, western, liberal democracy. Now what is that? What is that? How do you interpret that?
Psalm 2 tells us, doesn’t it? This is the “raging of the nations.” It is the “conspiracy of the rulers of the earth taking counsel together against the Lord and against his Anointed.” Interestingly, when the raging of the nations erupted in the first real persecution that struck the church in Acts chapter 4, it was to Psalm 2 that the people of God instinctively turned as they sought to understand the significance of everything they were facing. Luke says they “lifted up their voices together to God” and they prayed the first three verses of Psalm 2. And then they say this, in response to Psalm 2, “For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant, Jesus, who you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate,” – there’s the kings of the earth and the rulers – “along with the Gentiles” – the word, “Gentile,” just means the nations and the peoples of Israel – “to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” So they read the sufferings of Jesus under Herod and Pilate and the Romans and the Jews, as the fulfillment of the second psalm. And they saw clearly that here in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, here are the nations and the rulers of the earth seeking to throw off the yoke of the Lord and His Anointed.
And they also saw, in their own persecutions, facing those sufferings for Jesus’ sake, another iteration of that same age-old opposition of the kings of the earth who want to overthrow God’s claims upon their lives. In other words, Psalm 2 provided the interpretive grid for their experience of suffering. Psalm 2 provided the interpretive grid. And we must not miss that. It is a vital lesson for us; I hope that you can see it. If you want to cling to hope amidst difficult days, you must let the Scriptures provide the interpretive grid through which you make sense of things and not your experience and not even your suffering and not your fear and not your insecurity. The Scriptures must be the interpretive grid. Let God explain the world as He rules over it. That’s very much what the church in Acts chapter 4 was doing.
And that’s why, having quoted Psalm 2 in their prayers, having brought the Scriptures to bear on their experience and brought it to the Lord, instead of collapsing into despair or tucking tail and running, instead of watering down their message to avoid giving offense, instead of praying for God to deliver them from suffering even, they resolve to stand firm and keep preaching. So they pray in the light of Psalm 2, “‘And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to Your servants to continue to speak Your Word with all boldness.’ And then when they had prayed,” Luke says, “the place where they were gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they continued to speak the Word of God with boldness.” They were told to stop preaching Christ, upon pain of suffering. But Psalm 2 has put steel into their spines, and by the help of the Holy Spirit, they continued to preach.
The second psalm, do you see, helps us face a raging world with realism and honesty about how dark and hard things can be. We don’t need to hide from it. Instead, Psalm 2 actually provides the resources to face it head on. And so that’s the first thing to think about here – the raging world.
The Laughing God
But then look at verses 4 through 6 and notice in the second place God’s response. Here is the laughing God. The raging world is confronted with the laughing God. “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.’” What is it that allows the psalmist to face the dark, ugly world so unflinchingly? What was it that helped the church in Acts chapter 4 face persecution with such remarkable boldness? What can help you and me face today’s trials and tomorrow’s trouble head on? It is seeing clearly the effortless reign of the Lord, seeing clearly the effortless reign of the Lord, who hears every skulking whisper that the raging nations utter as they conspire against Him. And he finds it all frankly tantamount to a joke. It is risible; it is ridiculous.
“God,” writes Ralph Davis, “is unimpressed.” And then Davis issues a warning. He says, “If you have imbibed a Western sentimental view of God as the great soupy softie in the sky, then you will not understand this picture of verse 4, in fact, you will likely be offended by it.” You see the picture of God in verse 4? If in your view the most fundamental attribute of God is that He is unfailingly nice, you will have a very hard time comprehending the hope and comfort that verse 4 is intended to offer. But if you have come to know for yourself the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you turn in dismay from the dark conspiracies of the kings of the earth and start to hear the laughter of the only one who truly presides over all things, you will not take offense at it; you will find enormous reassurance in it. You will see that He is so secure in His governance of all His creatures and all their actions that the mere suggestion of human rebellion even coming close to unseating His dominion or thwarting His purposes is comedy of the highest caliber.
But you’ll notice that God does more than just laugh, doesn’t He? Look at verse 6. He has already appointed His King to rule on His behalf. “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” What is it that we are really celebrating at Advent? What is Christmas really about? Certainly, certainly we celebrate the birth of Christ became He came to obey and bleed and die for sinners to secure our pardon. That is the glorious, molten core of the Gospel and we must never lose sight of it. But sometimes, I think, we are too quick to focus our lens narrowly on the subject of personal salvation so that we lose sight of the wide angle truth that the first advent of Christ was God’s response to the raging world. Advent is about the laughing God who appoints His King in gleeful delight to reign over all things knowing that no matter what a rebel world does in opposition to Jesus Christ, “of the increase of His government and of His kingdom there will be no end.” The raging world. The laughing God.
The Reigning Son
Now look at verses 7 through 9 please and listen to the third voice that we hear in the passage. It is the voice of God’s King Himself. Here in the third place, then, is the reigning Son. The reigning Son. He speaks directly, “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, and 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.’” The speaker begins by reflecting on the divine decree, the sovereign engagement that was laid upon him by the Father.
The Son’s Identity
And that decree begins, notice in verse 7, with a statement of identity. Who is this speaker? We are told who the Lord’s Anointed really is – “You are My Son; today I have begotten you.” You may remember that Hebrews chapter 1 verse 5 quotes this verse and applies it to the Lord Jesus Christ in order to make the point that Jesus is the divine Son. The begetting, “Today I have begotten you,” is an eternal begetting. And the today, “Today I have begotten you,” is the eternal present, the everlasting today of the divine life, so that this Son, this Son has always been the Son of the Father. There never was when He was not.
That’s why, as we read earlier in John chapter 1, John 1:18 uses the same language, the same language as we find here in Psalm 2 and in Hebrews 1:5 to speak of Jesus as the “only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father.” This Son, whom God has appointed to be King, He is none other than the second person of the blessed Trinity Himself. And the New Testament is actually quite insistent on that point, so much so that these words from Psalm 2 are alluded to again and again in connection with Jesus’ identity and mission.
You see them, for example, in the synoptic gospels – Matthew 3:17, Mark 1:11, Luke 3:22. When Jesus was baptized at the beginning of His public ministry, the Father declares from heaven for all to hear, “You are My beloved Son, and with You I am well pleased.” You see the same language again in Matthew 17, Mark 9, Luke 20, and in 2 Peter 1:17 to speak about the transfiguration, as the Father yet again bears public testimony to the deity of His Son. Jesus is the Lord’s Anointed King, and He is not like any other king who has ever lived. None of the descendants from David’s line were like this man, who is no mere man, but the God-Man, the divine Son. To put it in the glorious language of our catechism, “The only Redeemer of God’s elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who, being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was and continues to be both God and man in two distinct nature and one person forever.”
Of course when Jesus was born, the kings of the earth missed it, didn’t they? King Herod certainly didn’t understand what was really going on. He thought this Jesus, born to be King of the Jews, was a rival clamant to an earthly throne. And you remember, he ordered the murder of all the infant boys of two years old and younger in order to snuff out what he thought was a potential threat to his power. He didn’t realize this King, this King isn’t like all the kings of the nations who plot and scheme, which is exactly what Herod himself was like after all. And yet for all their machinations, they do not really possess true sovereignty, do they? But this King that God has appointed, this King is God’s only begotten Son. He is divine, and so He is able perfectly to accomplish the Father’s plan.
The Scope of the Son’s Reign
Notice also not just His identity, notice the scope of the Son’s reign; the scope of His reign. Look again at verse 8. “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” There is no place, no people group, no tribe, no language where His dominion will not one day be absolute. The same nations that were raging and plotting in verse 1 will be the possession not of the petty kings of the earth, but of the Lord’s Anointed. The ends of the earth belong to Him.
Beleaguered, beaten-down, world-weary child of God, do you remember what Advent is really about? It is about lifting up your head and looking past the strutting, preening fools who set themselves up as trend-setters and culture-shapers. It’s about looking beyond the arrogant attempts of legislators and governments, at social engineering or moral revolution. It’s about seeing right through the apparently almighty power of social media to shape opinion and steer society. And it’s about remembering that the true King has come and there is no place beyond His rule and no one will escape His dominion. So lift up your hearts, brothers and sisters, and rejoice. Jesus reigns! He reigns. Let’s not forget it. The true King has come. So we see the identity of the reigning Son. We see something of the scope of His reign.
The Power of the Reigning Son
Before we move on, let’s be sure we don’t miss also the power with which He shall reign. Look at the end of verse 9. “You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” There was a tradition among the ancient pharaohs of Egypt at their coronations to have the names of their enemies written on a potter’s vessel. And then pharaoh would literally smash those pots to pieces. And once broken into a thousand shards, of course there is no possibility of those pots being put back together again. Against the Lord’s King there can be no resistance. That’s the picture. The King’s iron rod is mightier than mere clay pots. Against the iron rod of the rule of Jesus Christ, the clay pots of our rebellious lives do not stand a chance. The kings of the earth think themselves mighty, don’t they? But the truth is, the righteous wrath of Jesus Christ is an iron rod and our rebellious lives are old clay pots and there is no resisting the just judgment of God’s appointed King.
Now I think if we are honest, that image rather grates against our Advent sensibilities. Doesn’t it? We have the cutie pie baby Jesus in mind, perhaps, and the romance of the nativity scene, you know, with the cattle with their big brown eyes welling with tears of wonder. And the shepherds are there, and the wise men too, and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer has managed to sneak in somehow. There are three ships sailing in, bizarrely, and even a little drummer boy, rum-pa-pum-pum! “That’s Christmas, don’t spoil it for me, preacher!” But not so fast. Not so fast. Some of you have learned, perhaps by painful personal experience, that actually what we need most urgently is not a Hallmark card nativity scene. What we really need is a King who will one day execute judgment, justice, upon the whole world; a justice that cannot be ignored or subverted or evaded by anyone! Don’t we really need that today, desperately? Just judgment. That’s the King who has come in Jesus Christ whose advent we celebrate at this time of year, and that is good news. It is good news.
The Pleading Word
The raging world. The laughing God. The reigning Son. And then finally and appropriately, the psalm ends with a pleading word. A pleading word. What should we do in light of the King’s first advent? Look at verses 10 through 12. At last we hear the psalmist speaking again. He began the psalm telling us about the nations’ rage and the kings and the rulers’ conspiracy against the Lord’s Messiah. Now he returns to those kings and those rulers, doesn’t he, to apply his message. He takes up the role of preacher and he pleads with them, he pleads with us. How should you prepare for Christmas this year? Psalm 2 says, whatever else you do, you must “be wise, be warned, 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.”
The psalmist is warning us about the absolute sovereignty of Jesus Christ. He is the great King. All who reject Him, oppose Him, deny Him will perish in the way. But it doesn’t have to be that way for any of us, not for one of us. If we will but serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling and kiss the Son. Kiss the Son – it’s an image of fealty and submission and love and honor and trust. Kiss the Son. The book of Psalms opens in the first psalm, Psalm 1, by talking about two ways to live. There is the way of the wicked that leads to destruction and then there is the way of the righteous that takes you to the blessed life. Here at the end, in the last line of Psalm 2, we find the key to the blessed life. Where do you find the blessed life? What is the way into the blessed life? “Kiss the Son…Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.”
Jesus came, you know, in His first advent, to provide refuge for rebel sinners like me and you. He obeyed and bled and died and rose that every provision might be made for anyone, anywhere, who wants the pardon of God, who wants to be reconciled to the Father. Nobody needs to perish in the way. You do not need to perish! No one needs crumble like an old clay pot under the iron rod judgment of Jesus Christ. There is an offer available to you of a blessed life. You know, He died, He Himself died a cursed death under the judgment of God so that the way could be opened for guilty sinners into the blessed life. The blessed Son died a cursed death that wicked sinners might enter the blessed life. So come and take refuge in Jesus. Kiss the Son. Turn from your sin and your rebellion against Him while there is still time, for His wrath is quickly kindled.
One day soon there will be a second advent, another advent, when Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead, as we confessed earlier in the Apostles Creed. Revelation 19:15 pictures that moment and it quotes Psalm 2 – “He will rule them with a rod of iron and tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.” So today, while you hear His voice pleading with you in Psalm 2, do not harden your hearts. Can you hear His voice? He is pleading with you. Turn and live! Turn and live! Kiss the Son! Blessed are all who take refuge in Him. Come and hide away in Jesus. He is your only refuge from the winepress of the fury of the wrath of Almighty God. Look, Jesus must either be your Refuge or your Judge. Which will He be for you this Advent? The raging world, the laughing God, the reigning Son. And do you hear the pleading word? What will I do with Jesus this Advent?
Let’s pray together.
Our Father, how we bless You, we adore You, that You reign and preside over all things. Forgive us for allowing the rage of the world to fill our horizons, to plunge us into unbelief and despair. Help us to get clear the perspective that Psalm 2 offers – filled with realism about this dark world and yet also filled with hope because we know who reigns over all. And we pray for any here today, covenant children, visitors from out of town, guests, friends, maybe even long time members who are not yet children of God by grace. O Lord, bring them to Christ that they might today, now, while there remains time, kiss the Son and take refuge in Him and enter into the blessed life. For we pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.