Please turn to Psalm 2 (Pew 418).
The psalms are the songs of the people of God as they are walking by faith. Commentators view Psalm 1 & 2 as introductions to the entire psalter. Think of them as twin pillars through which you enter the rest of the collection of psalms. These two psalms are setting the scene for what you’ll find farther in.
And what do you find farther in?
Some psalms have to do with God Himself – “Praise the LORD, for the LORD is good”
Some have to do with me – “Why are you cast down O my soul”
Some of them have to do with God and me – “my heart longs for you”… O God, why are you so far from me?
Some have to do with God and others and me. “God, my friends have forsaken me.”
So there’s a lot in the psalms that’s experiential, personal – what the psalmist is up against, what he’s feeling.
So far, no surprise. When we think about the religious life, we tend to think of our experience with God, our feelings, our interactions with others in the light of God’s reality etc.
But also, there’s Psalm 2. One of the two pillars that leads us into this collection of songs about walking with God by faith has to do with God and the nations. Or more specifically, God and the rulers of nations. God and politics.
And since Psalm 2 functions as part of an introduction to the psalms as a whole, we can expect that there will be much in psalms having to do with God and the political powers. And that is indeed what we find.
Someone says: I don’t want God around my politics. And Scripture replies: Psalm 2.
From noticing that 1) the psalms are the songs of the people of God who are walking by faith in this world and that 2) the psalms have much to say about the political powers – – we conclude that the life of faith has a political aspect to it. The people of God are not meant to be otherworldly and ignore or even diminish the importance of the political systems of the world. No, we are to walk with God in the nation under the rulers.
In fact, the early Church understood the gospel largely in political terms and Psalm 2 was an important text for our spiritual fathers. One of our earliest Christian prayers on record – in Acts 4 – quotes from Psalm 2 asking for God’s help among political pressure. Our earliest sermon on record from Paul – in Acts 13 – includes an exegesis of Psalm 2. This is a key psalm. A modern-day theologian says: If you’re engaged in any work for God’s kingdom, any ministry of evangelism, teaching or pastoral wisdom, you’re going to need it. Get to know Psalm 2…as it stands behind a good deal of Scripture, and learn how to enter into its spirit and apply it to new situations…Many times the Church is called to take a stand, and the local authorities – from a city councillor all the way up to the national political hierarchy – may send a clear warning that this is not wanted. This will happen more and more, especially in polarized political situations or places where the Church is under threat from the authorities.
There are four stanzas to this psalm, each relaying different political realities:
Stanza 1: Rulers and citizens are attempting to break away from the rule of God and His anointed King.
Stanza 2: God is awfully unimpressed with this defiant “sound and fury,” mainly because He’s already installed His own King from the place of His dwelling.
Stanza 3: And a King not in name only. God has decreed that His King be given supremacy over all the world’s political power and lands, and that He be given the satisfaction of subduing or shattering his enemies. This development only awaits a word from the King.
Stanza 4: Because this is already arranged, the rulers of the earth are urged – not just formally but from their hearts, enthusiastically – to make peace with the King from Zion. Even to find refuge in him.
Let’s read the first stanza:
Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”
The nations seethe against Creator God.
Specifically, the rulers of the earth work together – form coalitions, enter alliances – in order to carve out a trail leading away from the rule of Lord and His Anointed King.
The heads of state and other rulers – policy-crafters, the gatekeepers, the directors of markets, the story-tellers holding sway over people’s attentions, the educators and entertainers who are shaping the minds, the influencers… – all are working together – and they might not identify what they’re doing this way, but nevertheless – they are working together to come out from under the rules and definitions of God and His Messiah.
The narrator of this psalm looks out onto a world that isn’t just in trouble, isn’t simply misguided or heavy with bad actors; rather he says the world is in a state of rebellion.
Since there’s no single historical event attached to this psalm, and since alongside of Psalm 1 it forms kind of a two-pillar entrance into the whole psalter, we assume that this psalm is describing how things are perennially. Every generation is attempting to leave behind the authority of God. One generation might have progressed farther down the path, but it’s always the same project: break loose from God.
Not true of every government worker, and it’s not to the same degree in different governments, but there’s always this stream of defiance running through the earthly powers: the educators are shaping minds to assume that it’s smart to break away. Policy makers and intellectuals are redefining old words that bind to God’s truth. The story tellers are imagining a good world where God is absent. Bureaucrats administrate in such a way that leaves God out: ignores his word, or confuses and complicates his laws, keeps godless people in power, frustrates the intentions of those who would rule justly in the fear of God. ETC
Because they live among and often under the sway of those who are breaking free from God, the righteous have always been frustrated, often oppressed, often angry, often scared, worried for their country and even worried for their and their children’s survival.
Stanza 2: How does God react to all this?
4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
6 “As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”
To the rebellion, God’s response is set down in four words: laugh, deride, wrath, fury. To laugh and be furious at the same time is tough to pull off, but the character of God is vast enough to contain a lot of emotions at once.
If we just heard that God laughed, we might think of his reaction as from a grandpa – shaking his head and saying, kids these days… But this folly has also warranted God’s wrath – He takes this world seriously; He takes the conduct of people seriously; creation and nation forming is His idea, His project. And His project is being resisted, undermined! So, though He’s unthreatened to the point of amusement; He’s also enraged.
A mature understanding of God understands that God both laughs and is enraged at the world-wide rebellion.
After his laughing, God speaks. What will He say to this?
What He says has to do with the King He’s already installed. The rulers of nations are straining to exert their independence. And God says, in effect, ‘Too late, I’ve raised up a King in Zion, that is, while the world has been raising a ruckus, all along where I dwell and reign, I’ve been at work on a King of kings.’
In the next stanza we hear from that King himself:
7 I will tell of the decree:
The LORD said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
I will tell of the decree. The readers, the worshipers, the people of God are being let in on a decision that the Creator has made. We get to overhear what the Creator said to this Anointed King.
God tells the Anointed King, You are my Son.
In one narrow sense, all people are offspring of God, created to bear his image, a vocation having a lot to do with managing things in his behalf. But this psalm points to a pre-eminent Son of God, the King of Israel. Standing out from all children of God comes one preeminent Son, the Anointed Ruler, the King of Israel, the Human in full, the model image bearer.
Historically, Psalm 2 was used as a coronation song in Israel as the new descendant of David, the Anointed One, the Son of God came onto the throne. The coronation of the Son of God – here called a begetting, meaning God sourced this – sent a message to the world’s rulers: Rail against the authority of God all you want, there is already – today! – a King installed by whom God will eventually rule the nations of the world. A King of kings and Lord of lords. A Son of God who bears the image, ruling in God’s behalf.
The house of David is God’s answer to the powers of the world that seek to defy him. The rule of the Davidic King, an Anointed One eventually means the downfall of the rebellious rulers and the demonic powers behind them. The Creator says to His Son, “Ask of me.” Come on, let me do this for you. I want to give this to you, to honor you, to see you honored. I’ll crush your enemies. No, actually, I’ll let you have the satisfaction of breaking and dashing them into a thousand unrecognizable pieces.
I’d like to turn your attention to Romans 1 (Pew, 883).
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations…
The gospel here is that, by His resurrection, Jesus of Nazareth has been identified as the preeminent King, the One bearing the image of the Father, the final Son of God out of the lineage of David. The ultimate David-King has arrived into history. And now Paul is commissioned to go out into the nations of the world and tell citizens of every nation that the Uber-Lord, the King of kings, has been identified and that their first obedience must be to him.
And this Son of God who perfectly bears the image of the Heavenly Father restores humans to their full humanity as children of God. Through Him we pick up the broken pieces of our vocation as image bearers! But those who refuse allegiance to him will be dashed in pieces…
Which brings us to the final stanza of application:
10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
11 Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
12 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.
In final stanza the narrator turns back to addressing the rulers.
Kiss the Son is analogous to the old tradition of kissing the ring of a ruler. A gesture that shows obvious respect, submission.
You grasp the point of this last stanza. To the rulers of the world who are so bent on leaving God and ignoring His King, there is no waffling, no diplomacy offered.
Rather, get with the King’s program, come under his protection. And not just by going through the motions, on the outside. But, “rejoice with trembling,” – celebrate from your heart the King and his authority without ever losing sight that the One you are celebrating is a transcendent King whose reign will know no end.
Otherwise you’ll perish in the way.
_____________
What do we do with this psalm?
First of all, this psalm helps us see that the gospel is the announcement that Jesus, Son of David, is the head over all powers, including all governments and state powers. He has been placed there by the Creator and Lord of history, and no power will topple him.
Good news: God’s Man – AND NOT ANYONE ELSE – is King. But more good news: By his atoning death he has opened a final refuge for sinners, repentant rebels, to be at peace with God. Those that take refuge in him are now justified by his resurrection, have been sealed with the Spirit of his everlasting bodily life and eventually will join in his inheritance to rule the world. HALLELUJAH. HALLELUJAH.
Just as much as the gospel is great news for individuals as they relate with God, it also has political implications. By his resurrection Jesus is Lord over the nations and its rulers… and any harder to define power backing those nations and rulers. The gospel is a message of hard-won glory and strength exerted over other powers.
In fact, it is upon the basis of his all-powerful resurrection that he is able to offer forgiveness of sins to individuals: Because of the resurrection there hasn’t been nor will ever arise any state of nature or supernatural reality or government or technology or expertise or species that can limit or cancel or otherwise nullify the accomplishment of Jesus’ atoning death that cancels guilt and secures a grand future …and that includes the ultimate anti-God force, death itself. Good news – See the strength that never diminishes. HALLELUJAH!
The gospel of Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t cancel all other powers, but it does relativize them. USA, Democratic Party, Deep State or non-elected Bureaucracy, Ivy League, National Institute of Health, State Governors, Town Selectmen, Fortune 500 Companies, Business Owners, Fathers and heads of families, Hollywood and other storytellers, Silicon Valley…and citizens and clients and competitors of the same – – you are all under God’s Messiah, who has been declared by his resurrection to be Son of God.
So…Kiss the Son, lest he be angry. Leaders, find out what policies or statutes or protocols that please the Son, and align yourself under those. MBGA = Make the Bible Great Again.
Most of the rulers of the world won’t read this psalm, and so it is the role of the Church – corporately, especially through the mouthpiece of clergy, and individually in our different spheres…to constantly assert the political reality that Jesus is God’s Messiah and King over all powers.
The Church should always be the herald announcing to the powers that be, especially the State, that Christ is ultimate Lord and they are not.
And so, they should Kiss the Son. True, we don’t want big government establishing which Christian denomination should be the denomination throughout the land. But then again, we don’t want any pretense that there can be some so-called neutral, “secular” sphere wherein Christ is not taken seriously. Rather, the Church – both corporately and individually – is to be constantly announcing to the powers that Christ is their Lord and it’s in everyone’s best interests to submit to Christ. Not submit to a generic Creator or to submit to a universal natural law, but to submit to Jesus Christ.
You might have seen some prayers before Senate sessions where the chaplain addresses God, but in only the most generic ways and then signs off even more generically. While we should appreciate the appeal to God – that’s good – it’s not enough. Kiss the Son, Senate. Take refuge in the Son, America.
But what about the non-Christian citizens of the country whose leaders are confessing allegiance to Jesus, won’t they feel marginalized, unrepresented under the name of Jesus Christ? And yes, they probably will. But then again, they’ll reap the benefits of living in a nation whose rulers are squared with reality, because the reality-shaping gospel is that Jesus is the Son of God over all powers. They’ll have freedom. They won’t be religiously coerced.
The Church wants to pray for, vote for, work for government officials and leaders in every field who will Kiss the Son lest he be angry and who will rejoice with trembling that the King is Jesus. A nation whose God is the Lord Jesus Christ has a future, because Jesus is the future.
A nation or enterprise or business whose God is not Jesus Christ will perish in the way…is on its way out. And while on its way out it will turn wicked and cruel and poor. Let me put it this way: one of the best ways to love your neighbors and offer him the best life possible is to do all you can to place him under Christian leadership – Christian by confession and by policy and by conduct.
Church, don’t rest in proclaiming in word and conduct… and working/fighting (with the weapons of the Spirit) for a clearer, wider, bolder proclamation in word and conduct…that Jesus is Lord over yourself, over the nation, over the nations, over the supernatural powers. Otherwise we’re not aligned with God’s decree.
AMEN
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