If you would, I invite you to, open your bibles and turn to the second psalm, Psalms chapter 2. If you don't have your Bible, you're welcome to use the worship guide before you. I believe the entire chapter is printed there. For this entire year, we'll be looking at a different Psalm during the last Sunday of each month. And last month, we did Psalm chapter 1, and tonight, we'll do the second chapter.
Joel Brooks: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.
Joel Brooks: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, oh kings, be wise, Be warned, oh rulers of the earth.
Joel Brooks:Serve the lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son, lest he be angry and he perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him. Pray with me. Lord, we ask that you would bring great clarity to this song, Lord, that you would speak in power, transformative power.
Joel Brooks:I pray that no one here would be the same. God, in this moment, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. I pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, had a very famous conversation, about legends and ancient myths.
Joel Brooks:They had this conversation just a few days before Lewis was converted. You see Louis was really drawn to these, these old Norse legends or Greek mythology. He just loved the power of those myths, and he didn't know why he was so fascinated with them, but but they just kept drawing him in. Later after conversion, he would call them the Preparatio Evangelica, meaning it prepared him for the gospel in a way that he wasn't aware of in the time. And he's talking about these myths and things with Tolkien.
Joel Brooks:And of course, nobody understood the myths more than Tolkien, because he has spent his entire life studying these things. He was writing about these things. And Tolkien said, have you noticed that all the myths are very similar? How, there's always some some huge problem. There's a huge darkness that comes over the land.
Joel Brooks:There's some big catastrophe, and some hero has to come up. And usually, a great sacrificial love, which Tolkien called a eucatastrophe. This, the sacrificial love was made, and people were saved. And he said, Louis, I think you're you're drawn to those because of the underlying story. And Louis said, what what story?
Joel Brooks:These are these are just lies. And he actually had this famous line. He said, they're lies, even though they're lies, breathe through silver. And Tolkien said, actually, I think the reason you're drawn to them is because they speak of an underlying truth. So, let me let me tell you Christianity.
Joel Brooks:The world is under a spell. The world has come under darkness by by an evil sorcerer, if you will. And no technology, no science, no new knowledge, nothing that humans can do can ever break the spell or get them out of it. Only the ancient king can, the creator. He's the only one who could come and restore things as they were before.
Joel Brooks:And the ancient king, he comes, but the people rejected him, stirred up by this sorcerer. They killed him. They actually crucified him and nailed him to a cross, and this is the eucatastrophe. This is the sacrificial love that actually brings salvation to everyone, breaks the curse, and it's going to bring an all new kingdom, a new creation together. So, have you ever thought of Christianity that way?
Joel Brooks:And Lewis was like, gosh, I haven't. I guess Christianity is like the other myths. You know, maybe, Christianity also speaks to some kind of underlying truth, like all the other myths do. And, and, and, Tolkien looked him in the eye and said, no. Christianity is the underlying truth.
Joel Brooks:Said all of those myths, all of those legends that you were so drawn to point to the true story of Jesus, who is the king, who makes all things right. And Louis, that just something in him just broke at that moment. And just a few days later, he gave himself to the Lord Jesus. Christianity is the reality in which all those stories point. This is what Psalm chapter 2 is about.
Joel Brooks:It's about the central reality in all the universe. How how everything is under the control of this ultimate king who makes everything right. And he provides refuge for all who will come to him. And although there is a seeming rebellion at work, he sits in heaven and laughs, and he will put it down. Martin Luther, I was kind of surprised when I began studying through Psalm 2.
Joel Brooks:Martin Luther wrote 89 pages on this one Psalm. He called it the best of all the Psalms. It's a coronation Psalm, which means it was sung when a king of Israel was was crowned king. It is frequently quoted throughout the New Testament. You're going to come over and over again to Psalm chapter 2.
Joel Brooks:If you remember, as we've been working through the book of Acts, in Acts chapter 4, when Peter was rescued from prison and he went back to the church, the first thing they did is pray this Psalm. The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers gathered together against the lord and against his anointed. And they found such comfort and knowing that everything that was happening was happening according to God's plan. And he laughs. He laughs at the persecution coming that way.
Joel Brooks:Later in Acts 13, when Paul is preaching his first sermon to the Gentiles, he goes to Psalm 2 and he talks about how, how the king, king Jesus is the king of all the nations. This psalm is the only psalm that we have in which the words or the titles, Messiah, Son, and King are all used together. It's the only Psalm we have that all 3 of those are used together. Those three titles become fundamental for us to understand who Jesus is in the New Testament, and they're all right here. Psalm 2 lays the foundation for who we think of Christ when we call Him Christ, our King.
Joel Brooks:The Psalm is structured into 4 stanzas, each with 3 verses. And so, let's take a look at each of these stanzas. Let's walk through. Let's look at the first one. First three verses.
Joel Brooks:It says, 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. Now, every commentator you're going to read is going to say this is over the top language. This is, I mean, this is ridiculous because Israel was just such a small nation. The kingdom of Israel, even when it was at its height, was nothing like the powers around them.
Joel Brooks:And yet here it's talking about all the nations and all these kings are raging against Israel when the reality is most didn't even give Israel a thought. And so how are we supposed to read this? I guess you could broaden the question and say, how are we supposed to read all the Psalms that are like this throughout the book of Psalms? In order to make sense of this Psalm, and I guess all the Psalms like it, you have to understand that they really do talk about an actual situation that King David was in. They do.
Joel Brooks:But then David always expands it. He expands it to talk about a greater reality, a greater David. And so, that's why the Psalms always start small, and then they get really big and they point us forward to a higher and better reality. And so this Psalm is talking about the kingship of David, but more importantly, it's talking about the kingship of the Messiah or the kingship of Jesus. Let me just walk through that the very first verse, you find the word plot there and the people's plot in vain.
Joel Brooks:That word plot is the same word that's used in Psalm 1 that's translated meditate. Same word, which is kind of unusual that it's plot there and it's meditate in Psalm 1. But if you remember what meditation is, it's murmuring. It's, it's when you talk to yourself because people would read out loud and so they would read it something over and over. And if that's done positively, like you're reading the Bible over and over, this is meditation.
Joel Brooks:If it's done negatively, it's muttering under your breath. It's plotting. And what you're supposed to do here is you're supposed to read Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 together. They go together. You have your good meditation of Psalm 1, you have your false meditation of Psalm 2.
Joel Brooks:There's actually a number of other things that kind of wed these two chapters together. Psalm 1 begins with the phrase, blessed is the man. Psalm 2 ends with the blessing of the man. They're kind of bookends uniting these 2 Psalms together. These rebellious kings, they're they're muttering to themselves that they want to burst their bonds apart, cast away their cords.
Joel Brooks:When they think of the Lord's anointed and that word anointed is Messiah, when they think of the Messiah and his reign, they think of it as slavery. They think of it as oppressive, holding them down. That word cords there is the word that's used to tie on a yoke. You know, a yoke that's put on an oxen to make it a beast of burden. And what they're saying is, Messiah, your your kingship is like a burden to us.
Joel Brooks:We do not want to work for you. We do not want to be ruled by you. These kings don't want to be ruled by anyone. And so, they're muttering these things under their breath. And what they don't understand is that the the reign of the Messiah is a gentle rule.
Joel Brooks:I mean, the the moment I read this, I was just thinking Matthew 11, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. That's what Jesus said. He said, Take my yoke upon you, and learn from from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, my burden is light. And so the the yoke of Jesus is not burdensome.
Joel Brooks:It's restful. It's joyful. We were created to be ruled. And if you think you're the captain of your own fate and you're the master of your own soul, you have deceived yourselves. You were going against what you were created to do.
Joel Brooks:And this is not oppressive any more than if you look at an eagle and you were to say, what is an eagle created to do? To fly. Now, when the Eagle is flighty, flying, would he say it's being oppressed because that's what it was created to do? No, you would say it finds such freedom in doing the very thing it was created to do. Or a fish that's out of water Makes no sense because God created a fish to be in water.
Joel Brooks:And when it's in water, it has freedom. And in the same way, we were created to submit to Christ. And that is not a burdensome yoke. It is a freeing thing when we submit to it. Let's look how God responds to the rebellion of these kings.
Joel Brooks:Look at verse 4 through 6. It says, he laughs. He laughs. The picture I have is this, all my girls, you know, when they know 2 years old or something, they think they could take on the world and they kind of want to just fight you, you know, and they come up to you and you could just kind of put your hand on their head and they just kinda swing away, and you just laugh. I mean, you just laugh as they're trying their best to hurt you and you're just like, come on, come on.
Joel Brooks:And that's the picture. You have all of these nations, all of these presidents gathering together, and God is just like, really? Sir seriously? You think that's going to affect me? He laughs.
Joel Brooks:And let me tell you, everybody who has placed their trust in Jesus can laugh as well. There there's a phrase in, Proverbs 31 when it talks about the excellent woman. I love the description, says that she laughs at the future. She laughs at it because she has knows that has no power over here, her, no matter what problems come her way, when no matter what circumstances comes her way, she just rests in submission to her Lord, rest in the sovereignty of the Lord, and she could just laugh at it. And as a husband, let me just speak to to the wives out there.
Joel Brooks:Wives, if you can laugh at the future instead of worry about it, you point your husbands in a way that I cannot even describe. You point them to the lordship of Jesus. It's probably the best way you could point them to his kingship. Martin Luther, ran across this when I was studying Psalm 2, a familiar story to you, some, seminarians. One of his mentors or he was mentoring a man named Melanchthon, also a famous theologian, but Melanchthon worried a ton.
Joel Brooks:And one time, Martin Luther just put his arm around Melanchthon and said, Melanchthon, Melanchthon, when will you give up trying to rule the world? When you could give up being king and rest in the Lord's sovereignty, anxiety cease, ceases. Let's go to the 3rd stanza. If this is the heart of the Psalm, if you grew up Baptist like I did, you would likely miss it because you only read the first, second, and fourth of, of all the hymns. This is the heart.
Joel Brooks:I say that affectionately affectionately. I will tell of the decree, the lord said to me, you are my son. Today, I've begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You'll break them with a rod of iron, dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
Joel Brooks:This is now the Messiah speaking, and he is reporting what the Lord has said to him. And he says, the Lord has called him son. And so he's not just a king. He's not just a great king or a really, really great king. He's actually a son of God.
Joel Brooks:And his father has promised him possession of all the earth. All of the nations are his inheritance. And that means that there is not a a lost penny or there is not a giant mansion that is not his. Whether you're the president of a country or whether you're a maid, you are his. There is nothing in all of creation that Jesus does not say mine.
Joel Brooks:It is mine. All of it. We are his possession. And what you're finding here is the roots of what we would call the great commission in the New Testament. This really is the great commission here.
Joel Brooks:You know, when when Jesus rose from the grave and he conquered sin and death, and when he was about to ascend to his throne on heaven where he would reign, right before he ascended, he he said to his disciples, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. It's all been given to me, and that means that the earth has been given to him as his possession. All of it is his. It means your home is his. Your car is his.
Joel Brooks:Your family is his. Every little hidden part of your life, it is His. Everything is His. All authority on heaven and in earth has been given to Him. It means he's the king.
Joel Brooks:And then after Jesus says all of this, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, he go make disciples of all the nations, or basically, go and tell everyone of my kingship. Go. We've said this before, but the word gospel, euangelion, we translate it good news, but really it's a it's a declaration of the king. But when a good king would make a declaration, it was good news. And so when we go to share the gospel, we're just proclaiming the word of the king, and that's there is a king.
Joel Brooks:There is a new king. He's coming to reign. We go and make disciples of all nations. What does it mean to submit to the lordship of Jesus? What does it mean to treat him as our king?
Joel Brooks:It means a lot. Let me just maybe give a couple. It means absolute obedience, Absolute obedience. It means we can't treat Jesus like he's a good teacher, or he was just some wise sage that he's our little counselor next to us, giving us good advice. So, when he says things like, hey, you need to love your enemies, or you need to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, we can't say that's really good advice, Jesus.
Joel Brooks:I'm going to, I'm going to try to do that. That's not submitting to his lordship. Obedience, before we even know what he asked. I shared this several years ago, but it bears repeating. It was Caroline when, when she was a little girl, probably 2, she loved to go into our backyard and she would find any place we had put insect repellent, little bottles of Alt off, and she would squirt them in her mouth.
Joel Brooks:I don't know why she would. She's, she's really smart, so maybe something happened, you know, there. But but she would just go and we'd always find her and she'd be just sucking on these things. And so I did tell her, I was like, Caroline, don't do that. You can't you cannot do that.
Joel Brooks:And so Caroline said, why not? I said, well, because if if you drink that stuff, you're going to get really, really sick and you might even die. She looks at me and she's computing. She's computing as she holds this, and then she puts it down. So I asked the question, is that obedience?
Joel Brooks:The answer is no. She simply agreed with me, which is fine that time. But there's gonna be times when a 2 year old child is gonna disagree with her daddy. And let me tell you, she needs to listen. And I think a lot of times we confuse our obedience to our king and we say it's obedience and it's nothing more than agreeing with him.
Joel Brooks:We obey when it makes sense to us. We obey when we like it. We obey when we see the final result and it's something, yeah, I could sign, I could get on board with that, but that's not obedience. That's just simply agreeing. That's treating Jesus as your little counselor that comes alongside you and gives you good advice, but he's our Lord.
Joel Brooks:And that means we say yes before we ever know what he commands us. Yes. That's how we treat him as king. Now I realize that this can be a pretty heavy Psalm. I mean, you read this.
Joel Brooks:It was heavy to me because I realized, you know what? I don't always do that. A lot of times I bow up. I'm like the kings, I bow up against the lordship of Jesus. And if you read the Psalm, things don't really turn out well for them.
Joel Brooks:There's, there's, there's some judgments there. There's some woes there. It's it's gonna get ugly for these guys. But a lot of times, I'm just like them. And so, it's a pretty heavy Psalm.
Joel Brooks:I gotta ask a question. How does the end of it? How is it true to me? How can I be blessed? All who take refuge in him.
Joel Brooks:Am I allowed to take refuge in him when I disobey him so often? For the answer of that, turn to Matthew 3. 1st book of the New Testament, Matthew chapter 3. This is at Jesus' baptism. We'll begin reading verse 16.
Joel Brooks:And when Jesus was baptized, immediately, he went up from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him. And he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him. And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Now this is Jesus' baptism. This is when the spirit of God falls on him here.
Joel Brooks:And god the father quotes part of Psalm 2. He declares Jesus to be his son. So this this is my beloved son. This this is he's not just a king. He's not just a man.
Joel Brooks:This is my son. But then he quotes, not from another Psalm, he quotes from Isaiah 42. Isaiah 42, which we read at the start of the service, begins like this. Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights, or in whom I am well pleased. I've put my spirit upon him.
Joel Brooks:We just saw that in baptism. He will bring forth justice to the nations. Now, Isaiah 42 is when the suffering servant is introduced to us. Notice that he doesn't say son in Isaiah 42. This is this is the servant.
Joel Brooks:This is the the one who's gonna come and suffer. This is the one who will find out in Isaiah 53. He's gonna carry away our iniquities. Who's gonna be treated unjustly, who's gonna carry on our sins upon himself for the people of God so that they will not be punished. And so at Jesus' baptism, what we get is a declaration from God of 2 different things.
Joel Brooks:Said, you are my son. You are the king. You are the one in Psalm 2. You are the lord over all, and you are the servant who will suffer, and you will pay the penalty of all these sins. He's both the king and he's both the suffering servant together.
Joel Brooks:This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased. And it's when we understand that Christ becomes a refuge to us. When we understand that, when we realize, yes, we, we have rebelled. When we look at scripture, it doesn't call us God's friends apart from Jesus. It says we are enemies of God.
Joel Brooks:We are like those Kings. We deserve punishment, but the suffering servant, our King Jesus has taken that for us.