The Vain Mutiny (Psalm 2:1-3)

Jim Osman explores Psalm 2:1-3, examining the futile rebellion against God's authority. He highlights the raging, defiant, and lawless nature of this cosmic mutiny against the Lord and His anointed. Osman contrasts this rebellion with the blessed man of Psalm 1, emphasizing that true fulfillment comes from delighting in God's law rather than rejecting it. Despite appearances, he reassures that God remains the ultimate ruler.

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Host

Jim Osman

Pastor-Teacher, Kootenai Community Church

What is Kootenai Church: The Psalms?

This series explores selected Psalms, starting with an introduction to the book of Psalms and its theological significance. It focuses primarily on Psalms 1, 2, 37, and 49, while also touching on imprecatory elements found in these and other Psalms. The series aims to help listeners understand the Psalms' relevance for Christian life and worship today.

Well, this is the second in our series in the Psalms, not a series that will encompass every psalm in the Psalter, but some select ones. And we did Psalm 1 a couple of weeks ago, finished that up. Today we're starting into Psalm 2. These two psalms are—it would be wrong to say mirror images of each other, but there is overlap in these two psalms, as they handle some of the same themes and they certainly complement one another. And they are complementary and overlapping psalms, and together they form the gateway to the Psalter, and they are intended to be taken together, understood together, read together. And I have suggested that they are really the doorposts at the entry to the Psalter. So we have Psalm 1 on one side, Psalm 2 on the other, and seeing how they complement one another and what they teach, what they lay out, helps us to understand the purpose of the Psalms.
There is in Psalm 1 and Psalm 2, when taken together, something of an inclusio, which is a literary device that uses the same theme or idea at the beginning and at the end to sort of incorporate like brackets or parentheses everything that comes between them. And I want you to notice the inclusio in Psalm 1 and Psalm 2. Psalm 1:1: “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!” So there you have Psalm 1:1, a declaration of blessedness. Then look at the end of Psalm 2. Psalm 2:12: “Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” So there is a declaration of blessedness at the very first verse of Psalm 1, then there is a proclamation of blessedness at the very end of Psalm 2, and these sort of form an inclusio, brackets, and everything in here describes the way of blessedness.
These are not just two random psalms placed at the beginning of the Psalter as if the organizer, which I think was King David, just took these two psalms randomly out of a collection of songs and said, “We're going to put one here and one here.” No, I think that these are intended to be seen together, and they really tell us what the book is about. Psalm 1, we saw when we studied that, finished it a couple of weeks ago, we saw that Psalm 1 describes the blessed man, the path of the blessed man, the prosperity of the blessed man, and then the prize for the blessed man. Blessed is the one who has never walked in the counsel of the ungodly and has never stood in the path of sinners and has never sat in the seat of the scoffer, “but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night” (v. 2). That's the proclamation of blessedness. And of course, we understand that none of us have ever done that, and so the question remains how can we be blessed? How can we be blessed if that's the requirement for blessedness?
Well, the good news is that Psalm 2 answers that. God has appointed a King and a Savior who has fulfilled the law of God and has never walked in the counsel of the wicked or stood in the path of sinners or sat in the seat of the scoffers. And because He has been obedient to the law of the Lord and meditated in it day and night, we can be blessed because we take refuge in Him. That's Psalm 1 and Psalm 2.
You'll notice at the beginning of Psalm 2 that there is no superscript. That's what we call the little words that are above the psalm that sort of introduce the psalm and sometimes describe the occasion of the psalm. Like you see on the next psalm, Psalm 3, where you see it says, “A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.” There's no superscript in Psalm 2. So we don't know from Psalm 2 who wrote Psalm 2, but here's good news. We do know from the New Testament who wrote Psalm 2 because Psalm 2 is quoted in Acts 4 where we read this in verses 24–26:
24 And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, “O Lord, it is You who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them,
25 who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Your servant, said, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples devise futile things?
26 The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ.’” (NASB)
And they're quoting Psalm 2:1–2, and in Acts 4, they attribute this psalm to David.
Now historically, Psalm 1 and 2 have been viewed by the Jews and throughout church history as really belonging together. In fact, there are some ancient manuscripts that refer to the words of Psalm 2 and they call it Psalm 1 because in the Jewish mind these two psalms were inseparably linked to one another. So it is assumed that if David is the author of Psalm 2 that he is also then the author of Psalm 1. And though we recognize that these are two different psalms, in the Jewish way of thinking, historically they have been seen as being inseparably linked together at the beginning of the Psalter.
There is something of a double meaning to Psalm 2. It does describe David, but it also looks past David and describes David's greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. You're going to see in a moment how there are messianic tendencies in the psalm, messianic statements in the psalm, because it does speak of Christ, though the psalm does describe—in some of the words of the psalm, it does describe aspects of the covenant that God made with David, the promises that God made to David in 2 Samuel 7, promises and a covenant that are also described in Psalm 89 as well.
You can imagine Israel being surrounded by its enemies, the Philistines, the Edomites, the Moabites, the “Heathenites,” the “Paganites,” and all the other “-ites” that surrounded Israel, and when David is installed as king, it had a unifying effect for the twelve tribes of Israel, as all the twelve tribes then became one nation under the leadership of David, and it is assumed that this psalm was a coronation psalm. It was something that was sung when new kings were anointed over the kingdom in the line of David. And it was a reminder again of God's purpose in choosing David. And oftentimes transfers of power inside of kingdoms were tumultuous. It could be a time when the enemies outside of a nation saw an opportunity to exploit a weakness when power was being transferred from one king to his son or from one king to another. And so this is a psalm that would be sung during those coronation services.
Allen Ross in his commentary on the Psalms says this: “Psalm 2 is a royal psalm focusing on the coronation of the Davidic king in the holy city on Mount Zion. It was included in the collection to be sung by the choirs at any appropriate time, certainly at coronations of kings, but also in times of national crises when people needed to be reminded that God had installed their king and that the threats from the nations would fail.” So what was the answer? What was God's answer to the raging of the nations around Israel that threatened always to undo them and to conquer them until they had a king, David? His answer to those raging nations was to seat His king, David, upon that throne. And that is the language that is used in Psalm 2.
But that was not a one-time and temporary event with no lasting consequences. That installation of David on the throne in Zion would have eternal and lasting consequences because ultimately, again, Psalm 2 looks beyond David's kingdom to the rule of his greater Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in a future and coming kingdom. The psalm clearly speaks of Christ. It is inarguably messianic. It looks beyond David to Christ. In fact, it is Jesus Christ, the Son, who speaks in verses 7–9. Christ is the King, the ultimate King who is installed in verse 6. David is a prototype of that. And then Christ is the one whom we are to worship and do homage to in verses 10–12, where we are said to worship the Lord with reverence and do homage to the Son lest He become angry. So the last half of the psalm is explicitly the words of the Son regarding the Father and His decree to seat Him on His throne, and they describe the rule and the reign of Christ and the refuge that can be found in Him.
This psalm, Psalm 2, is cited no less than eight times in the New Testament. Every time it is cited, it is applied to Christ. It's cited in Matthew 3:17: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” There is an allusion there to Psalm 2. It's cited in Acts 4 and in Acts 13. It's cited in Hebrews 1 and Hebrews 5. In Revelation 1, Revelation 2, and Revelation 12, and every time it is used, it is seen to be fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Now the psalm divides really naturally into four sections of three verses each. The psalm is twelve verses long, and it divides really naturally into four sections of three verses each. This psalm describes Yahweh's promise to establish His king and His kingdom in spite of the vain opposition of earthly powers. And the psalm sort of unfolds in four scenes. There is a different speaker in each one of the scenes, and I'll show you that here in just a moment. Harry Ironside, in his commentary on the psalm, sort of divides the psalm up into these four sections, recognizing the different speaker in each one, which he identifies, and this is his outline for the psalm. It's not our outline for the psalm, so don't feel like you have to write this down just yet. But Harry Ironside divides the psalm into these four sections, identifying four different speakers. And you'll notice in verse 3, the first three verses, that it is the wicked who speak. Then you'll notice in verse 6 that it is the Father who speaks from Heaven. Then in verses 7–9, the third section, it is the Son who speaks, who tells of the Father's decree. And then you will notice in verses 10–12 that there is an invitation, a warning there, of comfort and a promise of blessing. And so those words are attributed to the Holy Spirit. So you have the wicked speaking in scene one, the first three verses, then you have the Father speaking, then the Son speaking, and then the Holy Spirit speaking and giving application of the entire psalm there at the very end.
Each section has a central truth that helps unfold that. So while we could recognize that as the outline, we're not going to. I've developed something I think a little bit more helpful. We're going to notice the same division, four sections with three verses each, but there is a statement that I think summarizes each section. And when we put all these together, it helps us to unfold the meaning of the psalm. Now here's where we're going to read the verses together. And in verses 1–3, we will say that the rebellion of the wicked is vain folly. The rebellion of the wicked is vain folly. Let's read those verses together. “Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, [and here's the wicked speaking] ‘Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!’”
In the second section, verses 4–6, we see that the response of Yahweh is mocking fury. The response of Yahweh is mocking fury. Verse 4: “He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury, saying, ‘But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain’” (vv. 4–6). That's Yahweh, the Father, who is speaking.
In the third section, verses 7–9, we see that the reign of the King is with sovereign force. The reign of the King is with sovereign force. Verse 7: “I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You.’” So this is the Son speaking. Verse 8: “Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware” (vv. 8–9).
And then in the final section, the refuge for the wise is His blessed favor (vv. 10–12). Look at verse 10 and hear the narrator of the psalm. We can even say the Holy Spirit is speaking. “Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” (vv. 10–12)
Now as you might expect, we're going to take four weeks to work through this psalm. And we're going to unpack each section and meditate on the truths of each section. And as God's good and kind providence would have it, we're going to be finishing up this psalm with God's answer for the rebellious, wicked rulers of the world on the Sunday right before Election Day. Now I didn't plan it that way. I wish I could take credit for having planned something that magnificently great, but it just fell out that way. About Wednesday, I thought, oh, this is appropriate. So for the next four weeks, we are going to meditate upon the promises of God regarding His kingdom and His King and His wrath against the rebellious wicked.
And no matter who wins the elections on Election Day or election week or election festival or whenever they decide to declare an end to election season and they get the outcome that they want, whoever wins that, we are going to remember that these four truths remain unchanging and unchangeable: the rebellion of the wicked is vain folly, the response of Yahweh is mocking fury, the reign of the King is with sovereign force, and the refuge of the wise is His blessed favor. That's Psalm 2. I think those are four good truths to keep in mind over the course of the next month.
By the way, there's also in this psalm a little mini gospel outline. Verses 1–3 is the sinful depravity of man, verses 4–6 is the sovereignty of God, verses 7–9 is the preeminence of Christ, and verses 10–12 is a gracious invitation to find refuge in the Son. You are a sinner. God is justly angry with you. He has appointed a Savior and a King who will execute His wrath, so find refuge in Him or you will perish. That is Psalm 2. That's the outline of Psalm 2.
So let's look today, and just today, at the rebellion of the wicked being vain folly in verses 1–3. And we're going to notice here that the author describes the rebellion of the wicked. It is a cosmic mutiny that is described in these first three verses. And you're going to notice three things about their rebellion. Number 1, it is raging, verse 1. It is defiant in verse 2. And then number 3, it is lawless; that's verse 3. It is a raging, defiant, and lawless rebellion that is executed against God and against His Christ.
Psalm 2:1: “Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing?” This is a raging rebellion in verse 1. Now the question asked in verse 1 is not of somebody inquiring as to the reasons that a thing is so. In other words, he's not saying, “I wonder why the nations rage. I wonder why they're plotting vain rebellion.” He's not wondering why it is so. It is a question of astonishment and indignation. Why do the nations rage? Do you hear the difference in tone? Why are these people plotting such vanity? This is insane. Why would they do this? He is simply amazed at the insolence of these fallen creatures who are mere dust rebelling against God and His anointed Christ. He's marveling at their rebellion. He's marveling at their insurrection and the stupidity of it all. He describes their corporate rebellion. It is the nations and the individual peoples that conspire together in those nations. Why do the nations rage? Why do the peoples plot this thing? Whether you're talking about individual sinners raging against God or whether you're talking about collections of sinners raging against God, it is utter futility.
The word translated “nations” in verse 1 is a word that was often used to describe the pagans or the heathens. It was just a general reference to God-haters, usually a generic reference to those who are outside of the covenant, just Gentiles, pagans, non-Jews whom God had not looked down upon and revealed Himself to. So it is describing there pagans or heathens and those who had not received the revelation of God, of Yahweh, in His Word through the prophets, just God-haters.
And David notes here that they are raging or in an uproar. The nations are in an uproar. Some translations translate that word uproar as “raging.” It describes a tumult or a commotion, like the raging of a stormy sea, like a commotion, a frothing and tossing about in that commotion. It describes the passionate hatred, the passionate and intense rage and hatred of unbelievers for the one true God. That is what is being described. A passionate hatred. A fury. This is how Paul describes fallen man in Romans 1:30, as “slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,” etc. So this is the condition of fallen man apart from the grace of God, a raging, tormenting, tumultuous commotion of passionate rage and hatred and fury toward the one true God. That is the heart of every unbeliever. It describes all of fallen humanity. We are born with a deep-seated animosity to God and to His truth.
Now this deep-seated animosity expresses itself in all kinds of different ways. Sometimes it can even express itself in apathy and indifference. So, for instance, the individual who says, “You know, it's not that I hate God, I just don't care for Him, I don't love Him, I don't want anything to do with Him, I'm not interested in His truth or being obedient to Him,” that's not just apathy and indifference. That is an expression of humanity's hatred for God. It is an expression of the darkness and the love for darkness that man has and the hatred that he has for truth and for righteousness. Sometimes it is expressed in terms of intellectual superiority. I'm not foolish enough or stupid enough to believe that ancient Bronze Age book that you guys worship and love. We've progressed past that. We are more enlightened now that we've gone through the Enlightenment. We understand things that the ancients did not understand. Ignoring Christ, pleasing yourself, rejecting His demands, living in disobedience, setting up our own standards of righteousness and truth, living for ourself, following after our own hearts and self-worship, caring nothing for the truth, nothing for God's Word but only for ourselves, lying, idolatry, murderous of the heart, even pious religion that seeks to mask its hatred for God under the religiosity of love for truth is an expression of hatred for the one true God.
The Pharisees and the religious leaders of Jesus's day who crucified Jesus were doing so under the guise of a religiosity and a love for and a desire for the law, and yet they were haters of the one true God. In John 7:7, Jesus said to unbelievers and about unbelievers, “The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.” John 15:23: “He who hates Me hates My father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me and My father as well” (vv. 23–24). There's a hatred for Christ that unbelievers have that expresses itself sometimes in religiosity and pious behavior and sometimes in indifference and sometimes in outright hostility toward God and to God's people.
If left to ourselves, and this we have to remember, if left to ourselves, apart from the grace of God, you and I would still be in that condition. I say this if you're in Christ. You'd still be in that condition. Our natural state is at enmity with God. We are born in that state, born in rebellion, and we express it at every turn and every opportunity. Born into darkness with a love for sin and a hatred for the truth, we prefer darkness and ignorance to light and truth. And there is within the heart of fallen man, this seething, rageous, tumultuous hatred for God, for Christ, and for His truth, and you just need to look around us to see that this is true in our culture and amongst those who make no profession of faith in Christ at all.
But what can it accomplish? What can man possibly do against God? It is futility. It is emptiness. He meditates—that emptiness is described in the second phrase of verse 1—he meditates on vain things. “And the peoples devising a vain thing” is how the NASB translates it. The word devising there means plotting. It's translated as “plotting” in the NIV and the New King James. It's actually the same word translated “meditate” back in Psalm 1:2—“his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.” Here, the same word is used for the mental working of the unbeliever and those who rage against God. In fact, the LSB, the Legacy Standard, translates it that way—“Why do the nations rage and the peoples meditate on a vain thing?” So here you see yet another connection between Psalm 1 and Psalm 2. In Psalm 1:1–2, the wicked sinner, the scoffer, meditates upon their own counsel, whereas the blessed man meditates on the law of the Lord and in His law he dwells and muses day and night. And here in Psalm 2, we see an expression of what the wicked meditate on. They meditate on vain things, empty things.
The word meditate, you might remember from Psalm 1, means to muse over or to sort of chew over. It describes the muttering kind of underneath your breath. Do you remember that? [Mutters] Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, stands in the path of sinners, and sits in the seat of the scoffer. It's kind of that just turning over in your mind, in your heart, under your breath, in your mouth, in your mind, in your consciousness. It's a musing. It's a turning it over. It's a chewing on it and a meditating on it, sort of squeezing out the juice of it.
Well, the blessed man does that with the Word of God. The heathen nations and the unbeliever does that with their rebellion. They speak of it. They work over it. They whisper it. They talk of it. They plan it. They plot it. They meditate upon it. They think upon their iniquity. This is what they give their hearts and their minds to. Just as the heart of the blessed man is set on truth, so for the wicked, their heart, their mind, and their musing is set on rebellion. Their evil mutiny, their treason against God is the subject of their thought life, and their wicked ways and their rebellion are always on their lips because those things occupy their minds day and night. And it ought not to be with the blessed man. The unbeliever gives his mind to vanity and futility. In fact, this is how Paul describes fallen man in Romans 1:21: “Even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile [vain, empty] in their speculations [or their imaginations]. This is the condition of unbelieving man. They become futile in their thinking so that they meditate and muse on vain things.
And since all of their rebellion will come to nothing and all their tumultuous rage against God will amount to nothing, it is in the end vain. It's empty and useless. It is like the waves that crash against a rock. So the wicked in their rage accomplish nothing. You can see a massive wave come into the shoreline and crash against an enormous rock on the seashore and it will just turn to mist and be gone in an instant. So is all of the vain, wicked raging of sinful men. All their plotting and planning against God to overthrow His kingdom and overthrow His truth and reject His righteousness and thwart His plans amounts to nothing. It just crashes against that rock, turns to mist, ends up being nothing, and the rock remains unchanged, undaunted, unaltered, and immovable. So it is with the wicked. A raging rebellion.
Second, it is a defiant rebellion, verse 2, a defiant rebellion. Verse 2 says, “The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed.” This is utter defiance. Nations, peoples, kings, rulers. In verses 1–2, he's not just talking about one specific group of people. The rich take their stand against the Lord. No, the rich, the poor, the middle class. The rulers take their stand against the Lord. No, peoples, nations, everybody. Just people on one particular continent or just people of one particular ethnicity or just one language group or just one skin color—no, none of that. Just one culture? No, none of that. All of the peoples, all of the nations, all of the kings, all of the rulers. It is upper class, lower class. It is everybody who has a hostility against this God working together, standing together, taking counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed.
In verse 4, notice the contrast with the reference in verse 2 with the rulers or the kings of the earth. Contrast that with verse 4 where it describes God who sits in the heavens. The kings of the earth and God who sits in the heavens. The contrast there is intentional. The kings of the earth put on their silk robes and their crowns and they sit on their little chairs of gold with their silk cushion and their scepter in their hand, thinking that they rule over this vast domain on a planet which is just a speck in a solar system, which is just a speck in a galaxy, which is just a speck in the universe. And God sits above all of that, and He scoffs at the kings of the earth because these men in their pride and their arrogance and their vanity think that they rule over this vast domain. And in the end, they rule over nothing because God laughs at them. It's an intentional contrast that is set there to mock the kings of the earth.
These are influencers, government rulers, military leaders, economic authorities, commercial, trade, cultural, medical, academic, scientific, business, educational, entertainment, religious. Whatever the ruler, whatever they’re king over, whatever authority they have, they're the one who sits in the seat of the scoffer. Remember Psalm 1:1? They sit in the seat of influence and power and prestige. There they sit, and they scoff against God. Here in chapter 2, in Psalm 2, we get an idea of what it is that they are doing. And they are taking counsel together, they are coming together, taking their stand, and coming together against the Lord and against His Christ. In other words, they are conspiring one with another to plot against the Lord and His Anointed.
That kind of sounds like a conspiracy theory, doesn't it? A little bit like a conspiracy theory? It is a conspiracy, but it's not one hatched in a smoke-filled room where they script out all of their plans and then go play their parts. This is a conspiracy that is hatched in a sin-filled heart where each one does what he is naturally inclined to do. And as it turns out, they all end up working in concert together because they all have a common enemy. You ever wonder why it is that feminists never rage against Islam? They will rage all day long against Christianity, as if Christianity is responsible for all of the oppression of women that goes on all over the world. They'll never rage against Islam, but they'll rage against Christians all day long. It's a joke that Christianity results in the oppression of women. Why don't they do that? Because they have a common enemy. The common enemy is the Lord and His Christ. And therefore, they are really on the same team. Now, like brothers who live in a household, they might fight with one another, wrestle, poke, bite, scratch, claw, wrestle over toys, etc. They might do that from time to time, but in the end, they're in the same family. They're on the same team. They're united in the same kingdom. And so they are at war against the same enemy.
Recently, we have seen people protesting for Palestinians, holding up signs that say “Queers for Palestine.” Now, I'm not here to talk about homosexuality or Palestinians or any of that, but it should be obvious to all of us that if they took a flight and went to that area, that region, and went out there with their signs, the Palestinians would throw them off buildings and kill them. But as long as they have this one cause, a common enemy, God and His Christ, they will unite together with one another, laying aside all of their other differences. They end up conspiring together because each one acting in his own individual interests is at war against the same enemy, and so more often than not their agendas align, their actions align and serve to feed off one another. It is a conspiracy, but the conspiracy is not hatched by men in smoke-filled rooms. It's hatched by spiritual beings in the heavenly places who are all moving all of it against the Lord and His Christ. All of them stand together, finding agreement in this, that they will not have this Man to rule over them. They take counsel together to oppose Christ.
There's a New Testament commentary on this passage, Psalm 2. I read it to you earlier. I want to read to you the rest of that passage now. It's in Acts 4, where, after the apostles were arrested and warned not to preach anymore in the name of Christ in Acts 4, they are released by the council, and then they go meet with the church and they report to them all that had happened. And then they have a prayer meeting, and Acts 4 says this:
24 When they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, “O Lord, it is You who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them,
25 who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Your servant, said, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples devise futile things?
26 The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ.’” (Acts 4:24–26 NASB)
Pause there. You notice that they're quoting Psalm 2:1–2.
Then they said this: “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur” (vv. 27–28). Now you could not get Jews and Gentiles to agree on anything except the crucifixion of the Son of God. You could not get Herod and Pilate to agree on anything except the crucifixion of the Son of God. And so they quote Psalm 2 and say, “There were gathered together in this city Pilate and Herod, two men who would never talk to one another, but they conspired together to execute Your Christ, Your Anointed.” And the Jews and the Gentiles, two groups of people who would never go in concert with one another for anything except when it came to crucifying the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, then they were in lockstep agreement with one another. And the early disciples saw the crucifixion of Christ as a fulfillment of Psalm 2:1–2.
In fact, there's an interesting statement in Luke 23:12, where—this is in the trial of Jesus—at one point in the trial, Pilate sends Jesus to Herod, and it says that Herod had wanted to see Jesus for quite some time, so He had a trial before Herod, and then Herod sent Jesus back to Pilate. And Luke 23:12 says, “Now Herod and Pilate became friends with one another that very day; for before they had been enemies with each other.” Nothing will bring you together like crucifying the Son of God. Herod and Pilate became friends. Why? They conspired together, and though they may have disagreed on literally everything else, on this they agreed: we will not have this Man rule over us. And so they would put Him to death. Enemies became friends.
The word anointed here in verse 2 is the Hebrew word for Messiah. It can refer to an anointed king, like David was anointed in that sense, or a prophet was anointed, and it is the word that then also refers to ultimately the ultimate Anointed One, the Lord Jesus Christ.
They take counsel together. They take their stand together, and by the way, does the word stand and counsel sound familiar? Remember chapter 1, verse 1: “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers!” That is the idea. The unbelievers, they take counsel together. The wicked, they take their stand in the path of sin together, and so they are all united there in their rebellion and in their insolence. From their seat of influence and power, from which others are swayed, they scoff at God and His Christ. So Psalm 2 is a picture of the very kind of rebellion that is mentioned in Psalm 1:1. The kings of the earth fight against God and His truth, unanimous in their opposition.
And listen, in our day, it doesn't matter whether you're talking about the United Nations or the World Economic Forum or the G8 nations or any of the councils and confabs of unbelieving wicked rulers, they all get together and they are all united together against the Lord and against His Christ. Now, they don't have to stand up at the beginning of the World Economic Forum and say, “I pledge allegiance to the devil and the kingdom of darkness for which he stands.” They don't have to do that. But in pursuing their own agenda and their own interest, which is the exercise and the securing of their power and what they want to accomplish in this world, they all end up working in concert with one another. Once in a while, some little inter-family squabbles here and there, but ultimately, they are all going toward the same goal. They all want the same thing. They're taking counsel and conspiring one with another. I can't wait to get to verse 4—the Lord sits in the heavens, and He laughs at this—because ultimately, that is something of a hope.
Now, sometimes the impenitent wicked and the rebellious do state their purpose and they do state their intention. Here's something interesting. The Roman Emperor Diocletian who lived at the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth century, he advanced the Roman Empire into Spain toward the beginning of the fourth century. And there in Spain, before he died, he put up two pillars, two monuments to himself, and they bear this inscription—these are the two monuments’ inscriptions. On the first monument, he wrote this: “Diocletian Jovian Maximian Herculeus Caesares Augusti.” That's his name. I know there's six of them there, six good names there, by the way, if you're with child and looking for a good name. I wouldn't recommend Diocletian, but the rest of those five would be good. You don't have to use the whole thing. You could just drop one of those in there, it would be very august. So I won't repeat it again, but the name, and here we go: “For having extended the Roman Empire in the east and the west, and for having extinguished the name of Christians, who brought the Republic to ruin.” On the second pillar, this is inscribed: “Diocletian Jovian Maximian Herculeus Caesares Augusti, for having adopted Galerius in the east, for having everywhere abolished the superstition of Christ, for having extended the worship of the gods.”
Now here's something interesting. Within twenty years of those monuments being erected, Constantine would make Christianity an official religion of the Roman Empire. So, how it started, how it's going, right there in the early fourth century. Not so well. Diocletian, who said that he had abolished everywhere the superstition of Christ and extinguished the name of Christians, that was his monument to himself. And I would guess if I asked you today before this sermon who Diocletian was that very few of you even remember his name or even know who he was.
It is a raging rebellion, it is a defiant rebellion, and third, it is a lawless rebellion. Look at verse 3. “Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!” This is the wicked speaking. Now, these are not literal fetters. They're not literal cords or handcuffs or chains. That's not what's being described here. They weren't in prison, otherwise they wouldn't be able to conspire together with one another. So, it's not a confinement that is being described. He is describing here the constraints of God's rule, His law, His truth. The reign and the rule of this Christ, they will have nothing of that. They do not want this Man to rule over them. And so what they conspire together to do is to cast off the restraints of truth from themselves, to tear those fetters apart so that they can be what they would call free. Because this is how the unbeliever thinks, that true freedom is gained by casting off the restraints of God's truth and His moral standards. So they want to be rid of His commandments, His moral truths, His right to rule His creation. They refuse His authority and will not bow down to it. And in fact, everything that they intend to do is to cast off those restraints and to break the chains of this rule of this divine Son, the Lord and His Anointed. They hate God's law. They hate God's truth and His righteousness, and they want to be rid of it so they can be free.
This is expressed in our day in all kinds of different ways. I'll give you a few examples of them. All of the gender-bending madness that we see going on around us today is simply an expression of fallen man's unwillingness to let God have the final say in His creation. God says, “I have created man male and female.” “In the image of God He created him; male and female” (Gen. 1:27). And man says no, I will be a biological male that identifies as a female or doesn't identify as anything. Or I can be a biological female that will identify as a male—is that what I just said? Or biological whatever it is that identifies as the other thing. All of that rejection of gender and human sexuality that is written in the very DNA of our beings, mankind says no, we will not submit to those categories. It is a rejection of God's right to rule His creation and to decree and to determine and to establish what is true. And so man rejects that.
With marriage, God says one man, one woman, one flesh for one lifetime. And man in his fallenness says, no, we will have polygamy and polyandry and open marriage and adultery and homosexual marriage and any other kind of marriage that we want. It is a rejection of God's truth and His standards and His righteousness and an unwillingness to submit to what He has established in the creation order.
The gender roles that are expressed in creation to be honored inside of the home and inside of the church and the ministry of the church—no, mankind says we will not have that. That's just abusive, and we will instead take men and put them where they should not be and take women and put them where they should not be, and we will not have God to rule over us and determine what His creation should look like.
The same thing is true with God's truth and man's unwillingness to bow the knee to what is obviously true, instead saying we will make truth up ourselves, we will determine what is true, I will determine what is right and wrong, what's true for you is not necessarily true for me, and what's true for me is not necessarily true for you. That is a rejection of the God of truth and His right to decree what is true, things written into the fabric of creation.
And since our culture and our world, our entire world really, is on this pathway of rebellion, we have pride parades and drag queen story hours, presentations, the open sexual grooming of children, the sexualization of everything, debased moral standards, corporate and political corruption, tyranny, the abuse of power, the plundering of the public treasury, forever wars, ethnic hostility fomented by unbelievers for political power and for financial gain, violence in our streets and our cities, immorality everywhere we turn, murder of the unborn, and on and on it goes. They will not have His yoke, and they will fight against it at every single turn. And “because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed quickly, therefore the hearts of the sons of men among them are given fully to do evil” (Eccles. 8:11).
And so we live under a lawless rebellion, and they are taking all of this lawless insanity and they are trying to push it down on everybody from the top down because the nations are raging and the kings of the earth are taking their stand and they are saying, “We will be against the Lord and against His Christ, and we will not submit to that yoke.” And so they are going to try and make everybody do the same. That is nothing less than an arrogant, mutinous rebellion against God's moral standards and against His truth, and we are living through it in our day. We are seeing it everywhere that we turn.
Psalm 2:3 describes the wicked despising the law of God. And Psalm 1:2 describes the blessed man who delights in the law of God. So, do you delight in God's truth or do you despise God's truth? Spurgeon said this: “To the graceless neck the yoke of Christ is intolerable, but to the saved sinner it is easy and light. And we may judge ourselves by this: do we love that yoke or do we wish to cast it from us?” Do we love that yoke or do we wish to cast it from us? True blessing does not come from rejecting God's moral commands or truth. True blessing comes in delighting in that law and keeping it. The world thinks that licentious and libertine living is the path to true fulfillment and happiness, but the opposite is the truth. That is a lie. It only ends in ruin and destruction, utter despair and unhappiness. But blessed is the man whose “delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers” (Ps 1:2–3). That is the truth.
The raging, defiant, lawless rebels wish to cast off restraint, but they will only find that in the end, God will have His way. He will not be mocked, and they will only have pursued their own destruction and annihilation because Psalm 1:6 says that “the way of the wicked will perish.” Their rebellion is vain folly, and God will ultimately have the final say.
Now, brethren, it does sometimes appear as if the wicked have the upper hand in our world, and they certainly do. Their power and their influence seem to us insurmountable. They are the kings. They are the rulers. They have the nations. They are the influencers. They sit in the seats of scoffers, and they mock from their positions of power and influence. They're the movers, the shakers, the influencers of our society. And so what can the righteous do? We have to live under their raging, defiant, and lawless rebellion. But it is a vain rebellion, and Yahweh has the answer in verses 4–6. And so we can say in the words of the old hymn, “This is my father's world, O let me ne’er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet” (Babcock, “This Is My Father’s World”). That is the point of Psalm 2. This is God's promise to establish His King and His kingdom in spite of the vain rebellion of earthly powers.