Psalm 2: Two Voices, Only One King

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This is Psalm 2. May God bless the reading of His word. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?

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The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying,

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Let us burst their bonds apart, and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heaven laughs.

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The Lord holds them in derision. Then He will speak to them in His wrath, and terrify them in His fury, saying,

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As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of the decree.

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The Lord said to me, You are a 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.

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You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now therefore,

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O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

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Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way. For His wrath is quickly kindled.

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Blessed are all those who take refuge in Him. Father in heaven, I do pray that You would bless the preaching of Your word, that we would recognize,

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Lord God, who You are, and we would hear Your voice. We pray, Father God, that You would get me out of the way, and we would hear the voice of our

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Savior loud and clear. And may this word transform our hearts, grow us deeper in faith, and greater in love towards You.

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It's in Jesus' name we pray. Please be seated. So that's a short psalm, but there's a lot packed in there.

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So I'm gonna do my best to get through the whole thing this morning. On January 10th, 1920, the

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League of Nations, which is an intergovernmental organization, was founded as a result of the

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Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace.

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Its primary goal included preventing wars through the collective security and disarmament, and settling international disputes through negotiation and arbitration.

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In an address to the United States Senate in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson said, the

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League of Nations is the only hope for mankind. Well, thank goodness for the men who comprise the

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League of Nations. Don't you feel so much safer and secure now that our lives are in their hands?

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Don't you feel better knowing that? No. Is that the real and only hope for mankind?

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Not according to Psalm 2. The nations, the whole League of them, are raging, plotting, standing, and counseling together against the only real hope we have for mankind today,

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God and his anointed. Do we not see this playing out in the world today?

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This psalm is what should define our hope, and it should garner our attention because it's quoted by and alluded to at least 14 times in the

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New Testament. And it provides the introduction to all of our psalms. In other words, it sets the stage and the mood for the rest of the psalms.

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God is king, but the peoples are raging against him. Now, this psalm was most likely composed for a royal coronation ceremony in Jerusalem, like the crowning of a king.

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It was part of a ceremony. Perhaps one of the last kings, such as Josiah, who pledged himself, as someone would direct, to obey

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God's laws and traditions. Ironically, the very reason this psalm was composed to coronate a king who bound himself to God's law is the exact opposite objective of the nations of the world.

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They seek to rage and detach themselves from God's law. They want to dethrone the king.

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They hate the Lord, they hate his law, and they hate his anointed. Now, the psalm itself doesn't tell us who wrote it, but it's attributed to David by the apostles in Acts 4 .25.

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Luke quotes them, saying, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by his Holy Spirit, why did the

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Gentiles rage? And the people's plot in vain. So the apostles attribute the authorship of this psalm to David.

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And I'm in no position to disagree with the apostles, so David wrote it. This psalm, written by David, again, is part of a coronation ceremony.

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However, it will also point us to a future king, a foreshadowing of a greater and more spiritual king, the

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Lord Jesus himself. So before we get into the text, we need to recognize another important characteristic of Psalm 2, mainly that we cannot divorce it from Psalm 1.

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There's very good reasons to believe, scholarly reasons, to believe that Psalm 1 and 2 were one single psalm at one time.

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Psalm 1 begins with, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked. And Psalm 2 ends with, blessed are all who take refuge in him.

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It's what's called an inclusio. It's a literary device based on a central principle.

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Psalm 1 begins with a blessing, and leads into Psalm 2, which ends with a blessing.

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It's framed around a main principle, God, his plan, his king, and his kingdom.

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That's what the combining of these two psalms point to. But where Psalm 1 starts off with an individual blessing, an individual and an individual blessing,

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Psalm 2 ends with a collective people and a collective blessing. This is

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God who's going to bless all of his people. But for our purposes today, we're gonna be looking at Psalm 2 the way it's typically marked out in your

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Bible, keeping in mind that it was one psalm at one point in time. So if we take

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Psalm 2 as a unit, it's broken up into four parts or four stanzas representing four voices.

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In verses one through three, we hear the voice of mankind raging. In four through six, we hear the voice of God the

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Father replying. In verses seven to nine, we hear the voice of God the Son requesting.

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And finally, in verses 10 and 12, we hear the voice of God the Spirit rebuking. So in this psalm, we get to hear the united voice of mankind in agreement raging against God.

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And in response, we get to hear the united voice of God thundering back in triunity.

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The Father, the Son, and the Spirit each have something to say about this situation. God will respond with a reply, a request, and a rebuke against man's collective voice of rage.

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So let's take a look at the first section of the psalm beginning with verse one. The psalm starts off with a question, but it's a rhetorical one.

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Why do the nations rage and the people's plot in vain? The question isn't asked to discover the reason behind mankind's rebellion.

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It's being asked out of astonishment that someone would actually think that they could triumph over God.

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It's a rhetorical question. Anyone who thinks overthrowing God is a possibility has grossly underestimated the power of the creator and grossly overestimated the power of the creature.

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Man is no match for God. That should be foundational. The word translated rage in verse one appears only once in all of the scriptures.

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And the word suggests an image of a lynch mob gathering together to take action.

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They want to lynch God. The verse reveals the default position of the human heart.

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It's plotting and raging against him to lynch him. Paul would tell us that the heart set on the flesh is at enmity with God.

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Enmity is mad, very mad. It's like mad on steroids. Like it's mad mad.

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But thankfully, the text says that these plots are in vain. The nations rage, plot, scheme against God, but their plans are futile, useless, delusional.

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Any attempt to overthrow God is an act of delusion. And sadly, this isn't the isolated thought of one lunatic attempting to defeat the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God.

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This is the collective strategy of all the nations, the whole league of them.

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Look again at verse two. The rulers take counsel together. Together, they're united.

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This is a collective plan, united and deliberate. It's a unified rage of delusion.

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What can so unite sworn enemies, kings who hate each other here on earth, to collectively plot and conspire together in such an act of solidarity?

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Their hatred of God, of course, right? We see this elsewhere in John 11, the

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Pharisees and the Sadducees. These two groups hate each other. They despise each other, yet they unite to kill

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Jesus. They can't agree with each other on any theological topic, any political topic.

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They can only agree on one thing, kill Jesus. Kill him. Nothing binds unbelievers so close to each other as their disdain for God and their desire to rid themselves of his rule.

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Matthew Henry makes an important point about this section. He says, princes and people, court and country, have sometimes separate interests, but here, they're united against Christ.

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Not the mighty only, but the mob, the heathen, the people, numbers of them, communities of them. In other words, all kinds of people, every type, rich, poor, high, low, all ethnicities, all leaders, followers,

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Pharisees, Sadducees, are all united against God. And the text says they're plotting.

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They're plotting. Interestingly, the Hebrew word for plot is the same word used in Psalm 1 as meditate.

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So where the blessed man meditates on God's law day and night, the nations plot.

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They meditate against God's law continually. It's a contrast.

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In Acts, Luke quotes Psalm 2 to highlight the irony and the vanity of mankind's rebellion. He recounts that it was

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Herod, Pilate, and the Jews, the Gentiles, who collectively, together, united, put

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Jesus on the cross. And ironically, it was their rebellion against Jesus that actually secured and fulfilled

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God's plan to save his people at the cross. Boy, what a turn of events.

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Satan thinks he's got Jesus. Oh, let's put him on the cross. God's like, yeah, put him on the cross. That's what's gonna save everyone.

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Gotcha. It's there that we see four different sets of people united together in their hatred of Jesus.

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Herod, Pilate, the Jews, and the Gentiles all conspire to put him on the cross. Since the enmity of the nations is set against the

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Lord and his anointed, their hate and rage will vein on in vain, as this prophetic psalm finds a piece of its fulfillment at the cross.

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Psalm 2 is a reminder to mankind that God has set a date and he hasn't forgotten.

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So the nations are raging and conspiring to do what? They desire to break free from God's law and free themselves from his rule.

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The rebellious heart of mankind seeks autonomy. That's a big word. Auto, self, nomos, law.

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It seeks self -law or self -rule. The human heart wants to rule over itself, not be ruled over.

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Look at verse three. Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.

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In other words, I don't want any restrictions. I wanna you do you, me do me, right? I don't want restrictions.

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That's slavery. And notice, it's not that they don't believe God exists. They know he exists and are trying to break free from his rule, from his sovereignty.

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The people are rejecting God's authority over them and doing whatever they can to escape it because they see it as bondage.

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Like I said before, the heart set on a flesh is at enmity with God. It's hostile to God. It will not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.

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However, there's no escape. Imagine trying to cast off or escape laws that are written on your soul, written on your heart, engraved in your very nature.

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It's an act of futility, vanity. And when you try to cast those things off, what

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God has set inside of you, it leads to despair, anguish, suicide.

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God's authority threatens their rule and their freedom. So it is the cry of the unregenerate heart to say,

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I want to rule myself. I define the terms. I define what's right and wrong.

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No one tells me what to do. I'm the boss of me. It's no surprise that the one and only commandment in the satanic

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Bible is this. Do what thou will, shall be the whole of the law. Self -law, autonomy.

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George McDonald, I like the way he says it. He says, the one principle of hell is this.

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I am my own. But real freedom comes from obeying

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God's law, not casting it away. You and I are created in the image of God and cannot escape that no matter how hard we try.

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If you're in rebellion to God, stop trying. Think of the people who are railing against this, desperately trying to redefine reality.

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It's not a baby. It's a clump of cells. It's not a mom.

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It's a birthing person. What is a woman? What am

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I, a biologist? These men are trying to redefine, there are men trying to redefine themselves as women and women trying to redefine themselves as men.

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But that will never work because God has already defined his creation. He defines reality, not us.

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Again, railing against this causes internal anguish. That's why there's a predominance of suicide in that camp.

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As an image bearer of God, you will never experience true liberty and be at peace if you continually rebel against what you were created to be.

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Listen, if you pull up to a house and the key in your hand doesn't fit the lock of the house you're at, you're at the wrong house.

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You won't get in because the key doesn't fit. Now, trying to get into that house that you don't owe with the wrong key, it's called breaking and entering.

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It's illegal and you'll get arrested. I'm sure Pastor Jason will testify to that. Now, you don't need a new key.

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What you need to do is back up out of the driveway and pull up into the driveway of your own house and use the key that came with it.

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You don't change the key to match the house you want. You use the key you have to open the door of the house you own.

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God created you a specific way. He doesn't make mistakes. You are not random.

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The image of God will continually confront the nations, staring them in the face while they rage on trying to flee from it.

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Sinful humanity rages against the thought of a God defining and ruling over us because they want to define themselves.

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They want dominion and control. Tragically, the nations rage and are unified against the only thing, the only one that can bring them true freedom,

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Jesus. Competing kings, adversaries, and enemies would rather cooperate with each other to overthrow

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God and embrace chaos than submit themselves to Jesus's kingship and acknowledge his authority over them.

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The irony will swell further because the world, as the world seeks autonomy, the world doesn't have just one king.

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It has many kings, and they all compete against each other for power and control.

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So chaos ensues. So here's your choices, and I like the way Doug Wilson says, it's

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Christ or it's chaos. Those are the only two choices. The world will never achieve true liberation because having many individual worldly kings leads to having many individual worldly kingdoms.

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That's the necessary consequence of autonomy, self -law. In other words, it's self -defeating.

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If you want to rule over yourself and he wants to rule over himself and she wants to rule over herself, you have all these competing things.

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There is no one king. You will always have chaos, and it will always be that way until the world submits itself to the one true king, the only true king who can bring lasting peace.

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That's why he's called the Prince of Peace. Do you ever wonder why we have a democracy in the United States? I don't know if we do anymore, but did you ever wonder why we had a democracy in the

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United States? It's because we don't trust just one person to lead us properly.

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Yet, instinctively, we really do want someone to lead us, to rule over us properly and righteously.

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It's hardwired into us. We have three branches of government. Why? It's a balance of power.

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We have Father, Son, and Spirit. That's not a balance of power. That's a balance of love, which we're gonna hear in a minute. We do long for a king.

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It's ingrained in us. We desire a perfect king, a just king, a wise and a true king. But the problem of the human heart is we think we're king.

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You've heard this before. Alice, I'm the king of this castle. And what's the response?

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Put a sock in it, Ralph. Right? So looking for stability by hoping in humanity is an effort in futility.

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Right? So in verses one through three, we hear the collective voice of humanity. God, we don't want your law, but their rage against God is in vain.

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So what's God's response to all this? Let's look at his reply in verses four through six. So what you need to know is the scene now shifts from earth to heaven.

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As we read, God is sitting on his throne. So this is a scene of heaven. And it's here in the heavenlies that we read

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God's response. God, okay, I've heard what you have to say, and here's my reply.

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He laughs. Man's rage against God is laughable to him.

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And if you look at verse four, he doesn't even get up. He sits in the heavens and laughs. He stays seated, which means he's not worried.

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He's not running to the door to answer it. He's not anxious. He's comfortable on the throne, seated.

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His power isn't affected by the world. It's not affected or diminished one bit by the people raging. And God laughing at the wicked is nothing new.

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Psalm 37 reads, but the Lord laughs at the wicked for he sees their day coming. Right, he knows.

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It's not like God's worried that a rebellion has occurred that may knock him off the throne or overthrow the kingdom. He's sovereign over all things.

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He says, I am God. There is none like me declaring the end from the beginning. From ancient times, things not yet done.

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Saying, my counsel will stand. I will accomplish all my purpose. This one true king seated on the throne who we worship is immovable and immutable.

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Praise God. I like the way commentator Roger Ellsworth says it. Hate all they want, plan all they like, fret and fuss all they wish.

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They can never rid themselves of God. How does this scene of raging hostility strike

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God? Is he stricken with terror? Does he fly into a panic? Does he call an emergency session of the heavenly cabinet?

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No, he just laughs. He scoffs at puny men as they parade briefly across the stage of history, as they fume and fuss.

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God exists over and above us and he always will, regardless of what mankind plots or how much it rages.

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He laughs at anyone who thinks differently and then holds them in derision. Derision means to openly ridicule them to their faces.

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You think you're in charge? No. God is sovereign. It's God who sets up kings and governments as per Romans 13.

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Any authority or power that the nations have comes from God himself. In fact, you may recall before Jesus was crucified, when he spoke to Pilate, he said, you,

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Pilate, would have no authority over me if it were not given to you by my father. True power resides with God, not man.

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Rebellion against his rule is laughable and worse, it warrants God's wrath and fury.

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So while the nations gather together for war, God merely opens his mouth.

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And since the nations are raging in rebellion, God's voice is one of wrath and justice.

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He will not endure such insurgency from sinful creatures like this. The voice of the

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Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars and it will break mankind if you stand in rebellion to him.

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In verse six, God tells him what his plan is. So he's like, nations, I've heard your plan, but as for me,

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I have set my king on my holy hill. That's it. Nothing else.

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That's all I have to do. The nations set themselves against God and God sets his son on the throne.

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And notice the possessive pronouns he uses. Yeah, God's into pronouns. As for me,

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I set my king on my holy hill. God's solution to this problem is

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God -centered. It is God's plan, God's will, God's decision.

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That's the focus. He doesn't conform to you. You need to conform to him.

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Mankind doesn't get to pick this king. There is no voice or consensus by the people.

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God is carrying out his plan, doing what he wants in accordance with his nature over and against their will.

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And 2 Corinthians 16 says to one, it will be a fragrance from death to death.

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And to the other, it will be a fragrance of life to life. In other words, it will be the sound of wrath and fury for some, but to others, it will be the blessed sound of salvation and worshiping

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King Jesus forever. We live in a day and age that hosts the People's Choice Awards.

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But guess what? Jesus didn't win that. But that doesn't matter because the united voice of God trumps the entire choice of the people.

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It doesn't matter. So in verse six, when God says, I have set my king on my holy hill, the word translated set means to install or establish.

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And the tense of the verb indicates that this is an act that has already been done. In other words, it's past tense.

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There's no chance of it changing. What the nations are raging against has already been set in stone.

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It's an act of futility to rebel against God. As for now, this serves as the first of the three responses from God.

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The first response being from God the Father. Remember, we believe in a triune God and God's response will be triune also.

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And this is important because our God is different than everyone else's God. And I wanna take a minute to pause and just address the uniqueness and the necessity of a triune

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God as opposed to a unitarian God or a uni -personal God. We believe in a tri -personal

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God. This is what separates Christianity apart from every other major world religion.

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And I gleaned something from Tim Keller that I wanna repeat to you. And this is important because God is a unity in community.

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It's unique. God is love. Many people have difficulty with the

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Trinity. The God of Judaism, okay. The God of Islam, maybe.

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But a Trinity? But think about it. If you really think about it, you can never say God is love except for a triune

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God. If you have an impersonal God like an Eastern God, that type of God is impersonal, like a force.

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Therefore, it cannot be love. It's impersonal. Pastor Jason will tell you as an ex -Jehovah's Witness, the watchtower would teach them that the

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Holy Spirit is a force. Force is impersonal. It can't love, it can't hate. It's just a force.

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So an Eastern God would be impersonal, can't love. And in a uni -personal

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God, a God that's one person like the God of Islam and the God of Judaism, wouldn't be loving either until it created someone to love.

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Love requires two or more persons, which would mean for that God, power comes before love.

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A uni -personal God would have to exercise power to create a race of people in order to experience love.

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So love would come second. Power would precede love. That's a view that coincides with paganism.

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In other words, what life is really all about is power, but not with the

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God of Scripture. If God is triune, he is love and community from all eternity.

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He is love by nature. And it was out of that love that he decided to exercise power and create other beings to share love with them and bring himself glory.

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So with the God of Scripture, love comes first and forms the basis for power, which has enormous implications for what's actually important in human life.

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We sang this morning, your love is the firm foundation. I will place my life,

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I will build my life upon your love. As I saw that, I'm like, yes, they must've read my notes. So if you really think that love is meaningful and central to God's nature, you have to believe in a triune

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God. If not, you would have to believe that love is peripheral, fringe. It comes later after power.

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And again, that's a pagan notion. This is the issue that sets our God apart from all others. His power is rooted in love.

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Here's how I would explain it. There's a big difference between the power of love and the love of power.

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The nation's love of power, God in heaven, the power of love. Since God is triune, the power he exercises in setting up his son as king upon the throne is rooted and grounded in the power of love.

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Everything our God does is rooted in love first, power second. So the first voice of the triune

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God replies to man's rage with a king, his king, his decision, his kingdom, after having a good laugh, of course.

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Or as James Boyce says, after he laughs at these imbeciles. Don't hold back, tell us what you really feel.

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All right, let's move on and look at the son's request, verses seven through nine. Verse seven begins with,

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I will tell of the decree, the Lord said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you. And it's here where we can glean from several of the

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New Testament writers who do allude to this psalm where God specifically refers to Jesus as his son.

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Over 14 times in the New Testament, God refers to Jesus as his son, his only son, his only begotten, the unique one of a kind son whom he loves.

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So Jesus is not just God's king, he's also God's son. And God's son is one with the father, in other words, they're of the same nature, they're triune.

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So what comes first with Jesus, power or love? Love. Jesus is not like the creaturely kings of the earth, vying for power, raging against God, he is the king united with the father, rooted in love.

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He possesses divine power, rooted in divine love, because he's God in the flesh.

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We also see Luke specifically applying verse seven of psalm two to Jesus' resurrection in Acts 13.

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He says, but God raised him from the dead, and what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us children by raising

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Jesus, also it is written in the second psalm, you are my son, today

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I have begotten you. So Luke sees, he quotes psalm two, he sees Jesus' resurrection as a fulfillment of this verse.

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And remember, as I said earlier, this psalm is a royal coronation of a king who pledged himself to God's law.

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This points to the coronation of Jesus. And so in reading verse seven, we can see that this is the voice of the son of God, none other than Jesus himself, telling us of God the father's decree to make him the king.

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The decree is a divinely prescribed mandate that Jesus would be king, he would be the Messiah. God gives us a king, but not an ordinary king.

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He gives us his son, a holy king. Jesus would come to do the father's will and bring his father to glory.

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He would come to die in the place of his people, again, loving, and rise again to lead them to victory.

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The writer of Hebrews would also quote this psalm, and I wanna read you the whole passage, so bear with me.

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Long ago and at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he spoke to us by his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

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He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

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After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited, is more excellent than theirs, for to which of the angels did

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God ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you? Where God previously spoke to us through the prophets, he now speaks to us through his final prophet and the rightful heir to the throne, his son.

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The same writer would go on to speak of the priesthood of Jesus. So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, you are my son, today

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I have begotten you. When you read Psalm 2 in that particular verse, there's so much wrapped up in that one verse.

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So Jesus is not just crowned as our king and our prophet, he's also installed as our priest.

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Jesus is God's prophet, Jesus is God's king, and Jesus is God's priest. He's prophet, priest, and king.

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That's what's contained in that one verse of the Psalm in Psalm 2.

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But there's also a second part. Jesus recounts in verse eight for us a question that God asks him.

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It reads, ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of your possession. In other words, the nations and the earth are

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Jesus's for the asking. So now I listened to a guy by the name of Greg Bonson, and every time he taught on this verse, he would ask the listeners, so do you think

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Jesus asked for the nations? What do you think? I'll ask you the question. Did he ask

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God to give him the nations? Yes, he most certainly did.

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How do we know? Matthew 28, 18 and 19. After Jesus has been raised from the dead, he says, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

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Therefore, go make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the

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Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

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Jesus has all of God's authority now and commands his followers to make disciples of who?

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All the nations. Why? Because they belong to him. He asked the Father for the nations.

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They belong to him. And now he sends his bride out to go do the work and bring them to Jesus. Jesus has been appointed the heir of all things.

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And although Jesus is a king, he's far different than the kings of the earth. Remember at Herod's birthday party and Herodias' daughter came in and danced with him.

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He was so pleased with her that he said, ask of me and I'll give you anything, up to half of my kingdom.

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Why half? Cheapskate. Why only half?

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Because he's earthly king. He had to retain ruling interest in the kingdom. He needed control, power.

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Not so with the triune God. God the Father gives the whole kingdom to Jesus because he and his

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Father echo a united voice. They are one. This highlights the difference between God and man and love preceding power.

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The authority of both heaven and earth belongs to Jesus. The dominion over all the nations and all the earth are his.

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They are his inheritance. He is the rightful heir because Jesus has asked. Jesus was appointed to reign and he will not fail.

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He's ruling and reigning right now. Whether you like that or not, Jesus is

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Lord. We are all under his authority. Whether you are raging against him or whether you're submitted to him, he owns it all.

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I love Spurgeon here. He has a gem of a quote. He says, God's anointed is appointed and will not be disappointed.

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All right, real concise. Church, autonomy is a delusion.

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Let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ. You cannot rule over yourself properly.

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Do not follow your own heart. That's what the world will tell you. Proverbs says, whoever follows his own heart is a fool.

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Get your heart in line with God's heart. So the first voice of the triune God, the father says, I have a king.

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The second voice of the triune God, the son says, I am that king. In the next verse, verse 10, the setting reverts from heaven back to earth where God's king will deal with the raging nations.

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So it started in earth, goes to heaven and now we're back on earth. Again, while this is a sweet sound for some, this will be nails on a chalkboard for the unbeliever because Jesus repeats his father's orders.

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You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Psalm 110 tells us the

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Lord sent forth from Zion your mighty scepter, rule in the midst of your enemies. This scepter refers to the messianic power and dominion that Jesus would have as the divine son of God.

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He's the God man, he's king over both realms. He's the divinely decreed prophet, priest and king of heaven and earth.

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And since this scepter is made of iron, it will not bend, it will not bow or break.

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The justice Jesus brings will be inflexible, uncompromising and severe.

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We often hear, I receive Jesus as my personal Lord and savior. And the sinful tendency of the human heart takes that to mean he has a personal set of laws just for me.

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That's not true. They'll say God knows my heart, you know. Your heart is the problem.

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Your heart needs to be transformed like his. Obedience is big in the kingdom of God.

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You just don't say you're saved. Show me your faith. Faith without works is dead. We must obey

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God. Our hearts can become calloused and hearted to God's law. He has one set of laws and they're not bendable.

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I'm not saying you're saved by works or your obedience. You're saved by the mercy and grace of God. But if you've been hit by the

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Holy Spirit, that's more powerful than getting hit by a Mack truck. Somebody gets hit by a Mack truck and comes here this morning and says, oh yeah,

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I got hit by a Mack truck. You'd be like, no, you didn't. How do you know? You don't have a cast on. None of your bones are broken.

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Somebody walking like the world says they got hit by the Holy Spirit. No, you didn't. Oh, don't judge me.

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Aren't you supposed to love me? I do love you. I love you enough to tell you that you're not walking in accordance with God's word. You need to repent.

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You need to trust Christ. You need to join near to him. So finally, we get to the spirit's response or rebuke in verse 10.

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And I say this is the voice of the Holy Spirit for several reasons. First, because the role of the Holy Spirit is to convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment, which we're clearly gonna hear in these verses.

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And second, it's because it's the spirit that will testify of Jesus as per John 15.

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Jesus says, the Holy Spirit, he will testify of me. So the Holy Spirit teaches us and points us to Jesus.

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And we see exactly that happening in verses 10 and 12, through 12. So look at verse 10.

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Now, therefore, O kings, be wise, be warned, O rulers of the earth. So first, there's a warning and a call to earthly kings to be wise.

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The word wise here means to ponder, to understand, to act prudently with devotion. It's synonymous with the meditating that the man in Psalm 1 does, who delights in God's law and meditates on it.

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We also know that Proverbs tells us that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

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So in order to be wise, the kings must fear God first. He's the king of kings. He's not just a king.

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He's not one among equals. He's the king of kings. This is what the spirit bids them to do in verse 10 when he says to be wise.

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Then in verse 11, they're told, serve the Lord with fear and trembling. The earthly king's fear of being ruled by God must succumb to a reverent fear of the

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Lord and his judgment against them. They are being summoned to surrender, to relinquish their plot against the

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Lord and his Messiah and lay down their arms, lay down their vain idea of autonomy because Jesus is

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Lord of both heaven and earth. Jesus's lordship extends over all, vertically and horizontally, while the earthly rulers rule horizontal only and creaturely only.

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Again, another gem from Spurgeon. He says it like this. Christ is not only the king of the nations, but king of the saints.

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One he rules over, the other he rules in. God rules in his people, not just over them.

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In verse 11, we hear, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. The word serve here is abad in Hebrew, and again, it's very interesting.

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It's used in Genesis 2 .15. The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it, abad it, and keep it.

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So the word for serve in Psalm 2 and the word for work in Genesis 2 .15 is the same word.

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The Garden of Eden and the mandate to work the Garden and to keep it and extend it hasn't changed.

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When Jesus came back to the earth, we hear those words in John 1 .1, in the beginning, this is the new beginning, the beginning of the new heavens and the new earth.

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He's the final Adam, the last Adam, and he will not fail in his mission. We are appointed to him as a bride.

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A bride as a suitor will help me to their husband. Jesus is ruling and reigning until he makes his enemies a footstool for his feet.

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How does he do that? By strong churches like this, proclaiming the truth and proclaiming the gospel and bringing

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God's enemies under his footstool in mercy and love. If you're a

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Christian, you are the bride of Christ and you are called to co -labor with your husband to extend the

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Garden. Lastly, the spirit warns us to kiss the son lest he be angry at you and you perish in the way.

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God's anger is a righteous anger. It is a proper and just anger against unrighteousness and sinful behavior, and it will result in us perishing if we live in our own way autonomously.

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Proverbs says there's a way that seems right to a man, but in the end, it leads to destruction.

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And we all know what Jesus says. I am the way, the truth, and the life. There are two voices, but only one king.

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One voice is rooted in rage. The other voice is rooted in love. And notice the spirit doesn't say to blow a kiss in verse 12 as if the distance between him and the nations isn't an issue.

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It is. They're separated from him. You have to draw close to someone to kiss him.

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The scripture says draw near to God and he will draw near to you. But the nations have to come to him on his terms.

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What are his terms? Unconditional surrender. There can only be one king, and it's not you.

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It's not me either. Finally, we're told in verse 12, in the final line of the entire psalm, blessed are all those who take refuge in him.

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In other words, if you turn from your own way, draw close to Jesus, submit to him as Lord, and take refuge in him as Savior, you will be blessed.

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But you have to get off your own throne first. There's no negotiation. You don't get to negotiate the terms in this agreement.

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You have to come to Jesus on his terms, unconditional surrender. So to sum up Psalm 2, in this psalm, we hear four declarations, two voices.

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The united voice of mankind raging against the Lord and his anointed, and then we hear the singular, united, loving voice of God in response.

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The Father says, I have a king. The Son says, I am that king. The Spirit says, serve that king.

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Friends, the message is crystal clear. Repent, surrender to and believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved, be blessed. He is our only hope.

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In the end, the League of Nations' goal of world peace evaporated when it proved incapable of preventing aggression by the

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Axis powers in the 1930s, which led to the Second World War. The credibility of the organization was weakened by the fact that the

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United States never officially joined the League, and the Soviet Union joined late, and only for a short period of time.

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The onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed in its primary purpose, which was to prevent any future world war.

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The League lasted for a total of 26 years, and was eventually replaced by the United Nations, a new set of earthly kings.

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Friends, there exists no League of Nations, no United Nations, no group of earthly kings that will ultimately succeed and bring true peace on this world, except it fall under the rule of the one true king.

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Contrary to Woodrow Wilson, the only hope for mankind is the decreed plan of God, his king, his plan, his kingdom.

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When the League of Nations gave way to what we now know as the United Nations, someone said, we must move as quickly as possible to a one world government, one world religion under a one world leader, and to that I say amen, his name is

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Jesus, submit to him as king, welcome to Psalm 2. So once again, lastly,

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I'll repeat the words of David in Psalm 2. Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way.

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And if you draw near to Jesus to kiss the son, make sure it's not a Judas kiss, like the nations offer him.

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Surrender wholly, completely, repent, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved.