When God Laughs (Psalm 2:4-6) | Worship Service

Psalm 46 Call to Worship and Reformation Hymn

Good morning, as we begin our worship service this morning with a call to worship from Psalm 46. And it says, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains shake into the heart of the sea.

Though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its lofty pride. Yahweh of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our stronghold. From the pages of scripture to the pen of Luther, the message remains the same.

Our God is our refuge and strength. So let's sing together this timeless hymn, the battle hymn of the Reformation, a mighty fortress is our God.

Fortress is our God, our God.

Psalm 113, who is like the Lord?

In service, host of heaven.

Just two things that are worth announcing that are in your bulletin. There are a few other events coming up, so check your bulletin for those events. But two things I want to make you aware of first, next Sunday is our annual potluck, harvest dinner potluck.

So after the service, we'll be tearing down all of the chairs, setting up tables and enjoying a meal together. The details of what you will want to bring to that next week are in your bulletin. So check and make sure that you know whether you're supposed to bring a main dish or a dessert, or supposed to drop crab legs off in my office before on your way in, the bulletin will tell you that.

And then second, we, many of you know that Kevin Brenneman has cancer in our church, and he's going through a struggle with that. So somebody that Kevin works with is going to be putting on a instrumental bluegrass concert as a benefit for Kevin with an auction.

And all of the proceeds will go to benefit Kevin and his family. So if you want tickets to that, it's November 16th, which is a Saturday night, you can talk to, Lisa, are you in charge of that? Talk to Lisa Slippy about how to get tickets.

I think they're $20 a piece, and we're going to be hosting it here in our building. And so if you're wanting to come to that and contribute to that, we would welcome you to do so, and talk to Lisa for details.

Psalm 59 and Prayer for Deliverance

Turn if you will now, please, to Psalm 59, the book of Psalms, to Psalm 59. Psalm 59. We begin with the superscript. For the choir director said to Al-Tashhef, a victim of David, when Saul sent men and they watched the house in order to kill him.

Deliver me from my enemies, O my God. Set me securely on high, away from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from those who do iniquity and save me from men of bloodshed. For behold, they have set an ambush for my life.

Fierce men launch an attack against me, not for my transgression nor for my sin, O Lord. For no guilt of mine, they run and set themselves against me. Arouse yourself to help me and see. You, O Lord, God of hosts, the God of Israel, awake to punish all the nations.

Do not be gracious to any who are treacherous in iniquity. They return at evening. They howl like a dog and go around the city. Behold, they belch forth with their mouth. Swords are in their lips, for they say, who hears?

But you, O Lord, laugh at them. You scoff at all the nations. Because of his strength, I will watch for you, for God is my stronghold. My God, in his loving kindness, will meet me. God will let me look triumphantly upon my foes.

Do not slay them, or my people will forget. Scatter them by your power and bring them down, O Lord, our shield. On account of the sin of their mouth and the words of their lips, let them even be caught in their pride.

And on account of curses and lies which they utter. Destroy them in wrath. Destroy them that they may be no more, that men may know that God rules in Jacob. To the ends of the earth. They return at evening, they howl like a dog and go around the city.

They wander about for food and growl if they're not satisfied. But as for me, I shall sing of your strength. Yes, I shall joyfully sing of your loving kindness in the morning. For you have been my stronghold and a refuge in the day of my distress.

O my strength, I will sing praises to you, for God is my stronghold. The God who shows me loving kindness. Will you stand with me as we pray? Let us bow our heads. Our Father, you are our rock and our refuge, our strong deliverer and our strong tower.

And we are reminded again this morning through this psalm, as well as the one we'll be studying later, Psalm 2, that the nations are raging and taking their stand against you and against your anointed, the kings of the earth in tumultuous raging conflict against your truth and your righteousness.

And yet you are the sovereign God who delivers your people and you are in charge of our times. You know our strengths and our weaknesses. You watch over us and you keep us. You bless your people. You guard and protect us to accomplish your purposes.

We know that you are in the heavens and whatever you do will flourish, it will prosper. No purpose of yours can be thwarted. No one can call you to account and say to you, what have you done? And no one can judge what you have done in righteousness.

And so to you, we commit our cause. We commit the truth. We commit ourselves, trusting you are righteous and glorious, good, and that you are sovereign and wise and that you will dispose of all things, all peoples, all nations, and all of creation in a way that will bring you glory and will be for the good and the benefit and the blessing of your people, both now and forever.

We thank you for your grace and kindness. Watch over us this day. Watch over this nation. Watch over your people, your church, and accomplish your purposes in and through your word today in us, we ask in Christ's name, amen.

Let's sing together, the church is one foundation.

The church is one foundation It's Jesus Christ, her Lord, she and so is all of us

It says, who is like you among the gods, O Yahweh? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, fearsome in praises, working wonders? You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them. In your loving kindness, you have guided the people whom you have redeemed.

In your strength, you have led them to your holy habitation. Yahweh shall reign forever and ever. Let's sing together, God is king forever, Psalm 99.

Psalm 2 and the Rebellion of the Nations

You need to turn in your Bibles.

To the book of Psalms again, to Psalm 2, to Psalm 2,.

And we'll read the Psalm together here and we'll pray in just a moment, but let's begin with a word of prayer before we start our study. Our Father, we open your word with gladness and with joy, for we see in the pages of scripture, our glorious God revealed to us in the written word, which is so sure and reliable and true.

And we pray that today, our exposure to the truths regarding your nature, your justice, your righteousness, your grace, goodness, and love may serve to warm our hearts and to warn our hearts. And we pray that you would be glorified as we are exposed to your word, that you would be glorified to conform us to the image of Christ through that word.

Bring any who are here who have never responded to the message of salvation to your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that in him, they may find refuge from the wrath that is to come and teach us to think biblically about the world in which we live and our response to that, we pray in Christ's name, amen.

From the beginning of human history, mankind has been in rebellion against a good and benevolent and kind creator. The sin of Adam in the garden launched his progeny into a rebellion that has lasted to this present day and will last until the Lord Jesus Christ returns.

And this course that Adam set us on has been willfully and intentionally pursued by all of his children down to this present day, even to our own self-destruction. The idolatrous worship of false religion, the violence, immorality, and wickedness have marked Adam's fallen race since the beginning.

Cain expressed his hatred for the one true God by killing his brother outside the garden. Since Cain could not ascend the steps to heaven and tear God off of his throne and plunge the knife into God's chest and do away with him, he did the next best thing that he could do, which was to kill a righteous man who was created in the image of God.

It was the closest he could get, and that's why he did what he did. That rebellion of Adam's race is expressed both individually and corporately through all of history. At the time of Noah, the earth was filled with violence and there were only eight God-fearing people on the planet, and God destroyed the world that then was through a deluge of water, drowning everybody except for the eight whom were spared on board the ark.

After the flood, man populated the earth again and began to fill the earth, and they assembled themselves in contradiction and against the revealed will of God at Babel, and God judged them for that by confusing their languages, and so goes all of human history.

Mankind in rebellion against God, and we are part of a cosmic war, a cosmic war with eternal stakes. There are spiritual forces on both sides. There are two kingdoms at war with one another. It is a truth war, and you and I are caught up in the midst of that.

It is a war that is old as time itself and as current as today's headlines, and the questions that are asked in every era are asked today, and the questions go as follows. Who determines what is true?

Whose authority will be recognized? Who has the right to set the rules? Who is it that is going to rule in this creation? Who will be obeyed and who will be worshiped? Those are the questions that are asked in our day.

They are the questions that are asked in every age, and everything that man wages war over, every conflict boils down to the answer to those questions. All of our conflict, our suffering, our sin is really man insisting that we get to set the rules, we get to determine what is true, and we get to do as we please.

Fallen man's raging hatred for the one true God is expressed in the words of Psalm 2. Look at verse three. Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us. Fallen man says we will cast off God's restraints, we will break off his fetters.

Submitting to divine authority is a yoke, so we will be free, we will do whatever we want, we will express our individuality, we will be true to ourselves, we will live out our own truth, we will not be oppressed by religious dogmas and religious ideas that infringe upon our self-expression and our independence.

That is the mantra of our age, that is the mantra of every age because that is the banner and the battle cry of man at war against God and against his anointed. And for those who love the truth, it seems as if every age in which we live, the war is raging at a fever pitch that is heretofore unknown and unseen, does it not?

It seems like it's more intense in our day. It's not. There's nothing new under the sun. It feels new to us because we are new to it. We're not the first ones to step onto the scene, it just feels like, well, things are raging particularly badly and intensely and heated at this moment in history, but it has always been this way.

It's expressed differently. Different cultures do different things, but every age, every era is the same. It's the same war, it's the same parties, it's the same kingdoms in conflict one another, and it's the same questions being asked.

And we understand the raging rebellion of the wicked is a cause of great angst and vexation to us, and I think that today, looking at this Psalm, at least I hope, is going to calm your hearts, calm our hearts just a little bit as we consider what God's response to the raging wicked is.

We are in Psalm 2, and here we have God's response to the raging wicked. Psalm 2 describes Yahweh's promise to establish His king and His kingdom in spite of the vain opposition of worldly rulers, of earthly powers.

Psalm 2 is about God's promise to establish His king and His kingdom in spite of the opposition of earthly powers. We looked at verses one through three last week. In fact, we saw that the Psalm can be very neatly divided into four sections of three verses each, and the first three verses we saw described the rebellion of the wicked as vain folly.

That's the first three verses. Let's read them 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, let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us.

We saw in verse one that this rebellion is a raging rebellion, in verse two that it is a defiant rebellion, and then in verse three that it is a lawless rebellion. Those three things characterize this vain folly, this rebellion of the wicked.

Now, today we're looking at verses four through six, and I'll give you the outline for the rest of the Psalm just so we can remember sort of what has come before, what is gonna come afterwards, so we kind of take it in its context.

In verses four through six, we see that the response of Yahweh is mocking fury. Let's read those verses together. 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, and my holy mountain.

Then in verses seven through nine, the reign of the king is sovereign force. Verse seven, I will surely tell the decree of the Lord. He said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. 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. And then in verses 10 through 12, the refuge for the wise is His blessed favor. Verse 10, 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. A blessed are all who take refuge in Him.

So our passage today is verses four, five, and six. He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. We're gonna see three things in these three verses about God's response to the rebellious wicked.

First, in verse four, He holds rebels in derision. That's verse four, He holds them in derision. In verse five, He terrifies rebels with divine wrath. And then in verse six, He answers rebels with a decree.

He holds them in derision. He terrifies them with divine wrath. And then He answers them with a simple decree that is in verse six. So let's look at God's response, this mocking fury in verse six, or sorry, in verse four, He holds rebels in derision.

He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. Now, as you may have guessed, if you've listened to my preaching for any amount of time whatsoever, I find verse four very comforting, encouraging, delightful.

I sometimes recite it to myself to get myself to sleep at night. It is an object of my adoration, my love, my thanksgiving. I appreciate this verse a tremendous amount. I do not think that the raging of the wicked in verses one to three, and the calm repose of God in verses four through six could be more starkly contrasted than they are in these two sections.

In verses one to three, we see the frothing, tumultuous commotion of the wicked, like a sea that is always stirring and tossed up. They're in this state of violent, defiant, raging, lawless rebellion.

They have no peace. Their rebellion is in itself this turbulent tossing about. They're not satisfied. The wicked are not happy. They are not content. They are not peaceful. They are not at rest. They are always kicking against the goads, fighting against sound wisdom, casting off restraint, breaking apart fetters, thrashing about, fighting against God, aligning themselves against God and His truth, taking counsel together, taking their stand, bustling and raging about.

There is no peace before them. There is no rest in their lives. They are always drenched with blood and with violence, and they are unsettled and never at ease. God sits and God laughs. Why do the nations rage like a sea tossed about, always at war, taking their stand, counseling together?

God sits and God laughs. He holds them in derision. His calm repose in the midst of all of this violent, raging, foolish rebellion of the wicked is just seen in that statement. He who sits in the heavens laughs.

God sits. Now, this is anthropomorphism, which means it's human language or language that would be used to describe a human being, and it is applied here to God to give us a picture of something, to put an image into our head.

It doesn't mean that God literally sits because he doesn't have a literal physical body, so it is an anthropomorphic phrase that the psalmist is using here to describe God's calm repose. He sits in the heavens.

He doesn't stand. He doesn't rage. He doesn't rush about. He's not whisking about heaven trying to figure out what to do with these two presidential candidates that we are stuck with and our nation the way it is.

He's not wondering what is going to happen between Putin and China and Iran and Iraq and us and Lebanon and Israel and everybody else on the planet. He's not taking counsel with the hosts of heaven, asking the saints who are already there, what shall we do about this?

He's not consulting with the angels to figure out a good way to deal with this or to handle all of the chaos and commotion. He sits in the heavens and he laughs. He is not panicked. He is not worried.

He's not upset. He's not wondering what's gonna become of it. In fact, I want you to notice that there are three distinct contrasts between the first three verses and those next three verses, verses one to three and verses four through six.

There are three contrasts that are worth noting. First, the wicked are on earth and God is in heaven. I mentioned last week that is an intentional contrast by the author. The kings of the earth do this.

God sits in the heavens and he laughs. That's the first contrast. The second one is that the wicked take their stand, verses one through three, and God sits. They take their stand, God sits. And the third contrast is that the wicked are in commotion and raging and God is calm and unmoved.

Now I ask you, Saint, are you in angst over the world as it is? Does it vex you at all? You see what's happening and are you disturbed by the plots and the ploys and the plans of the wicked and the rebels and their raging and their threats?

You lose sleep at night, you wonder what is gonna happen to my kids? What is gonna happen to my grandkids? What is this nation gonna look like? And if you're my age, maybe a little younger or a little older, then you realize that the change that you have seen in our culture, in our nation and in this world is not slow and gradual.

It is becoming exponential. It is changing exponentially. Do you worry about that? And I say to you, believer, behold your God. He sits in the heavens and he laughs. He holds them in derision. All of the raging heathen and the raging pagans of this entire world are nothing before him.

Spurgeon says this, mark the quiet dignity of the omnipotent one and the contempt which he pours upon the princes and their raging people. He has not taken the trouble to rise up and to do battle with them.

He despises them. He knows how absurd, how irrational, how futile are their attempts against him. He therefore laughs at them, close quote. So he's not on the earth like the other kings. He's not just another monarch going to battle against a worthy adversary over a piece of turf here in this world.

He's not that at all. No, our God sits in the heavens and he laughs. Psalm 11, verse four, the Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. His eyes behold, his eyelids test the sons of men.

Psalm 68, 33. Let these verses just wash over your mind and your heart. Psalm 68, 33, to him who rides upon the highest heavens, which are from ancient times, behold, he speaks forth with his voice, a mighty voice.

Psalm 115, verse three, our God is in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases. Isaiah 40, verse 22, he who sits above the circle of the earth and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

Isaiah 66, verse one, thus says the Lord, heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. Where then is the house that you will build for me? And where is the place that I may rest? The kings are of the world, of this earth, this little tiny terrestrial ball that they fight and bicker over.

And let me give you a word picture. Imagine a meatball on the floor and two ants on top of the meatball arguing with each other. And every once in a while, they look up and shake their little tiny fists at a six foot six, 300 pound offensive lineman standing above it.

And they curse him and say, you will not tell us what to do. That is the kings of the earth before our God. He sits in the heavens and laughs. And it would take more energy for that offensive lineman to squash that meatball and its ants than it would be for God to conquer all of the kings on this little speck of dust in this solar system in this universe.

He would expend no energy whatsoever to dissolve it all into nothingness and to judge every last creature on this planet. No energy. Our God sits in the heavens and he laughs.

He rules over all.

Divine Derision and Mocking Fury

Now what kind of laughter is this? You and I laugh for different reasons. You just, some of you just kind of chuckled or laughed over the little illustration that I gave you. It's kind of a neat, quirky little thing.

It's an odd word picture, so that makes you chuckle. We laugh for different reasons. For instance, sometimes we laugh because something is funny, like that word picture, or because something is funny because something kind of catches us unexpectedly.

Like this is what makes standup comedy funny to us is that the joke or the punchline is something that we don't expect, we don't see coming. So the funniest part of standup comedy or a situation comedy or something like that, or a joke is the thing that you don't see coming and it strikes you as weird out of the blue.

And the more that somebody is able to surprise you with an outcome like that or a twist, the funnier it becomes. Sometimes we laugh as a coping mechanism. We say either, you know, I gotta laugh about this or cry about it, I'm not sure what.

So we see what's happening in the world and I might as well poke fun. I mean, I might as well enjoy some good memes. I never thought that the fall of Western civilization would be this much fun, but at least we're memeing about it all the way through to the end.

Sometimes we laugh at pain. Like this is my natural mechanism is to laugh at my pain or the pain of other people. I don't intend to do that. If you stub your toe or bonk your head or something like that, you're likely gonna hear me chuckle before I can kind of control myself because it's just a, it's a defense mechanism.

I laugh at other people's pain. Sometimes we laugh to relieve tension or stress. Sometimes we are nervous or anxious and we're responding to those situations with laughter. But the laughter that is described here in verse four is none of those things.

It's none of those kinds of laughter. This is a laughter of mockery and scoffing. This is ridicule. Does that make you a little uncomfortable? This is ridicule. The next phrase of verse four tells you what's going on.

The Lord scoffs at them.

This is scoffing.

This is not God uncomfortable with the situation and so nervously laughing in heaven. He's not laughing because he finds sin humorous or because he thinks that the kings of the earth and the raging nations are doing unexpected things like the punchline of a joke that kind of catches him unawares.

He's not laughing. He doesn't think that the violence and the bloodshed and the wars and the raging and the immorality and wickedness, he doesn't think that it's cute. He doesn't say, oh, boys will be boys.

Just kind of laugh at them down there fighting with each other. That's not why he's laughing. He's not indicating in verse four that God does not take it seriously. How do I know that? Because verse five says he is angry and he is going to speak to them in his fury.

So God is furious and he is angry. He is full of wrath at this situation. He's taking it serious. In verse four, this is mockery and derision. This is scoffing that God is heaping upon these kings and these nations.

Now, if that makes you uncomfortable, let me argue a case for you for just a moment. Part of God's triumph over his enemies is holding them up to open disgrace. This is not the only place we're gonna read this in scripture.

I'm gonna give you a few other references. Part of God's triumph over his enemies is holding them up to open disgrace. He publicly triumphs over them. He publicly shames the wicked. Colossians 2 says that God has done this to the spiritual forces in heavenly places, the evil spirits.

Colossians 2, when he had disarmed the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through him, that is through Christ and his suffering on the cross. The triumph over evil spiritual forces was a public triumph.

They hung the son of God on a cross in broad daylight next to the gate to the city of Jerusalem on the highest holy day of the year so that thousands upon thousands of Jews walking in would walk right past this public shameful display of the son of God being crucified in broad daylight before everyone's eyes.

But the joke was on them because three days later he rose again and there was a public empty grave to testify to the fact that God raised him from the dead. And so his triumph over the wicked was a public display of his victory over spiritual forces.

Now the wicked in this world, they mock God publicly. They do it shamelessly. They scoff at him and his law. This is one of the ways that they take counsel against the Lord and his anointed. Unjust laws, unjust court decisions, immoral policies, shameful public acts are open mockery of God and his truth.

The wicked take their seat in the seat of the scoffer. They sit down in the seat of the scoffer and from there they publicly mock and jeer everything holy, righteous, and true. Their sin and their defiance is an open, raging, defiant, lawless rebellion against God.

And every act of defiance against the Lord and against his anointed is an open and public act of scoffing and mockery. They take the name of Christ and they use it as a filthy four-letter filth word to express disgust.

They take the name of our God and they drag it through the mud. They hold him up to mockery, making him and his cause the gist and the butt of their ribald jokes. This is what they do publicly. They publicly flaunt their immorality, debauchery, and perversions, openly defying God and mocking him as if he can never have the final say.

And therefore, I would suggest to you that it is just and it is righteous for God to openly, publicly mock those who have mocked him. And I, for one, am content with that. It is just for God to do that.

He makes a mockery of mockers and he scoffs at the scoffers. That is just and it is right, for they have made him the object of their jokes and then he will show that publicly, shamefully, the joke is on them in the end.

Now, just this week, we saw at a rally for one of our presidential candidates, somebody during a brief quiet moment shout out, Christ is king. Then you heard that statement publicly booed by the people who were there.

And then Kamala Harris, the presidential candidate, said, I think you're at the wrong rally. And then she mocked it, laughed, and everybody cheered that. The kings of the earth take their stand against the Lord and against his anointed and they hold him up to public mockery and shame.

They do this all the time and everywhere. And when the presidential candidate on the other side of the aisle, if he does the same thing, he deserves the same reproof and the same rebuke because this is not a partisan issue.

But we are seeing in candidates on both sides of the aisle, righteousness and truth, slandered and mocked and God's name drugged through the mud. God's promise is that those who defy him publicly and openly, their judgment will be public and open.

Those who mock him, he will mock. Those who scoff at him, he will scoff at. He scoffs at the nations. Isaiah 66, verse 24, the last verse in the book of Isaiah describes something that is going to be true, I think, in the new heavens and the new earth.

Isaiah 66, 24 says, then they will go forth and look on the corpses of the men who have transgressed against me. Their worm will not die and their fire will not be quenched and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind.

For all of eternity, the wicked who have mocked God will themselves be the objects of mockery. Obadiah, verse 15, I love the book of Obadiah. Obadiah, I call Obadiah the, I don't know where I got this, so I know it's not original with me.

Very little of what I do is original with me, except the meatball analogy. The meatball with the ants, that was, I came up with that during Sunday school. Simon, it wasn't that I wasn't listening, but I was back there thinking about it.

So the meatball picture is mine with the ants, that's all me, I get credit for that. But this, I don't necessarily think I can take credit for. Obadiah has been called the prophet of poetic justice.

You know why?

Because Obadiah lists the sins of the Edomites and what they had done against the nation of Israel. He says, you have done this, and you have done this, and you have done this, and it is a litany of charges against them.

And then he says, because you have done this, I am going to do these things to you, this, this, and this, and it is a one-to-one correspondence between these things. In fact, the key verse of Obadiah is verse 15, where we read this, the day of the Lord draws near on all the nations.

Listen, as you have done, it will be done to you. Your dealings will return on your own head. That's the prophet of poetic justice. As you have done, it will be done to you. Mock God openly and die in that condition, and you will be mocked openly and publicly, and that for all of eternity.

This is not the only place where we read of God laughing. Psalm 37, verse 12. The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes at him with his teeth. The Lord laughs at him, for he sees his day is coming.

The wicked have drawn the sword and bent their bow to cast down the afflicted and the needy, to slay those who are upright in conduct. Their sword will enter their own heart, and their bows will be broken.

Listen to that last verse. The wicked have drawn the sword and bent the bow to slay the righteous, and the psalmist says their sword, which they have drawn to slay others, will enter their own heart, and their bow, which they have drawn back, will itself break while it's drawn back and punish them.

As you have done, it will be done to you. Your deeds will return upon your own head. Psalm 59, verse eight. But you, O Lord, laugh at them. You scoff at all the nations. Take comfort in that, Christian.

Divine Wrath and the Terrifying Voice of God

He holds them in derision. Second, verse five, he terrifies rebels with divine wrath. Then he will speak to them, this is Yahweh, is going to speak to them in his anger and terrify them in his fury, saying, then verse six gives us the statement, the decree.

The scoffing itself that God does in verse four is an expression of the wrath that is mentioned, the fury that is mentioned in verse five. In other words, the scoffing is an expression of God's judgment.

The scoffing is part of their judgments, not all of their judgment. It is part of the judgment that falls upon the wicked. These two words, anger and fury, both of them describe a deep and burning indignation.

In fact, the word anger is used, I think a couple hundred times in the Old Testament. It is most often translated anger, but it is also translated as nostrils. I bet you didn't see that coming. You thought I could see it, wrath, being upset, something like that, but I didn't see nostrils coming.

It's translated nostrils, for instance, in Exodus 15, verse eight, where it's describing the children of Israel leaving Egypt and the parting of the Red Sea and the eventual destruction of Pharaoh and his army.

Exodus 15, verse eight, at the blast of your nostrils, the waters were piled up. The flowing water stood up like a heap. The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea. At the blast of your nostrils, you might say at the blast of your anger or your fury or your wrath.

Also translated nostrils, and this is not just twice, but a number of times in the Old Testament, Psalm 18, verse 15, then the channels of water appeared and the foundations of the world were laid bare.

At your rebuke, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of your nostrils or at the blast of your anger. So it's not difficult to see sort of how anger would be associated with nostrils. You picture somebody who is furious and just like that, the blasting out of the nostrils, somebody full of rage that vents that rage, that is the picture there.

He will speak to them with the blast of his nostrils, with his anger vented and terrify them in his fury. The word fury there describes a burning or something that has become hot. It describes something that is kindled.