Wednesday, September 13, 2023

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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Psalm 2, 4 -6, but I'm going to read 1 -6 to start out with. ...if that's alright.

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And I'd like to open us up with prayer before I read the passage that we're going to be working today. Father, I thank you for this time that we get together and that we eat and fellowship and come to a table together as a body.

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We know, Lord, that there is a table where we are going. We know that at the head of that table sits our

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King, and we want to focus on Him. We want to know more about Him. We want to know how

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He wants us to conduct ourselves at that table and how we are to think upon all the good things

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He has given us as we sit and we ponder the seat beneath us and the table that holds our meal.

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And we know that our Lord has given us much to feast upon in this Word. So Lord, as we think about it tonight, as we go through this devotional that will have many gaps, that we take the

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Word and we go home and You fill those gaps for us. That You, by Your Spirit, give us the fullness therein of the riches that lay before us.

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And it's in Jesus' name we pray and ask these things most sincerely. Amen. So we'll be in Psalm 2 again after over a month now, and it was a good little break.

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I got to re -read the Psalm multiple times, multiple tens of times, and think upon it, meditate upon it, and be deepened in what

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I've learned, what I've come up with, what I've been given from the Lord in this text and many others, and how this relates to the rest of Scripture.

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But tonight I'd like to start by reading verses 1 -6. We're going to be focusing on verses 4 -6, but I want to start in verse 1 to give us a little bit of context before we get going.

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So Psalm 2, starting in verse 1. We've been examining this psalm under the assertion, or my assertion, that it is a song about the best of biblical comedy.

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We've previously considered the psalm's structure, its characters, and I spent a little bit of time explaining why

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I think the psalm is a comedy of at least four acts. You could break it up into five if you really wanted to. If there are any questions or thoughts from those previous considerations lingering in your mind from past Wednesday nights, and you've thought about some of those things and have questions as to the past lessons,

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I'm giving you the opportunity to ask those questions or give those thoughts now. Okay, so you guys are all reviewed up.

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There are no gaps in your knowledge of Psalm 1, 2, and 3. Good, I like to hear that.

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Okay, so we just read verses 1 through 6. Like I said, we're going to be focusing on 4 through 6. Show of hands, how many of you have had friends that laugh before they get to the punchline of a joke?

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They just can't help themselves? Like they're so excited about this story they're telling you, and they're just fumbling right through it with laughter.

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And they're thinking ahead about the payoff, right? So much so that they laugh through the entire setup.

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And how many of those friends ruin the payoff or the punchline by laughing through the setup?

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They can't even get there. They're just crying. And in my experience, the answer is that most of them ruin the payoff because they can't breathe when they get through the setup.

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They can't get to that point. And so they waste the timing, and they waste the pertinent details which would be fueling that payoff.

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It throws off their rhythm. There's no cadence because a joke has rhythm. A joke, it has meter to it.

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It's song -like in that way. And it overwhelms the joke rather than adds to it.

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The joke may be funny on its own, but they shouldn't be the ones telling it, right? Somebody else should have picked up.

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They should have written it down for somebody else and then brought it and said, Here, this is what I have for you. But those who can properly restrain themselves, chuckling here or there, may actually add to that payoff.

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They know how to deliver those laughs. Their laugh builds suspense and anticipation. They're well -trained and well -timed, part of the joke itself.

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This is how God uses his laughs. They're always perfectly timed. Verse 4,

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He who sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall hold them in derision. This falls directly on the heels of the kings and people setting themselves against the

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Lord and his anointing. We talked about the word setting. To set one in a place of authority is how the language really reads consistently throughout this psalm.

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So there's an authoritative battle going on. And in the context of the psalm, do we have the punchline yet?

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As we're reading through, when we get to verse 4, we don't know what the punchline of the joke is just yet. But the

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Lord doesn't jump directly to the punchline, nor does his laughter drown out the reasons for his laughter.

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He's able to laugh and still deliver those details, that pertinent information, and have his rhythm. And his laughter adds to the suspense and tension, as I said, that we have between the

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Lord and his adversaries. It adds to his derision. It adds to his wrath and his displeasure.

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It adds to their distress and terror. A holy God laughing at you.

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How can he laugh when he is displeased? It's kind of odd, isn't it? We read that he's laughing, and then he is holding them in derision.

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He's speaking in his wrath, and he is deeply displeased. But he's laughing. The Hebrew word for laugh in this verse, in verse 4, is rendered as laugh, scorn, or mock in various places, like Job, Psalms, and Habakkuk, denoting a use of laughter that may be quite foreign to us, with the exception of our fictional villains, right?

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You know, the big villain in Disney characters, that they have an evil laugh that they go through.

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This is the type of scornful, derisive laugh that one might have, but without the villainous disposition.

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The laughter that accompanies the villainy in popular story, it is definitely scornful and mocking.

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And there are a few examples of heroes using a scoff or scornful laughter as well, but we prefer, and we normally have, our villains doing the mocking laughs.

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And God laughing scornfully shows us that in order for a scornful laugh to be righteous, it must be accompanied by righteous anger.

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He has justified to laugh in such a way, to these rebels, these kings and peoples setting themselves against him.

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And his scornful laugh does not make this any less of a joke than it is. Jokes do not always have to elicit pleasure on the hearers or tellers, but we will see that this laugh of God may be twofold, eliciting both pleasure and displeasure.

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So if we consider the characters in this block of text, verses four through six, who are we dealing with?

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Who do we see here in the text, the characters that we have in verse four through six? Anyone?

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The kings of the earth and peoples. Okay. Say again. The nations.

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The Lord. God the Father. And then he mentions his king at the bottom, right, in verse six.

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So those are the three groups that we're dealing with in this block of text. Who does the

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Father cast his eyes upon in the text? Who's he focused on? Who does he speak to and who does he speak about?

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Right. Who in verse six is he highlighting?

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Who's he looking at there? Who's he focusing on? The king. Okay. So we go from those rebelling against Christ to Christ.

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Is it so hard for us to see, given who the Father is focused on in this text, how he might be both pleased and displeased at the same time?

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Don't we have scenes in the Bible of deliverance and judgment coinciding? In fact, do we ever see them separated from one another in the

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Bible? Not really. And I can't think of a place where I can remember that happening at the same time either.

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And I'll contend in this text that the Father's laughter is, to us, a sign of both his pleasure and his displeasure.

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Displeasure being directed toward rebels and pleasure being directed toward his anointed. Let's go ahead and read verse five.

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Then he shall speak to them in his wrath and distress them in his deep displeasure. Verse five further builds tension in the story.

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It further enunciates or emphasizes his derision, his wrath, his displeasure.

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Three different words, back to back to back, repeating how much he dislikes what's going on here.

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And when we read this tension, what is the

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Lord about to do? What do we think he's about to say?

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Can you imagine what he's going to say? Right? But of course we can, though, right?

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We can imagine what he's about to say because we have the greater part of Scripture to tell us this is what is said.

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We have this quoted in other places in Scripture. But imagine, if you will, coming to this psalm for the first time, and your eyes have never read verses six through twelve, or everything else that we know about Jesus.

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You may be forgiven for thinking that what comes next is a list of the rebel's wrongs.

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Right? Here we go. The father's mad. He's going to list off all the reasons he has to be upset with us.

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Or a list of punishments they might receive. They already know what they've done wrong. They know they're rebels.

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They might be preparing for punishments listed out. Or maybe a list of things they may have taken away from them.

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They may have their land taken away from them. They may have their freedom taken away from them. They may have their crops, their vines taken from them.

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But what does the Lord do? He focuses on his Son, in whom he is well pleased.

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Displeasure and pleasure are both present here and anywhere. There are those in Christ and those who are in Adam.

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There lies his act of pleasure and displeasure. He speaks to them, but he speaks to them about his

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Son. Now we go down to verse 6. The Lord says,

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Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion. Now, this is the punchline that we've been building to from verses 1 to 6.

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How is that a punchline? How is that a punchline to the joke? Anybody have an answer for that?

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They've cried out for some king amongst themselves. Someone who looks maybe like them or maybe the kings around them.

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And now, not only is it a punchline for one joke, but two jokes, actually, historically. Anybody have an answer for that?

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And the jokes are separated by about a thousand years. And there's a punchline, and this is it for both of them.

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Depends on how you define king or Zion. And the next point is, for each punchline to the joke, we have to consider who the

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Lord's king is and where Zion is actually located. For the first punchline, around 1000

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BC, David became king in Israel. And where did he reign from? He reigned in Jerusalem, where the physical

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Zion is, the hill outside of the city. And this punchline is originally directed at Saul and all of David's enemies.

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But also Israel, right? With Saul and David, we have the presence of both displeasure and pleasure.

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One passing away and one ascending. For David was a man after God's own heart.

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Do you think he took pleasure in David? I think so. Though Saul was anointed under God's direction, who was it that originally wanted a king like Saul?

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Was it not Israel crying out for a king, and a king that looked specifically like the kings in the nations surrounding them?

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God graciously gives Israel David. Though they had cried out for a Saul. The joke lands with perfect timing and weight,

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I would think. Now for the second punchline, the true punchline, we might say.

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We look at the end of Palestine a thousand years later. Christ is born. He begins his ministry around the age of 30, which lasts three years.

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He is crucified, buried, resurrected, and he is set where? Now where is

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Zion? You beat me to it. I was going to say, before you answer that, if you would turn to Hebrews 12 with me.

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No, you set the punchline. That was a great punchline, right? She nailed it. Timing was perfect.

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All right, we're going to start in verse 18, and we're going to read through 24. 12,

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Hebrews 12, verses 18 through 24. Verse 18.

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For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched, and that burned with fire, and to blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore.

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For they could not endure what was commanded. And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow.

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And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I am exceedingly afraid and trembling. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living

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God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

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Now, where is Zion? It's in heaven. And who is there?

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Our king and mediator, the

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God of all judgment is there. In this text, we have a similar sequencing, actually, of events as we do in verses 4 through 6, don't we?

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We'll look at it a little closer. Might the scornful laughter of the Lord sound and look like a black tempest to us?

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Might his scorn scorch a mountain and darken the skies? And then he speaks like a trumpet.

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Where else do we find trumpets, and are they ever accompanied with the Lord's wrath? Then those who hear him are terrified, just like we have at the end of verse 5.

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They beg for it to stop, beg for it to stop, turning away from it. What is mentioned next in the text?

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What's mentioned next is who is the king and where is Zion? And now the king rules, he rules from a heavenly throne, and his people are seated with him in the heavenly places, the general assembly and church of the firstborn.

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With them are an innumerable company of angels, and God the judge,

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Christ the mediator of the new covenant. The joke, the true joke, is that rebels war against a mountain and a king they cannot even touch.

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They can't reach, they can't get to it. That's the joke. They war against the graces of a place and a king they will forever be sifted from.

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Outside of the glorious grace of God. That's the only way they get there. So we pray for rebels, and we thank the

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Lord for his grace. Now that's all I have on verses 4 through 6 tonight, but are there any thoughts and questions or contentions,

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David, before we finish up tonight?

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Hebrews 5, and the other ones are written in the notebook behind you over there if you want to go look into that.

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But Hebrews 5, just off the top of my head. Anybody else have another place where Psalm 2 is mentioned in the

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New Testament? I know it's multiple places for it and Psalm 110. And honestly, another interesting discussion is verses 4 through 9 here of Psalm 2 is actually you get an expanded version of that in Psalm 110,

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I would argue. So these two middle acts are kind of explained in greater detail in Psalm 110.

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And I might do that, but maybe what comes next is we'll go through verses 7 through 9 and then after that I would like to probably move on to how 110 is an expansion of all those themes and all those things as well.

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Most. Yeah. Right, right. Yep. It's easy for us to say, well, the whole

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Bible is about Jesus. Right. Yes, I know there's historical content.

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Yes, I know there's religious content.

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The portion where it's mentioned in Hebrews 5 is specifically talking about Christ being after the order of the priesthood of Melchizedek.

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And it's talking about his role as priest. And there is great riches there to mine as well.

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Yes, thank you. I knew it was the next. And specifically to the

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Lord's laughing, we actually see that three or four extra times in the Psalms itself. But as far as Psalm 2 specifically being quoted in the

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New Testament, those are the two places that I know as well. Any other questions or observations or thoughts that have popped up?

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Yes. Right.

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Right. Look, it would be easy to fear kings of the earth. It would be easy to fear every bureaucrat from top to bottom.

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They have positions of authority that you don't. But they don't have the position of authority that your king does.

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And when you're talking about absurdities, it's clearly laid out that when they can't touch that Zion, when they can't touch that king and they rage against him, it's kind of pitiful and childish.

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That's interesting. He actually says who he anointed both

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Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, the people that are all gathered together to do at your hand.

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Yeah. They were doing. Okay. Well, I'll go ahead and close this out with prayer.

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I almost made it to 30 minutes, guys. Almost. And you helped me. You helped me get there. Okay, we'll pray.

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Father, we thank you for our king. We thank you that he is our king by grace.

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That it is not of ourselves that we come to him, but it is by you drawing us to him.

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And what a lovely king we have. One who cannot be touched. One who sits and rules over all kings.

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One who, if we ask and we diligently seek after wisdom and knowledge in him, we receive it.

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We ask, Lord, that as we go from here, we follow that king. We worship him.

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We exalt him. And we know with greater depth who our savior is.