Psalm 2

[0:00] I want you to open up your Bibles to the book of Psalms, Psalm 2. We're going to spend our time this morning in Psalm 2. Before next week we move on to celebrate the Reformation on Reformation Sunday.

[0:12] And then in November we'll begin a new sermon series going through the first 11 chapters of the book of Genesis. But this morning we're in the book of Psalms, Psalm 2. And so as you turn there, I want to ask you guys to stand up with me as we read.

[0:25] Psalm 2.

[0:55] Psalm 3.

[1:25] Psalm 3. Therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.

[1:37] Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish in the way. For His wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.

[1:47] Father, we give you thanks for your word and we give you thanks for your spirit who opens our eyes to see wondrous things in it. We pray in Christ's name. Amen.

[1:57] Amen. A little over 3,000 years ago, God chose a man to lead His people.

[2:07] He chose an unlikely candidate for king. And many of you know the story of God's choosing of David. And many of you know the story of God's choosing of David. And He was pulling him out of the fields where He was shepherding the sheep to lead His people.

[2:21] And it was a rough and rocky road between the time that God set apart David through the prophet Samuel. But from the time that He set him apart and named him as king. And the time when David actually became the ruling king of Israel.

[2:34] It was a rocky road there for David for a while. But eventually, David became the recognized king of Israel. And then a few years after that happened, another prophet came to David.

[2:46] A prophet by the name of Nathan. And that prophet came to David and told David that God was going to do something more than simply make him king. He was going to do something far grander than establish another kingdom like that of his predecessor Saul.

[3:03] In 2 Samuel chapter 7, if you read it when you go home today, you'll see that God through the prophet Nathan came to David and made a covenant with David. Made sacred promises to David that not only would David be king, but that David would have a kingdom that would last forever.

[3:19] Saul's kingdom before David had only lasted for a few decades. But David's kingdom will last forever. And then on top of that, God tells David that one of his descendants will sit on the throne forever.

[3:31] There will be a descendant of David who reigns and rules for all time. And that descendant of David would be known as God's own son.

[3:41] God says, I will be a father to him. I will be like a father to him. And he will be to me as a son. God will regard this descendant of David as his very own son in much the way that God would often refer to David and regard David as his own son.

[3:59] And so you have those covenant promises hanging over the rest of the story of the Old Testament from the next chapter on to the end of the Old Testament. And the strange thing is that with each generation that came and went, those covenant promises seem to get further and further away.

[4:18] They seem to be less and less attainable. If you read through and you know the story of the kings of Judah, the kings from the line of David, it's a fairly sad story.

[4:31] There are a handful of good kings like, say, Uzziah or Josiah, but there are far more bad and wicked kings. For instance, Manasseh, a terribly wicked king in Judah.

[4:44] And so that you read through the history of Israel and you begin to wonder and speculate, God, I know you made promises to David, but then when I read the rest of the story, it doesn't seem as if those promises are coming to fruition.

[4:59] Because by the time you arrive at a little over 400 years removed from the promises God made to David, you see the last king to sit on the throne in Israel, Zedekiah.

[5:09] You see him as a poppet of Nebuchadnezzar from Babylon and eventually being stripped of all of his power, blinded, had his eyes plucked out and was drug away to Babylon.

[5:20] That's not a very good way for your kingdom to end. That's not a good sign for the covenant promises that God made with David. And so as we read the Old Testament, one of the things that we're supposed to be wondering about, thinking about, looking for is, when will these promises come true?

[5:38] When will God fulfill His word? And that's exactly what the prophets towards the end of the Old Testament began to think about and talk about. And they look forward to a day when God will finally bring back another descendant of David, and that descendant will indeed rule over David's kingdom forever.

[5:54] Not for a few decades, not for a few centuries, not for a few millennium, but for forever that king will rule. And those promises and that hope hang over the Old Testament like a dark cloud, wondering, wondering when will that be.

[6:13] And when we come to Psalm 2, we learn from the New Testament that David himself wrote Psalm 2. And when we come to Psalm 2, we see a lot of the language of that covenant kind of cropping up.

[6:25] You are my son, and all these sorts of things. And we read this psalm in the light of that covenant, thinking David is rejoicing in the promises that God made to him. And most likely this psalm would have been passed on and recited throughout the history of Israel.

[6:42] That's how it came to be in the book of Psalms, that this particular psalm was passed on. And most scholars think that this was the kind of psalm that would have been read out loud every time a new king was crowned.

[6:55] So that over and over throughout her history, the nation is hearing these promises over and over again and hoping that maybe this will be the king. Maybe this will be the descendant from the line of David through whom these promises come to pass.

[7:10] And so when we read Psalm 2, we read it in light of those distant promises for the people of Israel. And we read it in light of its ultimate final fulfillment in Christ that we learn about in the New Testament.

[7:25] So as we walk through Psalm 2, we're going to ask two main questions. We're going to ask the question, what was David thinking about? What was in David's mind as he wrote this? And then we're going to turn to the New Testament and we're going to ask, how is this fulfilled in Christ?

[7:39] Where do we see this prophetic poem coming to fulfillment in the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus? So I want you to take a look. We're going to begin at verse 1 and just walk slowly here.

[7:52] Psalmist David begins by saying, Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? He says that the kings of the earth set themselves, the rulers of the earth, they gather together, they take counsel together against the Lord, against God Himself, and against God's anointed one, His Messiah, His chosen king.

[8:15] They're aligning themselves against God. They're aligning themselves against God's king, saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.

[8:25] You can imagine David saying this and thinking probably primarily of the Philistines, over whom David had had significant military victories throughout his reign.

[8:36] So you can imagine the Philistines saying to themselves, Let's burst the bonds of these Israelites. Let's get out from under David's rule.

[8:46] Let's get away from him. Let's set ourselves free. And over and over you have these skirmishes and these battles between the Philistines and the armies of Israel. And I think that might be in David's mind as he writes this.

[8:59] But even as David writes this, I think that he envisions something larger than that. Because it's not merely the Philistines that David writes about here.

[9:10] It's the kings of the earth. It's all the nations upon the earth that come and oppose God and oppose his anointed king. And that situation hasn't really changed greatly today.

[9:23] It hasn't changed. We look around us and we see a world that is very much opposed to and against the gospel of Jesus Christ. We see, oftentimes we read in the news and we scratch our heads and we wonder, How can these things be happening?

[9:40] How can people think that way about the gospel? How can people think that way about Christ? How can these things be? But we read this psalm and we think, I can see that.

[9:51] I can relate to that. I can see the anger and the rage of people against the truth of the gospel. When you say to someone, there is one way through Christ to come to the Father.

[10:07] They get angry. They react against that. Why is your way the right way? Why can't everybody just sort of make their own way and believe whatever they want to believe and everything will work out and everything will be okay so long as they're sincere, so long as they really believe what they're saying?

[10:25] Why can't we have that sort of approach to things people will say to us? And yet the Bible is clear. There is one name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, Jesus.

[10:36] He is the only way and the truth and the life, the only way to come to the Father. And yet when we proclaim that kind of a message, the peoples around us become uneasy and oftentimes angry.

[10:49] So we can relate a little bit to what David is saying here. We can understand to a certain degree why people would gather together and oppose God, oppose His anointed King.

[11:02] Now in David's day, that opposition came in a kind of an interesting, unique form though that I think we can also understand because of the culture that we live in. In their day, every nation had its own sort of gods that they believed in.

[11:17] They had their own idols, their own national deities, and they believed in those and they trusted in those, but they didn't deny the existence of the gods of other nations.

[11:27] So it's not as if the Egyptians looked upon, say, the Babylonians or the Assyrians and denied the existence of the Assyrians' gods. They didn't do that at all. It was just a matter of proving whose gods were the most powerful.

[11:41] And yet in the midst of that kind of situation, you have a nation like Israel just situated right in the middle of all those other powerful nations, a nation of Israel that's saying, no, no, no, no. Our God is not the God of Israel only.

[11:55] Our God is not a national deity. Our God is the one who created the heavens and the earth. He is the only God. So Israel stands opposed to all of its neighbors, not only in the God that it worships, but in insisting that this Lord, this sovereign one and his king are the only rightful rulers of the world.

[12:19] It's not a message that plays well in their day. It's not a message that plays well in our day either. And it's not a message that played well during Jesus' lifetime. I want you to hold your place in Psalm 2, and I want you to turn all the way in the New Testament to the book of Acts chapter 4, where these verses are referenced and applied to Christ.

[12:39] In Acts chapter 4, Peter and John have just been released from prison, and they report back to their fellow believers, and they begin to pray out loud a sort of corporate prayer.

[12:54] And this is what they say. If you can jump in at verse 24, it says, When the people heard John and Peter's report, when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.

[13:12] So they have that perspective. Our God is the only God. Who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, Why do the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain?

[13:26] The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His anointed. There it is. Psalm 2, the first couple of verses, cited right there.

[13:36] Now he's going to tell you when this happened. When specifically did this happen? Verse 27. For truly in this city, in Jerusalem, there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed.

[13:49] So he's the anointed one. He's the Messiah. Whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

[14:04] And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness. While you stretch out your hand to heal and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant, Jesus.

[14:18] These early disciples understood and saw that this ancient prophetic poem in Psalm chapter 2 came to its ultimate fulfillment in Jerusalem when Christ was opposed by Herod, a half-Jewish, half-Gentile king, by Pilate, a Roman-appointed governor, by the Gentile Roman soldiers, by the Jewish religious authorities.

[14:41] All of these rulers and supposed kings gathered together in Jerusalem for one purpose, and that was to oppose and to destroy the anointed king, Jesus.

[14:57] To even mock him and put above his cross king of the Jews. to oppose God's king. And the amazing thing about this is that the disciples view this and they don't see this as reason to be sorrowful or mournful or sad in any way.

[15:20] Rather, they see it as a reason for them to have strength, for them to be encouraged, for them to become more bold in their proclamation of the gospel. Take a look at what it says.

[15:31] Verse 29, Now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness. They know that the nations gathered together against Jesus, and they now know, having just been released from prison, that that opposition will continue with Jesus' followers.

[15:51] And they do not say, We're frightened, Lord. Deliver us from this. Make this go away. They don't say that at all. They say, Let this be the occasion by which you strengthen us and cause us to be all the more bold in proclaiming your word.

[16:09] And the reason for that is that they understand that Herod and Pilate, the Gentiles, the leaders of Israel, when they gathered together against Jesus to oppose Him, they were doing whatever God's hand and purpose predestined to take place.

[16:25] You notice at the beginning that they address God at the beginning of this prayer as Sovereign Lord. You see, what underlies the hope and the confidence that the disciples had when facing opposition is that opposition doesn't take God by surprise.

[16:42] It wasn't a shock to God that the Gentiles and the Jewish leadership all gathered together against Jesus. It wasn't a surprise to Him. It was a part of His plan.

[16:53] It was a part of His means of accomplishing salvation and nothing has changed for us. Jesus says that through many tribulations you'll enter the kingdom of God. If they persecuted me, they'll persecute you.

[17:05] It hasn't changed so that still one of the means that God uses to cause His word to go out with boldness from you and I is opposition.

[17:16] He hasn't stopped. He has not stopped doing that. And we should take courage and know that in the middle of that, God is accomplishing His plans. God is sovereign.

[17:27] How do you respond when overwhelming opposition comes your way? Whether it's like overt persecution or whether it's just things in your life, whether it's illness or kids that frustrate you or whatever it might be, how do you respond to all these troubles that come against you?

[17:46] You respond to them by trusting in God's sovereignty. Which, incidentally, is exactly what David does in Psalm 2. Turn back to Psalm 2.

[17:56] I want you to see as we move ahead, how does God respond to these nations saying that they're going to cast off His rule? Verse 4 says, He who sits in the heavens laughs.

[18:13] The Lord holds them in derision. There's a contrast here between the kings of the earth and now God is described as He who sits in the heavens.

[18:25] And then He's described secondly as the Lord. Now I want you to take a close look at verse 4. I want you to notice that the word Lord in verse 4 starts with a capital L in most of our Bibles and then it's all lowercase letters.

[18:38] But if you move up to verse 2, Lord is all capital letters. Because in verse 2, the word there for Lord is the name Yahweh or Jehovah, God's covenant name by which He's known among His people.

[18:50] That's God's name. But in verse 4, it's the word Adonai which means Lord or Sovereign King. So David, in even describing God, describes God as the other kings on the earth but God sits up in the heaven.

[19:04] You have these kings, rulers, but God is the real sovereign one. He's the true king over all of creation. That's the perspective that the psalmist begins with.

[19:16] And God looks down upon these rebellious nations that in our eyes seem huge. To David must have seemed unbeatable at times.

[19:29] You have nations like Egypt, powerful at various times in history. Babylon that rose in power later on. Assyria that would rise in power later on. Surrounded by these nations more numerous and more powerful than the nation of Israel.

[19:45] And you can imagine that the kings of Judah would look out and see them and be afraid. God on the other hand looks down and sees them and he laughs at them.

[19:59] He laughs. They're like little rebellious ants to God. They pose no threat to him. They pose no threat to his plants. He just simply laughs at them.

[20:12] I can remember a few years ago when Calvin was smaller. I think he was probably around maybe three. And he was a small little three year old too. He was a little bitty guy.

[20:23] He's probably not even that old. Maybe even two. But he was pretty small. And I don't remember what he had done. Maybe he was fighting with his brother or something. That sounds like a pretty good guess. But I don't know what he had done.

[20:34] But I told him that he was going to get a spanking. You're going to have to get a spanking. And he didn't like that at all. So he took off running. And he's going to get away. And so I'm not happy at this point.

[20:47] I'm not pleased with him. But then he ran back in the room and he looked at me and he took this kind of stance. Broad legs there. He took this stance.

[20:58] He gets down and he holds up his fist just like this. And he's got these evil eyes. And he just looks at me and he goes I'm going to bust you in the nose. Like I'm not afraid of you.

[21:11] I can take you out dad. You're going to threaten to spank me. I can take you out. And there was for a moment a flash of just rage that a little kid would threaten me.

[21:21] And I look over at Allie and she's just trying her best not to die laughing. So then we both start to kind of laugh and giggle at him. And I imagine that that must be God's response to these rebellious rulers.

[21:32] That they actually think they have the power. They actually think that they have the ability to cast off God's sovereignty from him. To say we're not going to live under your rule.

[21:44] We're going to do things our own way. To which God looks down at these tiny little rulers and he laughs at them. Because in all of their rebellion they do nothing more than accomplish the plan that God had in store in the first place.

[22:00] Just like we see in Acts chapter 4 with the death of Jesus. In all of their frustration, in all of their anger, in all of their rebellious attitudes, they are fulfilling God's plans for history.

[22:13] I think the same thing is true today. I think that we can, at times, we can look around at various nations around the world or we can even look at our own country and we can get so frustrated with the way things are going, the direction things are heading, and we begin to talk and act as if we're hopeless, all is lost, everything is just falling apart, what are we going to do?

[22:34] And what we need to remember is that though things may not go in the direction that we want, though we may, we may be in a culture or we may look at other nations and see them in rebellion against God, though all those things may be true, there's no reason to lose hope, there's no reason to give up because God, who's sovereign, looks and he laughs as he accomplishes plans through the rebellious activity of the nation around the world.

[23:01] If he did it through Christ, he's doing it through Christ's people now, and he's accomplishing, when people come against you, when nations oppose God, he's accomplishing his plans, he's doing it, he's sovereign, that's the foundation of all of our hope in the midst of opposition.

[23:22] But there's more there in Psalm 2, I want you to move on, because it not only says that he laughs at them, it says in verse 5, that he is going to deal with them though, he's going to address them, it's not as if God laughs at them and lets them go, I laughed at Calvin and then that was it, it was really funny, and they didn't even get a spanking I don't think, it was just too funny, that was it, I'd lost it by then, that's not God's response, God's laughter is not the laughter of an amused parent who says, that's so funny, get out of here, that's not God's laughter at all, it's far more than that, there's more to it than that, it says in speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury saying, as for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill, now I want you to recognize here that what is, what is it that God has done that is a clear declaration that he will accomplish his purposes, you cannot thwart them despite all your rebellion, what is it that he's done, he has set his king, in fact it's emphatic, it's God saying, in the translation

[24:32] I'm reading here it says, as for me, but it's like God is saying, I, look at me, I have set my king on Zion, I put my king in place, and there's nothing that you can do to overthrow him, can't be done, I put him there, I put him in on my holy hill, I put him there, now the record of Israel, of the history of Israel, would lead us to think otherwise, that the nations can overthrow God's anointed kings, that the nations can cause God's kingdom to crumble on earth, but all of those kings were merely pointers, lessons for the people of Israel and lessons for us, that those kings, even the best of them, they were not good enough, David himself, the king, par excellence in the

[25:32] Old Testament, he's not good enough, read on, he talks about the establishment of the king on his throne, verse 7, David says, I'll tell the decree, so I'm going to tell you what God said to me, the Lord said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you, that's strange sort of language, you're my son David and today I've given birth to you, that sounds very strange, or today I've caused you to be born, if you take that too literally it doesn't make any sense because David is in the middle of his life, he's a grown man here, so in no sense has God suddenly given David birth, the point of saying you are my son, today I have begotten you is to say today I have declared before everyone else that you're mine, now I tell the world you are my son, I've already regarded you as a son as soon as I anointed you as king, but now I let the world know, today I regard you as my son, and over and over we see in the

[26:38] New Testament God declaring Jesus to be his son, in fact there are three main events in the life of Jesus in the world in the world this is my son this is the one I spoke of in Psalm 2 this is the one that I promised to David that I regard him as my son three times in Jesus life and ministry in which that happens I want you to turn over hold your place in Psalm 2 but turn over to the gospel of Matthew!

[27:13] we'll look at a couple of them in Matthew real quickly in the gospel of Matthew toward the beginning of Matthew in chapter 3 where John the Baptist is baptizing his disciples and Jesus comes to John to be baptized by him and this is what we read in Matthew chapter 3 verse 16 that when Jesus was baptized immediately he went up from the water and behold the heavens were opened to him and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him and behold a voice from heaven said this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased literally it says this is my son my beloved with him I'm pleased this is my son God says right at the outset of Christ's earthly ministry God wants the world to know he wants Christ's followers to know this is the one!

[28:06] promised he is declaring him to you to be my very own son he's the chosen king of Israel this is my son and then it happens again later on in the ministry of Jesus towards the end of his earthly ministry a more private declaration to some of Jesus disciples in Matthew chapter 17 as Jesus and Peter and James and John go up on the mountain for Jesus to pray we come across an event that's known as the transfiguration where the glory of Jesus suddenly shines through and the disciples bear witness to a glimpse of his glory and in verse five we read this he was still speaking when behold a bright cloud overshadowed them and a voice from the cloud said this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased listen to him and it says that when the disciples heard this they fell on their faces and they were terrified this is my son this is my beloved with him

[29:08] I am pleased! Jesus earthly ministry God breaks into history and he speaks in an audible way to say this is my son this is the one that I have chosen this is the king of Israel this is the one and then one other time one more place where God definitively declares in fulfillment of Psalm 2 that Jesus is his son occurs at the resurrection and we can see this in the!

[29:47] of Acts if you'll turn to Acts chapter 13 I apologize for making you jump around we don't usually jump around this much but I want you to see the fulfillment of this psalm really clearly in Acts chapter 13 the apostle Paul is preaching a sermon he's summarizing the history of Israel and then towards the end of his sermon he's going to show the people how that history how all those promises covenant promises the Old Testament come to their fulfillment in Christ and this is what we read in verse 32 he says now we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus as it is also written in the second psalm you are my son today I have begotten you so according to the apostle Paul in the book of Acts the resurrection of Jesus is the greatest moment the final moment at which God definitively declares Jesus is my son he is the king whom

[30:49] I have anointed which is why the apostle Paul also says in Romans chapter 1 that God declared Jesus to be the son of God with power by raising him from the dead the resurrection if it's about anything is about!

[31:05] healing to us who Jesus really is it's about God saying to the world this is my chosen one this is my son he's the king he's the anointed one so that whenever we come to a discussion with someone about who Jesus is because this is going to happen if you make any attempt to share the gospel with people if you make any attempt to tell others about the good news you're going to eventually come down to who is Jesus because Jesus either is who he claims to be he either is who the New Testament writers claim to be or he's not and if he is then that changes everything changes everything it means that our entire lives have to be rearranged and reordered around his priorities and how do we know that he is who he claimed to be the New Testament tells us the resurrection confirms and declares all that was spoken about

[32:08] Jesus that's why Paul finds it so important in 1 Corinthians 15 to say that Jesus really was raised from the dead and if you have any doubts about it at Paul's time he says there are over 500 witnesses who saw him after the resurrection you can still go talk to them today Paul because even in Paul's day there were those who doubted those who wondered and Paul's very clear to say look if the resurrection didn't happen everything we believe is worthless and vain and our lives have been wasted but he says the resurrection happened go ask about it the resurrection is real Jesus was raised and so Jesus is who he claimed to be and he is who his father declared him to be in the resurrection we see definitively son of God now come into the world to not only save the world by his death but to cause God's kingdom to finally begin to break in to this world to begin to break in to the world of course we know by looking around us that the kingdom of

[33:15] God is not fully established here we know that you don't have to be a genius to figure that out you can look around you and see all sorts of terrible things happening you can see all sorts of wars happening you can just look in your own family or your neighbors lives and you can see that there's heartache and devastation surrounding us in the world we know that okay I get that you're!

[33:37] saying that the kingdom of God is coming into the world through Christ but it doesn't look like it to me it looks painful it looks like a series of triumphs and failures and many times it looks like the failures outweigh the triumphs and this world does not look to me like the kind of place in which God's rule is being expressed in any kind of real way to which I think David would answer wait it is coming wait look back at Psalm 2 not only does he speak of the establishment of the Messiah as the king but in verse 8 he speaks about that king's rule and what it will look like verse 8 says ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession now pause for a moment right there I remember hearing a song several years ago in which these verses were quoted ask of me and

[34:40] I'll give the nations as your inheritance I can't remember exactly how the song worded it but it basically quoted and paraphrased this verse right here but the song was supposed to be a call to missions and so the song was celebrating that that God has given to Jesus the nations and by extension given to us the nations and everything's going to be great the gospel everything's going to be wonderful and that's what this means there's some truth in that the gospel is going to spread to every tribe tongue people and nation God has people these calling these calling forth from nations that's going to happen but that's not what this psalm is about that's not what this verse is about ask of me and I'll make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession verse 9 you shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel when is that going to happen when does that happen because there are days when we long for justice and righteousness we want that there are days when we think

[35:56] God would you just please set things right there are times when I hear the news report or I see something online and you see evil that is so dark and depressing and you just think to yourselves when is he going to set things right I remember watching a video I think it was on YouTube and I won't go into detail because there's kids here but it's a video about how babies are treated in China it's I don't know 10 15 minute long video and you watch not only does your heart break for these babies but you just think God why when are you going to fix this because you've got to fix this this is evil this is just when are you going to break in and do this and I think that's what David is talking about here David is saying that God is not going to endure these things forever he's not going to let this them with a rod of iron and we say when when is going to happen hold your place again and turn over to the book of revelation final book of the bible that teaches us very clearly about the judgment but it doesn't only teach us about the judgment it has a great deal to say to us about church history in general

[37:26] I want you to look in revelation chapter 12 can't go there's a lot of confusing details here but I'll just explain a little bit to you in revelation chapter 12 there's the picture of a woman who is being pursued by the dragon that's Satan being pursued by the dragon I think that the woman represents the people of God whether it be Old Testament or New Testament I think it represents the people of God being pursued!

[38:01] crying out in birth pains and then in verse 5 it says that she gave birth to a male child now listen carefully one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron that's good news that's good news it means that it's going to happen it means that Psalm 2 is going to come to fulfillment Jesus has come into the world and he's going to rule the nations with a rod of iron but then it says but her child was caught up to God and to his throne in other words in chapter 12 it says he is going to do it that promise will come it's not been forgotten yes that's a thousand year old promise by the time this is being written that's a thousand year old promise but it's not forgotten by God he's going to not yet turn over a few more pages in Revelation chapter 19 here it comes chapter 19 verse 11

[39:06] John says I saw heaven opened and behold a white horse the one sitting on it is called faithful and true and in righteousness he judges and makes war his eyes are like a flame of fire and on his head are many diadems and he has a name written that no one knows but himself he is clothed in a robe dipped in blood and the name by which he is called is the word of God and the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen white and pure were following him on white horses pay close attention from his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the almighty this is the promise of a coming day in which psalm 2 will most definitely be fulfilled we live in the time between the day when Christ was born his first coming and the time when he comes back to rule the nations with a rod of iron and set all things aside we live in that time that John describes as him being caught up and taken up into his father's presence in other words he's not fully expressing his rule right now but it's going to happen it's sure and certain as sure and certain as the resurrection so sure and certain is it that Jesus will come back and he will establish his rule and he will make all things right all those terrible grievous evil things that we can see and learn about today he will fix them he will set them right he will judge those who do those things it's going to happen and because of that

[40:49] David's going to bring us a warning near the end of the psalm in verse 10 back in psalm 2 now therefore what are you going to do in light of this it's a sure promise of God what are you going to do in light of this now therefore oh kings be wise be warned oh rulers of the earth serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled that the picture of Jesus that you're familiar with in your own mind his wrath is quickly kindled most of us don't think of Jesus in those terms most of us only only consider one aspect of Christ's character and of Christ's work we consider Christ as a savior who would come to the earth and lay down his life on behalf of us and that's precious and true the Bible tells us that he suffered once for sins the righteous for the unrighteous that's precious and true that is something we need to cling to he loves us he laid down his life for us we need to believe that but he's also a king who will return in his wrath one day and set things right and the only way the only way to escape that wrath is to turn yourself wholly over to him

[42:26] I think that's what he means when he says serve the Lord with fear I think that's what he means when he says kiss the son bow down before him submit yourself to him trust in him look at the last phrase in this psalm blessed are all who take refuge in him what's the hope for a sinful fallen world what's the hope for sinful people like you and me what hope do we have if Jesus really is one who comes in wrath and fury what hope do we have as sinners when Jesus comes as the judge of sinners one day what hope can we possibly have and David tells us take refuge in him trust in him believe in him turn away from all of those wicked ways and turn to him and embrace him and he will no longer be to you a terrifying judge he will be to you a place of safety and refuge protected from the wrath of God himself

[43:31] I know that like like Israel often times we wonder when are things going to be set right when are we going to see Jesus ruling when when when when are all these things going to happen and what the Bible comes to say to us is it's not for you to know when that's going to happen all you need to know is that it's going to happen and all you need do all you need concern yourself with is take refuge in him and if you have not taken refuge in him if you have not trusted in him and given yourself over to him then I urge you right now take refuge in him lest you be among the nations who he rules one day with a rod of iron he is a good and loving and faithful savior to all those who trust in him let's pray father let us see

[44:35] Jesus in his power and majesty in his sovereign rule over all things let us also embrace him as the lamb slain for us as the righteous one who took the place of us of we unrighteous people let us rejoice that he is going to come and set things right and judge the world but let us hope and take courage that he is a refuge for all those of us who trust in him pray this in Jesus name amen