The Messianic implications of Psalm 2
Psalm 2:1-3, “2
1
Why do the nations rage?
Why do the people waste their time with futile plans?
2
The kings of the earth prepare for battle;
the rulers plot together
against the LORD
and against his anointed one.
3
"Let us break their chains," they cry,
"and free ourselves from this slavery."”
This Psalm usage in the New Testament is found in Acts 4:25, 26; 13:33, Hebrews 1:5, 6; 5:5; Revelation 2:26,27; 12:4; 19:15). This Psalm is considered a messianic Psalm. Its theme is God’s ultimate rule, a Psalm written to celebrate the coronation of an Israelite king, but also written for the coronation of Christ, the eternal King. This psalm by King David who was a shepherd, solider and king. We can see that he was also a Prophet (Acts 2:29,30)., because this psalm describes the rebellion of the nations and the coming of Christ to establish his eternal reign. David may have written these words during a conspiracy against Israel by some of the surrounding pagan nations. Chosen and anointed by God, David knew that God would fulfill his promise to bring the Messiah into the world through his bloodline (2 Sam 7:16; 1 Chronicles 17:11-12).
Verse 1 poses for us a rhetorical question, one that we don’t see until we read verse 2. Mankind is driven by many things most of which drive them away from God. We can walk down many roads in life towards many dreams and aspirations, but if our lives are not focused upon the meaning of Life, then we have lost the point and have no base for our lives. The point is that demonic hordes love to distract and distort truth as reality and falsehood into belief. Yet this cannot be since God Himself is truth, then Satan must be the liar in this equation, since God’s truth is all pervasive and truth. But this is the whole entire point. God will draw His enemies together to battle during Armageddon, and throw them into the Lake of fire, along with Satan, Antichrist and the False Prophet, the rest will be torn asunder unto the mighty Word of God. We fight against God when we as believers don’t love one another because while God is a God of holiness, He is still a God of love, wanting us as believers to love one another, thus fulfilling our obligation in this transaction of sorts, from death spiritually to life eternally. Christ is the one who holds the keys it is not us. The nations rage and go to war with each other, Jesus addressed this fact in his Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24-26. The whole point though is that while judgment may be coming, a person can avoid the judgment of hell by receiving the new life, that is found in receiving Jesus personally by faith in Him. Its not that we won’t have to face Him, because as we saw last time, each one us is headed towards some judgment, its just a matter of which judgment you are headed towards. Are you headed towards the judgment of what you’ve done with your faith in Messiah, or the judgment of eternal damnation? This battle that will occur during the Great Tribulation, the last three and one half years in the Tribulation, will happen. This in a sense in verse two gives us the first view of what this battle may look like. Although we know the nations will be gathered to fight and to die at the Word that will proceed from the Lord’s mouth, it is still important nonetheless to look forward and to press in towards the high calling that we have as believers in knowing God personally.
We bound ourselves upon slavery in the sense of slavery to sin. In a sense we are all bound to something whether that be for our benefit or for our ill. The decision and the regard for truth must be so prevalent to us personally that instead of being bound by slavery, we would be slaves for the cause of Christ, committing our care, our desires, and our lives at the feet of Jesus, saying use me Lord, take me Lord, higher, and higher into Your promises and Truth through Your Holy Spirit. Judgment is coming that’s for sure, but its what you have decided already that will make the difference, so make sure you are resolved to follow Jesus with all of your heart mind and soul. By loving Him, you will in turn be able to love others around you. This prophecy here within this verse refers then to a future time of God’s impending judgment at Armageddon. The Messianic implications for this are huge.
Psalm 2:4-6, “4
But the one who rules in heaven laughs.
The Lord scoffs at them.
5
Then in anger he rebukes them,
terrifying them with his fierce fury.
6
For the LORD declares, "I have placed my chosen king on the throne
in Jerusalem, my holy city.[1] "
Psalm 45
6 Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever;
a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.
God laughs not at the nations, but at their confused thoughts about power. It is the laughter of a father when his three year old boasts that he or she can outrun him or beat him in a wrestling match. The father knows the boundaries of power of nations. Every nation is limited, but God is transcendent. If you have to choose between confidence in God and confidence in any nation, choose God! God is all powerful, He created the world and knew about the empires of the earth long before they came into being (Daniel 2:26-45), but pride and power causes nations and leaders to rebel against God and try to break free of him. Our world has many leaders who boast of their power, who rant and rave against God and his people, who promise to take over and form their own empires. But God laughs because any power they have comes from him and he can also take it from them. We need not fear the boasts of tyrants-they are in God’s hands.
God’s rule will be forever and ever, as He defeats His enemies and makes them His footstool. God’s enemies will be afraid by the obvious judgment of not knowing Him in a relationship with His Son. The early churches emphasis in there preaching was upon the fact that Jesus was the Messiah expected, not the Messiah delivered. The Jews view of God was the fact that He was going to come to rescue them and redeem them, but what they failed to see past the form of Law that they had with traditions based, was the fact that many times and in different ways God pointed out the true nature of the Law was to expose sin and thus in repentance have faith in Him. While Israel had many idolatrous affairs with its neighbors and worshipped pagan god’s because they felt that their own God was not good enough, the God of heaven did not give up on them, no the Lord Jesus Christ walked with Israel and protected Israel even to this day, because Psalm 45
6 Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.”
Psalms 2:7-8, “7
The king proclaims the LORD’s decree:
"The LORD said to me, `You are my son.[2]
Today I have become your Father.[3]
8
Only ask, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance,
the ends of the earth as your possession.”
Acts 13
32"And now Barnabas and I are here to bring you this Good News. God’s promise to our ancestors has come true in our own time, 33in that God raised Jesus. This is what the second psalm is talking about when it says concerning Jesus,
`You are my Son.
Today I have become your Father.[1] ’
Hebrews 1
5For God never said to any angel what he said to Jesus: "You are my Son. Today I have become your Father.[1] "
And again God said,
"I will be his Father,
and he will be my Son."[2]
6And then, when he presented his honored[3] Son to the world, God said, "Let all the angels of God worship him."[4]
Hebrews 5
5That is why Christ did not exalt himself to become High Priest. No, he was chosen by God, who said to him,
"You are my Son.
Today I have become your Father.[1] "
The link here is established clearly between the Father and the Son’s role in the Godhead. The Son submits to the Father and the Father to the Son. God raised Jesus from the dead. Thus through that Christ become our High Priest entering into the Most Holy place, to take the place of our Sin, all of our sin thus enabling us to be made whole through His sacrifice on the Cross. It is only through that that we are made right, this is why Christ had to die, why He screamed, and why the veil tore in half in the Temple in Jerusalem, because Christ was then entering into that Most Holy Place ripping apart the veil that separated us spiritually from heaven, so that now we can enter into the salvation process by faith in His Son, and His sacrifice alone. So here the linkage again to the Son Only ask, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance,
the ends of the earth as your possession.” Clearly here is a reference to the Millennial Kingdom reign of Christ. It is through Him that we will be able to enter into that Millennial kingdom when He establishes that Kingdom. Yet it is Christ who will rule supremely over all the land. This shows and proves the messianic link between what Christ set out to accomplish in turn was fulfilled in His death by Him tearing apart the standard of the Law, so that we could in turn see the intent of the Law, was to see our sin, turn from our sin, away from eternal damnation into eternal life in His Son.
Psalm 2:9, “9
You will break them with an iron rod
and smash them like clay pots.’ "
Psalm 28
5
They care nothing for what the LORD has done
or for what his hands have made.
So he will tear them down like old buildings,
and they will never be rebuilt!
Psalm 110
5
The Lord stands at your right hand to protect you.
He will strike down many kings in the day of his anger.
6
He will punish the nations
and fill them with their dead;
he will shatter heads
over the whole earth.
Revelation 2
26"To all who are victorious, who obey me to the very end, I will give authority over all the nations. 27They will rule the nations with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots.
Revelation 19
15From his mouth came a sharp sword, and with it he struck down the nations. He ruled them with an iron rod, and he trod the winepress of the fierce wrath of almighty God.
2 Corinthians 10
4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
2 Thessalonians 2
8And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.
Some care not of the things of the Lord, even though God’s goodness and mercy are ever present realities throughout our days from our waking to our resting. For the Word of God is a Sword that precedes from the mouth of our Risen Savior. He shall triumph absolutely over mankind thus exposing the realities that the Antichrist and the False Prophet have propagated throughout the reign of terror which will no likely insue during there own administration. Yet during the administration of Christ the rule will be sweet and fragrance will abound. But before this can happen during His second coming He will override free will for He has more than shown His mercy and kindness. God’s mercy is restrained in a sense and unstrained in the sense. God desires that all people come unto Him yet at the same time that mercy is limited, because God will not be mocked, for a sinner will reap what they sow unto eternal life or unto eternal damnation and the lake of fire for those who reap to the wrong. It is only through faith in Christ Jesus through accepting what He has done and thus enabled you to do as a believer through that very sacrifice that you have any footing at all in terms of over strongholds or over anything for that matter. True power does not express itself in the power it expresses itself in its desire to do good for those who have not and those who thirst, for God is our light and our refuge, and it is also our primary responsibility to shine that light into the dark places so that men and woman will turn in repentance towards Christ away from self, so that they will bring honor and glory by presenting themselves before the Master (Romans 12:1-2, Isaiah 60:1; 61:1-11; Ephesians 2:8-10; 1st John 1:1-10).
So now today we have seen the Messianic implications of Psalms 2 and its implications further upon the Messianic prophecies regarding Jesus. We have seen that while God’s sovernity is all powerful, even to the point that it can override human choice and free will of man, yet that is not God’s desire. It is God’s desire that man and woman come unto Him and know the joy of the Lord. The implications are such that it leads one to many choices, of which today reader you have as well. You either have the decision to disregard the presentation of His messianiship as the Son of God and deny who He is fully, or you can receive Him and believe in who He is, existing before the foundations of the world. The decision and the choice are solely up to you today to decide. The messianic implications of Psalm 2 are such though that they are recorded all over the NT as we have seen today. May we turn our eyes in faith-the lens of our faith aimed towards Christ who will reign supreme over all. The Messianiship of Christ shows us that Christ became among us, that He dwelt among us, that He died for us, yet in the end He defeated that death triumphing over it by tearing the veil apart, through defeating death and rising from the dead to give us new life, and a new hope, and in the future when we stand before Him resurrected bodies, and that’s all through His sacrifice, His resurrection, and His ascension to the right hand of God. So then the implications are such that they lead us towards the decision. Will you receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior today? Will you let Him become the Messiah who shed His blood for you on the Cross?
Psalm 2
10
Now then, you kings, act wisely!
Be warned, you rulers of the earth!
11
Serve the LORD with reverent fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
12
Submit to God’s royal son, or he will become angry,
and you will be destroyed in the midst of your pursuits--
for his anger can flare up in an instant.
But what joy for all who find protection in him!
Are you ready for His coming? We must surrender our lives all of our lives if we seek to be willing vessels living in expectancy of our Messiah return not only for His church but of His millennial Kingdom as well. Christ is not only God’s chosen King, he is also the rightful heir and King of our hearts and lives. We must therefore submit to His leadership as Messiah everyday, as He is our Lord, and our King, in whom we trust and obey. Those who are in positions of leadership better take heed, to the Word of the Lord, the warning is there, lead your people astray and you will incur the wrath of God, nothing to mess with but the future beholds His glory and His praise, for all who love Him will willingly submit all that they are unto Him, so that He can use them for His plans, and precepts. It is only through the fact that we are His workmanship a work in progress that we are being perfected and cleansed, yet not in the total sense as of yet, since that will occur during the time when we stand before Him, and He shall know us totally, but yet at the same time submitting to God is a good and holy thing to do. Those who love Him will submit to Him in worship and adoration, those who don’t will have no sense of what the joy of the Lord is all about other than a mere feeling or perhaps a joke at that.
Philosophy is like a razor to the mind it buzz saws truth and spearheads it into the intellectual arena of our mind, but theology does much more than this, for theology pierces not only our minds when done truly, it pierces our hearts and causes us to experience the joy of the Lord, not the anger of the Lord of which those who have yet to experience Him fully through His sacrifice now incur. Are you a willing vessel for God to use? Are you living in expectancy of the Messiah? Its up to you today reader! Decide, make your decision, for the time is coming when He shall return for His own. Believe upon His name and be saved, changing your behavior and your life to live in accordance to His holy Word.
Pastor Jenkins
http://www.servantsofgrace.net
