When God Laughs

I invite you to turn in your Bibles to Psalm chapter 2, starting in verse 1 to the end.

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision.

Then He will 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. I will tell of the decree. The Lord said to Me, You are My Son. Today I have begotten You. Ask of Me and I will make the nations Your heritage and the ends of the earth Your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now, therefore, O kings, be wise, be warned, O 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. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.

You may be seated. Before we start, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we know that you reign in heaven alongside the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that it is Christ who has been given all full authority and power in heaven. We know that He is our sovereign King.

He is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We pray that we would have this written upon our hearts this evening. Please remind us of His sovereign rule as we go into Your Word this evening. In Your Son's name we pray.

Amen. Jesus said in some very solemn words, Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. The Gospel divides, the message of the Gospel divides the believers with unbelievers, the sheep with the goats, the wheat with the chairs, the elect and the unelect, those who love God and those who have rejected God. Going back to John chapter 8, the Pharisees asked Jesus, Where is your Father? They are mocking Him. They know about Mary and Joseph and they are poking fun at Him.

They are calling Him illegitimate. Jesus says, You know neither me nor my Father. You are of your Father the devil. There is this sense that the Pharisees are steeped in the church and they are grown in a religious context but they were not numbered among those that kiss the Son, that come to the Son by faith. Jesus had 12 disciples and one of them was the son of perdition, Judas Iscariot. Paul thinking about his own fellow Israelites was grieved in Romans chapter 9 and he said, Not all those who are descended of Israel belong to Israel.

Not all of them will believe in Jesus. We look at the Psalms and it starts off with Psalm 1 and 2 but these were not the first Psalms that were ever written but they are placed here strategically to set the tone for the rest of the book. When we look into Psalm 2 we have a choice that we have to make today. We are to go with these nations, these kings of the earth, these rulers of the nations or we are to come to the Son of God by faith to love Him and to find rest and refuge in Him. But Psalm 1, I'm so glad we sang it because it illustrates these two paths that we must walk in either walking in the counsel of the wicked, standing in the way of sinners or sitting in the seat of scoffers or we are to delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on this law day and night. And if we do this, the promise here is that we will be like trees planted by streams of water yielding fruit in its season. These streams of water are watering the seed of faith that our faith will be rooted in God's Word and this is actually probably one of the most evangelistic Psalms in the Psalter.

So what we will look at this evening is we are called to kiss the Son, that is to believe in Christ and find our rest in Him. First we will look at the rebellion of the nations. The rebellion of the nations in verses 1 to 3. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together. Back when David wrote this, the nations were everyone else.

You were either in Israel or you were in the nations. You believed in the God of the Bible or you were part of these unbelieving nations and what they are doing here, the question that is being asked is why do they rage? Their anger is being raised up against God and against His anointed. They do not like, they hate actually, that God rules over them as a sovereign Lord. We think of the typical nations of Assyrians and Babylonians and the Philistines and all these ancient Near East kings had gods, had false gods that they would cite and they would call themselves divine monarchs. They believed themselves to be appointed by God as kings and now they want to go up against the true king and they are plotting and planning in vain.

This word plot in the original meaning comes with this concept of restlessness. They cannot get over it. They have to deal. They have to challenge this God, this true God of Israel and their anointed king that he has appointed. Back in David's time at the coronation ceremony of a new king in Israel, the new king would first pledge his allegiance and his faithfulness to the covenant and then secondly he was crowned and proclaimed as their legitimate ruler and only then would he be anointed with holy oil. We see this in 2 Kings chapter 11 verse 12.

Thus we have the phrase anointed of the Lord. So this idea is that they are then anointed and then placed as the king of Israel and on the throne of David. The irony here is that this Davidic covenant is actually meant to be a blessing to the nations. The church, its law, the anointed king of Israel that sits upon the throne of Israel, these are all blessings for the nations. They are to be added into Israel, Lord willing, and embrace these covenant promises. Many times we have missionaries come through and say may the nations be blessed.

That is in reference to this Davidic covenant. It is supposed to be a blessing to them. But they respond and say let us burst their bonds apart. Let us cast away their cords from us. They want full removal of God from their life. They don't want him or his king or his law but instead they say let us remove the restraints. Let us throw off these boundaries that God has set in his law and his precepts.

Let us cast away these cords. The book of Acts quotes verses 1-2. If you go to Acts chapter 4 you will see it. Verses 1-2 are laid out in verses 25 and 26 and then they apply it in verse 27 and 28.

David wrote this back in his time and he was talking about the nations. Now in Acts chapter 4 they are talking about Herod and Pilate. Verse 27 says, For truly it is in this city that we are gathered together against your holy servant Jesus whom you anointed. So Psalm 2 is confirmed in Acts chapter 4 that Christ is the anointed one.

This is our first Messianic Psalm in the Psalter. Both Herod and Pontius Pilate along with the Gentiles and the people of Israel to do whatever your hand and plan had predestined to take place. So in Psalm 2 the nations raged against the king of Israel.

In Acts chapter 4 it is Herod and Pilate against Jesus and now we have people that rage today. What does that look like today? If you read the news you see that people are raging against the civil government in the United States. We see that there is great deal of turmoil.

I thought at the end of last year there wasn't much going on. Then we get hit with the coronavirus and we have fires in Australia and riots after the death of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks. $500 million worth of damage in downtown Minneapolis. People are raging in the streets in Los Angeles and Tokyo, Japan even. People are mobilizing. They want to defund the police. They want to even abolish the police. We have groups of left wing and right wing protesters fighting in the streets. Some groups even insisting on a form of anarchy as the form of government.

Police officers have been killed in Minneapolis and Los Angeles. Rachel and I were walking in downtown and we even saw a sign that said a world without police, a world without prisons. I think about the Old Testament passage that everyone did what was right in their own eyes. We have to filter this through with the Christian grid. What does God's word have to say about this? Romans 13 actually says that we are to be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those that exist have been instituted by God. Whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed. A government and law enforcement has been established and ordained by God. We as Christians are called to be models of civil obedience to these warring nations as long as the government is just.

We have to give a caveat here. If the government was to ask us to break God's law we stand with Peter in Acts chapter 4 and say we must obey God rather than men. We do see policies in the civil government that push against God's law.

If you watch the news you have seen our country seems to be moving in this direction of the nations, civil unrest. As a result of Roe v. Wade 60 million children have been killed through abortion. All the while there is more and more pressure building against the church. We will face more and more pressure in the coming years for our tax exempt status to be removed unless we embrace the same sex unions as a faithful expression of the marriage covenant. The mayor of Houston, if you remember back in 2014, she issued a subpoena asking for sermon manuscripts of ministers that spoke openly against homosexuality from their pulpits. This is one of the many examples where the government is coming into the church and saying let's compromise, let's work within the system. I've seen both political parties this year trying to work within the churches, going into inner city churches and talking about policy to the local congregations.

Mike Pence made it to the national meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. There is this sense that now we are being pulled in two different directions where both political parties are saying the church can find a home here in this party or that party. They are tugging on us left and right saying we are the party of the church. They are citing verses that seem to say if you believe Jesus, if you believe in the Bible, this verse or this rationale should make you side with us.

They start quoting policies on guns and open borders and immigration and taxes and military spending and welfare. Everything is being cited from God's Word as to why we ought to be in this camp or that camp. All the while I just wonder if any of those politicians ever thought of the last words of David, that he that rules over man must be just, ruling in the fear of God. I want to ask them are any of you my Christian brother or sister? Are any of you repenting of sin and believing in the word Jesus Christ?

Do any of you believe in the Bible as the infallible word of God? Because my commitment first and foremost is to the Lord Jesus Christ and His church. That's who I think about. I think about you. I think about the Lord whom I love and His bride that is the church of Jesus Christ.

That's who I think about. This election is coming up in nine days apparently and it's been divisive and even the church is being divided over who to vote for and I just want us to be reminded that it is the Lord Jesus Christ who is enthroned in heaven. He is sovereign over all things and He demands an undivided loyalty from His church. I know the thought process. I've talked to you all.

I know what it is. We want to honor the Lord by voting in the policies that are closest to Christian ideals and ethics and a Christian worldview and I understand. You might think we have to win this election. We have to get this right administration in and if they get in it's going to be a disaster and we've got to get this guy in or that guy in and ultimately I want us to know that no matter what happens God ordains all things that come to pass. God is sovereign over all things.

Would you lose heart if your candidate did not get in? Would you think for a second that God has neglected His church? Does He not care that the nations rage against Him? Is God indifferent? He gives us an answer in verse 4. Verse 4 tells us He is reigning in heaven ruling from His throne of sovereignty and He is looking down governing all that is in the world and He is watching our nation plan and plot and try to win an election.

What is His response? He tells us He who sits in the heavens laughs. God laughs at us as we plot and plan.

The foolishness of men and their pride as they rebel against His sovereign rule. He's not laughing in a sense of humor. He's laughing in a sense of derision. He is mocking. He is seeing the futile plans of men to reign and govern over America as these divine monarchs tried to be God.

He's laughing out loud. We think back into history of men that have tried to be God. Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Hannibal, Marcus Aurelius in the Roman Empire and all these men are dead and buried and they are now in a history book. They sought to take God's authority. They wanted to be God and then God comes in and laughs at their foolishness. He responds to their rebellion with anger, with justice which they deserve and we think of extending grace and mercy and we should as Christians. We ought to embrace the grace and mercy that is extended to us in Christ. But what of those that deny Him? What about those that revile and hate God?

And if the nations were to judge the ways of God would it be so far-fetched that He would in turn judge the nations? We see in verse 5 that He will 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. Christ was born in a manger and now the world belongs to Him. He suffered under Pontius Pilate and now He will in turn judge Pilate in the Sanhedrin.

He endured harsh treatment being mocked and scourged and spit upon and now Christ is ascended into heaven and enthroned as our King of glory reigning for an eternity. Psalm 72 tells us may He have dominion from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth may desert tribes bow down before Him and His enemies lick the dust. Here we see Christ is claiming His full authority and power over all the earth. It is Christ that rules and reigns and it is the power that is given to Him by God the Father.

This is placed by the Father, given to the Son. He is installed and coronated as the King for all eternity. He establishes this authority and power in Psalm 110. The Lord says to my Lord sit at my right hand and I will make your enemies a footstool and He asserts that I have installed my King on Zion. Zion is a hill in the center of Jerusalem and that is where the temple was.

So it was in the center of town and these ancient Kings of Israel would sit there enthroned in heaven ruling over God's people as God's appointed monarch and God sanctified this hill by putting His presence on Mount Zion. From this hill David and the many Kings of Israel would reign and now they were a shadow that was pointing to the eventual that is eternal King of glory, the Lord Jesus Christ. And now he will declare the decree that is from His Father. Our third point goes into verse 7 to 10, the decree of the Father. I will tell of the decree of the Lord that is God the Father says to me you are my son today I have begotten you. God the Father says to the Son you are my son. He is staking claim in the Lord Jesus Christ and saying you are mine. This is pointing back to the incarnation of Christ that Christ was clothed in human flesh, born of a virgin and declared by the Father at His baptism. If you remember back in Matthew 3 God the Father says this is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased and the Holy Spirit descends like a dove upon His baptism.

We see all three divine persons of the Trinity working together and blessing this moment here. And then verse 8 follows up and says ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. God's people were looking forward to this eventual ruler.

They had David and they knew that he would be in the line of David but the goal was that this last and final King would usher in this era of peace and prosperity spoken of by the prophets. So now God the Father gives His Son these nations as an inheritance. The promise of the Messiah who is to rule over Israel becomes a reality and now this is the reign of Christ. The Gospel goes out throughout the nations of the world that they might be grafted into the eternal covenant. This Davidic covenant is a blessing to the nations that they might believe in Christ and believe on Him and eternally be in peace and communion with Jesus Christ.

Isaiah chapter 9 verse 7 says of the increase of His government and the peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over His kingdom to establish it and to uphold with justice and with righteousness from the time forth and forevermore. This is an everlasting peace, mercy and riches of grace for those that belong to Him. That is for those that believe in Christ, those that come to Him. But what of those that don't?

What happens to these nations? Though they have heard the message and they have been pleaded with to look to the Son, to kiss the Son, to find refuge in the Son. Verse 9 he shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. The imagery used here is Christ wielding a scepter that is a rod of authority and symbolizing His rule and authority in heaven. Typically a scepter would be made out of gold.

It would be in a palace laid with gold. It was distinguishable between any other shepherd's rod or any other symbol. This meant that you were the king of Israel appointed by God. And so He raises this scepter of authority and in judgment like a rod of iron He is striking His enemies like they are pots of clay.

No one debates what happens when iron strikes a pot of clay. It is utterly destroyed. So this is a warning. This is the warning of the law. This is the warning of judgment that those that hear it that are outside of Christ that have not come to the Son by faith that they might run to the grace of God. That they might believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so verses 10-12 give us reconciliation with the Son.

They give us a pathway that we might believe. Now therefore O kings be wise, be warned O rulers of the earth. These pagan nations they are still not believing in God.

They are still rebelling and hating the true God of Israel. He says consider the direction you are going. Consider the pathway that you are taking away from God. Realize that Christ is going to come again and He is going to judge the nations unless they kiss the Son.

He will administer judgment on those that have openly rebelled against Him. So this offer here is for you and I in this passage. For all those that might hear the Gospel call that they would receive this free gift of God and eternal life with Jesus Christ our Lord. But we are commanded further in verse 11 to serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. This is not a sort of fear of punishment. We are in grace but it is a reverential fear. The way that we would respect God as being all powerful.

Proverbs chapter 1 verse 7 of course says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. One of my favorite examples of this is Samuel Davies. He is an early minister in the colonies. He went back to Westminster Abbey in London. As the story goes Davies was preaching in the royal chapel there and King George was actually in attendance for his sermon. King George started to talk to those in the pew next to him and it was actually quite loud.

So disruptive to the point that Samuel Davies had to say something. So he was in the middle of his sermon and the conversation got louder and louder and Samuel Davies stopped his sermon and glared at King George. He said when the lion roars the beasts of the forest tremble and when King Jesus speaks the princes of the earth keep silent.

It got silent in the royal chapel. King George held a meeting later that day and apologized to Davies for talking during his sermon and the point was that when King Jesus speaks, when the king of kings speaks other kings are to remain silent. I think that applies to us this evening when Christ speaks we ought to be silent. We must go to the sun. We must believe in the sun. We must kiss the sun. Translation may say do homage to the sun or show respect to the sun but this is a common expression that simply means there is close relational association and so it is to receive Christ and to love Christ.

To receive him not only as the son of God but simply our savior and our redeemer and our friend and the one that has redeemed us for all eternity. It is to show respect to the sun lest we perish in the way that his wrath is kindled. Again these nations are still under this judgment as they deny Christ and so the plea here is to believe and to go to the sun to hear his voice. But they do perish in the way those that deny Christ. We see in Matthew 25 this is describing the second coming of Jesus Christ. That he will divide them, those to his left he will divide them between the wheat and the chaff, the sheep and the goats, the elect and the un-elect. And finally in verse 41 he says, Depart from me you cursed into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. He finishes this, he concludes this passage in verse 46.

These will go away into an eternal punishment. He is warning of an eternal separation from God. And so that offer is extended out to you tonight, to everyone throughout the nations to go to the sun, to come to the sun as our savior and redeemer and ultimately our king that rules over all creation.

And those that believe in the sun will have peace with God for all eternity. And in that same passage of fear and judgment and eternity in hell verse 34 he says, Come you who are blessed by my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. That inheritance that God the father gave the son, through the son the father extends that to you and I.

We have this kingdom that is inherited. We have an eternal kingdom, a kingdom of heaven that belongs to you and I if we simply go to the son and kiss the son. And he is the only way, we know he is the way and the truth and the life.

He is the only way to eternal life. Timothy tells us there is one man, mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. We are to go to him by faith and since we have been, to Christians here, since we have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have obtained access by faith into the grace in which we stand.

We stand in a place of grace, those that kiss the son. And he calls us to find refuge in him so no matter what happens in the coming week, no matter what happens in the future, we trust in a God that ordains all things that come to pass. Let us find our rest and our refuge in him.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father we do come to you in the name of your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Please renew in our hearts a love for the Lord as he laid himself down for us and bore our sin and gave us his perfect righteousness when we believe in him by faith. We are so thankful that we serve a God who reigns eternally. That you have added us into this everlasting covenant. Let us not forget these truths but write them upon our hearts. In your son's name we pray. Amen.