Devotion with the Psalmist: Christ is on the throne...relax

Psalm 2:1-12

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.

There is not a moment in human history where conflict is not to be found, whether it be at an individual level, or a nation striving against nation. War is ever-present, always around the corner, always in everyone’s thoughts. War, in fact, is the child of the thoughts and motives of men, generated by hatred, anger, envy, murder, greed and other such things.

In this Psalm we see the plotting of man, the pronouncement of God, the proposal for submission, and the product of reliance upon God.

1. The Plotting of man is futile and foolish against the Lord Jesus Christ.

Acts 4:24-30 says:

And 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,  who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’—for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, 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.  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.”

David wrote this Psalm under the direction of the Holy Spirit prophesying about the actions of the kings of the earth and religious leaders against the King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus Christ. The plotting spoken of in this Psalm may have indirectly referred to the nations against David in his day, but it primarily referred to the plotting of Herod and Pilate, the Gentiles and the Jewish people and leaders against Jesus.

There two a few things to note about this plotting.

A. It is futile for men to plot against God, because God makes all the plans and has ordained what will comes to pass.

Those who plot against Christ are laboring without benefit or result. Why? Because the great omnipotent, the potentate of time, the master and maker of the universe scheduled it, and planned it, and it would surely come to pass. The rulers plotted, but the Maker had planned.

B. Through their plotting they think they will throw off bondage, but really what they throw off is their freedom, and they plunge to true bondage.

These wicked men who are plotting against God believe that the freedom offered to them in Christ, freedom from the curse of the law, freedom from the eternal prison of hell, where the worm does not die, and the fire forever burns, freedom from living like an animal is actually bondage. They attempt to shake off, or tear off what they would consider to be shackles. These shackles are none other than the eternal and faithful love of God in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ.

2. The Pronouncement of God concerning the divine rights of Jesus Christ and his reward for the work on the cross.

Man plots, but what is God's reaction?

God sits, laughs and mocks in the heavens on his throne. God sees and hears the plotting of the wicked, and he is utterly unconcerned with what they can do. God laughs at those who plot and conspire to throw his kingdom and king down.

God judges those who try to throw off his yoke. He addresses them, and it comes with terror, wrath and fury. They have assaulted and insulted his king, Jesus Christ, one time to many.

The pronouncement is:

A. God has put Jesus Christ, His Son, on the throne in the holy city.

B. Yahweh, the covenant faithful God speaks to Jesus Christ, and tells him the reward that he will be given for the work he did in the world on the cross.

C. Jesus Christ will bring justice to those who rebelled against his coronation as king of the universe.

This justice against the wicked will take the form of a blow to them and separate them into pieces. He will do it with his rod or scepter, with authority and a symbol of conquest to break them to pieces. This is significant, because he has actually been given this authority.

This is the pronouncement of the Lord, and it is terrible. There is the receiving end of God's mercy which is wonderful place to be and a receiving end of his wrath which is a most terrible place to be.

Yes, Jesus is kind and loving and gracious, but only to those he names his friends. To those who rebel and set themselves up against him he is a most terrible enemy.

Jesus is not tame. He is a consuming fire, the bright morning star. Anger him and be prepared for his wrath, do not submit to him, and be prepared for his justice and judgment. Accept his grace and mercy and be put under his protection.

3. The Proposal of submission or the free offer of the gospel found in Christ Jesus.

God does not just leave the people of the earth to perish in their sins and their hatred of him. Rather, he is a gracious God, giving mercy to any who come to seek the forgiveness found in His Son. This mercy is found in a proposal.

A. They are to serve Yahweh with fear.

They are to submit to God and perform all the duties he has required.

What are these duties? This question is answered in Micah 6:8:

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Also, Jesus, the very subject of this Psalm also tells us in Matthew 22:37-40:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”

The requirement is to serve him with great respect, understanding who he is and the power and majesty of his name, and the deep requirements of being holy like he is.

B. They are to serve Yahweh with joy.

It is not enough to have a healthy fear of God, to respect him for his power and be afraid to offend him, but they must serve him with great excitement, with vigorous and enthusiastic expressions of joy. Serve him in a heart-felt way that their whole being is excited and enthusiastic about it. God is not ok with hypocrisy. This is a tall order, which is why we are told that they must kiss the son or perish.

We must submit and pay homage to Christ. We must openly, publicly acknowledge our feudal allegiance to the king. Just as a vanquished foe, who promises fidelity and submission to the conqueror, so they must submit and acknowledge their absolute rebellion, realize their failure to conform to the standard, and then run to the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God.

So the proposal is that they run to the Son of God, Jesus Christ the very one that they tried to overthrow, and he will give them mercy, otherwise, God's wrath will suddenly come upon them, and they will be consumed by him and perish in everlasting fire.

4. The Product of reliance upon this wonderful Savior is peace and happiness.

Happiness and joy in life is not based upon how things are going, how good our job is, our family life is, our health is, or any other thing in this earth. No, the product of knowing and believing that Jesus Christ has been coronated, and is on the throne is peace, joy and happiness.

The product of knowing Christ in a salvific way is happiness. Yet, as the text says, this happiness does not come from simply acknowledging and believing that Christ is on the throne and is reigning, but resting in the fact that he is on the throne, that nothing can withstand the mighty and awesome power of God, and no one will be able to stand against his fury and his plan.

Jesus Christ is our shelter and our refuge from the storm of the wrath of God because of our plotting. Jesus Christ is one whom we can rest in and under to find peace and happiness.

Application for life under the sun:

1. Have we really kissed the Son? Do we serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling? Do we truly trust and treasure Christ?

2. Christ really IS on the throne, the world is not out of control.

The one who shed his blood for you is the one who rules the universe. His plan cannot be thwarted, even by the ruler of the most powerful nation in the world. Herod and Pilate played into his hands, and the result was our salvation. He is the great I AM the one true God. No one can oppose him and live. He has planned every atom, every molecule, every bit of dust. His power cannot be controlled, he cannot be manipulated.

Don't worry! Jesus is on the throne! He is ruling, and no power will own or control him. The world is not out of control, nor ever will be. Jesus rules the nations.

3. Christ really IS on the throne, your life is not out of control.

But Jesus speaks to us! In the book of Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus tells us not to worry, because the Father loves us, and will take care of us. He tells us not to worry or fret, because of the fact that Jesus is on the throne. He rules, governs and directs all people, their actions and all things.

I end with a poem from John Bowring:

There is a land where everlasting suns shed everlasting brightness; where the soul drinks from the living streams of love that roll by God’s high throne! Myriads of glorious ones bring their accepted offerings there. Oh! how blest to look from this dark prison to that shrine, to inhale one breath of Paradise divine, and enter into that eternal rest which unites the sons of God.

Devotion with the Psalmist: Caught between two worlds

Psalm 1

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.
The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.


A poem by an unknown source says:

All the water in the world, However hard it tried, Could never sink a shipUnless it got inside.  All the evil in the world, The wickedness and sin, Can never sink the soul’s craftUnless it got inside.

As humans we struggle with suffering, pain, hurt, depression and anxiety. But as Christians we struggle with our mind and our heart being caught between two worlds. The world of righteousness and the world of wickedness.

We desire to be with our God, to know, to love, to worship, to give to Him and others, but we also desire to be by ourselves, to be known as great, to love ourselves, to get praise, and to be worshipped by others.

Yes, we are "caught between two worlds."

Psalm one is a fitting introduction to the Psalms. It calls us to the very core of the matter. There are two ways, the way of life and the way of death. We live in a place that we are caught between two worlds: the world of happiness, and the world of misery. It is here in this first Psalm that we see our hearts and lives exposed for what they really are, and our emotions and feelings exposed as well.

The happy man is the man who avoids falling into the sinful patterns and practices of the world. The happy man is one who loves every word that comes from the mouth of God, and makes these words his life practice. This happy man is then prospered because he lives as was intended by God. Every single decision and every single action is framed by what God wants. This man is protected by and guarded by the Lord.

The psalm is broken into three parts: verses 1-2, verses 3-4 and verses 5-6.

Verses 1-2 teach us that happiness comes from Yahweh’s word. Verses 3-4 teach us that delighting in Yahweh’s Word brings permanence and despising Yahweh’s Word brings impermanence, and verses 5-6 teach us that God knows the righteous but is against the wicked.

1. Happiness comes from the Lord.

The psalmist tells us that the happy man is the one who instead of taking advice from the wicked, listens to Yahweh’s Word. Yahweh’s Word has been clearly revealed to us in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and from John chapter 1, especially verses 14-18, where we can see that Yahweh’s Word is Jesus Christ, the revealer of God. So the happy man is the man who listens to Jesus Christ, and keeps from the advice of the unrighteous, those who live immoral lives apart from Yahweh.

But it is not that he just listens to Yahweh’s Word, and finds happiness, but that he delights in Yahweh’s Word. Yahweh’s Word is a cause or source of great pleasure for the happy man. The one who is happy delights or finds great pleasure in Jesus Christ as the revelation of the true and living God, our Father. But it is not that he just listens, but he meditates on the Word as well. The happy man makes the Word his focus for a period of time. What is this period of time? It is both day and night. It is from sunrise to sunset to sunrise.

To sum these verses up: How happy is the man who doesn’t live in the advice of the unrighteous, but rather lives in the advice of the Word of God, Jesus Christ. How happy is the man who doesn’t take his stand in the ways of those who offend God’s standard, but rather takes his stand in God’s standard, Jesus Christ. How happy is the man who doesn’t live in arrogance and mock God and his Way, but rather lives and loves the Way, Jesus Christ.

So this is where we are caught between the two worlds. We desire to live like the happy man, but so often we are living for ourselves and our pleasure, even at the expense of our own happiness.

It isn’t that we can’t be a part of the world, it is that we have to have the source of our life as God, in Jesus Christ. We have to live on his very words, and have our passions and desires as his.

2. Delighting in Yahweh's Word brings permanence and despising his Word brings impermanence.

The way of the righteous, the one who delights in Yahweh’s word, instead of being blown away, stands firm in the Lord. The righteous one is transplanted firmly into the ground by the banks of a flowing river. This river provides the source of life for this tree, and because of the constancy of the sun, and the permanency of the water source, this tree always provides its fruit at the proper time. Every year, at the same time, we can expect it to bear fruit, and good fruit too. The righteous one is like the one Christ referred to who built his house on the rock, and not on the sand. The righteous one is like the one Christ referred to who bears fruit 100-fold.

But the way of the wicked is the way of worthlessness and emptiness. Yahweh says here that his way is like the way of the chaff. Chaff is the worthless hulls of wheat. In order to get the “good stuff”, they would pound the wheat in order to crack the hulls. The good wheat inside would not break, but the hulls would be loosened. They would then in a light wind, throw the wheat with the hulls up in the air, and the wind would blow away the hulls. These hulls were worthless except to be thrown away or burned. The hulls were a waste product.

3. God knows the righteous but is against the wicked.

Yahweh knows in a personal way the path of the righteous. He doesn’t just know who they are, he knows them in a personal way. He knows their name, who they are, and cares deeply about them.

Only the righteous will stand before God. Only those whose delight is in the Word of Yahweh, and on His Word they meditate both day and night. Only a righteous man can enter into the righteous and holy presence of God.

Psalm 1 has been fulfilled in Christ!

So here we are, at a very difficult place. How many of us have completely and fully delighted in the Word of God? How many of us have made our meditation be the Word of God both day and night?

The answer to this question is that none of us have. In fact, we are most of the time caught between two worlds. We want to have one foot in heaven, while we have another in hell. Most of us, in fact, cannot say that we have never, or never take advice from the wicked. Most of us on a day by day basis can’t say that we don’t mock God, and His care over us in either creation or providence. In fact, most of us can’t say that we are really worth anything in and of ourselves. Most days we feel like chaff. So what now????

First, Jesus was the man who truly avoided evil and dwelt on God's word. Jesus was the perfect man, the second Adam, who did everything right. He followed God perfectly and completely.

Second, Jesus was the only man who truly and fully delighted in the word of God. He knew the law, knew it perfectly, but also kept it perfectly.

Third, Jesus fully and perfectly dwelt in God. He fully and completely dwelt in God.

Jesus truly received and is receiving the blessing of Psalm 1. All that Jesus did prospered. He prepared the disciples to preach the good news, they did, and the gospel spread to the known world. He will not lose any of the ones he has been given (John 17), and none of his words will ever fall to the ground. Looking at the book of Acts, it is clear that the gospel spread, and looking 2000 years later, it is still spreading. His work in us through his Spirit is effectual and final, it will accomplish it's end, he truly is the fruitful one.

However, the evildoers who are not covered by Christ will be destroyed. Judgment already came upon Christ, for we truly have sat in the seat of scorners, and walked in the way of sinners. So Christ bore this for us, and truly and ultimately tasted this judgment. But those who continue to sit and walk in evil and do not embrace the gospel of Christ will truly bear the judgment of God.

This judgment of God will mean that they cannot see God, and means that those who sit and run as sinners will experience eternal separation from God. This is so horrible and frightening, that it even made the Deity, the God-man, Jesus Christ, cry out in extreme suffering and anguish, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me."

The conclusion then is that God, in Jesus Christ, protects his people, and fights against those who despise, ignore, or are complacent towards him. God is for his people, which can be seen ultimately in Jesus Christ.

He was so for us that he sent his Son to die for our sins. He is so for us that he sent us his Holy Spirit, who lives in us. He is so for us, that he makes sure that nothing but good comes to us. He is so for us that he is preparing us to see him. He is so good to us that only goodness and mercy will follow us all our days, and we will dwell in his house forever. This is the ultimate in being for someone.

Yet God is against the wicked. He may allow them to have a life of relative financial ease, or even luxury, yet their souls are tormented with no joy or happiness. They are empty, filled with nothing that will satisfy. God does not allow them to live in prosperity forever, and if not in this life, in the next stage, God will turn all of his goodness and blessings off, and turn his wrath and judgment toward them at max capacity, they will dwell in outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is the ultimate in being against someone.

Conclusion and application

First, we should exalt and treasure Jesus Christ, because he truly was the happy and blessed man. He was the right man, the perfect man, who did all that was required, and lived in devotion to God. His life was a fruitful tree that is still bearing fruit, even our souls, and the souls of countless others. We as believers are in Him, and His Spirit is in us, this means that we not only are partakers of Him, but we have His power in is. This can only lead us to one conclusion, we were washed, we were justified, we were sanctified (1 Corinthians 6:11).

So, put off the old way of living. We are to live and strive, because of our love, to be like our Savior both in our external actions and our internal desires. We are to delight in the law of the Lord. We are to meditate on the law of the Lord. When we do this we will be delighting in Christ, meditating on Christ, and because of our union with him, we will experience his blessings and joy.

Second, we should exalt and treasure Jesus Christ, because we were cursed, because we ran with sin, and sat in sin, and our judgement was sure, yet, Jesus took our punishment and gave us his perfection. And now, we can enjoy the blessings of being planted by the water, as a tree. We are planted by/in the living waters, even Jesus Christ. And one day, we will partake of the tree of life, and be face to face with him.

Our lives should be a testimony to the living water. We should be bringing life with our speech, with our actions, we should be sharing the hope that is in us with the lost, giving to the poor and needy, and pouring ourselves out as a living stream available to all. This is the picture here. We will be like a tree planted by water. A place for shade, bringing comfort and joy to those who are weary as they can find the true living water to quench their thirst.

Third, we should proclaim this message of hope and excitement to those who are running and sitting in their sin. Their hope is empty, their end is sure, and they desperately need our beautiful Savior. We should have pity for them, for their lives are empty, their hope is on things that rust, that the moth will eat, their barns can be taken in a moment, and so they are people who desperately need a Savior and need to live their lives so they can have meaning and purpose.

Fourth, and finally, to be happy we should look at what Jesus says about it. In Matthew 5, Jesus says that the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the peacemakers, and the persecuted, will experience happiness, because they will have the kingdom of heaven, they will have comfort, they will inherit the earth, they will be filled, they will receive mercy, they will see God, and they will be called sons of God. We are joined with Christ, through faith, and because of this, these things are a part of us, are in our new nature.

Thus, today, we need to look to Christ, run to him, and ask the Spirit to fill us anew and afresh. We need to live out the truth that is already in us.