All right, Psalm chapter two, well, I should say Psalm two, technically not chapters, Psalm two in our Bibles. And trust you had a good prayer time. We'll continue to pray for one another throughout the week. Take our list with us. Thank you for praying for one another. Psalm two, we'll, Lord willing, finish up this psalm this evening as we've been starting, or have started a new series on select psalms. And Lord willing, next week, since we moved business meeting to November 3rd. Lord willing, next week we'll skip all the way to Psalm 8. That's where I plan to go to next. But Psalm 2, very significant psalm, messianic psalm, also identified as a royal psalm. We have entitled this on this psalm, Serve the Lord with Fear. And there are several other royal psalms. I read one commentary that referred to this royal psalm as the kingliest, the kingliest of all the royal psalms. And it is a significant psalm, quoted at least three times in the New Testament, Acts 4, and then also in the book of Hebrews, and then again, in the book of Acts and chapter 13. So I'll quickly go through the outline that we have been using for scenes, human rebellion, divine reaction, divine rule, and human responsibility. And each of those contains three verses. We looked at The first scene, human rebellion. Why do the nations rage? We discussed what rage means as a riot or a tumult. It is gathering for the purpose of causing turmoil, particularly against God, his son, Jesus Christ, and against his followers. Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? The second question regarding vain means empty or foolish or wasteful. It is a wasteful, vain, empty thing to rage against God, against His Son, Jesus Christ, against God's truth, against God's people. It is wasting one's life, wasting one's time and energy to rage against the Lord. And we see what raging does in our culture, in our society, rioting. mobs don't accomplish anything good. Destruction and various types of destructive behaviors that accompany riots and tumults. We even saw just recently another headline, sadly, out of Haiti, where a gang, where gangs pretty much rule the country, a gang that was receiving some sort of Retaliation, or there was a village that had a group that was defending the village against the gang. That gang went in and killed over 100 villagers, men, women, and children. Just anarchy, it's sad. So we see in Psalm 38, 12, Proverbs 24, 2, Isaiah 59, we see similar uses of this word vain, or rage, or the concepts as they are described in these other verses. The kings of the earth, the kings of the earth in verse two, they set themselves and the rulers, they take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. We've looked at the kings of the earth being the leaders, the nobility, the rulers, they set themselves in direct defiance and rebellion against God and willful disobedience. They think by joining together, obviously they share in a similar ideology in their hatred for God and their hatred for God's people, for the truth, and there's various degrees of that, but ultimately it's in rebellion against God. It's in rebellion against God's Son, God's Word, God's people. And they take counsel, they plot, plan, they have strategies. They are doing so against the Lord and against his anointed one. We see God the Father and we see God the Son. We see two persons of the Trinity separated here. We see God the Father against the Lord and his anointed one, the Messiah. The Messiah in Hebrew and in Greek is the anointed one. It's referring to Christ, the Messiah. Bands and cords, those are what they see as God's word, God's law, God's moral orders. They are seen as bands and cords. Instead of cords of love, instead of seeing the yoke of Christ as being what will give them rest, instead of seeing Christ as meek and lowly in heart, where he says, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest unto your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light, Jesus says in Matthew 11, 28 through 30. But instead of seeing Christ in that way, they see God and his law and his truth, his moral orders, and even now in the reprobate state of much of our culture now, even biological creative design, is seen as bands and cords. And we see the ridiculous idea of men trying to become women. And there's been at least five volleyball teams out West that have refused to play against San Jose State because they have a man who thinks that he's a woman on a girls volleyball team. And he is firing spikes at 80 miles an hour and hit some girl upside the head. of one of the teams that played against them. And there's already a girl up in, I think, the Northeast who has paralysis and possibly long-term brain damage from a dude living in some fantasy world, thinking that he's a girl, and he spiked a ball in high school so hard, he injured the girl, put her in the hospital with some paralysis and even possible long-term brain damage. That's the attitude of this kind of defiance, that even God's creative design is seen as cords and bands. We could go on and on, but we go down to verse number four, and we see the second point of the outline, the second scene, divine reaction. God sits on his throne. He sitteth in the heavens. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision. We see there in verse five, then shall he speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure. This is God's divine contempt. Vex means distress. He will distress them in his sore displeasure. God's anger is out of holiness. He is a God of love, but he's also a God of wrath. He is a God of judgment. And in his holiness, in his righteous anger, this is not out of control anger. We often get angry and we're out of control. We're defenseless. God's not like that. His anger is holy and it is righteous. It's done in judgment. Verse six, yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. We see here that God set Jesus as king. He, speaks of this in the Holy Hill of Zion, both prophetically and also in verses seven and eight, I will declare the decree the Lord has said unto me, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee, ask of me and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. God in eternity past, set Jesus Christ as King. Christ is eternal. He's always been the Son of God. The Trinity is eternal. But we see, for a matter of distinction, we see a separation of God the Father and God the Son. And we see God the Father declaring. So There's argument, when was that declaration? Jesus Christ has always been the Son of God. He's always been God, always been God's Son. Three persons, one God, one essence, three persons, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. But we live in time. There was a time when God made the heavens and the earth, he created the world, and by Genesis 3, we already see God revealing when he said that the serpent would crush the heel of the seed of the woman, but the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. Already we see a revelation of God's divine plan, the decree, so to speak. The decree in eternity past, is now revealed to man. I use the example of David, who was anointed king by Samuel, but it was some years later that he was coronated as the king in first Hebron and then eventually in Jerusalem as the actual king on the throne. Well, there was a revelation of God's divine plan, of God's redemptive plan. Even we see it in the skins that he made for Adam and Eve. And then we see the Genesis 3.15, the prophecy and we see then also with Cain and Abel and we see as we go through the Old Testament and we see various prophecies and then we get into the New Testament and Jesus Christ is born and even in Hebrews 1 this psalm is quoted and we see this psalm quoted in Hebrews 1 in regards to the birth and the life of Jesus and then in Acts 13 this psalm is quoted in reference to Christ's resurrection. So this is all about the deity of Christ, but it's referencing God's divine plan from eternity past into eternal future. There is even implication of the Davidic covenant here. And we could even reference in the New Testament, like we talked about last week, where Jesus at his baptism and at the Mount of Transfiguration, God himself said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. So we talked about the enthronement of Christ. Specifically, there is a physical, literal place where the temple was built, holy of holies, where Christ will reign at the millennial kingdom on his throne, his rightful throne, as the son of David, as the son of God, as the God-man, but in this case, as the holy son of God, having now been resurrected and ascended. So, having already ministered on this earth, he will come again, and he will establish his millennial kingdom, and he will sit on the throne, enthroned in the heavens, enthroned in very Jerusalem, ruling with a rod of iron during the millennial kingdom. There's so much here to unpack. It's so rich, and I wanna get to the end of this, so I'm gonna just quickly go through, once again, This slide here, there's this decree of God declaring the Messiah, Jesus Christ, as God's Son and King. It's an eternal decree. It's a statement of eternal reality. It is God's declaration of Jesus as the Son of God from eternity past, authorizing Jesus as King. There's an authority from God of Christ's rule. Even the scribes and the Pharisees, the religious leaders, What did they say about Jesus? He taught with authority, not as the scribes. Even as a 12-year-old boy, they were astonished by his wisdom. We see so many ways in which this is revealed, and of course, through the miracles, the teachings, and then Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, and then his ascension up into glory. He's the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. We see references to the Davidic covenant, The Messiah would be a descendant of David, we know only physically through Mary. Joseph, obviously, was not physically Jesus' father. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, virgin born, of course. But there was a legal, in a sense, aspect, though there was the curse, I think it's called the curse of Jeconiah, where there would not be a descendant of David literally, physically on the throne. through Mary and of course Jesus being the Holy Son of God, obviously the eternal decree and the authority of God. Jesus Christ is the Son of David who sits on the throne of God, who sits in that throne, on David's throne in Jerusalem, in the Millennial Kingdom and into eternity. So we see the Davidic Covenant, 2 Samuel 7, gives the details of that. This is the only place in the Old Testament that the father-son relationship of the Trinity is referenced. I mentioned already Hebrews 1, this psalm was quoted in reference to the birth and the life of Christ. In Acts 13, this psalm was quoted in reference to the resurrection. We've mentioned the baptism of Christ, the transfiguration, where once again there's an audible declaration by God the Father, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Today is referenced to the coronation day. There is a day, that is referenced here where this truth is revealed to mankind. There is a day when Jesus will literally physically reign on the earth in the millennial kingdom. We could speak to all of that in reference to today. And then the word begotten. This is the relationship of the unique one and only Son of God as God in the Trinity with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Begotten is not what the JWs and the Mormons say. The JWs say Jesus is a created being. The Mormons say Jesus is the spirit brother of Satan. No, this psalm is not saying that Jesus was created somewhere in the past. This is the word begotten that we think of in John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. It's a unique Greek word, monogenes. the unique one and only son of God. It's a reference to relationship. It's a reference to the preeminence of Christ. It is a reference to the fact that he is greater than all. He is preeminent in Colossians. He is to have preeminence. We're to orient our entire life around him. We were talking on Monday night at Bible study about how we have to throughout our lives in every circumstance. And we were talking as some of the college students have to sit in a classroom where there is clear teaching that is in opposition to the truth of the word of God. And one student was saying that as they take notes, they have to mark in their paper, not millions of years, not billions of years. They have to cross out certain things or ignore. What is that doing? It is like a GPS that recalculates Constantly, we are recalculating because of our spirit being willing, but our flesh being weak because of sin and temptations. We're constantly tempted to take Christ off his throne, to not make him at home in our lives, to not give him the preeminent place, to not orient our lives around him. So we're constantly, in a sense, recalculating our moral, spiritual GPS to make sure Christ is always preeminent, that we're constantly measuring our lives, our decisions, by the standard of God's word, by his holiness. That's the essence of the word begotten. Inheritance, the son of God receives the inheritance of the father. We could go to Hebrews 12, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. We share in that inheritance. In 2 Peter 1, we have inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, reserved in heaven, which fadeth not away. Unbelievable that we get to share in the inheritance, join heirs with Christ. But he receives the inheritance of the Father as the Son of God, as deity, as Jesus Christ is God. I and my Father are one, he said. So we see the deity of Christ. I think I went too far here. We see the deity of Christ so clearly in this psalm. And then we see the words break and dash, which refer to the judgment of God. It refers to a crushing blow. There's even reference to a rod of iron or a rod. We see verse nine, rod of iron, dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. There's understanding here that it's a reference to the shepherd. as well as to the scepter, the shepherd's rod, as well as the king's scepter. There's a royal scepter of the king, a rod of iron, but there's also a dashing in pieces, which seems to be a reference to the shepherd's rod, where the shepherd would have to deal with a enemy of the sheep, a lion, a bear, a wolf, or whatever is attacking the sheep. And we see both are used, and that seems to be the reference in verse nine. And then that brings us to the last scene. And we see in God's mercy, verses 10 through 12, we see human responsibility, and we see an opportunity for repentance. Be wise, now therefore, O ye kings. Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry. And you perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. Here we see that God is calling out to the leaders, to the nobility, to the influencers, to those who think that they have the power, they have the authority, they have the influence. And what does that often do? I had a history teacher, I don't know where he got the quote from, but he would say it frequently, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Money. Influence, one of the things that we see with all the influencers in our society, we get too big for our own britches. Why do we need God when we can get all these likes and subscribers and we have all these influence? I mean, we're talking now in terms of TikTok culture, where people have so much influence, they can get kids to eat a Tide Pod. I just heard of another TikTok challenge the other day. I can't remember all the details of it. Unbelievable, the stupidity. But there are people with that much influence that they can get people to do the dumbest things imaginable for 15 seconds of fame, and then they make millions. And we see people who have great influence and money and fame and wealth and celebrity, and their lives are in shambles. Their lives are a waste. They have raged against the Lord with their lives. And God is giving the leaders, the nobility, those with influence, those with authority, he's giving them an opportunity for repentance. He's calling them out, and he says, be wise. He says, be instructed. Be wise now, therefore, ye kings, be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Wisdom and instruction, service, This all has to do with obedience to the word of God, obedience to the truth, listening to God's word and obeying it. We have in a world today this idea that wisdom comes from rationalism and humanism and science and all of the ways in which man tries to find his own way without God. Instead of seeing all of the information and the data and the science and the knowledge as subservient to God, as submitted to God. as the only way that we could even discover those things is because God allowed us to, and it's about understanding God's creation, it's about understanding God's order, and it's understanding my place under God and in his will, instead of saying, oh, I've got all this knowledge, I've got all this power, I've got all this influence, I've got all this authority, now how can I use it and abuse it and exploit others and get money and get power and take over the world? And so we have Kim Jong-un and we have, all these other dictators from Putin to all the different leaders all around the world, all fighting and jockeying for position and authority. And we've seen all the kingdoms through the past, they've all failed. And yet God is calling out to the leaders, to those in authority, to those with influence, be wise, be instructed. be in fear, I wish that there were politicians, more politicians running for election in a few weeks that had the fear of God, that had knowledge of the holy, that realized their very power that they have is only because of God and they need to be very careful how they exercise that authority and exercise that power because they are gonna stand before a holy God one day and there's going to be judgment. And Psalm 2 declares that. And they're either gonna face the rod and the scepter or they're going to be wise and be instructed and submit and in humility rule with fear before God and with an understanding and a knowledge of His holiness, or they're gonna rule in their own selfish, self-centered, narcissistic ways, oftentimes in direct defiance against God, and they will face the judgment. It's a sobering thought, and it's a sobering thought for any of us, whether it be a teacher, a pastor, a boss, a manager, how do we exercise our authority? Do we exercise it in the wisdom of God? Somebody has often asked me through the years, how can I pray for you? And one of the things I often tell them, pray for me to have wisdom. I want to have wisdom. I want to know how to properly lead, shepherd the church. Principal of school, father in the home, husband. I need wisdom. We see with Solomon, what did he pray for? When he could have asked for riches and fame and glory and everything else, he asked for wisdom. He was humble, at least in the early days of his reign, right? And he said, I wanna know how to lead these people in a way that honors you, and God gave him riches and glory and fame. But because he humbled himself, at least early on, and said, I need wisdom, Be wise, be instructed, serve the Lord and serve the Lord how? With fear. Rejoice with trembling. There is joy and there is rejoicing, but there is with that an honor and a reverence and a respect. I wish we had that more in our churches. I feel like sometimes much of evangelicalism, whatever you want to call it, church, it seems like it's so much about self. It just seems like it's so much about entertainment and performance. And yet we see here, serve the Lord with fear, exercise what you have been given before God. And I know he's talking about leaders, judges, kings, those in authority. And he's saying serve the Lord with fear, but he's saying rejoice with joy. There's joy in serving. There's joy in leading. There's joy in having authority exercised rightly under God, humbly with service to the Lord and service to others. We've taken time in our men's Studies, Our Men's Breakfast, to look at biblical leadership. The book, Biblical Leadership, and all throughout that book, it's about serving, it's about humility, humbling yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. Interesting phrase, kiss the sun. This is not what we think, it's the idea of allegiance, it's submission, it's homage. The word sun is in the Aramaic. And the word son in the Aramaic is the word that can be translated son, but it can also be translated nations. But the word son in Hebrew means pure. It means clean. Kiss has to do with doing homage. It has the picture of bowing down before someone in great respect and honor and reverence and kissing their shoes, kissing their feet, saying, I am not worthy. But it's the idea of doing so sincerely, with honesty, with purity. So this word or this phrase, kiss the sun, has to do with doing homage in a sincere way, with reverence, with holiness of heart and purity of motive. lest he be angry and you perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. We see finally at the end of this psalm, blessed are they that do what? That put their trust in him. The true place of blessing, of contentment, of satisfaction, of joy, is found in obeying the Lord, serving him, and trusting him. It's a good reminder for all of us, whether we're a boss, a manager, a pastor, a leader, or whatever, we all have some measure of influence, but it's a good reminder for all of us to be humble before the Lord and before a holy God and to serve him with fear and to honor him and to trust him. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your word and this psalm that instructs us, that helps us. so much as we live in a very wicked and cruel world with an election right before us and with so many people fighting for power and thinking that they have greater authority sometimes than even God himself and your truth. Lord, may we not be caught up in that kind of pride and self-service, but Lord, may we humbly do homage to the Son with a sincere heart and purity of life. Lord, may we trust in you and receive the blessing of serving you faithfully, serving you with fear and trusting in you and humbly walking with you. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you for being here tonight. Trust that you have a good rest of the week. Don't forget about security training on Saturday and we look