Kootenai Church Morning Worship

So where is history going? Where will all of this end up? That is something that we think about maybe occasionally and probably a little bit more often than normal when it comes to election time, as we're strolling up upon that inevitable day with destiny here in a couple of weeks. Even now, if you've never given a moment's thought to that question or any kind of reflection to that question, you do nevertheless have something that you believe about that, where history is going and what the purpose of all of it is. We tend to make life decisions and live in a way that reveals what we truly believe about the purpose of everything, the direction that everything is heading.
In other words, all of us have a worldview, that is to say, a view of the world, the cosmos, and our place in it. Everybody has a worldview. It may be a wrong worldview, it may be an inadequate worldview, it may be a misinformed worldview, but we all have them. A worldview is a collection of assumptions, presuppositions, and beliefs about the world and your place in it. A collection of assumptions, presuppositions, and beliefs about the world and your place in it. Inevitably, every worldview is going to seek to answer the questions, Why am I here? Where am I going? What am I doing here? What is the purpose of all of this? Now, your worldview may be something that you adopted without question from the culture or from academia or from your parents or your family or your lifestyle, your peer group, or even a false religion. But whether you have ever evaluated it or not, you have some underlying assumptions and beliefs about the purpose of everything and where it is going.
And generally speaking, worldviews will fall into one of two different categories. Either you believe that there is a purpose for everything that exists and everything that happens, or you believe that there is no purpose behind everything that exists and everything that happens. It is purposeful, intentional, or it is without purpose, without intention, without goal, without aim, without culmination, and we are all just aimlessly molecules in motion, meat in motion. We're all meat puppets heading to an eventual grave to be digested by worms. One of those two is your worldview. You either believe that we have a purpose or you don't.
Now if there is no reason for anything, then history is going nowhere, and it means that there is no directing purpose, no goal, no ultimate aim, no culmination, no plan, that there is nothing and all is nothingness and it is all for nothing. Listen, if it is all for nothing, then you are for nothing since you're part of the all. That make sense? And if you are for nothing, since you're part of the all, therefore you then have no purpose, no consequence, no intention, there's nothing behind your existence, that means that everything you do, and everything you are and everything you accomplish, everything done by you, everything done for you, everything done to you, is ultimately without purpose, without aim, without goal. It is meaningless, purposeless, and it is not difficult to see where that kind of a worldview consistently leads. It leads to nihilism and to despair and to utter hopelessness.
Now, an atheist who believes that we're all just meat puppets, molecules in motion, and the results of random chance, a collection of natural processes and chemicals—an atheist may try to ignore the implications of his worldview. He may not like to live in consequence with his worldview and as if that worldview were true, but he can't avoid the obvious that if there is no purpose to any of it, then you are without purpose as well since you are part of the any of it, which means that you have no aim.
But there is a purpose for everything. That's the other kind of worldview. There is a purpose for everything. And if there's a purpose, then there is a purposer. If there is a goal, then there is a goal-setter. If there is an aim, then there is somebody who is shooting everything toward that aim. If there is design, there must be a designer. If there's intentionality, there must be one who has intended everything to turn out some way.
And I would suggest that not only is there Someone who has established or created everything with a purpose, but that He is also moving all things toward the accomplishment of that purpose. If He has the power, the wisdom, and the ability to speak all of this into existence, then He also at the same time has all of the power and ability and intentionality to direct all things toward the purpose that He has established everything for, meaning that He will accomplish that purpose.
And I would submit to you that worldviews also fall into one of two categories in terms of purpose. Either the purpose can be known or it can't be known. And either the purpose has been revealed or it hasn't been revealed. And I would suggest that the purpose of all things can be known and that it has been revealed by the One who has purposed all things for a purpose. I'm glad that Rick Warren didn't copyright the word purpose; otherwise I would have had to pay a king's ransom for royalties just for that introduction.
But God is the one who Himself has purposed all things that exist. He has a purpose behind all of it. Isaiah 46:9–10 says, “Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.’”
Now it has pleased God the Father to place into the hands of His Son the accomplishment of every purpose that He has in creating all things. Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, directs all of creation toward its intended goal. Hebrews 1:3, describing Christ, says, “He is the radiance of [God's] glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power.” That Greek word upholds all things not only means that He holds all things together, keeping it from just dissolving in an instant, but that He carries it along toward its intended goal. He upholds it and directs it and brings it along on its predetermined course toward the goal that He has set for all of creation. Ultimately, we would say that the glory of God is the overarching reason for everything that exists and anything that exists. And one of the many ways in which that overarching goal of God's glory will be accomplished is the establishment of Yahweh's King upon Zion and His rule over all of the world. That is the goal and the ultimate destiny of all of creation, the establishment of God's King and His rule over all of this world.
That is described in Psalm 2. Now, it's all the way through Scripture, but our focus in the last couple of weeks and for today and next week is on Psalm 2. We're working our way through this psalm at a pace that is in keeping with its very convenient outline, four sections of three verses each, and we've divided that up over the last couple of weeks. We're continuing with that today. I'm going to remind you of the outline thus far because it's such a good one. I’m going to remind you of the outline thus far as we read our way through the psalm, and then I'll remind you of what is to come next week.
So, Psalm 2, let's begin with verse 1. In Psalm 2, this describes Yahweh's promise to establish His King and His kingdom in spite of the vain opposition of earthly rulers. In verses 1–3, we see that the rebellion of the wicked is vain folly. Look at verse 1:
1 Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising [or meditating on] a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!” (NASB)
Verse 1, it is a raging rebellion. Verse 2, it's a defiant rebellion. And verse 3, it is a lawless rebellion.
Then in verses 4–6 we saw that the response of Yahweh is mocking fury. Verse 4: “He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury, saying, ‘But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain’” (vv. 4–6). We saw last week that He holds rebels in derision in verse 4, He terrifies rebels with divine wrath in verse 5, and He answers rebels with a decree in verse 6.
Now in verses 7–9 we see that the reign of this King is with sovereign force. Verse 7:
7 I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, “You are My Son, today I have begotten You.
8 Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession.
9 You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware.” (NASB)
And in verses 10–12 we see that the refuge of the wise is this King's blessed favor. Verse 10: “Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” That's verses 10–12.
Now, our passage today is verses 7–9, and we have seen that in each of these little groups of verses, there is a different person that speaks. In verses 1–3, we have the world speaking, the kings of the rulers of the nations. They speak, and in verse 3 they say of God and of His Christ, “Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!” Then in verses 4–6, it is Yahweh or God the Father who speaks. And in verse 6 He says, “But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain.” Now in verses 7–9, it is a different person that speaks. It is the Son or the King who is installed upon Zion. That's the decree of verse 6. In verses 7–9, we have that King speaking. He is the one who speaks in verses 7–9. And He retells what Yahweh has said to Him in issuing this decree. So Yahweh gives the decree, “I have installed My King upon Zion.” Now in verses 7–9, the King speaks, the one who is installed. And He speaks on behalf of Himself and His right to rule, describing His commission to rule, His authority to rule, and He describes what Yahweh has said to Him regarding the establishment of His kingdom in Zion.
Today, we're looking at verses 7–9. We're going to see that the reign of this King is with sovereign force. That was our overarching idea in verses 7–9. We're going to see three things regarding His rule. First, in verse 7, He rules as a son. He rules as a son. Then in verse 8, He rules as a steward—“Ask of Me, and I will give the nations as Your inheritance.” And then in verse 9, He rules as a sovereign. He rules as a son, as a steward, and as a sovereign. Those three things describe the rule of this Son of God.
First, He rules as a son in verse 7. Let's read together Psalm 2:7 again. “I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You.’” Now verses 7–9 are all what Yahweh has said to this King. And in verse 7 He describes Yahweh describing this King as a Son. Yahweh says to this one, “You are My Son, today I have begotten You.” So this is another Person. It is the King, the Son, speaking in verses 7–9, telling of His commission.
Now ultimately the author of the psalm was David. We remember that. We learned that the very first Sunday we were in Psalm 2. The author of the psalm is David. And there is a sense in which David is describing something that was true of him as one whom God had chosen to sit upon the throne of the nation of Israel. There's a sense in which David is describing something that is true of him. Yahweh in a sense called David a son. But there is also a sense in which verses 7–9 describe things about this King that were not fulfilled by David that couldn't possibly describe David. David never ruled over all of the nations. David was not a son of God in the sense that this King is a Son. So, David as the author is speaking on behalf of this King, but again, as I mentioned before the Scripture reading, David is looking forward to One who would come who would ultimately fulfill verses 7–9 and would fulfill this entire psalm, but David was not that King.
The symbolism of a son is significant both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and of course we recognize places in the New Testament where Christ is called the Son of God. There's Old Testament significance to that father-son analogy as well. I'm just going to give you a brief introduction to this so you can see the way in which this would have described David and Solomon and others. The language of father and son is used in the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7 where God appeared to David and made a promise to David that He would seat one of David's descendants upon his throne and establish his kingdom forever and that the household of David would never come to an end. It would be an everlasting kingdom. And there's language in there that seems to describe Solomon, and there's language in that covenant that describes a King who had to have come after Solomon who would ultimately fulfill that covenant. So while David and Solomon were foreshadowings of that or pictures of that coming King, they weren't the fulfillment entirely of that Davidic covenant.
Second Samuel 7:13–14 uses the father-son analogy for this King of Israel. Listen to what he says. The Lord says, “He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be a father to him and he will be a son to Me; when he commits iniquity, I will correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men.” Now that of course is describing Solomon and Solomon's progeny who would come after him and take over as king over Israel. The king was one who ruled on behalf of God, and so was regarded as a “son,” using that term loosely. He's not a divine son, not of divine nature, but a son of God in the sense that the king was given the rule over his theocratic kingdom, and he was the one through whom Yahweh would rule the nation. That was the intention. And so he is the son of Yahweh in that sense, that the king functions as a mediator and as a designated one to rule the kingdom. But ultimately, Solomon, as well as every descendant of Solomon, would fail to obey the terms of the covenant and to rule on God's behalf. So One would have to come later on who would not fail to do what Solomon and every king after him failed to do.
Second, the father-son analogy is not just used to refer to the king of Israel, but Israel itself is called God's son—Exodus 4:22–23—in the Exodus. “Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I said to you, ‘Let My son go that he may serve Me’; but you have refused to let him go. Behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn.”’” And of course, Hosea 11:1: “When Israel was a youth I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son.” And you recognize that Hosea 11:1 is quoted by Matthew to speak of Christ who would come later. So there is, in God's intention, in Hosea 11, a reference to Israel, the nation, as His son, but of course also to One who would come later on, who would not fail to do what Solomon did and would not fail to do what Israel did. Israel was supposed to keep the terms of the covenant, but they disobeyed and they failed to do what God commanded them to do, so He disciplined them.
And so then we wait for a King and one that Israel foreshadowed who is truly a divine Son, but He would not fail as Solomon failed, and He would not fail as David failed, and He would not fail as Israel failed, but instead He would keep all of God's Word and fulfill all of God's Word. And that, of course, is the Messiah, God's Anointed. He is also called His Son. And this is where we get this reference in verse 7 and in verse 12. You see it explicitly in verse 12: “Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry.” It's a reference to the King who is here speaking in verses 7–9, the King whom Yahweh says He will install in verse 6. Israel would fail to keep the covenant and obey God. Solomon would fail to keep the covenant and obey God, but this coming King would not fail. In fact, He would come and He would do all of Yahweh's will perfectly, obeying the Father, fulfilling the covenant, and doing all of Yahweh's will, being obedient to the very end. And thus He will rule His people and His throne will be established forever.
There are New Testament references that we are familiar with that allude to this verse, verse 6 of Psalm 2. At the baptism and the transfiguration, Matthew 3 and Matthew 17, where the Father says of Christ, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” That is an allusion back here to Psalm 2. Specifically in Hebrews 1 and Hebrews 5, this verse is quoted in Hebrews 1 to describe the sonship of Christ by His exaltation to the right hand of the Father, and in Hebrews 5 to describe the priesthood and the mediation of Christ as a high priest and King. And then it is quoted by Paul in Acts 13, referring to the resurrection of Christ. I'm going to look at that here in just a moment. So it is often quoted in the New Testament, and every time that it is, it refers to Christ. So there's no doubt in the minds of any New Testament writer who it was that David was describing here.
The term begotten in verse 7 is probably the most discussed verse or phrase of this entire psalm, if not the entire Psalter, because the question comes down to what is the nature of this begottenness? Does the reference to Christ as the begotten Son of God indicate that there was a time when He was not and was created and came into being? And the answer to that is no. That's not what begotten means, not in this context and not in any New Testament context where Christ is called the begotten Son of God. You're familiar with some of those references.
John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
1 John 4:9: “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.”
So the phrase “only begotten Son” is used of Christ in the New Testament, and every time that language is used of Christ, it is hearkening back to Psalm 2 where this begottenness is described here.
The word begotten, especially the word that is used in the New Testament, monogenes, is not a word that describes a beginningness. It describes a relationship. It is a relationship, not a beginningness. This is an eternal begottenness. The begottenness describes the nature of Christ, not His coming into being, because Scripture over and over emphasizes that Christ has no beginning, that as long as God has been God, Christ has been the second Person of the Trinity, fully divine, sharing the same essence and nature as the Father has and possesses.
The word begotten in the Greek means “only” or “unique” or “singular and unique.” It is a way of singling Christ out. He is a Son in an entirely different way than any king of Israel was a son. He is a Son in an entirely different way than Israel was a son. And He is a Son in an entirely different way than you and I are sons and daughters of God. We are sons of God by adoption. Christ is the Son of God by nature, which is why when He claimed divine sonship of Himself in the Gospels, the Jews picked up stones to stone Him. And He asked them, “Why do you pick up stones to stone Me? Is it because of some good work that I have done?” And they would answer Him and say, “No, it is not because of anything that You have done, but because You, being a mere man, make Yourself out to be God.” That was in response to His claim to be the Son of God because they understood that what Jesus was claiming was not to be the son of God in the way Israel was or that David was, but to be the Son of God in a unique sense. And though they never would have stoned David for that claim because they understood what that would have meant for David, they would stone Christ for that claim because they understood exactly what He was claiming to be—to have a special relationship with the Father by which He shares the nature of the Father. And this relationship between Father and Son in the Trinity has always existed. It is an eternal begottenness.
John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (John 1:1–3 NKJV). Nothing was created apart from Him. Nothing came into being apart from Him. He is the the creator of all things, who spoke all things into existence, and John 1:14 says that “Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” So the Divine One who has always existed in relationship with the Father—there was never a time when He was not. He, at a point in time, took upon Himself a real human nature, stepped into time and space without ever ceasing to be God. He assumed true humanity and He lived and dwelt among us here, and John says that in that becoming of flesh, we beheld His glory, as of the only begotten of the Father. And then later on, four verses later in John 1, John describes Jesus Christ as “the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father” (v. 18). So since Christ is the Word, we could read John 1:1–2 this way: “In the beginning was Christ, and Christ was with God, and Christ was God. He was in the beginning with God.”
He is the eternal Son of God, which is, we have to admit, something of a mystery because it is unlike anything else we have ever contemplated or thought of. This is why the Nicene Creed says that Christ is “true God from true God, begotten, not made.” Begotten, not made. Begotten, an eternal begottenness without a beginning. There's no illustration of that. There's no analogy. I can't pull out some meatball story and give it to sort of picture that. It doesn't work like that. It's unlike anything else we've ever seen or experienced. We just have to apprehend what is true with our mind without fully comprehending it, that this One can be with God, He is not the Father, but He possesses fully the divine essence, and in that sense He is the God who is begotten, an eternal begottenness without beginning.
Now Paul quotes Psalm 2:6 regarding the resurrection of Christ in Acts 13. Paul, in preaching in Pisidian Antioch, said this: “That God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, ‘You are My Son; today I have begotten You.’” And there Paul calls the resurrection the fulfillment of that verse. How is it that the resurrection is the fulfillment of that verse? It is not as if He became the Son of God in resurrection, but there is a sense in which He was declared to be the Son of God in resurrection. And that's what Paul says in Romans 1:4, that He “was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord.” Begotten, as it were, out of the grave, His resurrection declares Him and demonstrates Him to be the eternal Son of God who was what He claimed to be. So Christ claimed to be the eternal and unique Son of God, and His resurrection from the grave was evidence that He was not a liar and that He was not a lunatic, but instead He was Lord of all creation. He was therefore declared to be the Son of Psalm 2. So you can look at what Christ did and being resurrected from the dead, and you look at Psalm 2, and you have to come to the conclusion that He then is the begotten Son of Psalm 2, and the resurrection is the indication that that is true. And therefore, He was declared to be the Son of God, begotten in that sense, as it were.
Because He is a Son of one nature with God the Father, He is able to rule on behalf of God, and because He is the Son of Man and shares a true human nature with us, He is able to represent us. And this, by the way, remember, is the essence of the gospel. This is the essence of His mediatorial reign, and it is the essence of the gospel, that One came and stood in our stead and lived the life that we were required to live and then died in our place so that we could have that righteousness and we could be forgiven. So as God, He is able to pay the full penalty for sin, and as man, He is able to represent us and therefore pay our sin. So the God-man, who is Christ Jesus, is Himself the perfect representative of God and man, able to atone for sin, rise from the dead, and able to rule men on behalf of God. And therefore, He rules as a Son.
Second, He rules as a steward. Verse 8: “Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession.” Now, as I said a few moments ago, the Father commits to the Son the rule over all the nations. All of the earth will be His possession. He will exercise a global rule. He will possess all of the nations, the nations that currently rage against Him. He will crush them and subdue them and possess them and rule them. God's answer to the raging nations of verse 1 is to give those very nations to His Son. This is His blessing to the Son. And the judgment upon the ruling nations is to give the nations to the Son, who will crush them like earthenware vessels, as verse 9 describes. This is God's answer.
It fulfills the promise that God made to David to seat one of his descendants upon his throne and to establish His kingdom forever. It fulfills one of the promises that God made to Abraham, that in Abraham He would bless all the nations of the world, since that rule and that reign will end up being a blessing to all nations. God said to Abraham in Genesis 12,
1 Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you;
2 and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing;
3 and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. (Gen. 12:1–3 NASB)
There was from the time of Abraham, in God's intention, the desire to bless all nations through that One who would come from Abraham's line.
So the rule of Christ then, verse 8, is over all the nations. As God's steward, He rules from Jerusalem, from David's throne. Isaiah 9:6 says, “The government will rest on His shoulders.” Israel will dwell in peace. The nations will come up to Jerusalem to worship. There will be peace and prosperity for a thousand years on this planet, and then that rule and reign will continue into the new heavens and the new earth, and it will be a never-ending kingdom in which the Son of Man will be glorified forever by His people. The extent of His redemption is over all the nations, and thus the extent of His rule and reign will be over all the nations. Revelation 5:9 says, “They sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.’” Christ has purchased out of all of the nations a people for His own possession and for His own glory, and He will rule all the nations.
The Father commits to the Son this rule over creation as a stewardship. He rules as a steward. All creation is given to Him to possess, and thus He will rule all of the nations. Psalm 72:8: “May he also rule from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth.” That's what Solomon foresaw. May this King, who is a righteous King, rule over all of creation. That's what the psalm promises. In Daniel 7:13–14, Daniel describes seeing in the night visions in the clouds of heaven,
13 One like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.
14 And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed. (NASB)
To Him is given a dominion, a kingdom, by the Ancient of Days. The Ancient of Days gives the rule and the reign over the entire planet to the Son of Man. That's what Daniel foresaw. That is yet to be realized. We have yet to see that happen. He will rule on Mount Zion, and from there He will possess the nations. His destiny is to rule the entire world; that is His inheritance.
So where is history going? This is it. You're reading about it. Wonder what the purpose of it is? The purpose of it is for God to set His King upon Zion, and there He will rule all of the nations. He will subdue His enemies, and He will rule and reign until every last enemy is put under His feet, and the last enemy will be death, and then He will give all of that to the Father as a gift to the Father, and then the Father and the Son and all of those who belong to Them will rule and reign in a new creation forever and ever and ever without sin, without the curse. That is where everything is going. Christ will establish His kingdom. He will return and take His throne and rule the world. This will mean the destruction of all those who are at war against Him. This is what the psalmist is describing. And it will mean the blessing and joy of all those who joyfully bow the knee. It will be a righteous, good, just, benevolent, wise, and perfect rule and reign. It cannot be otherwise. He will rule all that is committed to Him because He is the perfect steward of God's kingdom.
He rules as a Son, He rules as a steward, and third, verse 9, He rules as a sovereign. “You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware.” There's a reason why the very next verse says, “Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; take warning, O judges of the earth” (v. 10). Because verse 9 is a solemn verse. “You shall break them with a rod of iron.” He's speaking of the nations, of the kings of the earth, of those who take their stand and take counsel together against the Lord and say regarding Him, “We will break their chains. We will cast off their fetters.”
The word rod here is a word that is elsewhere translated as “scepter.” A rod or a scepter was the symbol of the rule and authority the king had. In fact, this word is translated as “scepter” in Genesis 49:10, which is the chapter where Jacob is blessing all of his twelve sons and he gets to Judah and he says, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes [that's a reference to Christ], and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.” So there, after Abraham, in the days of Jacob, Abraham's grandson, there you have a promise regarding one of those twelve tribes, that One would come from that tribe of Judah who would rule the nations, and to Him shall be the obedience of all of the peoples. And the rod or the scepter will not depart from that tribe.
The reference to an iron rod demonstrates the strength and the authority of this rule. There will be no resisting Him. This is sovereign force that is being described. The nations that stood against Him will fall. He will break them, all these nations that rage. They will be shattered. Their authority will crumble, and they will be destroyed before this King.
Psalm 110 describes the same thing in more vivid detail. It describes the judgment that is to come when Christ takes His throne. Psalm 110, by the way, is the most quoted psalm in the New Testament. So out of all 150 psalms, Psalm 110 is quoted more often than any other psalm in the New Testament. And here's what it says: “The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet’” (v. 1). So here in Psalm 110:1, you have the Lord saying to another one who is also called the Lord—“The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.’ The Lord will stretch forth Your strong scepter from Zion, saying, ‘Rule in the midst of Your enemies’” (vv. 1–2). That's Yahweh committing to this one who is Lord the rule and dominion over His enemies. Psalm 110:5 says, “The Lord is at Your right hand; He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath.” Do you hear that? “He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath. He will judge among the nations, He will fill them with corpses, He will shatter the chief men over a broad country” (vv. 5–6). This is destruction. This is the language of judgment. It is the language of cataclysm, sovereign force. Final and irreparable destruction is being described. Christ does not slowly take over the nations. He doesn't slowly Christianize them, polish them, make them better, make them prettier, make them nicer, slowly subdue them. He doesn't do any of that. He destroys them.
We're always fine with little Baby Jesus, meek and mild, laying in the manger, not crying at night while the oxen are lowing. We sometimes struggle to come to grips with King Jesus, who, when He returns, is not returning as a baby in a manger. He's returning as a King to subdue His enemies. And He will tread out the winepress of the wrath of almighty God. That is why we are warned to give heed and to do homage to the Son. This is judgment. It is cataclysm. It is destruction. The nations that raged and fought against the King of Righteousness will be judged in righteousness by that King. They will come to an end. Wicked governments will cease. Now I know you're not charismatics, but somebody has to say amen to that statement. Wicked governments will cease. They will come to an end. Their raging will stop because the cataclysmic judgment of the Son of Man will destroy this rebellion, and their wickedness and their wicked rule will end—finally, cataclysmically, and forever. With sovereign and irresistible force, He will establish His kingdom in Jerusalem, and He will rule the nations with justice.
Psalm 9:7–8: “The Lord abides forever; He has established His throne for judgment, and He will judge the world in righteousness; He will execute judgment for the peoples with equity.”
In John 5, Jesus said, “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given [listen to the language of stewardship] all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him” (vv. 22–23).
And Paul in Acts 17 says that God “has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead” (v. 31).
The finality of this judgment is described in verse 9: “You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware” (Ps. 2:9). It is beyond repair. It is final and complete destruction. In Daniel 2—you remember the vision that Nebuchadnezzar had in Daniel 2? We had Babylon and Persia and Greece and then Rome, those four kingdoms there. And then eventually at the end of that vision, that dream that Nebuchadnezzar has, you have the stone that is cut out without hands that comes in and crushes all of those kingdoms and shatters them. Daniel 2:34–35:
34 You continued looking until a stone was cut out without hands, and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them.
35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. (NASB)
That's the kingdom that comes in that fills the whole earth. It comes in and crushes and puts to an end all of those other kingdoms and itself then assumes dominion over the entire globe. Psalm 1:4—that language by the way from Daniel 2, it's the language from Psalm 1:4—He makes them like chaff. “The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff which the wind drives away” (Ps. 1:4). Daniel describes that stone coming in and crushing all of those kingdoms, turning all of the nations into chaff which the wind blows away.
In Daniel 2:44–45, Daniel gives the interpretation of that vision:
44 In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.
45 Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy. (NASB)
Daniel was prophesying the very thing that is being described here in Psalm 2. Matthew Henry says those who will not bow to this King will break before Him. Those are the two options.
So where is history going? It's going to a kingdom. It will end in a kingdom, an eternal King on an eternal throne ruling over an eternal kingdom in an eternal creation, and that is a good thing. When rebels get what they deserve, that is good. When lawbreakers get what they deserve, that is good. When justice is done and truth triumphs and prevails, those are good things. Proverbs 29:2 says, “When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when a wicked man rules, people groan.” This King will rule for the good of His people, and it will be for our glory, and every longing that you have ever had for peace, prosperity, justice, truth, righteousness, and the vindication of all that is right, those will be fulfilled in that kingdom. And as it is today, evil stands in the way, and evil is triumphing for a period of time, but that evil will be vanquished, and the destruction of that evil is inevitable and necessary.
Psalm 2:12 says, “Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!” And so the psalm points us back to finding refuge in this King who is coming. He is coming to destroy the nations and to judge His enemies, and on that day you do not want to be in the camp of His enemies. Instead, you must bow before Him in repentance and faith to this King, recognizing your sin and your iniquity and your lawbreaking and that you deserve the justice of God and that without the sacrificial death of that King and His resurrection from the dead, you will forever perish. Because you will stand in the presence of this righteous King, and the question will be this: why should you enter into this righteous kingdom? What do you have in yourself, your past, your history, your person that would commend you to this King, that would grant you access to this King, to come into the gates of this kingdom? And the answer is, within myself, in ourselves, nothing. We have nothing to commend us to Him.
But here's the good news: this King came and He lived the life that we were required to live and then died the death that we should have died so that He can give to us that righteousness, so that our entrance into that kingdom is not dependent upon our goodness or our deeds or anything that we have done in righteousness, but instead our entrance into that eternal kingdom is merited and purchased solely by the King Himself, who has given us access to that kingdom through His death, His burial, and His resurrection. And that King commands you this day to repent and to believe upon Him and to trust in Him and have forgiveness of sins. You can have peace with that King today, or you will face His wrath later on. Those are the two options. Bow the knee before Him or be crushed and made like chaff which the wind drives away into eternal punishment. That is what the psalmist is saying.
So Christian, do you see now the triumph of the wicked? Do you see the rebels in all of their taunting, their rebellion, their wickedness, and their evil? It will not last. Do not be vexed by it because the end is coming faster than you realize. Either your end is coming, or the end of all of it is coming. But before you realize it, the end will be here, and you will have passed into Heaven and then into the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. You shall possess the nations, for your King shall possess the nations, and He has promised to share that possession with you. He will destroy all opposition to Him and to His people, and He will give you the kingdom, and He will rule all the nations. That is where history is going. And what will be your part when the conclusion is written?