Thoughts On Psalm 2

There are four sections in this very wonderful psalm. The first views the nations, the peoples with their kings and rulers tumultuously assembled, and meditating something that is verily vain. The kings and rulers have set themselves, and taken counsel against the LORD, and against His Anointed, saying:

"Let us break Their bands asunder,

And cast away Their cords from us" (verse 1-3).

Obviously a future time is here set forth in prophecy when, under the leadership of the man of sin, the man who will come in his own name and be received (John 5.43), the peoples of the earth will be gathered together against Jerusalem, and against the Israel nation (Zechariah 14.2).

What are those bands and cords which they desire to break asunder and cast away? Well, the measure in which the recognition of God has found a place in the hearts and minds of men to that extent there will be restraint from evil and constraint unto that which is good in the sight of God. If we love the Lord we will rejoice and find delight in all that is well-pleasing to Him, but if we do not love the Lord then the restrictions of the law will be but bands and cords. God complained through Jeremiah of the great men in Judah at that time, "that these with one accord have broken the yoke, and burst the bands" (5.5). May we His people today be preserved from the condition that will lead to this!

This then is what is before us in the Spirit's words in the second Psalm. Here are kings and rulers and nations that are resolved to act as they please and be quite free from heaven's regulations and restrictions. These are the wicked as in Psalm 36.

"There is no fear of God before his eyes

The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit

He deriseth iniquity upon his bed

He abhorreth not evil."

Israel at the present time is again back in the land after hundreds of years of wanderings among the nations, and woeful abuse by them. Problems are maturing, especially with regard to their relations with the Arab nations around them, that will afford exercise for the keenest brains, and we believe the time is at hand when Zechariah 12.3 will have fulfilment.

"I will make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all the peoples; all that burden themselves with it shall be sore wounded; and all the nations of the earth shall be gathered together against it."

The kings and rulers take counsel against the LORD and against His Anointed, His Christ. In Acts 4 we see this had application at the rejection and crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. How sad to think that again just before He comes to reign men will unite against God and against His Son! "The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved" (Psalm 46.6). And how will this affect the Most High? What will be His feelings as He looks down and sees this tumultuous assemblage of all the nations of the earth? Will His purpose be stayed, that of bringing again the Firstborn into the world, not to die, but to reign? Let us listen to the declaration in the second part of the Psalm:

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh

The Lord shall have them in derision" (verse 4).

He shall laugh at them and deride them. He knows it is their day of calamity, and He has revealed how He is going to act:

I also will laugh in the day of your calamity;

I will mock when your fear cometh" (Proverbs 1.26).

Men have a saying, "United we stand." When, however, men are united against the LORD and against His Anointed it must be altered to, "United we fall." What are these many nations and peoples as against Him of whom it is written, "Behold, the nations are as a drop of the bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance:

behold He taketh up the isles as a very small thing" (Isaiah 40. 15)? He who spake and it was done when creating the world will use the sword of His mouth: "And the rest were killed with the sword of Him that sat upon the horse, even the sword which came forth out of His mouth" (Revelation 19.21).

"Then shall He speak unto them in His wrath,

And vex them in His sore displeasure" (verse 5).

They had taken crafty counsel against God's people: "They have said, Come and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance" (Psalm 83. 4); instead, however, they themselves will be cut off, and the LORD says,

"Yet I have set My King

Upon My holy hill of Zion" (verse 6).

"He uttered His voice, the earth melted" (Psalm 46. 6).

It is all important that men should know who the Son of God is, and the third part of our psalm has special information in regard to Him. "What think ye of the Christ? whose Son is He? " are still questions all must face, since all will have dealings with Him either as Saviour or as Judge. He Himself gives a revelation of the Son, as to who He is, by the psalmist's pen:

"I will tell of the decree

The LORD said unto Me, Thou art My Son;

This day have I begotten Thee" (verse 7).

We should make quite certain that the Lord's Sonship did not commence at His birth in Bethlehem, and if we give attention to the words of Isaiah 9.6 we can receive help on this matter. There we read, "For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given." When that Child was born God had given His Son-His Son who had been with Him from all eternity; the Word who was with God, and was God. The begetting of the Son was neither at the birth in Bethlehem, nor at the resurrection of Christ from the dead. "This day" is surely the day of eternity in which the triune God lives.

"Thou art the everlasting God,

Past, present, future still the same."

We judge that this interpretation of "this day" is the only reasonable mode of expressing the revelation contained in the writings of the apostle John, "the only begotten of the Father" (John 1.14), "His Only Begotten Son," monogenes (1 John 4.9), where the Father is referred to as begetting, and the Son as being begotten. It is thus the truth is revealed to us in the Scriptures and we must not allow human reasonings to rob us of the wonder of divine revelation. Here we are touching that which refers to the nature of God, a subject "the most eminent and the most inscrutable." The Septuagint Bible says, "Today have I begotten Thee."

It is worthy of note that when recording the birth of Jesus Christ Matthew says, "Now all this is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, "Behold, a virgin shall be with Child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel"; but we do not have the quotation from Psalm 2 concerning His being begotten of the Father. In the three instances in the New Testament where the Holy Spirit uses this word of the decree His purpose appears to be to show the greatness of the Person made reference to. How fitting that in Acts 13.32, 33 the majesty of the Saviour should be emphasized! He that hath inherited the "more excellent name," who is the Maker of the worlds, the effulgence of God's glory, and the very image of His substance, and who upholds all things by the Word of His power, is contrasted with the angels in Hebrews 1.4, 5, "For unto which of the angels said He at any time, Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee?" And in Hebrews 5.5 the glory of the office of High Priest which God has given Him cannot add to the glory of His Person since He is God's Son, begotten of the Father.

It is to this ineffable Person that the LORD says,

"Askof Me, and I will give Thee the nations 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" (verses 8, 9).

Sad indeed is the history of mankind that lies behind this coming judgement. Since judgement is His strange work we are face to face with its stern necessity, for the nations of the earth, having turned after the man of sin whom they worship as god, will be broken to pieces and consumed and every vestige of men's authority will become like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, the wind will carry them away, that no place be found for them (Daniel 2.35).

It is folly for men to hope for the arrival of the millennial age through evolution for man will be at his worst when the Lord Jesus Christ comes to take the kingdom which His Father has promised in the words of the second psalm. At the sounding of the seventh angel in Revelation 11.15 we are told, "The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ: and He shalt reign for ever and ever."

Mr. Newberry, in his marginal notes, indicates three sections in the Psalm, (1) God speaking, verses 1-0; (2) the Son speaking, verses 7-9; (3) the Holy Spirit speaking, verses 10-12.

Here is wisdom's voice in these three verses, calling on the kings to be wise, and judges to be instructed, and to serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. If only men would listen to the voice of God in the Scriptures they would indeed kiss the Son and be saved from His anger, and from perishing in the way. "Happy, (or blessed), are all they that put their trust in Him."

unknown | May 1956
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