It’s my privilege this morning to introduce to you our guest speaker. Joel Penton is no stranger to Northwest Bible Church. Joel, you’ve been a member here for how many years? Too many to count. Too many to count. And just kind of like your kids, too many to count.

Love Joel, his family, and what they bring to our church, but also how God is using him in the ministry that he founded and he leads called LifeWise. And God is doing incredible things. And if you’ve not heard Joel Penton preach, you’re in for a treat today. Joel, would you come, preach whatever God’s put on your heart, and just open the word of God and teach us this morning. Thanks, buddy.

All right. Good morning, Northwest. Well, it’s an honor to be with you in the pulpit again this morning and on a very special, special day capping VBS. What a week. How many of you were here for part of VBS? Don’t get excited about it or anything. Golly. No, I was. I was here every day, although I didn’t really participate like my family.

So my family was so involved in VBS. My wife helped with a group, I think the, the church, helped with a group, I think the second graders or something. My two oldest boys were in the drama. My third born was teaching, I think, kindergartner’s science, which is cool. My 11 year old was participating in the morning and then she helped lead a group in the evening. And then my, my nine year old was simply participated. And our 10 month old was in the nursery filling diapers, which was very kind of him. That’s what I heard at least. And so it’s, I’m grateful to have a chance to participate here at kind of the end of the week, I guess, or the beginning or whatever.

And today’s a special day because it’s Father’s Day. Where’s the fathers in the room? All right. They’re excited to be up early and here on Father’s Day. And it is customary on Father’s Day, which is always Sunday, of course, to hear a Father’s Day message or Father’s Day sermon. And I have opted not to do that. So we won’t be doing that today. It would be self serving of me, I feel like.

But, but I did make sure every single illustration and every single example I plan to use in this sermon is very masculine. So there will be much talk of kings and battles, wars. There’s even a Viking and even a movie. So that’s what we’re gonna do.

So we’re in Psalm 2. So if you have your Bible, go ahead and turn on your Bible and scroll with me to Psalm 2.

But actually, before we get into Psalm 2, we’re gonna start somewhere else. We’re gonna go in the side door where Psalm 2 is quoted in the New Testament. In fact, did you know that one of the most quoted Psalms in the entire New Testament, entire Bible, is Psalm 2? And it’s quoted, one of the places is quoted or alluded to many times, it’s quoted in Acts 13.

So we got the Apostle Paul, he’s in Antioch preaching, and he’s preaching about Jesus. And he quotes Psalm 2. Let’s read it. It’s Acts chapter 13 verses 32 and 33. We’ll have it on the screen as well.

Here’s what it says. This is Paul preaching. He says, “And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus. As also it is written in the second Psalm, you are my son, today I have begotten you.”

You might be thinking, “What? What is he talking about?” He said, “Jesus rose from the dead as it is written in Psalm 2. You are my son, today I have begotten you.” That is very confusing. I don’t know what those two things have to do with each other. That’s what we’re going to talk about this morning, and we’re going to talk about it in Psalm 2.

First, a little bit of background on the Psalms. I don’t know if you know this, but the Psalms are organized into five books. If you’ve been reading through the Bible and you, sometimes you all of a sudden, it’ll say in the middle of Psalms, it’ll be like book three. And you’re like, “What? There’s multiple books in Psalms.” It’s divided into five books, and many people say, theologians say, they are meant to roughly mirror the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.

The book of Psalms is in fact the longest book in the Bible. It also took a very long time to write. Psalms actually span a thousand years, have several different authors. It is often said the Psalms, which are sometimes called the Psalter, which I think is nice. The Psalter is sometimes referred to as the school for the soul, because it covers every aspect of human experience, all the highs of joy, all the lows of sorrow.

The primary author is David. He wrote roughly half of the Psalms, and some people have pointed out the paradox, which I think is fun to consider, that the Psalms, which tend to be songs and prayers, they are both human words to God, while they are God’s words to humans.

And ultimately, like all of scripture, the hero of the Psalms, the Psalms are ultimately about Jesus, Jesus, the word of God incarnate. In fact, in Luke 24, 44, Jesus explicitly says that he had to fulfill what the Psalms had to say about him.

So as you read through the Psalms, you’ll see many different prophecies about Jesus, but you also see some deep themes and passages that are kind of patterns that all point to Jesus, patterns of suffering and vindication, patterns of this priest-king that is to come.

You’ll see mention of a rejected stone and a real mega-theme, as you can imagine, written by David. Throughout the Psalms is this theme of kingship, this theme of kingship that is ultimately about Jesus.

And as you read the authors that tend to be kings, particularly David, you’ll kind of notice this theme of kingship maybe operating on three levels, at least I feel like I noticed this, is sometimes you’ll see David writing about being a king and you realize, “Oh, that’s just about David. He’s talking about his life, his experience, his battles, his wars.” But sometimes you’ll notice a second way that as he’s writing about being a king, that you can tell there’s something deeper going on. He’s referring to a pattern that’s about something bigger, that’s about something that he’s pointing forward to this ultimate king who is Jesus. And then sometimes there’s a third way where David will be writing and you’ll think, “I don’t even know how this could even apply to David. He seems to just be talking about this one true king to come.”

And Psalm 2, that we’re going to read this morning, is one of those times. Is it about David? Is it about Solomon? Yeah, kind of maybe, but it’s definitely pointing forward to Jesus. And so that’s what we’re going to look at this morning.

Psalm 2 is what’s known as a coronation psalm, which is a song that’s meant to be sung when the king is crowned. All right, so the king is crowned, sing this psalm.

Okay, so here we go. There are four scenes that I see in Psalm 2 that I would like to point out and tease out. You know, my sons were in the drama and they had five acts from five days. This psalm I think has four scenes.

Scene number one, do you have your notes? I’m going to have you fill in the blanks. Okay, first scene one, what is it? Foolish rage. Fill in your blanks. The first scene we’re entitling foolish rage. Foolish rage. All right, let’s read it. This is verses one through three.

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.”

All right, so here’s the scene. This is, you got this group of kings who have been conquered and in the original setting, these are Middle Eastern kings, so David and Solomon, they were very successful in conquering the neighboring nations and the scene is that these neighboring nations, the kings, the rulers are getting together and they’re raging. I can’t believe we’ve been conquered. I can’t believe this this king in Israel holds authority over us and they’re conspiring about how they might burst their bonds apart.

And so in one sense, that’s what it’s about. But as I said in another sense, this psalm is about something much bigger, much deeper. Notice that it talks about kings of the earth, not just Middle East. Kings, rulers of the earth are conspiring and not just against the king in Israel, but against who? Against the Lord. And it says, “And His anointed,” the word there, anointed the Hebrew word, you know what that word is? “Messiah,” which the Greek translation for that word is “Christ.” So the kings of the world are raging against the authority of God Himself and Christ.

This foolish rage is rebellion in the world and it manifests itself in many different ways. In fact, we can look around right now and see how rebellion against God manifests in the world. You could talk about secular humanism, that we as people try to figure out how we can find true meaning, true purpose, true fulfillment in just this world and just being a person, not in anything eternal. We can talk about scientism, how we as people think that we can solve all of the mysteries of life. If we can just learn more about science and learn it all.

I’m sure you’ve heard the story, the joke, about the scientists who talked to God, who had a conversation with God. He said, “Hey, God, we don’t need you anymore.” And you know why? Because we figured out how to create life. And God said, “Wow, that’s very impressive. Could you please show me?” And the scientist said, “No problem.” And he bent down and he got a little bit of dirt. And God said, “Hey, get your own dirt.” Get it? Okay. Okay.

Scientists, and there’s political utopianism. Many of us, we tend to think, “Oh, if we can just find the right leader, if we can just elect the right person who has the right agenda or whatever.” Every single election, it’s like, “Oh, if we could, if our guy could just win, everything will be perfect.” We could go on and talk about moralism. We could go on and talk about, ultimately, idolatry, serving false gods. But at the end of the day, the world order is rebelling against God himself.

And the truth is, it also manifests itself, not just in the world out there, right? It manifests in our own lives, in our own hearts. Each and every one of us rebel against the true king. We want to be our own kings, right? We want to decide what happens in our lives. We resent God’s timing often. Why didn’t he do what I wanted him to do at the time I wanted him to do it? Many of us live our lives in practical atheism. Maybe we’re here Sunday morning, but for the most part, just walking around our lives as though God didn’t exist. Many of us build our own kingdoms with our career, our family, our own little kingdom that we want to protect. And we resent God if he tells us that we should do something else with it. This applies to all of us, all of us in our hearts like these kings of the earth want to burst God’s bonds apart. We want to defy him.

And so, let us see in the next scene how God responds to this foolish rage, this rebellion. Let’s look at verses four through six. Scene two. Oh, actually, yes, fill in your blank. Terrifying laughter. Here’s how he responds with terrifying laughter. Scene two. Let’s read it. Verses four through six.

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.

He who sits in the heavens laughs. Here we can see in God’s response that our rebellion is both absurd and serious. Notice that he just sits there and laughs. Men out there, if you find yourself in a fight and you wind up and give your best shot and the guy you just punched laughs, you should probably run away. It’s not going to go well for you.

It reminds me of when my oldest boys were really little, I had three boys right in a row, Joel, Judah, Luther. And when they were smaller, this still kind of happens, but when they’re smaller, anytime we would go to a pool, I would see them get together. And if we were all in the pool together, and they would conspire. And I would hear them say, hey, you get his legs. I’ll sneak around behind. You jump on his head, and we will dunk him. And every time we’re in a pool, my three boys thought they could dunk me. And you know my response? It wasn’t concern. It wasn’t crisis. I would hear that and I would laugh because it was so ridiculous. They were going to dunk me. God sees our rebellion and he’s not threatened. He laughs.

It reminds me of the Tower of Babel. Remember that story? People are like, we’re building a tower. We’re going to reach up to heaven and be like God. And what’s it say in the text? God said, let’s go down to see their tower. It’s great. It’s great. Oh, the people are building a tower. Let me get my microscope. Oh no. Right? This is a joke.

Have you heard the story of King Canute? I promised you a Viking. The Viking King who conquered England in the early 1000s, King Canute, it was said that he was all powerful. And so what did King Canute do? He had people take his throne to the beach and sat on the beach and he commanded the tide not to come in. And when his feet were wet, he got up and left because it is so ridiculous. Our rage. Let’s burst the bonds of God. How ridiculous. How silly.

So it’s so absurd. It evokes laughter. And yet it’s so serious. It evokes wrath. Look with me at verse five. He will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury.

You know, I’m not sure we talk about this enough. I’m not sure we soberly face the reality that we are in rebellion against the God of the universe. We talk a lot about God’s love as we should. God is love, abounding in love. And yet, did you know, numerically speaking, there are more references to God’s wrath in scripture than his love?

Humanity is an open rebellion against the creator of the universe. We, in our rebellion, dishonor an infinitely honorable God. And that is an infinite crime. Justly deserving infinite punishment. We are God’s creation made to serve him. Our only purpose is to serve God himself. And we’ve done the exact opposite and said, “No, we’re going to serve ourselves.” That is a serious breach and it has a serious response. The penalty for that kind of treason is infinite.

And so on one level, our rebellion is a joke, humorous. On another level, it’s infuriating. And at the end of verse six, we see God’s plan. What’s he going to do in response to this rebellion? He’s going to send a king. He says, “As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.” God has a king to put down this rebellion.

So let’s go on. Let’s meet this king. Scene three. Here we go. Scene three. Write this in your blanks. Promised king. Promised king.

Here’s the text, verses seven through nine. “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.”

Here’s what we learned about the king. And I remember this was originally written by likely David. Maybe he’s written about his son, Solomon. It’s alluding to 2 Samuel chapter seven, the Davidic covenant, where David says to God, “God, I want to build you a house. I want to build you a temple.” And God says, “You want to build me a house? No, no, no. I’m going to build you a house.” And he says, “I’m going to make your kingdom last forever. Your son is going to be my son and he’s going to reign forever.” So already pointing to this future forever king. And that’s kind of standing behind this psalm. So it’s looking kind of at Solomon, but as we’ve said, it’s more so looking at Christ.

Here’s what we’ve learned about him. Verse seven says he is the son of God. Verse eight says he’s the heir of all nations. He owns the entire world. Verse nine says he rules with a rod of iron. This is not a gentle, administrative king. This is a conquering king and we should feel the severity. After reading about our rebellion, after reading about God’s terrifying laughter, we should now feel the severity of this king who’s holding a rod of iron to dash the nation to pieces.

But to understand this, we have to consider when the context of this coronation psalm, I need you to track with me theologically through this. This coronation psalm, when is this psalm, when is this coronation happening? That’s why we started in Acts 13. When was Christ coronated as king? Do you know? Now you might say, “Well, he was always king.” Okay, but this, yes, on one level, yes. But you might say, “Well, when he was born, he was coronated king.” Well, in a way, but not really. You might say, “When he was baptized or when he performed miracles,” well, maybe. Acts 13 connects it to when Jesus rose from the dead.

And there are other biblical authors that do the same. Philippians chapter two, Paul says, “It was after Jesus suffered, died, and rose again, that God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.” In Hebrews 10, 12, it says, “After offering one sacrifice for sins forever, he sat down at the right hand of God. He was exalted up and sat down on his throne after offering sacrifice.” Jesus was always king, and yet the Bible is giving us a picture that the moment of his coronation was when he had done his settled work.

Here’s the point. Jesus is coronated as the one true king, equipped to deal with the rebellion of the world after he suffered, died, and rose again.

Here’s the point. Every other kingdom that we’ve ever known on this world has been built by breaking the backs of others. And Jesus steps in and takes his throne after he was broken for the sake of others. Jesus is handed, not just his crown, but his iron rod after he absorbed the iron rod on our behalf.

Jesus’ reign is qualitatively different than any other king who has walked this earth. Jesus has suffered and died for us, and in light of that, as he has risen again, he is now equipped to reign as our king. He’s coronated, and the picture for this coronation I want to put in your head, as promised, Lord of the Rings.

How many of you seen Return of the King? The third movie? How many of you read Return of the King? Not that many. Guys, it’s been out for over 20 years. The book was written 70 years ago, spoiler alert, but if you haven’t read it by now, it’s not happening.

So you got Aragorn, who’s one of the main characters, and he is the promised king of men. And for pretty much the entire trilogy, he’s wandering the earth, wandering Middle Earth in obscurity and doing battle for the sake of Middle Earth. He goes into the paths of the dead. He fights battles no one else would fight. He leads an army through impossible odds, and even in the second Two Towers, he says he is willing to die with the people of Middle Earth.

And then when it’s all said and done at Minas Tirith, he’s finally crowned king and everyone is gathered. There’s all the music, there’s the crown, and he’s crowned as king, and that is the image I want in your head for this, when Jesus has risen from the dead. He didn’t just say he’s willing to die, he did die. And at his resurrection, he’s crowned as king of kings, Lord of lords, and he’s now equipped to deal with our rebellion.

So let’s go on and see how he makes a way. In scene four, scene four, you can write down “Blessed repentance.” Blessed repentance.

Here’s what it says. “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.”

Blessed are all who take refuge in him. Here’s the scene. It’s a failed rebellion. We’ve seen these movies, right? The rebels rose up, they failed, and now they are marched in front of the king, and there they stand, these failed rebels. That’s us, that’s the kings of the earth, that’s all of us. We stand before the king.

And because Jesus has accomplished Jesus, has accomplished his work, there’s this twist at the end. He stands with two hands. One hand is in a fist holding this rod of iron, severity, judgment. And in this other hand, it’s open, offering grace, offering refuge, and the choice is ours. And notice how it’s held together, this tension, the two coins are held together. You can see in the passage, “Serve the Lord with fear. Rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, like kiss his ring. Bend the knee, kiss his ring, lest he be angry.” Jesus offers us grace we don’t deserve, even though we rebelled against him.

Every now and then we see the faintest glimmer of this in the world. At the end of the Civil War, it ended in April of 1865. Anybody know where? All right, we need to work on history, everybody. At Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, okay, that’s where Lee, he surrendered to Grant. And if you think about the scene, and I hope I don’t offend any Southerners here, I know that people have views on things, but if you think about the scene, the South rebelled against the Union, and hundreds of thousands of Americans killed each other. And then the South surrendered. And by every legal standard the leaders could have faced, imprisonment, public execution. However, what’s offered is grace. General Ulysses S. Grant said, “Keep your firearms, keep your horses, everybody just go home.” And the Southerners were welcomed in as fellow countrymen again, throughout the whole thing. President Lincoln had the same approach. It’s over, and now there’s grace. And that is just the faintest shadow of what Christ does for us.

This King, our promised King, he offers us grace. I told you about the Viking King, King Canute. He conquered England in early 1000s. And everybody, usually people tell that story about King Canute taking his throne to the shore, commanding the tide not to come in, and it’s lifted up as some example of, you know, the arrogance of humanity. And that’s, it should be. But most people don’t tell the story correctly.

King Canute was actually a Christian. And after conquering England, his courtiers were so impressed with him and just falling all over him that they told him, “King Canute, you can do anything. You have all power.” And so to prove a point, King Canute took his throne to the shore, and he said it there. And after the tide came in, history tells us that he stood up and said this, “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings. There is none worthy of the name, but he who heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” And then King Canute, it’s told, took his crown off, put it on a crucifix, and never put it on again for the rest of his life. I have a feeling he read Psalm 2. He bowed the knee to the true King and found his refuge in him.

And here’s that, the paradox of that last line, “Blessed are all those who take refuge in him.” We need to find our refuge from what? From suffering in the world? Sure. From death? Sure. Ultimately, remember the context. This is the paradox. We need to find refuge from what we deserve. We need to find refuge from the wrath of the King. We need to find refuge in him, from him. This is not a contradiction. This is the heart of the Gospel.

And I want to plead with you this morning that we would all put down our rebellion and bend the knee to the King of Kings. C.S. Lewis said, “We are rebels that need to lay down our arms.” Let’s lay down our arms, bend the knee to the King, and find refuge in him.

Let me pray for us. Father in heaven, you’re so kind. Lord, in light of our rebellion, in light of our arrogance, Lord, in light of how we set up our own kingdoms, Lord, you have found a way through your King who suffered and died and rose again, and is crowned now. You’ve made a way to your throne, in fact, to your family. And so, Lord, we give you thanks and we pray that we would submit ourselves to you in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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