This could be subtitled Sovereignty and Sarcasm, or An Exposition on Psalm 2. Or you can make up your own subtitle and leave it in the comments. For the next 700 words or so, we’ll be taking a look at Psalm 2, a text that gives us an idea of how we might respond to God’s sovereignty. As I won’t mention every verse exactly, nor will I begin with a summary, it might be helpful if you read it quickly before we begin. (Here’s the ESV.)
Permit me to read into the text just a bit, but I think the second psalm begins with God asking a sarcastic, rhetorical question: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?” This seems like thinly veiled contempt on the part of God. Perhaps what was really going through his head was, “Look at the idiots! Have they no idea what’s going on?” In their foolishness, the kings of the earth have conspired against God. They say (and at this point I can hear God using his taunting-on-the-playground-voice), “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” (“Morons.”)
Next in the text comes the reason for my willingness to read such deep sarcasm into God’s talk about these people: “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD holds them in derision.” His contempt is mitigated only by the humor of the spectacle, and only momentarily. “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.'” This earthly plot has no effect on what God has planned. It’s like he says to them, “You have done your thing, and it is laughable. I have done this, and you can do nothing about it. And now you’ve made me mad.”
The psalm has begun with cutting sarcasm, but in verses seven through nine, we see a shift in tone. Because scholars consider this to be a messianic psalm, we can infer that the “Son” to whom “the LORD” speaks is, in fact, the Christ. (This “Son” could refer to an earthly king, too, but we’ll not get into the interpretive issues of typology at this moment.) Though the tone of this section is anything but sarcastic, the content is still quite surprising. Jesus is not portrayed as some comforting savior, but as a militant conqueror who “shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them like a potter’s vessel.” The combination of sovereignty and wrath, even in our loving Savior, if fearsome to behold.
Up to this point we’ve seen that God’s sovereignty and power are so much greater than anything of this earth that any rebellion against him is laughable, and pathetic. The language is much like a giant taunting an gnat. But at verse 10 the psalm becomes suddenly didactic. “Now therefore,” we hear. Instructions are on the way; what ought we to do because of God’s sovereignty over this situation? We will:
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.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, we read elsewhere, and this same fear is exactly what we should feel upon contemplating his control and authority. He holds our plans and hopes and sadnesses and fears in his grasp and he does what he wills. Before we can learn anything else from God’s sovereignty, we must fear him.
But it is the final line of the psalm that is its most surprising. After verses of contemptuous questions and sarcastic laughter, after learning of the wrath of the Messiah and a warning to serve him in fear, the psalm changes suddenly, just as it ends. I like to think that the Psalmist, after meditating fearfully on the sovereignty of God and writing all this, suddenly paused, trembling, wrote this last line, and then walked away perfectly calmed. After this gnashing meditation on the wrath of a sovereign God, the Psalmist says simply: “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”
These are the two response that we should have when we recognize the sovereignty of God. The unregenerate in particular must fear his wrath. We who are saved should still fear, recognizing that we still sin. Though God’s wrath is no longer directed towards us, in his love, he will bring chastisement to the fullest degree. But after we arrive at fear, suddenly the sovereignty of God becomes our refuge, and a blessing to us. We who find shelter in God, we are blessed.
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