If I were still an enemy of God, if I still dwelled in rebel camps outside his kingdom, if I still played the madman slinging stones at my Creator, this audible response to our amassed assault would empty my blood of courage. I would sooner hear the threats of the archangel, the blast of the trumpet, the opening of his gates, the rhythm of his war drums, the wheels of his chariots, than this. After our rage had been spent, our God presumed defeated, our terms of surrender sent, “He who sits in the heavens laughs” (Psalm 2:4).

What was true in David’s generation is true in every generation: the nations rage, the peoples plot in vain, the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and his Anointed (Psalm 2:1–2). Mankind does not just walk a broad way; we march along it. We bring the battering ram to the door; our soldiers spend quivers shooting over walls. You and I were born in their ranks, children of wrath by nature (Ephesians 2:3).

And the nations do not just oppose God; they “rage” at him. Their lives spit upon the ground at the mention of his name. Their hearts speak sedition: “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2:3). And they gather, each man’s disgrace torching another’s — “the peoples plot in vain.” Heads of state sit stately, nodding their approval, strategizing — “the rulers take counsel together.” The body fevers mutiny. Samson’s foxes dart into the King’s fields with fire at their tails.

And after they unleash their hate and let slip the dogs of war, they thought the battle decided. They thought his strength broken, his cords snapped, the immortal dead. And then they hear it. Scorn and mirth that strip the forests bare and shake the earth to the foundations. His laughter, the noise to shatter the shield and stop the heart as the hunter realizes he is the hunted.

Sinister Soundtrack

Psalm 2:1–3 depicts how every age wars against God. Every generation of unbelief swarms and swaggers, taking counsel together to escape his rule. Fools pretend to deny him. Most pretend to ignore him. Nations defy his law. Our time flaunts its sexuality and kills its children. Every age seeks to break his reign, and every generation will hear his dreadful laughter.

But the specific fulfillment of this rising against God’s Anointed happened two thousand years ago. This was the D-Day of the world. The Master sent his own beloved Son to a people who had beaten his servants, as if saying, “they will respect my son” (Matthew 21:37). They did no such thing. They took him, cast him out of Jerusalem, and crucified him amid the garbage heap.

Consider the soundtrack of their unholy day, foretold in Psalm 22. Mankind scorns him; the people despise him (verse 6). All who see him mock him, hurl expletives at him, wag their heads at him (verse 7). They taunt, “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” (verse 8). Bulls surround him (verse 12). Lions roar at him (verse 13). His dry tongue sticks to his jaws as dogs bark and growl, as they pierce his hands and feet (verses 15–16). They gloat over him as soldiers cast lots for his garments (verses 17–18). They snarled over their prey, the ageless war decided, so they thought. Until a curious key change occurs (verses 21–31).

His enemies, no doubt, thought themselves very manly, exulting over the anguish of the Master’s Son. With violence they cast his cords from them; with what disdain they threw his shackles back at him. They must have assumed themselves mighty indeed to have subdued this lion like a lamb. They had failed so many times to trap him. Where now his whip, his woes, his questioning whether we have read the Scriptures? Where now his rebukes, his blasphemies, his boastings about his Father and being the Man coming on the clouds. Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe him; let him now extend his hand to us, and we shall kiss his ring!

What musical sounds in their minds. The victory, they thought, was final. They slew him, slowly, as one might roast the Passover lamb. Oh, how the mighty have fallen — or rather, how that serpent had finally been lifted up. He who stood and beckoned the thirsty to himself now cries, “I thirst.” Is this God’s Anointed King? Well then, we have lifted him to his throne — we, his royal footstools (Psalm 110:1). If you are the Son of David truly, shake off this unproven and wooden armor, come down at these taunts, and sling the stone at Israel’s enemy.

Hunters Hunted

How quickly did their revelries end. But two days they enjoyed cigars. The Lord’s silence was their favorite song. On the third day, though, laughter. Laughter that kills courage. Laughter that bursts champagne bottles. Laughter that replies, “Your havoc only wakes my slumbering wrath.” They cannot discern how death lies dead at his feet, how the sins of his people lie still, alone in the tomb. A voice speaks, through a smile, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill” (Psalm 2:6).

The war room is mic’d with a megaphone — omnipotence cares not who overhears. He speaks to someone, but to whom? The riddle does not remain unsolved.

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.” (Psalm 2:7–9)

And when was his sonship publicly declared? We might think only of his baptism, but overhear Paul’s revelation:

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.” (Acts 13:32–33)

But they killed him. Let him reintroduce himself: “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17–18). The seed perished and was buried, corruptible, but raised incorruptible, indestructible. He lives. The one they fixed to the cross with iron nails has forged those nails into a rod of iron to dash the nations apart. All authority has been given to him. Who can stand in the day of his terror?

His empty tomb speaks a command to all, including kings and all in high places:

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. (Psalm 2:11–12)

Checkmate

Publish it in Gath, tell it in Los Angeles, speak it forth in Minneapolis, alert the Supreme Court, hail it in China, chant it in Honduras, light beacons in Brazil, declare it in Denmark, announce it in Afghanistan and Argentina: Christ is King. All authority is his; he offers amnesty to the humble who repent, and he will judge the nations and dash the unrepentant with his scepter.

Write it upon the gates of Jerusalem; post it for all to see: “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). The Son reigns. “Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him . . .” (Hebrews 2:8–9). We see him by faith. We hear him in his word. We love him by his Spirit. And the time hastens for all to see him face to face — even those who will soon cry out to the rocks and mountains, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” (Revelation 6:16–17).

Yet today is the day of his kindness, the day he offers terms of shalom. Surrender to his Son who freely gave his life, bore his Father’s almighty wrath and your curse willingly, that by faith in his finished work on the cross you may enjoy his peace and glory and life with him and the Father, forever. He does not ask — he demands you come be forgiven, welcomed, loved.

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30–31)

But this day of salvation is drawing late. John calls it “the last hour” (1 John 2:18). The time is arriving when he will say, “As for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me” (Luke 19:27).

Hail Him While You Can

O man, see the disaster of your rebellion. You have always been Satan’s pawn — “captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26) — and never close to checkmate. Come to your senses and escape his snare. Your plots and plans have served his courses. Overhear how the early church prays Psalm 2:

“Why did the Gentiles rage,
     and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
     and the rulers were gathered together,
     against the Lord and against his Anointed” —

for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. (Acts 4:25–28)

Sinner, he laughs at your rebellion, and it is a harrowing laugh. He holds the nations in derision. He has equipped his Son with a rod. You stand outflanked, surrounded, defenseless. Only one safe space exists — not in his mother Mary, not in morality, not in Muhammed, not in your own positive vibes or self-defined spirituality — only in the Son, Jesus Christ, so violently put to death to bring the guilty dead to life. “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” By faith, kiss this Son, lest he be angry with you, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Are you still raging? Your insurrection causes him no loss of sleep. Your revolt gives him no worry. The loss is yours alone. Know that it will soon be sung to God, in praise, concerning all such rebellion: “The nations raged, but your wrath came” (Revelation 11:18). Celebrate his grace in this day of salvation, receive his kindness while you can, lest you glorify his justice and power in hell. All uprising is futile; sinner, come to Jesus, kiss his ring, bow to his love, and live.