Challenging the Lord God to a Fight
Psalm 2:1-5
1 Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together,
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.”
4 He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision.
5 Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, And distress them in His deep displeasure:
Many of the Psalms have authors and titles named in them. Psalm 3, for example, says "A Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son." But Psalm 2 has no byline. So who wrote it? We can go to a scholar and ask for their textual analysis, examining word usage and the poetic meter. They could compare it to the other Psalms and give us their educated guess. But I can save you a lot of time. David wrote it. How do I know? When reading the New Testament, I read Acts 4 and that is where Peter tells me David wrote Psalms 2. Since Luke recorded Peter’s words and wrote the book of Acts by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I will not dispute this statement.
In Acts 4, Peter and John were arrested for preaching in the name of Jesus. They were threatened and then let go. When they were released, they went to the other Christians and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard {this,} they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said, "O Lord, it is Thou who did make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit, {through} the mouth of our father David Thy servant, did say, why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples devise futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against His Christ.
Now we know who wrote Psalm 2.
This Psalm can be difficult to read because different people are talking in different places. It would seem that the Holy Spirit is talking at first telling us about the Nations are in an uproar against God and they are plotting to fight against Him.
Then the people of the Nations are talking and they tell us their plan is to break the bonds of God and His Anointed.
Then we see God laughing at their plotting and puny abilities. As if mere humans could oppose God! No wonder He laughs at them. Yet we see in the world around us how this is actually happening today. The nations are indeed in an uproar against God. They plot to take God out of our lives. It is against the law to pray or read the Bible in many places. And don’t try to display the Ten Commandments! You will find yourself in court. It’s OK for many religions to meet in public and advertise in public and pray in public, but if Christians try it we’re violating someone’s idea of privacy and infringing their civil rights.
The kings and rulers of this earth have taken their stand against Jesus. Mankind does not want to admit any accountability to God, the creator of Heaven and earth. They go so far as deny the very existence of God. Evolution has been shown to be unscientific and requires more faith to believe in than Creationism does, but it is the preferred teaching in our classrooms. The Bible has been declared to be “out-of-date” and filled with errors and false claims. Hollywood portrays Christians as “religious fanatics” and are often the criminals in the storyline.
They strut and talk a lot about their wisdom and their intelligence and how they don’t need a god. And in response to all this, we are told God laughs at these people who dare to shake their tiny fists in His face. Imagine going to your back door and a group of ants are marching and holding signs claiming you didn’t exist. Would it look silly to you? Would you laugh at them?
That being said, it amazed me to find that there is no other verse in the Bible that says God laughed. The only place we hear about God laughing is here at the ridiculous scene of men opposing God and threatening to overthrow Him.
Then the really scary verse. God will laugh for a time and hold them in derision, but time will run out and then God will stop laughing and will display His anger. Reading the book of Revelation, I cannot even describe the terror that will come upon the people of the world when His righteous anger is poured out upon the earth during the Great Tribulation. At the end of those terrible years, Jesus will come down and in spite of all that has happened to the people and the world they will oppose Him and assemble an army to try to stop Him. And then, after reigning for a thousand years, the world will assemble again to fight Jesus and try to depose Him.
The Bible says that the unsaved have minds and hearts that are at enmity with God. This means they are enemies of God. Their only hope is the message of the Gospel.
Stephen Cram June 9, 2013
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, following the tradition of men according to the rudiments of the world, and not in accordance with Christ. Colossians 2:8
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