Psalm 2 - The Power of the Son

Individual Topics — Steve Gregg

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Psalm 2 - The Power of the Son

Individual TopicsSteve Gregg

In "Psalm 2 - The Power of the Son," Steve Gregg presents different levels of understanding this kingdom Psalm. He discusses the importance of fearing and serving God, submitting to the anointed king, and prioritizing faith in God over anti-God rulers. Gregg points out that Psalm 2 contains a message about rebellion against God, and highlights Jesus as the King of kings who will reign until all His enemies are defeated. He also touches on the complex and difficult to understand relationship between God and Jesus.

Transcript

Okay, let's turn to Psalm 2. These, the first two Psalms, and we did talk about Psalm 1 last time, there have actually been people who thought that these two Psalms were or should be seen as one Psalm. They are very different from each other. They have some similarities, but some theorized that maybe they were originally one Psalm, and then they were broken in two.

However, if that happened, it happened before the time of Paul, because Paul refers to this one as the second Psalm. In Acts 13, he refers to this as the second, no, is it in Acts? He does quote this Psalm in Acts 13, but he also does elsewhere. Anyway, Paul does refer to it as the second Psalm, and so it's not, and probably never was, at least not since his time, ever been one with the other.

It's a great Psalm. It's truly one of my favorites. It's one of only four that are considered to be about the kingdom of God.

That is the Messiah. They're called the great kingdom Psalms. Now, we know the Old Testament prophets have a lot of passages that we could call kingdom passages about the Messiah's kingdom, but the Psalms, which do mention the Messiah elsewhere than these four Psalms, these four specifically talk about his reign from different angles.

Psalm 2 is the first of those Psalms that are in this category. Psalm 45 is also counted as one of them, as is Psalm 72 and also Psalm 110. Now, Psalm 110 is quoted in the New Testament more often than any other chapter in the Old Testament.

Psalm 2 is also quoted very frequently in the book of Acts and in the epistles, but it's widely quoted. Different parts of it are. It certainly is about Jesus and about his kingship.

I'm going to read the Psalm. It divides into four equal stanzas, each of them three verses. So we've got a Psalm of 12 verses, which goes like this.

The Lord shall hold them in derision, which is a word that many younger people may not know derision. It means to mock, to deride somebody, means to mock them. So God mocks them.

He laughs at them, mocks them. He holds them in derision. And then he shall speak to them in his wrath and distress them in his deep displeasure.

Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree. The Lord has said to me, you are my son.

Today I begotten you. Ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. You shall break them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Now therefore be wise, O kings, be instructed, you judges 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 when his wrath is kindled but a little.

Blessed are those who put their trust in him. Now the first stanzas, the first three verses, obviously describes the rebellion of the rulers against God and against the Messiah or against God's anointed one. Now, by the way, there's kind of three levels that this psalm can be applied and two of them are quite natural.

The third is not unnatural either. The first level would be that this is David talking about himself as God's anointed because he was. God had anointed him to be king to replace Saul.

God had sent Samuel the prophet to Jesse's house to call in his sons, including David. And David was the one that oil was poured over, which is the anointing to be king. At that time, the spirit of God came upon David and left Saul, which also suggests that it's not just a ritual act, but a spiritual transition that God did in fact anoint David to be king.

And he did face opposition, especially after he came to power. I mean, even before that, Saul opposed him before then. Absalom opposed him after that.

But there were also other nations that he waged war with, the Philistines. He waged war against other surrounding nations that he conquered. And there were rebellions against him.

So some would say the first level of this is that David is the anointed king, that God has set on his holy hill of Zion, Zion being Jerusalem, which is the capital city that David, after he was anointed king, made his capital. So Zion, which is the mountain and Jerusalem the city upon it, is David's capital. And that's where he was enthroned.

So there's everything about this can be applied to David. Perhaps the one point that people might say, well, maybe not, would be in verse seven, where God says to him, you are my son, today I have begotten you. Now, the truth is, even this could apply to David, because in the ancient Middle East, the kings of nations were often spoken of as the sons of the gods of those nations.

So Pharaoh was considered to be the son of Ra, the sun god of Egypt, for example. And this is not an uncommon way of speaking, that the king of a nation, and all nations were religious nations, they just didn't have the right religion. All nations had idolatrous practices and religions and priesthoods to false gods, except Israel, of course, who had the true God.

But like the nations around her, the king in Israel would be spoken of colloquially as the son of the national God, in this case Yahweh, Israel's God, the true God. So God could be said to be, when David was anointed, indicating, okay, now you're my son, today I have begotten you. Well, we have more to say about that verse.

But we do know that in 2 Samuel chapter 12, that God made, I'm sorry, chapter seven, verse 12, God made a promise to David later in his life, that he would raise up his son to sit on his throne after him, and of that son he says, he shall be to me a son, and I shall be to him a father. Now, the New Testament recognizes this as being about Jesus, who is, of course, the son or descendant of David. And, in fact, the Jews themselves, long before Jesus came, recognized that promise that Samuel, I'm sorry, that Nathan made to David in 2 Samuel 7, 12, as a prophecy of the Messiah.

Though it was also partially fulfilled, of course, in Solomon, because the promise actually said to David, when you have died and you're resting with your fathers, I will raise up one of your seed from your own body upon your throne, and I'll establish his kingdom forever, and he will, it says he'll build a house under my name. Well, Solomon did that. Solomon built a temple.

He was David's seed. He sat on David's throne after him. So, in a sense, the prophecy is fulfilled in Solomon, but Jesus is the real fulfillment, because that statement in 2 Samuel, where God says, I will be to him a father, he'll be to me a son, is quoted in Hebrews 1 5, where it's referring to Jesus, to which of the angels did he ever say, he shall be a son to me, and I'll be his father.

And that same passage in Hebrews quotes this passage, Psalm 2 7, you are my son today, I begotten you. Both passages, Psalm 2 and the promise made to David of his son, ruling after him, are said to be fulfilled in Jesus, even if they were also, in a more primary sense beforehand, fulfilled in David and his sons. They were, in a sense, sons of God.

But you can see that the reference to the son, today I begotten you, does cause the prophecy to transcend David, somewhat to a more lofty subject, which the Jews always recognize, and Christians too, you can tell by the way the apostles quote it from this Psalm in the New Testament, that this is really about Jesus. So you can see it as, in the first instance, and it may be, frankly, it may be the only way that David understood it, because the prophets who wrote often didn't understand the significance of what they wrote. David might have been writing simply autobiographically, you know.

The nations, the kings, the rulers around me, they're trying to overthrow me. They're trying to undo what God has done. God has anointed me as king, and they're trying to break, you know, away.

I've brought them under tribute, and they're trying to cast off the bans and the bonds I've put upon them of, you know, vassal-ship. But God, nonetheless, has established me. God laughs at them, at their attempts to overthrow me.

And he says, yet, yet meaning nonetheless, in spite of all your efforts to undo this, I have set my king upon my holy hilt of Zion. That would be true of David. And then, you know, later on, some of the things seem to be more relevant to Jesus than to David, though in a limited sense, they are true of David.

David was given the nations as inheritance, in the sense that he conquered the nations around him, and they paid tribute to him. So, the first level that this could be seen as would be about David alone. And I don't know, but David might not have known it to mean anything more than that.

But the Holy Spirit, as was recognized by New Testament writers, intended it for Jesus. So, that's a secondary, and more to our interest level. That's a second level of understanding the psalm.

Not just David, but also Jesus. And the persecution he received, and the rejection as the Jews sought to unseat him. He was the anointed that God was setting up as king.

But, you know, the Jews didn't want it to happen. And not only, it says the nations and the people. Herod was essentially a Gentile, part Gentile king.

Pilate was a Gentile. And the apostles quoted this verse, applying it to Jesus and those who crucified him, in Acts chapter 4. And this is actually in the context of a prayer, they quote this passage. When the apostles had been arrested, beaten, and released with the threat that if they would preach any more in the name of Jesus, it would go badly for them.

Instead of being intimidated, they went back to the assembly of the brethren and prayed. For boldness, not for protection, but for boldness. In other words, they didn't say, Lord, we don't want to get hurt.

Please don't let them hurt us. They said, look, Lord, they're going to hurt us. Help us not to be intimidated.

You know, help us to not compromise, because they're going to try to hurt us, and they may do so. And here's how they prayed in Acts 4. In the middle of a sentence, verse 25 says, Who, meaning God, by the mouth of your servant David, have said, Why did the nations rage and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. Christ being the Greek form of Messiah.

Now they've quoted it. Now they comment on it. Verse 27.

For truly, against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever your head and your purpose determined to be done before. Now, they quote the psalm where it says the kings and the rulers have gathered together against God and against the Messiah. And they say, yeah, that really happened.

Herod, Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles, the people of Israel, they gathered together against Jesus, your anointed. So they make no bones about the fact that they see this as a direct prophecy about Jesus and in their own time, the things they had witnessed in their time. Jesus came and he was opposed in just the same manner that David had been opposed and only by different people.

So we can see this psalm, and I think it's most profitable way to see it, is primarily about Jesus. Even if that's a secondary layer, the first layer being David, it's nonetheless most importantly about Jesus. Then I said there's a third way of looking at it, and it'd be more by way of application.

I said it's not as natural, but it's not entirely unnatural. And that is to see that since Jesus has been enthroned for the past 2,000 years at the right hand of God and is reigning over his kingdom, any rulers of the world who continue to oppose him are in the position of these who opposed him initially. Those who crucified him thought they had prevented him from becoming king.

They were greatly mistaken. He rose from the dead, ascended to the right hand of God, and is seated and he'll reign there until he's put all his enemies under his feet. In the meantime, his enemies still rebel.

In the meantime, nations still oppose him. And in that time, God still laughs at their efforts and still says, notwithstanding whatever you do, my king is still there. He's still enthroned.

I have nonetheless installed my king. The word set, my king, the Greek word or Hebrew word means installed. I've installed my king upon my holy other side.

He's still there. Rage all you want to. Do all you can to stop it.

You'll just show how impotent and how foolish you are. Because once all the dust of your rage has settled there, he is still seated, unmoved from his position. And so we can see that in our own time.

Because rulers have always wanted to be God rather than submit to God. It's just a thing in human nature. Not everyone wants to be God, but those ones don't usually run for office.

The people who want to rule other people, they have something in them that makes them want to rule. I don't have that in me. I've never had that in me.

I don't even want to run an organization. I don't even want to pass for mature. I don't want to rule over anybody but me and whoever I have to rule over.

My children, fortunately, they're grown. I'm just not one of those people who likes to rule, but there's a certain kind of personality that does. And if you like to rule over people, it's sort of like if you love money.

Once you have a lot of money and you love money and you love riches, where do you want to quit? Where do you want to stop getting more money? And people who love power, they don't really have a ceiling. The best they can hope for is to rule over everything in every way. Most people can't do that.

In fact, none of them have done that. But that's the goal. If you love money, the goal is to have infinite amounts.

There's no cap on how much you want. If you love power, same thing. Now, the only way you can have uncapped ambition for power is to oppose God who is the only one who really has that power.

He controls you. He controls the world. He controls the weather.

He controls everything. And someone who loves control finds that to be annoying. That is, why should people obey God instead of obey me? They're always in competition with God.

And that's why so many ancient rulers actually demanded that people worship them as gods. Now, in our country, to my knowledge, we've never had a person in charge who actually required citizens to worship them. But there certainly are a whole spate of rulers in various positions of political power now who definitely would like to remove any influence or authority of God in our society.

And the reason is, of course, because God doesn't agree with their agendas. They've got some very corrupt, wicked agendas. And God has always stood in the way.

In this country, the fact that some people, many people, fear God and want to obey God and believe the Bible and follow Jesus has always been an obstruction to tyrants. And I don't know how many, I haven't lived long enough to know very many presidents. I don't know how many of them would have really liked to be tyrants.

I know our first president didn't want to be. They actually were willing to make him king after the Revolutionary War, but he didn't want to be king. I mean, it's great to get that kind of leaders, people who don't really want to have to rule, but they do it as a service.

Something needs to be done, you know. But, and I don't know, I haven't studied the lives of the presidents enough to know if we've had other people as tyrannical as our present leaders. We may have had them before.

Or this, it may just be getting worse. And I'm not aware of Americans since the Revolution living under tyranny that resembles the tyranny that our leaders are trying to subject us to and succeeding with many people. And the biggest obstacle that stands in their way is people who want to follow Christ.

People who will say like the apostles did to the Sanhedrin, well, whether you think it's better for us to obey you or God, you can make up your own mind about that. We've already made up ours. We must obey God rather than man.

People like that have always been the heroes in the Old Testament too. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Daniel, who would not comply. Noncompliance.

And so, because of people who put God first and consider themselves beholden to obey the king on the throne that God has anointed, those anti-God kings and rulers want to do everything they can to overthrow him. And I think we can look at our own times through that particular lens. What is going on? How can people be as stupid as they appear to be? And I'm not even thinking of the people who are the followers, I'm talking about the leaders.

The things they command are so out of touch with reality that even a child can see it. And, you know, there aren't many children bold enough to stand up and say the emperor has no clothes, but everyone can see that he has none. And they're trying to silence that.

They don't want people to be able to say, you know what you're saying about gender roles? There's no science for that. That's just stupid stuff. It's just ridiculous.

You know what you're saying about racism? I don't think that's describing the way things really are. It sounds to me like you're trying to make a scenario become true. You know, I've never seen it in almost 70 years of living in this country.

I've never seen this thing you're describing as the fundamental systemic nature of our society. And they're saying things that everybody I think knows are not true, except for people who don't think. And these are the kinds of people that the rulers like, people who don't think.

The trouble is that God makes us think because if we are mindful of what God wants and then someone suggests the opposite and wants us to comply with it, suddenly we have to think about that. We have to really, wait, I think there's something wrong here. I remember the first time as a teenager hearing someone talk about self-esteem.

We need to cultivate more self-esteem. I've never read a Christian book against self-esteem. I just thought, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense.

That's not what Jesus said. That's the opposite of what Jesus said. You've got to deny yourself.

And some of you know when I was in second grade, my teacher taught a film on evolution. And I remember, I didn't know there were people who didn't believe the Bible. I didn't know that this was an attack on biblical creationism, but I just, I walked around all day through recess.

I mean the whole recess period, not all day. I was just thinking of it. When we have God and his word coloring our thoughts and then someone comes and says the opposite, we have to think and say, wait a minute, there's something wrong here.

And so Christians who are real Christians become deeper thinkers about their faith when there's pressure to accept something they know intuitively isn't right. So they're the thinkers in the society. The people who just go along and just comply, they have to stop thinking or else they'll know that it's wrong and they don't want to disagree.

There's people who just want to live and let live. Let the government leave me alone. What do I have to tell them? How many masks do I have to wear? What kind of shots do I have to get? Just tell me and I'll do it.

Just keep these people off my back. But Christians recognize another king that is on the throne who has his own agenda, has his own claims on the total loyalty and obedience of all people. And this is where the conflict comes up.

And so it was true in David's time. It was certainly true when Jesus came to Israel. It's true in our time as well.

Jesus has been enthroned on his holy hill in Zion, which is the spiritual Zion that Hebrews talks about in Hebrews chapter 12. That we have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the, as he calls it, the general assembly, the firstborn, the church. And that being so, we are at war.

And yet we are not the ones that are troublemakers. It's kind of funny when, when Ahab and Jezebel tried to impose Baal worship on all of Israel, there were some who resisted. There were a hundred prophets of Yahweh that had to hide because Jezebel would kill them and they hid in caves.

Elijah was confronting Jezebel and Ahab personally up front. But when, when Elijah announced there would be a famine and a drought until he would say so, that went on for three and a half years and the nation was starving and so forth. And finally God told Elijah to reveal himself to Ahab.

And when Ahab saw him he said, are you the troubler of Israel? And Elijah said, no, you're the troubler of Israel. Now, it looked like Elijah was the troubler of Israel because he's the one who, he's the negative guy. He's the one saying, hey, wait, everything you guys are doing is evil and wrong.

And, and it weren't God's judgment. Well, not most people don't want to hear that kind of stuff. It makes them uncomfortable.

And he's the troubler, the one who actually stands up for God. But Elijah said, no, wait, you're the troubler. I'm just standing for God.

That's what this nation is about. Israel's about, Israel's about God. You brought in Baal, so you brought the trouble.

And, and there is trouble, but it's not God who's causing the trouble. It's the kings of the earth and the rulers who want to oppose God, who want to overthrow the king that he's appointed. And so let's keep those things in mind, all three of these levels of application.

As we look at the, the first three verses are the first stanza and the first subject, the introduction to the kings, you know, and their rebellion. Now, by the way, the last stanza verses 10 through 13 are addressed to the 12 are addressed to those kings advising them. I think you better surrender resistance to futile instead of, you know, get yourself in so much trouble.

Why don't you just kiss the sun, submit like you should, lest he get angry a little bit and totally consume you. You know, when his angers kindle just a little bit, it'll burn you right up. So I think you'd be wise to be wise kings, take counsel, kiss the sun, find your place under the king rather than trying to overthrow him.

So the rebellion of the kings at the beginning stanza and the counsel to the kings to surrender at the end. Now in between there's two sections. The second stanza talks about God's reaction to the rebellion.

He is essentially amused initially, but also angry by it. It's amusing their arrogance, but anger is in him for their, you know, doing so much harm in trying to oppose his efforts. And so he answers them and says, well, yeah, but I have still set my king on my holy hill in Zion, no matter what you do.

And then that third stanza is a really important one. The Messiah speaks. We've got Yahweh who we would, from New Testament terminology recognizes God the father saying, I've set my king on my holy hill.

And then we have the son speaking to whom God says, you are my son. This time you got to ask me and I'll give you the nations for your inheritance in the uttermost parts of the world for your possession. So the promise that God has made to the anointed to the Messiah.

Okay. So verses one through three, why do the nations rage? The people plot of anything. This word plot, interestingly enough, should probably be translated meditate.

It is the same Hebrew word that is used in Psalm one, verse two. The blessed man, his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night.

That verb, the Godly man meditates day and night on the law. That's the same verb that is translated plot in chapter two, verse one. Why do the nations rage? And they meditate a vain thing.

Now, what this means is they're getting angry. They're raging and they're contemplating. They're meditating on how to overthrow the Messiah.

You'll remember when you read the gospels from time to time, it says, therefore, like the Pharisees and the Herodians conspired together, how they might destroy him. You find people, the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees and others plotting or meditating, thinking, coming up with some kind of a plan. It wasn't obvious how they get rid of him.

So they had to meditate on it, had to think about it. But then they actually resolve in verse three to rebel. But it says in verse two, the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed.

So this is a rebellion against Yahweh and against the Messiah. Let us break their bonds in pieces, they say, and cast away their cords from us. Now, the bonds and the cords, that speaks of bondage, speaks of chains.

It's like they see themselves as having been enslaved by God and they don't want to serve him. They don't want to be his servants. Let's break these cords off.

Let's cast these chains, these bonds away from us. Let's declare our freedom, our independence, our total liberty from God's rule, is what they're saying. We don't want to be in bondage.

Now, it's hard for someone like me to imagine someone wanting to do that if you know there is a God that you would not want to serve him. I can see people convincing themselves there's not a God or ignoring the fact that there's a God and living their life. But when they know there's a God, they know that God has brought them into his service.

They know that God has a claim upon their obedience. And they say, yeah, but we don't want that. Let's break out free and live independently of God.

First of all, people like that are just stupid because the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. If you don't have any fear of God, you don't have the beginning of wisdom, much less any other part of it. And it's just fools would say that.

Now, in Psalm 14, it says, the fool has said in his heart, there's no God. But these people are not that kind of fools. They're greater fools.

They know there's a God and think they can break free from him and suffer no consequences of it. That is an astonishing degree of stupidity. And not only stupidity, but I don't even know why they'd want to.

Is there like a better life available than following Jesus? You know, when people say, well, you're just wasting your life following Jesus. Okay, so tell me exactly what it is that would be a better life than my life following Jesus. A happier life.

I don't know anything that makes a person happier than living with a clean conscience. And everyone who doesn't follow God and knows they're not following God has got to monkey around with their conscience to try to live with it, to sleep with it. They can do it.

They can numb themselves with alcohol or drugs or entertainment or just take their mind off of reality. But, you know, reality always catches up. Whenever you try to live contrary to reality, you really show yourself being an idiot because reality is not going to change for your imagination's sake.

You've got to follow God or that will catch up with you. But I don't even understand wanting to be rebellious against God. I understand temptation to sin.

Every Christian has a flesh and the flesh has things it would like to do that are not on God's agenda for you. And to want to do a thing that God forbids is... No one lacks understanding of what that's like. But to say, I know there's a God, a real God, and he has a plan for my life.

He's given instructions. And I really think I can do better. Really? What's better? You know, and you look at the people who think, well, you're wasting your life following Jesus.

Exactly what are you wasting your life following? You know, your life's going by. You're either investing it or you're wasting it. You know, time goes by.

You're spending it one way or another. Is it an investment or is it a waste? Now, frankly, I'm sure that I waste some of my time. I would like my goal to be waste as little as possible.

Make every moment count because you don't have very many. And every one of them you're going to give an account for. But how can anything other than serving God be considered anything other than a waste? What is there to live for if not for God? I mean, getting rich? Obviously you can't take it with you.

Leaving it to your kids? Well, they can't take it with them either. It's just a distraction from real life to be rich. And, you know, being popular, famous? Yeah, yeah.

How many minutes after you're dead do your friends leave the funeral and go and party and forget about you for the rest of their lives? There's nothing lasting except the approval of God. And to live for anything else, I just can't even imagine. I would feel so empty.

So I don't understand people saying, yeah, there's a God. Yeah, he's got claims on us, but let's break those claims off and do what? What do you do if you're not going to follow God? Well, nothing of any use, certainly. You might say, well, but an unbeliever can do useful things.

They can feed the poor. They can support charities. Yeah, but those poor, they're going to die too.

I mean, yeah, we should feed the poor. We should do what we can to relieve misery. But that's only a temporary fix.

Anything we can do that isn't God's doing, you know, is temporary. And then whatever meaning it had at the time suddenly is forgotten. A generation or two later, no one remembers that you did it.

It doesn't make any difference that you did it. There's only one thing that's different. You know, that famous line, only one life will soon be passed.

Only what's done for Christ will last. I mean, that's so true. What could last apart from that? So here are the fools, the rulers, who think they can do a better job than God of ruling.

They're trying to break free. Let's break free from it. Let's break his bonds.

Let's cast away their cords from us. You know, there's such a difference in the mind of a person who's a Christian. My disposition would be, if I could have God totally bind me and force me to do the right thing all the time, I couldn't wish for anything more.

You know, my problem is I've got a little too much freedom. My problem is that God doesn't make me do the right thing often enough. The more I can be his slave, the better.

And frankly, honestly, I can't imagine being happy knowing what I know and not following God. I mean, there's no alternative life that I can imagine that's happy. Now, I realize that unbelievers, many of them would say, well, they're happy and possibly are at the moment.

They find ways to be happy. Happy isn't really the goal of life. But a lot of times what they consider happy might be more like what we call just having fun.

Having fun is very transient. They might be happy. They might have satisfaction.

They might have a happy family and kids and grandkids that they love. I'm not saying that unbelievers can't be happy. They just can't have much meaning.

And to me, I could never be happy without a sense of meaning. The existential need of human beings is meaning. And there is no meaning that makes any transcendent sense without feeling I'm inserted into the plan of God as a cog in that wheel where I was designed to be and causing his whole program to run properly.

And when I'm not doing that, I'm not happy about it. I mean, the happiness is not in rebelling against God. Happiness, deep happiness is in fellowship with God, the favor of God.

What could anyone wish for in life than at the end of their life to see God and say, well done? I mean, you like your dad saying, hey, you did a good job on that. Well, how about God saying that? I mean, what could be more thrilling than to have the God of the universe, you know, summarizing your tenure here on Earth saying you did real good. Proud of you.

Well done. I mean, there's no nothing can compete with that. So these people, I have never been able to relate with them.

Even when I was very young, I remember thinking, if there's a God, I mean, like the God we're talking about, create the universe, who fills all things, who's got all power, all knowledge, all the talent that I admire in other people is just a little bit of a gift from him to them. But he's got all that talent, all that, all that humor, all that stuff that is, is good things that people enjoy. He's like the total of those things combined.

And if there's someone like that out there, how could anyone not want to give up whatever they have to give up to be in touch with that, to be in sync with that, to be in fellowship with that? But see, that's why some people are Christians or some are not. The problem is there are people who are like these kings who want to be Christians on their own terms. They want to say they're Christians.

They want to go to church. They want to believe that when they die, Jesus say, okay, you're in. But their whole life, they're spending trying to break his bonds off of them.

They want a savior, but they don't want a king. They don't want a lord. They don't want to be a slave.

And these have got to be the most miserable of all people. I think the atheist is a happier person than them. But a person who knows there's a God, wants to think of themselves as on good terms with him, but doesn't want to really live in the way that keeps people on good terms with him.

Those are the greatest fools of all and the most unhappy people I could imagine, I would think. So he who sits in the heavens laughs. Now, he's laughing, I think, sort of that kind of laughter.

Not that he's, not like you laugh when you see kittens playing and tumbling around and you think it's just so cute. Or your kids, you know, saying their first words and you're all excited and laugh because they said a little bit wrong, but they at least said something. You know, things that are pure and amusing and bring happiness.

That's not the kind of laughter here. It's more like a, it's like he's deriding them. He's mocking them.

He's laughing at them, not with them. They're amusing him, but not in a good way. What's so amusing is that they're like a tiny little bug shaking their fist at an elephant.

I mean, that's just humorous. If such a bug could be so arrogant and so idiotic as to do a thing like that. And that's what these people are like.

Now, then he stops laughing and starts talking and he doesn't talk with good humor. He talks, he speaks in his wrath. Okay, my amusement has ended.

Now I'm just mad. And he speaks in his wrath and distresses them in his deep displeasure and his announcement. Yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion.

Now this is such a great, a great line because it's true from the time that Jesus ascended into heaven to this present time. He's still seated at the right hand of God on the holy hill and spiritual Mount Zion. The heavenly Jerusalem.

And he's been reigning there for 2000 years. He's going to reign until he's put all his enemies under his feet. That's actually what Psalm 110 says.

Now that being so, we can see that this is just a very optimistic situation for those who are on his side. It's his enemies who are destined to be crushed like dust and blown away like the chaff of the threshing floor. And so the announcement, I've set my King on the holy hill.

That's the gospel. The gospel message is there's a King, Jesus. There's another King, one Jesus.

That is the gospel. That's the gospel of the kingdom. And this is it in a single statement.

God announces the gospel. Jesus is King. And nothing's going to change that.

No opposition is going to turn that over. Then in verse seven, we have the Messiah speaking. And he's declaring a decree.

We're not, it's not made clear to whom he is speaking. He's not speaking to the father, though he does quote what the father said to him. He may be speaking to the Kings who are opposing him.

Probably. They're the only other persons, you know, in the psalm that, you know, are subjects that have been brought up. So he may be speaking to his opponents.

He says, I will declare the decree. This is the decree that God Yahweh made concerning me. Yahweh has said to me, you are my son.

Today I begotten you. Now I need to say something about this verse because it's one of the few verses that people quote from the old Testament to prove the doctrine of the, what's sometimes called the eternal sonship of Christ or the eternal generation of Christ. The idea that Jesus has always been the son of God for all eternity.

Now, I believe Jesus has always been God. I believe he's always been the word of God. These are terms the Bible encourages us to to use.

But to say he's always been the son of God is a little hard to establish from scripture. Now, I have to say that the Bible seems to teach that Jesus is called the son of God came to be known by that designation at his birth or his conception. In Luke chapter one, the angel Gabriel came to Mary.

He told her she's gonna have the child who's gonna be the Messiah. And she said, well, I've never really known a man. How can I have a child? And the angel said, the spirit of God will come upon you and the power of the highest will overshadow you.

Therefore, that holy one that will be born of you shall be called the son of God. Why? Why? Why is he called the son of God? Because the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and the power of God overshadowed her. That's answering her question.

How will I? How can this be? I don't know a man. How am I gonna have a child? Well, this is gonna make it happen. This is a virgin birth.

You're not gonna know a man. God's gonna take the place of supplying the genetic information that a man would normally supply so that your egg can conceive and become a zygote and become an eventually a human being. And that's why your son's gonna be, your child's gonna be called the son of God.

That's what the angel said. So he's called the son of God because he has God fathered him. He didn't have a human father.

He had God as his father. That's why he's called the son of God. Now, Christian theology has always said that Jesus is called the son of God because of something more eternal.

But he's always been in the Trinity. There's always been the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. Well, I mean, this is a thing I've never had a problem accepting, at least when I thought the Bible taught it.

I remember always saying that when I was arguing with Jehovah's Witnesses. They said, no, Jesus is a creation of God. No, he's the son of God.

He's always been the son of God. They said, but if he's a son, he had to have a beginning. That makes him a creation.

No, it's different to beget than to create. He was begotten in eternity past. Begotten not made is the old credo statement.

Begotten not made in eternity past. Well, okay, fine. I mean, I accepted that.

That's what I was taught. I can accept anything that the Bible says. But I remember after having an argument with these people, I thought, you know, it kind of does kind of make sense what they're saying.

That if he's, if someone's a son, that means they were birthed from a parent or how do you become a son of something else? And if there's a birth, there must have been a beginning. And my view is and always has been that Jesus had no beginning. He's God.

God is eternal. Jesus is eternal. But how can he be eternal? And also in those ancient times be, how could he originate from a father and a son kind of father relation? Anyway, I'm not trying to say it can't be so.

I'm just saying that I began to make sure that I wasn't going to say it was so unless I could find the scripture that said it. It's always embarrassing to teach something that sounds counterintuitive because you think it's in the Bible. And then later on you find it isn't.

So I thought I'm going to find what the Bible says. I fully expected to find passages that said he was the eternal son. But what I found was that statement of the angel, you know, this is how you're going to get pregnant, right? Therefore, your son will be called the son of God.

But then there were two verses in the Old Testament that called him the son. One of them is famously Isaiah 9, 6 and 7. But I understand it to mean the child was born and then was the son who was given on the cross. He was given for us, but he was a child born first, then he was the son given.

But at least it could be understood that way. I'm not insisting on it. But it didn't make a clear statement that Jesus was eternally the son.

But the other verse was this one, Psalm 2, 7. This is in the Old Testament. This is before Jesus was conceived or born. God says, you are my son.

This day I begot you. That's an Old Testament verse. So this seemed to be, and Isaiah 9, 6 to a lesser degree, direct statements of Jesus being the son found before his birth.

However, this isn't talking about before his birth. It's a prophecy about something later than his birth. He is the son.

Was he a son when David wrote this? Was he the eternal son? Or is David talking about something later? Well, Paul tells us the answer to that in Acts chapter 13. In Acts 13, Paul is preaching in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch. He's telling a story about Jesus' death and resurrection.

And it says in verse 30 and following this Acts 13, 30 and following. But God raised him from the dead. He was seen for many days by those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses to the people.

And we declare to you the glad tidings, which means the gospel. Good news. That promise, which was made to the fathers, God has fulfilled this for us, their children, in that he has raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm.

You are my son. Today I begotten you. Now there's our verse.

Paul says God raised Jesus from the dead, as it says in the second Psalm. What's Paul saying? This is a Psalm. This verse is speaking about Jesus' resurrection.

Now that seems strange because it doesn't say I've resurrected you, it says I've begotten you. And yet twice in the New Testament, once in the mouth of Jesus in Revelation 1.5, and once in the mouth of Paul in Colossians 1.18, Jesus is referred to as the firstborn from the dead. His resurrection is likened to birth, coming into a new life, of course, from not having been there.

So Paul, when he read Psalm 2.7, he saw that as a prediction of the second, excuse me, the resurrection of Christ. So when God says you are my son, this day I begotten you, he's not talking about his eternal past existence. In fact, we know he isn't because he says this day.

Eternity doesn't have days. When God created the earth and said let there be light, that was the first day. There weren't days before that.

So this is not talking about some eternal state that Jesus was in in eternity past as the son. It's a particular day in history that is being addressed. It's the day of the resurrection of Christ.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he was begotten from the dead. He's the first begotten from the dead. And that's what Paul says is referred to here.

So the kings of the earth thought they overthrew him by killing him. But God says, no, he's on my holy hill throne because I begot him again. I begot him from the dead.

I raised him from the dead. And that's what the father says to the son. You're my son.

Today I begotten you. Ask of me. God tells Jesus to ask him.

Now, what God tells Jesus to ask him is what we should be asking in Jesus name because when we pray in Jesus name, we are praying in the place of Christ. That's what it means to do something in someone's name. You do it as their agent.

You do it in their place. You do what they would want to do, but you do it in their shoes for them. You're an agent.

You've got power of attorney. So when we are told to pray in Jesus name, we have every reason to believe this is what Jesus would pray because God tells him to pray. God tells Jesus to pray for the nations to become his own.

That's what we pray in Jesus name. Your will be done on earth. Your kingdom come.

That's asking God that the earth, the world will come to be governed by Christ. God says, ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession. Now the ends of the earth.

When the disciples said to Jesus in Acts 1 6, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Jesus said in verse seven, it's not for you to know the times or the seasons. The father's put his own authority, but verse eight, you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you'll be my witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, the uttermost parts of the earth. We are to be his witnesses of what? Of the kingdom.

The gospel of the kingdom. There's another king. We're to tell it to the ends of the earth.

And that is how God is going to give Jesus the ends of the earth. This is inheritance through conversion of sinners. Not that everyone's going to get saved, but there won't be any part of the earth where people are not saved.

There won't be any part of the earth where the kingdom has failed to penetrate and late and take hold and grow from that point. So this is what Christ is to inherit the nations and the ends of the earth. He's not going to inherit heaven.

That's been his home for eternity. He's always had that he's inherited the earth. And it says in Romans eight, that we are to be joint heirs with Christ, which means we're going to inherit what he inherits with him.

Joint heirs inherit together with him. What's that? Jesus said, blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth. Jesus is going to inherit the earth.

We're going to inherit the earth with him. It'll be the new earth though. When Jesus comes back, he's going to renew the creation.

As it says in Revelation, there is no more any curse in Revelation 22. I think it's verse three, might be verse two. And so an uncursed unfallen world, Jesus is going to reign forever.

And we will too. And so that's what Jesus is promised by his father. Now his father tells him, you will break them in with a rod of iron.

You shall dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now a rod could be referring to a shepherd's implement. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me, you know, although the same word is used in Genesis 49, 10, translated scepter.

Remember the prophecy about Judas as the scepter shall not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. The scepter is the emblem of rulership. It's the same word in the Hebrew as rod here, but it's also the same word as a shepherd's rod.

So depending on the imagery, the word you shall break them, you know, in the Hebrew, the vowels are missing. So translators have to decide what vowels were implied between the consonants and the consonants of this word can be go more than one way. You can put different vowels in and you can either get the word break or rule.

You will rule them with a rod of iron and the word rule there actually means to shepherd. You will shepherd them with a rod of iron. This seems to be the right meaning rather than break.

Our Hebrew text says break, but the Septuagint says rule. That is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. The Septuagint actually renders it rule.

And the reason we favor it is because the New Testament did. This particular statement about Jesus ruling the nations with the rod of iron is mentioned three times in the book of Revelation. And it's always from the Septuagint, not you will break them, you will rule them.

Now it does say you'll dash them in pieces. So it's kind of breaking them could work. But the first line of verse nine apparently is not about him breaking but ruling because that's how the New Testament quotes it.

In Revelation chapter two and verse 27, it's one of the promises to the seven churches that they will reign with him with a rod of iron. In Revelation 12, 5, excuse me, the child, the male child that's born in chapter 12 says he is to rule the nations with a rod of iron. And then later on in chapter 19 and verse 15, when Jesus is seen on a white horse conquering the nations with the sword out of his mouth, it says, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron.

So this line from Psalm 2, 9 is used three times in Revelation. Speaking of his rule, not that he'll break them with a rod of iron, but he'll rule them. He'll shepherd the nations.

Like it says in Isaiah, he shall feed his flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs in his arms, carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those with young. He's a gentle ruler.

He's not smashing people up. But of course, if you rebel against him, there's not much he can do but smash you up. I mean, it's going to be a, it's going to be a collision.

And in a collision, obviously, if an unstoppable or irresistible force hits an unmovable object, it's a tie. But God's the immovable object. The rulers in opposition are not an irresistible force.

They're easily resistant. You smash yourself against a stone wall, and you're going to end up like them. They'll be dashed in pieces like a potter's vessel.

Now, therefore, be wise, O kings. Yeah, I guess. Be instructed, you judges of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Those are interesting emotions to combine. Rejoicing with trembling.

When you fear the Lord, you still can be joyful. Because the fear of the Lord is not an oppressive emotion. If fear of the Lord was an oppressive emotion, it's like what John said, fear has torment.

Well, it's not that kind of fear. It's rather common sense respect for something that could be very dangerous. You know, when I'm on mountain roads that are very narrow, and there's a steep ledge on the side, you know, I don't, my heart's not beating fast.

But I'm very careful. Because I know that, you know, to turn off by a foot or so could be very disastrous. You know, have you ever, you probably have, most of you, if you've driven where it snows or where it freezes.

Have you ever hit black ice? You ever hit black ice on the freeway? I've done that actually several times. Even though I hardly ever live where there's snow. I've just done it two or three times in different places.

Once in Ohio, once in Oregon. I know, man, you're on the freeway. You're not going fast because no one's going fast in those conditions.

But you hit a patch there and you're going 30 miles an hour, but you feel like you're going 70 as your car's spinning around on the freeway. You know, all the cars behind you are slowing to five miles an hour because they're watching you spin like a top. Well, you don't have time to be afraid until the car stops.

You know, what slams up against the bank on the side, that's when your heart starts pounding like crazy. You know, I wasn't really afraid. But there was something to be afraid of.

You know, once you realize, wow, I almost, I need to drive more carefully on this, you know, I suddenly came into an awareness that this could cost my life if I'm careless. Now, once I know that, and I drive slower, I drive more carefully, I'm happy. But I'm happy because I'm very much aware that going too fast to be safe is a very dangerous thing.

When you know that, you know, there's perimeters that God has set. And if you go beyond those perimeters, you're taking a serious risk. Very scary thing.

But you don't go beyond those perimeters. You just live within the will of God. You can be happy there.

You can tremble at the thought of being on bad terms with God, but you don't have to be on bad terms with God. You can rejoice without the absence of the fear of God. Actually, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.

Kiss the son lest he be angry. The word son, it's kind of interesting here in the Hebrew. The article the is not in the Hebrew.

It just says kiss son. Now that's as awkward in Hebrew as it is in English, which means it may not be the original reading. The word son is very close in Hebrew to the word pure.

And some commentators think what this is just saying kiss purely or sincerely. And the word son isn't even in it. Just kiss pure, kiss sincere.

Don't fake it. Don't kiss up. But just give the submission kiss on the hand that the king usually receives from those who meet him.

But do it sincerely. Be pure about it. Lest he be angry and you perish in the way when his wrath is kindled but a little.

Now, God doesn't have to kindle his wrath completely. He doesn't have to pour out his wrath in order for you to perish in the way and be consumed. So again, people who don't know that are pretty, I don't know, very uninformed or if they are informed, they're very foolish and stupid.

It doesn't take very much of God's anger to totally smash you like a bug, you know, but you can live free from that. You don't have to make God angry. The last line is very optimistic, very gracious.

Blessed are those who put their trust in him. That's the advice to the kings. Listen, you can be blessed like your court disaster right now.

But if you submit to the son, if you submit to the anointed, to the king, I've said I'm a holy hill. Well, there's blessings in that. You know, it's like you're my enemy now, but hey, I'm willing to make friends of you.

Put your trust in him, accept him, submit to him, and you'll be blessed like the person in the first psalm who's blessed. So in a sense, Psalm 1 and 2 kind of come full circle. You've got Psalm 1 pronouncing a blessing on the righteous contrasted with in the second part of Psalm 1, the wicked.

And then you've got the kings of the wicked rebelling against God in chapter 2 at the beginning, but they're offered at the end to become one of those blessed ones that are mentioned in chapter 1. The Psalms were always in this order since Paul did refer to this as the second Psalm. Apparently, these Psalms were arranged like this because of the way that they do these contrasts. They complement each other in a sense.

Very different than the next two Psalms. The next two Psalms are both kind of like bedtime psalms, which have their own value. But these first two Psalms are really, I don't know, they're among the best.

There are certainly some others that are rivals to them, but these are great Psalms. But this one in particular is the first of the Kingdom Psalms of the Messiah. I wasn't quite sure what you were getting at or what kind of point you were making about Jesus being begotten.

There's no dispute in my mind that he was God and always has been, but what's the point that I think you were trying to say that this is... The point is that if somebody is the son of someone else, that means that that someone else brought them into existence, right? But if someone brings you into existence, then you have a beginning of your existence. Now, the idea that Jesus has always been the son of God is a hard concept because if two things have always existed the same length of time as each other, how did one bring the other into existence? C.S. Lewis wrestled with this in his book Beyond Personality in Mere Christianity. He said that if you could imagine two books, one on top of the other on a table, so there's a lower book and an upper book.

He says the book below is defining and causing the position of the book on top of it in space. He says if you could imagine both those books were in that position for all eternity, that book below would always be causing the position of the upper book in its place. And so that's how he made it work that God could always be, in a sense, determining Christ's existence without it ever being otherwise in the past.

It's just a philosophical, difficult thing, and I'm not unwilling to go with the standard creedal formulas if that's what the Bible says. What I'm saying is the Bible doesn't actually say that before Jesus was born on earth that his relation with God was father-son. He was the Word of God.

He was with God. He was God. But was he a son in the sense that he is called in the New Testament? Standard theology says yes, he was.

He was always a son. He's always generated from the Father. There was never a time when he wasn't being generated by the Father.

Therefore, he's always been son. Well, that's a possibility. I mean, I could allow that.

I mean, I'm not against it. I just can't find anything in the Bible that would support it. What I'm saying is every time Jesus is called the Son of God, it's either in the New Testament after he was said to have been the Son of God because of his virgin birth, or it's in the Old Testament in a process talking about his life in the New Testament.

Yeah, you know, until a child is born, okay, that's his incarnation. Until a son, that would be Jesus having been born already, he's given as a sacrifice on the cross, that's an Old Testament verse, but it's talking about New Testament timeframe. And likewise, you are my son, this day I have begotten you.

It's an Old Testament verse, but if it's actually predicting the resurrection of Christ, it's not talking about a pre-incarnate condition. That's what I was trying to say. Yeah, I'm trying to, my son took a bunch of Hebrew at Biola and threw all these books at me to read, and I just, they're way over my head.

But I just, sometimes I wonder when we read these words, begotten, and that aren't really fluent in our everyday life. I just assumed, well, this was talking about when Christ became, in a sense, subservient to the Father's wishes, all the while being his wishes too, but there's that part of my background in theology that talks about us, and I know this is going to sound complimentary a little bit, but us being the church, how God is going to, he's presenting us to Christ as being his bride, that's his gift to his son. And it's, all this is, I can't really wrap my head around the fact that Christ somehow is lower than God the Father, except in this framework of him coming to this earth, satisfying the Father's legal requirements for us being justified.

And I can't see it any other way right now, so when I think of begotten, at what point was he, in a sense, as far as becoming whatever book he was, top, bottom, it's like, okay. There's an aspect of Christ that obviously existed before he was a man on earth, but it wasn't his humanity, it was his deity. When he became a man on earth, humanity was added to that, you know, he didn't become less deity, but he became what deity is when it takes on human nature.

When God becomes flesh, when God becomes man, whatever that, I mean, that's a mysterious thing, that's what Jesus was and is. See, the thing is, before Jesus was born, I don't know that he, we could think of him as, in a sense, sitting at the right hand of God, like, with that kind of personal distinctions, I don't know. But we do know that Jesus is still the man.

He's exalted, he's glorified, like we will be because of him. But, you know, the Bible says, and it's talked about after his ascension, it says, there's one God and one mediator between God and man, the man, Jesus. So, I mean, Paul's still talking about Jesus as the man, who's our mediator in heaven.

So he took on human nature, that was permanent, forever. He became a human being, and that human being, we could say it added something to God's experience. God had never been a man before.

He had appeared in human form in the Old Testament, in the Theophanies, but he had never had human nature. Now he does. But the Father also exists separate from that human being.

Jesus is at the right hand of the Father. I don't know that there's really right hands and left hands of God, or if that's just a figure of speech, that he is, along with his Father, you know, reigning, second in command. But I was just going to say before we get there, what I was affirming and what I was challenging, there's not that much of a big difference.

There's no practical difference. It's just more of a way of trying to understand something in a more biblical terminology than what I was first taught, what I often hear. But, I mean, if Jesus was eternally the Word, and then became the Son at birth, he's still the same being, except he's now added humanity to his divinity.

But, likewise, if he was eternally the Son, and took on humanity at birth, he's still got the same outcome. The question is, I guess the question is, what's the right way to describe what his relationship was with the Father before he came here? Was he the Word of God, whatever, I mean, that would philosophically be teased out too, but, or was he a son? Was he the Son? Either one is fine with me. I'm just saying there's limits on the biblical statements, in terms of what we can say with biblical authority and what we cannot.

And so, that's the point I was making. Stu. Well, I always think too, when the Pharisees declared Jesus saying he was blasphemous, when he said he knew Abraham.

Well, what conversation did Jesus have? If we go back and look at what position was God, God-Jesus talking to Abraham, right? I always thought that is, well, God was God back then, and he became man. Yeah, that raises the question of the theophanies in the Old Testament. Abraham saw God in a theophany.

God and two angels came and ate with Abraham before they went and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. He saw Melchizedek, who, in my opinion, was Christ. Or an appearance of God in human shape.

But there are these theophanies, and the question is, okay, is that Jesus before his incarnation? Or was there even, you know, Jesus in the form we think of him as? Certainly not as a human being. It's not like a human Jesus came down. It's more like God and Jesus, or one or the other, came down and took on a human form, briefly.

These things are never explained. These are what theologians have to argue about if they really want to know the answers. The answers are not that important to me, honestly, because no one, frankly, Jesus never explained any of these things to his disciples, so it must not have been a front-burner issue.

You know? These are things theologians decide to argue about four centuries later. You know? Or three centuries later. So, you know, when Christianity ceased to be a simple walk with a Lord, as servants and followers and students of his, and became, instead of a philosophical system where you have to explain mysterious things that the Bible never explains, that's a different kind of religion than what Jesus started.

But I'm not saying it's wrong to explore those things. The problem is that those things became the things that people began to be included or excluded on the basis of how they felt about those things which Jesus never mentioned or discussed. Nor the apostles, you know? Yeah, Todd? I was thinking, God being God, and outside of time, he can see everything once, so to speak.

And for him to speak of something here as if it's now, is not a problem. You know what I'm saying? You mean those prophecies in the Old Testament about Jesus? The prophecies, yeah. You know, time is only with us.

Right. And he can see the beginning and the end. He knows that his son's going to be the son, so to speak.

And then time just catches up with him. Yeah, I'm interested in just the meaning of words as we understand them. I have two sons.

Both of these sons began when they were conceived, you know? I'm their dad. I had something to do with engineering that. But they didn't exist before that.

Jesus did exist before that, but was he a son? Or was he the Word? I mean, the Bible uses the term the Word for him. Even in 1 John 5.8, which is not really in the older manuscripts, and therefore might not even be original, it says there are three that bear record in heaven. The Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.

It's interesting that whoever added that verse, because it's probably not John that wrote it. The older manuscripts don't have it. But someone, probably in the 4th century, when they were copying 1 John, they wanted to make this Trinitarian statement.

But it's interesting they didn't say, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It says there are three that bear record in heaven. The Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.

Now, it would have been perfectly accurate to say the Son, because Jesus has since been born. At least no one denies him. He's the Son.

But I just found it interesting, even when I didn't know that that verse wasn't in the oldest manuscripts, I just assumed it was just part of the Bible. I always thought it was interesting they didn't say the Trinity the way that I most naturally would say it. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There's only one place in the Bible that uses the expression the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's where Jesus gives the baptismal formula in Matthew 28. Baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But you don't find that expression in the Bible other than that. But it certainly is the right way to speak about Jesus. Certainly since his birth.

Maybe before, but we're not living before, so it's not a practical question. So, verse 7 being the Gospel, we understand that, but what did David and that generation believe? Well, the Gospel had not been really... The Gospel is the good news about Jesus being King. That wasn't the case in David's day, so he wouldn't have seen this as the Gospel proclamation of the Messiah necessarily.

But it was good news to him and those who were his supporters that he, David, was seated on the Holy Hill of Zion. I mean, that was a good... That's a decree, actually interesting, because the word Gospel just means a... It means good news. You know, glad tidings.

And before the New Testament was written in Greek, that Greek word, euangelion, which is translated Gospel, was in common use in the Greek-speaking world, but not in terms of a religious message. It's just good news. And usually it'd be like political news or military news.

You know, good news, we won. You know, the barbarians were routed, and we, our boys are going home victorious. So that's good news.

The runner would come home to the city, announce in the town square, you know, we won this war. Or, you know, the king has a new heir. You know, the child was born today.

That's a good news proclamation. The word preach in the Greek is a word that means to proclaim. And the word Gospel in the Greek means something, it means good tidings.

So when we talk about preaching the Gospel, we think of, of course, evangelism, because that's how it's applied in the New Testament. We preach good news, the kingship of Jesus. But when the Gospels in the New Testament were written, the Greek words they chose were already secular words.

It just meant to proclaim good tidings, which in prior to Christianity would have been usually political tidings about the status of the government or the status of a war or something like that. So, I mean, when the New Testament writers chose to speak about what we do in evangelism, we're proclaiming good tidings. They're basically connecting it with the idea that a war has been won.

There's a new kingdom, there's a new king. You know, we're proclaiming this to the nations. This is to whom it applies.

This is the message everyone has to hear. There's a new king. And that's the Gospel of the kingdom that has to be preached in all the world to all the nations.

So when God himself says, I've set my king on my holy hill of Zion, and we know that the New Testament writers understood this to be reference to Christ, I mean, that is a very good summation of the Gospel that we preach. Although David may not, when he wrote it, may not have understood that this was about the Messiah. He may have.

It's hard to know. Hard to know if he knew. But it's what the apostles knew that's more important because Jesus opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures.