My brother, Harvey Day, is bringing that lecture
to us from the Word of God, by
Karl Arnett.
Would you please turn again to the Book
of Psalms, and this morning we'll take a
look at Psalm 2.
Psalm 2.
I would like, in looking at the first
verse of this psalm, to refer to a,
what I think is one of the most
accurate translations of the Scriptures that I have
ever come across.
I'm referring to the translation made by Mr.
John Nelson Darby, more than a century ago,
which I think still is one of the
very best.
I appreciate the paraphrases that are in existence
today, but when it comes to reading accuracy,
even though he may not be quite so
smooth in reading, the translation may not be
quite so smooth, I know that it's very
accurate.
Mr. Darby translates the first verse of Psalm
2 in this way, Why are the nations
into mulchierous agitation?
Why are the nations into mulchierous agitation?
And the people might in the same thing,
the kings of the earth, set themselves in
the rulers they counseled the others, against the
Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us
break their plans asunder and cast away their
poor strumpets.
He that sitteth in the heavens to lie,
the Lord shall have them in derision.
Then shall he speak unto them in his
wrath, and text them in his sword his
pleasure.
Yet have I sent my king from my
holy hill of Zion.
I will declare the decree the Lord hath
sent unto me.
How art my son?
This day have I begotten thee.
After him I shall give to the heathens
thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the
earth to thy possession.
I shall break them with a rod of
iron.
I shall cast them to pieces like a
potter's vessel.
Be wise now, therefore, O ye kings.
Be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear.
Rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the son, lest he be angry and
be perished from the ways.
When he troth his kingdom but a little,
lest it out all they that put their
trust in him.
I dare say many of you present here
this morning, you like many other Christians, you
read through the book of the Psalms as
a devotional exercise.
And this is very good.
I myself was brought up to do this
as a lad, to read through the book
of the Psalms, just purely in my devotional
periods.
But you know, there's something more than just
a devotional exercise in these psalms, because the
writer of these psalms, or the writer of
most of these psalms, was also a prophet.
And this is never more evident than in
this second psalm which we have just read.
No doubt there was some experience in the
life of the psalmist which led him to
write a poem like this under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit.
But he believed that he was also thinking
ahead.
As a matter of fact, in the fourth
chapter of the book of the Acts, we
have these very words applied to our Lord
Jesus Christ in the time that he was
rejected and crucified.
Then again we find in the fifth chapter
of the Epistle of the Hebrews how this
psalm is referred to there with our Lord's
elevation to the high priesthood.
Of that I would like to speak another
morning in more detail.
But just to say this this morning, that
we must not limit these psalms to some
incident or something that took place in the
past.
Don't let us think of them as simply
being ancient documents, but something which is right
up to the minute.
And that was one reason I had for
giving to you the more literal translation of
Mr. Garvey, why are the nations in tumultuous
agitation?
And I'm sure I don't need to labor
the point this morning to show you how
this fits into the picture of this very
day in which we live.
If ever the world was in tumultuous agitation,
it is right now.
We find not only that there are wars
going on, but there are rumors of war.
And men are continually talking about the possibility
of a third world war and they're predicting
that if it ever takes place, it will
be the end of our civilization.
So that even men who don't know anything
at all about prophecy, know nothing at all
about what the word of God has to
say, are beginning to demonstrate the very thing
that the psalmist is talking about here.
I remember some years ago I was asked
to speak to a group of university students
in the city of Guatemala, in Central America.
All of the ministry was taking place, of
course, offered in the Spanish language.
I was asked if I would address this
group, not to present my Bible openly, but
to take some scripture with which I was
pretty well acquainted, and just keep my Bible
in reserve until later.
On that occasion, I took one of the
psalms, and quoted it from memory in Spanish,
and proceeded to speak on it.
And after the meeting, it was my pleasure
to hear a number of these students, who
were well acquainted with literature, come up and
say, you know, I never knew that things
written a thousand years before the Christian era
could have anything whatever to do with the
times in which we live.
They were surprised with this.
They began to feel that there was something
about this book, which we know as the
Holy Bible, which they had never yet discovered.
There's something about this book that's different.
Very recently I've been reading a little book
put out by J.B. Phillips, the author
or translator of the Phillips Translation of the
Scriptures.
There are some things in the book which
you probably wouldn't agree with, but nevertheless, when
Dr. Phillips tells us that this book has
the ring of truth, we agree with him.
We say there's something about this book that
commends itself to us as we read it.
It has the ring of truth.
And this I believe is evident even to
unbelievers as they read this book.
How many men have their explanations as to
why the nations are into multifacetation.
Some of them will argue that it's because
of the economic differences, that the haves are
against the have-nots, and the have-nots
against the haves, and so on.
Others again will tell you it's a difference
in political beliefs and ideologies, and so on.
But not one of them, so far as
I'm aware, I'm speaking now purely secular books.
There is not one of them that comes
very near the answer that we have right
here in this psalm this morning.
The reason why the nations are into multifacetation
is because they don't want any restraint from
above.
Notice what they're saying here.
The kings of the earth and the rulers
have taken counsel together against the Lord and
against his anointed.
And that word anointed should have been spelled
with a capital A.
That word is the Messiah.
That's the Christ.
These three words are synonymous in our language.
The anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ.
They're against him, against the Lord, and against
his Messiah.
And what do they say?
Let us break their fans asunder and cast
away their cords from us.
They don't want any restraint from above.
There may be some distinction between these fans
and these cords.
The fans may speak of that which restrains.
The cords, on the other hand, may speak
of that which draws.
But we find that men don't want either
one of these two things today.
They want no restraint from him who sits
in the heavens.
Neither do they want to be drawn by
the cords of life.
This, my friends, is the basic cause of
all the commercial agitation we see in the
world today.
And it will never cease.
There will never be international peace until this
is recognized, and God makes good what we
have in this psalm this morning.
And just to bring this down to each
and every one of us personally, because you
know what you and I see in the
world, generally around Mississippi, the multiplication of millions
of hearts.
So that it comes right down to the
individual himself.
Unless you and I are at peace with
God, there'll be a commercial agitation within.
And I'm sure we can diagnose it this
morning and say, it's because of our opposition
to the Lord and to his prophet.
I'm sure in this audience this morning there
must be some.
I never take it for granted that even
a group like this, say, of 300 or
more people, that every one of you knows
the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal savior.
I'd like to believe that that is true.
But if it isn't true, and it probably
isn't, I would like to speak personally to
that one present this morning or more, who
have never yet had settled peace in their
hearts, who do not know the Lord Jesus
Christ as a personal savior.
My dear friend, the reason for that is
because you've never been reconciled to God.
You know what it means to be reconciled
to God?
Years ago I heard a definition of reconciliation
which I've never forgotten.
Reconciliation, or to reconcile, means to make a
friend out of an enemy.
And that's exactly what God does when he
saves your soul and mine, he makes friends
out of enemies.
Because we were enemies by wicked works.
We didn't want to be sinners.
I told you last night that I was
born and brought up in a Christian home,
and I thank God for that.
Oh how I praise God even now, for
that training which I had in those early
years of my life.
When God in his marvelous grace, even when
I didn't know him, was preserving me from
things which wrecked the lives of many of
my companions.
I remember one fellow who was really a
bosom friend of mine, who died at Osteen.
Thank God I never had anything like that.
I've never been able to sing that hymn
which says in the line, all my life
was wrecked by sin and strife, and mine
wasn't.
Even in my unsaved days this was never
true.
God in his marvelous grace preserving me, so
that when it came to the time where
I asked for the hand of the lady
who became my wife, I could say to
her, I'm bringing you as much as I
know I'm getting.
You know dear friends, that's something that many
people can't say today.
They're taking liberties with the standards and the
word of God.
And alas, when they become married, there are
no undiscovered joys to expose.
Nothing.
But thank God for those who still live
up to the standards of the word of
God, and who've had the training of a
Christian home, so that they too, when they
invite another to become a life partner, can
say as we said, I'm bringing as much
as I know I'm getting.
And how God blessed that union.
We thank him for these things.
My dear father before me could bear the
same witness.
In fact, I believe it was my father's
example in his prayers, which led me to
think of the value of this very thing.
When I spoke to him in the later
years of his life, and the way God
had blessed him, and his ten children, all
of whom confessed the Lord Jesus Christ as
a personal savior, I said to him, Dad,
what one thing would you say God used
to bless your home the way he did?
Well, he said there's so many things.
But he said your father was the husband
of one wife.
I knew what he meant.
That when he asked for the hand of
my beloved mother, he could say the same
thing to her.
I'm speaking along these lines with design this
morning, because I've had enough experience with young
people in my work as a teacher, down
the years, both at the Moody Bible Institute
and Wheaton College, for fourteen years.
I know what we're facing in days like
these.
And dear friends, all of it comes back
to the first three verses of this psalm.
Against the law and against his own.
Let us flick their fangs asunder.
We don't want this restraint from above.
We don't want to be drawn by these
cords of love.
Now what's God's answer to this?
It has been noted by commentators down the
years, that they really have four speeches in
this psalm.
We find them in the four sections of
three verses each.
We have listened to the speech of these
kings and these rulers.
Perhaps I ought to add a word about
these kings and these rulers.
We know so very frequently, trouble is blamed
upon those who are down at the bottom.
But here the blame is put on those
at the top.
Upon the kings and the rulers.
And I'm inclined to believe that these rulers
are some superhuman group, referred to in the
New Testament as the Principalities and Powers, who
are in league, shall we say, with human
leaders in the rejection of the law of
Jesus Christ.
St. Paul refers to them in his Epistles
to the Corinthians when he says, which none
of the princes of this world knew.
For had they known it, they would not
have crucified, with the law of glory, the
princes of this world.
The very title which our Lord gives to
the devil himself, in the Gospel according to
John, when it refers to him three times
over as the prince of this world.
I'm inclined to believe we see this league
right here.
Yes?
Little do men realize, as they look upon
the world today and see the agitation, that
this is but a reflection of some other
agitation which is going on in the world
above us, in the Principalities and Powers in
Satan's domain, for he's the prince of the
power of the air.
But come to come to God's response.
He that sits in the heavens.
Perhaps this could have been translated, he that
is enthroned in the heavens.
He sits in the place of authority.
He sits in the place of supremacy.
There he is.
He that sits in the heavens shall lie.
I remember being puzzled about this as a
lad, as I told you last night in
my horrible days.
We lived next door to a Presbyterian church.
We used to attend there, and they sang
the Psalms in that church.
There were no musical instruments allowed.
The only musical instrument that was allowed in
the church was a tuning fork.
And we had a young dentist who gave
us the key, and we'd sing the Psalms.
And one day I went to the pastor
of the church, Dr. Parker.
I said, Dr. Parker, what does it mean
when it says he that sits in the
heavens shall lie?
You know, I couldn't associate this idea with
God.
I was only a boy about ten years
old at the time.
He said to me, well, when do you
lie, son?
Well, should I lie when there's something funny
to laugh at?
I didn't know any other answer to give
to that question.
Well, he said, let me give you an
answer.
I was no boy ten years old, except
in the project he would have used these
words that he used.
But he said that you lie when you're
at perfect ease about the situation.
Well, I had to think about that a
long time before the meaning of it shook
in.
But that's the fact, isn't it?
God is at perfect ease about the situation.
He doesn't worry about it.
He can't worry.
He doesn't wonder how this thing is going
to come out.
He knows exactly how it's coming out.
These things in heaven shall laugh.
The Lord shall have them in his origin.
Well, what does he say?
Does he say, look at them.
They're all mixed up down there.
All their United Nations and their League of
Nations and all these other things.
All the world's problems.
What did he say?
He said, yet have I set my finger
upon my holy other side.
You nailed him to the cross and said,
this is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of
the Jews.
I have recognized him as my head.
And I have set him upon my holy
hill of Zion.
While this has not yet been literally fulfilled,
for I believe this refers to the actual
place on the earth's surface known as the
hill of Zion.
I'm not inclined to spiritualize this.
And I'm not unmindful of the fact that
our blessed Lord is at this present time
seated at the right hand of the majesty
in the heavens.
But I believe this scripture has a final
fulfillment when our blessed Lord will indeed sit
upon his throne in that hill of Zion.
But then, how do you explain this, you
say?
Well, the theologians have an expression for it.
They call it the prophetic passage.
God speaking of something yet to come as
if it were already accomplished.
We get a perfect example of that in
the 53rd chapter of Isaiah.
700 years before our Lord was crucified, it
says he was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised for our iniquities.
Strange language that is.
One Jew at least called my attention to
it.
He said, how could that refer to Jesus
of Nazareth since it was written 700 years
before he lived?
I was only a lad when I had
to face that question in a little farmhouse
up in Nova Scotia.
But, I believe God gave me the answer
then.
When I looked at that Jew who, by
the way, was blind, I said to him,
Diamond, do you believe that God knows the
end from the beginning?
Oh yes, he said, I believe that.
So he would know every event that is
yet to take place and could speak of
it as if it was already accomplished.
When he saw where that question was leading,
he was a bit hesitant.
Because it meant that he would have to
admit that when the prophet said, by inspiration,
he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities, he was speaking of
them as yet to come.
As if it were already an accomplished fact.
And so it is.
I have set my king upon my holy
hill of fire.
This is God's answer.
They nailed him to a cross.
God says, I set him on my holy
hill.
This, dear friends, is God's answer to the
whole thing.
It's the exaltation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And until he is exalted in your heart
and mine, we'll never know what real peace
is.
And now we listen also to the king
himself.
Beginning at verse seven of our psalm, Notice
you have another speech here.
And here again, I'm merely repeating what any
one of you may have read, even in
some of the simplest commentaries on the book
of the Psalms.
Here is the king himself speaking.
He says, I will declare the decree.
The Lord has said unto me, Thou art
my son.
This day have I begotten thee.
Now, it's rather remarkable that this verse is
never directly connected with the first of our
Lord in the New Testament.
It is referred to in the 13th chapter
of the book of the Acts, but there
immediately we read about the Lord's exaltation.
God has raised up Jesus.
According as it's written in the second psalm,
Thou art my son.
This day have I begotten thee.
But the most extensive use, or at least
the, shall I say, the most definite use
of it, is found in the fifth chapter
of the Epistles of the Hebrews.
I'm going to ask you to keep your
finger or bookmark in Psalm 2, and turn
please to Hebrews 5.
Hebrews 5, if you have the same kind
of a Bible that I have, it's page
1294.
I'm going to read from the beginning of
this chapter, Hebrews 5.
For every high priest taken from among men
is ordained poor man in things pertaining to
God, that he may offer both gifts and
sacrifices for sin.
And it's just too bad that we have
a verse division at this point, because I
think we missed something very precious.
We think of a priest, especially in Old
Testament language, as a man who offers up
sacrifices and so on.
But notice that verse, the first words of
verse 2.
Who can have compassion on the ignorant.
Oh, that's a peacefully minister's act.
Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and
on them that are out of the way.
For that he himself also is, of course,
is referring to the human priest that he
is compassed with in primacy.
And by reason hereof he ought as for
the people, so also for himself, to offer
for sin.
So no man taketh this honor unto himself,
but he that is called of God as
what they are.
And now we come to the verse that
I want to call particular attention to.
So also Christ glorified himself, not himself that
he made an high priest, but he that
said unto him, Thou art my son, this
day have I begotten thee.
Notice that here the Holy Spirit of God
is using this person, Psalm 2, verse 7,
in connection with our Lord's elevation to the
high priesthood.
Yes, as you say, this day.
Well remember it's the eternal God who's speaking,
and to him there is only one day.
There's only one day.
This is God's eternal day.
No doubt there was a moment in time
when this became specifically true, but God doesn't
speak as you and I do about today
and tomorrow and tonight.
Have I begotten thee.
And the word begetting here might refer very
well to acknowledging in a certain place of
endearment to himself, rather than to his birth
as we have already observed.
God recognizing you now.
This is recognition.
You say, well I don't see how often
this would really fit.
Well, perhaps an illustration will make this clear.
I, as I've already told you, I'm the
oldest of ten.
There were seven boys of us and three
girls.
My youngest brother, who's also the youngest of
the family, was the only one who followed
my father in his business as a builder
and contractor.
While he was serving his apprenticeship with my
father, Father's truck had on it, E.
Armerding, Contractor and Builder, Sandwood, New Jersey.
But after Howard had served his apprenticeship, and
Dad recognized him as a real builder, he
sent the truck down to the paint shop
and it came back, E.
Armerding and Son, Contractors and Builders.
Now, my brother had been his son for
many years, some years.
But now he's officially recognized as God.
And here is God recognizing the one who
men rejected and nailed to a cross.
He recognizes him as his son.
And that's why the Lord in speaking here
in Psalm 2, he doesn't say, I will
declare my genealogy, but I will declare the
decree.
The Lord hath turned to me, Thou art
my son.
This day have I begotten thee.
But if he's the son, he's also the
heir.
And you notice in verse 8 of our
psalm, he's invited to ask, ask of me,
and I shall give thee the heathen for
thy inheritance and the uttermost part of the
earth for thy possession.
Strange to say, this verse is frequently claimed
in missionary meetings, and you hear people pleading
the promise.
And so it were made to them.
The Lord says, ask of me, and I
shall give thee the heathen for thy inheritance
and the uttermost part of the earth for
thy possession.
In the first place, the promise wasn't made
to you and me.
And secondly, what the Lord does with them,
after he gets them to prove that this
is not a missionary text, he puts a
nice verse that says, Thou shalt break them
with a rod of iron.
Thou shalt cast them as pieces as a
potter's vessel.
When you look at it that way, dear
friends, you realize that our Lord, in having
refrained from asking all these years, it is
because in his grace and in his mercy,
he's waiting for men to be reconciled to
God.
Because once he asks, this is what's going
to happen.
How our Lord could have used these words
in replying to the devil in the days
of his temptations.
Remember how Satan spread all the kingdoms of
the world with the glory of them before
our blessed Lord in his temptations.
He says, for all this will I give
thee if thou fall down and worship me.
Our Lord could have used this text in
replying to him.
But if he had, he would have been
using something you and I couldn't use.
Therefore, the temptation would only have an academic
interest for us.
Our blessed Lord was taking that temptation of
a man.
And as a man, he gives the answer
when he says, Thou shalt worship the Lord
thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
That's an answer that you and I can
give.
But he could have used it.
He had a perfect right to use it.
And we'll repeat, dear friends, It's a great
mercy on his part, for any of you
still on stage here this morning, that he
hasn't asked yet.
Because when he does, he's not only going
to take over as the heir of all
things, but as the judge.
And this is a role which is not
very often emphasized in connection with the Lord
Jesus.
But he himself claims it in the fifth
chapter of John's Gospel when he says, God
has committed all judgment to him because he
is the son of man.
Yes.
Don't forget it, my friends.
These are the days when as a Savior,
he spreads out his loving arms and says,
Come unto me, all of you that labor
on the heavy laden house, if you dread.
But listen, if you don't listen to that
invitation today, you may have to face him
as your judge by and by.
But this brings me to the closing verse
of the psalm, and I know that very
often this is looked upon as a negotiation
on the part of the psalmist himself.
But I believe in keeping with what we've
been saying this morning, that we have the
voice of God the Father, God the Son.
I like to think that in these closing
verses, we have the voice of God the
Holy Spirit, even though he's speaking through David,
through the psalmist, as his mouthpiece.
And what does he say?
Be wise, Father of your kings.
Be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
And notice to me that nothing is said
about the rulers that you read about earlier
in the psalm.
If I'm correct in my belief that those
rulers are spiritual beings now infesting the heavenly
realm under the domination of Satan himself, I
can quite understand why they were omitted here.
The words of an old hymn come to
mind as I say that.
Though angels may with rapture see how mercy
flows in Jesus' blood, it is not theirs
to prove as we.
It claims he purchased that blood.
God has no offer of salvation to fallen
angels.
He does to fallen men.
But here they are, and the Holy Spirit
is pleasing with them.
And the plea is summed up, I believe,
in this last verse when he says, which
I take it is really, shall I say,
an Old Testament way of saying, be reconciled
to him.
I know that the commentators say that this
is an act of homage, and of course
it is that.
But I'd like to think that there's something
deeper than that.
This is a tithe of reconciliation.
Tithe to Solomon.
And what is not manifest in our English
Bibles, and you'll excuse an old school teacher
for calling attention to it, is that we
have here another word for son.
Up in verse 7 of the psalm, where
it says, Thou art my son, we have
the Hebrew word, ben.
We should get a name like Benjamin, ben
Ahad, and so on.
You get the plural of it over the
gates of some Jewish cemetery, ben Eberich, the
sons of the covenants.
But in this last verse, we have another
word for son, it's the word far, which
you have in such words as chronos, and
far juna.
And you say, well why the difference?
Why didn't the Holy Spirit use the same
word in both cases?
Well, the grammarians tell us that they did
this for euphonies' sake, that is, to make
it sound better.
Because the next word is rather similar in
sound, ben pen.
It would be, in the Hebrews, so that
they for varieties had far pen.
I think there's a deeper reason than that.
You know, when they rejected the law of
Jesus, what did they say?
Not this man, but far Abbas.
And far Abbas, by the way, means the
sons of the covenant.
He was the devil's counterfeit, he was the
devil's substitute on that occasion.
And now the Holy Spirit is reminding them
of that by using the very word which
they used when they shared death.
Yes?
If the simple gospel is, we believe on
the law of Jesus Christ, then how shall
we say?
My dear friends, I know that most of
you here this morning have a lot of
people who like to think that in going
over this beautiful psalm you have seen the
array of titles that belong to him.
He's the Anointed One, he's God's King, he's
the Son, he's the Heir, he's the Judge,
he's the Savior.
What a wonderful list of titles.
You know this is one thing that thrills
me reading this psalm, and any other part
of the Word of God, and that is
to discover how Christ is presented in it.
So if you don't get anything else this
morning out of this little Bible study, or
this hasn't been a sermon, this is a
study of this portion of the Word of
God, I hope you'll go away with a
vision of Christ in your soul and in
your heart.
Oh, to see no man save Jesus only.
Now it's just 10 o'clock, but you
know I never like to close a meeting
like this without singing.
And we're going to turn to please the
hymn number 78.
Hymn number 78.
Oh happy day that fixed my choice on
being my Savior, my God.
Well may this glowing heart rejoice until it's
rapture of all God.
Hymn number 78, I don't think you can't
hear it.