Psalm 2. Kiss the Son, and you will be free.

Psalm 2

I remember a friend of mine at University utterly broken one Monday morning. I asked him what was wrong. Turns out he’d cheated on his girlfriend that weekend, and she’d left him. He was devastated. But what stuck with me was the words he said about cheating on her with this other girl. He said “I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t want to cheat on her. But I couldn’t stop myself.”

He was free. Free to do whatever he wanted. And he found that that freedom was not freedom but slavery. He could not stop himself. Slave to his own desires.

Psalm 2. Kiss the Son, and you will be free.

(By the way, this is called Kiss the Son because the literal translation for v12 “Submit to God’s royal son” is “Kiss the Son”. I think it’s such a brilliant picture as we submit to this great King, we come forward to kiss him.)

We want to be free! Free from what? Free from God.

1. We want to be free from God

Ps 2:1–12 (NLT) Why are the nations so angry? Why do they waste their time with futile plans? 2 The kings of the earth prepare for battle; the rulers plot together against the LORD and against his anointed one. 3 “Let us break their chains,” they cry, “and free ourselves from slavery to God.”

The word “nations” is goy-yem – the foreign nations or Gentiles. That is those who are not God’s people. What the New Testament often calls “the world”. Why is the world so angry? Why is the world preparing for battle, making plans, plotting against the Lord and his anointed one?

The answer is in v3: they want to be free. 3 “Let us break their chains,” they cry, “and free ourselves from slavery to God.”

That is our default position as human beings. We do not want to serve God. We want to be God. Little girls dream of being the princess, not the scullery maid. Little boys dream of being the king, or the knight, not the wine-taster or the stable hand!

Our desire for self-glory rather than God-glory goes right back to our rebellion in the garden of Eden, when Eve, looking at the fruit that God said “do not eat”… reached out her hand, and took it, and ate. I will decide for myself what is right and wrong. I will decide whether God should be obeyed or not. I will be God in my life. I’m not going to listen to anyone else. Why should I? I want to be free!

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Freedom. You know what the problem with defining freedom like that is? Freedom without constraints, freedom to do what you want, when you want. The problem is that that definition of freedom has no place for love. Because love is a constraint. You love someone and you are no longer “free”. You are bound to them. Their ups and downs are your ups and downs. Their joys your joys. Their sorrows your sorrows. There is something very wrong with our idea of freedom when it has at its core not love, but selfishness.

See, we were made for love, for relationship. We were made to love God, and love each other. But we decided to love not him, but love ourselves. But “loving yourself” is not love – that’s selfishness. Unsurprisingly, basing our new world order on selfishness instead of love for God broke our relationships with each other. So much hate in this world. So much anger and heartache and war and cruelty. Even in our own lives we lash out at the ones we love. Say hurtful things. We let them down. We break promises. We lie. And they do the same to us. We’re in a mess.

And it is all because we decided to be “free”. What a lie that freedom has turned out to be! Being free to do whatever you want makes us slaves to ourselves – our every whim, every change of emotion. We can choose anything – but we’re terrified we’ll choose the wrong thing – so we do nothing. How many of us use our freedom to sit and do nothing, paralysed by indecision. How many just drift through life, never achieving anything. Freedom?

Remember my friend at University. He said “I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t want to cheat on her. But I couldn’t stop myself.” His freedom turned out to be slavery: A slave to himself, his own desires.

We, the angry nations, want to be free from God. We want to be king in our lives – but

2. The Lord has already set his chosen King on the throne

Did you notice the first word in the Psalm? “Why?” Why do we fight against the Lord? Why do we lay plans? Why do we rebel? Because it is pointless. Why do they waste their time with futile plans? (Futile means useless, wasted, unsuccessful).

So, we shake our fists in rebellion against God. Like an army, we link arms and march together. Millions upon millions of us, throughout time and history – we march. We march against this God. “Who does he think he is”, shouts our Captain, our Commander, Lucifer, also known as Satan. “God wants to chain you down – will you be chained?” He shouts. “No”, comes our answering cry.

What is the response in heaven? Is there worry? Is there shuffling of plans, reorganisation of defences? Does the Lord send out a negotiator, to bargain with us? Come up with some power-sharing agreement?
No.
There is mocking laughter.

4 But the one who rules in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. 5 Then in anger he rebukes them, terrifying them with his fierce fury. 6 For the Lord declares, “I have placed my chosen king on the throne in Jerusalem, on my holy mountain.”

As the Lord looks on our terrible rebellion, he is not concerned. We are like a puff of wind, a speck of dust. It reminds me of one of my favourite verses which is from Revelation 20:8 [Satan] will go out to deceive the nations—called Gog and Magog—in every corner of the earth. He will gather them together for battle—a mighty army, as numberless as sand along the seashore. 9 And I saw them as they went up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded God’s people and the beloved city. What’s going to happen? You expect some sort of epic battle like in the Lord of the Rings, swords and heroism and desperate charges and big speeches.
But the next sentence is so brilliantly unexpected: But fire from heaven came down on the attacking armies and consumed them. That’s it. Done. The rebellion is over. Evil’s time is up.

Evil is no threat to God. It is his patience that delays the final judgement – that we have a chance to “Kiss the Son” before the hammer falls.

You can imagine the scene in heaven’s throne room. An angelic messenger running in – “Lord, they’ve surrounded us – a vast army.” And the Lord just bursts out laughing “Have they really. Oh dear.” And he walks out to see our might – and again laughs “Look at that. Is that the best you can do? Maybe I’ll give you a little puff from my nostril?” And at that the army is blown backwards.
Just do that now – blow through your nostrils. Not very powerful is it? But in Exodus 15:8 it is the “weak” breath from God’s nostrils that raises up the waters of the Red Sea and brings them crashing down again in judgement on the mighty army of Egypt. That’s what he can do with a little puff of breath from his nostrils!

Mighty does not begin to describe the power of God.

So it is unsurprising that he laughs at our rebellion. That he mocks our puny fists. We are no threat to him. We cannot bargain with him. We cannot demand to share power. We have nothing.

Actually, what I’ve just said about the army falling backwards in terror from the blast from his nostrils is not true – at least not here in Psalm 2. Because what is it that terrifies us? It is not a display of power. God does not get up there and flex his muscles. What terrifies us is what he says. It is there in v5 Then in anger he rebukes them, terrifying them with his fierce fury. 6 For the Lord declares, “I have placed my chosen king on the throne in Jerusalem, on my holy mountain.”

What do we find terrifying? That the Lord has placed his chosen king on the throne. It is too late! I will never be King. I cannot be King. The Lord has already chosen the King and he is not me! That’s what terrifies us.

Isn’t that surprising? When I first read the Psalm I thought that God was displaying his power or something. Thunder and lightning – shock and awe – that kind of thing. I read v5 and 6 separately. But v6 starts with “for”: because. We are terrified because his King is already established, and we cannot win. We are forever rebels, terrorists instead of freedom fighters. Our cause is not just, we are not right. And now it is too late. The true King is upon the throne, and he is all powerful. Our rebellion is pointless.

The Lord has already set his chosen King on the throne. So let us listen to the words of God’s King.

3. The King speaks

7 The king proclaims the LORD’s decree: “The LORD said to me, ‘You are my son. Today I have become your Father. 8 Only ask, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, the whole earth as your possession. 9 You will break them with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots.’ ”

Did you notice that the King speaks only what the Lord has said? He proclaims the Lord’s decree. He is King under God. That is what the king should be. The reflection of God on earth. The visible image of the invisible God. Now, as Christians we know that that King is Jesus. Indeed, we might even remember that Jesus said in John 14:24 “my words are not my own, but my Father’s who sent me.”

Jesus is God’s chosen King. But how did we get there? This Psalm wasn’t written for Jesus. The person writing it didn’t know. So why did he write it, how did he use it, and how did it come to so clearly be about Jesus? This is the work we need to do reading the Old Testament. We first need to understand it in its original context, then we need to ask the question “what difference does it make that Jesus has come”. And only then can we see how it applies to us. We’re on this side of the Cross, and so we have to take application from before the Cross through the Cross. Otherwise we’ll get into all sorts of trouble!

Well it seems based on the content of this Psalm that it was used in the coronation of Israel’s kings (when they were crowned king). And it’s all based on the promise God made to King David in 2 Sam 7. 2 Sam 7 is one of the great promises in the Old Testament, second only to the promise made to Abraham. In 2 Samuel 7 God promises David that from him will come a number of kings, leading up to the Great King of Israel who will rule the world forever and who will build the Temple of God, the meeting place between God and Man. So from David’s line would come God’s King who would bring man and God together.

So every time a new king appeared there was this hope that maybe this one would fulfil the promises of God. So they would sing Psalm 2. Maybe this one would subdue the nations and bring in a golden age of world-wide worship of God. But they also knew the track-record of the kings, and how often they sinned and ruined everything. So Psalm 2 was also a warning to them or a reminder to them of how they should rule as kings. That they have a decree from God to rule – but rule as He has said.

Jesus, we know, was descended from David. Jesus did only what his Father said. Jesus was the meeting place between God and man, the true Temple found in him, found in his own body: The God-man Jesus Christ. Jesus, too, was called the Son of God. 7 The LORD said to me, ‘You are my son. Today I have become your Father.’

Now if you remember back to our series on Exodus, you will remember the nation of Israel being called the son of God. Israel was God’s Son. So why is the King called the son? Because he came to represent the nation of Israel before God. In the King is the nation.

In the same way Jesus, the perfect King, is our perfect representative before God. And we who are in Christ are called sons of God.

We see this in Acts 4 in the prayer of the Christians: 24 O Sovereign Lord, Creator of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them 25 you spoke long ago by the Holy Spirit through our ancestor David, your servant, saying, ‘Why were the nations so angry? Why did they waste their time with futile plans? 26 The kings of the earth prepared for battle; the rulers gathered together against the LORD and against his Messiah.’
note how they now see Psalm 2 as pointing to the Messiah. Not just an anointed one, not just the king, but the promised Messiah – the rescuer of Israel. Why? Because they saw it being fulfilled. V27 continues 27 “In fact, this has happened here in this very city! For Herod Antipas, Pontius Pilate the governor, the Gentiles, and the people of Israel were all united against Jesus, your holy servant, whom you anointed. 28 But everything they did was determined beforehand according to your will.

When they saw the risen Jesus they suddenly saw with eyes of faith this same Jesus on the cross, crown of thorns upon his head, the charge against him above his head “the king of the Jews” – and instead of his failure they understood this was his coronation. The Cross was Christ’s crowning achievement! There was the King, the true King of Israel, taking his place once for all. Here was the true Son of God, our representative. Here was the King who only spoke what the Father said. Here was the King who was given the whole earth as his possession, the nations as his inheritance.
And here we are, the nations, gathered together by the King.

Jesus says in John 8:36 If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. He offers true freedom. Freedom to be what you were born to be. Freedom to serve the true King. And as we give ourselves to him we find our true selves. We find power to love, truly love others. We find compassion and truth and goodness in us which we didn’t have before. And the ability to say no to sin, no to that which is wrong, no even to our own desires. We are free from the tyranny of ourselves, and can relax, given over to our Heavenly Father, who does only what is good for us. True freedom is found in Christ.

Jesus is God’s King, and he is established on the throne. He was crowned on the Cross, revealed to be the King in power with his resurrection. There is none like him, and there is no-one who can take his place. He is the King forever. I am not the King. You are not the King. And no-one else is the King. Only Jesus.

And soon he will return. And anyone who stands against him will fall. So, what do we do? Well, Psalm 2 applies this for us.

4. Kiss the Son

10 Now then, you kings, act wisely! Be warned, you rulers of the earth! 11 Serve the LORD with reverent fear, and rejoice with trembling. 12 Submit to God’s royal son (lit. “Kiss the Son”), or he will become angry, and you will be destroyed in the midst of all your activities— for his anger flares up in an instant. But what joy for all who take refuge in him!

Be wise, you “kings”. Rebellion is foolish and ultimately futile. Rebellion will lead to being smashed like broken pottery by Jesus’ iron rod. There is only one King, and you’re not him. So submit to the King. Come forward and kiss the Son.

There are only two ways to live. For yourself, in rebellion, for a “freedom” that is not free – and he will become angry, and you will be destroyed in the midst of all your activities. Or live for him, take refuge in Him, and experience eternal joy and true freedom. But what joy for all who take refuge in him!

As I was preparing this I was listening to the soundtrack for the Chronicles of Narnia. In the Narnia books Aslan, the Jesus figure, is a Lion. One of the characters asks “Is he a tame lion.” The answer? “A tame lion?! Oh no, he’s not a tame lion. But he is Good.”

We do not serve a tame God. He is not domesticated – a pet to have around when we want or to dismiss when we want. Like Aslan the lion he is powerful, dangerous, able to tear you apart. Like Aslan he is good. But not a tame goodness “oh that’s lovely” – but Goodness, hard as rock, unyielding as iron, which wickedness and rebellion will be smashed against. So make right with him before you are smashed to pieces on the Rock.

There is no time to waste v12 for his anger flares up in an instant. When should you repent? NOW! Because you don’t know when he will return or call you home. When will you die and stand before the King? Don’t be like a friend of mine and say “Oh, I believe, but I want to have my fun now. Have a few years being “free””. That was twenty years ago. And he’s still living in rebellion against God. He is not free. He is bound by sin, his own desire to be king. And he cannot break it. Don’t be like him. Get right with the Son now.

We, the angry nations want to be free from God. But he has already put his King on the throne. Our rebellion is futile. It will only end in destruction. So cry out to the King – forgive me! Kiss the Son, and take refuge in Him. And this powerful King will smile like the noonday sun in all his brightness and glory and say – the price has been paid, you have been set free! Come in and join me, and rejoice!