Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Good morning and welcome again to Dishman Baptist Church.

If you’re just joining us for the first time we’ve recently completed a six month study through the book of Colossians and we’ve seen what a glorious picture of Christ the Apostle Paul gives us through that book.

We got to witness who Christ really is, what He has done for us and then spend some time as Paul meticulously explained what that means for us.

Over the last two weeks Kyle did a great job unpacking Hebrews 12:1-3 for us as we have examined our lives to see what hindrances or sins may be impacting our race and our effectiveness in serving Christ.

It has been interesting how much of the sermons from Colossians and from Hebrews have shown up in our mid-week Bible study as those who are involved in that have been going through a study entitled Behold Your God and we are having our eyes reopened to see the person of God for all of His beauty and grandeur that sometimes we can get away from in the trappings of our modern church.

The summer is quickly passing away and we are starting to get prepared for the fall when we will launch into our next expositional study of an entire book - the Gospel of Mark and I’m looking forward to starting that with all of you on September 1st.

During this intervening time I want to take a few weeks and look back.

Not to yesteryear or to our own history but to look back into the Word of God to see Christ presented through some key passages in the book of Psalms.

We are New Testament Christians and there is much in the New Testament for us to study and to digest and we could legitimately spend the rest of our lives studying those passages.

We even have a habit of saying that our faith is 2000 years old - which would date back to the time that Christ walked the earth and the books of the New Testament were being written.

But in doing so I think we do ourselves a disservice as we overlook the beauty of His foreshadowing provided for those witnesses from Hebrews 12:1 who have gone before us and would attest to the truth that our faith is really 6000 years old.

That it dates back - at least in our human reckoning of time - to the moment when God created the earth and then Adam and Eve.

To when Eve ate the fruit and then Adam did as well.

And to that great pronouncement from God in Genesis 3:15

The promise of a Messiah to come who would set all things right.

We’re going to spend some time examining a category of Psalms called the Messianic Psalms that point us if only ever so dimly to Christ and see how even then through David or the other writers God was revealing Himself to the careful eye and attentive ear of the listener.

If you would please turn in your Bibles with me to Psalm 2. We’ll be reading the whole Psalm.

In addition to being a Messianic Psalm there are many commentators and Biblical scholars who view this Psalm as a second introduction to the book of Psalms.

There are many parallels between Psalm 1 and 2. Psalm 1 looks at the paths of individuals, while Psalm 2 broadens our view out to the paths of nations.

In both early Christian and Jewish traditions Psalms 1 and 2 were both one Psalm.

This Psalm happens in four stages, movements if you will.

We see four actors on the stage as the Psalm unfolds.

There is the narrator and he will be ever present, there are the nations who speak during the first movement in verses 1-3, the Lord who speaks second in verses 4-6, the Son makes an appearance for the third act in verses 7-9 and then the narrator has the stage all to himself during the last stage.

Let’s sit back and observe as this Psalm unfolds how not much this drama unfolds and is even now unfolding in our day.

The Nations Speak

Psalm 2:1-3; James 4:4;

In addition to providing a second introduction to the book of Psalms and being a Messianic Psalm this Psalm is also a coronation psalm and would have been sung at the ascension of a new King to the throne of Israel.

An interesting note is that even during the successful military campaigns and rule of David or the even greater success of his son Solomon - who really advanced the territory of Israel to it’s high water mark or greatest territorial possession - Israel never attained the kind of empire that would be in view during this Psalm.

They never really achieved the kind of success over the nations that would be envisioned by the statements of the nations here within these verses.

There truly is nothing new under the sun, just a re-envisioning of the past.

There are three things we should immediately notice from these nations that will also provide us a view of what is currently happening in our world today.

The nations actions in this passage, and consequently their actions today, are deliberate, resolute and comprehensive or unified - they include everyone without distinction.

You will note the way the passage opens - why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?

The writer is not really asking this question he is more musing out loud.

It is really no surprise that this is the course of the world - James tells us

What is surprising though is the measuredness of the rage.

The narrator says that the peoples plot, the rulers conspire together.

This is no emotional reaction that is the product of pure drive.

This is the cold, calculated actions of a world that desires and has desired from the start to rule themselves.

This is Romans 1 in action where Paul writes

The most devastating terrorist attack in US history happened on September 11, 2001.

Many of you can instantly hear that date and remember exactly where you were and what you were doing when you heard about the attacks in New York and Washington.

It was an attack that took 102 minutes to unfold from the moment that American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center until that Tower collapsed.

In the intervening time the South Tower had already collapsed, the Pentagon was struck by a plane and Flight 93 had been crashed in a field in western Pennsylvania.

102 minutes.

But the planning for this event started 5 years in advance in 1996.

This is the kind of plotting and conspiring that is alluded to in these verses.

There is a deliberate effort on the part of the nations to remove the influence of Christ.

We see it represented in this Psalm.

We see it in Matthew 27 with respect to Christ.

And we see it in our day.

We shouldn’t be surprised by news like that which came out of Berkley California this week that all gendered language would be removed from the city ordinances.

There wont be any more manholes or manpower.

There will now be maintenance holes and human efforts.

There wont be any policemen, policewomen, firemen or firewomen on patrol - they will all be fire-persons.

Now do the words really matter that much?

Not really - but it is the mindset, the worldview behind this move that is informative for us today.

"Having a male-centric municipal code is inaccurate and not reflective of our reality," Robinson said.

"Women and non-binary individuals are just as entitled to accurate representation.

Our laws are for everyone, and our municipal code should reflect that."

This is the world view that says that God doesn’t determine who we are - whether we’re male or female or non-binary or indeterminate.

We will determine for ourselves very nicely thank you.

And this isn’t something that has just happened overnight.

This is a part of a deliberate effort to supplant God’s stated condition for the human race

and to determine for ourselves who and what we are going to be.

It also is what drives the announcements recently that the American Psychological Association is now saying that polyamory - a romantic relationship that involves multiple people - is completely normal, even going so far as to call it just another healthy choice, and should be accepted.

These are deliberate, measured attempts to “throw off their chains and throw their ropes off of us”.

And being deliberate takes effort.

It takes dedication.

It takes a certain amount of internal resolution to hijack a plane full of people and fly it into a building.

It takes an equal amount of resolution to say that no matter what scientific or physical data you provide I’m still going to be whatever I want to be and act however I want to act.

And that is the next attribute we see exhibited by the nations in this Psalm - resoluteness.

The kings of the earth take their stand - they are resolute in their determination to get rid of God and His Anointed One.

The word used here for resolute is the same word used to characterize that stand that Goliath would take as he stood and hurled his challenges and insults down on the armies of Israel.

This is not the fatalistic resolution of the Light Brigade - “ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die” - but that of one who actually expects to win.

The nations take their stand with contempt.

Commenting on this subject, the 18th Century commentator Matthew Henry wrote this

“One would have expected that so great a blessing to this world should have been universally welcomed and embraced, and that every sheaf should immediately have bowed to that of the Messiah, and all the crowns and sceptres on earth should have been laid at His feet; but it proves quite contrary.

Never were the notions of any sect of philosophers, though never so absurd, nor the power of any prince or state, though never so tyrannical, opposed with so much violence as the doctrine and government of Christ.”

Instead they stood and said

The final point that we should note from these nations is their unity.

A favorite radio host of mine has a saying “darkness doesn’t fight against darkness.”

What he means by that is that every other worldview will put aside their differences to fight Christianity.

The leaders in this passage are no different.

They conspire together putting aside any differences to try to supplant the Lord from His throne.

It is interesting that this is not only still the case but the unfortunate disunity of the church in the face of such unified opposition.

Charles Spurgeon once quipped

1472The church of Christ is always quarreling, but did you ever hear that the devil and his confederates quarrel?

They are so united that if at any special moment the great prince of hell wishes to concentrate all the masses of his army at one particular point, it is done to the tick of the clock, and the temptation comes with its fullest force just when he sees it to be the most likely that he will prevail.

If we had such unanimity as that in the church of God, if we all moved at the guidance of the finger of Christ, if all the church could move in one great mass to the attack of a certain evil, how much more easily might we prevail!

But alas, the powers of hell far exceed us in unanimity.

This is how the nations act.

They are deliberate.

They are resolute.

They are unified.

But what about us?

What about you?

When it comes to that private sin.

Those acceptable sins?