Posted by R. Fowler White
Until recently we liked to believe that a majority (silent or outspoken) in Western culture still lived off the capital they borrowed from the historic Christian faith (or at least from the Judeo-Christian tradition). But that belief is now all but demolished. Most of the faithless want to live life on their own terms, not on terms borrowed from natural revelation, much less from special revelation. The social influencers among us have us thinking that they’re just promoting rights and privileges, when they’re actually remaking our world, step by step, as a pagan earthly knockoff of the heavenly city of God (bereft of common grace, of course). With an agenda so shameless, it’s crucial that we in the church see our lives, history, and culture in full awareness of the conflict between heaven and earth. And that is just what we find when we turn to Psalm 2. Here David sings of the faithless in conflict with our God and His Christ. And in the lyrics of his song, David tells us of heaven’s agenda that we all, faithful and faithless, need to heed: words of warning and pardon, simple and direct. David starts off in Ps 2:1-3 with a warning to us: wise up and confess our rebellion against God and His Christ.
David is flabbergasted and incensed at our rebellion against the government of the God of the Bible and His Anointed King. He says we’re in a rage, an uproar, staging a revolt. And this uprising, David would have us know, is all in vain. Rejecting what God reveals of His moral will in nature, in conscience, in His law, and in Scripture as a whole is simply reckless. Rejecting the gospel of Christ and His commandments is just foolish. It’s either God’s government or man’s government. Choose life with God—or die.
When we reject God’s government or see others doing the same, what are we to think? Are we human beings not obligated to honor what God calls good and to reject what He calls evil? Is God’s gospel of forgiveness and justification good? Is His law of love good? Or are they “hate speech”? “A dog whistle for bigots”? Do we recognize all this for what it is? Friends, David would have us understand that when members of a society don’t share the moral vision of God and His King, that society is a mob of insurgents against divine government. That insurgency appears not just in others, in our fellow citizens, or in our government officials, but in us, in our families, in our pulpits and pews. We’re all by nature rebels against the Lord and against His Christ. So we all should bear in mind this truth from the first stanza of Psalm 2: if we throw off the government of God and His Anointed King, we’re just a horde of reckless fools whose revolt is sure to fail. Isn’t it time you and I, along with our fellow citizens, wise up and repent of our rebellion against God and His Christ?
Green Baggins 