Psalm 2 in the Scriptures, and let us attend carefully to God's Word. Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves. and the rulers take counsel together against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs, the LORD holds them in derision. Then He will speak to them in His wrath and terrify them in His fury, saying, As for Me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will tell of thee decree. The Lord said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now therefore, O Kings, be wise, Be warned, O rulers 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, For His wrath is quickly kindled, Blessed are all who take refuge in Him." we have before us Psalm, a scripture so profound that its phrases ought to be common parlance on every Christian tongue. Every Christian should find Psalm 2 to be like a compass that guides us to living with authority in this world because it shows us the true north, pointing always to the center of all authority in heaven and on earth. none other than the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And yet this psalm's truth is obscurely known. In our times, Christians have retreated behind the safe walls of church buildings, quietly admitting that the influence of King Jesus should not be felt outside those walls, in family, workplace, or in political entities. Many communities, don't care if believers meet in an old building for what they consider outdated rituals, but they would care if the true faith impacted everyday life. Long ago in Ephesus, the gospel made such an impact that the silversmiths became terrified they would go out of business. So they started a riot and wanted to kill Paul. If Christians today practiced what this psalm teaches, There would be a change in economic activity, sports, schooling, farming, road repair, and more, and a good change and a blessed change. I suppose true Christian submission to King Jesus would make the idolaters of today so miserable they would riot and maybe persecute Christians. Are you a secret Christian? Does your Christianity end when you leave the church parking lot? What about when it comes to voting and politics? Do you take your faith to the ballot box? If the Lord will permit, I hope to preach some biblically topical sermons on Christ's kingship and what it means for the Christian in politics. Christ's mediatorial kingship is a very important doctrine. The blood of martyrs was shed so that this truth would not be silenced. The Scripture says Christ is King in every sphere, including politics and civil government, and a Christian should live as if that were true. Now, I'll say something you probably have never heard said. Being a Christian is political. I believe that's a biblical truth. But by political, I for sure don't mean involvement in a political party, necessarily, or even voting. I'll show you as I go that it means loyalty to the King in every sphere of life. So this morning, with the Lord's help, believers should be political because of who the Lord the King is. And basically, the first part of this is the King's identity. The King is identified as God's appointed world ruler. The second part is all application. We owe the King the duty of loyal obedience. So first of all, the King is identified as God's appointed World Ruler. These verses reveal His identity. In verse 2 He is called God's Anointed. It says the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed. And then in verse 7 and in verse 12 He is called Son by Jehovah God. In verse 7 the King recites what God told Him in eternity The LORD said to me, Today I have begotten you." This person, the king, has been anointed. He has been anointed. From earliest times this psalm was seen by the people of Israel and even the Samaritans as prophesying the coming Messiah. Messiah means anointed, and the Greek word for anointed is Christ. Whenever you say Messiah, you can also say Christ. They are interchangeable synonyms. There are many scriptures that point this out and point out how the expectation of Israel for their Messiah was fulfilled in the one we worship, Jesus Christ. So here are a couple scriptures. In Luke 22-26, we read of Simeon, who is a righteous and a devout man, who it says was waiting for the consolation of Israel. He was waiting for Messiah. Inspired by the Holy Spirit of God, Luke says it had been revealed to him that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. Then what happened is Jesus' parents brought him in and Simeon took the baby in his arms and blessed him. So there you have a marker, a signpost that says, this is the Christ. There's another one in John 1. when the Lord Jesus, beginning His ministry, first met Nathanael. And Nathanael, since they had never met before, said, How do you know me? And the Lord, knowing supernaturally of the spiritual prayers and supplications which Nathanael had been making to God by himself under a tree, said, Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. And Philip trained in the Psalms and elsewhere to look for Messiah as the hope of Israel, said, Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel." Anyone anointed is designated and chosen and commissioned by God for a task. The offices of prophet and priest and king in Israel were held by the anointed men. The prophet was anointed by God's Spirit to be God's spokesman. He was then tasked to anoint the king. God showed him who to anoint and the prophet would take his ram's horn full of scented oil and when he had located the man of God's choosing he would unstopper the horn and drain the oil over his head which would run down to his feet. The anointed now belonged to God and was commissioned for God's task. The same kind of anointing was done for priests. Friends, I think you may think that anointing like that is something of a strange ritual, but it was critical. It was critical. It said that the anointed was the legitimate officer, the one that had God's approval, and it separated him from all usurpers and pretenders. Sometimes in Israel's history, men would set themselves up on the throne without this anointing. men like Adonijah and Pekiah and Hosea, well things didn't turn out well for them. To be anointed meant the man was God's property, he had God's protection, he could not be removed without God's approval, and he received the Holy Spirit of God to equip him for his tasks and office. As you know, Israel's three offices are now collected into one. The office of Mediator and the Lord Jesus who is the anointed Prophet, Priest and King, He holds them all. Isaiah foreshadowed Christ's ministry when he said, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. Words Christ quoted in the synagogue in Luke 4. was anointed by the Holy Spirit at His baptism, for the Spirit of God descended from heaven like a dove and came to rest on Him." Matthew 3. God's anointed must be regarded as worthy of attention and reverence. That is also true because He is the Son of God and God. This psalm shows the dignity that He has in being fully God. This is a psalm ascribed to David even though it has no title. In one sense, it's about David because it commemorates coronation. Isn't that a strange word, coronation? And that means to crown a person as king. There was a temple service for coronations. Because God's covenant with David and his sons was a perpetual covenant, when each king in succession came to the throne, this psalm was sung in the temple at his coronation. And by the way, there was no temple when David was anointed or received his coronation, but his sons. There was a temple for Solomon and his sons. The mystery that is now revealed in the New Testament is that these verses looked far beyond David's earthly sons. They foresaw Jesus as the final Davidic son, the one who is also David's Lord. And in another psalm we read about Him where it says, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. And so where it says in verse 7, Today I have begotten you, the word today is a reference for coronation day. for each successive king who in coming to office became in a sense one of God's sons to foreshadow who? The coming of Messiah. You can know from this psalm that Jesus is God because He quotes the terms of the covenant. He says, I will tell of the decree. What decree? God's eternal decree in which the Son of God being eternal God was a participant and in which he was both designated to be Redeemer of God's elect and in which he volunteered himself to be surety, the one who would guarantee the salvation of the elect. In God's eternal decree, the Lord Jesus was appointed to mediatorial kingship. David and his sons could quote the decree. But the Lord Jesus was present in eternal glory for that decree's making. Of that decree He was part and He is its fulfillment. There is another important scripture that speaks about Him as Son of God and God. In Acts 13, Paul was preaching this very text and some other texts to some Jews and he said to them that God had fulfilled His promises by raising Jesus from the dead. He told them about the resurrection and then he quoted verse 7, Today I have begotten you. Jesus was always the eternally begotten Son of God. But Resurrection Day was a special day. He had His divine power before and after His death. But once He rose from the dead, that day was appointed to commemorate the event and to recognize, sorry, to recognize and display the power that came from His death. Why is His death so important? His death is important because it was meritorious for really saving sinners. It has power to save. And so a day was appointed. to commemorate the display of that power. See, the Psalm tells us He is more than a man, more than an earthly son of David. Though fully man, He is also God. He is the only man who has died and is already now glorified in the Resurrection. And since His kingly power is God's power, He deserves our admiration and our worship. He is anointed Son of God, He is also King. I realize I have already said that He is King, but I wish to come at it now from a different angle, to speak about Him as King. No one knows where the Hebrew word Zion comes from, yet it is throughout the Scriptures. And here in verse 6, Jehovah God says, As for Me, I have set My King on Zion, My holy hill. You have to notice that term Holy Hill. The Bible makes us think of Zion on earth and it also causes us to think of a Zion in heaven. Zion on earth was Jerusalem and especially the Temple Mount with the Temple of God constructed on it. There is no Temple of the True God there now. But it was there in ancient times. Solomon built it. And it was there to be a replica of the true Zion, which either is heaven or is in Zion. I'm sorry, or is in heaven. It's a reference to heaven. And what's a replica, you say? Well, a replica is a lookalike. Remember Psalm 24 asks, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And then in Ezekiel 28, God seems to be speaking about a time before the creation of the earth when Satan was discovered to have sinned. And what does God say to him? You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you. You were on the holy mountain of God. And so, Zion on earth was a lookalike of heavenly Zion, a replica. This is important because heaven is God's temple. It is the place of His special presence. It is the place of His mighty authority and power of His dominion. Heaven rules earth. The Psalm we sang, Psalm 115, says, Our God lives in heaven high and carries out His will. Again, Psalm 2 is saying, Christ is no earthly king. The Anointed is King of earthly kings. He has taken His heavenly throne and is ruling all things providentially, bringing His righteous purpose to pass. What is He? He's the world's governor, the mediator. Friends, the enemy of humanity wishes to dilute humanity's knowledge of Christ the King. The reason is that Satan, our enemy, hates us. and wishes we were all dead and separate from God in hell. He hates that the mediator has done what it takes, that by believing in him, that separation from God in hell will never happen. You know what happens if you dilute something. If you put a little bit of salt on your tongue, boys, its salty taste is very strong. But if you put that same amount in five gallons of water, You probably can't taste the salt, it's been diluted. Satan and his worldly proxies want knowledge of the king diluted. Children, he wants to flood your schooling with scores of academic studies and activities and recreations and sports without one mention or reference of the king. He wants to flood all of our time in millions of hours of entertainment. to subtly lift knowledge of the King right out of our minds. He wants Christianity safely tucked away in books about world religions. His many designs are to dilute everyone's knowledge of this King, because if we knew Him, we would know His qualities. We would see that He is worthy of our attention and reverence, admiration and worship. In His power, He is to be feared and also trusted. We recently saw a presidential candidate show quality of character when someone shot him. He's someone that people respect. They admire him. He's a manly person with estimable civic virtues deemed worthy to lead the nation. But when he went out to that speech, he didn't know that someone would try to kill him that day. His supporters never left Him. And what rides on His shoulders in terms of importance is far less important than the salvation of sinners and, may I add, the governance of this world. On the other hand, the King in this psalm knew the death that awaited Him and went willingly. He had no supporters. The bullet effectively missed the one man, but this king got hit with the whole salvo of suffering under God's wrath, and he did, in fact, die from it. He died in a sacrificial way no human can because he literally died in the place of and on behalf of others. And yet, knowledge of that lesser man, a sinner, is common, while knowledge of the anointed and victorious king And His power and His qualities is hardly known. Who do you consider most worthy?" That brings us to the second part of this sermon, which is that we owe the King the duty of loyal obedience. We owe the King the duty of loyal obedience. At this time in history, the very concept of duty is nearly absent from the Church, just as it's missing from much secular thought. thought that's been unmanned by radical individualism and the creating of one's own identity. But the Bible's concept is really clear. If there is a God-appointed king over all creation, and if all humans are creatures, then it is every person's duty to yield obedience to him in every sphere of life. What kind of loyalty do we owe? I said we should be political. Let's look back at Psalm 2 for insight into what that means. You will have noticed that in the opening verses the nations and their kings voice their rebellion. They say, let us cast away their cords from us. Then later in verses 7, 8 and 9, the Son pronounces His right to rule. I will tell of the decree. The Lord said to me, you are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me God's promise to the Son and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." Then someone, ultimately God, gives an admonition, an exhortation in the last three verses and is the thing that all are admonished to do. Now therefore, O kings, be wise. O rulers 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, for His wrath is quickly kindled." Particularly, those three commands, serve the Lord, spend most time on that, and just briefly mention the other two. Rejoice with trembling and kiss the sun. Loyalty is serving. Usually being political means you put yourself in service to a candidate or his platform or her platform or you put yourself in service to a political idea or a manifesto. You direct purposeful action to bring about a goal. Being political is serving. Serving Christ means submitting to His rule. The Psalm says there is only a limited time to do so. There is this season of grace. After that a person is the King's irreversible enemy and will be broken. Serving also means worship. We know that from Joshua where he said, �Choose you this day whom you will serve. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.� Serving implies submission to someone's will, just like when we worship, we are, or what we should be doing, is God's will in worshiping Him. It implies reverence, just as we might regard the worth of a ruler, an earthly ruler, with reverence, so even rulers are commanded to revere Christ the King with the kind of fear that submits decision-making to the higher power. That is one reason true worship includes reading and hearing God's Word. We don't come to worship as a church to get something from God, at least not a material thing certainly, but to hear His commands and to do them. Just like our culture doesn't care for the word duty, we don't like the words subjection or submission. A submissive woman So lovely and deserving of honor in the sight of God is thought a curse in our culture. But subjection in the Lord is the duty of all people to the lawful authorities over them. Our duty is to obey what they say. Our service must be to God's authority exercised in and through Jesus Christ. We must obey what Christ says because that's His will. Everyone serves something. Everyone worships something or complies with the will of another, for we are created for worship. Worship is inescapable. And what do people worship? We sang of the idols of gold and silver. Ultimately, people willingly comply with their own selfish ambitions or the will of the state, by which I mean a government, or a false god. But since Christ is King, Christ's will is the will to which God commands compliance from all humanity. It's a duty. Rejoicing is the second one found here, is awe, it's appreciation of these truths with confidence that if you serve God, He'll honor and bless. It's appreciating these truths and knowing He'll that He'll keep His promise. Kissing the sun gives you the image of kneeling, of bowing to kiss the hand of a sovereign. Again, a posture of fear working itself out in submission. What does all this have to do with us? The answer is that you can think of God's authority as a very big circle. within it is every part of our lives, inside is a smaller circle, the authority of government. The kind of loyalty that we owe to King Jesus includes all the duty and submission owed to the civil authority but does not stop there. God's authority includes all political power. What are some of the loyalties that we owe to God that we do not necessarily owe to our civil rulers. Here are some loyal duties that come from the first commandment, which says, you shall have no other gods before me. One loyal duty is to know God. It's not a duty to know the president's family history or to have read everything he wrote. But while God is infinite, and therefore he's unknowable in a comprehensive sense, everything that he does reveal about himself is our duty to know or to be in the process of knowing. Same with remembering. If you go a whole day and never think about the governor of Kansas, you have not shirked your duty. But we are enjoined to remember God daily in our prayers and thoughts and thanks. We're to remember him on his day. We're to desire God also. You don't have a duty to desire your county commissioners, but we are duty-bound to make God the object of our desire. We don't necessarily have to believe and trust our congressmen. They may err. But God does not err. So we must believe and trust Him even when we don't understand Him. Similarly, you do not have to take delight in the county clerk. But obedience to God's law requires loving delight in God. It would be silly and blasphemous to pause before your dinner to thank the vice president for the food. but it is righteous to thank God for it. And we are duty-bound not to call on the name of any human as we do when we call on the name of the Lord in worship, but we are duty-bound to call on His name through Christ the Mediator and to offer worship. As you can see, we owe to God a great deal more than we owe any earthly king. We owe a great deal more to God than any earthly government. We even owe God our thoughts and emotions and desires. And what this exposes is that Christ rules even where there are other rulers. We call that a suzerain. His dominion means He is absolute Lord even where there are other lords. A suzerain. Let me give you an example. In Acts 5, the civil and religious authorities commanded Peter and the Apostles not to teach in Jesus' name. How do you rightly answer? We must obey God rather than men. See, man's legitimate authority is limited. God's is unlimited. It's no secret that ungodly men and women in government are uncomfortable with God's suzerain authority. I'll say, the authority of Christ the King. This goes way back. Under the rule of Darius the Mede, Daniel the Hebrew was in high office in government. And other officers were envious of him and they entrapped him. They got the king to sign a law that for 30 days no one could make any petition to God or man except to the king. You see what had happened. That bad law gave the king totalitarian rule. Totalitarian means total over every area of life, and that is different from authoritarian, which might not cover every area, but just means having a person subject to the authoritarian with unquestioning obedience. Totalitarian means the ruler's power is in every aspect of the citizen or subject's life. Well, guess what? That's God's sphere. The government only has a little circle of power, and it comes from God, but oh, how many wish they could have God's blanket authority. Darius was tricked into making a law as if he were God. They were supposed to pray to him, and Daniel didn't and went to the lion's den. Why do you think Chairman Xi of China and the party persecutes Christians? Because communism projects total power total party power, even in thought and worship. And they realize, if people become Christians, they will not be Communists. They see, rightly, Christianity contests and challenges total rule by the state. Long before the Chinese Communist Party, Roman Emperor Decius decreed that every citizen had to have a witness certificate carried on his person called a libellus that verified he or she had sacrificed to the Roman gods. Christians refused pagan worship. Those found without their certificate were arrested, punished, and sometimes killed. Why? The emperor wanted no competitors to his power. In 1954, some of you will remember this, a U.S. senator who would later become president, Lyndon Johnson, introduced a bill that would change the tax code so that if churches took political positions, they would lose their tax-exempt status. That's still a popular idea on the left today. Why is that? The government is always striving for total control. Anything that might limit their authority, including what might be written in books or proclaimed from a pulpit, is a threat. And of course, a dissenting Christian who says, I must obey God rather than men, wherever there's a conflict, is a threat no matter how peaceable the manner of his or her dissent. See, there are some rulers who do not want Christianity to affect ordinary life, or politics, or economics, and so on. But we must be established on the truth of Psalm 2. The authority of rulers comes from God. Pilate, Pontius Pilate, threatened the Lord Jesus at His trial with the full authority of the Roman Empire to put Him to death. But the Lord told him, you would have no authority at all unless it had been given to you from above. He said it in John 19. Our duty to obey them ends as soon as we would break God's command or circumvent God's will by doing what they command. Consider this as I begin to wrap this up. When I was in the military in basic training, I had a laundry duty. And my sergeant ordered me and others to steal folded bedsheets. And so at the laundry, while counting out bedsheets, I snuck extras into my pile. Why, I was afraid of the very oppressive authority on the one hand, but also sinfully desirous to please human beings more than God. You see what was happening. I had two authorities with conflicting wills. Christ said, thou shalt not steal. The US government said, steal. And I confess I had not the moral courage to obey my true sovereign. Our Lord has more than this worldly authority. He has a right to all our, all your allegiance, and therefore it's your duty to submit to Him. A dangerous temptation we will all face in the Christian life is this, that we may wish to obey Him in many things. Are you like this Christian? Do you wish to obey Christ in the areas where it's comfortable for you to obey Him, but to reserve a spot where His authority holds no sway? Often we'll obey until there's a conflict with something we hold more dear, perhaps a special talent, or the outcome of an election, or our life and property, or our comfort, and then we'll disobey. But we should be political Christians because of who the King is. To be a political Christian means loyalty to Christ above all others. And that means if there's a conflict of wills and commands, the Christian obeys Christ. When governments does what's right, there's no conflict. But that is not always the case. So I leave you with a question. and an encouragement from Psalm 2. Will you, Believer, in your life serve the Lord with fear? Will you kiss the Royal Sun? Be encouraged as you do so, because He says, Blessed are all those who take refuge in Him.