January 2, 2017: Day 2- Psalm 2

I wanted to cover a couple of administrative issues before we launch into Psalm 2.  First of all, who noticed that I put the wrong year on my post yesterday?  It is hard to get out of the past, isn’t it?  Secondly, when we talk about the Psalms and we are addressing the entire book we call it Psalms.  The reason why is because there is more than one Psalm in the book, there are 150.  But when we speak about each individual Psalm, like today we are discussing Psalm 2, we use the singular.  It is a very, very common mistake to speak about an individual Psalm and describe it in the plural.  I have heard consistently someone talk about Psalms 6, or Psalms 23, when it should be in the singular.  Just a heads up, it is one of those things where people are able to distinguish who knows their Bible and who doesn’t.  It reminds me of how we pronounce the book of the Bible Job.  It is a long o and not something that you do to make money.

Okay, on to Psalm (singular) 2.  There are many categories of Psalms.  We have laments where the author basically complains that the entire world is against him.  We have Psalms of praise where the author rejoices in what God has done for him.  Today we find what we call a royal psalm which describes God’s doings with the ruler of Israel.  Remember, David could have been king at the time of this writing so when he describes God as being on his side, well, that isn’t unusual.  Whenever the Scripture describes the anointed one then we know that he is talking about the king.  The literal word for anointed one is Messiah.  So here David is described as the Messiah, anointed one.  See, I told you that we are going to find Jesus in these Psalms.

But it gets better.  Look at vs.7.  Where have you heard the beginning of vs.7 in the New Testament?  Remember when Jesus is baptized?  Go to Matthew 3 and you will hear after he is baptized God says: This is my son.  In John we find John the baptizer deny that he himself is the Messiah, but saying that the one who came after him, Jesus, would be the Messiah.  From the very beginning we find that the author is laying out the fact that God has chosen a people and He will be their advocate.  But we also find that from the beginning of time the Son, Jesus himself, had a plan to be involved in the life of the people of God.

It is interesting in this day and age when there is much conversation in our nation about the nation of Israel and whether we are their ally or not.  Okay, I’m about to dive into a fairly controversial topic, but it applies as we read in Psalm 2 the author depicting God as being an unabashed ally to the people of Israel.  But when Jesus comes we hear the Apostles Paul tell us in Galatians 3:28 that there is no Jew or Greek.  We hear in John 3:16 that God so loved the world, not just one group of people.  So today, when one group of people refer back to the Old Testament in order to give themselves primary citizenship then there has to be a red flag.  When they are involved in similar human rights abuses as other nations against which we speak out, then we need to remain consistent.  We should be vigilant about all abuses of power.  

As Christians we do a disservice to God’s Word when we side almost exclusively with one group of people because we think that it is somehow commanded by God.  No, God commands us to love and protect, and work with all people, whether they are mentioned in the Scripture or not.  I fully recognize that this may put me outside of  the common approach for evangelical Christians, but I simply do not see a backing in Scripture for the affinity that many Christians have for the people of Israel to the point where a blind eye is turned to injustice and oppression that may be caused by the hand of the nation of Israel.  We must be vigilant about all abuses of power.