Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
The second psalm is an amazing song of victory. God triumphs over his enemies and spoils the plans of the kings of the world.
He does this primarily by installing the Messiah as his king, over all the rest of them, and by promising the whole earth as the Messiah’s possession. This psalm is quoted in the New Testament, including by Jesus, as an explanation for the suffering and resurrection of Christ, and as a promise of enduring, future victory over evil for the people of God.
Jesus is the star of the show in this song.
However, you’ve never heard any believer anywhere say that Psalm 2 is his favorite. It doesn’t make us happy. Nobody’s hollering over the second psalm. Christians don’t cling to it; memorize it; or, walk at all in its clear tones of victory.
I’ve spent some time wondering why that is. I’m convinced there are a few “turn offs” for evangelical believers here, but only have time to discuss the first one.
Psalm 2 opens with the rulers of the world conspiring together to get rid of God and God’s anointed one, the Messiah. In verse 3, their stated desire is: “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”
These conspirators join forces to escape the rule of God.
Bonds and cords signify the law of God, with its commandments and moral demands, with its warnings that the wicked will be judged and punished.
Wicked people feel the law of God as bonds and cords. Chains and shackles. God promises prosperity, peace, and abundance to those who keep his commandments; but sinners convince themselves that real freedom is found in breaking through all the boundaries.
As with the packs of elk we see outside of town, a fence-line is something to be gracefully hopped over, and nothing more.
Freedom means only following your own desires.
The trouble is that modern evangelicals view the law of God in basically the same way as the conspirators. They have convinced themselves that Christ came to loosen up all the rules for us. When they hear the good news, that Jesus sets us free from the curse of the law, they jump to believing that the law itself is that curse. Having a law at all is the bad thing we need to be delivered from.
So, in a song of victory that is only 12 verses long, modern church people find themselves in some amount of agreement with the bad guys starting at verse 3. They too desire freedom from the chains.
This was not, however, Christ’s attitude toward the law of God, nor that of the New Testament writers. The curse of the law, which is very real, and from which we do need deliverance, is not that the law exists in the first place. It’s that those who fail to keep it are in terrible trouble. The requirements are good and holy. My failure to meet up to them is why I need a savior.
Once we’re clear about what side we’re on, the second psalm is suddenly much better news.
Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: