The thought that pervaded last evening's sermon [The Handwriting Is on the Wall (2002)] was intended to be a lead-in to this morning's message. It focused on a very clearly perceived enemy both within and without our shores. This enemy I spoke of there is obviously different from us in virtually every area of our culture. What we're going to look at today is more complex. It is more subtle and a little bit more difficult to discern. We're going to take a look at another enemy that is both within and without, but focus on that which is within our nation's borders - Israel's borders - because that is where the damage is really taking place. This enemy is far more dangerous than the one focused on last night, because they fall very close to the poignant Pogo cliché that goes, We have seen the enemy, and they is us!
The enemy began to appear more publicly in the United States about 100 years ago and has been growing steadily in strength mostly through subtle and crafty maneuvering, away from the public spotlight. Over the past 40 years it has grown steadily more vocal, and today it is quite demanding.
It is highly unlikely though, that even had the public known, it would have been an alarmed few, because most would not perceive them as being dangerous to their liberty. Even though they are today right out in front about doing their maneuvering, most Americans are still apathetic, don't recognize the danger, or feel powerless to do anything about it. In fact, a large percentage of Americans approve.
These people that I'm speaking of have been insinuating themselves into every area critical to the well-being of this culture. They are most definitely in government - from the smallest municipality to the highest branches of government. They are in both political parties, but the Democratic Party especially has an overwhelming abundance of them. It is these people who authored the infamous Immigration Act signed by President Johnson in 1965, and it is these people who maneuvered it through Congress and enabled it to be signed into law of the land.
These people are undoubtedly sincere in their belief, and if they were your neighbors, I think that you would welcome them as being part of your neighborhood. They believe what they are believing in, and they feel that they are doing this for the overall good of the world especially, and of the United States secondarily, but these people are most definitely revolutionaries.
Most people wrongly assume that revolutions are fomented in the mean streets of city ghettos, but that most assuredly is wrong. Revolutionaries are most frequently brought to birth in universities. These people with more specialized education then tend to become the leaders in society regardless of their field. The unfortunates in the ghettos merely become the cannon fodder to be used to carry out the bettereducated's plans to alter, in any manner they can, the inequities that they perceive to be working in their nation. And if persuasion does not work, force is eventually the alternative.
Their better education is why these people, who are the subject of the beginning of this sermon, are spread throughout the entire culture. They lead churches of virtually every denomination, businesses of all kinds, and educational institutions all the way from kindergarten up through elementary, middle, high school, and university. It is in the universities and churches that they have been most effective. But because virtually everybody is educated in the government's elementary and high schools before they go on to university, everybody who goes into the work place has been effectively propagandized to some degree.
Many have noticed that they were able to direct their children along the straight and the narrow until they went to university, but their children came out profoundly changed. Later the changes began taking place in high school as these people spread throughout the culture. Now the … . . .
This is what is going on behind the scenes, or in our information age, right in the open.
What we see here in in the New King James and whatever Bible you have, almost all of them do this. They write this as a question. Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? Well, it is a question really, technically, but really the way it is supposed to be understood as an exclamation of surprise, of astonishment. The psalmist is looking at things from God's perspective and he is saying, What's going on here?! He is puzzled, he is perplexed. He does not know why they could think that, why they could do this, because it is utterly foolish and stupid to think that they can, in any way, plot against God.
Have they not ever heard of omnipresence? Do they not know that He is omniscient? Do they not know that He has an ear on all their councils? Even if they are muttering. That is one of those words here. The word plot here is the same word as meditates in chapter 1, verse 2. There it was like murmuring because they were reading aloud. Here it is muttering, nattering, this is what I want to do, what is that you want to do? and they are trying to keep their voices low so nobody hears. And so they are making these sounds that sound like murmuring or muttering, but what they are doing is they are plotting. That is why they translated it here as a plot because that is what they are doing and they are trying to keep their voices low.
But God can hear. That is why the psalmist is saying, What are they thinking?! Whether you murmur or mutter or natter, or whatever it is you are doing, God can hear you. You don't even have to speak. He can hear what's going on inside your head and what you're thinking. Do you think you're going under the radar here and think you are going to surprise God? Ha ha! He knows all your plans. He has figured everything out. Like I said before, He is going to squash you like a bug. What he calls it here is vain, it is worthless. It is not going to get you anywhere. Why waste your breath? You are going against God. It is going to come to nothing.
Now, these leaders of nations, these kings, these rulers, it says they have set themselves. The idea here is that they have arrayed themselves for war against Him. They are preparing for battle is the sense in the Hebrew and then they allied themselves together and they try to gain strength and bring this guy in and bring this nation in. And they think that if they gather the peoples of the world together, they are going to be strong enough to fight against God. And so they make all their little devious plans and they plot and they scheme. And the psalmist was like, What are they thinking? How stupid.
There is an interesting contrast developed in verses 1 and 2. Notice that when it is written down here, we see nations, people, that means like a lot of people. It is not just six or eight, we are talking thousands and millions of people are plotting vain things. Kings, rulers. We are talking many, many multiple millions of people scheming against God, plotting, allying themselves, conniving, doing all this stuff against God.
And who are they doing this against? The Lord and His Anointed. Look at the odds there. Millions on one side, whole nations, all the people of the earth, God and His Anointed on the other side. Everybody against Two. Surely they are going to win, right? We got the numbers behind us. We are just going to steamroll the Lord and His Anointed, right? Ha, ha, ha, ha! Hardly. It may be Two against millions, but the tone of the psalm with the surprised beginning and the way that he talks about these stupid kings, it is certain that the few will easily defeat the many. They are like gnats, Go away, to God. It is no contest.
Now, this seems paradoxical to us. We as humans think that if you get a lot of allies together and you are stronger than the other in terms of numbers, that you are going to win. But with God that is not the case. … . . .
Notice that if you look at Psalm 1, there is no superscription. It does not say a psalm of David, it does not say that it is a certain type of psalm. It does not say anything, it just launches into Blessed is the man. Your Bible may have some sort of heading there, but that is from the translators. Mine says The Way of the Righteous and the End of the Ungodly. That is not in the Bible, that is not in the text of the Bible, not in the original, that is just something some man has decided to tag the psalm with. It is not wrong, but the Psalms open with Blessed is the man without any introduction. It just goes straight into that. Psalm 2 is the same way. There is no superscription there either to tell us who wrote it or what kind of psalm it is. It just goes right in to Why do the nations rage?
On top of the fact that they do not have superscriptions, they also share several words in common and they are important words. Not just like the, and, or anything like that. We are talking pretty important words that are thematic in themselves. The first one is haga, and it is a rare verb. It only occurs a couple times in Scripture, so that it happens in Psalm 1 and in Psalm 2, right next to each other, is a pretty good indication that they are dealing with similar things.
It is interesting that this word haga means to murmur. Not like the children of Israel did in the wilderness. This is a different word. That word murmur is all throughout the Pentateuch because they did a lot of it. This is a different kind of murmuring. Let us look at the second half of verse 2 of Psalm 1.
The word meditates is haga. We would not think that murmur would translate into meditate. But what it is talking about is that before modern times, people did not read silently. They read aloud. And if they were trying to be quiet, they would read very softly and it would sound like they were murmuring. If they were going over it line by line by line by line, just talking to themselves, it would sound like they were murmuring. You could not exactly make out what they were saying. So this is the idea, that this person is meditating. He is murmuring over God's Word, God's law, day and night. He is always thinking about it. He is always talking about it. He is always concerned with it.
The other one is in chapter 2, verse 1.
The word there is plot. I believe here they are speaking silently and covertly together making plans.
So, you can see how the different ideas come in and how it is translated these two different ways. But the idea is mostly that they are talking quietly.
The nations were angry is reminiscent of Psalm 2. We will go back there for a moment. We sing this on occasion in our hymnal.
...which sounds a lot like, The Lord and His Christ. Remember back there in Revelation 11:15, where it says the kingdom of this world has become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ. Notice what it says in Psalm 2: ...against the Lord, and against His Anointed. That is the word Messiah, which in Greek is Christ. So, that ties these two together nicely.
