Transcript
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Welcome to Gospel and Life. Christianity isn't just a spiritual practice or set of moral teachings. At its heart, it's the person of Jesus actively pursuing us. In today's teaching, Tim Keller unpacks how Jesus actively seeks us, reveals truth to us, and calls us to Himself.
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I'm gonna read to you from Psalm 2. Our teaching this afternoon is taken from Psalm 2. It's all printed in your bulletin. It's a shorter psalm than we have been seems like looking at recently we've been looking at very long Psalms. This is only 12 verses and I'll read it first. Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather to together against the Lord and against his anointed one. Let us break their chains, they say, and throw off their fetters. The one enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. Then he rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, I have installed my king on Zion, my holy hill. I will proclaim the decree of the Lord. He said to me, you are my son. Today I have become your father. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. You will rule them with an iron scepter. You will dash them to pieces like pottery. Therefore you kings, be wise, be warned, you rulers of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the sun, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way. For his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. This is God's word. It's Advent. As we approach Christmas, we ask ourselves, what did Jesus Christ come to do? And we've been answering this question last week, this week, next week by looking at some of the Psalms. We've been looking at the Psalms all fall. And I think I mentioned last week that some psalms have been understood by the Christian church as Messianic Psalms. They're called Messianic psalms because Jesus himself picked out a few some psalms. And he said, you know this psalm, like we said last week, John chapter 15. He quotes from Psalm 69 and he says, you know, this psalm talks about this, about David. It talks about the psalmist and the immediate environment of the psalmist. But it's also foreshadowing and talking about me. And these particular psalms therefore can be read on two levels. They have in a sense, two horizons, two reference. They've got the reference to the immediate historical context of the person writing the psalm. But they've also got an ultimate referent to a greater David than David, a greater king than this king, a greater warrior, a greater suffering servant, and so on. Now, this particular psalm is a coronation psalm. If you read it carefully, you'll see that it actually consists of several stanzas, and it has to do with the accession of someone to the throne of Israel. And it can be read, obviously, just on that level. You see someone in David's line. This could either be David. It might have been originally written when David was crowned, but it certainly was also used in other situations when descendants of David were installed as king. And in the beginning, it talks about the nations of the earth plotting against the king. Well, it's natural that if you became a king in those days, you had a whole, whole lot of hostile neighbors who couldn't wait to test out just what kind of king you really were, what kind of general you really were, which was the same thing. And. And therefore this, the context of the psalm is God is seen as installing the king in Israel on Zion, which was one of the hills. Zion was the original hill in Jerusalem on which the original Jebusite city. The Jebusites built a city in Jerusalem before the Israelites built a city. And so Zion was just simply another way of talking about the entire city of Jerusalem. So here in Jerusalem, the king has been installed, but all the foreign hostile kings are conspiring against this king. So the psalmist says, be warned, God is with him. God is going to take care of him. He will give. God will give us aid. And that's how you can read the Psalm at one level. But if you read it carefully, you will see that no earthly king can completely justify the fury of the threats, and no earthly king can completely justify the glory of the promises. The language, you might say, of Psalm 2 spills out over its banks. You know, if Psalm 2 is a river, the language comes up over top of it. And the things that are said about this king, this anointed one, are far too great to really be confined to any earthly king. As a matter of fact, in verse 2, where it says, the kings of the earth take their stand against the Lord and his anointed one. In Hebrew, you know what the word anointed one is? Mashiach. The kings of the earth take. They conspire against the Lord and his Messiah. By the way, on just about any subway car you go into now, there's this great big picture of the Lubovitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Schneerson, saying what? Mashiach is coming. Have you been in the subway lately? If you're very, very rich or very, very poor, you're never in the subway, I suppose. But for the rest of us, there it is. Mashiach is coming. The Anointed One is coming. He says, be ready. And it's very good advice. Now, look. That's what it's talking about. The Lord has put his Messiah and has installed his Messiah. And therefore, we can read this Psalm as talking about that greater David, that greater king. And it actually tells us three things. It tells us. And I'll lay these principles out, and we will just examine them. The middle section, from verse four to verse nine, tells us that we have a true king, a king above all the kings, a king behind all the kings. We have a true king installed by God, my king, he Sundays. Then verses one to three tell us, however, also that human beings hate the king. We have a true king, but we hate that true king. And then verses 10, 11, and 12 are extremely practical. They are a summons to us to see that though we have a king and we hate the king, we need the king. We'll never find blessedness without the king. We must serve and we must rejoice, and we must kiss the king. And so there's the three points. We have a king. We hate the king. We need the king. Okay, let's go number one. We have a king. God says, here's all these kings around, but there's a king above the kings. There's a king behind all the kings. There's my king, the true king that I have installed. One of the things that's so incredibly interesting about the literature of the human race is how many in ancient legends in all of our cultures kind of go like this. There was a great king who ruled with wisdom and power and justice and compassion all at once. And therefore, when the king was there, the land experienced a golden golden age. And everyone blossomed, and we all reached our potential. The land blossomed. The arts blossomed. Relationships blossom. Civilization blossomed. But something has taken the king away, and everything has deteriorated. Everything has fallen into decay. But we look for the day in which the king will come back. Do you know how many of our legends are like that? It's astonishing. You have the Robin Hood legend where here's Robin Hood fighting because the good king is gone. And now darkness has descended on the land, and he's fighting just to keep the flame alive until the good king can come back. You have the great Arthur stories, King Arthur, camelot When Arthur was ruling, there was Camelot. But now he's gone. And supposedly on his tombstone it says, here lies Arthur, Rex quandum rex futurus, meaning the once and future King. Not just the once, but the future king. See, that's critical. Behind all the legends, there was a great king. And when he was here, everything was great, and he's gone. When will he come back? I mean, you even have, you know, one of the most successful and powerful modern legends, a legend written in the 20th century. It was Lord of the Rings. All the legends in that cycle written by J.R.R. tolkien. And actually behind all of them, any of you who've read them know that in many, many ways, the basic theme is that there's a true king and he's hidden in the north, but he's going to show up. And when he does, everything will blossom, right? The hands of the king are healing hands, and thus shall the rightful king be known. And on and on it goes. Now, why? Why all these legends when the actual record of human kings is absolutely abysmal? The actual record of human kings is nothing but a record of tyranny and of tragedy and of slavery. And it's been so that all human, practically every single monarchy, has been toppled and in its place has been put some kind of democracy. And as a result, you know, Christians. And by the way, one of the great things about the four o' clock service is you can ask more questions afterwards. We have a question answer time afterwards. Christians have been part historically of trying to topple tyrants and kings and put in place democracy. But the question that comes up is, in spite of that, why this fascination with kings? Why do the old legends have such powerful impact on us? And not only that, why do they still have powerful impact on us? Why is it that in the countries that still have some kind of royalty left, some kind of royal line, that the people are obsessed with the royalty? Why is it that in lands like America, where there is no king, there is no royal line, we have to create them? So we take billionaires and we take athletes and we take media stars and we even take criminals and we turn them in to kings. We crown them, they hold court, we adore them. Why is it that there is a significant, significant part of the population that's constantly giving themselves over to the sway of dynamic, charismatic figures who abuse them? Why is there this need for kings? Why is there this need to crown them? Why there's this need to create them? Why is there this need to adore them? Now, I Can't get into it too far. That's what I'm saying. Afterwards, somebody might want to ask me about this. Christians know the Bible knows that democracy is medicine, not food. You can't live on medicine. It's medicine. We have to have democracy because human beings are so sinful that none of us really are fit to rule. But we need a king. We were built for a king. The reason for the old myths, the reason for the new myths, all the superhero myths are new myths about kings. The reason we adore kings and create them is because there's a memory trace in the human race. There's a memory trace in you and me of a great king, an ancient king, one who did rule with such power and wisdom and compassion and justice and glory, so that his power and wisdom and compassion and glory were like the sun shining in full strength. And we know that we were built to submit to that king. We were built to give ourselves to that king. We were built to stand before and adore and serve and know that king. That's what the Bible says. The Bible says there is a king above the kings. There is a king behind the kings. There is a king beneath all of those legends, that even the greatest kings are just dim reflections of the memory trace in us. And the Bible says if you reject the true king, you will find a king, because you have to. Even if you reject the idea that there is a true king intellectually, you can't reject it ontologically, you can't reject it in your being, you can't reject it psychologically. You will find someone to adore. You will find saviors, you will find kings. You will adore. One of the. You know, one of the most poignant things I've read in the last month. Jeffrey Schmaltz was a writer for the New York Times, and he was suffering with aids, and he was very. You know, he wrote about it for over at least a year, and he just died this fall. And just two, three weeks ago, they published his last column in the New York Times Magazine on a Sunday. And it was a fascinating column because what he wrote, he said, you know, he was embarrassed to admit it, but he admitted it publicly. He says, before this last presidential election. I'm just so embarrassed. I felt that if I could just get a Democrat into the White House, I'd be saved. He says, I looked at this candidate and I said, this is my white knight. These are his words. This will be my savior. He'll get all the resources together. He'll find a cure. And he realizes months later what an idiot he'd been, how naive he'd been. How could he feel that way? Things really aren't nearly as simple as that. Well, it's just what we're talking about here. The Bible says you will find a king. You will find a white knight. You will find a savior. You've got to. It's in your blood. It's in a memory trace. King Arthur. Hmm? Robin Hood. Good King Richard, a Democrat in the White House, or somebody you're sure with someday comes along and sweeps you off your feet romantically, and someone who will save you. You need a king. And if you don't find the real king, you're going to create a false king, and it's going to poison your life. My dear friends, your physical nature will be served. If you deny your physical nature. Food. It will gobble poison. Eventually, it'll eat anything. And if you deny your spiritual nature, the king that it needs, it will gobble something. It'll gobble poison, but it will gobble. God says, I have set my king in Zion, and I give my king the whole earth. In the book of Hebrews, Psalm 2 is quoted. And Hebrews says, you know, to what earthly king or even angel, could God truly say, you are my begotten son? To what angel, what earthly king, or even what angel, could God say, all of the ends of the earth are your possession? Hebrews says, is this just courtly hyperbole? Is this just another one of the kinds of. Is this just the flattery you have to heap on an earthly king at his coronation, just the sort of thing that was done? Or is it possible that God has literally and fully said this to somebody? Is it possible that there's a real king above the kings, a real king behind the kings? And in the New Testament, the Gospel message, the message of Christianity is, yes, there is. There is one and only one. The Messiah. Mashiach is coming. The Christ, the Lord and his anointed one. That's the first point. There is a king, a true king. But secondly, we're taught here in verses 1 to 3, that the natural heart of every human being hates the true king. See, you have down here in verse 1, 2, and 3, why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers gather together against the Lord as an anointed. And here's what they say. Let us break their chains, they say, and throw off their fetters. Now, that's the translation we have printed out there, the new international translation. Well, what does it mean? Probably when you read it, the way it's translated, you get the impression that the Lord and the anointed ones have the kings of the earth in chains, like captives thrown in prison. That's really probably a poor translation. As I was studying this, I came to realize for people who know Hebrew a whole lot better than I do, the probably that second has. That second word should be translated. Yoke. The kings of the earth are not upset because they're prisoners and that they have chains on them. The kings of the earth are upset because they have an owner. A yoke is something you put on the oxen, or a harness is something you put on your horse. And the idea here is there is someone who owns them. There is someone who demands that they be yoked. There is someone who demands that because they are owned and they have been created, that therefore the Creator has rights over them. And that's what they want to have nothing to do with. They say, I want to be my own. Now, this is teaching us, verse three, that this is the basic impulse of every human heart. I think it was George MacDonald, he was a Scottish writer who inspired C.S. lewis. George MacDonald said, There's one conviction. The central conviction of hell is I am my own. Now, I think what he means is that's the one conviction that everybody in hell shares, but also it's the one conviction that creates hell. It's the one conviction that will create a hell in your relationships, a hell in your marriage, a hell in the neighborhood, a hell in the neighborhood, in the community, a hell in your life if you operate on this principle. I am my own. Take the yoke off. I belong to no one but myself. I am the captain of my own soul. I am the master of my faith. That, says George MacDonald, is the essence of what every human being feels. You feel it from the beginning. If you're trying to raise any children, you know exactly that that is something that completely affects and dominate, dominates the thoughts and the feelings and the decisions and the worldview of every human being as they grow up. I am my own. Take off the yoke. And the Bible therefore says that we hate the idea of a king. We hate the idea of someone who has rights over us. We hate the idea of a king who has a yoke on us, who says, you belong to me. You are not your own. You must do as I say. And that's the reason why the Bible says that human beings don't just disbelieve in God. We Hate him. Jonathan Edwards wrote a whole book on this subject. He called him, and the name of it was men Naturally, God's enemies. And it's based on passages like Romans 8 where it says the natural mind is enmity with God. You know, there really was a sermon once. There was a sermon in 19th century Britain that ended like this. These were the last words. Oh my friends, if virtue incarnate would only appear on earth, we would fall down and worship. That's pretty incredibly stupid, isn't it? Because you know, virtue incarnate did appear on earth. And what did we do? We ran, we choked him, we hit him, we nailed him, we whipped him, we killed him. Why take this yoke off my neck that we all hate the king? There's a true king, but we hate him.