The Resurrection Means Jesus Is King of Everything
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
That is the best news. Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, was born of a virgin, lived a perfectly sinless life, and—after being unjustly accused by Pilate, Herod, and the Jewish leaders—suffered and died for the sins of his people. He was crucified and buried. Three days later, he rose to life again. He spent forty days teaching his disciples before he ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he rules. Christ is King.
Psalm 2 is all about this best of news.
I want to start with two quick introductory questions before we dive into the text of Psalm 2.
Why Psalm 2 on Easter
Psalm 2 tells the story of Easter. Pilate and Herod and the Jewish rulers raged and plotted against the LORD and against his anointed (Acts 4:23–26). They didn’t want to submit to his reign; they tried to cast off his binding authority. But God had the last laugh. As they schemed against God, they were doing precisely what God had planned (Acts 4:28). If the rulers of the age had understood that Jesus truly was God’s anointed, the one chosen to reign in the heavenly Zion (Hebrews 12:22), they never would have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor 2:8). At the resurrection, God declared that Jesus was his Son (Rom 1:4) and gave him all authority in heaven and on earth (Matt 28:18).
Now we all have two choices:
- We can repent, kiss the Son, and take refuge in him.
- Or we can continue to rage against him and be irreversibly broken.
Hear the good news (and the message of Psalm 2), brothers and sisters: Jesus is the king of everything. He is king over all nations, over kings, rulers, and authorities—over every mountain and valley, every continent and ocean. From the rivers to the ends of the earth, he reigns supreme. Therefore, serve him and take refuge in him. Obey him as king and give your life in humble service to his majesty. He will destroy all evil. Come and take refuge in him, where you will be safe from his fierce wrath against his enemies.
David, or Jesus?
Before we dive into Psalm 2, I want to address one question that might be on the mind of some of you. Is Psalm 2 about David or Jesus? Acts 4:25 tells us that David wrote Psalm 2. As we read Psalm 2, you heard many allusions to the Davidic king who reigned in Israel when it was written. Verse 2 talks about God’s “anointed,” referencing the ritual where David was anointed by Samuel to be king and later acknowledged by the tribes of Judah and Israel. God says that he has set his king on Zion, which is where David made his capital. Psalm 2 undoubtedly has something to do with the Davidic kings of Israel. However, we know that its fullest meaning concerns Christ because the New Testament specifically says so. In Acts 13 Paul addresses the Jews in Antioch and he says,
We bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.”
So we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this Psalm is ultimately about our Lord, Jesus. That’s why I’ll be preaching about Psalm 2’s meaning as applied to the Davidic king: Jesus.
So the message of this sermon is this: Jesus is the king of everything, so serve and take refuge in him. To unpack this message, we’ll go through Psalm 2 one stanza at a time and see how it tells us the Easter story. Here’s the outline:
- The rulers of the earth attack God and his Son, Jesus (vv. 1–3).
- But the Father planned for his Son to be king of everything (vv. 4–6).
- At the resurrection, Jesus became king of everything (vv. 7–9).
- Therefore, serve the LORD with fear and take refuge in Jesus (vv. 10–12).
The Rulers Attack God and His Son
In verses 1–3 Psalm 2 describes the constant state of the wicked world. Nations and people rage against God. They devise wicked schemes in their hearts to unseat the King of kings. But these verses apply especially to those who schemed against Jesus to kill him.
Acts 4:24–31 records a prayer of the early church. Peter and John had been taken before the high council, threatened, and then released. As the church gathers to pray, Scripture tells us,
They lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, ‘Why do the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed.’”
They continue in their prayer,
For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel.
Sit in awe for a moment at the God who wrote the Scriptures for us. Hundreds of years before Jesus was born, generations before Herod was king, well before Pilate was governor—in fact before Rome had taken power from the Greeks, or the Greeks from the Persians, or the Persians from the Babylonians—God, through David, wrote Psalm 2 about the way rulers would conspire against Jesus. And the early church opened Psalm 2, perhaps to sing it, and realized that it just happened. The nations did rage, and their plotting sure was in vain. The Anointed One they worked so hard to kill didn’t stay dead.
Didn’t reckon on that, did you, raging nations? Didn’t think that you might succeed in killing God’s Anointed in the battle, but still lose the war when he rose again? Didn’t imagine he might defeat Death by death, did you?
Psalm 2 asks the question, “Why do the nations rage?” It’s a rhetorical question. The question invites us to join God in laughing at the raging nations because resistance against omnipotence is futile. That’s why it says that they plot in vain. “Why do you rage? Don’t you know that God holds all power, including power over you?”
But it’s also worth answering their rhetorical question. Why do the nations rage? They rage because they are like their father, the devil. They want to be king. Any king, no matter how good he is, is bad news as far as they are concerned, because they want to be that king.
That’s why the Jewish rulers, Pontius Pilate, and Herod all stood against Jesus. Pilate killed Jesus because he was afraid of losing control. Herod killed Jesus because he failed to impress him. The Jews killed Jesus because he taught with authority and thereby undermined theirs. The nations rage because they want his seat.
Do Not Cast Off God’s Rule
Brothers and sisters, are you trying to cast the rule of God away? I know you aren’t trying to kill the Son of God like those in the first century. But that doesn’t mean that you aren’t trying to cast off his bonds.
Is your life characterized by rejoicing and submitting to God’s rule? Are you happy to obey? Or is it characterized by anger and resisting God’s rule? Are you grumpy when you obey?
When your life is characterized by rejoicing and submitting to God’s rule, you thank God for his law and happily follow it. You don’t find his commands burdensome or onerous. You rejoice because you’ve found that God’s burden is light and his yoke is easy. When you find out that you haven’t been obeying, you quickly and gladly correct course.
When your life is characterized by anger and resisting God’s rule, you may follow some of God’s laws, but you aren’t happy about it. You view his laws as an obstacle instead of as your delight (Psalm 1). When no one is watching and you think there won’t be any consequences, you may do what you want regardless of what God says.
Think back to the last time the commands of God conflicted with the way you wanted to go. You knew you had a choice: I can follow God, or I can get what I want right now. Which way did you go?
Of all days, Easter is the best day to joyfully, humbly accept the rule of Jesus—to confess that he is Lord and to follow him as king. If you’ve been resisting his rule, either over your whole life or in parts of it, give it up today. You’re plotting in vain.
The Father Planned His Son as King
Look with me at God’s reaction to the wicked rulers who rebel against him in verses 4–6. God laughs at them. God laughs at the rulers who crucified Jesus. This isn’t a funny “haha” kind of laugh. This is the laugh of a general who receives news that his trap to destroy his enemies has gone off perfectly. He holds them in derision, meaning that he looks on them with contempt.
As Jesus dies, his enemies mock him. They gamble for his clothing and spit on him and beat him and jeer at him even as he’s nailed to the cross. They try to make a laughable spectacle out of him. But all the while, God in heaven laughs. He holds them in derision. He’s already spoken from heaven, identifying Jesus as his beloved Son, as the anointed one who will rule on his behalf, as the King whose throne is the heavenly Zion. They should know better. But their pride blinds them. When it’s all over and they go back to their homes for the Passover, they think they’ve won. They think they have freed themselves forever from God’s bonds. But they’ve only sealed them tighter. They are doing exactly what God planned would take place (Acts 4:28). They don’t know it, but they are defeating themselves. They’re so clueless, so foolish, so blind that Paul tells us if they’d actually known what they were doing, they wouldn’t have crucified Jesus in the first place (1 Cor 2:8). In their rage, they become the butt of God’s joke, the object of his derision.
But mere men were not the only ones looking to cast away the authority of the Son as Jesus walked up Calvary’s hill. The forces of darkness were arrayed behind the wicked men who killed our Lord. Just like ours, Jesus’ battle wasn’t just against flesh and blood. The cosmic forces of evil worked through Judas and Pilate and the Jews, trying to destroy humanity’s only hope to fulfill God’s vision for a good man to take dominion of God’s earth and make it a fitting place for God to dwell. But Jesus defeated them just as soundly. Colossians 2:15 says he put them to open shame. They, too, walked right into God’s trap, and God’s Son triumphed over them.
See the wisdom and power of God here. He doesn’t just plan to put Jesus on the throne. He plans to put Jesus on the throne by turning the evil rebellion of those who hate him back on themselves. “You don’t want to be ruled by my king? How about you unintentionally help me install him as the king of everything, the Son of Man who receives all power and authority, my Son who owns the ends of the earth as his own possession.” Isn’t it simply a lovely turn of irony?
Verse 6 records God’s terrifying decree to the kings who rebel:
As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.
God says to the kings rebelling against him, “I have chosen a king, and it’s not you.” Notice that Psalm 2 doesn’t just describe this as a fact; it’s a terror. The kingship of Jesus is a chilling reality, a terrifying decree according to verse 5. This is God’s response in his fury. So the subtext isn’t a calm, “Oh, by the way, you might not have known, but I’ve actually chosen a king, so you need to submit to him.” As we’ll see in verse 9, God is saying, “The man I’ve chosen will break you such that the damage will never be undone; he is sitting in Zion on his throne. Look out.”
That is our Lord who was raised from the dead 2,000 years ago and sits now at the right hand of the Father on high, where he reigns from the heavenly Mount Zion (Heb 12:22).
God Plans Evil for Our Good
This morning I want you to be immensely comforted at the deriding laughter of God in verse 4. God laughs like that at Pilate and Herod and the evil Jews and Gentiles who put Jesus to death. He’s not scared of them. He’s not worried about them. They’re walking right into his trap. It’s all going according to plan. Like Acts 4 says, they did exactly what God had predetermined would take place.
Reason with me from the greater to the lesser. If, when the worst conspiracy to commit the worst evil imaginable—killing Jesus—occurred, God was in heaven laughing at the perpetrators because they were so mistaken, what do you think his attitude is when other evils befall you and me? If God can turn the murder of the only innocent man—and the Son of God to boot—into the salvation of the world, you can bet that he can turn every evil you’ve ever experienced into your everlasting joy.
Our church has seven priorities you can find on our website. One of them is that we praise God’s glorious grace. God’s meticulous sovereignty over all things inspires us to worship, trust, and obey him. We want to trust God when suffering comes. This is what that means.
Easter is the ultimate poke in the eye to every evil. All things work together for the good of those who love him and keep his commands. Even graves turn into resurrection life. So, brothers and sisters, in your sorrows and pains and trials (and I know many of you are in the midst of significant trials), today is a day of hope—hope that will not put us to shame. Jesus died, and more than that, Jesus is risen. He swallowed up death in his victory and has promised to rule until every enemy is under his feet. God is so wise that he’s planned for each of our evils to work for good, just like the evil of the cross forged the glorious empty tomb and our salvation.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. (2 Cor 4:16–18)
Do you hear this in your trials in marriage, your pain and sickness, your job loss, your miscarriage, your longing to marry, and your longing for children?
Let’s turn now to the resurrection in Psalm 2.
Jesus Became King
In Psalm 2, the king reports the decree that God gave him, which says, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” Let’s look at both sides of that sentence.
First, what does “You are my Son” mean? In Scripture, sonship language is used of both humans and Jesus. For instance, in 2 Samuel 7:12–14 God promises that David’s son (Solomon) would be a son to him. Also, Israel is described as God’s son, whom he called out of Egypt (Hos 11:1). The language of sonship is about a special relationship with God where he is as “on your side” as he could possibly get. It’s essentially a royal term. Being God’s son means that you rule on his behalf. Sons of God are heirs in his kingdom who rule on behalf of their father.
Second, what does “today I have begotten you” mean? This Hebrew term is about literally begetting a child. So it’s certainly being used metaphorically. The king isn’t a baby recently begotten. He’s a man on the throne. What it means as a metaphor here is that there was a status change for the king. In some meaningful way the king goes from not God’s son to being God’s son.
Let’s illustrate this with David. David is anointed king of Israel by Samuel while he is a young man (1 Samuel 16). You could say that he was king then—he’d been chosen by God, after all. But he wasn’t the king in power. He was mostly a king in hiding or a king on the run until Saul died. When Saul dies, David is anointed king of Judah (2 Sam 2) and then of all Israel (2 Sam 5). When he’s anointed again, he takes the throne in fact. The Gentile nations around him become his vassal states, and when they plot against him, he destroys them (2 Sam 8).
In other words, David was set apart to be king, and then there was a day when he was actually crowned and became king. That’s what “today I have begotten you” is talking about.
But when was Jesus “begotten”? Of course, the Son of God and the Father are eternal. In the words of the Athanasian Creed, “Nothing in this Trinity is before or after.” We also don’t mean by “begotten” the incarnation, when the eternal Son took on flesh and was begotten by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary (as the Apostles’ Creed says). Here we mean begotten like David was begotten, or became, God’s son in a way he wasn’t before—when he was crowned king of Israel and received the Davidic covenant. A great analogy that I heard from Pastor Andy is that of the presidential inauguration. Even after the vote is complete, the president-to-be is just a normal citizen. But after the inauguration he’s the president. You could say that the nation begat the president at the inauguration.
When Jesus came to earth, God quickly proclaimed who he was. At his baptism, right at the beginning of his ministry, you remember that the Father says, “This is my beloved Son.” Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah, the one chosen by God to make all of his promises come true. But at his baptism and even through his ministry, Jesus is like David, who is anointed but hasn’t been crowned king of the nation yet. He’s often on the run and in hiding from crowds and his enemies. But Acts 13 tells us when Jesus was begotten—when he was crowned king of everything in power. As Paul preaches in Antioch he quotes Psalm 2. Here’s what he says (pay attention to which day he applies “today I have begotten you”):
We bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you.”
He says that the day Psalm 2 is talking about is the day Jesus rose from the dead. Resurrection Sunday, Easter, is the day Jesus was begotten as the king of everything. The resurrection wasn’t just a day to celebrate. It changes everything. Romans 1 says that Jesus was “descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.”
The resurrection changes the world like the presidential inauguration changes the whole nation. Early Sunday morning, when the quiet of the garden was disturbed as the stone rolled away from the tomb and Jesus walked out alive and well, everything was different. The powers of darkness were bested, wickedness was overcome, death defeated. Jesus had been given all authority in heaven and on earth (Matt 28). That’s Jesus saying, “I am king of everything.”
Here on Easter we are not celebrating the day that Jesus narrowly escaped the jaws of death and quickly retreated back into heaven to gather strength until he amassed enough power to rule the world. We are celebrating the day that Jesus was crowned king of the world and received all power to rule the world. It’s official. All the nations were signed over to Jesus. He received the deed for the ends of the earth. It’s all his. That doesn’t mean it’s uncontested yet. Certainly many earthly and spiritual authorities still set themselves against the LORD and his anointed. But everything changed when he rose. The wicked nations are living on borrowed time in conquered land.
This can be hard for us to get our heads around because we think, “Hasn’t it all always been God’s? What really changed?” What we need to remember is God’s plan to rule the earth through delegated authority. He delegated his authority to Adam to rule righteously and cultivate the earth. Adam failed and plunged the world into sin and darkness. Later God delegated his authority to earthly rulers, like Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus. He delegated his authority to spiritual powers and principalities. But his fundamental plan was always to put all things under the dominion of Man; for Man to take dominion over all the works of his hands. That great plan is fulfilled in our Lord Jesus. He is true God and true man ruling the earth as God designed. He won’t stop the war until every knee bows and every tongue confesses that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. And, brothers and sisters, we are co-heirs with Christ, Sons of God, and therefore working with Jesus to build and fight so that every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus is Lord and the whole earth is full of the glory of God.
Wicked Rulers Are Fragile
From an earthly perspective, things may seem hopeless and unchangeable. But look at the world through the lens of the resurrection. Jesus rose from the dead and was begotten as the royal Son of God and king of everything. He will dash the wicked nations to pieces like a potter’s vessel. That means he’ll break them, and it’ll be easy, and they’ll never be mended.
Easy, irreversible damage. That’s the idea. It’s not hard to break pottery. You can do it accidentally if you aren’t careful. And God is giving Jesus a rod of iron. When you break pottery, there’s no putting it back together. It shatters. If the world is a china shop and the wicked rulers are the delicate dishes vainly displayed, God gave Jesus a baseball bat.
This changes everything in the fight. We don’t know if we will live or we will die. We don’t know if we will win or we will lose in our lifetime. God may have awful judgment in store for our nation, and things won’t take a turn for the better (he knows we sure deserve it). But it changes everything to know that on your side—dwelling inside you, gathered here with us today by his Spirit—the risen Lord Jesus has all authority in heaven and on earth. With Jesus raised from the dead and his promise that he’ll raise us too, I’m happy to die in the fight. I’m happy to be a public spectacle. I can count it all joy when I face trials; I can count myself honored to be counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus as one of his slaves. Jesus is alive! He’s already won.
Church, don’t fight like Easter never happened. Don’t build like Easter came and went with no change. Jesus took the throne. Everything changed. He is our living hope—meaning that since he’s alive we have hope to face any trial or enemy. In WWII the Allied troops defeated the Axis powers at D-Day. It wasn’t until VE Day, eleven months later, that the war was really over, but everything really did change after D-Day. With the Axis power broken, don’t you think soldiers fought differently? It’s not that all risk was gone. It’s not that all the fighting was done and they could go home. But there was a new sure hope of victory that changed everything. That’s what Easter should do for us. Victory is sure. Just keep marching on the side of King Jesus.
And now we come to the “so what?” The “therefore,” the “how then shall we live” of Psalm 2. The last stanza gives a warning and a promise.
Serve the Lord with Fear
The warning is that the kings of earth better serve the Son—or else they’re goners. Their plotting was in vain because God is more powerful than they. He’s given the nations they rule to Jesus, so they had better get with the program and pay homage to Jesus. They had better serve the LORD with fear by submitting themselves to his anointed king instead of plotting to overthrow him. “Kiss the Son” here isn’t anything romantic; it’s about reverential honor—like a duke kissing the ring of the king as he enters his presence.
After Resurrection Sunday, everyone has two choices. They can submit to Jesus and be blessed by his lordship, or they can rebel against Jesus and be shattered by his lordship. This is what Easter is all about. The Son of God is so strong he wrestled death and won. There is no defeating him. The wisdom of God ran circles around the “wisdom” of man so thoroughly that at the very moment they thought they’d won, they’d actually fallen on their own swords. There is no outwitting, out-maneuvering, or defeating God or his Son. You can either fall on your knees and pledge your life to him—heart, soul, mind, and strength—or you can fall on your knees at the end of time when Christ returns and regret you didn’t do it sooner.
Pastor Andy has said that there will be a right side and a wrong side of history. And the only way to be on the right side of history is to be on Jesus’ side. So, brothers and sisters, be warned. Don’t resist our Lord. God is not mocked. He always has the last laugh. That’s why we are told to rejoice and tremble.
Take Refuge in Jesus
But we are also told to rejoice. The psalm ends with astonishingly good, merciful, glorious news. “Blessed are all those who take refuge in him.” This is amazing. Jesus has come to the throne. Wicked people have fought against his ascension to power and still hate him. But their fate is not sealed. There is still hope for every sinner who will submit—who will throw down their weapons and cast away their pride, who will confess and repent.
This morning, come take refuge in Jesus. Only in him will you be truly safe. The only way to be safe from the wrath of God is to repent and trust, taking refuge in his Son.
In Acts 13, after Paul quotes Psalm 2, he says,
Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses. (Acts 13:38–39)
The law of Moses couldn’t forgive sins. But Christ offered one sacrifice for all time, and then he sat down at God’s right hand (Heb 10:12). The law of Moses couldn’t provide new hearts, but Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant (Heb 12:24).
Take comfort, brothers and sisters: if you will hide yourself in the cleft of the rock of Christ, you will be safe from all the designs of the enemy. What do you need refuge from? You’ll have to humble yourself. You’ll have to stop resisting him (if you are). You’ll have to repent of your self-reliance and learn to depend on his grace and mercy. But you will find that he is more than enough. Come, come to the well that won’t run dry. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the Good Shepherd who will not leave you in the valley of the shadow of death. He is the bread of life that satisfies our hungry souls. He is the King of everything. Come take refuge in him.
Remember, as you celebrate the resurrection this Easter, Jesus is the king of everything. So serve him, and take refuge in him. Amen.