When God Laughs! Part 4

Psalm 2:7-8, “I will declare the decree: ‘The Lord has said to Me, You are My Son, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession.’”

In between teachings I began looking at this Psalm a little differently, not really through a different prism, but merely from a different angle. If we analyze this Psalm we realize there are a lot of parties doing a lot of talking, and just from a rudimentary reading we can discern four distinct voices trying to get our attention, trying to teach us something, or trying to distract us. 

As we've already discussed, the first voice is the voice of the nations who rage, the nations who counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed One.

One thing that I found interesting and even pertinent to our current situation as a nation is that it was the leaders and the men of authority in these nations who were encouraging the people to ‘break the bonds and cast away the cords’.

It was the leaders of the nations encouraging the people to lawlessness, and rebellion. It was those in authority who shook their fist at God and incited others to do likewise.

The voices rage to this day, the voices of kings and princes and presidents and judges, and all manner of men who have some sort of authority or wield some sort of power.

If we give these voices half the chance, it is very probable we will grow discouraged and dour in our outlook, rather than retain the joy of the Lord which is our strength. As a side note, you know that you have the joy of the Lord when everyone else around you is on the edge of despair, yet you still have an unexplained yet very real and tangible joy in your heart.

It’s one thing to have joy when everyone else has it; it’s another to have joy when few others do.

The second voice we saw as the Psalm continues to progress was the voice of the Father who declared that He had set His King on His Holy hill of Zion. We saw the Father declaring the immutability of His Son’s place, and though the nations raged and the kings plotted, Jesus is still upon the throne the Father has given Him.

The third voice we begin to hear now is the voice of the Son.

It is the Son declaring the decree of the Father, who promised Him the nations for His inheritance and the ends of the earth for His possession if He so desired and asked.

The one profound thing we must understand from this Psalm above all others is how much God the Father loves His Son!

The nations and the ends of the earth were His if He so asked, yet God so loved the world, that  He sent this Son He loved so much to  die upon a tree so His rebellious, disobedient, duplicitous and indifferent creation might be reconciled unto Him.

In order to fully understand the love God has for His creation, for you and me and all who breathe and walk this earth, we must understand the love God has for His Son first.

If God the Father and the Son were at odds, if they'd been arguing or they didn't see eye to eye, then perhaps we could reason that having sent Jesus was not such a monumental thing.

But this was not the case. God loved His Son to the point of offering Him everything if He so desired it, and it would not have seemed burdensome or extravagant to Him.

It’s as though Jesus was saying, ‘this is what My Father promised me, even offered if I so desired it.’

By the same token we can also understand why God grows wrathful and shows His deep displeasure when the Son He so loves is mocked and ridiculed and belittled and ignored and marginalized by both the world and the church.

Imagine having a son whom you loved with all your heart, whom you would do anything for, then seeing that selfsame son being maligned and spat upon and vilified though there was no evil in him.

Would you get angry? Would you grow wrathful? 

Even if we got angry and grew wrathful there isn't much we could do about it, but God can, and yet He tarries. Perhaps longer than some of us think He ought. 

It’s in the layered complexity of God’s emotions and attributes that we begin to realize the depth of the multidimensional God we serve, a God who loves, a God who forgives, a God who restores and receives, but also a God who is capable of exhibiting wrath, and bringing forth justice.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.