Now therefore, O kings, show discernment;
Take warning, O judges of the earth.
Worship the LORD with reverence
And rejoice with trembling.
Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way,
For His wrath may soon be kindled
How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!

Psalm 2:10-12

We have been studying the 2^nd Psalm in our home group the past few weeks, using Walt Chantry’s book, “Praises for the King of Kings,” as a guide. When taken with the whole counsel of God, the Psalm seems to expand and expound the Gospel to the nations, who are described as mankind at war against the Lord and His Anointed, Christ. All are or have been members of this tumultuous and rioting army; the Lord makes it quite clear in Romans and many other passages that none of us are righteous and none of us seeks for God. We are His enemy.

As man rises up and shakes his fist at the God of all creation, the Lord laughs derisively in His throne room. It would be like the 3 year old child pummeling a grown man with the intent of getting his way at any cost. The grown man would laugh at the puny fists of the impotent child; a bear hug contains his struggles! The Lord, infinitely greater and more powerful than any man, has no worries about the threat of those who hate Him. He is, after all, creator of this entire universe and of all men.

God has crowned the King of all kings, Christ the Lord, and has installed Him upon His holy hill. Christ has been given the inheritance of all things, even the nations, and He will do with them as His justice demands. He will wield an iron scepter and crush the enemies of His kingdom. And of course, mankind is deserving of His righteous justice. Man has committed treason against the rightful King and has become His sworn enemy, refusing to acknowledge the authority of his Creator.

A true king would not allow such treason in his kingdom. Christ is a righteous and just king and He stands ready to judge. However, and thankfully for us, He is also merciful and patient, longsuffering. This stands out most in our study – the longsuffering patience and mercy of our righteous God! He waits; He holds His wrath to give every one the opportunity to repent, to turn to Him and to forsake the enemy.

The entire Psalm is written in language reminiscent of days gone by, when kings ruled kingdoms and certain protocol must be adhered to in the courts of the king. It is difficult for us Americans to truly understand this and we bristle at the thought of bowing the knee to any man. But, this is no mere man. This is the God-man, the Lord and King of all creation, Christ Jesus. He has done what no other man could or would do and certainly no king would do. He has paid the price of treason for those who trust in Him. Our sins against a holy God are blotted out by the One enthroned in heaven. Thank goodness – no, thank God! – this Psalm doesn’t end at verse 9!

On page 45, Mr. Chantry writes about those who do come to Christ in repentance. This paragraph made me have to do some soul-searching. It made me wonder about my own salvation . . . here is what he says:

“Most of us who are Christians can recall our earliest approaches to God’s Son in prayer. Because God’s law had done its work in our consciences we went to the Lord loaded with a great weight of guilt and shame. We trembled to enter the courts of His holiness, justice and power, knowing that we were deserving of His wrath. But we had heard that enemies of heaven could have peace with God through Him and that there was no other way to pardon and life.”

I did not experience this at the beginning – not in the way he describes it! I thought I was saved and needed to make things right. I started going to church and found myself agreeing with the preaching. I went to an SBC church for several months then to a Christian church for a while, about 2 years or so, never realizing that I needed to repent. Yet God was changing me. Then, we started going to a church where the focus was different than anything I had ever experienced. I began to learn about God. And He kept getting bigger and bigger.

It has been difficult to shake my Arminian roots. I believe, yes, I thoroughly believe the great doctrines. They make sense to me; they are just plain right! But the old patterns of thought and of response are deeply grooved into my mind and I have to make a conscious effort to deviate from them at times. Couple this with the fact that, naturally, man (myself included) always tries to work his way toward God, has to approach Him on his own terms, and – for me at least – it takes years of prayer, study, experience, under God’s patient and loving care to change at all.

I do believe He has saved me. But when I read stuff like Mr. Chantry has written, it shakes me up. And so then I have to do some thinking and wondering, “Am I saved?” But the evidence, I have to remind myself, does not lie within me. It is in Christ. Is there faith in that great work of His; am I drawn to Him? More than anything else? What captivates me most? This present world, my family, the horses, my homeschool? Or Him? If I lost it all – all these things that are meaningful and significant to me – would I still find hope and a future in Him?

Or, to look at it from another perspective, could I walk away from this new life? Could I live as if there were no eternity? Oh, no when I think that, there is this writhing within me, an agony of thought and soul, “NO! That is the lie! There is an eternity and it is ruled by God.”

Stripped of all the trappings and distractions of my life, there is this underlying faith that is stronger than even my will, my desires. I may be shaken, but this faith remains unbroken. Not because of me. Because of Him! For some reason that I can’t understand, He has given me His love, this faith, this great gift of mercy and grace. Oh, I don’t deserve it and I certainly don’t live as if I’m grateful for it. But look, look at that One seated on the throne in the courts of heaven. He paid for my treason, and when I deserved a common traitor’s death, He gave me His life and His love instead.

paragraph 1.  In the beginning it pleased God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness, to create or make the world, and all things therein, whether visible or invisible, in the space of six days, and all very good.
( John 1:2, 3; Hebrews 1:2; Job 26:13; Romans 1:20; Colossians 1:16; Genesis 1:31 )

The question is:

How can we hold to such a strict view of creation? Isn’t the 1689 too narrow and weren’t those men writing this document without the benefit of modern scientific discoveries?

I see four essential issues stated here in the confession:

1) God created all things ex nihilo. Out of nothing! The confession rules out any who see a process whereby God took pre existing material and re-constituted it into our present universe.

2) God is the only un-caused cause therefore he is the first cause of all things; he created all things!

3) God’s creation was ‘very good!’ The material universe is a good thing and there is nothing inherently superior about the spiritual realm. Also, death did not reign before the fall.

4) God created all things out of nothing in six days.

Now what is the point of the gospel if points 1 through 3 are not true?

Is God omnipotent? Not if he merely used previously created (by whom?) material in order to re-form it into our present universe.

Is God sovereign? Not if there were pre-existant things in the universe. If some things were not created by him he would not posses sovereign control over them. But he is the first cause of all things. Therefore we must believe he created all things.
The Bible clearly teaches that death is ‘bad’ and a result of sin. Gospel believing Christians cannot believe in an evolutionary system whereby life ‘advances’ through the death of countless inferior mutations and the successful survival of superior species. If death reigned before Adam, yet death is a result of sin, then how can we speak of a redeemer who sets us free from the curse? If the curse (death) was a mechanism whereby life evolved then it makes no sense to say that death is a curse.

Point four (Six day creation) gives us the essential information that the universe was created by God in a specific time period. The 1689 writers stated it in the same way that the Genesis account speaks of it without any explanation of the how of creation - just a chronological statement of fact! And furthermore, Jesus refers to the Genesis account as a literal event. But since this is a unique event (the creation of the universe as well as the creation of time) I do find it difficult to be dogmatic about the chronological nature of creation. I think there is some degree of liberty in interpreting the biblical account of beginnings. I don’t see how the 1689 wording for point four would necessarily exclude some who may interpret ‘days’ to mean ‘periods of time’ as long as they are not trying to accommodate evolutionary processes.

Personally, I don’t see any reason to have to equivocate on the 6 literal day biblical account. Why do believers feel the need to twist the scriptures to gain acceptance? The gospel is an offense and no amount of accommodate on our part will make believers out of skeptics.

Reformed theology resists the kind of thinking that makes our ‘presentation’ an essential ingredient in the conversion of souls. That is in God’s power alone for His glory alone! We are, of course, responsible to preach the gospel as we are his appointed means, but we ought never confuse ‘who does what in salvation.’

And that makes all the difference, especially to those of us who sincerely desire salvation for our neighbors and family. If I thought that I was ultimately responsible for convincing them I would be tempted to de-emphasize the harder points of the gospel. Why tell them about God’s righteous Law and their exposure to the wrath of God? Why should I tell them of the need to truly repent? Why point out to them that they ought to, as Jesus said, “Count the cost!”

Pastor Oliver Heywood 1629-1702

Pastor Thomas Manton 1620-1677

Pastor Richard Baxter 1615-1691

Let our retirement be devout,
our conversation edifying,
our reading pious,
our hearing profitable,
that our souls may be quickened and elevated.

We are going to the house of prayer,
pour upon us the spirit of grace and supplications;

We are going to the house of praise,
awaken in us every grateful and cheerful emotion;

We are going to the house of instruction,
give testimony to the Word preached,
and glorify it in the hearts of all who hear;
may it enlighten the ignorant,
awaken the careless, reclaim the wandering,
establish the weak, comfort the feeble-minded,
make ready a people for their Lord.

This prayer is from a little book called The Valley of Vision, A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions, edited by Arthur Bennett. I highly recommend this book; you can purchase it through Banner of Truth Trust

Countless believers have declined in this way. Part of the tragedy is that they have fallen into coldness while convincing themselves that they were serving God. The scholar at his books persuades himself that he is too busy to spend an hour each morning in secret devotions. The pastor feels he cannot devote time to the cultivation of his soul because he has too many letters to reply to or even sermons to prepare. The missionary cannot wait on the Lord as he used to because of the pressures of language-study, and later on still, because of deputation work in the home country.

In these crafty ways does the devil lead God’s people by a staircase which winds ever downwards. But let us recall in the midst of our busy life that we may do ourselves and the cause of God great harm by our neglect of the soul. Let us once lose the dew of our spiritual freshness and we are at once a ready prey to compromise. How have so many evils come into the church but through men’s neglecting to cultivate daily fellowship with Christ? Like the Ephesian church in the Book of Revelation, they have been busily engaged in their ‘works’ and ‘labor’ and ‘patience’ and even their zeal for orthodoxy. But in the eyes of the Saviour they have ‘left their first love’ (Rev. 2:2-4) and risk loosing the very ‘candlestick’ altogether.

We may conclude … with a concern to revive in ourselves and in our brethren far more emphasis on heart-religion. As we view the state of the churches, this is the great priority everywhere. Nothing must be permitted to weaken our cultivation of fellowship with Christ.

The overwhelming concern of the Christian’s life must surely be to live unto God, upon God and for God. What else can the familiar words mean where the apostle Paul tells us, ‘For to me to live is Christ’?

What a force for good even a handful of Christians would be who lived in near intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ! What prayers would be heard again in the earth as believers took hold of the sleeve of Christ and drew down the blessings! What power and authority for our preaching would flow out of his glorious ‘fullness’ (John 1:16)! What new life would be breathed into all our meetings if an army of …(believers) …emerged from their closets melted with gospel-love! What new levels of excitement would there be in our services if preachers came into their pulpits clothed in the garments of visible holiness! In a word, what might not be done for God if only we were not so ignorant of him!

Maurice Roberts, The Thought of God, (Edinburgh:BPC Paperbacks, 1993) pg.63-66.

If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot From doing your own pleasure on My holy day, And call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable, And honor it, desisting from your own ways, From seeking your own pleasure And speaking your own word, Then you will take delight in the LORD, And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father, For the mouth of the LORD has spoken. (NASB)

The Lord tells us that if we will refrain from seeking our own pleasures and speaking our own words; if we call the Sabbath a delight, then we are given a glorious promise. That promise is that we will then take delight in the Lord. We will ride on the heights of the earth. He will feed us with the heritage of Jacob. In other words, if we take time to sanctify the Sabbath, we will derive from the Lord a delight greater than any the world can offer us. Do you want to have great joy and pleasure? Then this passage tells us that if we will honor the Sabbath as God commands us, then we will have that joy available only in this sanctifying of the day. Let us delight in the Sabbath for in doing so we are delighting in the Lord of the Sabbath.