THE CONFERENCE - Postmillennialism - Session 8 - Doug Wilson ｜ Blueprints for Christendom 2.0 2024
Episode Stats
Words per minute
153.17003
Harmful content
Toxicity
6
sentences flagged
Hate speech
51
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, Pastor Ken teaches about the postmillennials and their views on the millennium, and how they differ from those of other denominations regarding the second coming of Christ. He also gives a brief autobiographical account of how he got into doctrinal trouble in the early 20th century.
Transcript
00:00:00.400
It's always encouraging when you speak two times at a conference to have people show up for the second talk.
00:00:12.960
Father, we give this time to you. We ask you to watch over us.
00:00:15.500
I pray your Holy Spirit would be at work, teaching, encouraging, and instructing.
00:00:22.300
So, I've tentatively titled this talk, Psalm 2, the Postmill Key to Everything.
00:00:35.560
But before getting to Psalm 2, the Postmill Key to Everything, let us define us some terms.
00:00:43.120
The millennium is a thousand years of peace that Christians like to fight about.
00:00:55.100
Seriously, the three main positions have a prefix that tells you where advocates of that system place the second coming of Christ in reference to the millennium.
00:01:08.400
The millennium is mentioned one time in the Bible, in a most difficult passage, in a most difficult chapter, in the most challenging book of the Bible.
00:01:18.220
And so we named all the positions after that one term.
00:01:22.300
I would refer you to my commentary on Revelation when the man comes around, reminding you at the same time that Ambrose Bierce defined Revelation as a book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew.
00:01:38.120
The revealing is done by the commentators who know nothing.
00:01:44.040
And Chesterton once said that John saw many strange monsters in his vision, but none so strange as any one of his commentators.
00:01:52.300
So, with these exhortations in mind, let us tread carefully,
00:02:01.620
which was to put the conscience of another upon the spit
00:02:10.120
So, pre-millennialists, here are the three main positions.
00:02:13.000
Pre-millennialists place the second coming of Christ prior to the millennium.
00:02:18.760
Pre-millennial. Christ comes before the millennium.
0.81
00:02:22.300
Ah, in amillennialism, the ah is a term of negation.
00:02:27.800
So amillennialists say that the millennium is a spiritual reign with Christ in the heavenly places.
00:02:33.780
And so the second coming has no reference to the millennium.
00:02:37.520
So amillennial means the second coming happened.
0.61
00:02:41.120
All Orthodox Christians believe in a literal bodily return of Christ at the end of human history to judge the quick and the dead.
0.94
00:02:50.760
But premillennialists say that that coming is right prior to the millennium, and then he reigns on earth for a thousand years in person.
00:02:59.640
Amillennialists say the second coming comes at some point in history.
00:03:03.000
We don't know when, but it's not in reference to any earthly millennium.
00:03:08.520
And then postmillennialists are those who see a literal second coming at the conclusion of the millennium, which will be ushered in by means of gospel preaching.
00:03:19.040
So the post-millennialists and the pre-millennialists both believe that there will be a literal earthly millennium.
00:03:26.680
But the pre-millennialists believe that the earthly millennium will be reigned over by Christ, the incarnate Christ, reigning over the earth.
00:03:36.540
Post-millennialists believe that Christ is going to reign during the millennium through his Holy Spirit, planting of churches.
00:03:43.580
The earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
00:03:51.180
Now, there are other terms I could define for you, but I'm not going to bog you down.
00:03:58.140
So the next thing I want to do is I want to explain, give you a little autobiographical account of how I got myself in as much doctrinal trouble as I did.
00:04:07.020
and then I want to go to Psalm 2 to map out for you a sort of a textbook case of how this method
00:04:16.620
works. So I would encourage you to get an old beater Bible, the Bible you don't mind marking
00:04:22.980
up, and I would encourage you to make for yourself an apostolic study Bible. An apostolic
00:04:30.040
study Bible. What do I mean? Well, almost all Bibles have little footnotes or some notation
00:04:36.200
in that middle column where they'll tell you in the New Testament, if the New Testament quotes
00:04:41.540
the Old Testament, it'll be indented or set apart in some way, and then there'll be a little footnote
00:04:48.320
that says this gives you the reference in the Old Testament where it's from. Well, oddly, a lot of
00:04:55.780
Bibles don't do it the other way. So they'll tell you in the New Testament if this is a quotation
00:05:00.640
from the Old Testament, but they don't tell you in the Old Testament if this passage that you're
00:05:05.580
reading is quoted somewhere in the New. That's not set out or marked in any distinctive way.
00:05:12.160
So the making of an apostolic study Bible is where you undertake to fix that. So years and
00:05:18.820
decades ago now, and I don't know what possessed me to do this, but I went through the New Testament
00:05:24.560
and I highlighted every Old Testament quotation that was found in the New Testament. And then I
00:05:32.140
highlighted the place where it told me where it was, and I just, I wasn't reading, I was just
00:05:36.820
highlighting. I went through and highlighted them all, and then I spent a couple of weeks
00:05:41.340
looking up all those verses in the Old Testament and highlighting them there, and then writing in
00:05:47.280
the margin where in the New Testament that citation was found, okay? So that, and when I was
00:05:54.620
done, I had an apostolic study Bible. Instead of going to an evangelical commentary where
00:06:01.220
a believing evangelical who believes in inerrancy is arguing with some obscure German scholar about
00:06:07.780
what this means. Instead of that, I was reading along and, oh, Peter quotes this. Oh, Paul quotes
00:06:15.980
this. Oh, Jesus quotes this. And so what I could do is I would run into these, oh, this is quoted
00:06:22.200
five times in the New Testament. And then I could flip over and look at what the New Testament said
00:06:44.040
You're reading along and you're reading about Noah's flood
00:06:50.860
and then i'm reading also in genesis oh hagar and sarah these women are two covenants as paul
00:07:01.580
teaches in galatians and you get starting and slapped around where you think oh
00:07:06.960
maybe the bible is more mysterious than i thought i maybe there's more going on maybe i should
00:07:15.280
learn from jesus and the apostles how to handle how to handle the old testament
00:07:21.440
Now, it is very easy for us to assume, to just be reading along in the Old Testament,
00:07:28.580
and to just assume that we know what it's talking about.
00:07:31.900
We're reading it like we're reading a newspaper article or something.
00:07:36.480
And there is that level, that historical meaning that is there.
00:07:41.100
You should read it that way, the grammatical historical method.
00:07:46.660
So you get to, when you were first converted, somebody told you, you heard a preacher say,
00:07:52.220
you know that there are over 300 messianic prophecies of the coming Christ.
00:07:57.280
And they were all fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.
00:08:00.580
And you've been a Christian for two months and you think to yourself, yay, great faith builder.
00:08:07.140
And then you get around to reading the Old Testament for the first time.
00:08:11.060
And you start having these wait a minute moments.
00:08:13.520
so Matthew says when Joseph and Mary and Jesus flee to Egypt Matthew says so that the word might
00:08:23.940
be fulfilled out of Egypt I called my son well if you've got your apostolic study bible you
00:08:29.840
you're reading along in Hosea and Hosea 11 1 says when Israel was a child I loved him and out of
00:08:38.200
Egypt I called my son. And you think, wait a minute, this is talking about the exodus. Hosea
00:08:44.820
is talking about the exodus, and Matthew is talking about the holy family running down to,
00:08:49.380
wait, wait, wait, wait. And so that's the moment where your faith gets a little rattled. You think,
00:08:55.340
oh, these 300 prophecies, maybe they're all like this. Now, then you grow up into the third stage,
00:09:03.100
which is a faith-building stage again, because it occurs to you that this is the very first time
00:09:08.180
in your life that you've ever read Hosea, and you think that, you know, maybe Matthew had Hosea
00:09:18.420
memorized, and maybe Matthew's up to something. So this was touched on, Joe in the previous talk
00:09:26.800
touched on this, in Matthew chapter 4, Jesus is baptized. Well, was Israel baptized? Yeah,
00:09:34.320
Israel was baptized in the cloud and in the sea.
00:09:38.740
What happened to Israel when they were baptized into Moses?
0.52
00:09:42.240
Well, they go into the wilderness for 40 years.
00:09:44.440
What happened to Jesus when he was baptized by John the Baptist?
00:09:51.200
What happened to Israel when they were in the wilderness for 40 years?
00:09:56.520
What happened to Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days?
00:10:02.780
And you think, oh, and then what did Israel do at the end of the 40 years?
0.82
00:10:07.200
What did Jesus do at the end of the 40 days?
0.86
00:10:12.480
And just two chapters earlier, Matthew said, out of Egypt I called my son.
00:10:26.600
And here, at last, is Israel doing it right.
0.97
00:10:31.780
Israel finally quit screwing up all through the Old Testament Israel veers off after idols they
0.92
00:10:39.480
get into trouble the Midianites take over the Philistines take over they get they're oppressed
0.74
00:10:43.740
they cry out to the Lord and the Lord delivers them raises up a judge and you turn the page and
0.98
00:10:51.040
they're worshiping idols again and then over and over and over again and then you come to the New
00:10:58.000
Testament, here's Jesus doing it right. And you think, okay, okay, there's an awful lot in the
00:11:04.820
New Testament that is commentary on the Old Testament. So if you're a new Christian, I would
0.99
00:11:09.800
say, read the New Testament a couple, three times, read it through, then mark it up, then look up all
00:11:14.600
the verses in the Old Testament and mark them, and then start reading through the Old Testament.
00:11:21.260
You're also going to discover, if you listen to any speaker, oh, he likes C.S. Lewis a lot,
00:11:27.140
he quotes them all the time. Or he likes Chesterton, he quotes him all the time.
00:11:32.620
Well, you're going to find the same thing out about the New Testament writers. What were their
00:11:36.600
favorite books? The ones they quote all the time. And what are they? Genesis, Deuteronomy,
00:11:44.740
Psalms, and Isaiah. Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Isaiah. So you're a new Christian,
00:11:50.760
you're going to read the Old Testament, start with those books, read through those books,
00:11:53.880
and then read the whole thing. You know, I'm not telling you to read part of the Bible and not the
00:11:56.960
whole Bible, but I'm saying read intelligently, approach it with a plan, so the New Testament a
00:12:03.180
couple times, look at all the places the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, concentrate
00:12:07.200
on getting Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Isaiah down, and then read through the whole thing,
00:12:12.020
and you're going to be, you're going to find yourself in all kinds of trouble at your church.
00:12:46.700
lay it out on the table. Then what you do is you lay the New Testament over top of it. And every
00:12:52.980
time the New Testament tells you this is talking about that, drive a nail. Just drive a nail and
00:12:59.540
say, okay, this verse is the New Testament tells me what this is talking about. And then you read
00:13:05.180
down a few verses and then there's another verse quoted, drive another nail there. And so you drive
00:13:10.660
nails everywhere the New Testament tells you this is what this is about. And when you do this with
00:13:16.040
Psalm 2. Psalm 2 is a great textbook case for doing this because all kinds of things fall out.
00:13:23.980
All kinds of things are revealed about the meaning of Psalm 2 in its entirety. Because I know the
00:13:30.040
New Testament tells me what verses 1 and 2 are talking about. The New Testament tells me what
00:13:33.940
a few verses down are talking about, what verse 7 is talking about, what verse 9 is talking about.
00:13:37.900
And I've driven nails there. And the conclusion of what the rest of the psalm is talking about
00:13:43.620
is now inescapable you can't get away from it so let's uh let's uh do work through this is in a
00:13:52.400
workshop sort of way so in the second psalm we have a wonderful prophecy of the reign of messiah
00:14:00.340
the prince a wonderful prophecy of the reign of messiah the prince now there's another thing that
00:14:07.680
And this is something you'll discover if you conduct this operation with Psalm 8.
00:14:13.440
But I'm going to fill you in because it helps you understand this.
00:14:19.720
There's never been a moment in human history where God was not exhaustively sovereign over the number of hairs on your head,
00:14:26.840
what sparrows are doing when they fall to the ground, when a cat catches one.
00:14:32.200
A sparrow doesn't fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father.
00:14:39.140
But in the Old Testament, the cosmology is this.
00:14:42.840
God as sovereign, mediatorial princes, celestial beings, angels, powers, then man.
0.52
00:15:00.460
So it's God as sovereign, mediatorial princes, many of them corrupt and evil and fallen.
00:15:05.000
and then man now and you see this in the old testament when daniel's praying
00:15:11.060
his prayer the answer to his prayer is delayed by like three weeks and then the angel shows up kind
00:15:17.780
of i imagine disheveled and he said i would have been here sooner but i got a got in a fight with
00:15:24.500
the prince of persia right so he was delayed by the prince of persia there was a battle there
00:15:30.720
And so you have celestial forces behind Tyre and behind Ekron.
00:15:40.740
So Beelzebub is the god of Ekron, and he comes up later as Beelzebub in the New Testament.
0.79
00:15:47.580
So he's the demonic entity behind the Philistine city of Ekron.
00:15:52.600
So you have these, the Bible doesn't tell us that these spiritual entities are superstitions.
0.69
00:15:59.860
They are angelic forces, angelic beings who are fallen
00:16:10.520
God in his sovereignty, and then the mediatorial princes,
00:16:14.460
corrupt and many of them receiving worship as though they were gods,
0.88
00:16:20.780
In the New Testament, in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus,
00:16:30.160
That's what the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ accomplished.
00:16:33.680
It was a complete revolution of the way the world runs.
00:16:38.820
Now, God is sovereign at the top in the New Testament.
00:16:44.840
And then you have the mediatorial prince, just one, the Lord Jesus.
00:16:50.660
The mediatorial prince is now ruling all things.
00:16:57.400
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
00:17:02.200
Therefore, go disciple the nations, baptizing them, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded.
00:17:11.400
And then underneath Christ is man in Christ, man in Christ.
00:17:16.960
So God is sovereign, Christ, the prince, and then man in Christ.
00:18:01.160
So, this prophecy does not concern the reign of God and his sovereignty,
00:18:08.120
which is the necessary result of the creator's relationship with the world that he created.
00:18:13.840
But it's a reign that results from, God's sovereign reign is a reign that results from his sovereign decree.
00:18:23.860
And then in his sovereignty, he issues a command regarding his son, the Lord Jesus.
00:18:31.240
So he gives a sovereign decree, the mediatorial reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:18:36.620
In other words, God rules the world just as he always has,
00:18:40.760
but now he rules the world redemptively through Jesus Christ.
00:18:47.140
the the king and prince of this world has now got salvation for the world in mind
00:18:54.720
behold the lamb of god what does john the baptist say behold the lamb of god who takes away the sin
00:19:00.800
of the world in first john and he is a propitiation for our sins and not for our sins only but also
00:19:07.920
for the sins of the whole world right next to the most famous verse in the bible john 3 17 it says
00:19:14.300
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be, what?
00:19:22.060
Now, most evangelicals believe that God sent his Son into the world to condemn the world.
00:19:31.100
But God says, I didn't send my Son to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
00:19:38.120
All right, so, God rules the world just as he always has,
00:19:41.800
but now he rules it redemptively with the redemption of the human race in mind
00:19:46.620
and the putting back together of every mess restored in Jesus Christ.
00:19:56.700
and I trust that you're going to see this meaning just unfold naturally from the text.
00:20:06.800
Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?
00:20:11.800
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord
00:20:17.540
and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords
00:20:23.220
from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision.
00:20:30.220
Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set
00:20:35.720
my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art
00:20:42.040
my son. This day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine
00:20:47.640
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a
0.98
00:20:53.300
rod of iron. Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Be wise now, therefore, O you
0.98
00:20:59.120
kings. Be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
00:21:05.720
Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and he perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.
00:21:12.860
Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
00:21:18.820
So we are Christians, and this means, among other things,
00:21:22.260
that we should always seek to have the New Testament tell us, teach us, what the Old Testament is talking about.
00:21:29.360
We're Christians. We follow Christ. We follow Christ and his apostles.
00:21:35.200
And so consequently, our method for learning the meaning of this psalm
00:21:39.580
is to pay close attention to what the New Testament says about it.
00:21:44.060
The New Testament says a great deal about Psalm 2,
00:21:54.200
These New Testament references should be our anchor points,
00:21:57.680
or the places where I said you should drive the nail.
00:22:00.720
These New Testament references should be your anchor points,
00:22:03.480
and we're going to consider those anchor points first.
00:22:14.240
that the first two verses of the second psalm are a prophecy of the crucifixion.
00:22:23.500
that these words of Psalm 2, 1 and 2, are a prophecy of the crucifixion.
00:22:28.920
We also learn, incidentally, of the Davidic authorship of the psalm there,
00:22:33.480
the Old Testament doesn't say that David wrote it, but the New Testament does.
00:22:38.260
In addition, we see that the psalm, this psalm is the basis for saying
00:22:48.840
God used the wickedness of men to save the world.
00:22:53.120
God used the wickedness of men, the treachery of Judas, the cowardice of Pilate,
0.77
00:22:58.560
the, I don't know what was going on with Herod, the envy of the Jews, he took all those things,
0.98
00:23:06.960
Herod, Pontius Pilate, and all the Jews did, it says in Acts 4, they did what your purpose and will
0.85
00:23:13.140
determined beforehand to be done. Now that means, now when I was, before I was reformed,
0.99
00:23:20.720
this verse, Acts 4, was my undoing, because after I came to grips with what it was saying,
00:23:30.740
that God ordained every evil thing that has ever happened
00:23:48.580
it was prophesied a millennium before it happened
00:23:57.240
the murder of Christ was baked in. So why did the heathen rage? Well, we're told that this is all
00:24:03.580
about the crucifixion. So we drive one nail from Acts through Acts 4 into Psalm 2, 1 and 2. That's
00:24:10.600
a fixed point. Verses 1 and 2 are talking about the crucifixion. Now I'm going to jump to the next
00:24:17.000
anchor point and then we'll come back through and fill in the gaps. In Acts 13, 33, Acts 13, 33,
00:24:25.700
we learn that verse 7 of our psalm is a prophecy of the resurrection verse 7 is a prophecy of the
00:24:33.680
resurrection one and two of the crucifixion verse 7 of the resurrection and this is one of those
00:24:40.020
things that could trip you up because if you're not cross-checking if you're not looking at acts
00:24:44.420
13 when you read psalm you are my son today i've begotten you it's very easy for you to drift into
00:24:50.340
a theologically correct misunderstanding of the passage. We affirm that the Apostle John
00:25:00.620
uses the term monogamous for only begotten. Jesus, the second person in the Trinity,
00:25:06.320
is eternally begotten by the Father, eternally begotten in the intra-triune life. The Son
00:25:12.300
is eternally begotten, and Psalm 2, verse 7, is not talking about that. You are my Son,
00:25:19.300
today I've begotten you. Because the Arians, the early heretical followers of Arius, would say,
00:25:26.180
well, see, you are my son, today I've begotten you. Yesterday he wasn't the begotten son,
00:25:31.260
and today he is. There was a time when he was not the begotten son. See? Psalm 2, verse 7.
00:25:37.160
Well, no, I don't see, because Acts 13, 33 tells us this. It says, what God promised for them,
00:25:44.220
he fulfilled for us their children as it is written in the second psalm you have uh you are
00:25:51.220
my son today have begotten you so he is fulfilled for us their children by raising up jesus as it
00:25:58.340
says in the second psalm and then it quotes that verse you are my son today have begotten you is a
00:26:03.140
prophecy of the resurrection it is not talking about the eternal begetting of the son it is
00:26:07.940
talking about jesus as it says in colossians being the firstborn from among the dead
00:26:17.960
And then that verse, verse 7, is quoted in two other places as well,
00:26:24.120
In Hebrews 1.5, it shows that this passage shows the supremacy of Christ over the angels.
00:26:33.800
And then Hebrews 5.5 quotes it as describing Christ entering his office as high priest.
00:26:39.680
so when he comes when he rises from the dead he is fulfilling the prophecy of verse 7 he is
00:26:48.680
showing his supremacy over the angels hebrews 1 5 and he is entering into his office as high priest
00:26:55.760
at the point of the resurrection so you put all three of those verses together and we see that
00:27:01.700
in the resurrection christ is begotten from the dead the firstborn from the dead he enters into
00:27:08.040
his high priestly work and he begins interceding for you and for me and he is made higher than the
00:27:13.920
angels that is what verse seven is talking about so one and two jesus was crucified because the
00:27:22.160
kings of the earth were raging against him jesus is crucified then in verse seven he is raised from
00:27:29.020
the dead then in verse nine two verses later then there's the rod of iron the book of revelation
00:27:36.980
refers to verse 9 three times, and the usage there is very interesting. Revelation 19, 15, and 16
00:27:47.040
refers to Christ's rule over the nations with his wrath in view. All right, so Christ rules over the
00:27:54.460
nations with his wrath in view. Revelation 12, 5 refers simply to Christ's rule over the nations,
00:28:02.400
And then Revelation 2, 26 through 29, teaches us that Christ rules the nations through his saints.
00:28:10.800
God has made us kings and priests on the earth.
00:28:18.220
He does it, according to Revelation 2, through his saints.
00:28:22.900
In Genesis, where the promise is made that the seed of the woman is going to crush the head of the seed of the serpent,
00:28:32.500
that's the first messianic promise in the Bible in Genesis 3.15.
00:28:37.900
Then in Romans 16, the Apostle Paul says to the Roman Christians,
00:28:43.480
the God of peace will soon crush Satan beneath your feet.
00:28:48.420
Also, incidentally, Satan is never mentioned in Genesis.
00:28:53.440
We don't know from the Old Testament that it was Satan there in the garden.
00:28:59.440
Because in Revelation it says that ancient serpent, that dracos, that dragon, was cast down out of heaven.
00:29:06.220
And then in Romans 16 it says that it quotes Genesis 3.15 saying to the Roman Christians that the God of peace will soon crush Satan beneath your feet.
00:29:19.000
in other words you collectively the saints of god are the seed of the woman you are the seed of the
00:29:24.760
woman and you're going to crush and defeat the serpent and the woman is going to have her revenge
00:29:31.540
and it's going to be a full and complete revenge he does this through his saints so this is one of
00:29:38.660
the features of post-millennial uh thinking which is that the rule and reign of jesus christ
00:29:44.300
the kingdom of God, is extended out through the world through the faith of his people.
00:29:52.720
It says in 1 John, what is it that overcomes the world? Is it not our faith? What is it that
00:29:59.080
overcomes the world? Is it not our faith? So we are used by God to wield the rod of iron.
00:30:07.100
We are used by God to wield the rod of iron. So what are the implications of this?
00:30:14.300
this psalm has 12 verses. It's a short psalm. The psalm has 12 verses. We now know that verses 1
00:30:21.920
and 2 are about the crucifixion, that verse 7 is about the resurrection, and that verse 9
00:30:29.640
addresses the reign of Christ through his word through the church. Those are the anchor points,
00:30:36.240
crucifixion, resurrection, and the rule of Christ through the saints. What do we then
00:30:41.740
consequently learn from the rest of the psalm. You see what we're doing? You anchor those points,
00:30:47.640
and then you go back through and say, I wonder if these anchor points shed any light on the in-between
00:30:52.960
verses, the verses that are in between these anchor points. Yes, it does. Having established
00:31:00.120
the fixed points in the psalm, and they are fixed by authoritative commentary from the New Testament,
00:31:07.440
We are in a position to see what the rest of it means.
00:31:10.820
The language of verse 3 refers to the nation's resentment over the fact
00:31:15.800
that they had to plow underneath the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:31:19.520
They chafed at the idea of having to serve Christ.
00:31:23.300
And so the kings of the earth, they took counsel together.
0.99
00:31:34.020
And we are going to fix the problem the way we always have.
00:31:39.460
Now, this is another big topic, but let me just touch on it.
00:31:46.040
Jesus tells us that prophets frequently come to an unhappy end.
00:31:54.580
Prophets are a pain in the neck as long as they're alive.
00:31:58.840
And then, after they're dead and safely in the ground, we honor them.
00:32:04.020
okay and jesus says you build the tombs of the prophets you guys are the curators of the memorial
00:32:10.420
tombs of the prophets and if any one of those prophets came back you would be aghast right
00:32:17.840
we name things after uh dead and gone heroes and we name our our evangelical institutions
00:32:25.400
after men who could not get a job in those institutions today.
00:32:37.320
Could Tyndall get a job at Tyndall House Publishing?
00:32:51.040
but then when they're executed and safely put away,
00:32:54.400
then we the machinery goes into motion and we honor them i don't have any this is going to be
00:33:00.920
a little bit cynical on my part but i i don't have any problem believing that caiaphas who was
00:33:06.600
instrumental obviously in the railroading job of getting jesus killed would have been the person
00:33:13.900
10 years later who made the motion to build a memorial for the prophet who so lately walked
00:33:20.680
among us okay now jesus wrecked that plan by coming back from the dead
00:33:26.320
that was that was the most disruptive thing that god ever thought of doing
00:33:34.820
oh there's so many wonderful things um in the gospel of john when before lazarus is called out
00:33:43.700
of the tomb uh martha tells jesus i know she's a faithful jewish woman she knows about the
00:33:49.760
resurrection at the last day. He says, I know, I know he'll be raised at the last day.
00:33:55.600
And Jesus, and it's quite striking when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead,
00:34:00.420
there's a crowd of people there. And he, and Lazarus has been in the grave for four days
00:34:05.960
and he'd begun to decompose. And Jesus reaches underneath the history of the world, grabs,
00:34:12.800
what he's doing is he's giving us a proleptic prophecy of what's going to happen.
00:34:19.980
He doesn't really reach under the history of the world until his own resurrection,
00:34:24.040
because Lazarus was resuscitated and had to die again, right?
00:34:28.280
Jesus, when he rose again, that was Jesus grabbing something at the end of the world
00:34:32.780
and causing it to erupt in the middle of history.
00:34:37.520
And he gave a little harbinger of what he was going to do himself
00:34:45.500
Lazarus comes back after four days in the grave,
00:35:10.980
go off to consult with the people who eventually had Jesus killed.
00:35:17.220
The other thing is, well, sometimes the rabbit trail is the point,
00:35:25.340
I will simply say that when Jesus, in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man,
00:35:33.400
that's the only parable where somebody is named, where Lazarus has a proper name,
00:36:01.140
I think Jesus is doing some pointed political commentary there.
00:36:08.400
they have Moses and the prophets. If they don't listen to them, they won't believe if someone
00:36:13.620
comes back from the dead. So this rebellion is a moral issue. It's a hard-heartedness issue.
00:36:22.480
It's not a cognitive issue. So these rebels are staunchly against what God's going to do.
00:36:31.240
They don't like Jesus when he's alive, and then they kill him, and then what does God do? Then we
00:36:36.720
come to the laughter of God. I want you to consider two things about the laughter of God
00:36:43.240
here in Psalm 2. First, if the laughter of God can accomplish such great and terrible things,
00:36:50.780
what will his wrath be like? And secondly, who would have thought of this? Divine laughter,
00:36:58.620
when the sun was dark, the disciples scattered, our Lord in anguish, the Sanhedrin gloating,
00:37:05.440
Satan triumphant, Peter wretched, Judas in despair, and Mary in tears.
00:37:23.340
If the rulers of this age had known what they were doing,
00:37:25.980
they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
00:37:28.940
They did not know that they were pulling down the roof on their own heads.
00:37:34.280
And yet God will do what he intended to do through all of this.
00:37:39.620
Despite their pitiful little schemes, the Lord will establish his king in Zion.
00:37:48.920
So God looks at their puny efforts at stopping him, and he laughs at them.
00:38:33.220
God is declaring something in the resurrection.
00:38:36.320
Also, incidentally, going back to Joe's talk on apologetics,
00:38:41.440
we modern evangelicals think we need an apologetic argument to prove the resurrection.
00:38:53.580
Jesus comes back from the dead, and this is God's declaration that he is the Son of God.
00:38:59.600
All through Jesus' earthly ministry, he's telling demons to shut up about who he is.
00:39:04.380
Peter confesses that he doesn't want them spreading the word who he is.
00:39:10.200
I believe that Jesus was waiting for the declaration of God.
00:39:14.280
That when God makes his declaration, this is my son, I've raised him from the dead,
00:39:23.500
Now, if there is someone who is able to reach under all of history, including our portion of history,
00:39:30.060
reach to the end of the world and grab the resurrection
00:39:32.980
and cause the first fruits of that resurrection at the end of the world to erupt in the middle of history,
00:39:50.920
They killed him once, they can't kill him again.
00:39:54.220
And he exercises his rule of iron through his saints.
00:40:00.240
So, despite their pitiful little schemes, God is going to establish his son on his holy hill.
00:40:07.500
So, after the resurrection, after the resurrection, in verse 7,
00:40:12.820
God Almighty extends an invitation in Psalm 2 to his son, Jesus Christ.
00:40:25.260
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance,
0.93
00:40:42.420
Now you've entered into your high priestly work.
00:40:47.160
Jesus, ask me for whatever you want, and I will give you whatever you want.
0.88
00:40:57.880
Do you want Thailand? You've got Thailand.
0.79
00:41:01.140
And Jesus says, in effect, through his prophets, he wants them all.
00:41:06.440
There is no nation, there is no tribe that he purchased with his blood
00:41:11.000
that he's going to leave there and go home without them.
00:41:22.060
Why would Jesus go through all that, purchasing all the nations of men,
00:41:29.340
God invited him to, ask of me, whatever it is, you may have it.
00:41:36.720
And this is why in the Great Commission, all authority in heaven and on earth.
00:41:42.580
Now notice, it's not all authority in heaven, which you will recognize when you get there.
00:41:48.580
It's all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
00:42:02.760
Just going to preach the gospel is disobedience.
00:42:09.580
We go on the basis of Christ having all authority, absolutely all authority.
00:42:14.960
There is no authority on earth or in heaven that outranks the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:42:29.240
We ought to walk into every meeting where we're going to testify to something or witness to someone.
00:42:34.080
We should walk in, not as though we own the joint in our own name or on our own authority,
00:42:40.780
but we walk into these places as though we know somebody who owns this place.
00:42:46.740
So, after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, God extends the invitation.
00:43:10.300
Remember, the rod of iron extends over all of them.
00:43:18.100
What, therefore, is the responsibility of our Congress,
00:43:26.560
They must seek wisdom, and they must receive instruction.
00:43:45.200
well we believe in separation of church and state
00:43:56.620
at the time of the American War for Independence
00:43:59.260
had what, to moderns, would be bewildering contradictory laws.
00:44:21.240
You had to be an evangelical Protestant in order to be in the legislature,
00:44:26.620
Because they believed in the separation of church and state.
00:44:29.260
But did they believe in the separation of truth and state?
00:44:39.360
Do you really want to live in a country where we have successfully separated morality and state?
00:44:55.900
so you can't have morality that appears from nowhere that just sort of floats above our heads
00:45:02.040
and we all know that this is everybody recognizes that this is the true and right morality because
00:45:08.320
Immanuel Kant hung it from an invisible skyhook and we all recognize it no have you been paying
00:45:16.620
attention we have some people who believe that it's right and moral to dismember little children
00:45:22.340
in the womb. You have people who believe that it's right and moral to mutilate them in the name of
00:45:30.440
sexual equality. That is a radically divergent view of morality. That's not what we hold.
00:45:37.480
And what they're doing is consistent and based on the word of their God.
00:45:43.380
What we hold is based on the word of our God. But their God is an idol, and their God has been
00:45:53.280
rose from the dead, and he owns this place. That's what we're
00:45:57.400
talking about. So, the United States, this means
00:46:01.260
that the United States, on the basis of Psalm 2, has an explicit
00:46:10.020
And, to be historically accurate, this means that we have
00:46:13.400
an explicit duty to be a Christian nation again.
0.99
00:46:25.480
We have a deep responsibility as Americans to kiss the sun.
00:46:40.120
on the basis of Jesus asking for all the nations of men,
00:46:42.920
and the fact that God is going to rule the world through his son,
00:46:46.860
through his saints. On the basis of that, what should President Biden do? Kiss the son.
00:46:53.940
And that's not negotiable. That's not negotiable. So kiss the son, lest he be angry and he perish
00:47:02.000
in the way. So did the psalmist conclude his psalm by saying that every ruler, every last ruler,
00:47:09.120
should kiss the son except for the Americans due to their gross distortion of the history of the
00:47:14.200
First Amendment. I repeat, did the psalmist say that? No. No, he didn't. Now, there's two levels
0.51
00:47:24.080
here. One of them is, if the First Amendment really did say that, if the First Amendment said,
00:47:31.400
Psalm 2 doesn't apply here because we're Americans, and there's a separation between
00:47:35.500
every religious claim and the American civil arrangement, well, then we would say as Christians,
00:47:43.040
Well, that's too bad for the First Amendment, right?
0.87
00:47:49.340
But this argument from the First Amendment is a gross distortion of the First Amendment.
0.54
00:47:54.560
What they're doing is lying about the First Amendment, and they're taking a Christian statement and using it to festoon their idol with.
0.67
00:48:01.960
And many Christians, we don't know the history of the First Amendment.
0.76
00:48:07.080
And so we just say, oh, and then try and change the subject.
00:48:13.040
The First Amendment, what's the first word in the First Amendment?
00:48:19.620
The only entity on earth that can violate the First Amendment is Congress.
00:48:25.720
Congress shall make no law concerning the establishment of a religion
00:48:43.040
And Congress will make no law concerning the establishment.
00:48:49.060
Well, what about the establishment of religion?
00:48:52.060
The United States, at its founding, was a confederation of sovereign states.
00:49:00.360
And if you have 13 colonies, 13 states by this point after the war,
00:49:06.280
if one state decided on a particular bird to be their state bird,
00:49:11.380
Maryland did one thing and then Massachusetts picked a different bird
00:49:15.660
you are unlikely to have any wars resulting from that
00:49:19.520
if you have a state flower in Maryland and a state flower in Massachusetts
00:49:24.040
we're okay a state anthem and a state anthem we're okay
00:49:29.400
but if you establish the Anglican Church in Maryland and the Congregational Church in Massachusetts
00:49:34.880
now what well you're going to have a problem when you come to the federal level
00:49:40.080
The only thing that the founding fathers were saying is we do not want a church of the United States the same way there's a church of England or the church of Denmark.
00:49:49.500
We do not want an established state church at the federal level.
00:49:54.020
And when they made that determination, nine of the 13 colonies had official relationships with Christian denominations.
00:50:03.800
Connecticut didn't give up their tax support for the congregational church until the 1830s.
00:50:12.300
that state establishment of a particular denomination at the state level
00:50:20.740
I like the separation of church and state there.
00:50:32.500
So, the First Amendment does not separate truth and state.
00:50:37.220
it does not separate Jesus and state, it does not separate morality and state, it separates a
00:50:43.260
particular ecclesiastical government and the civil government. It separates those two, making them
00:50:49.380
distinct, but it doesn't prohibit them from talking to each other. And it certainly
00:50:54.220
doesn't prohibit the president and the Supreme Court and congressmen from kissing the sun.
00:51:00.900
it does not prohibit that so when the church hears the word of god rightly
00:51:07.020
the whole world is set to rights when the church hears the word of god rightly the whole world
00:51:13.280
the bone that is broken gets set properly the three great offices of christ are set before us
00:51:21.740
in this psalm he is the prophet we must hear the words of his instruction in verse 10 he is the
00:51:28.880
king established in Zion, verse 6, and he is the priest, verse 7, cross-reference Hebrews 5, 5.
00:51:36.280
He is the high priest who enters in to intercede for us. So we see that the Lord has already
00:51:43.280
received his inheritance. Jesus Christ has entered into his inheritance. The matter is settled.
00:51:50.880
The question is not being brought before the United Nations for consideration. They would say no.
00:51:55.540
it's too bad for them the reign of christ has been established already the nations who object
00:52:03.660
to this trouble the decrees of god about as much as dogs barking at the moon trouble the moon
00:52:09.300
so this is why jesus christ reigns redemptively throughout the entire earth this is what we're
00:52:16.980
proclaiming we are talking about practical boots on the ground theology comes at your fingertips
00:52:24.460
This eschatological faith puts iron in your blood.
00:52:28.100
It gives you confidence that, oh, God sent his son to save the world,
00:52:35.800
and he will be content with nothing less than a saved world.
00:52:40.420
So Christians are those who are called to believe what God has declared concerning this.
00:52:57.000
One of our names, we're Christians, but one of our other names is believers.
00:53:05.860
Jesus reigns from the river to the ends of the earth.
00:53:17.540
From the Thames to the Hudson, from the Nile to the Ganges,
00:53:21.160
from the Rhine to the Mississippi, from the Potomac to the Amazon,
00:53:30.280
and pure sacrifices will be offered up to him from every nation,
00:53:34.080
and the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
00:53:56.020
I am a crawl over broken glass post-millennialist.
00:54:09.580
He could have just blasted the world and sent everybody to hell.
00:54:13.620
But it says in Romans he wanted to be just and the one who justifies.
00:54:16.660
All right, he wants to be just and the one who justifies and the solution to that dilemma was the cross of jesus christ
00:54:27.660
He could have just winked at all our sin and then said everybody goes to heaven boys will be boys
00:54:35.240
The bible tells us that god wants to be just and the one who justifies
00:54:39.400
And so he has given to us unfolded for us unpacked for us the mystery of the cross
00:54:47.580
And this is the means by which we conquer the world.
00:54:52.240
And the thing that's astonishing about this is that he does it.
00:55:02.180
He offered his kingdom to Jesus if Jesus would just bow down and worship him.
00:55:07.040
And Jesus said no, not because he didn't want those kingdoms,
00:55:11.420
He wanted to bind the strong man and take his stuff
00:55:18.400
I'm going to bind the strong man and take all of his things
00:55:39.560
and his ways are not our ways he conquers through the death burial and resurrection of christ
00:55:49.860
who who thought of that well god the father in the eternal councils he's the one thought of that we
00:55:55.900
we never would have thought of that and then he says okay he comes back from the dead and he
00:56:01.900
appears to his disciples and i'll finish with this he appears to his disciples and they gather
00:56:07.140
together on the Mount, Mount of Olives, before he ascends into heaven. And he says, okay, boys,
00:56:15.500
you're going to conquer the world, right? And they look around, there's just a handful of them.
00:56:23.840
This is worse than the feeding of the 5,000, right?
0.98
00:56:28.500
Okay, it's just a group of ragtag fishermen. We're going to conquer the world.
0.99
00:56:54.400
and some of the disciples in the back row perhaps are going
00:57:04.060
and then wonderfully mercifully jesus oh go back to jerusalem and wait for the holy spirit
00:57:11.880
go back to jerusalem and wait and when the holy spirit is poured out there's going to be
00:57:18.100
no ignoring the church of God forever and ever.