“Look at how the power brokers of the world Rise up to hold their summit, Scheming and conferring together Against God and his Anointed King…” (Psalm 2:2 TPT)
We who live in countries where there is relative safety, security and comfort too often forget that many fellow-believers worldwide know very little of these things. Just go to any website concerning the persecuted church and maybe you will be surprised by just how widespread persecution is and just what fellow believers in many nations have to live with daily.
The words of this psalm come to life in the context of the persecution that is happening worldwide. Believe it or not there are whole nations, political groups, ideologies, religions who are totally anti-God, anti-God’s people, and who are using every resource available to them to destroy any thing/any people that proclaim by life or word the truth that “our God reigns”.
Speaking of the Christians in the USSR prior to its dissolution formally enacted on December 26, 1991, author Nik Ripken writes, “Pastors and church lay leaders were arrested and imprisoned. Their wives were pressured to divorce them; children were discouraged from writing to their imprisoned fathers. The sons and daughters of known believers would be kept after school to be questioned and badgered by a panel of teachers who denigrated the family’s faith. Sometimes children were called up in front of school-wide assemblies and publicly ridiculed by both school officials and classmates for their family’s ‘backward, traitorous and anti-communist beliefs’…The strategy of the government was clear: it would do anything to keep faith in Jesus from continuing beyond the current generation.” (see references # 34) And similar things are still happening today in various nations around the world by various governments and organizations.
Sounds a lot like what Psalm 2 is talking about. “Rebellion…foolish plots…scheming and conferring…against God and his Anointed King: saying; ‘Let’s…break away from the Creator…let’s caste off these controlling chains of God and his Christ!’” (Psalm 2:1-3 TPT)
The wonderful thing is that the last word will not be spoken by those who seek to destroy God and his people because it has already been spoken by God himself. Wilcock commenting on verses 4-6 says,
“Few of those who reject God think much about him; none, I dare say, ever thinks of his actually ridiculing them! And while a God who derides, scoffs, rebukes, and terrifies is disconcerting enough, even worse is one who speaks as this one does in verse 6. The ‘I’ is emphatic, and the tone must be one of cold anger. ‘You may conspire and rebel, but I, you see, have already decided who shall finally rule in your world. I have spoken, and there’s an end of it’.” (see references # 5)
No matter what is happening in the world around us, we have hope, knowing the end of the story, because the Lord of all the earth has spoken, “I have installed my King”, and that King is Jesus.
May we pray for those suffering for their faith and ourselves in the words of Paul’s prayer, that “God will fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” (Colossians 1:9-20)
Tehilim (Psalms) - "songs of praise". 