Doug Wilson defines postmillennialism as a literal earthly millennium ushered in by gospel preaching, contrasting it with premillennial and amillennial views. He details his "apostolic study Bible" method to show how New Testament writers view Christ as Israel's fulfillment, arguing the crucifixion and resurrection constitute a cosmological revolution where God rules through the church. Wilson interprets Psalm 2 as prophecy fulfilled by these events, asserting Christians must engage in public life to influence government rather than seeking separation. As a "yellow cake postmillennialist," he concludes that God will conquer the world through his people's faith, urging the church to await the Holy Spirit for the Great Commission. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Defining Millennial Positions00:03:57
It's always encouraging when you speak two times at a conference to have people show up for the second talk.
Thank you.
So let's pray.
Father, we give this time to you.
We ask you to watch over us.
I pray your Holy Spirit would be at work, teaching, encouraging, and instructing.
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
So I've tentatively titled this talk Psalm 2, The Postmill Key to Everything.
Psalm 2, the post mill key to everything.
But before getting to Psalm 2, the post mill key to everything, let us define us some terms.
The millennium is a thousand years of peace that Christians like to fight about.
It is, too.
Seriously, the three main positions have a prefix that tells you where they place, where advocates of that system place the second coming of Christ.
In reference to the millennium, 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, and so we named all the positions after that one term.
I would refer you to my commentary on Revelation when the man comes around, reminding you at the same time that Ambrose Pierce defined Revelation as a book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew.
The revealing is done by the commentators who know nothing.
And Chesterton once said that John saw many strange monsters in his vision, but none so strange as any one of his commentators.
So, with these exhortations in mind, let us tread carefully, recalling Bierce's definition of exhortation, which was to put the conscience of another upon the spit and roast it to a nut brown discomfort.
So, where was I?
So, premillennialists, here are the three main positions.
Premillennialists place the second coming of Christ prior to the millennium.
Pre millennial.
Christ comes before the millennium.
Ah, in amillennialism, the ah is a term of negation.
So, amillennialists say that the millennium is a spiritual reign with Christ in the heavenly places, and so the second coming has no reference to the millennium.
So, amillennial means the second coming happened.
All Orthodox Christians believe in a literal The bodily return of Christ at the end of human history to judge the quick and the dead.
We all believe that, but premillennialists say that that coming is right prior to the millennium and then he reigns on earth for a thousand years in person.
Amillennialists say the second coming comes at some point in history, we don't know when, but it's not in reference to any earthly millennium.
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.
So the postmillennialists and the premillennialists both believe that there will be a literal earthly millennium, but the premillennialists believe that the earthly millennium will be reigned over by Christ, the incarnate Christ, reigning over the earth.
Postmillennialists believe that Christ is going to reign during the millennium through his Holy Spirit, planting of churches.
The earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
So, Pre, ah, and post millennial.
Now, there are other terms I could define for you, but I'm not going to bog you down.
These will do in a rough and ready way.
The Postmill Key to Everything00:15:05
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.
And then I want to go to Psalm 2 to map out for you a sort of a textbook case of how this method works.
So, I would encourage you to get an old beater Bible, the Bible you don't mind marking up, and I would encourage you to make for yourself an apostolic study Bible.
An apostolic study Bible.
What do I mean?
Well, almost all Bibles have little footnotes or some notation in that middle column where they'll tell you in the New Testament if the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it'll be indented or set apart in some way, and then there'll be a little footnote that says this gives you the reference in the Old Testament where it's from.
Well, oddly, a lot of Bibles don't do it the other way.
So they'll tell you in the New Testament if this is a quotation from the Old Testament.
But they don't tell you in the Old Testament if this passage that you're reading is quoted somewhere in the New.
That's not set out or marked in any distinctive way.
So the making of an apostolic study Bible is where you undertake to fix that.
So years and years, decades ago now, and I don't know what possessed me to do this, but I went through the New Testament and I highlighted every Old Testament quotation that was found in the New Testament.
And then I highlighted the place where it told me where it was.
And I just, I wasn't reading, I was just highlighting.
I went through and highlighted them all.
And then I spent a couple of weeks looking up all those verses in the Old Testament and highlighting them there and then writing in the margin where in the New Testament that citation was found.
Okay?
So that, and when I was done, I had an apostolic study Bible.
Instead of going to an evangelical commentary where a believing evangelical who believes in inerrancy is arguing with some obscure German scholar about what this means.
Instead of that, I was reading along and, oh, Peter quotes this.
Oh, Paul quotes this.
Oh, Jesus quotes this.
And so what I could do is I would run into these, oh, this is quoted five times in the New Testament.
And then I could flip over and look at what the New Testament said these verses were talking about.
And I can tell you, I'm here to tell you that this was entirely disorienting.
Because the New Testament said crazy things, things I wouldn't have ever guessed.
Right, you're reading along and you're reading about Noah's flood, and you say, Ah, Peter tells me that this is talking about Christian baptism.
And then I'm reading also in Genesis, Oh, Hagar and Sarah, these women are two covenants, as Paul teaches in Galatians.
And you get started getting slapped around where you think, Oh, maybe the Bible is more mysterious than I thought.
Maybe there's more going on.
Maybe I should learn from Jesus and the apostles.
How to handle the Old Testament.
Now, it is very easy for us to assume, to just be reading along in the Old Testament, and to just assume that we know what it's talking about.
We're reading it like we're reading a newspaper article or something.
And there is that level, that historical meaning that is there.
You should read it that way, the grammatical historical method.
But then there are other things going on.
So you get to, when you were first converted, somebody told you, you heard a preacher say, you know that there are over 300 messianic prophecies of the coming Christ, and they were all fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.
And you've been a Christian for two months, and you think to yourself, yay, great faith builder.
This is wonderful.
And then you get around to reading the Old Testament for the first time, and you start having these wait a minute moments.
So Matthew says when Joseph and Mary and Jesus flee to Egypt, Matthew says, so that the word might be fulfilled, out of Egypt I called my son.
Well, if you've got your apostolic study Bible, you're reading along in Hosea, and Hosea 11, 1 says, when Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
And you think, wait a minute, this is talking about the Exodus.
Hosea is talking about the Exodus, and Matthew is talking about the Holy Family running down to, wait, wait, wait, wait.
And so that's the moment where you're.
Your faith gets a little rattled.
You think, oh, these 300 prophecies, maybe they're all like this.
Now, then you grow up into the third stage, which is a faith building stage again, because it occurs to you that this is the very first time in your life that you've ever read Hosea.
And you think that, you know, maybe Matthew had Hosea memorized, and maybe Matthew's up to something.
So, This was touched on, Joe in the previous talk touched on this, in Matthew chapter 4.
Jesus is baptized.
Well, was Israel baptized?
Yeah, Israel was baptized in the cloud and in the sea.
Jesus was baptized in the Jordan.
What happened to Israel when they were baptized into Moses?
Well, they go into the wilderness for 40 years.
What happened to Jesus when he was baptized by John the Baptist?
He goes into the wilderness for 40 days.
What happened to Israel when they were in the wilderness for 40 years?
They were repeatedly tested and fell.
What happened to Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days?
He was repeatedly tested and stood.
And you think, oh, and then what did Israel do at the end of the 40 years?
They invaded Canaan.
What did Jesus do at the end of the 40 days?
He invaded Canaan.
And you think, oh, and just two chapters earlier, Matthew said, out of Egypt I called my son.
And you think, oh, oh, oh.
Matthew is telling us, Christ is Israel.
Christ is the new Israel.
And here at last is Israel doing it right.
Israel finally quits screwing up.
All through the Old Testament, Israel veers off after idols.
They get into trouble.
The Midianites take over.
The Philistines take over.
They're oppressed.
They cry out to the Lord.
And the Lord delivers them, raises up a judge.
And you turn the page and they're worshiping idols again.
And then over and over and over again.
And then you come to the New Testament.
Here's Jesus.
Doing it right, and you think, okay, okay, there's an awful lot in the New Testament that is commentary on the Old Testament.
So, if you're a new Christian, I would say read the New Testament a couple three times, read it through, then mark it up, then look up all the verses in the Old Testament and mark them, and then start reading through the Old Testament.
You're also going to discover if you listen to any speaker, you'll oh, he likes C.S. Lewis a lot, he quotes him all the time, or he likes Chesterton, he quotes him all the time.
Well, you're going to find the same thing out about the New Testament writers.
What were their favorite books?
The ones they quote all the time.
And what are they?
Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Isaiah.
Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Isaiah.
So you're a new Christian, you're going to read the Old Testament, start with those books.
Read through those books.
And then read the whole thing.
You know, I'm not telling you to read part of the Bible and not the whole Bible, but I'm saying read intelligently, approach it with a plan.
So the New Testament a couple times, look at all the places the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, concentrate on getting Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Isaiah down, and then read through the whole thing.
And you're going to be.
You're going to find yourself in all kinds of trouble at your church.
But that's a separate credo.
Okay, now to Psalm 2.
Now to Psalm 2.
Now I want you to picture it this way take the whole Old Testament, or take, in this instance, just Psalm 2, and lay it out on the table like it's a parchment or a map or some kind of.
Text, lay it out on the table, then what you do is you lay the New Testament over top of it and every time the New Testament tells you this is talking about that, drive a nail.
Just drive a nail and say okay, this verse is.
The New Testament tells me what this is talking about.
And then you read down a few verses and then there's another verse quoted.
Drive another nail there then, and so you drive nails everywhere.
The New Testament tells you, this is what this is about.
And when you do this with psalm two psalm, psalm two is a great textbook case for doing this, because all kinds of things fall out.
All kinds of things are revealed about the meaning of Psalm 2 in its entirety because I know the New Testament tells me what verses 1 and 2 are talking about.
The New Testament tells me what a few verses down are talking about, what verse 7 is talking about, what verse 9 is talking about, and I've driven nails there and the conclusion of what the rest of the Psalm is talking about is now inescapable.
You can't get away from it.
So let's work through this in a workshop sort of way.
So in the second psalm, we have a wonderful prophecy of the reign of Messiah the prince.
A wonderful prophecy of the reign of Messiah the prince.
Now, there's another thing that you, this is something you'll discover if you conduct this operation with Psalm 8.
But I'm going to fill you in because it helps you understand this.
God is always sovereign.
There's never been a moment in human history where God was not exhaustively sovereign over the number of hairs on your head, what.
What sparrows are doing when they fall to the ground, when a cat catches one.
A sparrow doesn't fall to the ground apart from the will of the Father.
So God is always sovereign.
But in the Old Testament, the cosmology is this God as sovereign, mediatorial princes, celestial beings, angels, powers, then man.
Man in his minority.
Man is not yet 21.
He's not come into his trust inheritance.
So it's God is sovereign, mediatorial princes, many of them corrupt and evil and fallen, and then man.
Now, and you see this in the Old Testament.
When Daniel's praying, the answer to his prayer is delayed by like three weeks.
And then the angel shows up kind of, I imagine, disheveled.
He said, I would have been here sooner, but I got in a fight with the prince of Persia.
So he was delayed by the prince of Persia.
There was a battle there.
And so you have celestial forces behind Tyre and behind Ekron.
So Beelzebub is the god of Ekron, and he comes up later as Beelzebub in the New Testament.
So he's a demonic entity behind the Philistine city of Ekron.
So you have these, the Bible doesn't tell us that these spiritual entities are superstitions.
They are angelic forces, angelic beings.
Who are fallen and who are the power behind the throne.
Okay, now that's who's occupies the second tier, god and his sovereignty.
And then the mediatorial princes corrupt, and many of them receiving worship as as though they were gods.
And then Man in the New Testament, in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
What you have is a cosmological revolution.
That's what the incarnation was.
That's what the death, burial and resurrection of Christ accomplished.
It was a complete Revolution of the way the world runs.
Now, God is sovereign at the top in the New Testament.
God is sovereign as he always was.
And then you have the mediatorial prince, just one, the Lord Jesus.
The mediatorial prince is now ruling all things.
What does Jesus say in the Great Commission?
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore, go, disciple the nations, baptizing them, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded.
So Christ is the prince.
He's Messiah the prince now.
And then underneath Christ is man in Christ.
Man in Christ.
So God is sovereign, Christ the prince, and then man in Christ.
That's the cosmological revolution.
That's what was accomplished 2,000 years ago.
And that is why it is such a tragedy that evangelical believing Christians think that they have, we think that we should go out into the slums of the world and live as paupers there because this world is not our home.
We're just passing through.
That is false.
It's false.
How can you say this world is not our home when Jesus bought it with his blood?
He bought the nations of, and we're going to see this in Psalm 2.
He, well, we will if I get to it.
So, this prophecy does not concern the reign of God and his sovereignty, because God is always sovereign, which is the necessary result of the Creator's relationship with the world that he created.
But it's a reign that results from God's sovereign reign is a reign that results from his sovereign decree.
So God is sovereign, and that's the way it is.
And then in his sovereignty, he issues a command regarding his son, the Lord Jesus.
So he gives a sovereign decree, the mediatorial reign of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In other words, God rules the world just as he always has, but now he rules the world redemptively through Jesus Christ.
The king and prince of this world has now got salvation for the world in mind.
Behold the Lamb of God.
What does John the Baptist say?
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
In 1 John.
God's Sovereign Decree for Christ00:08:10
And he is a propitiation for our sins.
And not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
Right next to the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3 17, it says, For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be what?
Saved.
Now, most evangelicals believe that God sent his son into the world to condemn the world.
But God says, I didn't send my son to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
That's postmillennialism.
All right, so God rules the world just as he always has, but now he rules it redemptively with the redemption of the human race in mind and the putting back together of every mess restored in Jesus Christ.
Now, let's jump into the psalm and see, and I trust that you're going to see this meaning just unfold naturally from the text.
Let me read the whole thing, the whole psalm.
Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us.
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh.
The Lord shall have them in derision.
Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure.
Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
I will declare the decree.
The Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my son.
This day have I begotten thee.
Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron, thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
Be wise now, therefore, O you kings, be instructed, ye judges of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
The Word of the Lord.
So we are Christians, and this means, among other things, that we should always seek to have the New Testament tell us, teach us, what the Old Testament is talking about.
We're Christians.
We follow Christ.
We follow Christ and his apostles.
What is the Old Testament talking about?
And so, consequently, our method for learning the meaning of this psalm is to pay close attention to what the New Testament says about it.
The New Testament says a great deal about Psalm 2, and we should tuck that away.
We should remember these things, like Mary.
We should treasure them up in our hearts.
These New Testament references should be our anchor points or the places where I said you should drive the nail.
These New Testament references should be your anchor points, and we're going to consider those anchor points first.
Why do the heathen rage?
We are told in Acts 4, verses 24 through 28, that the first two verses of the second psalm are a prophecy of the crucifixion.
We are told in Acts 4, 24 through 28, that these words of Psalm 2, 1 and 2, are a prophecy of the crucifixion.
We also learn, incidentally, of the Davidic authorship of the psalm there.
The Old Testament doesn't say that David wrote it, but the New Testament does.
In addition, we see that the psalm, this psalm, is the basis for saying that the murder of Christ was predestined.
The murder of Christ was predestined.
God used the wickedness of men to save the world.
God used the wickedness of men, the treachery of Judas, the cowardice of Pilate, the envy of the Jews.
He took all those things.
Herod took Pontius Pilate and all the Jews did, it says in Acts 4, they did what your purpose and will determined beforehand to be done.
Now that means, now when I was, before I was reformed, this verse, Acts 4, was my undoing because after I came to grips with what it was saying, I didn't believe, I didn't have to believe yet that God ordained every evil thing that has ever happened, but I now knew that He knew how to do it without ceasing to be holy.
All right, so He predestined the most grotesque murder. that ever happened in the history of the world.
God predetermined it.
It was prophesied a millennium before it happened.
And the treachery price was settled centuries before it happened.
The murder of Christ was baked in.
So why did the heathen rage?
Well, we're told that this is all about the crucifixion.
So we drive one nail from Acts through Acts 4 into Psalm 2, 1 and 2.
That's a fixed point.
Verses 1 and 2 are talking about the crucifixion.
Now, I'm going to jump to the next anchor point, and then we'll come back through and fill in the gaps.
In Acts 13 33, we learn that verse 7 of our psalm is a prophecy of the resurrection.
Verse 7 is a prophecy of the resurrection.
1 and 2 of the crucifixion, verse 7 of the resurrection.
And this is one of those things that could trip you up because if you're not cross checking, if you're not looking at Acts 13 when you read psalm, you are my son today, I've begotten you.
It's very easy for you to drift into a theologically correct misunderstanding of the passage.
We affirm that God the Father, the Apostle John, uses the term monogonese for only begotten.
Jesus, the second person in the Trinity, is eternally begotten by the Father, eternally begotten in the intra triune life.
The Son is eternally begotten.
And Psalm 2, verse 7 is not talking about that.
You are my Son, today I've begotten you.
Because the Arians.
The early heretical followers of Arius would say, Well, see, you are my son, today I've begotten you.
Yesterday he wasn't the begotten son, and today he is.
There was a time when he was not the begotten son.
See?
Psalm 2, verse 7.
Well, no, I don't see, because Acts 13, verse 7 tells us this.
It says, What God promised for them, he fulfilled for us, their children, as it is written in the second psalm, You are my son, today I've begotten you.
So, He is fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus, as it says in the second psalm.
And then it quotes that verse.
You are my son, today I've begotten you, is a prophecy of the resurrection.
It is not talking about the eternal begetting of the son.
It is talking about Jesus, as it says in Colossians, being the firstborn from among the dead.
You are my son, today I've begotten you.
It's a prophecy of the resurrection.
And then that verse, verse 7, is quoted in two other places as well in ways that harmonize.
In Hebrews 1 5, it shows us that this passage shows the supremacy of Christ over the angels.
And then Hebrews 5 5 quotes it as describing Christ entering his office as high priest.
So when he rises from the dead, he is fulfilling the prophecy of verse 7.
He is showing his supremacy over the angels, Hebrews 1 5, and he is entering into his office as high priest.
At the point of the resurrection.
So you put all three of those verses together, and we see that in the resurrection, Christ is begotten from the dead, the firstborn from the dead.
He enters into his high priestly work and he begins interceding for you and for me, and he is made higher than the angels.
Crushing the Serpent at Resurrection00:02:45
That is what verse 7 is talking about.
So, 1 and 2, Jesus was crucified because the kings of the earth were raging against him.
Jesus is crucified.
Then, in verse 7, he is raised from the dead.
Then, in verse 9, two verses later, there's the rod of iron.
The book of Revelation.
Refers to verse 9 three times.
And the usage there is very interesting.
Revelation 19, 15, and 16 refers to Christ's rule over the nations with his wrath in view.
All right, so Christ rules over the nations with his wrath in view.
Revelation 12, 5 refers simply to Christ's rule over the nations.
And then Revelation 2, 26 through 29, teaches us that Christ rules the nations through his saints.
God has made us kings and priests on the earth.
So, how does Christ wield the rod of iron?
He does it, according to Revelation 2, through his saints.
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, that's the first messianic promise in the Bible in Genesis 3 15.
Then in Romans 16, the Apostle Paul says to the Roman Christians, the God of peace. will soon crush Satan beneath your feet.
Also, incidentally, Satan is never mentioned in Genesis.
It's just the serpent.
We don't know from the Old Testament that it was Satan there in the garden.
We do know it from the New Testament because in Revelation it says that ancient serpent, that dracos, that dragon, was cast down out of heaven.
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.
In other words, you, collectively, the saints of God, are the seed of the woman.
You are the seed of the woman, and you're going to crush and defeat the serpent.
And the woman is going to have her revenge.
And it's going to be a full and complete revenge.
He does this through his saints.
So this is one of the features of postmillennial thinking, which is that the rule and reign of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God, is extended out through the world through the faith of his people.
It says in 1 John, What is it that overcomes the world?
Is it not our faith?
What is it that overcomes the world?
Defeating Evil Through Saints00:13:12
Is it not our faith?
So we are used by God to wield the rod of iron.
We are used by God to wield the rod of iron.
So, what are the implications of this?
This psalm has 12 verses.
It's a short psalm.
The psalm has 12 verses.
We now know that verses 1 and 2 are about the crucifixion.
That verse 7 is about the resurrection, and that verse 9 addresses the reign of Christ through his word through the church.
Those are the anchor points crucifixion, resurrection, and the rule of Christ through the saints.
What do we then consequently learn from the rest of the psalm?
You see what we're doing?
You anchor those points, and then you go back through and say, I wonder if these anchor points shed any light on the in between verses, the verses that are in between these anchor points.
Yes, it does.
Having established the fixed points in the Psalm, and they are fixed by authoritative commentary from the New Testament, we are in a position to see what the rest of it means.
The language of verse 3 refers to the nation's resentment over the fact that they had to plow underneath the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ.
They chafed at the idea of having to serve Christ.
And so the kings of the earth, they took counsel together we are going to kill him.
We are going to deal with Jesus.
He has become a problem.
And we are going to fix the problem the way we always have.
Now, this is another big topic, but let me just touch on it.
Jesus tells us that prophets frequently come to an unhappy end.
Prophets are a pain in the neck as long as they're alive.
And then, after they're dead and safely in the ground, We honor them.
Okay?
And Jesus says, You build the tombs of the prophets.
You guys are the curators of the memorial tombs of the prophets.
And if any one of those prophets came back, you would be aghast.
We name things after dead and gone heroes.
And we name our evangelical institutions after men who could not get a job in those institutions today.
Could Calvin get a job at Calvin University?
No.
No.
Could Tyndall get a job at Tyndall House Publishing?
No.
And we can just go down the roster.
What we do is we decorate, we decorate, we decorate.
The live prophet is a pain in the neck, but then when they're executed and safely put away, then the machinery goes into motion and we honor them.
I don't have any, this is going to be a little bit cynical on my part, but I don't have any problem believing that Caiaphas, who was instrumental, obviously, in the railroading job of getting Jesus killed would have been the person 10 years later who made the motion to build a memorial for the prophet who so lately walked among us.
Okay?
Now, Jesus wrecked that plan by coming back from the dead.
That was the most disruptive thing that God ever thought of doing.
Oh, there's so many wonderful things.
In the Gospel of John, before Lazarus is called out of the tomb, Martha tells Jesus, I know she's a faithful Jewish woman.
She knows about the resurrection at the last day.
She says, I know he'll be raised at the last day.
And Jesus, it's quite striking.
When Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, there's a crowd of people there.
And Lazarus has been in the grave for four days, and he had begun to decompose.
And Jesus reaches underneath the history of the world.
grabs what he's doing is he's giving us a proleptic prophecy of what's going to happen.
He doesn't really reach under the history of the world until his own resurrection because Lazarus was resuscitated and had to die again, right?
Jesus, when he rose again, that was Jesus grabbing something at the end of the world and causing it to erupt in the middle of history.
That's what happened there.
And he gave a little harbinger of what he was going to do himself by bringing Lazarus back from the dead.
So he does that.
Lazarus comes back after four days in the grave, hopping out in his grave clothes, and they unwrap him and say, Are you hungry?
But there's a crowd of people there, and that miracle didn't convince all of them.
What?
Jesus did that and didn't persuade everybody.
Some of them, not persuaded, go off to consult with the people who eventually had Jesus killed.
The other thing is well, sometimes the rabbit trail is the point, but sometimes rabbit trails.
Lead you astray.
I will simply say that when Jesus, in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, that's the only parable where somebody is named, where Lazarus has a proper name, and the rich man is dressed in fine regalia, and they are the colors of the high priest.
Colors of the high priest.
And the rich man in Hades says, I have five brothers.
Go tell them.
And Caiaphas famously had five brothers.
I think Jesus is doing some pointed political commentary there, right?
Because he concludes that parable by saying they have Moses and the prophets.
If they don't listen to them, they won't believe if someone comes back from the dead.
So this rebellion is a moral issue, it's a hard heartedness issue, it's not a cognitive issue.
So.
These rebels are staunchly against what God's going to do.
They don't like Jesus when he's alive, and then they kill him, and then what does God do?
Then we come to the laughter of God.
I want you to consider two things about the laughter of God here in Psalm 2.
First, if the laughter of God can accomplish such great and terrible things, what will his wrath be like?
And secondly, who would have thought of this?
Divine laughter when the sun was dark, the disciples scattered, our Lord in anguish, the Sanhedrin gloating, Satan triumphant, Peter wretched, Judas in despair, and Mary in tears.
And yet God laughs.
The plan is unfolding perfectly.
The plan is on track.
The devil took the bait.
If the rulers of this age had known what they were doing, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
They did not know that they were pulling down the roof on their own heads.
They didn't know that.
And yet, God will do what he intended to do through all of this.
Despite their pitiful little schemes, the Lord will establish his king in Zion.
That's verse 6.
However little they like it.
That's verse 5.
So God looks at their puny efforts at stopping him, and he laughs at them.
He holds them in derision.
And then he says, Now watch this.
I'm going to establish my son.
Now after the crucifixion and after the resurrection, so the resurrection remembers in verse 7, after the crucifixion and then after God laughs and holds them in derision, and then he issues the decree and Jesus comes from the grave, what does it say in Romans 1-4?
It says that Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.
That's God's declaration.
God is declaring something in the resurrection.
Also, incidentally, going back to Joe's talk on apologetics, we modern evangelicals think we need an apologetic argument to prove the resurrection.
In the Bible, the resurrection is the proof.
That's the proof.
We don't need to prove the proof.
Jesus comes back from the dead, and this is God's declaration that he is the Son of God.
All through Jesus' earthly ministry, he's telling demons to shut up about who he is.
Peter confesses that he doesn't want them spreading the word who he is.
I believe that Jesus was waiting for the declaration of God.
That when God makes his declaration, this is my son, I've raised him from the dead, now he wants us to go and tell everyone.
Now, if there is someone who is able to reach under all of history, including our portion of history, reach to the end of the world and grab the resurrection and cause the first fruits of that resurrection at the end of the world to erupt in the middle of history, what can we say about that man?
We can say that he owns this place.
He can't be touched.
Death no longer has dominion over him.
They killed him once.
They can't kill him again.
And he exercises his rule of iron through his saints.
So despite their pitiful little schemes, God is going to establish his son on his holy hill.
So after the resurrection, after the resurrection in verse 7, God Almighty extends an invitation in Psalm 2 to his son, Jesus Christ.
He invites him to just ask.
Verse 8.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
You've done this.
You died on the cross.
You've been in the grave three days.
I've raised you from the dead.
I've declared you to be with power.
I've declared you to be the Son of God.
Now you've entered into your high priestly work.
You've entered into your triumph.
Jesus, ask me for whatever you want, and I will give you whatever you want.
You want China?
You've got China.
Do you want America?
You've got America.
Do you want Canada?
You've got Canada.
Do you want Thailand?
You've got Thailand.
Do you want Taiwan?
And Jesus says, in effect, through his prophets, he wants them all.
There is no nation, there is no tribe that he purchased with his blood that he's going to leave there and go home without them.
That's not going to happen.
And so this is, God says, ask of me, just ask.
Why would Jesus go through all that, purchasing all the nations of men, and then not claim what he purchased?
God invited him to ask of me, whatever it is, you may have it.
Jesus claimed it all.
And this is why in the Great Commission, all authority in heaven and on earth.
Now notice, it's not all authority in heaven, which you will recognize when you get there.
It's all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Therefore go, disciple the nations.
It's not enough to go.
It's not enough to witness to people.
We have to therefore go.
Just going to preach the gospel is disobedience.
We have to therefore go.
And what do we go on the basis of?
We go on the basis of Christ having all authority, absolutely all authority.
There is no authority on earth or in heaven that outranks the Lord Jesus Christ.
None.
And so consequently, we ought to act like it.
We ought to walk into the public square.
We ought to walk into every meeting where we're going to testify to something or witness to someone.
We should walk in, not as though we own the joint.
In our own name or on our own authority.
But we walk into these places as though we know somebody who owns this place.
So after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, God extends the invitation, ask of me.
So what belongs to Jesus Christ now?
What nation is not his present possession?
His present possession.
None.
Can you find one?
Is there one that he didn't want?
Did he refuse to ask for one?
Remember, the rod of iron extends over all of them.
Psalm 2 and the Christian Nation00:07:57
That's verse 9 again.
So, what do we do?
What, therefore, is the responsibility of our Congress, our Supreme Court, and our President?
They must seek wisdom and they must receive instruction.
They must seek wisdom and they must receive instruction.
Now, people say, and it's amazing that we fall for these tired arguments, well, we believe in separation of church and state.
Well, yeah, so do I. Christians invented that.
Separation of governments, a bunch of colonies at the time of the American War for Independence had what to moderns would be bewildering contradictory laws.
You could not, in a number of colonies, be a member of the legislature if you were an ordained Christian minister.
And you had to be an evangelical Protestant.
What?
You had to be an evangelical Protestant in order to be in the legislature, and you couldn't be a minister.
Why?
Because they believed in the separation of church and state.
But did they believe in the separation of truth and state?
Or the separation of morality and state?
Or the separation of ethics and state?
Do you really want to live in a country where we have successfully separated morality and state?
But morality is based on Faith.
It's based on revelation.
It's based on the word of the living God.
So you can't have morality that appears from nowhere, that just sort of floats above our heads, and we all know that this is, everybody recognizes that this is the true and right morality because Immanuel Kant hung it from an invisible skyhook, and we all recognize it.
No, have you been paying attention?
We have some people who believe that it's right and moral.
to dismember little children in the womb.
You have people who believe that it's right and moral to mutilate them in the name of sexual equality.
That is a radically divergent view of morality.
That's not what we hold.
And what they're doing is consistent and based on the word of their God.
What we hold is based on the word of our God.
But their God is an idol.
And their God has been toppled.
Their God has been defeated.
Our God rose from the dead.
And he owns this place.
That's what we're talking about.
So the United States, this means that the United States, on the basis of Psalm 2, has an explicit duty to be a Christian nation.
And to be historically accurate, this means that we have an explicit duty to be a Christian nation again.
We need to return to that.
That is what we once were, and we have a solemn duty to return to him.
We have a deep responsibility as Americans.
To kiss the sun.
That's what's what, what should you, rulers of the earth, do?
Therefore, at the end of Psalm 2, on the basis of the crucifixion, the basis of the resurrection, and the basis of Jesus asking for all the nations of men, and the fact that God is going to rule the world through his Son, through his saints, on the basis of that, what should President Biden do?
Kiss the Son.
And that's not negotiable.
That's not negotiable.
So, kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way.
So, did the psalmist conclude his Psalm by saying that every ruler every last ruler should kiss the sun except for the Americans due to their gross distortion of the history of the First Amendment.
I repeat, did the psalmist say that?
No.
No, he didn't.
Now, there's two levels here.
One of them is if the First Amendment really did say that, if the First Amendment said, Psalm 2 doesn't apply here because we're Americans and there's a separation between every religious claim and the American civil arrangement.
Well, then we would say as Christians, well, that's too bad for the First Amendment.
The First Amendment is part of your idol.
But this argument from the First Amendment is a gross distortion of the First Amendment.
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.
And many Christians, we don't know the history of the First Amendment.
We don't know what's going on there.
And so we just say, oh, and then try and change the subject.
The First Amendment, what's the first word in the First Amendment?
Congress.
The only entity on earth that can violate the First Amendment is Congress.
Congress shall make no law concerning the establishment of a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
What are they currently doing?
Prohibiting the free exercise thereof, right?
It says not to do that.
And.
Congress will make no law concerning the establishment.
Well, what about the establishment of religion?
The United States at its founding was a confederation of sovereign states.
And we created a federal government.
And if you have all, you had 13 colonies, 13 states by this point after the war.
If one state decided on a particular bird to be their state bird, Maryland did one thing, and then Massachusetts picked a different bird, you are unlikely to have any wars resulting from that.
If you have a state flower in Maryland and a state flower in Massachusetts, we're okay.
A state anthem and a state anthem, we're okay.
But if you establish the Anglican Church in Maryland and the Congregational Church in Massachusetts, now what?
Well, you're going to have a problem when you come to the federal level.
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.
We do not want an established state church at the federal level.
And when they made that determination, nine of the 13 colonies had official relationships with Christian denominations.
Connecticut didn't give up their tax support for the Congregational Church until the 1830s.
Now, I happen to think, I happen to believe, that state establishment of a particular denomination at the state level is not a good idea either.
I don't think it's a good idea.
I like the separation of church and state there, but it's not an unconstitutional idea.
Because when they adopted the Constitution, they were doing it right that minute, right then.
So, the First Amendment does not separate truth and state.
It does not separate Jesus and state.
It does not separate morality and state.
It separates a particular ecclesiastical government and the civil government.
It separates those two, making them distinct, but it doesn't prohibit them from talking to each other.
And it certainly doesn't prohibit the President and the Supreme Court and Congressmen from kissing the sun.
It does not prohibit that.
So when the church hears the word of God rightly, the whole world is set to rights.
Justice and Justification Established00:03:49
When the church hears the word of God rightly, the whole world, the bone that is broken gets set properly.
The three great offices of Christ are set before us in this psalm.
He is the prophet.
We must hear the words of his instruction in verse 10.
He is the king established in Zion, verse 6.
And he is the priest, verse 7, cross-reference Hebrews 5.5.
He is the high priest who enters in to intercede for us.
So we see that the Lord has already received his inheritance.
Jesus Christ has entered into his inheritance.
The matter is settled.
The question is not being brought before the United Nations for consideration.
They would say no.
It's too bad for them.
The reign of Christ has been established already.
The nations who object to this trouble the decrees of God about as much as dogs barking at the moon trouble the moon.
So this is why Jesus Christ reigns redemptively throughout the entire earth.
This is what we're proclaiming.
We are talking about practical, boots on the ground, theology comes at your fingertips.
This eschatological faith puts iron in your blood.
It gives you confidence that, oh, God sent his son to save the world, and he will be content with nothing less than a saved world.
So, Christians are those who are called to believe what God has declared concerning this.
The one who trusts His word is always blessed.
God has spoken on this glorious subject.
Are we blessed in hearing it?
Do we believe Him?
One of our names, we're Christians, but one of our other names is believers.
Shouldn't believers believe?
Jesus reigns from the river to the ends of the earth.
Which river?
Well, it doesn't really matter, does it?
From the Thames to the Hudson, from the Nile to the Ganges, from the Rhine to the Mississippi, from the Potomac to the Amazon, the name of the Lord will be praised, and pure sacrifices will be offered up to him from every nation, and the earth will be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
So, am I a postmillennialist?
Yeah.
Let's go further.
I'm a yellow cake postmillennialist.
I am a black coffee postmillennialist.
I am a crawl over broken glass postmillennialist.
And I am a black coffee postmillennialist.
All of those.
Why?
God is good.
God is good all the time.
He could have just blasted the world and sent everybody to hell.
But it says in Romans, he wanted to be just and the one who justifies.
All right, he wants to be just and the one who justifies, and the solution to that dilemma was the cross of Jesus Christ.
God could have been just and blasted us all, but then no salvation.
He could have just winked at all our sin and then said, everybody goes to heaven, boys will be boys.
But then he ceases to be just.
The Bible tells us that God wants to be just and the one who justifies.
And so he has given to us, unfolded for us, unpacked for us the mystery of the cross, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus.
And this is the means by which we conquer the world.
And the thing that's astonishing about this is that he does this.
He tricks the devil.
The devil didn't know what he was doing.
Conquering the World by Faith00:02:29
He was destroying his own kingdom.
He offered his kingdom to Jesus if Jesus would just bow down and worship him.
And Jesus said no, not because he didn't want those kingdoms, but because he didn't want them that way.
He wanted to bind the strong man and take his stuff.
That's what he says in Luke.
I'm going to bind the strong man and take all of his things.
And so, what we do, what we are to reflect on, what we are to think about, is that we are privileged to stand in the spot.
Where God is extending his kingdom through pitiful beings like us.
And his ways are not our ways.
He conquers through the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
Who thought of that?
Well, God the Father in the eternal councils, he's the one who thought of that.
We never would have thought of that.
And then he says, okay, he comes back from the dead and he appears to his disciples.
And I'll finish with this.
He appears to his disciples and they gather together.
On the Mount, Mount of Olives, before he ascends into heaven.
And he says, Okay, boys, you're going to conquer the world, right?
And they look around, there's a handful of them.
This is worse than the feeding of the 5,000, right?
Okay, it's just a group of ragtag fishermen.
We're going to conquer the world.
And someone says, Are we going to have any weapons?
Are we going to have any?
What are you going to give us?
What will we use to conquer the world?
He says, in effect, word and water, bread and wine.
That's the plan on three.
And some of the disciples in the back row perhaps are going, ah, ah.
And then wonderfully, mercifully, Jesus says, oh, go back to Jerusalem and wait for the Holy Spirit.
Go back to Jerusalem and wait.
And when the Holy Spirit is poured out, there's going to be no ignoring the church of God forever and ever.
Our Father and gracious God, we thank you for your goodness to us, and we thank you for this wonderful gospel.