Day 2
Read Psalm 2
I heard a missionary tell a story about showing the Jesus Film to a village in Central America. The Jesus Film was produced in the late 1970’s by Campus Crusade and was used to introduce the life of Jesus to people who had never heard of him. The movie depicts Jesus’ healings and compassion and ethical teachings and then his trial and crucifixion and the first Easter Sunday. The missionary described how the crowd that gathered to watch the movie were visibly upset at the point in the movie when Jesus was killed on the Roman cross. Execution seemed so unfair for a man who had done so much good? Why would anyone want to kill him?
I think we have similar thoughts. We read about Jesus’ miracles, his ethical teachings, and it seems silly that anyone would want to give him the death penalty (the cross was the most humiliating way the Roman Empire came up with to execute people). Jesus appears harmless. Most movies and artwork usually depict Jesus as a traveling entertainer who speaks in bizarre philosophical statements. What was everyone so mad about?
Psalm 2 begins “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?” (NIV) This Psalm became one of the early church's favorite Old Testament references to Jesus because it speaks of God’s Anointed one (Messiah). I think the nations rage and the kings of the earth conspire against Jesus (both in his time and ever since) because if the claims of Jesus are true then the nations and kings don’t actually have the power they believe they have. Jesus came claiming that there was a different kind of kingdom we could belong to in this world. He puts little value on the things the world cares most about (wealth, prestige, ambition, success, comfort, power). The ways of the world, which often boil down to the powerful exploiting the weak, are not the ways of Christ. The means of leadership in the world – force, coercion, deception (they lord it over you) – are not the means of a King who ultimately sacrificed his life and whose mission statement was “I have not come to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many.” The ways of Christ are not the ways of the world. And so the nations rage. Jesus’ way was so radical that even as they raged and beat him and crucified him, he looked at them and said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
The good news in this Psalm is found in verses 7 and 8. A king will come, the Lord’s Son, and the nations will become his heritage and the ends of the earth his possession. In other words, “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). The raging kingdoms won’t rage forever. And the kingdom of peace will spread to the ends of the earth. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
Prayer
Spend some time today listening to God. Ask Him to show you ways that your life might look more like the ways of the raging nations and kings instead of the ways of Christ. Listen to His answer. And then ask God what it would look like to follow Jesus in those areas of your life. Listen to His answer. I know silence is awkward for many people, but try it.
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