The Useless Rage of the Potentates Text: Psalm 2:1-3
Introduction: The Unavoidable Question
The second Psalm begins with a question that echoes down through all of human history. It is a question that is as relevant in the halls of the United Nations as it was in the courts of ancient Babylon or the Sanhedrin that condemned our Lord. It is the fundamental question of political science, of history, of culture. And the question is this: Why do the nations rage? Why do the rulers of the earth imagine they can successfully conspire against high heaven? This is not a question born of confusion, as though the psalmist is genuinely perplexed. Rather, it is a question born of theological astonishment. It is a rhetorical question that highlights the sheer absurdity, the spiritual insanity, of fallen man's central political project, which is rebellion against God.
We live in a time of great political tumult. We see nations in an uproar, rulers taking counsel together, and peoples imagining all sorts of vain things. They are busy little bees, constantly arranging and rearranging their godless systems, passing their legislation, issuing their decrees, and all of it is a grand conspiracy against the Lord and His Christ. They believe they are sophisticated. They believe they are autonomous. They believe they are in charge. And God, from His throne, sees their frantic activity for what it is: a ridiculous temper tantrum. It is a cosmic joke.
This Psalm is a royal psalm. It is about kingship. It sets before us the ultimate conflict, the only conflict that truly matters: the rebellion of earthly kings against the one true King, Jesus Christ. This is not poetry for our quiet times alone; this is a declaration of the central reality of global politics. Every headline, every election, every piece of legislation is a skirmish in this one great war. And the central message of this Psalm is that the war is already over. The King is on His throne, and the rebellion, no matter how loud and impressive it seems to us, is a vain thing. It is doomed. It is futile. It is going nowhere.
The apostles understood this. When Peter and John were threatened by the rulers in Jerusalem, they went back to the other believers and prayed, and what did they pray? They prayed this psalm. They saw the events of their day, the conspiracy of Herod and Pilate and the Gentiles, as a direct fulfillment of this ancient prophecy (Acts 4:25-26). They understood that the opposition they were facing was not a new thing, but was part of the age-old rebellion of man against his Maker. We must learn to see our own times with the same biblical clarity. The rage of our modern secular states is not a sign of Christ's weakness, but a confirmation of His rule and the truth of His Word.
The Text
Why do the nations rage
And the peoples meditate on a vain thing?
The kings of the earth take their stand
And the rulers take counsel together
Against Yahweh and against His Anointed, saying,
"Let us tear their fetters apart
And cast away their cords from us!"
(Psalm 2:1-3 LSB)
Cosmic Treason in High Definition (v. 1-2)
The psalm opens with this incredulous question about the behavior of the world.
"Why do the nations rage And the peoples meditate on a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers take counsel together Against Yahweh and against His Anointed..." (Psalm 2:1-2)
The word for "rage" here describes a tumultuous assembly, like the noisy, chaotic milling of a mob. It is the picture of agitated futility. The "peoples meditate on a vain thing." That word for meditate is the same word used in Psalm 1 for the righteous man who meditates on the law of the Lord. Here we see the antithesis. The ungodly also meditate. They think, they plan, they strategize. But their subject is vanity. It is emptiness. All their intellectual energy, all their political scheming, is poured into a project that has no substance and no future. It is an exercise in nothingness.
Verse 2 gives us the specifics. This is not a disorganized, grassroots rebellion. It is a coordinated effort from the top down. "The kings of the earth take their stand." This is a military posture. They are drawing a line in the sand. "The rulers take counsel together." They hold their summits, they form their committees, they sign their treaties. This is a picture of the international political order in a state of high conspiracy. And who is the target of this grand coalition? It is "Against Yahweh and against His Anointed."
Let us be very clear. All political rebellion, at its root, is theological. The rulers of the earth may tell themselves they are fighting for "freedom" or "progress" or "the rights of man." They may dress up their rebellion in the most noble-sounding language. But the Bible cuts through all the propaganda. When men rebel against God's created order, when they defy His law, they are not making a political statement. They are making a theological one. They are shaking their fist at the throne of God Himself.
And notice the dual target: Yahweh and His Anointed. The word for "Anointed" is Mashiach, or Messiah. In Greek, it is Christos. You cannot separate the Father from the Son. To reject the Son is to reject the Father who sent Him (John 5:23). This is the great error of all false religions and all secularisms. They want to have a god of their own making, a god who does not have a Son who is King. But God has revealed Himself in His Son, and He has given all authority to that Son. To rebel against King Jesus is to rebel against Yahweh. There is no other way to come to the Father. Every government on earth that does not bow the knee to Christ is in a state of open, declared rebellion against the God who gave them their authority in the first place.
The Rebel's Manifesto (v. 3)
Verse 3 gives us the very words of the rebels. It is their declaration of independence from God.
"Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!" (Psalm 2:3)
This is the heart of all sin. This is the essence of the fall. The rebels see God's law not as a framework for liberty, but as fetters. They see His commands not as loving guidance, but as restrictive cords. They believe that true freedom is found in autonomy, in casting off all divine restraint. This is the lie that the serpent whispered to Eve in the Garden, and it is the same lie that every secular government, every revolutionary, and every unrepentant sinner whispers to himself today.
What are these fetters and cords? They are the moral law of God. They are the Ten Commandments. They are the created realities of male and female. They are the institution of the family. They are the sanctity of life. They are the requirement that rulers must be just, ruling in the fear of God (2 Sam. 23:3). To the ungodly, these things are chains. They want to be free to define their own morality, to create their own identities, to be their own gods. They see God's rule as tyranny and their own lawlessness as liberation.
But this is the great satanic inversion. The reality is that God's law is the only true liberty. His service is perfect freedom. When you cast off His cords, you do not become free. You become enslaved to your own lusts, to your own pride, to sin and to death. The nations that rage against Christ, promising a secular utopia of absolute freedom, invariably end up building gulags. They tear off the "fetters" of "Thou shalt not murder" and "Thou shalt not steal," and they get the Reign of Terror. They cast away the "cords" of biblical marriage and they get societal collapse and sexual chaos.
This cry, "Let us tear their fetters apart," is the mission statement of every godless political movement. It is the anthem of the sexual revolution. It is the charter of the abortion industry. It is the foundational principle of Marxist and secular humanist states. They are all united in this one mad project: to de-throne God and to de-Christianize the world. They see the influence of the gospel, the moral framework of a Christian society, as an intolerable burden. And so they take their counsel together, they pass their laws, they indoctrinate the children, all in an effort to cast these cords away from us.
The Inevitable Outcome
The first three verses of this psalm lay out the nature of the rebellion. The rest of the psalm, which we will consider in due course, lays out God's response. And His response is not one of panic or concern. It is laughter. "He who sits in the heavens laughs; The Lord scoffs at them" (Psalm 2:4). All this raging, all this plotting, all this furious activity is, to God, a laughable absurdity.
We must adopt this same perspective. When we see the kings of the earth setting themselves against the Lord, we should not be filled with fear, but with a holy confidence. We should see it for what it is: a vain thing. Their rebellion is noisy, but it is impotent. They are sawing off the branch they are sitting on. Their defiance of God is the very thing that guarantees their destruction.
This is because Jesus Christ is not a candidate running for office. He is the enthroned King. His authority is not derived from the consent of the governed. His reign is an established fact. The Father has already set His King on Zion, His holy hill (Psalm 2:6). The resurrection was God's great "I told you so" to the raging nations. They did their worst at the cross, and God turned it into the centerpiece of His triumph.
Therefore, the political task of the church is not to timidly ask for a seat at the world's table. Our task is to proclaim the reality of Christ's throne. It is to call these raging nations and their deluded rulers to repent. It is to warn them, as the psalm does, to "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way" (Psalm 2:12). The choice is not between Christ's rule and some other neutral, secular option. The choice is between submission and destruction. The choice is between kissing the Son and being broken by His iron rod. The nations may rage, but the King reigns. And blessed, wonderfully blessed, are all who take refuge in Him.