Today I’d like to read Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 together, and we’ll be looking at both of these Psalms this morning.
Psalm 1, beginning with verse 1: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He’s like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season. Its leaf does not wither and all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.”
Now Psalm 2: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.’ He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath and terrify them in his fury, saying, ‘As for me, I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill.’ I will tell of the decree. The Lord said to me, ‘You are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.’ Now therefore, O kings, be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way. For his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”
Let’s look to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, we draw our attention again to this portion of your word that is a favorite to so many and has been a favorite to so many over the centuries. The Psalter is a source of great encouragement and instruction and comfort to us all, and these two Psalms in particular have been favorites for good reasons. We pray that you will guide our minds and our hearts as we look at them again today. We pray that you’ll encourage us to be the righteous and therefore blessed man of Psalm 1 and that you will give us grace to see the great king of Psalm 2 and happily take refuge in him. We pray that you will impress us with the richness of your word. We pray that you will instruct us how it points us to the Lord Jesus. We pray in his name, amen.
Well, we have looked through Psalm 1 and Psalm 2. In the morning series, we’re beginning some expositions through the Psalms. We won’t go through all of them, but we will take many of them. And we have seen Psalm 1 and then we saw Psalm 2. And just by way of review, that Psalm 1 was the Psalm of the blessed man in contrast to the wicked.
The blessed man is blessed because he delights in the law of the Lord. He does not follow the counsel of the wicked. He shuns away from that and delights in the law and meditates on it day and night. And so consequently, verse 3, he becomes like a tree. He’s stable. He’s planted by the irrigation channels and he’s fruitful and prosperous in all that he’s done.
By contrast, the wicked, they do not delight in the law of the Lord. They mock the righteous. They delight in their sin. And consequently, they are not stable in all their ways. They’re like chaff that the wind drives away. And they—this matter of instability of the wicked—ultimately refers to their failure, their inability to stand in final judgment, verses five and six. Wicked will not stand in judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. The Lord knows, the Lord looks with favor on the righteous, but the way of the ungodly will perish.
That’s Psalm 1, and we saw—and I think I noted it when we went through Psalm 1—that in verse 3 of Psalm 1, there is an unmistakable allusion to Joshua. In Joshua chapter 1 and verse 8, God tells Joshua as they are entering into the promised land: “This book of the law will not depart out of your mouth, but you’ll meditate therein day and night.” So he instructs Joshua to delight in the law of the Lord, to meditate on it always, and as he does so, he will be prosperous in all that he does. That’s God’s promise to Joshua. And now we have here, the blessed man is that man, like Joshua, who delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night, and therefore prospers in all that he does. God, of course, does not want external obedience only. He wants one who is truly righteous from the inside out. He delights in the law of the Lord and aims at it as his life goal.
Well, that was Psalm 1 that we saw. Then in Psalm 2, we saw this Psalm of the Lord’s anointed. We have in stanza 1, the nations raging against God. In rebellion against him, they’re determined to throw off his yoke. They don’t want anything but his law reigning over them. They just won’t have it. And so they’re in rebellion, and they’re concerted in their rebellion. They’ve gathered together. They’re taking counsel together. It is a universal, global revolt against God. Sounds like one of the most contemporary passages in all the Bible.
And then we have God’s response to that in verses four through six. God laughs. You think you’re gonna pull this off? In verse one, the psalmist, David, is asking, “Why do the nations rage?” This is a futile thing. They think they can pull away from the God who reigns over all? Why are they doing this? And what makes it so silly is that God is settled in heaven, and his response to it is not one of a nervous deity pacing about wondering, “What am I going to do now? These people are rebelling against me.” But God sits confidently on his throne. He laughs in mocking tone at the world and its rebellion. And then he speaks in verse 5 and says, “Now I’ve got something to say. I’ve set my king on my holy hill.” He’s established his king. God will establish his kingdom through his anointed king.
And then in verses 7 through 9, that king, the anointed one, speaks. And here he gives us this conversation that previously was held between God and the anointed, where God makes a promise to his anointed. Verse seven: “I’ll tell of the decree. The Lord said to me, ‘You are my son, this day I have begotten you.'” That’s enthronement language. I’ve made you king. And so he says in verse 8, God says to the anointed king, “Ask of me, and I’ll make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You’ll break them with a rod of iron, dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” So God has promised the king, and now the king recites this. He says, “God has told me, he has made me king. ‘You are my son. This day I’ve begotten you.’ And he’s told me that he’ll give me the world.”
And so then in verses 10 through 12, David now, the psalmist, acts as a counselor to the nations and to the kings of the earth. And he says, “Now therefore, O kings, be wise.” That is, if God is not concerned, overly concerned with your rebellion, and he’s not nervous and threatened by it, if he has established his king on Zion, and if that king has received these promises from God, and he himself has resolved to carry it out, verse 10: “Be wise. Be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear. Rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son,” that is, do obeisance to him. Bow down and kiss his ring, as it were, in submission to him, lest he be angry and you perish in the way. For his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
Well, these are the first two psalms of the Psalter. We’ve worked our way through them. Now what I want to do today is back up again, and rather than work through them again, sort of stand over them at 1,000 feet and look down and have some observations about them. And I’m going to back up before I do that. Just give some observations on how we read the Psalter, and in fact, how we read any passage of the Bible for that matter.
We Read The Psalms On Multiple Levels
We read the psalms on multiple levels. It might sound a little academic, but I think you’ll follow me with it.
First of all, we read the psalms on the level of the author himself and his intent. This is pretty straightforward. We look at the words of the psalm, we look at the context, we might look at the structure of the psalm, see what his thought structure is and how his flow of thought goes. We might look at poetry and how it works, but all of these things on the author’s level, we read the psalm on that level: the author’s intent. We’ve seen a lot of that in our Sunday evening series on how to read and understand the Psalms.
Second, we read the Psalms not only on the level of the Psalmist himself, but we read the Psalms with an eye to that particular Psalm’s place in the Psalter. Now this isn’t something that is as well known as the other, not something we’re as familiar with, but it is an important step to take. This has actually, in the last generation or so, been the most cutting edge and booming area of Psalms scholarship. Rather new to me—I’ve only been catching on in recent years. But this is a very important observation: how to read the Psalms. You look at this particular Psalm that we have in mind in its place in the Psalter.
Now we’ve mentioned before—I’ll look at this in more depth one time, I think, on a Sunday evening message—but we’ve seen that the book of Psalms is actually five books of Psalms. For instance, over Psalm 1 in your Bible, I’m sure you see in big letters, “Book 1.” And then if you look over Psalm 42, you’ll see “Book 2.” And over Psalm 73, you’ll see “Book 3.” Psalm 90, you’ll see “Book 4.” Psalm 107, you’ll see “Book 5.” We have these five books of the Psalms and there’s a long history to their compilation and their editing and their placement in each and the order of these five books, their connection to surrounding Psalms.
This is the work of the editors, whoever they were—strong tradition that Ezra was involved in that—bringing these psalms together in the collection that we have with these five books. And not only in these five books, but in the arrangement of the psalms within those five books. Often this psalm and the next one will have some important connections. Sometimes the connections are subtle and not as telling in terms of interpretation or canonical significance or things like that. Often they are, though. And so one thing is helpful, and this is where we’ll be spending a lot of time today, is looking at Psalms 1 and 2 with regard to their place in the Psalter.
And let me give you some more observations with that. We’ll deal with this on a Sunday night at more length, but we have these five books of the Psalms, and these five books in progression give us something of a history of Israel from the United Monarchy, the time of David, all the way through to the exile and beyond. So Psalms 1 and 2—this would be Psalms 1 to 41 and Psalms 42 to 72—these first two books of the Psalms represent Davidic Psalms; they’re almost entirely Davidic Psalms and they represent the rise and the triumph of David, often through crisis and all of his lament Psalms. Books 1 and 2 represent the rise and the triumph of David.
In book three of the Psalms, we have anticipated Israel’s exile. Book three of the Psalms has often been referred to as the “dark book” of the Psalter, just filled with lament Psalms, with all kinds of sadness. Israel’s kings, the house of David, the sanctuary’s been destroyed, everything is collapsing, and book 3 of the Psalter climaxes with Psalm 89, which is a lament of the seeming collapse of the Davidic covenant. God has made a promise to David; what in the world happened? The Dark Book of the Psalter, Book 3.
And then we have Book 4 of the Psalter, and that’s oriented to Israel in exile. At this time now, the orientation in Book 4 is Israel has no king at all. But there is a note of hope a couple of ways. Psalm 90, the first psalm of Book 4, is the only Mosaic psalm in the Psalter. And with its reminiscences of Moses and the exodus from Egypt, it arouses some sense of hope and the strong sense stated in Psalm 90 that God’s care is with his people always. And then immediately in book four, we have these enthronement psalms where they’re triumphing with God as king. So we’ve just lamented in Psalm 89 that God’s promise to David, the kingly line, seems to have failed. We open up book four, and now God is king. God is king. The Lord reigns. The Lord reigns. We’re reminded of that, Psalms 93 through 100, and Psalm 100 being something of the doxology to that section of the “Lord is King” Psalms. And so there’s that note of hope that’s retained even though Israel has no king in exile.
And then book five of the Psalter, we have praises given to God for Israel’s restoration after the exile and their return. And here in book five of the Psalter, we have praises given to God from the nations. And with that as well, there’s this hope that has been retained even though the Davidic promise seems to have collapsed.
That’s something of a broad overview of it, but also in the arranging of Psalms within the books, there are often connections to adjacent Psalms. Let me give you just a couple that I think you’ll find interesting. I’d say some of them are fascinating in terms of the progress of thought in the Psalms, like Psalm 89 with its lament of the loss of the promise of David seemingly, and then Psalm 90 and the enthronement Psalms that follow with the new hope that’s born on the end of that. Many of those kinds of things—I think Psalm 22, 23, 24 has been long recognized as having been placed in a particular order. We have the suffering shepherd, the good shepherd, and then the great shepherd who rules and reigns.
But here we’re at Psalm 2; look over at Psalm 3. In Psalms 3 to 6, we have alternating Psalms regarding the morning and the evening. Now the interpretive significance of this I don’t think is great, but it seems to be clear that the editors have placed them this way. By the way, both the Jewish and the Christian communities have always recognized the editors of the Psalter to have been inspired. But look at Psalm 3; we have a morning prayer. He tells us that in verse 5: “I lay down and slept. I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.” So we have a morning prayer. Look at Psalm 4; we have an evening prayer. Look at verse 8: “In peace I will both lie down and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.” So Psalm 3, a morning prayer. Psalm 4, an evening prayer. Psalm 5, again, reflects on the morning. If you look at verse 3: “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice. In the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” And then Psalm 6, again, reflects on the evening. Verse 6: “I am weary with my moaning. Every night I flood my bed with tears.” So we have these subtle connections like that. Again, I don’t know the interpretive significance of that, at least not yet, but they seem to be carefully arranged that way.
Psalm 7, 8, and 9 have the common theme of praising God’s name. If you look at the end of Psalm 7, verse 17: “I will sing praises. I will sing the praises of the name of the Lord Most High.” Psalm 8, verse 1: “O Lord, Our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” At the end of the psalm, verse nine: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” Psalm nine and verse two: “I will sing praises to your name, O Most High.” It seems beyond coincidence sometimes that these things were arranged with some thoughtful arrangement in mind because of some common connecting themes. Sometimes, as I say, they’re very obvious, and sometimes with huge interpretive significance. Sometimes you just wonder, well, that’s an interesting way they put them together. All right.
So enough of that on the reading of Psalms with an eye to their placement in the Psalter. So we read the Psalms on the level of the author himself and what he has in mind, we read it with a mind to its place in the Psalter. And then thirdly, and I think most are familiar with this as well, we read the Psalms with a canonical perspective. And that is how this given Psalm connects both directions to the rest of the Bible, both before and then particularly after. What are the interconnections that we find both verbally and thematically? Say something that is fulfilled in Jesus. How is this psalm quoted in the New Testament? Issues like that come up and we want to keep an eye to that when we read the psalms so that we can understand it better. This is one of the marks of the single divine authorship of the Bible that we have multiple authors in the psalms, multiple psalmists as well. And yet these connecting themes before and after, it’s just a marvelous, marvelous mark of the divine authorship of scriptures, overseeing it all through the centuries, through so many different authors.
Psalm 1 And Psalm 2 Together
Now we’ve looked at Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 individually on their own terms. I’ve spent some time—very little in the first one, some more in the second one—with an eye to looking at it in the Psalter and in the rest of the canon. And what we’ve seen then is that together these two Psalms introduce the Psalter and at the same time they proclaim a message that is whole Bible shaped. And I want to spend more time with that today. Again, it’s a wonderful mark of the inspiration of scriptures. I think it’s encouraging to the Christian heart to see how these things are so.
Since the early centuries, it has been recognized that Psalm 1 is the gateway to the Psalter. Jerome, a fourth century Christian theologian, likens Psalm 1 to a great door in a large building. Pretty obvious, I think, that that is the case. We spent some time looking at that in our exposition of the psalm. Psalm 1 prepares the reader for entering the Psalter. It’s like the door into the building. The blessed person is the one who refuses the way of sin, refuses the counsel of the ungodly. He devotes himself to divine instruction.
And in that sense, it introduces you to the rest of the Psalter or lets you in. This is a huge theme in the Psalter. I mentioned that a few weeks ago—that God will accept only the worship of the righteous. It’s a repeated theme. He has no interest at all in the feigned worship of the wicked, those who disregard his law. He won’t have their worship, however they may pretend to have it. And this is a repeated emphasis in the Psalms. Psalm 15: “O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? Answer: he who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart.” Or the famous words of Psalm 24: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?” So here we’re walking up Zion to the temple. “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place? Answer: he who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.” We have the same in Psalm 50. We’ll take time to go through a couple of verses there, but verse 9 in particular in Psalm 50: he will not accept the sacrifices of the wicked.
Now this is a familiar theme not only in the Psalter; it’s a familiar theme in the Old Testament. We even have it in the New Testament. We have the prophets echoing this theme. Isaiah 1 is prominent in that regard. God chastising Israel, “I’m sick of your sacrifices that you’ve offered.” Sacrifices that God has prescribed, and they’re offering them, and God is sickened by them because Israel herself is so sinful. The feigned worship of the wicked is not something God will have. We have it in Ecclesiastes chapter 5, in a poetic rendering: “Watch your foot when you walk into the Lord’s house.” This is serious business. The worship of God is something only for the righteous to do. We find the same even echoed in 1 Corinthians 11 when Paul gives instruction concerning the Lord’s table. We have those who are mistreating one another in the congregation and then coming to the Lord’s table as though all is well. And Paul says, “For this reason, many are sick among you.”
So the Psalter begins by declaring to us, Psalm 1, that godliness is essential to worship. You enter the Psalter, you enter God’s presence as a righteous person, a righteous person that Psalm 1 describes, or there’s no place for you. One commentator, Tremper Longman, puts it this way: “Psalm 1 stands like a Levitical gatekeeper, warning the wicked to proceed no further.” God will not accept the worship from anyone who disregards his law. So the message of Psalm 1, standing on its own, it is the righteous who are blessed by God. It is the righteous who in the end will triumph over the wicked. Verse six: “The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” Viewed in its place in the Psalter, Psalm 1 is telling us the worship that this book expresses—in this book of praises—the worship that this book expresses, the hope that it offers, is for the righteous. Those who delight in God’s law, those who meditate in it, who refuse the counsel of the wicked, that’s who the praises are for. The prayers, the songs, the joys, the cries for help in the lament psalms, and the praises that are offered in the Psalter, all are for the righteous. And Psalm 1, in that sense, is the doorway to the rest of the Psalter. It’s the way in. As I say, it’s been recognized as that since the early centuries of the church.
But it’s also obvious, and here we’ll spend more time, that the editors have placed Psalm 2 so that it’s read along with Psalm 1. We might ask the question this way: why is Psalm 1 Psalm 1? And why is Psalm 2 Psalm 2? And it seems pretty clear that these were meant to be read together. And in fact, some of the ancient manuscripts combine these two Psalms as one at the beginning of the Psalter. And the connections between Psalm 1 and Psalm 2 are just too many to be coincidental. It is clear that they were meant to be read together so that together these two Psalms form a gateway into the Psalter.
And let me give you some of these. I think you can probably give up on taking notes; I’m gonna run through a lot of this. But I think you will be impressed with how the editors, the inspired editors of the Psalter, have had some insights into these two Psalms in placing them together.
So Psalm 1 begins pronouncing the blessed person, pronouncing the person blessed who devotes himself to God’s law. That’s Psalm 1 verse 1: “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, doesn’t stand in the way of sinners, sits in the seat of the scornful. He delights in the law of the Lord.” Psalm 2 ends with the same blessing, but now it’s pronounced on those who submit willingly to God’s rule through his king. Psalm 2 verse 12: “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.”
Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm, so we have the wise presented, and the wise are those whose life is shaped by divine instruction, who give their attentiveness and their delight to the law of the Lord. Psalm 2: the wise, verse 10 through 12, the wise are those who submit to God’s King. “Now therefore, O kings, be wise, be warned, O rulers of the earth, serve the Lord with fear, rejoice with trembling, kiss the sun lest he be angry with you, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” So the wise in Psalm 1 are those whose life is shaped by divine instruction. The wise in Psalm 2 are those who submit to God’s King.
Psalm 1: the blessed man meditates on the law of the Lord. His delight is in the law of the Lord. He meditates on it day and night. In Psalm 2, the nations meditate—now it’s translated in our version, “plot,” but same Hebrew word. The nations meditate or plot their vain rebellion. So you have the meditation of the righteous and you have the meditation of the wicked nations.
Psalm 1 begins and concludes with the key expression, “the way.” Psalm 1:1: the blessed man does not stand in the way of sinners. Verse 6: the way of the ungodly shall perish. Psalm 2 concludes that way also: “Kiss the son, verse 12, lest he be angry and you perish in the way.”
Psalm 1 warns of the seat of the mockers. Psalm 2 reassures us that God is seated on his throne: “He that sits in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord holds them in derision.” So both Psalms speak of mocking. So in Psalm 1, the wicked mock righteousness. In Psalm 2, God mocks the wicked.
Both of them speak in terms of the success of their respective subjects. In Psalm 1, we have the righteous man who is fruitful and he prospers in all that he does. In Psalm 2, it’s the king who succeeds and is prosperous in triumphing over the nations and making them his.
Both of these Psalms speak of the blessed destiny of the righteous. In Psalm 1, the righteous in the day of judgment will stand in vindication. In Psalm 2, the righteous are spared from judgment because they’ve taken refuge in the king.
Both of these Psalms warn that the wicked will perish in Psalm 1. They perish for rejecting God’s law. In Psalm 2, the wicked perish for rejecting God’s king and God’s rule, and they’ll be destroyed by him.
Both of these Psalms, Psalms 1 and 2, speak of the wicked as something that’s worthless and disposable. In Psalm 1, the wicked are like the chaff that the wind drives away, just worthless. In Psalm 2, the wicked will be dashed in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
In Psalm 1, the wicked who reject God’s law are, in Psalm 2, the rebellious nations who rage and conspire against God and his king. So the wicked one or the wicked ones in Psalm 1 become a cabal of nations in Psalm 2, rebelling against God.
Psalm 1 counsels regarding morals and righteousness, describes the person who can enter the Psalms with profit. Psalm 2 presents instead the subject and the hero of the Psalter who’s celebrated throughout, and that is the triumphant king whom God has appointed. In Psalm 1, we read for whom the Psalter is written and compiled; it’s for the righteous. In Psalm 2 we read about whom the Psalter was written and compiled: the King.
Psalm 1 gives insight into the purpose of the book. It is the instruction in the law of the Lord. Psalm 2 opens a window to the message of the whole book and of the whole Bible for that matter, and that is the Lord’s reign. Like the rest of the Bible, the concern is with the establishing of the kingdom of God, and that is the overall concern of the Psalter as well, that God will establish his kingdom by means of his anointed king.
Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm extolling life by the Torah. Psalm 2 is a royal psalm extolling the triumph of the king. Psalm 1 is concerned with justice. In Psalm 2, the king dispenses justice. In Psalm 1, the righteous man becomes the king in Psalm 2. So in Psalm 1, we have his character, and in Psalm 2, it presents the king in his royal rule. And if we look at it that way, then in Psalm 1, we have his domestic policy: God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. He delights in the law of the Lord. This is the king’s domestic policy. In Psalm 2, we have his foreign policy: he’ll bring all the nations into submission to God.
The prosperous man of Psalm 1 is the one who in Psalm 2 is enthroned and begins God’s kingdom and brings it to its full realization. So together, these two Psalms lead the way into the Psalter. They were independent Psalms written independently of each other, brought together by the final editors, and together they open the door and provide entrance into the Psalter as a whole. And together they proclaim a unified message: the righteous who are blessed or favored by God are fully rewarded; they have sided with God’s anointed king, and on the day of judgment, they will triumph over the wicked.
So these two Psalms each have their own message. Together, they present a unified message as well. Now for the rest of our time, I want to show how they also set a gospel trajectory that continues through the Psalms and through the rest of the Bible. And I think this is how we are intended to read the Psalms with our “whole Bible glasses” on.
Psalm 1, I think, resonates with every redeemed heart with its ideal, calling for the love and delight in God’s law. This is what God’s will on earth, done on earth as it is in heaven, looks like. Shun the counsel of the wicked, delight in the law of the Lord, meditate on it day and night. And I think every one of us, when we read through Psalm 1, want to be like that. I want to be the man who shuts up the wicked and quits listening to them. I want to be the man who delights in God’s law and meditates in it all the time.
But I think once we have said that, once we’ve worked through Psalm 1 on its own, and we’ve seen that God’s blessing and his favor is on the righteous only, all of that can stir feelings of guilt as well, because of our failures to live up to what Psalm 1 is pressing on us. Psalm 1 presses an ideal, and it’s the mark of all of God’s people that we make that ideal our own. This is the kind of person we want to be. And yet it’s a goal that not one of us has lived up to. Not you, not me, not David, not Moses, not Abraham. It’s an ideal that’s pressed on us, and yet it’s an ideal that not one of us has ever attained.
Psalm 1, I think, is rightly to say that this is addressing you and this is addressing me. It’s pressing our responsibility to live righteously before God. But in the longer flow of the Psalter and the longer flow of the Scriptures, we have to see that it pushes us to look somewhere else and find someone else who is righteous. Another Joshua who delighted in the law of the Lord and meditated in all the days of his life and was successful and prosperous in all that he did and all that he will do. And that is the king of Psalm 2.
And this is the king who leads the people of God and triumphs in establishing God’s kingdom. So Psalm 1 introduces us to the great king of Psalm 2, who as we know in the long flow of scripture points us directly to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the very embodiment of this ideal, this righteous person of Psalm 1. Or if you like, the words of Psalm 24, he is the one who ascends the hill of the Lord with clean hands and a pure heart. He’s the one who steadfastly refused the counsel of the ungodly. We see that in Matthew chapter four, the Mount of Temptation. He is the one who delighted in the law of the Lord supremely. He said it himself: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me.” And he followed the law of God perfectly. He was able to say to his enemies, “Which of you convinces me of sin?”
As Psalm 40 will prophesy when we get there—we’ll see it—Psalm 40 prophesies of him, he delighted to do God’s will. In fact, he came to do it. That’s picked up in the book of Hebrews and referred to Jesus. He’s given him a body to do this. God’s law was in his heart. So we find the king who is himself the embodiment of the ideal of Psalm 1.
And yet, as we’ll see throughout this Psalter and then in the rest of scripture—so for example, Psalm 22 will tell us, Psalm 40 will tell us—that this righteous king offered himself as a guilt offering and as a sacrifice for sinners. He stands in the place of sinners and bears the curse of their sin. Then as Psalm 2 tells us, as Psalm 110 tells us, he, having borne the sins of his people, will ascend to the throne of the universe at the right hand of God until all of his enemies are made his footstool. And in fact, in Psalm 110, it tells us not only will he rule as king, as this priest king over all, but it tells us in verse 5, he will make his people willing in the day of his power—willing enlistments into his service.
Now we get to the prophets and we find that written in other terms. We have Jeremiah and Ezekiel in particular promising that God, as Christ as the reigning king, will pour out his spirit on his people and he will write God’s law on their hearts and change them from the inside out so that they’ll follow. He will enable them to bear fruit unto God, enable them to be the righteous person they are called to be until ultimately he transforms us all together to be like him.
Then as the Psalter anticipates, and as the prophets explicitly promise, this king who establishes God’s kingdom will share his reign with all of those who submit to his rule and take refuge in him. These two Psalms then, in themselves considered, and in the context of the Psalter, and in whole Bible perspective, I think have a richness that reflects the work of a divine author. I think clearly it is not just David at work here, and it’s not just the editors, but we have God directing them to display the great message of the scriptures that focuses on Jesus.
Each of these Psalms has a message to us in terms of our responsibility. We are responsible to be the righteous man of Psalm 1. We are responsible, per Psalm 2, to submit to the rule of God’s king. And yet together, these two Psalms tell the story of the gospel. Psalm 1 tells us the kind of people we ought to be. Psalm 2 points us to the one who was just that kind of person, the greater Joshua, the king of Israel, who has established his kingdom through his death and resurrection and now exalted into heaven, he reigns over God’s kingdom and will in his return bring that kingdom to grand consummation and share that glory with us. Amen.