Vladimir Putin is attacking Ukraine as I write this. He’s determined to take the land and people of that Nation as his own. Putin is just another one following along the lines of Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Mohammed, Etc., etc. including Napoleon, Hitler, and others who set their hearts on advancing their domination. In Psalm 2, when the Psalmist speaks of the nation’s “raging,” it appears that this is what he’s talking about. There is this scramble for power and wealth. History is organized around these people and their efforts and wars. God laughs at them according to verse 4 of Psalm 2. Then, in verses 5 and 6, he adds, “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.’”
When I think of God’s wrath and fury, I think of the natural consequences of ignoring the simple laws of physics. Man cannot fly! God did not make him with wings as he did the birds. When man attempts to fly by jumping off of a cliff, he faces God’s wrath and fury and has to suffer the consequences. In Greek mythology, there is the story in which Icarus fell to his death after flying too close to the sun, which melted the wax holding his feather wings together. One cannot violate God’s laws and come away unscathed. But, as we’ve learned since Wilbur and Orville Wright, if we submit ourselves to God’s established laws and accommodate our lives that acknowledge them and cooperate with them, we can even send a man to the moon. The point is that we must learn to submit ourselves to God’s laws in life. He laughs when we ignore them to our peril. One of the most important laws of God is the reign of His Chosen King.
When earthly kings rage against God to usurp His position, God is not threatened by them. He laughs at them, and they must face his judgment. The law of God includes the enthronement of His son on the holy hill of Zion, who will rule the world with truth and grace. Alexander Maclaren says, “All the self-will in the world does not alter the fact that the authority of Christ is sovereign over human wills. We cannot get away from it, but we can either lovingly embrace it, and then it is our life, or we can set ourselves against it, like an obstinate ox planting its feet and standing stock-still, and then the goad is driven deep and draws blood.”[1]
[1] Maclaren, Alexander. 1903. “The Psalms.” In The Expositor’s Bible: Psalms to Isaiah, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll, 3:12. Expositor’s Bible. Hartford, CT: S.S. Scranton Co.