One of the things I love about the Bible is its earthy realism. It understands the world we live in – the good and the bad, the grief and the joys. It also understands how we feel about life’s injustices especially when we see people who mock the notion of God, enjoying success. Nothing ever seems to go wrong for them. And as well as the unfairness we often feel, there are the realities of droughts and famines, floods and fires, earthquakes and ruthless autocratic rulers. Why doesn’t God step in? It seems so out of character, if he is all-powerful and truly good.

True faith will always have questions. In fact, faith that refuses to ask questions is one that leaves itself open to the contempt of the skeptic. True faith will want to address tough questions and be willing to experience the doubts that arise.

Now it’s important to note that to have doubts is not to lack faith: doubt is not the opposite of faith. Doubt and unbelief are two very different things. Doubt is something that only a believer can experience, for you can only doubt what you believe.

Doubt. Psalm 73 is a reflection written by a man who experienced doubt. He came within a hair’s breadth of abandoning his faith in God: But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped (73:2). Yet at the end of the psalm he tells us he felt closer to God than ever before: But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord Godmy refuge, to tell of all your works (73:28). As the psalm unfolds we learn of his spiritual pilgrimage –  how he progressed from doubt to a surer trust in God.

One of his big questions is framed by what we might say is a theological principle – that God is good to the upright(73:1). ‘Why is it then’, he asks, ‘that many who are godless find life easy while I suffer? Where is God?’

Indeed, a tone of bitterness flows through verses 3 through 11. It’s as though he is saying, ‘Come on, let’s face it, whatever we say when we go to church, it is the self-centered, proud, deceitful and ruthless people who succeed. Healthy and wealthy, nothing seems to bring them down. No-one seems to be able to call them to account. ‘They get rewarded for their crimes with popularity’, the psalmist observes. ‘God is irrelevant’, they say in mocking tones, rejecting any thought of divine retribution. Justice is the issue troubling the poet.

Consider what triggered the writer’s crisis of faith: All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.  For all day long I have been plagued and am punished every morning (73:13f). For many, injustice only becomes an issue when it touches them. In those times we ask: ‘God, why me?’ It’s here that the first person singular pronouns give us away: ‘Why should I suffer?’ ‘Why me God?’ The psalm-writer articulates it: I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked (73:15).

The solution. In verses 15 following, we discover how the poet worked through his doubts. He went to church: When… I went into the sanctuary of God… I perceived their end.

Good churches not only read the Bible, but believe it to be God’s authentic, self-revelation. And so, they teach it and as they do they put God at the center of the vision of God’s people. This is vitally important. For it is only when God is at the center of our vision that we see life as it really is. We’re like the moon – we live on borrowed light. It’s only when we turn our face towards God through his Word that we see the light. But as long as we put ‘me’ at the center of life, our vision will be distorted.

So it’s only when we learn from God’s Word that we begin to see the true light revealed by God. And when the psalmist reflected on God’s Word he began to see what happens to those who choose not to believe: They are like a dream when one awakes; on awaking you despise their phantoms (73:20). As far as the Bible is concerned, this is dreadfully real.

The idea of a final day of accounting is mocked today. But when we think about it, if there is no ultimate judgement the world is reduced to moral indifference: goodness itself has no value. Furthermore, God’s people realize that just because we can’t see the future doesn’t mean it is imaginary. God sees it, even though we don’t.

There is probably no more terrible judgment on godless men and women than the reality that one day God will ignore them forever. ‘Depart from me, I never knew you,’ Jesus will say.  What chilling words to hear from the Lord of the universe. What a terrifying nightmare to be despised by God. When the psalmist went to church and put God at the center of his vision, he understood how precarious is the prosperity of the godless. It won’t last, he realized.

But the psalm-writer also learned that despite his doubts and foolish talk, he was a child of God: Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand.  You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me into glory (73:23). To hear God’s Word in the company of his people is a powerful grace-gift from God. It prompts us to see our doubts for what they are and opens our eyes to the riches of faith. God holds us by the hand, guides us with his counsel, and will bring us to everlasting glory.

We today have all the greater assurance of this because we live on the other side of the life and death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Without him we will not know life in all its fullness and joy. CS Lewis once put it this way: All your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained it, or else, that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.

Prayers. Almighty God, you have conquered death through your dearly beloved Son Jesus Christ and have opened to us the gate of everlasting life: grant us by your grace to set our mind on things above, so that by your continual help our whole life may be transformed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit in everlasting glory. Amen.

Heavenly Father, the giver of all good things, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and grant that by your holy inspiration we may think those things that are good, and by your grace and guidance do them; through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

© John G. Mason

Last week we reflected on the reality of the depression many people experience. Psalms 42 and 43 testify to this. The psalms are an example of the timeless wisdom and counsel that we find in the Bible. Psalms 42 and 43 are a cry from the heart.

The writer asks why he is depressed. ‘I believe’ he says, ‘Why then should I feel as I do? Why am I so inwardly disturbed? What’s happened to me?’ Three times he asks: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? (Ps 42:5, 11; Ps 43:5).

Speaking about his feelings, the poet doesn’t do what many who are depressed do: he doesn’t try to bury his emotional distress. And certainly, he doesn’t turn to alcohol, drugs, or some other diversion. Nor does he try to pretend he’s doing well: he admits his feelings.

We find here a very helpful lesson. It takes courage to identify that we have a problem. Men especially find this difficult, for generally we don’t like to talk about their feelings or admit to what might be perceived as weakness. Both Psalms 42 and 43 imply that if we are depressed, we need to acknowledge it. We don’t have to announce it on Facebook, but it’s worth speaking with a trustworthy friend, a pastor or a physician. And there may come a time when we will want to tell a wider audience – by way of testimony.

The point is that if we are lonely, or feel guilty about something, or if we have lost someone dear to us, we need to talk about it. There’s nothing to be gained by brushing it off or burying it. Look at the poet’s response in Psalm 42:9: I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?” He’s almost making an accusation: ‘God, where are you? You’re supposed to be my rock and my security. Well God, the rock has moved. You have let me down. Why?’

Now, it’s important that we ask questions like this. Not because there’s necessarily an immediate answer, but because we need to express our frustration, even despair. Indeed, there can be times when we’re depressed because we repress our anger. One psychotherapist speaks of it as ‘frozen rage’.

When we feel angry with God, we must remember that he is no stranger to emotion. He knows what it is like to be treated unjustly and to be sinned against. And he certainly knows what it is like to feel alone. We should never forget Jesus’ own cry of dereliction that he uttered from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

We cannot even begin to understand the depths of aloneness Jesus experienced over the three hours as he suffered the full power of God’s justice that we justly deserve. Time would have seemed to stand still as Jesus, the eternal Son of God, suffered the full force of the horrifying darkness and separation from all that is pure and good, from God, his eternal Father, as the weight of human sin was laid on his shoulders. In our moments of despair, it is easy to forget the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every day we need to keep it before us.

Remember. To return to the psalms we are considering, in Psalm 42:4 we read: These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God,… Recalling past blessings brought comfort to the writer in his spiritual drought. Many people find it helpful to keep what some Christians speak of as a journal of the soul. Reading it in the tough times can be a great encouragement.

Address our soul: Throughout the two psalms the theme cry is: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? The conscious mind of the poet is speaking to his inner self. Talking to yourself is sometimes reckoned to be a sign of mental aberration. But the poet is telling us that there are times when this can be a way to climb out of the pit of despair. A great danger for someone who is depressed is self-pity. Speak to your soul’, the poet advises.

Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a renowned 20th century English preacher wrote: ‘The main trouble in this whole matter of depression is that we allow our Self to talk to us instead of us talking to our Self.’ The writer’s soul has been depressing him, crushing him, so he stands up and says, ‘Soul, listen! I will speak to you: “Hope in God; I shall again praise him, my help and my God”.’

This is not the same as saying to anyone who is depressed, ‘Pull yourself together’. That kind of counsel won’t help. But, if we’re depressed, it would be helpful to say to ourselves, ‘Look to the Lord, for he is my light and my help. My hope is in him’.

Throughout these two psalms there is a movement from depression, to admission, and to self-exhortation. But there is something else: Prayer.

In Psalm 43:1 we read: Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people… And in verse 3: Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me…

The psalm-writer is confident in God’s grace at work in his life. Because of this he knows that the day will come when, again filled with joy, he will sing songs of praise to God.

Psalms 42-43 urge us to move beyond believing things about God, to sensing the Lord’s living presence in our lives – whoever we are, and whatever our situation in life.

A prayer. Almighty God, who taught the hearts of your faithful people by sending them the light of your Holy Spirit: so enable us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things and always to rejoice in his holy comfort; through the merits of Christ Jesus our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

© John G. Mason

Many people these days experience depression. It is not something new and should not be lightly dismissed. Some experience it more than others. Furthermore, it is not something that only people who have no religious faith experience. Great ones of the Bible, such as Elijah, King David, Jeremiah, and Paul the Apostle, all experienced it.

A cry from the heart. Psalms 42 & 43 which open Book II of the Psalms, reveal lessons we can learn from the experiences described in them. Far from home, in exile in the north, the psalm-writer asks three times: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you so disquieted within me? (42:5, 11; 43:5).

In the opening line of Psalm 42 the poet reveals his desire: As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? He longs for God’s presence. There are times when we too echo his feeling – times when prayer is difficult and talk of joy and peace is meaningless.

But notice what underlies these occasions – feelings, emotions, depression. Because we are psychosomatic beings, a disturbance in our body chemistry which may be caused by external physical factors, can affect our emotional balance as well as our spiritual awareness.

We can see what the writer is doing: he is telling us that it’s important we view our feelings and experiences through the lens of the wisdom of our faith. If we have a migraine we don’t shout, ‘Alleluia’. And so, if we’re suffering depression, we’re not going to feel close to God. But that shouldn’t prevent us from asking questions. Indeed, we should understand that there’s all the difference between feeling forsaken by God and being forsaken by him.

Now, that said, depression can be a result of spiritual factors. If, for example, we are burdened with guilt about something we’ve done, we may feel God is remote. There may also be times when we experience a spiritual attack from opposing forces. However, in most instances what might be called spiritual depression is in fact a natural depression impacting a spiritually minded person. This seems to be what the writer is experiencing.

And so he records his experiences. He speaks of his spiritual isolation: My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?” (42:3) The verbal barbs went home. It’s easy to trust God in the comfort and security of God’s people. But now he was alone, without emotional support or personal encouragement. Situations like this can depress us for we are social creatures.

Furthermore, he reveals his physical isolation: These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

A high point of the writer’s life had been religious festivals. He is homesick as he remembers them. Anyone who has moved to a new city or a new country knows how real this can be. It’s enough to make anyone depressed.

But again, his experience was not necessarily spiritual depression. Yes, he felt isolated from God, but that didn’t mean there was an underlying spiritual cause. His issue wasn’t sin or lack of faith. It was the consequence of his situation.

His depression so disturbed him that he burst into uncontrollable tears: My tears have been my food day and night,..(42:3) Three times he also tells us that he was downcast. He felt flat. He felt no spark of enthusiasm or energy. Depressed people often feel exhausted.

He also says three times that he is disturbed: ‘Why are you so disturbed within me, o my soul?’ We sense his anxious sighs and groans. And in verse 7 he tells us that he feels overwhelmed: Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your waterfalls (or, cataracts); all your waves and your billows have gone over me.

Socially and physically alone, the writer was emotionally distraught. He was flat emotionally, anxious, and overwhelmed. Which led to something else: spiritual rejection. In verse 9 he says: I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?” Torn with a sense of loss, he is like someone grieving the loss of a loved one. He feels spiritually bereft, devastated, and heartbroken.

But this writer is a believer. The dominant person in his life is God. We recall his opening line: As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. The poet feels spiritually depressed, not because he was spiritually negligent but because of his situation as one of God’s people. ‘I believe’ he is saying, ‘Why should I feel like I do? Why am I so inwardly disturbed? What’s happened to me? What’s happened to my faith?’

We may think this man is spiritually weak but there’s no hint of this in the psalm. In fact, the way he wrestles with his depression testifies to the reality of his faith and to his perseverance.

Psalms 42 and 43 are most important for they provide lessons for us when we are in the depths of despair. What was the writer’s response? We’ll consider this next Wednesday.

A prayer. Almighty God, we commend to your fatherly goodness all who are in any way afflicted or distressed, especially those who are known to us. May it please you to comfort and relieve them according to their needs, giving them patience in their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. All this we ask for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

© John G. Mason

Twenty-four years ago Judith and I were living three short blocks south of the Twin Towers in Downtown Manhattan. We had awakened on Tuesday morning, September 11 to clear blue skies and the sparkling waters of New York Harbor. But it was not to last.

We felt the shock in our building when the first tower was hit from the north. We heard the scream of the second jet flying low overhead and what sounded like a sonic boom when the south tower was hit. We experienced the shaking of our apartment building, similar to that of an earthquake, and the midnight darkness when the first tower collapsed. We saw the dust, the ash and the paper on the streets and felt the eerie silence when we were later able to leave our building. Lower Manhattan was like a moonscape. A great evil occurred that day.

Twenty-four years on it is easy to put aside the hideous, evil acts that cut short the lives of people going about their daily affairs. It’s easy to forget that commercial airliners were used as missiles to crash into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. A further flight intended for more destruction was thwarted by the selfless heroic efforts of passengers. People on that flight prayed the Lord’s Prayer as the plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. Over three thousand men and women died that day.

In his address to the nation that evening, George W. Bush, then President, called for prayers for all who had lost loved ones. He continued: And I pray they will be comforted by a power greater than any of us, spoken through the ages in Psalm 23: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me.”

In the Wall Street Bible talks I was giving at the time, I spoke on Psalm 46 which begins: God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.

Creation in turmoil. It can never be said that the Bible knows nothing about catastrophic events – and not least human evil and its devastating effects on this world. Indeed, the Psalm introduces a theme we overlook today – namely, the ultimate dissolution of the present world order by its Creator. God continues his work even in the midst of the chaos. God’s supremacy and presence with his people is never thwarted. He alone is our security and strength.

The larger biblical epic records the intrusion of evil into God’s good creation in Genesis chapter 3. God didn’t create evil, but because he didn’t make us robots, he allowed it. However, as the biblical narrative unfolds, we become aware of the reality and the depth of wickedness.

As a side note, if we insist we’re here by chance and are nothing but atoms in an ordered cohesion bumping around in time and space, evil and suffering have no meaning for there is no transcendental moral compass.

The opening lines of Psalm 46 speak of the unchanging God who is our refuge and strength. In him alone we find a secure shelter and the power within to address any situation. Indeed, verses 2 and 3 exhort us not to fear, even if the world around us is undone, for God remains supreme over every facet of his creation – the earth, the mountains, and the seas.

Humanity in turmoil. Psalm 46 moves from the upheaval of the material world to human turmoil. There is a river, whose streams make glad the city of God….God is the midst of the city; it will not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.

Derek Kidner comments that ‘the city of God is one of the great themes of the Old Testament … God’s choice of Zion, or Jerusalem, had been as striking as his choice of David, and the wonder of it keeps breaking through’ (Kidner, Psalms, Vol.1, p.175). We also find glimpses anticipating the New Testament vision of the heavenly Jerusalem as the community of God’s people rather than as a place (Ps.48:2).

Verse 6 speaks of the instability of evil and human tumult: The nations are in uproar, the kingdoms totter… However, God has the last word for when he utters his voice, the earth melts. Verse 7 is so reassuring: The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.

The Lord of hosts points to the mighty armies of heaven to which Jesus alluded when he was arrested (Matthew 26:53). Refuge, a different to word to verse 1, speaks of an ‘inaccessible height’ which the New English Bible translates as our high stronghold.

Be still! Verses 8 and 9 are an invitation to catch the vision of God’s ultimate intention – to make wars to cease to the end of the earth. It is a picture of the perfect peace that will follow on the other side of God’s judgement – the accounting that precedes the perfect righteousness of the new heaven and the new earth (2 Peter 3:12f).

The command “Be still” is not so much a word of comfort to God’s people under duress but a command to every nation. Jesus’s word to the turbulent winds and waters, “Peace. Be still” display the power of God’s Word. Mind-bending though the idea is, at God’s command the nations will be called to order, confronted by God’s supreme and glorious power: “Know that I am God! I will be exalted among the nations … and in the earth” (46:10).

In the closing words, the confidence in God in verse 1 returns with greater power: The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge – our high stronghold! The death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ confirm the truth and trustworthiness of these words.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 twenty-four years ago, churches were filled as many looked for comfort and hope. Some turned to the risen Lord Jesus Christ for the first time.

As we reflect on these events twenty-four years on, will you join with me in praying for the nations, especially that God might open blind eyes and unstop deaf ears, turning hard hearts towards their true home in Christ?

It’s worth noting the words of Blaise Pascal, the 17th C French mathematician, physicist and philosopher: “Men and women despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. The cure for this is just to show that religion is not contrary to reason, but worthy of reverence and respect. Next make it attractive, make good people wish it were true, and then show them that it is”.

Let me also encourage you to purchase copies of my book, The Jesus Story: Seven Signs – one to refresh your own faith in Christ as well as copies to pass on to others. Use the link in the banner below if you are in the US. If you are outside the US copies can be purchased through Amazon.

Prayer. We commend to your fatherly care, merciful God, all those who in this passing world are in any kind of trouble, sorrow, sickness, anxiety or need, especially we pray for…  Give them patience and confidence in your goodness, and in your mercy provide their every need. Father, hear our prayer, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

We praise your name for all your servants in whose life and death Christ has been honored. Grant that, encouraged by the good examples of their lives, we may run the race that is set before us, and with them share the fullness of joy at your right hand; through Christ who is the pioneer and perfecter of faith.  Amen.

© John G. Mason

Back in April 2017, The Spectator (UK) carried an article by Douglas Murray who asked, ‘Who Will Protect Nigeria’s Northern Christians?’ Murray pointed out that the Fulani (militia) are watching everything closely from the surrounding mountains. Every week, their progress across the northern states of Plateau and Kaduna continues. Every week, more massacres – another village burned, its church razed, its inhabitants slaughtered, raped or chased away…

‘For the outside world, what is happening to the Christians of northern Nigeria is both beyond our imagination and beneath our interest… Villages have been persuaded to keep records of the attacks to show anyone who cares…

Murray was writing of the region where three years before (2014) the Boko Haram had abducted two hundred and seventy-six schoolgirls. A report in April last year, 2024 indicated that ninety-one were still missing.

Murray commented in 2017: ‘If the international community meant anything by its promises such as the UN’s ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine, then what is happening could not go on. But the international community is uninterested…’

The reality is that the persecution of Christians continues. With some 50,000 deaths of Christians in Nigeria over the last decade, Nigeria is considered to be the most persecuted country in the world.

Atrocities like this cause our hearts to cry out with the repeated words of Psalm 13, How long, O Lord…?

Indeed, over the years one of the questions that constantly arises is how to respond to the carping criticism against Christianity about suffering in the world. It’s an important question. Yet it is also one of the toughest to answer for anyone who believes that God not only exists but is also all-powerful and all-compassionate.

Our sense of right and wrong and our cry for justice suggest we live in a moral universe.

If we lived in a world that had come into existence simply through a process of spontaneous change, logically we would be nothing but particles, bumping around in some sort of meaningful connection. Our conscious state would be nothing more than electrical discharges in the human brain.

Indeed, when we think about it, it’s difficult to be morally indignant about behavior that results from quarks smashing together. The issues of evil and suffering and the cry for justice are irrelevant if our existence is simply the product of an evolutionary framework.

Is this a reason for the international and media silence about the plight of suffering in Northern Nigeria and elsewhere? Yet the reality is that most of us have a sense of justice, often ill-defined, but nevertheless it is there.

Difficult though the subject of suffering is for anyone who believes in God, the Bible assures us that our cry for justice is right. It is right to condemn all wicked violence, the taking of innocent life. The Bible condemns the perpetrators of such deeds. Indeed, the Bible helps us to know evil when we see it.

So will justice ever occur? If we agree that we live in a moral universe, the picture the Bible paints makes a lot of sense and is very satisfying. Winston Churchill once observed that there had to be a hell, to bring the likes of Lenin and Stalin and Hitler to justice. The good news is that one day God will call everyone to account.

But there is a sting in the tail. If we want justice to be done to others, we must agree that we too need to be brought to account. Yes, we long for justice and vindication, but we too are guilty before a good and holy God.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed: ‘If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?’

So, why doesn’t God step in now? The Bible’s answer is that God stays his hand for the present because he wants to give all men and women, like the Prodigal Son in Jesus’ parable, the opportunity to turn to him in repentance. The good news is that God will pardon and deliver us when we turn to Jesus Christ. His judgment may be slow as we count time, but it is very sure as we read in the Second Letter of Peter, chapter 3 (2 Peter 3:9-13).

In the concluding verses of Psalm 13, we see the energy of David’s faith as he presses on in the Lord: But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt wonderfully with me (13:5-6).

We now have a far greater understanding of God’s love than David, for we live of the other side of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The cross of Jesus came between God’s good creation ruined by human sin with which the Bible begins, and the promise of a restored creation with which the Bible ends. In Revelation, chapter 21 we read: God will wipe away every tear from our eyes… there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

Does this mean we do nothing about the atrocities perpetrated against God’s people now? We have this responsibility – to pray for our suffering brothers and sisters, to find ways of letting them know of our awareness and even to find ways of providing support. And, as we are able, to let others, including leaders, know of the plight of the persecuted peoples. As Edmund Burke, 17th century English philosopher and statesman remarked: The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men (men and women) to do nothing.

Prayer. God of the nations, whose kingdom rules over all, have mercy on our broken and divided world. Shed abroad your peace in the hearts of all men and women and banish from them the spirit that makes for war; so that all races and people may learn to live as members of one family and in obedience to your laws; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Raise up your great power, Lord, and come among us to save us; so that, although through our sins we are grievously hindered in running the race that is set before us, your plentiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; through the sufficiency of your Son our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

© John G. Mason

Studies reveal that Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world. Not that we should be surprised. Jesus warned his followers that this would be their experience because of their association with him. “If the world hates you”, Jesus says, “know that it has hated me before it hated you …” (John 15:18).

The theme of the persecution of God’s people is not new. Psalm 2, written some 1,000 years before, begins: Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?

Why introduces the first of four voices and the underlying theme. The plot is a war between humanity and their creator. Significantly, plot in verse 1 is the same word used in the original language as the word translated meditate in Psalm 1, verse 2. Whereas all who are truly blessed and happy delight to meditate on God’s Word, the nations and peoples mutter and murmur in a negative voice.

The psalm continues by identifying the leaders of this muttering: The kings of the earth set themselves, and their rulers take counsel together, against the Lord and his anointed saying, “Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us” (Ps 2:2-3).

In identifying who the kings and rulers oppose, two further voices are identified – the Lord God (Ps 2:4-6) and his anointed one, Messiah (Ps 2:7-9).

Significantly, the prophet Hosea, chapter 11, verse 4 reveals God’s words about his relationship with his people and his care of them: I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.

And the Acts of the Apostles records the prayer of God’s people when Peter and John were released by the Jewish Council for preaching that Jesus, raised from the dead, is the Messiah. Psalm 2 is referenced in Acts as a psalm of David (even though the Psalm is not titled as such) and understood it as a prediction of Jesus’s crucifixion: Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples imagine vain things? (Acts 4:25f).

Specifically, the Jerusalem believers understood that Psalm 2 pointed to the actions of Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Gentile and Jewish leaders who had called for the crucifixion of God’s anointed one (Messiah). They viewed it as an essential part of God’s hidden, sovereign plan (Acts 4:28f). As Derek Kidner observes, ‘Every grand alliance against heaven will show, in time, this double pattern’ (D. Kidner, Psalms, IVP).

Verses 4 through 6 reveal God’s response: He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord has them in derision.

God’s laughter is not mocking, but rather laughter at the human arrogance that denies the existence of the Lord, sovereign over his creation. As Psalm 19 reveals, The heavens declare the glory of God; and the earth proclaims his handiwork …

Paul the Apostle echoes Psalm 2:5 and Psalm 19 when he writes: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him… (Romans 1:21a-23).

And in First Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 20 we read: Where is the one who is wise? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

To return to Psalm 2, God speaks to us all when he says: “I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill” (Ps 2:6). The perpendicular pronoun “I” is emphatic. Despite the view of many, especially in the western world today, God is not mocked. As he promised King David, a descendant of his (David’s) will one day be enthroned and be seen by all. God and his king will have the final word – and the last laugh.

Which introduces the third voice of the psalm – the voice of the king: I will tell the decree of the Lord: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you (Ps 2:7).

In Second Samuel chapter 7, verses 12 following, Nathan the prophet reveals God’s promise to David as he speaks about a descendant of David: … I will raise up your offspring after you, … and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son.

The relationship between the second and third speakers of the psalm permeate the New Testament. God says to Jesus at his baptism: “You are my Son, the Beloved” (Luke 3:22) and to Peter, James and John at Jesus’s transfiguration: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35) Furthermore, Paul the Apostle in his address at Antioch in Pisidia, linked the title of Jesus as God’s Son with his resurrection from the dead (Acts 13:32-34).

The theme of the rule of God’s king develops: 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” (Ps 2:8-9).

Matthew records Jesus’s mandate to his disciples: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, … (28:18f). And although the rule of Christ Jesus is hidden for the present, his mandate to make disciples of the nations, continues through the ages for all his people. Furthermore, in the context of Psalm 2 we can paraphrase break them as shepherd them, and a rod of iron as scepter, indicating his rule is as a shepherd king, guiding and disciplining with his royal scepter.

Which leads to the warning to God’s enemies in Psalm 2, verses 10 through 12: Now therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned, you rulers of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, live in trembling, paying true homage or he will be angry and your way will lead to your destruction, for his wrath can flare up in a moment.

God’s anger is not fickle, but just. It is balanced by the reality that he is also merciful and slow to anger – as we read, for example, in Isaiah chapter 63, verse 9: In his love and in his pity he redeemed them (his people)…

The fourth voice is in the last line of the psalm: Happy are all who take refuge in him (2:12c). Happy or blessed brings Psalms 1 and 2 together.

Dr. Andrew Shead (Moore College, Sydney) comments, ‘… this refuge-seeker is none other than the wise reader who delights in God’s instruction. Most of the psalms that follow are told from the perspective of this character as he addresses God in trust and thanksgiving, and comes to God for refuge’.

We shouldn’t be surprised when our faith in Christ Jesus is mocked. Rather, as Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” (Matthew 5:44).

Prayer. Almighty God, the protector of all who put their trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: increase and multiply your mercy upon us, so that with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal that we finally lose not the things eternal: grant this, heavenly Father, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Eternal God, from whom all holy desires, all good purposes, and all just works proceed: give to your servants that peace which the world cannot give, that our hearts may be set to obey your commandments, and that free from the fear of our enemies we may pass our time in trust and quietness; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

© John G. Mason