The Begotten Son | Psalm 2:7

Intro

On June 8, 2020, the Seattle Police Department announced (via Twitter) that a crowd of protestors was “throwing bottles, rocks, fireworks, and other projectiles at officers. The crowd is shining green lasers into officers’ eyes.” To de-escalate the intense clash between protestors and police that had been going on for over a week, the Seattle Police boarded up and abandoned its East Precinct. Protestors immediately filled that void, occupying several blocks of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. That area came to be known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ.

Protestors commandeered police barricades and used them to prevent vehicles from entering CHAZ. Signs were erected at the entrances that read, “You are now leaving the USA” and “Welcome to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.” CHAZ was supposed to be a police-free zone. Signs on the police precinct were changed to read “Seattle People’s Department.” There was a community garden, and racially segregated public spaces were available.

However, the CHAZ attempt at autonomy failed to produce a police-free paradise. One author reported, “Over its 24-day history, the autonomous zone saw two gun homicides and four additional shooting victims. …  In the absence of a legitimate police force, armed criminal gangs and untrained anarchist paramilitaries filled the void. Almost every night, gunshots rang through the streets. … By instituting a ‘police-free zone,’ the CHAZ didn’t become peaceable; it became lawless, brutish, and violent.”

Though the CHAZ existed less than 4 weeks within a few city blocks, it is a poignant picture of the problem with the world as a whole. Beginning with humanity’s fall into sin in Genesis 3, Scripture repeatedly describes humanity’s attempt to establish this world as an “autonomous zone,” free from God’s rule and reign.

And even though you might never participate in a protest like the CHAZ, CHAZ represents your heart in sinful rebellion against God. According to Scripture, every man, woman, and child has set up an “autonomous zone” in his or her own heart. Every last one of us is by nature an anti-God protestor, a lawless rebel intent on running our own lives our own way. We think we know better than God what is best, what will satisfy, what will fulfill.

And what a mess we make! Instead of establishing utopian order in our lives and our homes and our nation, we ruin everything we touch. Does your life ever feel like a mess? We feel it in our hearts and minds. Our thoughts, emotions, and desires can be disordered. We can make a mess of our relationships, our finances—of every part of life.

The root of all the mess in the world is our sinful attempt to live our lives our own way. As hopeless as that mess feels when you’re in the thick of it, it is the very context into which God the Father makes one of his clearest declarations to and about his own Son.

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.”

We’re giving our attention this Advent to texts where the Father not only speaks about the Son, but also speaks directly to the Son. This morning, our focus is Psalm 2:7: “I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.’”

But who is this Son? 

Psalm 2 is anonymous, though some believe it was originally written by David. It’s clear from v. 2 that this is a Messianic Psalm. The word Messiah is right there in verse 2: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed” (Psalm 2:2). Messiah is the Hebrew word for the Anointed One. And while it’s true that each king would have been anointed with oil, the events in Psalm 2 don’t match the life or reign of any of them … until Jesus. Psalm 2 is about the Messiah, the Christ, God’s Anointed One.

Psalm 2 is also considered to be a royal psalm, because it’s about the king of God’s people. Some scholars think the decree in Psalm 2:7 could be words that were spoken at the coronation ceremony of each king who descended from David. That’s because in 2 Samuel 7, God spoke to David about his offspring and said, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” (2 Samuel 7:14). But in 2 Samuel 7, God also promised David an eternal kingdom. And that came true, not through an unbroken line of many perfect kings, but in one single descendent of David who rose from the dead to reign forever.

The New Testament also claims that Psalm 2 is about Jesus. In fact, Psalm 2 is one of the most frequently quoted Psalms in the New Testament. The first time it appears is when the angel Gabriel visited the virgin Mary and told her she would bear a son. This is the very first thing he said: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:32–33). That echoes the language of Psalm 2! The first Christmas was the beginning of the fulfillment of the glorious hope promised in Psalm 2.

And in Acts 4, the disciples of Jesus recognize the rebellion of the nations described in Psalm 2. It’s not ultimately about a situation from the days of David or Solomon or Hezekiah. It was prophetically describing something that came to pass in their own days, when the leaders of Israel and the leaders of the Gentiles conspired together against Jesus. The disciples quote Psalm 2:1–2 in prayer, and then they add, “For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27–28).

In one of Paul’s sermons, recorded in Acts 13, Paul claims that the divine decree in Psalm 2:7 referred to Jesus and his resurrection from the dead. The author of Hebrews quotes the decree in Psalm 2:7 twice, once in Hebrews 1 and again in Hebrews 5, claiming that these words refer to Jesus.

For all these reasons, we can say confidently that Psalm 2 is ultimately and exclusively about Jesus. The psalmist, by divine revelation, heard and saw God the Father addressing his Son and God the Son addressing his Father.

As a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, my favorite content from their media team is the behind-the-scenes videos they produce. Every week they put out a “Field Access” video and a “Mic’d Up” video, which give fans like me a glimpse into what goes on in the locker room, in the tunnel, and on the sideline. I know I’m not on the team, but those videos make me feel like I am. I get fired up, sometimes choked up (if I’m honest).

Psalm 2:7 is like that. It’s an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. Just consider what we have the privilege to observe here … and marvel! As we listen in to this divine conference, we will see that God reconciles the world to himself by making rebels into worshipers of his Son, Jesus. 

We’ll look at this under three headings: 1) what this reveals about the Father; 2) what it reveals about the Son; and 3) what it means for the World.

What does this reveal about the Father?

In verse 7, the Lord’s Anointed speaks for the first time. But when he speaks, he simply repeats what GOD spoke to him. He says, “I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you’” (Psalm 2:7).

“I have begotten you” is a declaration by God about God’s own action. God is the subject here, the one doing the action.

And what we notice first is the simple yet profound fact that God reveals himself. “I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me  ….” (Psalm 2:7). The Father communicates himself. We would not know anything about God unless this was true. That’s why the very first sentence in the Sovereign Grace Statement of Faith says, “Our eternal, transcendent, all-glorious God, who forever exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is by his very nature a communicative being.” It is God’s very nature to speak, to communicate, to express himself, to reveal himself, to overflow and extend himself outward as it were.

But not only does the Father speak, he begets. That’s what he says: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” To beget means to father. The Hebrew word here appears nearly five hundred times in the Old Testament, frequently in the genealogies: Adam fathered Seth, Seth fathered Enosh, and so on.

But what does it mean for God to beget or father a Son? The primary way God has chosen to describe the relationship between the First and Second Persons of the Trinity to us is in terms of a father-son relationship. That’s familiar to us. But whenever God speaks analogically—or “anthropomorphically”—we have to think in the right direction. It’s not that our experience of fatherhood is the real thing, and God is simply “like” a father. Not at all! God is the definition of fatherhood. God the Father’s generation of the Son is the real thing, and he has graciously granted us to experience a mere shadow of that. He is the image. We are the reflection. He is the original, we are the copy. And as a copy, our experience is helpful but imperfect. For God, the generation of the Son is spiritual, not at all physical or sensual as it is for creatures. 

Herman Bavinck can help us here. He writes, “The generation [procreation] of human beings is imperfect and flawed. A husband needs a wife to bring forth a son. No man can ever fully impart his image, his whole nature, to a child …. A man becomes a father only in the course of time and then stops being a father, and a child soon becomes wholly independent from and self-reliant [with regard to] his or her father. But it is not so with God. … God is no abstract, fixed, … solitary substance, but a plenitude of life. It is his nature to be generative and fruitful. … God is an infinite fullness of blessed life.”

In fact, God’s speaking and God’s begetting are related. This is the very way Scripture describes the Son. He is the Word. He is the way God expresses and communicates himself. C.S. Lewis says the Son streams forth from the Father like thoughts from a mind: the thoughts are generated by the mind and express the mind. Here’s Lewis: “He [the Son] is the self-expression of the Father—what the Father has to say. And never was there a time when He was not saying it.”

No wonder the author of Hebrews says, right before citing Psalm 2:7: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–2). The Father expresses himself in the world, not only in spoken words, but ultimately in a person, his begotten Son.

And through the Son, the Father acts in the world. After Psalm 2 describes the raging rebellion of the nations against the Lord, it turns immediately to God’s response in v. 4: “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.” God’s position is key here. He sits “in the heavens.” That is, God is over and above everyone and everything on earth. And his place of authority is not threatened in the least, so he laughs at those who shake their fist at him.

But God is not a ruler who is far-off and out of touch; he is neither absent or passive. Look at vv. 5–6: “Then he [that’s the Father] 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.’” God asserts himself on earth through his Son.

What does this reveal about the Son?

As the one begotten by the Father, the Son reveals God to the world. One of the most fundamental aspects of sonship is representation or resemblance. Listen to the way Adam’s genealogy is described in Genesis 5. It begins by repeating the language of Genesis 1: “When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God” (Gen. 5:1). Then v. 3 says this: “When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.” (Genesis 5:3).  

To father is to replicate, to re-produce—to produce again. A begotten son resembles and represents his father. I love how C.S. Lewis explains this in Mere Christianity: “When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man … may make something more like himself …, say, a statue. If he is clever enough carver he may make a statue which is very like man indeed. But, of course, it is not a real man; it only looks like one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive. … What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man.”

The begotten Son represents the Father on earth because he perfectly resembles the Father. As the Nicene Creed says, “We believe … in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made; of the same essence as the Father.” 

So the New Testament declares about Jesus: “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Hebrews 1:3). Colossians 1:15 says, “He is the image of the invisible God.”

Why then does Psalm 2:7 say, “today”? “Today I have begotten you.” At first, it might sound like Jesus began to exist or became God’s Son at a point in history rather than existing eternally as God.

There are several possibilities. Some say “today” refers to Christmas, when the Son of God became a man. Others say it refers to Jesus’ baptism, when the Father said, “This is my beloved son.” 

In Acts 13, Paul marks Jesus’ resurrection from the dead as the fulfillment of the Psalm 2 decree: “And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’” (Acts 13:32–33).

However we take it, “today” is not talking about when the Son of God began to exist—Scripture clearly affirms that he has existed eternally with the Father. It’s talking about a time in human history when Jesus, the God-man, entered into full maturity as the representative Son and began to exercise his rights and privileges as the Son of God on earth. The eternal Son of God fulfilled this decree in Psalm 2:7 in history by taking on full humanity, living a life of perfect obedience to the Father, dying as the substitute for sinners, conquering the grave, and ascending into heaven.

As C.S. Lewis has said, “For the first time we saw a real man.” Think about that! Never had the world seen human nature reach full maturity. Adam failed. David failed. Solomon failed. But Jesus obeyed the Father perfectly and entered the fullness of sonship.

Sons are meant to grow up and launch into the world, carrying the family name, taking over the family business, inheriting the estate. Psalm 2:8 continues the Father’s decree to the Son: “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” As the Son of God, Jesus is the heir of the whole world. Whatever belongs to God the Father belongs by right to God’s Son. Since everything belongs to God, then everything belongs to his Son. Hebrews 1:2 says, “In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things.”

The whole planet lawfully belongs to Jesus. There are no “autonomous zones” outside of his authority. Some may refuse to acknowledge his status and his right, but he holds the title to the world.

God says to his Son about the nations of the earth (v. 9): “You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” The word “break” could also be rendered “rule.” In fact, that’s how this verse is translated in the Greek version of the Old Testament: “You shall rule them with a rod of iron.” 

And that’s exactly how the last book of the Bible presents Jesus—in the language of Psalm 2.  Revelation 19:15 says, “From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron.”

This decree is for the World

What makes the decree in Psalm 2:7—“You are my Son; today I have begotten you”—so powerful is not only the content of the decree, but also the context. In the midst of global unrest, as the nations are raging and the kings are conspiring, where does God’s Anointed King find his confidence? What truth does he announce? “I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you.’”

This father-son relationship is at the center of God’s plan to reconcile the world to himself. This Son is the hope of the world—hope for this rebellious world. Look at vv. 10–12: “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.”

This is how God reconciles the world to himself: by turning rebels into worshipers of his Son. It is impossible for anyone to remain neutral toward Jesus, the begotten Son of God. There are only two responses: rebellion or worship. To kiss the Son is to pay him homage. It shows affectionate loyalty and humble submission to the Son.

So are there areas of your life where you are trying to carve out an autonomous zone, trying to do things your own way but making a mess? Kiss the Son! Acknowledge and honor Jesus as the Son of God who deserves your exclusive allegiance and adoration in every part of life. Worship him in the midst of your marriage conflict and your toddler’s tantrums. Worship him right there when you’re tempted to lie or cheat or lust. Worship him in the middle of your anxiety, your fear, your depression.

What has God done about our rebellion and chaos? He gave his own Son. Now you can be reconciled to God by trusting and treasuring that Son, Jesus.