We're reading from Psalm chapter 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 the 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 you be angry and you perish in the way.
For his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.
Last week we talked about man's desire for blessedness, as Simon has said.
We actually don't know what blessedness is.
I mean, if you're not there, you never know what actually blessedness is.
I mean, I'm not sure whether you've eaten durian before.
I don't think many of you have eaten durian.
So, I mean, a lot of people thought that durian was a very, what is it, yucky food.
It just tastes like vomit.
They say, oh, it smells like vomit.
But unless you have eaten it, you never know what good taste is.
I can assure you that.
And that is something that reminds us that when we talk about blessedness,
we don't actually know what that is because we're never there.
What we are seeking is we want to avoid suffering.
We don't know what sufferings are.
We know what poverty is.
We know what hunger is, what sickness is.
And we want to avoid those.
And that's as best as we can do as human beings.
We don't actually know what more than that is there that we can have.
And so, last week we talked about Gautama Buddha.
He was trying to solve that problem of suffering.
And he thought that suffering was caused by a person's craving.
A craving causes suffering, which is true in that way.
Today I want to talk about another philosopher, Karl Marx.
Karl Marx, he was one about 200 years ago now.
And Karl Marx thought that suffering was caused by inequality of power in the world.
Karl Marx was a highly intelligent man.
His father was a Jewish lawyer.
And when Karl Marx was six years old, his father changed their religion from Judaism to Christianity
because his father needed to adopt Christianity to be allowed to work as a lawyer in the country where they live,
in Prussia.
I think it's called, pronounce it Prussia or Prussia.
That is part of German at that time.
Now, growing up in a Lutheran church, I suppose there would be resentment to the fact that they needed to change religion.
Karl Marx had enough of religion.
He said, religion is the opinion of the people.
As he could think that people, a lot of people were using opinion at that time.
So after you inhaled opinion, you will become drowsy and you become unconscious of your pain.
And so for a short period of time, an hour or so, you are just out of the world and forget about the suffering.
And so to Karl Marx, religion does not solve any problem.
It just sort of covers it up for a while.
And at times, religion also makes people suffer more because they demand or it demands these followers to do something that is difficult or not pleasant.
And so about 150 years ago, he published this Communist Manifesto.
So his longing was to create a better world, a world in which there is no suffering.
So the basic problem, as he saw, was that there were two major classes of people in the world,
the honours class and the working class, or the landlords, or the tenants.
So a class of people who own things and a class of people who work for those who own things.
And during his time, most of the honours would be kings and rulers.
And those rulers, because they got the power, so they can exploit the workers to squeeze all the profits out of them.
So the rich were getting richer.
The poor remained poor forever.
So in the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx encouraged the workers to work together to topple the honours.
He also saw that this cannot sustain because how can life, during that, somebody has to do something.
And so he encouraged people to do that.
While during his time, he didn't actually get acceptance.
He was kicked out of many countries.
Because all the rulers were like his ideas.
But eventually, after his death, in 1917 in Russia, the working class successfully toppled the ruling class.
And then the Communist movement started to gain momentum in many countries.
So as the revolutions progressed, honours, the workers started to redefine the honours.
So they are no longer just land honours.
It could be all sorts of honours.
So when, for example, when communism reached Cambodia in 1974,
honours, the workers were so jealous that they killed all the educated people, including anyone who wore glasses.
So apparently, if you own knowledge, you can also oppress people.
So anyone who, in particular, anyone who just worked just by talking, like teachers or clergy or businessmen,
and they don't actually do, didn't do any physical work.
So they were all killed, these people.
So under the communist ideology, in less than five years, Cambodia was plunged from a poor country under the oppression of their former king into a lawless and stone-edged country.
Because they destroyed all the intelligent, educated people, destroyed all the machines they used for farming.
They just back to using manual things to do things.
Because the whole country has gone crazy under the ideology of communism.
And during that five years, out of the eight million people in Cambodia, two million people died.
One quarter is incredible.
In many countries, after the workers were free from the honours of oppression,
they tortured and killed anyone who were considered to be honours.
Because it is estimated that about 200 million people died in the war because of the communist movement.
So communism has been abandoned by most countries, except in some countries where the communist leaders become the new honours.
These countries still hold on to communism because it maintains the power of the ruling party.
But they don't actually practice it anymore.
While Guatemala Buddha's goal is for an individual to get to a state of low suffering,
Karl Marx's goal was for a community, a community to get to a state of low suffering.
Karl Marx believed that the whole world would adopt communism and live in paradise.
However, the world soon found that communism led to more suffering.
Where had Karl Marx gone wrong?
While Buddha left God out of the picture of his ideal, Karl Marx went all out against God.
He considered the idea of God to be oppressive.
He thought that by freeing people from the fear of God, they would be free to create their own paradise.
If Karl Marx had lived in Cambodia during the time of communism, he himself would have been killed as well as one of those who own knowledge.
In real life, Karl Marx was like a scoffer.
He didn't actually do anything physically.
He just sat there, gave up his idea.
If you read history, his house was quite unkempt.
He would be sitting there doing nothing, even though things are not tidy.
The wife is the one who worked.
He didn't care about those children.
He would get drunk if he was not doing anything else.
So there's his life.
His ideal, he did not actually translate into the change of his own life.
And so the communist experience showed that political and economic freedom does not necessarily bring a better living condition.
Because people are selfish.
We have ideals, but we do not want to, we can't change ourselves, not to mention about the world.
So we will use any freedom when we are not under oppression.
We will use freedom for our own wishes.
And when there's no fear of God, as communism will remove God, there will be no respect to authority and human life.
And that's why a communist country, they rely on secret police to maintain their power.
They know that nobody actually respected them because they didn't respect any other authority either.
So Karmak's idea was not new.
So those who felt that they were oppressed have tried to topple the oppressors since history began.
So in our reading today, Psalm 2 talks about God's plan for his creation in the world's attempts to gain freedom from God.
Men wanted to be free from the kingdom of God.
They did not know that the real freedom can only be found in the kingdom of God.
It's like blessedness.
If you have never been there, we don't know what it is.
And if you never tasted the freedom that is in the kingdom of God,
we only know about our own little experience of what freedom is.
Psalm 2 is divided into four parts.
And each part has got three verses.
Part 1 describes how the world views God.
Part 2 describes what God has planned to do.
Part 3 tells us the one who is ultimately sovereign.
Part 4 is a call to repentance and blessing.
So I will just read to you again part 1 from verses 1 to 3.
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 bones apart and cast away their court from us.
Why do the nations make noise?
What do people and their rulers hope to achieve?
Though they want to be free from the oppression of God.
Why do people think that God's rule is oppressive?
Because God's rule requires them to do what they do not like doing.
I think we can understand this by thinking about our childhood.
Most children would feel that their parents were oppressive
in some stage of their life as they grew up.
They wish that their parents would give them freedom to do what they like to do.
It's only when we become more mature,
sometimes only when we have our own children,
that we begin to understand a bit or appreciate what our parents did to us.
I mean, our good parents.
And because we can never become God ourselves,
so I think we can never fully appreciate God's action.
We can, many a times, we can only trust that God knows what he's doing
and God is good and he will do what is good for us as well.
In the history, we can see that the Israelites did the same thing.
After they were free from the oppression of Egyptians,
they preferred to be their own rulers,
to replace the God who rescued them with a golden calf
just in front of the mountain of God.
Why golden calf?
Because golden calf let them live in the wild way they want.
And when they settled in the promised land,
a land thrown with milk and honey,
would they be careful to live under God's rule?
No.
They choose to worship foreign gods.
Again, because those gods let them do what they like.
And also, they wanted a king to rule over them
like the nations around them.
So we all like to have rulers who are after our own hearts
and not after God's heart.
The rulers of the world would also like to declare independence from God
and the king whom God has chosen
because they do not want to lose their position and power.
And we can see that during Jesus' time,
the Pharisees and the priests,
they were against Jesus
because they saw that Jesus was attracting more followers.
And so these rulers,
they can think that God's rule is oppressive,
but they do not think that their own rules are oppressive as well.
They want to cut the cord like a dog wants to break the leash
from his good master.
The dog thought that he can navigate the streets better than his master.
So we will come to part two,
that is verses four to six.
He who sits in the heavens laugh.
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.
How would you respond to a young boy
who wants to declare independence from his parents?
Or a man who leads blood transfusions to save his life,
cutting off the transfusion lines
so that he could walk out of the hospital?
Such acts reveal a person's ignorance,
foolishness,
and willful rebellion.
In some two,
the rebellious act
is planned and led by kings.
It is a willful act.
Such a decision is lovable.
It is lovable because
so-called intelligent rulers
carefully devise ways
to cut themselves off from God,
and they think they have achieved something great
for themselves and humanity.
They ban the preaching of gospel in their countries.
They ban scripture,
teaching,
and prayer in schools.
They remove the sanctity of marriage.
They take away the value of human life.
They reduce parents' right
to discipline their children,
or in the name of freedom from oppression.
At the same time,
they oppress those
who want to follow God's ways.
God is not going to re-courcer his ways
with the foolish and rebellious rulers.
He simply said,
I have appointed my king on Zion,
my holy hill.
You do not try to explain to a child
how electricity works.
You simply tell him in a stern voice
not to touch the electricity outwards,
because they are not.
You can't explain things
that when people don't understand,
or not at that level to understand.
We will go to part three now,
verses seven to nine.
I will tell 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 porter's vessel.
Why does God need to set up a king?
Isn't God a king himself as God?
Why is there a need?
I think there are at least two reasons.
One, because God is spirit.
He's providing us a king with a human body,
whom we can relate to.
Number two, from someone,
we know that we have fallen short of God's glory,
because we have thought,
talked,
and done things which are unrighteous,
and we have no interest in God's law.
He has provided the righteous man in Jesus Christ.
We can become right with God
through his life and death.
After we reconcile with God,
how do we live?
Do we still live as individuals doing our own things?
No.
We become God's people and new creation.
Those who are in Christ now live in his kingdom.
God has set up his king to establish his kingdom.
So, in Psalm 1,
God is leading us into righteousness.
In Psalm 2,
God is leading us into his kingdom
as a community.
And we don't live as a Christian
just on our own,
by myself,
at home.
That is not God's plan.
You stop at Psalm 1.
God's plan is more than that.
There's Psalm 2.
And that is the church.
That is the community.
And that is the living up of that righteous life.
And that's why there's a king,
because we can't do it on our own.
And we need a king to lead us
and rule over us
and guide us
and also lead us
to live a life that is holy.
So, who is worthy for God to annoy
as the king of his choice?
Only the righteous man in Psalm 1
who fulfills the rules of God
is worthy to be God's anointed ruler.
God has provided his son,
Jesus Christ,
live out a life of righteousness.
He is therefore worthy
to be God's chosen king.
He is also therefore worthy
to judge sinners.
He is the king.
He is going to be judging us.
And he is worthy to judge us,
not only because he is God's son,
because he has lived a life
of righteousness himself.
We have no excuse in front of him.
And after his death and resurrection,
Jesus declared that
all authority in heaven and on earth
has been given to me.
At that time,
he formally informed the world
that he is the king
whom God has set up in Psalm 2.
We go to the last three verses,
verses 10 to 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 took refuge in him.
Knowing that all authority in heaven and on earth
has been given to Jesus Christ,
what should the rulers of the world do?
They can keep ignoring him
or rejecting him.
They can keep cutting themselves off from God
and live for eternal destruction.
God's command to the rulers
is to serve
this ultimate king with fear
and rejoice in him with trembling.
Who are the kings and rulers of our world now?
So in a democratic society,
we can be considered our own kings.
So if we don't have a king,
then we are the king,
the kings or the rulers.
Why should we serve Jesus Christ
and not our own purposes?
Because he's the only king
who is worthy for us to live and die for.
And why serve him with fear?
Because we need to fear
before we take anything seriously.
The fear is not only about fearing God,
but also about fearing ourselves.
We can only make judgments
based on our own limited knowledge and wisdom.
I fear that I would hold on to my judgment
and reject wiser advice.
I'm often amazed by the way
patients insisting on their own wills,
refusing to accept sound medical advice.
The less we know about something,
the more we think that we know it all.
isn't it the same?
I mean, when I was in medical school,
I thought I knew everything
before I graduated.
But as I work in it,
the longer I know that,
the longer I know that I don't know anything
about medicine or a little.
It's so easy for us
to think that we know everything.
and not only with God,
we're relating to people.
We know how people live,
how they think.
All these are very,
I mean, this is how we live.
And that's why I fear.
I fear that I would be so,
I don't know that I'm,
when I'm foolish,
I don't know that I'm foolish.
That is what I fear the most.
And so,
fearing God
and fearing our own
tinfulness
and foolishness.
And why rejoice in Him?
Because I know that
despite my stubbornness
and foolishness,
Jesus the King
has loved me
and died for me.
Because there's now
no condemnation
to those
who are in Christ Jesus.
why trembling?
Because we need to take things,
because we tend to take things for granted,
we need to keep reminding ourselves
that we are saved by His grace
and we need His grace day by day
to keep ourselves humble.
It is so easy for us
to take what is familiar for granted.
We can become careless
to those
who are most familiar to us.
And we tend to take
people for granted
when we get to know them
better.
And the same thing
we can do towards God.
And that's why
the trembling
that we want to know
that we don't become proud
in our
thought about God.
When our practice
changed our building policy
this year
from Bob Building
for Private Building,
I was amazed
that
no patient
whom I have been
Bob Building
for the past 10 years
thanked me for that.
Everyone was complaining
about needing to pay
for my service now.
When things are free,
like God's grace,
it's so easy for us
to take it for granted.
and I
and
so
that word
is very powerful.
Surfing with fear,
rejoicing
and
trembling.
Kiss the son
lest he be angry
and you perish
in the way
for his wrath
is quickly kindled.
Kissing the son
is a sign
of submission.
This
sound
sounds a bit
oppressive,
doesn't it?
submit to the son
or else
he will
dash you
into pieces.
If you think so,
we need to check
our definition
of oppression.
Our foolish
and biased minds
have often
confused
justice
with oppression.
We have
grossly
overvalued
our worth
and goodness
and at the same time
grossly
undervalued
God's son's
worth
and goodness.
While we
feel free
to pronounce
judgment
on God,
we do not
accept
judgment
from God.
God is not man.
He does not need
to use his power
to oppress people.
Whatever he does
is done
according
to his
nature,
to his nature
of holiness
and kindness.
If the consequence
for a child
to play with
erraticity
is serious
because it's
a matter of life
and death,
the consequence
for God's
creature
to break
God's law
is even
more serious
because it is
a matter of
eternal life
and death.
God has
given us
a warning
about the
consequence
of rejecting
his rule
and rejecting
his ruler.
He's fully
expected
and justified
to judge
those who
choose to
live as if
there's no
God.
We thank
God that
the last
sentence
in the
psalm is
blessed
is all
who
take
refuge
in him.
God has
not only
given us
a warning
about
submitting
to this
king,
he also
promised
blessing
to those
who take
refuge
in this
king.
He has
sent this
king to
redeem us.
The
punish of
God
has first
fallen
onto this
king.
Many
kings in
the world
are kings
because they
were born
in a royal
family.
God's
king
does not
only
become
king
because he
is the
son of
God,
he is
king also
because he
earned the
kingship.
He came
to suffer
and die
for his
people.
One of
the blessings
for those
who take
refuge in
God's
kingdom
is freedom.
Surprisingly,
when people
want freedom,
they want to
get away
from God's
kingdom,
but the
real freedom
is in
God's
kingdom.
In
Luke 4,
verses
18 and
19,
Jesus
said,
the spirit
of the
Lord
is upon
me
because he
has
anointed
me
to
proclaim
good
news
to
the
poor.
He
has
sent
me
to
proclaim
liberty
to
the
captives
and
recovering
of sight
to the
blind
and set
at liberty
those
who are
oppressed
to
proclaim
the year
of the
Lord's
favor.
Galatians
5,
1 says,
For
freedom
Christ
has set
us
free.
Stand
firm
therefore,
do not
sum
again
to a
yoke
of
slavery.
God
has set
up
his
king
to
bring
in
the
ultimate
freedom,
a
freedom
which can
only be
achieved
by
submission
to
this
king.
We are
all
deficient,
effective,
and
deceitful.
Only the
true king
can make
us whole.
If what
you want
is to
topple
this
king,
if what
we want
is to
topple
this
king,
then we
are making
a death
wish.
you may
not want
to listen
to a
doctor's
advice
to stop
drinking
soft
drinks
as you
think
that soft
drinks are
the best
things in
life.
But if
you submit
to the
doctor's
advice and
drink water
instead,
you will
find yourself
able to
enjoy many
more things
in life
as you
get older.
Karl Marx
thought that
religion is
open for
the people.
It is
true that
religion can
lead to
more
burden and
does not
really solve
suffering in
life.
But even
opinion gives
some comfort
and relief
to the
users.
It may
not be
long term,
but at
least you
give people
some
reprieve.
If religion
is opinion
to the
people,
e-religion
is soft
drinks to
the people.
E-religion
tells people
to enjoy
themselves in
whatever they
like.
it is
like soft
drinks,
which give
people short
term
enjoyment,
but need
too many
sufferings
later,
individually
and in
the community.
The King
Jesus is
more than
religion.
He is
also more
than
communism.
We can
only be
free to
be holy
and kind
in Jesus.
Without
this radical
change
inside us,
there will
not be
any
paradise
with any
religious
or
iridigious
ideologies.
It is
only in
Jesus that
we can
have peace
with God,
with ourselves,
and with
others.
Let us
pray.
Father,
we are so
thankful for
your
forbearance
upon us.
we are
just like
little
children,
very
short-sighted,
and
wondering
very,
very
little
things.
We thank
you for
such a
promise that
no one
has seen,
no one
has heard.
You have
prepared for
those who
love you.
May you
help us
to see
that in
the Lord
Jesus Christ
and live
for him.
Thank you,
Father, for
we pray in
Jesus' name.
Amen.