Why do the Heathen Rage?

Why do the Heathen Rage?  2021 01 10

Psalm 2

In the news this week, there has been an endless stream of “news” about how a sitting US president tried to start an insurrection.  They claim, quite falsely, if you listen to what he really said, that he told his supporters to rise up and storm their Capitol building.  They have banned a sitting US president and the very administration of the country from as many means of communication as possible, in an effort to prevent the prevent the government from having any communication with the citizens.  They are now quickly and systematically removing thousands of conservative voices from the major social media platforms and doing all they can to shut down other social media platforms that still believe in free speech.  They declare that it is to protect the people from violence, yet they are all for the most violent act of all, to tear a human being from the safety of its mother’s womb.  Conservatives, right-to-lifers, Evangelical Christians and several other groups of loyal citizens are now being branded as extremists.  Canada is no different, and in both countries, there are politicians calling for an end to charitable status for churches.  Schools teach the theory of evolution as an established fact, while telling little children that God is a fib.  The heathen rage against God and His Christ.  Why?

 

Psalm 2

 

Why do the heathen rage and imagine a vain thing?  Why does the world so hate the one true God and His Christ?  Why do they imagine a vain or empty, useless, powerless thing?  Why do they put such faith in such an unproven and unsupported theory as evolution and shake their collective fists at the One who created them?

 

I Why do the Heathen Rage?  vv 1 – 3 (Acts 4:25,26)

  1. The word, rage, can also be translated, tumultuously assemble. The general idea is that of the heathen, those who do not believe in almighty God and his Christ, assembled together as one noisy and agitated body against Him.
    1. In fact, the leaders of countries around the world together rage against God and Christ, sometimes giving a false acceptance to Christianity, but denying any form of it that agrees with the Bible. “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”  2Timothy 3:5
    2. ISIS crucifies Christians. Iran hangs Christians.  The Canada and the United States arrest Christians whose sound Biblical beliefs are in opposition to judges.  Politicians often invoke the Bible they do not believe at all.
  2. The fact is that they want to remove any kind of restrictions based on faith in God and his Christ. They want to change or remove anything in the Bible that disagrees with life choices that sinful people want to make.  Rather than accepting that the Bible is the Word of God, they want to retranslate it, change it, or simply have the entire Bible reclassified as hate speech and banned.
  3. Why do the heathen rage? Why can’t they simply live and let live?  Jesus explained when he spoke to those who raged against him in the days when he walked: “Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:43, 44
    1. We Christians hear the heathen rage, see their actions and are shocked when they don’t behave like Christians. They aren’t Christians!  They hate real Christianity!

Real Christianity goes against everything they believe in!

  1. Sexual immorality
  2. Abortion
  • Assisted Suicide
  1. Godless, sinless, meaningless evolution
  2. No God to have to give an answer to – and more.
  1. Rather than having to face and consider that they might be wrong, the heathen rage, imagining a vain thing, that they are powerful enough on their own to face down anything that might stand in opposition to their godless world view.
  2. To them, the bonds of Christ are burdensome and thick, yet our Saviour says to us, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:30

           

II  God Has a Plan  vv 4 – 6

  1. God is so far above their plans and power that He looks on them with utter contempt.
    1. He sits in the heavens, out of reach of all their absurd, futile, and irrational attempts against Him. The vain attempts of the unbelieving world to bring God under their power are utterly contemptible in their futility.  God has a plan.
  2. God will speak in His wrath and that will be the end of it. The heathen rage, God speaks, and all their vain plans come to naught as His Son is crowned upon His holy hill of Zion.
    1. As history winds down, the heathen rage. They will soon all come against Israel, thinking to destroy God’s chosen people, but God will destroy the nations, instead.
    2. They will come again with the devil’s own beast and false prophet, only to be destroyed by the very Christ they rage against. “And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.  His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.  And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.  And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.  And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.“  Revelation 19:11 – 16
    3. They will come again at the end of time, not having learned their lesson, even after a thousand years of peace, when the devil is in prison and Christ and the saints are ruling the earth. Yet God will simply speak and that will be their end.  “And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”  Revelation 20:9

 

III  Christ Will Rule  vv 7 – 9

  1. The speaker beginning in verse 7 is our Saviour, Christ, Himself. He declares the decree, the proclamation of almighty God, who declared Him to be His Son, the inheritor of these very heathen who rage against Him and all things for His possession. “But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom.”  Hebrews 1:8
  2. The heathen rage, but He will rule with a rod of iron and break their power and plans. “And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron…”  Revelation 19:15

 

IV Be Wise  vv 10 – 12

  1. Jesus Christ our Saviour says to the leaders of this world. “Be wise.  Serve the LORD joyfully and reverently.”  It is wise to serve the Lord.  It is unwise to rage against God and His Christ with the heathen.
  2. “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.” To kiss the Son is an expression from the East, meaning to show allegiance to a king.  He IS the King of kings.
    1. It’s wise to show allegiance to Christ. It’s very unwise to reject and rage against Him. “…fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”  Revelation 20:9
    2. Blessed are all who put their trust in Him. It’s wise to repent and put your faith in Jesus Christ the Saviour.

 

Conclusion

  1. Why do the heathen rage? They are under the influence of the devil, the god of this world and sold out to him.  They are blind to their foolishness, oblivious to their peril. Even when faced with the glaring lack of logic in their godless philosophy, they continue, because the god of this world has blinded them.  “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” 2Corinthians 4:4
  2. “ Blessed are all they that put their trust in him,” in Jesus Christ.  No matter how the heathen rage against what you believe as a child of God, your destiny is sealed, the way is sure, the path is set.  We are “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;”  Titus 2:13 when Christ comes back for us and we will be forever with our Lord.   Amen!