"Wait for the Lord" (Sermon on Psalm 130) | December 7, 2025

Sermon Text: Psalm 130
Date: December 7, 2025
Event: The Second Sunday in Advent, Year A

Psalm 130 (EHV)

A song of the ascents.
1Out of the depths I have called to you, O LORD.
2Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive to the sound of my cry for mercy.
3If you, LORD, kept a record of guilt,
O Lord, who could stand?
4But with you there is pardon,
so you are feared.
5I wait for the LORD. My soul waits,
and in his word I have put my hope.
6My soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.
7Israel, wait confidently for the LORD, because
with the LORD there is mercy.
With him there is abundant redemption.
8So he himself will redeem Israel from all its guilt.

Wait for the Lord

Almost every parent of small children knows that this time of year can be taxing. Sure, there’s a lot to do, so many tasks to check off the list, but often for the children, there’s one thing and one thing only in view: those Christmas presents. I know that in my own childhood, I was continually looking for ways to convince my parents to make early Christmas presents a thing because it was tough to wait. That rarely went very far, despite the great reasons I had for implementing something!

No, this season offers many learning opportunities, and patience is a big one. There’s a lot of looking forward, anticipating, hoping, and … waiting. No matter how exciting things are, no matter how much you’re looking forward to them, you can’t force December 25 to come any sooner than the calendar and clock tell us it will arrive (and for overwhelmed adults, sadly, we can’t delay its arrival either).

But what a tremendous picture of our Advent focus! Advent is all about waiting—whether we are putting ourselves in the shoes of Old Testament believers waiting and longing for the arrival of God’s salvation in the Messiah, or considering our situation as New Testament believers waiting and longing not for a holiday or other temporary joy and reprieve, but the permanent rest that will come.

Psalm 130 is a psalm about trusting God’s promises and waiting patiently for them to come to fruition. As you can see in the heading, this psalm is one of the “songs of ascent.” The songs of ascent were used by people traveling to Jerusalem for worship. No matter where you were coming from, you always spoke about going “up” to Jerusalem because of the hill on which it is built. We might think of pilgrims making a long trek on foot from their homes in the diaspora to reach this center of worship, or those making a shorter trek from nearby Judea and eventually Galilee. The songs of ascent typically center the traveler on the trip and the worship, and specifically the care that God brings to them in both.

Psalm 130 is very focused on the spiritual preparation the worshiper should invest in before coming to the temple, to be ready to hear the word and promises of God with a well-grounded, well-centered heart.

The psalm writer begins with what seems like a dreadful situation: Out of the depths I have called to you, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the sound of my cry for mercy. When the psalm writer describes himself as calling from the depths, this is a spiritual condition rather than a physical one. He’s not fallen into a hole or been thrown in prison. He’s in a very low place; low because of his sin. Perhaps David’s description of the torture of his guilt from elsewhere in the psalms comes to mind, “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away as I groaned all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy on me” (Psalm 32:3-4). You and I both know what it is to feel guilty over the wrong things we have done or the good things we have neglected. Describing that state as “the depths” seems pretty appropriate.

One feature we should pay attention to in this section of Scripture is the psalmist’s subtle shifts in the name for God he uses throughout. When you see the name “LORD” in all capital letters in our psalm, that is God’s unique name (likely pronounced “Yahweh” in Hebrew). This name expresses his covenant grace, his love for his people, and most clearly his forgiveness. When you see the name “Lord” with regular letters, that’s a different name in Hebrew (pronounced “Adonai”). It’s a respectful name, but rather than carrying the force of God’s love and mercy, it describes the fact that God is above us and that we are accountable to him. While I probably wouldn’t advocate for this in a published English translation, it might be a helpful shorthand in our minds to substitute the word “Savior” for the all-capitals “LORD,” and to substitute the word “Master” for the regularly-lettered “Lord.”

So, his initial plea from the depths is to his Savior, to his God of covenant grace. The only way he’ll be heard is if God looks on him with mercy and love. But addressing God as “Master” in verse two, “Lord, hear my voice” acknowledges that God is under no obligation to pay attention to him. He’s asking him to, but God, being higher than us, and more to the point, God being the one whom we’ve sinned against, doesn’t need to do anything for us—save for the fact that he’s promised to.

He goes on to note that this guilt and sin, this disaster of a rebellious life against God, is the universal human condition in our fallen state. If you, LORD, kept a record of guilt, O Lord, who could stand? The answer? No one. But it is the God of covenant grace who doesn’t follow this hypothetical situation, who doesn’t keep a record of our guilt and sins. If he did so, we could never stand before the God to whom we are accountable.

Verse four is really the central verse of this psalm, not just in the number of lines of text, but even more so in thought. For the first three verses, the psalm writer has been coming to God from a state of guilt and shame over his sin. He knows that God owes him nothing, but he also knows what God has promised to him—pardon! And this verse really underscores the notion that to “fear God” is typically not to be afraid of him but to stand in awe of him and revere him. God’s pardon, his forgiveness, is the motivation for this fear in the psalmist’s eyes. Surely God’s forgiveness is not a reason to cower and hide from God, but it is the reason to be amazed at him and thank him!

This hope isn’t just some crazy fiction that we’ve created, hoping in vain for a merciful God to save us. No, this is exactly what he’s promised. And the psalm writer points us to where our confidence ought to be, not in ourselves or what we want to happen, but in what God has specifically told us he’s going to do: I wait for the LORD. My soul waits, and in his word I have put my hope. His Word is our confidence because that is the flawless, inerrant record of his promises. We can be certain that there will be pardon for all of our sins because that’s what God promised and—unlike us—he never breaks a promise.

Think back to a point when time just seemed to drag. It was probably because you were really anticipating something that was about to happen. Maybe the end of the school day or the workday meant big, exciting plans, but it felt like the clock wasn't cooperating. That’s a taste of what the psalm writer means when he says, “My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” Think about what eager anticipation the night watchman would have in ancient days. They had to stand guard when there were no electric lights. Oil lamps and candles only shed their light so far. How close the enemy could get to the city walls under the cover of darkness! If the watchmen lost focus, it could be disastrous. So how welcome those first rays of light would be in the early morning—either because they made the watching job so much easier or because they meant this overnight shift was over, and the pressure was off.

That’s the kind of eager anticipation we have for God’s arrival. This life is sometimes like the night watch that feels like it’ll never end or the school or work day that seems to go on forever. We drag ourselves through this muck of this life, and it seems like it might never change. But we know it will, because our King and Judge will return. We wait for him with that eager expectation.

You don’t need to be afraid of God as judge because you know him as your Savior: Israel, wait confidently for the LORD, because with the LORD there is mercy. With him there is abundant redemption. Jesus himself, the one who gave his life as the payment for every single one of your sins, is your judge. Imagine walking into a courtroom where the judge had done everything he could to make sure you would walk out of there released and free. Imagine if you knew exactly what the verdict was going to be—and it was good for you! What a difference that would make! How greatly your nerves would be settled, where in a different situation they would probably be on edge!

This is our confidence before God: He himself will redeem Israel from all its guilt. Do not be afraid, dear Christian, because your Savior, the LORD, has loved you and forgiven you. Be confident, dear Christian, not in yourself but in our Savior who lived and died to save you from your sin. Wait patiently, dear Christian, for the return of our Savior and Judge, who will publicly announce that we are not guilty of any sin because he himself took them all away. Rejoice, dear Christian, for the Lord has heard your cry for mercy and has saved you.

Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to look with eager anticipation for your return! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Listen Up! Our King Gives Rest!" (Sermon on Psalm 95) | November 23, 2025

Sermon Text: Psalm 95
Date: November 23, 2025
Event: Christ the King (Last Sunday of the Church Year), Year C

Psalm 95 (EHV)

Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD.
Let us give a loud shout to the Rock who saves us.
2Let us approach his presence with thanksgiving.
With music we will shout to him.
3For the LORD is the great God
and the great King above all gods.
4He holds the unexplored places of the earth in his hand,
and the peaks of the mountains belong to him.
5The sea belongs to him, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
6Come, let us bow down. Let us revere him.
Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker,
7for he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture
and the flock in his hand.
Today, if you hear his voice,
8do not harden your hearts as they did at Meribah,
as they did that day at Massah in the wilderness,
9where your fathers challenged me
and tested me though they had seen what I had done.
10For forty years I was disgusted with that generation,
and I said, “They are a people who have hearts that stray.
They do not acknowledge my ways.”
11So I swore in my anger,
“They shall never enter my resting place.”

Listen Up! Our King Gives Rest!

Politicians on the campaign trail make a whole lot of promises. They assure voters that if they are elected (or reelected), things will be different—better—for those who vote for them. But those things don’t always happen the way they were promised. Perhaps there are political or logistical roadblocks to doing what they promised to do once in office. Maybe if you’re very cynical, you consider that they never intended to keep those campaign trail promises, and only said what they thought would get them votes.

The reality is that even the best-intentioned promises usually have an asterisk next to them. The parent who promised the trip to get ice cream in the evening cannot foresee the car troubles that will arise later that day. A rainstorm may upend the promise of a day at the amusement park.

This morning, our focus is on the Psalm of the Day, Psalm 95. The words of Psalm 95 are probably familiar to us; they are the basis for the liturgical song the Venite, or “Oh Come Let us Sing to the Lord,” that we sing at the end of most months when we follow the Morning Prayer (Matins) order of worship. The words of Psalm 95 don’t so much make promises as to what God will do, but give reasons for why we should listen to him, while also pointing ahead to the final rest that our King promises.

The first verse of Psalm 95 is the verse from which all the others flow. Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD. Let us give a loud shout to the Rock who saves us. Why would we sing joyfully to God? There are many reasons, but the fact that he is the one who saves us reigns supreme. He is the one who forgives our sins. He is the one who assures us of eternal life with him. The reasons for praising God that follow this verse, while important in their own right, would be meaningless without this first truth. For truly, God’s might and wisdom would mean nothing good for us if he weren’t also merciful and forgiving.

What is our response to God’s forgiveness? We sing songs of praise! That doesn’t mean that you need to be a great musician or show your appreciation to God. Instead, this music is the overflow of a thankful heart—gratitude and appreciation to the God who loves us and cares for us. Let us approach his presence with thanksgiving. With music we will shout to him.

And why? For the LORD is the great God and the great King above all gods. Here’s our focus for Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year. We praise God because he is above anyone and everyone. Obviously, there are no other gods except him, but he reigns supreme over anything that would attempt to steal that divine spotlight, be it the false gods of other religions or the materialistic things in our lives that often try to steal that number-one priority spot from God.

His dominion over all is shown clearly in the way he holds the whole of creation in his care: He holds the unexplored places of the earth in his hand, and the peaks of the mountains belong to him. The sea belongs to him, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Places that no person has ever gone are still in God’s care. The areas that are the most difficult for people to get to—the highest mountain peaks and the depths of the oceans—are still in his care.

This majesty and power, paired with his eternal love for us, lead the psalm writer to only one conclusion: Come, let us bow down. Let us revere him. Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker, for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the flock in his hand. For all of his goodness to us, the only response that makes any sense and the only response that is right is worship and praise.

But, does that always describe our lives? Are we always willing to submit our lives to the God who made us and made the earth? Do we always trust his promises to work good for us no matter what is going on around us? Do we always give him that number one place in our lives, or are we often giving that spot to other people or things?

The psalm writer, in a psalm that is for the most part very positive and upbeat, does give us a warning along these lines, transitioning to a direct quote from God himself: Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as they did at Meribah, as they did that day at Massah in the wilderness, where your fathers challenged me and tested me though they had seen what I had done. The two events referenced here are bookends of the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness. They didn’t seem to have enough water to support the group, so many of the Israelites began complaining against Moses and, by extension, against God.

Both times God miraculously brought water out from a rock, but the issue was that they ignored what they knew about God and assumed he was going to let them die of thirst in the wilderness. Rather than bringing requests to their loving King, they just grumbled and complained as if God was their enemy, ready to let them die rather than provide for their basic, physical needs.

Despite that, God’s love shines through as he provides for those needs. But God decreed that those who had sinned against him in this way “shall never enter my resting place.” When it comes to the nation wandering in the wilderness, that was the Promised Land. God was so serious about this that it even applied to Moses himself at Meribah, where he didn’t follow God’s directions and even started taking some of the credit for the miracle himself. Those who rebelled against God in these ways would never enter the Promised Land.

But there is a greater resting place in the balance when it comes to our relationship with our King. The eternal resting place of heaven stands waiting for us. Through Jesus’ decidedly unregal death, eternal life has been given to us as a free gift, like the Promised Land was offered to Old Testament Israel. But there is a warning for us here as well, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as they did…”

Not wanting to listen to God is not an uncommon trait among people—among us—but God warns us in this psalm that such a course of action has eternally dire results. Wandering away from our King means we wander away from his love and forgiveness. If we are not with our King, we are wandering alone and will need to deal with our sin on our own, something that is impossible for us to do. So, wandering away from our King or rebelling against him means that we cut ourselves off from Jesus’ forgiveness and instead face the consequences ourselves. In this case, the consequence is eternal death in hell. For if we wander away from the King, we will never enter his resting place.

But thanks be to God that he is not as quick to give up on us as we are to give up on him! In fact, he stands ready and willing to forgive, and love, and restore. The almighty God who created the whole universe loves you with that almighty power, forgives you with that unending grace, and restores you to being members of his family yet again. Perhaps the words of the doxology in 2 Timothy chapter 2 ring in our minds as we think about this: Indeed, if we have died with him, we will also live with him; If we endure, we will also reign with him; If we deny him, he will also deny us; If we are faithless, he remains faithful, because he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:12-13).

No matter what you’ve done, no matter how faithful or faithless you’ve been to your King, he stands wanting to give you his rest. He gives it to us by faith in Jesus, who gave his life in exchange for ours. He gives it to us, though we are unworthy and rebellious. Let us come to our King in sorrow and repentance, trusting his love. In the peace of forgiveness, let us praise the Lord! Come, let us sing joyfully to the LORD. Let us give a loud shout to the Rock who saves us! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Seek a Lenten Mindset!" (Sermon on Psalm 85) | March 23, 2025

Sermon Text: Psalm 85
Date: March 23, 2025
Event: The Third Sunday in Lent, Year C

Psalm 85 (EHV)

You showed favor to your land, O Lord.
You restored Jacob.
2You removed the guilt of your people.
You covered all their sin.                                                                Interlude
3You put away all your wrath.
You turned from your burning anger.
4Restore us, O God who saves us.
Put an end to your indignation with us.
5Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you extend your anger through all generations?
6Will you not turn and revive us,
so that your people may rejoice in you?
7Show us your mercy, O Lord,
and give us your salvation.
8I will hear what the true God, the Lord, will say.
He indeed speaks peace to his people, to his favored ones,
but do not let them turn to foolish ways.
9Surely his salvation is near for those who fear him,
so that glory may dwell in our land.
10Mercy and truth meet together.
Righteousness and peace kiss each other.
11Truth springs up from the earth,
and righteousness looks down from heaven.
12The Lord will indeed give good things,
and our land will yield its harvest.
13Righteousness walks in front of him.
It prepares the way for his footsteps.

Seek a Lenten Mindset!

For some tasks, you just have to be in the right headspace, and if you’re not, perhaps you need to try to manufacture it. For instance, if you know you need to work out or do some cleaning around the house, but perhaps you just don’t feel like it, sometimes putting on the right music, podcast, or TV show can flip that switch and get you going. Perhaps you have a project due for school in the coming weeks, but it feels so far away that you find yourself lacking the drive to get any work done on it. But perhaps setting smaller, more immediate deadlines can help light that fire under you to get started.

During the season of Lent, we might have to work especially hard to focus our minds on the season’s themes. Lent is very different from the Advent and Christmas seasons. There’s nothing in the world around us that can help “set the mood” for Lent. Just the opposite, actually. Everything around us directly contradicts that self-reflection centered on our sins and the need for God’s forgiveness. So, sometimes, having a model to follow, a path to trace, can help us get “in the zone,” as it were. Thankfully for us, in Psalm 85, we have exactly that.

The psalm writer begins this song to God with a bit of a history lesson. Now, it might seem a little bit weird to give God a history lesson on his own actions (did he forget?), but this really ties in with what we talked about on Wednesday evening with the Second Commandment. The best way to use God’s name is to share what he has done and to praise him for it. And that’s what the psalm writer is doing here: You showed favor to your land, O LORD. You restored Jacob. You removed the guilt of your people. You covered all their sin. You put away all your wrath. You turned from your burning anger.

Now, there is no indication of what events the psalm writer is talking about, and that’s probably intentional. Looking back through Bible history, we can see repeatedly where God followed this pattern of favor, restoration, and turning from fierce anger. We might think of Abraham and Sarah’s lack of trust in God’s promises for a child, so they turn to Hagar, Sarah’s servant, to be a “surrogate” of sorts in direct contradiction to God’s explicit promise that Abraham and Sarah would have a son (Genesis 16, 21). Perhaps, as the First Reading set the stage for the exodus of God’s people from Egypt, we think of the numerous times that God’s anger burned against the people for their idolatry and grumbling during those forty years wandering in the wilderness—beginning with that horrendous scene making and worshiping the golden calf (Exodus 32). David sinned against God in his lust and adultery with Bathsheba and in his deception and eventual murder of her husband, Uriah (2 Samuel 11-12). The prophet Elijah served at a time when the number of faithful people in the whole nation dipped to just 7,000; everyone else was serving the false gods of Baal and Asherah (1 Kings 18-19, esp. 19:18).

Whether the author of this psalm is a contemporary of David or lived a while after him, there was more than enough material in Israel’s history to draw on to see this pattern in God’s work. The people sin against God, and he is truly and justly angry over that sin, and yet he has compassion for his people and restores them.

Knowing this pattern helps us to understand the questions the psalm writer asks God, “Restore us, O God who saves us. Put an end to your indignation with us. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you extend your anger through all generations? Will you not turn and revive us, so that your people may rejoice in you?” He is not saying, “God, you have no right to be angry with us! This is unjust treatment!” In fact, just the opposite. When he asks God in v. 4 to “restore us” or “turn us back,” that’s a clear admission that they had gone astray. Put another way, you could say that the psalm writer is repentant for himself and on behalf of his people at large.

The psalm writer’s questions reveal that he knows and trusts God’s attitude, which drives God’s actions. The psalm writer had seen this before: God’s people sin, and he has mercy and compassion on them. So, his pleading with God is not a vain hope that he thinks has no chance of coming true; instead, it is a confident request that he knows God will follow through on: Show us your mercy, O LORD, and give us your salvation. He pleads with God to make his nature present in their lives.

The psalm writer had an appropriate Lenten mindset, which we want to emulate and capture for ourselves today and in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. As we examine ourselves, we should see every reason God is upset with us, for his wrath to bubble over us. We have failed to be what he expected—demanded—we should be. But we, too, can look back over history and see the principal way God deals with people. Is it with anger and retribution or with mercy and forgiveness?

In fact, we have a far greater thing to point back to than the psalm writer did as we consider our sins. At the absolute latest, the psalm writer is writing hundreds of years before Jesus’ life. So he could look at God’s interactions with human beings and the promises that God had made. But those promises, certain as they were because God had made them, were still unresolved and unfulfilled.

But as the wheel of time rolled on, God sent his Son when that right moment came. Jesus made real what, up to that point, God has only promised and deferred. He came to redeem us who were wasting away in our sin under the law so that we might become the heirs of God rather than his enemies. When we plead with God to be merciful and forgive our sins, we can and should point to the cross. “Look, Lord! The punishment my sins deserved was doled out in the body of my Savior Jesus! There is nothing left for me to pay; he did it all for me!”

That repentant, Lenten mindset should be our approach to God for all our lives. Nothing we’ve done or will do can change what Jesus has accomplished. The steadfast God will not decide one day to no longer forgive you or to go back on his promises. No, if God’s promises are sure, then all the more is the fulfillment of those promises sure!

When his Spirit-given attitude is in us (one that is repentant, both sorry for our sins and trusting God’s mercy to forgive), we are the fig tree that Jesus pictured in our Gospel. We are bearing the fruit of faith because the fruit of faith is not trying to pretend we don’t have sins, nor is it assuming our sins create a hopeless situation for us. No, a fruit of faith is a confident resolve that he indeed speaks peace to his people, to his favored ones. And how does he speak that peace to us? Through the Word-made-flesh, Jesus, who paid for our sins with the sacrifice of his life for us. We are forgiven, no matter how grievous our failing or how deserving we think (and know!) we are of God’s wrath. Will God be angry with us forever? No! Because in Jesus, the punishment has been met, and his promises are fulfilled.

My brothers and sisters, we are truly God's favored ones. Not because of anything you have done or anything I have done, but because of what God has done for us. He will not be angry with us forever because he took out his just anger on Jesus. We do not have to worry about the effectiveness of his death because we know what awaits us just three days after his death at that garden tomb.

So, go forth in genuine acknowledgment and sorrow over your sin, but not hopelessly. Go forward trusting that all God has promised has been done and will be done. Your sins are forgiven. You are God’s child. And because of what he’s already done for you, he will bring you to his heavenly home. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.

"Do You Laugh with the Lord?" (Sermon on Psalm 2:1-7) | January 12, 2025

Sermon Text: Psalm 2:1-7
Date: January 12, 2025
Event: The Baptism of Our Lord, Year C

Psalm 2:1–7 (EHV)
Why do the nations rage?
Why do the peoples grumble in vain?
2The kings of the earth take a stand,
and the rulers join together
against the LORD
and against his Anointed One.
3“Let us tear off their chains
and throw off their ropes from us.”
4The one who is seated in heaven laughs.
The Lord scoffs at them.
5Then he speaks to them in his anger,
and in his wrath he terrifies them.
6“I have installed my King on Zion, my holy mountain.”
7I will proclaim the decree of the LORD.
He said to me:
“You are my Son.
Today I have begotten you.”

Do You Laugh with the Lord?

Have you ever been in a situation so bad, frustrating, or seemingly hopeless that all you could do was laugh? Why is that a gut reaction for us sometimes? I assume it’s a response to things we can’t control, things that are sometimes so out of reach that it almost begins to be funny.

That laughter or “humor” (if we can call it that) is a dark, hopeless laughter. I can’t do anything but laugh. But it’s not expressing the joy that laughter often communicates. It’s certainly not expressing something funny or entertaining. So, there are many reasons someone might laugh at the situation around them, some of them positive but sometimes very negative.

In Psalm 2, we get some behind-the-scenes look at God’s actions, and perhaps one of the most surprising is that the one who is seated in heaven laughs. What kind of laughter is this? Joyful? Funny? Hopeless? What is going on here? And if God is laughing at the events surrounding him, do we join him in that laughter?

The psalm writer sets a scene that was familiar in ancient days and continues to be familiar today: Why do the nations rage? Why do the peoples grumble in vain? The kings of the earth take a stand, and the rulers join together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. “Let us tear off their chains and throw off their ropes from us.” The nations, and especially the powerful people in them, are taking their stand against God. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? When was the last time you saw someone who was truly influential in the world and you thought, “This person really has their moral compass calibrated completely correctly. What they say and do is in line with God’s will!”? I don’t know that I could list many examples...

Being on this side of it, that’s kind of scary. When the world around us seems to have their sights set on God’s will, trying to rebuff it, ignore it, and even change it, what will we do to stop them? To redirect it? If the most powerful, influential, and wealthy people in the world want to try to rip off what they see as chains and ropes from God and even encourage others to do so as well, so that the nations and people rage and grumble against God, what can we do? Does this feel like a hopeless situation?

It might. But then we look at God’s reaction. The one who is seated in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. The Lord laughs. But what is in this laugh? Is it a laugh of fear and hopelessness because all of these powerful forces have taken their stand against him? No! This is the laugh that might come out of me when I see one of the cats reaching and reaching and reaching under the refrigerator to retrieve a lost toy that is hopelessly out of their reach. They’re trying so hard, but it’s never going to work. It’s almost funny, but there’s also a little sadness at the effort’s futility.

This reaction from God helps us to understand precisely what the psalm writer is getting at in the first verse of this psalm. When he asks, “Why do the nations rage?” it’s not an inquiry about motives. He’s not wondering what drives someone to do this. It’s “Why?” more like “What are you doing? What do you hope to accomplish? What is the point?” Because he knows that no matter how powerful you are, to take a stand against God is to lose.

That point is driven home by what God says next and how he says it, “Then he speaks to them in his anger, and in his wrath he terrifies them. ‘I have installed my King on Zion, my holy mountain.’ ” This raging of the nations against God is not laughable to be ignored and dismissed. This open rebellion against God is a real problem he doesn’t allow to stand. So, in his anger and wrath, he points to the King—the real ruler—he has placed over everything.

This installation, placing, and anointing of this King is what we are focused on here this morning. What is spoken of as true from eternity here in the psalm happened in time as Jesus came to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. This moment—as Jesus is baptized, the Holy Spirit descends as a dove, and the Father’s voice booms from heaven—is the formal start of Jesus’ ministry.

Why is the Messiah’s installation pointed to as proof that no rulers of this world can do anything against God? We do well to pay close attention to a very small detail in our text, one that might not have stood out at all when we read these verses and honestly could be chalked up to a typo in our worship folder, but it’s not. It’s very important.

Look at the word “Lord” in our psalm. In vv. 2 and 7, it’s in all capital letters (LORD), and in v. 4 it’s in normal lettering (Lord). This is intentional because it reflects the careful wording of the Hebrew verses of this psalm. When that name is printed in all capital letters, it is God's special covenant name. This is God’s unique name, Yahweh, that emphasizes his grace and his mercy. So who are the nations and people raging against in v. 2? The covenant God of grace. Whose decree is the Messiah proclaiming in v. 7? The covenant God of grace.

But then, in v. 4, God is responding to this open rebellion. His name is no longer listed as the God of grace, but a more generic “Lord,” which we might sometimes translate as “master” or “ruler.” This name emphasizes God’s sovereignty and his authority. This name reminds the nations that they are not in charge; God is. He is the Lord.

So, the rebellion is against the God of love and mercy. The peoples of the earth don’t want to hear from God about anything, and certainly not about sin and forgiveness. And while that might strike us as a touch strange, we need to carefully consider how unpleasant it is to be told we are not only not in charge, but that we are accountable to someone else—to God—and that we haven’t met his expectations. The message of God’s law is deeply unpleasant, so much so that the sinful nature will do anything it possibly can to get rid of it, even trying to stage a coup against God. If we are accountable to God and we can get rid of him, then we would be free, right?

Well, as we said before, to take a stand against God is to lose. So, no, the path to freedom doesn’t go through open rebellion against God because you won’t get rid of him. And people with that mindset and goal will be crushed. But even the sovereign, ruling God points to the Messiah as proof that he can’t be thwarted. Why? Because the Messiah is the solution to all of this. “I have installed my King on Zion, my holy mountain.”

Jesus’ work is one of mercy, but it’s also one of exclusivity. If you and I want to be rid of our sins and be right with God, Jesus is the only way. So, from a law perspective, if you’re not with Jesus, you’re lost. But from a gospel perspective, Jesus is everything you could need for eternity.

This part of the psalm ends with the Messiah speaking. I will proclaim the decree of the LORD (the God of grace!). He said to me: “You are my Son. Today I have begotten you.” Sound familiar? We heard essentially this exact phrase from the Father at Jesus’ baptism, “You are my Son, whom I love. I am well pleased with you.” What does it mean for the God of grace to call the Messiah his Son? It shows their profound unity of purpose.

God’s plan is not just to be the vengeful, terrifying, wrath-filled God that punishes open rebellion. If it comes to that, he certainly will, but he prefers a far different approach. He would much rather solve this with his grace. So he sends his Son to take the place of these rebellious, sinful people—you and me included. We hear more details about this relationship at his baptism: I am well pleased with you. If God is well-pleased with anything, it is perfect. So here, in Jesus’ anointing, we have not just a connection shown, but Jesus’ value is made clear. Here is the perfect Son of God who has been sent to rescue us and all mankind from our sins.

What does all of this mean for us? Let’s return to our original question: do you laugh with the Lord? When it comes to what some might call the crumbling of society, living in a post-Christian world, or however else people might choose to despair when they see what they view as the downfall of society, do we need to panic? No! This is not anything new. It’s been happening since the beginning, and it will continue to happen until the end. But in the meantime, we can laugh with God. This can be a laugh of certainty, not despair and hopelessness. These nations, these people, these powerful forces raging against God are no more than the kitty desperately trying to get the ball from under the fridge with no hope of ever reaching it.

Because Jesus, God’s Son, won the victory over sin, death, and hell, we know that we do not need to join the nations in this rebellion against God. The solution to our eternal problems is not getting rid of God; rather, it’s the plan God has set in place. He has installed his King, his Messiah, our Savior, as champion and ruler of all. He is the one who willingly started this formal work at his baptism, knowing full well it led to the cross. The one who judges the earth, who rules all things, is the same one who loved you and me enough to die in our place. And so complete was his victory that not even the grave could hold him.

So, my brothers and sisters, do not despair over your sins or how they affect your relationship with God. The covenant God of grace forgives you for Jesus’ sake. And as you see the world in open opposition to God, do not fret or fear. Instead, you can laugh with God. Laugh, knowing how hopeless their raging is in the long run, how they will not be able to overthrow God or do anything to change his promises or his work. With that confidence, we can approach those who rage with the comfort and assurance of God’s mercy in Jesus to show them they are not chained or bound by God but that he has released them from their sin just as he has released us from ours.

The results of sharing the gospel can lead to real, joyful, even ecstatic laughter as we and many more join in the perfection of eternal life that Jesus has won for us. Here before us is God’s Son, God’s King, the one who, despite appearance to the contrary, will conquer sin, death, and hell in his death so that all of us, purified from sin, can be called the children of God. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Sermon prepared for Gloria Dei Lutheran Church (WELS), Belmont, CA (www.gdluth.org) by Pastor Timothy Shrimpton. All rights reserved. Contact pastor@gdluth.org for usage information.