This Day Have I Begotten Thee
Bible Study Time 3-26-06
Church links:
Bible Study Time 3-26-06
In Psalms, Chapter 2, verse 6, God says, “I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion.” But then the Messiah-King, Himself, says:
Psalms 2:7 (NKJ)
7 "I will declare the decree: the LORD has said to Me, 'You are My Son, today I have begotten You.
We know that these verses look forward to the day when Jesus Christ will rule the earth from Jerusalem, the holy hill of Zion, because the next verse says:
Psalms 2:8 (NKJ)
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession.
This kingdom is something that God had in mind before sin and its curse come into the world, and we have looked at the fact that God hinted at this worldwide kingdom at the time the curse was pronounced. He said, “The Seed of the woman would bruise the head of Satan.”
But let’s look again for just a few minutes at the first few verses of Psalms, Chapter 2. Verses 1, 2 and 3 read this way:
Psalms 2:1-3 (NKJ)
1 Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying,
3 "Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us."
This is certainly a good description of the world we live in today, and it is a good description of the world as it has been since shortly after the curse was pronounced. We see the curse in Genesis, Chapter 3, and in Genesis 4 Cain killed his brother Abel and went to live to the east of Eden in the land of Nod. By the time we get to Genesis, Chapter 6, the world is in such rebellion and chaos that God elects to destroy all of the people of the earth except Noah and his family.
We might be tempted to think that there were relatively few people on the earth in Noah’s day, but if you do the math and consider the fact that people lived for eight or nine hundred years and often had multiple births, you will find that it is altogether possible that the population of the earth at that time was almost has dense as it is today with 4 to 6 billion people. If that’s true then we can safely assume that their technology was also very advanced.
But out of all of these billions of people, God saved only Noah and his family. It was not that Noah and his family were so good. On the contrary, the Bible says that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and the book of Hebrews tells us that Noah became the heir of the righteousness which is of faith. God told Noah that it was going to rain and that he should build an arc. Noah simply believed what God said and did what God told him to do, and he became the heir of the righteousness which is by faith.
But the rest of the people who lived on the earth at that time had no concern for God. Whether consciously or subconsciously, they were in a rage against God, and they wanted to break loose from any connection with God. Genesis 6:5 says:
Genesis 6:5,11,12 (NKJ)
5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
11 The earth . . . was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
Therefore, God sent the flood to destroy everyone on the earth except Noah and his family. How different life must have been after the flood. Noah and his family went from a high tech world filled with billions of people to a world with 8 people who simply depended on God and His wisdom to survive. This may well be the way the world will be when Jesus Christ establishes His kingdom after the tribulation period. There may be very few people on the earth at the beginning of the kingdom.
But after the flood, it wasn’t long before man set his heart against God again. Genesis 11 says that the people all got together and decided to build a great tower which was probably a great temple dedicated to the worship of the heavens. The Bible says that the people wanted to make a name for themselves by building this tower which would reach up into the heavens. The people were taking counsel together against the Lord and plotting a vain thing so the Lord stepped in and confounded their language, and they were scattered abroad over the face of the earth.
As mankind followed his vain imagination, he grew continually worse and worse and farther and farther from God. One day God called out a man named Abraham and told him to leave his family and friends and go to a new land where God would bless him with great blessings. Now why did He chose Abraham? For the same reason that God chose Noah. Abraham believed what God said and did what God told him to do. The Bible says that Abraham believed God, and God counted it to him for righteousness. God’s purpose was to pour out His blessings upon Abraham and his descendants and make them an example to all other nations of what it’s really like to walk in fellowship with the true and the living God.
All the nation of Israel had to do was live by the righteous laws of God. All they had to do was love God and love one another for, in fact, all of the laws of God hang upon these two commandments, love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. But the children of Israel were still under the curse of sin, and it is impossible for those who live under the influence of the old sin nature to please God. The old sin nature loves pleasure, and it loves self glorification. The children of Israel were in no position to love God or their neighbors.
As a result, the nation of Israel joined the other nations of the earth in their rebellion against God. They took counsel against the Lord, and they specifically took counsel against the Lord’s Anointed. When the Lord Jesus walked and talked among them, they witnessed His miracles. They saw Him give sight to the blind and heal the lepers. They saw Him cast out demons and raise the dead.
However, on two different occasions the Pharisees and other religious leaders came to Jesus and asked Him to give them a sign from heaven. Can you image? After all of these miracles, they ask for a sign from heaven. Well, this was Jesus’ answer:
Matthew 12:39-40 (NKJ)
39 . . . "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
40 "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
He said that the Son of man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, but then like Jonah He would rise again. This would be the sign that would prove who Jesus really was and is.
The religious leaders plotted against the Lord’s Anointed. They nailed Him to the cross, but death could not hold Him. It may be that it took more power to bring the Lord Jesus back from the dead than it did to create the universe, but come back from the dead He did. And when Jesus Christ came back from the dead and conquered death, hell and the grave, that is when God the Father declared before all the hosts of heaven and earth, “Thou art my Son. This day have I begotten Thee.”
David predicted the resurrection of Christ, and He foresaw the day when the Father would say, “Thou art my Son. This day have I begotten Thee.” But it was the Apostle Paul who put the two together. In Acts, Chapter 13, we read that when Paul and Barnabas arrived in Antioch of Pisidia, they went on the Sabbath day to the Jewish synagogue where they were asked to speak.
When Paul stood up to speak, he demonstrated his enthusiasm by motioning with his hands, and he reminded the Jews that they were God’s chosen people and that God had demonstrated His mighty power to them over and over again. Then Paul told them about the Lord Jesus, saying:
Acts 13:26-30,33 (NKJ)
26 "Men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to you the word of this salvation has been sent.
27 "For those who dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they did not know (Jesus), nor even the voices of the Prophets which are read every Sabbath, (they) have fulfilled them in condemning Him.
28 "And though they found no cause for death in Him, they asked Pilate that (Jesus) should be put to death.
29 "Now when they had fulfilled all that was written concerning (Jesus), they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in a tomb.
30 "But God raised Him from the dead.
33 " . . . As it is also written in the second Psalm: 'You are My Son, today I have begotten You.'
In this passage the Apostle Paul reveals for the first time that the statement in Psalms, Chapter 2, finds its fulfillment in the resurrection of Christ. It was in the through the resurrection of Christ that God made the proclamation, “You are My Son, today I have begotten You.” Jesus Christ was always the only begotten of the Father, but it was the power of the resurrection that declared Him to be the Son of God before all of creation. Paul said in Romans, Chapter 1, that the gospel of God concerns:
Romans 1:3-4 (NKJ)
3 . . . Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
4 and (was) declared to be the Son of God . . . by the resurrection from the dead.
Jesus Christ was declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead.
In Psalms, Chapter 2, immediately after declaring the Christ to be His Son, the Father says:
Psalms 2:8 (NKJ)
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession.
It was only after Christ’s resurrection from the dead that Jesus told his disciples:
Matthew 28:19-20 (NKJ)
19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen.
Before the resurrection, Jesus had emphasized that they should go to no one except the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They were not to go to the Gentiles or to the Samaritans. But now, after the resurrection, He tells them to go and make disciples of all the nations. The resurrection had set the stage for the kingdom in which Christ would be given all of the nations of the earth for His inheritance just as David predicted in Psalms, Chapter 2.
However, the book of Acts is a record of Israel’s rejection of Christ and His kingdom. On the day of Pentecost, Peter said to the Jews, “You with wicked hands have crucified the Messiah, but the good news is, God has raised Him from the dead, and His resurrection proves that He is the Christ, the Son of God.”
Peter said, “Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins for the promise is to you and to your children and to those who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.” What promise? The promise of the kingdom. Peter was offering them the earthly kingdom even as Jesus had taught them.
This offer of the kingdom went out to the Jews all the way through the book of Acts, but in Acts 28, the Apostle Paul called for a meeting with the Jews of Rome. He showed them from the books of the Old Testament that Jesus had to be the Christ. He had fulfilled all of the Old Testament prophesies. When the Jewish leaders of Rome refused to accept Christ, Paul proclaimed,
Acts 28:28 (NKJ)
28 " . . . let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!"
From that time on, the Apostle Paul spoke no more about the promised earthly kingdom. Instead, he revealed a body of believers who have a heavenly hope. He called them the Church which is the Body of Christ. If you want to know how to be saved today, you need to look at what Paul revealed for the Church the Body of Christ.
Paul says that for us to be saved and accepted into this church, we have to do what Noah did and what Abraham did. We have to believe what God has said. For us that means believing that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that He was buried and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures. We have nothing to add to what Christ has already done. All we have to do is accept it by faith.
Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time this morning. I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
Psalms 2:7 (NKJ)
7 "I will declare the decree: the LORD has said to Me, 'You are My Son, today I have begotten You.
We know that these verses look forward to the day when Jesus Christ will rule the earth from Jerusalem, the holy hill of Zion, because the next verse says:
Psalms 2:8 (NKJ)
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession.
This kingdom is something that God had in mind before sin and its curse come into the world, and we have looked at the fact that God hinted at this worldwide kingdom at the time the curse was pronounced. He said, “The Seed of the woman would bruise the head of Satan.”
But let’s look again for just a few minutes at the first few verses of Psalms, Chapter 2. Verses 1, 2 and 3 read this way:
Psalms 2:1-3 (NKJ)
1 Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying,
3 "Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us."
This is certainly a good description of the world we live in today, and it is a good description of the world as it has been since shortly after the curse was pronounced. We see the curse in Genesis, Chapter 3, and in Genesis 4 Cain killed his brother Abel and went to live to the east of Eden in the land of Nod. By the time we get to Genesis, Chapter 6, the world is in such rebellion and chaos that God elects to destroy all of the people of the earth except Noah and his family.
We might be tempted to think that there were relatively few people on the earth in Noah’s day, but if you do the math and consider the fact that people lived for eight or nine hundred years and often had multiple births, you will find that it is altogether possible that the population of the earth at that time was almost has dense as it is today with 4 to 6 billion people. If that’s true then we can safely assume that their technology was also very advanced.
But out of all of these billions of people, God saved only Noah and his family. It was not that Noah and his family were so good. On the contrary, the Bible says that Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and the book of Hebrews tells us that Noah became the heir of the righteousness which is of faith. God told Noah that it was going to rain and that he should build an arc. Noah simply believed what God said and did what God told him to do, and he became the heir of the righteousness which is by faith.
But the rest of the people who lived on the earth at that time had no concern for God. Whether consciously or subconsciously, they were in a rage against God, and they wanted to break loose from any connection with God. Genesis 6:5 says:
Genesis 6:5,11,12 (NKJ)
5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
11 The earth . . . was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
Therefore, God sent the flood to destroy everyone on the earth except Noah and his family. How different life must have been after the flood. Noah and his family went from a high tech world filled with billions of people to a world with 8 people who simply depended on God and His wisdom to survive. This may well be the way the world will be when Jesus Christ establishes His kingdom after the tribulation period. There may be very few people on the earth at the beginning of the kingdom.
But after the flood, it wasn’t long before man set his heart against God again. Genesis 11 says that the people all got together and decided to build a great tower which was probably a great temple dedicated to the worship of the heavens. The Bible says that the people wanted to make a name for themselves by building this tower which would reach up into the heavens. The people were taking counsel together against the Lord and plotting a vain thing so the Lord stepped in and confounded their language, and they were scattered abroad over the face of the earth.
As mankind followed his vain imagination, he grew continually worse and worse and farther and farther from God. One day God called out a man named Abraham and told him to leave his family and friends and go to a new land where God would bless him with great blessings. Now why did He chose Abraham? For the same reason that God chose Noah. Abraham believed what God said and did what God told him to do. The Bible says that Abraham believed God, and God counted it to him for righteousness. God’s purpose was to pour out His blessings upon Abraham and his descendants and make them an example to all other nations of what it’s really like to walk in fellowship with the true and the living God.
All the nation of Israel had to do was live by the righteous laws of God. All they had to do was love God and love one another for, in fact, all of the laws of God hang upon these two commandments, love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. But the children of Israel were still under the curse of sin, and it is impossible for those who live under the influence of the old sin nature to please God. The old sin nature loves pleasure, and it loves self glorification. The children of Israel were in no position to love God or their neighbors.
As a result, the nation of Israel joined the other nations of the earth in their rebellion against God. They took counsel against the Lord, and they specifically took counsel against the Lord’s Anointed. When the Lord Jesus walked and talked among them, they witnessed His miracles. They saw Him give sight to the blind and heal the lepers. They saw Him cast out demons and raise the dead.
However, on two different occasions the Pharisees and other religious leaders came to Jesus and asked Him to give them a sign from heaven. Can you image? After all of these miracles, they ask for a sign from heaven. Well, this was Jesus’ answer:
Matthew 12:39-40 (NKJ)
39 . . . "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
40 "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
He said that the Son of man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, but then like Jonah He would rise again. This would be the sign that would prove who Jesus really was and is.
The religious leaders plotted against the Lord’s Anointed. They nailed Him to the cross, but death could not hold Him. It may be that it took more power to bring the Lord Jesus back from the dead than it did to create the universe, but come back from the dead He did. And when Jesus Christ came back from the dead and conquered death, hell and the grave, that is when God the Father declared before all the hosts of heaven and earth, “Thou art my Son. This day have I begotten Thee.”
David predicted the resurrection of Christ, and He foresaw the day when the Father would say, “Thou art my Son. This day have I begotten Thee.” But it was the Apostle Paul who put the two together. In Acts, Chapter 13, we read that when Paul and Barnabas arrived in Antioch of Pisidia, they went on the Sabbath day to the Jewish synagogue where they were asked to speak.
When Paul stood up to speak, he demonstrated his enthusiasm by motioning with his hands, and he reminded the Jews that they were God’s chosen people and that God had demonstrated His mighty power to them over and over again. Then Paul told them about the Lord Jesus, saying:
Acts 13:26-30,33 (NKJ)
26 "Men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to you the word of this salvation has been sent.
27 "For those who dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they did not know (Jesus), nor even the voices of the Prophets which are read every Sabbath, (they) have fulfilled them in condemning Him.
28 "And though they found no cause for death in Him, they asked Pilate that (Jesus) should be put to death.
29 "Now when they had fulfilled all that was written concerning (Jesus), they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in a tomb.
30 "But God raised Him from the dead.
33 " . . . As it is also written in the second Psalm: 'You are My Son, today I have begotten You.'
In this passage the Apostle Paul reveals for the first time that the statement in Psalms, Chapter 2, finds its fulfillment in the resurrection of Christ. It was in the through the resurrection of Christ that God made the proclamation, “You are My Son, today I have begotten You.” Jesus Christ was always the only begotten of the Father, but it was the power of the resurrection that declared Him to be the Son of God before all of creation. Paul said in Romans, Chapter 1, that the gospel of God concerns:
Romans 1:3-4 (NKJ)
3 . . . Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
4 and (was) declared to be the Son of God . . . by the resurrection from the dead.
Jesus Christ was declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead.
In Psalms, Chapter 2, immediately after declaring the Christ to be His Son, the Father says:
Psalms 2:8 (NKJ)
8 Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession.
It was only after Christ’s resurrection from the dead that Jesus told his disciples:
Matthew 28:19-20 (NKJ)
19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen.
Before the resurrection, Jesus had emphasized that they should go to no one except the lost sheep of the house of Israel. They were not to go to the Gentiles or to the Samaritans. But now, after the resurrection, He tells them to go and make disciples of all the nations. The resurrection had set the stage for the kingdom in which Christ would be given all of the nations of the earth for His inheritance just as David predicted in Psalms, Chapter 2.
However, the book of Acts is a record of Israel’s rejection of Christ and His kingdom. On the day of Pentecost, Peter said to the Jews, “You with wicked hands have crucified the Messiah, but the good news is, God has raised Him from the dead, and His resurrection proves that He is the Christ, the Son of God.”
Peter said, “Repent and be baptized for the remission of sins for the promise is to you and to your children and to those who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.” What promise? The promise of the kingdom. Peter was offering them the earthly kingdom even as Jesus had taught them.
This offer of the kingdom went out to the Jews all the way through the book of Acts, but in Acts 28, the Apostle Paul called for a meeting with the Jews of Rome. He showed them from the books of the Old Testament that Jesus had to be the Christ. He had fulfilled all of the Old Testament prophesies. When the Jewish leaders of Rome refused to accept Christ, Paul proclaimed,
Acts 28:28 (NKJ)
28 " . . . let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!"
From that time on, the Apostle Paul spoke no more about the promised earthly kingdom. Instead, he revealed a body of believers who have a heavenly hope. He called them the Church which is the Body of Christ. If you want to know how to be saved today, you need to look at what Paul revealed for the Church the Body of Christ.
Paul says that for us to be saved and accepted into this church, we have to do what Noah did and what Abraham did. We have to believe what God has said. For us that means believing that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that He was buried and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures. We have nothing to add to what Christ has already done. All we have to do is accept it by faith.
Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time this morning. I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
Church links:
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