Here, however, the soothing influence of the previous psalm is not felt; it is altogether broken up; for the world enters the scene. It is no longer the privacy of God and the godly man. That path is in this psalm trespassed upon by the rude and wild foot of an evil persecuting world.
It is “suffering and glory” that we get here—the rage of man against the Lord’s anointed; but the Lord’s triumphant exaltation of Him.
Jesus, the Christ of God, is presented in His grace and power, and consequently the vanity of resisting Him, and the blessedness of trusting in Him.
The confederacy, which is here anticipated, was formed when Jesus was crucified. (See Acts 4.) He will punish it when He returns in His kingdom. (See Luke 19.) It is still in principle existent, being the course of this world already judged, but spared through divine long-suffering. It will be fully developed in all its forms of evil in the last days—those days which the Psalms so generally belong to. It acts on the old desire, and the lie of the serpent (Gen. 3:55For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:5)). It would dethrone God. For the present, however, He that sits in the heavens laughs at it all; as was expressed by the angel rolling away the stone, and sitting on it, while he put the sentence of death into the hearts of its keepers (Matt. 28). What was all that but the Lord telling the confederacy which had crucified Jesus that He had them all in derision? In like spirit the Lord Jesus from the heavens challenged Saul, the persecuting zealot, in Acts 9.
But there is much more than this present laughter; for the decree of God touching the Christ is the great counter-scheme, and will of course prevail. And that decree, as here announced by the Lord Himself, gives Him Sonship and inheritance. Sonship is already His by resurrection (Acts 13); inheritance will be His in glory by and by.
NOTE—Looking at these Psalms together, it is Jesus under the law, approved of God and earning blessing by His righteousness, whom we may see in the first: Jesus in testimony or as anointed, resisted by man but exalted by God, and securing blessing or executing judgment on others, whom we see in the second.