 Throughout my life I've increasingly found that reading scripture in public isn't just about feeding our own spirits and minds, but about rehearsing the mighty acts of God for God's glory. So let's think together about the Wisdom of Solomon chapter 6 verse 1. And first let's have some tea. Listen therefore, O kings, and understand, learn, O judges of the ends of the earth. This is a passage from the book called The Wisdom of Solomon, which was pretty certainly written around the time of Jesus and Paul, possibly just earlier, possibly even a little bit later. I suspect a bit earlier, maybe the late 1st century BC or very early in the 1st century AD. And it was known in its Greek version from early on in the Jewish world of Paul and his successors, but then particularly in the early Christian world. Some people included it as part of their Bible, some people didn't, but it is soaked itself in the Old Testament in the Jewish piety of the time. And there are a great many parallels between this and not least the work of Saint Paul. So what's going on here in Wisdom chapter 6? Well, Wisdom chapters 1 to 5 have told a great story about the righteous who are being persecuted by the wicked, and the wicked are cast as classic careless philosophers, probably Epicureans, who say if there is a God he doesn't care, he doesn't see, we can do what we like. This is eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, except that this has an even nastier edge. If there are righteous people who are saying that their God is the true God, we can kill them, we can get rid of them, and that'll be the end of the matter. And so in chapter 2 that's what they do. But then in chapter 3 the author of Wisdom says, but the lives of the righteous are in the hand of God. The Greek word psuke, that souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, but it's the kind of the whole life. No torment shall touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seem to have died. The wicked thought they'd got rid of these troublesome pesky, supposedly righteous people, but they are at peace. But then at the time of their visitation they will shine forth and run like sparks through the stubble, and the Lord will set them over nations and kings. This is the story of Israel resulting in resurrection, the resurrection of God's people to be the royal priesthood, to be the ones through whom the world, the new world that God will make, will in fact be ruled. This is how the narrative works. It isn't that those righteous people have been got rid of and are just going off to heaven somewhere so that we can forget about them. Rather, God is looking after them and they will be back. And in chapter 5 the wicked are terrified as they realise that actually God had a trick up his sleeve which they didn't know about at all. Now at this point, and it comes out explicitly in chapter 6 verse 1, the book of wisdom is channeling Psalm 2, one of the great seminal Psalms which is picked up in a great deal of subsequent Jewish writings. You see Psalm 2 quoted in Acts 4 as a good example of that. Why do the nations rage and the peoples imagine vain things? The kings of the earth rise up and their rulers take counsel against the Lord and His anointed. This is exactly what's going on in wisdom 1 and 2. But the one who dwells in heaven laughs. The Lord shall have them to scorn. This is rather like the story of the Tower of Babel where human arrogance gets up to its height and God looks down and says, what on earth are you pitiable little people up to? And in Psalm 2, God's responses, yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion. And then in Psalm 2 the king says, this is what God has decreed. Ask of me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance. And so Psalm 2 verse 10 says, now therefore, O kings, be wise, learn which way the world is up. You may think that you run things, you may think that you can boss the world around, but God is God and God's will is going to turn things the right way up in the end. And so wisdom of Solomon, listen therefore, O kings, learn O judges of the ends of the earth. Your dominion was given to you from the Lord and he will search out your works and inquire into your plans. And if you have ruled wisely, that will be great and God will bless that in prosperity in days to come. And if you've ruled unjustly, then God will know that as well and will hold you to account. There is a political theology therefore emerging from Psalm 2, but now focused in the wisdom of Solomon on what's going on in the first centuries BC and AD. And the New Testament picks that up exactly. For instance, as Jesus stands before Pontius Pilate and reminds him of freedom and truth and power and wisdom and gives him a little lecture even though Pilate doesn't understand and says, what is truth? But Jesus calls him to account and even though Pilate kills him just like in wisdom chapter 3, in John 20 we see what happens at the end of wisdom chapter 3. God's new world is inaugurated and the kings and judges of the world are held to account. So may God give us grace in this day to be able to speak truth to power and on his behalf to call the nations of the world to account before the one who is Lord of all. Amen.