Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I would like to open with two observations this morning.
[00:00:04] One, John Muller is here.
[00:00:10] And that makes my heart glad.
[00:00:14] If I say anything helpful or true in this sermon, it's because that man loved me for years.
[00:00:20] Thank you.
[00:00:23] The second observation. It is hot in this room.
[00:00:27] But there is nowhere I would rather be than here with you all this morning on this Lord's day.
[00:00:33] I'd like to invite each of you to turn in your copy of God's word to Psalm 45.
[00:00:38] This is such a wonderful passage of Scripture.
[00:00:42] Let me pray for us and we'll begin our time.
[00:00:50] Father, please send your spirit to open the eyes of our hearts this morning so that we would see and delight in the glory of your son.
[00:01:02] Amen.
[00:01:04] Please follow along with me as I read God's word for us.
[00:01:09] To the choirmaster. According to Lilies, a maskiel of the sons of Korah, a love song.
[00:01:18] My heart overflows with a pleasing theme.
[00:01:22] I address my verses to the king.
[00:01:26] My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.
[00:01:30] You are the most handsome of the sons of men. Grace is poured upon your lips.
[00:01:36] Therefore God has blessed you forever.
[00:01:41] Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and and majesty in your majesty. Ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness.
[00:01:55] Let your right hand teach you awesome deeds.
[00:02:00] Your arrows are sharp in the hearts of the king's enemies. The peoples fall under you.
[00:02:07] Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
[00:02:12] The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness.
[00:02:17] You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.
[00:02:22] Therefore God your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness. Beyond your companions, your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia from ivory palaces. Stringed instruments make you glad.
[00:02:40] Daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor.
[00:02:44] At your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.
[00:02:49] Hear, O daughter, and consider and incline your ear.
[00:02:55] Forget your people and your father's house. And the king will desire your beauty, since he is your lord. Bow to him.
[00:03:05] The people of Tyre will seek your favor with gifts, the richest of the people, all glorious is the princess in her chamber with robes interwoven with gold.
[00:03:19] In many colored robes she is led to the king with her virgin companions following behind her.
[00:03:26] With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king.
[00:03:33] In place of your fathers shall be your sons.
[00:03:37] You will make them princes in all the earth.
[00:03:40] I will cause your name to be remembered in all Generations, therefore, nations will praise you forever and ever.
[00:03:52] Well, our passage this morning is a wedding song. It's a love song. That's what our superscript says.
[00:04:00] That's a label that appears nowhere else in the psalter. And everything else that follows in the psalm confirms it. We have a bridegroom, and we have a bride leaving her father's house and then a procession into the palace.
[00:04:16] This is a love song. The greatest love song ever written.
[00:04:21] I like to preach this passage in. In three movements, but I want to leave you with one takeaway.
[00:04:29] That one takeaway is, delight in your king until the day you are with him.
[00:04:39] Delight in your king until the day you are with him.
[00:04:46] Now, the three main movements of this Psalm are in verses 2 to 9 and there I want us to behold your king.
[00:04:57] And then in verses 10 to 12, I want us to see that we're to belong to the king.
[00:05:05] And then in verses 13 and 17, I want us to be with the king.
[00:05:12] Now, everyone who reads this psalm wants to know who it's about.
[00:05:16] Some say Solomon, others say David.
[00:05:21] Others will mention other Davidic kings.
[00:05:25] Now, Brad Wheeler has an interesting interpretation of who this is.
[00:05:29] He texted me and said, would you be willing to preach Psalm 45 on July 26, I read verse two and thought of you.
[00:05:38] Now, I'd like the record to show.
[00:05:42] I'd like the record to show Brad thinks this psalm is about me.
[00:05:50] Now, certainly this song had a historical occasion, it would have been sung at the wedding of Davidic kings.
[00:06:01] But I read this psalm as a love song about Christ and his church, and that for three reasons.
[00:06:13] First, no historical king perfectly fits this description.
[00:06:20] When you read the psalm, you realize that this is a larger than life character that Solomon and David, as wonderful as they are, don't quite match up to.
[00:06:31] But then, secondly, the text itself calls this king.
[00:06:37] Look at verse six.
[00:06:39] No merely human king can bear that kind of address.
[00:06:45] Only a king who is himself divine can be told that your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
[00:06:54] But third, and perhaps most importantly, the New Testament settles the question for us.
[00:07:02] If you know your New Testament, you know that the author of Hebrews in chapter 1, verses 8 and 9, quotes this Psalm and applies it to Jesus.
[00:07:12] So for the earliest Christians, they read this psalm as a song about Christ and the church. They read it as a prophecy fulfilled in Christ. And so this morning, I will preach this psalm to you as a love song about Christ and his church.
[00:07:32] But before we get to our first point, I want to draw your attention to verse One. Let me read it again for you.
[00:07:39] My heart overflows with a pleasing theme. I address my verses to the King.
[00:07:47] My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.
[00:07:52] The psalmist is modeling for us the very response to that his song calls for.
[00:08:00] When you read it, do you hear his heart's excitement?
[00:08:05] Older translations will say that his heart bubbleth over.
[00:08:10] A spring doesn't need to be pumped or pressured to bubble up. A spring simply rises from the ground. It simply flows.
[00:08:22] And that's the psalmist's heart, not forced into praise, but open, overflowing simply because real delight can't sit still.
[00:08:34] What fills our hearts is what flows out of our mouths.
[00:08:40] If you've spent any time around me, you know that I am constantly inventing reasons to talk about my daughters. If you sneeze in front of me, I'll say, oh, Camila has the cutest sneeze.
[00:08:51] Or if someone says, I love flowers, I'll say twice. Did you know that flowers and flora have an etymological relationship?
[00:08:58] I will just make things up just so that I can talk about them, because my heart delights in them.
[00:09:05] So how much more should my heart. Should your heart delight in Christ?
[00:09:11] Flora and Camila? They are beautiful, but Christ is more beautiful than 10,000 floras and 10,000 camillas.
[00:09:22] Beauty, wherever you find it in this world, is like a whisper about the King's beauty.
[00:09:31] Every sunset, every mountain, every symphony, every song, every newborn child, every beautiful thing that you've ever loved has only been whispering, whispering about the beautiful of the one who is coming.
[00:09:51] This world's beauty is God's way of preparing your eyes to delight in the beauty of the King.
[00:10:00] And so God intends for our hearts to bubble over for the King.
[00:10:06] And so Psalm 45 gives us four reasons to delight in this king. In verses 2 to 9. In verse 2, called to delight in the King because of his person.
[00:10:18] In verse two, we're called to delight in his person.
[00:10:22] In verses three to five, we see the King's power.
[00:10:27] We see his power.
[00:10:29] In verses 6 to 7A, we see his position.
[00:10:35] And then in verses 7B to 9, we see his pleasure.
[00:10:41] So let this King fill your heart the way he filled the psalmist's by starting with his person.
[00:10:48] Look with me at verse 2.
[00:10:51] If Christ would be precious to us, we must first ponder his person.
[00:10:57] Notice that the psalmist begins by pointing us to the beauty of the King.
[00:11:03] But watch where the psalmist goes next.
[00:11:06] He doesn't go to the King's face, he goes to the King's. Mouth.
[00:11:13] This king's beauty is not what he looks like, but what he sounds like. And verse two tells us why. Because grace is poured upon your lips.
[00:11:26] This king's speech ought to amaze us.
[00:11:30] Some kings might imagine it an insult to their dignity to speak words of grace to their citizens.
[00:11:38] Maybe they think they're too busy or too important, too powerful.
[00:11:44] So imagine when this king steps off of his throne and goes into his kingdom and addresses his citizens with words of grace.
[00:11:54] Of course, for the Christian, that's not too hard to imagine, is it?
[00:12:00] Because our king left his heavenly throne to speak words of grace to us.
[00:12:07] People were often amazed when they met Jesus, Luke tells us, and all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth.
[00:12:21] Christ amazed people with his grace.
[00:12:26] That word poured that the psalmist used, it points toward plentitude. This isn't a gentle mist of grace.
[00:12:34] This is a downpour.
[00:12:36] It's a flood.
[00:12:39] Now, this church is filled with wonderful saints who regularly speak words of grace.
[00:12:47] But grace on your lips isn't the same thing as grace poured onto your lips.
[00:12:56] You have some words of grace, but Christ has all of them.
[00:13:03] We have a few drops. Christ, an ocean.
[00:13:08] And so where do you find this ocean? Where do we find this ocean of grace?
[00:13:15] We should listen to his words, listen to Christ's words of grace to you.
[00:13:21] What does he say? Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest, or your sins are forgiven, or now you are my friends.
[00:13:41] Christ's words are words of rest, forgiveness and friendship.
[00:13:49] Christ speaks words of grace.
[00:13:53] Every word from Christ is a window into his heart.
[00:13:58] And what do we see but more grace?
[00:14:03] To delight in our king, we should delight in his person.
[00:14:09] But that's not all that we should delight in. Look with me at our next point, verses 3 to 5, we should look at his power.
[00:14:15] In verses 3 to 5, we see this incredible description of the king and his abilities as a warrior.
[00:14:25] Christ is full of grace, yes, but Christ isn't merely gentle.
[00:14:32] He's not a pushover.
[00:14:34] He's a king who fights for his people.
[00:14:38] Christ is not just perfectly good, he's perfectly powerful.
[00:14:45] As I prepared for the sermon, my friend Deanna Richmond pointed me to Jeremiah 20:11, one of her favorite ways that God is described.
[00:14:55] It says this, but the Lord is with me as a dread warrior.
[00:15:01] Dread warrior.
[00:15:03] What an incredible title.
[00:15:06] This is a king who inspires fear and terror in his enemies.
[00:15:11] And that title isn't Just an ornament. It's not just poetry. Look at the psalm here. The psalm arms him. To match it, we have a sword on his thigh, which means that it's ready to be drawn.
[00:15:26] He has a bow and arrow, and this king is a marksman.
[00:15:30] Your arrows are sharp.
[00:15:32] They pierce the hearts of the king's enemies.
[00:15:35] So whether his enemies stand and fight or turn and flee, there's no ground on which the enemies of our king are safe.
[00:15:45] And so his enemies fall.
[00:15:47] The peoples, the nations, they fall under you. Beneath the king's feet they fall and they bow down.
[00:15:58] So, sword drawn, arrows flying, nations falling.
[00:16:03] Every image in this psalm is building towards the same point.
[00:16:08] This king's power cannot be withstood.
[00:16:13] But look at verse three again. Notice what he's called.
[00:16:17] He's called the Mighty One.
[00:16:20] That sound familiar?
[00:16:21] It's a title normally reserved for God. You can see that in Isaiah 9, 6. But even his appearance is described the way God's own appearance is described elsewhere.
[00:16:34] Splendor and majesty go before him.
[00:16:38] This is no ordinary king, and this is no ordinary power.
[00:16:44] Which raises the real question, not whether this king can win a war, but rather, why does he fight them?
[00:16:54] Power like this could be spent on anything.
[00:16:59] But what does he spend it on?
[00:17:01] Well, kings across history have gone to war for all kinds of reasons. Kings marshal enemies over what they want to possess.
[00:17:10] Throughout history, wars have been launched over wounded pride, stolen property, insulted honor, border squabbles, kings defending their own name, their own glory, their own possessions.
[00:17:25] And if we're honest, we're not much different.
[00:17:29] How many times have each of us gone to war over wounded pride or a point we needed to make?
[00:17:36] How many times have we gone to war with brothers and sisters over disagreement?
[00:17:42] But Christ wars for different reasons.
[00:17:45] In your majesty. Ride out victoriously. Why?
[00:17:49] For the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness.
[00:17:54] This king wars not for vanity, but truth and meaning and purpose and humility and justice. Here's the difference. The kings of the world win by taking, but this king wins by giving.
[00:18:11] Christ's sword was ready at Calvary, but he drew it against no one.
[00:18:17] The arrows left in the quiver.
[00:18:20] Instead, Christ himself was pierced.
[00:18:24] That's the gospel.
[00:18:25] A king who fights for truth and righteousness by sacrificing himself for his people.
[00:18:33] But his sword won't stay sheathed forever.
[00:18:37] If you've read the end of the Bible, you know that in Revelation 19, we see this same warrior king who returns with robe dipped in blood, treading the winepress of the fury of God.
[00:18:51] The king who fought his first war through sacrifice will fight his last by triumphing finally over evil.
[00:19:00] Power like that wielded for us, not against us.
[00:19:06] How could we not delight in this king?
[00:19:11] Look with me at the next point. His position. In 6 and 7a, the Psalmist turns our eyes to our king's position. Let me read it again for us.
[00:19:21] Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
[00:19:26] The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness.
[00:19:30] You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.
[00:19:36] Well, this is incredible language. The psalmist here has spent the last five verses singing to a king about his beauty, his speech, his sword, his splendor. And then, without warning, how does he refer to this king? He calls him God.
[00:19:52] And what kind of throne does this God king sit on?
[00:19:56] One that is forever and ever.
[00:20:00] Every throne that Israel ever built had an expiration date.
[00:20:05] Saul's fell, David's was eventually empty. Solomon's kingdom split within a generation of his death.
[00:20:14] Every crown rested on the head of a dying man.
[00:20:20] But Psalm 45 refuses to lower its expectations.
[00:20:24] It keeps describing a king whose throne never ends, who never dies.
[00:20:32] And if this psalm were merely about Solomon, it would be cruel.
[00:20:37] It would awaken longings in us that no earthly king could ever satisfy.
[00:20:43] It would promise a throne that couldn't last, a righteousness no sinner could sustain, a beauty no man could preserve, a kingdom a funeral would eventually interrupt.
[00:20:58] But Psalm 45 isn't cruel, it's prophetic.
[00:21:03] The New Testament tells us exactly who this king is. As we mentioned earlier, Hebrews 1 quotes these very verses and applies them directly to Jesus.
[00:21:15] Every king after David inherited God's promise and died waiting for it.
[00:21:22] But Jesus is the king who fulfills it.
[00:21:25] He alone reigns forever. He alone has loved righteousness and hated wickedness perfectly. He alone never vacates his throne.
[00:21:36] And so to delight in this king, we must delight in his Deity.
[00:21:41] A divine king doesn't just make for a better king. He makes everything in this psalm true.
[00:21:49] A human king's grace could run dry.
[00:21:53] A human king's beauty could fade.
[00:21:57] A human king's promise could die with him.
[00:22:01] But this king's throne is forever, because this king is God.
[00:22:07] Everything that we found delightful in this king, his beauty, his grace, his power, rests on his position as God.
[00:22:21] So Christian, delight in this king's position.
[00:22:27] But look with me again.
[00:22:28] What does his position produce? We see this in 7B and 9. Let me read it again for us.
[00:22:38] Therefore, God your God, has anointed you with the Oil of gladness beyond your companions, your your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia from ivory palaces. Stringed instruments make you glad.
[00:22:51] Daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor. At your right hand stands the Queen in gold of Ophir.
[00:22:59] In these final few verses we see a picture of the King's pleasure, blessing and abundance poured out.
[00:23:09] Now these verses are mysterious. This king himself, just called God, is here anointed by a God of his own.
[00:23:20] Now this isn't a contradiction.
[00:23:23] This is the Trinity.
[00:23:25] These verses push us past David, past Solomon.
[00:23:31] In them we see the second person of the Trinity, God incarnate Christ the Son, whom the Father anoints.
[00:23:40] The Lord God has christened him with the oil of gladness because only the Eternal Son could receive the Father's everlasting delight.
[00:23:52] This divine King is eternally a glad hearted king.
[00:23:58] But this gladness doesn't stay in his heart.
[00:24:01] It spills over into everything around him. Notice the sensory images that we see here. We Fragrance, music, Splendor.
[00:24:13] Verse 8 tells us that his robes are perfumed with myrrh and aloes and kasha.
[00:24:19] These are fragrances that would have immediately filled up the room.
[00:24:23] You would have smelled that the king was near before you saw him.
[00:24:28] Stringed instruments play from ivory palaces.
[00:24:32] Ivory would have been the wealthiest, most extravagant material available in the ancient world. And it decorates this king's palace.
[00:24:41] This is not a king who rations his joy.
[00:24:45] Gladness marks what he wears, how he smells, what he hears and where he lives.
[00:24:54] This picture is exquisite, evocative.
[00:25:00] It's sensory and abundance is the key word here.
[00:25:06] And all of it is a backdrop to the king in all his beauty.
[00:25:12] To stand in his presence would be to enjoy fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.
[00:25:20] This is a picture of unending gladness that flows from a king whose gladness never runs dry.
[00:25:28] To delight in the King we must see the pleasure of the King.
[00:25:35] Application here basically writes itself simply.
[00:25:41] Behold the beauty of Christ.
[00:25:45] Let me ask you, do these verses stir your heart to a greater love for Christ?
[00:25:55] If we're honest, the answer is no, not always.
[00:26:00] The beauty of Christ isn't often top of mind for us.
[00:26:05] When my mind is cluttered and my heart is heavy, I often stop looking up and I forget that there's a king on the throne at all.
[00:26:17] But seasons of sorrow or distraction are precisely when we most need to look up.
[00:26:25] Samuel Rutherford was a Scottish pastor in the 17th century who spent a few years in exile, barred from his people, barred from Caring for the people that he loved, from preaching to the people that he loved.
[00:26:41] And yet it was in these years when he would pen some of the most beautiful letters that a human has ever written.
[00:26:49] Here his heart and pen overflowed and he wrote, oh, what an excellent one is Jesus put the beauty of ten thousand, thousand worlds of paradises like the garden of Eden in one.
[00:27:06] Put all trees, all flowers, all smells, all colors, all tastes, all joys, all sweetness, all, all loveliness in one.
[00:27:17] Oh, what an excellent thing that would be.
[00:27:21] And yet that would be less to that dearest, well beloved Christ than one drop of rain to the whole seas, rivers, lakes and fountains of 10,000 worlds.
[00:27:39] If exile couldn't dim Rutherford's sight of Christ, surely whatever weighs on you this morning doesn't have the final word.
[00:27:50] Christ's beauty is unfathomably deep for the Christian. Each day, each moment becomes a new adventure of admiration.
[00:28:00] We can enjoy a fresh angle on this same unfathomably beautiful king.
[00:28:07] So, Christian, make it your aim this week to look at Christ's heart, holiness, his love, his mercy, his wisdom, his gentleness. All of these things, perfectly demonstrated, are wrapped up in this one Christ.
[00:28:25] If you want to see mercy or grace or compassion or love, look to Christ.
[00:28:31] All of the ways that we experience love and beauty and joy in this world, as true as they are. The love that a father has, has for his daughter, the love that obtains between a husband and a wife, those are but trickles. Follow it all the way back and you will find the waterfall, the source, the place from which all of that beauty and love come.
[00:28:53] Look to the beauty of Christ.
[00:28:55] He is worth it.
[00:28:57] If you struggle to see this beauty, I'd encourage you to pick up a very small book.
[00:29:02] It's called the Loveliness of Christ by Samuel Rutherford.
[00:29:08] It's not even full letters. It's just beautiful little phrases taken out of his letters, just compiled and put together. It's very small, very easy to read. I read one or two phrases almost every morning when I get to the office.
[00:29:23] I read them and I let them stir my heart to Christ.
[00:29:27] Because page after page, he does what he just did.
[00:29:32] He holds up Christ's beauty until a struggling heart has no choice but to look.
[00:29:40] But Christ is too beautiful to remain merely admired.
[00:29:47] His beauty calls for a response.
[00:29:50] It calls for our allegiance.
[00:29:53] Having beheld the King of Psalm 45, Psalm 45 now teaches us what it means to belong to Him.
[00:30:00] So let's look at our second point in verses 10 to 12. To belong to Christ at every wedding I've ever attended, the bride is usually the center of attention.
[00:30:13] On my wedding day, I'm pretty sure people were asleep when I walked down the aisle.
[00:30:17] But when Ana walked in the room, all eyes immediately snapped to attention to look at the beautiful woman coming down the aisle.
[00:30:27] Every eye found its way to the bride.
[00:30:31] But that's not this wedding.
[00:30:34] Here, every eye, as we've seen, is first drawn to the King.
[00:30:39] His beauty, his grace, his power, his joy.
[00:30:46] Before the bride is ever called to respond, she is first given someone worth loving.
[00:30:54] The bride's beauty. And she is beautiful. She is lovely.
[00:30:59] The bride's beauty is a reflection of the King's beauty.
[00:31:04] Her joy is a participation in his joy.
[00:31:10] Delight leads us to belong to the King. And in verses 10 to 12, we see the bride's whole hearted devotion. How she leaves her old life behind to belong entirely to her bridegroom.
[00:31:26] Notice how verse 10 begins. Look with me.
[00:31:29] Hear, O daughter, and consider and incline your ear.
[00:31:36] Three commands come one after another. Hear, consider, incline.
[00:31:43] The repetition slows us down.
[00:31:47] The bride is being summoned to listen because what she's about to hear will change her life.
[00:31:55] And what does the psalmist tell her?
[00:31:59] He says, forget your people and your father's house.
[00:32:05] Now, her father's house is more than the place that she grew up. This is a metaphorical way of speaking.
[00:32:11] It refers to more than just a home. It refers to her history, her identity, her inheritance, her loyalties, her old loves, her old gods.
[00:32:25] Everything that once defined her.
[00:32:28] This isn't moving across town.
[00:32:31] This is trading one kingdom for another to transfer her deepest allegiance to the King.
[00:32:41] Notice the text. Doesn't say add to your father's house.
[00:32:46] It doesn't say live there in the summers and live with your new husband in the winter.
[00:32:52] It says to forget.
[00:32:54] This is a wholehearted turning away.
[00:32:58] It's a shutting of the door on a whole way of living.
[00:33:03] Friends, if you are a Christian, you must forget your father's house.
[00:33:10] Some of us have left our father's house, but we still keep a key in our pocket.
[00:33:16] We return when we feel like Christ isn't enough.
[00:33:21] We revisit the old rooms of pride and bitterness and lust and self reliance, self sufficiency or the approval of others.
[00:33:32] We know where everything is kept in this house. We knew which chair we used to sit in. We know which voices echo down those hallways.
[00:33:41] But Christ does not call us to renovate the old house. He calls us to leave it.
[00:33:49] Leaving your father's house means leaving behind rival loves. It means rearranging every loyalty so that Christ is first.
[00:34:01] And at this point, the Queen.
[00:34:05] Or maybe some of you might hesitate.
[00:34:08] If I leave everything for Christ, what will be left of me?
[00:34:15] Some of you might think that you'll leave your father's house impoverished.
[00:34:20] But look with me at the text.
[00:34:23] What awaits the bride after she forgets a promise?
[00:34:30] The king will desire your beauty.
[00:34:35] Imagine leaving everything you've ever known, wondering whether you will be welcomed, only to discover that when the doors open, every eye is on the King. But the king's eyes are on you.
[00:34:49] And why?
[00:34:50] Not because she's made herself worthy of love, but because she now belongs to the King.
[00:34:58] And isn't this exactly what Christ has done for His Church?
[00:35:03] Christ doesn't merely forgive sinners. He clothes them in his own righteousness and he welcomes them into his home. And he delights in them as his beloved.
[00:35:17] It's only after this, after she meets the king who desires her, that that second command comes.
[00:35:27] Since he is your Lord, bow to him.
[00:35:32] This isn't simply a king who delights in his bride.
[00:35:37] This is a king to whom she owes her allegiance.
[00:35:42] Now, we rightly love to speak about Christ's love for his people, his delight, his mercy, his grace.
[00:35:50] But the text doesn't stop there.
[00:35:53] Coming to this king means more than falling in love.
[00:35:58] It means bowing the knee.
[00:36:01] Some people want Christ as a physician, but not as a king.
[00:36:06] They gladly receive his medicine, but they resist his commands.
[00:36:11] They want his cross to forgive them, but not his scepter to rule them.
[00:36:17] But notice the order.
[00:36:19] Desire comes before demand.
[00:36:23] She doesn't bow to earn his favor.
[00:36:27] She bows because of it.
[00:36:30] The world tells you that surrendering everything to Christ means losing yourself.
[00:36:37] But Psalm 45 says the opposite.
[00:36:40] Yes, this king costs you your history, your identity, your old loves, your old way of living.
[00:36:49] But you lose your old life to discover the love that you were made for.
[00:36:55] You leave one house only to be welcomed into a palace.
[00:37:00] To belong to your king, you must be devoted to your King.
[00:37:06] But belonging is not the end.
[00:37:09] Those who belong to Christ will one day be with Christ.
[00:37:15] Look with me at the last four verses of our Psalm.
[00:37:19] In verses 13 to 15, delight leads us to be with the King.
[00:37:26] The bride who has given herself to him is finally led into his presence with joy and gladness.
[00:37:35] The delight, the movement of this psalm goes from beholding to belonging, to being with.
[00:37:43] This is the procession moment. You know this moment in every wedding.
[00:37:48] The music changes and every eye turns to the back of the room.
[00:37:53] Here comes the bride, all glorious, decked in many colored robes, lavishly interwoven, with her maid of honors behind her, walking with joy and gladness.
[00:38:08] But look really closely, look really closely at what the verbs do in verses 13 to 15.
[00:38:16] Everywhere else in this psalm, the bride is called to act, to hear, to forget, to bow.
[00:38:25] But here the verbs go passive.
[00:38:29] She is led to the king. Verse 14.
[00:38:33] They are led along as they enter the palace. Verse 15.
[00:38:39] The bride is swept up and swept along, and what she's swept into is glorious gold, companions sharing in her joy, splendor, majesty. If you've ever experienced the joy of a wedding, the music, the laughter, the color, the celebration that fills up the room, that's the picture that we're seeing here, only far greater.
[00:39:09] This is what it looks like to be with this king.
[00:39:13] This is not a private, solemn arrangement settled quietly between two people.
[00:39:19] This is a public, joyful, crowded celebration.
[00:39:24] The gladness that already belonged to the king in verse seven is the same gladness that now fills the room she's led into delight becomes everlasting joy.
[00:39:39] Revelation gives us this same scene again, centuries later, thrown open to the whole world.
[00:39:48] Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory. For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.
[00:39:59] Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.
[00:40:07] It's quite the movement in this psalm.
[00:40:10] It began with beholding the king belonging to the king and being with the king. And this is a wedding song.
[00:40:21] But Psalm 45 doesn't end with a wedding celebration, gives way to promise. Look with me at the last two verses.
[00:40:31] In place of your fathers shall be your sons.
[00:40:34] You will make them princes in all the earth.
[00:40:38] I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations.
[00:40:42] Therefore nations will praise you forever and ever.
[00:40:48] Every royal wedding raises the question, will the Kingdom continue?
[00:40:55] Psalm 45 answers this with an eternal yes.
[00:41:00] Generation after generation, the king gathers more into his household.
[00:41:06] But this promise isn't fulfilled through biological descendants, but through spiritual ones.
[00:41:13] Every time a sinner repents and believes, another son, another daughter, another prince or princess is invited into the king's household.
[00:41:26] Which means the invitation of Psalm 45 is still being extended to anyone in this room who has never said yes to this king.
[00:41:38] Consider my words, this sermon, to be your invitation.
[00:41:43] This praiseworthy king, out of great love for us, in obedience to his father, came into the world to save sinners.
[00:41:52] He lived the life that we should have lived, but didn't, but refused, and he went to the cross bearing our sin and God's wrath, dying in our place, paying the penalty for our sins, the sins of anyone who would trust in him.
[00:42:10] And on that bloody cross, these same lips of grace cried out, it is finished.
[00:42:18] And three days later, he rose again, so that we would have new life in him.
[00:42:24] Will you trust this king?
[00:42:29] Psalm 45 wants us to behold him, for his beauty awakens our delight.
[00:42:37] Psalm 45 wants us to belong to him, and for that delight to become devotion.
[00:42:45] And Psalm 45 wants us to be with him, to wait for the day when delight becomes everlasting joy, and when we are with our King forever.
[00:42:58] And so delight in your King until the day you are with him.
[00:43:04] Let's pray.
