Introduction
Every girl has a dream, my little girl, who is two-and-a-half, will one day have this dream, that a man, strong and mighty, noble and handsome, will come and rescue her, marry her, and they would have a family of their own. Every girl looks forward and anticipate their wedding day, glorious and bright. They imagine the ideal: the ideal man, the ideal day, the ideal wedding dress, the ideal family to follow.
Every boy has as a playground where the bad guys are on the loose and they are the hero. Every stick is a sword and they defend the weak and capture the great nemesis of the world. And when they get a little older, the weak is swapped out for that girl, who longs to be rescued. They look forward, anticipate, imagine their heroic day. Glorious and bright.
Taking these dreams of little girls and boys, you might just pass them by as “childish” or wishful thinking. Yet, it is amazing how profound those dreams are as they fit into the great story of God. As one children’s catechism goes,
“What is the whole point of the Bible?”
Slay the dragon, get the girl.
Today, in Psalm 45, we read a dream. Yes, it more than a dream, but a prophetic foreshadowing of things to come. It is a love song pinned to dream up the Psalmist ideal royal wedding which he hope for in the King of Israel, descendant of David. The Psalmist here looks forward, anticipates, and imagines when the Great hero, King Jesus, would come, rescue His bride-to-be, and take her hand in marriage.
Let us read Psalm 45.
Psalm 45:1–17 (ESV)
To the choirmaster: according to Lilies. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah; a love song.
1 My heart overflows with a pleasing theme;
I address my verses to the king;
my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.
2 You are the most handsome of the sons of men;
grace is poured upon your lips;
therefore God has blessed you forever.
3 Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one,
in your splendor and majesty!
4 In your majesty ride out victoriously
for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness;
let your right hand teach you awesome deeds!
5 Your arrows are sharp
in the heart of the king’s enemies;
the peoples fall under you.
6 Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness;
7 you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.
Therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness beyond your companions;
8 your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia.
From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad;
9 daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor;
at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.
10 Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear:
forget your people and your father’s house,
11 and the king will desire your beauty.
Since he is your lord, bow to him.
12 The people of Tyre will seek your favor with gifts,
the richest of the people.
13 All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold.
14 In many-colored robes she is led to the king,
with her virgin companions following behind her.
15 With joy and gladness they are led along
as they enter the palace of the king.
16 In place of your fathers shall be your sons;
you will make them princes in all the earth.
17 I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations;
therefore nations will praise you forever and ever.
For those who are taking notes, here are my points: First, we will look at the Ideal Royal Groom from verses 2-9. Then, we will look at the Ideal Bride from verses 10-15.
The Ideal Royal Groom (vv. 2-9)
Poured out from the heart (v1), the Psalmist puts down on paper a love song to his king, who is the ideal royal groom. He magnifies three characteristics of this royal groom. The first characteristics of the royal groom is his excellent beauty. Look with me at vv2-3, “You are the most handsome of the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty!”
Now, today, as we read the words, “most handsome”, we might think of People magazine “Sexiest man alive” award in the likes of a Brad Pitt or George Coloney, but this is not what the Psalmist seeks to portray.
External beauty truly comes from an internal one as we know when God chose from the house of Jesse a king for Israel, “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). David was said to be “handsome” and I would assume other Israel kings were as well given that royalty uses cares for their outward appearance, yet the Psalmist describes the external beauty from the king’s words and works. Gracious words come from the lips of the king. Truth, meekness, and righteousness is the king’s speech. And he stands confidently behind those words with his works. He is willing to defend them with his sword on his thigh and his previous victory wrapped around him in splendor and majesty. This connects with the Psalmist second characteristic of the royal groom which is his military prowess.
The king is a mighty warrior. He is the champion for what is important to the Lord and his covenant people. He fights for truth, meekness, and righteousness. These mirror the kingdom of God in fidelity and righteousness. And this king has been blessed by God forever, which is the third characteristic. In v. 2, God has blessed the king forever. And in v. 7, God has anointed the king with the oil of gladness. The king does not live for himself nor go to war alone seeking fame and glory for himself, but God, the mighty one, goes with him and blesses him. This is the key to his characteristics and his kingdom, the blessing of God. But the writer here takes us higher as he writes, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.” Now, we speak a divine-human king where throne is forever and his kingdom is forever.
So, the picture of the ideal royal groom is desirable, picture perfect. Yet, the question which commentaries seeking to answer and you are probably asking is, “who is this Royal Groom?” Well, we don’t know which earthly king and bride it was originally composed for. We know that the language here is idealized harking back to God’s covenant with David in 2 Sam. 7. There, God promises David’s offspring to establish his kingdom and his throne. As it says in 2 Sam. 7:16, “And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.” Furthermore, God promised Judah, the one the royal line will come through, in his blessing from his father, Jacob, that “the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples” (Gen. 49:10). And so, we look at the line of David. Is there one like this?
Problem: Historical Kings
Well, there is one constant theme in the line of David. And what is it? Failed. All the kings failed. They are failures, royal mess-ups. There is a long of line of failures. This is the story of human history whether we, that is all of us, are royalty or not, there is one constant truth for us and that is we all fail to match perfection. No king nor common man fits this exalted language. None of us are divine and too many of us are too human if “to err is to be human”.
There is talk in the commentaries that it could reference the marriage of Ahab of Israel and Jezebel of Tyre since the Psalm refers to the people of Tyre in v.12. But let’s look at Ahab’s track record? 2 Kings 16:32, “He erected an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, (F) which he built in Samaria. And Ahab made an Asherah. (F) Ahab did more to provoke the Lord than all the kings of Israel who were before him. (F)” And do you remember the duel between Elijah and the Baal worshipers on Mt. Camel? That was under Ahab’s reign (F). Another option, a more likely one, is Solomon. Yes, we see glimpses, or types, in him. Solomon, he was a man of wise words. We have two books of wisdom in the Bible where he is the author or co-author. Yet, he failed. He didn’t apply the wisdom to his life and it ruined his life and family (See 1 Chr. 11). But, what does the NT say... "something greater than Solomon is here" (Matt. 12:42).
Fulfillment: Christ (Hebrews 1:8-9)
“Where earthly kings could never tread,
Christ our King came instead.”
The ideal promised Royal Groom whose perfect and eternal reign found in the fairest of them all, Lord Jesus. You don’t need to take my word for it. The author of Hebrews, when showcasing the Son is greater than angels by virtue of His eternal reign, declares Christ as the royal groom by citing Ps. 45:6-7 (Hebrews 1:8-9). Once we realized that this Psalm is about Christ, does it not just sing in our hearts?
O Church, Bride of Christ, your King is your Bridegroom. He loves you, O church, and washes you with the water of His words. His words are gracious as He is gracious. When Jesus walked on this earth, one of the common reactions from the crowds were about his words. After his first sermon, announcing His ministry, the reaction was, “And all spoke well of him and marveled at the gracious words that were coming from his mouth” (Luke 4:22).
Here in verses 8-9, the talk of oils and fragrances and instruments are the preparation of a wedding ceremony. Christ, in his beauty and splendor, rode out, slayed the dragon and has established His throne. Now, He graciously invites you to be his spouse, v10, “Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear.” Do you know Him as your Bridegroom?
O Church, Bride of Christ, your King is your warrior. He rides out victoriously. Revelation portrays Christ, as our Bridegroom, who rides out on a white horse from His heavenly throne, in His majesty called Faithful and True, and comes to the earth to speak truth and to care for the meek by spreading justice, and stakes righteousness in the ground. But not only does He prompt truth, meekness, and righteousness, King Jesus subdues all his and our enemies. He slays the dragon, the serpent of old. Ever since the Fall, there has been an all out war between the seed of the serpent and the seed of woman. And King Jesus, “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Col. 2:15). King Jesus binds up Satan and throws Him into the lake of fire, and there Satan and all our other enemies “will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev. 20:10). Do you know Him as your Warrior?
O Church, Bride of Christ, your King is on the Throne. As the Psalm states, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.” King Jesus in on the throne of God reigning as God because He is God. This is a king who conquered the chaos of sin, Satan, and death. And He did this by dying for us. This is a King who gave us his life. This is a KIng who died for us. This is a King who rose to create life in us and started a kingdom for us which we can have our sin forgiven, we can have our eternity altered, we can feast with him, and He is our King who is our Groom. And we belong to Him. If we submit to him, and if we follow him, and if we repent of our sins, and trust in Jesus, as this King has invited us, then all that is his is ours.
To summarize, C. S. Lewis puts it so eloquently, “The birth of Christ is the arrival of the great warrior and the great king. Also of the Lover, the Bridegroom, whose beauty surpasses that of man. But not only the Bridegroom as the lover, the desired; the Bridegroom also who makes fruitful, the Father of children still to be begotten and born” (
Reflections from the Psalms, p. 130)
The Ideal Bride (vv. 10-15)
Now, that we have seen who is the royal groom, ultimately being Christ himself, who will he marry? Again, we don’t the historical figure the Psalmist could be talking about if he even means to speak of a particular event. We do know, like any bride on their wedding day, she is radiant and beautiful. “The king will desire your beauty” (v11), “All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. In many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her.” This ideal bride is gorgeous and pure. Let me go directly to talk about Christ’s bride.
Problem: the harlot church (Hosea 1-3)
The description of this bride of Psalm 45 does not do justice to the bride of Christ. Not because it speaks to little of her, but way too much of her. How is the church, the bride of Christ, pictured? Well, consider the prophetic parable of Hosea. God calls the prophet Hosea, the man of God, and says to him, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” Or, consider Ezekiel 16 where the Lord God at the age for love made a vow to the church, entered into a covenant with them and they became his. He lavished them with fine clothes and oils. They are called “exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty” (v13). But, the truth doesn’t stop there. “But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore” as they made idols of the nations (vv15-17). The truth about the church is that. It is the disreputable woman, the harlot.
So, how can we square with Psalm 45? One word. Grace. The whole story of the Bible is God the Father has chosen a bride for His Son. But, this bride is not spotless and white, but stained and sinful. So, the Lord Jesus, the royal Bridegroom, when he first comes to you, finds you full of sin and pollution; you are deformed, defiled, enslaved, poor, miserable and wretched, very despicable and loathsome, by reason of sin; and he make His choice of you, not because of your holiness, nor of your beauty, nor of your being qualified for them; no, the Lord Jesus puts these qualifications upon you, as may make you meet for his embrace; and you are drawn to make choice of the Lord Jesus Christ because he first chose you.
This is why in Christian marriages, the bride wear white symbolize purity. But, how many Christian brides come into the marriage with a disreputable past? How can they still wear white? The Gospel. That is, our righteousness is not something of and in ourselves (an infused righteousness), but given to us (an imputed righteousness). It is a perfect picture of the righteousness of another. The Christian bride wear white, not because she is pure, but because Christ has given her his purity for her sin. And this picture at any wedding captures a glimpse of the greater story of the Bible.
Fulfillment: The Redeemed Bride
The Gospel today is that Jesus came to save through marriage. That we, the church, are a collection of mess ups, sinners, loser, and disreputable women with a disreputable past. And Jesus came to save us. To have our ears inclined, listen to His gracious words to forget the past and our father’s house, and come be with him. But not just to save us, but to marry us. And over our messed up lives, He gives us robes of purity. The bride is presented clothes with linen bright and pure. Jesus has provided everything that the bride need by sanctifying her, cleansing her with washing of water with the word, and by presenting the church to himself without spot or wrinkle.
Do you desire to be loved? Come to Jesus, our Royal Groom.
Do you desire to be redeemed? Come to Jesus, our Mighty Warrior.
Do you desire to live with Jesus? Come to Him and live in His forever kingdom.
Sermon preached on 07-08-2012 at First Pres. in Wanyesboro, Ga.
Yet something I heard an older wiser Christian say at a missions conference one time has really stuck with me. He was talking about how arrogant and impatient we American missionaries are with new believers on the field. We expect people who have grown up all their lives steeped in idol worship, karma or caste systems to immediately shed off all those "silly notions" and start living mature, godly (and maybe a little bit more like us thank you very much) lives. Whereas, we on some level are still so tightly tied to the American dream, materialism, comfort and ease. This is the essence of the culture I live in. Why do I think, just because I am a follower of Christ that all that way of thinking and way of living has fallen off as scales?
