(I want to listen to this sermon)

A Royal Wedding

Weddings are happy occasions. And royal weddings are splendid, magnificent affairs. Our Psalmist picks up his pen but he doesn't struggle to find the right words to use. His subject is a noble one but his will be no mere formal composition. The words of his love song come tumbling from the overflow his heart which is full of his theme. His is a poem that must be written and a song that must be sung!

And so down through the centuries Christian writers have penned hymn after glorious hymn to the glory of God and His Christ because their hearts too have burned within them as they have reflected upon the many pleasant themes of the Christian faith.

Singing is a hallmark of the Christian faith. If you never find your heart ready to burst into song I begin to doubt whether you have ever really grasped what the Christian message is all about. Yes, I know that God's message in the Bible speaks firstly to our minds, our intellect and our understanding – but the message doesn't stop there. Having informed our minds it works transformation upon our wills and our emotions. God's message is indeed a message for the whole man, the whole woman!

As the Psalmist prepares to celebrate the royal wedding with his love song he begins by turning to consider the King.

The King he describes in these verses is the embodiment of everything that makes kingship glorious and his description strikes us perhaps as too good to be true. Surely he is exaggerating – no King in Israel was ever that good! And indeed if we were to ransack the pages of the OT we would be hard pressed to find a King who might come close to fitting this description.

Yes, Saul and David were both described as being handsome men as was David's son Absalom. Yet Saul was an abject failure and rejected by the LORD God. And of David it is specifically said that he was NOT chosen because of his looks. Yet there is another King spoken of in similar extravagant terms in another love song:

Song 5:10 "My beloved is radiant and ruddy, distinguished among ten thousand." "the chiefest among ten thousand."AV

King David might be called the "sweet psalmist of Israel". A former Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, once wrote that the most popular poet in the British Isles was none other than this "sweet singer of Israel".

His son Solomon too was a remarkable man. We read that God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond measure, and that the breadth of mind was like the sand on the seashore. (1Ki.4:29) "He also spoke 3,000 proverbs, and his songs were 1,005." (v.32).

But there was yet another, a greater son of David, of whom it was said “No one ever spoke like this man!” Jn.7:46 "Never man spake like this man."

Our psalmist also speaks of a combination of qualities in his opening description of the king. He writes of a King who rides victoriously for the cause of truth, meekness and righteousness! Does any OT King demonstrate such qualities? And yet there is another who is later described as being "meek and lowly" who nevertheless sallies forth "conquering and to conquer". This later King rides a white horse and bears the name of the Faithful and True".

The King who is to marry has all the "normal" trappings of royalty. The psalmist has already portrayed him as riding with power and might into battle where he defeats his enemies. Now he continues declaring him to possess a throne and a sceptre – the outward symbols of sovereignty.

But there is something even more extraordinary in the description he now brings to our attention concerning this king.

Listen to what he says:

vv.6-7a "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The sceptre of your kingdom is a sceptre of uprightness; you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness."

Such a verse caused OT reader's a certain amount of difficulty as to just how it should/could be understood as the king was not usually referred to in this way!

Various alternative interpretations were proposed but none were fully satisfactory.

a)    Some suggested that the flow of the psalm abruptly changed direction at this point. The psalmist stopped speaking to the king, they said, and suddenly started addressing himself to the LORD God. Having thus addressed the LORD the psalmist then, again abruptly, picked up where he had left off in speaking to the king.

b)    An alternative proposal was that the king and God were so closely identified, with the LORD standing as it were behind His king, that the king being addressed as God's representative could be called by God's name.

While this might seem at first sight to be highly improbable the king in Israel was sometimes referred to as God's son and was also understood to be occupying the LORD's throne:

Eg. 1Chron.29:22b-25.

"And they made Solomon the son of David king the second time, and they anointed him as prince for the LORD, and Zadok as priest. Then Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD as king in place of David his father. And he prospered, and all Israel obeyed him. All the leaders and the mighty men, and also all the sons of King David, pledged their allegiance to King Solomon. And the LORD made Solomon very great in the sight of all Israel and bestowed on him such royal majesty as had not been on any king before him in Israel."

The royal compliments that moved from fulsome praise to divine honours could only be taken at face value with the coming of the NT era.

The writer to the Hebrews picked up on these verses and understood them not as exaggeration, nor as speaking of the close identification between the king and his God but at their full value. The was a King on the throne of David who was nevertheless fully divine – this King was truly the Son of God. The author then quotes the Psalm in Heb.1:8-9 applying them to the Son of God who is infinitely superior to the angels. Later in his letter the author makes it crystal clear that the Son of God was none other than Jesus: "Jesus, the Son of God," Heb.4:14.

So with this light from the NT we must not try to understand this psalm in a way that excludes Christ from the picture. How then are we to relate a psalm that speaks of a royal marriage to our Lord Jesus Christ?

The answer lies in the fact that comparisons in Scripture are frequently used. Indeed marriage is often used as a picture to illustrate the relationship that God has with His people as a rapid glance at Hos.chs.1-3 would confirm. The NT frequently applies this idea to Jesus' own relationship with His people.

Eg. Eph.5:22-33 and especially v.32 "This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church."

This emphasis can be found in Jesus' own teaching when Jesus referred to Himself as a bridegroom:

Mt.9:14-15 "Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, “Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast."

Or again when Jesus told His parable of the Wedding Feast in Mt.22:1-14.

In the last book of the Bible this wedding feast becomes the marriage feast of the Lamb Rev.19:6-8.

So here in Ps.45 as we consider a description of a royal marriage the comparison must be the familiar one to Bible readers of Christ's "marriage" to His church.

From v.10 onwards the focus shifts away from the bridegroom to His bride.

The words that are addressed to the bride are words of exhortation wonderfully mixed with encouragement. Life completely changes for a young bride coming to her husband – nothing will ever be quite the same again but there is no reason for fear in this marriage as the future will be full of positives.

Let's look a little more closely at just what is involved.

Firstly, the bride is encouraged to "forget her people and her father's house" v.10. Now we're not going to overplay this in a woodenly literalistic way. What the psalmist has in mind is an end must come to the old, to the past allegiances. The bride has hitherto been a member of one community and her loyalties were all bound up with that community. But now as she comes to her husband a whole new set of loyalties opens up to her.

So too for a person who comes to Christ by faith. The old pre-Christ loyalties must no longer dominate the new life in Christ. Neither should the new convert be always harping back to those pre-Christ days and to those pre-Christ loyalties as though life was so much better then, so much richer then, so much more fulfilling then.

The pre-Christ loyalties I'm talking about are not primarily loyalties to people but loyalties to sinful patterns which must be completely overthrown. How sad when a person who professes Christ gives the impression to all around that life was so much happier before coming to Christ. Are you in danger of living like that? Are you in danger of living your life in envy of those who are still their lives in a Christless world?

 Secondly, there is perhaps a hint here too of the worldwide spread of the gospel to include not merely Jews but Gentiles too as the bride is told to forget her people. v.10. No national qualifications are necessary to become a Christian – you don't have to be British or a westerner in order to come to Christ!

Thirdly, the bride is encouraged to consider the depth of her husband's love and desire for her. We live in an age where marriages often end in breakdown and where the emphasis is placed by so many on their rights within marriage etc. People can easily grow suspicious of the institution of marriage. But here the King has a great love for His bride! Christian think much on Christ's great love for His church!

Fourthly, others will notice the bride's new found status – it will be evident to them that she is loved, blest, enriched. So much so that they will seek out her favour recognizing how privileged her new status is. Those about her will rejoice with joy and gladness – just as Christians do when a new Christian comes into God's family and as angels rejoice in heaven at the salvation of a lost soul!

Fifthly, the future is so positive for this bride. Yes, she's had to leave members of her old family behind but she won't be left isolated or lonely. This marriage to her King will be incredibly fruitful. She's bear sons who'll take the place of her other relatives. And these sons will be special and important these are princes who will fill the earth. The union of Christ with His church will not be some drab boring affair but an incredibly rich and positive one. Oh Christian shame on you whenever you're tempted to envy sinners and to forget or minimize the blessings of union with Christ!!

Sixthy, this union will live on and on. The psalmist can only speak in terms which his contemporaries can understand and so he speaks of the bride's marriage to her King as living long in the memory of others. That memory, he sys, will never ever end but will go on and on forever. The union of Christ with His church will not live on only in the memory but in the reality of ongoing ever-deepening relationship. Transformation from age to age – an eternity of blissful union and joyous untiring service.

It is a wonderful thing to united to Christ. The church is united to Him and will enjoy yet fuller communion with Him. Glorious perspectives lie ahead. Do they lie ahead for you? Have you joined this church yet? I'm not talking about having your name on the membership role of this local congregation or any other denomination for that matter. I'm talking about whether you have entered the church universal that Christ has bought with His own life's-blood.

Come to Christ now if you have never come before and to God be the glory.

Amen.