Adoring Jesus
So today we start back into our series on the Book of Psalms, and just to remind you, the Book of Psalms is an ancient collection of prayers and poetry that are in the Bible to remind us that our hope is in God’s promised King, the Messiah, who is Jesus.
Every psalm, one way or another, is pointing to Jesus, and Psalm 45 points to Jesus in a fascinating way. Psalm 45 is a wedding poem, but it’s not just for any wedding, this is for the wedding of the Promised King.
And so right away I just wanna be super clear about the ultimate meaning of this psalm. There are three things here I want us to see, and I’m gonna try to say them as clearly as I can:
The King is Jesus.
The King is Jesus and he is worthy of adoration.
The King is Jesus and a wedding is coming.
We’re gonna look more at each of these in more detail, but first, let’s pray again for God’s help:
Father in heaven, we praise you! Hallowed be your name! Thank you for this morning and for this moment when your word is open before us. We ask that your pour out your Holy Spirit now and show us the glory of your Son! We ask this in his name, amen.
#1. The King is Jesus
There are two ways to approach the kingship theme in Psalm 45: One way is to read the whole psalm and then ask at the end, Who is this ultimately about?
The other way is to say from the start who this is ultimately about and then read the psalm with that in mind. And that’s the way we’re gonna do it, okay: The King in Psalm 45 is Jesus.
Here are three reasons why — and I’ll say these quick, but I need you to hang with me …
First, we know the King is Jesus because in all the kingship psalms, Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment. So throughout the Book of Psalms, some of the psalms about kingship are more directly about David or Solomon or God himself as king, but the office ultimately belongs to the Messiah, who is son of David AND God the Son. And so right away, when we see the mention of a king here in Psalm 45, we should think: this is telling us something about Jesus.
Secondly, we know the King is Jesus because in the New Testament book of Hebrews, in Chapter 1 when the author is describing the glory and uniqueness of Jesus, he quotes from Psalm 45. This is Hebrews Chapter 1, verses 8–9:
But of the Son [God says],
Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness;
you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.
Therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness beyond your companions;
That is verbatim Psalm 45, verses 6–7, which means the New Testament authors, without a doubt, understood Psalm 45 to be about Jesus. (And we all should all say: it’s good enough for the New Testament, it’s good enough for us!) The Book of Hebrews just settles it: Psalm 45 is about Jesus.
But also, thirdly, let’s take a look at what Psalm 45 is doing in the context of these surrounding psalms. Right before we get to Psalm 45, Psalms 43 and 44 show the psalmist in a desperate place. In Psalm 43 his soul is cast down, and he feels rejected. He’s in mourning and he’s oppressed, verse 2, and so he’s preaching to himself to hope in God (verse 5).
But then in the next psalm, Psalm 44, verse 9, the psalmist says again that God has rejected his people, and he’s asking God why. The psalmist says that God’s people have become the laughingstock of their enemies (44:14), and he implies that God has treated his people unjustly (44:17–21).
Which means this is a very low moment for the psalmist, and yet still in Psalm 44, verse 23, he practices what he preaches to himself in Psalm 43, verse 5: The psalmist hopes in God. He hopes in God enough to pray. He calls on God to act!
Look at Psalm 44:23, he says: “Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever!”
And then the psalm concludes Psalm 44 with a clear petition for salvation. The psalmist says, verse 26: “Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!” (44:26)
That’s the last verse in Psalm 44. Does everyone see what the psalmist is asking God there in that last verse?
The psalmist is asking God to help his people. He’s asking God to redeem his people for the sake of his steadfast love. Psalm 44 ends with that bold request. And now we wonder, how will God answer that?
Well, Psalm 45 comes next and it happens to be about a King. … Because the King is the answer.
How will God save his people? By sending his King … and Yahweh’s King who saves is Jesus. In Psalm 45 the King is Jesus.
Now the second thing to see here in Psalm 45, and I think the most central thing and it’s that:
#2. The King is Jesus and he is worthy of adoration.
Look at verse 1. In verse 1, the psalmist is being unusually self-aware. He’s describing both his emotion and what he’s doing. The actual song starts in verse 2, but in verse 1 he wants us to know the process. He wants us to know where this is coming from …
He says, verse 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.
Calvin actually says verse 1 is another reason we know this psalm is about Jesus, because nobody talks this way about a human king.
We can hear the exuberance and joy in verse 1. There’s not a trace of inhibition — the psalmist loves the king and he wants everybody to know — and my guess is that for most of us, most of the time, we don’t know what that’s like. … I want to slow down on this for a minute.
I wonder for us if we know what it’s like to have this kind of overflowing love for Jesus. I mean, can you imagine that when you pray, you just overflow with praise like this? A lot of times, just to pray at all, we have to [shock our hearts.]
I want us to be more like Psalm 45. I want the praise of Jesus to come easy for us. And whatever is standing in the way, I pray that God would free us from it.
So here’s a simple question just to think about for a minute: do you love Jesus?
It’s not a trick question, and don’t overcomplicate it. Just think about it: Do you love him?
I can remember the moment when it first occurred to me that I loved Jesus. I was in college, standing in the kitchen of my apartment, in the afternoon, frying an egg.
I was a Christian; I believed in Jesus; I had heard the gospel as long as I could remember, but I think that because I knew what Jesus’s love looked like for me, I felt like couldn’t really say that I loved him (or something like that) — but I was standing there that day, praying, talking to Jesus, and I don’t know how to describe it other than that it just occurred to me that I loved him. As imperfect or whatever it might be, my heart welled up with affections for Jesus. I knew that I loved him, and it brought tears to my eyes, and then I ate my egg. I remember.
And here’s the deal, I remember that because that’s pretty much all I really want in life. I want to know the love of Jesus and to love him. That’s what I want for my family; that’s what I want for you, as your pastor and brother; that’s what I want for these cities. I want us to know Jesus the way the psalmist knows him here. I want us to be able to adore him as easily as we read the psalmist do it here.
We don’t run out of things to say; we never get stuck; we just open our mouths and adoration gushes forth, because Jesus is worthy of such adoration. That’s the point. We’re not working something up here or putting something on, we’re just saying of Jesus what he deserves. He deserves our adoration. Look what the psalmist says:
Jesus is better.
First, Jesus our King is better. There’s nobody like him because he surpasses every comparison. Verse 2: “You are the most handsome of the sons of men.”
Now to be clear, this description of Jesus here in Psalm 45 is Jesus in his resurrected glory. In his first advent, when Jesus humbled himself and came into this world in the First Century, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). But in his resurrected body, Jesus as our glorified and exalted King, he is the most handsome of the sons of men — which is the ancient Hebrew way of saying that if we could see Jesus now we would not be able to take our eyes off of him, because he’s better than anything we’ve ever seen before; he’s radiant in glory.
Look at verse 7: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” See, Jesus is set apart! “My beloved is chiefest among ten thousand” (Song 5:10).
Which means, line up ten thousand kings, put them all in a row and consider each one, and you will find out what the apostle Peter says in John 6, that there’s nobody out there like Jesus.
He is chiefest among ten trillion. Only Jesus has the words of life (John 6:68). “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Jesus is in a category of wonder all his own, and so when we think about him we should think about that. When we think of Jesus and pray to Jesus, we are thinking and speaking to someone who is unlike anyone else we know, because he’s better than anything that we can imagine. Adore him!
Jesus conquers in righteousness.
Also, here, the psalmist tells us that Jesus conquers in righteousness.
Verse 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.
So Jesus our King will always conquer, and he will conquer righteously in all ways. We can never separate his power from his justice … which reminds us of John’s description of Jesus in Revelation 19, when he saw the heavens opened,
… and behold, a white horse! And the one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. (verse 11)
See, at one level, Revelation 19 is a terrifying scene, because …
Jesus’s eyes are like a flame of fire,
and he has a dazzling crown on his head,
and his robe is covered in blood,
and the armies of heaven are following behind him —
— which is terrifying, but then we remember that Jesus is faithful and true and that everything he does is right.
Jesus never does anything wrong. He never misuses his power. He has never said a wrong word or taken a wrong step or given bad directions. He is a ruler who is completely and exhaustively perfect. In Jesus, the greatest power belongs to the hands of greatest good. And so
he strikes down the nations and he heals the brokenhearted;
he rules with a rod of iron and he makes the blind to see;
he slays the wicked with the sword from his mouth and he says to the dead little girl in Mark 5, “Sweetie, wake up.”
Jesus destroys his enemies and for his people he wipes away every tear from their eyes.
He has the greatest power, and he has the best heart.
“The scepter of your kingdom, Lord Jesus, is a scepter of uprightness; you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness.” And so we adore you! Adore him!
Jesus conquers in righteousness.
Jesus is eternally blessed.
Also we see here that Jesus is eternally blessed. This is in verses 2 and 7.
The end of verse 2: “therefore God has blessed you forever.”
The end of verse 7: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions” [and then in verse 8 we read the signs of God’s blessing] …
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.
Now in verse 7, the word “anointed” there is where we get the word “Messiah”, which is translated into Christ. So you could say here, “God, your God, has Christed you…” Because to be the Christ is to be the most blessed of God.
It reminds us of Jesus’s baptism where we see that the Christ of God is also the Son of God. God the Father says of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” This is the Son I love, and I’m happy with him!
And that gladness of God surrounded Jesus throughout his entire earthly ministry. We know that even when Jesus faced the cross, when he prayed in the garden just before we entered into the valley of suffering and death, he prayed that his disciples would know the love that the Father has for him. He wanted them to see the glory that God the Father has given him (see John 17:24). The Book of Hebrews tells us that “for the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (see Hebrews 12:2).
So even in his suffering, the blessing of God was on the mind of Jesus. He thought of God’s joy. Of his joy. Of him being seated on his throne. Which is what Psalm 45 envisions.
Psalm gives us an image of Jesus after his suffering and death. This is after Jesus was raised from the dead and ascended. The vision here is Jesus eternally blessed, on his throne, receiving the adoration he deserves, and with the King is his queen. That’s the last thing I want to say about Psalm 45.
#3. The King is Jesus and a wedding is coming.
Psalm 45, verse 9 first mentions the queen. And so if this King is Jesus, we should ask: who is she?
Well, we know from the New Testament that the bride of Christ is his church. That’s the metaphor of the church that we find in the Book of Ephesians Chapter 5, and also in the Book of Revelation Chapters 19 and 21, and it’s also alluded to in the Gospels. Ultimately the church is in view here in Psalm 45.
And how she gets to be here is the best part of the story. She is here because the King came here to rescue her. This the bride for whom Jesus died and was raised.
Ephesians 5 tells us this, that Christ loved the church (his bride), and gave himself up for her,
that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Verses 25–27)
And those last few lines here from the apostle Paul are looking to a time in the future. Psalm 45 is doing the same thing. Notice that the mention of the bride is a summons for her to bow to the King. The psalmist describes the bride as beautiful, but her beauty comes after we see her allegiance. This is a vision of the church fully sanctified and cleansed, and having been washed and purified, the church is presented to Jesus as his bride in glory.
The church will be radiant like we see in Ephesians 5 and Psalm 45, and on that day of her radiance, there will be a wedding. That’s the image. A wedding is coming.
And speaking of weddings, I think Psalm 45 fits nicely as our kick off to summer, because we are now in wedding season, right?
I wonder: how many of you in here know of a wedding that’s happening within the next few months? [raise hands]
Most of us probably have at least one wedding on our calendar. Weddings are coming, and we look forward to them. They are meant to be looked forward to.
And the same goes for this one. We are to look forward to this last, great wedding that is to come.
John describes it for us in Revelation 19 as the marriage of the Lamb. Revelation 19:6,
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,
“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns. [we hear kingship there]
7 Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
8 it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure”—
The rejoicing and exulting and glory and purity of this future day is an understatement. It’s an ending so good that we can hardly believe it. This is a joy so thick that we have to stretch our imaginations just to think about it, and the image of a wedding is here to help us. Because weddings are the happiest events we get to celebrate in this life, and they’re always pointers to this.
And there’s one moment especially in weddings that I think is the most profound. It’s right at the beginning. It’s when everyone stands, and the doors in the back open, and there’s the bride. And everyone is standing to honor her.
I always tell the groom to anticipate that moment, and to know that in that moment, when those doors open and he sees his bride and everyone standing for her, in that moment he is the richest man in the world. He is.
And now to think that one day Jesus will see us like that. Us.
We, his church, his rescued people, redeemed by his blood, we will be the sign of his blessing, forever. He will take joy in us, and we will take joy in him. And it will be — and I don’t mean in any trite kind of way, but as deeply as I can say — it will be “happily ever after.”
Because God’s joy is deeper than the universe, and this one great wedding celebration is where all this is headed.
Which now brings us to the Table.
The Table
First, I want to say for anyone who is here and does not trust in Jesus, I invite you to trust him now. Put your faith in him. Bow to this King and be saved.
And for those of you who do trust him, at this Table each week, when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are “proclaiming Jesus’s death until he comes.” Which means we are looking forward to the wedding celebration that Psalm 45 points to. And so this morning as you receive the bread and cup, receive it in that hope. A wedding is coming.
