Sunday 07 • 29 • 18

And the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today's scripture is Psalm 45.

My heart overflows with a pleasing theme. I address my verses to the king. My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. 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, oh mighty one, in your splendor and majesty. In your majesty, ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness. Let your right hand teach you awesome deeds. Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies. The peoples fall under you. Your throne, oh 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. Your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia. From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad. The daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor. At your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir. Hear, O daughter, and consider and incline your ear. Forget your people and your father's house, and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him. 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. In many colored robes, she has led to the king with her virgin companions following behind her. With joy and gladness, they are led along as they enter the palace of the king. In place of your fathers shall be your sons. You will make them princes in all the earth. I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations. Therefore, nations will praise you forever and ever. — Psalm 45

Amen. Thank you, Lee. Well, this morning, we're turning our attention to Psalm 45. We've been doing a series on Christ in the Psalms, and many of you may not know this—some of you do know this—I've been doing a lot of weddings this summer. Lots of people in this church have been getting married. I've had five weddings this summer, so it feels like every other week I'm doing a wedding ceremony.

The place that I used to work, Saint David's School, is perhaps in my opinion the best venue, the best place to get married. The reason for that in my opinion is just the way the chapel there is set up. If I can describe it to you: The seating isn't facing forward like this. It's antiphonal. So imagine all you fine folks over here turning and facing towards the center, and all you fine folks over here turning and facing in the center. And then we put you in stadium seating so everybody's a little bit higher than the person in front of them. You have a perfect view of the center, and we move the sides. There's this magnificent red aisle right down the middle. It's just the perfect place for a bride to walk, to be the center of attention.

But more than that, there is this Everest-like stairway at the back of the chapel. The bride essentially descends down this very steep stairway of red coming down into this aisle and then towards the groom. I had the privilege of doing a couple of weddings there, and it was always kind of amazing. We would always talk to the bride before the ceremony: "Do you want to descend down the stairway of death? Or would you like to come in at the bottom?" No bride that I was a part of there wanted to come from the bottom. They always wanted to descend down from the top.

We had one bride who was particularly adventurous. She wanted candles on every stair. So I said to her, "Not only do you want to descend down the stairway of death, you want it to be on fire." But it's a great venue for getting married because as the bride, you want the attention, right? You want to be the center of attention at the wedding ceremony. It's a beautiful setup. Loved it.

Ancient Weddings

In the ancient Near East, in ancient Israel, weddings were a little different than they are today. In those ancient times in Israel, the way weddings worked was essentially that the groom would show up to the bride's house and would pay a price for the bride—would pay the father of the bride a fee. And then he would give the bride some sort of sign of their wedding. At that point, they're married. They're bride and groom, they're man and wife at that point. But the wedding isn't over.

Essentially then, the groom would go back and he was tasked with preparing a house for him and his bride, for the new couple to live in. Once that was done—and it could sometimes take years—

Some of these Jewish guys took a little while, right? Sometimes it could take seven or eight years before the house was finally ready and they're married the whole time. Finally, after this long period of time, once the place is prepared, the bride would come in this amazing march. It's not just down an aisle like our weddings, but across town or across multiple towns. She would travel from wherever her home was to the new home of the bride and groom, and it was this amazing procession.

I think about that. I think about Saint David's and the majesty of the entrance of a bride in that space, and the majesty of some of the entrances of some of the brides that I've witnessed this summer. What we have described in Psalm 45 is a wedding. It's an exciting wedding. Who are the couple? Who are the couple in Psalm 45?

I spent a lot of time researching this because in Psalms you often have essentially a type—usually about some ancient Near Eastern, some ancient Israelite king, and then it's applied to Christ. Who's the original king in this passage? I spent a lot of time researching that. Some folks thought the king described here in Psalm 45 was Solomon, the great wealthy Israelite king, and the bride is maybe his bride from Egypt. Others thought maybe David. The Psalm talks about weapons, and Solomon was kind of a peaceful king, so maybe it's David. David was a warlike king who fought lots of people. Another set of commentators thought it was various different other kings in Israel's history. One commentator even thought it was Ahab and Jezebel—Ahab, the very famous, not so good king, and Jezebel, the very famous, not so good queen. Others thought maybe it's describing some sort of king and queen while the Israelites were actually in captivity.

Bottom line, commentators are all over the map in terms of who this king and queen are. But one theory stood out to me as my favorite. I don't think the Psalmist here is describing any historical king or queen. Maybe—I want to be clear, I don't know. Maybe. But my suspicion is that the Psalmist was dreaming specifically about a messianic king that was to come.

The Case for a Messianic King

The reason I think that is for a couple of reasons. First, in verse one:

My heart overflows with a pleasing theme.

That sounds less like describing a historical event and more like dreaming about something that's exciting. Furthermore, in verses six and seven:

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. Your 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.

The word "God" there—Elohim—it's a Hebrew word for God. It's the same word that appears in Genesis when God creates the heavens and earth at the very beginning. Elohim. What's somewhat startling is that this is not applied to God in heaven. "Your throne, O God"—talking about the king. "Therefore, God, your God anointed you." Notice that the king is described as Elohim.

There's not any other example of an Israelite king being described as Elohim anywhere in the Bible. That's not common. In fact, you find the opposite in the Bible. Israelite kings were very definitively not God. That actually made them stand apart from other ancient Near Eastern kings. Pharaoh, for example, thought he was a god. But throughout Scripture, you see this very clear distinction between Israelite kings and God. Yes, the king did represent God, but never, never would the king be referred to as God.

Something else is going on in this Psalm. In fact, the earliest Jewish commentators picked up on this Psalm and very definitively defined it as predictive of a coming Messiah—a Messiah who would be in many ways divine. They didn't ascribe it to a specific king. They ascribed it to some future king who is going to be beyond and greater and better than any of their kings.

Guess who we Christians think that is? Any guesses? Jesus. Very good, Sunday school. The Sunday school answer. Jesus. It very clearly points to Christ, and the authors of the New Testament picked up on this. Hebrews chapter one quotes Psalm 45 and very specifically says that it's describing Christ.

All the other kings of the earth, all the other angels, everybody else in all the universe—nobody else can compare to Christ in terms of what is said about him in, for example, Psalm 45. So the groom in this passage is definitively Christ, and Jesus shows up, right? In the gospels, he shows up and starts referring to himself as the bridegroom. His coming, his initial coming—the New Testament authors pick up on that, and it's him paying the initial bride price, right?

Paul in Ephesians picks up on Jesus being the bridegroom, and he describes who as the bride? Us. The church. Throughout the New Testament, the church is picked up on as the bride of Christ, and that culminates in Revelation chapters twenty-one and twenty-two, essentially describing the great wedding feast of the Lamb. The lamb marries the New Jerusalem, which is representative of the church. The lamb represents Christ; New Jerusalem represents the church.

So this is a Psalm—whether it was once about a historical king or not—it is definitively a Psalm celebrating the marriage of us to Christ. CTK, this is your wedding. This is your wedding day that's being described.

I tell every couple that I do premarital counseling with: at some point, we talk about different logistics, and usually what I tell them is, you know, the logistics are kind of just trappings. But one thing I'd really encourage you to do is hire a good photographer. Because here's the deal: once you get to your wedding, you don't remember it. All the logistics, all the things you're worrying about—you don't necessarily remember that. It's great to have a photographic record of it after the fact. I don't remember hardly any details of my wedding. Every now and then I pull out our wedding album and flip through it, and I'm like, "Oh, look, Lee was there. He played keyboard. Thanks for that." And I look at different things that happened at our wedding, and I'm kind of like, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that."

Well, Psalm 45 is the wedding album of the wedding that has not yet fully completed and taken place. You know, the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland told Alice once: she said, "It's a very poor sort of memory that only works backwards." This is the memory of the wedding that is yet to be. It is God's gift to us—to look at our wedding day with Christ and to look at it with eager expectation.

Now, I need to say with some kind of pastoral sensitivity, looking at this may be hard for some of you. Because some of you are in hard marriages. Some of you aren't married. Some of you really want to be married. Some of you don't care about marriage. You're coming from all sorts of different places with regards to your personal experience with marriage in this life. But this Psalm isn't about that. This is a Psalm about our marriage in heaven. It's something that all of our experiences with marriage, all of our experiences in life are meant to bleed into and point to. Whether you're single or married, you have a unique perspective on this wedding day that is valuable and needs to be celebrated and rejoiced in and meditated upon. So that's our goal this morning.

We have just two points, and I told the early church service that it was going to be a short sermon. It really wasn't. So I'm going to do my best to shorten it, but even though it's just two points, we might take a little while. Because here's what we're going to do: we're going to look down the aisle at the groom, Jesus. And then we're going to look up the aisle at the bride, which is the church. Down the aisle at the groom, up the aisle at the bride. It's like the wedding photographer took two pictures, and that's how the Psalm is laid out. Looks at the groom and then the bride.

The Groom

First, the groom. First thing that we see in verse two: "You are the most handsome of the sons of men." Jesus is handsome. Jesus is handsome. Of course, if you've read the New Testament, you might say, "I don't remember reading about how handsome Jesus was. He kind of seemed like a lowly carpenter, kind of plainly. I don't remember crowds and crowds of teenage Jewish girls swooning at the sight of him." None of that happened. There's not a lot of ink spilled in the New Testament over the beauty of Christ and his bodily form when he came as a man. In fact, a lot of ink is spilled over the ugliness of some of his life—how he suffered and died on the cross.

But notice: I want you to understand that Jesus Christ is the most beautiful man that's ever lived. He's the most beautiful man that has ever lived—metaphorically and literally. First, metaphorically, Isaiah says:

How beautiful are the feet of him who brings good news — Isaiah

Isaiah talking about the feet, kind of the ugliest part of the body says it doesn't matter that the feet are ugly. They're beautiful if they're bringing good news. Well, Jesus Christ was the bringer of good news. He brought more good news than anybody ever. He is the good news, right? Essentially and so, metaphorically speaking, we have to say that Jesus is beautiful. The news, the hope of the gospel that he supplied us with is the most beautiful thing ever and what's more is that even though his suffering and his death were ugly, horrible, terrible to think about, every year on Good Friday, during Easter, we meditate on the ugliness of the cross and we meditate on that ugliness as something beautiful.

Jesus in his life and his death were beautiful but more than that, in his resurrection, he is beautiful. Literally, beautiful. When he rises from the dead, you do start to get the sense that people are kind of in awe of his presence. It's kind of like he has something attractive to him even though he still has nail holes in his hands, right? Even though he still has the marks of some of his suffering, he is beautiful.

Can you imagine what it's going to be like on the day when you get to see Jesus, Christians? Can you imagine that? I mentioned that I did several weddings this summer and I won't single out this one because I don't want to embarrass anybody but I did one wedding and the doors opened and the bride and the groom, they just started weeping. Like loud weeping, puddles of water weeping, like someone called the janitor and mop up the floor before someone slips on all these tears kinds of weeping.

You realize that when we get to heaven, when we see Christ face to face:

Now we see in a mirror darkly but then we will see face to face.

We will gaze on the very face of beautiful Jesus and this Psalm is absolutely right in describing him as the most handsome of the son of man. We need to think about that moment. We need to meditate on it because as we take our bride's journey towards our groom, oftentimes we can be distracted by all sorts of suffering and hardship in this world, all kinds of sin in our own lives and we can lose sight of the fact of where we're going, of what we're looking for and this world can press in on us and sometimes we'll make the subtle argument that maybe Jesus isn't that beautiful. Maybe he isn't that attractive. Maybe this isn't worth it. CTK, it's so worth it. He is the most handsome of the son of man. Gazing upon the face of Christ, who will be gazing upon the most beautiful thing that you've ever seen and I can't wait to get there with you.

The Gracefulness of King Jesus

Second thing that I want you to see about the groom is notice in the second verse two B, the gracefulness of king Jesus. Grace is poured upon your lips. Grace is poured upon his lips.

Jesus isn't the awkward groom that just doesn't know what to say when he sees his bride. He has nothing but gracious things to say and I think that's important for many of you. I think it's important for me because often times, I struggle with sin and I worry. I worry about that moment when I come face to face with Jesus because I'm going to see him in all his glory and I know he's going to see me in all of my sin and now listen, if you think pastors are better people than other people, let's go get coffee. I'll sit down and I'll tell you very plainly, right to your face about 10% of my sin. 10% of it, I will lay out for you to look at and gasp at and go, oh, I can't believe that, right? And some of what I'll share with you is a little shocking but there's the other 90%, right? That I won't share with you because you will go running from this church forever. You'll be like, I'm never going to associate with that man ever again.

Now, here's the deal. Jesus doesn't just see the 10%. He sees the 90% and above that, he sees another 50 to a thousand percent that I'm not even aware of. And so when I show up face to face with Jesus, I do worry. Like, what's he going to say? Do you take this bride? I worry he's not going to say no. I don't. But that's not what the Psalm says and it's not what the New Testament points us to. Jesus is incredibly gracious and he's paid for our sins and he's covered it. He values us. He cherishes us and grace is poured upon his lips.

When Jesus sees you in heaven, he is not going to go running. He is going to be rejoicing. He is going to have beautiful things to say about you and when that door opens, it's not just us that will be weeping, it'll be him because he longs to be with us. Grace is poured upon his lips.

Recently when my wife and I celebrated our anniversary and on our anniversary, I had a presbytery meeting in Durham. So I was in presbytery all day on our anniversary till about two or three in the afternoon. So it was a great anniversary. My wife was at home with our five kids.

You can imagine how much she loved that. Presbytery, by the way, it's not always the funniest of meetings, but anyway, I'm coming back from Presbytery and I had gotten word that a director at NC State's Theater was retiring. I was involved in the theater at NC State when I was there and I was eager to go wish this guy congratulations on his retirement. Even though I had the option of sending an email or making a video, I decided that this man that I hadn't seen in five years—I needed to go and just tell him congratulations on your retirement, on my anniversary, while my wife was at home with our five kids by herself all day.

I get to the theater and I realized, man, this is a bad idea. I text Katie and tell her what I'm doing and as I hit send, I'm like, oh, this isn't going to play well. So I bust in there, I'm like, congratulations, and I leave. I go home and I'm thinking, man, I'm going to get home and my wife is going to be so livid with me. I get home and she is nothing but grace. I fell in love anew with Katie Sutton in that moment. Our marriage was deepened and enriched because I found out how gracious she was.

The Lord Jesus is that gracious and more to us. Can you imagine having all of your sins known and forgiven face to face?

The Strength of King Jesus

Next thing I want you to see is the strength of King Jesus. Verses three through five talk about girding swords on your thigh and bows and arrows and riding out victoriously. You have this picture of a military king with a sword, riding out with a bow. We could talk about how all of these things apply to Jesus. Swords in the New Testament are analogous to his word. His word is powerful and sharp—the word of Elohim that created the heavens and the earth. That's the picture here: a powerful sword and bows and arrows that can pierce the hearts of his enemies.

I have this theory that the bow is actually talking about the rainbow from Genesis and Noah's Ark. The rainbow—it's the bow of God. Think about how powerful that bow is. It's turned up after the flood, but before the flood, it's turned down, like pouring out God's wrath and the power of his wrath. I don't know if that's really accurate, so take that with a grain of salt. But my theory is that all of these are powerful weapons. We tend to see sword and bow and arrow and think, oh, those are quaint, nice antique weapons that aren't really that powerful. But essentially, what is being described here is world-dominating power in the king. It's like the nuclear arsenal of the king.

Think of it that way. The point is this: who's going to show up and mess up this guy's wedding? Are any of the bride's enemies? Are any of the groom's enemies going to show up on the wedding day and mess with this dude? The answer is no. Because if anybody stands up and messes in any way with this wedding ceremony, the groom is going to level him. That's the picture in the Psalm—there is no one who can dispute the might of this king. No one will come into this wedding ceremony, no one will come into this marriage and mess with the peace of this bride and groom because the king is that powerful and equipped to deal with enemies.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, all of the things that you struggle with, the things that you worry about in this life, all of this world's struggles, all of this world's pain, sorrow, suffering, and grief will not be admitted. It will be scared to show up on the wedding day because the Lord Jesus Christ is strapped on his sword. He has his arrows and he will not allow it to have any presence in his wedding.

The Regality of the King

Fourth thing that I want you to see is the regality of the king. This is verses six through eight.

Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of brightness. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. 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. String instruments make you glad. — Psalm 45:6-8

All kinds of regal imagery here. First, starting with the throne. We've already talked about the throne of the King Jesus. Psalm 110 talked about it:

The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. — Psalm 110:1

Jesus reigns on a throne next to God—an eternal throne that's never going away. The next image is the image of a scepter. We talked about that in Psalm 23. Psalm 23 is the great shepherd image of Jesus. That's a kingly image, right? And the scepter finds its origin in the shepherd's crook. It's essentially how a king was meant to rule his people. He leads them by the crook, right? And this is describing his scepter as a scepter of righteousness. He's an incredibly righteous king. He does everything right. His kingdom is marked by everything being done right.

And then you have in the next section this image of anointing. That's not something we've talked about. Anointing is kind of a weird practice if you think about it. Has anybody ever seen that done? Like someone pulls out some oil and pours it on someone's head, right? In the Old Testament, that was common for prophets, priests, and kings. These people that were essentially the caretakers of God's covenant relationship with his people. They were essentially representatives of God and they were anointed. Why?

Well, in ancient Near Eastern culture, the communication would have been like lots of other cultures. They would take the fat of various different animals, make that into an oil—a fragrant oil—and they would pour that onto certain individuals and it was meant to represent that animal and its power or the god that animal represented would be bestowed upon the person who was anointed, right? The closest thing that we probably have to experiencing that is the movie Black Panther, right? He gets the power of the panther. It's kind of that concept, right? That was very prevalent in the ancient Near East.

But in Israel, when these people were anointed, the picture is not a picture of an animal oil or fat being poured on. It's essentially a prefiguring of the Spirit—the Holy Spirit. It's essentially meaning that God himself is invested in that person. That person is essentially empowered with the Spirit of God. And Jesus Christ, when he comes, there's this baptism which is meant to be his anointing and you see this dove come down—the Spirit of God. And you have essentially in Christ the fulfillment of that imagery, the full fulfillment. Jesus isn't just empowered with the Holy Spirit. He is God, and he represents God, and his relationship with God is bound together with the Spirit. And that anointing represents his authority and kingly power.

The Significance of Royal Imagery

Now, I want to pause just for a second. There's one more image—the palace. But all of this, the point of this is this: why is it so important that we get that this guy is a king? Why is it so important that we deal with the regality of it? That's because whenever a king is married, there's an element in which the human world is kind of marrying the divine. You think about why do we get so excited about British weddings? Can we talk about that for a minute? Like, why do we get so excited about British weddings? I've been watching the show The Crown on Netflix. If you watch The Crown, you kind of pick up throughout it this concept of the divine right of kings. Kings essentially represent gods. Even the English monarchs have a sense of that, even within their Christian framework, right? And if you watch the crown, like Elizabeth talks about that at various different points. There's a sense in which a royal wedding is a marriage of humanity to the divine.

And in this case, this wedding—the wedding of the Messiah, the anointed one, that's what Messiah means, the anointed one of God—is a marriage of humanity with the divine. And the palace that's represented, the final image of the king. You see it in verse eight:

From ivory palaces, stringed instruments make you glad. — Psalm 45:8

You have kind of the bride arriving to the palace. It's essentially us arriving into heaven, right? Jesus said essentially:

I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father's house, there are many rooms. I'm going to go prepare a place for you.

Essentially, I paid the bride price. Now, come and be in the place with me. Essentially, when we go to heaven, this is what it's going to look like. I can't help but think about Preston Hunt. Many of you know Preston was a member here for a long time, had brain cancer and passed away not too long ago. We were visiting him in hospice care and I talked about this at his funeral but I can't stop thinking about this. There was this woman who wandered around hospice care with a harp and she just offered to play for people. It was her kind of service to people who were in hospice and Preston was in there and she came in and she said, "Hey, would you like some harp music?"

Can I play for you? And Preston said, I'm not ready for that quite yet and sent her away. But this is the picture of us arriving in heaven. Can you imagine the fanfare? It's not just going to be harps. It's going to be all kinds of beautiful music. It's going to go beyond what we sing on Sunday mornings, but that's a picture of it. There will be great rejoicing when we arrive in heaven because the divine will be joined with humanity. We will become a part of the divine through our marriage with Christ Jesus himself. Amazing.

CTK, we need to spend time meditating on the groom because so often, as we travel through life, I think we get distracted. We lose sight of where we're going. The world presses in on us and we need to meditate on who Jesus is, where we're going.

I was in Ireland on a missions trip and I was at this place called Greystones. This is a hotel by the sea. We were doing a retreat there and there was this Irish guy who got up at the crack of dawn before the sun came up and he went out into the field next to Greystones and he had a guitar and with his little leprechaun Irish kind of voice, he was just wailing away. I was out there because I was trying to dutifully have a quiet time. And this guy was totally interrupting. I'm like, what is he doing? It was beautiful. He was singing the sun up, meditating upon the day when Jesus would return to call him home and he would rejoice in the presence of his savior. That's what we need to do, CTK.

Alright, that was one sermon. I'm now going to move on to the second one. It'll be quicker, I hope.

The Foreign Bride

Second image in our wedding album is the photo of the bride. That's us. Notice the foreign origin of the bride.

Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear; forget your people and your father's house, and the king will desire your beauty. — Psalm 45:10

We're a foreign bride. We're foreign and that doesn't mean we're mysterious and full of intrigue. In Israel, foreign wives were kind of a bad thing. We're coming from another land, another worldview, false gods, all kinds of weird stuff that go on in other kingdoms. You're not supposed to marry brides from foreign countries. That's the impression you get if you read the Old Testament. And so it's somewhat surprising that a meditation on the messianic king would marry a foreign bride and yet that's what Jesus did. That's what we are.

We are sinful children of this world. We come from a foreign culture—a foreign culture of sin. We have no business being in heaven in the place of an eternally righteous God whose righteousness will consume sin. No business being there whatsoever. Think about that individually. You have all kinds of sin. I have all kinds of sin. But think about it corporately as well.

Many of you are very gracious. You come to me all the time and you talk about how much you love this church. And you have all kinds of things about the church that you love. Some of you are brave enough to come and tell me things that you don't love about the church. And believe me, I know that there are even more of you that probably talk amongst yourselves about things that you don't love about this church. I do that too.

But I gotta tell you, our church is full of sin and full of dysfunction. We're messed up. We're a bunch of misfits. Spend a little time with us. Those of you who are new, you'll get to know. We are a crazy ragtag bunch of people worshiping in Downtown Raleigh and I don't know sometimes why. Sometimes the conflict that we have is messy. There's all kinds of messed up stuff that goes on in this church. Believe me, sometimes we can get coffee and I'll tell you about 10% of it.

But I'll tell you honestly, I have kind of a bigger picture because I go to Presbyterian and hear about other churches. If you think this church is bad, I have heard some messed up stuff about other churches. I can't even begin—I won't tell you because that would just be gossip. But I mean, I probably have just scratched the surface of the dysfunction of the worldwide Church of Jesus Christ that's in the world right now. Just think about it. How messed up is the body of Christ? We have little glimpses of it here and there but we don't know about a ton of it.

Now think about the historical body of Christ. All of us know some of history's lessons of how the body of Christ has just been really ugly and messed up. And we have no business being in heaven as the church and yet we are exhorted to forget our foreign ways, to turn from them. That's the exhortation of the Psalm and we are being transformed. I loved the C.S. Lewis quote that Mary Pat read because that's what God is doing with all of us. None of us are mere mortals.

We're being transformed into the bride of Christ. How glorious is that? And this verse that says, the king will desire your beauty. There is inherent beauty in each of us, in us corporately, in us universally. The church of Jesus Christ is beautiful and will be made beautiful when he returns. We will be incredibly stunning because of his sacrifice and covering of our sin and his making us beautiful.

But more than that, notice we'll also be wealthy. Verses twelve and fourteen talk about the wealth of the queen—beautiful, multilaced with gold, people bringing all kinds of gifts. To be sure, our life as the church of Jesus Christ in this world is not necessarily marked by wealth, much like Jesus's life on this earth wasn't marked by wealth. But the riches and glories that we will have when we come into the palaces with the stringed instruments playing is unrivaled by anything that we could ever experience or imagine in this life.

If you think the wealth of this world that you have to turn down because you're pursuing Christ is something to give up, you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until you come into the presence of the king and are lavished with the gifts that he will pour upon you for eternity. Incredible.

The Joy of the Bride

The last thing that I want you to see about the bride is the joy of the bride. Verse 15:

With joy and gladness, they are led along as they enter the palace of the king. — Psalm 45:15

We don't necessarily always have joy and gladness as the church. We're led along with joy and gladness. Hopefully all of us to some degree or another have joy and gladness in the reality of the gospel and we're walking in that. But the Psalms would contradict me if I told you that all of this life is full of joy and gladness for Christians, for believers. There's great sorrow often along the way. But when we get there, when we get there, there will be no room for anything else. There will only be joy and gladness.

Because the groom who is standing waiting for us longs to be with us, longs to be with you, wants you to be his, and him to be yours.

If you are struggling in this life, if you are struggling to find joy, if you're struggling to find contentment, if you're struggling to find gladness, my suggestion would be to spend some time meditating on this Psalm, meditating on the marriage that is coming. Because I think often times we forget. We forget that we have a groom who loves us. We forget that we're his bride, that this is our wedding. Sometimes I think we forget and struggle with, is this real? Or is this just the imagination of some poet from thousands of years ago?

One of my kid's favorite movies, and I'll end with this, is the movie Nanny McPhee. You ever seen that movie? It's like Emma Thompson. She's kind of like this witch nanny figure who gets more beautiful as the film progresses. I love the picture of Nanny McPhee. I love the movie because there's all kinds of gospel imagery in it.

One of the pictures is the character Evangeline. She's the illiterate scullery maid, right, who cares for the children. Mister Brown is trying to find a wife and right under his nose is poor Evangeline, the illiterate scullery maid, who reads bedtime stories to his children about fairy tale farm girl women who are married by, you know, these princes. She's reading the book halfway through the story and Nanny McPhee encounters her and asks her about the book. She says, hey, how's the book? And she's struggling with it, right, because I told you she's illiterate. She can't really read very well. And she says to Nanny McPhee, I wish, I wish they would write books about real people.

I guarantee you, this woman—she's in the story, she's made out to be a farm girl, but they're going to find out she's a princess of some sort, because there's no way this guy would marry her if she was just an illiterate farm girl.

Well, you might remember how the story ends. Mister Brown winds up marrying Evangeline. She winds up being the bride that he marries, right? As he's walking down the aisle with Nanny McPhee—they just had this incredible food fight. I mean, arguably one of the best food fights in cinematic history, right? So she's wearing this dress. She's all covered in food and she says, I don't look much the bride, do I? And Nanny McPhee says, you will.

She looks up and like snow comes down magical and all of a sudden she's in a white, pure wedding dress, looking stunning and beautiful, and she's walking down the aisle. And Nanny McPhee says, how's the reading going? And she says, I've gotten better at reading, but I still haven't finished that story. Still don't know how it ends. And she says, no need. You are the end of the story.

CTK, we are the end of the story. This is our wedding day. This is the picture of Christ's love for us that he's given us in advance. He gave us the wedding album before the wedding even happened.

So, we can look with longing and expectation and joy in what will be ours when we are finally in the arms of our loving savior. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.