A Wedding Song

Psalm 45
<To the leader: according to Lilies. Of the Korahites. A Maskil. A love song.>
1 My heart overflows with a goodly 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 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 glory and majesty.
4 In your majesty ride on victoriously for the cause of truth and to defend the right;
let your right hand teach you dread deeds.
5 Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies; the peoples fall under you.
6 Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever.
Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity;
7 you love righteousness and hate 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, 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 with all kinds of wealth. The princess is decked in her chamber
with gold-woven robes;
14 in many-colored robes she is led to the king;
behind her the virgins, her companions, follow.
15 With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king.
16 In the place of ancestors you, O king, shall have sons;
you will make them princes in all the earth.
17 I will cause your name to be celebrated in all generations;
therefore the peoples will praise you forever and ever.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As it works out, the last Psalm in our summer series, Psalm 45, is one of my all-time favorites. It gives us such a beautiful picture of Jesus and such an amazing vision of the Kingdom of God – and what the future will hold for those of us who love and follow Jesus. And especially for anyone who may be feeling down or discouraged today, this song’s for you.

Psalm 45 has been set to music many times. Verse 8 inspired the hymn Ivory Palaces, and the whole psalm has been set to music by Graham Kendrick, who’s probably best known for Shine Jesus Shine. Kendrick’s version of Psalm 45 was sung by my choir as I came down the aisle to marry my husband Neil, so this psalm has a very special place in my heart.

(lyrics for the above song)

All The Glory

My heart is full of admiration
For you, my Lord, my God and King
Your excellence, my inspiration
Your words of grace have made my spirit sing.

All the glory, honour and power
Belong to you, belong to you.
Jesus, saviour, anointed one,
I worship you, I worship you.

You love what’s right and hate what’s evil
Therefore your God sets you on high.
And on your head pours oil of gladness
While fragrance fills your royal palaces

Your throne, O God, will last forever
Justice will be your royal decree
In majesty, ride out victorious
For righteousness, truth and humility.

Graham Kendrick, Copyright © 1991 Graham Kendrick, http://www.grahamkendrick.co.uk

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Starting out with the notations at the top of the Psalm: To the leader: according to Lilies. Of the Korahites. A Maskil. A love song. “To the leader” means for the music director; “the Lilies” would have been a melody or a tune; “the Korahites” were the songwriters. They were descendants of Moses’ cousin Korah, and they worked as temple musicians. A “maskil” is a type of composition; and then it says “a love song” – or in some versions of the Bible it says “a wedding song”, which is actually more accurate.

Psalm 45 was originally written for a royal wedding that took place in the temple in Jerusalem around 3000 years ago. We don’t know for certain exactly whose wedding it was; but some scholars guess it was King Solomon’s wedding to Pharaoh’s daughter, the Princess of Egypt. Whether that’s accurate or not, I think it’s helpful to think of it that way, because this wedding would have brought together two very important families, and it would have been a lavish royal wedding.

We Americans don’t have a lot of experience with royalty, except for occasionally when one of the British royal family gets married, and even then not everybody gets into that… but you gotta admit ‘nobody does it better’. I’ve never lucky enough to be invited to one of the royal weddings (tho I still want to know where they get those hats).

But I got a small taste of British royalty a number of years ago when I was overseas. I had taken a week-long class up at Oxford and was coming back into London on a Saturday morning. I caught a taxi at the train station and immediately we found we were in a massive traffic jam. I looked at the cabbie and asked, “what’s going on?” and he said, “it’s the Queen’s birthday.”

Really?  “I thought her birthday was in April?” I asked. He answered: “That’s her real birthday. This is her official birthday. She’ll be attending a special church service about a mile from the palace and if you hurry to Pall Mall you might catch a glimpse of the carriage.”

Really?!?!  When he got me to my hotel I threw my bags in the lobby, dashed out the door, and following his directions quickly found Pall Mall. Dashing up to the street, I found about a half-dozen rows of British citizens waving flags; and beyond them, on the street facing us, a row of soldiers in red uniforms and those tall black fuzzy hats sitting on huge black horses, with long swords attached to their hips. And they did not look amused. (I tell ya, these guys can be scarier than Secret Service.)

So I struck up a conversation with the people near me and gathered I hadn’t missed anything yet, and one couple kindly invited me to sit down on the pavement and join their family in a picnic lunch, which was lovely.

About a half-hour later we saw some motion down the street to the left, and along came more soldiers on black horses moving in absolute precision.

And then a marching band – all playing from memory, absolutely flawlessly. And then a carriage: Prince William and Kate! And then more horses. And then another carriage: Prince Harry (he hadn’t married yet at that point) and Prince Charles and Camilla. And then more horses, and then men on horses with trumpets, all in perfect precision, and then a massive gold-trimmed carriage with the Queen and Prince Philip inside, waving. And more horses. And then they were gone.

And I said, “well now, that’s something you don’t see every day.”

And my friends with the sandwiches said, “sit down, join us.” And I looked at them kind of quizzically and they said, “Well the royal family do have to come home, you know.”

Good point. So we sat down again for a little over an hour, and the procession came back, every bit as perfect as the first time.

And then something unexpected happened. You and I have seen these processions on TV before, but I’ve never seen what happens afterwards. After the royal company had passed by, the soldiers that had been lining the street watching us from horseback turned and make this beautiful pivot into the street (around every 200 feet or so) and started moving toward Buckingham Palace, and the crowd filed in behind them.

And all of a sudden we were part of the procession!  We were part of the celebration! And we walked down the street, following those horses, all the way to Buckingham Palace. And when we got there we sang “God Save the Queen” while she waved from the balcony. And that was it.

All of this by way of describing something of what it’s like to step inside Psalm 45 and live it.

Because this is us. This Psalm has a dual meaning, and this comes from Jewish scholars as well as Christian theologians:

The first meaning of the psalm is the royal wedding that happened in ancient Jerusalem.

The second meaning is a prophecy of the Messiah with God’s faithful people.

The Christian faith teaches that this king is Jesus, and Psalm 45 is a vision and a prophecy of the future. On that day we will be there. Not just faces in the crowd but taking part in the events of the day!

There are scriptures all through the Old and New Testaments that tie into Psalm 45 and add depth and detail to its meaning, so I’d like to take this psalm line by line and invite you to join me in this royal procession …

Verse one: the heart of the songwriter is full to overflowing, both at the joy of the occasion, and at the worthiness and beauty of the King. The writer describes Jesus as handsome, full of grace, and blessed by God.

This stands in contrast to Jesus’ life here on Earth 2000 years ago. Back then he was, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “despised and rejected… a man of suffering and acquainted with… grief.” (Is 53:3) Jesus has entered into our pain and our suffering in every way. And now, at last, God is restoring all things. The injustices Jesus suffered are being set right – and here he stands, the king, in all his majesty.

In verse two the writer says of the king, “grace is poured upon your lips.” Two thousand years ago, when Jesus was here on earth, people used to remark about how full of grace his speech was. Luke tells us: “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” (Lk 4:22)  The King’s majesty and blessing does not have its roots in conquest or in force, but in truth, humility, and righteousness.[1]

The songwriter then says: “put on your sword, mighty one, in glory and majesty.”  This is not a prayer for war. It’s more like the swords those British horsemen carried: they never came out of the scabbards. They didn’t need to. And the Bible adds one other interpretation: Scripture speaks of “the sword of the Lord” as “the word of God”, and the songwriter is praying on behalf of us all that “that all the nations on earth would come under the command of the justice, peace, and love of Jesus.”[2]

The songwriter continues: “In your majesty ride on victoriously for the cause of truth and to defend the right.”  Isn’t this what we pray for: that lies would be silenced, that misinformation would be done away with, that injustice would be defeated? Here, today, in this psalm, God answers our prayers with a resounding “YES”!!

And yet the next verse and a half sound almost violent. Will Jesus really kill his enemies? John Wesley gives us an explanation that is as British as it is accurate: “[both the] arrows [and] the sword, are none other than [Jesus’] word, which is sharp and powerful, and pierces [human] hearts.” The people fall, Wesley says, in the same way that a conquered people might fall to their knees in front of a king to ask for mercy.[3]

If there are any who perish, it’s because they reject God and in doing so reject life. There are those who (as Dante put it) would rather “rule in hell than serve in heaven”; but the choice is theirs. God will not force anyone who hates Him to be with Him.

In verse six the songwriter continues: “Your throne, O God, endures forever and ever.” Every Sunday we pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” – and at last this prayer is answered YES!!

By the way this passage is quoted in the New Testament book of Hebrews, where the writer makes the connection between this prophecy and Jesus. Hebrews 1:7-9 says:

Hebrews 1:7-9   7 Of the angels [God] says, “He makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire.”  8 But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom.  9 You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

Then in verse seven the scene changes: and we are in the royal palace. The battles are over, God’s word has won the day… AND won the hearts of the King’s subjects. The songwriter can hardly find the words to express his joy. The king has been perfumed (and he smells good), and the royal palace is gorgeous, and there stringed instruments scattered throughout the palace playing beautiful music, and the ladies in waiting are princesses from various nations.

And then the scene shifts again to the wedding day. The bride – the queen – is robed in golden robes. And the songwriter turns and speaks to her. He says:

“Hear, O daughter; forget your people and your father’s house; the king desires your beauty.”

The bride in this psalm is a union of God’s faithful people throughout the centuries – all of us, together – and the king finds us beautiful: in part because his mercy has made us that way. Charles Simeon, a friend of John Wesley’s, said that: [God’s people have] “by adoption, by regeneration, and especially by [our] union with the Lord Jesus Christ, become the “daughter of Almighty God”… [and we are] addressed by him under that affectionate name.” “The direction is given to every individual [among God’s people]… to give up all earthly attachments… and unite ourselves to Christ. “The interests of the world, and of Christ, are altogether opposite” – and the world must be left behind. Simeon warns: “Remember Lot’s wife” and don’t look back.[4]

Jesus, the King, is delighted with us: because we have been changed “from glory to glory” by the Spirit of the Lord.

I mean, really, how on earth can one draw this scene? But all the people becoming the Bride… that’s the idea.

So the bride (that is, us) has been decked out in gold and multicolored robes with the richest of jewels. The apostle Paul says: “having put on Christ (Rom 8:14)” “she walks as he walked.” (I John 2:6)  John Wesley says the “people of Tyre” represent the Gentiles, who are also included. And the apostle John says, “blessed are they who are called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb.” (Rev 19:6-9)

The songwriter adds a mysterious postscript in verse 16, and I’m not going to speculate on the details, but his words promise a glorious eternity ahead.

So as we struggle through these dark days, let this prophecy and this vision lift our spirits and remind us of who we are and whose we are.

This will be our royal wedding song in the Kingdom of God. AMEN.

Preached at Fairhaven United Methodist Church and Spencer United Methodist Church, 8/29/21

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[1] David Guzik commentary

[2] Charles Simeon, Expository Outlines on the Whole Bible

[3] John Wesley, Commentary

[4] Charles Simeon, Expository Outlines on the Whole Bible

Read Full Post »

How Lovely!

Psalm 84

To the leader: according to The Gittith. Of the Korahites. A Psalm.
¹ How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts!
² My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
³ Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God.
⁴ Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise. Selah

 ⁵ Happy are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
⁶ As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
⁷ They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion.
⁸ O LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah

 ⁹ Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed.
¹⁰ For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.
¹¹ For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
he bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does the LORD withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
¹² O LORD of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Continuing in our series on the Psalm of the Day, today we look at Psalm 84, one of my personal favorites. The psalm opens, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs… for the courts of the LORD…”

Back when those words were written there really was no place on earth quite like the Temple in Jerusalem. It was not only beautiful, it was the center of life and faith – the place where God met with God’s people. Psalm 84 helps us understand what it was like to be there.

The notation at the beginning of the psalm tells us it was written by the Korahites, the descendants of Moses’ cousin Korah. The Korahites were Levites – of the priestly tribe – and their job was to be either temple musicians, or doorkeepers to welcome people into worship: two jobs that are still very important in the church today.

The notation also says “according to the gittith”. We don’t know exactly what a gittith was, but it was probably some kind of stringed instrument like a harp or a lyre. So the overall musical effect of this psalm was pretty: something like a love song except not quite so mushy.

The overall purpose of the psalm is to express our love for God, and to invite everyone who hears it to join in and sing their love to God. Verse two might be better translated “my soul craves the place where God lives; my whole being cries out for joy to the living God.”

This psalm is also, at heart, a song of the pilgrim: a song sung by people who are traveling to where God is, who are SO looking forward to meeting God.

Even though the psalm doesn’t say so at the beginning, this could have been a song of ascents, which is a specific kind of psalm sung by people who were traveling to Jerusalem. I’d like to spend a little bit of time with this thought, so let me take us back 3000 years to ancient Israel.

We are followers of Yahweh God, and according to the law of Moses all able-bodied people are required to present themselves at the Temple three times a year: for Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Three times a year, our whole extended family and neighborhood would pack up and travel together to Jerusalem for the festivals.

There was just one thing: for most people at that time there was really only one way to get to the Holy City: travel to Jericho in the Jordan Valley and then turn east up the mountain.

Imagine this: Jericho is the lowest city on Earth, elevation-wise. It sits 864 feet below sea level. Jerusalem sits at the top of a mountain 2575 feet above sea level. The road from Jericho to Jerusalem goes just pretty much straight up for around 14 miles, over rocky ground where there is very little water. A healthy young adult might walk it in around eight or nine hours. An entire neighborhood, however, would take a bit longer! As the old African proverb says, “you can either travel quickly or you can travel together.” The people traveled together; and as they did, they sang songs to encourage each other as they walked up the mountain.

This psalm is one of those songs; so let’s join in.

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts.” The people are imagining what the temple will look like when they finally arrive at the top of that mountain. And don’t we sometimes feel like that about the place where we worship? At the end of a long week, we come here and… how lovely. How beautiful.

(One of the earliest contemporary settings of Psalm 84, from Maranatha! Music)

There are truly no buildings on earth quite like churches: from the greatest cathedrals to the smallest chapels. It’s not just the décor, although that helps; it’s the feeling of being in a house of prayer, a place where people meet God, and being part of the family of believers. All of us who know Jesus and have been saved by his death and resurrection are members of God’s family, and this is our home. How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! We look forward to being here. “My heart and my flesh sing for joy.”

The second set of four verses – beginning with verse 5 – talk about the blessings that come from finding our strength in God and not in ourselves. One modern translation paraphrases it this way:

“In your courts there’s shelter for the greatest and the small
The sparrow has a place to build her nest
The pilgrim finds refreshment in the rains that fall
And each one has the strength to meet the test.”[1]

It’s been lost to history exactly where the “valley of Baca” was (in verse 6), but if it was in southern Israel it was probably a semi-desert area – very hot and dry, where a traveler would get worn out very easily. But the psalmist says those who have the “highway to Zion in their hearts” find strength in God.  But question: what exactly does he mean: do people ‘know the road by heart’? Or do people ‘know in their hearts God’s path of salvation’?

Probably both. For people who know God, as they pass through the dry places of life, desert places become places where fresh water springs up and strength is restored. And vss 6-7 add “as they go”: they’re moving. The people are traveling together. The life of faith, and the road to God’s dwelling, is never traveled alone; we go together.

In verse 8, as we travel, we pray as we go: O Lord hear us. Hear us when we pray for our families. Hear us when we grieve for those we have lost. Hear us when we pray for our brothers and sisters in Haiti and Afghanistan and in Africa and in all places where our people are in trouble. Hear our prayer! Give ear O God of Jacob!

And then the word Selah gives us a musical interlude… after which the scene changes and suddenly we find ourselves in the middle of a Messianic prophecy!

Verse 9: “Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed.” The word for anointed in Hebrew is meshah, or messiah. The Messiah is our shield. As we draw near to God, we become very aware of God’s holiness and perfection and our own imperfections. So we ask God not to look upon us but to look upon the Messiah, who stands between us as a shield (verse 9) and as a bringer of honor (verse 11). “For a day in your courts” – that is, in God’s kingdom – “a day in your courts is worth a thousand elsewhere.”

The world would tell you otherwise. The world would tell you, in the words of Lucifer in Milton’s Paradise Lost, “tis better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” These are the words of pride, and they lead to isolation, despair, and destruction. The words of the psalm are true: it is a greater joy to serve in heaven than to be anywhere else: because God is there.

In the words of the old theologian Matthew Henry (paraphrasing to make the language a bit more modern): “The word of God is the believer’s comfort in this evil world; because in God’s word we enjoy the presence of the living God… God’s words are, to [us], like a nest to a bird. And yet it’s only a down-payment of the happiness of heaven… [those who travel] to the heavenly city may have to pass through valleys of weeping, and thirsty deserts; but wells of salvation will be opened for them… Those that keep on keeping on will find God adding grace to grace. And those who grow in grace, will become perfect in glory.”^[2]

Truly in God’s presence there is beauty and welcome: and “O Lord of hosts, how happy is everyone who trusts in you.”

So what or where exactly is God’s “dwelling place”? Where does God live? The ancient temple has been gone for a long time; and even in the Old Testament, the Temple wasn’t the only place God met with people.

In the book of Genesis, God met Adam and Eve while strolling through the Garden. Later in Genesis, God stopped by to visit Abraham in his tent. During the time of Moses, the people met with God in the Tabernacle. As we get to the reign of David and then Solomon, the Temple is finally built in Jerusalem.

But then in the New Testament, Jesus says: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2)  And Paul says in Ephesians that all of us, as the church, are being “built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” (Eph. 2:22)

The one thing all these passages have in common, from Genesis to Ephesians – is that God’s ‘dwelling place’ is with God’s people. And our dwelling place is with God. Yes, we believe in heaven, we believe in the afterlife, we believe one day God will restore all things. But God’s home and our home will be the same place. “How lovely is your dwelling place” – because where God is, we are home. A day in your courts, O Lord, is better than a thousand elsewhere! Happy is everyone who trusts in You.

For those who know and trust God, Psalm 84 is a reminder of all that God is and all that we will experience when Jesus takes up his throne as King. And for anyone who hasn’t met God yet, this psalm is your invitation to do so.

(and here’s Brahms’ version of Psalm 84 – breathtaking)

Preached at Carnegie United Methodist Church and Hill Top United Methodist Church, 8/22/21

[1] Psalms Alive!, How Lovely Is Your Dwelling Place, Maranatha Music

[2] Matthew Henry Commentary, https://www.christianity.com/bible/commentary.php?com=mhc&b=19&c=84

Read Full Post »