Today’s reading is Psalm 45.
This week, we are singing a song about a king getting married. But what good is a groom at a wedding if there is no bride. Sure enough, Psalm 45 doesn’t just sing the glory of the groom. At the groom’s right hand “stands the queen in gold of Ophir.”
In the original setting of this psalm, I wonder if this isn’t the whole reason for the psalm. Sure, it praises the king, God’s king. Sure, it explains why the king is blessed, God blessed the king. But notice the instruction to the queen:
Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear: forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty.
This is the most straightforward bit of instruction in the psalm. I can’t be sure this was written for Solomon’s weddings. However, think of where Solomon would have been if the wives he married had followed this instruction. Instead, they hung on to their father’s houses and their own people. They hung on to their gods. And Solomon fell. The wedding may have been beautiful, but the marriages became nightmares.
I can’t help but hear a bit of Ruth in that instruction. Ruth, a Moabitess, whose children up to the tenth generation weren’t supposed to be allowed in the congregation of God’s people. Yet, her great-grandson was the king after God’s own heart. Why? Because she forgot her people and her father’s house. She honored Boaz and submitted to him, his people, his God. I don’t know how beautiful their wedding was, but their marriage was amazing.
However, more than this, we know this psalm is about Jesus. Which means this psalm is ultimately about us, His church, His bride.
This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
Ephesians 5:32
God established marriage because it ultimately is supposed to demonstrate the truth of Jesus Christ and the church. We, the church, are His bride. We, His bride, are glorious with robes interwoven with gold, many-colored robes, led to the King with joy and gladness.
However, this is the kind of glorious bride we are, not because we are so glorious, but because our King, our Groom, sanctifies us by His own sacrifice for us.
…Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 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.
Ephesians 5:25-27
That is our King. That is why we are such a glorious bride. But we will only be this glorious bride if we, who have become part of His church, His holy city, His kingdom, His bride will abandon the country from which we came. We must forget our father and our father’s people. We must surrender to our King. We must worship Him. Friendship with the world is enmity with Jesus. We can’t hang on to both. We must choose. We are the bride of Jesus Christ. Let us choose Him.
Let us not choose Him in some nebulous, ethereal, mystical sense. Let us choose Him in a very practical, real way. Let us choose Him today. Let us make today about Him, about pursuing Him. Let us abandon the pursuit of the world and its things. Let us go with Jesus.
Tomorrow’s reading is Psalm 45.
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Discuss the Following Questions with Your Family
- What are your initial reactions to the psalm and the written devo above?
- Why was Israel’s king not supposed to multiply wives for himself? (see Deuteronomy 17:17) And why should he stay away from foreign wives?
- Yet, if the king’s wife behaved like Ruth, the great-grandmother of David, how could the marriage be beautiful?
- How do you think a good marriage portrays the relationship between Christ and His church? Why do you think God would even use that as a teaching tool?
- What do you think we should pray for and about in light of this psalm and our discussion today?
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