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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 Daughter 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,[b] 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. (Psalm 45:10-17 NRSV)
Dear Friend, I pray you are well and enjoying life. You matter to God and you matter to me. I pray your prayers are going up on a regular basis to praise God and to ask God's blessings on those who are hurting or ill, and that we pray for our nation as we near our 250th Anniversary. May we seek to truly be a nation of priests truly serving the Lord and not just sharing lip service to our neighbors. We are in need of clear direction and light from the Lord in all that we do as a nation and as individual citizens.
During my college and seminary years I was invited to be in seven weddings. My siblings knew I didn't date much and so I was teased unmercifully for "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride," more so because in the seven weddings I was best man five times, and a groomsman for two. I was't worried. My grandmother was! Nellie saved me finally and during 48 years of ministry I saw more than my shared of, to be nice, interesting weddings. Thankfully, only doves were the animals I ever saw and been scared they were alive in one wedding; and years later I was told by the groom that he wanted permission to walk down the aisle with a live tiger but, thank God, the church vetoed it! And speaking of weddings, here we have a special psalm.
Psalm 45 is a wedding song — a royal wedding song, specifically, composed for the marriage of a king. It is lavish and celebratory and full of the imagery of a royal court. But the church has always read it as something more than a court poem for a long-dead monarch, and the New Testament confirms that instinct: the writer of Hebrews quotes it directly and applies it to Christ. So when we hear the psalmist addressing the bride in these verses, we are hearing something that reaches far beyond the wedding it was written for. We are hearing, in the language of marriage and royal belonging, a description of what it means to be claimed by the King of kings and brought into His house.
The opening address to the bride is arresting in its directness: "Hear, O daughter, consider and incline your ear; forget your people and your father's house, and the king will desire your beauty" (Psalm 45:10–11, NRSV). It sounds almost like what Abraham's servant said to Rebekah — leave what you know, come to the one who has chosen you, and discover that what lies ahead is larger than what you left behind. The call to forget her father's house is not a call to dishonor her past but to let a new belonging define her. She is being invited into an allegiance so total that it reorders everything else around it.
And what does she receive in exchange for that complete reorientation? The king desires her. This is the extraordinary exchange at the heart of the passage — she brings her willingness to leave, and he brings his desire toward her. The people of Tyre will come with gifts. The richest among the people will seek her favor. She will be led into the king's palace, accompanied by her companions, in robes embroidered with gold, "with joy and gladness" (Psalm 45:15). The life she steps into is not smaller than the one she left. It is immeasurably larger, more honored, more beautiful than anything her father's house could have offered her.
The New Testament writers heard in this psalm the story of the church — the bride of Christ, called out of one household and brought into another, leaving behind what once defined her in order to be defined by the one who desires her. Paul uses exactly this kind of language in Ephesians when he describes the relationship between Christ and the church as a marriage, one in which Christ gave Himself up for her entirely, that she might be presented without blemish and in full beauty. The bride of Psalm 45 is brought to the king in embroidered robes and escorted by joy; the church is brought to Christ clothed in His own righteousness, which is the only garment that makes her beautiful in the way that matters.
And this is where Pentecost does something the psalm itself could only anticipate. The Spirit poured out at Pentecost is the presence of the Bridegroom with the bride until He returns — the guarantee, the deposit, the ongoing experience of being desired and held and known by the King whose house she has entered. Every day in which the Spirit prompts us, comforts us, intercedes for us, and draws us deeper into the life of God is a day in which the promise of this psalm is being lived rather than merely hoped for. We are not waiting in the father's house any longer, wondering whether the servant will come. We have said "I will go." We have entered the palace. And the Spirit's presence is the daily confirmation that the King's desire toward us has not diminished since the day we crossed the threshold.
What the psalmist saw dimly across the distance of centuries, we inhabit. The sons who will be made princes, the name that will be celebrated through all generations — these are not ancient poetic flourishes about a forgotten king. They are the inheritance of everyone who has left the father's house and come to the one who was always, from the beginning, writing their name into His story.
PRAYER: Lord, remind us today that we have already been claimed by the King, brought into His house by Your Spirit, and robed in a beauty that is entirely His gift to us. This we pray in Christ Jesus' strong name, amen.
Have a great and blessed day in the Lord! OUR CALL TO ACTION: Today, identify one thing from the "father's house" — an old identity, an old fear, an old allegiance — that you are still carrying into the King's palace, and consciously lay it down at the threshold.
I love you and I thank God for you! You matter to God and you matter to me!
Pastor Eradio Valverde, Jr.
