Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Psalm 45 | Date: December 17, 2023 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

You can open your Bibles, if you will, please, to Psalm 45. Psalm 45. We’re continuing our study of the Messianic Psalms, that is, Psalms that are about the Messiah. I thought it would be helpful. So for the last many weeks, we have explored some of the background to that in earlier revelation in the Old Testament. And then we came finally to 2 Samuel 7, the Davidic promise of his greater son who will come to reign, and then how that tells the story of the Bible. And then finally now we’ve come to the Messianic Psalms themselves to see how the Psalter anticipates the coming of David’s greater son, the Messiah, who will come.

Last time we saw Psalm 72, a very important psalm in that respect, presenting the king in his ideal. Now recall what I’m trying to show here is that we started with Luke 24 where Jesus says that the Psalms are about him. They’re written about him. Now we, I think, sometimes expect that in terms of direct prophecy. And so there’s a Psalm 110, there’s a Psalm 2 that look more like direct predictions of the Messiah. But when Jesus says that the Psalms are about him, he’s not saying simply there’s a prophecy here and a prophecy there. But the Psalter as a whole anticipates the coming of Christ, and he fulfills what is foreshadowed and anticipated in the Psalter. That’s the claim.

And we saw then that the Psalms speak of Jesus, but they don’t all speak of Jesus in the same way. There are some that are directly predictive. We typically call those prophecies, and they are, but there’s a broader category of prophecy in which the coming of David’s greater son is anticipated in more subtle ways. And so we saw last time, Psalm 72, where the king, that is the Davidic king, is being prayed for and praised. But the king that is described there is presented in his ideal, and so we see a king who reigns in perfect righteousness, a king who reigns in peace, in prosperity, and joy. Under his reign, the people flourish, and there’s prosperity of all kinds. His reign is universal. He exercises dominion over all of his enemies all over the world. His reign is eternal, and we see that he is a kind, a compassionate king. He’s compassionate to the needy. He cares for and protects his people. His subjects all the world over will pray for him and do homage to him.

And so the king is presented in his ideal. And so we’re left to say, which king are Psalms like that talking about? And there is no historic king that fits the bill. And we have to see that it anticipates and looks ahead to the greater King who will come. Now we’re going to follow that line of thinking again tonight with Psalm 45, but we’re going to do it in just a little bit different way. The Psalms anticipate or foreshadow the coming of the Messiah in—and I’ll put it this way—in the extravagant language that is used to describe the king. The extravagant language that is used, not only to describe his rule, but to describe the king himself. And that language goes far beyond anything that is fitting to any of the historical sons of David.

A Love Song

So Psalm 45. The superscript identifies this as a love song, a maskil of the sons of Korah, a love song. As the psalm progresses, it will become obvious that this psalm was written to be sung at the king’s wedding. I assume that—I don’t know which king this was originally written for, perhaps Solomon at his wedding—but I suspect it was sung at the wedding of all, each successive king along the line as well.

So we have in verse 1 then a prelude, sort of a reflection on the theme. And here the psalmist exposes his own heart. This is a psalm he just had to write. “My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.” So this theme, he says, just had to be sung. His heart is just bursting to overflowing. He clearly adores his king, and he can’t but sing about him. So I’m addressing the king.

Verses 2 and following, he describes the king himself. And follow along here as he describes him, the king, in his handsomeness and his various graces, his valor, his majesty, and his stature, all of that. Verse 2, “You are the most handsome of the sons of men; grace is poured on your lips; therefore, God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty. In your majesty ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness; let your hand teach you awesome deeds. Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies; the peoples fall under you.”

So, this king that he’s singing about is the best looking. He’s the most kind, compassionate. He’s the strongest. He’s the most valiant. He’s majestic. He enforces righteousness the world over, universally. So this king is not some mere figurehead, sort of like the empty suit that embodies the position. But he represents a great office, you know, the guy who’s actually a bumbling fool, has to be led by the Easter bunny by the hand so he doesn’t walk into the bushes, but he’s not really filling the office well. That’s not this king. This king embodies his royal dignities and the glories associated with the office. That’s who this king is. What the office represents is who this king is.

A Divine Messiah

Verse 6 and following, more of the king’s person and majesty, but here again notice he uses just this exorbitant language. “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. Your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia from ivory palaces. Stringed instruments make you glad. Daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor.”

Now he introduces the bride and the honor that the bride will have. “At your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.” Stands at the right hand. Stands at the right hand, his right hand. That is the position of authority. So this queen is with him, not just on the wedding night. She’s with him in the administration of his kingdom. Verse 10, she’s evidently a Gentile bride, a king’s daughter; perhaps there’s some alliance that has been made. Verse 10, “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 down to him.” That is, she has a dignity and she has a place of authority in the kingdom alongside him, but her dignity is derived from him. So she bows before him.

Verse 12 continues, speaking of her dignity as the queen. “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.” And now verse 14, we have the wedding procession. “In many colored robes, she is 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.” And then verse 16 speaks of the sons that she will bear to him and who will then carry on his rule. “In place of your fathers shall be your sons; you will make them princes in all the earth.” And then verse 17 ends with universal, endless praise given to this king. “I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations; therefore, nations will praise you forever and ever.”

All right, we read this love song, praises the glories of the king—he’s the greatest, he’s the best looking, he’s the strongest, he’s the most mighty, he has this rule that is universal, he enforces righteousness. So again, he’s presented in his ideal. And we have to ask the question then, of whom is this Psalm speaking? Which king is in view? Now there’s no historical superscript to identify which Davidic king is in view. As I mentioned, it perhaps was sung at Solomon’s wedding, and I assume it was part of the ritual, part of the ceremony that was sung at each royal wedding. It was part of the celebration.

And the language that is used here of the king, describing the king, is just—it’s grand, it’s extravagant, and you expect that in poetry. Poetic excess, we see that all the time and we understand that poetry can overstate things at times. And so verses three to five describe the king in terms of his splendor and his majesty, his greatness, his success, his international rule. Verses six and seven tell us that his reign is marked by righteousness. And all of this is very grand, describing the royalty of this king. But verse 6—verse 6 transcends any merely human king. It’s addressed in the vocative. “Your throne, O God. 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.”

Now, I think it’s impossible to know how the most diligent student in Israel before the time of Christ could have read this. Is this just poetic excess? “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.” It almost seems blasphemous to address any human king like this. “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.” And so for the readers, I think before the time of Jesus at least, this must have been at least puzzling. Perhaps they wondered, is poetic excess—man, this has gone to new levels.

But what we have to do, I think, is look back at these Psalms and see how the Davidic king, Solomon, each one of his sons that comes past, each of the Davidic kings anticipates or foreshadows the greater king who will come. And so in that sense, each of the Davidic kings from David forward represents in himself and in his office, represents in whatever diminished way—and many times, most of the time, in whatever broken way—represents the greater King who will come. And that anticipation of that greater King who will come is built into this Psalm. Verse six again, he’s addressed as God. “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.”

So we have a divine Messiah. Now that’s not unprecedented in the Old Testament. We have some precedent for that in other places as well. Isaiah 9:6, “His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father.” We have Daniel chapter seven, where the son of man appears riding on the clouds, appears before the ancient of days to receive a kingdom. Who rides on the clouds? This is a divine being of some kind. And we’re just clued into with some hints like that. And lest you think that you are over-reading it when you read verses six and seven, where this King is addressed as God, lest you think you’re over-reading it, thinking, “well, that must be a divine Messiah,” let’s take the time to look at Hebrews chapter 1, and that’s just how the New Testament writers take it.

The King In The New Testament

Hebrews chapter 1. Now in Hebrews 1, you remember from verse 1 onward, the writer here is launching into the highest of Christologies: that God has spoken to us by his Son, who has outstripped the previous prophets who have come and spoken, as important as their word has been. God now, in these last days, has spoken by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things—this is chapter 1 verse 2—through whom also he created the world, so he’s creator, he’s the exact radiance of the glory of God, the imprint of his nature, he upholds the universe by the words of his power. Okay, he’s God.

And then when he gets to verse 5, to which of the angels—he’s talking now about the superiority of Jesus to the angels—to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my son, today I have begotten you”? Or again, 2 Samuel 7, “I will be to him a father, he shall be to me a son.” Again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.” Of the angels, he says—and here he quotes Psalm 104—”He makes his angels, winds, and his ministers a flame of fire.” But of the son, he says—and here he quotes Psalm 45—”Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” And so the writer of the letter of Hebrews understands Psalm 45 as speaking of divine Messiah, of Jesus, who is, of course, God and man.

Back to Psalm 45, verse six. He’s a ruler, he has a throne, and his kingdom is eternal. “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.” Well, that’s what God promised to David in 2 Samuel 7 that we saw. Verse seven now, he’s anointed by God. “Therefore, God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness.” Well, that echoes as well in Isaiah 61, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon him.” This we find at the baptism of Jesus, his anointing with the spirit at John’s baptism of Jesus. But verse seven gives us even more than all of that. “Therefore God, your God has anointed you. Therefore God, your God has anointed you.” So we have something of a paradox. This King is God and yet he’s anointed by God. Now there’s a paradox that can’t be resolved until you come to the incarnation of Jesus. And so we have here already in Psalm 45 an anticipation of what we call New Testament theology or New Testament doctrine that’s revealed more in its fullness. But all of that is anticipated here. We have a divine Messiah. We have the rudiments of the doctrine of the Trinity. We have the incarnation. All of that directly implied here in verses six and seven. And that’s the way Hebrews chapter one takes it.

Again, verses eight and nine. “Your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia from ivory palaces. Stringed instruments make you glad. Daughters of kings are among your ladies of honors and your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.” So songs are written about this king and there is nothing too extravagant to give to him. And I think the implication is clear: you just cannot exhaust the praise that is due this king. You cannot adequately express the glories and the worth of this king. So again, now, like we saw in Psalm 72, we have the king presented in his ideal, but it’s more than that. He’s presented as divine.

Now this side of the incarnation, it becomes immediately evident who he’s talking about. You read through this carefully at least. You read through it quickly, you may miss it, but you read through this carefully and you see all of this and you begin to think, that looks a lot like Jesus. And the psalmist then, we need to see him as anticipating, foreshadowing this great king in the king that they sang to at his wedding. We see a representation of that greater king who’s still the hope of Israel and is still to come.

Many commentators have tried to identify the particular king that’s in view here, but no exact identification is given. The psalm is not about any particular historical Davidic king. On the one hand, it’s about every one of those Davidic kings, but each of those Davidic kings represents the greater king who will come. And so ultimately this psalm is about the greater king who will come. And it is the king that every previous Davidic king foreshadows.

Glance back at verses two to five. “You are the most handsome of the sons of men. Grace is poured on your lips. Therefore God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword on high, oh mighty one, in your splendor and majesty,” and so on. Derek Kidner, who has written a wonderful commentary on the Psalms, writes this: “This portrait, verses two to five, could be discounted as conventional flattery if it were not for the one king of whom similar things can soberly be said, that he is, in verse two, the chiefest of 10,000, that no man ever spoke like this man, Or verses three to five, that he’s meek and lowly, that he rides forth conquering and to conquer. And verse four, that he’s called faithful and true.” There is one king of whom all of this can be said in complete sobriety without any excess at all. And this is the one that’s anticipated in the same with verses six and seven. God, and yet anointed by God. Verse 17, at the end of the Psalm, universal, endless praise given to this king. That sounds a lot like Jesus.

Now, I think once we’ve seen all of that, we might see a little bit more, and that is that we might have some implications here, since this is a song written for the wedding of the king, and it’s about him and his bride, and we might have some implications here for understanding the Song of Solomon. And that there’s a song, a love song about the king and his bride. Now there have been many allegorical approaches to the Song of Solomon that I think have been a little excessive, but I think we can see here some warrant for seeing the Song of Solomon as in some way reflecting the love of Christ for his church. If you have any doubt about that, then Paul confirms it for us in Ephesians chapter 5. And all of this of God and his wife Israel and Christ and his bride, all of that is symbolized in our weddings as well.

Now again, let’s go a step further. Once you see all of that, I suspect that we might further see in the Gentile bride, verses 10 and following, some foreshadowing of the church. The Christ bride, which dominantly at this point in redemptive history is a Gentile affair. Verses 13 to 15 here, the bride is presented to her king in her glories; that’s the kind of language that’s picked up in 2 Corinthians 11 and Ephesians 5 about Christ presenting his church and all her glories to the Father. Verse 9, “At your right hand stands the queen in gold,” so she shares in the administration of his kingdom. Well, that’s everywhere in Old Testament and New Testament prophecy, that we share in the reign of Christ. We have it in Daniel chapter 7, where the saints share in the reign of the Son of Man. We have it all the way through to the book of Revelation. Verse 16, we have sons as exalted princes in the earth, the church reigning with Christ. And that might inform for us the little by-the-way statement that we find in Hebrews chapter two, where Jesus came to bring many sons to glory.

You might remember way back when on a Sunday morning when we looked at Psalm 3, where David writes this psalm in light of his fleeing from Absalom. He had to flee the city, you remember, and he writes this psalm of lament. And you might remember we rehearsed some of the history behind that in 1 Samuel chapter 15 in particular, where Ittai the Gittite met David on the way out of his city as he has to leave. And Ittai says, “I’ll go with you.” And so there’s David leaving the city, and it’s a Gentile who goes with him. And there’s some anticipation already, I think, of the, at this point in redemptive history, predominantly Gentile church that Christ has.

Well, and I wanna say, too, that there have been many interpreters of the Psalms who I think have been excessive in their almost an allegorical approach, and every time that there’s, not just in the Psalms, but anywhere in the Old Testament, anywhere there’s anything where you can draw a parallel, they’re saying it’s a type of Jesus or something like that. I remember reading one commentator one time, a guy I respect; he was talking about the tabernacle in Exodus and the building of the tabernacle and the center board on the back wall of the tabernacle represents eternal security. I’m not sure how he got that, but that’s what he said, was it represents—I think it’s a little excessive. But when you see these trajectories going through the scriptures that the biblical writers themselves pick up on, I think we have warrant. In fact, we are commanded, I think, by the way the New Testament writers take the Psalms to see, yeah, that’s the way it was intended to point. Not the back—the center board on the back wall of the tabernacle representing eternal security—but we find Jesus. Certainly in places like this in Psalm 45, where the language is just so excessive, you have to say it’s speaking of the greater Son who will come.

So we have the superscript, a maskil of the sons of Korah, that was that musical guild that David established, a love song. It’s written for the king on his wedding day. Be mindful then as you read through the psalm of what the king and who the king represents. Intentionally looking, so the writer here is intentionally looking beyond that king to the king who will come, and to do that he ties into a stream of prophecies that we find all over the scriptures. And so I think we have great warrant and a firm foundation to say, yeah, this is obviously talking about Jesus.

Now notice again, this prophecy is not as direct and not as obvious as Psalm 110. It’s more subtle than that, but the language exceeds in such a way that you have to see, once you take the language seriously at all, that it’s prospective of the greater David who will come. I mentioned last time that it has become—there’s some move to correct this now—but there has been for a long time a mindset among Old Testament scholars to say, “No, what we need to do is study the Psalms on their own terms. Forget New Testament revelation, let’s just understand what they understood at that point.” I don’t want to do too much of that. I think that’s wrong-headed in some ways, but in some ways that’s legitimate. Let’s see what they understood in their own context. And what I’m trying to show tonight is that what they understood in their own context looked ahead to a greater king who will come. And I think to do justice to the psalm, we have to see that. And so, as I quoted last time, so one Reformation era scholar said, when we read the psalms, we keep our left eye to the historical king and our right eye to Jesus. And we see how it comes together.

The Expected King

I’ve given you a handout. I thought you would like to have this. This is a wonderful summary from Alec Motyer, wonderful Old Testament scholar. He gives a wonderful summary of what we find of the king or the Messiah in the Psalms. The expected king would meet world opposition, and I give you the reference, but he would meet opposition as a victor. And by the activity of the Lord—I’m giving you passages for all of this from the Psalms—he would establish world rule, based on Zion and marked by a primary concern for morality and righteousness. He would rule forever in peace and prosperity and undeviating reverence for the Lord. He will be preeminent among men. He would be the friend of the poor and the enemy of the oppressor. Under his rule, the righteous would flourish. He would possess an everlasting name, would be the object of unending thanks. He’s the recipient of the Lord’s everlasting blessing, the heir of David’s covenant, and of Melchizedek’s priesthood. He belongs to the Lord, is devoted to him. He is his son, seated at his right hand, and then I added, and is himself divine. Psalm 45 and verse six. At some point, when you notice all of this in the Psalms, you have to say, that just looks a lot like Jesus.

Bruce Waltke has a wonderful analogy that I think just describes this in a perfect way. The royal psalms in the Psalter, these psalms that speak of the king and that anticipate something greater and present the king in his ideal, the royal psalms are like royal robes, he says, put on the shoulders of the king. And so each historic king puts these robes on that are described for us in the Psalter. And those robes are big robes. He’s an eternal king. He’s a righteous king. He’s a compassionate king. He’s a kind king. He rules over all of his enemies, the whole world over, and he rules forever. And all the nations sing his praise. Those are big robes. And what you find as you go through David’s historical—the progress of David’s line historically—is that the king’s shoulders become narrower and narrower and the robe just slips off and falls off and they’re just not up to wearing those robes until finally there’s just no king left at all. And Jesse’s tree is cut down to a stump and there’s no Davidic king. And then you have Jesus and he picks up the robes and they fit him perfectly. That’s what we have in the Psalter, presenting an ideal king in his greatness and in his glory, his majesty, and even his deity. And it is not until we come to the New Testament finally and see in the incarnation of the Son of God, one who can wear those robes and who fulfills the promise and the long hope of Israel.