Listen, daughter, and pay careful attention:
Forget your people and your father’s house.
Let the king be enthralled by your beauty;
honour him, for he is your lord.
The city of Tyre will come with a gift,
people of wealth will seek your favour.
All glorious is the princess within her chamber;
her gown is interwoven with gold.
In embroidered garments she is led to the king;
her virgin companions follow her –
those brought to be with her.
Led in with joy and gladness,
they enter the palace of the king.Your sons will take the place of your fathers;
you will make them princes throughout the land.I will perpetuate your memory through all generations;
(Ps. 45:10-17 NIV)
therefore the nations will praise you for ever and ever.
The Psalmist turns his attention to describe the royal bride. He urges the bride to set thoughts of her own people and country to the one side, and to focus on the king who clearly admires her beauty. Like Ruth, the bride was a foreigner, and would be required to give her allegiance to the covenant people and their covenant Lord. She was encouraged to submit herself fully to her husband, the king, as a gesture of her belonging to the people of God. We have seen in previous Psalms that the purposes of the king are the same as the purposes of the Lord, therefore the queen’s submission to the king will be seen as submission to the Lord. The king of Israel is not the same as the king of any other nation.
The reward for her identification with God’s people is her exaltation among the nations. There is great honour in being associated with the people of God. The beauty of the bride is described as she is arrayed in her wedding garment, and as the procession of attendants prepare for the procession as she is led in with joy and gladness into the palace of the king.
As the people of God were taken into exile and there was no longer a king upon the throne, the perpetual memory of the bride and the praises of the nation take us to a NT scene of the New Jerusalem and the bride of the Lamb
I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honour of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
(Rev. 21:22-27 NIV)
Jesus the Messiah is of the lineage of David. The Lord Jesus Christ will rule and the memory of the royal line of David will be perpetuated in Jesus Christ.
Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
(1 Cor. 15:24-26 NIV)
But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool.
(Heb. 10:12-13 NIV)
Prayer
Lord our God, we thank You that You are preparing us as a bride for Your Son our Saviour. We thank You that one day we will be presented spotless and pure to our Saviour. Lord this causes us to feel so humble because why should we ever have deserved such elevation and exaltation. We know that one day we will be like Christ and help us seek to purify ourselves just as Christ is pure, so that we are not ashamed before Him at His coming. Lord allow the hope of the future to sustain us today as we seek to live for You, in Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.