Psalm 45
Psalm 45 is
a wedding psalm in many respects. It
begins by talking about a king and ends by talking about the king’s bride. Let’s look at its structure and see what we
can learn.
If we
speak to the opening verses, we can see a neat dynamic for human interaction. The human author of the psalm desires to
write words that are pleasing to his king.
He wants the psalm to be a blessing upon him. He is genuinely seeking to please the
authority figure in his life.
Of course,
this can be taken too far. We shouldn’t
want to please people for the wrong reasons.
Neither should we seek to please people in lieu of giving praise to
God. But as human beings we should
desire to have genuinely pleasant relationships with each other. We should seek to be a blessing to those who
have charge over us. We should desire
that our presence in their life is a good thing rather than a bad thing.
I have
more than a few friends in my life who are police officers, so as I wrote the
above paragraph I couldn’t help but think about how my words really impact my
relationship with them. In many
respects, the police and other legal keepers of the peace (judges, military,
etc) are authority figures in my life.
Certainly they do not rise to the level of God’s authority. But they are an authority figure. As a person under their care, I should be
living my life with an attitude such that they look forward to interactions
they have with me. So I have to ask
myself … is that how I live my life? Am
I living my life so that the people who are in authority over me in this world
genuinely appreciate my presence in their life?
Of course, then I have to ask the same question about the culture I live
in. Do the majority of us live with that
same perspective?
It’s
simply a perspective of caring about the other before myself. When what I want negatively impacts my
relationship with the genuine authorities in my life, things are wrong. When my life impacts the authorities in my
life positively, then things are good.
That is the general attitude of the psalmist that we see in this
psalm. The psalmist desires to
positively impact the authority in his life – the king and future queen.
Speaking
of the queen, let’s leave the early verses of this psalm and turn to the end of
the psalm, beginning with verse 10. Here
is another call to respect authority.
The queen is called to love her soon-to-be-husband. She is called to prepare herself to raise her
children and be the teaching authority that they are going to need. Again we hear the importance of joy between a
person and an authority figure in their life.
When we
take the words spoken to the king and to the queen we get a consistent
message. Our relationships should be a
benefit to those who are in our life – especially those who are put in
authority over us. Then shall our name
be praised.
This being
said, I’ve saved the best for last! Did
you notice the subject of the verses between the set of verses about the king
and the set of verses about the queen? The
subject of those verses is God. Verses
6-8 are all about God. God’s kingdom
will endure forever. God’s kingdom is a
kingdom of righteousness. God’s
anointing is the anointing about which we should care.
This is
such a neat statement when it comes to a faithful representation about
marriage. If God is not in the center of
the marriage, then it will not work. If
God is not seen as the stuff that binds the man and the woman together, then it
will fall. If the man and the woman do
not see themselves as God’s subjects first and foremost, they will experience
trouble. If the man and the woman are
not jointly working through their marriage to bring glory to God, then the
marriage will have conflict.
God
deserves to be the center of everything, especially marriage. He is the one who brings glory. His plans are the only ones that can be made
with His grand perspective and thus are the only ones that deserve to be
followed. He is the only source of grace
and love and mercy that will not fade.
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I've been thinking about this one and the more I think about it, I'm reminded of a picture I've seen on Facebook recently. It's an old couple holding each other. The caption underneath says something like "In the old days, when something was broken, we didn't throw it away. We fixed it." After reading this Psalm and your words, I see that picture and think "with God in your toolbox, everything is possible." I also got to thinking about how "in the old days" we didn't have all the media, tv, computers, cell phones...and it had to be so much easier to focus on God and work on relationships that God helped to form without all the distractions. God is there when you say "I do" - God should remain there the whole way through.
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