Psalm 45. I've entitled this, The Honor
and Glory of God's Church. The honor and glory of his church,
or the honor and glory of his bride. The bride of Jesus Christ. Now, we'll take our text from
verse 9, and we'll go down to the end of the chapter, but I
want to remind you, we'll go back over a little of this psalm
to give you the background of it here. This is the Lord's heart. The psalm begins with the Lord
speaking through the prophet, saying, My heart is inditing
a good matter. A good matter. This word, inditing,
if you were to take something and put it in a pressure cooker,
and you were to pressurize it, and it would be as though it
were to explode. And this is what God is saying.
My heart is boiling over with this goodness. And the message
of God is singular here. It is not concerning multiple
things, but only one, and that is His King. He said, "...My
heart is indicting a good matter. I speak things which I have made."
Touching the King. The tongue. My tongue is the
pen of a ready writer. And he says of Christ, this is
the king, thou art fairer than the children of men, grace is
poured into thy lips, therefore God bless thee forever. And notice
he talks of him as a mighty conqueror, he says, gird thy sword upon
thy thigh, oh most mighty. With thy glory, and with thy
majesty, and in thy majesty, ride prosperously. That word
is victoriously. Ride victoriously. And that's
exactly what our Lord Jesus Christ has done. He has come into this
world with the sword of the Word of God upon His thigh. And He
has ridden prosperously. He has ridden victoriously in
His might. because of truth and meekness
and righteousness. And thy right hand shall teach
thee awesome things, terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp
in the heart of the king's enemies, whereby the people fall under
thee." This is his conquering, not only of his enemies, who
don't know him, but the conquering of his people. Remember when the arrow of his
word pierced your heart. And what did you do? You fell
under him. You fell down before him as a
dead man. bowed before Him. And what did
God do with Christ? He said, Thy throne, O God, is
forever and ever. Thy scepter, Thy kingdoms, is
a right scepter. Thou lovest righteousness and
hated wickedness. Therefore God, thy God, hath
anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. All thy garments smell of myrrh,
aloes, and cassia. We remember this from last time
when, speaking of the Lord's righteous garments, the garment
of His deity, the garment of His humanity, the garment of
His righteousness that He Himself has put together by His own hands. This garment was anointed of
God, these choice spices. These were the spices that God
used to anoint the tabernacle, the furniture, and the high priest. And Christ is all of those things. He is our tabernacle by where
we meet with God and worship God. He is the furniture, He
is the mercy seat, the showbread, He is the laver, He is the candlestick,
He is all the furniture of that tabernacle. He is the mercy seat
by which we come to God through His blood. By which we were atoned,
our sins were atoned. And He says, out of the ivory
palaces whereby They have made thee glad. I want you to see
this, that what makes the heart of this king glad is you. Is that not amazing? The church is the desire and
love of the heart of God and Christ. And so now he begins
speaking to those that he desires, those that make him glad. And he says this in verse 9,
"...the king's daughters are among the honorable women upon
thy right hand that stand the queen in gold of Ophir." Now,
here the Lord is speaking of the honor of His church. God,
with His heart being the pen of the ready writer, is writing
here concerning the King's daughter, the Queen, which is the church,
His people. And so He takes the eyes, His
gaze, from the greatness and honor of Christ, and now reveals
to us what He has accomplished by His victory. And that is the honor of His
church. The honor and glory of His church.
Jesus Christ has made the King's daughter, listen, among the honorable
women. This word honorable means valuable. Precious. Precious. You know why diamonds are precious? Because they're rare. They're
rare, they're valuable, because there are not many of them. And I tell you this, God has
a people. There are few. There are few. And God says they are precious,
they are valuable. And I tell you this, He uses
this speech of the king's daughter, because is there any daughter
more valuable than the king's daughter? You take a peasant's
daughter, and that peasant, she's valuable to the peasant, but
to no one else. But the king's daughter is valuable
to the whole nation. And so this is his speech as
to show us the glory and honor that he has bestowed upon all
his church. You remember when David slew
Goliath, what did he win? He won the king's daughter. That's
exactly what happened when Christ slew Satan and our sins, and
all his enemies at the cross he defeated. He won his bride. He won the king's daughter. Jesus Christ has purchased our
honor, the honor of all God's elect children, thus making us
precious. Precious. Jesus Christ, in the
gracious purpose of God, know this, He was betrothed to this
church. Before the victory was accomplished
at Calvary, He was given this bride by God. You, you who are
believers in Christ, you were given to Him from eternity, betrothed
to be His bride, and therefore the Father has sent Him to be
the Savior and Redeemer of His people. That by His blood, He
should redeem us and then provide righteousness that we could not
provide for ourselves. Therefore, I want you to see
this. When it says anything good about you, you must remember
it was He that made you honorable. You cannot see this about yourself
except you see that He has made you honorable. Let me tell you, it takes faith
to see that. You will never see that apart
from faith. I can only see that by looking
to Him in faith. Jesus, God's anointed, who was
anointed with the oil to be our high priest, his garments were
dipped in blood, his own blood. and became a sweet-smelling savor
unto God. And it is this smell of grace
and mercy and forgiveness that draws us. Isn't this what draws
you to Christ? Isn't this what allures you to
Him? Is His offering, His righteousness,
His goodness, His person allures us? Isn't that what He said in
the prophecy of Hosea? He said, I will take away all
her false gods. I will take away all her mirth.
I will expose her. And then he said what? I will
allure her. I'll put her in a solitary place
where she has nobody and nothing. And when she hears of me, I will
allure her. And I'll give her everything. I'll give her everything. the
song of solomon the bride said then let him kiss me with the
kisses of his mouth for that love is better than wine because
of the saver of that good ointments that name is as an ointment poured
forth therefore do the virgins love the is it not when the gospel
is poured if you take a bottle of perfume bottle it up well
there's nothing that allures you when it's bottled up but
when it poured out. When the top is opened and the
fragrance released, it's then that you're lured by the scent.
This is Christ. When God opens the gospel to
His church, we are lured to Him. When the Holy Spirit reveals
to the sinner His person and work and the sweetness and glory
of His work, His bride, His church, the virgins, the honorable women,
the elect are drawn to Him. They say, draw me. Knight, is
that not what you desire to be drawn? You know and I know we cannot
do this in our own strength. If it were left up to us, our
hearts would still be dead and cold and hard. He must draw us. He must lure us. Draw me, and
then we will run after thee. The king hath brought me into
his chambers, we will be glad and rejoice in thee. We will
remember thy love more than wine, the upright love thee. The honor of the bride is only
then found in the honor of her husband. Is that not right? The
honor of the bride is only found in the honor of her husband. He bought us He bought us with His blood,
and in time He brings us to Himself, and she then is willing to run
after Him, and her desire is to follow Him. The church never
gives, therefore, any praise to our coming to Him, only in
His drawing us. Only in His drawing us. Believer
in Christ, we have truly been greatly honored of God. We have
been truly blessed in that we have found favor with God. How do we know? How can you know
you have favor with God? Here it is. He drew you to Himself. And every time His name is mentioned,
the Spirit, like John in the womb of his mother, leapt with
joy. When His name is mentioned, the
ears of our spirit perk up, and He draws us to Himself. And what
do we say when we are drawn? What is our confession when we
come to Him? When He says things like, You
are honorable, You are the King's daughter, the Queen of Heaven. What does this ring in your ear?
I think of the bride again in the Song of Solomon who confesses,
I am black but comely. I am black but comely. O ye daughters
of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kadar, as the curtains of Solomon,
look not upon me, because I am black, because the Son hath looked
upon me. My mother's children were angry
with me. They made me the keeper of the vineyard, but mine own
vineyard have I not kept." Is this not our testimony? We have
not kept our own vineyard. We have not kept ourselves. We
are black. We are sinful. And yet what does
Christ say about us? You're beautiful. the two natures
that reside in us constantly warring at one another so that
when we hear such things as the beauty of the church, the glory
of the church, surely we think of others, not ourselves. But
yet, Jesus himself says, no, I'm talking to you. You are the
King's daughter. King's daughter. Honorable. This
is the testimony of his church. We are black, but in his sight
we are beautiful. Let us keep this in remembrance,
and we will be glad because of his grace. We will remember his
great love, wherewith he hath loved us. Let us then rejoice
and be glad together, for we are made honorable in his sight. The second thing is the position.
He said the king's daughters were among the honorable women,
precious, valuable women. Upon thy right hand did stand
the Queen in gold of Ophir." What is your position? You who
believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, what is your position? Here,
not only are you the King's daughter, but you are here now said to
be the Queen. The Queen. Not only are we honorable and
pure, chaste virgins by the work of our Lord Jesus Christ in His
sight, but we are also the queen of... Go to Roman, go to Revelation.
Look over at Revelation chapter 20, yeah, chapter 12. Revelation chapter 12, look at
verse 1. This is talking about the church
here. I know the pagan church, the false church, would try to
make this about Mary. This is not about Mary. This
is about the church. It says, "...and there appeared
a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the
moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And she, being with child, cried,
travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared
another wonder in heaven, and behold, a great red dragon having
seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon his head. And
his tail drew a third part of the stars of heaven, and it cast
them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the
woman which was ready to be delivered for to devour her child as soon
as it was born. And she brought forth a man-child
who was the ruler to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And
her child was caught up unto God and to the throne. And the
woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared
of God, that they should feed her a thousand, two hundred,
and threescore days." Now, I want you to behold the glory of Christ's
church here that she has mentioned as the Queen of Heaven, clothed
in the brightness of Christ's glory. Now this bride, this queen,
is not just of one person, but rather this is speaking of the
church, the whole church from the beginning. Do you not know
that the prophecy was given from the beginning? The seed of the
woman shall crush the head of the serpent, and he shall bruise
his heel. And from that time forth, what
have the church been doing? They have been laboring in birth
pains until he should come. The church had labored in birth
pains all those many centuries, waiting, wanting, desiring that
the Lord should come. And I tell you, one day He did
come. He that should rule the nations with the rod of iron,
He came into the world. And you can see this every time
that there was one of those in the lineage of Christ, was Satan
not ready to devour them? He was always ready to devour
Christ. He didn't know who He was. He
just tried to devour anyone that would fit that description. And
so the church had been persecuted from the beginning. You remember,
Satan did try this when our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world.
Herod killed all those young children. He tempted our Lord
to sin against God and he found nothing in him. Why? That child was caught up to God
from his birth. He was, he said, this is the
son of man which come down from heaven and which is in heaven. Try to figure that one out. You see, he was always caught
up with God, and all of his efforts to kill our Lord and destroy
Him only ended in his defeat, the defeat of the enemy. At Calvary,
Satan did not defeat Christ, but rather Christ defeated Satan. And God hath highly exalted him,
and now, Though His church is persecuted and fled into the
wilderness of this world, God has prepared a place for us and
cares for us. Even when our enemies pour forth
the floods of their wrath, this dragon in this verse here, he'll
go on and he'll pour out, a flood will come out of his mouth. And
you remember, God opens up the earth and swallows whatever it
is He pours out toward His church. Always protecting. Why? She is
the Queen. There is nothing that can hurt
her. Nothing the Lord will allow to touch her or drag her down. She is the Queen of Heaven, the
Bride of Christ. Believer, we are made the Royal
Bride. We are made Kings and Priests
unto our God. Not of physical or noble birth,
but rather what? Spiritual birth. In these days, we're only by
blood. You know, you couldn't be a royal
unless you were in the bloodline. We know this. Naturally, we're
not in the bloodline, are we? We are of Adam's fallen race. God speaks of our nativity and
He says this in Ezekiel 16. He said, Thy birth and nativity
in the land of Canaan, thy father in Amorite, thy mother in Hittite. As for thy nativity in the day
when thou was born, thy navel was not cut, neither was thou
washed with water to supple thee, thou wast not salted at all or
swaddled at all, none I pitied thee to do thee any good, to
have compassion on thee. But thou wast cast out in the
open field to the loathing of thy person in the day when thou
wast born. But when I passed by thee, and
saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee, When
thou wast polluted in thine own blood, live. Yea, I said when
thou wast in thy blood, live. We were born sinners. This is
the confession of all of the bride of Christ. We were born
under another bloodline. A lost and damned race. Not fit to be queen of heaven
by nature. But listen, our birth is not
of carnal blood, is it? This queen is not born of carnal
blood, but rather of spiritual line, a spiritual birth. When God passed by thee, in spite
of our birth, in spite of our blood, He said, when you were
in your blood. He didn't wait till we were cleaned
up. He didn't wait till we got better. He said, when you were
in your blood, I said, live. And then you remember he took
that babe, he washed that baby, he clothed that child with a
royal garment and made her to be his beloved. Rejoice, believer! In your time of love, when God
washed you from all your sins, He decked you in the Spirit of
His grace and made you the Queen of heaven. The third thing is the garment.
Notice this. Go back to your text. The garment
of the queen. She says she is a queen in gold
of Ophir. Now this place was renowned for
the gold in that it was pure gold. the purity of his gold. You know that gold, in order
to be pure, must be purified. It must be tried. So that is
to take out all the dross and the external metals so that it
would become pure when it's melted down. The church is said to be
dressed in gold of ophir. Have you ever thought of a gold
robe? This is what they had made in
those days. They would purify this gold and
bring it down to make it into a thread. And they would sew,
that's what some of those curtains inside the tabernacle were sewn
in golden threads. But this is much more valuable
than physical earthly gold garments. This is talking about the righteousness
of Christ. You are clothed in the purified
righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is not speaking outside.
Look at verse 13. He said, "...the King's daughter
is all glorious where? Within." She's not glorious without,
she's glorious within. Within! Her clothing is wrought
gold. She shall be brought in the king's
raiment of needlework. In other words, this robe is
of craftsmanship. It was made with skill. And we know this about our robe
of righteousness. It was made with the skillful
hands of our husband, the Lord Jesus Christ. He made this robe
for us. By His own obedience and by His
blood, He hath made a robe acceptable unto God, and now dawns this
robe upon you, His church. Why? The Lord is well pleased
for His righteousness sake. Paul says this of our new birth,
he says, for we are His workmanship, skilled craftsmanship, created
in Christ Jesus unto good works. We are wrought, we wrought nothing
for God, Yet for his own sake, he by the blood and righteousness
of Christ hath blotted out all our sins. He says, I have blotted
them out, listen, as a thick cloud. Isn't that wonderful to
think of? That all your sins cannot be
seen by God. He blotted them out. Oh, my sin! Oh, the bliss of
this glorious thought! My sin, not in part, but the
whole, was nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more. Why? I have a robe of righteousness. A needlework of Christ. And thirdly, the Church, the
Word of God to His Church. Look at verse 10. Verse 10, he
says, Harken, O daughter, and consider and incline thine ear.
Forget also thine own people and thy father's house. So shall the King greatly desire
thy beauty, for He is thy Lord, and worship Him." Believers,
seeing what God has done for us, is it not just reasonable
for us to remember His Word? To take heed to His Word? He
said, look what I have done for you. Now hearken you to Me. Listen to Me. Hear My Word. Those of us who are saved by
the grace of God, made honorable, clothed with the righteousness
of Christ, washed in His blood, we also hearken unto His Word. We listen. We hear His voice. Wasn't this so when He called
us the first time? The hour is coming and now is
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they
that hear shall live. And that's what happened to us.
That's our experience of grace. But have we stopped hearing His
Word? Have we stopped listening to our God? No! It is our necessary
food. The Word of God is necessary
to us to hearken to His Word. The Word of God commands us who
believe on Him to continue to believe on him i tell you i have not had true full faith in christ like
i should i have not believed him as i should i have not loved
him as i should and therefore i desire to grow
in these graces I desire to learn of these things, to continue,
and this is only through His Word. Through His Word. He calls us to incline our ear
to His Word, to hear of His grace and His love. And this Gospel
that we are hearing now must be to us more important than
anything else. Is there anything more important
than the Word of God to you? I tell you, the only time I'm
fearful is when I don't hear Him. It is the most difficult time
for the believer when God hides His face and you cannot hear.
You cannot hear His voice. And so believer, therefore, let
us hear his voice. And secondly, Christ must be
all the object of our worship. The scripture says, And so shall
the king greatly desire thy beauty, for he is thy Lord. Worship thou him. Jesus said in Luke 14, If any
man come unto me, and hate not his father and his mother, his
children, his brethren, his sisters, and
yes, his own life also. He cannot be my disciple. He's saying, look, that's not
characteristic of my disciple. That's not one of mine. Why? Because my disciples forsake
all. They forsake all and follow me. Our surrender is an unconditional
surrender, isn't it? When Christ came and conquered
our soul, it had become reasonable for us to surrender. Can one
with a thousand meet Him that cometh with ten thousand? No. No, it's not going to happen.
So what do we do? We've bowed to Christ. We've
surrendered to Him. Therefore, what do we forget?
He said this. He said, verse 10 again, "...forget
thine own people and thy Father's house." What is this? Our self-righteousness. That's
the mark of our Father's house, isn't it? Self-righteousness. Adam's house. We must forget
our Father's house. We must forget His house of self-righteousness,
We must forsake all the earthly treasures and relationships of
this world and the sins of our flesh that would hinder us from
worshiping Him. We should forsake all. Paul said
this, I count all things done. Matter of fact, he said, I counted
and I still do count them as but done that I may win Christ
and be found in Him. Is this not reasonable to you?
You who are the Queen of Heaven, you who have been honored by
the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, chosen vessels of mercy, is it
not reasonable for us to forsake the world and all that's in it? Is this world not fleeting? Are not we all going to lose
our relationships here? You know, the Lord took brother
Gil a while back. And when he comes for you, Joanne,
when you see him again, you won't be his wife. That relationship's
gone! That's no more! You see, all of these relationships
and things we hold so dear, Christ said, forget about them. Look
to Me. Look to Me for your strength. Look to Me for your courage.
Look to Me and worship Me. Is that not reasonable, considering
what He has done for us? And listen, this last thing,
"...all the church shall be brought to heaven." Look at this, verse
11, So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty, for he is
thy lord, and worship thou him. And the daughter of Tyre shall
be there with a gift. Even the rich among the people
shall entreat thy favor. The king's daughter is all glorious
within, her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto
the king in raiment of needlework. The virgins, her companions that
follow her, shall be brought unto thee. With gladness and
rejoicing shall they be brought. They shall enter into the king's
palace. What is it saying? It's saying
this, that every one of those the Father chose, every one of
those that Christ died for, the Spirit will bring them. Even those entire. This is talking
about the Gentile nations. He's opening this up to us to
know that this kingdom is not made up of just Jews, but rather
all men. All types of men. All nations
and kindred and tongues in that last day shall bow before Him
and sing praises unto Him. Why? He will bring every one
of them to Himself. And what does He use? What is
the means that He has chosen to use to bring in the bride?
It is His church, the preaching of the gospel, the sending forth
of His glorious people to speak of what Christ has done for them.
Now what He told that man, that demoniac? He said, you go and
tell your friends what great things God has done for you. You may not know all theology,
but you know this, what he's done for you. What has he done for you? I know
this, he chose me. I don't like election. I don't
know anything else. He chose me. Not because of me. I know this, I was dead. But now I'm alive. I know this,
only his blood can cleanse me of my unrighteousness, only his
righteousness can clothe me before God. I know that. I know this,
all those he saved, he will save. I know this, he that hath begun
a good work in you shall perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ.
Now you who are his bride, you who are his church, don't you
know your value? Do you not know what it costs
to make you his bride? You are honorable, chaste virgins. You are the Queen of Heaven, dressed in His royal apparel.
And none of us shall be lost. None of us shall be lost. Now,
does this make you proud or humble? If you know anything at all about
yourself, it makes you humble. And it moves me to love Him more. for what he's done. I pray that
God would bless this to your heart as to who you are. Honorable. Beautiful. Desired by Christ. And what he desires, he gets. He gets. I wouldn't have it any
other way. And God bless us. Stand and be
dismissed in prayer.