Hallelujah! I#039m Pastor Sung Hoon Lee. Today we#039re looking at Psalm 45, which is a wedding song. Our entire life is like a bride being led to her groom, Jesus. The important thing is that we should be led. Let#039s consider how we are guided to heaven through today#039s text.
First, we should be royal.
In verse 6, the descendants of Korah cried out, ampldquoGod!amprdquo They were branded with the sin of being the descendants of a rebel, but God set them up as temple ministers. We, too, have labels we want to remove, but like the children of Korah, the more shame and pain we feel, the more eagerly we call out to the Lord. Verse 9 says, ampldquoThe queen is adorned with gold from Orville, and stands at the king#039s right hand.amprdquo God places us in the position of queen because we are the queen and bride of Jesus Christ. This position is sovereignly chosen by God and graciously given to us, and we must receive it, but at the same time, we must not leave it.
To defend the position of queen is to defend the place in our lives that the Lord has entrusted to us on this earth: home, church, and nation. The secret to defending this grace freely given by God in the best passive way possible is to obey in the best active way possible in the place in which I am living. In other words, the best passive in the position of queen is the best active, and the best active is the best passive. When we cry out, 'God! God!' when we cry out, we trust that the Lord will take charge, that we will be joyfully and cheerfully led through whatever storms life throws at us, and that we will enter the kingdom of heaven.
At my wedding, my grandfather, a minister whom I most admired, officiated, but at the time of the pronouncement of the holy matrimony, he forgot the bride#039s name. I tried to persuade my wife, but she was amplsquoextremely angryamprsquo with me for siding with her grandfather nevertheless, I thought I was right, and this was my sin. I was a Pharisee, and I didn#039t know it until I met the Cutie, but I confess that it was by the special grace and choice of the Holy Trinity that the Lord placed me in my husband#039s place.
Second, we should forget the old man.
Verse 10 says, ampldquoDaughter, hear and see, incline your ear, and forget your people and your father#039s house.amprdquo Daughters are fragile and need to be protected and cared for. And in ampldquoForget my people and my father#039s house,amprdquo the command to ampldquoforget!amprdquo is only found once in the entire Bible: to forget our old self, the roots from which we came, the familiar values and culture, the conditions and background. These two things, forgetting the old man and hearing, seeing, and listening to the Lord, are the same thing. The only way to do this repentance of forgetting my old man is to fill my soul with the Word of God. When we do this turn, the Lord says in verse 11, ampldquoHe loves our beauty.amprdquo The most beautiful people in His sight are those who repent daily. The Lord is exalted through our frailty. When we forget the old man and worship with the confession, ampldquoYou are right than I am!amprdquo we believe we will be led to true joy and gladness and enter the kingdom of heaven.
Third, we should lead and be led by one another.
In verse 12 it says, ampldquoThe daughter of Tyre shall bring offerings, and the rich of the people shall desire to see your face.amprdquo The ampldquodaughter of Tyreamprdquo symbolizes the rich, which means that the worldly well-to-do look up to the saints, the bride of Christ, because Christ is more beautiful than all men, and that#039s what you and I want to see. And then in verse 13 it says, ampldquoThe king#039s daughter enjoys all the glory in the court, and her garments are embroidered with gold.amprdquo We, as Christ#039s bride and queen, whom God calls ampldquodaughter!amprdquo enjoy all the glory in the court. And the queen is said to be clothed with garments of gold, which is to be clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ, which is to be clothed with the amplsquorevealed will of Godamprsquo.
It is to carry well the cross of the mission that the Lord has entrusted to you in the difficult place of your life, just as the saint Jesus, the ampldquorevealed will of God,amprdquo revealed the will of God through his death on the cross. It is also to admit that you are a sinner, repent, and confess, ampldquoYou are more right than I am!amprdquo And it is to stick to the body of Christ, the church. The queen clothed in Christ is led to the king. They don#039t go out to the King on their own, but are led into all truth by God the Holy Spirit, and they don#039t enter heaven alone, but are led and drawn together. This, I believe, is the joy and pleasure of the Holy Spirit, that we will be so well led that we will finally enter into that royal palace where the Lord is, into the eternal kingdom of heaven.
I#039ve never seen my parents fight loudly in my life, but in our household, it was a very dynamic scene, with yelling and things flying through the air. I thought of myself as a rational person, and I tried to talk as unemotionally as possible during the fights, but my wife would start shouting ampldquoHey!amprdquo when she got angry, and at first I had no idea that the ampldquoHey!amprdquo she was shouting was directed at me. So I would clean up the debris on the floor after the fights, and I would go into my room, and I would find my Hebrew and Greek Bibles open, and I would think, #039What the hell am I doing here, when I#039m supposed to be studying these things and doing great things for the kingdom of God, not little things! #039 And I was miserable, but my wife#039s heart was more troubled in that war vat with the flying crockery, and she was led to our church first, and she heard the Word, and she confessed to me first, ampldquoThank you for living with someone like me,amprdquo and she gave me a cutie mark, and she gave me a doctor of divinity, and that#039s how our family was led to our community, and that#039s how our family has been preserved to this day.
Our destination in life is heaven. Not happiness, but holiness. We do not enter in our own strength, but by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. May we repent of our willfulness to leave the royal seat that has been established by grace, and may we be led by the Holy Spirit into the eternal home of our Heavenly Father.
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