Well, let me just say thank you to Skip and the elders for having me this weekend, for inviting the crazy Irishman to be with you. It's been lovely to fellowship with you, to minister God's word, and it's a joy to be with you this morning in this Lord's Day worship service. Please stand with me as we read God's word from Psalm 45. Please have your Bibles open at Psalm 45. And as we come to the reading and preaching of his word, let us pray. Father, in your light, we see light. So we pray that you would come now and by your Holy Spirit, illuminate the reading and the preaching of your word so that we might see your Son, our Savior, more clearly. and love him more dearly. And we ask this in his name, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever praised. Amen. Let us hear the word of the Lord, Psalm 45. To the choir master, according to lilies, a maskeel of the sons of Korah, a love song, My heart overflows with a pleasing theme. I address my verses to the king. My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. You are the most handsome of the sons of men. Grace is poured upon your lips. Therefore God has blessed you forever. Gird your sword on your thigh, oh mighty one, in your splendor and majesty. In your majesty ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness. Let your right hand teach you awesome deeds. Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies. The peoples fall under you. Your throne, oh 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. At your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir. 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 to him. 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. 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. In place of your fathers shall be your sons. You will make them princes in all the earth. I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations. Therefore, nations will praise you forever and ever. Amen. Please be seated. My wedding was one of the happiest days of my life. It was a beautiful sunny day in Sydney, Australia, not a cloud in the sky. Jackie and I were married in a lovely old Anglican church with the longest red carpet in Sydney. The church was decorated with beautiful flowers. The music was great and grand for the occasion. Jackie walked into the Hallelujah Chorus. All our friends and family were there, apart from 300 Irish guests who told me they missed their flight. My two brothers were there looking handsome in their suits. Both fathers looked handsome in their suits with their matching ties. My mother wore a lovely pink outfit. The bride's mother was beautifully dressed in red. The bridesmaids looked beautiful, their long blue dresses. And then as the center of attention, and rightly so, looking absolutely magnificent, was the groom. I was clean shaven. I wore a dark suit with a white shirt and a deep purple tie. I got my hair cut, short back and sides. I had a white flower in my lapel, and my shoes were polished for once. It was an amazing occasion. Oh, and Jackie, the bride, she didn't look too bad either. Well, ladies, you happy with the description of my wedding? Did I go into enough details for you? Well, of course not. What's wrong with the description of my wedding? The bride, the lovely Jackie, wasn't the center of attention, right? Because that's what we expect at weddings, isn't it? We expect the bride to be the center of attention. It's all about the bride. Here comes the bride. She's who we talk about after we've been to a wedding, don't we? We talk about the bride. But did you notice who's the center of attention in this wedding song in Psalm 45? It's the bridegroom. It's the man. It's the king, not the bride. We see that by how it's introduced in verse one. It's a love song for a royal wedding addressed to the king. My heart overflows with a pleasing theme. I address my verses to the king. My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. This is actually what makes this psalm unique in the Psalter, because the psalms are either about God or are addressed to God. Even Psalm 72, which is all about Israel's king and his kingdom, is actually addressed to God. But this psalm is addressed to the king, of Israel. It's for the king. He's the center of attention. And he remains so throughout the song. Just cast your eye down the psalm, and you'll see that the king gets 10 verses, verses 2 to 9, and then 16 to 17. And the bride gets six verses, verses 10 to 15. And even then, she only really has three verses that are about her, what she looks like on her wedding day. This is a love song for the bridegroom on his wedding day, not the bride on her wedding day. The songwriter, in verse one, may be the king's best man. I think that makes good sense. He's certainly someone who knows the king, who admires the king, and his admiration is so great that his heart overflows into song for him. An older version of the Bible has the lovely phrase, my heart bubbleth over. with a song for the king. Here's a best man who can't keep his wedding speech to himself. He has to sing it to everyone. Have you ever heard a wedding speech sung? And notice that this one is sung before it's written, verse one. My heart overflows with a pleasing theme. I address my verses to the king. My tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. It's in the songwriter's heart first, then on his tongue, before it flows out of his pen. But what is it about this king that makes this songwriter burst into spontaneous praise for him? Well, it's the beauty of the king, verse 2. You are the most handsome of the sons of men. You are the most handsome of the sons of men. It's the beauty of the king that captures this songwriter's imagination. This opening line of verse two is like the umbrella statement under which everything else in this song hangs. You are the most handsome of the sons of men. And this is the big surprise in the psalm. The bridegroom out-beautifies the bride. He's the center of attention. He's the beautiful one. And the songwriter shows us this in four ways. Number one, there is the beauty of his words. The beauty of his words, verse two. You are the most handsome of the sons of men. Grace is poured upon your lips. Therefore God has blessed you forever. Here's another surprise in this royal wedding love song. The defining mark of beauty of this king is not his looks, but his lips. It's not his height or his hair or his eye color or his physique. It's his speech. It's not what he looks like that's beautiful. It's what he sounds like. His words drip with grace because grace has been poured upon them as if from on high. It's as if he's been anointed to be a man of grace, to forgive, to free, to favor by what he says. This is what would have been in the on the front pages of the Israeli daily the day after the wedding. The king's speech. That's the identifying mark of this royal bridegroom. His words, gracious words. And for his gracious words, he receives a reward from God. Notice the therefore. Grace is poured upon his lips. Therefore, God has blessed you forever. There are actually three therefores in this psalm, the one in verse two that I've just read, then verse seven. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness, therefore God your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. And verse 17, I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations, therefore nations will praise you forever. and ever." Three times this king is rewarded in this psalm with something because of something he is or does. Here in verse 2, he is eternally blessed by God because he is a man of grace. Because he's a man of grace, he gets to be a man of blessing. In times, the concept of blessing was primarily physical, material. And in the case of a king, it was primarily linked to him having many children. So for being a man of grace, this king gets to be a man of posterity. He is blessed with an eternal dynasty. He gets sons on his throne forever. So that's the first way this songwriter shows us the beauty of this king. There is the beauty of his words. And second, there is the beauty of his war. The beauty of his war, verses three to five. Gird your sword on your thigh, oh mighty one, in your splendor and majesty. In your majesty, ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness. Let your right hand teach you awesome deeds. Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies. The peoples fall under you. If in verse two, this king knows how to forgive, here, in verses three to five, he knows how to fight. His lips drip with grace, but his thigh has a sword strapped to it. His right hand knows how to use it. His back has a quiver of arrows on it. Yes, he's a man of grace. He's also a man of war. And we need to see the connection between the two because the commands, notice there commands in verses three to five, to go to war, the commands to go to war only follow because he is first established as a man of grace. Only gracious men are qualified to fight. The problem with Hitler was that he was an angry man. And angry men are never qualified to fight, because angry men never have a just cause to fight. But gracious men, they have a just cause for war. And that's what this king has, verse four. In your majesty, ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness. This is the beauty of his war, what he fights for. The truth, humility, the right standard. This is the beauty of his war, what he fights for. Now, that might sound like a bit of a contradiction, beauty and war. I mean, they're not really natural bedfellows, are they? I mean, who ever called war a beautiful thing? Well, let me take you to Buchenwald. to one of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany. Jackie and I visited it a number of years ago when we traveled through Germany. We saw the inhumane conditions that the Jewish prisoners lived in. We saw the bear cage beside the wire fence where the Nazis would feed the bears meat to taunt the Jews that the bears were better fed than them. We saw the gas chambers and an execution chamber where the Nazis for fun would line up Jews against a wall and ask them to look through a tiny hole in the wall only to be shot by officers on the other side playing games with who could get the bullet through the hole. I remember we both felt physically sick as we walked around this concentration camp. There was one thing that day that lifted our spirits a little. It was a clock positioned at the entrance gate. It read 3.15 p.m. It has never read anything else since the end of the war. Because that was the time when American soldiers discovered Buchenwald and freed the prisoners from their horror. Now just imagine that day. What the Jewish prisoners saw as the American troops rolled up in their tanks and military vehicles at 3.15 p.m. What did they see? They saw fighting men in army gear with guns in their hands. But were they horrible-looking men or beautiful-looking men to these Jewish people? Well, they were beautiful-looking because of what they fought for. They fought to free these Jews from the tyranny of evil men. Fighting men are beautiful men when they have a just and good cause to fight for. And that's like this king's war. The songwriter celebrates the beauty of this king's war because of what he fights for. This is what makes his war a beautiful war. This is what makes him a beautiful warrior. because he fights to replace lies with truth, pride with humility, wickedness with righteousness. But the question is, why is this songwriter speaking about war at all? I mean, this is a love song for a royal wedding, right? I mean, there's a time and a place. So why is he talking about war at all? Well, because in the case of kings, wedding and war go together. If I may be all British for a moment, just think of Prince Charles or Prince William or Prince Harry on the day of their weddings. If you were interested at all to watch any of those weddings, what did those men get married in? Their military uniforms. Why? Because for kings and princes, wedding and wars go together. The defense of the realm is linked to the continuation of the royal line. No royal line, no future realm. No future realm, no lasting kingdom. Wedding and war go together when you're a king. And that's why the songwriter includes this aspect of the king's beauty in his wedding song. Because the establishment of this king's kingdom will be connected not just to a war that he wins, but to a wedding that he goes to. But before we get to the wedding, there's also one aspect of this king's beauty that the songwriter points us to another aspect. We've seen the beauty of his words, the beauty of his war, and now there's the beauty of his rule. Verses 6 to 7a. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness. You have loved righteousness and heeded wickedness. The beauty of this king's rule is that it is divine. Your throne, O God, is forever. Your throne, O God, it is eternal. Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. It is upright. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of upright. There's the beauty of his rule. It's divine, it's eternal, and it's upright. But notice at what point in this psalm his eternal, divine, upright kingdom is established. It's after he has gone to war and defeated his enemies. This king only gets to receive the divine title of God after he has pierced the heart of his enemies on the battlefield. This king only gets to have an eternal kingdom after he has proved himself to be a man of grace, fighting for truth, humility, and righteousness. And when he does get the kingdom, when he does sit on his throne forever, what kind of a kingdom does he establish? A kingdom of uprightness. Why? Because that's the kind of man he is. Verse seven, you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. His rule is founded in the right because he is upright. There's no neutrality in him. He understands the great antithesis in the world between righteousness and wickedness, and he loves the one, and notice, and he hates the other. This is what serves as the foundation of his kingdom, his moral compass, his moral affection for good, his moral hatred for evil. His scepter is a scepter of uprightness because he has loved righteousness and hated wickedness. And that's the beauty of his rule. It's divine, it's eternal, it's upright because of the kind of person he is. In other words, this king's beauty is not so much outward as it is inward. We look on the outward appearance at a wedding, but this songwriter has looked on the heart. And just as there was a reward for the beauty of his words, he was eternally blessed, so now there is a reward for the beauty of his war and rule. Here's the second, therefore, 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. At your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir. What is the reward for the beauty of his war and rule? He is joyfully anointed and made ready for marriage. Anointing here speaks of a ceremonial occasion. It suggests a coronation following his victories in battle and the establishment of his kingdom. And the sounding note of this coronation, did you see it? Did you hear it? Did you feel it? Gladness, gladness, joy. For his love of righteousness and hate of wickedness, for his war on lies and pride and wickedness, this king gets to be the happiest man who's ever lived. Which is a nice reward if you've just been to war. There's only one problem, though. I wonder if you've spotted it. Here's this king, the most handsome of men, victorious in battle, happily sitting on his throne, but he's all alone, and it is not good for man to be alone. Jane Austen in her famous novel Pride and Prejudice said, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune is in want of a wife. And here is this king in possession of an eternal kingdom, and he's in want of a wife. Which is why this king's anointing, the establishment of his kingdom, naturally moves towards his wedding. The occasion builds an atmosphere and tension. His robes are scented with all the best fragrances of the day, myrrh, aloes, cassia. His ivory palaces are filled with music. Daughters of kings have come from afar for the occasion. And at the right hand, at his right hand, stands the queen dressed in the gold of Ophir, which was the most expensive gold of the ancient world. Now, the queen here might be his bride. Or it might actually be his mother, the queen mother. If the queen is the bride, then the songwriter sort of fast forwards proceedings and gives us a future snapshot of the king in his palace with his new bride on his right arm, the royal wedding photograph, if you like. But I don't think that's what's happening here, because that would break the flow of how the psalm unfolds. You see, the wedding hasn't taken place yet. The bride doesn't enter until verse 13. All glorious is the princess in her chamber with robes interwoven with gold and many colored robes. She is led to the king with her virgin companions following behind her. Do you see the problem? In verse nine, she hasn't arrived yet. And if it is the bride, then the exhortations in verse 10 for her to leave her family and go to the king seem a bit odd if she's already standing at his right hand. You see the problem? So I think it's better to see this as a reference to the king's mother, and actually in the Hebrew, it's a different word to the word princess in verse 13. I think what we have here is a queen, mother, standing beside her victorious warrior son who is seated on his throne. Here is the offspring of a woman. waiting to be married after he has crushed his enemy in war. And so we're still waiting for the bride, and that's what we'd expect to happen next, right? If this man is the most beautiful of men, with a good fortune, an eternal kingdom, with ivory palaces, and the gold of Ophir, surely the bride's on her way. Surely she can't wait to marry this king. And so we would expect, verses 13 to 14, here comes the bride. But that's not what happens next. Verses 10 to 12, interrupt the flow. Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear. Forget your people and your father's house, and the king will desire your beauty. Here's the surprise. The bride's not on her way. She's staying away. She's delaying, she's hesitating. She's having second thoughts. This is the tense part of any wedding, isn't it? Will the bride turn up? In our Western culture, it's become a tradition for her to be a little bit late. It adds to the tension. Will she follow through with her commitment to marry? Has she met someone on the way? Or will she back out? And that's a bit like what's going on here. There seems some reason why she's hesitating. Now, I know, ladies, what you're thinking. She's hesitating. because the mother-in-law's standing beside him. You know, get the mother-in-law out of the way and then I'll come. Well, actually, no, it's not the mother-in-law that's causing her to hesitate, it's her own family. You see that in verse 10? Forget your people and your father's house. Getting married to this king means leaving her family and people. It's a big deal for her. It involves a cost. It involves a change of allegiance and loyalty and location. Marriage is a big deal. And I think most couples have moments when the weight of what they're about to do in their courtship or their engagement hits them. A lot of couples I know who are now happily married had wobbles in their engagement or courtship. Jackie and I were no different. We had a wee wobble. I try to tell myself Jackie had the wobble because she was feeling weak at the knees because she couldn't believe her luck. But Jackie's side of the story is a wee bit different. For Jackie, marrying me was a big deal because marrying me meant leaving her family and literally leaving her country. No small thing for a young girl. And if you've married internationally, cross-culturally, interstately, then you know exactly how we both felt. Marriage is a big deal. It involves at least one of you or both of you living away from family and friends. And it was the same for this bride. She's clearly from another country, from another people. She clearly lives at home still with her father and family. And leaving her home and country was the big deal. And that's why there's this interlude in the song. That's why the songwriter stops the proceedings. presses pause, stops the music and exhorts this waiting, hesitating bride to come to her king. And he exhorts her to follow through with her commitment by giving her some motivation. In verse 11, he says, if she leaves her people and family to cleave to the king, he will desire her beauty. She'll become the center of his attention. If she leaves her people and family, she will come under his authority as her lord. Nothing bad about that if he's a man of truth, humility, and righteousness. If she leaves her people and family, she'll become a woman of influence, the people of tire. will seek her favor. Now that's a pretty big deal because Tyre was the most prosperous neighbor to Israel, the richest of the peoples, especially in Solomon's day. And yet here the people of Tyre will now come to this queen for favor. She'll become a woman of world influence. It's a bit like Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge who's married to Prince William. She and William had a wee wobble. in their courtship, and they broke up for a time. Well, let's imagine they never got back together again. Do you think Kate Middleton would have been asked to open hospitals, attend charity balls, go on world tours for Her Majesty the Queen? No. It was her marriage to Prince William that has made her a woman of world influence for good. Perhaps that was one of her motivating factors, along with desiring William. and him desiring her beauty. All good motives. Well, we all know what happened in that royal wedding. William and Kate got over their wobble and she turned up at the wedding on time. And that's what this bride does, verse 13. All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. 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. This brings us to the fourth way in which we see the beauty of this king. The beauty of his words, the beauty of his war, the beauty of his rule, and now, the beauty of his bride. There are two indications of her beauty here. First, there's her dress. It's multicolored and interwoven with gold. Gold was the most expensive material in the ancient world. The gold of Ophir. Only kings could afford to buy gold or to wear clothes with gold in them, which means that her robes have been given to her by her groom. Her beauty was given to her by her husband-to-be. She looks beautiful, but only because of him. That's the first sign of her beauty. And then there's the hint of a second. Did you notice who attends her in verse 14? Virgin companions, which suggests that she herself is a virgin. This is her beauty presented as a virgin to her king dressed in beauty not her own. And so she enters the palace of her king. And then it's as if the curtains are drawn and they head off on honeymoon to consummate the marriage. And then the psalm sort of fast forwards to the king's posterity and praise. His posterity is seen in verse 16. In place of your fathers shall be your sons. You will make them princes in all the earth. His praise is seen in verse 17. I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations. Therefore, nations will praise you forever and ever." Prosperity and praise. The prosperity here and the praise are a bit like the best man's wedding toast. at the reception, only this is not his best wishes for the groom, but rather a prophetic prediction about the groom. And notice that it's a prediction about the groom and not the couple. Not the bride as well as the groom. No, it's a prediction only about him. The year in verse 16 is singular. The bridegroom will have sons. He will have posterity. And these sons will follow in their father's footsteps. They will be princes in all the earth. Here is a marriage that produces children whose rule spreads beyond the borders of Israel into all the earth. And then the psalm ends with a focus on this king's praise. I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations, therefore nations will praise you forever and ever." This brings us to the final therefore. Do you remember the three therefores? Verse 2, for being a man of grace, therefore he is eternally blessed. For being a man who loves righteousness and hates wickedness, therefore God has anointed him with the oil of gladness. And now, for being remembered in all generations, therefore he is guaranteed worldwide praise forever. And again, notice the your and the you are singular. The king's praise doesn't get passed to his wife as well. It doesn't even get passed on to his sons. It's always his, even when his sons rule the nations as princes. This is what is unique about this king's majesty and dynasty, sorry, about his dynasty. The praise is always his. In every other dynasty in the world, the praise for the monarch passes from them to their descendants when they die. Back in the UK, we sing, God save our gracious queen. But one day, she'll die, and Prince Charles or Prince William will become king, and then the national anthem will change. It will no longer be, God save our gracious queen. It will be, God save our gracious king. Why? Because the queen will be dead, and we will have a new king, and then the praise will be for him, not her. But not so in Psalm 45. The songs of the kingdom. will always be about this king, the one who is more handsome than all the sons of men. And it will be about him forever and ever. Which makes us ask the question, just who is this royal wedding love song actually about? We've seen the beauty of the king's words, the beauty of his war, the beauty of his rule, the beauty of his bride. We've seen their marriage ending in royal posterity and worldwide praise forever. So just who is this king? Well, in the first instance, it relates to a real king in Old Testament times because the mention of the gold of Ophir in verse nine and the people of Tyre in verse 12 situate this song in a historical, cultural setting. Some scholars think it's a love song about Ahab and his marriage to Jezebel. But as we'd say in our scholarly way in Belfast, catch yourself on. I mean please, Jezebel was a hater of Yahweh and Ahab followed in her footsteps. Ahab and Jezebel's marriage was hardly one you could put a song to and put it in the Psalter. I think Solomon's marriage to Pharaoh's daughter is the best guess. We know he married a foreigner, so she would have had to have left her father and country and people. We know Solomon was handsome from the Song of Songs, as was his father David. We know he was known for his wise words, words of grace, we might say. We know Tyre was the most prosperous neighbor to Israel in Solomon's day, so that fits with the richest of the peoples. But there are also problems with taking it as a reference to Solomon. Solomon never went to war. He was the prince of peace, never fought a war. 1 Kings 3 tells us Solomon made an alliance with Egypt and married Pharaoh's daughter, but it was opposite to what God had commanded Israel. The kings of Israel were not to marry foreigners in this regard. And yes, Rahab and Ruth are grafted in as wives of men in Israel, but they convert to the religion of Israel. There's no idea in the Bible that Pharaoh's daughter ever converted to the worship of Yahweh. In fact, isn't it that Solomon's wives turn his heart away from the worship of God after other gods. And if it was all about Solomon, why didn't the psalmist just tell us? But more significantly than even all of that is some of these descriptions just don't fit Solomon. Some of the descriptions are larger than life. They're too good to be true, too beautiful to be real. I mean, just glance back over the passage, and I'll show you what I mean. In verse two, it says, you are the most handsome of the sons of men, literally the sons of Adam. But that's an interpretation on the translator's part. The verse could equally be rendered, you are more handsome than the sons of Adam, not the most handsome of the sons of Adam. On the first translation, you are the most handsome of the sons of Adam. This king is one of the sons of Adam. But on the second translation, you are more handsome than the sons of Adam. This king stands outside the category of all the sons of Adam. Do you see the difference? It's a comparison between two groups, not a comparison within the one group. The King James Version actually interprets it the second way. More handsome than the sons of Adam. Which I think is the best translation. Because what we are seeing here is a king in a league of his own. Solomon was blessed initially by God and his reign as king but not eternally. As a result of his unfaithfulness in marriage the kingdom splits. In verse 3, this king is presented as a warrior, riding forth in splendor and majesty, just like God the warrior. And as I said, Solomon never went to war. In verse 6, he's addressed as God. In verse 7, he is anointed as the happiest man on earth. In verse 16, he's promised princes who will rule over all the earth, not just Israel. Verse 17, he's promised eternal praise from the nations, not just from the Queen of Sheba. And yes, there are some similarities to Solomon, but there are too many details organic to the text that suggests that this king is in a league of his own. In other words, what we have here is a king who is peerless. We have a King who is beautiful beyond compare. What we have in Psalm 45 is a King of all kings. Here is Jesus Christ, the most beautiful of the sons of Adam. No, more beautiful than all the sons of Adam, because He does not descend from Adam. He is another Adam, the second and last Adam, a king in his own right. This psalm is about the beauty of Jesus Christ and his posterity and his eternal praise. Just think about the beauty of Christ's words. They dripped with grace, they forgave, they freed, they favored the weak and sinful and excluded sinners like you and me. Jesus' words were the defining mark of his beauty. Because Isaiah tells us there was no outward beauty that we should desire him. You ever thought about that? That Jesus was so ordinary looking that if you saw him in the street, if you saw him in a crowd, you wouldn't take a second look at him. It wasn't that he was ugly, because then you probably would take a second look at him. He was just so ordinary looking. If you passed him in the street, you wouldn't even know you'd passed him in the street. But when he spoke, you never forgot it. Oh, the beauty of his words. They dripped with grace. And because he was a man of grace, he was qualified to go to war. Just think about the beauty of his war. He fought for truth, humility, and righteousness. Just think of how he went to war with the Pharisees for their lies and hidden sins and hypocrisy. He spoke the truth, he stood up for righteousness. Just think of how he went to war with the world authorities in Jerusalem with all their pride and haughtiness. He exposed their pride by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Just think about how he humbled himself yet further by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. And yet it was that humble death that was an arrow in the heart of his enemy. Jesus was a man of war. But it was a beautiful war, because in it he conquered the world, the flesh, and the devil. And he rose victorious from the battlefield of death, never to die again. And then he is, or was, raised and ascended into heaven, and seated at the Father's right hand, and given an eternal kingdom. He was given the title God, so that at his feet every knee shall bow. Think about the beauty of his rule. Verse 6, Hebrews tells us that the throne and the title belongs only to one person. God's Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. This is the beauty of his rule. His kingdom is eternal, it's divine, it's upright. And then finally there's the beauty of his bride. That's you and me here this morning. From heaven he came and sought her to be his holy bride. With his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died. And because of that death, we will be presented to him on that last day in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, like a virgin, dressed in robes of golden beauty, not our own. And that's why this love song for the king was written. so that we, his bride, might see the beauty of our king, the one who is the fairest of ten thousand, the one more beautiful than all the sons of Adam. And having seen his beauty, we might burst into song for the king." Because that's what love songs are meant to do, isn't it? They're meant to stir our affections, our emotions for the one we love. And what the Holy Spirit says to us this morning is, betrothed bride of Christ, lift up your heads and behold the beauty of your king. And don't hesitate. Don't get distracted. Go to him. If you're on the mountaintop of joy, Don't get distracted. If you're in the valley of the shadow of death, don't be discouraged. Lift up your heads and behold the beauty of your King. Don't take your eyes off the King, because soon and very soon we're going to see the King. And so the bride of Christ says, come, Lord Jesus, come. Let us pray. Father, you have shown us this morning the beauty of your son in all his glory, from his humble birth to his exaltation to your right hand. And we ask that this morning, having seen him in this, Sam, you would show us that we, by grace, are his bride. And you would cause us to love him more dearly and follow him more nearly. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.