My Heart Overflows: A Love Song for My King

Welcome & Exciting News

Oak Grove will begin meeting again in person on May 17. We’ll continue our live stream so if your health is high risk or you’re uncertain whether you’re comfortable coming back immediately we encourage you to remain home to stay healthy. We’ll implement safety measures when we return to meet again. But I am thrilled to be able to all of you and to be able to worship together again.

Please pray for several in our church family who are grieving. This has been a hard week for several in our church family, and we grieve with those who grieve. We’ll send a prayer update email tomorrow so you can be praying more specifically.

We’re thrilled to announce that Pastor Brian & Jenni Petry had a baby boy, “Simon” Monday afternoon! What a joy to experience new life and see the Petry family continue to grow.

As you know we recently hired Jenni as our Ministry Assistant, so know that she’ll be taking the month off to settle into life with two wonderful boys! Pray for the Petry family as they adjust and learn new things together.

Series Introduction

SERIES TITLE

The title of the series reveals the raw, gut-level, honest emotion we ourselves experience in life, and see in the wording we see in the Psalms, which is why the Psalms provide comfort to so many. There is a particular language, or choice of wording, used throughout. This wording helps us understand each of the Psalms and how we can pray them, cry them, or sing them back to the Lord. We can even use them—and should—to pattern our own prayers and write them out!

Over the next few months we’ll focus on aspects of the language of the Psalms we’ve become detached from so we can reengage with God’s prayer book with confidence and either begin or deepen our engagement with God in raw, honest and God-glorifying prayer. When Jesus showed God’s great love for us by coming by coming to earth and taking the form (body) of a servant, and subsequently laying down His life at Calvary to pay the penalty for your sin and mine, He death opened the way for every Christian to pray to the Father with no human mediator (middle-man), since Jesus is now the one perfect mediator for all.

This means adults and children can and should grow in our understanding of the Psalms and how to use them to fuel our understanding of God, our faith, and take us deeper in pray conversation with the Lord.

Pace of life.

We live in a fast-paced culture with more information (and yes, distraction) at our fingertips in a matter of seconds than any time in history. In a moment you can find how to relocate your shed across your backyard, replace a part in your engine, learn how to swaddle an infant, and read more theology/bible study helps for free than you can imagine.

This means it goes against the grain for us to prioritize God and His Word enough to slow down to read words given to us by God that are meant to be read slowly.

Desires.

I think we have to be honest here to say that when it really comes down to it it’s not that “we don’t have time” to read God’s Word. If we’re honest, we’ll acknowledge that it’s an issue of desire.

I am pulled in almost every direction away from the Bible, and it’s a real fight to get it back into view. It takes prioritizing, boxing other things—other desires—out so my soul can be satisfied by God’s Word.Don’t misunderstand, it’s not that the Bible isn’t soul-satisfying (it is!). We find ourselves distracted with lesser, more trivial things.But God’s promise is that the God of the Bible will satisfy every need of your soul! The totality of who you are can be fully satisfied in Christ, who takes us to God through the empowering work of the Spirit of God.

We’ve become detached from the

God-centered posture.

There’s a manner of speaking/acting—flowing from what we believe—that is intensely focused on God and His glory to the degree that no matter what we endure in this life, focusing the totality of who we are (our heart) on the Lord’s glory and on the glory (satisfaction or joy) that will one day be ours to experience forever, is the only lasting medicine for our souls. The Lord beckons us to speak to the Lord in real, raw, God-glorifying prayer—privately, then with our family members, and then publicly—and God is magnified above all other desires.

In the wonderful preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, the reformer John Calvin calls the Psalms an “anatomy of all the parts of the soul” because “there is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or, rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn to the life all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated.”

We’ll see this in a certain language. But first we must slow down, admit that we desperately need God to be first in our lives, and that is entirely made possible through coming to Jesus in humility and faith/dependence. Jesus, the Son, is the single doorway to the Father.

The language of the Psalms.

In the Psalms we see prayers for every season of life. We learn that:

Blessed = “How to Be Really Happy in Jesus” (Psalms 1-2)

Confession = “I’m Sorry for My Sin, Stay Near to Help, Lord.” (Psalms 38, 51)

Confidence = “I Trust You, Lord.” (Psalms 11, 23, 62)

Lament = “Why, Lord?” or “I’m Afraid, Lord.” or “How Long, O Lord?” (Psalms 32, 42-43, 69, 70)

Praise = “I Love You.” (Psalms 8, 33, 111)

Petition = “Help, Lord!” (Psalms 71, 74, 88)

Transition to Message

This morning we get to lean into another type of Psalm, a Royal Psalm, or a Kingship Psalm.

Psalm 45 is a wedding love song of the Sons of Korah.

Kingship Psalms, or Royal Psalms can often be capture with a phrase like, “You are beautiful, Lord!” But let’s be honest, we often struggle to get there because it takes time. To see beauty in something or someone requires that we slow down, sit and really consider someone and what it is that makes them beautiful.

It’s also a challenge for us men because we often have a hard time speaking with flowery language to the Lord. But these Sons of Korah model it for us and we would do well to take our cue from them, learning to pray and sing My Heart Overflows: A Love Song for My King.

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My Heart Overflows: A Love Song for My King (Psalm 45)

Weddings are special - especially Christian weddings. Christian weddings are a sort of worship service. That may seem to be an odd comparison, but in life everything is worship—either of God or something/someone else. So a wedding between a man and a woman who profess that Jesus is their Savior and stand together before (usually) their pastor, facing each other, and often many special guests who make up their local body of Christ with some additional guests and family is very much a worship service as they all come together before the Lord.

Wedding preparation

There is much preparation that goes on before a special wedding day:

Engagement

First there is the engagement, of course, which comes with its own preparation. I remember preparing for mine as I was growing in love with Cherilyn. I thought of how to craft a memorable engagement and quickly what came to mind was writing a song. Now, I’m not much of a song-writer, but that’s alright because when you write a song for your soon-to-be-fiance it doesn’t really matter if it’s that good…she’ll love it anyway.

And while I had to sit down and think through how to compose the song, coming up with the idea wasn’t all that hard. You see I loved her and I knew we wanted a life that would glorify God together which would require a promise of cherishing her, and nurturing a love that would be dependent on Jesus to endure the tests of life.

And so I penned the song that ended with the words, “Will you by my bride?”

Of course then I had to navigate putting my guitar in its case, getting the ring out and getting on one knee (in a canoe, mind you) and placing her engagement ring on her ring finger (oh, after picking the ring up off the floor of the canoe and thanking the Lord that it didn’t land in the lake)!

It seems to me like our love for the Lord is quite similar: we love the Lord so we set out on a journey of following Him, fraught with fumbling about with distractions and difficulty that we often bring upon ourselves and others. This is why the Christian revels in the pursuing love of Jesus which goes after us when even when we run astray.

Wedding Day Preparations

After the engagement comes a period which describes the space between when a follower of Christ awaits the day when our engagement (our now meaning the Bride of Christ) will culminate in the marriage promised. We have confidence to wait with hope through His Holy Spirit, Who is the engagement ring, if you will (though a more permanent one), for the Christian. He reminds us that God made a promise to us to save us and to bring us home for the Marriage between the Bride and Christ Jesus.

During the engagement period couples grow in their love and plan for the big day. There is much anticipation. Every detail is though through, and with it come a flood of joyous memories, and the soon-to-be bride and groom don’t have to think too hard, because the memories flow quite easily.

In this Psalm, the Sons of Korah, let us into this love song.

SCRIPTURE SLIDES

Psalm 45 ESV

To the choirmaster: according to Lilies. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah; a love song. 1 My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. 2 You are the most handsome of the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever. 3 Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty! 4 In your majesty ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness; let your right hand teach you awesome deeds! 5 Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king’s enemies; the peoples fall under you. 6 Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of uprightness; 7 you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions; 8 your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia. From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad; 9 daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor; at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir. 10 Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear: forget your people and your father’s house, 11 and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him. 12 The people of Tyre will seek your favor with gifts, the richest of the people. 13 All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. 14 In many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her. 15 With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king. 16 In place of your fathers shall be your sons; you will make them princes in all the earth. 17 I will cause your name to be remembered in all generations; therefore nations will praise you forever and ever.

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A Heart Captivated by God’s Love Overflows in Praise to God (1)

A pleasing theme

As the psalmist watches this wedding, he sees the king and is, in a moment, transported in his mind to think of another King. The King of David who is the eternal king. His heart, which is to say his inner being and belief system, is stirred up within Him.

Lev. 2:7 speaks of cooking the grain offering in a pan. The idea is that his words and thoughts are constantly stirred up as though boiling over in a pan with rich praise.

Friends when we distill our relationship with the Lord into do’s and don’ts, we miss this entire (and primary) dimension of our love for the Lord and it because dry, regulations and formulas that were never intended to be forefront.

But when we sit with God by reading His word, when we contemplate His utter holiness and extravagant love for us and then consider the lengths He went to to demonstrate His love in Christ because “while we were still sinners Jesus (lived and) died for us (Rom. 5:8).”

Often we find ourselves in a defensive posture, so insecure striving to prove our worth to the Lord and to others that we miss the gospel altogether. The only thing to prove has been proven already: that Jesus loves and came to save sinners and I’m at the front of the line of sinners (1 Tim. 1:15).

When you spend your time defending yourself, avoiding responsibility for your part of obedience out of love you miss the joy of this beautiful relationship—this pleasing theme.

His tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe (1c).

One of the most beloved hymns, The Love of God, was written by Frederick M. Lehman, the 20th Century author and composer.

He tells that “These words were found written on a cell wall in a prison some 200 years ago, scratched onto the wall of a prison cell. It is not known why the prisoner was incarcerated; neither is it known if the words were original or if he had heard them somewhere and had decided to put them in a place where he could be reminded of the greatness of God’s love – whatever the circumstances, he wrote them on the wall of his prison cell. In due time, he died and the men who had the job of repainting his cell were impressed by the words. Before their paint brushes had obliterated them, one of the men jotted them down and thus they were preserved.”

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The Love of God (verse 3 lyrics)

Could we with ink the ocean fill

And were the skies of parchment made

Were every stalk on earth a quill

And every man a scribe by trade

To write the love of God above

Would drain the ocean dry

Nor could the scroll contain the whole

Though stretched from sky to sky

Chorus

O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure

The saints' and angels' song

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God is the Only Eternally Glorious Groom (2-9)

Notice his striking presence (2).

More…than...

Psalm 45:2 ESV

2 You are the most handsome of the sons of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you forever.

But it’s more than his physical appearance. Grace poured on your lips shows the blessing of God that shines forth from him.

Majestic Spirit (3-5)

The king is described as a man of war—one who faces danger with strength, bravery and dignity.

His Administration is Eternally Righteous (6-9)

Hebrews 1:8–9 cites these verses in Greek from the Septuagint as part of the author’s argument that the “Son” is superior to the angels. Hebrews 1 applies the term “Son” to Jesus, probably in his role as the heir of David. Thus Heb. 1:5 puts Ps. 2:7 with 2 Sam. 7:14, where “Son of God” is a title for the Davidic king (see note on Ps. 2:7). This also accounts for the use of the messianic 110:1 in Heb. 1:3, 13. (Hebrews does go on, like the rest of the NT, to apply to Jesus an OT passage about Yahweh; see note on Ps. 102:25–27.)

Since the king was God representative on earth, he could be addressed as “god,” an ’ĕlōhîm. This would then be a hint of the V 2, p 73 close relationship between God and the king, as expressed in Psalm 2

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Live for Your Groom (King) (10-15)

The marriage procession is about to begin and the bride receives words of instruction from the psalmist.

Forsake your background and live for your king.

Because the royal bridegroom is majestic, powerful, and righteous, the bride must take every care to please him so that their union will be glorious.

The first part of this Psalm is mention in Heb, and then in Revelation 19:6–8 we read about the time of the marriage supper of the Lamb and his bride. John very clearly asserts that the bride was instructed to clothe herself with white linens, which are the righteous acts of the saints.

Allen Ross points out:

The mention of the bride, and the pure linens, and the royal bridegroom, draw on biblical imagery begun in Psalm 45. Therefore, in the New Testament the apostles make a spiritual application from this marriage of the king. The royal wedding will not be an actual wedding, but a joyous union of Christ and his redeemed in heaven, and a new beginning of that life together. Thus, the second main application from the psalm is for believers to be doing righteous acts now in anticipation of the marriage supper.

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A Marriage Blessed in Heaven (16-17)

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