Psalm 45

 

⁰⁶          Your throne O God is forever and ever,

                        the scepter of Your kingdom is one of righteousness

⁰⁷                      You love righteousness and hate wickedness.

            Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You

with the oil of gladness above Your companions;

 

TEXTUAL RESOURCES

 

English Standard Version                                   Interlinear NIV Hebrew-English Old Testament

New Geneva Study Bible (NKJV)    Bratcher & Reyburn. Translator’s Handbook on the Psalms

Authorized (King James) Version     Barthelemy.  Pre & Int Rpt on the Hebrew OT Text Project

New American Standard Bible                                         Dahood.  The Anchor Bible: Psalms 1-50

The Jerusalem Bible

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Christ – on His eternal throne

For the Lord’s Day:  the 26^th of January 2003

 

Hebrews 1: 8-9

 

“But of the Son he says,

‘Your throne, O God, is foever and ever,

the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;

therefore God, your God, has anointed you

with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.’”

 

Introduction:  Our double entry from the Old and New Covenant witness today is to the vast unenlightened multitude as mysterious as the double-entry method of accounting which no amount of study could penetrate my mind when I once took up an accounting text book to learn something about that mysterious procedure.  My father trained as an accountant and for many years in the county was able to offer advice to friends, business associates and even a law firm.  On one occasion he was even called upon to show a father how his own son was transferring funds from their joint business to himself.  And it was a proper use of the double-entry system which exposed the on-going transfer.

 

To the public mind, the uses of dual references in the Old and New Covenant texts to obscure arguments seems to be a waste of paper and time.  However, any good lawyer will take all of the evidence for a case that can be scratched together, and while the jury may suffer long and hard – it is sometimes the overwhelming nature of the evidence that proves a case.  And such is the theological detailing before us in the incredible depth of the Apostles’ letter to the Hebrew people.

 

And the incredible depth of revelation argument is precisely the focus of our author here today.  As we work through the details, let us remember that so very much of the church in our day believes that dealing with sin is like wading in the shallow waters of a children’s pool.  However, we as well as the authors of the sacred texts have learned that when sin is involved – the depth of the waters is oceanic in proportion and except for the grace of God, everyone would sink instead of swim!

 

Development:  We begin our exposition of the text with the coupling of Old and New Covenant accounts in the wisdom of Delitzsch and more ancient Jewish Targumist.  “The Epistle to the Hebrews proceeds on the assumption that it is the future Christ, the Son of God,” mentioned here.  That view “is supported … by a tradition of the ancient synagogue” where the word Messiah is rendered in verse three of this Psalm.

 

However, where one ancient commentator was willing to tread, the leaders of the Jewish Church in Jesus’ time were unwilling to tread.  While to the Jewish mind the conceptual coming of a Messiah was common, the specifics of biblical references were little appreciated as they applied to the very person of God in the flesh:  Jesus Christ.

 

Commentator Delitzsch sets the context of the original publication of the Psalm in the royal wedding of Joram, the son of Jehoshaphat, to Athaliah, a daughter of the royal house of Tyre.  However, the fact that greater promises extending into an unlimited future where the prosperity and glory of Israel are grander than the mere rule of men is probable – this hint of the future glory is presumed to belong to the greater Son of David, even Christ Himself. 

 

Thus, we may learn, the later greater glory of the Lord Himself not only informs the ancient texts but will to believing hearts demonstrate what the God of Creation has been planning from the dawn of time.  And those blind guides of Christ’s time miss the theological bus entirely because they will not understand the ancient revelations as their divine author fully intended.

 

Delitzsch explains the absolute necessity for the messianic relationship of this psalm, when he observes:  “All the glorious things declared in the Psalm depend upon this (application to the Messiah) as the primary assumption, as essential to their being a blessing and being realized, that the king whom it celebrates should carry out the idea of the theocratic kingship.  To the Old Testament prophecy and hope, more especially since the days of Isaiah, the Messiah, and to the New Testament conception of the fulfillment of prophecy Jesus Christ, is the perfected realization of this idea.”

 

To this statement, I feel obligated to add the commental question:  What would be the ultimate use of the unfulfilled promises and covenantal structure if the Old Covenant were to simply stand alone in the literature and religions of the world?  The Jewish cult today must major in ethics and narrow mindedness because they refuse to recognize the complete and final fulfillment of their sacred texts.

 

In the same way, how little we really do appreciate the complexities of the New Covenant if we refuse to study the implications and promises of the Old Covenant records.  The author of the letter to the Hebrews would hang the pronouncements of the New Covenant upon the very letter of the law, the prophets, the scribes and psalmists of the Old Covenant record and thereby prove the sense of Christology on that prophetic basis – if we will have it and appreciate the ancient roots of what we testify to and believe.

 

Calvin observes that is must necessarily be “the divine majesty of Christ, beyond all question, [which] is expressly denoted here” in our text.  To that Spurgeon glories in the divine revelation with these majestic observations concerning verse six:  “The Psalmist cannot restrain his adoration.  His enlightened eye sees in the royal Husband of the church, God, God to be adored, God reigning, God reigning everlastingly.  Blessed sight!  Blind are the eyes that cannot see God in Christ Jesus!  We never appreciate the tender condescension of our King in becoming one flesh with his church, and placing her at his right hand, until we have fully rejoiced in his essential glory and deity.”

 

Both deity and manhood are obvious notations of the two verses before us as characteristic of our Lord Jesus Christ, the long promised Messiah of Israel.  It is and was to Him alone that the Hebrew Scriptures pointed and anticipated all the way from Adam to Malachi.

 

Application:  In the New Covenant application of the Messianic revelation before us, we must focus on the introductory comparison back to earlier verses: “But of the Son he says.”  This phrase harkens back not only to verse five where we read: “For to which of the angels did God ever say,” and also to verses six and seven: “And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says,” and “Of the angels he says.”

 

In all three cases, the reader was sent back again to Old Covenant passages which highlight the prophetic intentions of the original syntax.  The contrast is all the more dramatic in the comparative word moving us on to study specifically what the Old Covenant Scriptures say of the Son Himself.  In this case, we read about the final establishment of the Divine reign in and through God with us - in the person of the Son.

 

But, commentator John Brown shares something more with us from this Old Covenant usage, especially of the seventh verse of Psalm Forty-five, which reads: “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” By his reckoning, “These words are very descriptive of the whole of the character and conduct of our Lord Jesus, who “knew no sin” – who “always did the things which pleased the Father” – who was equally free from hereditary and personal guilt, from original and acquired depravity – whose character combined every species of moral excellence in its highest degree, and whose life was an uniform tenor of unspotted holiness – whose conformity to the divine will was perfect in its principle, perfect in its extend, and perfect in its duration.”

 

Do you realize the utter description of His awesome holiness in that description?  Yes, the Jews and much of the ancient world hoped for the “long expected Jesus” which we sing about during the Advent season.  And yet, culturally – neither the seasoned Greeks nor educated Jews would or could grasp the divinity thereby implicit.

 

In addition, there is in this text the “divine investiture with supreme dominion,” as Brown describes it in leading up to the apostolic words declared in Philippians 2: 5-11.  “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

 

Two further points may be made from our text today.  F.F. Bruce points the way:  “His anointing with ‘the oil of gladness’ refers not so much to His official inauguration as Messiah – when ‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power’ (Acts 10:38) – as to the joy with which God has blessed Him in acknowledgement of His vindication of divine justice,” that we read about in Hebrews 12: 2: “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

 

And finally we must consider who the Messiah’s “companions.” are.   Bruce would argue that in the present context, the term must have a special meaning:  “The angels cannot be intended; their inferiority to the Son is so insisted on here that they could scarcely be described as His ‘fellows’.

 

We are referred to the “brethren” of Christ in Hebrews 2: 10-11 where we are reminded again of the whole purpose of the historic enterprise of Jesus Christ:  “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.  For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one origin.  That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.”  If that is not enough to describe the whole purpose of redemptive history, turn back to Hebrews 3: 14 to read where we fit into this revelationary record:  “For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.”

 

Bruce tells us that the word metochoi translated as “fellows” “peers” or “companions” is none other than all of those being elected in Jesus Christ – the members of the Church, or the bride also mentioned in the psalm from which our text is drawn today.  It is our joy that is great indeed, because of our companionship with Him, but whether we can fathom it or not – His joy is greater still!  How can it be that the joy we should have in being saved – is lesser than the joy of Him who saves.  Wondrous indeed are the things about God’s incredible grace that even the Angels would look into!  May we count our salvation a great joy indeed.  Amen.

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PREACHING RESOURCES

 

Brown, John.  A Geneva Series Commentary: Hebrews.

Bruce, F.F.  New International Commentary on the New Testament: Hebrews.

Calvin, John:  Commentary on Book of Psalms.

Delitzsch, F:  Commentary on the Old Testament – Psalms.

Spurgeon, C.H:  Treasury of David.

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