“My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.” Or, “my tongue is the pen of a ready scribe.” The writer of Psalm 45 had no need of conjuring up a blessing for the royal wedding, something we can barely do for a birthday card; no, but indeed, his pen was ready as a scribe receiving the oracles of God. So it is, this Psalm must be looked into, read, and enjoyed as a writing from God himself on the wall, with images that open deeper and deeper into a personal hearing of God’s very voice, a voice with sound perhaps. The one who is too busy with the cares of this life will not hear these words and even if, with their very ears the words are heard, even in song, but the tune will fall flat as on a wedding guest too busy with her own makeup to possibly feel the majesty of the appearance of the bride and the subtleties of the fleeting moments in the ceremony. Is this how we go about life? Are we too busy or worried to be able to pause and wonder, to hear? But we are beckoned, “Listen, O daughter, Consider and incline your ear.”

The writer addresses both the King and God, as God. This is how it was translated from the Hebrew into the Greek. “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever;” . . . “Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You.” There is that familiar and wondrous sight of Jesus and his relationship with the Father in the Psalm; he who as a King was God, and worshipped God. Endless facets of the splendor and majesty of Jesus are here found, even in “Grace is poured upon Your lips”. These words should bring images to our minds of Jesus as a child teaching scribes with grace, or standing on the mount, his audience moved by the authority on his words. Even without being present in any of his meetings we love, as it is written, “whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Pt. 1:8). So permeating, clean, pure, powerful, holy, everlasting, and blessed were his words. The grace is poured; it overflows and saturates all his garments. “It is like the precious oil upon the head, Running down on the beard, The beard of Aaron, Running down on the edge of his garments.” For Jesus is that unity, that oil running down the beard of Aaron, that costly oil with which the first High Priest was anointed and ordained. And it is he, Jesus, who reigns from the mountains of Zion and causes the oil to flow once more . . . the time approaches. And this is the oil poured upon the lips of Jesus, the oil of gladness, the oil that ran down the edges of Aarons garments, even “Life forevermore” (Psalm 133). Yes, life for eternity, but not as we have ever experienced, for life is now forevermore  full unity withChrist himself, as he said, standing outside the tomb of Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn. 11:25).