2017/07/9 Based on Psalm 45: 10-17

 Sunday, July 9, 2017

10 Listen, daughter, and pay careful attention: Forget your people and your father’s house. 11 Let the king be enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord. 12 The city of Tyre will come with a gift ,people of wealth will seek your favor. 13 All glorious is the princess within her chamber; her gown is interwoven with gold. 14 In embroidered garments she is led to the king; her virgin companions follow her, those brought to be with her.15 Led in with joy and gladness, they enter the palace of the king. 16 Your sons will take the place of your fathers; you will make them princes throughout the land. 17 I will perpetuate your memory through all generations; therefore the nations will praise you for ever and ever.

Psalm 45:10–17

This passage speaks to the beauty of the bride and the glory of the bridegroom and his kingdom.

As a lay speaker, I generally speak only a handful of times a year, when our pastor is away or when another church needs someone. The nice part of that is that I can take the time to think about what I want to talk about, choose my own scriptures, write and rewrite, and test ideas. It is a luxury that a pastor does not have. Because they need to have a message weekly, they must spend a large portion, often the major portion, of their time praying, studying, allowing the Spirit to guide them, and then writing and rewriting.

Being part of Pastor Ron’s preaching team is a big change. No longer do I have the luxury of choosing for myself. As part of his team, he tells us which scriptures he has chosen, explains why he chose them, and points out the focus of the message. We then prepare within our own style, and this way, even though we are different speakers with different styles and backgrounds, the same idea will be spoken in any of the collaborative churches on any given Sunday. It is a change and a challenge for all of us. It is a chance for growth. It is both frightening and exhilarating.

So I prayed over the scripture and began writing. Since this passage clearly describes a wedding, I set to work. As Christians, we understand that all mentions of marriage can in some way be applied to the marriage of Christ and His church. I have studied biblical wedding customs and felt confident discussing them. I began putting down ideas I had been taught about biblical marriage: arranged contracts, the dowry or bride price, and the understanding that, while there were notable exceptions, marriage was not primarily about love or choice but about alliances between families, tribes, and businesses.

Then I decided to take one more look at the research. I went to a Messianic Jewish site and read about the actual steps of marriage and the contracts involved. It was an eye-opener. While in biblical culture women did not have all the rights we, as modern women, enjoy, they had many more rights and protections than I had realized.

I had thought biblical marriage customs were a bit barbaric. The woman usually had no choice or voice in selecting a husband. The bride price was a payment meant to compensate the father for the loss of a laborer in his household. But when I did the extra research, I found that my view, and the view I had been taught, was overly simplistic.

The first step was called Shiddukhin. This was the father of the groom searching for and selecting a bride for his son. An example of this is in Genesis 24, where Abraham sought a bride for his son Isaac.

The second step was the Ketubah, or marriage contract, which is still used today. The contract included provisions and conditions of the marriage. The groom promised to support his wife, and the bride stipulated the contents of her dowry or her financial status. Also, as seen in Genesis 24, the terms were laid out, but it appears the consent of the bride, Rebekah, was very much part of the contract.

The third step was the Mohar, or bridal payment. Called the bride price, this was a gift from the bridegroom to the bride’s family. It set her free from her parents’ household. We see this illustrated with Rebekah and Isaac, and also in Genesis 29, where Jacob works for his brides Leah and Rachel. This bride price was different from the dowry. The dowry was what the bride brought into the marriage. It belonged to her and was to be returned to her should her husband divorce her, or used to support her if her husband died.

Though not mentioned in the Genesis examples, it was customary for the bride and groom to take a ritual immersion before entering the formal betrothal period.

We can see all these steps illustrating the betrothal of Christ and His church. We were selected by God to be His Son’s beloved bride (Ephesians 1:4). The contract is the New Covenant, and He paid the bride price with His life. The bride promises to offer her dowry, that is, her yielded life.

We are told in 1 Peter 1:18–19 that our bride price was not silver or gold, but Jesus’ own life.

We have also gone through the ritual immersion, Jesus by John at the start of His ministry, and ourselves through baptism.

The actual biblical betrothal is called the Eyrusin, meaning “the sanctification.” This was the time of preparation before the actual marriage. It is different from our custom of engagement. A betrothal was binding, and the couple would need a religious divorce to annul the contract. This option was only afforded to the groom.

After the contracts were signed and both bride and groom had been ritually immersed, separately, the couple would meet under a canopy and express their intention of becoming betrothed. They exchanged an item of value, such as rings, and then shared a cup of wine to seal the betrothal. The groom would give his bride a valuable gift to remind her of his love. They then separated, the groom returning home to prepare a place for his bride, usually an addition to the family home. This is reflected in Jesus’ words in John 14:1–3. The bride would begin preparing herself, specifically sewing bridal garments that were intricate and beautiful.

We can see these steps with Jesus and the church. He sealed the New Covenant at the Last Supper. He told us He was going to prepare a place for us. He gave us the Holy Spirit as a gift of value to remind us of His love.

Another interesting aspect of biblical marriage is that the home being prepared for the bride had to be inspected and approved as better than the home she was leaving. It was not up to the groom to decide when he would return for his bride, that decision belonged to his father. We see the parallel in Matthew 24:36.

The final part of the marriage was the Nissuin, the wedding itself. The bride knew the groom would return, usually in about a year, but the exact timing was always a surprise. She was to be ready at any time. We remember the parable Jesus told in Matthew 25 of the prepared and unprepared bridal party.

The groom’s party would lead the way, blowing the shofar and announcing his coming. Jesus will return, according to 1 Thessalonians 4:16, to the sound of a trumpet. They would rush to set up the canopy, and the bride and groom would meet under it, say a blessing over a cup of wine, share it, and finalize their vows.

Then came the celebration. This wasn’t just a nice sit-down dinner. This was seven full days of food, music, dancing, and joyful celebration.

Finally, the entire wedding party and guests would escort the bride and groom to their new home, where they would at last begin their life together.

This is such a wonderful picture of our joining with our beloved Jesus forever.

That was the other thing I had misunderstood about biblical marriage. There was love involved, because love is not just an emotion, it is a choice. Love is so much more than the excitement and thrill when you first meet someone. We can choose to love, just as God chose to love us. John 3:16 says that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. We were not worthy of being loved. God chose to love us even before we were washed by Jesus’ sacrifice. He looks deep into us and sees the beauty inside us, now clean by that sacrifice. We choose to love Jesus, and as we get to know Him more and more, our love grows.

I want to tell you something. I have mirrors in my home. I have seen myself in them. When Ron and I married, he told his family that he was marrying the most beautiful woman in the world. I know this because Ron’s little brother Carl told me. Carl also said that their whole family was shocked when they saw me. They all wondered how Ron could think such a fat woman could ever be considered beautiful. But Carl added that when he got to know me, he understood what Ron meant. Ron was looking at me with eyes of love, seeing me, the real me.

The psalm we read today describes the bride as beautiful and glorious as she comes to her husband, the king. That is exactly how God sees us. We are the perfect bride for His Son. We have been washed clean and pure and are arrayed in the beautiful garments of holiness. Our love for Jesus shines in our eyes. Our obedience to His commandments is a magnificent robe, and the souls of those we have shared Jesus with are brilliant jewels in our crown. We see ourselves physically, but He sees us with His eyes of love, radiant and beautiful beyond description. I pray you can see yourself this way: precious and dearly loved.

I have one more thought on this passage that might be lost to modern readers. I have spent the last couple of years studying Jewish customs and thought. There are no parts of scripture that a Hebrew scholar would see as simple or straightforward. Because of the complexity of the Hebrew language, they see layers and layers of meaning. The original readers of this psalm understood it to be about a wedding, but also more. It described change coming, the bride shifting her allegiance from her family to her husband and his family. They saw it as a warning of change coming to Israel.

In our era of declining churches, changing customs, and new ways of doing things, we need to remember that no matter what changes we see, we are the beloved bride, betrothed to the King, beautiful in His eyes. He will never stop loving us or caring for us, up to and beyond the day we are with Him, rejoicing at our great wedding feast that will last forever.