Sometimes wedding announcements can be funny.
The printed notice for the upcoming Hardy-Harr wedding predicted fun times. On the other hand, I wonder if the Looney-Ward wedding lived up to its billing. (As a pastor, I’ve presided over a couple of ceremonies that deserved that name.)
At the Kalla-Plummer wedding, hopefully they didn’t need to.
Let’s hope the announcement of the Sharpe-Payne wedding wasn’t a bad marital prophecy.
I know that sometimes a bride or groom second-guesses their decision before the ceremony. So, at the Wendt-Adaway wedding, did the groom run? And did they have to chase down the bride in the Gowen-Geter wedding?
Psalm 45 is a wedding announcement. It was originally composed to celebrate the wedding of one of Israel’s kings. But when you read it, you quickly see that no earthly king could perfectly fit the description in the verses. That is why Jews began to see it as a prophecy of the coming Messiah. They determined that the Holy Spirit was using the historical wedding of an earthly king to tell them something about the coming Messiah—and about the kind of people they needed to be for that coming Messiah.
God’s word tells us that God is on such intimate terms with his people that there’s only one earthly comparison: marriage. The kind of relationship that you find in an ideal marriage is the kind of intimacy and caring that God has toward his people. When we look into Psalm 45, we see a picture of what Jesus is for us—and what we must be for him. Verses 1-9 celebrate what kind of groom the church has in Jesus, and verses 10-17 remind us of what kind of bride the church needs to be for Jesus.
This Sunday, look at Psalm 45 with us and rejoice again in the relationship we have with the King of the universe! We’ll begin our worship service online and on campus at 10am.
--Tom
Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.