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Scripture Reading: Psa. 45:1-15
In this message we would like to see something regarding the flow of the Spirit and the exercise of our spirit in Psalm 45. Psalm 45 is a psalm that praises Christ and speaks of Christ as the King. Verse 1 says, “My heart overflows with a good matter.” Overflowing is a matter of our spirit. As Christians we must be constantly overflowing because we have something good to tell people, and this should cause us to praise, sing, and overflow. The people around us, the angels, the demons, and all the created things in this universe should hear us overflowing with a good matter. We all need to be like the psalmist, overflowing with something by speaking forth, singing, and praising.
Verse 1 continues, “I speak what I have composed concerning the King.” If we are in the spirit, we will always have something composed concerning the Lord and will always be overflowing. This is not a matter of mere knowledge, teaching, or doctrine but a matter in the spirit and of the spirit. The verse ends by saying, “My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.” The composer’s pen is his tongue. This indicates that our tongue should always be ready to compose something in praise of the Lord, and the only way we can be ready is by being in the spirit. By exercising our spirit the whole day, we will be like a ready writer. However, if we walk, act, and do things not in the spirit but in the soul or the mind, we will not sing any songs to the Lord. We may sing songs in the meetings when we are with others, but we will not sing songs when we are by ourselves, because such songs can be sung only in the spirit. This is one way we can check whether or not we as Christians are normal.
The next verse speaks of the King, who is Christ the Lord: “You are fairer than the sons of men; / Grace is poured upon Your lips; / Therefore God has blessed You forever” (v. 2). This verse clearly speaks of Christ, who spoke words of grace (Luke 4:22) and is God blessed forever (Rom. 9:5). The first part of Psalm 45:8 says, “All Your garments smell of myrrh and aloes, of cassia.” The myrrh and aloes in verse 8 signify the death and burial of Christ. In those days after someone died, his relatives would bury him with myrrh and aloes. After the Lord died on the cross, Nicodemus, a rich man, claimed His body and anointed His body with myrrh and aloes before His burial (John 19:39), indicating that these two spices signify death and burial. Garments in the Scriptures signify a person’s deeds or works. Thus, the Lord’s righteous deeds and works were full of the sweet-smelling fragrance of His death. Whenever we think of the Lord, His righteousness, and all that He did, we sense the sweetness of His death. This is the sweet smell of myrrh and aloes upon His garments.
Cassia is a kind of wood that produces an oil that is sweet and good for healing. If you want to extract the oil out of the wood, you must “kill” the wood. The wood must suffer death in order for the healing oil to come out from the wood. Thus, cassia signifies Christ in resurrection. The Lord is like the wood; He suffered the killing, and as a result, something came out of Him and into us — the healing Spirit, the Spirit in the Lord’s resurrection (John 20:22; cf. Luke 10:34). Whenever we think of the Lord and of His deeds and acts, we automatically sense the sweetness of His death and resurrection.
Although this psalm is a psalm of praise of the King, the second part of the psalm speaks of the queen instead of the King. Verses 8b-13 say, “From palaces of ivory, harpstrings have made You glad / The daughters of kings are among Your most prized; / The queen stands at Your right hand in the gold of Ophir. / Hear, O daughter, and see; and incline your ear; / And forget your people and your father’s house; / Thus the King will desire your beauty. / Because He is your Lord, / Worship Him. / And the daughter of Tyre will come with a gift; / The rich among the people will entreat your favor. / The King’s daughter is all glorious within the royal abode; / Her garment is a woven work inwrought with gold. / She will be led to the King in embroidered clothing; / The virgins behind her, her companions, / Will be brought to You. / They will be led with rejoicing and exultation; / They will enter the King’s palace.”
If you read this psalm, you will notice that although it praises the King, it also speaks much about the queen, who is a type of the church. This psalm praises Christ, but it also praises Christ with the church, which was produced after Christ’s ascension. Although the psalmist most likely did not know the spiritual significance of what he was writing, the Holy Spirit caused him to write first concerning the death and resurrection of Christ and then concerning the church.
Recently I reviewed a hymn in which the phrase palaces of ivory from verse 8 was misinterpreted. The hymn implied that the ivory palaces were the heavenly mansions from which the Lord Jesus came to this world of woe. This is not correct, because the king in this psalm is King Solomon, and we know that Solomon is a type of the ascended, glorified, and coming Christ, not the suffering Christ typified by King David. Thus, the writer of the hymn should not have associated King Solomon with the suffering Christ who came down from heaven to this world of woe to suffer. What then is the correct interpretation of the phrase palaces of ivory? In 1956 we spent much time during a training to study the books of poetry, and we realized something regarding this matter.
The palaces of ivory in this psalm are a type of the local churches. Ivory is a kind of bone that has been taken out of a body. In the Scriptures, when a bone is taken out of a body and is separated from it, in a sense the bone passes through death, and after it passes through death, it becomes something. The first mention in the Scriptures of a bone being separated from a body is in Genesis with Adam and Eve (2:21-22). In this example God put Adam to sleep, opened his side, and took a bone from his side. That bone became Eve, Adam’s wife and counterpart, who was a type of the church (Eph. 5:31-32; cf. Gen. 2:24). In the New Testament God did the same thing to Christ. God caused Christ to be put to sleep on the cross and caused His side to be opened, and what came out of Christ’s side was blood and water (John 19:34). The water signifies the resurrection life of Christ, and it is by this life that the church came into being. Just as the bone taken out from Adam passed through death and became a wife to Adam, so also the resurrection life of Christ passed through death and became the church, the counterpart of Christ. Thus, the ivory in Psalm 45 signifies the resurrection life of Christ (cf. John 19:36), and the palaces signify the local churches, which come into being through the death and resurrection of Christ.
The most significant matter regarding Christ in this psalm is the sweet smell of His death and resurrection, and the most significant matter regarding the church in this psalm is the singing and praising typified by the harpstrings in Psalm 45:8. The early church in the book of Acts is the fulfillment of this psalm. Out of the death and resurrection of Christ came forth many local churches in various places, and from those churches came forth singing and praising to the Lord. This made the Lord glad.
The churches as palaces of ivory come out of the death and resurrection of Christ and are in resurrection. Within these dwellings there must be singing all the time, music which makes the Lord glad (Heb. 2:12; Eph. 5:19; Col. 3:16). Thus, we need to sing. It is more difficult to pray than to gossip, and in a sense, it is even more difficult to sing. When we are not in the spirit, it is not easy to sing, but when we are in the spirit, it is easy, and the more we sing, the more we are in the spirit. We must be overflowing, bubbling over, and singing all the time. In our meetings there should be more singing than talking.
Because the church is in resurrection, our singing must also be in resurrection. Some people naturally like to sing. However, we should not sing in a natural or emotional way. When we sing, we should not think about the music or try to sing in a musical way. This will kill the singing. Instead, we should sing in a spiritual way. Before the meetings we should learn a new hymn and memorize some choruses or stanzas. Then there will be no need to sing from our hymnals; rather, we can sing from our heart. If we do this, we will see how living, active, and positive our meetings will be. We will be living, and we will be free from the letter and formality.
The right way to exercise our spirit is to pray, but sometimes singing a hymn is even better than praying. If we try singing a hymn in the morning, our spirit will be exercised. The more we sing, the more our spirit will be released and strengthened, and the more our mind will be focused, our will subdued, and our emotions purified. Singing in the proper way will deliver us from our natural mind, emotion, and will. This is the best way to be liberated from the things of the natural life. Our singing is a test of whether or not we are in the spirit. If we are in the spirit, we will constantly be singing. Even while we are driving, we will have a song or a hymn with which to praise the Lord. Our singing and praising are a strong testimony to others that we are Christians.
Psalm 45:9 says, “The queen stands at Your right hand in the gold of Ophir.” The queen is the church, and the gold is the divine nature of God. Thus, the queen being in the gold of Ophir indicates that the church, which is full of the praises of Christ, is in the divine nature of God (2 Pet. 1:4). Verses 13 and 14 say, “The King’s daughter is all glorious within the royal abode; / Her garment is a woven work inwrought with gold. / She will be led to the King in embroidered clothing.” The queen is in the gold of Ophir because her clothing is embroidered with gold. This signifies that the divine nature has been wrought into the daily living, walk, conduct, and behavior of the members of the church. In their daily living and walk there is the fullness of God. The church as a dwelling place for Christ in His resurrection is in the divine nature and is filled unto all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19).
The more time I spend with the Lord, the more I feel that it is not the forms, rules, teachings, or doctrines that are important. Rather, what is important is exercising the spirit, realizing the death and resurrection of Christ, practicing the genuine church life, and entering into the fullness of God. We must exercise our spirit, which has been mingled with the Holy Spirit, so that we may realize the death and resurrection of Christ, having the sweet smell of His resurrection and His golden nature wrought into us. The only way for the whole church to be in the divine nature and full of God is to exercise our spirit, and the best way for us to exercise our spirit is to sing praises to the Lord and to overflow with singing. Psalm 45 is a short psalm, but it is quite meaningful and all-inclusive. In this psalm we have the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the church in resurrection, the singing and praising of the church, and the fullness of God, the expression of God, in the church.
The saints in the early church had no forms, regulations, teachings, or doctrines. Instead, what they had was the living Christ as the Spirit. Whenever they came together, they were an ivory palace — the issue of the death and resurrection of Christ. They had the inward filling of the Spirit and the outward praising of the Lord and singing to Him from the spirit.
However, during the two thousand years that the church has been on the earth, many negative things that are unnecessary and even troublesome and disturbing have come into the church. Unfortunately, we have been very much influenced by these things. Thus, we must give up all the negative things, including the forms, rules, regulations, teachings, and doctrines. It is not easy to give up and forget about all these things. We have an abundance of these negative things and are short of the one positive thing — the praising in our spirit. We must exercise our spirit. Some may be able to give messages or write books on spiritual matters, but they cannot sing a hymn with their spirit. This is not a proper situation. In this situation the mind is too big and active, and the spirit is deadened and dormant. There is almost no activity or functioning in the spirit; rather, all the activity is in the mind. Thus, we must exercise our spirit to sing all the time.
John and Charles Wesley sang every day. If we sang for even half an hour each day, our spirit would be much stronger, and the meetings of the church would be much more living and powerful. The meetings would have an impact and an effect on people because something would be constantly flowing and bubbling in the meetings. As Psalm 45 indicates, we must have these two matters — the overflowing and the singing with the music of the harpstrings. If we are praising, singing, and overflowing all the time, we will realize the death and resurrection of Christ and will be the real ivory palace filled with God. We will have the gold, the divine nature, wrought into us.
We must find a way to release and liberate our spirit and to make our spirit active, living, and strong. We are too strong in the soul and too dormant in our spirit. Too often we pay attention to the body and the soul and neglect the spirit. If we exercise our spirit, the Lord will be liberated, because the Lord today is in our spirit as the Spirit. Thus, we must learn to pray and to praise by singing. This will issue in a real deliverance, liberation, and release of our spirit.
