Hearing the Lord’s Speaking and having the Embroidered Garment for our Wedding Day

After praising Christ the King in His fairness, victory, kingdom, and virtues, the psalmist praises Christ the King in praising the queen, who is a type of the church, the wife of Christ, as revealed in the Epistles (see Psa. 45:9-15).

This psalm – Psa. 45 – is the highest and greatest of all the psalms; it is a song of love, a psalm of the sons of Korah that praises Christ the King in Himself, in the church as His queen, and in the overcomers as His princes.

When we see the Lord Jesus as our King, our heart will be filled with a good matter, and we will overflow in writing, speaking, and living with what we have composed concerning our King.

If we have an affectionate love for the Lord Jesus, our tongue will be like the pen of a ready writer – ready to write our love for Him and our praise to Him with our experience and enjoyment of Him according to all that He is in His full ministry.

In His full ministry Christ has three stages: the stage of incarnation as seen in the Gospels (from His incarnation to His death), the stage of inclusion as seen in the Epistles (from His resurrection until His intensification), and the stage of intensification as seen in Revelation (when He was intensified as the seven Spirits of God).

In Psa. 45:1-8 we see Christ in the stage of incarnation, Christ as the King with His splendor, majesty, victory, power, and sweet human virtues. The Christ we see in the Gospels is the fairest among the sons of men; He had no outward beauty to display, but the divine attributes filled and were expressed through His human virtues.

He loved righteousness and hated wickedness, and He performed awesome deeds (such as His incarnation, His God-man human living, His crucifixion, His resurrection, His ascension, and all that He has been doing since His ascension).

Christ is the King with His kingdom – He was anointed by the Father with the Spirit as the oil of gladness, and His virtues are so sweet and aromatic.

His garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia, and in the church life today we enjoy Christ, pursue Him, seek to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, so that we may be conformed to His death, thus being “palaces of ivory” with harp strings making the Lord glad.

Forgetting what is Behind and Hearing the Lord’s Speaking to be His Beautiful Bride

After the psalmist praised Christ the King, in Psa. 45:9-15 we see the praise of the queen – actually, it is the praising of Christ as the King in praising the queen, which queen typifies the church as the wife of Christ, as revealed in the Epistles.

The queen typifies the church, especially the overcomers, as the unique wife of Christ, and the honorable women around the queen signify Christ’s overcoming guests (Psa. 45:9-10).

The daughters of the kings signify the believers in Christ in their royalty, and the king’s most honorable (or glorious) women signify the believers in Christ in their honor and majesty. Not only Christ the king has honor and majesty, but we as His wife and as His believers also have honor and majesty.

As the queen, we are told to “hear…and forget”, that is, 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 (Psa. 45:10).

This instruction to the queen is very significant to us in our Christian life; Hear and forget refers to how we must learn to hear the Spirit’s living, up-to-date speaking, and we need to forget the past – forget all the old relationships, the old ways, the old background.

When we hear the Spirit’s speaking and forget anything of the past, we become beautiful in the Lord’s eyes, and He desires our beauty. The more we forget the past and are under the Lord’s present, instant, up-to-date speaking, the more beautiful we become in the Lord’s eyes.

We need to give ourselves to hear the Spirit’s speaking and forget the past so that we may become the beautiful bride of Christ.

The king desires the queen’s beauty; this beauty is nothing else but the virtues of Christ expressed through the church. What the Lord appreciates and loves in the church is the expression and shining of Himself; real beauty in this universe is Christ expressing God and the church expressing Christ.

When we as the church enjoy the Lord, hear the Spirit’s speaking, and forget anything of the past, we will express Christ’s virtues and thus become beautiful in the Lord’s eyes, causing Him to desire the beauty of the church.

How beautiful the church is when she expresses Christ in His virtues! How beautiful the church is when she listen’s to the Spirit’s speaking and forgets anything of the past! How beautiful we are as part of the bride when we forget the things behind, stretch forward to gain the Christ who is before, and listen to the Spirit’s up-to-date speaking to the churches!

Lord Jesus, thank You for making us honorable and royal people. You are our King, and we are Your queen, clothed in honor and majesty, to match You in every way for our wedding and marriage life. Lord, as You instruct us, we want to hear the Spirit’s living, up-to-date speaking, and we want to forget anything of the past. Speak to us again and again, Lord. Speak to us what is in Your heart today. Strengthen our forgetting of the things behind and our pursuing of Christ and gaining of Christ.

The Bride has both the Woven and the Embroidered Garments for the Wedding Day

In Psa. 45:9-14 we see that the queen has two garments: the first garment is of woven work inwrought with gold, and the second is the embroidered clothing. The first garment is the gold of Ophir, the woven work inwrought with gold, and it corresponds to Christ as our objective righteousness, which is for our salvation (see Luke 15:22; 1 Cor. 1:30; Isa. 61:10).

When we return to the Lord in repentance, Christ becomes the best robe of the Father to be His righteousness covering us before Him so that we may stand before God and be justified before Him. Christ became righteousness to us from God, and He covers us with Himself to qualify us to come into God’s house and partake of God.

This garment also has gold, for by regeneration we received not only Christ as our garment but also the divine nature, and now the church’s appearing is in the divine nature.

The fact that this garment is of woven work inwrought with gold signifies that Christ was dealt with through death and resurrection to become the righteousness of the church to meet the righteous requirement of God for her to be justified before God (Gal. 2:16; Rom. 3:26).

The second garment is the embroidered clothing, and it corresponds to Christ “embroidered” into us by the transforming work of the Spirit and lived out of us as our subjective righteousnesses, which are for our victory (see Rev. 19:8).

We are here in the church life in the Lord’s recovery to have Christ not only as our righteousness before God but to have Him embroidered into our being. All the brothers and the sisters are like “little needles” used by God to embroider Christ into our being.

On the one hand the Lord uses the environment and the saints to embroider Christ into us, and on the other hand He uses His up-to-date speaking for our maturation, saturation, transformation, growth, and building up.

The more we allow the Lord to work on us through the environment and we stay under the fresh washing of the water in the Word, the more we are beautified with Christ, and Christ becomes our righteousnesses.

As our subjective righteousnesses (not just one but many righteousnesses), Christ is the One who dwells in us to live in us and for us a life that is always acceptable to God (see Phil. 3:9; Matt. 5:6, 20; Rom. 8:4; cf. Psa. 23:3).

When we walk according to the spirit, we not only not fulfill the lusts of the flesh but the righteous requirements of the law are being fulfilled in us.

The garment of embroidered clothing signifies that the church will be led to Christ at their marriage, clothed with the righteousnesses of the saints to meet the requirement of Christ for their marriage (see Rev. 19:8; Matt. 22:11-14).

Many are called, but few are chosen; to be called is to receive salvation, but to be chosen is to receive Christ as our reward.

Lord Jesus, thank You for dying and resurrecting to be our righteousness and qualify us to stand before God, being justified before Him. Work Yourself into us little by little, stitch by stitch, by the transforming work of the Spirit so that You may be lived out of us as our subjective righteousnesses. Lord, we want to have You embroidered into our being by being under Your up-to-date speaking and with the help of the environment and the saints. Lead us in the paths of righteousness for Your name’s sake. May we be those called and chosen by You to receive You as the reward and have You as our embroidered clothing!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by brother Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Life-study of the Psalms, msg. 21 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Direction of the Lord’s Move (2016 Thanksgiving Conference), msg. 4 (week 4), To Prepare the Bride as the Counterpart of the Bridegroom (2) – Praising Christ as the King in Himself, in the Church as His Queen, and in All His Sons, the Overcomers as the Princes.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Pursue Him and know Him; be found in Him. / Count all things loss for Him. / Just gain Him, obtain Him; lay hold of Him. / It’s Christ the central vision. / Forgetting the things which are behind, / Press on, pursue with this mind. / By any means each hour now redeem; / Stretch forth, lay hold of Him. (Song on pursuing Christ)
  # By righteousness was I condemned, / When I was lost in pain and sin; / When Christ redeemed me by His blood, / Thy righteousness gave peace within. / O God, Thy righteousness condemned / My Savior to the cross to die; / Yet now to us Thy righteousness / Grants peace, forgives, and justifies. (Hymn on God’s righteousness)
  # The daughter’s glorious garments / Are made of inwrought gold— / Within the inner palace, / How wondrous to behold! / The glory of God’s nature / Is given her to wear, / That all His holy being / She may in life declare. / In clothing too embroidered / She’ll to the King be led, / In that fine linen garment / To be exhibited. / ’Tis by the Spirit’s stitching / That Christ in us is wrought, / And with this glorious garment / We’ll to the King be brought. (Hymns #1099)