Let me pray for us, and then let's look at a few chapters in the song. I think I'll just read to us a few sections out of a few chapters, and then we'll go into this lesson in Christ in the Song of Songs. So let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for the privilege of gathering together as your people. Studying your word how we need your word Lord how we need to come away from the busyness of our lives and the the clutter of thoughts in our minds and the anxieties in our hearts and the trials and challenges of life and sit at the feet of Jesus and to hear his word. We thank you that all the scriptures are the word of Christ and Lord Jesus we pray that you would especially bless tonight and you would open our eyes to see you and that you would give us understanding and make us Wise and careful in the way that we read your word and and help us to glean The riches of the redemptive grace that's in the scriptures for us father. We pray that you'd work in our hearts tonight And we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen Song of songs let's start in verse 1 chapter 1 and read down to verse 7 the song of songs which is Solomon's and Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine. Your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is oil poured out. Therefore virgins love you. Draw me up to you, let us run, the king has brought me into his chambers. We will exult and rejoice in you, we will extol your name more than wine, rightly do they love you. I am very dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me. My mother's sons were angry with me. They made me keepers of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept. Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon, for why should I be like one who veils herself besides the flocks of your companions? Then turn over to chapter two, verse eight. The voice of my beloved, behold, he comes leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or young stag. Behold, there he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, looking through the lattice. My beloved speaks and says to me, arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. For behold, the winter is past. The rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth. The time of singing has come. The voice of the turtle dove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, and the vines are in blossom. They give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away. Oh, my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the crannies of the cliff, let me see your face. Let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely. Catch the foxes for us, the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, for our vineyards are in blossom. My beloved is mine and I am his. He grazes among the lilies until the day breathes and the shadows flee. Turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on cleft mountains. And then turn over to chapter 5 verse 10 through verse 16 and obviously the whole of the song is important, but this will suffice for us to jump in here. My beloved is radiant and ruddy. chief among 10,000. His head is the finest gold. His locks are wavy, black as raven. His eyes are like doves beside streams of water, bathed in milk, sitting beside a full pool. His cheeks are like beds of spices, mounds of sweet-smelling herbs. His lips are lilies, dripping liquid myrrh. His arms are rods of gold set with jewelry. His body is polished ivory bedecked with sapphires. His legs are alabaster columns set on bases of gold. His appearance is like Lebanon, choice as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet. He is altogether desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. Then turn over to chapter 8 and we'll just read from verse 8 to the end of the book The brothers say we have a little sister. She has no breast What shall we do for her sister on the day when she has spoken for if she is a wall? We will build on her a battlement of silver if she is a door we will enclose her with boards of cedar I was a wall, my breasts were like towers. I was, in his eyes, as one who found peace. Solomon had a vineyard at Baal Hamon. He let out the vineyard to keepers. Each one was to bring forth its fruit, a thousand pieces of silver. My vineyard, my very own, is before me. You, O Solomon, may have the thousand, and the keepers of the fruit two hundred. O you who dwell in the gardens! with companions listening for your voice let me hear it make haste my beloved be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices In his preface to Paradise Lost, C.S. Lewis has a masterful section in which he goes through all of the poetic features in different styles of poetry, epic poetry, lyrical poetry, and he breaks them all down categorically. And one of the things that Lewis notes is that He would often, he says at the beginning of that preface, go into a bookstore and he would find a book of epic poetry, maybe like Homer's Iliad or the Odyssey or some other Beowulf. And he'd say, in these books, I would notice that in the first two pages, there would be quite a number of lines underlined, and then there would be no more underlining in the rest of the book. And what Lewis observed was that both the high prose in epic poetry, but more than that, that what people were looking for were these great lines that made sense to them, these clear lines that they could say, yes, I get that. That's a phrase I understand. That's a common saying that I get. And they didn't find that. And what they failed to do was get the metanarrative of the poem. And if they had gotten the metanarrative, then they would have understood the greatness of every line in that poem, even when it wasn't something familiar or something that they could latch onto with a clear propositional statement. And what Lewis was arguing for was understanding the nature of poetry and the nature of a book. And I think that's helpful. It's interesting. Lewis actually mentioned some different categories of poetry. And in each case, he distinguishes scriptural poetry from the categories that he's outlining. I think that's helpful because the Song of Songs is clearly poetry. It's clearly ancient Near Eastern poetry. But I think much like what Lewis says about the epic poems, the problem most people have with the Song of Songs is not that they don't get that it's poetry. It's not that they don't get that it's love poetry. It's that they don't get its place in the metanarrative of scripture. They don't understand why it's in the Bible. And so attempts are made to say, well, you know, there's these ancient Near Eastern nuptial marriage poetry, and there's similarities to that with the Song of Songs. And so God is giving this ancient Near Eastern love poem for the covenant people in their marriages to help them. And today, especially, that's very common for people to reduce it to basically good advice for married couples. Even erotic advice from God for married couples. I'm going to argue that is not the point of the Song of Songs. I'm also going to argue that the history of biblical interpretation did not see it that way until post the enlightenment. And what happened, I think, is they ended up taking sections of scripture out of the canon. So extrapolating the Song of Songs and saying, let's see what this is, and let's see what this looks like in other writing in its time period, instead of saying, why is it in the canon? How does it fit in the meta-narrative of scripture, the overarching story? That story begins where? In a garden with a husband and a wife who then lose communion with God. And it's interesting, the Bible ends with a marriage in a garden. in the heavenly garden, in the new heavens and the new earth, the marriage of the Lamb, where in that marriage, communion with God is restored perfectly. The Bible has those bookends. I'm going to argue that the garden language, the human love allusions, and what I think is clearly redemptive historical imagery that were to take away from themes of communion with God are clearly present in the Song of Songs so that you have those same themes. Garden, marriage, temple. Garden, marriage, temple. just like you had in the Garden of Eden, which was the temple where God drew out with man, where God created husband and wife to reflect the communion that he had, that man had with God. And then in redemptive history, I think this book is almost the zenith of foreshadowing the full realization of restored communion with God that is clearly set out under the figure of the marital relationship between a husband and a wife. Christ is the bridegroom. We know that. Also interesting that there's several places where it talks about the coming of the beloved in this book. There in chapter 2, verse 8, the voice of my beloved, behold, he comes. leaping on the mountains, and how does the book end? Notice the last verse. Make haste, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on the mountains of spices. So it's a call for the beloved to come. And as we know, and as I'm gonna argue tonight, the Bible is written about the coming of Jesus, first and second coming, the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, God with us. And it's interesting that this book, which is arguably the most symbolic in the Old Testament, ends with a focus on come, my beloved, and the book of Revelation, which is the most highly symbolic book, though different genre, in the New Testament, ends with come Lord Jesus, come, come quickly. So you have not thematic and genre similarity, though you have symbols in both, but you have theological similarity. I actually think the Apostle John uses the Song of Solomon in the book of Revelation, the references to the virgins, which you find in the Song of Songs, the reference to the bridegroom that John picks up on so prevalently with regard to Jesus. There's also possibly an allusion to Mary Magdalene in the fourth gospel that John may pick up on out of the Song of Songs theologically, and I'll point that out at some point. One of the challenges we face is that we've had sort of a revisionist attempt at interpreting the Song of Songs in the last really 200 years, even though it's been more rapid in the last 100 years. And if you go to buy almost any major commentary on the Song of Solomon, you're going to find that all of them differ in their approach. I think I counted 14 different approaches that most scholars are going to say there's about five ways that this book could be approached. I counted, I think, 14 different attempts at explaining what the Song of Songs is. I think here it's important for us to understand a little bit about the history of interpretation of the song, and there, when you go back to the early church and the medieval church, they are all going to interpret the song Christologically, all of them. Calvin even, at the beginning of the Reformation, there are two bits of evidence for us to know how Calvin interpreted this, because he didn't write a commentary on it. So if you look at Calvin's commentary, there's none in the Song of Songs. But Calvin's notes were basically what were put in the Geneva Bible, which predated the King James. So if you are given over to King James only, I would encourage you to stand out on the street and yell, Geneva Bible only. And the Geneva Bible, Geneva Bible only. Okay, we're getting carried away here. The Geneva Bible had the Puritan's notes in it, but those notes were really Calvin's notes, and they really came out of Calvin's Geneva, and the notes on the Song of Songs are explicitly and thoroughly Christological in the Geneva Bible. The Puritans, everybody's going to know, the Puritans do the most massive amount of work on the Song of Songs and Christology. And so, for instance, in John Owen's Communion with God, Communion with the Triune God, it's basically a discourse and a treatise based on the Song of Solomon to encourage communion between the believer and God in Christ. And I think it would be safe to say that while they differ in how they interpret all the verses in the songs, they all agree that the Song of Solomon is in the Bible to stir up love and communion between the Savior and the redeemed. Now, why do I tell you that? I tell you that because I don't think they did that because they just were looking for fanciful exegesis. I don't think they did that just because they wanted to make everything mystical. I think that they understood a lot of the principles we're going to talk about here tonight. but that they were not as refined and careful in their applications of them always. So sometimes I think it's right that some of the Puritans could be charged with sort of an allegorical, fanciful interpreting of scripture, of the Song of Solomon, and we have to be careful with that. But I think because the Puritans understood typology, and they understood biblical theology, and they got the metanarrative, they could put the song in the canonical place it is in redemptive history. Now, where does the song fit in redemptive history? We talked last time on Christ and the Proverbs about putting God's revelation in the different epochs covenantally. Which covenantal epoch does this fall under? Which covenant? the Davidic Covenant. This, just like the Proverbs, just like the Psalms, by and large, falls under the period of the Davidic Covenant, the period of revelation of the Davidic Covenant. And interestingly, David's son more than likely writes this. And so if you're Solomon, about whom the Davidic Covenant spoke in part, I'm going to give you a son, he's going to sit on the throne, writes under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, further revelation in light of the Davidic covenant and the Davidic promise, it would seem that we ought to read this in light of the Davidic covenant and the Davidic promise, the promise of the kingdom, hence the allusions to the king in this book. Before I come to that, let me say this. There is a great little article you have to read, and I'll print it out for any of you. It's not easy in every place, but a guy named Ian Campbell wrote the best, in my opinion, the absolute best theological article on the Song of Songs ever. It's called The Song of David's Son, and it's a covenantal approach to the Song of Solomon. And a lot of what I'm going to tell you tonight is in there. He's going to talk about the garden theme, God restoring his presence through establishing his kingdom through the Redeemer, and all of that having to do with the Davidic covenant, the greater son of David, Jesus, of whom Solomon is a type. And Campbell is going to talk about the role of typology in understanding these things. One thing I'd want to say as we come into the song that we have to ask is, We have to ask about the characters. So we've kind of talked about the genre. It's poetry. That doesn't help us that much because we don't know whether these are nine different or 14 different poems put together or one big poem. So we're at a loss. I don't think we're ever going to come to a point where we can say this is the exact genre. I think just generally we can say it's poetry and it's love poetry. And when we come to ask about the characters of the song, we run into some difficulty because it's not just about a female lover and her male lover, which is sadly, I think, how a lot of people, when they talk about the song, oh, it's a sexual love poem for Christian lovers. Well, then why is the Shulamite telling her friends to come over and check him out? That's weird. If you don't think that's weird, we'll talk after this. I think that's weird. Why do you have other characters? Why does Solomon sometimes seem to be an onlooker and not himself the lover? This is one of the challenges as you get into studying the Song of Solomon that you're going to come across is that no one is really exactly agreed. The one thing we can be sure of, there are not just two characters in love. That's the one thing we can be sure of. The other thing we can be sure of is the names of the different characters. And I think that that lends itself also helpfully to reading the song in light of the Davidic covenant, in light of redemption, typologically. And the reason I would say this, and it's actually amazing that a lot of people have not pointed this out, what is the, we'll call him the bridegroom, because we don't even know, there's no wedding that occurs in the song, but let's call him the bridegroom. What is his name in the song? The beloved in Hebrew, what is that? David. I mean, it's almost so obvious. You almost want to be like, wow, why didn't I ever think of that? And yet commentaries are written that don't bring this out. His name is David, the beloved. And remember, David's name means beloved. David is a type of the beloved, to whom God the Father says, you are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Turn over to Isaiah 5, very clear messianic song in Isaiah, Isaiah 5. And notice Isaiah, This is a song about Israel, the church under the figure of a vineyard bearing wild grapes. So an unfruitful old covenant church. But notice what Isaiah says, let me sing for my beloved, same word. Now nobody's going to say this is just some ancient Near Eastern lover. They're going to say this is about Yahweh's vineyard. This is about the Redeemer and his vineyard. Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He dug it. He cleared out its stones. He planted it with choice vines. And then he goes on to say he expected it to bear good grapes, but it bore wild grapes. And here's the remarkable thing. Jesus picks up on Isaiah 5 in one of his parables, and he says that God had a vineyard. He sent his son to the vineyard. They didn't hear him. It bore wild grapes. He's clearly alluding to this. It's his vineyard. He's the beloved. If that's not enough to convince you that the Song of Solomon is about a divine beloved, a divine and human beloved, I would go on to note that the female lover in the song, she goes under the name the Shulamite. Now, there is a little article that does the etymology of the names. It's in a theological encyclopedia and I can't think of it right now. I can't think of the man, the guy's name who wrote it. I meant to look that up earlier. I'm going to be frustrated with myself for that. But did an etymology of the names, the Hebrew names in the Song of Songs. And Shulamite seems to have the female counterpart of Solomon. Solomon, one who gives peace. The Shulamite, Shulamith, the one who receives peace. The peace receiver is what her name would mean. There's actually allusions in there her asking for him to give her that she is like one who has received peace we read that early on that she says I am like one who has received peace I think arguably that the etymological study of Shulamite meaning one who has received peace and the fact that she says I am like one who received peace really heightens that so the beloved is David and The loved one, the lover, is one who has received peace. You have another group in there called the Daughters of Jerusalem. Now if you did a word study in the Old Testament, you would find the phrase Daughters of Zion, Daughters of Jerusalem. You would find that phrase, I think I'm right in saying about 63 times in different forms. And in every case, it has to do with what we'll call the visible church. the old covenant people of God. When God addresses Israel, he calls her daughter of Zion, daughter of Jerusalem. Now here, the language is daughters of Jerusalem. It seems to intimate something of a corporateness and an individuality, daughters of Jerusalem. You have brothers. You also have the Shulamite, calling the beloved her brother, which I don't know about you, but that's weird if this is just an erotic love poem, and him calling her his sister. You have Solomon coming on a pelican, being carried through the desert, through the wilderness. And so you have this kind of mix match of characters in the Song of Songs that makes it very difficult. If anything, it makes it harder to say it's merely a sensual love poem between two lovers. And it heightens what I'm going to argue a covenantal understanding, in that sense a Christological understanding. that it finds its place in the canon. Now, here's the next difficulty with the song. It is highly symbolic. The whole of the song is symbolism. Notice in verse 6. of Song 3, chapter 3, verse 6. What is this coming up from the wilderness like columns of smoke, perfume with myrrh and frankincense, and with all the fragrant powders of a merchant? Now, if you were going to start asking about the symbols of the song. You can do one of two things. You can do one of two things. You can try to interpret everything on an earthly, here's what I think this symbol represents plane. Or you could try to interpret it off of a redemptive historical, where else is this symbolism found in the Bible plane? I'm arguing tonight that there are litanies of redemptive historical symbols in this book that force you to say the writer of this book, if it's Solomon, is gathering together all of these symbols that are in Israel's history to date when he writes this, and he's using them to teach theological truths to Israel. under the Davidic Covenant rubric what God promised to David and what that foreshadows about redemption. So the writer's going back into what they already have in Revelation and he's taking all these different symbols, wilderness, garden, Pillars of smoke, cleft of the rock. We read that earlier. Hide me in the cleft of the rock. It's Moses with God on Sinai. You have all these images all through the song that the writer is gathering together in order to teach theological truths to the people of God about the redemption that God is promising in the Davidic covenant through the king. Also interesting that the beloved is both a king and a shepherd. which makes me think that the beloved is David in redemptive history and then ultimately as a type of Christ because Solomon to the best of our knowledge was not a shepherd but the beloved is a king at the beginning he's we're told he's a king and then notice notice verse 7 of chapter 1 tell me you who my soul loves where you pasture your flock Where you make it lie down at noon, for why should I be one like who veils herself beside the flocks of your companions?" Now, again, you could say, well, flock there doesn't mean sheep. Nevertheless, all throughout, there is shepherd imagery applied to the beloved. There is kingly imagery applied to him. He is king and he is shepherd. The only king shepherd we have in the Bible is David and Jesus. And obviously, Jesus, metaphorically or symbolically, those are applied to him. Now I think that, and I want to commend to you the theory, and it is a theory, and again this book is so hard, and I could be wrong, but I want to commend to you the theory that Solomon wrote this reflecting on his father David and David's relationship to Israel, to the church, the love relationship, because There is a very interesting verse in 2 Samuel 5 where David has just secured the kingdom and what we read is, then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and spoke saying, indeed we are your bone and your flesh. And so there you see that marriage language going back to the garden with Adam and Eve when Adam says you are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh and then Paul picking up on that language in Ephesians 5, that we are bone of Christ's bone and flesh of his flesh. And here in 2 Samuel 5, very important text where the king of Israel is, under the metaphor of marital union, said to have his heart wed to the people as it were. So there's a very clear statement about David and Israel under the marriage imagery. The heart of the king was wed to the people. and in Hebrew it's very clearly marital language, and their hearts were wed to the king. Look up that verse on your own, very helpful. So my theory is, and I think in part Ian Campbell would hold this, and in certain places Jonathan Edwards seems to be teaching this too, is that The song is a love poem written by Solomon reflecting on his dad's relationship as king to the people of God to the church, but that as a type of the greater David and his relationship to his church in the fulfillment of redemptive history. That's where I want to start. Now, as the Davidic Covenant unfolds, what major thing happens in Solomon's life in Israel's history? that has everything to do with redemptive history. It's one of the greatest events in the Old Testament, something that Solomon does. And it's related to the Davidic covenant. What does Solomon do? Builds the temple. Now what is the temple? The temple is the place where the almighty God is going to dwell with his people. When the blood is shed, when redemption occurs, God is going to come and dwell with his people. Ultimately, what is that pointing to? Jesus because Jesus says destroy this temple and in three days, I will raise it up He was speaking in the temple of his body. It was not about the temple on the mountain It's why we're not looking for that to be rebuilt. It was pointing to the Redeemer in whom God dwelt fully He is the temple. He's the one that tabernacled among us and God was fully in Jesus and God was fully with us in Jesus and is with us in Jesus. And then the New Testament says about the believers and about the church that you are the temple as the church. You are the temple. And so both Christ and the church are shown to be the fulfillment of what the temple prefigured in the Old Testament. The temple was the place where you would go to have your communion with God reconciled, as it were. It was about the place where you went to worship, but it was where you knew God was with you, where you had communion with God in the Old Testament. In the temple, You had lots of symbolic furniture, as the writer of Hebrews is going to tell us, lots of shadows and ordinances outside the temple. And every part of the temple mattered. And we may not be able to say, I know for sure what the blue cloth over the Ark of the Covenant, when they carried it, pointed to in Exodus. But we can be sure that had some symbolic theological meaning, whether that denoted the heavens, Whatever we know that it had meaning the writer of Hebrews tells us all of it was shadowing Christ to come But on the outside of the temple there were these very clear Symbols around the door and around the top of the temple and what were they? They were botanical imagery So there was a vine around the door of the temple. And so when Jesus said, I am the true vine, a lot of scholars believe he and the disciples are probably walking by the temple. And he's saying, I am the vine. I am the door, when he makes those statements. That makes sense. But what you find around the temple is other botanical imagery. And before we talk about those images and what they mean and how they relate to this, what I want to say is there was a reason, there was a purpose for those images. I'm going to read to you something Phil Riken said that I found so helpful. Phil said, the temple door really was like the gates of paradise. For many people, the way of access was still denied. Unless they were priests, they would never see the golden wonders inside. Only the high priest would enter that most holy place. Yet, however limited it was there was access. You see, God was opening back up the way to paradise. You might think of Solomon's temple as a kind of spiritual portal. Paradise loss could be regained. You see, what God was showing with palm trees, pomegranates, and lilies was that he was restoring what Adam lost in the garden. Adam lost the temple communion with God, the worship, the sacred space, the holiness that God was dwelling with him in that place, communion with the creator and the creature, between the creator and the creature. union with God for Adam lost that in the restoration of that which we see fulfilled in revelation in the fulfillment in the consummation we have the temple and the temple is just a stepping stone that's what I've always said to you guys think about you're trying to cross a river and God's giving you these big stones to step on across and the temple is just one of them it was never about the temple It was always about the restoration on the other side. And so that imagery around the temple makes sense. What were the temple walls wrapped with? Cedar. Remember Hiram gave David all that cedar. He was good friends with David, and David brought all that preparation to Solomon. Cedar everywhere. King's House Temple, cedar, cedar, cedar, walls covered with cedar, pomegranates, palm trees, lilies around the outside of the temple, all of that imagery. Symbolically pointing forward to what God was going to do in redemption. All of that imagery found in the Song of Solomon. All of it. The Solomon who built the temple wrote the song in which he uses the imagery of the temple in the song. Now, I don't know how much more convincing that could be. When she says, if I was a wall, I'd be wrapped in cedar. the commentators like Tremper Longman who take this to be just a sort of an earthly erotic love poem try to figure out some well she's flat-chested and she's embarrassed by it and they try to make sense of that imagery on an earthly sensual level and I want to say how about reading that in light of the biblical theology of the temple in redemptive history how not how about not looking at it from a merely earthly physical, but looking at those symbols and saying those symbols meant things. They meant the strength of God's house. They meant the majesty of God's house. The gold in the temple denoted his kingly majesty, all of which the people of God would see once they were fully redeemed in the consummation. And so I think if we get the biblical theology of the temple, which Peter gets, the Apostle Peter says, you are living stones. He says, we are a royal priesthood. Paul says, don't you know you are the temple of the living God? So, and in the book of Revelation, there is no temple. The Lamb, the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple. So the Apostle John, the Apostle Peter, they get that biblical theology. I think if we get that, and then understand that the imagery used in the song is all taken out of redemptive history, all tied, yes, to the love relationship between two lovers, obviously, that can help us enormously in understanding more of how to read this crystallogically. For instance, when I read, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, do I think about Jesus making out with me? No. Do I think of that as a symbol of the deep, rich, affectionate, dying love of Jesus for me? Yes. Your love is better than wine. Hey, that's interesting. He gives me wine in the Lord's Supper to understand something of his dying love for me. So I don't think it takes magical, mystical interpretation to make applications of the language of the song to our own understanding of Christ as our king and our shepherd and our bridegroom, whose love is better than wine, who is altogether lovely, whose mouth is sweet, who as we read the Gospels, as we read the Epistles, and we are grounded in what the Bible says about our relationship to God in Christ, and then we go back to the song, I don't think it's that hard, actually, for us to understand how this serves to deepen our communion with Jesus Christ. Let me say this. Some people get hung up on the sexual metaphors, and I won't mention his name, but I had a Theologian I really admired. really do admire, a really great Reformed theologian who did a lot of biblical theology. And I met him a few years ago. A friend of mine introduced us and I wanted to run by my thesis on the Song of Songs because I've been working on the temple imagery and the biblical theology of the temple and how that could play into understanding the Christology. And I kind of break it down for him and I said, what do you think? And he said, I think it's perverse to think about Jesus kissing me with the kisses of his mouth. And I realized then that if one of my heroes got hung up on that and somebody that understood symbolism and metaphor I think quite well couldn't understand it there. that probably most people are getting hung up on that. I mean, this guy is not a young man. He's written a lot of books. So, you know, if he's getting hung up on that, most people probably are. So I thought I'd just take a moment to try to defend this to you guys tonight. The Bible elsewhere uses the marital relationship and sexual fidelity or infidelity to, by way of analogy, relate our relationship to the Lord. So Hosea, for instance, nobody's going to argue with that. God tells Hosea, go take this wife of Hortum. She's going to whore around with other men, and you're going to love her because that's the way Israel is to me. That's the way the church is, the old covenant church, and you and I are to God, and yet I'm going to love my people. And everybody's going to agree with that. They're all going to say, yeah, that's the point of Hosea. And Peter's even going to pick up the, you were not a people, but now you are a people. You had not obtained mercy. Now you have out of Hosea. And Matthew's going to talk about Jesus being the true Israel going down into Egypt, out of Egypt, out of Hosea. So everybody's going to agree that Hosea is using, God has commanded here an unfaithful marital relationship to show his covenant fidelity to his people, right? To show his covenant love. First of all, I've loved you with an everlasting love. With cords of love I've drawn you. Now, I'm gonna woo you with my love. And so Hosea uses the picture of infidelity on our part to show the greatness of God's covenant love to an unfaithful bride, wife. I'm going to argue that the Song of Songs uses covenantal marriage sexual fidelity. to show the same thing in stirring up communion between us and God. So where Hosea, does that make sense? I know Hosea was faithful. Gomer was unfaithful. God uses picture of infidelity in the marriage relationship to show his great love. In the song, I think he's using the picture of sexual fidelity and love and marital intimacy to show the purity of communion in the worship setting on the vertical. He's using the horizontal to show forth the vertical. And this, I think, let me just, I'm gonna walk out with this. This is where I think when we get the bridegroom language in John, to return to that, I mean, John calls Jesus the bridegroom. Paul says the church is the wife of Christ, the bride of Christ. The Apostle John and the Apostle Paul get this. If nothing else, we have Ephesians 5, 20 and following, that marriage is a great mystery, that husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church. And speaking of a great mystery, even of Christ and the church, and just as husband and wives are one flesh, So, those who are united to Jesus are one flesh with Him, they are bone of His bones, flesh of His flesh. Our mystical union with Jesus makes us one flesh with Him the way a husband and a wife are. Not in a perverse way, not thinking perversely about the Savior, but understanding the analogy Paul draws that out. I think John, when he uses that bridegroom theme in the fourth gospel and in Revelation, he's doing the same thing. And I don't know how we can't go back to the Song of Songs. So if I'm right, David and his relationship to the church under the figure of a husband and a wife, the king's heart was wed to the people. That is a type of Christ in the church. Also, I think sexual fidelity and purity and worship are often linked in the Bible. There's an analogy. So in Revelation, when it says the virgins follow the lamb wherever he goes, well, he's not talking about physical virgins. He's symbolically, he's talking about those who have been faithful in their relationship to the lamb. Because if they are with him because they are physical virgins and it's talking about their moral uprightness in sexual purity and they've never actually been with women, which is what John says, and that's not a symbol, but he's actually saying that the question is, who needs a lamb? Sinners need a lamb. They follow the lamb wherever he goes well people that are unclean Go to the lamb because he's the sacrifice so even that language of virgins In the book of Revelation, I think is denoting Faithfulness covenantal faithfulness to Christ in our In our not turning from him, but following him and trusting him and loving him because he's loved us It's the reciprocal love, so sexual fidelity is showing fidelity in the worship realm. I think it's also interesting, two more things I want to say here. It's interesting to note that Jesus calls the Pharisees adulterers and adulteresses, and he's not talking about their physically being adulterers and adulteresses. He's talking about their spiritual adultery. You find that in Ezekiel, too, where God tells Israel that they've whored after other nations. They're adulterers, they're spiritual adultery. Here I think the song is setting out spiritual purity and faithfulness in the relationship between the creator and the redeemer and his people. You have lots of other helps, I think, in interpreting this. One I would just encourage you all with is reading Psalm 45, which is clearly about Jesus, the king, in his beauty. And his garments are scented with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. And that's the same language that's in the Song of Solomon. Jonathan Edwards, in his very last entry on notes in scripture, He had 500 some entries, I think it was number 507, somewhere in the early 500s. Edwards parallels the imagery in Psalm 45 that is clearly messianic, Hebrews 1 tells us it is, and the language of the Song of Songs, and he puts the verses parallel the imagery to show. A book I want to recommend to you that's not about the Song of Solomon, but I think will help you understand better that biblical theology of sexuality, sex, and worship, fidelity, infidelity, and worship is a book by Ray Ortlin called God's Unfaithful Wife. It's on Hosea, but it's really a biblical theology of what I just shared with you. It's so helpful, and I think it's helpful in understanding the song in Redemptive History. Um... There's so much else. There's so many little expositional parallels. I think John's use of the song is a good study to embark on. You know in Revelation 3 where to one of the churches, the seven churches, Jesus is standing outside the door and he says, behold I stand at the door and knock. And he's talking to the church. Whoever opens to me, I'll come in and dine with him. And you find this language in the song where It has to be. It has to be taken out of the Song of Songs. I'm not going to find this right now. I should know where this is. Oh, yeah. Song of Songs 5-2. I slept, but my heart was awake. A sound, my beloved is knocking. Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one. For my head is wet with dew, my locks with the drops of the night. And G.K. Beale in his Revelation commentary actually has a pretty substantial paragraph where he talks about it's almost indisputable that John is using Revelation 5-2 in the vision. Jesus is using that when he says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. the imagery of the beloved at the door knocking, wanting her to open, Revelation 3.20. And I'd encourage you to read G.K. Beals in his commentary on Revelation, that section on 3.20, and see the references he makes to John's use of the song. I actually think the Apostle John more than anybody else, because John is the apostle of love, and he's the one that lays his head on Jesus' chest, he lays back on Jesus, he reclines on him, he calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved, Mary and Martha whom Jesus loved, he's the one that says little children love one another, that he gets the love theme and the love motif, he gets the bridegroom motif. There are a couple others that I won't dump on you right here, but I've written on them on my blog where he John, I think, is taking imagery out of the song. I think John knew the song well. And when he's writing the revelation God calls him to, he has that. He's been conditioned by that. So here's what I'd say as we close. Very difficult book. While I am convinced of the things I've shared with you and grow as I study this book, I think it's difficult because even what I've shared with you, there are layers of interpretation, principles. Interesting, I didn't mention this in our talk, but even with the names, when Jesus is going to the cross, there's a group of women who are weeping. And he rebukes them. They're crying because they don't like to see him suffer. His back's torn open. And they're weeping because of the pain he must be in. And he turns and he rebukes them. And he says, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves. Destruction's coming on Jerusalem, basically. But he calls them daughters of Jerusalem. He says, daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves. Now I've speculated, I've written a paper on this, that the daughters of Jerusalem in the song, they're unbelieving covenant members, church members, who don't see the glories of the beloved. And so what the Shulamite's trying to do is get them to see he's altogether lovely. There's nobody like him. Come after my beloved with me. She calls them to come with her. And when Jesus addresses those women using that title from the Old Testament, especially from the prophets, daughters of Jerusalem, he's speaking to them as those who don't get that what he's doing, he's doing for them. They're weeping for him because they don't want him in pain, but he says you should weep for yourselves, that they don't see their need for him. And so there may even be an allusion that you're moving from Hebrew to Greek in the Testaments there. Still, Jesus's use of that title, Daughters of Jerusalem, when you see how he uses so much of the Old Testament, could very well be an allusion back to this group in the song as unbelieving covenant members who need to have their eyes open. So again, there is speculation in what I've shared with you. I understand that. But I think if you start reading this, and read through the Temple account, And as you read through Ivory, pillars. gold, cedar, bronze, pomegranates, lilies, palm trees. Oh wait, all of that is in the Song of Songs. When you start seeing that and realize that the Solomon who built the temple wrote the song, and then you understand that biblical theology, I think that'll help. Yes, the song does have this sexual, this language that's unavoidable, and yet it's still more chaste in its presentation than some guys have tried to make it. I mean, if you read Tremper Longman's commentary, I mean, he is trying to make it pornographic. The knob is really a euphemism for his, and he's using all this stuff, and that's what he's saying. And I'm like, or maybe it's just a door, metaphorically, the door to her heart, and the door to the heart of believers. Maybe it's just, maybe the symbol should be interpreted spiritually and not sexually at every point. And that's where I think this breaks down is that this book I think has more than just sexual. It does have sexual symbols and metaphors. But I don't know that they're as explicit as some guys want to make it out to be. And that's my concern is that I think a lot of people have made it Some have made it less explicit. Some people who are for Christ in the church almost want to say it has nothing like, and I think they've erred. Some of the Puritan types have erred in saying, well, it's not sexual at all. And it's like, well, no, it is. I mean, but then others that are like, yeah, it is, you know, and I'm like, what? Wait a minute, but there's also theological and spiritual and redemptive historical symbols here. And maybe we ought not interpret all of them as marital bed intimacy. And that, again, there are these layers of things going on. King, shepherd, garden, lover. And that these things are all kind of different layers in the symbolism of the song. Because king, shepherd, Garden, Lover, Temple are not all the same things. I just wanted to introduce this. Jonathan Edwards is the best on this. Go to the WJE online, the Yale Jonathan Edwards database. and type in canticles usually you'll find references under c-a-n-t period or the word canticles because that's how he calls song of songs a lot of the old writers do and there i mean literally you would find almost an entire commentary on the song of solomon in the writings of edwards piecemealed and it is some of the richest He brings in the tabernacle temple imagery, the garden imagery, he brings in all this stuff. So this is, Edwards has done this, this is not Nick Batzig, this is there.