Might ask you to those of you who have these little sheets to flip back to the pages that give the goals of the course and the assignments. The these got assembled a little bit backwards. This comes after the section on the outline of the first lectures in the course. The course objectives, I'd like you to glance at those for a few moments, to gain an appreciation of the prophetic force of the Psalms through a grasp of their place in the history of redemption, history that leads to the coming of Christ. And I'm going to go back to that in a moment and we'll think a little bit more about that. Second, to take account of the New Testament perspective on the Psalms in exegetical study and exposition. In other words, we want to see how the New Testament understands the book of Psalms and how the New Testament uses the book of Psalms. The interaction between the Old and the New Testament. Then third, to gain experience in employing literary studies of the Psalms in textual analysis, to be able to identify the structure of the lines and cola in the poetry of the Psalms. Cola in the Psalms has nothing to do with the beverage. I want to point that out. the Latin singular colon you're familiar with from the two dots, you know, a colon. But this is just to describe an element in the songs, an element that's often repeated in a line. We'll look at that later to see what that means. But we want to have some understanding of the structure of Hebrew poetry. for many years, and indeed up to the present, and it has still been maintained by some, that there is a meter in Hebrew poetry, that there's a beat to it. Tremper Longman, whose book is a text for the Course, How to Read the Psalms, discounts any real progress in finding meter in the Psalms. But that is not to say that they do not have poetic structure. They certainly do. And there's been a vast amount of writing recently about Hebrew poetry in general and about the Psalms in particular from the standpoint of the structure of the Psalms. And we want to think about that a little bit to be able to identify that to gain from literary studies of the Psalms. And third, in connection with literary studies, to appreciate the imagery of the Psalms in the context of ancient Near Eastern culture and in connection with the use of similar figures elsewhere in Scripture. The Psalms, of course, as poetry, are filled with figures and metaphors. And some of these are figures that are used often in scripture. Sometimes they're unusual figures, but we have to appreciate what they are and what's in view. If in Psalm 59, David is describing his enemies as slavering dogs circling around the walls of the city, we get the imagery pretty well. we might sharpen it up a bit more if we knew more about whether there were packs of dogs in the orient whether it was a common thing to have a lot of dogs around the city the more vivid the image is in our minds the more the force of the psalm will come home to us we have to think about that well, we'll look into that too then fourth, to use in teaching and preaching some literary devices employed in the Psalms, and to develop sensitivity to the appropriateness of such devices in contemporary communication. There's a double purpose there. Are some of the literary devices of the Psalms usable in our own preaching? Would we begin to use repetition? Would we want to use a kind of chiastic structure, you know, where first you go from A to B and then you go from B back to A again? Is this sort of thing useful in sermon structure? Well, we want to think about that. And the figures too, of course. How well can we use them? Are the devices used in the Psalms the sort of thing that would be usable in contemporary culture? Do you want to give people the ABCs of some particular doctrine in the scripture? You probably don't want to give them the A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N. That's done often enough in the Psalms, you know, but that probably isn't wouldn't be so culturally acceptable. Well, that's something to think about, isn't it? Just how far would you use some of the figures and some of the literary devices that are used in the Psalms? Okay, who did... that was fast work. I'll send you again. That went well. You must have a lot of clout with those secretaries. You just charm them all the time. That's the way it is, I know. All right, here. You know, why don't you do that? And then I don't trip over this court all the time. There should be a couple left. One that has changed. OK, everybody. Does everyone have one now? Very good. You got it exactly right to that. Then, in the fifth place, to explore the devotional direction provided in the Psalms in the light of the New Testament, and to practice devotional meditation using the Psalms as a guide. We want to think about what is said in the first psalm, the righteous man whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night, and the psalms are full of meditations, that's what they are really, they're meditations on the works of the Lord. We don't learn about the use of the Psalms if we just learn some rules of exegesis to understand what the language means. and then pick up that truth and apply it to people without ourselves being involved in the kind of activity in which the psalmist was involved in writing the psalm and in which he would lead us as we follow him. You see, if we use the psalms without any thought of devotional meditation, without any thought of letting these truths sink into our hearts and shape our own devotional response to the Lord. If we don't use the Psalms devotionally as we're preparing to teach or preach on them, then obviously we haven't adequately prepared. So let's be thinking about that. Sixth, to be prepared to describe the significance of the Psalms for private and public worship today. What place do the Psalms have in worship? What place in public worship? And of course there are some churches that use the Psalms exclusively for the singing of praise to God. Other churches don't use them exclusively, but do use them a great deal. Still other churches use the Psalms almost not at all, and although it is apparent that The guitar has brought back the songs, so that churches that didn't used to use them now use them under the title of Scripture songs, often with guitar accompaniment. And then seven, to demonstrate in a written sermon or Bible study the fruit of some realization of the above objectives. Now that, of course, takes you over to the assignments, which are, first of all, attendance on lectures and participation in class discussion, and then completion of the assigned reading, which is, first of all, the book by Tramper Longman III, How to Read the Psalms. This book, published by InterVarsity Press, is written by Tremper, who is an Old Testament professor at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. So he has done a splendid job in this book. It's brief and readable and understandable, but he digested a very broad range of study in the Psalms and deals also with literary forms and genre study and all that. but does it in quite a compact way. So I'm asking you all to get hold of this book and read it. And then I've given a few pages, about, well, 23 pages, in Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry, in Chapter 1, where he talks about the dynamics of parallelism. Now this is just one author on biblical forms, poetic forms, But it's a good treatment. Alter is a Jewish scholar. He's not a Christian, but he's very good on the structure of Hebrew poetry and was one of the pioneers of study of this kind. And then to clue you in on an approach to biblical theology, I would also assign an essay in Samuel Logan's book, a book he edited, The Preacher and Preaching, published by Presbyterian and Reformed, and I have a little essay in that, Preaching Christ from all the Scriptures. Some of you have already read that, I think, but that's just to clue you in on the general approach to preaching Christ from the Scriptures, and the assignment is to submit an original sermon or Bible study on a passage in the Psalms showing the fruit of the objectives of the course, and the message should include application to an intended audience as well as exposition. That is, I want you to think of some particular audience where you might use this Bible study or preach this sermon, some context where you would present it, and be thinking about people to whom you might be presenting this material. So there's your assignment. And then, of course, to answer questions that are always asked, how long should it be? Well, between 12 and 14 type pages are computer printout, double-spaced. It's due in the registrar's office on September 4, 1991. Somebody asked me at what time of day, but I'm vague on that. So there you are. But you see what I'm after. As we work together with the Psalms, I want to see the fruit of your own study, of your own exposition. And I'm not asking for a scholarly essay on the exegetical background of that particular passage. I want you to do the work of exegesis, but then I want you to present it, prepare a message or a teaching text from it. Okay? Now, are there questions on that? Yes? Final exam, the paper replaces the sermon or teaching text replaces the exam. Are you short one paper there? You have one, too. Oh, well, we can fix that. Sorry. I'm just afraid of tripping here. Well, when you've had a chance to look over some of those objectives and think about them a little bit, then we can discuss them some too. And I'm very much interested in your own reactions to them, especially those of you that have been teaching or preaching for a number of years. I'd like to get your input on this whole area of preaching from the Psalms. Oh yeah, one other thing I should have mentioned. There are a few books on reserve so that they'll be available, but I noticed there are a few folks with Korean background in the class, and my book on the unfolding mystery, Christ in the Old Testament, has just appeared in a NAV Press edition in Korean. So that's now on reserve. So if you want to read this in a perfectly understandable language rather than English, it's on reserve. I copied what I think is my name from the cover on my lunch bag today. I hope I got it right. My Korean is non-existent. The NAV Press in English is out of print, but I think it's going to be picked up by Presbyterian and Reformed, but the NAV Press edition is sold out and there are no more. But that's just an encouragement to those of us who are illiterate to learn to read Korean. Now, let's, today, just to get started, I want to think with you for just a few moments about this whole matter of biblical theology and preaching Christ from the Scriptures. Some of you have been in other courses where we've looked at different parts of the Bible with this in mind, how do we preach Christ from this part of Scripture. But others of you have not been in a class of this sort, so I do want to take a few moments in this first class to talk in general about the approach of biblical theology and about the reality of preaching Christ from all the scriptures. And let me remind you that God has given us the scriptures in a historical form, hasn't he? He's revealed his word over the centuries, so there's a history of redemption, and along with a history of redemption, a history of revelation. God has not only acted to call Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, and to promise to make a great nation of him, and then to deal with his descendants through the centuries. God's not only done all that, he's also kept revealing himself to tell us what he's been doing. And in the Bible, as the Word of God, we have God's record of the history of redemption. So there is a line of history that we can trace as it goes through the time from the creation of the world till it points ahead to the new creation and the new heavens and the new earth. So that line of redemption is also a line of revelation. God is explaining that which he does. So you have, incidentally, in the Psalms, all the time, memorials of the mighty acts of God, but then also celebration of the Word of God. Psalm 119, for example. the whole psalm centering on God's revelation of what God has done and what he has told us, and this is carried through the whole history of redemption. Now, that history of redemption is not like other histories. As you well know, there are many philosophies of history, many ideas of history, and many of those ideas have a kind of cyclical form. Everything goes around to the golden age, you know, the golden age comes back, and then things go around again, and you have different versions of that in different cultures, the Buddhist ideas. idea that everything can go back into oneness with the All, and then it could separate out again. The Greek idea of a cyclical view of history. But you might say, as over against that, the Bible gives us a linear view of history. History moves forward, it doesn't go round in circles. But the Bible's view of history is not simply linear. It's linear, but it's also progressive. And yet it's not just a straight gradient upwards. It moves forward in cycles, in periods. So you have these periods of the history of redemption. And there's much more that we could say about that, and I hope many of you will keep reflecting on that. It is the distinctiveness of the biblical view of history that is the ground for the biblical structure of typology. You see, only on a biblical view of history would you have a valid and meaningful topology, for a number of reasons. First, because it is God who is the author of this stream of history in the Bible. And therefore, the Lord, who knows what he's going to do at the end, can anticipate what he will do at the end by what he does in the beginning. And so, in the history of redemption, you have not only prophecy, you have not only God saying here what he's going to do here, but you also have anticipation in history. history itself can anticipate and point to something that will come later. Now you see, that's different from going around and repeating the same thing over again, because the next time around is going to be very different. very much better. And so sometimes people have talked of a spiral view of history in the Bible. You come around again, but you've come around at a higher level, you know, and then you come around again, still higher level. And there's something to that. But the point is this, because God knows the end from the beginning, he can cause his prophets to describe in advance what will happen, but he can also anticipate graphically, historically, things that he's going to fulfill later on. So you have a historical topology in the Bible. All right, now give me some examples of historical types. Where is there something that you think there wouldn't be much argument about, that in the Old Testament there's something that happens that anticipates something else that will ultimately happen? Pardon? Well, yeah, you haven't given me one that there's no argument about, but I agree with you. You're right. Yeah, okay, that's pretty good. I'm not saying you can't make a convincing case for it, it's just that Crobendom doesn't buy it. In that little book that I recommended, you've got a good essay by Hendrik Crobendom. But yes, the offering of Isaac. When Paul in Romans says, God spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all. See, when he uses that language, what's in his mind? Well, obviously, the fact that Isaac was spared. Abraham didn't have to bring the knife down into the breast of his son. He could spare his son, but God didn't spare his son. And what's a clue to that? What shows that that event has significance beyond simply the testing of Abraham's faith? What shows that? Right? Well, it's the title, see. It's Jehovah-Jireh. The Lord will see to it. The Lord, you know, the son Isaac asks Abraham, where is the lamb for the sacrifice? And Abraham says, God will provide. There's a play on words, you know, and God will see, and God will see to it. That's what's involved there. So God will see. In the mount of the Lord it will be seen. In the mount of the Lord it will be provided. And what is it that God will see or will see to? And the answer is the provision of the sacrifice. So, of course, in that setting, God provides a substitute so that Isaac isn't slain, but the ram caught in the thicket is slain. But what's the point? What's the message? Well, the message is God will provide, God will see to it. And, of course, how God does provide, how he does see to it ultimately is in sending his own son. Abraham spared Isaac, but God doesn't spare Jesus. Yes? Well, there again, yes, in the very same place, you see, maybe even the very same spot, but certainly the place in the narrative itself, the place is emphasized, isn't it? You see what I'm getting at? Even though I've drawn one line here, it isn't really adequate. In a sense, there's a kind of spiraling, you see, around that what happens here anticipates what's going to happen there when it's ultimately fulfilled. The spiral's not a perfect diagram either, because it doesn't just keep repeating interminably or repetitiously, but there are events that are in themselves typological. How about one other one? I've got two here. Moses, the serpent in the wilderness. What was the other? The Passover, exactly. Now, okay, we all know that, we don't have to develop that. The Passover is so obviously in connection with the great event of the Exodus, isn't it? Which is the great deliverance of the Old Testament. And Moses and Elijah, when they're on the Mount of Transfiguration talking with Jesus, in Luke's account, we're told that they were talking about his Exodus that he would accomplish at Jerusalem. Well, that Luke has chosen an unusual word in order to make the tie-in. You know, why would he speak of his death as an exodus? Well, here is going to be the great fulfillment. Here is going to be the realization, the actualization of the exodus event. And the whole book of Hebrews, you see, involves that topology of the deliverance of the people of God as compared to our deliverance now, the rest that now awaits the people of God entering the land and so on. And in Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, of course, you have in John 3 Jesus' use of that event, which is, oh, that's a remarkable passage, that John 3 passage, because I don't know, maybe we shouldn't get started in this too much, or we'll be here a while, but take a look at John 3, there, a very familiar passage, John 3. Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. And he says, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, because no man could do the signs that you do unless God were with him. You're a teacher come from God, Nicodemus says. But when Jesus tells him, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus wants to inquire about the kingdom that Jesus is teaching. And Jesus says, unless you're born again, you can't even see it. And Nicodemus is totally confused. Born again? What's that mean? Do I go back into my mother's womb? It makes a sort of a rough jest out of it, you know. What are you talking about, born again? And Jesus says, come on, you're a teacher in Israel. You're a rabbi. And you don't understand what it means to be born of the Spirit. And Jesus says, this is just something that everybody ought to know about, the birth of the Spirit. And you're a teacher and you don't know about it. And this is an earthly thing. And here I am, I've come from heaven to teach you about heavenly things. But Nicodemus, you don't even understand earthly things. How can I start telling you about heavenly things? And notice, see, what Jesus is building on, Nicodemus, you said that I've come from God, and Nicodemus, if you only knew how I have come from God, and how I can tell you of heavenly things. Now see, that's what he's talking about. Jesus says, Verse 11. Verily, verily, I say unto you, we speak that which we know. Jesus is talking what he knows about, and bear witness of that which we have seen, and you have not received our witness. If I told you earthly things, and you believed not, how shall you believe if I tell you heavenly things? And no one has ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of Man who is in heaven." Nicodemus, you said, I came from heaven. All right, Nicodemus, nobody comes down from heaven but he who is in heaven. Now, Jesus might have said it that way, but how did he say it? He said, no one ascends to heaven, but the one who came down out of heaven, even the son of man who's in heaven. Now that's a controverted reading, who is in heaven, but Metzger in his book on the textual readings in the Bible Society text, I think rightly defends that. That should be kept in the translation. The Son of Man who is in heaven. And of course, it's easier to understand how it would get dropped out than how it would get put in. Why would Jesus say who is in heaven when he's right there talking to Nicodemus? It's an astonishing affirmation of Jesus' eternal and unchangeable deity as God the Son. But anyway, what does he say first? Nobody can go up to heaven who hasn't come down from heaven. Well, it's an Old Testament allusion that he's making to Old Testament poetry. Not the book of Psalms to be sure, but the book of Proverbs. And in the 30th chapter of the book of Proverbs, We read the wisdom of Agur, the son of Jaka, and in verse 2, Proverbs 30, verse 2, Agur says, Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man, and I have not learned wisdom, neither have I knowledge of the Holy One. That sounds rather modest. He's not a wise man, he doesn't have wisdom, he doesn't have knowledge of the Holy One. But then, you see, he's not so humble after all, because he says, who has ascended up into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in his fist? Who's found the waters in his garment? Who's established all the ends of the earth? What is his name and what is his son's name, if you know it? You see what Agur is saying. I don't know much, but friends, you don't know much either. Who's ever been up to heaven to bring back a report? That's what he's saying. You know how it is in TV, you always want, you get a little summary of the news, and then let's go to Damascus and hear the report from our correspondents in Damascus. You know, nothing really happens in the world where there's not a reporter on scene, because if there's no reporter there, it didn't happen. But, you know, you can always get your man in Damascus and he'll always tell you what's going on because he's there, right? So who's our man in heaven? Who, you know, let's bring in our man in heaven and hear what's going on there. Let's get a report. But Agger says, there's nobody up there to bring us a report. I don't understand heavenly things, says Agur, but nobody else does either, because there's nobody go up to get a report. Now Jesus says, alluding to that passage, No one has ascended into heaven. See, that's what Agur said. And Jesus says, that's right. No one ascends to heaven, but he that descended out of heaven. The one who goes up has to be the one who first came down. He's the one who's come down. So Nicodemus, you're right. I have come from heaven, Jesus said. And because I'm the one who has come from heaven, I'm the one who can answer Agur's question. I can go to heaven. And as a matter of fact, I'm in heaven. So I can give you the report right now. But I'm the one who came from heaven, and I'm the one who goes back to heaven, and I'm able therefore to tell you about what's going on in heaven. Nicodemus, are you ready for a full report? But look at what he says now. He says, No one has descended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of Man who is in heaven. And as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." What an amazing connection. What's he talking about? Being lifted up. And being lifted up has in due, of course, ultimately, the ascension of Jesus Christ. It's used again in the twelfth chapter of John. Jesus says, and I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. And there, of course, what's in view is his exaltation. He'll be lifted up, he'll draw all men unto him. But John tells us, he says that in reference to the crucifixion. In reference to being lifted up on the cross. So that the exaltation of Jesus Christ is being lifted up, according to John 12, begins with a crucifixion. He's lifted a few feet off the ground on the cross. But that is the beginning of his triumph in the theology of John. It's the beginning of the realization of the exalted rule of Jesus Christ. Jesus dies as a king. He triumphs over the principalities and the powers of the darkness. Now, astonishingly, in this passage in John 3, Jesus says, I'm the one who came down from heaven, I'm the one who goes back to heaven, but when I'll be lifted up, I'll be lifted up first on the cross, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. that serpent, that symbol of shame and the curse. The people had sinned, you know, and God sent fiery serpents, venomous serpents among them, and they were being bitten, they were dying, and then Moses makes a replica of one of these serpents and lifts it up on the pole, and I assume that the symbolism of that is that the pole there could even have been the rod of Moses, It's a word that is used for that rod in Exodus 17. But here is the serpent lifted up, you see, lifted up in the sense of being triumphed over, see, the curse, here is the accursed thing. But the accursed thing is now a trophy on display, right? It's lifted up, this accursed serpent. Look and see that there the curse itself is triumphed over, the curse itself is vanquished. And Jesus says, and I, when I'm lifted up, when I become identified with the accursed thing, Then there will begin that wonderful ascension, that lifting up to glory, that lifting up to triumph for whoever believes in me will have eternal life. I open the gates of life by being identified with the curse and with death. He's made sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. You see, friends, the New Testament continually looks back to the old, not only in quotations, but in innumerable allusions. And Jesus just comes out with one talking to Nicodemus, not in the sense that Jesus says, in effect, well there must be some Old Testament passages that refer to me somewhere. And where can I find one? Now, this one's a little awkward. It has to liken me to a serpent, which isn't very flattering, but people were healed, and so it's not like that at all, is it? Jesus knows well the history of redemption. He knows well what God did in the wilderness. He knows well the symbol of salvation, when the accursed thing is lifted up and the people are delivered, and he knows well that he will be lifted up, lifted up first on the cross, lifted up then to glory, and in that way he will triumph in his salvation. Well, you see, it's the structure of history that I'm trying to get at here. It's the fact that God is Lord of all of it, and that he's leading us forward to an understanding of what his final work will be. Now, another principle. I've mentioned that there's this historical structure. I've mentioned that it has epochs in it, periods in it, and that these periods are related to one another. So there'd be different ways you could diagram that. But where does it all go? What's it all about? Why is there a history? Why didn't Adam and Eve fall dead at the foot of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? In the day that you eat thereof, you will die. That was the judgment that God had promised. And yet they didn't die physically. They died spiritually. They were alienated from God by their sin. But they didn't die physically, God maintained them in life. Now why? Why? Why were they permitted to procreate and to have children? And why was the human race there, you know? Why didn't God destroy all humanity with the flood and take Noah and his family to heaven instead of putting them in an ark? Why was there the ark? Well, God had something in mind, and what did he have in mind? What's the eventual goal to which everything goes? And you see, there's only one answer to that. Right? God, from the beginning, had chosen his own son, his elect. the one who is precious in his sight. And to him, he had given his elect people from the beginning. From the beginning of the world, we've been elected in Jesus Christ. God has this purpose from the beginning. That's where the history is going. Now look, friends, if it's God's program, if it's God's great work, If he's the one who's leading the whole history of redemption, and he's leading it all to Jesus Christ, Jesus isn't an afterthought, is he? You don't have Old Testament theology in one room, and then you have to go out and shut the door and open another door and come into New Testament theology. There's more continuity than that. There's transformation, yes. There's renewal, yes. But God's the author of the whole thing. There are the periods, yes. There are the epochs, yes. But through the epochs, there's this wonderful stream of the history of redemption. There's this movement. There's what God's doing. If in this structure, if in the structure of God's revelation, there is an element of symbolism, then you have an event down here, Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, and then you have a symbolic meaning. So the event becomes a symbol of something. And what is it a symbol of? Well, it's a symbol of a certain truth that's revealed in that period of the history of redemption. In this case, the symbolism says that God's salvation comes as we believe his command. And look, the people look to the bronze serpent as it's lifted up. So the truth is that by faith they are saved, by trusting God's Word and obeying Him, looking to this vanquished curse, they find salvation. So there's a certain truth there that's represented. Or on Mount Moriah, when the ram caught in the thicket is offered in the stead of the sun, you have a substitutionary sacrifice. The principle of substitutionary sacrifice is introduced. So you have an event which has a symbol that is found in a certain truth, that symbolizes a certain truth in the history of redemption. Okay? Now, that truth, does it ever get lost in the shuffle? Does it ever disappear? Are there Old Testament truths that become totally outmoded and forgotten? No. A lot of critical scholars would answer that question, yes, without any hesitation. They say, here's the old oriental religion and we've got way beyond that now and nobody would believe such things anymore. So they say that's all over and done with. But that's not the biblical perspective. The biblical perspective is the truth of God stands forever. And when God reveals the truth, he's not going to forget about it. That truth will be increasingly revealed, it will become clearer, plainer, stronger, but it won't be forgotten. So if the truth is not forgotten, it's carried forward to where? Well, to Jesus Christ. And when you've carried it to Jesus Christ, you have truth to the nth power. You have truth in its fullness. You have truth in everything that it means, realized in him. So, if you can draw this line of symbolism to that truth, then you can always draw another line. And that's the line of topology. What is the symbol is always the type. If it's a symbol, it's got to be a type, by a little bit of theological geometry. If you can construct the two legs of the triangle, you can always draw the hypotenuse. If lifting up the serpent in the wilderness has the symbolic meaning of life by faith, well then Jesus says that it applies to me. Whoever believes in me will not perish, but have everlasting life. So you didn't, the people in the wilderness didn't perish, but they had life because they looked and lived. And Jesus says in effect, look to me and live. It becomes a type. Now, in teaching and preaching the scriptures, we take account of this, right? And we have a line here, which is the line of significance. You see, the truth in its fullness in Jesus Christ is the meaning. You want to study this to find out what the meaning is. But in teaching and preaching, you're showing people the significance of the meaning. Okay? So you don't just seek for meaning without significance, because significance is what's putting the meaning in its context, which is showing you how to apply what this text means to the situation in which you're proclaiming it. And then, finally, Having seen that, there are a couple of things that you don't do. And I need a different color chalk really, but I'll fudge it in here. One thing that you obviously don't want to do is this. See, to get here, from here, You need the hypotenuse, or you can work through there, same thing, come to the same point. But what you can't do is just to start here and go right back here, ignoring all of the above. And that's what we usually call allegory, although the word allegory can be used in different meanings, but that just means you can connect anything with anything and it's okay. Anything that suggests something, jump to it. Rahab's red cord, Origen, in his allegorical interpretation, gave meaning to the red cord of Rahab. You know, the Greek fathers did this to a T. As a matter of fact, they did it to the T. The number of Abraham's servants, 317, the middle letter in the Greek number is the letter tau, and so Origen says that's the cross. So there you go. You got allegory, you can grab it anywhere. And then you've also got this line, which is another bad one. And that's moralism. And in that you're just jumping to the moral and preaching a synagogue sermon. So you've left Christ out altogether. You just say, it was bad when David committed adultery with Bathsheba. That was bad and you don't want to do that. That's wrong. Don't do it. It is bad. You shouldn't do it. That's perfectly true. But is that all you have to say? OK. Yes. While I was in. I didn't know anything about it. You know, the gospel is there. And so here's the abstract. You know, you have to do everything. And it really struck me that. Well, yeah, I know what that's going to do, but what you heard from the pulpit was, do this and you'll be pleasing God. You know, when I didn't hear Christ preach, then it really does become even more stressful. That's right. Well, we'll have to stop and take a little break now. You've been sitting here for an hour in a warm room. Oh, no, it's lunchtime, isn't it? No? Not lunchtime. Quarter twelve. It's my lunchtime, but not yours. Okay, this is just a mini break then. Then we come back and work to the lunchtime.