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If you're here in the student
body and have heard Dr. Talbot preach, you know that
he is an exceedingly effective teacher-preacher. He's been on
the seminary faculty since 2001, teaches New Testament exposition
and theology, greatly loved by his students, greatly admired
by those of us who are his colleagues. You won't find a more humble,
sincere, and consistent walking man anywhere. His gifts are great, but so is his humility. And humility
with great gifts makes a usable man of God, and he is. If you've
ever read any of his articles in Frontline Magazine, I think
he's written more than 150. since the mid 1990s in Frontline
Magazine and other places. If you've read either of his
two wonderful books, Beyond Suffering, an exposition of Job, and Not
by Chance, a wonderful biblical presentation on the sovereignty
of God. If you haven't read those, I
recommend them to you. I recommend them everywhere I
go. They bless me as much as any two books I've ever read.
I've told him that to his face, I say it to you. If you haven't
read those books, they would meet a real need in the lives
of many of you. I wanna thank God for the seminary
at BJU. Under the leadership of Dr. Hankins,
The combination of older and newer faculty combined make this
one of the most balanced places you will ever be able to train
for ministry. I love these folks and I esteem
them highly. They have good sense. No seminary
teacher without good sense should ever stand in the classroom.
It takes more than biblical sense. to be an effective seminary.
It takes common sense. It takes an understanding of
human nature, understanding of the times that we live in. The
seminary specializes in biblical theology, pastoral theology. It'll give the tools of homiletics,
exposition, as fine as any seminary could. but with a balance, without
tangents, just opening the Bible and saying, let's see what it
says and let's obey it and proclaim it. Let's discern it with a prophet's
eye. Let's speak it with a prophet's
voice. God is using these men in this
seminary in a great way, and I love them very, very much. At the risk of unnerving some
of you, perhaps, I want to ask you to turn to Song of Solomon
chapter 1. And while you're turning, just listen because I want to
read just a brief sampling from elsewhere in the book, from chapter
5. Where the Shulamite, the bride,
says, I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my
beloved, that she tell him that I am sick with love. And the daughters of Jerusalem
reply, what is thy beloved more than any beloved, O thou fairest
among women? What is thy beloved more than
any beloved that thou dost so charge us? And the Shulamite proceeds to
describe why in her eyes her beloved is so special. I was asked specifically to preach
a message this morning that I preached four years ago on a Valentine's
Day Sunday worship service. So if you were a freshman that
year, you should have graduated last May, so this should not
be a repeat for you. If it is, it's your fault. The faculty and staff and graduate
students, I'm sorry, I can't help that. The only Bible conference
message that I remember as a student with any clarity was from the
Song of Solomon, chapter 3, verse 3. It was the message preached
by Ian Paisley. And I suspect there are some
others here that remember that sermon, that message. 3.3 reads, saw ye him whom my soul
loveth. And it was a message of remarkable
theological scope and vision, and it made a deep and lasting
impression on me. It's really the only one I remember
from my years as a student. But generally, the Song of Solomon
is politely ignored in public preaching for fairly obvious
reasons, I suppose. No portion of sacred scripture
is unsuited for public use. But parts of the Song of Solomon
clearly are more appropriate for some audiences than for others.
It's probably not the first passage that comes to your mind if you're
preaching in elementary school chapel or at junior high camp. And yet it is here in our Bible.
Solomon was unashamed about writing it, God's spirit about inspiring
it, and Israel and the church have been unashamed about preserving
it. And by the way, let me just step in the margin for a moment,
make this passing comment. I will advocate, but I will not
take the time to defend that Solomon did write this poem,
but not autobiographically about himself. I think he wrote it
with reference to the relationship, describing the relationship between
two other people, a marital relationship, whether actual people or fictional
people. And if you are interested in
that approach, Dr. Bell, in his book Theological
Messages of the Books of the Old Testament, talks about that.
And I agree with that. But why is this best of songs
in our Bibles? And that is the literal meaning
of the term song of songs in Hebrew. It's the best of songs. Lots of theories about why it's
in the scriptures. I want to approach the question
from a canonical standpoint. And what I mean by that is not
just what is its function as an isolated book, what is the
message of this book as an isolated book, but what is its function
within the larger context of the Old Testament canon and indeed
of the entire Bible. Many Jews have thought that the
book is designed to be a picture of the relationship between God
and Israel. Many Christians, that it is a
picture of Christ and his church, and both are true. insofar as
it is a portrayal of marriage and God himself has chosen to
use marriage as an illustration of the relationship that he sustains
between himself and his people. But I want to take that concept
a step farther this morning. What is the Song of Songs doing
in our Bibles? Well, first, it is a sanctified
celebratory description of marital love from God's viewpoint. It
is expressed in highly metaphorical and exquisitely poetic language.
And the song celebrates the absorbing delight of each spouse for and
in the other. And that delight has five elements.
And you might be thinking at this point, is this like a marriage
seminar? Well, no and yes. You can think of these next five
brief points as the marriage seminar part if you want to.
But the marital delight that is depicted in the Song of Solomon
is characterized first by the fact that it is intensive. The
song sustains a high level of passion all the way through,
each spouse for the other. In fact, the majority of the
song is the expression of that passion and that delight of each
for the other. Secondly, this delight is exclusive. One reason for the intensity
is the exclusivity of the relationship. This is one man and one woman. Thirdly, the delight they describe
for each other is pure. It is utterly innocent and appropriate
and therefore unashamed like Adam and Eve on the day of their
creation because it is in the context of marriage. Fourthly, it is mutual, this
delight. The song describes a reciprocity
of relationship between the two. Each is fully satisfied in the
other and in no other. There's the exclusivity again.
It is intensive, it's exclusive, it is pure, it is mutual. But
lastly, and this is really, I think, the most crucial to understand
what the book is really about, it is personal. In other words, this passion,
this desire, this delight is focused not on an event. When you listen to the words
of these two people, it's clear that their consuming passion
is not for an act, but for a person. And all of these are significant
for a healthy view of marriage, but they are also significant
for the theological role that marriage plays in the broader
context of Scripture. Because, as I said, God uses
marriage as an illustration of the relationship between Himself
and His people, from Genesis to Revelation. That's not an
exaggeration. You will find the marriage metaphor,
and I don't mean references to human marriage, I mean the marriage
metaphor, marriage used as a spiritual theological metaphor in the Pentateuch,
in the historical books, in the poetical books, in the prophets
particularly, in the gospels, in the epistles, and in the apocalypse.
God uses this marriage metaphor all the way through. And that's where the second major
function of this best of songs comes in. The song is a celebratory
description of human marital love, delight. But the song also functions on
a theological application level as well. The song is a kind of
a drama, and I don't mean that in a technical sense as a drama,
as a genre, but it takes a dramatic form. It is a highly programmatic
poem with a number of speakers. Some of you have study Bibles
in your laps that identify who says which line all the way through. And in understanding and interpreting
any drama, the dialogue is crucial. So let me just ask you, who do
you think gets the most press in this song? Who says more,
the man or the woman? Well, let me start us out on
that question by getting you to look at the first verse, chapter
1 verse, well the second verse, chapter 1 verse 2, who gets the
first word in the song? Who's speaking? The bride. Thank you. Let him
kiss me. She's speaking. Turn to the end
of the book and answer the question, who gets the last word? Chapter
8 verse 14. Make haste, my beloved." Beloved
is her term for the guy all the way through the book. He never
uses it of her. He uses other terms, but not this term. She
gets the first word, she gets the last word. No, that's not where I'm going. But if you do take the time,
as I have, to actually count up the words in the dialogue
all the way through the book and figure out who says the most
all the way through the song, what you discover is that about
8% of the dialogue is spoken by various minor characters,
daughters of Jerusalem or the Shulamites brothers or whoever.
31% is spoken by him. 61% of the dialogue is spoken by
her. Why do you think that is? And
that's not supposed to be a joke. This is not about making a point
about the loquacious proclivities of the feminine personality,
hardly giving her beloved a chance to get a word in edgewise. But in any literary creation,
dialogue doesn't just happen by accident. who says what and
who talks the most is significant for some reason or other. And the fact is that this song
gives twice as much space to her speech as to his. In other
words, we hear her talk about how much she loves him and why
twice as much as the other way around. And more than anyone or anything
else, the song rivets our attention on the Shulamite bride and her
devotion and admiration and passion for and delight in her beloved. That's purposeful. And it's significant for the
larger purpose of the song as it stands among all the other
books of the Bible. It gives the Shulamite a loud,
clear voice down through the ages of biblical revelation.
Why? Why do we need to hear her voice? Well, there's a whole class of
passages that answer that question. We can only look at a handful.
And I have no outline to give to you. This really isn't a formal
sermon. It's more of a biblical theological journey through scripture. And you may be shocked. In fact,
you may be scandalized. In fact, you're supposed to be
a bit scandalized by some of the things that you will see
on this journey. Turn, please, first to Exodus 34. Exodus chapter 34, and while
you're turning, let me just observe that all of this begins back
in Genesis 2 with the creation and union of one man and one
woman by the design of God. And that text, as well as other
texts that refer back to Genesis 2, make the point that the exclusivity
of monogamy is built into God's whole plan, God's whole
purpose. It is built into the created order by God from its
Genesis. And with that as background,
look please at Exodus chapter 34 verse 14. For thou shalt worship
no other God for the Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous
God. Lest thou make a covenant with
the inhabitants of the land and they go a whoring after their
gods and do sacrifice unto their gods and one call thee and thou
eat of his sacrifice. And thou take of their daughters
unto thy sons, and their daughters go a-whoring after their gods,
and make thy sons go a-whoring after their gods. This passage introduces us to
two dimensions of our theme that are significant. The first is
the concept of divine jealousy. God expresses his right of possession
over his people in a term that might kind of bother us, jealousy. We think of and experience jealousy
in terms of suspicion, distrust, paranoia, the green-eyed monster. But in certain contexts, jealousy
is an entirely appropriate emotion. How we express it can sometimes
be sinful. But the expectation of loyalty
and devotion from someone with whom we have a covenant or family
relationship is a righteous expectation. Your spouse will expect it from
you. You will from your spouse. And displeasure at anything or
anyone that perverts that loyalty or diverts that devotion is a
righteous displeasure. So it introduces us to the concept
of divine jealousy. That will show up again. The
second significant dimension of this theme that this passage
brings to our attention is the sexual metaphor for spiritual
infidelity. And as Bible readers, we are
so accustomed to this metaphor that we really don't even blink
at it. We're supposed to blush at it. You ever stopped and really thought
about why would God choose this particular metaphor to describe
His people's being unfaithful to Him? Lots of other metaphors
you could use. Why use one that is so graphic? And God is not talking about
physical fornication here. Look at the text again. He does
not say that their sons or daughters would go whoring after each other. He's using the image of physical
immorality to describe how he feels about his people forsaking
him and going after the gods of the surrounding culture. God repeatedly evokes this image
throughout the Old Testament, as you are, I'm sure, well aware.
Rather than run through a litany of many passages, we're just
gonna look at two major, two of the major ones. Let me ask
you to turn, please, to Ezekiel chapter 16. Ezekiel 16, and while you're
turning, let me just mention a couple of those other Old Testament
passages. Probably the most famous development
of this image is in Hosea. Keep turning to Ezekiel 16, don't
go to Hosea. Because in Hosea chapter 1 verse
2, the Lord says to Hosea, go take unto thee a wife of whoredoms,
go take unto thee a wife of harlotry, go take a prostitute as a wife. and children of whoredoms. Why?
For the land has committed great whoredom departing from the Lord.
And Hosea goes on to describe in very graphic detail, frankly,
on this charge of Israel's unfaithfulness to God under the metaphor of
sexual immorality, sexual infidelity, sexual perversion. And the metaphor that God uses
to describe this is as if, you have to put yourself in Hosea's
situation, it is as if your wife entered into adulterous, even
prostitutional relationships while she's living in your house,
partaking of your provisions, and every day when you come home
from work, you find her at it. That's the way God describes
His feelings about His people's infidelity, spiritual defection
from Him. Isaiah and Jeremiah also use
this imagery. Jeremiah 2, verse 20 says, For of old time I have
broken thy yoke and burst thy bands, and thou saidst, I will
not transgress, when upon every high hill and under every green
tree thou wanderest, playing the harlot. And again, he's not
talking about physical fornication here. He is using the metaphor
of prostitution to describe Judah's departure from her God. And all
the time, as this metaphor unfolds throughout the history of the
Old Testament, all the time the Shulamite bride, back in the
Song of Songs, is modeling the pure passion that God's people
should be having for Him. You want to see what Israel should
look like with respect to God? Look at her. Listen to her dominating
that love song and expressing her single-eyed delight in and
devotion to her beloved. And you have to remember This
isn't really understood or adequately appreciated by a lot of commentators,
I think, but you have to remember this image is not chosen by a
bunch of crass, old, disgruntled prophets. This is not their image. This is not their metaphor. This is the image chosen by a
holy God, and the prophets are just quoting God's words and
God's views. And through no prophet does God
speak more bluntly than he does through Ezekiel. Ezekiel 16,
hopefully you're there by now. This is the longest chapter in
Ezekiel, 63 verses, and it's all given to this subject. God's description of his people
here is the ultimate antithesis to the Shulamite. The language
in Song of Songs, as I'm sure you are aware, is sexual, but
it is poetic and it's discreet. The language here is not discreet.
It's shockingly graphic. If you know Hebrew, it's especially
graphic. And there's a reason for that.
One writer has said, no one presses the margins of literary propriety
as severely as Ezekiel. Correction, no one presses the
margins of literary propriety as severely as God does here. He's the speaker, not Ezekiel. Look at chapter 16, verse 1.
The word of the Lord came to me saying, he's quoting God. This is God's perspective out
of God's mouth. And I face a bit of a dilemma
here trying to convey the force of God's language without unduly
offending the sensibilities of an audience. The fact is, it's offensive because
God means it to be offensive, because God is highly offended. But in the first 14 verses, you
have God's love for Jerusalem personified and allegorized.
Look at verses 2 and 3, where this is indicated that
this is specifically addressed to Jerusalem as a personification
of the people of Judah. Verses four and five describe
the pagan background of the city from which God rescued it. Like
you and me, when God found and rescued us, it was unattractive,
unpromising, and utterly helpless. And I remembered it, just like
Andrew sang, how deep the Father's love for us to make a wretch
his treasure. It's exactly what's going on
in this passage. And verses 6 and 7 describe all
the favor and the blessing that God heaped on that city historically
and its people. And then verses 8 to 14, just
skim through verses 8 through 14, which describe God's gracious
covenant with them, His beautification of them, His provision for them,
glorious provision. And then something very ugly
starts to happen. And you have to imagine a romantic storyline
that you are familiar with. Think of your favorite romantic
story where the lovely, pure heroine, whether it's Cinderella
or Dickens' little Dorit or Gaskell's Molly Gibson or Anna in Frozen. Got to be current here. Or your own wife or future wife.
At the end of the story, the lovely, pure heroine, here's
how the story ends. She becomes a prostitute. Think of Cinderella, the story.
In the end, she becomes a prostitute. Not because she's ill-treated
and needs the income to take care of her children. She wants
to. She chooses to become an adulteress
and a prostitute. We don't like stories that end
that way. It's exactly how this Cinderella
story ends, and God feels the same way. Look at verse 15 and following,
which describe Jerusalem's arrogant conceit and her ungrateful betrayal. Look at verse 15. But thou didst
trust in thine own beauty, and plaits the harlot because of
thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one
that passed by. His it was. Verse 17, Thou hast
taken Thy fair jewels of my gold and my silver, which I had given
Thee, and madest to Thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom
with them. And again, the language gets
exceedingly graphic here as God proceeds to describe Jerusalem's
panting nymphomaniacal infatuation with the surrounding culture
under the metaphor of a wife turned prostitute. For example, there's a Hebrew
verb, zana, it means to play the harlot. It occurs 21 times just in this
chapter. This is what God is talking about,
this is God's metaphor. Look at verse 25, thou hast built
thy high place at every head of the way, in other words, at
every intersection you've built your high places, and hast made
thy beauty to be abhorred and hast opened thy feet to everyone
that passed by and multiplied thy whoredoms. Who are these passers-by to whom
she is prostituting herself? Well, verse 26, the Egyptians. Verse 28, the Assyrians. Verse
29, the Babylonians. And again, remember, God is not
describing forays into physical immorality here, although that's
probably a side effect of their idolatry and their going after
the culture, but that's not particularly what He's putting His finger
on here. He's using the immorality as
a metaphor to describe how He views their defection from Him
and from His Word, their defection from His claim on their devotion,
their defection from His calling to image His character to those
nations. They've left Him and joined them
with an obsessive passion that, as God describes, disgusts not
only the Holy One of Israel, but even eventually the nations
around them that they're trying to be like and be liked by. They get disgusted with Israel
and with Judah. And off in the distance, you
can hear the echo of the Shulamite Bride back in the Song of Songs.
expressing the delight that God's people should have for him, their
husband, alone. But it gets worse, starting in
verse 30, where he describes Jerusalem as a desperate, dysfunctional,
nymphomaniac in her relations to the surrounding nations. I
want to give you 60 seconds to just on your own, please,
read through verses 30 to 38. You just take one minute to do
that. Just read through it on your
own, thoughtfully, and let the text engage you directly. I told you this gets blunt. God says a prostitute at least
does it for money. You are so desperate, you're
willing to pay them. There are words for women like
that that I can't say from this pulpit, but we have them. That's what God is talking about.
That's how God views it. Jerusalem has taken her unique
identity, which she has by grace, and the loyalty to the one true
and good God, which she owes by covenant and has exchanged
it for an insatiable lust to be like and to be liked by the
surrounding nations, the up-and-coming cultures. A lot of Israel's idolatry was
not just an abandonment of God. They didn't just leave God, leave
Yahweh, and go after idols. Most of the time there was some
combination, some mixture. Sometimes they cloaked it as
the worship of the true God, bootlegging the worship of other
gods under the cover of the name Yahweh, like the golden calf,
when Aaron makes the golden calf, and then with reference to the
calf says, tomorrow we'll have a feast to Yahweh. These are
your gods which brought you up out of Egypt, worshiping Yahweh
or worshiping other gods under the name Yahweh. And sometimes they combined their
idolatry with their worship of God. They'd go up to their high
places and have their idolatrous little flings and then come back
down and go to the temple just like this is all perfectly normal,
perfectly natural. And Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel
and Hosea, all of them described God's disgust with their worship
and their sacrifices to Him because of that. It would be like, It would be
like a wife bringing her husband's favorite meal home with her after an adulterous affair, on
her way back from a prostitution appointment. And she brings her
husband's favorite meal back with her. And he knows where
she's been and she knows where she's been. And she says, what's wrong? I
brought your favorite meal. Isn't that what you want? Love for the surrounding culture
and love for God's culture cannot coexist. God will not stand for
it. This is how strongly God feels
about this. He's using a metaphor that makes us very uncomfortable
to listen to and, frankly, me very uncomfortable to talk about. Idolatry always begins with an
admiration of. and affection for and infatuation
with the ways and the values of a neighboring culture. It's
really not about the idol. It's not like Israelites see
some golden image and think, oh, that is so beautiful. I'm
going to worship that as God. It's not about the idol. It's
about the culture that surrounds that, the lifestyle that's part
of that. The values, and if you want proof
of that, turn to Ezekiel 23. In fact, if you don't want proof
of that, turn to Ezekiel 23. God gives another allegorical
description of Israel's infidelity here, verse 2. He tells another
parable, another allegory about two women. Ezekiel 23, look at verse 4,
the names of the two women are Aholah the elder and Aholahba
her sister. And they were mine, and they
bear sons and daughters. Thus were their names. Samaria
is Aholah, that is the northern kingdom, Israel, and Jerusalem,
Judah, is Aholahba. And Aholah played the harlot
when she was mine, and she doted on her lovers, on the Assyrians,
her neighbors. Now in terms of modern usage,
the King James dote upon doesn't really quite express what's going
on here. We think of dote upon as kind of excessive fondness. I just dote upon boiled peanuts
because I'm a Southerner. That's not what the Hebrew means.
It means to pursue someone erotically. And the idea here is that she
lusted after her lovers. The Assyrians, verse 5, look
at verse 6. Listen to how God describes this. She lusted after her lovers.
The Assyrians, her neighbors, verse six, which were clothed
with blue, captains and rulers, all of them desirable young men,
horsemen riding upon horses. Thus she committed her whoredoms
with them, with all them that were, the idea is the choice
men of Assyria, with all on whom she doted or for whom she lusted.
With all their idols, she defiled herself. Go to verse nine. Wherefore, I've delivered her
into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians,
for whom she lusted. These discovered, discovered,
uncovered her nakedness. They took her sons and her daughters,
they slew her with the sword, and she became famous among women,
and for they executed judgment upon her. Verse 11, when her
sister Aholaba saw this, she was more corrupt in her inordinate
love, or lust is the idea, than her sister was. And in her whoredoms
more than her sister in her whoredoms. She lusted after the Assyrians,
her neighbors, captains and rulers, clothed most gorgeously, horsemen
riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men. Then I saw
that she was defiled, that they both took one way, verse 14,
and that she increased her whoredoms. For when she saw men portrayed
upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed in vermilion,
girded with girdles on their loins or sashes around their
waist is the idea, exceeding and dyed attire upon their heads,
flowing turbans on their heads. all of them princes to look to,
after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their
nativity. And as soon as she saw them with her eyes, she lusted
for them and sent messengers to them, into Chaldea. And the
Babylonians came to her into the bed of love, and they defiled
her with their whoredom. And she was polluted with them,
and her mind was alienated from them. So she revealed or displayed,
discovered her whoredoms, and discovered her nakedness. Then
my mind was alienated from her like as my mind was alienated
from her sister. And listen, and you can hear
the Shulamite bride avowing for her beloved the single-eyed delight
that God's people should be giving to him now. It is no wonder that God delights
in and that the best of songs emphasizes the kind of exclusive
devotion of such a woman for her beloved because He never
got it from the nation that He chose out of all the other nations
for Himself and for whom He did everything. He didn't get it from them. Does
He get it from us? Does He get it from you? The metaphor of sexual immorality,
spiritual adultery is God's metaphor for how He views their infatuation
with the up-and-coming culture. Listen to the way Ezekiel describes
it. He talks about their infatuation with their dress, their pomp,
their style, their impressive appearance, their pride, their
security. They are awesome. They are hip. They are so cool. I want to be
like that. I want to look like her. That's
who I want to identify with. What are they doing? They're
idolizing the culture. Not their idols, they're idolizing
the culture of the nations around them. The fixation that God describes
here is not idolatry proper, but they're seeing and lusting
for the people, the clothing, the status, the culture of the
nations. And Israel's desire to be like
the nations around them is just the Old Testament expression
of a more common New Testament concept that we call worldliness.
Same thing. A few years ago, Hannah Rosen,
or Rosen, I'm not sure how you say her last name, she observed
in a Slate magazine article that she wrote that evangelical Christians
have, quote, a deeply neurotic relationship with popular culture. Rosen, who is Jewish, in fact
she was born in Israel, noted that American evangelicals are
like the Old Testament Israelites. Quote, they are blending into
the surrounding heathen culture and having ever more trouble
figuring out where it ends and they begin. They've created their
own enormous parallel universe. It's like another planet hidden
somewhere on earth where everything is just exactly like it is here
except blue or made out of plastic. But it mirrors the culture. It's
just Christian. Every American pop phenomenon,
she writes, has its Christian equivalent, no matter how improbable.
There's Christian harlequin, Christian chiclet. There are
Christian raves and Christian rappers and Christian techno,
which is somehow more Christian even though there are no words.
This is her. Rosen asked two thoughtful questions
of this parallel culture. Number one, what does commercializing
do to the substance of belief? And what does an infusion of
belief do to the product? She says, when you make loving
Christ sound just like loving your boyfriend, you damage both
your faith and your ballot. When you sanitize Nirvana or
Jay-Z, you shoehorn a message that's essentially about obeying
authority into a genre that's rebellious and nihilistic, and
the result can be ugly or fake or just limp." End quote. She's not an evangelical. She's not even a believer as
far as I know. Just an observer. But you don't have to take her
word for it, because for the past two decades or more, evangelical
after evangelical has been writing and complaining that this 50-year
experiment of New Evangelicalism has resulted in the world invading
their churches and their schools. They're saying it. Worldliness is not an idea invented
by paranoid puritanical fundamentalists. It's not a new concept even in
the New Testament. It's been going on for centuries before
that. Worldliness is simply siding
with, identifying with the world, preferring their company, their
culture, their values to God's, or mixing it with God's, or calling
it God's just because God's people are doing it. Because the world is not just
neutral people. It's a domain. It is a kingdom of subjects governed and influenced
by a spirit who is in declared and hostile opposition to God.
Worldliness is not an external sin. It has external manifestations,
but worldliness is an intensely internal spiritual sin. The Old Testament describes it
as wanting to be like the nations. The New Testament calls it conformity
to the world. In both testaments, God calls
it not just idolatry, but adultery, and prostitution, and worse. Religion and culture are inseparable. Religion always expresses itself
in the culture, and the culture that is embraced always works
its way into one's religion and religious expressions. All of
life and culture is religious, because all of reality is theological,
because all of humanity has been created in the image of God and
is either pursuing God or rejecting and rebelling against Him. It's
all theological. The metaphor of marriage and
spiritual adultery does not die with the Old Testament. Turn
please to James chapter 4. And while you're turning, here
are just a few of the New Testament references that we don't have
time to look at that echo the same theme. Matthew chapter 12
verse 39, turn to James 4, Matthew 12, 39, Matthew 16, 4, and even
an evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign. Have you ever thought
about why Christ said that? Evil generation, I understand.
An adulterous generation seeks a sign? Why? Why does He use
that metaphor? What is it about seeking signs
while denying those that have already been given that qualifies
as adulterous? Do you think Jesus might be accusing
them of the same thing that God was accusing them of all through
the Old Testament? 2 Corinthians 11, verse 2, I am
jealous for you with godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one
husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin, like a Shulamite
bride to Christ. Ephesians 5, 22-33 is the classic
instruction to wives and husbands, and it is grounded in this marriage
reality, this marriage metaphor between Christ and the church. James chapter 4, verses 4-5,
adulterers and adulteresses. Why does he use that language
here? He's not talking about physical immorality. Don't you
know that the friendship with the world is enmity against God? Whosoever therefore will be a
friend of the world is the enemy of God. Or do you think that
the Scripture says in vain, the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth
to envy? I think a better way to render
that is the spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously over us. Right back to the jealousy, divine
jealousy concept. Verse 5 of James 4 links jealousy
to the marriage metaphor, same Old Testament concept of God's
righteous claims on the singular devotion of His people. And instead of reserving their
love and devotion for Christ, these had by their affairs with
the world, that's the terminology he uses, adultery, their friendships
with the world, their, again, all of reality is theological
and everybody is on one side or the other. on God's or the
world's and Satan's. And those of us who are on God's
used to be on the world's side. Don't forget that. And it's like we're over here
and we like the way they look. We like the way they dress. We
like the stuff they listen to. We like the stuff they do. They're
cool, whatever. And we kind of back away from God's side and
just kind of sidle over this way. and become friends with
the world. When we do that, we put ourselves
on the side of those who are in hostile arrangement against
God. Doesn't look that way to us usually. To dode and flirt with the world.
let alone to pant and pursue and lust after the world's culture
is to prostitute yourself. And if that analogy offends you,
you have to take that up with the Lord. It's His analogy, not
mine. And He keeps on using it. That marriage metaphor that pervades
both the Old and New Testaments comes to a final fruition in
the ultimate book of consummation, and that's Revelation. Turn,
please, to Revelation 17. In Revelation 17 and 18, the
angel shows to John, look at 17 verse 1, he shows to John
the judgment of the great harlot. Have you ever thought about this?
Why does God call this image, why does he use this image here?
Why a whore? Why is prostitution the divine
image of choice to epitomize this consummate expression of
human mutiny against God? Which is what's going on eschatologically
in the passage. I mean, if the real issue at
stake is a kingdom issue, God's kingdom, Satan's kingdom, then
why isn't Babylon depicted just as a rebel? Why Harlot? Because the essence of prostitution,
whether it's literal or metaphorical, is the selling on the public
market of what is intended to be private and sacred and devoted
to one, whether it is your body or your soul and worship and
loyalty and affections. I mean, think about this. Someone,
a woman who sells her labor, a woman who sells her expertise,
a woman who sells her time or her knowledge, her skill, we
don't call a person like that a prostitute. Prostitution is taking what God
has given for one exclusive sacred use and merchandising it publicly
for profit or pleasure. Jesus said, whose image and superscription
is on this denarius? Caesar's. Then give to Caesar
what belongs to Caesar. Whose image do you bear? Then
give to God alone what is God's alone. And this harlot prostitutes her
soul and her worship, which rightfully belong exclusively to God, to
the beast and to the dragon, apparently in exchange for considerable
power, since she is riding the beast and therefore in control,
at least for the time being. But like all prostitutes, she
is in reality a tool and a slave and will be ruined by those who
use her, just like Israel and Judah, Ahola and Aholaba were. But turn to Revelation 19, which
completes the Bible's metaphor, marriage metaphor. Right up against
the backdrop of 17 and 18 and the destruction of the harlot, this gaudy, drunken whore dressed
in scarlet, right up with that as a backdrop, you have the marriage
of the pure and radiant bride dressed in white, Revelation
19. And the final marriage imagery
is the ultimate echo of the beauty and the purity and the exclusivity
of that relationship described back in Song of Songs. The Shulamite has finally met
her spiritual counterpart in Revelation 19. Look at verse 6. I heard, as
it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the voice of many
waters, as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia,
for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let us be glad and rejoice and
give honor to him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his
wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she
should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine
linen is the righteousness of saints. And he saith unto me,
Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage
supper of the Lamb. And in Revelation 21, John describes
the new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven prepared
as a bride adorned for her husband. The Bible begins in Genesis 2,
ends in Revelation 21 with marriage. A metaphor chosen by God to bookend
his revelation and in the midst of his use of that metaphor stands
the Shulamite, the model bride. the model believer, the model
child of God. And if Israel or the church or
you or me are what we should be toward our divine husband,
we would sound like the Shulamite, delighting in the perfections
of our God, praising his qualities, expressing our single-hearted
devotion to him alone, forsaking all others and clinging to him
only. I want to end with 1 John chapter
2 and verse 15. You can turn there if you like.
You probably know the passage. 1 John 2.15, love not the world,
neither the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the
world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that's
in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,
the pride of life, does that not sound like Ezekiel 23? All that is in the world is not
of the Father, it's of the world, and the world is passing away
and its lust, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. So what do you think the world
covers? What do you think constitutes
worldliness or worldlikeness? If it doesn't have anything to
say about clothing or how you wear it, If it doesn't have anything
to say about entertainment, about worship styles, about your appearance,
about your social behavior, about music, about the use of your
body, about values and priorities, about what you do with God's
Word, about how you use the gifts God pours out on you, if the
Old Testament prohibition against being like the nations And the
New Testament prohibition against loving the world and being like
the world has nothing to say about any of that. What does
it have to do with? What is left? And if you don't care what God
has to say about any of those things, then neither did the people that
God described in Ezekiel 16, 23 as adulterers and prostitutes. You say, Lord, isn't it enough
that I give you my faith and tithe my time and my money? Who
are you that you should be so jealous over my loyalty, my devotion,
and what I love? Augustine asks a different question.
What am I to you that you should command me to love you? And if
I do not, you should be angry with me and threaten great miseries.
What must I mean to you that you think that way about me? We began our journey talking
about the Shulamite. I want to end by reminding you
of another woman well known for her prostitution. can read about
her in Luke 7. She was no Shulamite, but when
she came to Jesus and poured out on him her repentance and
her gratitude and her newfound devotion to him, he received
her and forgave her and comforted her and loved her and transformed
her. And He will do that for any of
us who come to Him like that.
The Metaphor of Marriage and Spiritual Adultery
Series 2014 Bible Conference
| Sermon ID | 328141243265 |
| Duration | 53:03 |
| Date | |
| Category | Conference |
| Bible Text | Song of Solomon 1 |
| Language | English |
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