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.