So we are in the Old Testament overview. And we are in part eight, which is the poetic books. We're going to be talking about the poetic books tonight. And so what is that going to entail? Well, we're going to be looking, of course, at introductions. We always have introductions tonight. We're going to introduce the poetic books to you, what those are. And then we are going to have the ambitious goal of going through Job. Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs all tonight, all within an hour, all before the kids are done. Let's see how well we do with all of that. And so to start off this evening, as I said, we want to introduce this. What are we talking about when we're talking about the poetry books? Well, the poetry books are in the Hebrew canon known as the writings, the Ketuvim, if I'm not mistaken. These are the writings and they include a lot more than what we're talking about tonight. In fact, we noted this last time that there are other books included in the writings. It includes Psalms, Job, Proverbs. Okay, these are ones that we're considering tonight, but also Ruth. We've already considered Ruth. Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, we're considering those two tonight. Lamentations, Lord willing, we'll be talking about next week. Esther, Daniel, which we typically think of as a book of prophecy, and it is. Ezra, Nehemiah, which are books we typically think of as historical books, and they are. And Chronicles, which we talked about last time. are all considered part of the writings." You say, well how are these books considered writings? We can think of Psalms of course, and Proverbs perhaps as partly part of the writings. But what marks the writings? And let's talk about that. What do mark the writings? Well, there is an emphasis on the individual godly man first. That's one thing that we see with the writings. There is an emphasis on the individual godly man or woman. We are seeing how we can live. And if you think about it a lot of the Psalms are that way, right? We have a good practical individual application that we can make with the Psalms. Several Psalms do have a corporate or national application, but there's also this individual application as well. We see that with Job, obviously, and Proverbs, very practical. We can see that with all of these books. There's also a lifting up of prayer and praise through the writings, prayer and praise through the writings. And finally, there is heavy use of Hebrew poetry. And so if you are doing the Bible reading, for instance, with us, we are in Chronicles right now through the McShane Bible reading. And if you've noticed in Chronicles, there is a lot of setting apart like the structure is poetic, and of course much of the structure is poetic. Some of Daniel is poetic. We do see this in other books that we don't typically think of when we think of Hebrew poetry. They are in several other books. And that's why there are so many considered in the Hebrew canon as part of the writings. Well, what is poetry? We typically think of poetry as rhyming. And so if you were a child who had a crush, you might have written a little love letter perhaps on Valentine's, something to the tune of roses are red, violets are blue. I don't know. Chocolates are sweet and so are you. There you go. Isn't that neat? All right. See, it rhymes. So it's really clever. And that's the idea there with a lot of our poetry. If it rhymes, it's poetry. Hebrew poetry is not so much about the rhyming, though. It's not that there isn't some rhythm of sound. There is some rhythm of sound, in fact. There is, for instance, some words that will sound very similar to other words that we see. We will I hear that as we hear the Hebrew being read. There are words that might start with the same letter. This is known as alliteration. And you see that in Psalms, like for instance, in Psalm 119, where you have eight verses all starting with the same letter in the Hebrew. And then you move on from that letter to the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And the eight more verses all starting with the same letter in the Hebrew language. Let me tell you, that's very hard to translate that that might not work as well coming across into the English language or into any other language, of course. Now, the King James has come really close in places in because of the rhythm of sound that it produces in its translation. It's really stood the test of time as a translation and really is a standard. hold up as we think of other translations. Not that it's perfect, there are errors of course in the King James just like in any other translation. But this is a very difficult thing to translate. What isn't as difficult to translate is the main aspect of Hebrew poetry. And that's not the rhythm of sound but the rhythm of thought. the rhythm of thought. And that is translated. What do I mean when I say rhythm of thought? Well, for instance, there are synonymous thoughts. Psalm 19 one as an example. Think about this. The heavens declare the glory of God. The second line says the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Now think about that heavens and skies. Are these not synonymous terms? They are declare and proclaim. Are these not synonymous verbs? They declare, they proclaim, yes, these are synonymous verbs. And so you see this synonymy of thought. This is a rhythm of thought that you sometimes see in the text where the first line is repeated in the second line. And with the two lines together, and sometimes you might even have it into a third and fourth line, you have a complete thought that is forming. where we're seeing the glory of God, in this case, in all of the majesty of his creation. And so there's that rhythm of thought that happens, and sometimes it's with synonymous thoughts. Sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes it's with antithetical thoughts. Opposites. For instance, Proverbs 10.1. A wise son makes a father glad, but a foolish son is grief to his mother. Now, what do we have? We have wisdom and folly contrasted. We have antithetical thoughts. In fact, it's even carried forward because we have a father being glad in the first line, but a mother being grieved in the second line. And so the antithesis is carried forward into the second line. Now, it's with the two lines that we get the complete thought. Will a foolish son also be grief to his father? Yeah, obviously, right? Will a wise son also be gladness to the mother? Yes, it's not saying that only the father will be glad with a wise son, but a foolish son will only make the mother Grieved that's not what's being said. It's the whole thought it's being stated poetically you be a wise son don't be a foolish son because you want to be Gladness to your parents. You don't want to be grief to your parents, but that doesn't sound nearly as nice as the way it's put in Scripture And so these are the kinds of things that we see with the rhythm of thought in Hebrew poetry and We could spend the rest of the night talking about these examples because there are several more kinds of examples that we see but this is why when you're reading the the Poetry sections you see that set apart in the text. It looks a little bit different It's usually indented in your Bibles and you read the first line you read the second line. It's meant to be read together And these two thoughts together form what should be the full thought that you are supposed to walk away with. So let's consider some of this, and we'll consider it first with Job. Job. Job, which is right after the book of Esther. which we haven't discussed yet. We'll get to Esther here. Let's get to Job chapter one. Job, of course, we are familiar with the story of Job. We have him being set up as a righteous man in the first chapter. And in the first chapter, we also see behind the scenes this this this heavenly debate that's happening Satan is going and presenting himself with the other angels and he is trying to tempt Someone and and Job ends up being the one that he's going to tempt and he thinks that he can cause Job to lose his faith and so he begins to test Job look all the way down to verse 21 verse 21 and After all of these things happened to him. This is what he said And this is what I read this morning when I was talking about thankfulness in all circumstances Naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I shall return there the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away Blessed be the name of the Lord This is the kind of attitude that we should have. And we see it even extolled in the next verse because it says that through all this Job did not sin, nor did he blame God. That is the right attitude to have when we are faced with difficulty. should say yes, of course, this is a hard time. Of course, this is something that I recognize is going to strip me of what I have. I'm now going to be returning naked. But it's the Lord who gave to me in the first place. And who is it that took away from me? It's the Lord who took away from me. Prosperity preachers, by the way, do not like this verse. But what does he say? He says, blessed be the name of the Lord. And that really sets the tone for the book, and Job throughout the book is going to have a relatively consistent testimony, although he is going to have an issue that grows. It's not a large issue compared to some other issues that we see in the book. We'll talk about those in just a moment. What is the name of the book? Job. So that's it right there. What's it in Hebrew? It's Job. That's the name of the book. When was it written? We're going back here. We had moved up in the timetable, but now we are going back in time when we get to Job. We don't often think of how old Job is. Job was written perhaps as early as 1800 BC. I saw one number that put him back to 2000 BC. But at the very least he is in the time of the patriarchs. And we see him operating in a patriarchal manner in verse five of chapter one, but he is in Abraham's time. Most likely he's in Abraham's time. So as we are thinking in Genesis about God calling Abraham, we see that God also had other worshipers at that time. And Job is an example of one of the worshipers of God. Now, why do I have such a long date there? Because remember, as we are dealing with a lot of the dating or a lot of the ages in the early part of Genesis, the people lived longer. And I do believe that they lived longer. And Job, because he is within that time frame. It doesn't tell us how old he was when all of the temptations and troubles and trials fell upon him. But it does say that he lived for an additional 140 years after his ordeal. And so that's why such a large time frame is given there. What's the theme of the book? Suffering and sovereignty. God is sovereign and sometimes we suffer. But here's what we see in the book. Not all suffering comes from sin. In fact, that point is made very clear in this book. Not all suffering comes from sin. It's easy to assume that if we have something bad happen to us that we have brought it upon ourselves. And that is not what we see in Job. We see just the opposite. But we do see that regardless of our circumstances, whether they're good or they're ill, we should worship regardless. We should worship the Lord and lift up His name and be thankful. And that's what we see in Job. What's an outline? I like to give very simple outlines to give you something to hang your hat on as you're going through the book. The disasters of Job, those are in chapters one and two, because in chapter two, not only did Job lose his family and his wealth, he then also loses his health. And Satan thinks that's what's going to push him over the edge. But of course, that doesn't. There's always that joke, of course Job left or Satan left Job's wife alive The other demons are saying hey, you forgot to kill his wife and Satan says well, I know what I'm doing. Okay And of course she comes to him, why don't you just curse God and die, you know? And that is, of course, is not the proper attitude that she should have had in the midst of that. But we have the disasters of Job in chapters one and two. Then we have the dialogues with Job or of Job for the large portion of the book there. And then finally we have the deliverance of Job in chapters 38 through 42. And so that's the quick overview of the book. But I do want to dig into these dialogues for just a moment because it is common for us to quote from Job. But we want to be very careful with where we quote again, talking about the devil and his schemes. Some of his words are recorded in scripture, right? We don't want to quote his words. His words are recorded there so that we know his schemes. Well, not everything in Job is something we should hold on to because Job received bad counsel. He received bad counsel. First of all, he received it from Eliphaz. This is the first of his friends. And he said, and you know, I have the verses up here. You can kind of skim along with us as we go through here. But he says, basically, if you sin, you suffer. What does he base that on? Well, he bases that on his experiences. And in fact, in chapter four there, there's actually this eerie account of a spirit coming to him and telling him basically, yeah, Job is suffering because he's in sin. And so Eliphaz is saying, look, I have a private revelation. I have an experience that tells me you're going through what you're going through because you sinned. Now, of course, in context, we know that this is an evil spirit. And this tells us that even when someone comes with private revelations or experiences, that doesn't mean that they are true. And we have to test the spirits, as Scripture says, right? And we hold on to what's true. Eliphaz came in with bad counsel. So did build at build at and He said you must be sinning and he gave insulting and bad counsel he kind of dug the knife in and It's been often said that the best thing his friends did was to be silent for seven days. But then they then they start speaking. Eliphaz gives bad advice and then Bildad. He says you must be sinning. And he bases this on his traditions, on the traditions of the people. Tradition says he must be sinning. And then we have Zophar, and he says you're sinning. And he's basing this on religious convictions. And he also was very defensive later on. Now, what do we see with these three men? We see that there are people, when there are times of trouble, there are people who are more than willing to give us their advice, and it's going to be bad advice sometimes. And that bad advice is going to come either from a religious background, sometimes it will, and it's bad. Sometimes it'll come from a traditional background, and sometimes it'll come from a background of experiences. And in each case, we have to say, but I'm going to hold to the word of God. Regardless of what others are saying, I'm going to hold to the word of God. Now Elihu is actually a fourth friend who's there. He's younger than the rest. He keeps his mouth closed, which is a sign of wisdom beyond his years. He then speaks. He gives counsel that is wiser than the older friends who are there with him. He says, God purifies and teaches the righteous. And he was against Job's self-righteousness. Job's self-righteousness. I thought he was right. Well, he was righteous. But as as it often happens when you are embroiled in debate with people, sometimes you become entrenched in your position. And Job. Can only say so many times I haven't sinned. I haven't brought this upon myself before he starts to develop self-righteousness And this is a danger that we have to watch out for as well because as we are facing others who may be falsely accusing us we might become self-righteous in the process. And so God has to address that. Elihu's response really serves as a foundation for God's response which comes next. And of course God as He's responding He's going to restore Job. We're going to see that He gives him that double blessing. But this is after a very humbling speech that he gives where he does talk about Job's growing self-righteous response. It basically says, you know, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth and did this and did that? And there are all kinds of incredible things that are listed there. But God also very specifically goes after the first three friends. He doesn't say anything about Elihu, which I think is telling there. But he does go after the first three friends and condemns the advice that they give there. So that tells us if we're going to be quoting from the book of Job, be careful where in the chapters of Job you're quoting from, because you might be quoting the bad advice of one of Job's friends. So be careful with that. Don't don't just quote willy nilly from there. Know the context of what you're what you're reading there, because God's the one who gives the the master response. Of course, this book is a literary masterpiece. A lot of folks see it as that. And it is the basis for many modern scientific discoveries. Lanny and I were just talking about that this morning. That ICR study Bible that he has lists a lot of discoveries that arose straight from the book of Job. And it's mainly from God's speech there, where he talks about what he did. It's incredible to see how that happened. And we talked about a little bit of that from the beginning of our study. But this is an incredible book to study. I hope that you will give it your time. But as this is an overview, that's all we have to do. We have to move on. And now we're going on to Psalms, which is an even bigger book to to tackle. What is Psalms? Well, let's look to Psalms for a moment, the book of Psalms. And we'll look to chapter one versus one and two. Here we see an example where it takes actually the two verses to get that full thought. It says, How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the seat or in the path of sinners, nor in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And in his law, he meditates day and night. See, we start with this word. How blessed is the man? But the but the cause for blessing really doesn't begin until verse two. But but it has to come through these negations. He doesn't he doesn't walk in the council of the wicked. He's not walking with the wicked people and getting getting words from them like Job's friends nor stand in the path of sinners. You're not standing there with them and nor are you sitting with them in the seat of scoffers But where where are you your delight is in the law of the lord and in his law you are meditating day and night That's this is how you are the blessed man. And so this is really setting the stage the book of psalms is a unit It is a unit, and it is, in a sense, meant to be taken as such. What is the book of Psalms? Well, in Hebrew, the term is Tehillim, and it means praises, praises. The Greek is a little bit more familiar to us. It's psalmoi, psalmoi, and it means psalms. accompanied by the plucking of strings. And so there is instrumentation that's involved. That's why we think it's okay to have instruments as we worship, because this is the worship book for the people. This is the songbook for the people of God. This is what the Israelites would use and that's why it's so important. I think that we Bring in Psalms into our worship. It shouldn't just be hymns. It should also be Psalms It should be inspired music and there are a lot of Psalters out there that you can consult as as you want to sing through the Psalms and Authors, there are lots of authors. David, of course, is the most prominent. He wrote 73 psalms, 73 psalms. But then you also have the sons of Korah who wrote 10, and then Asaph who wrote 12. And then you have Solomon who wrote a couple, not nearly as many as his father David did, right? And then Moses wrote one. Yes, Moses has a psalm. And then. Does that say He-Man? That's supposed to say Herman. Whoops. Of course, He-Man wasn't involved. It was old Herman who was writing that psalm. And then Ethan wrote one. And then our good friend Anonymous, he wrote 50. And if you add these up, that comes to 150. If my math isn't in error, that's 150 psalms right there. Now, if Moses is writing one and David is writing one and we're continuing on, that means that we are moving through a pretty significant time period if we're talking about the dating of Psalms. And yes, it goes back to 1410 B.C. 1410 BC, and that's Psalm 90. It's not Psalm 1 that's 1410 BC, it's Psalm 90. And then the latest Psalm we have is 450 years before Christ. That's Psalm 126. It's not the last Psalm, it's Psalm 126. What does this tell us? The book of Psalms is not chronological. It's not the oldest Psalm to the newest Psalm. They're arranged in a different order. It's not based on dating. It's based on material. And that's what we see in the book of Psalms. As you go through the Psalms, you'll find that there are actually five books within this book of Psalms. five books. And a lot of teachers like C. H. Spurgeon have paralleled this to the Torah and said this may actually be intentional here that we see the books of the Psalms paralleling the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. What do I mean? Well, book one is Psalm 1 through 141. If we go to Psalm 42, excuse me, Psalm 1 through 41. If we go to Psalm 42 in our Bibles, you will note. that right at the top there, it says book two, because this is book two. And you can continue on this path. These books are divided up. Well, book one tends to focus on themes of creation, man, covenant with God, things like that, just like the book of Genesis. Book two, starting in Psalm 42 through Psalm 72, tends to focus on deliverance, redemption, guidance, kind of like the book of Exodus. Book three, which is Psalm 73 through 89, tends to focus on holiness, restoration, closeness with God, Like the book of Leviticus. Psalm four, excuse me, book four, starting in Psalm 90, which, as we said, was that oldest Psalm, Psalm of Moses. Going through 106, well, these Psalms tend to focus on unrest. There's a lot of emotion, a lot of depression in some of these Psalms. There's deliverance, there's images of God's faithfulness. like the book of Numbers. And then finally, book five, which is Psalm 107 through 150, intends to focus on God's word, praise, thanksgiving, worship, all like Deuteronomy. And so there we see the books being highlighted there. And so it's fascinating to see how God did this and how they have been so arranged. And as I said, they have definitely been arranged by material. they do Express the full range of human emotion and experience from the depths of depression to the elation of joy I mean it's all in Psalms whatever mood you're in you can find a psalm for it and It's being expressed and it's being expressed Coram Dale life before God before the face of God And sometimes that means that it's a struggle with God. Why doesn't it seem like you're here right now? Why doesn't it feel like, or why does it feel like the wicked are succeeding? Why does it feel like the righteous are not succeeding? And you see the people struggling with that. But we also see the people turning from that to hope in these Psalms. Now there are different kinds of Psalms as we go through. There's the Psalms of Ascent, for instance, that were sung on the way up to Jerusalem to worship. There are Psalms of Lament, and that would be individual lament, like David in Psalm 51, confessing his sin with Bathsheba. You also have National Lament as well. You also have Psalms of praise lifting high the name of the Lord. And then you also have Messianic Psalms like Psalm two, which. definitely one of my favorite Psalms because it reminds me of where we are and where this world is going. It starts with the nations in an uproar, the peoples devising a famed thing, the kings of the earth take their stand, the rulers take their counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed. Who is that? Well, spoiler alert that's Jesus. Right because he's the Christ the anointed one. That's what Christ Christos means the anointed one takes Takes a council against the Lord and against his anointed. Of course that could be speaking directly of the king first the first order of priority, and then second order pointing to Christ. And it says, "'Let us tear their feathers apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs.'" And I just love that. Like as man is scheming, as they are coming up with all of their diabolical plans, they are going to overthrow God. They are going to overthrow Christianity. It's going to be in the dustbin of history. We are going to do away with all of it. God is up there laughing. God's up there laughing and let me tell you if you are on the wrong side of this You don't want to hear the laughter of God Because this also says the Lord scoffs at him it's not just like oh ha ha boys will be boys No, this is scoffing laughter Look at them then He will speak to them in His anger, and terrify them in His fury, saying, But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain." Where is He going with this? He's talking about His Son. He's talking about Jesus Christ. Of course David can apply this to himself in the first order, but it is ultimately pointing toward Jesus Christ. And it ends with verse 12, do homage to the son that he not become angry and you perish in the way for his wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in him. And so that's the book of Psalms. And we have there the Messianic Psalms as well, which prophetically point toward Christ. I tell you, every one of these, I'm tempted to dig deeper and deeper. But I did say it's an overview. So we have to keep moving. We have to keep moving. So as we're turning our pages here, we come next to Proverbs, Proverbs. And of course, that's where our Bible reading is. And we read in Proverbs one already. Verse 7 the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom fools despise wisdom and instruction We don't want to be fools. We want to we want to receive wisdom. Well, what is the beginning of wisdom? What's the beginning of knowledge? It's to fear God This is why so many people lack wisdom in the world because they don't want to bow their knee. They don't want to fear the Lord They want to look to other things Well, what is the title? In Hebrew it's Proverbs of, in the Greek it's Proverbs of Solomon. And of course most of these, the vast majority of these are by Solomon. except for the last two. They are written in the year 970 to 931. So now we're getting back to about where we were, where we were discussing last week. Those are the Proverbs of Solomon. And then the final collection was done in 690 by King Hezekiah. And that's actually noted in Proverbs 25 one, that King Hezekiah appointed his men to do this. What is the theme? It's wisdom for the people of God if if Psalms is the praise the song book of the people of God Well, here's the book of wisdom for the people of God and this will help us to to navigate this world it'll help the Israelites to navigate the the hostile nations around them and it helps us to navigate the deceptions of this world And it is a practical book noted. It names problems and solutions. I love that. Sometimes that's just what we need. We need a book where it gives us a problem and then solution. And that's what makes it so practical and so lovable. It keeps the young and the naive from hard learned lessons like we just talked about in Proverbs chapter 7, right? We need to know that she might be pretty, but you stay away from her, right? We need to know that sometimes. We need to know that. And we need to know that before we learn it the hard way. And so this is a book that definitely helps. And it helps also that there are 31 chapters, and a lot of months have 31 days. And so some folks will take a proverb a day, read it, and that's a very wise course right there to build wisdom. Now, if we were to outline the book, it would be very difficult. I've looked at various outlines. Some folks will say that this is a random collection of maxims and aphorisms. Because they are arranged by King Hezekiah's men, I would have to assume that there is an order to them. And as we read through the Psalms, we will note that there are smaller movements of thought. So I do think there was a reason why he ordered them the way he ordered them. But it is difficult as you're going through them to see the collection or to see what exactly is happening between the chapters as it were. Even within the chapters, it seems sometimes like we're jumping from topic to topic. But we do see smaller movements of thought through this through the Proverbs. And this is the wisdom book. If you feel like you lack wisdom, James one says, pray to God and he gives it. But he has also given it very clearly in the book of Proverbs. And so as you're praying, read Proverbs, and this will help you to grow in that wisdom. And so will in a way, Ecclesiastes is another wisdom book. Ecclesiastes, let's look there next. I think we might make it, y'all. We'll see, though. We'll see. That clock is way off back there. My watch is off, too, I'll tell you. All right, so Ecclesiastes. Let's go all the way to the end of Ecclesiastes for just a moment. Some folks ask, what is the purpose of life? I always think of Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verse 13, when someone asked that question. Ecclesiastes 12, 13 says this, the conclusion. When it is all heard. Is fear God. And keep his commandments, because this applies to every person. What does God want of me? He wants you to fear him and keep his commandments. There you go. You say, yeah, but I can't keep all of his commandments. Yeah, this is still the attitude he wants of us, though. There's forgiveness in Christ when you fail, but or if you fail, I should say, but this is what God wants of us. He wants us to fear him and he wants us to keep his commandments. This is the call of God upon all of us. We should do this. And the name of this book in the Hebrew is Kohelet, which is a preacher. It's the preacher. It's the Greek that names it Ecclesiastes. It was written around the time of Solomon, of course. 935 is one date that's been given. And it has the theme of feudal way versus the fruitful way. Why is that? Because a lot of this is based on this idea of vanity, vanity, vanities, all is vanity. But we have to see this if we want wisdom in life, we have to see that a lot of things that we pursue in life. Is is vain, is empty, is vacuous. Who is it written by? It's written by Solomon, a man of wisdom. Who didn't always live very wisely, right? We talked about him having those 700 wives and 300 concubines. He was building idols for those foreign wives. And he himself was participating in idolatry, leading his nation to engage in idolatry. And because he had a divided heart, his divided heart led to a divided nation in the next generation. Solomon begins to see these problems. He had lived that life of success of expanding out his kingdom. But but but those successes led him to an ability to pursue any kind of any kind of pleasure he desired. To have all the women he wanted to to to buy anything he wanted to build anything he wanted. And his conclusion through it all is all is vanity. You say, if I had money, I could do so much. Listen to the man who had all the money in the world. All is vanity. All is vanity. Human wisdom is vanity. Human labor is vanity. Human purpose is vanity. Human rivalry is vanity. Human avarice is vanity. Human fame is vanity. And it goes on. But how is all that vanity? Well, think of wisdom for a moment. From a human perspective, we want to be wise so we become successful in the world. But guess what happens to the wise man and to the foolish man in the end? They die, both of them. They both die. We want to work hard. We want to have that good work ethic so that we will succeed in life, so that we'll have money to do whatever we want. You know what happens to the laborious man and the lazy man at the end of the day? They both die. They both die. And it keeps going on from there. And besides all of that, it's God who reigns over our affairs. If we're going to be so humanly focused, it doesn't matter. All is vanity. But when we bring God into it, then the equation changes. That's why even though Ecclesiastes has a reputation for being a very depressive book, it's really not. It's a realistic book. It's a realistic book. It gives us a realistic view of things. And that's the view that we need to have in life. We need to see, for instance, the problem that all is vanity. And that's seen in the first chapter. And from the first chapter to the sixth chapter, we see proof that all is vanity. And then in the remaining chapters, chapter seven through 12, we see the prescription for living with vanity prescription. See, it doesn't leave us on a negative note. It gives us a prescription for this. So that's the book of Ecclesiastes. And finally, we get to the song of songs. We get to the song of songs, which is. in our English Bibles known as the Song of Solomon. But that leads us to some questions that are hotly debated, which I won't be able to satisfy tonight. Does Song of Solomon mean it's a song by Solomon? Does it mean that it's a song for or to Solomon, like it's been dedicated to King Solomon, like someone else wrote it and said to the King Solomon? Does it mean concerning Solomon, like this is about Solomon? And a lot of people say, yeah, this is about Solomon. Or is this a song in the style of Solomon, like he wrote other things? And this is in the style of Solomon. There are people who argue all four of those. There are people who say this. This is not about Solomon. He could not demonstrate this kind of romance in his life with all of those women. There's no way this could be about Solomon. This was dedicated to the king. But then other people say, no, this is this is about a shepherd, this woman falling in love with the shepherd. But then he leaves and she's wondering, you know, what is he coming back? What's happened? But when he comes back, he's actually the king. And there's actually a really neat, typological view of Christ there. where he came as a man, as a servant in the form of a servant. Now he's coming back as the returning king. And so there are two ways that people typically read it. And it was written around that same time frame of Solomon. And the theme is romance or God's view of love and marriage. And of course, that's the next debated topic. Is it just an allegory of God's love? Some people say, yeah, no, this is a really a risque book. You know, we don't want to dig too deeply into it. This is all allegorical of God's love for us. Others say it's a type of Christ in the church, like I just mentioned a moment ago. Others say it's a drama concerning romance. Where do I fall on that? My view is typically this. The straightforward reading is the preferable reading. It sounds like a story of a guy and a girl falling in love. And so that's what it's about. There's not really all these layers of meaning necessarily. Sometimes there are types that God gives us or allegories that God gives us. And he will indicate that in the text. But y'all, God created sex and marriage. It's not sinful. It's good. A lot of the people who wanted to turn it into a type and into an allegory had a view that it was wrong. In fact, so much so that they began forbidding priests from getting married. You need to stay celibate for the rest of your life. They started telling priests, you remember that with the Catholic Church? They were saying, no, don't don't don't get married because you need to keep yourself above such things. No, God instituted it right at the beginning of the Bible. No, this is a good thing. We should see it as God giving a stamp of approval on romance. Can it also speak of God's love for us? Yes, absolutely. Can it also be a type of Christ in this church? Yes, but it's not primarily that. Primarily, it's a drama for us to read and to see that God appreciates these things. And so, what's an outline? If we go back to Genesis 2, where Adam says, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, we can see a very good outline for the book. We have the courtship or the leaving there in chapters one through three. We have the consummation of the marriage or the cleaving in chapters four and five, and the celebration or the weaving in chapters five through eight. And so this is a good book right here. The the rabbis may have been wise in state and not letting children read the book. You don't want to awaken things before it's time. Of course, yes, that's that. There's some wisdom in that. And not all content is a blessing to us. Not all content is necessarily age appropriate. And so we recognize that. And we we have to deal with that as we are going through it. But that doesn't mean that just because it's a little bit more adult in theme that we should read it as something other than what it is clearly a man wooing a woman and getting married to her. And that's a good thing because God created marriage. And we should see it as honorable. Okay, so that's it. We made it through. What are we going to talk about next time? The major prophets. This may be two parts. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel. I put question marks there because I'm really not sure. We might have to break that up. And so we'll consider that. And that gives us a basis to see the end here. Because after the major prophets come the minor prophets. And so we'll consider those afterwards, the 12. I think we can handle all 12 of those in a single session. We'll see. And then the final writings, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and maybe even get into the intertestamental period. And that would put us, depending on what we do with the major prophets, at 11 or 12 weeks, I said I was shooting for 12 weeks here. We go through the Old Testament in 12 weeks and I do have in mind going through the New Testament next also in 12 weeks and maybe we can put it all together and call it learn the Bible in 24 hours or overview of the Bible in 24 hours.