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The first session, gentlemen, we were considering together some of the major themes of the Book of Judges, namely the fact that the men after whom the book is called were, in the first place, saviors, in the second place they were judges, and in the third they were military commanders who led the people of God to fight for their deliverance. Then we tried to briefly to sketch in the place that the book of Judges has in its immediate context in the canon of the Old Testament. But you will have noticed that even in that first session, I was using the Old Testament as a model for us today. I was drawing comparisons between the judges of that far off century and ourselves today in Christian service. And of course, as we proceed in the book of Judges, we shall find ourselves learning lessons from that book by looking out all kinds of comparison. We shall have to apply various techniques for taking the message of the old Testament and using it for our own spiritual edification and training. Now, therein, for some people, there lies a grave danger. They have observed how that in times past, people have interpreted the Old Testament as though it were an allegory, like John Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress. They have observed how people have claimed that the Old Testament stories are types of our New Testament situation. And they complain that that attitude to Old Testament, that method of interpreting the Old Testament, has led to grievously absurd interpretations that have no authority or validity. In consequence, the method of typology, typological interpretation of the Old Testament has fallen into great disfavor, not to say contempt, in many a theological circle. So before we proceed, I wish, if I may, to turn aside from the book of Judges and to discuss with you the many different ways in which the New Testament itself uses the Old Testament, so that we may learn from the New Testament how we ourselves may and should go about applying the Old Testament message to ourselves. For it is certainly true that typology, as it is commonly called, has often been abused, and fantastic lessons have been adduced by its means, like the apocryphal story of the man who was expounding, or trying to, the significance of the Ark of God in the most holy place in the Hebrew tabernacle, and he observed that his dimensions were two and a half by one and a half by one and a half cubits, which signified, according to him, that the half had not been told. You'll see. The story is doubtless apocryphal, but certainly typology has been used to fabricate many a meaning that could scarcely have been in the mind of the Spirit of God when he inspired the Old Testament record, and we therefore need careful thought on how we are to interpret the Old Testament. In some places, however, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and people are advised that only those things that the New Testament says are types may be safely used as types for ourselves. Otherwise, the Old Testament lesson is to be taken straight from its factual surface. I would like, therefore, to point out now that when the New Testament comes to use the old, it is not simply a question of either taking it literally or taking it typologically. That would be a very narrow in- uh, uh, interpretation of the New Testament usage. The New Testament uses the Old Testament in a large number of different ways. What I would like to do now, in some detail, and you will need my former exhortation to fight, uh, in order to endure the forces of gravity, uh, beneath your seat, drawing you down to the floor, uh, painfully so. You will need to fight, but in the end, perhaps it may be worthwhile in your future studies, if you care to remind yourselves with me, of this variety of ways in which the New Testament uses the old. So to begin with, we may notice that the New Testament uses the old by straight repetition. The chief commandment of the Old Testament was this: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, thy mind, thy soul, and thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. And the New Testament proceeds to just to repeat that chief commandment of the law, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. And by that simple repetition, applies the force of the Old Testament law to us in this particular generation. Straight repetition, therefore. Then the New Testament will draw a lesson from the old by the simple method of comparison. As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man. A straightforward comparison between an Old Testament event, Noah and his flood, and the event prophesied in the New Testament, the second coming of Christ. Moreover, it is worth your while noticing, perhaps, that when the New Testament takes a comparison between Noah's flood and the coming of the Lord, it doesn't limit itself to one single comparison, but it uses various elements in the flood and compares them at different parts in the New Testament to different situations with us. Our Lord quoted the flood with eyes particularly upon the generation of the flood and said, you know, the trouble was that they were totally consumed in the ordinary affairs of life. They married, were given in marriage, they built houses, they farmed their farms, none of these things evil in themselves, the ordinary avocations of life, but the people in Noah's day were so engrossed, so completely taken up with the ordinary affairs of life, that they had no time to give thought to the fact that the judgment of God was coming. The day that Noah entered the ark and the flood came, found the ordinary people completely unprepared for the deluge of God's judgment. And our Lord therefore drew the analogy, as it was then, so it will be in the days before the coming of the Son of Man. People so consumed by the ordinary affairs of life that they have no time to prepare or even to take notice of the fact that the Lord is coming again. Whereas if you come to, uh, uh, to, um, the letter to the Hebrews, the writer takes a different lesson. He says, you know, when Noah was, uh, warned of God that the flood was coming, he believed it. Oh, and how could you tell he believed it? Because he did something about it, that's how you would tell. To Noah, the, uh, warning of the coming of the flood was not just a theological doctrine to be savored over your muffins and tea in a comfortable hotel. It was a something that were real, and he had a family to save. And so he showed his faith in the doctrine that the flood was coming. By the way he set about building an ark to save his, uh, family, and if any others were willing to be saved. We don't believe the doctrine of the second coming of Christ if it hasn't got us on our toes, doing all we can to save people. Whereas when Peter thinks about the flood and Noah, Peter, perhaps to the dismay of some modern theologians, he uses it, uh, to say, there the ark, you know, wherein a few people were saved, that is eight souls, through water. The like figure whereto baptism also saves us. Dear, dear, dear me, for Peter's reputation, if he hasn't gone and made the flood a kind of a type. Dear, dear. Well, we'll pass him by for the moment and come back to such extraordinary things. So we've had straight repetition, and we have observed comparison, simple comparison. But then the New Testament sometimes uses a feature from the Old Testament as a simile. A simile is when you, uh, say of a certain thing as another thing. He barked like a dog. Or say. He, he came into the room like the very dew from heaven. Very good. Uh, do you say, a simile. You talk like a fool. In one Peter chapter one, um Peter uses a very interesting simi- uh, simile. He observes in chapters one and verse eighteen and nineteen of his first epistle, verses eighteen and nineteen, chapter one of one Peter, that we have been redeemed with precious blood of Christ. And as far as the doctrinal statement went, that would have been enough, wouldn't it? Redeemed with the blood of Christ. And all theologians would have been happy. We all say, but having said that, Peter isn't content to say that, but, uh, now drags in a simile. You have been redeemed with the blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. Pray, why add the simile, Peter? When you could have got away without using a simile, why use a simile? As of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He uses a simile at that point. But now let's look at, uh, the, uh, later verse in one chapter one verse thirteen. Wherefore, girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now you notice he uses not a simile, but a metaphor. In a similely, in a simile, you use words like as or like. This was like that. But in a metaphor, you don't use the words like or as. You simply describe one thing or one action in terms that belong literally to another thing or another action. So Peter says, gird up the loins of your mind. Anyone can see that's not literal, can't they? Because minds don't have loins, and therefore you can't gird up your mind in the same way as you'd gird up your loins. Here is a straight metaphor where our thinking processes are described in terms that literally apply to some other part of our anatomy, our namely our loins, do you see? What should we do with this? Older translators gleefully went and did translated it literally, so here we are landed in the King James Version with this metaphor girding up the loins of our minds. Modern translators have despaired of putting it into modern English and at the same time keeping the metaphor. They observe that if Canadians have loins, they don't talk about them generally, you'll see. And loins to Canadians, uh, uh, may be a certain cut of meat in the butcher shop, but even there the term falls out of modern usage, you'll see. And even if they had loins and knew what they were, Canadians are not in the habit of talking about girding up the loins, do they? I'm old enough and come from an ancient country, and my, uh, father's generation still talked about girding up your loins, do they? It is a metaphor that many countries would have understood, uh, not least people in the Middle East, where they tended to wear these long sort of flowing nightshirt things, as the Saudi Arabians do and other such people in the Gulf, you'll say. Uh, which are good for walking in if you walk slowly, but if you have work to do or re- running to do, your daily jogging, it is not a good piece of clothing to wear, one of those long nightshirt things. And so if they had some s- journeying to do or some running to do or hard work, they, uh, pulled up the old nightshirt thing and tucked it into their belts around their middles. You'll see that was girding up your loins, you'll see, like Elijah did when he ran all the way from Carmel down to Samaria in front of Ahab's chariot. Girding up the loins of your mind. Well, we can see what it means. Gird to gird up the loins of your mind, you you're preparing yourself to do some hard work, running or or working or some kind. How would you translate that in English? When you're using it as a metaphor, gird up the loins of your mind. And gird up our loins in the literal sense. Or if we do, we talk about putting a waist around your middle. We'll say if you're going to engage in lifting a heavy weight, well, be wise like the old countrymen were when I worked on a farm, and they would have a thick belt around their middle to take the strain when we were carrying sacks of o- o- of corn that weighed, um, nineteen stones, some of them. Also, they would gird up their loins on those occasions. But if we gird up our loins, we talk of fitting a belt. That wouldn't sound good in, in, in, uh, in scripture. Fit a, fit a belt on the middle of your mind wouldn't sort of sound, uh, very good, would it, what ho? You'll say, so what would you say? I mean, if, uh, well, again, in my generation, if you were going to do some work, you, you took your jacket off and rolled up the sleeves, but people don't wear jackets, poor souls, these days. So it's a job to know what to say. And even sort of, uh, take your jacket off and roll the s- roll up the sleeves of your mind wouldn't sound all too good in the Bible, would it? So modern translators, despairing of translating the thing as a metaphor, do what you have to do in some languages. They cut out the metaphor completely. They say, what does the metaphor mean? Well, it means get yourself ready, prepare yourself, you'll say, to do some hard work. In this case, it's girding up the loins of your mind. That's preparing your mind to do some rigorous thinking. And so some modern translations, which some of you may have before you, have got something like that in them. Nothing about girding loins, but simply prepare yourself for some rigorous thinking. And they've got the meaning, haven't they? Eh. And they've lost a whole dimension of significance, haven't they? Because, as you'll see, when Peter used the metaphor, it wasn't, uh, because he thought his sermon ought to be decorated a little bit with a bit of oratory to make it sound nice. It was part of Peter's deliberate intention of evoking a complete Old Testament scene. We come back to the simile, you were redeemed with precious blood as of a lamb. Why use the simile as of a lamb? Because once upon a time, the whole nation of Israel had been redeemed by the blood of a lamb. So now Peter reminds his modern Hebrews of the parallel between the two by that simile. You have been redeemed with the blood of Christ as of a lamb. And immediately by that simile, the whole story of the Exodus is evoked. And Peter means it deliberately, doesn't he, as a teaching method. Because again, it's not merely to, uh, pass through a boring five minutes within his sermon. It's part of his message to recall the Exodus. So now he goes on to use a metaphor taken from the story of the Exodus. Gird up the loins of your mind. You will remember that when the Israelites came to eat the Passover, they were told they couldn't eat it just anyhow. You couldn't eat it sitting at table and taking your ease with your feet up on the, uh, on the cushions. Eat not of it raw, but roast with fire. Your staff in your hand, your shoe on your foot, and your loins girded. Difficult to manage, mutton, roast mutton with the the grease dripping down, and the bread, unleavened bread, and the green herbs, and perhaps a cup of wine, and the staff in one hand ready to go. And perhaps they didn't do it literally, but metaphorically, yes. Staff in hand, shoe on foot, loins girt. Why? Because to eat that Passover was to say you believed the gospel, that the very night you were going out of Egypt, and not just to get out of Egypt either. You believed the gospel that you were getting out of Egypt in order to journey to the glorious inheritance that you believed lay beyond. And therefore, if you wanted to, to eat the Passover, you had to be prepared, physically prepared, to start journeying. For there was no other way to get to the inheritance but to journey. And that's why, of course, uh, presently, uh, uh, you'll see that Peter started off his chapter with the metaphor. You have been begotten again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that that fades not away. You begin to see that his whole first chapter is abounding with simile and metaphor as he evokes in his language the story of the Old Testament. So now he says, gird up the loins of your mind. Uh, what does that mean? Well, if Israel really believed that there was an inheritance out there in the blue, uh, they had to prepare themselves to journey. And if we believe we have been redeemed with the blood of our lamb, and there is an inheritance out there, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fades not away, then it calls for us to prepare ourselves, and in particular to start to do some rigorous thinking. Gird up the loins of your mind, and don't let them wander over baseball or anything else, you'll see. Uh, gird up the loins of your mind. Start to do some rigorous thinking and work out the implication of your Christian hope. Set your hope perfectly on the grace that is going to be brought to you at the coming of our Lord Jesus. Set your hope. You'll see it's a commonplace of Christian thought, isn't it, and experience to say that our faith needs to be refined, and Peter says that in the first paragraph of his first chapter. It is the fact that our Christian hope needs to be worked out. Its implications need to be thought out. We say we believe the Lord is coming and the grace is going to be brought unto us, then what are the implications now? And if I'm going to, uh, uh, work out the implications of my Christian hope, I shall need to do some rigorous thinking. Gird up the loins of your mind, says Peter. To do some rigorous thinking and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought to you. Hence the metaphor. And gentlemen, if one preacher, not a very good preacher, a- admittedly, but if one preacher might advise a, a host of expert preachers, preach your metaphors. Preach your metaphors. This thing of girding up the loins of your mind based on the Exodus story isn't there, I say, simply to make it a little bit more colorful. It's a useful metaphor, isn't it? I can imagine, can't you? Um, suppose, for instance, uh, you have been in Egypt six months after Moses and the Israelites left, and you're on a tour of the pyramids, and coming around the corner, you bumped into a Jewish friend of yours by the name of Eliezer, and you'll say, hello, Eliezer, old boy, how are you? Surprised to see you here. I- I- I mean, I thought you believed in this old, this inheritance story about a inheritance somewhere flowing with milk and honey o- over there. And he said, yeah, I do believe in it. And you say, well, well, what are you doing here, old chap? Uh, Moses and the others have been left alone. Why, what are you doing around here? Well, he says, to tell you the truth, you see, I do believe in it, but um, um, uh, foot slogging across the wilderness, it doesn't appeal to me a lot, you see. I mean, it does to some people, these extraordinary vigorous sort who like go jogging in the morning and things, you see. Uh, but foot slogging so many kilometers a day across our howling wilderness is not my sort of idea of life, do you see? So I, I, I prefer to stay here, really. I criticize the others for going, but um, uh, uh, um, I prefer to stay here for the time being. So you do. Uh, and yet you say you, you expect to be in the inheritance? Oh yes, I, uh, yeah, oh yes, I expect to be in the inheritance. I'm redeemed, you know, by the blood of the lamb. How I'm redeemed. I expect one day to be in the inheritance. You say you do, and how are you going to get there? Well, you know, I hadn't thought of that. I don't think too much about these things. I don't think we need to think about these things, really. I, I shall be there one of these days. I'm not quite sure how, but I, I'm sure I shall be there. And what would you say to that? You say, my boy, wouldn't you gird up the loins of your mind and do a little bit of thinking? There are no buses here, you know, that will take you at the last minute. What a vivid illustration it becomes. You'll find your fellow believers, and yes, they're redeemed and they hope to be in heaven, but they're not making any attempt to make progress along life's spiritual journey. And what a vivid illustration it can be to press the truth home to them, that they need to gird up the loins of their mind. Preach your metaphors, gentlemen. That's why God uses them. That's incidentally why we use metaphors ourselves, isn't it? When we want to vividly to impress something on people's minds, we use metaphors, if you'll observe it, in our everyday speech. It's nothing curious. It is certainly a legitimate way to use Old Testament. I made my point then, that Peter, by first a simile as a lamb, and then by a metaphor, gird up the loins of your mind, and then by, you might call it another metaphor, what shall we call it? We didn't bother to label it just yet, talking of our inheritance counterpart to Israel's inheritance. Uh, Peter is deliberately evoking the Exodus experience. Straight repetition, then, is one way the New Testament uses the old. Then comparison. As it was, so it will be, things like that. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. And then simile, as of a lamb, then metaphor, gird up the loins of your mind. But they are not the only ways that the New Testament uses to bring to bear the Old Testament upon us. Out of some of those other ways, we better speak on our next session and take our break here.