Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:04 Well, good morning. Good morning. You should be the most rested group of people in the world. Not only is it basically noon, um, but you've had tons of sleep, I am sure. Uh, years ago, um, Pastor Craig and I, he's the pastor at Village Church East over in Carol Stream. We went fishing up in Wisconsin. I want you to know, as I tell you this, I don't like fishing. I'm not good at fishing. I probably could be if I learned. Some of you have lost immediate respect for me and you're about to lose more <laugh>. I, I mostly hope I don't catch a fish because I don't wanna touch it <laugh>. Cause the smell, you just can't get it like lingers at six to your soul. And I'm like, I just don't want, anyway. So Craig says we should go fishing. And I'm like, I'm a man.
Speaker 1 00:00:55 Let's go fishing. It's gonna be sweet. So Pastor Craig has every, he has more gear than you could possibly imagine. We're pulling up these rubber things over our, like legs and arms, what he called the suits you wear when you get in like water. I dunno what waders. Yes, apparently. And, uh, he's got nets and everything. You've name it. The guy's got it. His car's loaded. And, and, uh, so I, I say to him, really just trying to avoid like touching a fish. Uh, I said, uh, can I just catch him with a net? And he says to me, Michael, you can't do that. And what happened in my head was interesting because in my head I said, this challenge accepted <laugh>. A few hours later we're in this, uh, river and uh, of course I have a net. And uh, I won. I got a salmon and a net and I was so proud of myself and I'm shouting and I said, Craig, Craig, come here.
Speaker 1 00:01:52 I need your help. Come here. Cuz I, even though I had it in the net, I didn't wanna touch it, but I really wanted to just show off. And I, and so as he's walking toward me, he's shaking his head with like this smirk on his face like, you moron. That's like the kinda look I got. And I said, Look, I got it. And he says to me, he says, Michael, anybody can catch a salmon with a net. When I said, You can't do that, I meant it's illegal to catch a salmon with a net on this river.
Speaker 0 00:02:24 <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:02:25 Oh, I made a critical mistake. <laugh> Craig was speaking in the genre of law and I interpreted him in the genre of man challenge. Challenge accepted. All right, welcome to our last message on how to interpret the Bible. Uh, hey, just for the last seven weeks I have been lecturing. You guys have been incredible. And uh, so it is just my joy to try to open up the word of God behind the scenes a little bit, show you what's going on. And I want you to love the Bible as much as I do. And so, so it's been a joy to do this because it's been incredible last Sunday in how to read the Bible. And then starting next Sunday, we have four weeks on really four of the biggest, um, challenges that skeptics make to the Bible. We're gonna be talking about genocide and violence in the Bible.
Speaker 1 00:03:13 Slavery in the Bible, um, has got oppressive to women, a few other subjects. And so the next four weeks are gonna be a blast, um, cuz we're gonna actually open up God's word and we're gonna let it speak in context and let God's heart and mind be revealed on each of these subjects. Uh, this morning we're gonna be talking about genre. And this is a very important subject. Now, some of you might be asking Pastor Michael, what is a genre? A genre very simply is a kind of something usually referencing literature, movies or music. For example, in music, here are some common genres or kinds. You have country, anybody rock r and b, rap, pop. Um, I would like to identify three unacceptable genres of music on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ. Number one is smooth jazz. Number two is polka, and number three is K-pop.
Speaker 1 00:04:08 You're welcome <laugh>, you know what I'm talking about. All right, so in literature, here's some common genres, biography, fiction, non-fiction poetry. You may not know this, but um, over the last couple decades, brand new genres of literature have been created. I'd like to share with you one that I find to be the weirdest of all and very interesting. It's called Ergodic literature. Uh, ergodic comes from the Greek word to work. Let me, let me read you a description of ergodic literature. The genre, the text in erotic literature might be arranged to look like a picture. The margins could contain an entirely separate story or a different ending. A book could be un an unbounded stack of papers to be shuffled around and read at random in erotic literature, you can't simply flip through a book page by page, you have to engage with the book.
Speaker 1 00:05:03 And the more you engage, the more you get out of it. The story is not static, but rather dynamic changing with the reader. Does that sound exhausting to anybody else? Like how lazy? You're like, I'm gonna put a page of a book of 50 pages, Shuffle 'em and it's a new story every single time. Have at it I'm novel. All right. 98% of the time, the Bible is not this difficult. If you know the genre and you know the genre's basic rules and the Bible is a library of multiple books made up of multiple genres. I have great news for every one of you here. Each one of you are already pros at identifying, interpreting and applying the genres of the Bible in their context. Every genre of the Bible you interface with on a regular basis. And the vast majority of you are functional human beings, which means you're able to listen to or read, interpret, and apply various genres of the written and spoken word all around you in everyday life, what most people lack are one or two extra rules or nuances in ancient near Eastern literature.
Speaker 1 00:06:14 And we're gonna really help you uncover some of that this morning. Now, what you have also learned over the past couple weeks are two very important words. And if you're gonna read a book of the Bible in its context, you have to understand its genre. And when you do this well, this is called ex of Jesus, the word ex that means to pull out of. And so what you do in ex of Jesus is you parachute into a text and you want to find what did the human author and the divine author, what did they intend to communicate? So here's the definition, it's the process of discovering the original intended meaning of a passage of scripture. If you are going to jump into the Bible and exe it correctly, you're gonna have to understand the genre of literature you are reading each time. The shadow side of exit Jesus is what none of you want to do.
Speaker 1 00:07:05 It's called Isa Jesus. Isa Jesus is when you put something into a text, isa means to put into. And the definition is the process of putting your own ideas, agenda or bias into a text. None of you want to be ised, correct? Neither do the human authors who wrote the Bible nor the divine author who inspired it. And so we wanna make sure we are honoring the intention of both as we read, interpret, and apply what the Bible is saying. Now, in the eighties and nineties, most conservative evangelical Christians were very proud of their interpretation of the Bible. And we would say something like this to our non-Christian friends. We would say, I interpret the Bible literally. Then your non-Christian friends would say, That's stupid. Here's why. If you believe that the Bible's literal as Jesus bread is Satan, a literal dragon. If you interpret the Bible literally, then why don't you eat shellfish?
Speaker 1 00:08:09 Why don't you eat bacon? The list goes on and on and on. So to be more accurate, conservative theologians, uh, began to concern, began to put together new terms that I think help us state the case more accurately. And here's a new phrase that I think is better. We interpret the Bible literarily, meaning we understand each book of the Bible has a different literary genre and we interpret that book or that section of scripture according to the literary genre that it's written in. Let me give you an example of this. Uh, there is a literary genre that you're familiar with called satire and here is a, uh, uh, from a, an online, uh, satirical news, uh, whatever bloggish, I don't know, whatever you call it. I think you'll appreciate this. And here's, here's what they wrote, man, sitting literally three feet away from Bible, ask God to speak to him, Okay?
Speaker 1 00:09:08 It's gonna sink in, it's gonna take a moment, right? Was this really literally a picture of a man praying, asking God for help? Probably not. When you read the story, is it a true story pro? No. If you read the story under, it's not a true story, but is it telling a story that happens on a regular basis? A hundred percent. Do you know how many people will sit within three to five feet of a Bible and they'll say, God, I know they're not a Christian, but should I keep dating them or not? God, I know you don't like lying, but should I confess that lie or not? Right? And we know this, and in fact, sometimes we just avoid the Bible because we don't want to read what we know it already says, and we're hoping that God has some different, like, I dunno, rule or law for us other than what he already laid out in the Bible.
Speaker 1 00:09:57 But this is called satire. It's making the point, right, by actually saying something that isn't a hundred percent true. And when you read satire, literally you get yourself into a lot of trouble. In fact, there's some of you, you said to me, um, I primarily get my news from the Babylon B. That is, that is not an effective way to get your news. For what? For what it's worth. If you interpret the Bible to rarely you're gonna be able to take different things like this into consideration when you're interpreting it and applying it. That may be normal news for many of you, but for some of you, this is the first time you have ever heard this concept. And once you understand how genres work and the rules that apply to them, it's like the Bible is unlocked before your eyes and you will be able to interpret literally 98% of what you read if you understand the rules and have a study Bible with you.
Speaker 1 00:10:51 All right? The Bible is five main genres. And so for each genre we're gonna do is we're gonna identify the purpose of the genre and then we're gonna share with you some basic rules for interpreting this genre. And then I'm gonna give you a brief illustration, um, from the Bible of how to actually interpret in light of some of these rules. So if you've got pen, paper, your phone or iPad or computer, pull it out. Uh, this is gonna be the last of our lecture series. And so, um, we're gonna jump into this. First, let's explore this genre of historical narrative. Historical narrative makes up 43% of the Bible. And the purpose of historical narrative is that the reader might be immersed, suppressed, and informed through true stories. So if I'm an author and I'm writing historical narrative, what might I want to inform my audience of?
Speaker 1 00:11:48 Here's one the hard truths of their family story. Or maybe I want to transfer familial identity from one generation to the next. What do most people want? They want to know, who am I? Where did I come from? What's, what's running in my blood? What are the stories of my people? Maybe maybe as an author of historical narrative, I wanna pass down from generation to generation the really hard lessons that we had to learn. Maybe there are lessons about ourselves about following God, but whatever the motivation, what you have to understand is that historical narrative is meant to be read and immersed, but also the person writing it wants generations after them to be informed of some really important things. So let's explore just a few of the rules of reading. Historical narrative. Number one, New Testament narrative is not 100% chronological or complete, but always 100% thematic.
Speaker 1 00:12:50 When Americans write stories, we write things in order, and when we take things out of order, it's almost considered like immoral. But the authors of the New Testament, of course they're concerned with chronology because you take each of the gospels for example, and they pretty much range by and large from the birth of Jesus for the beginning of his ministry all the way to his resurrection. And there's a general chronological theme that goes to this, but what you're gonna find is that not all the stories are in the same order from book to book. And that wasn't an issue for them in any way, shape, or form because that was permissible in the first century is you wrote biographies because what you did is, although you had a chronological scope, you pictured or you took someone's life and you told it themed by theme in the midst of this chronology.
Speaker 1 00:13:35 So you might go to one book or one gospel and they'll have a series of events in one way and another gospel have a series of events in a different order. That is not an issue for New Testament authors. That's not a concern of theirs. In fact, what they're trying to show you is theme by theme, what this looked like. Now what's interesting is you take all four of the gospels, they are written to for very different groups of people for for very different reasons. And so they pluck out details of the stories that are relevant for that group of people. And so as you read New Testament historical narrative, you have to understand there's some different rules at play than what most Americans find acceptable. The second rule, narratives don't typically state the truth, but they show the truth. For example, polygamy, if you were to ask most Christians, is polygamy wrong?
Speaker 1 00:14:23 They're gonna say yes. A non-Christian might look at you and say, Show me the verse. And you can't. But that's not the way. Old Testament narrative, by the way, works. Old Testament narrative rarely tells you the truth, but it almost always shows you the truth. And so here's how Hebrew Old Testament narrative would work. You have Genesis one and two and you have the standard of marriage. Adam and Eve, every single time a couple diverges from this standard, what happens? Really bad things. You won't find a polygamous situation in the Bible where things go well for them. And what are the na what are the narrators, the writers trying to tell you, they're showing you any deviation that goes away from the garden creation standard is wrong and bad. In fact, what you get in Deuteronomy is you have a law, a rule for uh, kings that says you cannot have multiple wives.
Speaker 1 00:15:19 And, but it doesn't say that for the rest of the people. But again, it shows you every time. So you have to understand narrative. If you're looking for something to tell me, like I want a Bible verse to state it as factual, uh, particularly in narrative, you're not gonna get that. You have to actually read and think and then process. What is the story telling me about the things that are happening? Rule number three, narratives are almost always descriptive, not prescriptive. Here's what that means. First, you're not always told what's good and what's bad. Do you know how you know what's good and what's bad? Particularly in Old Testament narrative, you read the law, the 613 rules that dictate behavior for the Jews. And if it diverges from that, it's good or it's bad. But the the text itself is not going to tell you.
Speaker 1 00:16:15 Here's another thing, You're not gonna know who the good guy is or who the bad guy is by and large because the text isn't gonna tell you here, here's an example of this. When you get to the New Testament, you think of Abraham, He's a hero of the faith. You know what the problem with that is? When you read through the story of Abraham before he was Abraham, he was Abraham, he was a terrible human being. Like every story is an indictment on this guy's character. And there are a few minor like short pieces of his story where he does something really good and faithful. And I'm glad the New Testament like plucked that out and said, We're just gonna remember him for the good stuff, boom. But you read the guy's story and he is a villain so often and God is gracious and you learn some lessons to this.
Speaker 1 00:17:00 You learn that Abram wasn't picked because he was a good guy and the rest of the world was bad. He was plucked by the grace of God. And then you learn that God's grace and mercy are bigger than our terrible behavior because at every step of the way, you have this guy doing ridiculous things according to the law that wasn't even written. But that's the, that's the lens you're supposed to read this through. And so here's what's interesting is we are tempted to make him the good guy in every story and in most every story he's not. And, and so you actually have to read Old Testament narrative because, because it's gonna describe something but it's not gonna prescribe it. Now you get to the New Testament and we see all of these things that the church did or different people did. But when the author is writing these things, is he just describing a series of events or is he prescribing this is the way all people should do it?
Speaker 1 00:17:47 Always, most of the time what the Bible is doing from Old Testament to New Testament, it is describing things, not prescribing things. People get into a lot of trouble when they say we have to do things exactly how they describe them in the New Testament because they mix up description for prescription. Here's the fourth rule of biblical narrative. Biblical narrative is written as factual history unless explicitly stated otherwise from creation to Adam and Eve to the fall, to babble to the flood, to Abraham, to Jonah, you name it. Unless the biblical authors tell you it's mythology or allegory, they are understanding that their writing history. And what happens in modern theological times is that when people don't like or believe that something is possible, they mythologize it or allegorize it, but if the authors, the original human authors were to stand up before you, they have no notion that these are allegories or mythology.
Speaker 1 00:18:57 And so we have to really understand that the authors who wrote historical narrative, unless they explicitly state otherwise believe that they're articulating to you and for generations historical fact. So I wanna look at a short example of this in the book of Jonah, uh, Jonah chapter one in verse 15, you can open up your bibles. I'll also have it on the screen here. This is the story of Jonah and the fish. Um, I want to read a portion of this and then I wanna apply some of the rules we just talked about. So they picked up Jonah and hurled him into the sea. Obviously we're picking up like mid story and the sea ceased from his raging. Then the men feared the Lord got exceedingly and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and they made vows and the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah.
Speaker 1 00:19:45 And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord as God from the belly of the fish. All right, let's apply some of the rules. Is this describing how God disciplined Jonah or is it prescribing how God is gonna discipline everybody? We're gonna say describing, because last time I checked, none of you got swallowed by a fish for three days and three nights. And so already what we're we're seeing here is that this isn't a prescription, it's a description number one. Um, but you're also seeing a little bit of the heart of God here. You see right away that God values obedience. This is very high value for the Yahweh character, but you also see that God will measurably disa discipline disobedience. Also, when you read Jonah, there is nothing zero indication that the person writing this book believes this is mythology or allegory.
Speaker 1 00:20:44 When you read this, I mean there are actual cities in places and it's a very, very, like all the, all the hallmarks of, uh, historical narrative are here. There is no clue whatsoever that this is a made up story or that there are elements that are made up here. Uh, lastly, the story actually never tells you that Jonah was wrong for fleeing. How do you know it's wrong for Jonah to flee? Because the law already tells you disobedience to God is bad. Disobedience to Yahweh is not good, but the text actually never has to tell you that because the law already shows you that. So it actually tells you the story and the reader has to use a little bit of discernment and you figure out who's the good guy, who's the bad guy, what's going on here? That's historical narrative. Second, let's explore the genre of law.
Speaker 1 00:21:35 Uh, law are simply rules given by God for people. And the purpose of law is to restrain people from sin, clarify morality and reveal God's values. Most of you, when you open up law, you get to Leviticus, you're doing your annual, your annual reading of the Bible, you get to Leviticus and you give up. I've told you guys in the past, my dream is to preach to Leviticus. I love this book. I think it's gonna be incredible and I think there's so much about God's heart and genius and mind in this book. But let's talk about the rules for interpreting law. Number one, no for certain the scope of a law's jurisdiction. I'd have a question for you. When you're in America, are you under the jurisdiction of Canadian law? No, definitely not. All right, as a new covenant Christian, are you under the jurisdiction of the old covenant?
Speaker 1 00:22:31 No. No. In fact, we have a new covenant that is made obsolete. The old covenant, thankfully the same God who inspired laws under old covenant is the same God who inspired laws and the new covenant, but they are actually different. All thankfully nine outta the 10 commandments are reiterated in the new covenant. But like, so you see this common heart of the common law giver, but if you are under the jurisdiction of the new covenant, you're not under the jurisdiction of the old covenant. So when you read Old Covenant law, the 613 laws in the first five books of of the Bible, you have to understand that you are not bound by these laws. But number two, laws are given both to regulate and to expose people. What I think is crazy, and there are some insane laws in the Bible and the Old Testament particularly, and every law is written because not just one, but many people are tempted or have the impulse to break that law.
Speaker 1 00:23:32 I mean, I'm, I'm telling you, just start reading all the laws you can, like people are tempted to to do that. That's really, really dark. What the law is supposed to do is to remind you that the same impulse in all of these ancient people to break all of these ethical moral laws, that same impulse is in every single one of us. And if you read a law and you don't have the impulse to go do that thing, thank your mom, your dad, your country, your church, the Holy Spirit or the conscience that you get to live in a civilization birthed out of a Judeo-Christian ethic. Because if you didn't have all of that guiding you and holding you back, you need every one of those laws. It's crazy. Just have some fun. Go read the book Leviticus and you'll realize what I'm saying. Number three, laws are given to reveal the law giver.
Speaker 1 00:24:23 Every single Old Testament law reveals the heart of God. If you are reading a law and you conclude God is a moral monster, after reading that law, you have not done enough work in that law because you will not find when you read a law in its context any law that shows God to be anything other than good, righteous, holy and just. And so what we often do is we, we project our American brain and values onto the Bible and hold God to our standards. If you can suspend those and allow the word of God in its context to speak, you will find every law declares the glory and the goodness of our God. All right, let's look at an example of biblical law. This is from Exodus chapter 23, verse 10. God says, For six years you are to sow your fields, harvest the crops, but during the seventh year, let the land lie unpled and unused then the poor among your people may get food from it and the wild animals may eat what they leave.
Speaker 1 00:25:30 Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. All right, what sinful behavior is God regulating the sinful impulse of every single person to exploit people, animals, and land every civilization on the planet treated poor people in weak people like dirt, abused their animals and exhausted their land. And God comes in and says, You are gonna be different. You will be the singular nation in the world that will set a different pattern for the way you treat the things that can't defend themselves. You will be a just people in a bright shining light. And when people see the agricultural process you take to care for not just the land and not just the crops, but also the poor and your animals, people are gonna be blown away by the level of productivity and they're gonna, you're gonna look at them and say, All of this is from Yahweh because he is the one true God.
Speaker 1 00:26:37 And so what does God do? He regulates not just their sin, but in the process of being the law blesses the entire net nation for generations to come. All right, third, let's explore the genre of poetry. Poetry is 33% of the Bible. And the purpose of poetry is that the reader might feel, experience and be lost in the imagery and the truths of the poet. There are 185 separate songs all within their own musical genre, if you will. In the Bible one scholar, he said this about poetry. He says, We don't live in a day when poetry. We do not live in a day when poetry is in vogue. We are shaped by smartphones and soundbites. We are impatient with communication that forces us to slow down. Poetry by definition is a kind of communication that cannot be fully appreciated on the first reading. Suppose a poem has a structure of cadence and rhyme and form.
Speaker 1 00:27:49 Two or three attempts are needed to make the path familiar enough to allow the eyes to be lifted. Then when the reader is comfortably in the flow of the poem, he begins to see so much more in the, in the world of poetry. It is not fast food literature that you get on the go. Poetry is fine dining that was designed to be savored as you slow down. So let's, let's dig into some of the rules of poetry. Number one, expect to be confused about 10% of the time you read ancient poetry, but always look for essential truth. Uh, biblical poetry uses references that you would've no idea what they mean unless somebody told you. For example, do you know that a pomegranate has significance for ancient near and culture? It symbolizes fertility. Did you also know, um, it probably was a compliment if you told a woman she's got a really big nose by chance, Anybody?
Speaker 1 00:28:51 Isn't that weird? You, How would you know that? Look at Song of Solomon verse seven or chapter seven verse four. This is a love poem, by the way. Your neck is like an ivory tower. What? You have a long white neck? Okay, cool. Your eyes are like pools in Hepa by the gate of bath beam. Now you have no idea what that is. Neither do I. But here's what he intends. He intends that when somebody reads this, they go, Oh, the pools of hepa are so beautiful, my gosh. And immediately you're brought to this like place of delight. Your nose, your nose is like the tower of Lebanon. Well thank you, which looks towards Damascus. And in my brain I'm like, is it cricket? Like, like maybe, I don't know. But this is where you open up a study bible and you understand that these are all points of reference that we're not familiar with.
Speaker 1 00:29:40 But there there is a central truth that every one of you got. This dude is smitten with this girl. He thinks she is beautiful even if their standards of beauty don't make sense because we don't know what the pools of Heand looked like. He loved her blue. Number two, poetry is the prayer language of Israel. The the Jews were so immersed into poetry that when they prayed, they prayed poetry. You find almost any prayer in the New Testament or Old Testament. The fast majority of them are poetry. It just came out of people. They were trained in this. They were born in this, it was in their blood. This is how they thought they loved poetry. They were a profoundly emotional culture. And one third of the Bible is foreign to most Americans because we don't value poetry. It's one of the least purchased major genres of literature in America.
Speaker 1 00:30:41 We're very much, tell me the fact, tell me the truth. Get to the point. We do like poetry when it's in music as long as it's four, four very simple and memorable words. But by and large, we are not a poetic culture like the nation of Israel was. And so when you understand that God gave this nation, one third of the book was poetry. Rule number three, parallelism in stanzas. It's a really big deal. I don't need to tell you about allegory, similarly metaphor, et cetera. Most of you have a broad enough like understanding of poetry to get that, but it most Americans miss this one. This is parallelism. Now, if you're listening online, so sorry for the next about minute and a half, you're not, I need to show this to you. So look at Psalm one, one as an example of this right away.
Speaker 1 00:31:28 When you look at Psalm one, one in your bibles, and I put an image of it here, you're gonna realize it's not put on page the same way that paragraphs are normal pros writing is. And so what the translators are doing is they're giving you a huge gift. They're saying to you, By the way, you can't read this like you would read a normal paragraph. This is poetry. Slow down, take a break. You're gonna have to probably get your study Bible out and take some time with this because it's not meant to be rushed through. Got it. Blessed is the man who who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of scoffers, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. Now, I want you to see this. I wanna show you Psalm one, one laid out in kind of a grid form.
Speaker 1 00:32:13 There's a blessing and the blessing is for the man, the person and, and the blessing. You wanna know what it is, but now there's gonna be three separate parallel categories. And if you find this, they're gonna follow each other. But I wanna show you this. The first category is has to do with walking, standing or sitting. And so someone, if you wanna be blessed, there's something you have to do. But here's what we have, there's gonna be a parallel parallel here. And then here's the next line of parallels in the council, in the way, in the seat. And then there's a, a third parallel category here, which is of the wicked, of the sinners of the scoffers. Now here's what we want. Just say it to me. Don't, don't hang out with bad people. Got it. But this is not the way God primarily communicates because God is not looking to primarily get your head into a factual place.
Speaker 1 00:33:05 Poetry is the language of the heart. And if God can get your heart, he has your life. And so God is giving one third of the Bible in his genre that grabs the heart. And here it is blessed. It is the man who doesn't walk, stand or sit in the council the way or the seat of the wicked sinners and scoffers and the book's gonna go on to tell you how to be blessed, et cetera. But when you understand this, just one stands, it's parallelism. And this is how so much of poetry is written. And when you can get that, you realize what the, what you could probably articulate in a few words. They're gonna take whole chapters to tell you. In fact, Psalm one 19, it is the longest chapter in the Bible and it is all about the word of God. They could probably tell, like tell you Psalm one 19 in two sentences.
Speaker 1 00:33:52 But what they do is they take every single letter of the Greek alphabet and they do a separate poem based on each letter of the Greek alphabet. It's an incredibly long chapter. In fact, if we preach in Psalm one 19, I probably in it for six months. That's how deep and rich it is. But literally, the author probably could have just pulled out one or two sentences and been like God's word. True. It's awesome study and it's valuable. Done. But that's, that's not their agenda. Their agenda is not to transfer facts. Their agenda is to speak to your soul and to your heart. Fourth, uh, let's explore the genre of prophecy. 27% of the Bible is prophecy. And the purpose of prophecy is to expose and usually not always, but usually realign the heart of its recipients to God. When we think of prophecy, we think about telling the future.
Speaker 1 00:34:45 That's a part of it. Sometimes prophecy is about exposing hidden things from the past. Sometimes prophecy is about the future. Sometimes it's about revealing what's in the heart right now prophecy can take any form, but what you realize is that there's some sort of supernatural information that God has that he's using to expose the people in that moment and realign them back to himself. So let's look at the rules of prophecy. Number one, most prophecy is written poetically. So you have to read that in mind with that in mind. Why is God writing prophecy poetically? Because prophecy is rarely ever about your head. It's about your heart. Do you see a theme? Why did God put so much of the Bible in a genre like this so that you slow down, so that you savor it, and so that it moves from your no to your heart?
Speaker 1 00:35:41 Rule number two, the prophets are primarily trying to motivate change in their day. Prophecy is a demanding genre of literature. If you are ever on the receiving end of prophecy, there is a demand today on your life. Even if it is about the future, the demand might be repents, the demand might be, trust me, the demand might be relax, be filled with shalom or peace because I am going to save the day one day what whatever the demand is for you when you're reading this, understand that the original here has had to demand on their life that God wanted them to know, do or feel. And rule number three, because much of prophecy is confusing and even vague, and this is gonna like bother some of you, but it's okay. It is okay to have differing views on the end times. It is a really, really hard genre of literature.
Speaker 1 00:36:35 Let me, let me tell you what we want to be aligned on explicitly. Jesus Christ is coming back. He is coming back to judge the living and the dead. Those who have trusted in Jesus will be resurrected to new life with new bodies to live in a new earth with Jesus forever and ever. Those who do not trust in Jesus will be raised to internal destruction in how forever and ever that that is the view of the in times that every Christian should say yes 100%. What happens up to that point? There is so much debate. This last week I was sitting with a, uh, a dispensational pre-millennial, pre tribulational guy who is also standing with a post-millennial dude. And I said, The two of you should get in room and talk. This should be really fun. Half of you have no idea what I just said, but that's all right.
Speaker 1 00:37:21 They knew what I was talking about and I wanted to put them in a room and I wanted to watch the debate. Let's look at an example of this. Uh, Isaiah chapter 66, Isaiah's a very long book, 66 chapters long, uh, verses 22 to 24 are the last three verses of a very, very long prophetic book. And before we read them to you, I want to read to you what I learned from opening up a study bible about this text, because I don't remember everything all the time about the Bible. I was trying to remember, was this written to Israel or Judah? I think it was divided kingdom. My brain just so I just, I said, you know, open a study Bible. Look at it. See what it says. Here's, here's what I was affirmed and learned. Isaiah, it's written to a rebellious Judah. Grace and mercy are offered to them.
Speaker 1 00:38:10 The righteous few are wondering if God is gonna save them and punish evil. The last section of Isaiah, it's future oriented prophecy. It ends with an encouragement to those who repent and a warning to those who don't. So the first two of these last three verses their prophecy in poetic form, and it's written to the righteous few in Judah. Here's what it says, For as the new heavens and the new earth that I make shall remain before me, says the Lord, so shall your offspring and your name remain from New moon to new moon, from sabba to Sabbath, all flesh shall, shall come to worship before me, declares the Lord I win. You will not be destroyed. You will be remembered forever. Stay in my team on the new heavens and the new earth. When I come to inaugurate and bring this in, it's gonna be good.
Speaker 1 00:38:58 I will make all things right. Relax. The last verse takes a shift, the last verse, It moves from poetry to pros. And it is a warning. It says this. And they, those are the believers on the new earth shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be crunched, and they shall be an abhorrent to all flesh. While the implications of that are massive, if you consider that is happening in eternity on the new earth with resurrected bodies, number one. Number two, this is a gospel proclamation before Jesus, anybody who comes to me and believes in me will have eternal life and you will reign with me on the new earth forever. And anybody who rebels against me, you will be in hell forever. This is before Jesus.
Speaker 1 00:39:56 The gospel has always been the same. Now we know his name is Jesus and we now we know the salvation is through his death and resurrection. They look forward to this and they're being told at the very end of this, there's two paths, life and death, eternity with God or eternity away from God. And he's giving them this choice. He's saying, Believe in me, trust in me. Follow me. How awesome is that? And that's how the book, 66 chapters of prophecy ends. And every single idea, except for like one or two small concepts that Jesus has of hell is rooted in this verse. When he describes the nature of hell, he goes right back to this verse, pulls out the imagery, and that's what he uses to teach from <affirmative>. Fifth and last, let's explore the genre of a epistles or letters 21 of the 27.
Speaker 1 00:40:44 Uh, New Testament books are a epistles. They're letters from one person to another and one person to a group. And the pur of an epistle is that the reader might be trained as they eaves drop on apostolic correspondence. These are only found in the New Testament. Uh, three of these a epistles or letters are from the Apostle Paul to young pastors training them. Many of them are from an apostle to specific churches in specific cities. Some like first Peter, second Peter in the book of Hebrews. They are to entire people groups. Um, the Jewish people, uh, who have been separated. They're on the run for their lives. So what are the rules? Number one, remember that you are not the primary audience. You are the secondary audience. New Testament letters were not written to you. They were written for you. There are specific contexts and locations and people and authors and recipients, and there are problems specific to these people or their local churches.
Speaker 1 00:41:47 And we have the joy to eavesdrop on this apostolic communication. It's awesome. But this is written for you. And one of the ways we know this is because every time a church or a person would receive an apostolic letter, do you know what they would do? They would copy it and they were obligated to give it away. And so when somebody would go from one church to another church, they would take the copy and take it to that church. And these letters spread like wildfire because they understood apostolic communication is divine revelation from God for the new covenant people of God. And so they copied and copied and copied and sent these copies all over the known world. And so it wasn't directly to you, but it is for you. And there's a warning in here, like if you were that silly dummy who actually did something really, really bad, that you got your name at the end of a book that says, Watch out for so and so.
Speaker 1 00:42:32 Everybody, all the churches in a region would know you by name. Don't be like this guy. So it was a good, it was a good, uh, prevention rule. Number two, read and listen to the whole letter first, then, then get into the details. The books were written to be received primarily through listening. And I think to get the most out of a New Testament letter or a pistol, it's really good. Read the book but then listen to it. Find an audio bible that just reads it to you and soak it in audibly. Because what we do is we do, we stop. But these are intended to be read at a fairly normal speaking pace. And so do this a couple times and it'll be really, really helpful for you to understand it. Rule number three, the problems of being addressed are typically easily discerned. If you remember that every single text of scripture, particularly epistles, is written to prevent a problem, correct a problem, or expose a problem.
Speaker 1 00:43:29 You can, you can therefore begin to understand like what's going on here. So you can read the book of First Corinthians, and there's this dude having a very inappropriate, intimate relationship with his mother-in-law. It's not very hard to figure it out because he states it, but then there are other problems and you're like, What's, what's going on here? And you can learn by the commands and the corrections what might actually be happening. And thankfully, if you open up a study bi bible with it, the study bible will probably tell you all the different options that are happening in terms of problems. I wanna look at a short example of this in the book of Ephesians in chapter six. This is the last chapter of the book of Ephesians. Paul's writing to a specific community in a city called Ephesus. And he writes in verse 10, Finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.
Speaker 1 00:44:13 And I want you to imagine you have never read this before. Why might you tell someone to be strong? Maybe because they're feeling weak, maybe because they have been through the runner and they're exhausted. First 11 tells us a bit more, more. He says, Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. Why are they, why are they feeling weak? They are under demonic attack. Did they know it? We don't know. They might actually be hearing this for the first time and going, Oh my goodness, how did I not see that? I thought this was just physical stuff. There's actually spiritual warfare going on. And Paul spent three years with the church at Ephesus. He probably trained them on spiritual warfare. And so it says in verse 12, We don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Speaker 1 00:45:20 And then what Paul continues to do is he continues to teach them the weapons that you have in Jesus are far more potent than the most powerful weapons of the evil one. And all of his dominion. You in Christ can stand strong. And he reminds them probably the teaching he gave them in person when he was with them. All right, now that you've been primed on all things genre, you are all masters of genre by the way, in the Bible. Now, um, I wanna, I wanna close with, um, two. So what's just a brief encouragement? So what number one, the Bible. It is not a textbook. I'm, I'm afraid that so many of us have been trained to see it like a textbook where maybe the goal is information acquisition. It's a multi-genre library designed to move the heart and the mind. I love that the vast majority of the words in the Bible are slow.
Speaker 1 00:46:16 They make you think and they make you feel, if you'll take the time, the Bible is designed not to be rushed through. It's designed to be saved. And what you even see, by the way, God sets up the genres, is that we as Americans think we just wanna know more and God wants our minds. No, God understands. If he gets your heart, he gets all of you. And the Bible is designed in a way to go right after your heart. And so what Number two, when you read the Bible more than once, remember that there are often 50 layers or more to every text. Some movies you watch them, you do need to watch it two or three times to really understand what's going on. And there's some books you probably do need to read them two or three more times to make sure you understand what's going on.
Speaker 1 00:47:11 What I have found with the Bible is that it does not matter how many times I teach it or read it. There are deeper layers and levels to it. I think of it like a gold mine. Uh, when you find a gold mine, I never have, but stories of the 19th century California gold rush Do tell me enough, they're super excited and you can probably live the rest of your life. And what you find in a year of digging out a gold mine if you're the first person to get there, but that's not all there is. In fact, the deeper you go, you need different tools. And there is so much in the mountain of God's word. We settle for what we got in the first year of digging into God's word. I'm telling you, as somebody who has taught multiple passages 10 times, 15 times or more, that I never ceased to be amazed at what God has in that text.
Speaker 1 00:47:57 If I keep digging. And it's interesting because sometimes I go to a text and I think to myself, I, I've learned everything there is to learn about this. And then I realize that's arrogant. And the Lord shows me to be wrong. Sometimes God uses a text to show me different aspects of God's heart and mind and will that I never saw before. Sometimes I don't get to that until I'm on my 15th or 20th time in the text. It's like God has reserved special gold for the people who dig long enough. And sometimes I read a text and it's not even about God or the book, it, it reveals me. It's a mirror to my heart because the last time I read it, I wasn't struggling with this issue, but now I am. And the Bible shining a light on darkness in me. And if I, in my hubris or arrogance would've gone to that text and say, I have mined all the gold there is to mine, I would've missed out what the Lord actually had in that text for me.
Speaker 1 00:48:47 And the Lord wants to think himself with me, my mind. I want his thoughts, my heart, his emotions, my life, the will of God. I want these things. And when I open up the word of God, he brings these two things together. He gives me his thoughts, his doctrine, his truth, his facts, reality. He begins to align my heart and my emotions, and then my life gets exposed, the discrepancies. And I am drawn back to at the end of the day the blood of Christ, where there are discrepancies between the mind, heart, and will of God and my life. The blood of Christ covers me. And so I read the Bible at the end of the day, and this is my encouragement through the lens of Jesus Christ and that I am covered by the blood of Christ. I'm given the Holy Spirit to help me understand the word of God.
Speaker 1 00:49:32 And I am pursuing by the grace of God, Union with Jesus alignment my mind and my heart and my life. Now let's take these seven weeks of training and dig into the Word of God to know him. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, thank you that for seven weeks, Village Church endured lectures. But Lord, we want to know you. We don't want to settle for surface things when there are depths of gold waiting for us to be treasured and to be valued. Lord, I pray that you would help each one of us to overcome hubris and arrogance, self-reliance. And Lord, would you teach us to be amazed at your word, your majesty, your glory, your goodness, your character? Would you reveal us and would you constantly remind us of the power of the blood of Christ, where there is a discrepancy between your mind and ours, your heart and ours, and your will in our life? We love you. We thank you, we worship you. All this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.
