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Introduction:
As we begin, I want to share with you the opening paragraph
of a book entitled Murder
at Cory Mansion.
“A few minutes of
stillness lingered at the Cory Mansion, when the night sounds were
shattered by a woman’s scream and an infant’s cry. A few
minutes later, as the clock in the hall struck 2:30, a man,
carrying a black leather handbag, slipped quickly from the house,
glanced up and down the street, and walked briskly away through
the early morning mist.”
What happened? Someone was clearly robbed and murdered in
the middle of the night. Sadly, this someone probably had an
infant. We certainly hope the sleuth in this mystery catches the
bad guy.
I now have a confession to make. I made the book and its
opening paragraph up (which certainly explains the poor writing)
to illustrate a point to you. Look again at the same paragraph.
But now read it as the opening paragraph to a book entitled The Life and Times of Richard Cory.
With that title, the opening paragraph has a completely
different meaning. Instead of being a picture of murder, it is the
picture of a new life being born. Instead of a murderer fleeing
the crime scene, we see a doctor leaving a wealthy patient’s
home, hurrying to get some rest before having to go to work the
next morning.
What changed? We read the exact same paragraph in both
situations. But in each case, we interpreted the paragraph’s
meaning differently. Why? In each case, we were reading a
different kind of book. We took into account the genre of writing.
One was a mystery, the other a biographical narrative.
This illustrates the point of this sermon. In previous
lessons, we have noted that the Bible is our proper standard for
the work of this church and for our individual Christian lives.
However, we have also learned that it is not enough to use the
proper standard. We must also use the standard properly (II
Timothy 2:15). Several weeks ago we learned that if we want to
use the standard properly, we must rightly divide between the Old
Testament and the New Testament. In today’s lesson, we will
learn to rightly divide the genres God used in the Bible. Discussion: I.
The entire Bible is not written in the same way, God used
different genres. A.
A genre is simply a kind of writing that uses specific
styles and forms. If we read every part of the Bible in the same
way, we are going to misunderstand and misapply the scriptures. B.
A very cursory look at scripture reveals that God used
different styles. The Psalms
are not the same as Isaiah,
which is not the same as Matthew.
We do not learn from the story of the Sower in Matthew
13 in the same way we learn from the story of Noah in Genesis 6. C.
But many people have a problem with this aspect of rightly
dividing the word. As such, they have come up with misguided Bible
study rules like “Take a passage literally unless absurd.”
That may sound feasible on the surface. However, to follow a rule
like this, we have to believe everything in the Bible can be
interpreted in the same way. That is just not the case. Genres
that are to be taken literally should be taken literally. Genres
that use symbolic and figurative language should be taken
figuratively-even if a literal interpretation is not an absurdity. D.
This lesson is not intended to explain every genre fully or
to explain exactly how to read each one. Rather, my purpose is to
demonstrate that God used different kinds of writing to convey His
unified message and provide a jumping off place for our personal
study as we strive to rightly divide His Word. II.
What genres did God use and how should we read them? A.
Prose:
We are most used to reading this normal, matter of fact and
straightforward genre. With prose, the author typically means what
he says and says what he means. While prose contains figures of
speech, they rarely cause us any problems because they are
obvious. When Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:28 to “let him who stole steal no longer…”, we do
not look for hidden or symbolic meaning. We take it at face
value—we are not supposed to steal. That is prose. B.
Narrative:
This form of prose tells a story, describing the actions, events
and circumstances in the lives of people. Narrative, as a form of
prose, is straightforward. We do not look for hidden and symbolic
meanings. However, we must work harder than just reading the
information on the page. For instance, when we read about Cain and
Abel in Genesis 4:1-8, we do not wonder what Cain and Abel represent, nor do
we question what the sheep and the vegetables symbolize. Cain
represents Cain and his vegetables are just that, vegetables. The
same is true for Abel and his sheep. But we want to learn more
than just the information. We discern lessons for how we should
live from how these men lived. We learn that we must do things
God’s way. We learn that we must not get angry when God is
displeased with us. We learn that we must not murder. If we read
this story just like the prose of Ephesians
4:28, we would learn what happened between Cain and Abel, but
we would not learn what God wanted us to learn. We must take the
genre into account. C.
Poetry:
This is where things begin to get a little tricky for us. Hebrew
poetry did not necessarily rely on rhyming sounds and metrical
reading, as does our modern poetry. Rather, Hebrew poetry often
relied on what some have called rhyming thoughts. Consider Psalm
140:4-5, the words do not rhyme but the content is parallel.
The problem we have with poetry is that it is highly figurative
and symbolic. When we read it, we know full well that we may not
be able to take it at face value. We have to consider a deeper
meaning than what is just on the surface. For instance, when David
asked God in Psalm 51:7-8
to “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I
shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness, that the
bones You have broken may rejoice.” We know he is not saying
that all he needs is for God to rub a hyssop branch over him.
David is using the imagery of the priest making a defiled house
clean by using the hyssop branch dipped in the blood of a
sacrifice, to express his need to be cleansed of sin’s
defilement. We also know David is not saying that God actually
broke his bones. Instead, David is expressing his guilt in very
expressive and painful terms. If we read poetry the same way we
read Prose or Narrative, or vice versa, we would be in trouble. D.
Proverb:
Of course, this genre is used mostly in the Old Testament book of
Proverbs. However, there are proverbs in other places (i.e.
Ezekiel 18:2). Proverbs
are often poetical, using couplets and rhyming ideas to make their
point. But the reason we need to view these as a separate genre is
because proverbs are rarely to be read as absolutes. Typically,
they are maxims, general truths that contain weighty advice. Thus,
while Proverbs 15:1
said a soft answer turns away wrath, we do not accuse God of lying
when we are dealing with someone who is a real jerk and constantly
angry at us no matter how softly we speak to him. E.
Parables:
This form of writing tells a story like Narrative. However, while
Narrative is simply about whatever is written, Parables convey
spiritual meaning beyond what is actually written. When we read
Narrative, we do not have to wonder what objects and people
represent. In Parables, we do. Because we have heard so many
sermons and had so many classes on this genre, it rarely gives us
any trouble. We know the example of the Parable of the Sower in Matthew
13:3-9. While Jesus was telling what appeared to be a
Narrative of a man seeding a field, we are to recognize that He is
actually illustrating a spiritual point about growing in God’s
word, as He explained in Matthew 13:18-23. Sometimes the Bible explains the parables in
detail; sometimes we simply read the parables and through study
have to figure out what they represent and mean, e.g.
Luke 16:1-12. If we
read Parables just like Narratives, we would be left wondering,
“What does this have to do with anything?” If we read
Narratives like Parables, we would spiritualize everything and
come up with crazy teachings. F.
Prophecy:
For the purpose of this lesson, I am using the term Prophecy to
refer to writing about something that has not happened yet.
Certainly, some prophecies are written in a very straightforward
manner. They tell us that something is going to happen later and
then tells us what it will be. For instance, Joel
2:28-29. However, prophecy is often very symbolic, using past
events and iconic images to describe future spiritual events. As
an example, consider Isaiah
2:2-3, which uses the imagery of the temple mount to describe
the coming church and kingdom of the Lord, which occurred over 700
years later. Or notice Jesus’ prophecy in John
2:19 in which He used the image of the temple to foretell His
own death and resurrection. Another device often used in Prophecy
is what some call Prophetic Certainty. God, wanting His people to
know how certain His promises for the future were, sometimes spoke
of them as if they had already occurred. Isaiah
53 spoke of the Messiah as if He had already lived, died and
been resurrected. However, this was written 700 years before
Christ. No doubt, we could spend several sermons just on the
devices and details of prophecy. But for our purposes in this
lesson, we need simply to realize that we do not read prophecy
like we read Narrative, Prose, Poetry or Parable. If we do, we are
going to misunderstand and misapply the scripture. G.
Apocalyptic:
While we are very unfamiliar with this kind of writing, the
ancient Hebrews and Christians were very familiar with it. They
did not have as much trouble as we do with books like Ezekiel,
Zechariah and Revelation
because they had read other books written with the same style.
Apocalypse was always written during a time of great stress and
duress. For the Jews during the Old Testament and the Christians
under the New, Apocalypse was a highly symbolic and exciting way
to explain that in the end, God was going to win and win big. That
is the main point behind every Apocalyptic book—no matter how
bad things look, God wins and you want to be on His side. A friend
of mine once described reading Apocalyptic literature as being
like watching a movie. For instance, when we watch an old Western,
we see a guy in a white hat and we know he is a good guy. The
point of nearly all Westerns is that you want to be a good guy,
because in the end, the good guys win. But we do not spend our
time wondering what the horses mean or why tumbleweeds blew across
the road in front of him. We do not wonder why he fired 10 shots
from a 6 shot pistol. We take the picture in as a whole. We do not
break it down into its tiny parts and figure out a meaning for all
of them. Thus, when Ezekiel had his Apocalyptic vision by the
River Chebar in Ezekiel 1,
we do not have to wonder what each of the living beings mean, what
each of their faces and wings mean, what each of the wheels mean
or all of the colors mentioned. Instead, we are simply to
understand the point that God is amazing, powerful and glorious as
stated in Ezekiel 1:28.
One other point to note before we move on is that Apocalyptic
literature uses numbers in a highly symbolic way. Certainly some
numbers may be literal in Apocalyptic writing, but most are used
figuratively. In Daniel
9:24-27, when Gabriel told Daniel about 70 weeks in which God
was going to accomplish several amazing parts of his plan, we do
not expect 70 literal weeks. Nor do we have to come up with some
arbitrary “a day equals a year theory” to make the number seem
literal. Instead, we note that 70 is the combination of two
numbers that represent fullness and completeness (7 and 10). Thus,
Gabriel was just letting Daniel know that God would accomplish all
these things when the time was right. Obviously, we do not have
time to go over every aspect of the symbolism of Apocalyptic
literature, but what we can see is that we cannot read these
writings in the same way that we read Poetry, Parable or Prose. We
need to read it as Apocalyptic literature, otherwise we are going
to misunderstand it and misapply it. Conclusion: Paul told us to rightly divide the word of truth in II Timothy 2:15. We are not allowed to just read the Bible however we want. Instead, we need to read the Bible as God meant it. That means taking into account the genre or style of writing God used to convey His message. If we do not, we will make mistakes, we will misunderstand and we will misapply. But, if we take the time to rightly divide the word of truth, then as Paul said in Acts 20:32, it will build us up and give us an inheritance with the saints.
Glory
to God in the church by Christ Jesus
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