Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello friends.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: If you have been blessed by the.
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[00:01:16] Speaker B: For being a part of this workbook.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Friends, welcome back to Unfamed Christianity. This is the podcast where we flesh out what it looks like to follow Jesus faithfully in our current cultural moment. Now, last week I started a series on how to approach the Bible. I think it's important to understand how to approach scripture if we're going to properly apply based on scripture. How do we interact with our current cultural moments? Sometimes we have this rigid approach to scripture as though it's a reference book, when really it's a story. And it's not so much a one to one application of here's our current cultural moment, here's what Scripture says.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: This is what we do. Sometimes it's more gleaning the wisdom that.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Scripture reveals and then applying that relevantly into our current time. So in just a bit, I'm going to be sharing the second or the first step of paradigm shift, shifting our paradigm from thinking of the Bible as a reference book primarily to thinking of the Bible as story. And that's what this episode is all about. The Bible is story. What does that mean? What do I mean by that as opposed to a reference book? We touched on it a little bit, talked about the cookbook analogy. We're going to dive in deeper to the different aspects of story that are in the Bible. We're going to get into that in just a moment. But first, I'm curious, what books are you guys reading this year? A couple episodes ago, I shared my five favorite reads from 2023, just about said 2013. That's crazy. I can't believe we're at 2024 already. It's crazy to think that 2014 2013 was ten years ago. Anyways, I've already read three new books with the help of audiobook for a couple of them. But two books that I've read, actually, the one I think I officially finished before the new year and then the other one I read finished up just yesterday, are two biographies, I guess you could say, of Duggar girls. So Jill Duggar, the first one, and I cannot remember the title of Jill's book. I'm going to have to look it up here. So the first one was counting the cost by Jill Duggar, just kind of her story of growing up in the Duggar family, the large 19 member family that had the reality tv show 19 kids and counting and counting on and also kind of just evaluating, deconstructing just what it was like to grow up under the Bill Gothard influence and movement. And then I just finished up yesterday, Ginger Duggar's book becoming free indeed. And so I really enjoyed listening to reading these books because I did not grow up. We went through the basic seminar a couple of times.
We were a part of children's events that would have, at the very least drawn from the children's Institute material, if not essentially facilitated it. But that was about it. We didn't go through the wisdom booklets.
I never went to any of the programs for young people and so forth. And so IBLP and Gothard is kind of fairly distant. But I've had some close friends who grew up under the influence quite a bit more. And so it's been interesting to talk with them, to talk with them about their experience. And I also enjoyed listening to these firsthand accounts from Jill and Ginger and just hearing their own input on the whole story. And one of the things that fascinated me, there's a lot of stuff that I think they're worth the reads. I personally appreciated Jill's book a little bit more.
I think for one thing, she's maybe a little better writer, does it a little more naturally.
But also I think her book dove into Ginger's book specifically, kind of interacts with some specific teachings of Bill Gothard and how she disentangled it, kind of decided, learned that the way Gothard was presenting this is false. Like it's not faithful to scripture, whereas Jill's is a little bit more holistic in just interacting with how their life as a reality tv show family, how the Bill Gothard influence all of that shaped her as a person and her family in general, and just kind of working through that, analyzing that, and it felt maybe a little bit more holistic in nature to a degree. But they're both good reads. They're both worth reading. Both of them talked about ways in which people who wanted essentially to expose Gothard used their stories in ways that would end up hurting them. And it reminded me of how when we're caring for people, when we're walking with people, when we're advocating for people, it is really important for us to remember the person and remember the people that we are working with. Most of us care for people because something matters deeply to us. And sometimes we can mistakenly allow that thing that cause to matter more to us than the people specifically that we're trying to help and walk with.
I could apply this in many different ways. I've seen this happen in just church planting and discipleship and how we care so much about church planting that we end up kind of running over and hurting the people that we're wanting to plant a church with. Or I've watched this happen when it has to do with people who are being abused and in abusive situations that we can without care for the effects that even coming forward is going to have on their life. We just kind of pick up the cause and when we really ought to be gentle and careful in it. Obviously, I think to a certain degree, some of the people that ended up using the Duggar story, they weren't christians at all. Like, they were just wanting to expose another religious cult kind of thing. And so I do think that we as christians, hopefully have a healthier starting place and that we want people to experience Jesus and his wholeness and healing at a deeper level. But it was a reminder to me of just being really careful that I am coming. Anything that I'm doing, whether it's kids ministry, whether it's just Bible studies, whether it's advocating for people who are in abusive, rough situations, that am I coming at it because I care about the person and I'm walking sensitively with them, or am I coming at it because I have a cause? And this is a part of furthering that cause, because we can then end up actually causing damage at times. I'm not saying this because I'm saying we should stop ministering or caring for people, but rather to challenge and encourage us to first of all, be genuinely loving, caring about the well being of the other person more than our own significance, but also to be curious about our own motives and well being, because the scripture talks about the deceitfulness of our own hearts, how we can deceive ourselves, and, and often our good motives are good motives, and there can be small seeds of kind of self centeredness that seep in there and end up causing damage even when there's good intentions. And so that was just something that stood out. It was pretty clear, like, their books are enough different, but that was something that was a distinct overlap. Both of them talked about ways in which even people who may have at first appeared to be on their side ended up kind of hurting them and using them and actually making the abuse worse to a certain degree.
So I'd love to hear if you've read those books or listened to them, what are your thoughts?
[00:10:25] Speaker B: What are your feedback?
[00:10:26] Speaker A: Maybe you have been a part of the IBLP movement. What was your experience like? Feel free to share. Send me a message. This week we're diving into the Bible as story and what all that.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: All right. Hey, welcome to module one of finding my place in God's story.
In module one, we're going to look at eight paradigm shifts that are necessary to approach the Bible in the way that it seems the Bible was intended to be approached. We'll get into that a little bit more. I just by way of introduction, want to acknowledge a few things. First of all, I am recording this in my home office, and so you're going to hear noise out and about in the other rooms. Our floors are hard and our walls are thin, so there's going to be noises that bleeds through. I will probably try to edit background noise out as I can, but bear with me, this is going to be kind of the nature, just kind of as if we're sitting having a conversation. Hopefully you have been able to access and download the my place in God's story journal and either print it out or saved it someplace where you can go in and edit the PDF, but go ahead and pull that up. As we walk through this lesson, we're going to be looking at the first paradigm. Kind of the biggest paradigm, you could say, is that the Bible is a story, and then there are seven aspects to it being a story or seven ways that we may need to shift. Some of these might not be new to you, some of them might be new. None of them are like, wow, like some revolutionary insight, but all of them are things that I think for most of us westerners, when we approach the Bible, we tend to forget or have not necessarily known.
You do have in your outline, you should have access to what these eight paradigm shifts are. And I'll just give a rundown of them all. First of all, the Bible is a story, and we're going to dive into that in this lesson. But the second one is that the Bible is a collection of writings by various authors. So what does that mean? What does it mean that it's a collection of writers? What does it mean that it's written by various authors, not just one person? What does it mean that it's written by people? It's divine, isn't it? And so what is the nature, the connection between the human element and the divine element?
The third paradigm is that the New Testament tells the climax of the story. Jesus saw himself. And we'll get into that in module three. Jesus saw himself embedded within a larger narrative for one thing. But then secondly, fulfilling certain things of that larger narrative. The fourth paradigm shift is that the Bible is about God. It's not about you or me. And so sometimes we come to the Bible wanting specific direction about certain things and we can't find it anywhere. And it's because the Bible is not trying so much to solve anything about us. The Bible is about God. It's about a movement, a work that God is doing. The fifth paradigm is that the Bible is meditation literature. What does that mean? We'll get into that in the fifth paradigm. Also along with that is the Bible as wisdom literature.
And then paradigm seven, the Bible wasn't written in English. It was written in several different languages. It wasn't just Greek or Hebrew. Those are the primary languages that the Bible was written in. But when we get to Jesus, it's a unique challenge to look at because Jesus probably spoke in Aramaic and then the biographers, the Gospel writers, wrote in Greek. And now it's translated into whatever language you are reading it in. For me it would be English. And so there's a lot of different language dynamics that we have to sort through as we try to understand the Bible. And then the last paradigm shift, and this is one of the biggest for me, is that the Bible was meant to be studied in community, not just individually. And obviously kind of the highest level view of that is that most of the New Testament at least would have been letters that were circulated throughout the church. And so there was kind of a communal aspect to not only hearing it, but then also when it came to the canonization of it. One aspect of what got canonized was whether it was one of the letters that a lot of the churches circulated. And so that's just kind of a high level view looking at how this is a communal process, communal meditation, communal reading and understanding. And what does that mean for us today, not only in our local church settings? What does it look like in the world global setting, what does it look like in the historical setting? And how do we keep in tune with the communal discussion at large, whether that's today in my setting here in Los Angeles, or whether that's looking back throughout history? So anyways, that's kind of a rundown here of module one, but let's just go back and look at this whole concept that the Bible is story. So if you watch the introduction video, and I hope you did, you'll notice that we looked at some of the unhelpful paradigms that we tend to approach the Bible through. If you have no clue what I'm talking about, go ahead and watch the video. You should be able to see it in the archives. You should have gotten an email about it. But if you're wondering what to look for, look for the FMP. Finding my place, the parentheses. God gave us his message by telling us a story. Look for that video and then watch that. That's kind of the introduction to the whole course, but especially to module one and go ahead and watch that one through and then come back here and it'll probably make a little more sense. But particularly in this lesson, we're going to dive deeper into what it means that the Bible is not a reference book, but instead the Bible is a story. Now most of us probably came to the Bible because we had questions about life. Maybe we had a problem that we needed solved. If you're like me, you were interested in what does it mean to follow Jesus. I had parents who knew Jesus, who knew the Bible, and they were trying to shepherd me into recognizing my need for Jesus as my savior. And one day I did, I recognized that and I wanted to pray to receive him. This process might look different for everyone, but as a part of that, then I began. I don't entirely remember if my parents told me that I should start reading the Bible or if it was even more organic, like wanting to know the Bible. I would have been about twelve years old at the time, but I remember fairly early starting to read the Bible every day. And a lot of my approach to it would have been, I have questions. Maybe I'm just like, who is Jesus? What does it mean to follow Jesus? Maybe that's my question. But obviously, the older I got, the more questions that I had, the more problems I bumped into. I had relational issues, whether that had to do with siblings, family members, or later in my youth, older youth. It had to do with relating with other friends or romance. And so we're searching the Bible to find answers to these questions.
And that's sort of like treating the Bible as a reference book. Like, I go there to get some answers from it. We might look at it as a book of facts, as if it has neatly cataloged every solution or answer to the different problems that we face in life. It's not wrong to come to the Bible with questions or to come with problems that you're facing in life and wanting to find answers, like, what does God have to say about this?
But we need to understand that the Bible wasn't written to specifically respond to our questions or specifically respond to the problems that we are facing. The biblical authors, when they were writing, didn't necessarily know the questions.
The people around them weren't necessarily asking the same questions that we are asking today.
And they were asking other questions. They were responding to other problems and situations that they were facing. And so part of learning how to read the Bible is learning how to kind of set our questions, our problems on the shelf and recognize that those are things we're looking for, we're needing help with right now. But I'm coming because I believe this text, this scripture, reveals God's design about life and about the world. And there's something in it that will give me wisdom for processing those issues and those questions. But I want to try to see what are the things specifically that they're talking about?
What situation are they addressing? What situation are they speaking to? And part of that is recognizing that what we have in the scriptures is orchestrated to tell one cohesive message. There is a particular message that is trying to be communicated through the books of the Bible, the collection of writings that we have in the canon, from Genesis to revelation. And so in order to understand the specific, smaller stories of the Bible, if you look at the book of Judges, and I think of Gideon as an example, we read the story of Gideon. And in order to understand precisely what is happening and what that role plays and its relevance for me today, I need to understand the overarching message of the story of scripture so that I can see, like, oh, this is how Gideon is kind of pushing forward this narrative or preparing a certain aspect of the story. So, again, it's not that we should not ask questions and bring questions to the Bible. But it's that the way we're going to find answers to them is not by looking for a direct answer, but by reading the story, being immersed in the story, and then seeing, like, this passage is speaking to this situation and it has some relevance. Comparisons to the situation I'm dealing here today, or here's kind of God's heart for life and how he feels about taking another man's life. And how might that impact how I think about something like abortion today, which is not directly addressed necessarily in scripture. So the Bible is capable of addressing my questions and my felt needs, but the way that it does it is different than a reference book. But if you think of a story like Pilgrim's progress, if you think of a story like, I don't know if you're familiar with the Lord of the Rings, if you were to jump in and just try to see, okay, what could I learn from the Christian when he's going up the mountain and you're reading that chapter where he addresses going up the mountain, I'm going to miss part of the meaning or the emphasis of that particular aspect of the story if I hadn't read everything that came before it. And so I can't just jump in and see, like, oh, this is one specific situation.
And furthermore, the question that I'm bringing isn't going to be answered. I can't dial it out and figure out, okay, it's right there, and here's the answer that we have for it.
The Bible does give us wisdom for life, and we're going to get into the Bible as wisdom literature more in depth later on. But there are answers. It does speak to my felt needs, but the way that it does, it might take some adjustment on our part, or else we will become either frustrated, maybe disillusioned, maybe begin feeling like God is silent, even perhaps because we're expecting this text to do something that it was never intended to do and to help us adjust. Let's look at three ways that we may treat the Bible as a reference book. When we see the Bible as a theology dictionary, we're approaching it like a reference book. And what I mean by a theology dictionary is if we're trying to figure out who and what are human beings, who or what is God, what's good, what's bad, what's the problem in the world and with people? Is there a solution to this problem?
What has God been doing? How old is the world? How did the earth cosmos come into being? How does God make decisions about things? How should I make decisions about things? How do I make sense of suffering or evil? You can get a lot out of the Bible treating it as a reference book. There are specific questions we could ask and get direct answers to. There is a lot of facts and figures and pieces that we can memorize and easily pull out and apply. It's just that the Bible is more than a reference book. It's a story. And there's a lot that you will miss if you treat it as a reference book. Does that make sense? I just want to pause here and say, if at any time this isn't making sense, feel free to ask. In the comments section you can reach out, send a note, a message. Don't hesitate. I don't want you going breezing through this and it not making sense. Sit in it, kind of mull over it. The biblical story is the kind of story that is meant to help God's people move out into creation and have wisdom to address all kinds of things the biblical authors never imagined. So even though we're facing questions and problems that Paul and Peter or Moses and David never imagined that people would have to face, the text of scripture is designed and of their writings is designed to give wisdom and to give principles that we thousands of years later can read and pull out and see relevance for if your impulse is to come to the Bible as a reference book, you will find things and do things that the Bible isn't doing, and you will miss things that the Bible is trying to do, but you just aren't seeing it because you're using the wrong framework for approaching scripture. Now, I do want to say there's two more ways that we treat the Bible as a reference book.
But I do want to say that there's a good intuition behind this.
Treating the Bible as a theological dictionary means that we know the Bible should shape my view of reality and what's true about the world, about God, about myself and about others.
So that's a good intuition. The Bible is supposed to show me truth and show me reality.
This is what the Bible is designed to do. The question is, how does it do that? And what I'm saying in this lesson is that the Bible is not a reference book. It's a story. So it does it through narrative form. The second way we treat the Bible as a reference book is that we treat it as a moral handbook. And so a lot of this is similar to the theological dictionary, but we look for sections of scripture that we pull out morality from. The problem then becomes that we tend to pick and choose what biblical texts guide our moral compass. Now, there is a good intuition behind this as well, and that is that the Bible is intended and designed to give instruction and guidance to God's people about what is right and what is just and what is good and beautiful. So God's people, the purpose of scripture is to shape God's people, to become a people that can live in a certain way in the world which is broken and which is acting in rebellion and kind of set against God. The Bible is designed to shape us, to discern what is good and what is bad.
The question is, how do we engage the Bible to help it do that in us? Do we treat it as a moral handbook? Oh, it says, don't lie here. Oh, it says, give honor to whom honor is due and don't shame here. It does it through a story form. There's something to glean through the story and through the different problems that Paul is responding to. We'll get into the New Testament eventually, but obviously it starts in Genesis. It starts with creation. One objection or fear that can be raised has been raised is that if we approach the Bible in a different way than a reference book, like, hey, it says this here, we need to do this here, it says this here, that then we will all come to our own conclusions about what is right or wrong, that I can read the story and kind of glean from it whatever I want, maybe a little bit like modern art or reading modern poetry, just like, oh, this speaks to me in this way. And that's a valid concern.
One question that might be raised is, what does it mean that the Bible has authority in our lives? Maybe I can make it say whatever I want it to.
And that's why I think it's important as we study scripture that we listen to each other and together we're listening to the spirit, to the guidance of the spirit and the scriptures. What does the scriptures say? What is the spirit saying? And how are we all reading this particular passage? And not just how am me and the people in my church, but maybe people in other churches or from other cultures and allowing that kind of, I like the word concert. Kind of together we're kind of grouping together, maybe a bit of a dance, as we kind of learn to hear and understand and allow each other to shape. Hey, maybe I need to look at this text this way and through the communal effort, and we're going to get into this in the last paradigm, through the communal effort, we're learning how to glean the morality and the moral compass that God has laid out through the text. Because the Bible is intended to shape us into a particularly moral people. It has a moral agenda. It just doesn't do it as a reference book where we can just cite chapter and verse. And that solves it. For that issue, if you look in the Torah, the Old Testament law, there's several hundred laws. I didn't look up how many specific laws there are, but some of them seem to contradict each other. And so there's this dilemma of, like, well, what is the nature of law? Like, if I'm supposed to do it there, then why did it say, do it this way here? And so listening to something as a story can shape the way and our understanding of how something is intended to be read. The whole premise of the first scene in this story is who gets to define what is good and what is evil? Is it human, is it mankind? Or is it God? And the Bible wants to produce people who can discern what is good and what is evil according to how God defines it. The Torah itself was thought of as a tree of life. That is to help us understand. So it's this tree that has fruit, you eat it, and it gives life. Or another metaphor that is used is that there's truth planted like seed, and it springs forth, it grows up to maturity, and so it takes some years of just kind of ruminating and kind of digging roots and taking root, and then it begins to sprout forth into this tree of life within each one of us. The question is, how do I get the Bible to do that in me?
And what we're saying in this lesson is that we don't do it by treating it as a moral handbook. The example where Jesus says or the law is that you're not supposed to murder, but Jesus himself quotes it, and then he says, there is a lot more to it. And he goes on to describe the case study example about how anger, public dishonor, mockery, and devaluing someone.
Those are akin to murder. So the deeper truth beyond just don't murder, that you need to treat someone with dignity, like you want to be treated as if they're an image bearer of God. So instead of like, oh, the Bible never says don't mock, or the Torah never said don't mock, but Jesus comes along and says, hey, that is the same as murdering. So there's deeper truths that we will glean as we see the whole text, the whole story. Again, I'm not saying that the Bible is not trying to shape our view of what's right and wrong. I am saying that it is doing that. The question is, how does it do that?
What story accomplishes the goal of forming a people who can discern good and evil? And then the last way we treat the Bible as a reference book is by using it as a bit of a devotional grab bag where we're looking for inspiration, we're wanting to feel the presence of God. Maybe we're studying for a sermon or a message.
This is personally a trap that I fall into a lot while I'm in Bible college. I'm looking at it, maybe doing a paper on a certain topic, and so I just kind of look and interact with the Bible as if it's a source for devotion, for explaining. Again, that could be the theological dictionary as well. The Bible is designed to overhaul our view of reality and connect you and I to the living God in a very personal way.
It's okay to have favorite parts of the Bible. It's okay that there are certain chapters. My wife and I were looking at psalms 31 and 33 last night, 31 through 33, and it just met so many. It spoke to so many questions and burdens on our heart. Right now, it's okay that the Bible does that. But the Bible is not only a devotional grab bag, and those psalms are not only for randomly being applied to the questions and issues that we are speaking. The reason that they have meaning is because they are the poems of other Yahweh followers who are struggling in certain times, in times very similar to us. And so all of these aspects that we find inspirational, that we find give us warm fuzzies or just kind of give clarity to the sermon or the lesson that we're developing.
That's good, that's healthy, that's right. But the Bible is not just that. It's not just to be interacted at times when we're looking for inspiration, but it's a story.
And the story, the more we read the story itself provides tremendous inspiration and hope. So if we only read the parts we like and stop before the real crazy or confusing parts, I think of romans eight and nine. Those are two classic examples. For me, romans eight is incredible. I love romans eight. Like, who can? Therefore, there is no condemnation in Christ. Who can separate you from the love of God? Nothing.
Not death, not depression, not murder, not darkness, not no evil. And then you get to romans nine, and it talks about people being created for destruction. What's going on there? I don't understand. How do I fit that into my framework?
If I only ever stick with romans eight. I'm going to miss some pretty big parts of this whole story. So don't just read the parts you like. It's okay to have favorite parts, but read everything through and try to glean the wisdom. What are the larger movements at play in the text of Romans in other aspects of the Bible that are hard to reconcile in our minds? So all three of these theological dictionary, a moral handbook or a devotional grab bag, those are ways that we tend to kind of stereotypical ways. We might treat the Bible as a reference book.
The Bible is not a reference book. The Bible is a story.
And so what does that mean? What does it mean that the Bible is story?
The fact that the Bible is a story means, implies that it was crafted to tell one cohesive message. And I really believe that the Bible has been expertly crafted. It has been designed to communicate a singular message. And there are many subplots, many moving pieces to this story. There are many sub messages to this larger message, but all of it points and tells a more holistic message that points to Jesus ultimately. But just kind of a super high level view is that God is creator, and he made a good and beautiful creation, and he established everything, and he established mankind to be kind of the pinnacle of his creation and the steward of his creation. And then he culminated it all in shalom, peace and rest.
But mankind chooses to rebel against God, which ushers in chaos. And so there's this problem. And then God is working throughout history to bring restoration so that we could once again experience this shalom, peace and fellowship with Yahweh. And that restorative work is not dependent on anyone except God. The covenant with Abraham, God is going to complete this. He's going to bring about this blessing for all nations, all peoples, because he is God and he cannot deny himself. But the way that he seems to be doing it is by transforming the very ones who kind of broke creation, who caused the chaos. And he's using people, humanity himself, by transforming their hearts to become bearers of his image as he originally designed to be conformed to Jesus, who is his image, and then to learn how to rule and reign throughout creation, according to Jesus as he originally designed, which establishes the peace that this good creation was supposed to be culminated in. That's like a super high level view of the story of scripture. And we see that fleshed out from Genesis to revelation, and we'll look at it. We're not going to get near as in depth into it as we could. My goal is to help you see the story, see the overarching message to give you the tools to then go dig into it yourself and begin interacting with people around this narrative as well. And what does that mean for our everyday life? So just like I mentioned this already, just like we wouldn't jump into the middle of Pilgrim's pogus or another story, neither should we just be jumping into the middle of the biblical story.
I think we should start from the beginning and read to the end. The whole story points to and culminates in Jesus, even the Old Testament. Just like all good stories, there's a lot going on in the biblical story and there's a lot of moving pieces. We already talked about this a little bit, but just kind of an example. Let me give you an example of how it's important to know the overarching message. If you think of the book of judges, there are a bunch of captivating little stories that serve as davidic propaganda. Now you say, wait, what was davidic propaganda? Judges seems to serve the purpose of warming people up to the idea that nothing good comes from the tribe of Benjamin and something good comes from the tribe of Judah. And we see judges, it looks like these leaders are just failing. They're bad. And there's sometimes good things that happen. There's some good, seemingly good judges that show up on the scene and all of it, people from the tribe of Benjamin don't do well, and people from the tribe of Judah do well. And so as we follow from judges, flow from judges into the books of Samuel and kings. And we see in the book of Samuel, we see Saul rise up and he's from the tribe of Benjamin and he doesn't do well. And then we see David rise up. He's from the tribe of Judah and he does well. And so it's serving to kind of warm people up to the fact that David is going to be a good king. David is the king, the man after God's own heart. And sometimes all we get from the book of judges is that you should put a fleece out when you're really wanting direction from God or that you think of Samson and don't be led astray by your eyes and your lust of the flesh. There's a lot of good sub messages that we can be learning something from as we're reading them. But the point of those aren't just for the purpose of learning how to seek direction when facing difficult decisions. The point is to see the larger movement that God is establishing, something with this man named David. And as we see in two Samuel seven, that there is a direct link between David and the covenant that God establishes with him there. And this kind of foreshadow that was given at the end of Genesis, where the scepter is not going to depart from Judah's hand. So all of this is connected. We're in second Samuel at that point, and we're harking back to the end of Genesis where a promise is given to Judah. But what does judges have to do with that? How is that moving the narrative forward? And it's serving to kind of warm up people to be favorable of David as opposed to Saul or somebody from the tribe of Benjamin. Another aspect, the fact that the Bible is a story is there are repeated, many repeated themes that weave throughout the entire biblical text that help make sense of the bigger narrative along the way. You find strange words that we don't use very often in our Bible. And so sometimes we might need to do some word studies or get some background to the language a little bit when we take the time to understand them, to understand the culture, like what figures of speech that are being used. I don't get that. I don't understand what that means. We do the work. It is a hard work. But as we do the work to understand the background, the authorial intent, to understand the different literature types in the biblical text, we discover that the Bible is a world of literary genius that can transform how you live and how you think about everything.
It's a book that is meant for a lifetime of study, rich with details as we learn to see them all.
That's what this course is all about. I want to help equip you for discovering the overarching message and the deeper truths being leaned in that message, but ultimately giving you the tools to then go dig into it on your own. In the next lesson, we're going to look at who wrote the Bible and what to make of human elements to a divinely inspired word. Till then, I would love to hear your thoughts, any questions you have. Is there anything that stood out to you in this lesson? Something you hadn't thought about before? Maybe something that bothers you, you're not quite sure you understand? Don't hesitate to reach out until next time. Grace and peace.
