How Do You Find Meaning in the Bible’s Narratives?
00:00:00.000 | Well, we've talked a lot about Bible study principles on the podcast.
00:00:08.280 | Arcing, specifically, the practice of breaking down a paragraph in the Bible to its individual
00:00:13.080 | statements, its propositions, to determine how those propositions relate to one another
00:00:17.960 | logically so that we can then see for ourselves the main point of a text.
00:00:22.400 | Arcing is a powerful way to employ discourse analysis.
00:00:26.880 | We talked about this back in APJ 1056, if you want more there.
00:00:31.800 | But in that episode, you only used examples from Paul's epistles, Pastor John, and I think
00:00:36.640 | the epistles are rather intuitive for arcing.
00:00:39.960 | But Nicholas in Ontario, Canada, who is, I think he's a pastor, writes in to ask about
00:00:46.480 | narrative texts.
00:00:47.840 | Hello, Pastor John, thank you for your tireless work on this podcast.
00:00:52.480 | It is such a blessing to have these concise and thoughtful responses to the perennial
00:00:55.920 | questions of life.
00:00:57.400 | I am currently listening on Audible to your book, Reading the Bible Supernaturally.
00:01:02.520 | It has been such a wonderful refresher on why to read the Bible and how to focus my
00:01:06.600 | reading and study for personal devotion and sermon prep.
00:01:10.360 | Thank you.
00:01:11.360 | My question is regarding narratives.
00:01:13.000 | You make the point that your revolution in reading came when you discovered that the
00:01:17.160 | Bible's authors were making arguments and that tracing those arguments well was key
00:01:21.880 | to understanding the author and thus God's intention in the Word.
00:01:27.400 | I see how this applies to the epistles of the New Testament and even the wisdom literature,
00:01:32.000 | but what about narratives?
00:01:33.560 | My church is currently preaching through Luke, and while there is indeed structure, how do
00:01:37.360 | you arc out a narrative?
00:01:39.800 | Are there different keys you look for?
00:01:41.860 | Are there specific transitions, markers, or triggers you're looking for in the narrative
00:01:46.640 | text?
00:01:47.640 | Pastor John, what would you say?
00:01:49.080 | Well, let me see if I can get everybody up to speed with what he's asking.
00:01:53.000 | I put a huge emphasis on following an author's train of thought in order to find his true
00:02:02.560 | intention.
00:02:04.320 | And I do believe that the most fundamental goal of reading is to discover the author's
00:02:12.280 | intention, what he wants to communicate.
00:02:16.480 | Now there may be other good effects of reading besides that discovery.
00:02:22.040 | You might just find entertainment, for example, but without pursuing this foundational effect
00:02:29.000 | of finding an author's intention, we're being discourteous and we're treating authors the
00:02:36.760 | way we don't like to be treated when we try to communicate something and somebody says,
00:02:40.760 | "I don't really care what you're trying to communicate.
00:02:42.280 | I'm going to take your words to mean this or that."
00:02:45.000 | And in the process, we're going to lose a great opportunity for growing.
00:02:50.240 | If we don't care about finding what another person has discovered in reality, and we just
00:02:55.280 | want to read our own ideas in, we're not going to grow.
00:02:59.000 | And 2 Peter 3.18 says, "Grow in the knowledge and the grace of the Lord Jesus."
00:03:06.120 | So I argue that one essential means of pursuing that goal of finding an author's intention
00:03:14.560 | and growing in knowledge and grace is to carefully trace an author's argument.
00:03:22.040 | And by argument, I don't mean quarrel.
00:03:26.000 | Sometimes people use the word argument differently than I do.
00:03:29.280 | I mean a sequence of thought that builds from foundations to conclusions.
00:03:36.560 | For example, Romans 1.15 to 17 goes like this, "I am eager to preach the gospel to you who
00:03:44.480 | are in Rome because..."
00:03:45.480 | There's going to be three of these becauses.
00:03:50.000 | Listen now.
00:03:51.000 | "I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome because I am not ashamed of the
00:03:57.480 | gospel, because it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, because
00:04:04.800 | in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith."
00:04:08.440 | I read my Bible for two decades before I discovered that's the way Paul wrote.
00:04:14.060 | So there are four statements here, right?
00:04:16.400 | Massively important statements.
00:04:18.040 | And my point is you can't understand Paul's intention, what he's trying to communicate,
00:04:25.000 | unless you understand the logical relationships between those four statements.
00:04:32.640 | And Paul signals loud and clear those relationships by using the word "because" three times.
00:04:41.760 | He's building an argument from foundations to conclusions.
00:04:46.300 | Now Nicholas's question is how that detailed, rigorous focus on the logical relationships
00:04:56.380 | between particular statements relates to the interpretation of big sections of narrative
00:05:05.200 | in the Bible or story in the Bible.
00:05:08.380 | And he could expand it out and say, "How does it relate to poetry and parable and so
00:05:12.700 | on?"
00:05:13.700 | Events that are woven together in a certain way.
00:05:17.900 | That's what I mean by narrative.
00:05:20.740 | Should we seek the author's intention in the same way?
00:05:25.100 | And my answer is, in principle, yes.
00:05:29.940 | But in the details of how the author signals his intention, we're going to have to watch
00:05:36.280 | for other things than simply one proposition following another proposition with a logical
00:05:41.780 | connector in between.
00:05:43.660 | Stories don't work like that.
00:05:45.500 | But biblical authors write stories for a reason.
00:05:48.980 | They are trying to communicate something to us.
00:05:52.340 | They want us to find it.
00:05:55.100 | One of Jesus' main criticisms—I remember when I wrote that book he referred to, I was
00:05:59.300 | just blown away by this, that I saw this really for the first time—one of Jesus' main
00:06:04.500 | criticisms of the Pharisees was that he said they didn't know how to read.
00:06:09.060 | I mean, it must have absolutely galled them.
00:06:11.940 | They were the readers, right?
00:06:14.420 | Over and over he says, "Have you not read Matthew 12.3, Matthew 19.4, Matthew 22.31?
00:06:22.780 | Have you not read?"
00:06:23.780 | And they're scratching their heads and saying, "That's all we do is read."
00:06:27.820 | Of course they read.
00:06:29.220 | So what does he mean?
00:06:30.660 | He means you are reading and not reading.
00:06:34.980 | You are seeing and not seeing.
00:06:37.660 | In other words, there are real intentions that the inspired authors—in this case,
00:06:44.400 | the Old Testament authors that the Pharisees read every day—those authors have real intentions
00:06:51.460 | to communicate, whether through careful sentence-by-sentence exposition or whether through poetry or whether
00:06:58.600 | through narrative, and those Pharisees weren't seeing it at all.
00:07:04.660 | That's what Jesus was upset about.
00:07:07.120 | So yes, we should look for an author's intention in all writing, all writing that's worth
00:07:12.820 | its salt.
00:07:14.260 | And yes, we should look for whatever clues the author gives us, and all good authors
00:07:22.180 | do give clues, to help us find what he's trying to communicate.
00:07:27.100 | Those clues with regard to narrative might be repetitions or the order of events or what
00:07:36.880 | the dialogues actually say or the effects of certain events or actual inserted interpretive
00:07:46.720 | comments by the author, etc.
00:07:50.560 | So let me just give a few illustrations from one of the best stories in the Old Testament.
00:07:58.120 | So I'm thinking of Joseph now, Genesis 37-50.
00:08:03.680 | Some regard this as one of the best short stories that's ever been written, if you
00:08:07.360 | want to put it in those categories.
00:08:09.360 | It's an absolutely riveting story, and you wonder, "What in the world is going on here?
00:08:15.640 | Where is this going, this story?"
00:08:17.840 | Fourteen whole chapters about Joseph's dreams, the hatred of his brothers, they're
00:08:24.640 | selling him into slavery, his fall further and further into misery as Potiphar's wife
00:08:31.320 | lies about him, and then he goes to prison and he's forgotten in prison, and then he
00:08:39.160 | becomes the second-ranked ruler in Egypt, and the people of God are saved from starvation
00:08:46.920 | in the famine, and the line of the Messiah is preserved.
00:08:50.840 | Oh, that's what was going on.
00:08:54.520 | And there are numerous layers of intentions in this writing.
00:09:00.000 | I want to get it out of people's minds that when you read a narrative, get the big
00:09:03.640 | picture, get the one big point.
00:09:05.400 | Well, yes, by all means, get the one big point.
00:09:08.120 | It may govern all the others, but there are a lot of little points that authors make along
00:09:12.300 | the way.
00:09:13.600 | So let's start with the big picture of this story.
00:09:16.680 | Moses doesn't leave us.
00:09:18.240 | I think Moses wrote this book, Genesis.
00:09:21.480 | Moses does not leave us wondering about the big overarching intention of the story.
00:09:27.680 | He fills us in with a couple of very clear-pointed summary statements of what he's been talking
00:09:35.600 | about.
00:09:36.600 | For example, Joseph says in chapter 45, verse 7, "God sent me, he sent me to Egypt before
00:09:45.160 | you to preserve you a remnant and to keep alive for you many survivors.
00:09:52.280 | So it was not you who sent me here, even though you sold me as slavery, but God, he has made
00:10:00.920 | me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and ruler over the land of Egypt."
00:10:08.440 | In other words, all these apparently human events that we've been reading about for 14
00:10:13.440 | chapters, even the sinful ones, were in the control of the sovereign God who is sending
00:10:19.080 | his emissary through sinful actions down to Egypt to save his people.
00:10:23.920 | That's crazy.
00:10:24.920 | That's wonderful.
00:10:25.920 | That's almost the meaning of the Bible in parable.
00:10:28.760 | And then Genesis 50, verse 20, Joseph says to his brothers, "As for you, you meant evil
00:10:34.600 | against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive."
00:10:40.960 | I think when you read that, you almost have to go back and reread the story because now
00:10:45.000 | you get it.
00:10:46.000 | Now you say, "Oh, that's where it was all going."
00:10:49.640 | And you can reread the story and say with that clue in your mind, "Oh, this meant that
00:10:54.120 | and this was going here," and you see God's hand more immediately.
00:10:59.360 | So the big point is human sinfulness of God's people, of God's people, or human sinfulness
00:11:06.480 | against God's people, not only does not thwart his saving plans, they advance his saving
00:11:15.360 | plans.
00:11:16.360 | They are part of the plans of God to save his people and finally his Messiah and bring
00:11:21.380 | him into the world through that line.
00:11:23.720 | So that's the big picture.
00:11:25.000 | And he clues us in with hints all along the way and with that big explanatory statement
00:11:30.960 | at the end.
00:11:32.480 | But there are other clues of meaning and layers of meaning besides the big interpretive statement
00:11:40.640 | at the end.
00:11:42.100 | Along the way, Moses mingles worsening circumstances with encouraging words.
00:11:51.600 | Joseph is thrown into the pit.
00:11:53.460 | He's sold as a slave.
00:11:55.320 | He's far from home in Egypt.
00:11:56.960 | He's lied about by Potiphar's wife.
00:12:00.480 | He's forgotten in prison.
00:12:01.800 | Down, down, down, down.
00:12:03.360 | You can graph this story and it corresponds to many of your lives.
00:12:07.960 | I've done this for our people.
00:12:09.480 | I graph it and say, "Where are you on this horribly descending graph of miserable circumstances
00:12:15.400 | in your life?"
00:12:17.000 | And he comes to the end and then he seems to be forgotten by God.
00:12:20.840 | In the world, it's supposed to sound that way.
00:12:24.700 | But along the way, he says things like, Moses says, "The Lord was with him and the Lord
00:12:32.940 | caused all that he did to succeed in his hands."
00:12:37.220 | Or again, "The Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor
00:12:43.300 | in the sight of the keeper of the prison."
00:12:45.540 | So we get these hints along the way that even though things are getting worse for Joseph,
00:12:51.600 | it's not because of his sinfulness.
00:12:54.020 | He's not bringing this on himself.
00:12:56.420 | It's not because he's been abandoned by God, but because God's hidden purpose.
00:13:01.840 | And as we read, we want to know what's the purpose?
00:13:03.800 | What's the purpose?
00:13:04.800 | God, you say you're for him.
00:13:06.260 | You don't look like you're for him.
00:13:09.000 | One more illustration of how the author gets across his intention.
00:13:12.560 | And this is one of the perplexing things to me in the whole story.
00:13:16.160 | Chapter 38 totally, it seems, interrupts the flow of this story.
00:13:22.880 | The story begins in chapter 37 with the dreams and the selling into slavery in Egypt.
00:13:28.560 | And bang!
00:13:30.520 | Moses inserts chapter 38 as soon as the big story starts, and it is so extraneous.
00:13:38.840 | It tells this bizarre story about Judah.
00:13:42.520 | This older brother who winds up getting his daughter-in-law pregnant, thinking she's
00:13:47.320 | a prostitute.
00:13:49.160 | Now whatever else is going on here, my question is, Moses, why here?
00:13:55.840 | I mean, put that chapter before chapter 37.
00:13:59.680 | Let the story flow.
00:14:01.800 | What's the point of interrupting the narrative with this chapter 38?
00:14:07.000 | Well, here's my suggestion, and I would love to know whether it's right or not.
00:14:14.280 | Because the very next thing after that horrible immorality of Judah in chapter 38, the very
00:14:24.000 | next thing we read about in Joseph's story is his incredible uprightness in sexual relations
00:14:33.480 | with Potiphar's wife, who tries to seduce him.
00:14:37.520 | And Moses records his words, "How then could I do this great wickedness and sin against
00:14:44.560 | God?"
00:14:45.760 | So I think the ordering of the narrative with the insertion of Judah's sexual immorality
00:14:54.000 | just before Joseph's staggeringly effective and beautiful sexual morality is to underline
00:15:02.160 | in bright colors the difference between Judah's unfaithfulness and Joseph's amazing sexual
00:15:09.560 | uprightness, which simply goes to show that there can be main points to narratives and
00:15:16.920 | lots of sub-points to narratives that we should be alert to.
00:15:23.960 | So in answer to Nicholas's question, whether we are reading a tightly argued epistle of
00:15:31.000 | Paul or a sweeping narrative across 14 chapters, we're always looking for what the author
00:15:39.880 | intends to communicate.
00:15:43.200 | And we look for the kinds of clues that he gives us, whether in exposition or in narration,
00:15:51.920 | to help us find the intention.
00:15:54.960 | And I would just say to Nicholas, the more you read, the more I read with that aim of
00:16:00.480 | spotting those tips and pointers that authors give us, the more you're going to see.
00:16:07.480 | Excellent.
00:16:08.480 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:16:09.800 | And if you want more on arcing, see APJ episodes 127, 395, and 1056.
00:16:16.680 | Those three are really good on this topic—127, 395, and 1056.
00:16:23.160 | All found at our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:16:28.560 | Just go to the search bar and type in the episode number—127, 395, 1056.
00:16:35.800 | We are approaching Halloween in the States.
00:16:37.960 | It will be here on Sunday for us.
00:16:39.800 | And for many, it's a day about ghosts and ghouls and goblins and pumpkins and candy.
00:16:46.160 | But for some of us, the day serves as an annual reminder of the Protestant Reformation.
00:16:50.520 | Reformation Day reminds us how Paul's epistle to the Romans ignited a fire in Martin Luther's
00:16:56.640 | soul—a fire so bold that he stood against an entire religious system that wanted to
00:17:02.520 | shut him up and shut him down.
00:17:04.960 | We'll look back on Luther's boldness next time on Wednesday.
00:17:08.360 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:17:10.200 | We'll see you then.
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