back to indexHow Do You Find Meaning in the Bible’s Narratives?
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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 00:00:47.840 |
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 00:00:57.400 |
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. 00:01:13.000 |
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, 00:01:33.560 |
My church is currently preaching through Luke, and while there is indeed structure, how do 00:01:41.860 |
Are there specific transitions, markers, or triggers you're looking for in the narrative 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 00:02:04.320 |
And I do believe that the most fundamental goal of reading is to discover the author's 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. 00:03:26.000 |
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 00:03:51.000 |
"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. 00:04:18.040 |
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 00:05:08.380 |
And he could expand it out and say, "How does it relate to poetry and parable and so 00:05:13.700 |
Events that are woven together in a certain way. 00:05:20.740 |
Should we seek the author's intention in the same way? 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 00:05:45.500 |
But biblical authors write stories for a reason. 00:05:48.980 |
They are trying to communicate something to us. 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. 00:06:14.420 |
Over and over he says, "Have you not read Matthew 12.3, Matthew 19.4, Matthew 22.31? 00:06:23.780 |
And they're scratching their heads and saying, "That's all we do is read." 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. 00:07:07.120 |
So yes, we should look for an author's intention in all writing, all writing that's worth 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 00:07:50.560 |
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 00:08:09.360 |
It's an absolutely riveting story, and you wonder, "What in the world is going on here? 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. 00:08:54.520 |
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 00:09:05.400 |
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 00:09:13.600 |
So let's start with the big picture of this story. 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 00:09:36.600 |
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. 00:10:25.920 |
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 00:10:46.000 |
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 00:11:16.360 |
They are part of the plans of God to save his people and finally his Messiah and bring 00:11:25.000 |
And he clues us in with hints all along the way and with that big explanatory statement 00:11:32.480 |
But there are other clues of meaning and layers of meaning besides the big interpretive statement 00:11:42.100 |
Along the way, Moses mingles worsening circumstances with encouraging words. 00:12:03.360 |
You can graph this story and it corresponds to many of your lives. 00:12:09.480 |
I graph it and say, "Where are you on this horribly descending graph of miserable circumstances 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 00:12:45.540 |
So we get these hints along the way that even though things are getting worse for Joseph, 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? 00:13:09.000 |
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. 00:13:30.520 |
Moses inserts chapter 38 as soon as the big story starts, and it is so extraneous. 00:13:42.520 |
This older brother who winds up getting his daughter-in-law pregnant, thinking she's 00:13:49.160 |
Now whatever else is going on here, my question is, Moses, why here? 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 00:14:45.760 |
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 00:15:43.200 |
And we look for the kinds of clues that he gives us, whether in exposition or in narration, 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. 00:16:09.800 |
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. 00:16:39.800 |
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 00:17:04.960 |
We'll look back on Luther's boldness next time on Wednesday.