#3 The Bible as Story

Show Notes

In episode #3 we take a look at the concept of Bible as story. In the first part, we ask the question, "Why read the Bible as story?" and in the second part address, "How to read the Bible as story.

We saw an increase in secularization (disenchantment) coming out of the modern period. Today we are seeing an increase in spirituality (reenchantment) in the postmodern period, but the Western world is reenchanting in the wrong direction. (new or hybridized mythologies). Through the fundamentalist and evangelical movements, the church has largely reduced the Bible to propositional truths and lost the mystical nature of the text.

In this episode, we look at how the story can help us regain some of the imagination of the biblical authors.

Music: Glossy by Coma-Media

Podcast Transcript

00:01:22 - 0

The church has largely reduced the Bible to propositional truths and lost the mystical nature of the text. In this episode. We want to look at how the story can help us regain some of the imagination of the Bill. All right.So in this first part, we're gonna talk about reading the biblical story. Um And maybe this is a new way to think of reading the Bible.Uh You might read the Bible, let's say in the New Testament and you read the letters of Paul and you're looking for what theological insights the Apostle Paul might have.Or you read the book of James and you look to James or maybe even to the gospels themselves and you're trying to ask questions like, how should I live and what should I do?And we tend to read the Bible more in a personal devotional way or in a theological way. Uh looking for what whatever truths and lie behind the below the surface and how they fit together. But I think more interesting uh is reading the Bible as story.

00:02:42 - 0

Uh This Bible is not a theological text, first and foremost, neither is it a legal code that teaches you how it is that you're supposed to live? The Bible? Really is a story, a grand narrative from beginning to end. Now, what even is a story?The word story um is shortened from the Latin word Historia, which can mean history, account, tale or obviously story. Um notice that there's no linguistic separation in the Latin between the words story and history. Uh And obviously, you can see the word story in both of those.

00:03:19 - 0

Uh It's a modern thing to think of story as a story that's untrue and history as a story that is true. Uh That clean separation didn't exist in the ancient world.The word story itself means a narrative, either true or fictitious in prose or in verse designed to interest a muse or instruct the hearer or the reader. And because I think we come to the Bible looking for instruction, we often don't want to think of it as story.But even there in our modern definition of story is the idea that somehow through narrative, through story, through prose or verse, we can actually be instructed in godly living uh through the way that the story unfolds. Now, what is a story for?And I, I can kind of see four answers to this question. I think stories um are supposed to build relationship. I think stories can be relational.They, they help us when we share with one another to understand uh different perspectives, different cultures, different world views uh that belong to other people. So relation, I think also stories can be historical uh in a technical sense. It's how we learn about our past.

00:04:38 - 0

The sort of, it's been said that one of the goals of history, maybe the primary goal of history is so that history doesn't have to repeat itself.Um And yet it does because I don't know that we always do learn from our histories, but story is a way of understanding who we are uh from where we have come from, from our history. Story is also for entertainment.Story is very much how we pass the time. Uh Now today you might pass the time by watching movies or television or uh by, by reading, reading books or by listening to story in audible form.Uh very much video games, even other forms of entertainment, like video games and social media in many ways are engaging story, you know, stories and social media. Uh uh apps are designed to be short momentary stories that you can consume in just a few moments.Uh Story is definitely for entertainment purposes and then story can also be for instruction. I would, I would say story is always in some sense for instruction that even stories designed for entertainment usually have some kind of objective, some kind of agenda.

00:05:49 - 0

Um Historical stories are usually worded in such a way that there's an agenda. And maybe even although I think we would like to think better of each other, maybe even our relational stories um have some sort of agenda behind them as well.And so there's always instruction that's involved in the concept of story, think about how you learn things best. Um My, my son is uh studying science because he's in school right now. And he has a science book that is called The Story of Science.And so, rather than just teaching propositional facts about science and how science is done, uh He's actually getting to learn through story the way that scientific discovery uh has come to be.And so you learn sort of intricacies through story that you can't learn through step by step instructions. And I think that's really the the ultimate power that story has. It. It has a way of maintaining your interest and sort of helping you to sometimes even subconsciously learn.

00:06:50 - 0

Um Even if you aren't looking through direct propositions, I think of, I think of welding. I, I, I've done a little bit of welding my life. I like it.Um But I can't imagine when I learned to weld, if I had learned from a textbook, a textbook is gonna be propositional. It's gonna tell you step by step. Um How, how to do things. It's gonna tell you the details.It's gonna probably show pictures, which help pictures, help story.Um But uh it's gonna show pictures and it's gonna have lists of facts, things like like safety standards and make sure you always do this and make sure you don't do that and where I think that sort of thing is important.Um I learned to weld from my father-in-law who uh said here's how you do it. Um And he gave me some propositional statements, don't ever weld without a mask. Um for example, and always wear leather gloves and some of those safety things were there.

00:07:42 - 0

Uh But very much much I learned how to do it in an on the job side type type of setting where, where I got to sort of live it out. And I think that's what story does for us.Story, story gives us a way to live out realities um that we can't physically step into the space. And so it kind of gives us a way to do that. Look what Lewis said about about this.Um This comes from his work day, a poet which means and my Latin is terrible. I'm sorry, but it means on hearing poets. So CS Lewis said that there are two ways of enjoying the past as there are two ways of enjoying a foreign country.So this is like an illustration. One man carries his English re abroad with him and brings it home unchanged. Wherever he goes, he consorts with the other English tourists by a good hotel. He means one that is like an English hotel.He complains of the bad tea where he might have had excellent coffee. In other words, I'm gonna step outside of CS Lewis for a minute. In other words, CS Lewis is saying that there's one type of way that you can travel.

00:08:46 - 0

Um And, and that is to just compare everything to the, the best that you have at home. OK. He goes on like this but there is another sort of traveling and another sort of reading, you can eat the local food and drink the local wines.You can share the foreign life. You can begin to see foreign country as it looks not to the tourists, but to its inhabitants. You can come home modified thinking and feeling as you did not think and feel before.And so so now he's saying there's another kind of traveling where you try to get into the culture and you try to get into the life, the way that the actual inhabitants live, that you, that you go to another place you travel, not to be a tourist, but to actually be modified to be changed by the way the inhabitants live.

00:09:33 - 0

OK. He goes on there's one more paragraph. So with the old literature, I'm sorry, as pronounce that word.So with the old literature, you can go beyond the first impression that a poem makes on your modern sensibility by study of things outside the poem, by comparing it with other poems, by steeping yourself in the vanished period.You can then reenter the poem with eyes more like those of the natives. Now, perhaps seeing that the associations you have in the old words were false, that the real implications were different than you supposed.And so, so he's talking about this idea of, of, of reading like a native or reading like an inhabitant and not reading like a tourist. He gives us two ways to read.The first way to read is to supplement what you already believe, to supplement what you already know, to compare everything to your own experience and reject everything that doesn't occur, that doesn't accord with it. It's sort of preserving your English to use, to use CS Lewis's language.

00:10:33 - 0

But then there's another way to read and I think CS Lewis is saying this is a better way to read, Um, or maybe an advanced way to read, maybe he, maybe he'd have you to do it both ways to see what's good and what's bad in both worlds.But anyway, the second way to read is to be shaped by what is written, even when it challenges what it is that you already believe and know seeing how it looks to the inhabitants rather than to the tourists.And so I think this is sort of a, a mature or an advanced way to read a book, any book really. And certainly the Bible as we are Christians and we come to the scriptures, we do lots of reading as Christians, I think.But many Christians will pick up um various types of Christian literature as well as maybe classic literature and things of that sort. But anyway, especially as it pertains to reading the Bible Bible, I think that most Christians um are, are going to do that.They're gonna read the Bible, they're gonna read stories, they're gonna hear sermons, different, different things and you're gonna do that in order to supplement your faith. And I use that, that word supplement on purpose, um, to supplement your faith, to supplement you what you already know.

00:11:38 - 0

It's reasonable enough. It's reasonable enough. It's like if you already believe things that are true then, then you don't wanna give those up. Well, it's reasonable. As long as everything you already believe is right, is true. Is correct, is biblically accurate.But the reality is for all of us myself included, it isn't um it's impossible that everything that we believe um as individuals could possibly be true when we know that there's differences in belief between virtually every individual.So am I to be, see myself as the lucky one who just happened upon all truth and everybody else is anywhere from a little wrong to a lot of wrong about everything else.I think that's probably not the most uh uh humble way uh to go about reading the Bible or to listening to biblical literature. So when we read the Bible, our tendency is to read it as a tourist visiting the ancient world from the outside.We like Bill and Ted hopping in, in, in the phone booth and zipping off to observe ancient worlds but, but not engaging in them, but we need to learn to read it, not as a tourist but as an actual inhabitant as the original audience of the scripture in its original context.

00:12:55 - 0

How, how is it that they would have heard this text and certainly first and foremost, I think they would have heard it in the occasion in the story.Let's talk about rationalism for a minute because I think that our reading in the way that the ancient people read, it's changed through sort of the enlightenment period as rationalism set in, in the western world, we, our tendency is not to read for story not to read for the sort of the how do things go in the narrative?

00:13:22 - 0

Rather we read for propositions and conclusions. We're looking, we're looking to rationalize it into something that we think it is useful or to rationalize it into a system that can then serve other purposes.And so then we take literature and we turn our reading of literature into some kind of scientific venture as if the only benefit that literature has for us is whatever propositional truths we can distill out of it and then out of those propositional truths, whatever fundamental activities that we need to then do because of it.

00:13:52 - 0

And that's sort of what the enlightenment has has, you know, imposition onto the biblical text. Do you think of the reformation? The the reformation for again, like I've said before, for everything that is good in the reformation, II, I consider myself small r reformed.I uh my faith is a product of the, the reformers. However, the reformation was fought on the grounds of wait a minute. The church is acting this way, the pope is saying this, the the the bishops are saying this and all of that, right?Um But doesn't the Bible say, and it was a rationalistic grammatical historical approach to the text of the Bible um that caused them to challenge the story being put forth uh by the Catholic church. Now, the reformation needed to happen.II, I think that, you know, if I could go back and rewrite history, which I obviously can't, but I would have loved to see sort of the Catholic church repent of some things that they weren't doing right.And for the reformation to actually be a reformation, to reform the church and to move it in the right direction, instead, the reformation turned into uh the protestant reformation, it became turned into protest and um a separation of church traditions.

00:15:08 - 0

But this new reformation or Protestant tradition is now rooted in this idea of rationalism so that we never go the way of that the Catholic church did before with the errors that they had made. We are going to root the Protestant faith in the text of scripture.And so now we're systematized the Bible into propositional statements into conclusions into various types of systems. Here's how, here's what the, the, the Bible says about how a church is supposed to operate.Here's what the Bible says about how salvation is supposed to operate and we're creating these neat and tidy little systems um that become the content of our faith uh to the neglect of the grand narrative of the scriptures.And so, if I'm right about what rationalism has done to Bible reading, then we need to learn to read the Bible again, just like CS Lewis called us to do.We need, we need to get that enchantment back when we, when, when we sort of run the, the biblical text through this where we, we lose so much, we lose the enchantment of the text.

00:16:09 - 0

We lose the, the beauty of the spiritual world and all of the confusing stuff that we're not sure about. Um all of that, that time type of stuff gets, gets sid out.So that all we have left is um propositions about what not to believe and what to do. And so we have, we need to have a little bit of intellectual humility here. Um I, I think there's three things that we need to be willing to do.We need to be willing to change our views as we read the Bible. But Bible reading is a task in humility and obviously the, the, the first or last in the last, first in the eternal kingdom of God.And so intellectual humility is, is going to be an important factor in our eternal state. And so in intellectual humility, it doesn't mean that you can't have any dogmatic truths. It, it's just a warning about how and when you're dogmatic about those truths.I point you to the apostles creed on this. Um If you go and you read the apostles creed, you'll notice that more than anything. The apostles creed is a list of events. It's not really theological propositions. It's saying Jesus did this, Jesus did that.

00:17:15 - 0

God, the Father did this, God, the Holy Spirit did that. And the nice creed as well is the same type of thing. The early Christian creeds, um sort of worked on the assumption that right story leads to right conclusions. Uh when those conclusions become necessary for wise living.

00:17:32 - 0

And, and other words, you don't necessarily need to draw conclusions about everything ahead of time. You can and, and then create systems and propositions about those. If you have the story, right?And if you have this in depth knowledge of the story, at least the early church, the ancient church, they very much felt that you could um you could live wisely if we were dogmatic about the story itself.And we sort of flipped that on its head um in the modern period where now we're dogmatic about the truths of the scripture about our system, about our eccles system. Uh you, you know, whatever system you want to plug in there, our eschatology or whatever, right?We're dogmatic about our systems many times to the neglect of the Bible itself. And so we don't let the story speak for itself because now we have a system that we're gonna use as that.We've got this system that we're gonna use to filter all of the biblical text through. And the problem with that is that a lot of the story and a lot of the beauty of the narrative, um it gets saved out.

00:18:31 - 0

So you need to have a willingness to change your views. Um You need to be humble as you come to the scriptures, but then you also need to have a willingness to see a new narrative emerge even if that narrative um is a mythological narrative.And, and I just use that word mythological and um Christians don't like that word because we've all been taught that Greek mythology is made up fairy tales that are um at best meaningful for, you know, seeing the consequences of human, the human heart and human activity.But they're just, you know, they're just children's stories at the end of the day now. Well, that's really not what myth is.And when I speak of biblical mythology, I'm certainly not suggesting that there's not truth, even historical truth in the stories of the Bible, a myth as it is uh defined is a traditional story, especially especially concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

00:19:35 - 0

And so if you, if you look at that definition, now, you can look at this up in dictionaries and you can find lower definitions that say it's a story that's not true.And that's sort of like a modern con connotation that we've placed on the words myth and mythology. That, that, that now to call something a myth. Well, that just means it's a false story. It's something that's made up, but that's really an immature definition.Um, uh, it's, it's not necessarily historically false and I think with myth you always need to ask the question. Um, it's, is it true? And in what way? Right.So that almost any myth I think is you can argue is true in some way that even within the Greek myths, um that they're, they are rooted in a historical setting. And so they're not entirely false if even false at all.Um to which, you know, I don't believe in Greek mythology and the inspiration of them. Um Not as I do the Bible, but you see my point that there's gonna be a truth in it. Now, CS Lewis was a, um was a professor of mythology.

00:20:41 - 0

And so CS Lewis had studied all of the mythologies of the, of the, uh especially the Western world and many other cultures.And, and he started to find that, that, that there was things he could learn and apply from these mythologies that he was learning patterns of human existence. And he was growing in his humanity because of these.And so he was challenged by two of his friends uh that to, to read the Bible that way and to say, well, well, well, what about the Bible? If you can believe all of this fantastic stuff, how come you can't believe the Bible?And the answer to that is probably rooted in sort of a fundamental legalistic um upbringing that Lewis had within the Anglican church. And so so, so Lewis takes this advice and he applies it to the Bible and then he looks specifically to the resurrection account of Jesus.And he says, then this is the true myth and he comes to faith and he starts to read the Bible the same way he reads the other mythologies and um and, and, and from there, Lewis's theology just grows and expands uh to make him one of the most influential or the most influential modern thinkers on the scriptures, on the church and on the Christian faith.

00:21:51 - 0

Um And so he even saw the scriptures as true myth. And so going back to what we're talking about here, we're talking about a willingness to see a new narrative, even a mythological one.And when we talk about many of the fantastic things, especially regarding the supernatural world, we need to have sort of not just the intellectual hum humility to understand what it says, but we need to have a willingness um to see this narrative emerge and to fight against that our mythological, you know, our mythological nature to say, well, that just sounds like myths.

00:22:25 - 0

So I don't wanna believe that about angels or that about gods or that about giants or you know that about demons or that about, you know, the eternal kingdom of God or that about creation, right? That we, we tend to dismiss things because they smell like myth.And actually I'm just asking you, would you have a, would you have a willingness to see what the Bible really is saying in its storyline? Um Before you try to critically analyze them in that way, don't dismiss them just because they smell like myth. Ok.So have intellectual humility, um be willing to see a new narrative and then have a willingness to read the Bible holistically.And this is gonna be a larger point here and we're gonna talk about these ideas uh quite a bit in future podcasts, but I, I love the Bible project there.The Bible project's mission stated is to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. And, and I think they're absolutely right. I know that is a very carefully crafted statement that Tim Mackey and others put together.

00:23:26 - 0

Um It's very carefully worded, it's very precise to, to what they're actually doing at the Bible project.And I think they're very much right, especially with um these two elements where they said it's to experience the Bible as a unified story and then to experience the Bible as a story that leads to Jesus.And those are sort of two different things that are inter, inter related. Um And, and so if we look to the field that is called biblical theology, um that's this part that says they want to experience the Bible as a unified story.Um Now, if you Google, what is biblical theology, you're gonna find all kinds of stuff out there on the internet. Um I've done some extensive study on this trying to, trying to look at what, how historically the term biblical theology has been used. It's a fairly contemporary term.

00:24:13 - 0

It, it, it, it hardly appears, I think not even on purpose until about 100 years ago. And then you're gonna start to see it being used um, in various different ways.Um Sometimes it's clear that the author isn't even intending to talk about it as a field of study.They're just saying theology, thinking about God theology, theology that's biblical and then in other and, and then in other ways, and especially as time goes on in the last 100 years, as we get closer to the modern period, there's been lots of talk about what biblical theology is.

00:24:45 - 0

And so you may disagree with me on some of this, but I'm just gonna ask for you to let me define biblical theology the way I see it so that you understand what I mean when I say biblical theology and then if you wanna use the term in a different way, in a different setting, that's, that's totally fine with me as well.

00:24:59 - 0

Um Just define what it means because people mean few different things by it. Um So here's how I see biblical theology. I first and foremost see it as a, the unified story of the Bible that there is one story of the Bible.And, and I will just kind of pin that last part on that. The story of the Bible is always pointing to Jesus.It's either pointing forward to Jesus, it's pointing back to Jesus that every story of the Bible ends with the ends with um a sort of a, this is what Jesus has accomplished type of conclusion, but it's the whole story of the Bible reading holistically, that is biblical theology.

00:25:35 - 0

Now, we conflate biblical theology with the system of thinking called covenant theology. And I subscribe to a type of covenant theology. There's, there's different, different kind of types of covenant theology.Um And, and so I subscribe to one of these types, but I wanna keep my covenant theology separate from uh separate from my biblical theology. Now, because I subscribe to covenant theology.And because I see um sort of this unification of the whole scripture, this unified story, I do believe that biblical theology is intrinsically.So I don't um I don't actually agree um that uh with, with some authors that have argued that you can have a dispensation of biblical theology.Dispensation is uh stated in its the construct and it's in, in the development of the dispensation of harmonic um is a separating of um of, I guess that's uh I guess just dispensations or eras of time in the scriptures.

00:26:34 - 0

And so it's in, it's sort of fundamental to dispensation um theology that the scriptures are not unified um on the level that we mean, when we say we want to experience the Bible as a unified story.And so the, the opposing system is covenant theology that looks at a progression of God's uh revelation and of grace happening throughout the covenants. And uh obviously, you know, different covenant systems, different people would say that different certainly. But covenant theology is a unified story in the scriptures.

00:27:09 - 0

And so biblical theology is covenant, but not everything under the umbrella of covenant theology is necessarily biblical theology. And the reason for that is because a lot of covenant theology actually belongs to a very important and yet different field of study called Systematic Theology.

00:27:27 - 0

And we'll talk about that difference. I think a little bit later more in this podcast, but definitely in, in later podcasts, we'll address to a degree the difference between biblical and systematic theologies.So don't conflate um uh Covenant theology with biblical theology as if they're the exact same thing. Um because they're not precisely the same thing, even though there's some overlap. Al also, I don't want to see biblical theology conflated with, with the, the, the systematic theology called Calvinism.

00:27:56 - 0

Um Calvinism is theology that is biblical in the sense that um that the arguments for Calvinism come from the Bible. So, Calvinism is biblical. Um it's even, you know, depending on your hermeneutic and the way that you think about how you extrapolate truths from different texts.

00:28:14 - 0

Calvinism is a good biblical system, but Calvinism is not biblical theology. I'm gonna point you to an article, you can read it if you like, it's sort of an article sort of a rant, but it's called Calvinist Theology equals Biblical Theology.It was written in 2005 by author Tim. And he says this in the article, he says, many people take issue with the statement that Calvinist reformed theology is biblical theology.I will go on record here and now and say that I believe that reformed Calvinistic theology is biblical theology.When I say this, I am in good company with some of the greatest pastors and theo theologians of our day and of days gone by perhaps Charles Spurgeon said it best in a defense of Calvinism where he wrote.If anyone should ask me what I mean by a Calvinist, I should reply. He is the one who says salvation is of the Lord. I cannot find in scripture or any other doctrine than this. OK.

00:29:09 - 0

So Tim wants to argue that they are the same thing that Calvinism is, is biblical theology, that they are the same thing that if it's biblical theology, then it's calvinistic. And if it's Calvinistic then it's biblical theology.And II, I don't much appreciate his argument because I think he takes Spurgeon a bit out of context here. Um, the Spurgeon quote makes me think that Tim defines biblical theology as theology that comes out of the Bible, not, and that's not the actual definition, right?So Tim Charlie is, is basically just saying well, because I believe Calvinism is true. And by the way, I'm not precisely speaking a Calvinist, I'm not anti Calvinist, but not precisely speaking personally, a Calvinist.And so, you know, I have a little bit of tension with this statement being that I am definitely uh a biblical theologian. And so I struggle with some of this, you know, that the, any systematic theology that leans heavily on the Bible can be referred to as biblical.Um but it cannot be referred to as biblical theology. Um Really what Tim is doing here. It's just a cheap shot. Um My theology is biblical.

00:30:19 - 0

Therefore, yours is not if you disagree with me and it's a way of just kind of muscling and, and, and, and it lacks the intellectual humility that we were just talking about just moments ago and so be a Calvinist, but understand the difference, you know, so if you're a Calvinist, be a Calvinist, if you're not a Calvinist, be a, not a Calvinist, you know, but, but read the Bible for its story, read it for as a unified story and don't, don't impose your systematic theology onto the story of the Bible.

00:30:48 - 0

The story of the Bible belongs to the field that is uh biblical theology and not to systematic. So biblical theology. Let's talk about it then as a technical term, biblical theology is a holistic reading of the Bible.Now, ironically, Calvinism is not biblical theology, the way most theologians argue as it takes passages of the New Testament, namely from Romans and Ephesians out of the context of the Old Testament and the corporate nature of the prophetic context.And maybe, I don't know, we can do a podcast about that in the future. Um I know that Doctor Michael Heiser and also uh Doctor Matthew Halstead have both done a fairly extensive um um analysis of this, this, of this on their podcasts.So you could look those up if you want to find those. Um But so, so I don't know if I'm gonna go into this, but, but frankly, biblical theology um refuses to take things out of context.You, you can't separate any statement in The New Testament, not only from the context of the argument that's being made in the passage.

00:31:51 - 0

Um Not only can you not take it out of the out of the book, not only can you not take it out of the new covenant, but you cannot take it out of the context of the Bible.And so you'll see in a few moments when I sort of analyze what I mean, by reading the Bib story and doing biblical theology, you'll see that it's not possible to take some of those statements in Romans and Ephesians and yank them from the Old Testament definitions, um, that give them context.

00:32:17 - 0

So biblical theology always reads the Bible holistically, never in parts and never out of context. It, it doesn't read the Bible front to back. Biblical theology doesn't read the Bible back to front.Um, but as a single literary unit and that, that might sound like a lot like how am I supposed to read the entire Bible all 66 books, all you know, and, and then if you subscribe to the apocryphal books as part of the, the can and then now you've even got a larger task on your hands.

00:32:43 - 0

So how am I gonna read the whole thing as a single literary unit? Not front to back, not back to front, um, and not intermittently? Ok. Well, we'll get there. Um I think the, the last thing that biblical theology is conflated with. So it's conflated with Calvinism.It's conflated with covenant theology. It's neither of those, neither is it uh biblical theology, systematic Theology? I did mention this prior um just a few moments ago, but systematic theology is really an attempt to put Christian doctrine into a logical order often starting from one fundamental principle.

00:33:17 - 0

And so what happens in systematics is that you don't actually do systematic theology until you have sort of propositions and conclusions.And so it doesn't make sense to impose your systematic theology onto your biblical theology because you can't even have the propositions and conclusions that are right and necessary until you've first done biblical theology. So biblical theology always precedes systematic theology. Systematics relies heavily on the scripture.

00:33:46 - 0

Um And so it is biblical in nature, but it, but it's about ordering the scriptures, um not reading the scriptures holistically, it's just a completely different approach um to, to the Bible. And I, and by, by all means, I loved my systematic theology classes in seminary.They have molded and shaped my thinking um both positively and, and uh and, and negatively.And I don't mean that, that like I had a bad experience, I mean, in the sense that sometimes you're studying it and you go, you know what, I'm actually not gonna agree with the conclusion of my professor here and you grow in, in the negative, in the inverse, in the, in the other direction.

00:34:20 - 0

And uh very much I was in the same direction and some doctrines and so systematic theology is important. It helps us to think about the scriptures, helps us to think about the Christian life. But systematic theology is not biblical theology. All right.I, I started talking about reading the Bible as story. Um Why on earth are we now talking about biblical theology? Well, the reason is because biblical theology is rooted in the story, biblical theology's aim is to uncover the meaning of the text through the entire narrative arc.

00:34:52 - 0

And that's where we're gonna go to in the next part as we talk about reading the Bible as story. All right, let's talk about reading the Bible story now. So every text of the Bible is occasional.What I mean by that is this, that there is an occasion that inspired the writing of every biblical text. Nothing was written in a vacuum. Nothing was written to be a systematic theology. Nothing was written, written to be a comprehensive history. Everything is occasional.It was written for a reason. Um It was written in a particular form that relates to that reason. Maybe it was written um as wisdom.Uh for example, the Bible project, they, Tim Mackey argues that everything in the Bible is wisdom regardless of the diff different forms that it takes. And so everything was written in its form for the reason that it was written.Um And then there is unity in the biblical narrative uh from Genesis to Revelation in spite of the occasional nature of each individual text. And so that's how we're supposed to read the story of the Bible. Um understanding where why it was written, how it was written.

00:36:10 - 0

Um And what form was it written and why it was written in what form. And so let's talk a little bit about how to read the Bible, a story. What, what do you do with this idea that every text is occasional.Well, I'm gonna go through sort of a different couple different subsets of the Bible. I'm just gonna hit the big ones. Um And, and sort of give an overview. So let's think of the different narratives. Um These are the things that are already written as a story.So you have a couple of different divisions, you have what we might call the histories like Samuel uh King's chronicles. They're, they're very much take on a historical form. Um Now, what's the occasion then?Well, maybe the occasion was that they wanted to write a comprehensive history of the Kings of Israel. Well, that's actually not true because we see a statement that's repeated uh throughout chronicles and kings.And um that, that aren't these things all written in the chronicles of the kings or aren't these things all written in the chronicles of David or in the chronicles of the prophet?

00:37:09 - 0

And you, you get, you get this also relating to, you know, Persia in the book of Esther, aren't these all written in the chronicles of the kings over there? And so you get this idea that like kings are keeping chronicles, they're keeping detailed histories of everything they do.

00:37:24 - 0

Well, what that means is that when the author of kings, by which I mean, 1st and 2nd kings in the English Bible, it's just Kings in the Hebrew Bible. But when the author of kings sat down to write that story.Um He had an occasion, there was a reason he was writing it. He included some details and not others that he was telling a story. And it's not my task right now to, to, to say what the story is, but that's what he's doing. He's telling a story.And so not everything that happened historically was considered scripture that wherever these chronicles of the kings of Israel, you know, wherever they went off to, um they were not considered inspired scripture, they weren't included in, in the Hebrew Bible and therefore, they're not included in the Christian Bible.

00:38:08 - 0

Um And so everything in Samuel King's chronicles, it was all written with a goal in mind. You'll also notice that kings and chronicles overlap quite a bit in some of the content and yet include different details.Oh, that again tells us there was an occasion to why kings was written. And there's, and it differs from the occasion um of for chronicles, they were actually written um at different times in history as well.And that points to again, to the idea that there's an occasion, there was something going on in Israel and in Israel's history, that was the occasion for the writing of the book. And that's gonna help you to understand and derive meaning from its story.Let's think about the Gospels in the New Testament. The and uh I'm gonna go ahead and lump in the book of Acts with that these are also narratives. They're, they're largely story, story with dialogue and story with internalized stories.You've got parallel or I'm sorry, parables in, in, in the, in that Jesus tells in the dialogue, in the gospel narratives.

00:39:06 - 0

Um And, and so there's an occasion to these that every time Jesus tells a parable, um there's an occasion, there's a reason that he does that everything that is taught. There's an occasion to it.When you, when you compare the gospels to each other, you'll find that they speak in different ways and they um include and exclude certain data for different reasons.Um And that's because there's an occasion, Matthew's gospel was pretty much written to in a Jewish audience where Luke's Gospel and acts was written um to a broad audience.Um Luke being a gentile was gonna in obviously include the gentiles in that and he wanted to write broadly to all people.Um Poly Carp uh tells us why Mark wrote because he wanted to write down the stories about Jesus that he was hearing from Peter, you know, and so Mark was probably the first of those, but, and then, and then John is often called the theological gospel.

00:39:55 - 0

And John's giving analysis on, on events and sayings of Jesus. And so he's, he's writing to, to teach a little bit more about what Jesus did, not merely to say um this is what happened. And so there's an occasion to all of these that's that's worked into it.And when you understand that occasion, it helps you to, to drive meaning from those narratives. Now, you may not consider these narratives, but I would also include Apocalypse as narrative, you know, um Apocalypse is um often, if not usually visions that different prophets are having.

00:40:28 - 0

And so you might not get uh you know, you have an entire book of Apocalypse that would be like the Book of Revelation or the Book of Daniel is mostly Apocalypse. The book of Ezekiel, mostly apocalyptic in nature. But so you get these, you get these apocalyptic books.Um but where they're having visions and they're seeing things and you gotta try to interpret them.I, I would say that the, that again, the, the first key to interpreting any of that, if you're gonna make sense from any of the nonsense that that seems to be in those, all of the, all of the crazy events and the beasts and the this and the that and right, that, that the first thing that you're gonna have to do is just say, what is the story, what's actually unfolding and, and that's gonna be the stepping off points to, to coming to that understanding of the occasion and the occasion for most apocalyptic literature is going to be, in fact, this is sort of what defines literature as apocalyptic in, in modern usage, um is the coming judgment.

00:41:23 - 0

And so whenever there's a coming judgment, um and paired with having visions of um fantastic things that's usually gonna be apocalyptic literature. And so there's an agenda that agenda belongs to God um who grants the vision and, and, and often he grants it through angels or through intermediaries.

00:41:42 - 0

Um And that's gonna point you to the occasion of the apocalypse, which is the coming judgment. All right. So those are kind of ways to like to look at narrative. Um And to see that it's, it's occasion how, where it fits in the story.Now, let's look at some of the poetry. So you've got really three categories of poetry. Um Although it, you know, little bits of tidbits of poetry show up all over the place and the gospels and the, and, and some of Paul's letters.Um certainly in the prophets, the Psalms uh Proverb book of Proverbs, other wisdom literature has, has, is, is either largely or partially uh poetic in nature if I think about the prophets, um when you're, if you're excluding apocalyptic prophecy from this, although I think in some ways it fits in you, the, the prophets are reiterating the law, they're reminding Israel um about the covenant that God has made with them and calling them back to faithfulness to Yahweh.

00:42:39 - 0

That's largely what prophetic books are about. Um And so if that's what God is doing through the prophetic Fred books, then certainly you see how apocalypse fits under the pro prophetic umbrella because the apocalypse is by the way.There's a coming judgment, there's a day of the Lord that's on its way. And so then you get this pairing of a reminder, reiterating of the law with the apocalyptic warnings. And so that's prophecy. There's an occasion to that.The occasion is it largely and this is reduction, but it's Israel isn't doing what they're supposed to be, therefore prophecy, therefore, apocalypse. Um Other, other poetic books would be Psalms is primarily um primarily poetic.Um You'll see that broken up into poetic form in your, in your Old Testament. Um What's the occasion?Well, the occasion of Psalms is unique because each Psalm or sometimes it's 22 or a couple or there's also categories of Psalms are broken up into five c, 55 books of Psalms in the historical uh pattern.

00:43:41 - 0

And so, you know, but each individual Psalm is somewhat unique and uh but so there, there may be a specific setting for each song within the, with each Psalm that's within the history of Israel that gives it its occasion.And you can't always, you can't always be dogmatic about the setting. It's not always easy to tell. Um but preachers who place the Psalm within the historical context, they, they understand what this means to tell the Psalm within the story.So, rather than just to reduce out of the song. Um um a number of principles for Christian living or principles for prayer or principles for lament, you know, to use during hard times or whatever it is, right?Rather than just proposition distilling the the Psalm, they wanna tell the story, what was happening in David's life or what was happening in the sons, you know, with the sons of Cora or what was happening in moses' life at the time that he wrote the, you know, the Psalm of Moses or whatever.

00:44:41 - 0

And so they're placing it within its occasion. Um Now Proverbs is, uh is, is believed to be written by King Solomon and Solomon being the wisest man who ever lived. And uh that's sort of his claim to fame.And so Proverbs and other wisdom literature in the, in the Solomonic tradition like Ecclesiastes, although it wasn't likely written by Solomon in any way.Um But it's in that tradition of wisdom, these types of books um uh were supposed to read under the occasion of Solomon teaching wisdom to the people of Israel. And so that's how we're supposed to read these. We're supposed to look at them within the setting of Israel.And then to ask, how does this wisdom apply more universally and throughout the grand narrative of scripture. And so there's an occasion there.And again, just to remind you what we're talking about, the occasion is where you're gonna get your touch point with the narrative of the entire scriptures.

00:45:36 - 0

Um Let's think about the letters, there's quite a few letters in The New Testament, they're, you know, to to so and so from so and so to, to the, the church at Ephesus, from the Apostle Paul and others, right? And stuff like that.So there, um there's an, there's an occasion to these letters. We have a tendency again, especially with um some of the real theological letters like the book of Romans.Um we have a tendency to get into the, into the me and, and the, and the, and the grammatical nuance of the phrases that are being said in our analysis of the Greek and, and, and things like that.And we, and to start to read Romans, like it's, well, frankly, we start to read Romans, like we read Carl Bart, right? Like we know it's theology, but we still have to interpret it, right? Bart's hard to understand if you've never read.That's why I say that like almost like Paul was writing theology, but it's hard to stand understand. So we have to, we have to study it to clarify what he was saying right now. That's not how you read the letters. It's certainly not how you read, read Romans.

00:46:34 - 0

Everything that is included in the letters was included for a reason. OK, paper and pen, so to speak was expensive in the ancient world. You didn't just write someone a letter um to explain random things to them.Um Everything is occasional, everything that Paul teaches in the book of Romans in the book of Colossians in the book of Philippians, although it has value broadly and they often shared these letters to say, hey, look what Paul said to us.And, you know, here's a letter from Corinth and here's a letter from, from, you know, from Galatia and they circulated these letters because there was things to learn from them. Um, each of them was initially written within a context.There was some kind of conflict, there was something they needed to learn, there was something they weren't doing right. There was some way that they were that they weren't living out the Christian faith according to the way that Christ had designed it.And so Paul is bringing correction or encouragement or what, whatever it is, but there's always something happening.

00:47:30 - 0

Um that is the occasion of uh not just the letter as a whole, but usually there's, there's something happening, that's the occasion of, you know, a particular part of the letter that a lot of times they're gonna unfold. Now, Galatians really has one big conflict, one occasion.

00:47:45 - 0

But then the book of First Corinthians, there's all kinds of stuff going on. So as you're reading, you always have to be asking yourself awful. Now, what's the occasion? Why would Paul say this? What was happening in Corinth?What do we know from the Book of Acts when Paul was in Corinth? Do we, do we get something there? What do we know from Second Corinthians that might inform what we read in first or vice versa.And so we're always doing that kind of work to try to understand the story of the church growing in that particular city, to understand why Paul wrote the letter that he did. Um uh again, I mentioned Galatians, you know, Galatians serves as a good illustration here.It's, it's really in the context of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. And that's really the context for the Book of Galatians.And also looks back at, you know, um the Peter's, you know, uh uh Peter's vision of the, the sheep coming down with the all of the animals on it.

00:48:34 - 0

And the Lord says, take and eat and he's showing in that the gentiles um do not need to be treated as unclean under the new covenant.And so then that causes complications within the Jewish Christians and some of those Jewish Christians without the permission of James, um the leader of the church in Jerusalem, they go to Galatia and they start to cause problems there in Galatia with the Christians that are uh with the gentile Christians that are living in Galatia and not keeping strictly to the law of Moses.

00:49:02 - 0

And so this is the controversy and if you don't know that, then you're not gonna have any clue what Galatians is about and you're likely to misinterpret it and to um pull statements out of context that might encourage you in some way that might attach to what you already know in some way.

00:49:18 - 0

Um But you might be misunderstanding what those are and you might be growing your theology in the wrong direction. And so we always want to read the story. We always want to know the occasion. The last one I want to talk about is Law.And, um, I don't know if you know this, but when we look at the law could just need Torah the first five books of The Old Testament.But, but as we look at the Laws of the Old Testament, um it seems fairly clear that the laws are being given for a reason. You know, in the book of Leviticus, you've got Aaron's two sons who go and offer unlawful fire in the holy of Holies.And then they're, they're torched for it by Yahweh. And then flowing from there is seven chapters of instruction on how to offer sacrifices in the temple and what priests need to do to purify themselves and to protect themselves.And so it's, it's always law is always within an occasion.

00:50:03 - 0

You, you start getting into some of the laws that are like, you know, if your neighbor's goat wanders into your yard and it falls in a hit and dies, uh who's responsible for that, you know, and stuff like that. And that's because these types of things were happening.And so then as, as Moses or one of the other rulers of Israel, uh gave, you know, a, a judgment on these things uh then they began to be written down and Moses recorded them into, into these books of law that we call the Torah.Um But they all happened within and occasionally you would say now we have what we might call comprehensive law codes from the ancient world, uh like the code of Ham rabbi.Um And so it's not that having a written law code where they tried to figure out everything that could possibly happen, it's not that that was foreign to the thinking of the ancient world. It's just that, that's not what Torah is.Um Torah is a recording of what, what was ruled because of what was happening. And so you can read every law now of uh within the Torah. And you can say, why did you know why were people boiling a goat in its mother's milk?

00:51:06 - 0

And instead of taking that as a dogmatic prohibition to not boil a goat in its mother's milk, you can start to try to place that within its historical context within its occasion and to start to understand the story of Israel and how they were being tempted by the worship of pagan gods and they were being tempted to see other gods as the ones that might provide them the things that they needed or wanted for life instead of yahweh.

00:51:27 - 0

And so you can see it cast within the context of the 10 commandments and, and their giving of loyalty to other gods. Ok? So that's the law always under occasion.Now, I think it's interesting because if you take a sort of a literature class today, you're gonna be taught about various elements of the story. And there's lots of elements of the story, you know, you know, 20 some odd 30 some odd depending on who you talk to.Um, but there's a few that really are um common suggestions for necessary elements that things that, in, in other words, things that you need to, to be aware of when you're reading a story in order to be able to understand the story.So the first is the plot and we've already been talking about the plot. I just gave you basically when I was talking about occasion for the law for the letters for poetry, for the prophets, for apocalypse, all that, right? The occasion is really the plot.It's what is unfolding in the story. OK? And how is it unfolding? And what is being said that tells us that that's what's unfolding in the story.

00:52:25 - 0

Um The second is the setting and usually this is gonna be historical and this is what this is where it's really important to have some of this intellectual humility and to understand that when the biblical texts were written, people were not thinking about story uh in the sense of his story in the same way that we talk about history.

00:52:43 - 0

Now, that doesn't mean that the events of the Bible aren't true that they didn't really happen or that they didn't happen exactly as the Bible says, they happen.It means that you need to be aware that the statements are crafted in a particular way according to the narrative that the writer was crafting. OK. And so, so you wanna have a certain amount of a certain sense of reading mythological.You want to read it the way that the way that CS Lewis says to read, um that he was talking about reading poetry, but you wanna read the Literature of the Old Testament especially, but even the new as the ancient person, you want to, you don't want to visit as a tourist, right?

00:53:22 - 0

You don't wanna go back in the the phone booth and, and, and just kind of observe things that are happening historically, to try to, to, to try to, to um obtain propositions about historical facts, right? That's not what we're trying to do.We're not taking a multiple choice history test. That's not why we read the Bible. We're actually trying to understand the narrative to see how the narrative of scripture, crafts our thinking in the modern day.And if that's true, then we actually want to understand the story from the position of the original person. We want to understand it as an inhabitant of the land thousands of years ago, right? How would they have understood this story?And if that's what you're really doing, then you're not asking questions about science, you're not asking questions about history in the modern modern sense of history, right?So you're always trying to place yourself into that setting and into that narrative and into that place where, where all of not just the things happening in the physical world, but all of the things happening in the spiritual world, in the supernatural realm that all of that is very real to that person.

00:54:24 - 0

And you're just gonna step into it and you're gonna read the Bible saying, I, I, before I am critical of anything in this before even try to ask a question of whether or not demons exist or, or, or, or how demons exist or, or whether or not giants are real or how many days was the earth created in or any of those scientific or historical questions before you even do that, you need to step into the mindset of the person to, to, to, to think mythological and just to become immersed in that world.

00:54:52 - 0

And so that's the setting, the characters, you're gonna have the author, the audience, other people who are mentioned. Um And then there's always even in, even in books, like let's say Esther, where God isn't actually mentioned, um He's obviously present.And so God is always a character who's present. Um And, and so you always want to ask questions about who's here and how are they interacting?And that's gonna help to help you to understand the flow of the story, you're gonna wanna look at the um look at the point of view. Um The speaker is not always the same in uh in every book of the Bible and sometimes the point of view changes.Um And sometimes the point of view is not the author, I think of the end of Deuteronomy where it, you know, where it doesn't appear that Moses is writing anymore because he's talking about Moses being the most humble man. And then he writes about Moses's own death.And so this is probably Joshua who writes this ending to Deuteronomy. Um when he sort of takes the reins from Moses and leading Israel into the promised land, right? So, so the point of view can even change.

00:56:01 - 0

Um and the point of view is not necessarily the the author. So you always always wanna ask kind of who is the narrator. And so, you know, for example, in the book of Job, job is not the narrator. Um but he is the main character.And so you wanna, you wanna kind of be able to parse that and then you want to try try to trace the narrative arc specifically where does conflict rise, where does conflict rise and there's gonna be lots of conflicts.The, the longer a story is, the more complex the story is, the more conflicts there's gonna be. Um but you wanna be able to identify the conflict. Um And then because if you can't get the conflict, you're not gonna understand the conflict resolution.And if you don't understand the conflict resolution, then you're not actually gonna be certain what you're supposed to do, what you're supposed to believe about the text. And so you always want to be looking towards that, that conflict and conflict resolution element of the story. OK.

00:56:54 - 0

So there's some elements of the story. Um, let's try to apply some of what we just talked about. I wanna, I wanna answer sort of the question.How do I do biblical theology when I sit down to study and I sort of do what I call biblical theological preaching where most of the time lately when I preach a sermon, I'm actually going to preach it from the context of the entire scriptures.And that might sound like a ridiculous text. And perhaps that's why my sermons average about 45 to 50 minutes. You know, they tend to be lengthier. Um You know, I'm, I'm always trying to pare it down to the necessary elements.Um, but I'm often preaching or teaching through a book of the Bible. And so my starting point isn't really gonna be the beginning. Um, and the end. So if I'm in Daniel or I'm in First Peter or I'm in Matthew or I'm in Galatians, right?I'm gonna be in a different place in the Bible. Sometimes that's gonna be Old Testament. Sometimes that's gonna be New Testament. Um The first thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start with understanding what's being said in that text. Um and, and identifying that texts occasion.

00:58:03 - 0

Why was this text written? What issue was happening here and, and part of the strength of preaching through books of the Bible, which I don't always do.But part of the strength of it is it helps you with the, with the occasion that when you can understand the flow of a letter before you, before you start to teach that letter, or you can understand the flow of one of the gospels or one of the narratives in the Old Testament, maybe kings, if you can understand the flow of it before you start to get it, parse it out into different pieces.

00:58:27 - 0

Um that it's gonna help you to identify the occasion of each individual text. And sometimes you're gonna go text by text by text and the occasion is gonna be the same. It's gonna save you a lot of time in your study.But you wanna know why it was written, what issue was happening, what's the conflict that's happening in this particular narrative? And then sometimes you're gonna see that narrative symbolically patterned onto other narratives.And so now that what I wanna do is I wanna take that conflict and I wanna place the na and maybe the conflict resolution alongside it and I wanna place it in the greater framework of the scriptures. And how can you possibly do that?How can you assume to know the content of the entire Bible. Well, this is why for a lot of years right now, um, preachers have been encouraging their congregations to shocker read the Bible. Know it, know it, know it for its story.Like, even if you don't think that you've got like a real good theological mind, learn the story. Everybody likes story. Don't you watch television? Don't you watch movies? Don't you read fiction, don't you? Whatever?

00:59:27 - 0

Put fill in the blank, don't you play video games where you're having to work through a story or whatever, right? We live in a world of story. And so you can understand the Bible from the perspective of story. You are smart enough to do that.In fact, everybody is smart enough to read story. That's one of the strengths of reading the Bible as story instead of reading it for propositions because I'll fail a multiple choice quiz all day long.Um But let's get into the story and now I'm gonna learn some stuff and you can too. So the first thing I do when I'm gonna take, I got the occasion of my text say my text is in Leviticus and I've got my occasion.I know I know what's going on in that text. Now I'm gonna, now I'm gonna start to think through what I know of the scriptures from Genesis all the way through revelation.And if I can, um if I can give words to the occasion or to the conflict or to the conflict resolution, then I'm gonna use my Bible study tools. I'm not, I don't just hold this all in my head.

01:00:20 - 0

Um I do have of, I think a spiritual gifting of being able to hold a large amount of story in my head. Um And uh I thank God for that because it definitely helps me with this task.But I think everybody can do this, you know, you work with tools you start to think through um what, how do, how do these, what do these look like in Genesis, especially the first handful of chapters of Genesis, maybe one through 12, 1 through 11 up to Abraham.And then what do they look like in revelation? Especially once you get to like chapter 19 through the end? Right? 1920 21 22 the very, the very ending.So looking at the beginning and the end of all things, the alpha and the omega of all things, um Do we see any kind of patterning that is similar to what we're working through in um in, in our core text that we're launching from?So if I'm in Leviticus per se, chapter 16, then do I see patterns from Leviticus 16 in Genesis. Do I see him in revelation? And then I'm gonna start to think through the covenants.

01:01:16 - 0

So I'm gonna start to think like from Abraham forward, you know, to, to the covenant of Sinai to the covenant with David to the, to the new covenant to the culmination of the covenant in the book.And in the end times, like, am I gonna see patterns of this happening throughout the different covenants? And then I'm gonna begin to once, once I see some of that patterning.And this is what, where covenant theology is helpful and really the namesake of covenant theology is, is believing that all of that, that the ultimate covenant that is the new covenant is Christ and Christ is present in the other covenants. And so we can start to trace patterns.

01:01:50 - 0

It doesn't matter if it's from Leviticus 16 or if it's from Galatians four, it doesn't matter, you can trace it through the covenants. And so you start to see how that idea that conflict goes through the covenants and then you ask some questions.So how does the Old Testament story inform My New Testament context or vice versa? How does the New Testament story? How is it informed by the Old Testament context? And so you can start to, to ask old covenants, new covenant, what, what happens there? Right?How does one inform the other and that's gonna work?Get that's gonna get you to work at putting together the pieces of the Bible as a whole narrative instead of reading the Bible for its individual parts and reducing it to propositions and beliefs and uh and activities that, that we need to do?That's that's where we get fundamentalism from is when we reduce it into propositions and activities. OK. Let me for illustrations sake. I keep saying Leviticus 16, I wanted to talked to you about Leviticus 16 for a moment and I'm gonna go through this fast.

01:02:48 - 0

Um I just preached on both of the day of atonement sacrifices in Leviticus 16, did some extensive study of them, um and some writing on them as well to supplement. Um And so I just kinda wanna show you my thought process going through it.So what, how do I approach? Um I specifically wanted to talk about the scapegoat sacrifice in Leviticus 16. So I start right there. I'm gonna read the whole chapter of Leviticus 16.Um I'm gonna, I'm gonna, if I'm preaching through Leviticus 16, which I'm not right now, I'm already going to have read all of Leviticus multiple times and already outlined the entire book and got an idea of the flux of it.If I haven't, I might read a new Testament introduction, try to wrap my mind around Leviticus as a whole so that I can think about the scapegoat sacrifice within its literary context, right? So I started in Leviticus 16.I'm making observations about the two goats that are for Azazel specifically in this case, the second goat uh for the one that is for, I'm sorry, the one goat for Yahweh, one for Azazel, the second goat that is for Azazel that takes the sins of the people out into the wilderness where Azazel is buried, he takes sin where it belongs.

01:03:59 - 0

And there's an, a context for that, um that gives us that kind of enlightens what the Jewish people might have been thinking this, this sacrifice was about this taking of the sins out to Azazel where taking sin where it belongs uh motif.And so I've kind of looked at my text Leviticus 16. Now I'm gonna go back to the, the Garden of Eden. And I'm gonna ask, what does, what does it have when I go back?Where, where do I see shadows of this or, or reflections of this in the creation account? And when Adam sinned, he was actually excommunicated from paradise. He, he, he was sent out into the chaos outside paradise.Uh In other words, he was sent out to where the chaos belongs. He was bringing chaos into the garden by rebelling against Yahweh. Therefore, he is sent out. He's excommunicated from paradise.And so you see the same type of thing that, that God is sending sin where it belongs. So if Adam is gonna sing, then he's outside the garden, he's gonna sin out there because you can't sin in God's presence, you can't sin in paradise.

01:04:56 - 0

And so he's, he's taken out of the temple of God, out of the paradise, the garden of God. And he's sent out into the chaos of the world where sin belongs. OK. So that's sort of my theme I'm working with taking sin where it belongs.I'm starting to see that pattern on other texts. Let's fast forward now to the other end of the Bible to Revelation. And I always like to do the ends before I do the in, in the, the internal parts.So if I go to Revelation, maybe Revelation 22 15 that depicts sinners outside the gates of heaven, outside the holy city.And we're always like, you know, if you're reading that, trying to make sense of it, like um as, as, as like a history, historical text, even though it can't be history if it's forward.But you're thinking that in the eternal kingdom of God, that there's actual gates where people are outside the gates that are sinners, like you're gonna walk away with some weird stuff from this text.

01:05:49 - 0

But if you think about it, it's really just a picture of how in the eternal holy city of God, there is no sinner left inside the gates that they are all sent outside the gates.And that's really all that, it needs to be out because sin doesn't belong in the holy city. Therefore, it stays outside. And the beauty of it is that the eternal city of God is actually a worldwide city, the way it's depicted in revelation 21 and 22.So there really is no gates, there really is no um the people standing on the other side of the wall. Um It's really a picture of, of those who live in God's presence and those who are eternally separated from him.And so it's, it's this idea that sin is never in God's presence and eternally, it is outside the holy city and it is that way forever.That what was designed for Adam and Eve in the garden comes to its ultimate fulfillment in the end, in the internal sin city of God. Sin is eternally and forever outside the gates of the holy city. Ok?

01:06:45 - 0

So now I've looked back to Eden, I've looked forward to revelation. Now I'm gonna start to step through, I'm gonna start to take my idea of um of sending sin where it belongs and I'm gonna get into the covenants.And so I'm gonna think about a ham sending Ishmael and Hagar away to the East because as Paul says, Children of the promise are not Children of a slave, but of the free woman Galatians 4 31.So he's, he's sending the He's sending those who are of, of, of slavery to the law away from, I'm sorry, away from uh the people of God from the presence of God. Um so that we can live in the freedom of Christ, right? That's Galatians 4 31.And he's thinking of that in the context of the Abrahamic covenant. OK. Now covenant this is actually where we're at in the story, the day of atonement, Leviticus 16 is part of the, the is, is part of the implications of the covenant made at Sinai with Moses.And so Hebrew, the author of Hebrews says in the New Testament that it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Uh That's Hebrews 10 4.

01:07:46 - 0

And he's reflecting on the sin sacrifices, particularly the day of atonement sacrifices of Leviticus, of the old of, of the Torah. And, and so he's thinking that like the day of atonement, scapegoat sacrifice uh didn't actually take the sins out of Israel.And maybe that has something to do with why Israel continued and patterns of sins. And, but they actually, if you continue to read Hebrews, they point forward instead to Jesus that the, that the, that the sacrifices that they were doing were symbolic.They were, they were practices that were symbolic and also um to, to practice sending away our sin, practicing repentance, sending away our sin. And so they are symbolic of uh Jesus um in the New Testament. OK. So let's go to the New Testament to the new covenant.Um Jesus was crucified outside the city. Um Why was he crucified outside the city? Well, because he is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.He, he took, he takes sin where it belongs, he took the sin outside the gates of Zion, where it belonged in the wilderness. And then further, and I love the apostles' creed. We, we already talked about it, I think twice in this episode.

01:08:56 - 0

But as the Apostle Creed states states he then descended into hell. And you get this like comparison between Jesus um as the scapegoat sacrifice um of Israel to taking sin to hell where it belongs.Mirrored um this idea that like Azazel who's buried in a pit in the wilderness, this um the, the, the goat who went to his was taking sin to the one who brought the sin into the world to, to this demon as a.And so Jesus takes the sins of the world to hell to the, to the eternal pit. He takes it where it belongs and he takes it there forever. And so there's so much more that you can say, say about this.But, but this is how this is how you look at the whole Bible. And you say, well, this is how this principle taking where it belongs that starts in Leviticus 16. Here's how it's traced throughout the entire Bible. And I've gotta be honest with you.If you find that it's not traced throughout the entire Bible, you might actually be reading your text wrong. So, so, so it becomes like a proof, a proofing, you know, like you do proofs in math mathematics, right?

01:09:59 - 0

It becomes like a way to proof what you studied out of your text to be able to look and say, is this consistent with, with the biblical theology of the scripture. And in this case, I think that it definitely is. And so then I teach it.And so again, there's more that can be said about this, but this is a brief look at how biblical theology is done on, on how you can look at the entire story, how, how you can know how the story weaves in and out of every book of the Bible finding its culmination in Jesus, which is exactly what Tim Mackay and the Bible project are, are, are also attempting to do and, and I think personally doing a great job at it.

01:10:34 - 0

So little application for you here when, when you know how to do biblical theology, then you don't have to force Jesus into every text. When you know how to do biblical theology. You're not gonna have to force law into every text.You're not gonna have to force obedience in every text. You're not gonna have to force yourself into every text. I think, I think so many preachers out there who do, who, who like preach a, a sermon that's Law based, right?Or it's, it's, it's don't, you know, don't lie, right, or whatever, right? They preach a sermon that's all law based or they preach a, you know, five ways to, to, to parent your kids better, right? And that's just positive law.That's just saying here's five things that you better do to earn God's favor instead of something that you shouldn't do to earn to, to lose God's favorites. It, it's just like self help is just law repackaged.And so like they preach these sermons that are just law or law repackaged and self help type of stuff.

01:11:27 - 0

And then at the end they try to, they try to, they try to get to Jesus somehow and, and then they do an altar call and, and they think that's gonna lead people to authentic faith in Jesus Christ.And maybe it did for a time when our culture was somewhat Christianized. But look, people are recognizing the anti spirituality within the Christian faith and that's not working more and more that is not working and it's not going to work in the future of the church.That time is not gonna let us have it. And unless we return to the story of scripture, we learn to do theology, the way that the ancient people thought about biblical theology, that we think about story, the way that they thought about story.And until we begin to do that, um we're, we're gonna start to see a decline in our ability to, to see people come to an authentic saving faith in Christ. And so that's my application there, don't force Jesus into the text.Read the story for itself, read the whole story and see how Jesus is the culmination of everything in the story. I think, I think of John Piper in this John Piper. Um And I forget where, where he said this.

01:12:28 - 0

But John Piper said that uh that you don't um uh you, you don't want to get to Jesus in a teaching or in a sermon, you actually just want to start with Jesus.And so when you can, when you can start with Jesus, and then see the story of Jesus unfold throughout all the scriptures. That's biblical theology and you might not present it that way, you might not be able to study it that way.But if you can, if you can conceive of it that way, then that's biblical theology. Biblical theology begins with the text. It extends to the ends of scripture. It traverses the biblical covenant, it finds its culmination and Jesus and that's how we read the Bible story. All right.