Jesus’ Teaching (contd) 
Law 
Hernemeutics Pt.7
 7-16-2009

Contents
Comparing the Gospels
Parables
How to Interpret a Parable
Let Jesus point you to the main focus
What Sticks Out?
Law
Key to interpretation: Love it!
Definition
Stipulation of the Covenant
The Purposes of the Law
1. To reveal God’s character
2.To set aside a people for Himself
3.To teach the people how to express loyalty to God.
How Does the Law Apply to Us?
What does the NT say about the OT?
The Old is abolished
No part of Scripture is abolished
Three aspects of the law – civil, ceremonial, moral
Case Law is Paradigmatic
What about the hard laws?
The condemnation of the Law
Striving to obey God is good
Review Questions:
What about the Passages that pit Law against Grace?
Excursus: What does it mean that we are not under the Law?
Uses of “under law”
Ro.6:14-15

HOMEWORK:
1000 extra credit points if you can determine the point of the quotation in Eph.4:8.
The first step is to go to the OT passage and discern the main point.
Paul is quoting from Ps.68:18.
In Hebrew, the last line reads He received gifts among men. 
However, Paul says, “He gave gifts to men.” 
There is good evidence that Paul had a version of the Old Testament that read that way. 
There are various explanations for why Paul used that version, but it is not a huge problem because the two translations are not as far apart in meaning as they sound at first. 
When a king collected the spoils of war, he would then often distribute those spoils to his people. 
Hence, he received gifts among men in order to give gifts to men. 
So the Psalm is referring to a time when God achieves this great victory, receives all kinds of treasures as the spoils of war, then gives those treasures as gifts to men.

The Hebrew idiom in the first part of the verse is “he led captivity captive.” 
It is a hebraism that just simply means He took captives. 
It is part of the whole imagery of the spoils of war. 
The captives are part of the spoils of war.  
The point is simply that God won a final, great victory, and, like a victorious king, received all the spoils of war. 
Paul’s point is that the gifts the Lord gives the Church are the spoils of war. 
The Lord Jesus Christ won a great victory, and, as a result, received massive wealth. 
And it is on the basis of that wealth that He gives gifts to us.

The Purpose of verse 9 – to prove Ps.6:18 is Messianic
Paul asks the question, What does "he ascended" mean?
When Psalm 68:18 says God ascended on high, the most natural interpretation would be that He ascended into heaven. 
The problem is:  how could God, who is already on high, ascend on high? 
If He is already in heaven, how can He ascend to heaven? 
So Paul says, “What could that mean, 9 …except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 
The only way He could rise up to heaven is if He first descended down to earth – which is what Jesus did.” 
Therefore, the purpose of verse 9 is to make an argument that Psalm 68:18 must be a messianic prophecy. 
It can’t refer to God the Father because the Father never ascended into heaven, so it has to refer to the Messiah. 

Now that Paul as proved that Ps.68:18 is messianic and has established that that is talking about Jesus, he shows us the purpose of the ascension.
10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.
Christ ascended in order that His abundance might be poured out to everyone and everything and be proliferated throughout the universe. 
How does He do that? 
In Ephesians 1, we learned He does it through the Church. 
This passage gets more specific. 
He fills all things through His ascension and His ascension was a victory ascension in which He was distributing the spoils of war. 
The goal of His ascension (the filling of the universe with His fullness), is accomplished by means of the distribution of those gifts. 
7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.
We have each been given a grace; the reason we were each given our gift is to accomplish the purpose of Jesus’ ascension which is the filling of the universe with His fullness. 
I preached a sermon on this text titled: “How to Proliferate the Abundant Riches of Christ Throughout the Universe in One Easy Step.”  
The one easy step is to use your gift.
The point of Ephesians 4:7-10 is this:  through your unique, personal ministry, the abundance of all that Christ offers is proliferated throughout the universe.
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Comparing the Gospels
Each passage about Jesus' life that you study, you must seek to determine the writer's purpose in relating the story.  
The main way to do this is to watch for clues in the context (repeated words, direct statements by the writer, the particular setting, interpretive remarks by Jesus, etc).
Some insights can be gained by comparing the account with the other gospel versions of the same story.  
To do this, you must consult a harmony of the Gospels.
The points of variation are sometimes clues as to the writer’s purpose.
NOTE: The purpose for this comparison is not to fill in the details into your text from another gospel, it is to show more clearly the emphasis of the writer.  
Example:
Mt.24:15 "So when you see standing in the holy place 'the abomination that causes desolation,' spoken of through the prophet Daniel-let the reader understand- 
Mark 13:14  "When you see 'the abomination that causes desolation' standing where he does not belong-let the reader understand-then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
Both writers add something, but what they add is different.
Matthew's concern is to continually remind his Jewish readers (who were familiar with the OT) of Old Testament images in order to point out the significance of the events of Jesus life.  
So he adds the phrase which was spoken of through the prophet Daniel...
Mark has a different purpose, and so he adds a different remark: standing where it should not be.  
Mark wants to make a point of the fact that the Antichrist will usurp a place that is not his.  He wants to personify this abomination not just as an event, but as a person.
Luke, on the other hand, who is writing to gentiles who may not be familiar with Daniel, interprets the comment for his readers.  
He just comes right out and says that the abomination of desolation is the time when Jerusalem is surrounded by armies.
Luke 21:20 When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near.
If you were to combine the three accounts above, the emphasis of each writer would be lost.  
In fact, there are times when one writer make a point, and another writer will present the same comment in a different context to make a completely different point.  
Example: Jesus' lament over Jerusalem.  
In Luke, it appears right after Jesus had been rejected by Jerusalem.  The point: rejection will bring judgment, and that breaks the heart of Jesus.
Matthew relates the same lament, but he places it in Ch.23, where He rebukes the Pharisees for following their ancestors' example in putting killing prophets.  
Here the point is that Jesus is the ultimate prophet and His killers will undergo tremendous judgment.  
So Matthew and Luke take the exact same event and same comment to make two completely different points.

In Matthew's list of beatitudes, "Blessed are the poor in spirit..."  he is speaking of humility.  
When it appears in Luke's list of beatitudes, however, it refers to actual monetary poverty.
homework: read at least three good commentaries on you text.
Parables
Many people teach that the purpose of parables was to make God’s Word easier to understand. 
In fact I’ve heard people in the Seeker movement use that as an argument to justify the things they do to dumb-down the Gospel.  
They say, “That’s what Jesus did when He spoke in parables.  He wanted to be understood by everyone.”
That’s the opposite of what the Bible says.
Mt.13:10-15  The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?"  11 He replied, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. 14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: "'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. 15 For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'   
The purpose of parables was to simultaneously reveal and conceal truth.
When people ignore God’s Word, very often God will judge those people by putting His Word out of their reach from then on.  That was the purpose of the parables.
Jesus wanted to deliver certain truths in such a way as to only be understood by the faithful.
And so by putting them in parable form, those who had limited interest wouldn’t go to the trouble of figuring out what He meant, because a parable is not immediately understood.  
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Understanding the concept of inaugurated eschatology will help you immensely when you study the parables.  
Some people read the parables and scratch their heads, because they seem to state the obvious.
For example, the point of the parable of the soils is to point out that when the Gospel is preached, some will respond negatively, some positively but temporarily, and others will bear fruit.
Isn’t that obvious?  No, because the readers of the OT thought that as soon as Messiah comes, everyone will believe.  And so Jesus has to explain that there will be a period where unbelievers continue to exist right alongside the people in the Kingdom.
The fact of that coexistence is the point of all those parables in Mt.13.
How to Interpret a Parable
There is always a temptation to turn parables into allegories – to make every detail represent something.  
Someone will be interpreting the Prodigal Son parable, and they say, “The robe represents righteousness, the pig slop represents this, the music that the older brother hears represents that, etc.”
That approach just turns the parable into an allegory.  
And one reason we know the allegorical method is not a valid way to interpret Scripture is the fact that no two allegorical interpreters ever come up with the same interpretation.
It’s completely arbitrary.  
If one guy says the music represents the church worship service, and another guy says, “No, it represents the Holy Spirit,” whose to say who is right?
That’s the wrong approach, and so many modern scholars reacted to that by saying a parable only has one point.  
They say the details are provided to make the story a story, but not every detail has some significance in the interpretation. 
There is a lot of truth to that, but it goes too far.
For example, the main point of the Prodigal Son parable is to show how the Pharisees who were standing there in Lk.15 were like the older brother.
But that can’t be all there is to the parable.  Who could disagree with the fact that the father in the parable represents God, and teaches us something about God’s forgiveness and love?
Craig Blomberg has come up with some safe, middle ground between the two extremes of allegory on one side and only one meaning on the other.
Generally, the parables have either 1,2 or 3 main characters.  If you look at the story from the perspective of each character, you will tend to draw the correct interpretation.
So the Prodigal story has three main characters – the father and the two brothers.  And it makes three main points – condemning the attitude of the Pharisees, highlighting the forgiveness of God, and illustrating repentance in the Prodigal.  
Let Jesus point you to the main focus
Sometimes a parable seems to be such a great vehicle to making a point that we would like to make, that we turn that into the focus of the parable.
For example, take the parable of the workers in Mt.20.
The first group is hired to work all day for a denarius (one day’s wages).
Later in the day some others are hired, later some more, and finally at the 11th hour some more are hired.
At the end of the day they are paid, beginning with the 11th hour workers who only worked one hour. 
They get a full denarius, as does everyone else.

Many people make the 11th hour folks the main point of the parable – they get the full blessings of heaven even though they got saved on their deathbed.
But Jesus doesn’t give most of the attention to them.
Look at how much space is devoted to the paying of the 11th hour guys – one verse (v.9).
And there is no dialogue at all. 
Now look at how much attention Jesus gives to the 1st hour workers.
Jesus gets into a dialogue with them that goes from v.10 all the way through the end of the parable in v.16.
Obviously they are the focus.

A good storyteller will save the climax until the end.
If the climax were about the 11th hour workers, we would expect the payment to start with the 1st hour workers, and then v.10 would say, “And those who were hired last expected to get paid less. And when they got the full denarius they rejoiced at the generosity of the landowner.”
But it’s the other way around. 
The point isn’t that they expected to get paid less and were pleasantly surprised.
It’s that the ones who worked all day expected to get paid more and grumbled. 

And then at the end Jesus gives some interpretive remarks, and they all have to do with the attitude of grumbling over God’s generosity. 
In fact, that last statement of v.15 (or are you envious because I am generous) really brings the point into focus when you read it in an interlinear. 
This is what it looks like.
ἢ  ὁ ὀφθαλμός   σου πονηρός ἐστιν   ὅτι    ἐγὼ ἀγαθός εἰμι;
Or       the eye           of you      evil               is it     because     I         good       am?
“Is your eye evil because I am good?”
“Evil eye” refers to looking at something negatively or with disapproval or envy.
Envy is a disapproval of the kindness of God.
It is when we look at something beautiful – God’s love, and judge it to be evil.

What Sticks Out?
Usually, if there is a startling detail in the story – that is the key.
In parables like the shrewd manager, the unjust judge, or the workers in the field, the reader is shocked when a crooked manager is praise, God is compared to an unjust Judge, or all the workers get paid the same amount (which seems unfair).
When there is a startling feature like that, generally the point being made revolves around that feature.
Shrewdness is so important and such a good thing, that it’s even praised in an unjust steward.
Persistence in prayer is so important, even an unjust judge will respond to it (how much more a loving God?).
God’s grace is so great it intrudes on our ideas about fairness.
In the Prodigal Son story, the father runs to meet the prodigal.  In that culture, that  is very startling.
It was undignified. 
Jesus could have just said the Father rejoiced when the Prodigal repented, and that would have made the point about the Pharisees.
But he adds that to show the effusive nature of God’s forgiveness. 
HOMEWORK: Pick 3 Parables and identify main points.  
Law
Key to interpretation: Love it!
If you want to know what the law is, what its significance is, and how it is to be interpreted – read Ps.119.
If I thought people would keep coming to this class indefinitely I would probably take a few weeks just to go through that Psalm.
But since we don’t have time for that I’ll just say this much – if you want to know the key to interpreting the Law, here it is: Love it.
If you want to understand it and obey it, you must love it.
Psalm 119:97-98  97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditateb on it all day long. 98 Your commands make me wiser than my enemies
It will make you wise when you love it.
127-128 Because I love your commands more than gold, more than pure gold,  128 and because I consider all your precepts right, I hate every wrong path.
119:167 I obey your statutes, for I love them greatly.
If you ever hear someone speaking about legalism in such a way that disparages God’s law, don’t listen.
Anyone who does not delight in God’s law will not interpret and respond to them correctly.
Psalm 119:35 Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight.
Notice the word “for” – hid delight is the basis for his asking to be led in the path of God’s commands.
Definition
The term “law” can be used in a number of different ways.  
Technically, any command in the Bible is a law.  
Sometimes the word “law” is used as a synonym for God’s Word (as in Ps.119).  
Other times it’s used to refer specifically to the entire OT.  
(In 1 Co.14:21 Paul quotes Isa.28:11,12 and refers to it as “the Law.”)  
Other times the OT is referred to as “The Law and the Prophets” (Mt.7:12).  
In that case it refers to all of the OT except for the prophets.

But when we talk about the Law as a type of literature in Scripture, the primary focus is on what we call “the Law of Moses” or “The Mosaic Law.”  
The first 5 books of the Bible were written by Moses.  
Genesis is about the formation and choosing of Israel.  
Then in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy God reveal the Law. 
Stipulations of the Covenant
We have a lot of information from the culture of the ancient near east – Israel as well as Israel’s neighbors.
And when you study the writings from back then one of the things that becomes clear is the form of what is known as a suzerain/vassal treaty, or covenant.
“Suzerain” is just another word for king.  
“Vassals” are the people who are subject to that king – people under his rule.
In those days, when a king came and conquered some people, if he was mean he would just enslave all the people.  
But if he was a kind King, instead of just enslaving the people or occupying, he would say – “You can just keep on living where you are and carry on with life.  
From now on, you are in my kingdom, so I’ll protect you, I’ll take care of you, I’ll provide but I require that you be loyal to me.  
And here are the terms of that loyalty...”  
Then he would go on to describe the terms.  
Those terms were the stipulations in the covenant.  
So it was a deal between the king and the people.  
The king said, “On my end, I’ll protect you and provide a government.  
On your end, I expect loyalty.  
And loyalty to me means following these stipulations…”

When a king back then did that, they would follow a certain standardized format. 
And the Mosaic Law follows that format. 
The significance of that is when God gave His law in the form of a Suzerain/Vassal covenant He was showing us that the one thing He was requiring of us is loyalty…
, and the acceptable way to show loyalty is to follow those stipulations.
And if we fail to follow them we forfeit the benefits of the covenant.

And by the way – the word they used in those covenants for “loyalty” was the Hebrew word HESED, which is the normal Hebrew word for love.
And when Moses gave the summary of the whole law he said “HESED the LORD your God will all your heart…”
So when I talk about the law being expressions of loyalty to God, I mean loyalty in the sense of HESED – loyalty/love.

The point of the law was never to say, “Jump through all these religious hoops, and you can be right with God.”   
Nor was it to say, “Here’s an impossible standard you will never be able to meet.  
I’m just giving it to you so you will see how futile it is to try to be saved by the Law.” 
Some people think in OT times people were saved by works.  
If you perform the works of the Law well enough, you deserve to go to heaven. 
Others go to the opposite error and say, “God never intended for us to strive to obey the Law.  
It’s just to show us how impossible righteousness is to attain.”  
Neither one of those is correct.  
You can read almost anywhere in the OT and see that God intended the people to strive to obey the Law.  
And if they didn’t, they were judged.  

Lawkeeping does not make you good enough to deserve the blessings God offers (such as salvation).
Salvation is graciously given to anyone who loves God.
And if you say, “What does loyalty to & love for God look like?
How is it expressed?”
God answers that by saying, “Here, express it in these ways…” and gives us the Law.
The Purposes of the Law
I can think of 3 major purposes:
To reveal God’s character
To set aside a people for Himself
To teach the people how to express loyalty to God. 
1. To reveal God’s character
God reveals Himself in different ways.  
In the gospels (the clearest picture) we see Him face to face, in the Epistles we learn the implications of Jesus life and teachings…
, in Bible stories we see Him in action, and in the law He reveals His character in detail.

One of the most prized truths of Christianity is that we worship a God who reveals Himself to us.  
You may take that for granted, but it is not a given.  
In most ancient religions, the gods did not reveal themselves.  
The people had to guess at what they wanted (the same is true today of polytheistic religions).  
The gods worshipped in those religions are really demons, and those demons are very demanding, but don’t let the people know what they are supposed to do.  
If there’s a famine, maybe the river god is angry and you need to stop fishing for a year.  

Or maybe it’s the moon god, and he’s wanting you to do the ritual where you stay up all night beating sticks on the ground.  
Or maybe it’s the god of the trees, and he wants you to sacrifice your firstborn son.  
It could be anything.  
So you just keep trying things until something seems to work.  
That’s the kind of tyranny the rest of the people in the ancient world lived under. 

And that’s why the Psalmist marveled in Ps.103 You made known your ways to Moses and your deeds to the people of Israel!  
The people of Israel were astonished that God was so gracious that He would actually condescend to communicate to us about what He is like and what His requirements are.  
That must have sounded strange to the pagans.  
For the pagans the whole point of religion was to try to figure out what the gods wanted.  

A religion where the God just comes right out and tells you?  
That’s too good to be true.  
That’s why the Jews so dearly loved the law.
2.To set aside a people for Himself
Dt.14:21  Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to an alien living in any of your towns, and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. But you are a people holy to the LORD your God.
Some people want to make laws like that into health and hygiene tips.  
But if that’s the case, it’s hard to see why it would be OK for foreigners.  
Does God not care about the health of foreigners?  
I don’t want you to eat roadkill, because it might be rotten and you will get sick and die – so sell it to foreigners instead?  
The purpose isn’t health.  
The purpose is stated right in the same verse.  
Dt.14:21  Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to an alien living in any of your towns, and he may eat it, or you may sell it to a foreigner. But you are a people holy to the LORD your God.  
The purpose was to set the Jews aside as separate from the world.

There are many parts of the law that had the purpose of distinguishing Israel from everyone else.  
God wanted a special, holy, set-apart people.  
God is holy and separate from the corruption of the world, and so He wants His people to be like that morally. 
And to illustrate that, He set laws in place that made them unique culturally.  
For example circumcision.  
Or the dietary laws.
3.To teach the people how to express loyalty to God. 
Sometimes we can get so caught up in looking for the underlying, over-arching, theological, philosophical, soteriological, hermeneutical, purposes behind the law that we can forget the obvious: One purpose of the law is to govern our behavior.   
Is it too radical to say that God tells us to do things simply because He wants us to do them?  
The main reason God told the Jews to do all the things in the Law is because He wanted them to do all those things.
There are a lot of people out there preaching against legalism.
How Does the Law Apply to Us?
Does the Law apply to us?  Well, do we have an interest in God’s character?  Yes.  
Is God our King?  Yes.  
Does He still desire loyalty from His people?  Yes.  
But … has anything changed in the way that loyalty is expressed?  Yes.  
People struggle and struggle trying to figure out what parts of the Law apply to us today.  
It’s not really that hard.  

Just look at each part of the Law as an expression of loyalty to God, and for each one ask yourself, “Did Jesus do anything that changed this particular expression of loyalty?”  
If not, then you must obey that law.  If so, you express loyalty in the new way in that area.  
When the Law says, “Demonstrate your loyalty to God by having no other gods before Him,” did Jesus do anything to change that?  No.  
So we are still forbidden to have any other gods before the Lord.  
When the Law says “Demonstrate your loyalty to God by sacrificing a lamb as a sin offering,” did Jesus do anything to change that particular expression of loyalty?  Yes.  
Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice.  
So now instead of offering a lamb as a picture of what Jesus would someday do, we put our faith in what Jesus already did.  
God's people showed loyalty to Him under the old covenant primarily by following the law.  
We show our loyalty by becoming disciples and followers of Christ.  
How do we know what has changed?  

Most people’s method is to accept whatever sounds reasonable, and whatever sounds unreasonable they say no longer applies.  
That system comes perilously close to the time of the Judges, when every man is a law unto himself.  
Another approach is to reject everything in the OT except the things repeated in the NT.

But that’s exactly the same as throwing out the OT altogether.  
What do you need the OT for if you only heed those things that are repeated in the NT?  
Besides, very often a NT writer will prove a point by quoting the OT.  So they regarded the OT as still being authoritative.  
So neither of those methods is correct.  
So what is the right method for determining what has changed?  
To answer that we need to take a careful look at exactly what the NT says about the OT.
There isn’t time for that right now, so for now I’ll just give you my conclusions from that study, and then next time we’ll go through the NT passages.
Three aspects of the law – civil, ceremonial, moral
Now, this class is about how to interpret the Bible.  
And so the issue at hand for us is when you are reading in the OT, and you see a verse commanding something, how do you know if you are required to obey that command?   
And if not, then what is the application for you?  
To answer that question, it helps to understand there are basically three different kinds of law.  
One had direct application to us, and the other two have indirect application to us.  

Some have argued against dividing the law into categories, but Paul does that.  
1Co 7:19 Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God's commands is what counts.  
There he says you don’t have to one the circumcision, but you do need to keep God’s commands.  
Jesus also made a distinction.
In Mk.7:19 He made all foods clean, meaning it is no longer necessary to observe the kosher food laws.
And yet He also taught that laws against adultery or stealing are still in force.

I think the best way to understand the types of law is as follows:  1. moral, 2. civil, 3. ceremonial.   
All three apply to us in that they are all useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so the man of God many be thoroughly equipped for every good work.  
None of them were written to us, but they all (like the rest of Scripture) were written for us.  
All three reveal God's character.
The moral law is like a list of God's attributes.  
We are told to love, because God is love.  
We are told not to commit adultery, because Go is faithful to His covenants.  
How did Christ fulfill that part of the Law?  
By living it out in a perfect way as an example for us.  
So what application does that part of the Law have for us?  
We should strive to follow in Jesus’ steps and live it out.
2. The civil law is the legal codes for the nation of Israel designed to keep law and order.  
The United States and local governments have civil laws.  
For example, we have rules about stray dogs. 
That’s exactly the kind of thing these civil codes were – what to do if a stray mule falls into your ditch, or if someone doesn’t pay back a loan, etc.

How did Jesus Christ fulfill that part of the Law?  
Some day He will set up His earthly Kingdom, and He will govern directly.  
In the mean time, He has given the responsibility to keep law and order to the government of whatever country you live in.  
So if a neighbor's ox gores you, instead of the penalty spelled out in the OT, the owner of that ox is under the penalty of the laws of the State of Colorado.  
The civil law is beneficial for us however, in that it reveals God's character.  
By observing what penalties were exacted for certain crimes, we can learn which things are most important to God.   
It makes sense, for example, that since if God requires the death penalty for a rebellious child, but required cities of refuge for involuntary manslaughter…
, it follows that God sees rebellion as far worse than accidentally killing someone.
Case Law is Paradigmatic
Much of the Mosaic law is case law – what to do in a specific circumstance.  
Those rules are paradigmatic - that is, they set a standard by example.  
Ex 21:28  "If a bull gores a man or a woman to death, the bull must be stoned to death, and its meat must not be eaten. But the owner of the bull will not be held responsible.  
There is no law in the OT about a donkey trampling a woman to death – it’s not needed.  
This law applies.  
So the Civil Law God gave Israel gives principles in how to punish crime.  
That is so much superior to our system of trying to write a specific code to cover every conceivable crime.  
That’s impossible.  
Even with our huge code, there are countless loopholes, and all kinds of bad things people can do to you that the law doesn’t cover.  

How much better was God’s system?  
He gave representative examples, and wise judges used those to determine each case.  So the law was instructional rather than judicial.  
3. ceremonial law
These are the worship laws that had to do with the Temple worship.  
These laws can’t be kept today, because there is no Temple.  
The purpose of this part of the Law was to serve as a picture of what the Lord Jesus Christ would do.  
So Jesus fulfilled this part of the Law by His life and death and resurrection.  

We don’t need to offer sacrifices that illustrate what God would someday do, because now He has done it.  
So instead of illustrating Christ’s death, we focus our attention on it directly.  
But those laws are still precious to us and they still teach us about God.  
For one thing, the earthly temple was an exact replica of heaven.  
Heb 8:4-5  They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. This is why Moses was warned when he was about to build the tabernacle: "See to it that you make everything according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."  
So we study this part of the law to learn about heaven.
We also study it to learn about God's holiness.  
The fact that the sacrifices for sin had to be bloody, violent sacrifice teaches us about the wrath of God.  
It also teaches us about the significance of the various aspects of Christ's redemption.
What about the hard laws?
There are some laws, known as the holiness codes, that seem very odd.  
Dt 14:21  Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk.  
Lev 19:19 "`Do not mate different kinds of animals.  "`Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.  `Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. 
What was the purpose of those laws?

Usually they are forbidding superstitious, pagan religious ceremonies.  
That’s part of the moral law and applies to us in that we are not to engage in superstition.  
But those laws also served to set Israel apart from the surrounding nations, which illustrates the concept of holiness to us.  
Now that wall has been abolished and there is unity between Jews and Gentiles in the Church, but the truth those laws illustrated is still very important to us.  
We are to be holy and set apart from the world not ritually, but morally.

The condemnation of the Law
There is one more element of the law that has been canceled. 
Col.2:13-14 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.
The word written code is a term that speaks of a document that was a record of debts.  
The Law was like a record of our debts to God.  Jesus nailed that record to the cross and stamped it “Tetelesti” (paid in full)  
The Law is God’s perfect standard, which is the measure by which we are condemned in our sinfulness.  
In the case of the Christian, who has full faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that part of the Law has been cancelled as well.

Striving to obey God is good
The rest of the Law is still in place and keeping it is good.
Some people think “law” is a dirty word – that it’s somehow opposed to grace.  Many Christians are anti-law and anti-commandments.  Was Jesus anti-commandments?  
Matt 5:19  Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 
Not only was Jesus pro-commandments, but He said your status in heaven for all eternity depends upon whether you were pro-commandments or not while on earth.
1John 2:3-4 By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.  The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar 
What about the Law?  Is keeping the Law a bad thing or good thing?
1 John 3:4  Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.
Are we supposed to be making an effort to keep the OT Law today?
Mt.7:12 do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. 
Jesus commands us to love, and then tells us the reason is because that is the fulfillment of the Law.  

At this point our more extreme dispensationalist friends will object and say, “Those passages are from Jesus and John, not Paul.
Jesus and the 12 taught law, but Paul taught grace.”
OK – if you need it from the mouth of Paul, how about this:
Ro.13:8-10 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. 
So, are we bound to obey the OT Law?  Yes.  
What is the OT Law?  Love God and your neighbor.  
And we are required to do that today.
Says who? Says Paul!

What does the NT say about the OT?
The Old is abolished
I told you last time that there are three kinds of law, and we apply them differently to our lives today because of the different ways Jesus fulfilled them.
Tonight I  want to show you how the New Testament teaches the principles I gave you last time.

At first glance the NT statements about the OT seem contradictory. 
Some passages make it sound like the OT is no longer valid at all.   
Heb.7:18,19 The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless   
Heb.8:7 For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another… 13 the first covenant was made obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.  
Eph.2:15   Christ abolished in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.  
Col.2:13-14 Christ… 14 …canceled the written code, with its regulations.  
So it sounds like the OT has been canceled, abolished and set aside, and so it is now weak, useless, inadequate and obsolete.  
No part of Scripture is abolished 
On the other hand, however, Jesus said "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 
Mt.5:17,18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 
Jesus seems to be saying the OT is not abolished, and those other passages make it sound like it is.
Some say, until everything is accomplished means until Jesus is crucified and raised. 
Problem: v.18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law  
So how do we understand the relation between the testaments?  
What is the place of law in the context of gospel, and the relation of Mt.5:17,18 to other NT passages that unambiguously affirm that certain parts of the law have been abrogated as obsolete?  
One thing is for sure: EVERY WORD IN ALL 66 BOOKS IS GOD’S WORD, AND IT APPLIES TO YOU.  
Jesus did not set aside the OT.  
Jesus did not cancel God’s Law.  
Jesus did not override the Prophets.
The Bible, for you, is not Romans-Jude.  It is Genesis to Revelation.  All 66 books.  

Then what are we to make of the passages we just looked at?  
There are some elements of the OT that were temporary, but the meaning behind them is permanent.  
Noah’s Ark was useful during the flood, but afterward it was abandoned.  

In Genesis 6 there is a command to build an ark, but Abraham didn’t build one.  
Neither did Moses or blameless Job or any of the prophets.  
You and I are not required to build an ark.  
But does that mean Gn.6 doesn’t apply to us?  No.  It does apply.  
The need for the ark was temporary.  
But the principles taught in that chapter are eternal.  
That chapter teaches us about the wrath of God, about His attitude toward sin, about what happens to humanity when God doesn’t preserve a remnant, etc.  
And all those principles are just as true for you and I today as they were for Noah in Gn.6.
In Genesis 7 God declared some animals unclean.  
In Mk.7:19 Jesus declared all foods clean.
Does that mean Jesus trashed Gn.7?  
No.  The principles in Gn.7 apply forever.  
But the specific diet requirements had a temporary purpose that has since been fulfilled.  
Mt.5:17 …I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  
How did Christ fulfill the law?  How did He fulfill the Prophets?  

This does not mean Jesus, by His actions, carried out every Law.  
Some laws are only for women.  
He never carried out those. 
“Maybe fulfilling the Law means He fulfilled the prophecies about the Messiah.”  
No.  That did happen, but it’s not what this passage is talking about.  
This isn’t about Jesus deeds, it’s about His coming.  
It’s about His person.  
His coming to earth, His life, death and resurrection fulfilled the Law.  
One thing this tells us is that the Law was not an end in itself.  
God intended all along for it to go somewhere - to arrive at a conclusion.  

Throughout history God’s revelation has been moving forward – moving ahead toward a completion.  
The word, fulfill means "fill up."  
The OT had a meaning when it was written, and Jesus came to fill it up with even more meaning.  
What a statement!  
“I am going to fulfill the whole OT.”  
People don’t think Jesus made extraordinary claims.  
What if I said that?  
Put the claims of Christ into anyone else’s mouth and that person becomes a lunatic.  
Such authority!  
Jesus says, “You are wondering about my relationship to the Law?  
How does My ministry fit in with Scripture?  
How do I measure up to the Law?  
That’s not even the right question.”  
“The appropriate question is ‘What is the Law’s relationship to ME?’  
How does the Law stack up against ME?”   
“And the answer is I fulfill it.  
What is the relationship between My ministry and the Bible? – The entire Bible points to ME, and I fulfill it all.”  
Mt.11:13  all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John   
Everything in the whole Bible was pointing to Me right up until John, and then John the Baptist took over the job and he started pointing to Me.
On the Road to Emmaus after Jesus’ resurrection they were all upset because the tomb was empty on the 3rd day.
Luke 24:25-27  He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself…  Later to the Apostles: 44 …Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." 45 Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.  
That was not just a study of the various predictions of Christ – it was a full-blown lesson on Biblical theology.  
I believe Jesus showed those men the correct interpretation of each part of the OT, explained the original meaning and intent, and then explained how His death and resurrection filled all that up with meaning – brought it all to fruition – accomplished every purpose God had in mind in every chapter of the OT.  
“I didn’t come to abrogate God’s standard.  
I didn’t come to set aside the Bible.  
Not one bit will pass away – every word will be fulfilled, and I WILL FULFILL IT.”  

God’s progressive revelation has been progressing toward a completion, a fulfillment.  
It has been building to a climax, and that climax is Christ.  
That’s why after the Apostles finished the Canon was closed.  
No more books of the Bible were written, because there remains nothing to be said.  

How did Jesus fill up the OT with meaning?  
Many, many ways.  
Everything the OT intended to accomplish, Jesus accomplished.  
He didn’t set it aside, He didn’t empty it of significance.  
He filled it full of even more significance than it had to begin with.

God gave the Law to reveal His character, to set aside a unique people for Himself, and to reveal to His people how they are to live.  
Christ fulfilled all that.  He accomplished all of those purposes if a far greater way.  
We get some idea of what God is like in His Law, much we can see what God is like in Jesus Christ. 

The possession of the Law made Israel the unique people of God, but those who have given their hearts to Jesus Christ is faith are the unique people of God in a much greater way.
The Law describes godly behavior.  
Jesus lived a perfect life in our midst, and then gave us the Holy Spirit to enable us to follow in His steps.  

So with all that in mind, let’s talk about what has changed.
All of God’s purposes with Israel that are unique to that nation (civil codes, etc.) – everything God was seeking to accomplish with Israel is accomplished in Christ – either His 1st coming, His ministry through the Spirit in the church age, in the Millennial Kingdom, or in the eternal state.  
Some elements of the Law were in place only temporarily, but their significance continues.  
That’s obvious from the passages I mentioned a minute ago that seemed to conflict with Jesus’ comment.  
Now we see that they support it.  
Heb.7:18,19 The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless 19 (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God.  
This is talking about the sacrificial system.  
Jesus didn’t set aside the entire OT – He set aside the sacrificial system.
The sacrifices were never intended to pay for sin.  
The book of Hebrews was written to some Jews who were thinking of bailing out of Christianity and returning to Judaism and the sacrifices, thinking that would pay for their sin.  
So the writer tells them that when it comes to paying for sin and saving the soul, the sacrifices are weak and useless.  
v.19 gives the reason  – because they made nothing perfect.
Rom 8:3-4  For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.
The Law was always powerless to handle our man’s problem – even in the OT.  
What about the sins of the OT saints?  They were paid for by Jesus on the cross.  
Those people didn’t know it, but that is the only reason they could be saved.  
Since they didn’t know about Jesus, they needed some kind of picture to remind them that their sins were being paid for by someone else.
And the animal sacrifices were that picture.  
But that’s all they were.  
They didn’t actually pay for sin.
Heb.8:7 For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another…(the new covenant) 13 By calling this covenant "new," he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.
The Mosaic Covenant was temporary and served its purpose.  
Christ came and set that Covenant aside and introduced an even better one – one that could take care of sin – and that included Gentiles in a much greater way.
And many elements from the Old Covenant also carry over into the New Covenant.
The only parts that were set aside were the temporary components.  

But please notice it does not say “By calling this covenant "new," he has made the OT Scriptures obsolete.” 
He didn’t make any Scripture obsolete.  
He only made the covenant obsolete.  
The Scriptures He filled up with even more meaning.  
Now we can see the whole picture.  
Now we understand the purpose.  

But the parts of the covenant that were temporary He did away with.
What parts were temporary?
Well, one part that was temporary was the division between Jew and Gentile.
Eph.2:14-15 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.  
This is talking about the elements of the Law the called for a division between Jew and Gentile.  
Those were temporary.  
They served their purpose.  
They teach us about holiness.  
But now we have a fuller understanding of holiness, and there is no longer a division between Jew and Gentile, and so that element has been done away with.  
Col.2:13-14 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.
The word written code is a term that speaks of a document that was a record of debts.  
The Law was like a record of our debts to God.  
Jesus nailed that record to the cross and stamped it “Tetelesti” (paid in full)
The Law is God’s perfect standard, which is the measure by which we are condemned in our sinfulness.  
In the case of the Christian, who has full faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that part of the Law has been cancelled as well.

So there are practices, pictures, illustrations etc. that had a limited, temporary purpose, they accomplished that purpose, and were then set aside.  
But that is not to say Scripture is set aside in any way.  
The principle behind every passage in the whole Bible applies to us today.  

Every passage teaches you something you need to know.  
When God tells Noah to build the ark, it does not mean you should build an ark, but it does teach some important things.  
That account teaches us how bad sin on earth would get if God didn’t preserve a chosen people.
It teaches about God’s wrath against sin.
It teaches about God’s grace in salvation.
It teaches about judgment and redemption. 
It teaches a whole lot of things that are still in force just as much today as back then.

Not one letter of Scripture will ever be set aside.
 “What about the verse that commands an animal sacrifice?”  
That verse has not been set aside at all.  
God commanded that His people do that temporarily, and we don’t continue to do that today, but the principle being taught in that verse still applies to us today.  
The principle is that God demands that the penalty for sin be paid, that it requires death, and that for us to be forgiven someone has to die in our place.

The issue is the intended meaning and the purpose of the passage.  
Jesus said I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.  (Mt.5:18)
“Jot” is the Greek word “iota” – similar in shape to our comma.  
“Tittle” is a word that means “horn” and refers to a portion of a letter.   
This is a figure of speech where the letters are put for God’s Word itself.  
(disappear = be abolished)  
He’s not saying no letters can be erased from a copy of the Bible.  	
It’s not about the preservation of the MSS.  
It’s talking about the message.
The principle behind every passage will remain in force until heaven and earth disappear.  
If the sun comes up, you can be sure your entire Bible is valid that day.
Note: 
It’s interesting that Jesus connects the meaning of Scripture with the letters.  
Some people say, “I don’t care about the Greek or Hebrew meanings, I don’t care about the grammar of the sentence, just give me God’s Word.”  
Problem: The only way to know the meaning of a chapter is to understand the meaning of each paragraph – sentence – word – letters.  
If you say the individual letters are not important, and so you eliminate all the letters – guess what – your Bible is now blank.  

This is a powerful statement on the inspiration of Scripture.  
Liberals want to say that not every statement is correct – just the overall meaning.  
Problem: How do you know when you have broad enough scope to where you have God’s Word?  
If the individual sentence is not God’s Word, what is?  The chapter?  Ten chapters?  
How big of a chunk do you have to take before you are dealing with God’s Word?  

Jesus says every piece of every letter is God’s Word.  
He’s not talking about ink on a page.  
He’s saying you can reduce it to the smallest part, and that part is God’s Word.  
Jesus rested His entire argument for the resurrection from the Pentateuch on a verb tense (“I am the God of Abe…”).  
Paul argues from a singular as opposed to a plural noun in Gal.
Applying the law to your life
So, when you interpret some part of the Law, and you try to discern what the significance is for us today…
, ask yourself, “In what way did Christ fulfill this part of the law?”
Moral law
If it’s part of the moral law, then He fulfilled it by perfectly living it out in our place and as an example for us.
And the implications for your life are:
Trust in His perfect righteousness that is credited to your account by faith (rather than trusting in your own righteousness)
Strive to follow His example in obeying that moral law
Rejoice that the condemnation that was upon you due to your failure in that area has been born by Christ in your place.
Ceremonial law
If it’s a ceremonial law then Christ fulfilled it on the cross when He carried out all that those ceremonies were given to illustrate.
So the application for you is to learn from them about the nature of the atonement and what was accomplished on the cross.
And with regard to the holiness codes, learn about holiness and what it means to be set apart from the world.
Civil law
And if it’s a civil law, learn from it about God’s character, and what things are delightful or detestable to Him.
What about the Passages that pit Law against Grace?
What are we to make of passages like Ro.6:14 you are not under law, but under grace?
 Statements like that make it sounds like law is opposed to grace.
 And some people have taught that if you make an effort to be obedient to God…
, you have crossed over into being under law, and you need to move back toward letting go and letting God (whatever that means).
So what does it mean to be under law or under grace?
Paul speaks of being under law in six places, and it’s very difficult to come up with a definition that fits all 6.
 And so we have to allow for the possibility that the phrase could be used in different ways in different contexts.
But if I had to try to give a definition that fit all the contexts, the closest I can come is this…
:   Being under the law means being in a system dominated by trying to attain righteousness through lawkeeping.
When you were an unbeliever, that was the system you were under.
You were trying to make yourself righteous by adhering to whatever you regarded as the Law (your conscience, societal norms, the 10 Commandments, etc.).
 
But it was never a good thing to do that – not in OT times and not now.
Old Testament Jews should have all been like David and Abraham…
, who understood that we are saved by faith alone, and that it’s impossible to generate your own righteousness.
 But the truth is, most of them were like most people in our day – they tried to generate their own righteousness through law-keeping.
So when the Bible says we are free from the Law, that’s the basic idea of what it means.
We are free from trying to generate our own righteousness through following rituals and ceremonies.
 
It’s beyond the scope of this class to do a detailed study of each of those passages that talk about not being under the law.
That would really require a verse-by-verse study of Galatians and Romans.
I will say one thing about those passages, however.
Whenever Paul condemns lawkeeping, and then gives examples, the examples are always in the realm of ceremonial laws.
For example, the purpose of the book of Galatians is for Paul to strongly warn those people, because they were in the process of embracing a false Gospel.
 And that false gospel involved being under the law.
But look at the examples Paul gives.
In 2:14 he rebukes Peter: How is it that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? 15 "We…16 know that a man is not justified by observing the law  
In 4:9 he asks how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles?
Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?
(then he gives examples) 
10 You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! 11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
He’s afraid all his efforts are wasted and they are lost and doomed to hell…
, because they are observing special Jewish days and month and seasons and years.
That’s not to say it’s necessarily sin to observe Jewish customs.
In 1 Co.9:20 Paul did that in an effort to win the Jews.
 It’s only sin if you do it in an effort to attain righteousness.
 In ch.5 he gives another example: 
1 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4 You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.
Again, that’s not to say everyone who is circumcised will go to hell.
It’s only those who are circumcised in order to be justified in God’s sight.
 
So the passages that talk about being under the law, when they give examples, give examples that are from the ceremonial law.
You never hear Paul say, “Those of you who are avoiding adultery and stealing and idol worship – why are you doing that?
Don’t you know you are free from the law?”  Nowhere in Galatians do you hear Paul saying, “What?
I hear you are loving the Lord your God with all your heart!  How dare you follow that law!”  
In fact, look just a few verses later in ch.5 -  13 …serve one another in love.
14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."   
Now all of a sudden we are supposed to obey the law.
 The law says to love, and so we are to love.
 Then he goes on to say we are to avoid sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. (vv.19-21)
The key is to avoid those things by subjecting yourself to the influence of the Holy Spirit…
, rather than by means of the ritualism and ceremonialism of the Law

And that answers the question that we so often ask: What does it mean for me to live by the Spirit instead of by the law?
The answer is not that you avoid trying to obey God.
 We should always strive to obey God in everything.
The answer is in Rom 7:6 now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
  
If you want to be more righteous and more godly, that happens by subjecting yourself to the influence of the Holy Spirit.
 And the influence of the Holy Spirit comes through Scripture, prayer fellowship and worship.
 When Ro.8:3 says  the law was powerless…in that it was weakened by the flesh we found that is talking about when the Law is used to do something it was never intended to be used for – making a person righteous.
 It doesn’t work for that.
 It never has, because of the flesh – the Law has no power to change the flesh.
What does it mean that we are not under the Law?
Paul speaks of being under law in six places.  
Being under law means simply having the requirement with no means of meeting it other than your own human ability.
Being under grace means having both the requirement and the gift of righteousness.
So being under law is being in the condition of trying to generate your own righteousness by means of law-keeping rather than by exposing yourself to the influence of the Spirit.
This is the point Paul is making in Gal.5.
Gal.5:1-22 It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.  2 Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised (that is, if you attempt to secure righteousness through ceremony or ritual), Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3 Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law (if that’s going to be your method of gaining righteousness, it would have to be perfect and total).
4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5 But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.
(Righteousness is something graciously given through the Spirit)  
Then vv.6-12 are a big parenthesis.
13 For (resumptive gar – picking back up with his argument from v.5) you, my brothers, were called to be free  (free from trying to attain perfect righteousness through law keeping).
But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another in love. 14The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."  
(In other words, keep the moral law! Paul distinguishes between the ceremonial and moral law)
16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.
If you take the “expose yourself to the influence of the Spirit and let Him generate fruit in your heart that will result in righteous actions” approach…
, you are free from the “try to obtain righteousness by obeying all the commands” approach.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is… Against such things there is no law.

History
Hernemeutics Pt.8
 7-23-2009

Contents
Definition
A Different Kind of History
How To Approach a Bible Story
NT Historical Narrative

Definition
Narrative is simply something that is narrated (someone telling a story).
Historical narrative is the telling of a true story (actual history).
So another word for historical narrative is “Bible stories.”  
Bible stories are extremely important, because the meaning and validity of our whole religion rests squarely on the veracity of the historical events.
In a parable, it doesn’t matter if it is something that ever actually happened.
The only thing that matters is the principle being taught.
And most people in the world probably think that’s how it is with everything in the Bible.

But much of what we believe are doctrines that, if the historical events of Scripture didn’t happen, are without meaning.
For example, the story of Jonah.
Liberals have suggested that those events may not have happened, the important thing is what is being taught.
But what is being taught is drained of meaning if the events didn’t happen.
Without an appreciation historically of the brutality of the Assyrians, and the significance of Nineveh in that world, much of the meaning of the book is lost.
The greatest example of that is the cross.
Paul summarizes the Gospel in 1Co 15:3 
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve...
Paul goes on to point out that if those actual events didn’t happen, we are to be pitied more than all men.
(There are some exceptions.
The message of Job is not dependent upon the historical setting.
I believe the story of Job is a description of actual events, but if someone doesn’t, that isn’t heresy).

The purpose of the Bible stories
Bible stories are probably the most misused, misinterpreted parts of Scripture.
Which is tragic, since they comprise a huge percentage of the Bible.
If you hear a sermon on a Bible story, 99 times out of 100 the focus will be on some man or woman in the story, and the lesson will be a character study.
If the character is bad, we are exhorted not to be like him.
If he’s good, we are given a list of godly traits we are to emulate.
There are a few occasions when that is appropriate, because Scripture itself presents the person as a model to follow.
But the vast majority of the time that is the wrong approach, and misses the purpose of the Bible story.
For example, if you hear a sermon or Sunday School lesson on Jonah, what is the lesson going to be about?
What does the average SS teacher try to accomplish in the lives of the kids by teaching that story?
(Don’t disobey God like Jonah did!)
How about Daniel and the Lions?
(Trust God like Daniel did)
How about Joseph?
(Be like Joseph)
We tend to reduce almost all the historical literature down to character studies.
Which is why we get real confused when we run into characters like Samson.
What is he – a good guy or bad guy?
Do you want your kids to grow up to be like him?
How about the story of Judah getting his daughter in law Tamar pregnant?
(You don’t know the answer – you may not even know the story, because your SS skipped over that one).

The purpose of the historical narratives is NOT character studies.
Think about it – if the point of the Jonah story is to teach us not to disobey God, tell me what vv. in Jonah tell us that we should obey God.
There are none.
So how do you know, after studying Jonah, that you should obey God?
There is no way to know, unless you already knew.
But if you already knew, what good is the book?
No wonder kids grow up thinking the Bible doesn’t have much to offer other than stating the obvious.
This is especially important for you who have children or teach children.
In most children’s ministries, we usually only teach two things to kids: Bible stories and Christian behavior.
It’s a rare church in which kids in the children’s ministry are taught anything other than Bible stories and behavior.
And the point of the Bible story is always behavioral, so really they only learn one thing.
But that leaves out something very important.
There is something far more important that teaching kids how to behave.
And guess where that thing is taught in Scripture?
Bible stories!!  That one thing that our kids need the most has been right under our noses this whole time.
All we have to do to get it is interpret the Bible stories correctly.

If the purpose of historical narrative is found in Ps.143:5.
Ps.143:5  I remember the days of long ago (he is remembering history from the historical narratives in the Bible.
And what is his response?
To focus on character studies?
No.); I meditate on all your works and consider what your hands have done.

The purpose of Bible stories is to show us what God is like by showing Him in action.
The Bible is not the big book about behavior.
It’s the big book about God.
And we rob our children when all we do is teach them about behavior.
Bible stories aren’t hard to interpret when you understand that God is the main character of every story.
If you think David is the main character or the David and Goliath story, or that Daniel is the main character of his story, you don’t understand the story.
They are only secondary characters.
When you look at some supporting secondary character and think he is the main character, of course you are going to be confused as to the meaning.
That’s why people run into a wall when they try to interpret the Samson story or the Judah and Tamar story.
The stories in the Bible are not like Asaph’s fables – where you try to pick out a moral to the story.
Don’t look for a moral.
Look for information about what God is like as you see Him in action.
A Different Kind of History
Before we look at some examples of Biblical history, we need to become aware of the difference between the kind of history we are used to, and ancient near-eastern history.
In ancient times, history was propaganda for the person who commissioned the history.
Its purpose was to make that person look good.
A king would hire a writer and say, “I want you to chronicle a history of my reign, and it should clearly portray me as…”  That sounds a little shady to us, but it’s only shady if the writer lies.
For example, if Ronald Reagan had commissioned a biography of himself, and he told the person, “I want you to portray me as a conservative who worked for lower taxes, and who was aggressive in the arms buildup, taking a peace through strength approach to the cold war.” – that’s not shady.
That’s exactly what he was.

Propaganda is when you present selective information for the purpose of promoting a certain point of view, or a certain person.
 The biblical historical information is propaganda for YHWH.
The writers don’t tell you about what was going on in Egypt with the pyramids, or about Europe, or Africa, or anything that wasn’t relevant to His purpose.
You can’t look into ancient history and find a record of a king like the record of David.
Because under the normal procedure, King David would commission the historian to write propaganda for him, and anything that reflected poorly on him would be left out.
So how is it that we have information about this king, including the bad things?
Because the writers were not hired by David to write about his reign, they were commissioned by God to write about His reign, and David is included because he is one of the secondary characters that interacted with God.

The biblical historical information is designed to chronicle God’s reign, and to present His character in an accurate way.
One more thing we need to understand about how God intended the material to be read.
It was written for an ancient near-eastern audience, and those people read history differently than we read it.
First of all, they understood it to be propaganda for a king.
But there was another difference.
Moderns always explain events in human terms.

If you asked someone why America and Iraq went to war and they replied, "Because God decreed that it would happen before the world began," you would say, "Well, besides that."  You would rather hear that it is because George Bush did this or that or because Hussein did this or that.

The ancients ware the opposite.
If an Israelite told you that Babylonia destroyed Jerusalem because the king kept giving Nebuchednezzar a hard time, they would say, "Besides that.
Why do you think God did it?"  Both Israel and the Near Eastern people thought in this way.

The ancients believed that God caused everything that happened.
So very often the Bible writers won’t bother to tell you that God did something, because it was so obvious to the original readers.
One final piece of background: The ancient pagan people did not have a concept of a transcendent God.
The gods they worshipped were not all-powerful, and could be acted upon.
They were inconsistent, unloving, and capricious.
Much of the OT is devoted to combating pagan ideas of God.
Since they had no concept of what the true God is like, the writers have to go out of their way to present God as transcendent, all-powerful, consistent, loving, etc.	
How To Approach a Bible Story
STEP 1 Isolate the scenes.
 Each story is made up of scenes.
A scene is a single event in the story.
It’s like TV – when one scene is over, and the camera takes you to another setting, that starts a new scene.
A scene usually has two or three characters, and one of them is always God.
STEP 2 Determine the purpose of the scene.
Think of a Bible story as a paragraph in the Epistles.
The scenes are like the sentences.
Listen very closely to the narrator.
The Bible stories are told from the perspective of a narrator who seems omniscient.
The person telling the story will tell you the character’s inner thoughts or motives.
He will describe scenes taking place in two different locations simultaneously, etc.
All that reminds us of the transcendent, omniscient view of God, who inspires the writer.
Every once in a while the narrator will break from the story and make a comment.
Pay very close attention to those.
Often these will be in the form of a repeated or emphasized phrase, or a conclusion statement.
Those are usually the key to understanding the story.
STEP 3 Watch for implied detail.
A good storyteller will often abbreviate detail.
Sometimes you can just say one thing and have an entire scene be automatically planted into the reader’s head.
Example, “It was Dec.23rd and he winced as he pulled into the Flatirons mall parking lot.”  Your mind fills in the rest (crowds, long lines, no parking, irritation from the shopping season having gone so long, etc.)  The writers often expect you to fill it in yourself.
Those original readers would have automatically done that – it was their world.
Just one word, “Passover” meant volumes to them.
But that is lost on us.
So to get the intended effect of the story, we have to provide a little filler (taking cues from what is said).
1Ki 17 – story of Elijah and the Widow
1Now Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, "As the LORD, the God of Israel, lives, whom I serve, there will be neither dew nor rain in the next few years except at my word." 
Sets the setting for the narrative.
Like in a movie when a scene begins with the camera sweeping across the landscape to show you what kind place this events happens in, or when you see at the bottom of the screen, “Washington DC, December 5.”
2Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah: 3"Leave here, turn eastward and hide in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan. 4You will drink from the brook, and I have ordered the ravens to feed you there."  5So he did what the LORD had told him. He went to the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan, and stayed there. 6The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook.
Shows God controlling the creation to care for His prophet in accordance with His Word.
8Then the word of the LORD came to him: …   
Shows God miraculously caring for the widow in accordance with His Word
23Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house.
He gave him to his mother and said, "Look, your son is alive!" 
24Then the woman said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth." 
God restores life to the son in accordance with His original promise (word).
All this proves God’s Word as announced through Elijah to be true and reliable.
So that’s the main point.
Therefore when you teach this story, the main point of your sermon shouldn’t be that God provides, or that He cares for widows, etc.
It should be that God’s Word is reliable.
STEP 4 Determine how the passage fits into the flow of the book.

Example 1  the Joseph account
Gn.37-50
The old way:  Joseph does some things good and some things bad.
The text doesn’t tell you, so you have to decide.
Problem, if you can do that, you already knew, and don’t need a lesson!  Also, Judah and Tamar are totally out of context appearing right in the middle of the Joseph story.
In the old way, Joseph’s rise to becoming a successful administrator is because of his skills.
That’s not in the Bible.
Let’s look.
Study his rise to power in 39:1-7.
Keep your eye open for a repeated theme.
GE 39:1 Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt.
Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there.
GE 39:2 The LORD was with Joseph and he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master.
3 When his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD gave him success in everything he did, 4 Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant.
Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.
5 From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the LORD blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph.
The blessing of the LORD was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field.
6 So he left in Joseph's care everything he had; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.
What about his rise to power in the prison?
(read vv.21-23)  Over and over you see the phrase, “And God was with Joseph.”  Joseph was a great man of integrity, but that’s not why he rose to power.
God is the main character, and it is the story of the dramatic preservation of the Messianic line.
Read 50:20.
That explains the Tamar story.
suggested O-line: 
The Hero that saved the family
God started a family to be His special family, and said someday a man in that family would be the Savior (Jesus would be born into the family).
He called the family Israel.
God gave them a nice place to live, and they were happy, and everything was fine – but a famine was coming!  They were all going to die!  BUT Somebody knew that the famine was coming, and he decided to save the family.
But how?
Did he stop the famine from happening?
NO – the famine really happened.
So how?
(Any good drama includes an impossible dilemma)  He picked a teenager out of that family, and took him to another country (the family thought he was dead) – and made him king of that other country!  Then He told the teenager about the famine.
So the teenager saved up huge piles of extra food.
When the famine came, the family came to this country because they heard about the food.
They saw the King, and it was that teenager (older now)!  It was their own brother!  He gave them food and none of them died!  Now read the story and make a game out of them figuring out who it was that saved the family.
When they do, ask, “How did He do it?”  Answer: by letting bad people do whatever they wanted.
Example 3
Jonah
Some stories don’t need anything added – everything is right there.
It just needs to be noticed and thought about.
NOTHING WILL MAKE YOU A BETTER BIBLE INTERPRETER AND TEACHER THAN MEDITATION.
Look carefully at the text and think it through.

TRADITIONAL APPROACH
If you got a Bible study guide on Jonah, what would you say would probably be the main point?
Obedience.
How do they get that?
Doesn’t say anywhere that he should have obeyed.
(Again, would already have to know, then who needs the book?)  
Someone: “Well, when he disobeys, he ends up in a fish.”
Yes, but when he does obey, he ends up out in the hot, miserable desert with a dead plant and at the end of the book he is suicidal.
Besides, isn’t that a little obvious?
(show map)
One more thing – if the book is about obedience, what about ch.4?
Let’s take a new look.
BTW – who do you think is the main char.
of Jonah?

1 The word of YHWH came to Jonah son of Amiti saying: 2 “RISE AND GO to Niniveh, the great city and cry out against her for their evil has come up before me.” 3 And Jonah ROSE AND WENT to flee from the presence of YHWH Tarshishward.
And he went down to Joppa and found a boat going to Tarshish, and he paid the fare and boarded to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of YHWH.
And YHWH hurled (fist of 4 hurlings) a great wind into the sea and there was a great storm on the sea, and the boat was thinking it was going to be broken to pieces.
5 The sailors feared and each man cried out to his god and they hurled the cargo from the boat into the sea to lighten the boat.
Jonah went down into the recesses of the boat and laid down and passed out.
And the captain of the ship approached him and said to him, “Why have you passed out?
Rise, and call to your god.
Perhaps he will think to himself and we will not perish.”
7  And each man said to his friend, “Let’s cast lots and we will know because of whom this evil had come upon us.”  And the lots fell to Jonah.
And they said to him, “Tell us because of whom has this evil come?
What is your occupation?
Where are you from?
What is your homeland?
Who are your people?”
9  And he said, “I am a Hebrew, and YHWH, the God of the heavens whom I fear, made the sea and the land and the men feared with a great fear, and they said to him, “Why have you done this?” for they knew that he was fleeing from the presence of YHWH for he had told them.
11  And they said to him, “What shall we do so the sea will be quiet?” for the sea was going on and storming. And he said to them, “Pick me up and hurl me  into the sea and it will be quiet. I know that it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” 
And the men rowed to return to the land but they were not able, because the sea was going on and storming upon them.
And they cried out to YHWH and said, “Please, YHWH, may we not perish because of the soul of this man and do not put his innocent blood on us, because you have done as you pleased.”  And the picked Jonah and hurled him into the sea and the sea stood still from its anger.
And the offered sacrifices to YHWH and vowed vows.
These are pagan men who were knew what Jonah was doing and were helping – and had just got done crying out to false gods.
They deserved judgment, yet at the slightest sign of repentance, God spares them.
(They care nothing about YHWH until they are about to die, then they cry out to Him – but only after nothing else worked).
 17  And YHWH appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah and Jonah was in the belly of the fish 3 days and 3 nights.
This is the first of 4 appointings in Jonah.
God appoints a fish (here), a plant (4:6), a worm, (4:7), and an east wind (4:8).
God controls not only the mighty workings of nature, but also the minute crawlings of worms.

1:17 But YHWH appointed a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the 
fish three days and three nights.
Tell the joke about the girl and the atheist 
“How did Jonah survive in a fish 3 days?”
“I don’t know.
When I get to heaven I’ll ask him.”
“What if Jonah isn’t in heaven”
“Then you ask him”
I believe this verse is true without the slightest hesitation.
2:1 Jonah prayed to YHWH his God from the belly of the fish.
[2] He said:  "In my distress I called to YHWH, and he answered me from the belly of the grave I called for help, and you listened to my cry.
This is Jonah’s second prayer.
In this prayer he recalls his first prayer which he prayed before the fish came.
This is a summary of the whole prayer.
Jonah cried out for help, and God answered.
2:3 You hurled me into the deep, into the very heart of the seas,
and the rivers swirled about me; all your waves and breakers  swept over me.
Look at 1:15.
Who hurled Jonah into the sea?
(the sailors and God)
Who sent Joseph down to Egypt?
(the brothers and God)
Who brought about the crucifixion of Jesus?
(the Jews and Romans and God)
Who cut you off in traffic?
(that driver and God)
What about things that happen due to nature - where no people are involved?
Notice, “Your waves.”  (remember – God hurled the storm)
Why did God hurl Jonah?
Judgment (for the radical disobedience described in ch.1)
2:4 I said, `I have been driven away from before your eyes; yet I will look again  toward your holy temple.'
Jonah says, you banished me, but I will turn again to you.
In other words, he is going to repent.

Now we see Jonah’s plight
The waters engulfed my soul forever,  the abyss surrounded me;
seaweed was tangling around my head.
2:6 To the roots of the mountains I sank down;  the earth beneath barred me in forever.
Jonah was sinking down to the bottom.
That is why there was seaweed.
v.6 - the very bottom.
Any chance of rescue was lost - the bars slammed behind him.
He had held his breath as long as he could.
He was doomed forever.
 His life was over.
There was no hope.
  But you brought my life up from the grave,  O YHWH my God.
 2:7 "As I was fainting away,  I remembered you, YHWH,  and my prayer rose to you,  to your holy temple.
He must have just been passing out.
Held his breath as long as could with his lips upward - The terror of death overwhelmed him, and he cried out to God.
Have you ever been at the end of your rope, but it was because of your own foolishness or sin so you didn’t want to cry out to God?
God wants you to look to him even then.
2:8 "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the kindness that could be theirs.
Everyone has access to God’s kindness, but when they refuse to worship God, they forfeit it.
 2:9 But I, with a song of thanksgiving,  will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
 Salvation comes from YHWH." 2:10 And YHWH commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Another now we see the fish hurl (not one of the hurlings) Lit “vomited” (disobedient prophet is enough to make anything sick)
Again, God is in control.
Notice, Jonah never showed any anxiety with being in the fish.
Often when God begins to help us, we tend to assume he will not follow through.
But Jonah had confidence in God.
CONCLUSION:
Jonah deserved death, cried out for mercy, and was given mercy.
Consider God’s mercy, Jonah blatantly disobeys right in God’s face.
Even in the storm he will not repent.
But in the last seconds before death, Jonah finally “remembers” God.
You would expect God to say, “It’s too late now.”  We should never presume upon such mercy, but we should praise him for having such mercy.
And the Word of YHWH came to Jonah a second time 
The God of the second chance.
We may thing Jonah would be unreliable, send someone else.
But God doesn’t have to worry about the reliability of his servants.
He controls everything.
He wanted to use a disobedient prophet for this job.
saying, Rise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and announce to it the proclamation which I am speaking to you.”  And Jonah rose and went to Nineveh according to the Word of YHWH.
Nineveh was a great city to God, a three day’s walk.
And Jonah began walking in the city the first day and he cried out and said, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned.”  And the men of Nineveh believed in God, and they declared a fast and put on sacloth, from the greatest to the least.
And when word reached the king of Nineveh he rose from his throne ad took off his robe and covered himself with sacloth and sat in the dust and cried out and said to Nineveh, “By decree of the king and the great men saying the men and the cattle, the heards and flocks, are to eat nothing, are not to graze or drink water.
And the men and the cattle are to put on sacloth and they are to call out to God with strength and turn each man from his evil way and the violence which was by their hands.
Who knows?
God may turn and relent and turn from wrath and also we will not perish.” God made no promises to them.
Jonah’s message was not, “Repent and be saved” it was just “You are doomed.”  - they had gone way too far for way too long
 
And God saw their deeds, that they turned from their wicked way and he relented from the evil which the word to make to them and he did not do it.
All their wickedness over the years is overlooked.
All their violence - all their taking advantage of the weak, forgotten.
God just let them off the hook.
Just like that…
Why?
Did God need this city for something?
Was there some special individual there (like Sodom)?
No.
This city was of no special value.
They could have disappeared of the scene without consequence.The reason God had mercy had nothing to do with who they were.
It was because of his nature.
He just loves showing mercy.
He hates sin, but he absolutely delights in showing mercy.
1 And it greatly distressed Jonah, and he was very angry. 2  And he prayed to YHWH and said, “please YHWH, was this not what I said when I was in my land?
Therefore I forstalled to flee Tarshishward because I knew that you are a gracious God and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in kindness.
He relents from evil.

Jonah was angry because God had mercy.
This is what he feared would happen all along.
When God first told him to preach judgment (just judgment, not repentance) Jonah put 2+2 together and figured out what would probably happen.
You would think Jonah would have been thrilled to preach this message.
He was not because he understood what so few today do - that the purpose of preaching judgment is so he can show mercy.
Every time you see an announcement of judgment in the Bible, put it under that category of mercy (color code)
compassionate, slow… Foundational statement about God in the OT – repeated over and over.
Those who say God is wrathful in the OT and gracious in the NT are way off.
 The OT picture of God is one of extreme tenderness
gracious   from the root word meaning “favor”  closely related to  (for nothing) Gn.29:15.
There is a big difference between love that is just a re-payment, and love that is for nothing.
(Job 1:9).
“gracious” is a good trans.

 compassionate  This comes from a root that means to show tender love toward the helpless.
The verb is infrequently used of men.
Most of its uses are for women or God.
It is a feminine characteristic.
ISA 49:15 "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast  and have no compassion on the child she has borne?”  Men are capable of it, PS 103:13 As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; but it is mostly associated with women.
It is a picture of very tender, soft, compassionate love toward the helpless.
Another form of this word is a Hebrew word for “Womb.”
slow to anger  patience  the opp.
of someone who is quick-tempered and out of control (Pr.14:29,16:32)   We are never “walking on eggshells” with God.

and abounding in kindness (hesed)  He doesn’t just hand out small bits of kindness here and there like a king throwing crumbs to the peasants.
He piles it on.
 
 YHWH, please take my soul from me for it is better to die than to live.
And  YHWH said Is it right for you to be angry?
(remember that Q) Jonah went out from the city and sat on the east of the city 
The significance of the east side is that is the opposite of the way home.
Jonah isn’t leaving and looking to see what happens, he is waiting.
and made for himself a shelter there and he stayed under the shade until he saw shat would happen to the city.
And YHWH appointed a plant and made it grow up for Jonah to provide shade for his head to take away his distress.
And Jonah rejoiced about the plant with a great rejoicing.
And God appointed a worm the morning of the next day and it struck the plant and it withered.
And the sun was beating down hard, and God appointed a harsh east wind and the sun struck Jonah’s head and he was fainting.And Jonah asked with all his soul to die and he said It is better to die than to live.
And God said to Jonah Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?
And he said It is right and I am angry unto death.
And YHWH said, you had pity on the plant for which you did not labor and you did not grow it.
It came overnight and it perished overnight.
Should I not have pity on Nineveh, the great city in which there are 120,000 who do not know their right hand from their left and many cattle?
 And YHWH appointed a plant and made it grow up for Jonah to provide shade for his head to take away his distress.
And Jonah rejoiced about the plant with a great rejoicing.

The average temperature there is around 120.
The east winds can raise it another 20 degrees.
They say it gets so dry it makes the skin feel like it is too small.
I read one quote talking about how when these winds come even the nicest, friendliest people become irritable and snap at people over nothing.
Discussion: what is the point of the plant?

And God appointed a worm the morning of the next day and it struck the plant and it withered.
And the sun was beating down hard, and God appointed a harsh east wind and the sun struck Jonah’s head and he was fainting.And Jonah asked for his soul to die and he said It is better to die than to live.

Jonah seems childish, but don’t be distracted by that - that isn’t the point that is being made.

 And God said to Jonah Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?
And he said It is right and I am angry unto death.
The key is to note the repeated Q  This time he does answer - yes.

And YHWH said, you had pity on the plant for which you did not labor and you did not grow it.
It came overnight and it perished overnight.
Should I not have pity on Nineveh, the great city in which there are 120,000 who do not know their right hand from their left and many cattle?
Either 120,00 children or 120,000 people who are like children in that they are ignorant.
My view:  The idea is, God is showing Jonah what it is like when something you care about perishes.
When God asks if he is right to be angry about Niniveh, Jonah does not answer.
(Obviously it is right for him to be upset about God showing mercy).
But when God asks the identical Q about the plant, Jonah answers, “yes” without equivocation.
As soon as he answers “yes” he proves God’s point - that it is bad when something you care about perishes.
The fact that it is such a menial thing makes the point even better.

Q: What city does God care more about?
Denver or New York?
(NY) 
God loves people.
He even cares about cows (which are important to people)  Jonah is a book about God’s mercy and grace.
First we see his mercy and grace on disobedient Jonah when he rescues him by means of the fish (ch.2), then we see his mercy on wicked, gentile, pagan Nineveh (ch.3), then God gives an object lesson about grace and mercy with a plant and a worm (ch.4).

NT Historical Narrative
Interpret the same as OT hist. narr.
Gospels: who is the main character? (Jesus)
Acts: who is the main character? (Jesus)
Remember, just because something happens does not mean that is to be normative.
Watch for clues as to the meaning of the event.
OT History
Creation 				Abraham	 Moses DavidExile  	   end of OT
  4000 BC				  2000 BC	  1500 BC  	  1000 BC	  600 BC	   400 BC

Genesis			Ex, Jos-Rt	Sam-Chrn.		   Es.
Ez, Nh
								 
								 				 Isa.
– Mal.

Homework: Pick a Bible story and try these principles out.

Prophecy
Hernemeutics Pt.9
 7-30-2009

Contents
Definition
A Different Kind of History
How To Approach a Bible Story
NT Historical Narrative
“Predictive” Prophecy
The Purposes of Prophecy
To Teach About God
To Validate the Prophet

Historical Narrative (contd)
Probably the most important principle to keep in mind when you are interpreting a record of an event is that the meaning is not in the event.
The meaning is in what the author was trying to teach about the event.
If you are teaching children and all you do is let them know what happened…
 – that Jonah fled toward Tarshish was swallowed and regurgitated then went to Nineveh, etc., you haven’t taught them the Bible.
The simple fact that those things happened is not the message of Scripture.
The meaning does not come from the events.

Nor does it come from the reader.
Many Bible teachers seem to think that the way to teach a Bible story is to recount from the Bible what all happened…
, and then the preacher or teacher gives meaning to what happened.
That’s also the wrong approach because the meaning does not come from the event nor does it come from the reader.
The meaning always comes from the author.
The writer is telling you certain, select pieces of information for a purpose.
He has an agenda.
He’s making a point about those events.
And if all you get is the events and not the point then you have not interpreted the passage.
You have not listened to the voice of God in His Word.
You have ignored the Scriptures.

That’s why I said last time it’s so important to watch for clues as to the writer’s point. 
And you pay special attention to statements of commentary by the author interspersed in the historical account.
This week I’m studying 2 Sam.6.
2 Samuel 6:2 He and all his men set out from Baalah of Judah to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the Name, the name of the LORD Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim that are on the ark.
All we need to know what took place is the first half of the verse – They left Baalah to bring the ark to Jerusalem. 
The rest of the verse doesn’t tell you anything about what happened.
It’s obviously given to show us the significance that the writer is pointing out.
I haven’t figured out what that is just yet (hopefully I’ll get it by Sunday)
But it may be better for my purposes right now in this class that I don’t know what the significance is yet.
Because if I told you that it would probably distract you from what I’m trying to teach right now, and that is how to spot these kinds of things.
Whenever you see these comments that don’t give you any information about what happened, or they emphasize something or repeat it – focus on those.
Jonah
In the past when I’ve taught this class I’ve taken a whole session for going through the whole book of Jonah to show how to do this. 
I’m not going to do that this time – I’ll just illustrate quickly the difference between seeing God as the main character or the human character as the main character.
If your focus is on Jonah, you approach the book this way:
Chapter 1 - 
God said go east and preach judgment on the wicked Ninevites and Jonah got on a ship going west and ended up being thrown in the sea and swallowed by a fish.
Conclusion: Don’t disobey God.
Chapter 2 - 
This is Jonah’s prayer from inside the fish.
Conclusion: God gives second chances.
Chapter 3 – 
Jonah preached judgment in Nineveh, they repented, and God relented on His judgment.
Conclusion: Obey God.
Chapter 4 – 
Jonah’s plant. 
Conclusion: ???
Message of the book as a whole – Obey God and don’t disobey God. If you do disobey you might get a second chance.

Now, let’s focus on God and see what we find.
Chapter 1 – 
Jonah disobeyed, got on a ship and God brought massive judgment on the ship.
But when the pagan sailors made an attempt to please Yahweh the storm instantly stopped.
Conclusion: God has awesome power but has a hair trigger on mercy when there is some effort to honor Him.
Chapter 2 – 
Jonah repents seconds before death and God instantly rescues him with a fish.
Conclusion: God has awesome power but has a hair trigger on mercy when there is repentance. 
Chapter 3 – 
The unbelievably wicked Ninevites make an effort to repent and God has compassion and cancels the judgment – just as Jonah feared.
Conclusion: God has awesome power to destroy a nation but because of His compassion His mercy is on a hair trigger when there is repentance. 
Chapter 4 – 
God provides Jonah with a shade plant to give relief from the heat. 
They God kills it, and Jonah is extremely upset.
And God says, “If you can love a plant that much can’t I love a city of thousands?
If losing your precious plant can get you upset shouldn’t it bother Me to lose 120,000 human beings?”
Conclusion: The reason God’s compassion is on a hair trigger is because people are greatly valuable to Him.
Overall message – God loves people and has astonishing compassion and as a result has His mercy on a hair trigger when there is repentance. 

What is Prophecy?
Most people probably think of prophecy primarily as predicting the future.
The problem is, if you read the prophets, much of what they say is not about the future.
A lot of it is instruction, or indictment about sin, or warning of judgment, etc.
So some people have defined prophecy as either Foretelling or forth telling.
That is, predicting the future or speaking before a crowd.
But that doesn’t work either.
Lots of people speak before a crowd – that doesn’t make them prophets.

The definition of prophecy is very simple: It’s an announcement of what is on God's mind.
If God is thinking about something future, the prophecy is about the future.
If God is thinking about the past/present, it’s about the past/present.
So technically, the historical narrative that we talked about last time (Bible stories) is in the category of prophecy.
That’s prophecy about the past.
The prophetic books are Isaiah through the end of the OT.
We call the long ones the major prophets (4), and the short ones the minor prophets (12).
Those terms are misleading, however.
It’s not that the minor ones are unimportant or secondary in any way.
We should just call them the long prophets and the short prophets.
Prophecy is generally made up of 
Historical narrative 
Visions  (The vision is not the message, it is the occasion for the message.)
Oracles
An oracle is when God speaks directly through a prophet.
The prophet is like a messenger taking dictation.
Poetry 
Examples
Habakkuk - mostly Psalms
Amos - a poem (psalm) broken up with oracles in between 
4 types of oracles
JUDGEMENT   God announcing impending punishment
INDICTMENT  God spelling out what they did wrong to deserve the judgment
INSTRUCTION  God describing how they should live (Micah 6:8)
RESTORATION  God announcing the time when they will live like they should 
(for the purpose of encouraging the remnant who are being punished with everyone else.
The vast majority of the prophetic material is about the exile (the exile was the time when the Jews were conquered and deported to Babylon for 70 years).
So the Prophets are categorized as pre-exilic (the prophet ministered prior to Israel being conquered), exilic (during the 70 years), and post-exilic (after their return).

The basic message of the prophets was this: 
Pre-exilic: “Hey Israel, you better repent, or you will be conquered by a hostile nation, and then restored.
OK, you didn’t repent, so now you are going to be conquered and hauled off to that hostile nation.”  
Exilic: Now you are in captivity, you will eventually be restored.
Post-exilic:  “Now you are back in the land, repent.”
“Predictive” Prophecy
When a prophet speaks about something in the future, we call that “predictive prophecy.”  But we need to be careful with that term.
It is “predictive” in the sense that it is about the future, but the prophets did not make predictions in the sense that Jean Dixon makes predictions, or in the sense that sports prognosticators predict outcomes of games, or in the sense that meteorologists make educated guesses about the weather.
A better word is “announce” rather than “predict.”  
The prophets weren’t making educated guesses.
They were never wrong.
God revealed what was going to happen and the prophets announced it.
Having said that, I will stick with the accepted term “predictive prophecy” so we can distinguish between that and prophecy that is not about the future.

Some predictive prophecy was future when it was prophesied, but is now past.
For example the announcements of the exile, or the restoration to Israel after the exile, or the coming of the Messiah.
But most predictive prophecy is things that have been announced but still haven’t taken place.
We call that eschatology, or end-times prophecy.
If you are like most people, chances are you are either fanatical about eschatology, or you tend to ignore it almost completely.

For those of you who ignore the end times, I would say that that is understandable, but not justified.
It’s understandable, because the approach most often taken in teaching it misses the point and is not edifying.
They just try to find out what is going to happen to me in the future, and to draw up a chart.
So if you have lost interest because of that, that’s understandable.
It’s understandable, but it’s not good.
If you have no interest in a major portion of God’s Word, that’s tragic.

According to Barton Payne in The Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy, 28.6% of the verses in the OT contain predictive prophecy, and 21.6% of the verses in the NT.
So 27% of the Bible is predictive prophecy.
This material covers 737 different topics (so there is more to predictive prophecy than just trying to pinpoint the timing of the rapture, the second coming and the resurrections).
 If you have set aside the study of predictive prophecy because it’s too complicated, ask yourself, do you want to ignore a quarter of God’s Word?
So let’s avoid both errors.
Let’s not ignore this important category of Scripture, but on the other had let’s not be like so many of the prophecy fanatics who seem to care about almost nothing else but figuring out exactly what’s going to happen in the future.
The Purposes of Prophecy
To Teach About God
Finding out what is going to happen in the future is not the primary value of predictive prophecy.
The primary value of prophecy is…that it teaches us about what God is like.
If you learn that, you will be much better off studying prophecy.
If you study prophecy to find out what will happen in the future, you will be frustrated.
The information about the future is generally cryptic enough that it is frustrating trying to map out exactly what will happen and when.
But if you approach prophecy in accordance with its intended purpose, you will be able to mine unlimited riches from it.

When you read prophecy, instead of asking “How can I draw up a chart?” ask “What does this teach me about what God is like, and how should I therefore live?” 
The information about the future is not enough to nail down all the events and the order, but it is enough to teach us about God, and how we should live.
Like everything else, interpreting prophecy boils down to whether you are man-centered or God-centered.
Are you primarily concerned about what is going to happen to you, or about what God is like (as seen in what He has done, is doing and will do).
To Validate the Prophet
Predictive prophecy also serves another function.
It demonstrates the divine authority of the prophet’s message.
It’s one of the ways we know the Bible is God’s Word.
The Bible is unique in being a prophetic book.
How do we know that the Bible is God’s Word and not all the other holy books?
One reason is that other holy books do not make specific prophecies.
And the announcements the Bible makes are nothing like the predictions of psychics, etc.
They are not vague things that would be likely to happen anyway.
(“You are about to go through a major change”).
Also the Biblical prophecies have a record of 100% accuracy.
The OT prophets announced exactly what would happen with the nations around Israel.
***********************
For example, regarding Tyre Ezekiel announced: 
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon would destroy Tyre (Ez.26:8)
Many nations would come against Tyre one after another (Ez.26:3)
Tyre would be made like a bare, flat rock (26:4)
Fishermen would someday spread their nets over the site to dry them (Ez.26:5)
Debris from the city would be thrown into the sea (Ez.26:12)
It would never be rebuilt (Ez.26:14)
From secular history we know:
Three years later Neb.
destroyed Tyre.
Tyre kept trying to rebuild, but was destroyed by Babylon, Greece (repeatedly), Antigonus, and the Moslems
This is the exact phrase secular historians use to describe that Alexander the Great did.
If you go there today this is what you will find.
Only fishermen are there.
When Tyre was first destroyed, the people went out to an island just off shore.
When Alexander the Great came, he did not have a fleet to get across the water, so he took the debris from he mainland city and threw it into the sea making a 200 ft wide road.
He then marched out and besieged the new city.
That great city, even though it is a prime location with plenty of water has never recovered.
This also happened with Sidon (Ez.28), Samaria (Hos.13, Micah 1), Gaza (Amos 1 Jer.47, Zeph.2), Moab (Ez.25, Jer.48,49), Edom (Isa.34, Jer.49, Ez.25,35), Thebes and Memphis (Ez.30), Nineveh (Nahum), Babylon (Isa.13,14, Jer.51), Jerusalem (Jer.31), Palestine (Lv.26, Ez.36), etc.
These prophecies were fulfilled with 100% accuracy and were very specific - even naming names.
Isa 45:1-4 "This is what the LORD says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him … 3  …so that you may know that I am the LORD, the God of Israel, who summons you by name. 4 For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me.
13 I will raise up Cyrus in my righteousness: I will make all his ways straight. He will rebuild my city and set my exiles free, but not for a price or reward, says the LORD Almighty." 
 You ask “Who is Cyrus?”  That’s the same thing they asked.
The king of Israel was Hezekiah (726-697).
Over 100 years later, in 599, a Persian woman gave birth to a baby and named him Cyrus.
In 586, while Cyrus was celebrating his 15th B-day, the King of another country - Babylon - conquered Israel.
Cyrus became king of Persia at age 42.
He was a great military leader and was bent on conquering the world.
At age 63 he conquered Babylon, and a short time later, he made an edict letting Israel return to Jerusalem!
So the prophet Isaiah talks about Cyrus – the man who will rescue Israel from Babylon, but at the time he is writing all this Babylon hadn’t even attacked Israel yet!  
It would be like if someone said, “Here’s the name of the man who will finally help the United States regain its independence.”
   
Daniel announced the world kingdoms from his time until Jesus (over 500 years) (Dan.9)  
He also gave detailed descriptions of Alexander the Great’s campaign (Dan.8)   hundreds of years before hand.
*************************
Messianic announcements:
Some prophecy teachers see almost everything in the entire OT as a direct messianic prophecy. 
I’ve heard it said that Jesus fulfilled 333 messianic prophecies, and that proves He was the Messiah.
The problem is many of those 333 are debatable.
They are things that you would never guess had anything to do with the Messiah when it was first written.
For example, Psalm 22, where the psalmist says “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?...
, and then goes on to talk about how they pierce his hands and feet and divide his garments.
Those things happened to Jesus, but before they happened to Jesus how would anyone have known that was a messianic prophecy?

I don’t think it’s a very strong argument, if we are trying to persuade people that the Bible is God’s Word, to point to things like that.
Why not point to prophecies that were clearly messianic when they were made?
What prophecies were known to be messianic when they were made? 
Three categories:
The Prophet like Moses in Dt.18 (probably)
The Davidic King (The Branch from the root of Jesse)
The Suffering Servant of Isaiah.  
Duel meanings
Are there prophecies with dual meanings?
Based on what we said before regarding authorial intent, I would say no.
There are two kinds of passages used to support the “duel meaning” view:
Passages that seem to have an ultimate fulfillment in the end times, but seem to have partial fulfillments in history.
Passages that are clearly speaking to a near fulfillment, but that also seem to fit NT realities.
I do not deny that there are prophecies in which the fulfillment consists in a series of parts separated by intervals…
, and may be expressed in language that may apply to the nearest part or the remotest part or to the whole.
What I do reject is the idea that a prophecy can have some sense other than the normal, natural original meaning of the utterance that only emerges later and relates to a different matter supposedly concealed in the very same words.

How Much Did the Prophets Understand?
This is where we run into a snag with authorial intent.
What exactly did the prophets know about how their prophecies would be fulfilled?
And if the fulfillment is something other than what the prophet intended when he wrote, how can we possibly interpret it?
Prophecy is a little different from the rest of the Bible, and should be interpreted differently.
But it is not just a free-for-all.
There are still some principles.
 One difference is in the clarity.
I taught you before about the perspicuity of Scripture – the Bible communicates clearly.
That’s not always the case with predictive prophecy.
The information the prophets were to write was given to them by God, very often, in riddles, visions and dreams.
And the meaning of those was not always apparent.
There was only one prophet that this didn’t apply.
 
Nu.12:6-8  "When a prophet of the LORD is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions, I speak to him in dreams. 7 But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. 8 With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles;
So how much of their own prophesies did the prophets understand?
While some things were hidden from them, the basic meaning of the prophecies was understandable by not only the prophet but also by the original readers or hearers.
We saw that with Jonah.
He understood exactly what his prophecies about the coming judgment of Nineveh meant, and what the implications were.
That’s why he fled.
The Ninevites also understood – that’s why they repented.
1Ki 22:1-38 
In 1 Ki.22 King Ahab is trying to get Jehoshaphat to help him in a war.
5 But Jehoshaphat also said to the king of Israel, "First seek the counsel of the LORD." 6 So the king of Israel brought together the prophets-about four hundred men-and asked them, "Shall I go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?" "Go," they answered, "for the Lord will give it into the king's hand." 7 But Jehoshaphat asked, "Is there not a prophet of the LORD here whom we can inquire of?" 8 The king of Israel answered Jehoshaphat, "There is still one man through whom we can inquire of the LORD, but I hate him because he never prophesies anything good about me, but always bad. He is Micaiah son of Imlah."  "The king should not say that," Jehoshaphat replied.
13The messenger who had gone to summon Micaiah said to him, "Look, as one man the other prophets are predicting success for the king. Let your word agree with theirs, and speak favorably." 14 But Micaiah said, "As surely as the LORD lives, I can tell him only what the LORD tells me." 15 When he arrived, the king asked him, "Micaiah, shall we go to war against Ramoth Gilead, or shall I refrain?" "Attack and be victorious," he answered, "for the LORD will give it into the king's hand." 16 The king said to him, "How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the LORD?" 17 Then Micaiah answered, "I saw all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd, and the LORD said, `These people have no master. Let each one go home in peace.'" 18The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, "Didn't I tell you that he never prophesies anything good about me, but only bad?" 
Clearly even wicked Ahab could properly interpret and understand Micaiah’s prophecies.
Examples like these are repeated over and over.
God gave prophecies to get people to repent, or to regard Him a certain way or to live a certain way
… how could God expect those things to take place if prophecy was not understandable by the original audience?
What about passages that seem to indicate that the prophets themselves didn’t understand their own writings?
Pe.1:10,11  Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.
This doesn’t say they didn’t understand their writings – in fact, it indicates that they understood them far better than most people realize.
They understood that the Messiah would come and suffer, and they understood that the Messiah would come in great glory.
The only thing they didn’t know was the time and circumstances, and how those two things could both be true.
But the reason they didn’t know those things isn’t because they couldn’t understand their own prophecies, it was because that information was not in their prophecies.

The only other passage I could think of was Da 8:27  I, Daniel, …I was appalled by the vision; it was beyond understanding.
 What did Daniel mean?
Was it that the vision was complicated and confusing that he was appalled that God would even give it?
Did it mean that Daniel was writing words, but he didn’t know what they meant?
Look at what he had just written:
23"In the latter part of their reign, when rebels have become completely wicked, a stern-faced king, a master of intrigue, will arise. 24He will become very strong, but not by his own power.
He will cause astounding devastation and will succeed in whatever he does.
He will destroy the mighty men and the holy people.
2 5He will cause deceit to prosper, and he will consider himself superior.
When they feel secure, he will destroy many and take his stand against the Prince of princes.

Is that hard to understand?
It’s about as straightforward as it can be.
There isn’t even any symbolism.
It just says that this wicked man will wreak havoc, and will destroy God’s holy people.
I don’t think Daniel had any problem understanding the meaning.
What was beyond understanding, and what was appalling to Daniel, was the fact that this was going to happen.

How to Interpret an Announcement of the Future
Keep in mind your ultimate goal right from the beginning – just like any other kind of Scripture; you need to determine what the purpose of the passage is.
Is this announcement about what is going to happen in the future given to bring about repentance?
Is it to cause me to live in a certain way?
To think a certain way about God?
If you can’t figure out the purpose of a prophecy – a purpose other than satisfying our curiosity about the future, you don’t understand the prophecy.
After describing the rapture in 1Th.4:18, he doesn’t say, “Therefore, make a chart with these words.”  
He doesn’t say, “Therefore, try to match up these words with the words in Daniel.”  
He doesn’t say, “Therefore argue over these words.”  
He doesn’t say, “Therefore plot these words onto a timeline.”  
He doesn’t say, “Therefore ignore these words and speculate about other words not revealed.”
What he said was, Therefore encourage each other with these words.
 
So the information about the rapture has a very clear purpose – to be an encouragement to us.
It should cause us to live lives that are alert, lives of hope, lives that look forward to that day, lives that live in the light of that Day, and the purpose of those words is to provide us with strength and encouragement now.
If someone preaches a sermon or teaches a class or a Bible study on the rapture, and the people don’t walk out afterward encouraged, that teacher has failed.
If you study the rapture in your own personal Bible study or devotions, and afterward you are the world’s greatest expert on the rapture…
, but you are not encouraged, you have missed the point of the passage and have failed in your Bible study.
On the other hand, if you study the passage and those things are accomplished in your life, you have succeeded – even if you still don’t know everything about the future.

Determine if the announcement is conditional or unconditional
Assume an announcement is conditional unless there is an indication otherwise.
For example, if a verse says, “This judgment will come upon you, unless you repent,” we say, “I see a condition, so that is a conditional announcement.”  But if it just says, “This judgment will come upon you” we tend to think it must be unconditional.
That’s the wrong approach.
Always assume an announcement is conditional unless there is an indication otherwise.
Jonah’s prophecy is a good example.
Jer.18:7-10  If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.
v.7 sounds unconditional.
But God says, “Whenever I give a statement about judgment or blessing, even if it sounds unconditional, always remember this caveat (v.8).
The same is true of individuals
Ez.33:13-15  If I tell the righteous man that he will surely live, but then he trusts in his righteousness and does evil, none of the righteous things he has done will be remembered; he will die for the evil he has done. 14 if I say to the wicked man, `You will surely die,' but he then turns away from his sin and does what is just and right- 15…he will surely live; he will not die.
There is a section in Dt.28-32, and Lv.26 that set out numerous conditional statements (blessings and cursings).
Those two sections are quoted hundreds of times in the prophets (Silva).
So when you see an announcement about something in the future that has to do with either blessing or cursing…
, unless there is something in the context that calls for an unconditional interpretation, it is best to assume it is conditional.

There are times in the NT (especially in Matthew) when a prophecy that was clearly intended to refer to an OT fulfillment is applied to Jesus, but that doesn’t mean there are duel fulfillments.
It only means the NT writer is applying the OT principle to the situation he is writing about, or he is using OT language to describe something, because that language is so appropriate.

For example, when Jesus’ parents took Him to Egypt to escape Herod, Matthew says that fulfilled the prophecy in Hosea 11:1 Out of Egypt I called my son. (Mt.2:14-15)
But Hosea was clearly talking about Israel at the Exodus, not the Messiah.
Matthew isn’t claiming that Hosea had the Messiah in mind or was prophesying anything about the Messiah.
He’s just applying the principle.
The Hosea passage is all about how tender God’s love is toward Israel as His son.
Matthew points out that God has that same tender love for Jesus as His Son.
And since Israel’s role as God’s Son was a picture of the Messiah’s role as God’s Son, it’s a profound statement about Jesus’ Messiahship.
But there are not duel meanings, hidden meanings or double fulfillments.
However there are sequential fulfillments.
Sequential Fulfillments 
That is when there is an announcement of some future sequence of events, that sounds like it may be a single event.
One example of that is in Ezekiel, when the destruction of Tyre was prophesied.
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon would destroy Tyre (Ez.26:8)
2. Many nations would come against Tyre one after another (Ez.26:3)
3. Tyre would be made like a bare, flat rock (26:4)
4. Fishermen would someday spread their nets over the site to dry them (Ez.26:5)
5. Debris from the city would be thrown into the sea (Ez.26:12)
6. It would never be rebuilt (Ez.26:14)

1) Three years later Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Tyre.
2) Tyre kept trying to rebuild, but was destroyed by Babylon, Greece (repeatedly), Antigonus, and the Moslems
3) This is the exact phrase secular historians use to describe that Alexander the Great did.
4) If you go there today this is what you will find.
Only fishermen are there.
5) When Tyre was first destroyed, the people went out to an island just off shore.
When Alexander the Great came, he did not have a fleet to get across the water, so he took the debris from he mainland city and threw it into the sea making a 200 ft wide road.
He then marched out and besieged the new city.
6) That great city, even though it is a prime location with plenty of water has never recovered.
If you read Ez.26 you would assume all that would happen in one event.
Ezekiel just says certain things will happen, but neither the prophet nor the original readers know that Nebuchadnezzar would do some of those things, and Alexander the Great would do the rest hundreds of years later.

They didn’t need to know that, because when it would happen had nothing to do with the purpose of the prophecy.
The purpose of that prophecy was to show how God responds to a nation that is brutal against Jerusalem.
So the only pertinent information is what will happen to Tyre – not when or in what order.

“Why doesn’t God give more times and dates?”
Since God is a perfect communicator, it’s safe to take the basic assumption that all the information provided is relevant, and only the information provided is relevant.
So if God had included dates and sequences, then we would assume that those dates and sequences had some bearing on the meaning of the passage, and we would miss the point.
For Him to include times would have been misleading as to His purpose.
God does not include details that would throw us off the trail of the point He is making.
And yet what do we do today?

God did not provide dates for the end times.
Jesus said it’s not for us to know the day or hour.
God tells us emphatically that it is not necessary for Him to tell us about times or seasons regarding the end.
So God says, “Do you want to understand end times?
Do you want to know the meaning of these things I revealed about the future?
I’ll give you a hint.
The meaning does not rest in the hour, or the day, or the times or the seasons.”
So what do we do?
99.9% of teaching about end times is an effort to put every major prophecy verse into a slot on a time line.
That’s why prophecy seems to confusing.
If you take the one thing God has said He has not revealed, will not reveal, and that is not germane to the point being made by the prophecies, and you make that the central focus of your study, of course you are going to be frustrated.
You get the impression that prophecy teachers think that God took the whole picture of the end times that He wanted us to have, cut it into hundreds of jigsaw pieces, and scattered them all over Rev., Dan.
Ez., Mt.24, and Thes., and He expects us to find those little pieces and put the puzzle back together.
Each passage stands alone, and makes its own point that is understandable simply from what that passage says.
The timing or order of events is significant only if the passage itself makes a point of it.

There are some future events in which the order does have some significance, and so it is revealed to us in Scripture.
I believe this is the case with the rapture.
It does matter if the rapture comes before or after the Tribulation, because the NT is full of warnings urging the reader to prepare for the Tribulation so that when it happens you will be able to persevere to the end.
If you believe the rapture happens before the Tribulation, then none of those warnings apply to you.
 Partial “Fulfillments” 
Sometimes a prophet will announce something that is way off in the future, but to establish his credibility, God will cause something to happen that is close enough to what was prophesied to make it clear that the prophet is credible, but different enough to make it clear that the ultimate fulfillment is still future.
When Daniel spoke of the abomination of desolation, he was referring to the end times.
But Antiochus came so close to what was described that it verified that Daniel’s prophecy was from God.

Another example is Jesus’ prophecy in Mt.24.
It was a prophecy about the Tribulation, but what happened in 70 AD was so close to some of the things He described it’s clear that He’s a true prophet.

Last week there was a question about John the Baptist.
The very last thing that is said in the OT 
Mal 4:5-6  "See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse." 
So the Jews were expecting a forerunner who would come before the Messiah.
And that forerunner would be Elijah.
And he will have a ministry of restoration that will saved the people from God’s judgment.
Many Jews seemed to expect a literal reincarnation of Elijah – the actual man himself returning from the dead.
But that idea is dispelled by the angel in Lk.1.
Luke 1:13-17 13 Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John…17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous-to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." 
So when John the Baptist came along and began to point people to Christ, they came and asked him if he was Elijah.
John 1:21 They asked him, "Then who are you? Are you Elijah?" He said, "I am not." 
But then later on Jesus said 
Mt.11:13-14`all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John. 14 And if you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come.
Then 6 chapters later the disciples asked:
Mt.17:10-13``10 "Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?"`11 Jesus replied, "To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things. 12 But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands."  13 Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist.
So what are we to make of all that?
First John is coming in the spirit and power of Elijah, then he’s clearly not Elijah, then he may or may not be Elijah depending upon whether they accept him, then they reject him and he is for sure Elijah.
At first it seems like figuring all that out is like unscrambling an egg.
But really it’s not as bad as it sounds.
John was the fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy.
But since the Pharisees had some wrong ideas about that prophecy, when they asked John, “Are you Elijah?” he had to say “no” because He knew what they meant.
If you read the context in Jn.1 it sounds like they thought the “Elijah” who was to come was a messianic figure.
So if John had said, “yes,” he would have been telling them he was the Messiah.
As for the question of why Jesus says that he is the Elijah only if the people accept it, that’s talking about John’s role of restoring the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous and to prepare people spiritually for the Lord.
They probably figured the Elijah would come and prepare everyone.
But Jesus says, “He only fulfills that role for you if you listen to him.”
John called the people to repentance.
For those who listened and repented, he fulfilled that role of restoring and preparing the people’s hearts.
So to answer Adam’s question, yes, I think there is a sense in which the prophecy in Malachi about John has a sequential fulfillment, because he says I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes which kind of sounds like it would be right before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
You can’t tell from the original prophecy that in between John’s coming and the final Judgment Day is the Church Age.
Apocalyptic Literature 
There is a certain kind of predictive prophecy known as Apocalyptic Literature.
It is characterized by lots of symbolism and vivid, figurative language.
You see it a lot in Revelation and Ezekiel, for example.
Any time you read something and try to picture it in your mind, and the picture makes absolutely no sense, chances are you are reading apocalyptic literature.
Many Christians ignore apocalyptic literature because they don’t know how to interpret the symbols.
But if you ignore it you miss out on a wonderful blessing.
The Role of Apocalyptic Literature
Apocalyptic lit. is especially important for people who are in difficult or painful circumstances.
Apocalyptic prophecy reverses our normal experience by setting a scene where the heavenly mysteries are the real world, and the present crisis is a temporary detail in the background.

Also, another characteristic of apocalyptic prophecy is it tends to emphasize God’s transcendence.
Most of the time through Scripture we see God working from within the creation.
If He wants your crops to have water, he sends rain through the normal natural process that we observe on a regular basis.
If He wants you to have something to eat, He enables a seed to germinate and grow in the soil and produce fruit.
That’s one way of looking at how God does things – from within the creation.
We call this providence, and it is one of the most comforting doctrines of Scripture.
The natural processes you see all around you are not random, mechanical reactions – it is God doing His perfect work.

But there is another way to think about it.
You can think about it from the perspective of God’s transcendence – the view from heaven.
God comes from outside and radically intervenes – that’s what happens in apocalyptic literature.
God is both immanent and transcendent (close by in creation, above and beyond the creation).
Both are precious truths.

Sometimes it’s comforting to realize that God is in this very room – that He is very close.
Other times it’s a great encouragement to remember that God is way above all this mess, and He is seated in heaven on His throne.
It’s the same with thinking about how God works.
There are times, especially when God’s people are in the midst of horrible disaster all around them, to think of God as being above it all, and invading from the outside.
Apocalyptic literature shows you the view of God being above and beyond and invading from the outside.
It lifts you up into heaven and shows you the view from there.
Sometimes the events of human history will plunge God’s people into such despair that it’s hard for them to believe that God is controlling all those events.

For example Daniel, when the world superpower is coming against tiny little Judah, instead of giving the view from providence…
, he illustrates the great powers of the world as a statue and a giant stone comes from the heavens and crushes the statue.
When the greatest world powers are against you that’s a little intimidating.
And sometimes the most comforting thing is to be lifted above the creation and see what God is going to do from the heaven’s-eye view.
Daniel’s point is that the Messiah is going to come and not just alter things somewhat, but introducing a totally new era.

If you are a first Century Christian, Rome is pretty intimidating.
But by the time you finish reading Revelation you realize Rome isn’t even a blip in the face of the awesome firepower of heaven.
Symbolism
The reason most people tend to ignore Apocalyptic literature is because the rich use of symbolism makes it notoriously difficult to interpret.
The more symbolism that is used, the more interpretation becomes necessary.
Symbolism is when something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention.
All symbols have meaning, and are meant to be understood.
They are not given to confuse us.
The reason they so often do confuse us is because most people don’t understand how they are meant to be interpreted.
They are not intended to give us a photographic picture of something.
When you read apocalyptic literature, don’t try to picture the scene in your head – it will be ridiculous.
If you want practice interpreting symbolic literature, read the political cartoons in the paper.

Suppose you saw one in which an eagle was extending an olive branch to a crescent moon, what would that mean?
[The United States making overtures of peace toward the Islam] 
If it’s a prediction, and it comes true, there will be no eagle, no moon and no branch.

The meaning conveyed in this cartoon has nothing to do with singing, nothing to do with obesity, nothing to do with the opera.
It’s about Al Gore’s refusal to acknowledge that the election was over

Those are just symbols to represent dialogue between two countries.

A symbol tells us just what we need to know, but leaves everything else hidden.
If you are satisfied to know just what God was communicating through the symbol, and you don’t seek to know anything beyond that, that will eliminate 90% of the confusion.
In order for a symbol to communicate anything, there has to be some knowledge of what it is supposed to represent.
There are three kinds of symbols.
Symbols that are explained in the context.
Dan.2:31-47 "You looked, O king, and there before you stood a large statue-an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
Is there a time in the future when there will be a rock – some hard chunk of mineral that will smash a statue then become a huge mountain that will fill the earth?
No.
The rock is a symbol.
How do we know what it represents?
He tells us.
36"This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king.
38....You are that head of gold.
39"After you, another kingdom will rise, inferior to yours.
Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth.
40 Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron-for iron breaks and smashes everything-and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others.
44"In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people.
It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.
45 This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands-a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces.
"The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future.
The dream is true and the interpretation is trustworthy." 
What is the purpose?
To fill in our history books ahead of time?
To tip us off what all the human kingdoms will do?
To satisfy Nebuchadnezzar’s curiosity about future politics?
NO!
The point is about God’s Kingdom.
We are always so interested to focus on the human aspect of things.
But Nebuchadnezzar got the point
46 Then King Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel and paid him honor and ordered that an offering and incense be presented to him. 47 The king said to Daniel, "Surely your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you were able to reveal this mystery." 

John saw a vision of 7 stars and 7 lampstands.
Are there going to be stars and lampstands?
No.
Those are symbols.
What do they represent?
Rev.1:20  The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

Never forget that the context is the most important part of determining the meaning of a symbol.
Symbols do not have fixed meanings.
A lion can represent Judah, Christ or the Devil.
Leaven can refer to good influence or bad influence.
On the other hand, that’s not to say that we should ignore past use of symbols.
There are times when that can be helpful.
Symbols that refer to past Scripture.
There are 404 verses in the book of Revelation and 278 of them refer to the OT (70%).
God has a reason for doing that.
If you don’t understand those OT symbols, you won’t be able to interpret Revelation.
In the description of Christ in ch.1 it says His head and hair were white like wool.
That has nothing to do with Jesus’ physical appearance in heaven.
It’s a reference to Dan.9, where the son of man, amazingly, is able to approach the great Ancient of Days – Almighty God Himself, who is described as having head and hair that are white like wool.
In Rev.1 John is taking it a step further and saying Jesus, the Son of man, doesn’t just approach the Ancient of Days - He is the Ancient of Days.
Symbols that do not refer to the OT, and that are not explained explicitly in the context.
In this case, we have 2 possibilities
* Sometimes it is a cultural issue that is explained by local customs or geography
* Sometimes God simply wants us to contemplate the image, and that, along with the flow of the context, is all that is needed.
Cosmic Language
There is a fair amount of discussion these days about passages that speak of cosmic, cataclysmic judgments…
, like stars falling out of the sky, the sun going black, the moon turning to blood, etc.
Are those literal or figurative?
That question is crucial in the debate between Preterists and Futurists.
A Preterist is someone who believes a lot of the things the Futurists consider to be future are actually already fulfilled in the past (or present).
So when the futurist reads Matthew 24:27 For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. he says, “That’s talking about the Second Coming in the future.”
But a Preterist might say, “No, all of Mt.24 is talking about the judgment on Israel that took place in 70 AD. 
It was in the future when Jesus said it and when Matthew wrote it, but it is now in the past.”
A futurist reads about the Tribulation in the book of Revelation and says, “That’s in the future.”
A Preterist might say, “No, that’s talking about 1st Century Rome.”
The Futurist reads about the Antichrist and assumes it’s a personality who will arise in the future; the Preterist says, “No, it was Nero (or Antiochus Ephiphanes).”

All of us are partial preterists.
We all believe some end times prophecies are already fulfilled (for example Jesus’ first coming, or the arrival of the New Covenant).
And we are all partial futurists too.
Even the preterists believe the final Judgment Day and the Second Coming are future.
So there is no strict definition I know of.

Anyway, one of the weaknesses of the preterist position that the Olivet Discourse was all fulfilled in 70 AD is the cosmic language.
When there is a reference to the sun going dark and the moon turning to blood and the stars falling out of the sky they say, “That’s just hyperbole.
Jesus is using “end of the world” type imagery to underscore how severe the judgment would be in 70 AD.”
But if that’s the case – if Jesus is speaking about how severe it’s going to be by using end of the world type imagery…
, then that means there is such a thing as end of the world imagery. 
I believe Mt.24 had both near and far fulfillments. 
Part of it happened in 70 AD and part will happen at the very end.

Next time - poetry

Poetry
Hernemeutics Pt.10
 8-6-2009

Contents
Importance of Poetry
Definition
Vivid language
Terse – economy of language
Structure characterized by lines, rather than paragraphs.
Literal
CHIASM
Parallelism (rhyming ideas)
Song of Songs
Job
Lamentations
Psalms
Lament Psalms
Challenges in Interpreting Psalms
Imprecations (prayers for the doom of the wicked)
Messianic Psalms
Wisom Literature
Ecclesiastes
Job
Song of Songs (of Song of Solomon)
The allegorical approach
An Exemplary Relationship
Proverbs
How Should Proverbs be used?
Application
1) Discover the Principle
2) Determine the Implications

Importance of Poetry
I’m sure there are varying ideas about the importance of poetry.
If you are mostly a logical thinker, you may want to stick with the prose, where principles are clearly stated in a direct way.
If you are more of an emotional person, you may enjoy the Psalms, but you may not look to them for a lot of instruction.
Either way, we face the danger of minimizing the importance of poetry.
If we do that, we have just minimized 1/3 of the Bible!  
Of the 66 books of the Bible, only 7 do not appear not to have any poetic lines.
So unless you want to spend the rest of your life studying only Lv, Rt, Ez, Nh, Esther, Hag, & Mal, you are going to have to learn how to interpret poetry.
Definition 
Poetry is language that is vivid, terse, and structured in lines, rather than paragraphs.
That definition involves three parts.
Vivid language
Poets are artists who paint pictures with words.
The goal of those words is to generate vivid mental pictures, and stir up powerful emotions.
Concrete, pictorial language is used, rather than abstract, conceptual language.
The idea is for you to picture it, feel it, and experience it.

In the epistles you find direct statements of abstractions like, 1 Pe.5:7 He cares for you.
But the Hebrew poet says the same thing in a way you can picture – “The Lord is my shepherd.”  
There is a reason why the 23rd Psalm is read to the grieving more often than 1 Pe.5.
Imagining the Lord leading you beside quiet waters has a different effect than just processing the information that He cares for you.
Hos.13:7-8  So I will come upon them like a lion, like a leopard I will lurk by the path. 8 Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open.
Like a lion I will devour them; a wild animal will tear them apart.
Think of the increasing terror these images are combined to produce:
A general reference to a lion that sparks instinctive human fear, but does not specify the animal’s actions
The image of the lurking leopard gives the sense that unexpected judgment could spring upon them at any moment from behind.
The bear robbed of her cubs…ripping them open  Intensifies the image.
Now it’s violent – totally overwhelming.
Finally the lion comes and devours every last part and they are torn to pieces.
That packs a little more of a wallop than just a statement: “The coming judgment will be both abrupt and comprehensive.”  
Terse – economy of language
In poetry there is a rich use of ellipsis (when words are left out.)  
Example: 
Plato: “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”
Some words are left out of that.
What he meant was “Wise men speak… and fools speak…” but he left out the “and” and the second “speak” for rhetorical effect.
That happens a lot of the poetic passages in Scripture. 
If you write a summary of what a section of poetry is teaching, your summary will probably be more words than the section you are summarizing.
There is an economy of language in poetry in which a lot of truth is communicated in few words.
Structure characterized by lines, rather than paragraphs.
Like our poetry, Hebrew poetry had assonance, rhyme, tempo and meter.
That makes it easier to memorize, and provides more of an emotional effect.
Which statement do you think has a greater impact?
“Being forced to live under a communistic form of government is to preferred over dying in a nuclear war.”
“Better red than dead.”
Isa.5:7 He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.
Hebrew: he looked for MASHAPAT but MASEPAH for SDAKAH but SDA’AH 
But, of course, it is completely lost in translation.
If you translate that literally it comes out: “He looked for justice, but bloodshed; for righteousness, but distress.”
That doesn’t give you the assonance and rhyming, but it shows the ellipsis. 
Literal
There are some people who try to dismiss various passages that they don’t like by writing them off as poetry.
Some people have done that with Genesis one.
They say we should not take this as a model of how the creation actually took place, because it’s poetry.
Hebrew scholars deny the possibility that this is poetry, because it doesn’t have the marks of poetry, such as parallelism.  
It has all the marks of historical prose.
But even if it were poetry – it wouldn’t matter, because you don’t interpret Hebrew poetry any differently than prose.
They are interpreted exactly the same: literal statements are taken literally and figurative statements are taken figuratively. 
Ps 119:135-136 Make your face shine upon your servant and teach me your decrees. 136 Streams of tears flow from my eyes, for your law is not obeyed. 
Make your face shine upon your servant  (figurative)
teach me your decrees (literal)
Streams of tears flow from my eyes (figurative)
your law is not obeyed (literal)
The question isn’t whether or not it’s poetry.  
The question is what parts are intended to be literal and what parts are intended as similes, metaphors, analogies, or other figures?
CHIASM
Also very common in poetry are chiastic structures.
Ps 76:1 In Judah God is known; his name is great in Israel.
a In Judah 
b God is known
b’ his name is great 
a’ in Israel 

Jer.2:5-9
a "What fault did your fathers find in me, that they strayed so far from me?
   b They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves.
c 6 They did not ask, `Where is the LORD,
d who brought us up out of Egypt 
   and led us through the barren wilderness,
 		   through a land of deserts and rifts,
 		   a land of drought and darkness, 
 		   a land where no one travels and no one lives?' 
 			e 7 I BROUGHT YOU INTO A FERTILE LAND TO EAT ITS FRUIT AND RICH PRODUCE.
d’ But you came and defiled my land and made my inheritance detestable.
c’ 8The priests did not ask, `Where is the LORD?'   Those who deal with the law did not  
   know me; the leaders rebelled against me.
   b’ The prophets prophesied by Baal, following worthless idols.
a’ 9"Therefore I bring charges against you again,"  declares the LORD.
     "And I will bring charges against your children's children.
Parallelism (rhyming ideas)
The most important aspect of Hebrew poetry is not the meter or rhyme or rhythm, but the rhyming of ideas in parallelism.
Parallelism is when there is one line followed by another related line.
Psalm 139 
3 You discern my going out and my lying down; 
you are familiar with all my ways.

6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, 
too lofty for me to attain.

 7 Where can I go from your Spirit? 
Where can I flee from your presence? 
Sometimes the second line repeats the first, and other times it contrasts (says the opposite), and other times it builds upon the first.
The examples above are called synonymous parallelism because the second line repeats the thought of the first line.
But to say it that way is actually an oversimplification.
A better way to think about it is that parallelism gives us binocular vision (not in the sense of magnification, but in the sense of two eyes instead of one).
When you look at a pencil from one angle with one eye, it looks like a little round dot.
For all you know, it’s a ball.
If you move to the side, it looks like a long rectangle.
Only if you see both can you get an idea of the dimensions.
God gave you two eyes and put a little distance between them, to give you depth perspective.
If you hold your finger in front of your eye with one eye closed, then switch eyes, it will look like your finger is in a different place (and you see more of one side).
When both eyes are open, instead of seeing a finger in both places – your brain combines those two and comes up with an accurate image of a single finger with depth.
Another illustration is stereo sound.
It gives more depth.
That’s the way ideas are presented in parallelism.

An idea is stated once, then repeated in different words.
The second line is not exactly like the first – the writer does not use precise synonyms.
In the second line he says something slightly different.
That gives a depth to the idea.

Isa.1:10  Hear the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom;
	
 listen to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah! 

Law is not exactly the same thing as word, nor does people = rulers.
We see that Isaiah’s message is for everyone, both the rulers and the people, and the implication is that they all are sinful.
It is the word of YHWH in the sense that it is the authoritative decree of God, and it is the law in the sense that it has ethical implications that are to be obeyed.
If God calls you Sodom, you are bad.
If He calls you Sodom and then calls you Gomorrah, you are really bad.

There are many, many different kinds of parallelism, and the study of them is extremely complex.
Hebrew poetry is like a flower.
A little child can appreciate that a flower is beautiful, but only at a superficial level.
Botanists can appreciate the beauty of a flower in a far greater way.
And a molecular biologist in a still greater way.
Biblical poetry is like that.
The genius behind some of the poetry in the Bible is hard to imagine a human being able to produce outside of the miraculous.
Song of Songs
Robert Alden suggests that the entire book is a grand chiasmus, which focuses attention on the middle point of the book (between the last verse in ch.4 and the first verse of ch.5).
SOS 4:16-5:1
Let my lover come into his garden and taste its choice fruits.
5:1  I have come into my garden, my sister, my bride; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice.
I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey; I have drunk my wine and my milk.
In 4:16 she invites her lover into her garden, and in 5:1 he has come in to her garden.
In between those two verses the union is consummated, which is the high point of the chiasmus.
Job
We don’t know for sure who wrote Job, or when.
There is only one thing we know for sure about the author, and it’s not disputed by anyone – not liberals, conservatives, unbelievers… 
everyone agrees whoever wrote this book was exceedingly brilliant.
The poetry is so complex, some scholars have spend their entire lives fascinated with studying it.
The book has almost every kind of poetic genera, and chiasms and grand chiasms are littered all through the book.
Liberals have used this as an argument against the historicity of Job.
They say it would be impossible for people to have a debate like that – where every word is perfect poetry.
My view is that the events actually did take place, and the writer probably accurately reported what was said, but took their normal language and converted it to poetry.
Lamentations
Lamentations is another book that is so well structured that it’s hard to imagine writing a such a book.
The entire book is poetry.
There are 5 laments.
22 vv.
22 vv.
66 vv.
22 vv.
22 vv.
There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
Each verse begins with the next letter.
The third lament has 3 verses with each letter.
Lamentations is a lament written after the devastation of 586 BC.
It is a book that teaches the appropriate way to respond to God after receiving His discipline.
Psalms
How many of you, if someone asked what your favorite book of the Bible is, Psalms would be in the running?
To read and pray the Psalms is the join the countless godly people over the last 3000 years who have read and prayed them, and who have felt their praise, anguish, hope, indignation and joy.
The Psalms are the most concentrated section of theology proper in the Bible by far.
I am currently going through the psalms verse by verse and making a list of all the attributes of God that I find.
Many of the attributes I have combined into categories, so a bunch of similar attributes are all grouped together and counted as one single item in my list.
But even after doing that I still have about 400 attributes, and I’ve only made it to Ps.119 so far.
There is no place in God’s Word where information about what God is like is more densely packed than in Psalms.
The Psalms give us the most comprehensive revelation of the nature of God in Scripture.

The Psalms are also packed with information on the nature of man.
We see how weak and frail man is – his heart so easily turned toward sin, his desperate neediness before God, and yet highly exalted and tenderly cared for by God…  

So the Psalms teach us about the nature of God and the nature of man, and they use poetry to do it.
So instead of just listing out the facts about those two doctrines…
, they are taken like two primary colors on the palate of a master artist and combined in a portrait of life with realism and idealism coexisting.
The Psalms paint an exquisite portrait of God and teach us how to relate to God personally and emotionally.
And they do so in a way the touches our emotions in a deep way.

I love Hassell Bullock’s comment in his Introduction to OT Poetic Books: “Wherever the individual finds himself on the journey of faith, the Psalms provide a place of rest and a time of repose and reflection, as well as a stimulus to send him on his way.As the occasions of life diversify and emotions intensify, the value of the Psalms increases proportionately.”  
Try to follow the flow of the Psalm.
And always check the Treasury of David – it has wonderful insights; especially in the “explanatory notes and quaint sayings” sections.
Lament Psalms
A lament is a cry from the agonized soul pouring out your heart to God.
I heard recently that there are 48 lament psalms.
That’s 1/3 of the psalms! 
Most of the time when you read those psalms they are a big downer.
We generally don’t want to read them – except when you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
In those times those psalms are an incredible balm for the soul.
They teach you how to pour out your heart to God.
It’s not more spiritual to read the praise psalms when you are suffering than to read the lament psalms.
Challenges in Interpreting Psalms
Imprecations (prayers for the doom of the wicked)
The imprecatory Psalms seem to be in conflict with the NT command to love and pray for our enemies.
Here’s David’s heart for the lost:
Ps 3:7 Arise, O LORD!  Deliver me, O my God!  Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked.
Ps 137:8-9  O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us-- 9 he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
Isn’t that beautiful?
That’s how the Psalm ends.

How does that fit with Luke 6:27-29  "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.
Some say it’s just that the NT teaches a higher ethic than the OT.
But that can’t be.
Why would God teach the people a substandard ethic in the OT?
The OT ethic is; love God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself.
What ethic is higher than that?
Two things to keep in mind when interpreting the imprecatory psalms:
The animosity was not a selfish reaction to personal attack.
It was a reaction to attacks upon the kingdom of God.

It’s not a reaction to being personally offended.
It’s a desire that the name of God not be defamed.
Ps 58:6-11 Break the teeth in their mouths, O God
9…the wicked will be swept away. 10 The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked. 11 Then men will say, "Surely the righteous still are rewarded; surely there is a God who judges the earth." 
Ps 35:26-27  May all who gloat over my distress be put to shame and confusion; may all who exalt themselves over me be clothed with shame and disgrace. 27 May those who delight in my vindication shout for joy and gladness; may they always say, "The LORD be exalted, who delights in the well-being of his servant." 
It’s not that David wants people to say, “Wow, David was in the right after all.”  
That’s not the issue.
The issue is that people realize how just and loving God is.
The imprecatory psalms are directed not so much toward certain individuals as much as a category of people.
It’s appropriate to cry out to God to bring judgment on the wicked and to vindicate His name and His people.
To the degree someone sets himself up as being opposed to God and his people, I am opposed to that person and desire that God bring judgment on him.

The imprecatory Psalms leave justice in God’s hands.
Most people, when wronged or attacked, take revenge.
But the Psalmists didn’t.
Instead of striking back, they cried out to God for justice.
That’s not just an OT ethic.
We see it in the NT as well.

Ro.12:17,19 Do not repay anyone evil for evil…19 Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord.
Isn’t that what the Psalmists were doing?
They asked God for justice, and then just trusted Him to do what is best.
That’s the great thing about prayer.
You don’t ever have to worry about sending God off in a wrong direction.
He is always faithful to say no to a prayer that isn’t what is best.
So if I pray for judgment on the wicked, and say, “Nevertheless thy will be done,” then I can take comfort in whatever God does.
But if I have a zeal for God’s name, and I have a love for justice, there is a sense in which I’m going to desire that the Lord’s name be vindicated and that wicked men be punished.
And if it’s appropriate to desire that, it’s appropriate to pray for it.
We see the same thing in the NT.
2 Thes.1:6-7 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you 7 and give relief to you who are troubled
2 Tim.4:14 Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm.
The Lord will repay him for what he has done.
In Rev.6:10 the martyrs call out in a loud voice, "How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?"
God is praised in heaven by the angels because of the justice He metes out on the wicked.
Rev 16:5-7 Then I heard the angel in charge of the waters say: "You are just in these judgments, you who are and who were, the Holy One, because you have so judged; 6 for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve." 7 And I heard the altar respond: "Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments." 
Rev.18:19-20  "'Woe! Woe, O great city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth! In one hour she has been brought to ruin! 20 Rejoice over her, O heaven! Rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets!  God has judged her for the way she treated you.'" 
Messianic Psalms
Psalms that speak of the great King, who is the Lord of David and the Son of God (such as Ps.2 and Ps.110) are, I believe, direct announcements of what the Messiah would be.
The other category of Psalms often thought of as messianic are the Psalms with the righteous sufferer motif.
There is debate over whether these Psalms are messianic.
On the one hand, some of them sure do sound like they are describing Jesus.
The most well known is Ps.22, which Jesus quoted on the cross.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
6 I am…scorned by men and despised by the people. 7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: 8 "He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him." 
14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. 16 …they have pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. 18 They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.
When you read those parts it sure does seem like this must have been an announcement of the coming Messiah…
, since we know that the Messiah came and these exact things happened to Him.
On the other hand, however, there is a problem with interpreting this as an announcement of the Messiah.
How would the original readers have known that’s what it was about?
There is no indication of that in the context.

Remember, a text can never mean what it never meant…
, and it’s hard to imagine how the original readers could have read this and came to the conclusion it was talking about the Messiah.
To understand the relationship between the righteous sufferer psalms and the Lord Jesus we need to back up a few steps and think in some broader theological categories.
The purpose of those psalms is to describe the reaction of a righteous man or woman in the midst of suffering, and to depict the fact that in this world we do indeed have great suffering.
They show how we are to turn to God in the midst of our suffering.
So those psalms are not speaking specifically about the Messiah.
They apply to all saints who suffer.
Later on Isaiah comes along and reveals something the people didn’t know – that the great Davidic king would also be a suffering servant.
Once Isaiah revealed that, it makes sense to take what the Bible says about righteous people suffering and apply it in an ultimate way to the Messiah.
So to apply Ps.22 to Jesus is appropriate, because it’s about the suffering of the righteous, and Jesus was the ultimate righteous sufferer.

One other very important doctrine in the Psalms as well as the rest of the Bible is the Creation.
Other religions had their creation stories, but in none of them is the creation a central doctrine in their religion as it is in ours.  
All the things we know about God, about this world, about ourselves and about redemption are built on the foundation of the Creation.
It establishes God as the center of all things, and the Author of history.
Homework: write a Psalm.

Wisdom & Application
Hernemeutics Pt.11
 8-13-2009

Wisdom 
I did an in-depth study of wisdom in depth in the Proverbs series (“Making Wise Decisions”), so I won’t go into detail again on that now.
I’ll just give you of some basics.
The wisdom literature teaches us how to make good decisions in life.
Wisdom is skill at living.
Christians always want to know what God’s will is for them to do.
“Should I choose option A or option B?
What is God’s will?”  The answer isn’t very hard – God’s will is always the wisest of the options.
So the more you gain wisdom, the more you know God’s will in every decision.
If you have an opportunity to start your own business, you have to make a decision about whether or not to do that, and you have to make that decision…
without a definite knowledge of what will happen to the economy in the next several years…
, without a definite knowledge of how good business will be…
, without a definite knowledge of what setbacks will come (such as a serious illness, an accident, family troubles, unexpected expenses, etc.)…
, without a knowledge of what will happen if you don’t start the business (might get laid off, might flourish in your present job, etc.)…
,  without a definite knowledge of anything in the future.
Why does God put us in a position of having to make decisions without any knowledge of the future?
The answer is because it pleases Him when we live by wisdom, because that requires faith.

Making a decision by wisdom is essentially examining the probabilities.
The wise woman or man examines the world and observes how things normally go, and projects based on that the likelihood of various possibilities.
On a normal day, I have no idea if I run to the grocery story if I will get into an accident and be killed.
Nor do I know for sure if that will happen if I go in an ice storm when the roads are glaze ice and visibility is low.
However I know that in good conditions, the probability of a crash is so low that it’s worth the risk even if the need to go to the store isn’t all that great (I just need a gallon of milk so I can eat my Fruit Loops).
On the other hand, the ice storm raises the probability of an accident so much that I won’t go to the store unless the need is something much more important.

Most of us don’t agonize too much over a trip to the store.
The wisdom process in that case is pretty easy.
But when it comes to starting a business, or moving out of state, or changing jobs, or going to school, or having more children, etc.
the wisdom process becomes more difficult, because there are so many factors to consider.
That’s why so many people just give up on wisdom and make all their major decisions based on promptings, and gut feelings and impressions that they imagine are the voice of God.
That is so much easier than going through the wisdom process, because wisdom requires not only that you determine the likelihood of a host of different things…
, but also that you determine how important each of those things are.
That’s the other side of wisdom.
It’s not just likely pros and likely cons, but how important are the pros and how important are the cons?
If I decide to invest myself in close friendships, from my observations of life I know that there is close to 100% probability of me getting hurt eventually.
However I also know there is a high probability of me being able to bless my friends, and my being blessed by them.
And since the blessings of love relationships in the Church is of far greater importance than avoiding emotional pain, the decision is very easy.
So you can see that to have success in any area of life, wisdom is critical.
That’s why Pr 4:7 says Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom.
Though it cost all you have, get understanding.
God does not want us to make decisions based on promptings, or impressions or subjective feelings apart from wisdom.
That kind of mysticism takes many forms.
Some Christians play Bible roulette (let it flop open, or scan for a verse that pops out at them, and then claim it).
Or they look for a feeling of peace in their heart over a decision.
Or they put out a “fleece” or interpret circumstances as some kind of sign or message from God...
- all apart from the wisdom process.
All that is mysticism and it’s not how God wants us to make decisions.

What God wants is for us to simply make decisions based on what wisdom calls for, and trust Him regarding all the unknowns.
That’s how God leads and guides you through life.
Pr.6:20ff., talking about the commands and teachings of wisdom:
Bind them upon your heart forever; fasten them around your neck.
When you walk, they will guide you;’ when you sleep, they will watch over you; when you awake, they will speak to you.

And it’s so vitally important, because the more wisdom you have, the easier decisions are to make.
Wisdom is knowing how life tends to go, and how important things are in relation to other things.
Once you know that, good decisions are automatic.

If your little toddler is playing out in the middle of the Interstate…
, you don’t have to make a long list of pros and cons and pray over your decision of whether or not to get him out of the road.
Based on your knowledge of life, you know the probabilities of him being killed out there are very high.
And you also know that preserving his life is much more important than whatever fun he might be having out there.
And so you don’t even consciously go through the decision making process.
You make the right decision easily and automatically.
The more wisdom you have, the more all decisions will become like that.
Decisions that are agonizing for everyone else, for you will become easy.
So how do you get wisdom?
How do you learn probabilities and the way life tends to go and which things are more important than other things?
For example, suppose you have some great opportunity, but it involves dealing with someone who is very foolish.
How do you know how dealing with fools tends to go?
Where do you get wisdom like that?

One way is to just be an astute observer of life for 6 or 7 decades.
But the problem with that approach is that by the time you have spent that much time observing how life tends to go, you have already made most of the decisions of your life.
Another way to get wisdom is to get it from people who already have it, or to get it directly from God.
And the way to get it directly from God is by studying the wisdom literature in the Bible.
There are books of the Bible that are devoted to teaching wisdom (how life tends to go, and which things are more important than other things).
Those books are Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and much of the Psalms.
Ecclesiastes
The following is taken from an article titled “Ecclesiastes - The Bible’s Black Sheep” by Bruce Waltke.   
 
Ecclesiastes is the most misunderstood book in the entire Bible. 
 Conservative scholars have traditionally handled Ecclesiastes in three different ways.
1) The author is a wise, rational, thinking man who works his way to faith by eliminating other alternatives. 
 2) The author is a reasoning man who comes to despair. 
Since life is futile to him, he assumes there’s only one thing to do, and that’s to have faith. 
3) Perhaps the most popular view is represented in The Scofield Reference Bible. 
It declares Ecclesiastes is only the conclusions and reasonings of a man—not revelatory truth. 
As a result the book is not normally studied.
 
Those interpretations not only misrepresent the book, but they also contradict its conclusion.
Ecclesiastes 12:10 The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true.
The words of Ecclesiastes are upright and true.
The Futility of Life
Chapter after chapter he looks at life and concludes it is all utter futility. 
And usually that’s rejected as a sub-Christian thought, and so we have to come up with some interpretation that allows us to reject that.
But Waltke insists it’s not a sub-Christian thought.
Romans 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility
That word translated “futility” is the same word used in the Greek translation of Ecclesiastes for futility or vanity. 
There is a very real sense in which this earthly life appears pointless and futile.
 Eat, Drink, and Enjoy?
Therefore what?
The conclusion is the other thing that people find so objectionable in this book.
The dominant theme running throughout this book is the importance of enjoying life.
That is his conclusion in almost every chapter.
Ecclesiastes 2:24 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God,
Ecclesiastes 3:12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.
Ecclesiastes 3:22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. 
Ecclesiastes 5:18-19 Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him--for this is his lot. 19 Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work--this is a gift of God.
Ecclesiastes 8:15 So I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of the life God has given him under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 9:7-9 Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do. 8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. 9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun-- all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.
To many people it seems as though the conclusions running through every chapter contradict the end of the book.
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole [duty] of man. 14 For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.
Luther said the whole book teaches Epicureanism (eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die) and then the end of the book teaches truth. 
But we already saw that the whole book is truth.
And the middle part of the book does not say, "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die," but, "Eat, drink, and be merry because that is a gift of God."
And those are two very different ways of looking at life. 

If you bring together the two difficulties of the book (life being futile and the importance of enjoyment), you can start to see the author’s point.
Man has not been given the key to opening up the riddle of life. 
We want to see how it all fits together.
We want to know why this and why that, but God has hidden the total picture from our eyes. 
We see the events, but can’t piece them all together. 
We know some general answers, but we don’t know the specific answers of why God does each individual thing.
You cannot figure out why one person is born rich and another poor. 
One baby is born with a healthy body and another is born a cripple.
 
So how should we approach life as we go through this apparent futility, unable to put everything together? 
Just trust God. 
 Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
God knows what He is doing, but we can’t see it – we just have to trust Him. 
When your work seems futile and doesn’t appear to make much sense or amount to much of anything, realize that it is a gift from God who knows what He is doing. 
And what He is doing is good, so just learn to enjoy it!
Enjoy your life. 
Enjoy your food. 
Enjoy your spouse. 
Enjoy your home. 
Accept God’s gifts as good gifts even when you can’t see how it all fits together.
Job
One of the most prolific principles in the wisdom literature is the retribution principle (God punishes the wicked and blesses the righteous).
Job teaches that the retribution principle can be applied only in one direction – you can apply it looking forward but not backward.
What I mean is this: before you do good or evil, you should apply the retribution principle.
You should think, “If I do good, the Lord will bless me, and if I do evil He will punish me.”  The error of Job’s friends was they tried to apply it looking back from the other direction.
“Job appears to be being punished; therefore he must have done evil.”  
That’s an incorrect application of the retribution principle.
It’s also incorrect to say, “That guy is being blessed, therefore he is righteous.”  Job also teaches the proper response to suffering, and the supremacy of God.
Job is the ultimate book for reminding us about the bigger picture.
What you see when you look around is not the whole picture.
Song of Songs (of Song of Solomon)
There is a great amount of confusion over how to interpret this book.
The allegorical approach 
This is the approach that makes the whole book an allegory of Christ and the Church.
The man is Christ, the woman is the Church, and all the erotic, sexually explicit language somehow describes the relationship between God and His people.
Not only is there no legitimate hermeneutical basis for making it into an allegory, but to ascribe the erotic imagery of the Song to God, in my estimation, is irreverent.
It is true that Scripture describes us as the Bride of Christ, but never is this relationship described in sexual terms.
The figure of the Bride and the Bridegroom is used to help us understand a number of things about our relationship to Christ (our anxious anticipation of His coming, the celebration when He does arrive, the commitment to one another and the seriousness of apostasy, etc.), however nowhere is sexual imagery used.
 To take a description of a man talking about a woman's private parts while ogling her as she dances naked, and apply it to God is at best questionable, and certainly not precedented by the Bridegroom imagery used for Christ.
Whenever you try to make some passage in the Bible into an allegory, your interpretation will be hopelessly given to subjectivity.
There is no way to identify the one correct (intended) meaning.
One interpreter says the woman’s breasts represent the two Testaments.
But how would we know that?
Why not the two Witnesses in Revelation 11, or the two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie in Heb.6:18, or the two great lights of the creation, or even the two other members of the Trinity?

With the allegorical approach Scripture teaches nothing and the "interpreter" supplies everything.
There is no need to think of anything as allegorical unless it is stated as such in Scripture.
An Exemplary Relationship 
The interpretation that seems to be most often preached in evangelical circles is the view that the Song of Songs is a drama designed to teach us about a godly marital relationship.
However, an honest look at the text produces no coherent order of events.
The following is a summarization of the events of the book:
She wants kisses from the king - to go into his chambers.
She wants to find out where he grazes his sheep.
He says follow the sheep tracks, and then compliments her face.
She says her perfume spread at the king's table, and her lover is like the sachet of myrrh resting between her breasts.
He compliments her eyes.
She compliments him and says their bed is green.
She calls herself a lily of the valleys.
He calls her a lily among thorns.
She calls him an apple tree.
THE CHARGE She remarks about his embrace and that she is sick with love.
He says let me see your face.
She says she looked for him in her bed and didn't find him - she looked around town and finally found him.
THE CHARGE Look at Solomon in all his glory with the crown he got when he got married.
He describes her entire body, calls her his bride.
She asks the wind to help her get her lover to come in to her garden.
He says he has come into her garden.
She says he came when she was in bed, she didn't want to get up, and he left before she changed her mind - she went to find him.
Tells daughters to tell him she is faint with love.
Daughters ask what is so special about him.
She describes his body.
Daughters ask where he went.
She says he went to his garden.
He describes her.
We want to gaze on the shulamite.
He describes the Shulamite's entire body and says he will pick her fruit.
She talks about having sex with him.
THE CHARGE.
She says she roused him under the apple tree, then LOVE IS POWERFUL.
We will keep our young sister a virgin.
She says she is a virgin with tower-like breasts, and therefore pleased her lover.
She says her vineyard is for Solomon.
Virtually any story could be imposed onto this book, but no story emerges from the text itself.
So I don’t see it as a story of a particular man and woman.
However I do believe it is given to teach us some things about how God designed marital love to be.

I believe the book to be a collection of love poems arranged in such a way as to make a point.
This would explain the lack of a coherent unfolding of a drama, but the very structured and seemingly intentional grand chiasmus.
The center of the chiasmus (as well as the center of the book) is 4:16 and 5:1 where she says, "Let my lover come into his garden" and he says, "I have come into my garden."  The actual consummation is not described, but apparently takes place in the "space" between these two middle verses - the very center of the chiasmus.
Clearly this passage is the climactic point in the book.

As one reads through the Song, there are 4 things that stand out:
the explicit language and descriptions of sexual activity,
the chiasmus, 
the charge (because it uses somewhat urgent language and is repeated three times)
the great statement of the power and intensity of love in 8:6,7 (regardless of the hermeneutical approach, virtually every interpreter seems to focus in on this passage with special interest).
These four things combine to make a single point: 
Romantic love is extreme.
It captivates all of a person's thinking and drives him to concentrate all of his energy, attention, strength, thought, words and deeds into a relationship with one person - around whom the universe revolves.
It even finds its way into your dreams and makes you forget everything else in your life.
Entering into it is a serious thing - as severe as death.
It makes you "sick with love" and refuses to release its hold on you until it finds its complete fulfillment.
It is never satisfied until it reaches that space between 4:16 and 5:1.
(That’s why dating, when you aren’t ready for marriage, is such a terrible idea.)  Romantic love begins with simple desire, takes you through all kinds of other things (such as embracing, kissing, undressing, etc.
- all the things described in the book) and culminates with intercourse.
For that reason, one ought not to begin the process until the appropriate time.
A person who is not prepared to enter into this whirlwind should not be making attempts to arouse or awaken the process, because to begin it is a serious thing.
The explicit language gains the reader's attention and points out the kind of extreme things to which romantic love drives a person.

The chiasmus serves to point out that it is a process that works toward consummation as its fulfillment as well as to provide a beautiful, poetic backdrop to properly frame the main point.
The charge states the conclusion.
The statement concerning the power of romantic love in 8:6,7 reinforces the point made by the explicit language - that love is extreme and unyielding.
Within marriage it lifts you to the heights of ecstasy.
But delve into it apart from marriage and it’s extremely dangerous. 
To make these points with such a grand mosaic of these four things makes the point much more effectively than a strict, didactic outline.
Proverbs
While the Song of Songs gives us wisdom in one specific area, Proverbs offers wisdom in every area.
The most important thing to understand in interpreting proverbs is to understand that they are proverbial.
People often misinterpret proverbs, because they are used to reading absolute truths in the Bible.
A proverb is simply a general observation about the way life tends to go in most cases.
Before reading Proverbs, think about some modern-day proverbs.
That will remind you how a proverb is supposed to be interpreted.
no news = good news
crime doesn't pay
early bird gets the worm
a stitch in time saves nine
it takes $ to make $
picture is worth 1000 words
home is where the heart is
better safe than sorry
penny saved = a penny earned
fight fire with fire
good things come to those who wait
a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
Too many cooks spoil the pot
You should interpret biblical proverbs just like you interpret those – not as absolute statements.
In fact, sometimes the purpose of a proverb is to state the exact opposite of the truth to illustrate the foolishness of something.
all is fair in love and war
grass is greener on the other side
How Should Proverbs be used?
Remember, the wisdom process involves making determinations about probabilities.
So proverbs are very helpful in that, because they tell you the way life tends to go.
Example
25:16  If you find honey, eat just enough-too much of it, and you will vomit.
That’s the way life tends to go.
If you over-indulge in a good thing, it tends to have negative consequences.
Once that little piece of wisdom is so much a part of your outlook on life that it’s second nature, you will tend to have some restraint in the enjoyment of good things.
And even though you don’t know the future, when you make decisions based on things like that, your decisions will tend to be wise ones and have better results.
The point isn’t for you to run to your kitchen and throw away all the honey.
It’s a principle that will help you navigate through life in a wise way.
Pr.19:15  Laziness brings on deep sleep, and the shiftless man goes hungry.
Laziness makes life harder.
It has a paralyzing effect.
Once you have been lazy for a while, the decision to work hard is ten times harder.
As you go through life, if you have an acute awareness of the fact that laziness is dangerous, because it begins a downward spiral by sapping your energy…
, that will become a major factor in your decision-making.
(I had better not choose that option, because to do so would likely involve laziness, and then my whole life will become harder).
God has given us a treasure chest of wisdom.
Proverbs are so valuable.
Think of how much wisdom we have in this book – ever tried to write a proverb?
It took me a long time just to think of that list of about a dozen.
Solomon wrote 3000 (we have about a quarter of those in Sc.)
Application
The next step is to respond to the message (application).
I believe more errors occur in application than in interpretation.
It’s not uncommon for someone to do a flawless job interpreting a passage, but then apply it in an inappropriate way.

The passage doesn’t mean anything different for us than it meant for them, but the very fact that those things were said to them has implications for us.
And most error takes place at this stage.
It’s not uncommon for someone to do a flawless job interpreting a passage, but then apply it in an inappropriate way.
So many errors come on the other side of the “therefore.”  
Consider these three applications of the story of the man Jesus healed and then commanded not to tell anyone:
“Jesus commanded the man He had just healed not to tell anyone.
Therefore if God heals us we should never tell a soul.”
“Jesus commanded the man He had just healed not to tell anyone.
Therefore nothing.
That has no implication for us, because it was a unique situation.”
“Jesus commanded the man He had just healed not to tell anyone.
Therefore we should avoid trying to attract thrill-seekers, and, like Jesus, focus only on those who have an interest in spiritual things.”
All three interpretations are identical, but there are radically different applications.
When Peter and John confronted the lame man in Acts 3:6-8 he said, Then Peter said, "Silver or gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk." 7 Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. 8 He jumped to his feet and began to walk. Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping, and praising God.
Two preachers might interpret that passage exactly the same, and one might have this application: 
When the man was healed he walked, jumped and praised God.
Therefore we should walk, jump and praise God.
And the other might give this application: 
When the man was healed he walked, jumped and praised God.
That proves it was a miracle.
Therefore we should have full confidence in the Apostles’ doctrine, because they proved themselves to be from God.
The interpretations are the same, but the applications are different.

All study of Scripture should address the will.
All doctrine given in Scripture was meant by God to be applied to life.  
There is no message given by God that does not call for or imply the responsibility of the recipient to respond in some way.  
Keep that in mind if you are the type who is tempted to study just for the sake of increasing your knowledge.
Keep that in mind also if you are a teacher.
All teaching should address the will – don’t just dump information on people.
Your goal is to address the will.

Scripture holds each person is responsible to be righteous in seven areas:
Actions, which are to conform to what pleases God (Dt.6:18)
Words, which are also to conform to what pleases God (Eph.4:29, Mt.12:36)
Thoughts, which must be true (Mt.9:4) and virtuous (Lk.1:51). 
Will, which must be comprised of decisions that arise out of desire to conform to God’s will (Jn.8:29).
Motives, which must be such that the reason we do the things we do is to glorify God (Mt.5:16).
Affections, which must love God above all (Mt.22:35-40) and must love, hate, fear, rejoice in, be angered by, take seriously, take lightly, etc. the same things God loves, hates, etc.
Attitudes, which must be disposed or inclined toward the things of God (Mt.16:23).
Every passage in Scripture, either explicitly or implicitly calls for some response by the reader in at least one of these areas.  
So how do you know how to apply a principle?
2 Steps:
1) Discover the Principle
Everything in the Bible is included in the Bible for a reason.
Every passage teaches a principle.
Events are not reported just because they happened.
The things that are written, and the way they are written is all to teach a principle.
And until you discover the principle, you can’t apply the passage.
2) Determine the Implications 
I think people would do a much better job at application if they used the word “implication” instead.
The way to correctly apply a passage is to find the principle, and then ask, “What are the implications for me?”  
Two crucial ingredients for a good application
1) Accuracy 
If an application is not actually implied by the text, then it is an improper application. 
So here’s the accuracy test: “True or false: The writer could not have written this if this application were not valid.” 
Unless you can say that, the application is suspect.

For example, suppose someone were teaching Mt.18:20 For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them, and drew this application: “God is present any time 2 or 3 are gathered, and so there really isn’t any value in having gatherings larger than three.” 
That conclusion would be easy to disprove using other passages of Scripture, but could it be shown to be an incorrect application just from this passage alone? 
Let’s apply our test: True or False – Jesus could not have made that comment in Mt.18:20 unless if this application were not true? 
False. Jesus could have said that whether that application is true or not. 
The meaning of what Jesus was saying is simply that when the church discipline process is followed and verified on the testimony of the 2 or 3 witnesses…
, then the authority of Christ is behind the action of excommunication. 
That does not imply anything about the value or non-value of larger church meetings. 
(In fact, if anything it implies that there must be larger church meetings, otherwise who would the 2 or 3 give their testimony to? 
Clearly the church is seen here as a larger group than the 2 or 3.)

What is a valid application? 
How about this – “When you go to confront someone in the church discipline process, and you find yourself about to chicken out, thinking, “Who am I to confront this person? I’m a sinner too!” – don’t chicken out because you have the authority of Christ Himself behind you.” 
If we apply out test to that we find that it is a valid application, because if it were not true then Jesus could not have said what He said.
2) Relevance  

2 Tim.3:16  All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for … training in righteousness. 
If your passage is useful for training in righteousness but it isn’t immediately obvious how it’s useful, you have more work to do. 
Examples of proper and improper applications
Example #1
When Paul called upon Timothy to drink wine in 1 Tim.5:23 the meaning of the passage is that Timothy was to use wine in a medicinal way. 
Let’s apply the test to the following applications:
The use of medicine is appropriate and wise for the Christian – it is not a lack of faith.
A good strategy for evangelism is to go into bars, establish friendships, and share the gospel – even if that means spending time drinking with the person in order to establish the friendship.  
It is appropriate for a Christian to seek relief from suffering.
It is appropriate for a Christian to seek healing through natural means.
It is not wrong for a Christian to go to a party and drink, as long as he doesn’t get drunk. 
Believers should take reasonable care of their bodies when possible. 
God allows godly men to have frequent illnesses.
2 and 5 are invalid, because they did not pass the test (Paul could have said what he said to Timothy even if these were not true). 
The rest are valid, because Paul could not have said what he said if they were not true.
Example #2:
Ex 23:19 Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk. 
Cooking a goat in its mother’s milk was a pagan, superstitious practice.  
The meaning of the passage is that God did not want His people indulging in superstition or paganism.  
Some implications of that are as follows:
Superstitious rituals are not harmless; They are wrong.
God wants clear distinctions between His people and the world.
The general application, then, is that the reader should avoid superstition and separate himself from the world (in the world but not of the world).
A more specific application might be this: We should not be involved in ecumenical prayer events. 
And example of an invalid application would be: “It is sin to ever set foot in a place where occultic practices are held.”
Example #3:
Ps.33:4 the word of the LORD is right and true; he is faithful in all he does.

The correct meaning, or interpretation of this passage is that God’s Word leaves nothing out that should be included, includes nothing that should be left out, He never misleads by saying too much or too little. 
And His actions are always faithful as well. 
Nothing He does ever contradicts anything You has done before. 
His actions are always in perfect harmony with His words. 

Some implications of this are as follows:
We can trust His Word completely! We never have to use discernment or make any kind of judgment about whether what He has said is accurate or useful or anything other than perfect. 
Since our senses can deceive and His Word can’t, God’s Word is more trustworthy even than our own senses.  What God says is more true and more real than what we feel with our hands or see with our eyes or hear with our ears. 
The proper response to these truths is exuberant, energetic, music praise (from the context of the Psalm). 
The reader should respond, then, by finding a way to develop a manner of thinking that focuses on these truths about God such that they generate faith and exuberant joy.