Study With Perspective (Women of the Word Chapter 4-Jonah Intro)

Review

So, the past few weeks, we’ve gone through the first 3 chapters of Women of the Word. We started with an introduction, moved on to learn the things we get backward, and then talked about why Bible literacy is important. Last week, we covered how to Study with Purpose. So we started with the 2 things that we get wrong: The Bible is a book about God, and the heart cannot love what the mind does not know. We make the Bible a book about us, and we rely on our unreliable feelings to fuel our relationship with God. Yet, it is so important that we flip this script, because we have to take responsibility for our relationships with the Lord, we have to be able to disciple future generations of women that also need to study the Bible, and we need to be able to discern when we may be led astray by false teachers. If we do not know firsthand what the Bible says because we have read and understood it for ourselves, then we can be told that the Bible says whatever someone else wants it to say. Last week, we started talking about what it actually looks like to read the Bible for ourselves and understand it. We learned that the Big Story of the Bible, or the metanarrative, connects all of the smaller stories of the Bible. The metanarrative is the Purpose of us reading the Bible. The metanarrative is the story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. Creation tells us that God is our sovereign Creator. In Him and through Him all things were created; He created plants, animals, the physical world, angelic beings, and humankind. Nothing was created apart from Him. We see the echoes of that creation throughout all of Scripture; because He created it, He is sovereign over it. He has control over all things, and He wants what is best for all things. He desires that all things are “good,” and that humans are “very good.” But sin entered the world, and this creates the Fall. The Fall is sin, and sin consists of humans choosing what is wrong over what is right. We decide that we know better than God, or that God is withholding something good from us, or that we ought to be sovereign for whatever reason. Adam and Eve ate the fruit because they thought that God was withholding something good from them; they thought that they deserved the knowledge of good and evil. But when that knowledge entered the world through sin and the persuasion of the snake, the Devil, so did death. The consequence to sin is death. The good news is that with sin and death came the option of repentance and redemption. Jesus, the Son of God, became man. Since He was both fully God and fully man, He became the first and only human to live without sin. He lived and made choices, but he never chose to sin. Consequently, He did not need to die. Death is a consequence of sin, and he hadn’t sinned. Yet, He chose to die anyway. In doing so, He redeemed us. He traded in His life for ours. We don’t have to die for our sins because Jesus died. The story doesn’t end there, though, thankfully. Jesus rose from the dead. He defeated death, and with it, sin. In this defeat, He allows us to defeat death. He came back to life on earth and then ascended back to Heaven. He is now ruling over the world, as is His sovereign right. And, restoration is coming. He has promised to return one day and overthrow our fallen world. He will establish a new order with a new heavens and a new earth, with no sin, no death, and no pain. Hallelujah! Scripture reveals this cycle, this plan, with every single story that it tells. Each story may not reveal each part of the plan, but the Big Story, the metanarrative of Scripture is woven into every story some way some how. When we don’t look for it, we miss God’s promises about our brokenness. We looked last week and the metanarrative in Jonah. God controls creation, Jonah and Ninevah fall into sin, God offers redemption, and we are left yearning for the hope of restoration. Tonight, we will dive into the historical and cultural background of Jonah, but let’s start with our chapter from Women of the Word to understand why that’s important.

Study With Perspective

Jen discusses in this chapter how we move from putting a passage into the context of the metanarrative to putting it into the passage of the book it’s in. The same way we wouldn’t pick up a scene from Romeo & Juliet without first learning about Shakespeare, England at that time, whether it’s a comedy or tragedy, and starting at the beginning of the play, we shouldn’t do that with the Bible. We live in a context that’s bigger than what we write about. Shakespeare doesn’t explain English customs and cultural norms at the time of Tomeo and Juliet. He assumes his audience will understand his references. It takes humility on our part, because we have to admit that it takes work for us to understand the Bible. We want to just pick it up, read it, and understand it. But it doesn’t work that way. The Bible is written for us in our time, but it was first written for them in their time. It is living and active, but it was also authored by a human living in a particular context. Jen encourages us to become archeologists. Now, in a lot of respects, this should be easy. A lot of this work has been done for us. We have the world at our fingertips online. All we have to do is open our study Bible, or do a quick Google search. I would recommend that you consult more than one study Bible for the sake of disagreements, but this should still be very accessible. (talk about how to choose study Bibles & find sermons or podcasts)

God could have chosen to communicate with us any way, but He chose a book (Dr. Prior- explain). We need to treat the Bible like a book

5 Questions

Who wrote it? Tells us why it’s written in a certain way, and tells us the credibility of the text. God chose a particular person to write it, so we should understand who that is and why. Think about being in high school and having a cute boy hand you a note. But, when you read it, you realize it’s from his super weird friend. It changes the meaning of the note!

When was it written? This gives us proper historical context and helps us know where a passage falls in the metanarrative. It tells us about the author’s assumptions in the text. A British person writing in America is going to make very different assumptions before the Revolutionary War as opposed to after, for example

To whom was it written? The audience is important to know before we try to apply it to ourselves. “The message of the Bible transcends its original audience, but it cannot be severed from its original audience.”

In what style was it written? Last week’s example was of not looking for superman in a historical fiction novel, and not looking for George Washington in a comic book. Different genres carry different assumptions about language. Jen outlines the different genres: historical narrative is a factual retelling, parables and storytelling teach a point, law give guidelines for a government, poetry is full of symbolism and metaphors, wisdom literature gives principles (not promises- explain), and prophecy speaks in symbolic language about things to come.

Why was it written? We learn this from major themes and repeated ideas. It could be to encourage, or to admonish (explain the difference) It could be to record, or to instruct (explain the difference)

Finding Answers

So, how do we find the answers to these questions? A reliable study Bible (talk about good versions). We should write out these answers. We can look them up in a commentary as well (tell them how). Compare answers (tell them why)

Jonah Background

Let’s apply this method to Jonah! Hopefully, you found the basic answers to it this week. I’m going to do a quick overview of the basic answers, then I’ll get into each one more in-depth (go through basic answers)

Jonah is 48 verses long and the 5th of the minor prophets. The format and content are more like Kings (historical books) than the other prophets, even though it starts like the other minor prophet books. Jonah was prophet from Gath Hepher in Zebulon, which will become important in the next few weeks when we start looking at maps. During the time of Jonah, Israel was being tormented by Syrians because of their sins. This was during the reign of a king named Jeroboam II. Israel ends up being successful because of God’s mercy and compassion on them; not because they turned from their sins (read 2 Kings 13:1-6, 2 Kings 13:11. 2 Kings 13:22-25, and 2 Kings 14:23-27). The Assyrians, on the other hand, which is where Ninevah was, had just experienced a Golden Age from about 883-826. There was a rebellion within their nation in 826 that took 6 years to get under control, but it started a 70 year decline for the nation. They began to prosper again from about 745-726 under new leadership. Jonah was there in approximately 760, so it would have been about 15 years before this prosperous time. While Jonah was there, they weren’t engaging in international campaigns because they were facing the domestic uprisings I mentioned earlier. There was also a 7 year famine and a solar eclipse right around this time, so all of these things would have primed the Ninevites to receive Jonah’s message (explain why). Assyria became responsible for the destruction of Israel in 724 when they took over Samaria (the capital of Israel). Their goal was “total conquest” and deportation, so this is what led to the Assyrian exile

There is basically no controversy surrounding who wrote the book, because we have no idea. The same is true of the third question, to whom was it written, because everyone basically agrees it aligns with the other minor prophets in that way. It was written to the nation of Israel (explain how that was the Church)

When was it written has been hotly debated (explain). Along the same lines, there has been some debate about the psalm of Jonah in the second chapter while he’s in the belly of the fish. (explain arguments either way)

In what style is also controversial (start with why not allegory, then talk about satire, then about historical narrative/didactic history)

What was the author’s purpose? Discuss major themes in the book (10 total)

Conclusion

As we read through Jonah this week going forward, we will be looking for these themes and ideas. It’s a turn from the usual focus on the fish, but the big fish is only three verses of the book :) This week, read all of Jonah in a new version. Note these major themes. Also read the next chapter of Women of the Word Chapter 5: Study with Patience