Observe Genre

Recap last week

- Where does truth come from? Turh comes from scripture, our job is to discover. So every time we come to scripture we are on a journey to discover truth. We are coming before the bible with the humility and conviction that I am wrong and God is right. This will allow us to properly discover truth without our agenda, opinions getting in the way.

So as we walk through this semester at man challenge our hope is to equip you with tools to help you in your journey to discover truth. Just like if you were a treasure hunter, you would have all kinds of tools to help you in various situations so that you could uncover the treasure. Sometimes you would use certain tools, others times you would leave those tools out. The questions this morning becomes, how do we know when to use which tools?

- Treasure hunter, how do I know when to use a shovel and go deep? How do I know when to use a chisel and be delicate? A leaf blower compared to a soft breath.

The main way we do this with scripture is understanding the genre we are reading. The genre of the passage and book we are reading will determine what tools we will want to take out of our tool belt, will determine what questions we can be asking of the text.

Great example of this is a newspaper.

- If you were to pick up a newspaper and it said ”The market crashed”. What comes to your mind? Does this mean that the super market down the street somehow crashed into Walmart? What market is it talking about, the fish market? What does it mean by crash?

- But these are silly questions to ask because most of this room would immediately go to he must be reading from the money section and it is talking about the stock market prices falling.

- What about the Marlins beat the white sox 10-2, what? The marlins beat some white sox? How did marlins beat up sox? Did they go 12 rounds?

Point – Depending on what we are reading, we read it differently. The same is true with the bible. This is where Genre comes into play

§ Axiom #13: A genre is a type of literature with the rules that govern its interpretation

- Authors used different genres to communicate what they want. CS. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia, that is a fictional story but has profound true theological messages embeded in it.

- Professor – “THERE IS NO BIBLICAL LITERARY GENRE there are literary genres in the bible”

o Now, I am not saying the Bible is fictional, I am not comparing the bible to Chronicles of Narnia or some fairytale. Remember we already covered last week that Truth is within scripture, it is the word of God, it is truth.

o But as one scholar says – “ Not every portion of the Bible tells the Truth in the same way and we need to be sensitive to that.”

§ Truth can be communicated in different ways.

The three main Genres of the bible are Narrative (story), Poetry, and Discourse (or letters)

Now, I am going to run through this quickly because I just want to make you aware of them. If you are sensitive to what genre you are reading, it will help you to know what questions to ask of the text. It will help you in using those questions at your table.

Narrative – Historical Narrative and Fictional Narrative

- Historical narrative is actual events coming in the form of story conveying true things

- Good example of fictional narrative is the parables that Jesus told. They were not true stories that actually happened, they were parables, but those parables still communiciate truth.

Poetry – defined by one professor as “Interpretive presentation of human experience in artistic form. It typically seeks to elicit and emotive response.”

- For the most part, the goal of poetry is to evoke emotion. Poetry wants to help you enter into the story, to feel what the author, God, or the people are feeling. This is where the psalms are a big piece of this.

Letters – Letters are actually letters written to people or groups. So for the book of Ephesians, this is a letter written to a group of people. A good way to think about this is that you are reading someone else’s mail. Therefor we are only hearing one side of the conversation. This is why letters can be so tough at times but also really practical and simple to walk through. Because majority of the time they are meant to be really applicable for the people they are writing to.

Ephesians 2:1-10 – Observe Genre

Sermon Series not who you are

- Simple flow of thought in ephesians. Begins with walking in the way of flesh and closes with walking in this new way of living. This whole section is one big contrast.

2:1-2 “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience…”

2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Open the Bible, say where are we, realize it, then move forward

§ Personal – we should cover narrative and epistles. We are going through the epistles and majority of the Bible is narrative.

Questions to focus on

- What metaphors or word pictures are being used?

- What information does the text want me to have? Facts, clear cut

- What comparisons or differences are being highlighted?

- What ideas or concepts are repeated?

Reading 135-173 – It is not in order from last week so sorry about that