Interpreting Stories With the Best Story

Part 4 in a 4 part series. View series intro and index.

The world is full of stories. Romantic stories. Dramatic stories. Sports stories. Horror stories. Adventure stories. Fantasy stories. We tell stories because we are created in God’s image. God is the divine storyteller, so it only makes sense that we would mimic him in our telling, writing, and acting stories.

If this is true–that we are reflections of God’s creative genius, which naturally expresses itself in storytelling–then every story outside of the Bible even relates to the gospel message, the climax of God’s redemptive story. You might say, “Can’t a story just be good in itself?” Maybe, but ultimately we will ask ourselves why we love victories in the face of affliction; why we long for protagonists who squish the antagonist; and why we always want a happy ending.

When we ask these questions and more, we start to realize that the fact is not simply that we love stories, but rather that we need stories. We need stories to understand how life works. We need stories to understand why we are the way we are. We need stories to understand why the world is the way it is. We need stories to understand what it takes to be rescued. This insight helps us realize that there aren’t “secular” and “Christian” stories. If God is the ultimate storyteller, then every story is a footnote in his grand, redemptive story told in the Bible.

Every story can be redeemed, even “bad” stories about rape, murder, hatred, and sexual immorality. Those stories–perhaps more than others–make us long for Hero who never fails and never forgets and never injures and never does injustice and never speaks foolishly. What about stories that seem to give false hope by neatly wrapping up everything in 90 minutes or 300 pages? Don’t those stories make us say, “I wish that were true”? Those stories make us long for Someone who will one day wrap everything up and judge the world with equity.

Great stories touch our heart and change us. They don’t change us because they give us a list of rules to follow. No one loves a story that says, “Be a nice sibling.” No, stories change us because (nearly always) some hero captivates and conquers our hearts. That is what the Bible is about. As Sally Lloyd-Jones has written, “When we drill a Bible story down into a moral lesson, we make it all about us. But the Bible isn’t mainly about us, and what we are supposed to be doing—it’s about God, and what he has done!”

The Bible is God’s magnificent story. Every other story–fanciful or true–is oriented to and grounded in it. Our stories point to the gospel story, which makes possible the dream we never thought could come true: one Hero who has accomplished final victory for us and promised eternal happiness to us. Once we get this, the “footnotes” of daily life that we read, hear, see, and experience will remind us of the infinite treasures of God’s kindness to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Here are several resources to help you learn how to read the Bible contextually and with a gospel-centered lens. These will also help you to think critically about so-called “secular” stories.

Children’s Books

• The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones
• The Big Picture Bible by David Helm

Adult Books

• God’s Big Picture by Vaughan Roberts
• How to Read the Bible Through the Jesus Lens by Michael Williams
• Gospel and Kingdom (in The Goldsworthy Trilogy) by Graeme Goldsworthy
• Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament by Christopher Wright

Other

• “Questions to Ask of Films” by John Frame [This can be adapted to help understand all kinds of stories.]

Is a Sermon Incomplete Without Application?

This is not just a post for preachers. It’s for anyone who takes the Bible seriously. So many of us sit in the pews (or chairs) on Sundays waiting for the “most important” part of the sermon: the application. It’s so important that many preachers and many congregants think that unless a sermon gives you a “to do” list, it is incomplete. The problem, of course, is that Christianity is not a “go and do” religion. There are obviously exhortations and commands to follow, and some sermons need to say, “You just need to do this if you are a Christian.” Paul did this (see Eph. 4). However, those are rooted in our new identity. The Christian life is a fight to always “become what we already are in Christ.”

Sidney Greidanus is an author and former professor and in a lecture he talked about looking at the goal of the human author in the Bible. If the author’s intention wasn’t to get people to “do something,” we have to be okay with that. Much of the Bible, after all, is simply trying to get people to believe and trust in Someone. Greidanus writes:

Even today, I know of quite a few preachers who don’t think the sermon is complete unless they can tell the congregation to do something. Now think about that…at the end, the application is that you have to “do something.” I always work with, “What is the goal of the author?” And the goal of the author is sometimes just to teach something. Well, can we be satisfied with that? [For example] can we just teach the sovereignty of God? Isn’t that enough?

It needs to be enough. In our sermons, in our quiet times, and in our Bible studies, we can’t always try to find something to do. This can get very dangerous. When Jesus was on earth, people asked him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus responded not with a list of five things to make life simpler or loving people easier. Instead he told them the one thing that takes all doing out of the equation: “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” (John 6:28-29).

As it has been said before, when God’s grace causes you to realize that you don’t need to do anything, because Jesus has done it all for you, it makes you want to do everything. Believe, and ask God to believe it deeply. Then, you will find something to do. I promise.

How Not to Read the Bible

Part 4 in a 10 part series. View series intro and index.

We are taking a step backwards a bit in our Gospel-Centered Devotions series. Before I get to how to keep Christ at the center of the New Testament (part 8), I want to briefly walk through some unchristian ways to read the Bible.

We learn how to read the Bible from the spiritual “experts” in our lives (usually the three “P’s”: pastors, professors, parents). People especially read the Bible the same way it is preached to them. These unchristian ways to read the Bible run rampant in pulpits all across America and usually leak their ways into small group Bible studies and children’s ministries as well (see my other series going on right now). With God’s help, we can “undo” wrong ways of reading to transform our devotional times. Without further adieu, here are a handful of unchristian ways to read the Bible.

• Moralism. You read the Bible to find morals and ethics to obey to get God in your debt. If you obey, God loves you. If you don’t obey, he doesn’t love you. When you fail, you need to try harder to ratchet up the obedience. You fail to see that your true problem is identity (sinner), not actions (sins).
• Self-Helpism. You read the Bible to find examples of how you can help yourself be a better person. You fail to see your natural inclination to resist obeying God by thinking  with the right tips you can achieve the absolute holiness God requires.
• Mysticism. You read the Bible expecting an emotional awakening from the Holy Spirit. You want goosebumps and chills and an “inner feeling” that God is with you. You fail to recognize that the objective aspect of Christianity (the gospel event of Jesus life, death, and resurrection) is your only foundation for the subjective aspect (what the Holy Spirit is doing/can do in your life now).
• Activism. You read the Bible to find justifications for corporate “kingdom work” like recycling, planting trees, starting homeless shelters, and other “causes.” These are good things, but you fail to recognize the personal work of the King as the foundation for all societal action.
• Road Map for Life. You read the Bible only when life gets tough and you need a pick-me-up. You want a fortune cookie saying, so you fail to read the Bible in context and often apply passages to your life that have nothing to do with 21st century Americans.

There are also unchristian motivations to read the Bible. These are straightforward enough, but at least deserve a mention:

• Legalism: You read the Bible in order to get right with God.
• Obligation: You read the Bible to appease your own guilt.
• Self-competence: You read the Bible to gain theological knowledge.
• Self-righteousness/Judgmentalism: You read the Bible to feel good about your self-worth. You read the Bible to have a hammer to swing at others.

We are guilty of all these on some level or another. We must repent and “unlearn” what others have taught us and, indeed, what our sinful nature wants. Jesus even died to bring us hermeneutical (interpretive) salvation! The Bible is God’s self-revelation to us so that we might taste and see he is good as we gaze upon his Son, who is God’s glory and the exact representation of God’s nature (Heb. 1:3). Let’s read it as such.

Give Them Jesus, Not Morality

Part 3 in a 4 part series. View series intro and index.

If the whole Bible is about Jesus, then we must relate every Bible story, every character study, every thematic lesson to the person and work of Jesus. Also, we must present each story within the proper context in the drama of redemption. This is not “heavy theology,” so long as it is explained at an appropriate level. In fact, I believe that the earlier kids hear this “heavy theology” the sooner it will take root in their hearts, by God’s grace. Introducing this kind of teaching to a child when they are teenagers, after a decade or so of moralistic teaching, will not do them any good. We must start as soon as they are able to understand our speech and speak back to us (and even before).

Let’s look at three common children’s lessons, how they are usually taught, and how they should be taught.

Noah’s Ark
A quick Google search led me to a children’s lesson about Noah with this take away: “Noah was an obedient man. God saved Noah.” Another said, “Noah loved and obeyed God even when no one else would.” The problem with that is Genesis 6:5: every intention of the thoughts of human beings was evil all the time. The good news is Genesis 6:8: “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” Noah didn’t earn favor. He found it. God was gracious to Noah. In Genesis 9:21, we meet Noah in a drunken, naked stupor. He was not an obedient man. Even after salvation, Noah had problems.

Hebrews 11 says that Noah had faith in God to save him from the pending flood. Did that bring about obedience? I’m sure it did, but he only inherited righteousness by repentance and faith, not obedience (v. 7). The story of Noah is not about being obedient (otherwise we would all open up a zoo inside a large wooden ship). It demonstrates God saving the human race and thus preserving the woman’s seed (Gen. 3:15) so that the promised offspring would come to crush the serpent. Through Shem (Noah’s son, who was in the ark with him) came Abraham. Through Abraham came Isaac, Jacob, and eventually Jesus. Ultimately, our faith must be in Jesus, as Noah’s was. Only through faith in Jesus are we delivered from the flood of God’s wrath to come (1 Thess. 1:10).

David and Goliath
Here’s how this lesson usually goes: David had the courage to defeat a giant. What giants are in your life? What will you use (Bible study, prayer, evangelism, etc.) to kill the giant? The story is actually about an underdog shepherd, the anointed-king-in-waiting, who wins a victory for a cowardly people who are too afraid to fight (and indeed incapable of doing so). The point of the story is “victory by representation.” We are the cowardly Israelites who cannot and will not fight. The forces of evil against us and within us are Goliath. Jesus is the Greater David who represents us and wins for us victory over sin, death, hell, and Satan. He is the underdog, anointed Shepherd-King who never failed like David did (see: sleeping with Bathsheba and killing Uriah). Rather, he is the perfect King who wins for us an eternal victory over all our enemies. Only when we put our faith in this King will we be able to conquer the much smaller enemies in our daily lives.

The Golden Rule
Some people sum up the basis of Christianity in the Golden Rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself. If you do this, God will bless you. If not, God will not love you.” What’s the problem? The gospel is about what God has done for us in his Son. The gospel is not “go love your neighbor.”

The Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) is set against the backdrop of Jesus introducing himself as the Messiah of Israel, but also to the Gentiles (Matt. 4:12-17). The point of Matthew 5-7 is to pull the rug out from underneath Jews who want to gain acceptance from God through law-keeping. The Sermon, certainly, expresses what true kingdom living looks like and we should pursue these exhortations. True disciples do what Jesus taught (Matt. 28:19-20). But remember Jesus’ appeal: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). The point? No one is perfect. But there is one who is. And he is the one who said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). He is the kingdom, in the flesh and he has come to bring all those who believe in him into the kingdom. God accepts us as his children because he accepts Jesus as his true Son (Matt. 3:13-17). Jesus vicariously does this for us in his obedient life and sacrificial death. Therefore, we are now free to obey out of gratitude and because we are already kingdom citizens. At the same time, we know that when we fail, we can turn (i.e. repent) to God from our attempt to gain our own acceptance by works (whether by making our own rules or self-righteously trying to keep God’s).

The Sermon ends with a series of four “two options” stories (7:13-27): two roads, two trees, two disciples, two houses. The point of these sections is that we must put our hope in Jesus, not ourselves. You are either for Jesus or against Jesus.

The Common Thread
I hope these three examples will help you as your teach your children the Bible story. Please do not underestimate your children’s mind! They can handle more theologically heavy issues than you think. It may seem impossible at first, but go light and increase as necessary. It will help them when they are teenagers–trust me.

The common thread in these examples is three-fold: First, a moral is not taught, a story is told. Good stories always instruct. Second, context is not thrown out the window. Each context is recognized and appreciated. Contextualizing stories will help children see the big story of the Bible instead of using the Bible as a grab-bag of pointless trivia. Third, Jesus is the focus, and since he is the only hope for your kids (and you!), that is the most important thing. Practice reading and studying the Bible with these things in mind and it will transform the way you teach the Bible to your kids.

In the final post, I’ll talk about interweaving the gospel story with non-biblical stories. I will also recommend some resources to help yourself and your kids learn to read the Bible this way.

God Loves His Little Pharisees and Prodigals

Part 2 in a 4 part series. View series intro and index.

In my last post, I made the point that in raising children and teaching them the Bible, the goal is not to make them nice kids who obey the rules. All people, including our children, are sinners who need a Redeemer who will rescue and deliver them from God’s wrath. No amount of rule keeping will make us right with God. If we truly believe that, it should drastically alter the way we raise our kids and instruct them at home and in church.

At the risk of over-generalization, most kids probably fall into two categories. On one hand, we have law-keeping Lewis. He is a good boy who loves always doing what Mommy and Daddy tell him to do. He stands a little taller when he obeys, especially when his sister does not. Speaking of his sister, she’s rule-breaking Rachel. Rachel knows that she can’t stack up to Lewis, so she makes her own rules. She cheats during games, shirks her chores, and scowls at Lewis for always being Mom’s favorite.

Does this sound familiar? The parable of the two sons in Luke 15:11-32 might ring a bell. The point is not mainly that Rachel (the younger brother in the parable) is an awful, sinful child. Likewise, the point is not mainly that Lewis (the elder brother in the parable) is a proud, self-righteous child. The main point is that God offers grace and redemption to both of them because both need it. You might give Lewis five gold stars for minding manners and doing chores, but you and I both know his heart is just as crooked as Rachel’s. If we are content with Lewis’ “obedience,” calling him a “good boy” and Rachel a “bad girl,” we end up raising a legalistic person who thinks they are accepted by God because of their merit, and Rachel learns this false theology in the process.

Now we can see why turning a Bible story into a moral lesson is dangerous. The apostle Paul thought he was the most moral man in the world, yet it amounted to garbage (Phil. 3:1-11). God does not require morality. The law was given to show our sin (Rom. 3:20). And the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-8)–which includes the “golden rule”–was given by Jesus to pull the rug out from under the Pharisees who though the law was only about the letter and not the heart. God demands perfect obedience, including motive and intention. Only Jesus provides that (see Phil. 2:8; Rom. 5:18; 2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 3:9). Perfect obedience is something neither Lewis nor Rachel can accomplish on their own.

Jesus’ perfect righteousness establishes our goodness before God, and our motivation for holy living. As Elyse Fitzpatrick writes in Give Them Grace:

Raising good kids is utterly impossible unless they are drawn by the Holy Spirit to put their faith in the goodness of another. You cannot raise good kids, because you’re not a good parent. There is only one good Parent, and he had one good Son. Together, this Father and Son accomplished everything that needed to be done to rescue us and our children from certain destruction. When we put our faith in him, he bestows the benediction upon us: ‘These are my beloved children, with whom I am well pleased’ (see Matt. 3:17)” (p. 50).

What do we as parents put our hope in then? The grace of God in the person and work of Jesus Christ for us! You might say, “That’s hard! My kids will go haywire if they hear about grace!” Really? Have you gone haywire because of God’s grace? If so, you don’t understand grace. I have heard it said before and I agree: I have never met a person who has been so captivated by God’s grace that they feel they have license to do whatever they want.

How does this all play out in children’s Bible lessons? We’ll tackle that in the next post.

Telling Our Kids the Best Story (Part 1)

Series Index:

1. Telling Our Kids the Best Story
2. God Loves His Little Pharisees and Prodigals
3. Give Them Jesus, Not Morality
4. Interpreting Stories With the Best Story

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Part 1 in a 4 part series. View series intro and index.

The whole Bible is about Jesus. I say that a lot on this blog. Probably in every post, one way or another. I say it so much so that I wonder if people get bored. Oh yeah, here comes the Jesus card again. What could be more exciting than the preeminent and all-satisfying Treasure of the universe? The challenge, then, is to be creative and fresh in pointing to Christ while still remaining biblical. We don’t want to allegorize or make an unwarranted connection. This takes hard work, but it’s possible.

This is necessary, of course, for preaching, teaching, and writing blogs. But it is also vital for children’s education. In fact, if we want our children to embrace the gospel and be salt and light in the world, we must make Christ the sum and focus of all our instruction.

If you have been around the church for any amount of time, the running joke is that the Sunday school answer is always “Jesus” to any given question. Despite this, many children’s ministries and Christian parents forget that, in fact, Jesus is the final answer for the Bible stories and spiritual lessons we teach our children.

The average children’s curriculum at an evangelical church is filled with Old Testament character studies or Jesus’ parables. A particular passage is read or the story is paraphrased, only to end with a line on how to be nice or kind or not lie. The point is clear: be more moral because that is what God wants! When we do this, little separates God’s self-revelation from Aesop’s Fables.

The goal of raising children and instructing them is not get them to be more moral. Our children are monsters on the inside from conception. They don’t learn to sin. They come out of the womb primed and ready, and they cannot learn to not sin. Our children, like us, are broken mirrors that need to be put back together in order to reflect his image. This cannot happen unless Jesus, the true image of God, is seen and embraced as the only Redeemer.

For the most part, children’s devotions remove a particular story of the from its redemptive-historical setting. This simply means that two things are being neglected: 1) the story’s original place along the timeline of history in God’s dealings with Israel, and 2) how the story testifies to the person and work of Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment of all God’s dealings with Israel. You might respond, “Kids can’t understand this ‘theology’! But they can understand they aren’t supposed to lie!” I disagree. Kids are captivated by good stories, and good theology tells the best story.

When we reduce our gospel story to a moral lesson we are not helping our kids. That will only make them self-righteous little Pharisees. Even Jesus condemned the Pharisees for reading the Old Testament to find rules to follow (John 5:29; Matt. 23:1-39). Wouldn’t it be so much more glorious to tell our kids how the Bible is really one story with one Hero who has done for us all the things we are incapable of accomplishing for ourselves?

What Happened to Pharaoh’s Heart?

I love the Bible because it does not argue in theological categories. When it comes to God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility, it is black and white. The truth is, the Bible makes it clear that man is free and has the ability to choose. At the same time, the Bible is unmistakably clear God is sovereign. If he were not, he would not be “God.”

In this wrestling match, somebody’s freedom has to be contingent on another. Do you want to be the one to say that God’s freedom is contingent upon yours? I don’t think so.

One example of how this plays out is in the life of Pharaoh during the plagues in Egypt. The first mention of Pharaoh’s heart being hardened is in Exodus 4:21. There it says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart before Pharaoh did it to himself.

It is sinful and wrong for Pharaoh to harden his heart against God. Furthermore, it would wrong for him (if it were even possible) to harden another human’s heart. Yet, here is God, doing what would be sinful for Pharaoh to do on his own. In fact, Exodus says Pharaoh’s heart was hardened 18 times. Nine of those times, it was Yahweh’s doing (4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8). Six times it is simply stated as a fact that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, not attributing the hardening to anyone in particular (7:13, 14, 22; 8:19; 9:7, 35). Only three times is Pharaoh credited with hardening his own heart (8:15, 32; 9:34).

This episode clearly shows that God is free in the absolute sense, and Pharaoh is free because he, in fact, did what he wanted to do. In his Freedom of the Will, Jonathan Edwards argues we should think of freedom this way: we are free because we do what we want. In the final analysis, we do what is sinful. Before salvation sin is all we really want to do anyway.

So it is clear that Pharaoh’s freedom was contingent upon the freedom of another, namely God. Lest we shout, “Not fair!” we must remember that God is not a man and we cannot project what we think is appropriate for man upon the all-wise, all-loving, omnipotent, and omniscient Creator God. For his ways are inscrutable (Rom. 11:33). As Edward writes, God is far above “the influence of law or command, promises or threatening, rewards or punishments, counsels or warnings.”[1]

This shouldn’t leave us feeling hopeless or like programmed robots or predetermined cyborgs. It should cause us to cast ourselves upon the grace of God in the cross of Christ, acknowledging our complete lack of ability to do any good. Only then will we really be free to do what God commands, for it was for freedom that Christ set us free to actually pursue holiness (Gal. 5:1).

The one who hardens hearts is also the one who softens hearts so that we might live a soft-heart kind of life. Therefore, let us pray pray as St. Augustine prayed: “Command us to do as you will, O Lord, and will us to do what you command.”

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[1] Jonathan Edwards, “Concerning the Notion of Liberty, and of Moral Agency,” Freedom of the Will, (accessed February 29, 2012), paragraph 9.