Rules for Interpreting Historical Narratives | Rapp Report Weekly Wrap-up 0004 | Striving for Eternity

Welcome to The Wrap Up Daily Edition, where we provide a quick Biblical interpretations and applications. This is a ministry of striving for eternity.

As we wrap up this week, I want to give you all of the episodes from The Daily Report in one episode so that you have it all together. It also acts as a refresher for you, even though we try to go back with each episode and give you a recap so that it reinforces the principles we're trying to teach you.

Principles for Interpreting Historical Narratives

But we wanted to start a series that will continue into next week, where we want to give principles of interpretation, and this week we focused on one style of literature called historical narratives.

And we focused here because this is one that is most often abused. You're going to hear that throughout. So I hope you enjoy this week's wrap up. One of the most important things for a Christian is to rightly handle God's Word.

This is essential because any group, whether it be a cult or atheist or anyone that is going to come after and attack Christianity, they have one thing in common. They will all misrepresent and mishandle God's Word.

They will not interpret it following the proper rules of interpretation. Paul gives this encouragement to Timothy as he was encouraging him to study God's Word so that he would be sound in doctrine and teaching others sound doctrine.

Paul says in 2 Timothy 2 .15, Do your best to present yourselves to God as one approved, a worker, who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the Word of Truth. And that's something that should be our goal.

We should have a goal to be standing approved before God, rightly handling His Word so we have no shame. When cultic groups or atheists want to come and attack us, we need to be able to handle God's Word rightly.

When we have troubles and trials and sins that enter our life, we need to rightly handle God's Word to be able to live sound in faith. And the first principle that I want us to take time this week to look at is identification.

We need to identify what type of literature we are dealing with. There's several types of literature in the Bible and each one of them have different rules. There's historical narrative, there's poetic literature, there's wisdom literature, there's prophecy, and there's instruction.

And each one of those have different rules and this week we're going to take a look at those different rules and how to interpret them. As we said yesterday, that one of the most important things to interpreting the Bible is to identify the different type of genre or style of literature you're dealing with.

Historical Narrative Does Not Directly Teach Doctrine

This becomes very important because each one of these different genres will have different rules. The first one that I'd like to deal with is historical narrative. And the reason being is this is one that is most often misrepresented, misinterpreted.

And this is one that we have to be careful with. You will find that almost every cultic group will love to focus on Old Testament historical narratives to build their doctrines. And that is the worst thing you could do because historical narratives are not trying to teach you some instruction all the time.

What they're doing is accurately reporting what actually happened in history. And many times people make a mistake of taking something that just because it's in the Bible and saying, well, if it's in the Bible, then it must mean that God says we should continue doing such a thing.

And they try to make a doctrine based on that. In other words, just because David had many wives or Solomon had many wives does not mean you should have many wives. It could mean that they were in sin.

That's right. Just because the Bible doesn't say that they are in sin doesn't mean that they weren't. And this is going to be a thing we want to pick up tomorrow because this is an important issue that must be thought through when we deal with any historical narrative type of literature in the Bible.

Reading Narratives as Accurate History, Not Hidden Allegory

As we looked at yesterday, we started to identify historical narratives. And this is one of those type of literatures that we see in the Bible that people most often misrepresent. And what they will do more often than not, mostly by cultic groups, by the way, is that they will take a historical narrative and they will try to get it to teach a doctrine.

The first principle when you come to a historical narrative is to recognize the fact that historical narratives do not directly teach doctrine. That's not the design that they have. They are not for the purpose of giving instruction, but they are for the purpose of recording things that actually happened.

So when we see things in Scripture, we have to look to say, is this a historical narrative and what specifically is it trying to teach? Because sometimes it's trying just to report what actually happened.

So narratives do not always record what should happen. They simply record what did happen. So the Bible is 100 accurate when it records what did happen. But we have to realize that just because it happened, doesn't mean God gives approval to it.

This is a very important thing when you come to historical narratives, and this is a thing that many people get wrong. So we're going to continue with historical narratives tomorrow, but I want to focus in on this, is when you come to a historical narrative, don't try to make it say more than it actually says.

Look at what it says and know that that is an accurate history being recorded. As we've been looking this week, starting to investigate how to interpret the Bible, we start with historical narratives, and we want to spend a lot of time on this one specifically because it is so often misrepresented and abused.

One of the things we see and have looked at already is the fact that many people try to use historical narratives to teach doctrine. And the first principle we saw when interpreting a historical narrative is that it does not directly teach doctrine.

It records what did happen, not what should happen. And therefore we have to remember that narratives do not always include a statement of whether the event is good or bad. So without a statement of God condemning or commending the behavior, we don't know whether it is something that's recorded and we should follow, recorded and we should avoid, or just record it.

When we see Laban basically tricking Jacob into marrying the older daughter before the younger, is that a practice that we should follow? Should fathers be tricking their future son-in-laws just because Laban did that?

Well, actually the Bible doesn't say specifically whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. But what it does accurately record is what actually happened historically. So when we look at that, we see what did happen.

When we see David or Solomon or anyone else having multiple wives, does that mean that God says we should do it? Well, we see that God makes it clear that he planned one man and one woman. And so we have to look at other principles sometimes to better understand the narrative.

Historical Narratives Are Not Allegories With Secret Meanings

As we continue to look at the methods of interpreting God's Word, we are spending this week looking at historical narratives. And we've been addressing this one because of so much abuse that happens with it.

One of the things we were going over is the rules specifically for this style of literature. We said that when we look at historical narratives, we must remember that they don't directly teach doctrine.

They could sometimes, but that is not always their purpose. We saw that historical narratives record what did actually happen, not what should happen. We saw that historical narratives don't always include a statement of whether something is good or bad, whether it should be practiced or avoided.

We also must understand that historical narratives are not allegories with hidden meanings. And this is something you see people doing often. They try to look for some secret meaning within the historical narrative, as if it had to have some special spiritual purpose that has special meaning to people.

So you'll have someone like Joseph Smith seeing reference to two sticks, that the scriptures tell us that these two branches are the two branches of the Israelites, and yet they will take that and say, well, that's the Bible and the Book of Mormon.

They give it a hidden meaning that had no understanding for thousands of years. This is something that you'll see them do. And so we must realize that it doesn't have some secret meaning. It also to be understood that these stories are about God first and foremost, and that's the purpose of a historical narrative.