What’s The Point | Biblical Genres and Apocalyptic Literature - Hebrews 4:11-13 | September 1

PSALM 19 (NLT)

“1 The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. 2 Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. 3 They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. 4 Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. God has made a home in the heavens for the sun. 5 It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding. It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race. 6 The sun rises at one end of the heavens and follows its course to the other end. Nothing can hide from its heat.

7 The instructions of the Lord are perfect, reviving the soul. The decrees of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. 8 The commandments of the Lord are right, bringing joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are clear, giving insight for living. 9 Reverence for the Lord is pure, lasting forever. The laws of the Lord are true; each one is fair. 10 They are more desirable than gold, even the finest gold. They are sweeter than honey, even honey dripping from the comb. 11 They are a warning to your servant, a great reward for those who obey them.

12 How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults. 13 Keep your servant from deliberate sins! Don’t let them control me. Then I will be free of guilt and innocent of great sin. 14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

Beautiful Words!

Tell me, what is this Psalm about?

Perhaps you see it as a celebration of God’s word. We are currently going through a series about the Word of God, addressing how to read the Bible and the way that it shapes us in profound ways as we seek God through His revelation. These are the family stories of Jesus which shaped His life and the world that He lived in. And they’re our family stories as well, shaping us into His image.

You would be correct in your assessment. These are stories about God. He is the Hero – not us. He is the main character – not us. It’s all about Him – not us. The laws of the Lord are true. They are wisdom that gives insight for living. They cut to the depths of the heart and reveal the truth of what’s there.

This revelation of His word goes out and it reaches out to everyone, just as the sun rises every day to shine its light upon all the earth.

But what else is this psalm about?

How about the first six verses?

So, the second half focuses on God’s revelation of Himself through His word. The first half, then, focuses on the way in which God has revealed Himself to the world through His creation.

“The heavens declare the glory of God!”

It’s about creation. It’s about how the details of creation serve as evidence for God’s existence, His power, and His great design. It is all evidence of God’s majesty.

In a fashion, it’s a creation account, is it not? In its own way it’s telling the story of creation.

“God has made a home in the heavens for the sun. 5 It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding. It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race.”

How come it looks so different from Genesis chapter one? They are telling the same story, aren’t they?

Genesis 1:14 also says, “14 Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. 15 Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.” And that is what happened. 16 God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, 18 to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good.”

God created two lights – lamps essentially is what the word literally means. God created two lamps which serve as sign posts. They are signs that point to the majesty of the Creator.

How come Psalm 19 and Genesis 1 look so, so different?

THE IMPORTANCE OF GENRE

What we’re talking about here, today, is the importance of understanding the genres of the Bible.

This is a huge topic and we certainly won’t be able to dive into its depths in the time that we have today, but although it may seem daunting. The reality is that we successfully navigate the complex world of genres every single day.

Brent and I went to watch “Shaun of the Dead” at the App Theatre Tuesday evening. Probably another movie I wouldn’t recommend watching. We went in expecting a dark humor comedy. Imagine if we had gone in expecting it to be a documentary? That would have been a totally different experience. We would have wondered how everyone else could remain so calm and why on earth would they be laughing.

Although, we do experience this deception from time to time. There are a number of beloved movies that performed poorly in the box office all because the movie trailer misrepresented the correct genre. “The Mummy” with Bredan Frasier was presented almost as a horror flick, but if you’ve seen it before, you would be aware that it is a comedy. The same could be said about “The Fifth Element”.

Its preview had people believing it was another serious, high action, drama. But it too is more akin to a comedy than a thriller. Of course, now they are each cult classics in their own right. But genres can confuse us if we aren’t correctly prepared on what to expect.

Still, this is natural to us, we do it all the time, we just have to relearn it a bit to apply it to ancient literature. The genres we use, though similar in some ways, are quite different from the ancient Biblical genres. And so we have to adapt a new set of tools to interpret these ancient Biblical genres.

HOW THE BIBLE IS PACKAGED

Here’s how I want you to think about genre.

As you know by now, the Bible is not a book. It is a collection of books. It is a library.

You may hear people ask for evidence outside of the Bible that points to the reality of Jesus and provides evidence. This is an incorrect way of thinking because it’s not a single source, it’s a collection of sources that span thousands of years, from authors of various backgrounds, that all point to one reality. It’s unfair to treat the Bible as one book with one genre although we do it all the time.

The Bible is a collection of 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. It is a library of many types of books expressing truths through different packaging – one story but not one book.

How something is packaged matters.

We all know the feeling of unboxing a product that has exceptional packaging. It is so satisfying. Apple is particularly good at making unboxing their products an experience.

Certainly quality products can come in humble packages. However, if a company invests in the package their product comes in, then it communicates that they have put some effort into making a quality product.

The packaging of something communicates something about what is inside.

A genre is packaging. And the packaging helps determine the meaning of the content.

You may already be thinking to yourself, “this is far too complicated for me”. However, even in that sentence (a genres is packaging), you successfully interpreted the meaning of what was being communicated without falsely believing that a genre is cardboard or styrofoam. You can do this. We just have to learn the cultural contexts of the Biblical genres.

FAITHFUL CAREFUL READERS

Why does this matter? What’s the point?

In September of 1999, after almost 10 months of travel to Mars, the Mars Climate Orbiter burned and broke into pieces. The orbiter was designed to study Mars from orbit and relay communications back to NASA. On a day when NASA engineers were expecting to celebrate, the reality turned out to be completely different.

Ok, Zach has lost his mind. He’s talking about NASA now.

What’s the point?

It was an interpretation error.

An investigation found that the spacecraft burned up in Mars' atmosphere after entering an orbit that was too low. The failure was attributed to a measurement mismatch between the metric units used by NASA and the US customary units used by the spacecraft builder, Lockheed Martin.

All because someone failed to interpret the right units!

We’re talking about interpretation. Genre is fundamental to interpretation.

The fancy word is hermeneutics. Which essentially means how we read the Bible.

2 Timothy 2:15 says, “15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”

We have to be a people who know how to correctly handle God’s word.

The false assumption too often made among Christians and in churches is that the Bible is a collection of ideas, and that the individual texts are a delivery system for an idea. But the reality of the Bible is much more complex than that. It’s not like there are secrets that you have to cleverly unlock. But there is wisdom and treasure to dig for.

And the goal is that we would be faithful and careful readers of the Word of God.

Each of these messages have had goals. I want you to fall in love with the Word of God. I want you to be saturated with the Word of God. And I want you to rightly handle the Word of God. I want you to be a faithful and careful reader.

GENRES OF THE BIBLE

So there are a number of genres you will encounter in the Bible.

How many? It depends on who you ask.

Here is a list of several of them. The reason there’s not a straightforward answer is because there are genres and then each genre has subgenres and some people think subgenres are unique enough to be counted as their own genres.

Generally speaking people like to overcomplicate things.

Here are the seven we’ll focus on. I believe these to be the five root genres with the others falling into the category of subgenre. We have 1. Narrative, 2. Poetry, 3. Wisdom, 4. Prophecy, 5. Epistles/Letters, and will also separate out a sixth 6. Apocalypse.

Generally speaking, each book has a dominant genre but it can often contain multiple genres through the course of a reading. And each genre has rules, not all the rules apply at the same time in the same way, but there are set rules for understanding each genre.

NARRATIVE

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, narrative makes up the bulk of the Bible. I said nearly two thirds. Some people would say almost half. It really depends on how many genres or subgenres they have. Let’s say around 60% of the Bible is narrative.

The Bible is a story. It is an expansive, epic narrative

This means there is a plot, with characters, in some setting and these form design patterns that repeat over and over again. These are the basic tools of narrative. You can make the statement about these writings, I ____ am writing you this story about ____ to teach you about _____. It’s placed in a context for a purpose. It’s not just history alone but it’s communicating a message.

Narrative tells us what happened, according to the purposes of the author. Sometimes there are spiritual lessons from events, and sometimes we are just gaining the context of the history of God’s people.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are narrative. They are stories. The Torah is a story. Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther are narratives. The Gospels are narratives. Acts is a story. The Bible is full of narrative.

Genesis tells the story of God’s creation presented with a beautiful garden full of purpose, living in His presence. But humanity wanted to define blessing and curse on their own terms so they took what seemed good in their own eyes.

This is one story, but this is a repeated story.

Abraham and Sarah wanted the blessing God promised to them so instead of waiting patiently for the promise they took Hagar and did what seemed good in their own eyes. During the time of the judges it says repeatedly that everyone did what seemed good in their own eyes. Even David takes Bathsheba because she was desirable in his eyes. All of this repeats and repeats, builds and builds, until Jesus appears on the scene. And when He’s in the wilderness he is offered every opportunity to see, desire, take, and have. But instead He trusts…

“Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” “‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.” (Matthew 4:1-11)

The story of the Bible leads us to trust in the one who is trustworthy.

POETRY

There is poetry in the Bible. Poetry that is designed to make you feel something. They communicate ideas, but they especially express emotion. They show life in its fullness.

Poems in the Bible don’t work in the same way as the poetry we’re used to. They don’t follow the same patterns. Most of the time they don’t even rhyme.

What they do is form repetitive groupings of two lines, they use acrostics, they use chiasm to reveal truth as you meditate on the beautiful language of metaphor and symbolism.

Psalm 24 begins, “24 The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, 2 for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers. 3 Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? 4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. 5 He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. 6 Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah”

There is a repetition, a building. The phrase, “the earth and all it contains” is amplified by the phrase “the world and all who live in it”. The phrase “he sets its foundation upon the seas” is rephrased “established it upon the ocean currents.” The question of who is allowed to ascend to the mountain of the Lord is restated “Who may go up to his Holy Dwelling place?”

This passage leads us to a beautiful truth. He who has clean hands and a pure heart. We can seek to be that person, but ultimately Jesus has become that person for us. And we are identified in Him through faith.

WISDOM

There is wisdom – wonderful wisdom in the Bible.

Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Job, even James in the New Testament has some wisdom leanings to it.

The wisdom literature of the Bible is general truth based on observations. What it is not is absolute truth or promise of what will always happen. Even when I live by God’s wisdom, life can be full of disappointments. These are general truths that are designed to shape the moral and ethical lives of the reader.

The wisdom literature of the Bible presents us with an opportunity. That every day we all stand before the tree of knowing stuff with our own choice to make. Godly wisdom urges us, choose wisdom and life.

They’re about how God designed all of us to rule the world by his wisdom so that we can all find true life – real life.

PROPHECY

Then there’s prophecy. These certainly have the potential to be among the more confusing genres of Scripture. They are filled with strange imagery and often very poetic.

But in reality they are all God’s word to his covenant people, warning them and encouraging them and strengthening them during periods of pronounced spiritual and national danger. The prophets are most concerned with bringing God’s people back to His covenant.

People always think of prophecy as telling the future or a prediction. Certainly there is a bit of foretelling contained within this genre, but usually it is God sharing His heart with His people. It is God speaking His voice to His people for that time. Not for all time necessarily but for that time definitely. That’s what usually gets us in trouble. These are most readily for God’s people in their time and not for God’s people for all time for us to look for their fulfillment.

It is God’s faithfulness and His desire to make things right.

“This is what the LORD says— he who made you, who formed you in the womb, and who will help you: Do not be afraid…” (Isaiah 44:2)

EPISTLES

Then there are epistles or letters.

When you think through the genres of the Bible, poetry and this one are usually the favorites. These letters are typically the favorites because they are a bit more obvious and comfortable to our modern understanding. Since the New Testament epistles are directed to churches and individuals in the church, they most directly apply to us today. Most commands given in the epistles are general enough in nature that we need to obey them, or in the case of promises we can claim them.

Even so, context is the most important interpretive tool for this mail of ancient dead people. Context that fits into the larger story. Context that fits into the Roman Empire.

How often do you think about that?

And context that fits into the occasion and purpose of the writing of the letter. Epistles are “occasioned” texts, and so we need to get at the circumstances that led to them being written.

In the letters we pay attention to logical connections that flow through the texts.

If we add another verse to our passage in Hebrews, “11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (Hebrews 4:11-13)

“The aim of life is to enter God's rest—to be saved from our sin and spend eternity joyfully in God's restful presence. That's the great goal of life—and to lovingly take as many people there with us as we can.

To enter this great and joyful rest we must trust God. Verse 3 says, "We who have believed enter that rest." We must believe and trust in God.

Verse 2 tells us that what they believed, what we are to believe is the Word of God – the good news that was preached to us. And Verse 6 tells us that we fail to enter into that rest because of disobedience.

“If we didn't have the good news preached to us, then we would not be able to believe the Word of God.”

Hebrews is steeped in Old Testament narrative, so if we cosider the overarching context, “what [Israel] failed to trust was the good news, the Word of God, that was preached to them in the wilderness—the promises of God that he would care for them and give them victory and forgive them and be merciful to them. They didn't believe God.

So we must Hebrews 2:1, "Pay much close attention to what [we] have heard"

Hebrews 3:1, "Consider Jesus.."

Hebrews 3:12, "Take care, lest there should be in any one of [us] an evil, unbelieving heart"

Hebrews 3:15, "Today if [we] hear his voice [his Word], do not harden [our] hearts

APOCALYPSE

Finally apocalypse, which I guess you could argue is a subgenre of prophecy.

The Revelation is apocalypse. The book of Daniel is narrative with a good helping of apocalypse. This is the most confusing genre of Scripture. These are the parts that are the harvest to interpret. Some see most of it as purely historical. Some see most of it as yet future.

Unlike the books of prophecy that have a conditional element; this will happen if you don’t return to God. Apocalypse does have more of a melody of this will happen and cannot be stopped by anyone. These are things that have come to pass and will come to pass that God has ordained to happen.

The difficulty is that it is veiled in extremely heavy symbolic language. Very vibrant language that is not really designed to let us know something but it is very much designed to make us feel something.

Apocalypse does not mean “end of the world” and that’s not what it’s primarily communicating. Apocalypse means to uncover or reveal – when you suddenly see the true nature of something that you couldn’t before.

We all have familiar ways of seeing the world that can limit or blur our vision, we need to see reality a bit more in other words. Apocalyptic literature provides a Heavenly perspective on our Earthly circumstances. And despite its difficulty, it’s designed to bring us encouragement and hope. Because we can trust the future with God.

And that is what is in store for us in the second half of Daniel.

OUTRO

God’s word is packaged beautifully in a library of books all telling one unified story. These are our family stories that shape us. I want you to fall in love with them. I want you to be saturated by them. I want you to read them carefully.

And my prayer is that God would change us through this consistent and faithful pursuit of Him in His word.