How To Study The Bible

Last week we talked about all these figures of speech, and I'm not pulling your leg. But we talked about figures of speech, and one of the things I mentioned is there will even be discussion of figures of speech in the main service. Remember we talked about one of those was Litites, gave the examples out of Acts or actually several. It seems like it's either Paul or Luke. Just loves to use those. I think it's probably Luke because that's where a lot of them show up.

This is no small city. Well, it means it's a major city, right? We talk about figures of speech. This morning we'll be talking about more figures of speech as we go into the main service. So kind of keep your ears open for that. But figures of speech just show up continuously in all the descriptions of who Christ says He is to each one of the churches. Just figures of speech, right? This morning He's going to tell them, I'm going to make you a pillar. And you know that He's not talking about making them a big vertical piece of stone, right?

So, lots of figures of speech in the Bible. Yes, and we don't want to make that figurative. That's literal, and this is figurative. So knowing what's what and trying to discern which is which is important. People can get really messed up not discerning that. This morning we want to take a look at three things, closely related.

Analogies, parables, and types. And those show up, I think, in chapters 8 and 9 in your book. and that the front where it says the language of analogy, that has kind of a little block summary of what each of those things are, and I'd like us to turn to that if we could. Okay, a parable, it says, is a story which is true to reality and teaches a moral or spiritual lesson. And what are some of the parables you can think of in the Bible? Parable of the sower, out of Matthew 13.

Is there another you can think of? The prodigal son. And what's that? The lost coin. Jesus told about 35 parables. There's quite a few. In the Old Testament, Nathan The prophet used a parable with David to bring David to conviction about his sin with Bathsheba. He told the story about this poor family. They had one sheep and somebody else came and stole it. David heard the parable as a real story and said, ìThat person deserves to die.î Nathan turns to him and says, ìYouíre the one.î And by using the parable, Nathan was able to bring David to a place of recognizing it and announcing sentence. Because he had the right to do that, right? And announcing sentence, and David had sentenced himself. So here's an Old Testament example of a parable.

Now, the next thing it says is an allegory, a story in which people or things have hidden or symbolic meaning. Can you think of some allegories? different from parables that are in Scripture. That's really a collection of figures of speech. An allegory is more of an orchestrated set of symbols, but that's important to get the distinction, isn't it? You can have a set of figures of speech that aren't necessarily set up as a unified allegory.

The mustard seed would be actually a parable, but we'll talk about the difference between the two because there actually is a kind of a little bit of a fuzzy line between them, but I think it's helpful to kind of get the extremes one to the other. Let me give you a for instance.

We have an enemy. What is our defense against the enemy? Pardon? We have armor, yes. And where is that found? Ephesians chapter 6, right? It goes and lays out armor. Well, you look at me, you look at everybody in the room, nobody's got these helmets and breastplates. What's that talking about? Yeah, what it is, is each of the pieces is given as an analogy to the spiritual protection. So there's a physical piece that is analogous to the spiritual protection that we have as believers. So that's an analogy.

There are various places in Scripture where analogies are used. Now, what's the difference between a parable and an analogy? This is important to get the distinction. Well, allegory, yes. An analogy, I'm using as a synonym. In an allegory, Virtually every single piece, every item given will be significant. In a parable, a story will be given, but not necessarily every single piece is significant. The parable is to make a point. We need to look at the parable to get what is the point.

In an analogy, there is something that is being demonstrated, virtually every little item given is going to have a symbolic meaning. Example, when you look at the pieces of armor given in Ephesians 6, there's nothing extraneous given in the analogy, is there? Everything that's there has a symbolic meaning. Jesus tells the parable of the lost coin and tells about the woman sweeping her house to find the coins.

The broom doesn't really represent anything. the dust that's coming up doesn't represent, in other words, you can go too far with a parable, can't you? You have to be careful with parables that you're getting the point and not getting so lost in trying to make a parallel between every single detail that you lose the point. You see the difference there? So a parable is, don't get lost in the details, get this main point, and an allegory every detail given has a point. See the difference? So when Jesus tells like 35 parables, we need to make sure when we're looking at that, that we're not taking some extraneous piece and trying to make detail out of it.

Now, with an allegory, something to take note of. Along about the 3rd century, there was a guy in Alexandria in northern Egypt He was a Christian and he actually went through persecution. His name was Origen. He came up with the idea that everything in the Bible is an allegory. I mean, everything is an allegory. To him, if you didn't come up with an allegorical meaning, it wasn't spiritual. So he would read about the rivers in Genesis. Remember, there's the rivers coming through the garden? Each one of those rivers had a meaning, and he'd have to cook up a meaning. He even said that Job's seven sons stands for the twelve apostles.

I don't know where you get that, but it was that kind of thing. He went through every little piece of Scripture, and he forced an allegory. So a person can carry this allegory idea too far. The point being, make sure that Scripture is setting up an allegory. before you force it to be an allegory. Otherwise you go the direction that he went, and basically the Catholic Church followed him, and the Church for centuries, in great part, followed him. Or maybe I should say christened him. That may be a better way to put it.

Followed these teachings of origin where they start forcing the whole Bible into allegory. By doing that, the meaning of the book of Revelation was lost for centuries to a great many people. Let me give you a quick history on how that came about. Origen came up with this idea, roughly 250-300 AD. He came up with this idea. Everything in the Bible is allegorical.

That carried over into the Catholic Church as the Catholic Church became prominent. In 607, the first pope was crowned. The Catholic Church for centuries carried that idea on, and when the Reformers, Luther, Calvin, Dwingley, those guys, when they came up with their understandings of Scripture, they started looking at things literally, everything except prophecy. They carried on the ideas that the Catholic Church had. And so covenant theology that you're talking about continues to look at prophecy in the allegorical fashion, that the Catholic Church had passed on to it. So basically, it's holding to those same teachings.

It's forcing an analogy where an analogy isn't intended. If I come to you and tell you something literal, by this method, I couldn't tell you something literal, because you'd always be looking for the allegory. And you get so many different principles and beliefs that way. And that is really, that's an excellent point, because what happened, it was after the Reformers then came up with this thing, well we're not going to follow the Catholic Church, but they didn't really settle down to how are we going to understand the Bible.

That's the importance of this class. That's when the church developed into a myriad of all kinds of different denominations and cults and everything else to the point where there's in excess of 20,000 different denominations and cults that call themselves Christian. So that's really an important insight. This differentiation we're making here is critical.

All right, so there's parables and there's allegories. The next thing it has down there is a type. A type is something that is real and historical that is subsequently a picture of something else that is real and historical, or a principle. Now, what do I mean by that? Let me give you some for instances. Here's a type, Melchizedek. Real guy. Real fellow, historical. You can read about him in Genesis. And who is he a type of? Type of Christ.

One of the things you will find, just like allegories, people can go crazy with types. They force fit something that isn't there. Types, I'm going to tell you, are typically And some would say, and I would almost go there, universally pointed out in the New Testament. So that people don't get forcing some kind of identity. Oh, this is a type of that. This is a type of that.

So that you'll see, for example, Melchizedek is referenced in Hebrews 7. So I can look at Melchizedek, who is an actual historical character, and then I can look at the New Testament passage and confirm that correspondence. Instead of the extreme that I could go to is everybody in the Bible becomes a type, some sort of a picture, a symbol. It's kind of personal allegory gone crazy.

There is another term. It's not listed in here, but you might want to write it in. It's called a symbol. Okay? Because, yes, theoretically you could go back to Leviticus and put it that way, but Jesus is called the Lamb in Revelation. He's called the Morning Star. He is called the Lion of Judah. So there are things like that that are identifiable symbols. It may or may not correspond to a particular individual or event earlier in history. with those symbols. But we understand the symbol typically by other explanations around it or other passages that give us understanding. Yeah? Okay, let's think about that.

Is that a parable? Why isn't it a parable? Okay, it's historical. A parable is a realistic but made-up story designed to illustrate a point. So it's not a parable. Okay, is it an allegory? Not really. And one of the reasons why it doesn't fit real well into an allegory is it's a historical event. Occasionally you'll see an allegory of a historical event set up, but it doesn't fit real well into that.

You could look at it as a type is probably of those three categories the best fit. Because what is it? It's a real historical event intended to prefigure, to give us a glimpse ahead of time, of what is to take place later. So what it means is it's real history that is an example of real history to take place at a later time.

And so that's a good question, because there's a lot of these kinds of things that show up in Scripture, and getting a sense in our mind, what is this, is important, so that we don't end up interpreting it wrong. We don't end up drawing a wrong conclusion. And frankly, the Church has gotten piled up with all kinds of folks making illustrations out of the Bible that aren't there, drawing conclusions that aren't in the text.

But with types, One of the things to ask yourself is, have I got something here that is referenced subsequently in the New Testament particularly? At least, you know, there. Maybe even again in the Old Testament, but particularly in the New Testament. Have I got it referenced again?

There's another type that will come out and that is, a lot of people will read through Leviticus and they'll say, my heavens, what am I supposed to make of this stuff? slaughter this and kill that and inspect this leper, and you're wondering, what on earth am I going to do with all this? Well, a lot of those are indeed types, and you will see them described as such in the New Testament. Now, let's take a look at a particular parable, and we won't be able to go through every jot and tittle of detail, but what I want us to do is to take a look at it and kind of get a sense of what it is and what it isn't, and how would we go about understanding it. This is the parable of the sower that was mentioned earlier. So turn to Matthew 13. Matthew 13, by the way, is the location of a number of parables, but we'll just be looking at this one. Let's look, somebody read that Matthew 13 1-9.

The same day, when Jesus got out of the house, he saw a mountainside, and great multitudes were gathered together unto him, and he went unto his shepherd and said, And all multitudes came out to the shore. And he spake many things unto them, and said, Behold, A sower went forth to sow, and he sowed till the seeds fell by the wayside, and the boughs came and devoured them up. Some fell upon stony places where they had not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up, they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them. But other fell in the good ground and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Who has ears to hear, let him hear." Okay.

Now, just to take a for instance, I talked earlier about a forest analogy or a forest allegory. There are some, this fellow Origen for example, let's look at those first few verses. He would say, on the day when Christ went out of the house, he was sitting by the sea, this fellow Origen would look for every single one of those things and find an allegory in it. He went out of the house, that meant he left the church, you know, or he went out of the house of Israel, or something like that, and he went down by the sea, and the sea is the sea of humanity.

You get my point? I mean, he would force everything to that point, but that's what a lot of people do prophecy still. Those, as Carol mentioned, of the covenant theology background, they want to find an allegory in everything. We need to guard against that. Let Scripture speak literally where it's seeking to speak literally, and not force it into an allegorical teaching. The thought was, if you don't make an allegory, it's not spiritual. That was their attitude, that was their approach. That's not what we want to do here. We want to let the scriptures say what they intend to say.

All right, now, it says, Behold, the sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, what kind of soils do we have? It's all beside the road. The birds ate them up. That's one. rocky places, didn't have much soil, they sprang up and then withered away. Then the next one fell among thorns, and the fourth one was productive. So those are the four soils. Now, how are we going to figure out what this means? But how do we know that Asia isn't the first soil, and Europe's the next soil, And Africa is the next soil, and America is the final soil.

See? That's what it is. Oh. That's a parable. OK. But maybe, well, how come I can't do that? Why can't I just make, I'll make the first soil Asia, and the next soil I'll make, you know. Oh, her question. Repeat your question. Well, it wasn't really a question. I get the words, but doesn't it say that? They're still saying it's terrible if you can add meaning to it. Ah, okay, yeah. You see, part of what I'm trying to do is by doing that, by saying that, I'm forcing a meaning on it, aren't I?

And the other thing is I have to be careful about forcing it into kind of the context outside of what he's talking about. Now, the other thing here is that He goes on, and we're going to skip a little bit because he gives some explanation, which I would suggest you might want to read afterwards. But verse 18, he explains it. So, that's one thing, is always look for other explanation or guidance points on the parable. In this particular one, here's in the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches it away. Let's ask this question. Who is the sower?

Perhaps, but the truth is that's not told here, is it? He kind of skips over that. Yeah, in other words, we have to be careful we don't start giving significance to everything under the sun. There have been people that have talked about things that aren't even in the parable and made a parable out of it.

The wind. I mean, all kinds of things, strange things. Okay, so then he explains in verse 19, when anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road.

I think there's two things to look at. One is, is there an explanation of the parable? Just like we saw in Revelation where there are places where it explains the symbol. Here, there's an explanation of the parable. And that's good to look for because it tells you explicitly what it is. The second thing to look for is having been given the parable and having been given the explanation, that will give me guidance on interpreting other parables for which I don't have an explanation.

You see that? If I look at how did Christ himself interpret this parable that he gave, I can look at how he went about interpreting that and use that to interpret the rest of those in the passage where I don't have an explanation given. You see that? Make sense?

I can look at how Jesus treated each of these things and apply that same treatment to each of the rest of the parables. Let's read through the rest of it. And the one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy." How much level of detail is there in Jesus' explanation? There's not a lot of explanation, is there? And I think that's the one thing. When you look at a parable, don't pour in more details than are there. Don't read something into it.

People have ended up with incredible conclusions. When you hear it, you're laughing on the floor. I read one account. There was this fellow who wrote down what he thought all these different things in Scripture meant, and by the time you're done, it's uncontrollable laughter. He's gone through these passages and just made incredible conclusions. He's feeling like he has to do it in order to make him spiritual, adding details that just aren't even in the text. We don't want to do that. Let's continue on.

Yet he has no firm root in himself, but it is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away. And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word and the worry of the world. and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. So now he's explained the soils except for the last. And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it, and who indeed bears fruit and brings forth some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.

Let's ask a good question here. Which of those soils are Christians? You say all of them. Everybody else agree? Let's ask this question. If the seed gets there, is a person a Christian then? What's the seed? Do we know? The word, okay. If the seed gets there, does that make a person a Christian? No. No, okay. Alright. What happens then? The next, because you've got one soil, nothing happens, right? And you've got another soil, what happens? The seed gets in, and it grows up, and the sun comes up and withers it away.

Is that person a Christian? Could have been. What's that? I think so. I think that's the final system. You never know. Well, so there's something there. There's life. Okay. You know, that comes from the seed. There is something that grows up. Okay. What's that? But it isn't planted, so it's got to be superficial. But all these are just cast, though. All of them are cast, even the one where it grows up. That would be the typical way of planting, like the grain crops and things of that sort. How do you define a Christian with respect to this seed? The seed's been planted.

What's that? What's that? She's saying you have to define this dispensationally. This is still the Old Testament. Ah, okay. What he is talking about here is a response to the word. church age in which we now live has not come about yet. As a matter of fact, this is fairly early in the process. It's going to be a bit of time before that comes to pass. Let's ask another question. Remember one of the things we talked about is who is he talking to? He's talking to Jews exclusively. What's that? I don't believe it. You don't believe it? No. Okay.

Because? Because the Jews were so infiltrated with so many other people from all around the place, and the Celtics, and the Epiphanians, the Jewish Jews. There may have been some Gentiles. Largely, largely Jews would be the context, though. Oh, yes. Then the other thing is, who is he doing this explanation to? We've got to look back in here. Let's go back to verse 10. Even Matthew was a Jew, even though he was a turncoat because he was collecting taxes for the Romans, or had been. He had been collecting taxes for the Romans. So he is talking to just the disciples here as he's making the explanation. Now, let's ask this.

How much did the disciples understand? How good was their understanding of things? Not very. Even after Christ had been resurrected and they had walked with him and he had gone on all this time and he was just about to ascend to heaven and ask them, is now the time when you're going to set up your kingdom? Well, that's moments before he's ready to leave the earth, right?

So they still do not understand what's going on. They're still thinking very Jewish, very much in a Jewish context. I would suggest to you that what he's talking about here is essentially a responsiveness to the Word. And the truth is, I've heard people argue, these are Christians, these are non-Christians, and go both ways. The truth is, he is talking to disciples who don't understand very well. And basically, the parable is about response to the Word. That's what it's focusing on, is you have different kinds of response. And people have tried to ask questions that the parable may not be able to answer, including the question I asked you, are these Christians or are they not? There may not be enough information in the parable to answer that question, because that may not be exactly the question that Jesus is trying to address.

It's responsiveness to the Word. She made the point, you've got to look at it dispensationally, there is a direct application to the Jews. And that's the main point that he's looking at making, as Jews, the degree of absorption. What are you listening to? This is the issue that Christ brought up to the Jews.

He says, you search through the scriptures and yet they tell you of me, but you won't listen to me. It's the degree of absorption issue right there. They had not listened to the truth that was there. Let's take another parable. Remember, here's Lazarus and the rich man. And there, the guy says, let me go and tell my brothers about this terrible place I'm in. He says, if they won't listen to who? They won't listen to Moses and the prophets. They won't do any good even if someone comes back from the dead. He's talking to Jews in that context because the Jews said, I'm a son of Abraham. So this is a very Jewish context How does it apply to us outside of the fact that we're not exactly this group of disciples and Jews? Here's one thing.

The Jews assumed that if you were rich that God had blessed you with it because you must be righteous. That was the Jews' understanding. So Christ would tell this parable to teach several lessons, one of which is being rich doesn't make you automatically good. Okay? And that would be one reason. The other reason is just to say be responsive to the word that you have right here and now. You've got it. And that's the lesson of this parable too. Be responsive to the Word.

Is it possible, let's ask this question just to bring it into application right here and now. Is it possible that you can be a believer and you can come to Holly Hills and have a heart and mind that is the first type of soil? What is being taught just doesn't go anywhere. It can happen. So the truth is... You would just be going there in order to fill your own concept of what you need to do to be good.

Yeah, and what is said just falls on deaf ears. So as a believer, I could maybe even attend church regularly, but as a believer, I could be the first kind of foil. because of the condition of my heart. So it's possible to ask questions of a parable that the parable is not intended to answer. This has to do with heart conditions. It can deal with the Jews, it can deal with unbelievers during this time, and it can deal with believers. Obviously, this last soil that is fruitful, I would have to say ultimately that's a believer because there's fruit there. But the general communication of this parable has to do with responsiveness to the Word. We know that the seed is the Word.

So just a question of how responsive are you? Whether you're a Jew, whether you're a Gentile, whether you're in the age of the Jews who were initially hearing this, the age of the law, or whether you're in the age of the Church, the age of grace that we're living in now. Responsiveness to the Word is the issue here. Well, I think what you can do, you can ask this question and I think Hal has put it this way.

Is it written to me or written for me? And there are a lot of scriptures that may not be written to me, but from which I can derive application because it's written for me. This may have been said specifically to the disciples, but it's written here so that I can benefit from it. So I think, you know, an answer to your question is I can look at any passage and say, okay, how does that apply to me?

How does it fit me here and now? We certainly don't want to get in a spot where everything in the Gospels and before we cast aside, because all Scripture is inspired and profitable. Does that answer your question? We have to ask the question that Cheryl brought up earlier. In order to interpret it correctly, I need to understand what dispensation it's talking But if it's not the current dispensation, by no means do I throw it away. I still look for, okay, now, how does that apply to me here? How does that fit to where I'm at now? And so that's why we've got this other elective on Genesis, which was all written even before the law.

There's application always for all times. Okay, let's, oh yeah, question? Good point. Do you see that? In Revelation, the end of each of the messages to the churches is, He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Parallel statement. It's talking about receptiveness, isn't it? What's your receptiveness quotient?

That's the point. And you can look for parallels like that. Why would that question be asked? Or why would that statement be made? What's he trying to get across? That's right. Yes. If we're willing to listen, there's significance there. If we're not, it doesn't matter what he says. Okay? Yeah. Okay, let's pray.

Lord, we do thank you for the immense riches of your Word, and that you have laid out for us the things, the truths, the precious truths, Lord, that you want for us to learn and to know. We thank you for your written Word, and we thank you for your living Word. In the name of Jesus Christ, the Living Word. Amen.