So we're going to wrap this part, which is really the majority of the class, but I'd like to add in a discussion next week on typology, because I think that's a natural kind of flow of... looking at the trajectory of scripture and when you see the salvation of say Israel from the hands of the Egyptians in what way and what's the appropriate way to see in which way God is a God who saves and ultimately that is a shadow of Christ saving us but how do we do that within the you know not making all the mistakes we're gonna we're gonna talk and review from a last time. But we talked in looking at the genre or the styles of literature, so just like music has different styles, writing has different styles, we kind of focused in on the last one and started to communicate on and talk about how to look at narrative. The reason narrative is really difficult is it communicates implicitly and doesn't always come out and say very explicitly what you need to know or what's being taught. see some tips and even the way the narrator comes out with dialogue today and helps you understand what's the point of the story. And then it's very important that we understand a lot of narrative and just in general the principle of narrative is that it's describing what happened, not prescribing what you should do. So you get in all kinds of trouble if you get too closely tied to, well this is the way it was done, in Acts, so we should do that today. There's not necessarily a one-to-one direction. She's telling you what they did, and there might be implications for the church today, but it's not saying it should be exactly this way in all cases, unless it explicitly states that. And so you're safer to go to explicit things in, for example, like number three, the epistles, where it's very clear what is being communicated. We looked at these four errors to avoid. One allegorizing, two spiritualized, moralizing, and then four imitating Bible characters. And so we just gotta be careful as you look towards narrative. It's really easy because we wanna pull some connection to today, make it more relevant for a modern audience. And so we very quickly want to run to You know, the five stones, what do those mean in David? And there's five smooth stones, and these five smooth stones represent, well, unless the text tells you what those stones represent, we want to be careful with that. Because you are representing God and saying, thus says the Lord. And if you're going to say, this is what these five stones mean, you're saying God says, and you just can't confidently say that in the text. Because it seems like he picked up five smooth stones because smooth stones fly better than, you know, that's what you pick up to skip rocks. The five characteristics of narrative, and then we talked about characterization, we talked about plot today, and I think we'll finish all five is the plan, and then look at typology next week, but this is kind of like the same way we looked at the five major themes of author, audience, occasion, purpose, theme, in the same way that this is how just human beings communicate. This is the way God created language. This is the way you tell stories. When you tell a good story or any story, you're going to have to give some level of characterization. You're going to use this technique to give some kind of flavor to what is or who is the person you're telling the story about. And every time the text does it, you want to pay attention. And we looked at that. So now on to plot. And plot is simply the point of the story. The plot of the story is the arrangement of events around a central conflict or set of conflicts moving towards a resolution. So very typical storytelling is, which we're going to talk about setting here later, but there's a setting, there's some level of rising conflict that leads to a climax, and then there's some resetting of that towards the end. And it pretty much is always every good story is some unresolved conflict that they're telling you how we get to resolution by the end. There's two kinds of plots and you see both in the scriptures. You're going to see simple plots and complex plots. When I'm talking about simple plots, I just mean that they're plots that get resolved within the story. They don't continue and they're not a thread that goes through all of scripture. You think about Revelation, it's a very complex plot because it's actually resolving Think of Revelation 12 and 13, which we've been. We're going to do 14 this morning, but the career of Satan. I mean, this is a conflict between Satan and God in heaven that goes all the way back to the beginning. That would be a very complex plot that has threads throughout all of history. A simple plot would simply be something that resolves itself within the immediate story. So a simple plot of David and Goliath. There's a complex plot that flows through 1 and 2 Samuel, but within that you see individual stories like David and Goliath, which is just a very simple plot. But it's a tension of the story, usually you think of it, it's a problem that needs solving. If you think of TV shows, I mean, old cartoons, even in the simplest form, you know, you think of the Tom and Jerry cartoon, the question is, is Tom going to catch Jerry the mouse? That's every show. Is he going to catch Jerry? Roadrunner, is the coyote going to catch the roadrunner? Same idea. That's every plot and just a different story saying, is he going to get him this time? Is he going to get him this time? But everything is going to have a plot. Even, there's a classic TV show, which is now very old actually, but Seinfeld was a show about nothing. And the point was it has to be about something. It is about something, but it's nothing. And it just follows characters doing nothing. But it's still, the point is, the plot is, it's about doing nothing. Everyday life and how it's comical and all those things. We think about biblically with simple plots. Abraham, you think of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Is Abraham going to kill Isaac? From the beginning of that story, God says, take him up, you're going to sacrifice him. You're wondering, is it going to happen? Is it going to happen? Is it going to happen? That's a simple plot. Daniel getting eaten by the lions. Is he going to get eaten? wondering, simple plot. But this is going to really help us understand what is going on textually. A little more on complex plots. They have complex resolutions. A plot comes up, gets settled, only to come up again and then get settled again. You think of Saul and David. I think we looked at just that thread that is all the way through 1 and 2 Samuel. The idea that Saul is very focused on the exterior. They want a king like all the other nations. He's tall, but God doesn't look at, don't look at the height. He actually says that. I think it's 1 Samuel 13 when he's anointing David, but God looks at the heart. That would be a complex plot that shows up all the way through Samuel and Kings. That it's God looking at the heart, not the outside. If you think of the Gospels and the kind of thread, I don't care if you're in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, there's going to be a thread in all of those where the question of, is Jesus going to die early? Because very early in his ministry, they're going to plot and try to kill him. Think of, I think it's Luke chapter 4, when he visits home in Nazareth. They try to kill him there, but that's not his time. That's not his time. Will he die early is a complex plot that keeps coming up, resolving, and then it comes up Why is it important? Because it points you to God's point. And the way they're going to arrange true history is still going to be communicating something. And they're going to do that by demonstrating these complex plots and complex resolution. It's going to point you to what is the central theme or what is the major point of any narrative. Or if that book's a narrative book, of that book. So just be aware of plots. Yeah, right. So like, right. And you think of stories within stories, I guess, is the dream within dreams. No, it's too complicated. But stories within stories in that way in which they're related to, they're progressing something. In other words, it's telling you something about David. And actually, it is related to the complex plot, which is a contrast between David and Saul. Because Saul is hiding at that point, for example, and David's not hiding. David trusts the Lord, even though it doesn't make any sense. The one who's tall, who has power, he won't go out and fight, but the little guy will go out and fight. What's this? And even you think of what David's offended by at that point is he's offended that Goliath is out there saying things against his God. So you definitely see a lot of the smaller ones. It's just helpful to kind of recognize when you see something repeated, there's usually more going on in that story. And that's throughout the scriptures, where things keep popping up. I mean, you think about just humanity from Genesis 3. I mean, there is a plot line that follows through the fall of Adam and Eve that keeps popping up over and over again. And is this going to get resolved? the curse given to them and then the promise that there'll be a future seed that will crush the serpent's head. It's going to keep going, keep popping up. Is that Seth? Is that, well, is it Cain is first and then you find out it's not Cain. It's not Abel. It's not Seth. Thirdly, though, looking at dialogue. This one is very important in that it's helpful to recognize what is being said and maybe just as important what's not being said in dialogue. And so dialogue, simply the speech being taken place between the characters in the narrative. And this is really important, the second half, that the author does not record everything that was said, only that which makes his point. So when he does tell you, like in the way we'd commune it with quotes, he tells you what they said. I think it's true. He's not making up words to try. I mean, this is all history, but he's only telling you the part that advance is the point of the text or the authorial intent or what the Spirit's trying to communicate. So it doesn't tell you everything. So we used an illustration early on with Joseph and Potiphar's wife. and their interaction, well clearly there's a lot more conversation going on between Joseph and Potiphar's wife over the course of months or years, but all we really get is the kind of climax of seemingly where she's saying, hey, come lie with me, and then we see Joseph's response, and again, he's responded, I'm sure, multiple times, but that's communicating and telling us something very specific about Joseph, and it's just good to know Now when he says something, it's not only what he says, but it's what he's not communicating. You see that throughout the Gospels. It's one of the ways you see the differences in the Gospels as well. And some will look at that and say, well these can't be all, these aren't true. Look at how different they are. Or even maybe the same story is told a different way and it's like, well, we don't always communicate history the same way first century authors would communicate history. But it isn't to say both those things can be true. It's just you're telling the story a different way. Or, a lot of times in the Gospels, another solution is possible that Jesus told that story multiple times, multiple places. So if there is a big difference, it could be, well, he's recording a different account of that story. Just like any teacher uses illustrations over and over again. Sometimes you'll see the author narrate the story from third-person perspective. He's going to tell the story about other people, and then he'll switch back to a first-person perspective, and the characters will reveal their own character that is the kind of person they are in their heart by having them speak for themselves. So we're going to look at a few of these examples, but very often When you get a quote, you're going to see, OK, finally, this is the inside scoop. This is who Saul really is. This is who David really is. And it's going to push whatever point of the text, or of that book, or of that larger thought section out. Because out of the heart, the mouth speaks. The first example here, just thinking of, is Mark 16, verses 1 through 3, where you have a quote. It starts in third person. You just hear, it would seem, Mark saying, let me tell you a story. When the Sabbath passed, Mary Magdalene married the mother of James and Salome bought... spices so that they might come and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb where the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the womb? And so he's telling from third verse to third verse to the last phrase, and they're talking, I'm sure they're talking about the weather, they're talking about Jesus, the Lord, their Savior has just died. They're talking about all these things. Maybe they're talking about the disciples and the people who have ran away and were afraid and they stayed. But all he really cares to tell you is they're asking this question. The question you need to know that you need to be asking is, who's going to roll away the stone so they can get into the tomb? That's going to be resolved very quickly and let you know, but that becomes, why is this question so important? And it's just to reiterate that it's nothing they can do. They can't remove the stone. It's going to have to be something, in this case, an angel is the one who removes the stone. Mark wants you to ask the question and wants you to come away with that answer, that God ultimately moved the stone. Another part of narrative here is the first speech of the narrative needs to be given special attention. So oftentimes the first speech is going to reveal the theme or the plot of the whole story. Ruth chapter 1 verse 8, the very first speech you get from Naomi, after Elimelech has died, her husband, and you're introduced to a typical story, right? It gives the setting, which we're going to talk about in a minute, of what's happening here. Why is she in a foreign land? She's in a foreign land because there's a famine in Israel. Why is she destitute? Because her husband has died. Why didn't her sons take care of her? Because her sons died. And now she's here with her two daughters-in-law. They're all widows. And you learn From her speech, from the dialogue, this, that Naomi is going to say to her two daughters-in-law, go return each of you to her mother's house. May Yahweh show loving kindness with you as you have shown with the dead and with me. And may Yahweh grant that you may find rest each in the house of her husband. Then she kissed them and they lifted up their voices and wept. Now, we tend to look at biblical characters, because I think this is the way we're raised with flannelgraph, or some of us were raised with flannelgraph, but it is just that we look at them with rose-colored glasses. And if you think about this, though, this is terrible advice. I mean, she's saying to her two daughters-in-law, because the sons married pagans when they went to the pagan land, and she's basically saying, leave me You've shown me kindness, but go back and basically go back to your pagan lifestyles. And what it introduces is this kind of thinking. Is that the right decision? Is that the wrong decision? Is God going to be faithful or not faithful? Ruth is going to kind of revolve around that storyline of the Davidic line. Is God going to preserve? Is God going to provide for Naomi? Is God going to provide for Ruth? And this just goes back to introducing this storyline of, it's a question of, is this the right response? And I would argue that all of Ruth is going to, in essence, show you that this is a wrong response. This is not a responsive faith. This isn't what happens. In fact, the hero at this point, you could say, is going to come around if you keep running in Ruth, and that's why it's named Ruth. It's going to be Ruth who says, no, I'm not going to leave you. And God ultimately blesses that. And Ruth, who is a pagan, is going to enter into the line of the Messiah. So, just recognize Why record this speech? It's not just, yes it's information that moves the story along, but it's also important to see what's in the heart of Naomi. And it's not a good thing in this case, but it's also going to be contrasted to ultimately Ruth and what God is going to do in that story. Another good example here is the first dialogue, the first speech you're going to get from Elijah. The prophet in 1 Kings 17, which is now Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the settlers of Gilead said to Ahab, as Yahweh the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, surely there shall be neither dew nor rain these years except by my word. And so you're introduced to Elijah very first. Yes, he's a prophet. Yes, it's introduction to a very complex relationship between him and Ahab. But his statement is, Not something a king wants to hear, which is it's not going to rain for the next three years. And this is an agriculture. There's no advanced farming techniques. And even in Nebraska, we start to, you know, you look at the river right now and you go, wow, years of drought has an impact even in a state which has a ton of water, like Nebraska, but even more so for Israel. And there's here the prophet saying to the king, it's not going to rain. But the way that he really emphasizes it is by that first part, by stating in the dialogue, as Yahweh, the God of Israel, lives. And it's this idea of Yahweh being a living God and Him even saying, in essence, if it does rain, if there is dew on the ground, then Yahweh does not live. And that thread keeps getting pulled all the way through, especially, you could say, the simple plot of the part of Elijah, but even through a larger plot of all of Scripture that God is not like the pagan gods. He's not an idol that doesn't have a mouth or ears or hands, but He actually is alive because He can hear and He can accomplish things. I don't have it up here, but probably the best example is the next chapter and first Kings 18 where the 450 prophets of Baal, then that whole issue comes up where he says, hey, go out, see, try to make it rain. Right? And they can't because their God can't hear because their God is not a living God. And that all comes back to this phrase which he's stating is the issue here is he serves the God who lives. And the question then is who is the living God? It's not Baal because he can't hear or act. It's Yahweh who is the one who is alive. Questions on that? On dialogue so far? I know we're kind of running but I'm just going to, I'm trying to crank this out a little bit to get through all five. Just a couple other notes with dialogue. This is kind of similar principles to what we've seen looking at any text, but if you see a contrast set up, then Just note it, and it probably is important to the point of the text. Probably one of my favorite kind of contrast slash neck-breaking, knee-jerking text is from Mark chapter 8, which here is a little small, but you have Peter go from hero to zero pretty quickly. The question they've asked, Jesus is asking them, saying to them, who do people say that I am? And the disciples are going to say, well, the people say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, other one of the prophets. And he continued to ask them, but who do you say that I am? And this is where Peter is a hero because Peter answers and says to him, you are the Christ or you are the Messiah. And Jesus warns to tell them, warned them to tell no one about him, which is another one of those actually complex thoughts. Why? Why don't tell? Why don't tell? Why don't tell? Because that keeps popping up as a complex plot throughout this gospel and really the other gospels. But then you see the knee-jerking reaction because then he goes on and he starts teaching and he begins to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer Many things be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." And you have this contrast then of, well, Peter gets the right answer. Peter's thinking, you are the Christ, which you are the Messiah, which would be, in his mind, a conquering king, which doesn't jive with a conquering king who's going to die, who's going to suffer. And he begins to state it openly, I assume, to the other eleven. And so much so, that Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him. And turning around, seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on God's interest, but man's. Now, this has a couple implications for teaching. One is, I would not teach this independently. And that can be tough for some people because there's a tendency to focus on a positive, like you are the Christ. Because this is Mark chapter 8, which Mark is 16 chapters, and in essence, this is the climax, this is the middle of the book of Mark. Everything after this point kind of moves towards suffering and towards resolution and his death and resurrection. But, it's tempting to preach, say, through verse 29. And then verse 30, let's go to a new thought and let's look at suffering in the cross. I definitely, you could do that and try to keep in mind the context, but I would encourage someone to say this contrast here in the dialogue that's going on is very important to be presented together because you want to bring both ideas of he is the Messiah and he is the suffering serpent. He's both these things, and you can look elsewhere where scripture shows that. But you also get an idea of, okay, Peter gets it, but Peter doesn't get it. which will play very much into who Peter is and where people are. I mean, think of the prosperity gospel today, that's very similar. There's certain things about the prosperity gospel about who Christ is, the deity of Christ, Christ died for our sin. They get it, but they don't get it because they missed the second half of this reality of it's not a promise for this life, it's future promises. So that's a good example of Contrast, another one here, Matthew 26, 1 through 5. This is a great one. And if you don't, like I say, if you don't pay close attention, especially if you're reading, your daily readings, Matthew 26, you just won't catch this kind of stuff. Because when you read intentionally, which hopefully we're trying to do here, is this will go, well, this is weird. This doesn't make any sense. This is saying the opposites. which is what actually it's trying to communicate by this, Matthew telling us quotes, this dialogue lets us know what's going on here because now it happened here, verse one, that when Jesus had finished all these words, he said to his disciples, you know that after two days, the Passover is coming and the son of man is to be delivered over for crucifixion. So Jesus is simply making a statement. He's teaching them just what he say, Mark eight, but he's been teaching them, but he's also saying, okay, Now's the time. And he says very specifically, you know that after two days, the Passover is coming and that's what I'm gonna be delivered over for crucifixion. So Jesus has said, I'm gonna die in two days. But then verse three, the chief priests, the elders, the people gathered together in the court of the high priest named Caiaphas, and they plotted together to seize Jesus by stealth and kill him. And they were saying, not during the festival, lest a riot occur among the people. And that is going to be a huge statement in the Gospels of who's in control. Because they're going to try every bit of their power to not kill, crucify him on Passover. But look at verse 2. If Jesus is God, even if you think through on the ultimate sense, asking the question, who killed Jesus? Is it the chief priests and the elders and the people? It's like, well, there's a real sense, theologically speaking, that it's ultimately God and it's His plan. And that's, it's going to happen the exact opposite way. When you look at the Gospels and you see, it toggles. So, let's say, so we just had it up here, Mark chapter 8 with Satan. In essence, Peter's the mouthpiece of Satan saying, no, you're not going to die. And so you go, okay, well Satan must not want Jesus to die. But then, they're all plotting to kill him, so he does want him to die. Then you see him enter into Judas, and betray him, so that he gets arrested, and they ultimately kill him. And you kind of go, well, is... I mean, if you go, well, Satan sounds bipolar, you go, okay, that's probably about right, you know. Sin makes you stupid, and Satan would be maybe the biggest sinner, therefore very foolish and seemingly bipolar. But also, I think he's trying to react to what God is doing, in my opinion, as you look through the Gospels. And one of the ways he's trying to interact at that point is, I think what Satan is trying to do when he arrests Jesus is actually get him so that he's arrested and can't be killed on Passover. because the most unlikely thing happens after Jesus is arrested that no one could have predicted, which is you have the trial through the night and him put on a cross within the next day, which is against Jewish law. Shocking. How did that happen? And so the very thing Satan did, I think, to try to avoid Jesus from dying on the Passover as the Passover lamb, by arresting him, that way no one can get to him, He actually sets in chain the very events that get Jesus killed at the right time, at the right moment, telling you who's in control. God is in control. And you see that by looking just at the dialogue here of what they're planning, what Jesus is planning, and you see which one is in absolute control. And that is teaching a point that the narrator wants you to know. Again, communicating exactly the information you need and nothing more, because they had a lot more conversation than that. But he wants you to know they're planning on not killing him, and that's exactly what happens on the Passover. We're not going to talk much about this. It's just another one of those same observations from what we did earlier. Just if you see a dialogue, a phrase repeated over and over again, then it's important. So repetition is always important. Number four, related to dialogue, is this idea of a narrator. Some people call it the omniscient voice because the narrator ultimately is not just the human author but the spirit that's carrying along the human author to communicate and tell you how you should interpret something and the way you understand it. Easiest illustration, you guys have all seen some level of a TV show with a narrator, or I think of the church, like a Christmas play, and there's kind of somebody's reading the Christmas story, the, you know, spotlight, and then spotlight moves, and you see him acting out whatever part of the play, and then the narrator's narrating Luke chapter 2, or something like that. The same thing kind of goes on in the biblical text with narrative, that you'll often see this omniscient voice, the narrator voice, kind of come in from the outside. One of my favorite places is in Kings, and so you're dealing with narrative after narrative after narrative, and what seems to be something random, you're carried along by the narrator to go, oh, they think it's random, but the narrator's letting you know nothing about this is random at all. In fact, let's go there real quick, because it's a little more impact. If you go to 1 Kings 22, I have one verse in my slides, but I don't have the whole thing. 1 Kings 22. If you haven't read 1 Kings, Ahab's a bad guy. He is, at this point, pretty much one of the worst kings. Probably the worst king to ever come out of Israel at this point of the northern. So you got Israel and Judah split. And so you have Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. You have Ahab, king of Israel, the northern king. And he particularly is wicked because he brought in Baal worship through his wife Jezebel. And so in 22, they go to the prophets. They want to figure out if they should go to war or not. Let's see, we'll back up. So this is the beginning of 22. So they lived for three years without war between Aram and Israel, which would be a setting. So it says, okay, there's been no war, everyone's safe. But now, it happened in the third year, verse two, that Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, came down to the king of Israel. And then the king of Israel said to his servants, do you know that Ramoth-Gilead belongs to us, but we are sitting still so as not to take it out of the hand of the king of Aram. So he said to Josephat, will you go with me to the battle of Ramoth-Gilead? And Josephat said to the king of Israel, I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses are your horses. So you actually have Ahab, who's the king of Israel, who decides, you know what, we've been at peace for three years, but I want to go take some of my stuff back. So let's go to war and Exactly what he does, but he doesn't want to go along, so he says, Joseph, will you come? Joseph says yes, but Joseph is a little concerned. Judah's always been a little more godly, and so verse 5, he says to the king of Israel, please inquire first for the word of Yahweh. Go to one of the prophets and let's ask them should we go up or not. And so the king of Israel, that's Ahab, gathered the prophets together, about 400 men, which I've been reading along, like, who are these 400? I thought there weren't 400 prophets in Israel, but he gathered 400 men and said to them, shall I go against Romath-Gilead to battle, or shall I refrain? And they said, go up, for the Lord will give into the hand of the king. Interesting there, he actually doesn't say Yahweh, that is interesting, and that uses a different word there for Lord. But Joseph says that, is there not yet a prophet of Yahweh? So that's the distinction which the LSB actually brings out, so. win one for the legacy standard. Because it says, go up for the Lord will give you into the hand of the king, but Jehoshaphat knows these aren't prophets of Yahweh. And so he says, there's not yet a prophet of Yahweh here that we may inquire of him. And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, there is yet one man by whom we may inquire of Yahweh. Which is interesting. There's 400 prophets, but there's one of Yahweh. But I hate him. because he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil. He is Micaiah's son of Ammiah, but Jehoshaphat said, let not the king say so." I don't know why I have this imagination in my head, but like this is such a, this is not meant to be like a political statement, but you know, this just feels like a Trump move here. Like, but he hates me. I don't want to ask him. He hates me. Not saying Trump did all bad things, just saying you see that personality in powerful people. Let not the king say so. So, then the king of Israel called off, said, hasten to bring him, Mekiah the son of Imlah, the king of Israel, Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, were sitting each on his throne. So here's even another one of those things of characterization. It gives you the characterization of these are the two most powerful men in all of Israel. You have Mekiah, who is solo, no armies behind him. He's just the last one who will tell the truth. They're clothed in their royal garments, again characterization, at the threshing floor at the entrance of the gate of Samaria, and all the prophets were prophesying before them. So again, all the prophets. Not necessarily the prophets of Yahweh, but just their prophets. Said a guy, the son of Shaniah, made horns of iron for himself and said, thus says Yahweh, with these you will gore the Arameans until they are consumed. And all the prophets were also prophesying, thus saying, go up to Ramoth Gilead and succeed, and Yahweh will give it into the hand of the king. This is one of those moments when you, you read the story a little slower, you go, it's crazy, it's wild. I mean, they're doing grand gestures of made horns of iron for himself. With these, you will gore the Arameans until they are consumed. I mean, this is getting wild over how they say they're gonna succeed. But Micah ultimately, or Micaiah, is going to be asked. So Micaiah comes. As Yahweh lives, verse 14, what Yahweh says to me, that I shall speak. And then he came to the king, and the king said to Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth Gilead to battle, or should we refrain? And he said to him, go up and succeed. Yahweh will give it into the hand of the king. Which is a whole other footnote of humans, even prophets of Yahweh, because Ahab doesn't buy it. Verse 16, the king said to him, how many times must I make you swear that you will speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of Yahweh? So you never tell me good things, Micaiah. What's this? So he said, I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains like a sheep which have no shepherd. And Yahweh said, these have no master, and let each of them return to his house in peace. Then the king of Israel said, Jehoshaphat, did I not say to you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil? And Micaiah said, therefore, hear the word of Yahweh. I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne and all the hosts of heaven standing by him on his right and on his left. And Yahweh said, he will entice Ahab so that he will go up and fall at Ramuth-Gilead. And one said, This while the other said, then a spirit came forward and stood before Yahweh and said, I will entice him. And Yahweh said to him, how? He said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all of his prophets. And then he said, you shall entice him and also prevail. Go out and do so. And so now behold, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all of these prophets, but Yahweh has spoken calamity against you. And so, we could summarize here. Verse 28, ultimately saying, you're going to die Ahab. And if you don't, he says, verse 28, if indeed you return safely Ahab, then Yahweh has not spoken by me. And he said, listen all you people. So what's set up here ultimately is one prophet against 400 prophets. One man against, is he true? Is Yahweh true? Is Yahweh not true? and you're going to die, Ahab. And then just to fast forward to make it a little bit summary, you get to 22, 34, and what they come up to is a plot with he's going to go ahead and disguise himself. And so you read on here and Ahab says, I'll disguise myself, Joseph, you go out looking like a king, but I'm not going to look like a king so that no one points me out and kills me. And then it says in verse 34, now a certain man, just, somebody, no name, drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel in a joint of the armor. And so he said to the driver of his chariot, turn around and take me out of the fight, for I am severely wounded." So you have dialogue of first person of Ahab, which is take me out, I've been severely wounded. But you have the narrator who's communicating, now a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel. Now, As we just read, is there anything random about Ahab's death? No. And his point is, he didn't mean to do this. It was random from a human perspective, but the arrow is going to find its sovereign target, as it were. And so you need to interpret this story through God's perspective, which you clearly see theologically dripping through this passage, and this is how King Ahab is going to die. It's really, really great. Great story, but the point here of the narrator is the narrator helps you understand that Ahab tried to run from God. He even tried to get the prophets all to prophesy what he wanted them to say, but ultimately God is, Yahweh is a living God and what he says is going to be true. Luke chapter 10, verse 25. Another great example. Yeah. I just... I think because it's false prophets. I think... Right, right, right. But I think they're proclaiming to be prophets of the Lord. So, I think it's just a way of communicating that they're... Where is the prophet of Yahweh? It also tells you why there aren't prophets of Yahweh running around, because even Micaiah, who seems to be faithful, was leery of saying the truth, because he figured that's going to get him killed. Which is back to earlier in 1 Kings, with Elijah and Jezebel killing all the prophets of Yahweh she could find. And retribution for all the prophets of Baal dying. So, I think that's why. And you wouldn't see that, unless you kind of noticed one didn't have all capitalized L-O-R-D versus the other. Luke 10 here, verse 25-29, another one with the narrator, lets you know here that, behold, the scholar of the law stood up and was putting him to the test saying, teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life? And he said to him, what is written in the law? So it's kind of, again, scholar of the law, asking a legal question, according to the law, how do I get saved? How do you read it? Verse 26, Jesus. And he answered, well, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. So Jesus says in verse 28, you have answered correctly. Do this and you shall live. But what you find out is, this is where you get some of these difficulties. Well, okay, well then this is our way to salvation. But the answer is no. And what you figure out is, oh, The narrator tells you verse 29, but wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? In other words, he knows I can't do what I said is the way to inheriting eternal life. How do I inherit eternal life? Obey the law perfectly. He knows he can't do it. Therefore, he wants to justify himself, make himself right before God by saying, well, if I can define who my neighbor is, then maybe, which even then you couldn't fulfill the law, maybe I can inherit eternal life. It's just another way the narrator starts to get after this issue of, okay, he's not genuinely like, this isn't the answer. Ultimately you're not going to be able to inherit eternal life through this because the point is you can't be obedient. British young ruler type story. But it helps you to know that he wished to justify himself. So it helped you narrate and identify what you wouldn't have seen. So sometimes you're wondering, what are the internal motives of this question? Verse 29 kind of lets you in on the internal heart motives are. He wants to justify himself. He wants himself to feel better. If you do look at the Rich Young Ruler and other passages where you see some of that and how does he justify that. And ultimately Jesus challenges him and says, well sell everything you own, give it to the poor, he can't do it. this narrator. Another real quick one, Luke 2, 50, where Jesus is, I guess, gets himself lost, stays behind intentionally, but the narrator lets you know in verse 50, after Mary's freaking out, why is it that you were searching for me? Did you not know that I, or verse 48, child, why have you treated us this way? Beholding your father and I have been anxiously searching for you. Which, yes, right? You understand, they're freaking out. If you lost your kid, you'd freak out. She lost her virgin born son that is supposed to save people from their sins and she's freaking out. And he answers, why is it that you were searching for me? Did you not know that I had to be in my father's house? And then the narrator tells you, but they did not understand the statement which he had spoken to them. We're not going to get too far into this, but I'd say if you're trying to teach or study this passage, That becomes hugely important. The only story we have of Jesus from the time he was two until the time he's 30 is this story told by Luke. And the narrator wants you to know the story, and he wants you to know mom and dad don't get it. They didn't understand the statement that he had spoken to them. Without the narrator's voice, you just wouldn't know that. So that becomes important. If you're gonna understand this passage, you're gonna have to answer, why did the narrator say that? So characterization, plot, dialogue, narrator, and then lastly, the setting becomes important sometimes. So sometimes it's important, and it's our job to determine if it is important and if it's not important. It simply is providing the physical location of the action. It's somewhat important, I'd say, in 1 Kings 22, so we just looked at that, where there was peace in the land for three years. That adds flavor, I guess you could say, or It's atmosphere. So sometimes it's just going to add atmosphere, but it's important. It's been peace. So here's Ahab, you live in peace, all you have to do is not go to war, and you live. But you're greedy, you want to go to war, and ultimately he's going to die. So sometimes it adds atmosphere, other times it's going to support the message of the passage. And sometimes, like I said, you kind of walk through, and you might walk through and see something that is very kind of, wow, like a puzzle, this all fits together, and what an amazing God we serve. And it may not have to do with the main point of the message, but you're still going to see things when you ask the right questions with the setting. One of those examples would be the Sermon on the Mount, because you're going to look at Matthew chapter 5 on the Sermon on the Mount, and it's going to say, when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up to the mountain, and after he sat down, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and began to teach them. So the picture you have in your head here, which is 100% accurate, is Jesus doing what? From reading this, what visual comes to your mind? What painting would you paint for me? Right, he goes up, he's sitting on the mountain, he sits down, and he's up top teaching everyone who's down. But then you go to Luke, and Luke tells you a little bit more. And 12 through 17, I kind of, 14, 15, 16, the name of the disciples I left out. But it happened at this time he went off to the mountain to pray. And so what you find out is, oh, he went to the mountain the night before. He prayed all night before the Sermon on the Mount. And he's spending the whole night in prayer to God. And when the day came, he called his disciples to him. And he chose the 12 of them, whom he also named as apostles. And Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place. And there was a large crowd of his people and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and coastal region of Tyre and Sidon." So, what's the difference between Matthew and Luke? And he's going up to the mountain, and he seemingly is coming down the mountain. Now you kind of look at Luke, and it's like, well, OK, it doesn't say he came down off the mountain. Just say he came down, found a spot, and then taught from that spot. But it's this setting, though, I think that is helpful. Because which one's right? Which one's historically accurate? Yes, both of them, right? Both are true. I think this is helpful to see because both of them are true, but in Matthew's case, with Matthew's audience, Matthew is trying to look at the Jewish king. What would you imagine a king would do in the way a king would? He's going to go up to the mountain and he's going to teach. He's not going to come down to his people. He's the king, right? You look at Luke, Luke has a different audience. You have a Greek Theophilus, who he is writing to, and you see the same thing. And it's not to, this is the kind of thing where you go, you don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill, but you do see something here. And you do see Jesus, verse 17, coming down with them, teaching them to a level place. And it does, I think, relate to their themes. The king doesn't come down, right? But then when he's talking to, and that kind of emphasis of Jesus being the son of man and Luke, we're saying, hey listen, to the Gentiles, Jesus, God in heaven, came down. born in a manger. There's an emphasis on his humanity and this emphasizes his humanity. Matthew emphasizes and they both set up the same event differently because they have different emphasis and I think you can, I think you can argue that in multiple places as you get through the Gospels and the way they communicate. It all comes back to the setting. Now would I play it up too much in 17 that Jesus came down to them and he came and was among the people? I don't know if I, you know, that's not the main point of the Sermon on the Mount, but it is carrying along and important in adding atmosphere to what's going on in that text. We had one more example in John 2 which we don't have time for, but any questions on that before next week we're going to look at typology and ask and answer those questions next week.