What Does The Bible Say?
30 Minute Discussions Of Bible Subjects
What Does The Bible Say?
What Does the Bible Say - Is It Literal or Figurative #4?
Arnie is joined by Glenn Landrum to continue the discussion of the literal and figurative aspects of the Bible. This episode begins by noting some helpful hints on how to distinguish between literal and figurative expressions in the Bible. We shouldn't make up our minds prematurely on a particular subject without considering the context of it. The time that the Pharisees misrepresented Moses as commanding divorce is discussed at length. Sometimes Jesus or one of the writers tells us which figure of speech is being used, whether it is a parable or an allegory. That is discussed. We ought to note how the inspired writers or speakers treat an event recorded in the Bible. Jesus speaking about Moses at the burning bush and the Hebrew writer noting Noah and the flood is looked at. We discuss Jotham's fable to show some of the figurative language found in the Bible and how to understand it. A good guide to follow is what someone has been quoted as saying, which is, "The sense that makes the most sense is the correct sense." There is a little bit more that needs to be said about this subject, so we will complete it in the next episode. Take about 30-minutes to listen in on our discussion. Have your Bible handy so you can verify what we are saying. There is a transcript of this Buzzsprout episode for your convenience.
This is a presentation of the Woodland church of Christ meeting at 3370 Broad Street in Sumter, South Carolina. We meet for worship on Sunday at ten thirty am and five thirty pm. We meet for bible study at nine thirty am on Sunday and seven pm on Wednesday. If you have questions or comments on this lesson, you may email them to Fred Gosnell at fgosnell@ftc-i.net or to Arnie Granke at agranke440718@twc.com.
Arnie:Good afternoon. This is Arnie Granke, and with me today is GlennLandrum, who's a member of the church of Christ with me at in Sumter, South Carolina, at Woodland. And this is what does the Bible say? It's brought, brought to you by the Woodland church of Christ. And we're glad that you're tuning us in. We hope that if you ever happen to be in the Sumter area, maybe on a military assignment, or just doing some tourism and looking at sites and what, what, what not. We hope that you'll come and and worship with us on Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Bible class also Sunday morning and and then on Wednesday, Wednesday evening. We've been talking about figures of speech in in the Bible. There are people that think that every word of of the Bible is absolutely so, and sometimes figures of speech, that confuses figures of speech with something that they aren't meant to be. telling us about. The figures of speech simply illustrate things for us. So we've, we've talked about, talked about parables and proverbs and and allegories and metaphors and similes similitudes, just a number of figures of speech and how they happen to be it as a part of the text, and not just that, everything that God has said is figurative language, like some people want us to believe. And I think tonight we are, this afternoon, what we ought to talk about is figurative language. How to Tell figurative language from literal. Glenn, what do you what do you think? What's it what's a starting point on that?
Glenn:Well, we have about six points we we plan to make here on figurative or literal language. But the first point is that we don't make up our minds prematurely, and therefore fail to consider the case. We can look at an example how the Pharisees misrepresented Moses. And most of us are familiar with this passage. It's Matthew the 19, verses, three through nine, and it reads, The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause. And he answered and said unto them, Have you not read that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female? And said, For this cause, shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they twain, shall be one flesh, wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder. They say unto him, Why did Moses then command, Give a writing of divorcement and to put away, put her away? He sath unto them, Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away the your wives. But from the beginning, it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication and shall marry another committeth adultery, and whosoever marrieth her which is put away, does commit adultery. So we see that the the Pharisees in this, this case, they were they, it says they came tempting him, uh, they, they knew something about this to start with. They knew it was going to be a situation that that was questionable, uh, that they understood what the what the Scriptures taught, that that it was male and female, and that when, when two marry, they're they're married for life. They knew that, and they understood that. But he also knew that under the Law of Moses. Moses had allowed men to put away their wives for, for just about any cause. So he or they were questioning him on that and trying to trip him up, and he explained that away. That how, how that was Moses had allowed it because they had hard hearts and they wanted to do something different than what God wanted to do. The way we approach that. We need to approach any of these situations that we have with an open mind. When we're reading the reading text, we need to have an open mind willing to understand what God is presenting to us. It's easy for us to understand if we pay attention and we read read read the text. Most, most of us have been taught something that we've heard about the Bible. Sometimes, some things we hear or been are learned are not correct. Some of the things we we've learned, they're not accurate. It takes an open mind to change your ideas or your beliefs when you're confronted with the evidence that we read in the in the scriptures. So have an open mind.
Arnie:Yeah, it's a shame that so many people during Jesus lifetime were deceived in this and and falsely told things by the the religious hierarchy of of the day who who really weren't in the business of trying to serve God and trying to help others be righteous according to God's will. They just wanted power and and they would use just about any guise that they could to try to make that possible, so that that was dishonesty. And, of course, a lot of people, there are pastors and and various preachers that are called by various titles that do exactly the same thing today, nothing has changed in that regard. So we need to be very careful and not be led astray by by those that want us to to just follow them and and and give them credit for all that they that they say. Usually the writer in in Scripture, whoever it is, whether we're talking about Matthew or Mark, Luke or John, or whoever it might be, when there's a figure of speech of some sort. They'll tell you what that figure of speech is. For example, I'm looking right now in Luke, chapter six and and at verse, verse 39 and it, it tells us that, He spake a parable unto them. Well, so, so here it is. It's a parable. You already know that. And as you go into it, it's, it's not a simile or, you know, not some kind of personification or, or whatever. It's a parable, you know. And, and a parable is, is a story or a statement that explains a particular point that Jesus wanted to, wanted to, to make. So the passage that I'm I'm looking at here, verse 39, He spake a parable unto them. Can the blind lead the blind? Well that that course causes us to say, well, of course not. We can't. You can't take somebody and lead them by the hand if you're blind. And, and that's the point that Jesus is is making there. And and then he adds to the end of that, shall they not both fall into the ditch? And another passage maybe that that would be useful in, in that respect, would be in in Matthew chapter 13, and beginning at well, just verse, verse three, uh, talking about Jesus, he was down by the seaside at the time, He spake many things unto them, in parables, saying, Behold, A sower went forth to sow, and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside. The fowls came and devoured them up, and what he's used is a real situation that occurs with birds. Doesn't mean that the people there were birds, doesn't mean that that, that they should be eating seeds. It just means that that this is an illustration to clarify a point that Jesus wants them to to understand. And of course, they did, when he can config, when he concluded what he was telling him,
Glenn:Yeah, one of the points we need to make about about parables, particularly is that Jesus, when he saw when he spake these parables, he spoke in terms of that day and time. So sometimes we might have to do some research to understand what he's talking about. Actually, most, most of us don't understand how lambs function and operate, and how they they follow a shepherd, or how a shepherd deals with with lambs. Uh, we, we, we're not in that that situation anymore. So we might have to study some to learn what Jesus is teaching in the parables that he's using so that we understand it. So, but so we want to see how did the other writers inspire, or the speaker and speakers treat it? Moses at the at the bush that's so would be in Mark or, I'm sorry, Jesus talks about it in Mark 12, 26, and 27 it says, As touching the dead they rise. Have you not read in the book of Moses how in the bush, God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. Ye that therefore do greatly err. So Jesus is is making this comparison. And most of us know the know the account in in Exodus, Exodus, three of when Moses went up on the mountain, he saw the the bush burning he, and then approached the bush, and God spoke to him out of the bush. We can we can understand that this was a situation, and that's the way, way the scriptures presented. Uh, so we don't we, this could be a difficult one. Uh, thinking about a bush talking to to Moses, but it was a, it is. It's a literal account. He uses a bush lit figurative, but the the literal action is, is what happened. God spoke to Moses out of the bush. So God it tells it that that Moses actually saw the the voice coming from the bush. So we know that that would be a literal action from something that's figurative to represent. Do I have that right?
Arnie:Say again.
Glenn:Do I have that right?
Arnie:I think you're exactly right. And, and, of course, that I suspect that God's purpose in speaking out of the bush was to, since it's flaming, it's on fire, was to direct Moses to go to the bush to where he would hear the things that God was was going to tell him. It would he would attract his attention there. But, but God doesn't always speak to people out of the bush anymore. Don't anybody get the idea that that every bush there in your front yard is is the voice of the Lord speaking, speaking to you. Uh, Noah, did you have something?
Glenn:Yeah,
Arnie:Go ahead.
Glenn:You know, this passage is, is definitely comparing alliterative as a figu and a figurative, as I mentioned before. Uh, this passage is definitely comparing literal and figurative. But you have to look at the whole passage going back to verse 18. The Sadducees, which were a group who did not believe in the resurrection. Were asking Jesus about a woman who had been married to seven brothers, one after another, one had died, and then the next one died and the next one died. And the tradition was that when one brother was married to a woman, he died, then the next brother would would marry her. So they were asking Jesus, who would the woman be in the resurrection, which they didn't even believe in a resurrection.
Arnie:Which was probably was their point.
Glenn:Oh, absolutely it was. They were, just like always, they were trying to trip Jesus up. The absurd question was, whose would she be in the resurrection? Jesus simply tells them that they don't know what they're talking about. You just read. He's in verse 24, Ye know not the scripture, neither the power of God. Then he goes on to explain that them to the marriage in heaven. That God is that there is no marriage in heaven, and that God is the God of the living even Abraham Isaac and Jacob, who had died many, many years ago physically, but they would be alive in the resurrection
Arnie:And and really what they were, what they were doing was just trying to confuse the the Jewish people, because, you know, we have to listen to what the what the priests have to say, because they're always right. And that's not true.
Glenn:That's sort of like today, isn't it? A lot of people think we have to listen to what the preacher says
Arnie:And and he may or may not be right.
Glenn:That's right. So the point is that we need to study and know the Scriptures and understand what they say. And that's exactly what Jesus told told the Sadducees said you don't know the Scriptures. They basically say you don't know what you're talking about.
Arnie:So maybe a lesson for that is when, when somebody offers a passage of Scripture, jot it down and and then, after you've listened to all that he has to say, go home, pull out your Bible and see if he represented it correctly or not.
Glenn:Well, we know of a group that that did exactly that, don't we?
Arnie:That's the way it goes.
Glenn:Acts 17, 11?
Arnie:Huh?
Glenn:In Acts 17, 11?
Arnie:Yeah.
Glenn:We absolutely know that that that they searched the scriptures, they made sure that they knew what, what was being said was the truth
Arnie:And, and, and that's the way to study the Bible and and listen to to people who would be teachers. I'm looking Glenn at at, at another illustration here of of inspired writers, and, of course, talking about Moses writing to telling about Noah and the ark and the and the flood and and and all that. He uses that as an illustration, that was written in in Genesis, chapter six, seven and and eight, three chapters really embrace that. and and then in in Hebrews chapter 11, we have, Noah spoken about by the the Hebrew writer. We don't know exactly who the Hebrew writer was. It could have been Paul, could have been, could have been somebody else. We just just don't know. But he says in Hebrews 11 and and verse five uses this illustration. By faith Noah, being warned of God, of things not seen as yet moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. Well, of course, the way that he condemned the world was, he wasn't responsible for the for the flood, but it did show some did show the world, and showed us who follow generations later, the the fact that that Noah obeyed God took his word, did what He commanded, and the results were positive for for him, rather than the the things that happened to the everyone else who died in the flood.
Glenn:Yeah, I you know Noah. This is, this is a situation basically all of it, literal. Noah received a command from God and and Noah literally followed up with with that command, and we see that he prepared the ark for the saving of his house, and we know that it was only his house, the eight souls that were saved and that the rest of the world was destroyed. So it was this in itself it condemned the world because he followed God, and the rest of the world did not. So the rest of the world, they paid the price for being being evil.
Arnie:And that's a shame that we do pay a price when we don't disobey, when we don't obey the Lord.
Glenn:Now we're about to come to to, in my opinion, is, is a very important passage, and one that we really do need to understand, and that's all of us. First Peter 3, 18, through to 21 it reads, For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just, for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quick, but quickened by the Spirit, by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once the long suffering of God wait, waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water. I just mentioned that, didn't I? The the like
Arnie:Yeah, you did.
Glenn:The like figure wherein to even baptism doth also now save us. Not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Well, it's, it's a very interesting passage. It likens baptism to the event that we just spoke of, Noah and the flood. The flood, and since Noah and his family were saved from some death, certain death, the flood covered the earth, they would have died just like all the other people, but he were saved in a ship that was built by Noah, and they were saved in wat, by the water, flood and the boat floating on the water. So we can therefore say that they were saved by water. That's a figurative sense that they were saved by water, when we could say they were saved by the boat. So either way, you understand that they were saved by the water. Here's the important point. God compares baptism, that's immersion in water, to the flood in which Noah and his family were saved. Now pay attention to the last phrase, the like figure, which is a comparison whereunto even baptism does also now save us. So baptism, in a literal is a literal action. Both the salvation by water is figurative in in a sense, but it's also literal. The literal water does not do anything for us, but the physical act of doing it does, just as Paul responded to the to Ananias his in his comment in Acts 22, 16, Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins. This is one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted concepts in the Bible, Most people want to concentrate only on the very last portion that first, Peter, 3, 21, but the answer of a good conscience towards God.
Arnie:Yeah. And it's a shame that somehow, somehow, many religions pervert what baptism really, really is. The word baptism comes from a Greek word baptizo, which literally means to immerse. You can't immerse by sprinkling a little bit of water or wiping it across somebody's forehead or something along along like that. Immersion is exactly that. And if we haven't done that, we haven't saved ourselves from the sins that we've committed in in thinking that we obeyed God's Will when, when we didn't. I see you're looking for a passage of scripture. What you got in mind?
Glenn:Well, I think about about two things we know about. What's the scripture that uses the term in much water? I well, I guess we're both drawing a blank there. We'll have to look that up. There's one of the passage that that mentions much water. But also think of, think about when, when Christ was baptized by John, they went down in, they were in, in the water. Also the Eth, Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, 38, after, after Philip had had taught the eunuch Jesus, they came to some water, and he said, Look, there's water. What prevents me from being baptized? And they both went down into the water and came up out.
Arnie:And literally, what he was saying was, what does hinder me from being immersed?
Glenn:Yeah, I got, got the passage. Now I would have some help from from brother Fred. In John 3, 23, And John also was baptizing in Enon near this near, near to Salem, because there was much water there, and they came and were baptized. Well, the point is that there had to be a lot of water in order to do the baptism. If we were just sprinkling or pouring, all you needed was just a little bit of water you could you could sprinkle by just dipping your fingers in it and sprinkling, or with a cup pour a little bit. So they needed much water in order to to baptize in that point.
Arnie:So again, our our point here is we want to be careful how we deal with figurative language and not damage the meaning of the panic, meaning of the passage to our own destruction, as a matter of fact. That we should consider things that the Bible says as being literal. That's a general rule, unless it forces an impossibility. The Scriptures were never intended to make the impossible possible there. So we want to be careful about that. Sometimes people will handle a passage, mishandle a passage of scripture in such a way that it turns it into nonsense.
Glenn:Yeah.
Arnie:And, and we, we want to avoid that. And in, in the book of Judges, in, in chapter nine is a an account of Joss Jotham's Fable. And he's and he's telling a a story there in, in that fable. It wasn't something that really happened, the the bushes and the trees and and all of that didn't speak. But he's using that as a as as an illustration, and when people want to make that as something that really, truly happened when it didn't just that one occasion that I'm aware of where, where God was speaking out of the out of the burning bush. Then, then they turn the Bible into into nonsense. Somebody once used this, this term, they said, the sense that makes the most sense is the correct sense, and and that's a good rule as we, as we study the Bible. Jotham's Fable, by the way, is in in Judges chapter nine there and starts at verse seven, goes all the way down to to verse 21 probably too much for us to read here now.
Glenn:I, I think yeah, it is a lot to read, uh, probably to get the gist of the whole thing. you even have to start at right back at verse one. But some of the things that Arnie is talking about there with that seems to be nonsense. Begins in verse eight. It says the trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them. And they said unto the olive tree, reign thou over us. But the olive tree said to them, Should I leave my fatness? Wherewith by my they my, by me, they honor God and man and go to be promoted over the trees. And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou and reign over us. But the fig tree said to them, should I first forsake my sweetness and and my good fruit and go and be promoted over the trees? And the trees said to the vine, Come thou and reign over us. And the vine said to them, should I leave my vine which cheereth God and man, and go and be promoted over the trees? And then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou and reign over us. And the bramble said to the trees, If in the truth ye anoint me a king over you. Then come and put your trust in my shadow, and if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour, devour the cedars of Lebanon. If we just simply read that passage, we don't get a whole lot out of that. And it it's really difficult to understand. But if you read the whole whole chapter and this fable of of Jotham, we come to understand that these, these trees, the fig tree, the olive tree, the the bramble probably all represent, which would be figurative, represent what people would say.
Arnie:That's That's exactly right. We just ran out of time, and we appreciate you listening to us. We we hope that we can pick up this conversation again next Lord's day, and thank you for listening.