We are pausing our History of the Reformation, our Voices of the Reformation series this afternoon. This has been quite the week. Had the visitation yesterday and then with the funeral in Winchester on Tuesday. It was a bit pinched on time this week and with the sessions, discussing it with the session, we decided I was going to pause the Reformation series and we're going to be looking at a topic I'm calling Kinds of Books in the Bible. or the technical term might be the genres of the Bible. And I thought about giving you a blank sheet like this for you to have to fill it out and then I was gonna give it to you. I feel like I've done that to you too many times. I'm just gonna give it to you this time. You're gonna have to hang with me and not get bored since you already have all the answers. The idea is that we want to read the Bible as it was intended to be read. The reality is that the Bible is full of a lot of different kinds of books. And if we read all these books the same way, we are going to misinterpret scripture. If we don't understand the difference between poetry and narrative and wisdom literature and letters and laws, if we don't understand how those are to be interpreted, then we're going to often misinterpret scripture. So a few of you that were at CY a couple months ago have heard this lesson before, so probably a good refresher anyway. One of the difficulties interpreting scripture is that there are people who have interpreted everything or who interpret most things in scripture figuratively. Some liberal theologians today, liberal churches today, that would take lots of things in the Bible as being figurative or myths that are just intended to teach a lesson. And in response to that, I think a lot of Bible-believing Christians say, well, we need to interpret the Bible literally. We always interpret the Bible literally. Because there are a lot of people who don't interpret passages literally that really should interpret them that way. And so I remember our pastor in Manhattan, Jonathan Haney, saying someone came up to him and was trying to find out what kind of a pastor he was, what kind of church he went to, and said, now do you interpret the Bible literally? And Jonathan's response was, No, hang on. He says, I interpret the Bible literarily, meaning I interpret it the way each type of literature in the Bible is intended to be interpreted, which means some parts of the Bible are intended to be taken literally, and other parts of the Bible are intended to be taken figuratively. And when we get that wrong, we get ourselves in a lot of trouble. The goal today is to try to go through these six different, seven different, Seven. Hey, I have seven. That's a good number. I have seven different types of books in the Bible. Now, you'll see a lot of different lists out there. Some of you may think this is too complicated. Some of you may think it's oversimplified. But this is one way to try to break down the different kinds of books in the Bible, and then a few tips on how to interpret those kinds of books. And then you'll see, I've done this in a half sheet so that you can keep it in your Bible if you want to. On the back, I've given you a list of every book of the Bible with what most of that book is. It's not a perfect list. This isn't oversimplification. It's an idea of if you're going to start reading a book, you could look at this sheet and say, OK, what kind of a book is this? And then you can use the front of the sheet to help you to know how you should be approaching this book. So the first thing we want to look at today is narrative. What is a narrative? Any kids know what the word narrative means? A record of something that really happened, right? Some people might say a narrative is a story, although story sometimes has the connotation of made up, right? You're telling stories. A narrative is an account of something that happened, right? Can you think of some narratives in the Bible? What are some narratives in the Bible? Birth of Christ, okay, the birth narrative, right? Creation narrative, now there's a key point where we come back to that. What other narratives? Right, Kings, the book of Kings in the Old Testament, there's lots and lots of narrative in the Bible. And this is a lot of what people read when they read their Bibles. I think there are other genres that we're a little bit less comfortable with. But you're reading an account of something that happened. And so it's pretty important to remember that when we read narratives in the Bible, they are recording real events that really happened. These are not just myths, they're not just parables or stories with a meaning. When there's a parable in the Bible, it's clearly delineated as a parable. Jesus tells a parable. There are things like parables in the Old Testament as well. These are accounts of things that actually happen, and they're presented that way in Scripture. Jesus treats the narratives of the Old Testament as facts, as historical facts, so we should treat them that way. And so the beautiful thing with that is that we have not just been given a theological work, a systematic theology, we've been given the story of history, right? God's plan throughout history. And so the first question I would have you consider as you're reading narratives is how do I see God working out his plan to save sinners? That's gonna be very different when you're reading the story of Noah than it is when you're reading Paul in Acts, or Jesus' life, or even the narratives in the book of Jeremiah. There are a lot of different kinds of narratives, but at all times, you know that God is working out his plan to save sinners. And so that's a good place to start, to say God has a plan, he's working it out, how do I see that working out in this passage? I think interpreting Old Testament narrative is a challenge, more of a challenge than interpreting New Testament narrative. If you're in the Old Testament, look for prophets, priests, and kings. Some of you may remember a long time ago when I did the Old Testament reading guide and we went through a lot of the covenants of the Old Testament, looking at prophets, priests, and kings, those kinds of things. There's a lot more we could say here. But if you see a prophet or you see a priest or you see a king in that narrative, is this person being like Jesus? Sometimes they're a type of Christ where they are being like Jesus. Sometimes they are a reminder how much we need Jesus, right? When a king is not being righteous, when a prophet is a false prophet. So that's one way to help you focus your thinking on Christ as you're reading an Old Testament narrative. And then one of the dangers in reading narratives is that often we say, dare to be Daniel, just be like the people in the Bible. But there are a number of times when we should not be like the people in the Bible. And it's not always clear immediately whether you're supposed to imitate this person. Some accounts are just presented. You have Jephthah making his vow to the Lord. And he's faithful to his vow, but he shouldn't have made the vow in the first place. There's some complicated things like that where we're not necessarily supposed to follow the example of these people. And so you need to ask yourself, okay, does God want me to imitate these people or not? Do they trust God? Do they obey God's law? And ultimately, the question is, are they being like Christ? Are they being like Jesus? And then, if they are, that's when you want to imitate the people in the Bible. So, especially as parents, if you're teaching your kids Bible stories, it's really tempting to just jump immediately to imitate this person. Let's make sure that we're pointing them to Christ and how this person is acting like Jesus. Okay, so a lot of the Bible is narrative, but the Bible also has a lot of laws in it. Where do we find most of our laws in the Bible? Exodus, Leviticus especially. Yup. Anywhere else? You're preaching on it. Right. There's some in Deuteronomy, or sorry, some, oh, I just gave out, oh wait, the other one. Numbers, some in Numbers, but then a lot in Deuteronomy as well, right? So especially the first five books of the Bible are called the law, historically, the Torah, the five books of the law. Laws can be a challenge. Many of you, I'm sure, have done a Bible reading plan, and you get through Genesis, it's going pretty well, and you get into Leviticus, or if you make it through Leviticus, you get to Numbers, and it's a struggle. And one of the big struggles is you sit down to read for your day, and you have a chapter on laws for leprosy. You say, what am I supposed to do with this today, right? What am I supposed to, how is this something that I'm supposed to apply in my life, or how's it supposed to affect my thinking in the New Covenant? Our confession breaks down the laws of the Old Testament into three different categories. You have these moral laws, you have ceremonial laws, and you have the civil laws for Israel. And so I have those questions there to try to help you think through that. Are these laws about what's right and wrong? Are they about what's moral? The kinds of things that you find in the Ten Commandments. Does this law somehow apply what the Ten Commandments teach? And when you read that, we're supposed to ask ourselves, do I need to repent of anything, right? That's the law, shines a light on our lives. And it says, am I committing sin somehow? And always in that, we're also seeing how is Jesus righteous like this, right? How is Jesus the perfectly righteous man? Those ones aren't quite as hard, though, when it is clearly about right and wrong. Then there are the ones that are symbolic. This is what we often call ceremonial laws. And it's harder to differentiate these sometimes from moral laws. Some people try to argue that the sexual ethics of the Old Testament were just matters of cleanness and just matters of symbolism. But we can point back to the Ten Commandments and say, no, sexual sin is under the Seventh Commandment. So these things are not easy to do, but to sort out always. But look at, is there something symbolic here? Is this a picture of sin? Like leprosy, leprosy was a picture of how sin sticks to you and it grows and you can't get rid of it, right? Or uncleanness is a picture of sin, you know, or is it a picture of forgiveness? The symbolic law is about cleansing, washing, those kinds of things. And when you see that, think then about the salvation you have in Jesus, right? Jesus, I was like a leper. I was unclean. I was, you know, those kinds of things. And the sacrificial laws point you to his sacrifice in your place, that forgiveness you have in him. But then there are also laws that are specific for the nation of Israel, especially civil laws and penalties. So somebody commits this sin, they have to be punished in this way. There are some people that try to teach today that those still apply exactly as they were at the time, but currencies have changed, values have changed, value of things has changed. They're really teaching us general principles about how a nation should apply the law of God. what our confession calls the general equity of those laws still applies today. So we look at that and say, okay, that's for Israel. How does that apply in being fair today in our laws? Okay, next we have poetry. Where can you find poetry in the Bible? In the Psalms, right? Absolutely the Psalms. Where else do we find poetry in the Bible? Song of Solomon. What do you say? Proverbs does have poetry in it, yes. It's sort of its own thing as well. There's one other big category that has a lot of poetry in it, we don't always think of it as poetry. If you have a newer translation of the Bible, like the ESV, the old King James wouldn't have this, but if you have a passage that kind of looks like the Psalms, where the lines are all funky, That means it's Hebrew poetry. So where else do you see lines that aren't in just block paragraphs? Is there anywhere else? The prophets, right? The prophets wrote in poetry. A lot of what they wrote was in poetry. Now we're going to get into prophecy here. Poetry, if you see it laid out in kind of weird looking lines, that's trying to show you that these lines are supposed to relate to each other in a poetic way, because that way it's clearer in the Hebrew language. In poetry, Hebrew doesn't rhyme in the original language, it doesn't rhyme with sounds, right? You think of poetry In English, there's all the other poetry these days that doesn't rhyme, but we generally think of stuff that rhymes, right? Hebrew poetry doesn't rhyme with sounds. It has what some people have called rhyming ideas. The idea there is you have two lines that rhyme, but they rhyme in the concepts and the ideas that are being told. So you have a line and then you have it repeated, and it gives you a little different angle on the same thing. And I think this is so beautiful, because if God had written Hebrew poetry in a way that had to rhyme in the Hebrew language, we would all have to learn Hebrew to get the poetic aspect of it. But he has made 150 Psalms that can be translated into any language, and it's still poetry, because it's the ideas that rhyme. And I think that's really beautiful. That's how God has designed his poetry and his word to work. If you're reading in the Psalms, if you're reading in the Prophets, and you see one line and you don't get it, wait a moment, read the next line and see if it makes sense of it. See if it often repeats itself. It's either the same idea again, what we call parallelism, or it's the opposite. Sometimes you'll see in the Proverbs often, you'll see an idea and then the opposite of it. And that really helps us understand, right? And if you get into that rhythm as you're reading, it helps you understand what's being taught there. And I would encourage you, kind of like I just said, if you're struggling to understand the prophets or the poetry in the Psalms, they really lend themselves better to reading more of them than just one verse. Paul's letters, you can just zero in on one little chunk and just chew on it, and it's really, there's a lot just right there. I think in the Psalms and in the prophets, often they're intended to have more read with it to really make sense of what's going on there. So go ahead and read more than just the one verse. Okay, next we have prophecy. We've been talking about prophets already because they use poetry. What are some examples of prophets in the Bible? What did you say? Revelation does have prophecy in it, yes. What are some other examples of prophets? Isaiah, right? major and minor prophets, right? So they're a pretty clear genre, right? Because that's how we think of them, as prophets. So often, prophets are the direct address by the Lord. Thus says the Lord. Think how often you hear that in scripture. And that's the prophets that are especially characterized by that. I think one thing that we don't always get right in the Prophets, and I think I say this fairly frequently, so maybe you've heard this enough times, but the Prophets were written at a specific time by a specific person to specific people. I think we think that way in terms of the letters pretty frequently, right? Paul's writing to the Ephesians and that kind of thing, but we need to get that about the Prophets, okay? Isaiah's writing to Judah at this time, at the time of these kings. And that's why I've tried to give you so much background information on the kings and on the prophets, so that you can know what's happening at the time. Because there's a reason Jeremiah says the things that he does in his time, and he speaks a little differently from the way that Isaiah was writing, right? They were in different generations. Jeremiah was after Isaiah, even though they were in the same place. And so we need to remember that context to help us understand it. Often, the prophets are addressing specific problems. Some have said that the prophets are God's prosecuting attorneys. They're the ones that have to deliver, they're making the charge against God's people. And they make this case for what's wrong. But God doesn't leave his people with just the accusation or just the charge of sin. There's a solution there. So often there's that call for repentance, there's that call, and sometimes specific to their time. This is what you need to do. You need to get rid of these idols. You need to rebuild the temple. You need to do, there's specific things they needed to do to respond to do that. So ask yourself, what's the problem here? And what's the solution that God gives? It's not always there in every passage, but those are good things to look for as you read the prophets. Now, prophecy often has a messianic idea, looking forward to the Messiah, right? So look for, how is this pointing me forward to Jesus? How does it show us that Jesus is our only hope? Either because the hope that they were trusting in at that time was not working, or because it specifically talks about the branch, the righteous branch that's coming, the son of David, you know, these figures that are coming, this figure that's coming that's going to save God's people. You can look for that when you're reading prophecy. Okay, next we have wisdom literature. What is, what's an example of wisdom in the Bible? Proverbs, yep, that's kind of our go-to, right? Proverbs. What else? Anything else you think of that's wisdom? Job, yes. Job is, Job is a tough book to read. We might just need to spend a whole week on Job sometime. What else? Ecclesiastes, yes, which you're all experts in now, right? Ecclesiastes and Job and Proverbs, those are primarily the ones that we think of as wisdom literature. There's wisdom literature scattered throughout Psalm 49 is wisdom literature, some things like that. But wisdom is especially instruction for young people. I think Job maybe not quite so much, but Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Look at how Proverbs starts. It's really geared, it's parents speaking to their child, to their son especially, warning them about how life works, right? And Ecclesiastes is this older man looking at how life works and saying, this is how life works if we don't have God speaking to us, if we don't have that hope, knowing God personally. And so often it's someone who's older with wisdom looking back at life and giving advice to younger people. Our junior high boys are going through Proverbs right now for that reason, because it's really geared towards young men, but it's good for all of us, of course. And so, one of the challenges of wisdom literature, and we saw this when we were studying Ecclesiastes, is that you can't interpret it exactly the way that you would law, for example. Okay, because you have the proverb that says, answer a fool according to his folly, and the very next proverb says, do not answer a fool according to his folly. It might be backwards, I'm not sure which way it is. You can't read that as law, because law tells you that's contradicting itself, right? If you read it as law, saying you must do this, and the very next verse it says you must not do this, you're gonna get yourself tangled up and say, well, the Bible's inconsistent, I can't understand what I'm supposed to do here. Proverbs especially is usually communicating what is sort of common sense or in the sense of what usually happens in the world. So it's giving you a case of this is how life works. We saw that a lot in Ecclesiastes, right? Rich people have more comfort in life than people who don't have resources, right? And that's just kind of, that's the way life works. Those kinds of things are said all through Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. And if you read them as law or, you know, promoting this is righteous and this is unrighteous every time, you're going to get yourself tangled up a little bit. There's certainly plenty about righteousness and sin in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. We need to be careful as we interpret wisdom. Wisdom literature in Job is tough because it's an account of people trying to interpret a situation But it's not all the right understanding of things. It's an account of how people often approach things, so it's kind of that common sense, like, this is how people think about things, but not all of it is worthwhile thinking. In fact, a lot of it isn't. And so Job is something that's really prone to being misquoted, because you're pulling something out of a speech by someone who is wrong. And God told him at the end, you're wrong, but we have a whole speech by this person. You have to think carefully. I think wisdom literature is something you have to be especially careful on how you quote from it, or how you proof text from it. But in all of that, with wisdom literature, how do you see Jesus' wisdom in it? As you think of Proverbs being written for a young man and being preserved in the word of God, it was preserved in part for Jesus in his life as a young man. He had to learn the scriptures. It's weird for us to think about it that way. But he sang the Psalms. He had to learn Proverbs. The book of Proverbs is a book of wisdom in part for Jesus to live that perfect life for us. And so how do we see his wisdom in that? And then that helps us appreciate his wisdom in living that perfect life for us, and also the wisdom that he continues to exercise in helping us. And then you ask yourself, then, how can I be wise like him? And that helps us go just treat Proverbs like a book of Proverbs, like you would have on a tear-off calendar or something, like, you know, these are Confucius's best advice or whatever. We can treat it that way sometimes and forget that it's really speaking of Christ and how we can be like him. Okay, next we have letters. Where do we have letters in the Bible? Most of the New Testament, right? Right, all through the Bible, right? But especially the New Testament, starting in Romans all the way through to the end, because even Revelation has letters in it. And the key interpretation point here is that these are written by real people to other real people at a certain time. We have to think carefully about what was going on in their lives at that time. Because there are more straight theological statements in the letters of the New Testament, more just straight out teaching, it's easier to pull it out of its context, I think, and to forget. This is written by Paul to the Corinthians. This is written by Peter to the dispersed Christians. And so we need to make sure we're keeping that in mind, because it does shape how we would interpret what's said there. And in that, there are times where there are instructions to them that are just to them, to those people. Could somebody read 2 Timothy 4.13 for us? Does anybody have a Bible handy that could read? We usually think of the letters as being things that, instructions to us, right? We're the church. These are instructions to us. So what does 2 Timothy 4.13 say? OK. Are you supposed to apply that directly in your life? What is Paul telling Timothy? He's saying, bring me my cloak and my books, right? You're not supposed to go bring Paul his cloak and his books, right? And that's an obvious one, right? We have other things where Paul's giving Timothy advice about his stomach, things where there's specific instructions to that particular person. But there are other places where it's not quite so clear that that's what's going on. We won't get into all this today, but I think that that's what the passage about head coverings has going on there. There was a particular case going on. The church had prophecy and public prayer by women in the church. Because of the time that the church was in, there was spontaneous prophecy by women in the church. And there was a need for that kind of a thing at that time in that part of the life of the church. And so it was to the Corinthians in their day. There's a reason we don't see it show up anywhere else. So we won't get into all that today. There are cases like that where you're interpreting scripture. If you just take it as, this is always to me, you're going to misapply some things. So we need to be careful that we recognize when some things are written specifically to the church at that time for their place. Now, that's something that people have abused, and people use that as the reason that we don't have to hold to biblical ethics and homosexuality, or the ordination of women to the pastorate, or those kinds of things that people say, well, that was cultural, that was for that time, that was for that place. The fact that people abuse it does not mean that it's not still a valid principle and we need to not swing the other way and try to act like every verse of the New Testament applies to us directly. The other thing we need to be careful with letters, as I said, is it's easier to pull them out of context. That includes the time and place, but it also includes the context in the letter. The statements of Paul tend to lend themselves more to quoting by themselves, but that doesn't mean that they don't still belong in their context. So make sure you're reading the whole paragraph. Read the paragraph before and after. Even if you're focusing on one verse, make sure you know where it comes from. Context is king, right? That's the idea, that we've got to keep thinking about what's going on around it to interpret it correctly. Okay, lastly, we have symbolic visions, as I call it here, or what's usually called apocalyptic literature. Here's your, uh, extra credit question for the day. Does anyone know what the word apocalyptic actually, well, let's start here. What do people usually think of when you say apocalyptic? End times, right? Or in, like, pop culture, what does apocalyptic mean? Like, or post-apocalyptic, what does that mean? Right, after nuclear wars, right? World ending but not actually ending, right? And then you can have a post-apocalyptic thing, right? We usually think apocalypse means the end of the world. The word apocalypse or apocalyptic actually means a revealing. And apocalyptic literature was really prevalent in the time leading up to the time of Christ. And we have other examples of it. It's there in Daniel, and then it's there in Revelation especially. But it's a type of literature where there is a revelation of big picture kinds of things from heaven's perspective. So you have symbolic visions of beasts and things like that representing animals, fire, water, those kinds of things, representing forces that are at play in history. whether invisible spiritual forces or things that happen on earth, but there are symbols for them. So there are clear examples of this in Daniel, for example, when we're told, you know, the goat is Greece, is the king of Greece. And so people will say, people who want to interpret everything in the Bible literally will say, well, okay, that's a symbol. But then people will say, OK, but everything else, unless we're told explicitly that it's a symbol, like the goat being the king of Greece, then it's to be taken literally. I think a lot of funky things get done, especially with the Book of Revelation today, because of that. And you'll have friends, especially in dispensational churches, that will come to you and say, well, you don't believe the Book of Revelation. You don't believe the prophecies of the Old Testament, because we don't interpret them Literally, I'll give you an example of that here in just a moment. In some of those cases, we think they're symbolic, and they're not supposed to be taken as if John got to see a video screen of literal events in history in the future. And so we need to be looking for what is symbolized here. How does this vision show us earth from heaven's perspective? Or heaven from heaven's perspective? We're being given a revealing, an opening up of what's really going on behind the scenes. that we don't see when we're in the thick of it here on earth. And then how does this vision especially give hope when evil is powerful? In Daniel's day, they're in exile, right? It looks pretty hopeless for Israel. In John's day, the church is persecuted. Rome is incredibly powerful. The Jews in Israel are unfaithful to Christ. It looks pretty hopeless for God's people. Revelation gives us hope. that gives us the hope that Jesus wins in the end, right? That God is over all of history. And so it's a revealing, apocalyptic literature is a revealing of what we can't see with our eyes that should give us hope for God's plan of history, right? He is over all these things and these things are working out according to his plan. And ultimately, of course, how do we see King Jesus winning in these things? In Daniel, we see the King, you know, the Kingdom of God triumph in Revelation. That's, you know, if nothing else, if you've struggled reading through Revelation, you know how it ends, right? You get to the end, and I hope it, there's a sense of refreshment when you get to the very end of Revelation, because it is pure refreshment, right? It is, the most refreshing experience we will ever have. The best experience we will have had up to that point is when Jesus returns and there's that new heavens and new earth. We know how it ends, that Jesus is not going to be thwarted by any of these things. Just to give you an example of that idea of interpretation and revelation, I just want you to give you an example here. Let me make sure I've got this right. Yes, in Revelation chapter 9. I'm just going to read this and tell me if you've heard this interpreted literally by someone. Chapter 9 verse 7. and their teeth like lion's teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon. Has anyone heard this interpreted literally, what this is a picture of? Maybe I don't want to perpetuate this. It's not as prevalent anymore. I heard, what did you say? Armageddon, but specifically because there are some people who say John got to see something from the future that he didn't understand and he tried to describe it, but we know what it is now. I almost don't want to say it because I don't want to keep perpetuating this, but for a while there was really popular to interpret this as attack helicopters. It's got hair like a woman. It's supposed to be the swirling blades up above the helicopter. The face is like a man, is the pilot's face visible on the screen. You know, the teeth, the sting is in the tail. It's got, you know, they've got tail gunners and all this kind of stuff. And so the idea is John had this, got this video screen of the future and he can't get it. But now we get it because we... Now we know enough today that we know what's going on. But the problem is, people have done that all through human history. We always think that today is the day that makes sense of everything in Revelation. Apocalyptic literature has all these beasts, right? It has creatures that have these different qualities, and the qualities represent something. And instead of trying to just imagine this is him trying to describe attack helicopters, we should stop and think, okay, what does it mean that there are going to be forces in the world at play that have teeth like lion's teeth, right? We know the evil one is like a lion seeking someone to devour, right? But it has hair like a woman. There's some kind of allure here, right? And so that's how you, we need to be interpreting those things that way and we end up missing the point because we're so stuck on interpreting things literally. Again, with great respect for brothers and sisters who are really seeking to protect the literal meaning of the Word of God, there are times it should be interpreted figuratively. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, Bill, I didn't implant him here to mention this earlier, but Bill mentioned the creation narrative. A lot of people try to interpret that figuratively today. right? That Adam and Eve are just symbols, they're symbolic of the human race, were descended from apes, and there's just all these different people descended from apes. There wasn't a true parent, true parents of the human race. Is that how scripture presents them? No. How do we know that for, I mean, how do we know that for sure in one sense? There's lots of reasons, but what are some reasons we know that for sure? So it describes very literally how he made them. Yep. What else? Yep. Yeah, God is the creator, right? And that's, even the creation of Adam, you know, Adam as a person is referred to later in scripture as a real person. The other thing is, where does the symbolism stop and the literal parts start? Right? Adam and Eve are recorded as real people who lived a certain number of years, and they had so-and-so, and they had so-and-so, who would be at so-and-so, and you get to Abraham, and Abraham's real, and there's no point, there's no line of division, right? Where do you start, and where do you stop, if you're gonna say Adam and Eve are symbolic and mythical? There's just no indication from the text. Again, we're trying to read the book as it was intended to be read. It's written as narrative. Now, I believe there are literary aspects of symbolic, well, not symbolic, but there are poetic aspects of Genesis 1 that are really rich, but that doesn't mean that it's not also narrative. It doesn't mean it's not also an account of what really happened. You can see that there's a danger on all sides of this, right? We could be interpreting things literally that shouldn't be. We could be interpreting something figuratively that we shouldn't be. This is, again, one of those places where we have to ask the Lord for wisdom, right? How much wisdom we need to understand that we need the Holy Spirit to help us understand the Bible. To ask Him, as you open your Bible, say, Lord, protect me from error. Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law. Remember to study together with other people, to talk things over with people. If you have an idea for scripture that you're kind of not sure about, or it seems like a new idea, go talk to somebody about it, right? Have a conversation about it. So much richer study of scripture happens when we talk about these things together, and we help each other interpret the word of God. One of the verses that I've heard that obviously you can't really translate, literally, is that if your eye causes you to think kind of now, Right. Yes, right. So Jesus says, if you're right, if your eye causes you to pluck it out, cut off your hand. There have been people who've taken it literally, and it's not been good, but Jesus is not intended literally, right? He's using teaching, he's using, it's in a narrative, but right, he's using these kinds of word pictures to help us understand something. Let's pray. Gracious Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you for your word and how blessed we are to have it and to have it in all of its depth and richness. that you have given us so many different books in the Bible with many different genres that help us understand you and the truth of Christ and truth of our salvation, truth about this world in so many different ways. And so, Lord, we pray that you would help us to patiently and joyfully mine the depths of your word. and that we would be fed by it, and that you would help us to understand it by the work of your Holy Spirit. We thank you for time together today. Please go with us as we go from here and bring us safely home. Bring us back to worship you again next week. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.