Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Explore the Bible for Yourself, Part 30 of 52
IDEA: The teaching in a narrative can be either explicit or implicit.
PURPOSE: To help listeners read narrative perceptively. Let me tell you a story:
It's about a man named Harold. When he was growing up, Harold and his father didn't get along very well. Harold's father drank a great deal. He often stayed out until the bars in town closed. At home, when he talked to Harold, he often swore at him. When Harold would do the least thing wrong, he'd beat him severely. When Harold was 16 years of age, he left home.
What do you know about Harold's father's character?
From what I've told you, what do you think you know about Harold?
Did I tell you any of those things directly? How sure are you of your conclusions?
Stories work that way. Sometimes they can be explicit: "Harold's father was a vile and angry man." Sometimes they can be implicit.
I. The biblical stories often tell us implicitly things that we have to know.
Take the story of Ruth.
A widow named Ruth, who was from the country of Moab, emigrates from Moab to the town of Bethlehem with her Israelite mother-in-law Naomi, who is also a widow. When she is there in Bethlehem, Ruth gleans leftover grain in the field of a man named Boaz. Boaz befriends Ruth because he has heard of her faith and the kindness she has shown to Naomi, who happens to be a relative of his. Under Naomi's prompting, Ruth lets Boaz know that she loves him and hopes that he would be willing to marry her. Boaz undertakes the legal procedures necessary to many Ruth and to protect the property rights of her late husband. Ruth and Boaz are married and they have a son, Obed, who is a great consolation to his grandmother Naomi. Eventually Obed's grandson turns out to be David, the greatest king of Israel.
II. What can we gather from this story that is not directly taught?
What do you know about Ruth?
Implicitly the narrative tells us that Ruth was converted to the God of Israel, Ruth 1:17. You can't read the narrative carefully, in comparison to the Judges, without seeing what an exception Bethlehem was.
What do we know about the people of Bethlehem? What can we gather from the book itself and in contrast to the book of Judges?
Implicitly, the people of Bethlehem seem to be a God-aware people, probably godly in the sense that they pray, etc. Nowhere does it state that Bethlehem was remarkable for its piety, but that's what it's telling us implicitly.
What do you know about the reason the book of Ruth is given to us? Is the purpose stated directly or indirectly?
Implicitly it tells us the significance of all of this in the very last verse of the book: 4:22: Ruth, a foreigner, was David's great-grandmother. If you know the whole Bible, you know that she also was an ancestress of Jesus. Even though they had no idea of all of this, (it was all very ordinary) God is working through ordinary people in what seem like very ordinary events to bring David into the world, and ultimately, Jesus.
In the genealogy in Matthew 1, Ruth is included. That's implicit, but that's really the purpose of the story. That comes at the end of a genealogy that we tend to skip.
III. Summary: A careful attention to details and the overall development of the narrative and its context demonstrates that what is implicit is every bit as significant as what is explicit.
