Five Act Story
1.4.09
Several of you are going to try to read through the Bible this year
so I wanted to give you two ideas
2 Timothy 3:16
Have you ever heard this one?
“The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.”
In other words: We do what the Bible says.
This sounds very Biblical and faithful.
The fact is every Christian ignores many commandments in the Bible.
Every Christian picks and chooses what he is going to obey.
AJ Jacobs’
The Year of Living Biblically:One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible
“As I write this, I have a beard that makes me resemble Moses. Or Abe Lincoln. It’s not a well-manicured, socially-acceptable beard. It’s an untamed mass that creeps up toward my eyeballs and drapes below my neckline. I’ve never allowed my facial hair to grow before, and it’s been an odd and enlightening experience.
But I mean no harm. The facial hair is simply the most noticeable physical manifestation of a spiritual journey I began a year ago.
My quest has been this: To live the ultimate Biblical life. Or more precisely, to follow the Bible as literally as possible. To obey the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love my neighbor. But also to abide by the oft-neglected rules: To avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers. And, naturally, to leave the edges of my beard unshaven (Leviticus 19:27). I am trying to obey the entire Bible, without picking and choosing.”
If you shaved your beard this morning, you broke a commandment.
We all know Leviticus 19:18 “love your neighbor as yourself” but what about other commands from the same chapter?
Leviticus 19: 9, 19, 26, 27, 32
My guess is you all ignore these commands.
Jesus said “do not pray in public”
Do you ignore this?
Jesus also said “whenever you pray, recite this prayer..” and gave us the words to use.
Do you ever pray with other words?
“Wash one another’s feet”
John 13:14
Do you obey this one?
“give up everything you have”
Lk 14:33
“heal the sick and raise the dead”
Mt 10:8
“do not charge interest”
Lev 25.36
What about these?
Sometimes we claim we are keeping a commandment when we are not.
For example, Tithing
How many of us have heard preachers preach that the Bible commands people to give a tithe? They tell youto give 10% of your money to the church and say that is “obeying” God’s commandment to tithe. But those who give 10% to the church are not really obeying the commandments in Deuteronomy to tithe (12, 14, 26)
from Generous Giving website
“The tithe was an offering of one’s agricultural income to the Lord as an expression of thanks and dedication. In the Old Testament agricultural economy, tithes were paid not in cash, gold or goods but in crops or livestock, for only the agricultural fruit of the promised land was to be tithed—not other forms of income. Although today we commonly think of the tithe as “10 percent” , apparently there are three tithes in the Old Testament, two every year and a third every third year, or an average of 23.3 percent of one’s annual produce from the land. Israelites who had become poor and lost their land or those who had moved to cities and engaged in non-agricultural trades almost certainly would have been exempt from tithe under Old Testament law. In the Old Testament and in early Jewish literature, tithe was not applied to all but only to landowners in Israel, who tithed off the increase of the land, i.e., what God’s promised land produced for them. Accordingly, there is no record of tithing from servants and other non-landowners, widows, sojourners and others in the land since these all received from others. (Except the Levites) Nor is there any evidence that tithe applied to all money/income, such as artisans in the cities or those who lost their land and became day laborers. The three tithes in Israel were used for three main purposes: (1) to support the Levites who were not given land of their own, (2) to provide a meal for community celebration and (3) to provide for the needs of the poor.”
one of the 10 commandments is “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy”
which is explained as meaning do no work from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday
None of us do this
some of us ignore this commands
and some of us take Sunday off and go to church and call it Sabbath
but that is not the literal commanment that God gave Israel
We claim to obey the Bible but we don’t really
we claim to obey Jesus but we don’t really
we can either become radical literalists or admit that we pick and choose
We all pick and choose which commands to obey.
That is my point.
None of us doing what the Bible says simply because it says it.
BUT how do you know you are not to obey a certain commandment and you must obey another commandment?
Genesis 17:9-14
Circumcision commanded
Galatians 5:6
“in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value”
Even the Bible disagrees with itself.
but that is because Paul knew he was in a new ACT of the story
He was living in Act 5 and God had commanded Israel to circumcise in Act 2
1. Read the Bible as a Story with Five Acts
creation –Gen 1-2;
fall –Gen 3-11
Israel –Gen 12- Malachi
Jesus –Gospels
Church –Acts & Epistles
(There is another act coming as well sometimes called New Creation)
We live in the fifth Act
and so we are at a different point in the story than Genesis or Moses or the prophets or even Jesus
When you are reading a portion of the Bible
know where you are within the overall drama,
know which act of the story you are in
there are things that are appropriate for one act that are not appropriate for another act
compare to a crime drama
you can’t arrest the man
until you gather some evidence in an earlier act
you can’t gather evidence until the man has actually committed the crime in an earlier act
every word of the Bible is not a “timeless truth” for everyone everywhere
the receivers of these words obey them in their Act
even our Act will end
there will be no reason to pray or read the Bible in the new creation, marriage vows will be finished
we are not being disloyal to parts of the Bible
we are being loyal to them as what they really are — one Act in a larger Story
we must live as those
who know that 4 acts came before
and we are moving toward a 6th act
the NT epistles are the most directly addressed to us
*But even when dealing with the NT epistles we must remember that every command is directed to a certain people in a certain culture
and we must try to understand the spirit of the command,
because the specific letter of the command is often culture-bound
1 Peter 3:3
no gold jewelry, fine clothes, or elaborate hairstyles
1 Thessalonians 5:26
Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss
Colossians 3:22
Slaves obey your earthly masters in everything
1 Cor 11:6
every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head
Another problem in the NT is that many commands are so general that we need spiritual wisdom to know how to obey them in our culture and situation
commands such as “love one another” and “clothe yourselves with compassion”
2. We need discernment from the Spirit to know the expression of a commandment in our culture