The Royal is a story about a boy born into a royal family but was orphaned soon after birth. A sage commits his life to mentor the young Royal, in order to prepare him to take his rightful place as a ruler of his father’s kingdom. The sage will train the Royal in the principles found in 7 books left by his deceased father. Each book provides specialized instructions and preparations for the Royal.
The series is called “The Royal” simply because YOU are The Royal. Based on the lessons taught by the sage, we will learn the basic rules of studying and interpreting the 7 biblical genres of the Holy Scriptures.
Why would we want to study literary styles of the Scriptures? Simply stated, it allows us to experience a Holy and Awesome God in many ways that we would normally not be able to understand without guidance. Every one of the 66 books in the Bible fall underneath a category of biblical genre. Each genre is designed to prepare us in its own unique way about the nature, provision, and attributes of God. It also allows us to navigate through writings that were produced in some cases up to almost 6,000 years ago. As the ages have progressed, so have many different literary styles, which can sometimes get lost in our understanding of our own modern day literary styles. This is precisely why the Royal needs a wise sage to help him navigate these ancient Scriptures properly, so that he will have the complete understanding of the principles so that he can rightfully possess his father’s kingdom.
A biblical genre is a literary style.
Reading the Bible literally means reading according to the rules of each literary style.
BOOK 1: WARRIORS (Old Testament Narrative)
Old Testament narratives are stories of the deliverance God provides as God's friends fight His enemies in an attempt to build His kingdom. Some examples of these are the stories of Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, David defeating Goliath, and Esther saving her people. All were seemingly impossible tasks, but were accomplished by the leaders' obedience to God.
BOOK 2: CHARACTER (Old Testament Law)
The Old Testament Law was Israel's first glimpse of God's character, designed to outline relationship guidelines for God's holy people. These laws show us how to get along with God and with each other.
BOOK 3: SOUL FOOD (Poetic Literature)
Narratives tell stories, and law keeps order, but poetic language empowers us to express our hearts toward God and live by the wisdom of God. In Biblical poetry, God also instructs us how to behave when we feel a certain way. God knows and understands that we will all experience anger from time to time, so He tells us that we should pray a certain way when we feel angry. When we want vengeance, we should pray another way. (Notice He doesn't say to take vengeance.) God wants us to deal with our emotions His way, as a father teaches a child not to throw tantrums.
BOOK 4: LAW ENFORCEMENT (Prophetic Literature)
God's prophets were God's law enforcers, commissioned by God to challenge Israel to obey the law. God's prophets had the job of reinforcing the law and mentoring the people to follow God's law in order to gain God's blessings.
BOOK 5: TWIST & TURN (Kingdom of God/Parables)
Parables are short earthly stories designed to twist one's thinking about the Kingdom of God and turn one's actions to match that new thinking. These are the stories that Jesus told so that people could understand what He was trying to teach. For example, He told a tale of three servants given money by their master so that they could produce a profit. This story expressed a powerful spiritual message of stewardship in common terms that the people could understand.
BOOK 6: LETTERS (Epistles)
Epistles are letters from apostles to groups and individuals of believers, designed to teach Kingdom principles for everyday life. We all need help from time to time in different areas of life: money, faith, sex, parenting…the list is practically endless! These instructional letters are sent to help us to know how to deal with these issues as they occur.
BOOK 7: VISIONS (Apocalyptic)
Apocalyptic language is used to describe visions of God's hopeful and supernatural culmination of history. As Miles so eloquently put it, this is God showing us what the outcome is. (By the way, God wins!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment