Archetypes and Applications- I Know, It sounds Boring, Bear with Me

[Marathoner]

22 minutes ago, Starise said:

Yes parables. Intentionally vague information. Do you think that's accurate?

It was to those whom He spoke. Remember that the Lord spoke in parables to specific individuals, but He explained them to the disciples. 

[Guest AFlameOfFire]

3 hours ago, Starise said:

Yes you are right. That's a great reference. To me it didn't feel very personal talking about a people when we might be looking for personal help. God helped them, He will help us and I get that. Possibly I just wasn't aquiesing to it as well as if it was , let's say, one of Jesus's teachings which to me seems far more personal. Most of us read the bible for personal revelation.

Another word for personal is "private" I am thinking,  but I am not so sure in this case if 2 Peter 1:20 might apply anywhere here when trying to look for something on that level that did not come by the same. If I even put that right, I stink at articulating myself.

3 hours ago, Starise said:

Not sure what an 'ensample' is. I would need to look that one up. I'm guessing it means "example" .

Admonition? It's a council or warning. Not really a warm fuzzy word. I look at it like it's something rigid and strict. So I take it to mean examples to follow. IOW don't do what they did when they did the wrong things because God will judge. If anything it's an admonition to look at what happened to them, which for the most part, wasn't good. Even so, God delivered them.

Archetypes such as Jonah in being representative of Christ, in the whale three days . Jesus was in the ground three days. There are parallels. Same with the story of Joseph, many parallels. We can take that text and make direct comparisons to Jesus, in fact I think these were likely intended to give those similarities.

So far as I am concerned, I need to ask myself how to interpret some of this sometimes, and not always to lean on every message that a speaker is trying to tie into some personal application. If a speaker says, " Just like the oil that was poured on David's head, We too will recieve this holy oil in our lives." This is obviously suspect. Sometimes it seems they force an application. Not often, but sometimes. If they are referring to the Spirit, I believe there would be better more accurate references for that. Know what I mean?

Here is a link to ensample, 

https://www.blbclassic.org/lang/lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G5179&t=KJV

Yeah, pretty much the same as example, I don't know why that was used, there are 2 words spelled like that that hold the same definition as example, I just don't know.

I can relate to a little of what you are saying. Some stories might sound good, but upon re-examinaton things are often stretched for good story telling. I don't have an apreciation for stories because of that, I treat them all as a fiction. I prefer common themes that run throughout scripture but not so much things on any personal (or private) level. Its not that I cannot receive from the Spirit personally from them its just they arent often presented to me in any kind of personal way (that I, before Christ) would have both opted for or would have expected, however that doesn't make any revelation received by him less impactful at all. Not sure if your following me, because I am horrible at finding words. I am taking up studying 3 words a day in the dictionary in the hopes that finding just the right words will help.

[Revelation Man]

10 hours ago, Starise said:

I recently heard a sermon taking stories in Exodus  describing the journeys of the children of Israel under the Lord's care, to the personal lives of Christians in making direct application to something God did with the Israelites.

In other words taking one unrelated story and making it applicable to your life in some way, only the first story doesn't show even vague similarity to the application attempted.

Has anyone else thought this, or am I the only one? 

When we see David say the Lord is my shield and/or buckler in the Psalms, he means his protector of course. Of what? Of his enemies. Well who are our enemies? Paul said we battle not against flesh & blood but against principalities in high places (Demons with varied ranks). When  Moses held up the staff Israel won, when he got tired they started losing, until Arron and Joshua helped him hold up the staff. Psalm 22 teaches us to cast all our cares upon the Lord. 

Of course all of these issues we face are the same issues Israel faced, we face a spiritual battle, thus we must trust in God, we can only do that by faith alone. So, every word in the bible is like us having a sword of the spirit, we just refuse to use it like we ought to. 

[Sower]

11 hours ago, Starise said:

In other words taking one unrelated story and making it applicable to your life in some way, only the first story doesn't show even vague similarity to the application attempted.

                   story doesn't show even vague similarity to the application

When that occasionally happens to me I usually say "that's a big stretch" and
what does that have to do with the price of tea in China...

 

 

[AnOrangeCat]

17 hours ago, Starise said:

Has anyone else thought this, or am I the only one? 

You're not the only one. Sometimes I do think people are trying a little too hard to fit a square peg into a round hole or they're just on a really different wavelength from the rest of us, either culturally or personally. Sometimes you can tune into it and you end up finding something weird yet wonderful but a lot of the time it's just weird.

[Ray12614]

13 hours ago, Starise said:

Yes you are right. That's a great reference. To me it didn't feel very personal talking about a people when we might be looking for personal help. God helped them, He will help us and I get that. Possibly I just wasn't aquiesing to it as well as if it was , let's say, one of Jesus's teachings which to me seems far more personal. Most of us read the bible for personal revelation.

Not sure what an 'ensample' is. I would need to look that one up. I'm guessing it means "example" . Admonition? It's a council or warning. Not really a warm fuzzy word. I look at it like it's something rigid and strict. So I take it to mean examples to follow. IOW don't do what they did when they did the wrong things because God will judge. If anything it's an admonition to look at what happened to them, which for the most part, wasn't good. Even so, God delivered them.

Archetypes such as Jonah in being representative of Christ, in the whale three days . Jesus was in the ground three days. There are parallels. Same with the story of Joseph, many parallels. We can take that text and make direct comparisons to Jesus, in fact I think these were likely intended to give those similarities.

So far as I am concerned, I need to ask myself how to interpret some of this sometimes, and not always to lean on every message that a speaker is trying to tie into some personal application. If a speaker says, " Just like the oil that was poured on David's head, We too will recieve this holy oil in our lives." This is obviously suspect. Sometimes it seems they force an application. Not often, but sometimes. If they are referring to the Spirit, I believe there would be better more accurate references for that. Know what I mean?

I get what you are saying . . . because I have done that a couple of times. Interestingly enough, last night I taught on Jonah and how he allowed hatred for Nineveh to fuel his disobedience of refusing to preach to them. He knew that God was compassionate and merciful, and did not want God to change His mind about destroying that city. My teaching was about the Mercy and Compassion of God to ALL people, and how we should not think that certain people cannot or won't receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

My application was that we must not become arrogant as the people of God thinking that we are somehow better than unsaved people. In fact we were once just like them until Jesus saved us from whatever sins we were into.

Did I stretch the book of Jonah a bit?  Probably. But it was what my local church body needed to be aware of (in my opinion).

[luigi]

How about the admonitions to the seven churches throughout Asia Minor in Revelation chapters 2 and 3? Do not these warnings apply as well to the churches of God throughout the world today? I believe they do.

Edited October 5, 2023 by luigi

[TrueFollowerOfChrist]

20 hours ago, Starise said:

I recently heard a sermon taking stories in Exodus  describing the journeys of the children of Israel under the Lord's care, to the personal lives of Christians in making direct application to something God did with the Israelites.

In other words taking one unrelated story and making it applicable to your life in some way, only the first story doesn't show even vague similarity to the application attempted.

Has anyone else thought this, or am I the only one? 

I think I know what you mean. The Old Testament is history. It's not intended to be applied to modern life. I think many Christians and even pastors like to pull texts out of context and try to make them personal. There are quite a few passages of scripture that were specifically directed at a person or a group of people, and are NOT for Christians today. 

[FJK]

23 minutes ago, TrueFollowerOfChrist said:

I think I know what you mean. The Old Testament is history. It's not intended to be applied to modern life.

I hear people say the same thing about the New Testament, that that was then and thios is now so we need to do things differently now because it was not intended to be applied to modern life.

The Pope is an example of this, as are many of the great preachers we see on television on Sunday morning.

Something to think seriously about.

[Starise]

My pastor is on a track that uses expository preaching with applicational approaches using famous reformed authors like Ligon Duncan, RC Sproul and others similar, often with some short personal application, life experiences etc. 

He generally manages to pull a lot from a text, but lately we've been in geneologies and admittedly that's a difficult one to find applications for. To his credit, he doesn't dance around controversial texts. His applications are usually very well done.

22 minutes ago, Ray12614 said:

I get what you are saying . . . because I have done that a couple of times. Interestingly enough, last night I taught on Jonah and how he allowed hatred for Nineveh to fuel his disobedience of refusing to preach to them. He knew that God was compassionate and merciful, and did not want God to change His mind about destroying that city. My teaching was about the Mercy and Compassion of God to ALL people, and how we should not think that certain people cannot or won't receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

My application was that we must not become arrogant as the people of God thinking that we are somehow better than unsaved people. In fact we were once just like them until Jesus saved us from whatever sins we were into.

Did I stretch the book of Jonah a bit?  Probably. But it was what my local church body needed to be aware of (in my opinion).

I always liked the story of Jonah because it shows a ray of light to us Greeks ( as we were referred to back then), even the pagan ones.

But given my very analytical approaches, I had to play devil's advocate and ask why God destroyed some pagan nations with apparently no prior evangelism, and others, such as Nineveh were high on the Lord's priority list. Some commentators say that story was a parable addition, and if true it takes some air out of my balloon. I personally don't see support for it not being true as a real story. Why didn't God reach out to all pagan nations in a similar way. There's something to chew on

I like your application here. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us ALL scripture is profitable for us. The question is, are we always rightly dividing it? I think God's behavior shows us a lot about His personality if we want to call it that, His traits, the way He responds to any given thing. All of the bible applies to us. The question is, how does it apply and in what contexts? The Lord used Himself as a fallback example to His chosen people when He reminded them later on what He had done in their behalf, but I largely see that as relational things to His chosen, even though we can glean some applications from it. WE are His chosen now in that all have been added to the tree. The Jewish people hold maybe a special place there.

We know a few things about Him. He is patient to a fault with those He loves, but when that patience is expended, look out. Noone wants to be there. He made things to work in a flow with Himself in obedience to His ways, and anything else is setting itself up against Him. It is a mystery how He brings some around who were hardened, like Saul, and gives me great hope for those we all know in similar situations.