Reading Narratives and the Law

🎯 Objectives

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

• read a biblical narrative, recognizing plot, characters and above all God’s action;
• distinguish what the Bible narrates from what the Bible commands;
• understand how the Law of Moses speaks to the believer who lives under the new covenant.

📖 Receive

Read this verse slowly; it tells us why the ancient stories were preserved for us:

“For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” — Romans 15:4 (KJV)

Then read 1 Samuel 17, the story of David and Goliath, straight through. Before going on, ask yourself: who really wins the battle, and why?

🔍 Examine

With this lesson we enter the third module. You have already learned the steps Receive, Examine, Connect: now we apply them to the different “genres” of the Bible. Each genre has its own rules, just as a poem, a letter and a newspaper article are read in different ways.

Let’s start with the two genres most present in the Old Testament: narrative and the Law.

Narrative: a true story, told with art

More than a third of the Bible is narrative: from Genesis to Esther, and on to the Gospels and Acts. These are true stories, but told with great care. The author chooses what to say and what to leave out, where to slow down and where to speed up.

When you read a narrative, observe four elements:

• the plot: how the conflict opens, how it grows, how it is resolved;
• the characters: what they say and do, and how the narrator judges them;
• the setting: places and times often carry meaning;
• the point of view: sometimes the narrator comments, more often he lets the facts speak.

God is the real protagonist

The most important principle is this: in biblical narratives the protagonist is God. Abraham, Moses and David are great figures, but the story is above all about what God does through them, and often in spite of them.

Go back to 1 Samuel 17. This story is often reduced to a motivational message: “You too can defeat your giants.” But listen to David: he says he is going against Goliath in the name of the Lord, so that all the earth may know there is a God in Israel and that the battle is the Lord’s (1 Samuel 17:45-47). The center of the story is not a boy’s courage, but God’s faithfulness in saving his people through the king he has chosen. It is a foreshadowing of Christ, the King who wins in our place.

📌 Three questions for every narrative

1. What does this narrative reveal about God?
2. How does man respond: with faith or with unbelief?
3. How does this episode fit into the great story that leads to Christ?

Narrated does not mean approved

The Bible is honest: it also tells of its characters’ sins, deceptions and wrong choices. That is why we must distinguish between descriptive texts, which tell what happened, and prescriptive texts, which say what must be done.

A classic example is “Gideon’s fleece” (Judges 6:36-40). Gideon has already received a clear word from God, but he asks for two signs to be sure. The story does not present a method for knowing God’s will: it shows us the Lord’s patience with a fearful man. Imitating Gideon means taking a descriptive narrative and turning it into a rule.

Errors to avoid with narratives:

• moralizing: reducing every story to a lesson in behavior (“be brave like David”);
• allegorizing: giving every detail a hidden meaning the author never intended (David’s five stones are not “five virtues”);
• isolating: reading an episode without the larger story it belongs to.

The Law: God’s gift to his people

For many readers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy are the hardest pages. Laws about sacrifices, skin diseases, fabrics and food seem very far from our lives. Yet these pages too are God’s Word.

The first step is to remember when and why the Law was given. God does not say to Israel: “Obey, and then I will save you.” He has already freed them from Egypt, and then he gives them the Law (Exodus 20:2). The Law is the response of an already-saved people to the God who freed them. It is the “charter” of the covenant, showing how to live as a holy people among the nations.

In the Law we find different kinds of rules:

• moral laws, such as the Ten Commandments, which express God’s character;
• ceremonial laws, on sacrifices, feasts and purity, linked to the tabernacle and the priesthood;
• civil laws, which governed Israel’s social life as a nation.

The Law in the light of Christ

Jesus says he did not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it (Matthew 5:17). In him the Law finds its purpose. For example, the sacrifices announced Christ’s perfect sacrifice, offered once for all (Hebrews 10:10-14). That is why believers no longer offer animals: not because those pages are useless, but because what they announced has come true.

How, then, should we read a law we no longer keep literally? Ask which principle supports it. Deuteronomy 22:8 requires a parapet around the roof of a house, so that no one falls. Today we may not have flat roofs where guests are received, but the principle remains: loving our neighbor means protecting his life. Think of a fenced pool, a safe car, a workplace free of hazards.

The path from the ancient law to life today can be summed up in four steps. The diagram shows them with the example of the parapet:

flowchart LR
  A["📜 The law: a parapet on the roof"] --> B["🏛️ Its world: roofs that were lived on"]
  B --> C["💡 The principle: protect life"]
  C --> D["✝️ In the light of Christ: love your neighbor"]
  D --> E["🏠 Today: safety at home and at work"]

The same path also works with harder laws. First understand what the rule required, then why it made sense in Israel’s world, then what truth about God and neighbor it expressed, and finally how that truth takes shape for those who live under the new covenant.

Type of law	Example	How the Christian reads it
Moral	Thou shalt not kill (Exodus 20:13)	It remains valid, and Jesus carries it all the way to the heart (Matthew 5:21-22)
Ceremonial	The sacrifices (Leviticus 1–7)	Fulfilled in Christ, the perfect sacrifice (Hebrews 10:10-14)
Civil	The parapet (Deuteronomy 22:8)	We keep its principle, not its form

Errors to avoid with the Law:

• discarding it, as if it had nothing more to say;
• imposing it literally as a condition for salvation, forgetting the new covenant;
• reading it without Christ, losing its true center.

🔗 Connect

Narratives and the Law are interwoven throughout Scripture and find their fulfillment in Jesus.

• Luke 24:27: Jesus explains that from Moses onward the Scriptures speak of him. Narratives and the Law are also part of this witness.
• 1 Corinthians 10:1-11: Paul rereads the story of Israel in the wilderness and says those things were written as examples and warnings for us.
• Galatians 3:24: the Law was like a schoolmaster that brought us to Christ.
• Romans 7:12: the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy, just and good.
• Hebrews 11: the great “gallery of faith” shows that Old Testament figures are praised for their trust in God, not for their perfection.

🙏 Apply

Take a few minutes, on your own or with your study group:

1. Think of a Bible story you have known since childhood. Was it taught to you as a moral lesson or as an account of God’s work? What changes if you reread it asking first “what is God doing here”?
2. Is there a Bible story you have taken as a “model” to imitate? Was it a descriptive or a prescriptive text?
3. Choose a law from Leviticus or Deuteronomy that seems strange to you. What principle might lie behind it?
4. Thank the Lord that the Law, which shows us our sin, also leads us to Christ, who fulfilled it for us.

📚 Go Deeper

• Read Ruth 1-4: it is a short and beautiful story. Notice how God acts almost “behind the scenes”, and how the story ends with the birth of an ancestor of David (Ruth 4:17).
• Read Exodus 19-20: notice the order between liberation, covenant and commandments.
• Reread Matthew 5:17-48: Jesus shows the deep meaning of the Law, which reaches all the way to the heart.

In the next lesson we change tone: we will enter the poetry of the Psalms, the wisdom of Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes, and the voice of the prophets.