Hermeneutics Pt. 1: What is Hermeneutics?

Okay, so we're starting a new study tonight. We've finished up with explaining inerrancy, and we're talking about hermeneutics, which is simply interpreting the Word of God. The first question we should ask is, what is hermeneutics?

A lot of people say, Herman who? And believe it or not, if you ask that question, you're not too far wrong because the name comes from the Greek god Hermes, or demigod Hermes, who was the messenger or the interpreter.

And that's where we actually get the word from. So it's hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the art and science of interpretation. Now notice I didn't say the art and science of biblical interpretation because everything needs to be interpreted.

So we are engaging in hermeneutics. You may never have heard the term hermeneutics before, but you've engaged in it your whole life. I call it an art and a science because it's a science because there are principles, methods, and rules.

It's an art because it requires skill, it requires wisdom, it takes instruction, and it takes practice. Interpreting any type of literature is not something you just sit down and you just do it. It does require a certain amount of instruction, understanding the basics of it.

You have to understand the basics of language. One of my college textbooks in my freshman English lit class, I was given a book, which I still have on my bookshelf, and the title of the book is How Does a Poem Mean?

Think about it. It's really quite profound. How does a poem mean? If you don't understand how poetry is written, you're never going to understand the meaning. You ever read a poem and go, I don't get it?

That's because you're not on the same wavelength. You're not understanding what the author is trying to say. That whole first textbook was designed to show us how poets write poetry, what are the devices that they use, and then you can interpret what it means.

It's basically hermeneutics is putting theory into practice. All literature must be interpreted. For example, legal documents such as the U .S. Constitution. We know there's a vast number of ways in which the Constitution is being interpreted, and they're not all correct.

So legal documents need to be interpreted. Scholarly books, textbooks, research papers. How often when a candidate for a Ph .D. goes before the board, he gives them his thesis, and then he has to be able to defend it and interpret it.

Hopefully, the people at the board have interpreted his paper correctly, or he may have to reinterpret it for them so that they understand what it is that he's saying. Fiction. How many people have read Moby Dick?

Was it easy to understand? It wasn't for me, so that's not fair. That's cheating. That's cheating too. No, Moby Dick is considered one of the greatest of all American novels. It was R .C. Sproul's favorite novel.

He thought it was the greatest of all American novels. There's a lot of themes that run through that, and if you're not picking up on the themes, you're never going to understand the purpose of the book.

Lord of the Rings. A lot of symbolism involved in Lord of the Rings. A lot of Christian symbolism. If you don't understand how to interpret literature, you're not going to get that. I'm going to give you a biblical example of hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics in Scripture: Nehemiah and Luke 24

Nehemiah 8 .7. This is where Ezra has been commissioned by Nehemiah to read the law. And we read this also, The Levites explained the law to the people while the people remained in their place. Notice what it says.

The Levites explained the law to the people while the people remained in their place. And then we continue in verse 8. Now notice, this is God's appointed Levites, the priests, and they had to not only read the law, but to translate it to give them the understanding so that they would know what it said.

What good is the law of God if the people don't understand it? Correct? I mean, that's kind of a simple thing. So, right from the scripture, we have an example of the necessity of hermeneutics. I'm going to give you another biblical example, this time from the New Testament in Luke 24.

Luke 24 should be familiar to everybody. This is one of the first post-resurrection appearances of our Lord. Remember, He's on the road to Emmaus, talking to a couple of the disciples. And remember, they're amazed that He hasn't found out.

They're all concerned. Their Messiah has been crucified, and they don't understand these things. So, what do we find out? Jesus then, beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the scriptures.

Notice, He had to explain to them. They didn't get it. These were not pagans. These were disciples. They're described as disciples of Jesus, but they still didn't quite understand all that was going on.

So, what's the result of sound hermeneutics? We find this in Luke 24. A few verses down. Remember, Jesus now has explained everything to these disciples concerning Him in the Old Testament scriptures.

And they said to one another, We're not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the scriptures to us. That should be the result of properly interpreting the Word of God.

When the Word of God is expounded, when it is explained, when it is translated in the right way, in the heart of the believers, in the heart of the faithful, your heart should be burning. And that's what we look for, the result of teaching, preaching, are your hearts burning as you hear the Word of God being expounded.

All right. So, the disciples on the road to Emmaus needed someone to explain the meaning of the Old Testament scriptures to them. That's hermeneutics. So, why is hermeneutics important? That's the next question that we're going to ask.

Why Hermeneutics Matters for Theology and Scripture

First, it's necessary for a proper theology. All right. Theology is meaningless without sound hermeneutics. If you read something in the Word of God and you don't understand it, how are you going to apply it to your life?

Remember, all theology is meant to be practical. There's no theology just meant for our amazement. If it's in the Bible, it's meant to put into practice in some way, some manner, somehow. So, theology is meaningless without sound hermeneutics.

Now, there's five major divisions or types of theology. All right. And I'm going to go through these. And there's a reason why I'm going through these. First is practical theology, ethics, pastoral theology.

Unfortunately, this is the level that most churches live on. If you talk to…. I've been to…. I used to go to pastor's meetings. I don't go to very many of them anymore. And I would hear pastors say, don't talk to me about systematic theology.

Don't talk to me about that historical theology. I'm concerned about practical theology. I want it to be practical to my people. Sounds great. But there's a problem. The other types…. And I'll get to what the problem is.

I'm not going to leave you hanging. There's systematic theology, historical theology, biblical theology, and exegetical theology. All right. These are all different types of theology. The problem with up here is how do you get the practice if you don't understand what the theology says.

Okay. So, this is the way most people look at theology. There's practical, systematic, historical, biblical, and exegetical. It's backwards. First type of theology is exegetical. What is exegetical theology?

That's where you look at…. The pastor looks at the Scriptures and determines what does the Scriptures say. What is the meaning? John 3 .16, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Very simple Bible verse. What does it mean? If you don't start with that, you're going to go wrong. Second is biblical theology, and that is how is theology revealed biblically. There's an order through the Scriptures as to how theology is revealed to us.

Okay. Then you have historical theology. How has theology developed over the ages of the church? All right. I'll get to this a little bit later, but I'll say it right now. Do you realize that the average church-going person, and I'm going to qualify that, the average person who's going to a Reformed church today has a better grasp of theology than the contemporaries of Jesus?

Why? Because the contemporaries of Jesus didn't have the benefit of most of the New Testament. All right. So that's important. So historical theology, how theology develops over the course of the ages.

All right. Look what had happened during the Middle Ages. Some of the doctrines that we hold precious had virtually disappeared. Then what happens? Along comes the Reformation. How important is the Reformation in the history of the church?

It's crucial. It's huge. All right. Then we come to systematic theology, and this is the one that gets a really bad rap. Oh, we can't systematize the Bible. Of course we can, and we should. All that simply means is we take everything from a particular topic and take all those verses and put them together so we understand what the Bible says in whole.

So everything. If you don't practice systematic theology, you're going to come up with errors like Jesus is only a man or Jesus is only God. But when you put it together, what do we find out? He's man and he's God.

But if you separate those, if you don't systematize it, you're going to come up with wrong interpretations. Once you go through those four, then you can have pastoral theology. That's where your preaching comes in, your counseling, and everything else.

But now you have the full range of not only do I understand what the Scripture says, but I see how it has been applied over the history of the church and through the councils and the creeds. That's why we pay such attention to the councils and the creeds, because it tells us how we got to our place in history.

So this is all talking about hermeneutics. Without the proper hermeneutics, you're going to go astray on some of these. Jesus himself taught the importance of hermeneutics. This is not a man-made or theological principle.

Jesus taught it. In John 5 .39, Jesus says, You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me. So if you go to the Scriptures with wrong motivation, you're going to come out with wrong ideas.

They didn't see it, the Sadducees in particular. They didn't see that Jesus was in fact the Messiah. They denied that fact, and yet Jesus says, No, if you understood the Scriptures, if you practiced hermeneutics, proper hermeneutics, you would understand that these are testifying about me.

Search the Scriptures. These testify about me. Mark 12 .24, Jesus said to them, Is this not the reason you are mistaken? That you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God. They are engaging in some serious mistakes.

And Jesus says, The reason? You do not understand the Scriptures. Why did they not understand the Scriptures? They were not interpreting it correctly. Second reason, sola scriptura becomes a meaningless phrase with poor hermeneutics.

We are those who tout sola scriptura. What is our source, our supreme norm? The Bible and the Bible alone. We don't hold the church councils and the creeds. Yes, we use them. They're beneficial tools.

But only the Bible has the ability to bind your conscience. The Bible is the arbiter of every dispute. Not our creeds and confessions. Again, as helpful as they are. But it's only the Bible. Well, if you don't interpret the Bible correctly, what's the benefit of sola scriptura?

Bible alone, but it's teaching error. Bible is not teaching error. The poor hermeneutics is what teaches error. This is from Ram. He wrote this book, Protestant Biblical Interpretation. It's considered probably the most definitive work on biblical hermeneutics.

He says, There is no prophet to us if God has spoken and we do not know what he has said. We need to know the correct method of biblical interpretation so we do not confuse the voice of God with the voice of man.

And unfortunately, this is exactly what happens when you have men who set themselves above the scripture and say, No, this is what must happen. And if it's in direct conflict with the scriptures, how many people are listening to the voice of man and not the voice of God?

If the scripture isn't taught properly, then its authority has been nullified. Third reason, the Bible is subject to distortion in several ways. Now, we know this intuitively because most of you are in this church because you've been to other churches where the interpretation of scripture didn't add up.

Not everybody, but a lot of people, that's one of the reasons why we're here. It's one of the reasons why there is a Hope Reformed Baptist Church. Twenty-five years ago, we planted this church because there was no Reformed church in Suffolk County at that point.

There was none. So, how is it subject to distortion? The immature, untrained, and careless. Do you realize that there are people who have a conversion experience and within a matter of months, all of a sudden, they're pastors.

How in the world can that be? Where's the training? Where's oversight? How do they know, you know? Immature, untrained, and carelessness. And Peter talks about this in 2 Peter 3 .16, talking about the Apostle Paul.

He says,. And so also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which some things are hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do the rest of the scriptures, to their own destruction.

So, Peter actually warned about this very situation that we see rampant in the church today. Oh, yes. Well, that's clear from that, that he considered Paul's writings to be scripture. Judaizers are a perfect example.

Paul wrote the epistle to Galatians specifically to refute the Judaizing heresy. He says, You foolish Galatians who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

This is the only thing I want to find out from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

Now, again, what was the Judaizing heresy? Basically, in essence, it's more complex than this, but basically had to become a Jew to become a Christian. Had to go through all the Old Testament rites and everything else.

And Paul wrote and says, who bewitched you? You know, and Paul, if you read the book of Galatians, you see how it strongly condemns that. Also by superficial reading. John Gerstner, he was R .C. Sproul's mentor.

And I heard him in one of his lectures, he says, Beware of the theology of the first glance. In other words, things are not always as they appear on the surface. You know, you have to understand that, you have to dig deep and make sure that you have everything in the right context.

And that's why pastors spend so much time preparing sermons, to make sure that we don't not just superficially examining the Scriptures. Proverbs teaches that understanding the Scripture is hard work.

We hold to a doctrine that's called the perspicuity of Scripture, which means the clarity of it. But that doesn't mean that it's easy to understand. In fact, we just saw Peter talking about some of Paul's, he says, Paul writes some stuff that's really hard to understand.

The writer to Proverbs, in this case it's Solomon. This is how he says you have to study. For if you cry for discernment, lift your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver and search for her as hidden treasure, then you will discern the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God.

Where do you find silver? You got to go into mines. If you just want to walk along the road, you look and say, there's a piece of silver, there's a piece of silver, and just pick it up as you go really easy.

Don't even work a sweat, right? No, you have to mine for it. Seek for her as hidden treasure. Why is hidden treasure so hard to find? Yeah, because it's hidden. All right. And that's how the writer of Proverbs likens the word of God.

If you want the wisdom from the word, you've got to work for it. It's not just laid out there for you. You're not going to, wouldn't it be great if you could go to sleep at night, put the Bible under your pillow, put your head down and through osmosis, you know, you just absorb all of that knowledge.

It doesn't happen that way. You have to search for her. In other words, you have to work, cry for it, lift your voice for understanding. Seek for her as silver, search for her as her hidden treasure. Then you will discern the knowledge of God.

Context, Proof-Texting, and Relative Truth

Third is isolation of the text. This is where systematic theology comes in. All right. Having tunnel vision. Taking the text out of context. One of the things that you hear frequently. How many people know the cardinal rules, three cardinal rules for real estate?

Location, location, location. Cardinal three rules for hermeneutics. Context, context, context. You have to look for it in context. And a lot of people just take a verse out of context. Example, law versus grace.

How many times have you heard somebody say, but we're not under law, right? And they point to Romans 6, 14. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. See, could anything be clearer?

We're not under law, but under grace. But they must have jumped over the first three chapters of Romans. Because Romans 3 says, do we then nullify the law through faith? May it never be. On the contrary, we establish the law.

Hmm. Do you see the importance of context? We're not under the law. Obviously, the law is not going to save anybody. But does that mean that the law is of no consequence? Absolutely not. What did Jesus say about the law?

Not one iota, not one jot, not one tittle of the law will pass away until all is fulfilled. Then you have manipulation and deceit. I mean, there are people who just are flat-out false prophets. All right, proof texting.

Just taking a text to prove something. Do you remember? Anybody remember the Heaven's Gate cult? Marshall Applewhite. All right. Remember what he said? He convinced his followers that there was an alien spaceship behind the Hale-Bopp comet.

And they were going to go there. And if they committed suicide, they would immediately be taken up into this spaceship and go into Heaven. Well, he used—now, this is a man who claimed to be a Christian.

All right. He would go in—when he was traveling around the country, he would go into a hotel. All right. And then early in the morning, before anybody else was up, they would get up and they would leave the hotel without paying the bill.

All right. And when he was questioned by one of his followers, why do we do that? Isn't that stealing? He says, well, we're just following the example of Jesus. Because we found out Jesus is going to come like a thief in the night.

Can you imagine? And that's proof texting, intentionally twisting to fit a particular view. And another example, and this is one of my personal pet peeves, is the self-esteem movement. The self-esteem movement says there are not two great commandments.

We know the great commandments, right? Matthew 22. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Clear. It's two. All right.

They changed the two into the three. They say, because Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself, that before you can love your neighbor, you have to love yourself. So love yourself is the first commandment.

Now, just look at that. I mean, firstly, I'm pretty certain Jesus could count to three. Secondly, when he says the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God, I'm sure he didn't make a mistake and say, well, oh, you know, I forgot.

I should have said love yourself. All right. So what they say is you must love yourself before you can love God and love others. And I'm talking about this is coming from so-called Christians, Christian counselors.

OK, so we can see some of the problems. Fifth is relative truth. One text can have more than one meaning, people say. Let me say something very crystal clear. If you and I go to a portion of scripture and I say it means one thing and you say it means another thing, at least one of us is wrong.

Maybe both of us, but at least one of us is wrong because the Bible is very explicit. I'll give you an example. There was a Bible study on John 14, two to three. You remember in my father's house are many dwelling places.

If it were not so, I would have told you for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am there you may be also. All right.

There was an example. It was a lady's Bible study. It doesn't have to have been. It just so happens that that's the way it was related to me. It was a lady's Bible study. And the leader of the Bible study opened the book.

And this was the Bible study for the night. And she went around the things. Now, what does this mean to you? All right. Yes. What does it mean to you? And the first person said, well, the fact that there are many dwelling places indicates to me that God's heaven is open to everyone.

It doesn't matter who you are. There's a place for everybody in heaven. Next woman said to me, I just look at this. I go to prepare a place for you. I think it's speaking to me. I need to be a better housekeeper.

So you're getting the idea. So that's an example of just completely missing the text. No, no. So fourth, now here we're getting to one of the really important sections here, the need to bridge the gaps.

Bridging the Language, Geography, History, Thought, and Culture Gaps

What do we mean by bridging the gaps? Why is hermeneutics so important? Because there's a language gap. How many people here speak fluently ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek and ancient Aramaic? I think you're pulling my leg.

All right. Because even modern Greek is different. And classical Greek is different than Koine Greek. So none of us speak that fluently or are even raised that way. Even if you were raised in Greece, you wouldn't be speaking Koine Greek.

So that means there's a gap. Any time you translate, how many people here speak a second language? Was English your first language or did you have another language that was your first language? Spanish was your first language?

So you know then from experience it's not always easy to translate exactly from one language into another because there's little innuendos and nuances that are different. I'll give you an example. I come from a place that speaks the language of heaven.

That's Norway. By the way, Norwegian is the language of heaven, so we all need to study that. Lord forgive me. I'm just repeating what my grandfather told me. And he wouldn't lie. So anyway, there's an expression in Norwegian, and I use it a lot even when I see some of the guys.

I'll go up, I'll shake their hand, and I'll go, tak for sist. And then if it was another Norwegian, he would respond back to me, tak li ta mora. And it's a very polite greeting in Norwegian, but literally it means thank you for the last.

It loses something in English. And I don't even know the literal translation of the second, but it's kind of like, yeah, right back at you, something like that. You can't translate it exactly, but you just have to understand it's a polite greeting, and you leave it at that.

And so language, there's language gaps. Nobody speaks Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the ancient forms anyway. There's also a geographical gap, distances, climate, landscapes. For example, in the scriptures, you'll see used that there was nobody, there was no enemy left in the land from Dan to Beersheba.

All right. What does that mean to anybody here except the guy nodding his head? Anybody know what that means? Yes. It means the whole thing because Dan is on one side, Beersheba is on the other end. It would be equivalent to us saying from Maine to California, right?

See, there's a difference, okay? And if you don't know that, you're going to have trouble understanding. What did he mean from Dan to Beersheba? All right. But it's very clear if you understand the geography.

So we need to understand that. Then there's the historical gap, the political climate, what historical events were occurring at the time. If you go into Matthew 24, okay, where Jesus is predicting the destruction of Jerusalem, okay, and he talks about there'll be wars and rumors of war.

Well, you can say, well, you know, that fits almost any period of time. But there is one fact that makes that very significant, that it was going to happen in his generation. Anybody know what it is? Well, the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome.

At that particular time, there was an unprecedented period of peace. So when he starts saying there's going to be wars and rumors of war, that goes completely against what was taking place in the political and climate.

You see the difference? Who was in a position of authority? We have to understand, you know, what was the characteristic of the Caesars? And even what were the characteristics of the local government in Jerusalem?

All right. Remember when we went through the Gospel of John, we looked at the trials of Jesus. All right. And remember what we saw? He was moved around. First, he went to the Jewish Sanhedrin. Then he went to Pilate, then to Herod, then back to Pilate.

All right. Why? Well, we went through that at the time because there were political landscapes that were important that had to be fulfilled, and also that all fulfilled Scripture as well. Fourth, the thought gap, Oriental versus Western mentality.

You need to understand that the way we think is not necessarily the way Middle Eastern and Oriental people think. There's a big difference. Why? Because of, well, wait a minute. Well, I mentioned this earlier, progressive revelation as well.

We know more now than the contemporaries of Christ. This is what I want to get to, the effect of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment on how we think and how we process, how we argue. All right. And then, of course, the effects of the Reformation.

We don't necessarily reason. Do you realize, in the example, Sermon on the Mount, the opening verse, and Jesus went up on the mountain and sat down and began to teach the disciples. Realize in that culture, the professor, the rabbi, sat, students stood.

We got it backwards. I'm standing, you're sitting. Hey, stand up. No. So we think differently. You know, even our logic, there's different ways to think. And how did Jesus teach mostly? Parables. Taught in word pictures.

That's how they learned. It was very different. The cultural gap, they lived in an agrarian society. They were shepherds, farmers. This is one of my favorites. First Kings 13. Remember, there was the king of the north, Jeroboam.

The king of the north was acting ungodly. God sends a prophet to him. All right. And he tells him. And remember, his hand withers, et cetera. But he tells the prophet, once you deliver the message, go straight home.

Don't stop anywhere. Just go straight back home. Well, there's another old prophet up in the northern kingdom who decides he needed some fellowship. He was the only prophet of God left. So he convinces this other prophet to come and have a meal with him.

Disobeyed God. What happened? He's riding his donkey. A lion comes and attacks him. Kills him. All right. Now, when they had gone, a lion met him on the way and killed him. And his body was thrown on the road.

With the donkey standing beside it, the lion also was standing beside the body. You say, okay, what's the big deal? All right. The big deal is this is completely unnatural. This would never happen in nature.

Firstly, lions only kill for food. If he attacked and killed a man, he would have devoured him. And he wouldn't hang around for it. Secondly, if given a choice, a lion would never choose a man over a beast.

He would choose the beast first because there's an inherent fear of man. All right. So somebody walking down the street and sees the man killed, the donkey sitting there. Oh, that's the other thing. The donkey would always have run away.

All right. And the lion's still sitting there. They'd look at this and they'd say, whoa, God's not happy with that guy. There's a story just in how it happens. There's a lesson to be learned there. This is hermeneutics.

This is the cultural gap. A little kid who started out in Brooklyn would never understand donkeys and lions. All right. Unless you study it. Questions. Yes. How the theology is revealed in the pages of Scripture itself.

Yes. I thought I did, but I'll read. No, that's all right. I'll repeat it. The problem is when you if you're only functioning on a pastoral level. All right. You're not getting down to the actual meaning of Scripture.

So it's very easy to use Scripture and distort it or just misapply it. If you're not understanding what the Scripture itself says. OK. So I'll give you an example. Suppose somebody comes to me and to fix a car and they hand me a wrench.

OK. And I say, here's the wrench. This is my tool. I'm going to fix the car. All right. But I have no idea how the car runs. I don't know. I don't know what makes an internal combustion engine tick. So what am I going to do with the wrench?

All right. You'll find people beating the distributor cap with the wrench. All kinds of crazy. In fact, being Norwegian, you know, we're born with hammers in our hands. And just like Thor. But we use them to build things.

OK. One of my pet peeves when I was doing construction work and working with carpenters is to see tools that are used not for their purpose. I mean, the things you take a monkey wrench and hit a nail in with it or something like that.

If you don't engage in exegetical theology, biblical, historical, and systematic, and you go into practice, you're going to be using the tools but not for the right purpose. OK. Jake, I'm sure you can identify with people using wrong tools on cars, right?

Any other thoughts or questions?

Yes. What would you recommend the solution would be for churches who find themselves in the position where they're, would you say it's contingent on the members of the church to be seeking out the other four methods of exegesis or rather theology because they're only getting the pastoral?

Yeah. You know.

Yeah. You have to hold the eldership. Look, as elders, our church is run, if you go through our constitution, it's basically what we call an elder-ruled church. The elders, you know, and the board of deacons underneath, but the elders are responsible for the run.

But we are responsible to the congregation. You don't have to make every single decision. You leave that to us. But if we're taking the church in a direction where we're negligent in an area, that's the congregation's responsibility to come to us and say, hey, you guys, you're not doing the right thing here.

And that's what you have to do because we're responsible to watch over your souls, and if we're not doing a good job, you're also responsible to let us know. You can't just sit back and say, oh, well, it's the elders.

They didn't teach us. Any other thoughts? Okay. And that's pretty much consistent with Reformed Baptist churches. You'll find most churches in that way where the elders, yes, we make most of the decisions, but we're always accountable to the congregation.

Yes. Okay. I just want to make sure I got these correct. The types of theology explains each one, how you explained it. The exegetical theology is what? Yep. Biblical theology is historical theology is how has theology developed over the ages of time in the church.

Yep. Systemic theology is you put all pertaining to one topic together and understand it better. Yes.

And practical or pastoral theology is taking the theology and saying, all right, now what does it mean to you? When I finish writing a sermon, okay, I always sit back and I look at my notes and I say, okay.

Firstly, I ask, you know, have I properly interpreted the scripture? All right. Have my use of the words, have my concepts been correct? But the very last thing I do is, okay, what does this mean to the congregation?

How do I apply this to their lives? Because the idea of preaching is to make changes. It's not to tickle ears. It's not to make you smarter. I mean, I hope it does make you smarter, but that's not the goal.

The goal is to help. You need this to change your life. And so I always ask myself, all right, what now? There should be some sort of a response of the congregation. Based upon what they hear, I have to make this change in my life.

That's practical. But you can see why you have to start with the others first. If it's not founded in scripture and if it's not interpreted properly and it doesn't fit in the context of the rest of scripture, then it's not going to have the desired result.

Okay. Any other thoughts? Okay.