In his sermon titled '10 Key Principles to Sound Bible Interpretation,' Jason Dohm emphasizes the importance of diligent and reverent handling of Scripture. He begins by highlighting the foundational principle that sound interpretation depends on having a heart for God, asserting that without a genuine love for God and His Word, other interpretive principles are ineffective. Dohm discusses the Apostle Paul's exhortation to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15, urging believers to be diligent workers who rightly divide the Word of Truth, and warns against the risks of wrongly dividing Scripture, as described by Peter in 2 Peter 3:15b-16. The sermon outlines several key principles for interpretation, including the necessity for Scripture to interpret Scripture, respecting the context, recognizing the genre, and understanding that each portion of Scripture has a single meaning. Dohm cautions against relying too heavily on external sources like science and history, which, while potentially helpful, are not authoritative. He encourages an approach to Scripture that prioritizes a plain reading of the text and warns against common fallacies such as arguing from silence and connecting dots without scriptural evidence. The sermon concludes by reiterating the need to approach the Bible as worshippers, not just students, and to rely on the Holy Spirit for guidance in discerning spiritual truths.

Titled, 10 Key Principles to Sound Bible Interpretation. If nothing else, this will keep you awake after a good, warm lunch. Just filling in the blanks will keep you with us. All right, let's pray. Father I thank you for your word and I pray that you would make us a careful students of it.

I pray that you would increase our love for this this word, this treasure, this deposit you've given to your people and that we would have such a reverence for it and such a delight in it. I ask this in Jesus name, amen. So in 2nd Timothy, of course the Apostle Paul is writing to his son in the faith, Timothy, who he's been training. And Timothy himself is one of the faithful men that Paul has been pouring his life and his doctrine into. Here's what Paul says in 2nd Timothy chapter 2 verse 15 and this really serves as a foundation of what we're talking about today.

2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 15. Paul writes, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, A worker who does not need to be ashamed rightly dividing the Word of truth. Paul, when he writes to this son in the faith, Timothy, is talking about the handling of the Word of God, and Paul calls it work. It's work. Snow walk in the park?

It is, it's work. And it's work because we see through a glass darkly. And sometimes truth is hard for us to apprehend. Sometimes though our spirits have been redeemed, they're still married to a flesh that isn't redeemed. And this is why we see through a glass darkly.

And so, handling the Word of God isn't always intuitive, isn't always easy, but Paul actually calls it work. And so when Paul talks about handling of the Word of God, look at the phrases that he's using. A worker being diligent, Okay, so now it's not just work, it's work requiring diligence. Paul is painting a picture of a hard worker. And he's calling Timothy to be a hard worker when he takes the Bible in hand.

And by extension, Paul is exhorting us to be hard workers, to be diligent workers when we take the Word of God in hand. He says, rightly dividing the word of truth. What's the implication? That there is such a thing as wrongly dividing the word of truth. So why is this much care required?

I think Peter gives us some insight into why this much care is required in 2 Peter chapter 3, starting in the second half of verse 15. So This is what Peter writes in 2 Peter 3, 15b and 16. Peter writes, And consider that the long suffering of our Lord is salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction as they do also the rest of the Scriptures." So Peter here talks about Paul's epistles and he calls them scriptures. And he says, you know what, there are some things in what Paul write that are hard to understand. And Peter is saying that because there are things in the Word of God that are hard to understand, it provides an opportunity for untaught people and unstable people to twist what it's saying.

So this is the wrongly dividing the Word of Truth that Paul is speaking of in 2 Timothy chapter 2. So from what Peter says, there's at least two things that ought to be learned here. The first is that, number one, there are some things that are hard to understand. The scriptures are meant to be understood. They've been given by God so that they would be understood and would be a blessing, and yet they're not all equally understood.

Anybody who's been in the scriptures for more than a week knows that all the scriptures are not equally easy to understand. Secondly, Peter teaches that some people twist the Scriptures. He talks about two kinds of people to do it. He talks about one kind that's untaught, and so maybe they unintentionally distort the Scriptures. But then he talks about people who are unstable.

So it seems like Peter is talking about those who unintentionally and those who intentionally twist the Scriptures, but whatever the case, they do harm by how they handle the Scriptures. And so Paul is calling Timothy to be a diligent worker, a hard worker in the Scriptures, And the implication is, because He says, so you don't need to be ashamed of how you've handled the Word of God. The implication is that there will be some that are lazy workers, not diligent, not hard workers, that will need to be ashamed of how they've handled the Word of God. May it never be said of us that because we were lazy, we need to be ashamed of how we have handled the treasure that God has given us. We want to have the spirit of the Bereans.

In Acts 17, Paul talks about the people of Berea, and he found them to be a people who wouldn't take his word for it. And he doesn't say that in a derogatory way at all. In fact, he's very complimentary to these people who wouldn't take his word for it, but who were checking him against the Word of God. In Acts 17, The text says that they received the Word with all readiness. In other words, they came to hear Paul with a hunger for the Word.

They were ready for the deposit that Paul was bringing to them. And that They searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether those things were so. So they were listening to an apostle. All better sermons than you'll ever hear at Sovereign Redeemer Community Church. All better.

All more pure doctrine. And yet, they were going home and checking Paul against his Bible. Did Paul despise that? Not for a minute. Paul was delighted that the people would come with readiness, come with hunger, and then go home and double check his sermons against the Word of God.

Paul rejoiced in that. So, hermeneutics isn't for seminary professors and seminary students. It's not. Well, it's not just for them. It is for them.

But it's not just for seminary professors and seminary pursuits. It's for people who love Jesus and who want to be the hard workers that Paul is exhorting Timothy to be in 2 Timothy chapter 2. In commending the Bereans to us and the Berean spirit goes home to double check the preacher and see if these things be so against the scriptures. Luke is telling us that we don't need a Pope. You got that?

Luke is telling us that we don't need a pope. We don't need an infallible man, but that we need to take the Scriptures in hand and the Scriptures are the pope. Because the scriptures are the word of Jesus Christ himself. So if the preacher gets off track, it's self-correcting. If there's a people who come with a hunger for the word of God and go home and check behind the preacher.

May it be so here. Okay. Ten key principles for sound Bible interpretation. Number one, and this is absolutely in order, this is far and away the most important, Sound interpretation depends on having a heart for God. It depends on having a heart for God.

If we were to go and do number two through nine, but miss this, You miss everything. We love God. We fear God in the right way. We have a healthy reverence and fear for God. We want to be approved to God.

We want to be that hard worker who approaches the Scripture like the Bereans do. And so, I want to begin by saying that you can't just take an unregenerate man and Apply key principles two through nine to Him, and have sound doctrine come off the end of the conveyor belt. This is not a conveyor belt like that, okay? So, there are ten key principles, but this is a do not pass go principle. Because these things are spiritually discerned.

The natural man can't discern them because they're spiritually discerned. So it begins with being born again. It begins with having a heart of stone taken out and replaced with a warm heart, a fleshy heart, a soft heart. And then, and then once you've got that soft heart, number two through nine matter, okay? But until, until that time, number two through nine can't matter.

Listen to what Jesus says in John 14. This is John 14 verse 26. But the helper, Jesus says, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you." And then just two chapters later, so John 14-16 is all about the Spirit and the sending of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is priming the pump for Pentecost. And so, he says that in John 14-26 and then in John 16 verse 13.

Jesus says the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth. So the Bible is a different book in this way. There's only one book in the world that fits this description. It comes with a tutor. For all those who are born again, it comes with a tutor.

Jesus promised it would be so. The Holy Spirit has been sent into the world and now believers, regenerate people have a tutor to help us discern spiritual things that the natural man can never discern. You see, God is the primary author of the Scriptures. So Paul wrote some things, Moses wrote some things, Matthew did, Luke did, Isaiah did. But God's really the author of the Scriptures.

There are human instruments that God used, but behind them all is a God who's inspiring the word choice, okay, down to verb tense, down to singular versus plural. God is the author of this book. And when God comes and takes up residence in your heart, you have a tool that the unregenerate man never can because the author lives within you and can help you to understand these things. Numbers 2 through 4 actually come directly from our confession. So number one is you have to be born again.

Numbers 2 through 4 come from the 1689 Confession, Chapter 1 of the Holy Scriptures. This is why our Confession starts there, because to know anything about the rest of the chapters of the Confession, there are 32, you have to start with the baseline, which is we know about these things because of the Word of God. So in chapter 1 of the Confession of the Scriptures in point 9 reads this way, the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself. And therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture, which is not manifold or many but one, it must be searched by other places that speak more clearly. So the writers of the Confession have actually embedded hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is just a fancy word to say Bible, principles for Bible interpretation. So The writers of the 1689 Confession actually embedded three of the most important principles for rightly interpreting the Bible into the Confession in chapter 1.9. Here's the first one. So It's our second key principle. Scripture interprets Scripture.

Scripture interprets Scripture. The best commentary ever, that ever will be, on the Scripture is not anything that I'll write in the future. It's not Matthew Henry. It's not John Calvin. It's not even J.C.

Ryle. It is the Scripture itself. Now what's the basis of this? Inerrancy of Scripture and sufficiency of Scripture. In Psalm 19, Psalm 19 might be the plainest place that talks about the inerrancy or the infallibility of Scripture.

It says that the Word of God is perfect. Perfect. Pure. True. Righteous altogether.

So in Psalm 19, God makes a claim about His own Word, and it's that it is completely infallible. This is the basis for Scripture being the number one tool for interpreting Scripture. And the sufficiency of Scripture. Second Timothy 3, 15 and 16, you know it, but it says that the Scriptures are useful in these different categories to what? That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

And of the good works, rightly handling, rightly dividing the Word of God is on the top shelf. It's on the top shelf of good works. And so the Scriptures are sufficient to make you complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. And one of the best works there is, is rightly handling the Word of God. Now, where does that leave archaeology?

History? Science? High-tech linguistics. There's a lot of that now. High-tech, you can analyze language now more than ever in history because you can do it with a quad core processor.

So you can do language analysis that could never be done in Matthew Henry's time. I'm not saying we shouldn't do that. I'm just saying if you need a quad core processor to do it, that it's not essential for the people of God because we haven't always had quad core processors. So where do these things stand? Where does Matthew, Henry, John Calvin, J.C.

Ryle, and on and on stand? Potentially helpful, not authoritative. Okay? There's all manner of helps. Praise God for Science that will help us with the Bible.

History that will help us with the Bible. But don't get the cart pulling the horse. The horse is the Bible and it pulls the cart, not the other way around. Science does not pull the Word of God, nor does history, nor does archaeology, nor does John Calvin, nor does J.C. Ryle.

But the Bible pulls all of them. So as much as we love our commentators, I fight the war every week not to be too quick to run to them. You're better off to spend more time in chasing down the cross references to find out which other texts shed light on the text that you're studying. And then, and then you go look at science and history. Josephus is good.

Josephus is not the Bible. Archeology is good. Archeology is not the Bible. So here's an example. I'll try to give an example of each one of these.

Here's an example of the Bible interpreting the Bible. In Matthew 24, verse 3, the disciples ask, When will these things be, the pulling down of the temple, and of your coming, and of the end of the age? Okay, so we've got to decide what the end of the age is. Is that the end of the Jewish age? Is that the end of the Old Covenant?

Or is this the day of judgment or is it something else? Where do we go? We go to the Bible. There are two other places where the end of the age is spoken of within the gospel of Matthew. Jesus himself speaks directly to it in Matthew 13 in the parable of the tares.

And when you read Matthew 13, he speaks of it twice in that parable. The end of the age, he uses it very precisely and there's no misunderstanding. It is the day of judgment when Jesus Christ bodily, physically, visibly returns to judge the living and the dead. You go to Matthew chapter 28, the Great Commission passage, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." That's not to the end of the Jewish age. Otherwise, he's not with us.

That's not to the end of the old covenant to the new covenant. Otherwise, he's no longer with us. And so this is an example where you have a phrase, it's very, very important that you understand exactly what is meant by that phrase Because if you get that wrong, your interpretation of the whole rest of Matthew 24 is suspect. So where do you go to find out? You don't go to Matthew Henry.

You go to Matthew 13 and Matthew 28. Okay. Here's the implication of our second key principle, Scripture, Interpret Scripture. All texts are harmonizable. We don't gather up texts to say, three seem to say this and five seem to say this, so I agree with this.

We come to the Word of God saying, it's all perfect, pure, true, righteous altogether and it's sufficient for every good work. And so, these texts are all true and these texts are all true and these texts are all true and to the extent that I think they're in opposition to each other, I'm the problem and not the Word of God. And when I understand them right, as long as it may take me to understand them rightly, when I understand them rightly, the truth of these texts will be preserved and the truth of these texts will be preserved. And so, as the people of God, we're never pitting texts against each other. We're in humiliation, in humility, acknowledging that all the texts are true and that though our brains might have put them In competition and in contradiction, they're not really.

We're the problem. And it makes us slow down to say, okay, I am the problem here. Either I'm not understanding something rightly about these group or these group, but This is the Word of God and all the truths have to be preserved. Number three. Number three.

Each portion of scripture has one meaning, not many. One meaning, not many. Now, it may have a thousand applications, ten thousand applications where you say, it works out in life this way, okay? That's not what we're talking about. Applications can be like the sand of the sea.

But meaning, God was saying something, okay, and it's not endless. It's one thing. Now, this is not directed towards a biblical author who intended a double meaning as a play on words. Sometimes you find that in Scripture where the author intends the double meaning. But you can tell through a study of the text that he meant the double meaning.

Okay, so the double meaning is the meaning of that text. So I'm not talking about that. What we're talking about is people who assign a spiritual or symbolic meaning when it's not clear that the author did. Okay? That's off limits.

That's bad. When we begin assigning spiritual or symbolic meanings that it's not clear that the author intended. Matthew 13, a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven. It's like a mustard seed. The mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds and yet what happens when you plant it?

It grows and it grows and it grows and it grows and it becomes the biggest tree in the garden. In fact, it's big enough that the birds come. Now, there's a vein of interpretation that spiritualizes that parable. And the institutional church becomes a monster that birds which are always bad come and nest in. And so it's given a spiritual meaning that is not clear that the author ever intended.

Birds aren't always bad in Scripture. And it perverts the meaning to impose a symbolic meaning or a spiritualized meaning that it's not clear that Jesus meant. In fact, I think it's pretty clear Jesus didn't mean that. Jesus is talking about the growth of His reign. When He's talking about the growth of the Kingdom of Heaven, it's not a bad thing, it's a good thing.

An author intends to communicate something specific to his audience. So the author lives in a context and his audience lives in a context. And so we keep going back to Matthew and say, wait a minute, look through the lens of a Jew. We had a Jewish author writing to Jews about the king of the Jews, so let's sensitize ourselves in our understanding of these texts because this author meant something to this audience. That's what we have to get at.

So, each portion of Scripture has one meaning, not many. Number four, The clear interprets the less clear. Now by this point you ought to be saying, oh this is just horse sense. This is just common sense. Okay, you haven't said anything profound yet, and we're already on number four out of ten.

And I just want to assure you, I'm not going to say anything profound. This is how we understand literature of any...it's not intended to be rocket science. The people of God don't need rocket science, but we do need discipline and we do need soundness in applying horse sense to our handling of the Scriptures. Clear interprets the less clear. Some texts on a subject are more clear than other texts on the same subject.

So you start where? You start with the clear ones. Could anything be more obvious than that? And you take the clear ones that don't have debate and controversy and you use those clear ones to form the boundaries of interpretation for the less clear ones. And this keeps you within the framework that God intended, right?

So in clear text, there are perimeters being set up. And so you take the unclear text and you put it in here and say, because this text over here is clear and it has to mean that, there's no way to wiggle out of it, then that has a bearing on this less clear text. Rapture texts, we're coming to one of those at the end of chapter 41. They're used to teach that The church will be caught up before the great tribulation comes. I've got a big problem with the great tribulation as it is because I think the tribulation that was spoken of was in 70 AD.

I don't deny that there's not going to be times of intense pressure for Christians. But to take the quote unquote rapture text and to say that means the church is going to be caught up before the tribulation is to take a less clear text and then go impose it on many clear texts. Now this keeps you from running wild with possible interpretations of a text. I'll happily concede of the rapture text that a pre-tribulational rapture could be the interpretation of that text. It's one possible interpretation of that text.

But we need something to keep us from running wild with possible interpretations of text and to be hemmed in by the clear text of Scripture. So that's the principle. Always, always when you're approaching a subject in a text, we want to find the clearest text that we can. We want to find the text where there's no wiggle room and establish the boundaries because we have such certainty about how that text ought to be interpreted and it provides a safe place for us to start interpretation on the less clear text. Number five, the specific interprets the general.

The specific interprets the general. Again, this is horse sense. This is common sense applied to handling the Bible, handling the Bible. Applied to handling the Bible. Some texts are directed by an author right like a laser beam at a specific subject.

This happens a lot in Paul's epistles. He's talking ecclesiology. He's talking about life in the local church. Okay? So he's like a laser beam on this part of life in the local church, and he's directing it specifically towards that.

And then there are other texts that are much more general in nature, and they're equally valuable and they have principles that ought to be applied to many areas of life, one of which being life in the local church, but they're general. And so we're extracting the principles out of this general text, and it will have a bearing on this other place. But you don't take the general principles and apply them to something that an author has specifically spoken to. So the general doesn't interpret the specific, the specific interprets the general. Here's a great example of this, A text that gets used this way all the time.

Galatians 3.28. Neither male nor female. It's the Word of God, so all God's people say, Amen, neither male nor female. But it is a general text. It is speaking of oneness in Christ.

So with regards to oneness in Christ, I'm on the same plane as Janet, and I'm on the same plane as Raquel, and I'm on the same plane as Tamara, and I'm on the same plane as every female in here. In Christ, there is neither male nor female. Paul has spoken of that. It's a general text. Now, often that is taken to say, don't worry about those chauvinistic texts about gender roles in the local church.

In Christ, there's neither male nor female. Now, wait a minute. Paul, in the role text, 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy 2 and 3, is speaking directly to local church life and directly to roles in the local church. That's the specific text that ought to interpret, set the boundaries for the more general text. So you don't take a general principle which is absolutely true and have it overthrow something that was more specifically targeted.

Number six, the literal interprets the figurative. The literal interprets the figurative. Prophetic visions and parables are meant to be figurative. They've always been figurative. They were given to be figurative.

They play their purpose as figurative. And they're to be interpreted by the literal. Prophetic visions and parables, the figurative, are not as precise as the literal, but they're more powerful. Praise God for the prophetic visions and the parables that communicate in a way that you'll never forget. Matthew 24, the temple is torn down to the last walk.

That's literal. Matthew 24 is going to talk about a carcass and the vultures or the eagles. Powerful, unforgettable, not as precise as the literal. They serve different functions. You have to know what you're dealing with.

And you can't treat the figurative as ruling the day over the literal, but you start with the literal. And we praise God for both kinds because He's doing different things with the figurative than he is with the literal. Revelation 20 verses 1 through 10. It's a prophetic vision of a dragon chained for a thousand years. Don't start your eschatology there.

Okay, now it's about eschatology. It's about the end times. It's going to have to be fit into your eschatology, but if you start there, you are a train wreck. You don't start in Revelation 20. It's figurative, figurative, figurative.

You have a figurative dragon chained by a figurative chain for a figurative thousand years. So don't tell me the thousand years can't be figurative if the dragon and the chain are figurative. Nobody disputes the dragon or the chain. But now we have a big debate about the thousand years. The point is you don't start your study of eschatology in Revelation 20 unless you just want to ask for trouble and heartache.

Matthew 12, Jesus actually talks about a strong man being bound as he's casting a demon out of someone. He says, how can you plunder the strong man unless you bind him? You bind the strong man and then you plunder his house. So Jesus in that text, We have something very literal. In other words, we have circumstances.

Jesus is a person who's casting a demon out of a person. Very literal, and it helps us to understand something about what it means to be the binding and the plundering. So from Matthew 12, we come away with literal circumstances that help us to understand the figurative. That's what we ought to be looking for, literal to help us understand the figurative rightly. Number seven, number seven, We should favor the plain reading of the text unless there's a compelling reason to do otherwise.

And I'm not denying that sometimes there's a compelling reason to do otherwise. Fair enough. Sometimes we say, this text seems to say this, but look, these things have a bearing and it makes us think more rightly than we thought the first time we ever read it. That does happen sometimes. Sometimes we read it and we thought we had it, but really as we think more deeply about it and we look at the other places in Scripture, we come back and say, this isn't what I thought it was in the first pass.

That happens sometimes. But more often than not, it means what you thought it meant. More often than not, It means what you thought it meant. More often than not, it means what you thought it meant the first time you read it. And we should have a bias, an inclination, a leaning towards the plain reading of the text unless there's a compelling reason.

We're open to compelling reasons, but our bias is towards the plain reigning. So much can be cleared up by focusing on the actual words. I mean, I believe this so thoroughly. Jesus puts the full weight of an argument on whether a verb tense is present versus past. He makes the whole argument based on one verb tense.

So we know from that that God picks the words. He doesn't pick the thought or the sentence or the paragraph. He picks the words. Paul makes an argument based on one word is plural or singular. So we know Jesus and Paul both think that God picks the words, not the thoughts, the sentences, the paragraphs, but the words down to even the parts of the words, down to the jot and the tittle.

So that means something. That means we should be focused on the words. That means we should be careful about ever dropping words. We should look carefully at the words. So here's an example of this.

Romans 8.28. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. I dropped a word there. I dropped a word. To those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Now when it is that, it becomes if I'm in the center of God's will, things are working for my good. This is taught everywhere. This is taught in so many places. So I've got to be in the center of God's will. Well, I'm for being in the center of God's will.

I'm not arguing with the goodness of God's will. But I'm saying the actual verse says, to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Now we're talking about election. Now we're talking about a people that God has loved and had mercy on, and when He puts His hand on them, He declares that he's going to do good towards them and he's going to use all things to work together for good for them. Now, there's a huge difference in meaning and the the, the called according to his purpose is there in the Greek, in the original language.

The definite pronoun is there. You have to have the called according to its purpose and it changes the meaning. All that to say, we've got to look at the words. Like every word matters. There are no throwaway words in the Word of God.

So we're talking about a bias towards the plain reading of the text. When someone has a complex reason why the text doesn't say what the text says, watch out. This is so common and frequent. When someone has a long, developed, complex reason why the text doesn't say what the plain meaning of the text is, watch out. So I've got a Keyword Study Bible on the shelf at home.

It's great. It's a fantastic tool because it helps you to understand the actual Hebrew and Greek words. It gives you some word study background. So it's really a helpful tool. But it's also a study Bible, so it does have study notes at the bottom of the pages.

Genesis, there's this much. Page and then study notes. Half an inch to an inch at the bottom. Not many study notes. Exodus, Leviticus, Psalms, through the Old Testament all the way to Malachi, Matthew so far so good, inch, half an inch.

Okay, you get to the manhood and womanhood texts. So the ones I was just mentioning, 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Timothy like three-quarters of the page is study notes, okay? And you read the study notes and it's really technical. You might think that this text means what it seems to mean but it doesn't. And we have to educate you so you understand enough about this text so you can understand that it really doesn't mean that there are gender roles in the local church.

When somebody, when that happens, okay, study an inch, half an inch, three quarters of a page, okay, to explain to you why you don't understand the nuances necessary to understand why the text doesn't mean what it says. Watch out. Okay, so we're having an example of this right now. Matthew 24. We are putting so much weight on verse 34.

All these things will be accomplished before this generation passes away. That was probably a bad paraphrase. But anyway, we're putting a lot of weight on the plain reading of this generation. And going back to Matthew 23, I think that fits well. But this comes from a bias towards the plain reading of the text.

And we want to encourage that bias. All right, number eight. Number eight. Context is absolutely crucial. Context is absolutely crucial.

This should really be number two. It was murder trying to prioritize, which I should do. It's really number one, I think is really number one, and then there are nine co-number twos. And so this one does not belong this far down in the list, but it's just hard to know what to displace. So Matthew 24 is in the shadow of Matthew 23, right?

They're part of the same flow of thought. And so if you lift Matthew 24 out of its context, you don't end up with the right interpretation. Context is absolutely crucial. Each book has a theme. Each section of that book has a theme.

And so when you're looking at a verse or a passage, if you don't understand what came before it and what came after it and the theme of the book that it's in, then you don't really thoroughly understand it yet. You better be able to see the connections with the theme of the book, the theme of the section, the verses before it, the verses after it, before you have any confidence that you have a right interpretation of something. How many verses have been lifted out and forced into isolation so that they'll mean what the preacher needs it to mean for the point that he's making. Well, I just want to encourage us, let's not need a verse to mean anything. Let's let the verse mean what it means and then submit ourselves to it.

Number nine, the historical grammatical method, historical grammatical method. Fancy term, simple meaning. It means how you understand anything you read, the normal meaning taking into account the author who wrote it and the audience he wrote it to. It's the opposite of postmodernism. Of course, postmodernism is, I have my truth, you have your truth.

This means this for you, but if it means something else for me, that's not a problem. Bible interpretation says that's a problem. Postmodernism doesn't mesh well with sound interpretation and the principles that it takes to get there. It's not my truth and your truth, it's God's truth, and it's our job to be diligent workers to go mine it out of the scriptures. It's the normal historical grammatical sense.

In other words, people who are writing are trying to communicate something. So they structure their sentences in a way to be understood. And they choose words in a way to be understood. And it's our job to try to find out what that guy was trying to communicate when he wrote it. That's all it means.

That's the historical grammatical method. He was trying to be understood, so he structured his language in a way and picked the words so that he could communicate a certain thing. Now let's go get our arms around that. So it accounts for the author's intent. What did the author want to communicate to his readers?

Now here's a word we haven't mentioned so far, but it's so critical to Bible interpretation. Genre. Genre of Scripture. There are multiple genres of Scripture. There's didactic.

So, Paul is usually didactic. It's a teaching text. He's the professor and you're the student and he's teaching you on a topic. So he, as the professor, picked the topic and he's communicating with you and it's direct. And in some ways didactic texts are the easiest to approach because somebody has come to the head of the class and said I'm the professor and I'm teaching you about love today.

1 Corinthians 13. The professor is teaching about love in 1 Corinthians 13. And so it's right to the point. And you know what it's about. And you can go.

And the interpretation often in didactic passages is easier. Narrative, these are the histories. So much of the Bible isn't didactic text where the professor has assumed a podium and is teaching the class on a topic, but it's a history. It's recounting what God has done. You can get in a lot of trouble if you baptize a narrative and say because it's in the Bible and because nothing catastrophic happens that God's pleased with this behavior.

Okay you can get in all sorts of trouble. People come to narrative texts and they do that. They say it's in the Bible and Father Abraham did it and there was no lightning bolt and so this is what we should do. That's the wrong way. We've got to know that we have a different genre, and that it's a history, and that we're going to have to be careful with it.

There is a proved narrative where God says in the text somewhere that it was righteous, but you have to be looking for that. You can't just baptize something that Father Abraham did because not everything that Father Abraham did was worthy of being followed. Like many things, we're not. All of the heroes in the Bible histories have feet of clay. We find them all doing sinful things.

And if we just follow them as if anything that's not explicitly condemned is righteous. You end up in a world of hurt and you end up with multiple wives. And none of that is good. Some of us can't handle the one we've got. Some of you, some of you.

Poetic. The Psalms are poetic. If you start treating a poetic Psalm like a didactic text, you just end up with a mess. Okay? If you come to the Song of Solomon, like it's Paul writing a letter about love, you end up with a mess.

Prophetic. Okay? This is back to figurative and literal. Prophetic is often figurative. If you treat it like it's a didactic text, or like it's narrative, or like it's poetic, then you end up with a mess.

So when you come to a text of scripture, one of the first things you've got to be asking is, what kind of text is this? What is the genre of this text? Because you don't demand the same things of each genre. If you demanded from a history the same things you demand of one of Paul's letters, you end up with nonsense. And so there are different things that ought to be demanded from the different genres.

Number 10, understanding common fallacies. So this is kind of a catch-all and there's probably, we could go on for a long time. But I'm going to name, I think, five common fallacies. Common pitfalls that people twist their ankles in. Common mistakes that are made in understanding the scriptures.

Number one, arguing from silence. Arguing from silence. So, five places in the New Testament, households are baptized. Five places. So it's not just once, twice, not three times, not even four times, it's five times.

Households are baptized. Who ever heard of a household without an infant? Not around here. No way. Households have infants.

And if you've got five households, at least one of them had to have an infant. So an infant was baptized in the New Testament, therefore we should baptize our infant. That is an argument for silence. And it's bad interpretation of Scripture. It's not according to sound principles of how you understand anything, let alone the Word of God.

Number two, connecting the dots. Oh boy, You get in so much trouble connecting the dots. Here's how it goes. This is kind of an innocuous example, but they get a lot more harmful than this. Priests can't drink alcohol in the Old Testament.

I can prove that. I'm solid on that dot, okay? Priests in the Old Testament cannot drink alcohol. New Testament believers are what? Priests.

We're a holy nation. We're priests to our God. So I've got two dots that I can prove, and I can get you nodding. Okay, so now we're nodding. Priests can't drink alcohol, right?

New Testament believers are priests, right? Now I connect them. New Testament believers can't drink alcohol. It's unlawful. It's unlawful to drink alcohol.

Because I got these two dots and now I'm just connecting them. Watch out. If we find ourselves connecting dots that scripture doesn't connect, you better be careful. You just better be careful. And here's the problem with this.

The teachers that are good at it can almost get you every time until you've got it settled in your mind that it's not automatically legitimate to connect dots because here's how you get nodding. This is exactly how it happens. Yes, yes, yes, that's true, that's true, that's true, that's true. Then they start making the connections and then you become disoriented because everything's been true up till the time when they have started bridging these truths. And then you've got to say, wait a minute.

And it gets very disorienting because you've agreed all the way up to this point in the argumentation. How about this? Majoring in the minors. Majoring in the minors. Everything in scripture is true.

So in a sense, there are no minors, in a sense. And yet, the Scriptures assign a proportion to everything. God hasn't spoken equally about everything. So, We can develop our hobby horses and give so much focus to a truth in Scripture that it begins to dominate over things that the scriptures don't give the same proportions to. So this is an exhortation towards understanding the proportion given to any truth in scripture and making sure that we don't find ourselves with a different proportion.

It's like the mirrors, you know, in the in the funny houses. Like that's all you sort of. It is a reflection of you, but it's out of proportion. You know, It's either made you really skinny or really fat or wavy or whatever. It's out of proportion.

Next, gravitating toward the controversy. So it's no secret that I love J.C. Ryle. Here's why I love J.C. Ryle.

He's one of the commentators that refuses to gravitate towards the controversy. Many texts have a controversy. Rarely is it the center of the text. So if you're always, now most commentators, because it's their job to get a text right, okay, I'm not faulting commentators towards gravitating towards a controversy in the debate, because that's the part that's hard to sort out and a commentator's job is to help you sort it out. Okay, so but you got to recognize that when you go to commentaries, you got to recognize that they view it as their job to sort out the controversies even though the controversy might not be the main theme of the text.

So they'll spend that much space on what Jesus was trying to teach, and they'll spend that much space on the controversy that was just on the perimeter of the main point of the text. Well, if you start doing that, that's bad. Okay? What I love about Ryle is he says at the very beginning of his commentary, I'm not that kind of commentator. That's not my purpose here.

My purpose isn't to help you sort out all the mysteries of the gospel. My purpose is to pound on the main point of what Jesus is trying to teach in each section. And we should have a heart like that. Sometimes it might be our job to go sort out the debate and the controversy, but we shouldn't find ourselves gravitating towards it or loving it to the exclusion of really what the Bible is about. Okay, I think I'm going to stop here.

In closing, hey, the Bible is a treasure. The Bible is a treasure. What a grief it would be to be a lazy workman who ought to be ashamed of how carelessly he or she handles the Scripture. What a terrible heritage it would be to leave for that. Now I'm confident I haven't gotten everything right in Daniel 9 or Matthew 24, but I can tell you this, I want to.

I want to get every bit of it right. It is the Word of God. It's a treasure. If we don't have the Bible, we don't know truth. We have no line to truth.

It's the Bible and the Holy Spirit illuminating the Bible that gives us a line to truth. We should treat it like a treasure. Okay? This should be your most prized possession. And we should act like it when we come to it.

And We should come to it as worshippers and not as students. I want to leave with a parting shot. We come to our Bibles as worshippers, not students. We are students And we need to be diligent workers, but that's not how we approach the Bible. We approach the Bible as worshippers of God, as people who have been set free from their sins and who love the author of it.

And we don't come just to study it and have our brains enlarged. We come to it to have God revealed to us and to have Him speak to us, okay? So this goes back to the first principle, which is it's a heart for God that gets you so much of the way there to a right interpretation. I come as a worshiper and I never open it without praying that God would come and help me and reveal Himself through His Word. Let's pray.

Oh God, I pray that you would plant within us the hearts of the Bereans who came with such an eagerness to hear and a hunger for your word, and that we would never come ready to take the preacher's word for it, but that every word would be measured against the plum line of your word that is the gold standard. Oh God, give us a love for your word. Cause it to be a treasure among us like it never has before. Help us to understand it rightly, to be diligent workers who don't need to be ashamed of how we've handled the treasure that you've left for your people in Jesus name. Amen.