Ecclesiastes 8:1: “Who is a wise person? Who knows the solution to a problem? A person’s wisdom brightens his appearance and softens his harsh countenance.”

This is my second time focusing on hermeneutics—the theological word for Bible interpretation. This is beyond Bible reading. This is beyond, “This is appealing to me; let me just push it out.”

You start with a coherent understanding of the Scriptures from beginning to end. You do not pit one part of Scripture against another. You do not pit one writer of Scripture against another. You start with Christ as the focus.

What did they proclaim? They proclaimed Christ. Christ is the proclamation. Christ is the hermeneutic. You start with Christ. You proclaim Christ, and you do not stop proclaiming Christ.

Paul told Timothy to “present yourself approved to God as a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). There is a right way to interpret the Scriptures. That is what I am trying to communicate: there is a right way.

You cannot come up with an idea and then try to force the Scriptures to speak to it. You start with the Scriptures: “What is the Scripture saying?” and let the Scripture itself tell you what it is saying.

Do not start with a conclusion. Do not start with an idea and then want to impose it on Scriptures. Do not start with an idea and then go looking for verses to support it. You will then find verses that do not support the idea, and you will be tempted to push them aside or pretend they are not saying what they are saying.

Be careful how you handle Scriptures. Be careful that you are pulling in the direction of Christ.

Paul said, “There is no other foundation except that which has been laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). That means you already have your starting point. Do not go pushing another agenda. The agenda to push is Christ. And He is the glorious One. He is the One we are supposed to focus on—what He has done, how great He is, how He is coming back, and how we should live our lives now.

Look at the simplicity and the powerful pictures Jesus used when He preached. When you look at the gospels, you have that clear simplicity. But when you begin to go to the letters, where they are not telling you stories, they are trying to give you a more 360‑degree view—because the letters were written to Gentile nations that did not have the background of the people who first heard Jesus. So the apostles used language those Gentiles could understand. But that language has now been translated into English, and sometimes it may be difficult to fully grasp what is being communicated.

That is why you do not just go to the dictionary and say, “The dictionary will tell me what it means.” These are theological things. The dictionary may not help you. Anecdotes around you may not help you. Let the Scriptures be the one that helps you.

That is why context matters. That word used in that place—what is its context? What sense is the writer trying to communicate? Do not force the Scriptures to communicate what the writer is not trying to communicate. What sense is the writer trying to communicate, given how that word is used in that context?

And let us just stay within the text.

God bless you. See you later.