IDEA: Interpretation is asking questions beyond the questions we first asked.

PURPOSE: To help listeners think of how they would ask questions of the biblical text.

Two guys were sitting at a bar . . .

How does that story work?

What do you have to do to understand it?

I. In order to study the Bible, we not only have to observe what is there, but we try to make sense of what is there.

We not only ask, "What is it saying," but we also ask, "What does it mean?" That is interpretation.

We can make the process more difficult than it is.

We do it all the time.

Example: a note when you come home in the evening may demand a great deal of interpretation.

What do you learn from that note about the observation step? What is left for interpretation?

II. It is easier to demonstrate what we mean by interpretation than to explain it. Let's look back at Romans 12:1-2 again.

"I beseech you therefore . . ." You would have observed the word therefore. Now you must ask what it is "there for." What are the possibilities?

It could refer to what is immediately before it—the depth of the riches of God's wisdom and knowledge (Romans 11:35).

He says "by the mercies of God." It could refer to the section in Romans chapters 9-11 in which he has talked about God's mercy to the Gentiles, that they are included in God's plan.