How to Study the Bible - Step 2: Having the Right Tools - Skip Heitzig

there was a young woman who went to a bookstore she bought a book she started reading it it was boring simply because it just really touched on subjects and places and people that she really had no tie to after a while after a few weeks she just put it down she tried and finally she just put the book down tell about a week later and she met the author and she really didn't tell him what she thought about his book she just was intrigued by the encounter they had a nice little meeting they were close to the same age he was single she was single he correspond did with her she wrote back it turned into a dating relationship soon they were in love suddenly that boring book became awfully exciting to that young lady she wanted to read every page of it turn every word is it what did he mean by that where did his background lend itself to these details and all changed because she knew the author of the book there's a lot of people who look at the Bible it's so black even I got to read this thing it's all Greek to me of course that would just be the New Testament but when you know the author of the Bible it does make a difference doesn't it what if God mean by that what does God have in mind for me in regards to that little promise or warning and so we think of the two on the road to Emmaus who said did not our hearts burn within us as he spoke to us along the way and he opened up the scriptures to us or as Jeremiah who said your words were found and I did eat them and they worked to me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart the burning of the heart the joy and the rejoicing of the heart is that your experience when you read the Bible or is it well I've been told I have to read so many chapters a day I better get at it then I'll be okay with God as long as I keep up this little work and a lot of times we transfer the idea of works before God that we had in some previous religious system into our new relationship with Jesus Christ and so we think if I maintain the level of Bible reading then everything will be alright now tonight we want to talk about tools it looks like I'm trying to sell books up here believe me I'm not I want to get to a point in this study where I can point out some different helps to Bible study simply because I'm asked about this all the time and I never get the opportunity to do it so we're doing it last week tonight and in the future for a few weeks gonna talk about how to study the Bible and enjoy it you need the right tools to do the job can you imagine how frustrating it would be to go to an artist and say produce a masterpiece but you can't have any paints you can't have an easel and forget using a brush or to an astronomer to say plot the heavens for me without giving him a telescope or the charts that are necessary or imagine going to a surgeon and saying perform this operation but you can't have a sterile field and you need a Swiss Army knife to do the job you'd want to make sure that the person doing the job has all of the right tools or else the job will be very difficult well to study the Bible we need the right tools tool number one a Bible that would help if you're gonna study the Bible you might as well have a Bible to study it's gonna be awfully difficult to really study the Bible if you don't own a Bible now I am speaking to the choir in a sense tonight because probably all of us have brought Bibles to this church and if you haven't it won't last very long because you come to this church a few times and you think you know everybody has a Bible around here I better go get one and maybe it's out of sheer guilt I don't know or competition but eventually you'll have a Bible I'm sure another thing you will need is I think some way to record what God is speaking to your heart a notebook I noticed little rips of paper just a moment ago as paper was torn out of notebooks and placed on the Bible as some of you are taking notes I think it's good to record unless of course you have a perfect memory if you have a photographic memory you can disregard this if you have like a little tape player hard disk can spit it all out no worries but if you're like me I need to take notes and I've made a habit whenever I sit and listen to a Bible study I take notes and I still have Bible study notes from 20-some years back and I take them out and I'll read them periodically and refer to them even in my own study Dwight Al Moody who was an evangelist from Chicago Illinois said he made it his practice to carry with him a Bible as much as he could as well as a notebook to record things that God was speaking for him to apply from a sermon from daily reading from an evangelistic message he would write it down and then refer to it later now if you don't have a notebook and I realize this is a different generation maybe a notebook computer would actually be a little more up to date and I've seen people in church as I've taught Bible studies open their laptops and just start cranking away at that thing calling up the Bible in one section and word process or another if you've got that great Jay Wilbur Chapman who was an evangelist in the early part of the century concerning Bible study said study it through that is never begin a day without mastering a verse from its pages pray it in never lay aside your Bible until the verse or passage you have studied has become a part of your being put it down the thought that God gives you put down in the margin of your Bible or in your notebook and then finally work it out let the truth that you get in the morning get you through each hour of the day now in Daniel chapter 9 Daniel it says opened the books and was reading the books of Jeremiah and it was while he was reading the books of Jeremiah that he discovered that Israel would be captive and Babylon for 70 years and he figured it all out and he thought 70 years is almost up I guess that means that it's time for us to come back to Israel because according to the books when 70 years is up God will bring us back to the Land of Israel and then he thought if that is true if what I just read is true then I better set myself to prayer and ask God to forgive the sins of his people ask God to bring us back and grant us safe passage so Daniel begins an incredible episode of prayer based upon what he read as he applies it to his own personal life and of course it changes the course of Israeli history for God gives him in response to his prayer an outline the seventy weeks of Daniel the prophetic backbone of all of the scripture first question then when it comes to the first tool the book the Bible what Bible should I buy now let me ask you this question how many tonight have purchased a Bible within the last 12 months within the last year I like to show of hands raise your hand that's an awful lot of Bibles praise the Lord now was it a little overwhelming when you wanted to buy a Bible see years ago there was like a Bible it came in like one version two colors if you lived in the right community they even had study Bibles but nowadays there are so many choices there's no problem if the only problem is which one of all of these choices should I get should I get the wide margin should I get the thin line should I get the woman's Study Bible the men's Study Bible should I even have a Study Bible should you have a center reference she did have a marginal reference should it have a reference at all should it be bonded leather should it be hardback should it be mauve should have Paisley's on or should I get the Living Bible that kind of comes in its own little cage because it's still alive you see well let me put it to you this way this is how you judge it number one get a Bible that you will read yeah that's the whole concept not you know this looks like I could really press some cool flowers and butterflies with this one it's got to be one that you will read you may even want to have two one for home and a real small one that you put in your purse or carry in your briefcase and take it with you throughout the day but it should be one that you read secondly get one that has references in it so that you can read the little a B C and D that are in the Bible text itself refer to the margin which will refer you to other books other passages of the Bible to give you a balanced perspective of the Bible as a whole what references do is basically say hey you look up this passage and you will find something that refers to this thought it links this thought with another thought penned by another author perhaps or with a different setting and you'll get a full orbed perspective of the Bible now if you really want you can get a wide margin Bible there's not that many out there but there's a few good ones that allow you to write all of your notes on the side of the Bible text so that as you go through it over the years you will have virtually your own thoughts that God gives you your own commentaries or things the Holy Spirit has spoken to you or through other persons then there are study Bibles there are lots of them let me just give you a few there is the Scofield reference Bible which I find is excellent for major themes of the Bible there's the Ryrie Study Bible the Thompson chain which sort of is an old classic it's a little awkward in its usability and it's print is very tiny and the Bible is huge so if you want a big Bible with tiny little print but great great notes as far as links and chains to take a chain of thought all the way through it's a great Bible there's the life application Bible the NIV Study Bible on and on they go what you will find in these Bibles is not only the Bible but notes you'll have a line somewhere in the page hopefully at the very bottom where there are a few notes explaining the text that lies above it these are great but they're dangerous so what do you mean by that dangerous now I say again they're great let me underline that they're great they're good they're dangerous in that they can tend to make a person lazy and so when a person gets to a difficult passage instead of finding out by observation and interpretation and by other chain references they just want to look at the bottom and say well what does this mean I don't want to fly kaksi read through the Bible to find this I want a quick answer that is the danger of it then you can rob yourself of understanding the meaning of the text and discovering it for yourself there are two basic versions of the Bible now there are many versions there's two basic categories of versions number one there is the dynamic equivalent if you have a new international version tonight you have a dynamic equivalent if you have a Phillips translation a dynamic equivalent if you have an amplified bible a dynamic equivalent then there are formal equivalent translations if you have a new American Standard King James New King James you have a word-for-word or a formal equivalent you say man that's is this is getting a little too high-tech for me why is it so complicated okay follow me translators have a problem okay put yourself as you are now Joe translator and you have a Greek manuscript in front of you and you're a Greek scholar you're fluent in the original languages and when you read something in the Greek language NRK analogous cuyahoga same process on the--on you know what that means cuz you've studied Greek but now you want to take and translate that for a modern audience you know Greek idiom you know modern idiom if you translate it exactly word for word in absolutely every instance you're gonna have a translation that doesn't always make sense so you want to be faithful to the original manuscript but faithful to the contemporary idiom the receptor language you're gonna write in English or Spanish or whatever language you're translating it into so you want to be faithful to the original faithful to the receptor and you're bridging this gap and making critical decisions as to how to translate it usually it's not one person it's a whole committee of people and scholars and they discuss these things together now the reason there are so many versus the number one language changes words don't mean the same language is never static it is always in a state of flux right so a word that means something now means something different later on here's an example probably a really dumb example but let me give you I have a lot of them so let me just give you this one nowadays no twenty years ago if you were to look at something and say that is bad people think we'll stay away from it it's evil but today if you go dude that's bad it means the exact opposite it means it's great language changes now in the Bible there's a lot of changes that have happened from 2,000 years ago to today now let's go take English translations let's take the King James the venerated 1611 King James Version words have changed there are obsolete words that once meant something as easy to be understood as you reading a Living Bible or in an NIV you read a King James today many people who my goodness how can anybody understand that back then it was like reading the Living Bible everybody sort of had a higher degree of well really education they had a greater grasp of vocabulary and I think over the years society has dumbed down you think well gosh you know 400 years later we ought to be a little smarter than that not only understand that language but several others but that's just not the case and words change they become obsolete for instance in the King James Version in Philippians chapter 1 verse 27 Paul said only let your conversation be as it be cometh the full of Jesus Christ let your conversation be as it be cometh the gospel now when you hear the word conversation typically today you think of somebody talking to somebody else but did you know in 1611 conversation didn't mean talking it meant doing and so a modern translation in the New King James would be of the same verse only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ another example in 1st Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 15 in the King James regarding the coming of the Lord Paul said we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep now when you hear the word prevent you say okay we're not gonna prevent those who are asleep and you might get a picture of like we're gonna hold them back we're gonna prevent them you can't go yet but the word prevent in 1611 meant to go before somebody so a rendering of that today in the New King James would be we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep so language changes another example is in mark chapter 10 jesus said suffer the little children you think how cruel why would Jesus want them to suffer but the word suffer in 1611 meant to permit and so a modern rendering would be let the little children come unto me for as such as the kingdom of heaven another reason there are so many translations is not only language change but we find more manuscripts in 1611 there were a handful of manuscripts available since Discovery archaeology many scrolls and texts have been found and we've been able to compile the text together and get more accurate renderings different renderings okay let's think of the dynamic equivalent if you have an NIV a Philips an amplified Bible you're holding a dynamic equivalent what does that mean it means the translator tries to transfer the dynamics of the language over so it's not going to be a word-for-word thought for thought but the translator wants you to have the same impact when you read it as the ancient here had when he or she heard it or read it so it's a dynamic equivalent and they say to do that we have to change some of the wording around we don't want to distort the message we don't want you to lose information we want you to have the equivalent dynamically when you hear the passage that they had in ancient times the aim is total impact on the believer the same feel of the passage then there's the word forward or formal equivalent as I said new American Standard King James are two notable versions this attempts to give you a word-for-word class by Clause sentence for sentence rendering of the original text only changing maybe word order for understandability this category sacrifices though not always but sometimes it sacrifices smooth English for literal translation now let me just kind of go down a working list I can't cover all the translations there's volumes of books just to cover all the translations that have been written the King James Version is beautiful it's a literary masterpiece there are certain things that I still have trouble hearing and anything else than King James though I'm not married to it I don't think that well that's the perversion Paul used so that's the version all use but it's a great translation it's majestic it is beautiful and yet there are words as we mentioned that are simply obsolete today then there's the new American Standard Bible by the way I'm not asking you to buy a base on my grading this is simply my opinion of it and I've got good things to say about all of them and bad things to say about all of them because all of them are lacking the new American Standard Bible is very literal and they have painstaking effort involved to make the tenses of the verbs very accurate in the Greek language is very complex in verb tenses and so the NASB seeks to be very faithful to the verb tenses and they do a good job of it it's not easy reading in my opinion however for me to sit down and read it's very awkward it's very wooden that means it doesn't bend much it's stiff it's awkward I'd have to read it a few times to really get the sense of it in many cases and they have retained some of the ancient language like thee thou instead of you and your so God has sort of pushed off as majestic I understand their reasoning behind it because God is different than we are yet it sort of removes the intimacy factor between us and God then there's the NIV great version it's a very readable version it is a very popular version when it came out it was scorned by many and yet today it's probably sold more than any version in terms of new Bibles being purchased the Gideons in fact are now placing the New International Version in hotels rather than the King James as their replenishing their volume sometimes however the NIV tends toward paraphrasing and in some instances it's not an accurate rendering if you were to compare it I think with the Greek text in some cases it's very lacking because the translator has put there what he thinks it really is saying rather than the text itself in spite of that it is a great translation it's very very popular then there's the Living Bible now you got to understand something about the Living Bible if you have one fine but it's not a translation I've often asked is the Living Bible a good translation I say it's not a translation it is kenneth taylor's desire to put in his words what he thinks the author is saying so that his kids could read it that's why he wrote it he wrote it so that the children could understand the Bible very young ones in their language so he read it and he said I think the author is saying this and he knows that it's not a translation so it's not a bad thing it's good it's helpful but it is not a translation it's very very paraphrased and I would say because it is a restatement rather than a translation please avoid using it for doctrinal conclusions or theological conclusions it could be in that case very inaccurate now you can also buy a parallel Bible if you'd like and that has four versions you open up a page there's one two three four columns on two pages and you can read from a very formal equivalent to a dynamic equivalent and you can get the sense that way if you're into that fine if you want to go further you can get what I have 26 translations of the Bible in three volumes now it's not 26 columns that would drive you nuts what they've done is they have taken the King James is the starting translation and anything that the other translations differ significantly or shed light on they add so I'm gonna read a portion out of Romans chapter 12 verse 1 I'll only read part of one verse so you get the idea the verse says of course I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies as living sacrifices holy and acceptable to God which is your reasonable service so the first portion I beseech you therefore brethren now there's a list of other translations that say different things I exhort you or I entreat you or the good speech translation I appeal to you or the Weymouth translation I plead with you or the amplified I appeal to you therefore brethren and I beg of you by the mercies of God is the next section Berkley version puts it in view of the mercies of God the Rheims translation through the Compassion's of God the amplified in view of all the mercies of God next phrase that you present your bodies a living sacrifice one translation says to offer your very selves to him a living sacrifice the Williams translation says to make a decisive dedication of your bodies as a living sacrifice the amplified version says to make a decisive dedication of your bodies presenting all your members and faculties as a living sacrifice so you get the flavor of it and then you get down to verse 2 where it says and do not be conformed to this world the ASV says be not fashioned according to this world the reams be not configuring yourselves to this age one other one do not live according to the fashions of the times but listen how the Phillips translation puts it do not let the world around you squeeze it squeeze you into its own mold very very picturesque it sheds a lot of light and so 26 translations if you're into it you can get it there are other versions of the Bible that are very very colorful you may not have heard of them but I remember back in the 60s and 70s there was a virgin going around called the cotton patch translation any of you remember that okay a couple of you do it was sold in some of the stores but mostly it was sold in the south and it was put together on purpose that way it was put together in the dialect of the south especially around the areas of Atlanta Georgia so that some of the isolated people's could understand the impact of the Bible in their language local place names were taken out and others were inserted in fact listen to this passage in Matthew chapter 2 verse 13 when the angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells Joseph to flee to Egypt it says quote after they checked out the Lord's messenger made connection with Joseph in a dream and said get moving and take your wife and and hightail it down to Mexico close quote then the the passage of john the baptist's as he's introduced at the jordan river as being eccentric and wearing camel's hair and eating locusts it says in matthew chapter 3 verses 4 & 6 quote this guy john was dressed in blue jeans in a leather jacket he was living on cornbread and collard greens and folks were coming to him from Atlanta and all over North Georgia and the backwater of the Chattahoochee and as they owned up to their crooked ways he dipped them in the Chattahoochee this became very popular as the hippie generation kind of matured there was another version in 1966 put out by Carl Burke called goddess for real man that's the version the goddess for real man version of the Bible and it was the retelling of Bible stories in the language of the kids of the inner city and in Psalm 23 the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want he says the Lord is like my probation officer he will help me he tries to help me make it every day he translates psalm 46 where it says God is our refuge in our strength a very present help in trouble he says God is a good hideout he is stronger than the weightlifter at the Y now you may not like that but for those kids they could understand God in that kind of language it was put in such a way that they could understand it and at least get some kind of a hunger and thirst for the things of God I also have an article here from Red Lake Falls Minnesota that I picked up and I wanted to share with you tonight from the newspaper quote a group of scholars is now translating the Bible into the language of the klingons this is from the newspaper I'm not making this up you might think does he sit around and like dream this stuff up all day the rough warlike warriors of the science fiction TV series and movies Glenn Perot called the director of last summer's Klingon language amp in the Northwest Minnesota town says that the Bible will supplement a Klingon dictionary created by linguist Marc Okrand Procol already has translated the first few chapters of the Gospel of John and Hebrew scholar Marc Scholten has finished the Book of Jonah so if you want a witness to a klingon friend soon you will have a version that will enable you to do that I don't know why they're doing this by the way now I haven't touched on another translation that many of us have tonight and that is the New King James Version because of this there are dynamic equivalent there are formal equivalent translations the New King James translators say well we believe the New King James is a complete equivalent that is we want to translate it as faithful as we can to the original language and maintain the majesty of the King James Version but where needed we can replace some of the words presenting it in good literary form now they do make a very important point and after this will go on and get a perhaps more practical uhm in First Samuel chapter 15 verse 33 in the New International Version it says and Samuel put a gag to death before the Lord at Gilgal now if you were to read that and never read another version you would know how we put him to death but the Hebrew text tells you how he put him to death and yet the NIV translators have it seems sought to soften what would be may be construed as very very harsh the New King James translates it as does the Hebrew text and Samuel hacked a gag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal the reason I say that is the Hebrew word shakhov means to cut or to hew into pieces and so yes he put him to death and in one sense it's very correct but in a true linguistic sense to convey the real idea of the text it is missing in that version that translation now I'm going to touch on this be I'm asked about it but I'm not gonna really explain it just for further thought there's another argument another problem and that is the textual basis problem if you are holding in your hand an NIV or an NASB or most Bible translations it is based upon a different set of manuscripts then if you're holding a New King James a King James and a couple of other versions the King James New King James is based upon the Textus Receptus which has its as base the Byzantine or Western text some scholars say oh that's not a really reliable text we have older manuscripts which is of course under debate and they're more reliable I guess they think if it's older it's more reliable for some reason course you can be wrong long as well as you can be short but that is based on two other different set of texts and they're called the codex which means a book codex cine Atticus and codex Vaticanus I don't care if you remember that just remember that there's a debate as to which version which text is best and I seek not to answer that I think they're all great translations I like the NIV I read it a lot in my devotions I like the new King James I read it a lot why do I teach out of the New King James for this reason number one what I became a Christian about the only thing around in my Bible bookstore was the King James number two every commentary was and many of them still are tied to the old King James and many concordances are number three I use the new King James because if you're reading a King James Version it's pretty easy to follow along with this text that I read if you're reading a new American Standard it's still pretty easy if you're reading a New International Version it's not far off if I were to take any of the others the other translations that people read wouldn't track as well and so I just it's sort of a middle slice to read out of the New King James okay let's talk about some other tools in the few minutes that we have we have um up on this table various tools if you want to augment your study of the Bible and have more than just a Bible if you want to kind of like buy something next and you wonder what should I buy next I'm gonna mention a few be careful again a warning these books can never take the place of this book the best study of the Bible is the Bible itself as somebody once said the Bible sheds a great deal of light on the commentaries we think all the commentaries said a great deal of light on the Bible but we need to be reading the Bible first of all get a concordance you have one in the back of your Bible as you can look at it if you've never seen one before checked it out you might want to just check it out right now there's a thing that's called a concordance I have in my hand three concordances the concordance in the back of your Bible is very limited have you ever tried to find a word and you look at it in the back of your Bible and it's not there because if it were there your thinline bible would look like this and it would be mostly concordance a concordance is an alphabetized system of every word in the Bible and then a list of where all of those words appear in the Bible that takes a lot of pages it's great though when you are saying where is that word on Grace that I wanted to find or on God's guidance and you can only remember a word or two a concordance will help you out some of these the Strong's the Cruden's are now the new King James and the NIV all have what they call an exhaustive concordance you say yeah it's because it's exhausting to read no not exhausting exhaustive the reason it's called exhaustive is because every word in the Bible except a and the things that you're not gonna really look up every word is listed and because every word is listed is called an exhaustive concordance you say do I really need one I guess you'd really don't need one you really just need the Bible but it's good to have for a word studies charles spurgeon once wrote in the Flyleaf of his concordance these words for these 10 years this has been the book at my left hand when the word of God has been at my right hand so get a concordance now if you want to like take leap years ahead of a concordance you say I'm into computers well you can get computer programs that are like so fast and it's before you could even look up the word is it's just all there every word every sentence everything in the Bible right in front of you and you can double-click and it comes up and you can cut and paste it is astonishing secondly a Bible Dictionary a Bible dictionary I would say that would be your second purchase after you get a Bible then a concordance then get a Bible dictionary if you're listening on the radio it's because I'm leaving the Pope and getting books that's why there's dead air a Bible dictionary summarizes a word or a subject it's sort of like a mini encyclopedia rather than a true dictionary where you look up a word there are some language study helps Greek Hebrew and Aramaic that you could look up the word it gives you a full definition of the meaning of the word in its context a Bible Dictionary will give you maps a small atlas it'll give you the feel of an item that you want to look up you want to look up high priesthood look it up in a Bible dictionary it'll tell you where the concept came from how other people and surrounding areas had a priesthood what made Israel's priests so different from their priesthood how Jesus fulfills the high priesthood it's a synopsis of the subject that you're trying to look up so listen they're great and of course they're also available in computer so you know we're gonna stack these books up and you could get it all in one little cd-rom and plug it in your computer but of course you're talking cost factor as well next commentaries one of the most frequently asked question is skip which is the best commentary and I do not have an answer for that because my probing question after you asked me that would be for what if you're studying The Book of Jonah I can tell you a couple great commentaries on that if you're looking at the Gospel of John I'm not going to tell you the same guy that wrote Jonah go by as John book some were really great in certain areas and they're very individual I don't like multiple sets as well as I like individual sets there's a couple good ones but personally I like them individually what is a commentary commentary is a bunch of comments by scholars on the text some are very good comments some are pretty lame and you wonder this guy like took time and actually wrote this why and sometimes I get that impression when I read them but there are many many good ones there are one volume commentaries and I'm just going to tell you about a couple of them well there's a couple ones over here there's a two-volume commentary by Warren where's be based upon his B series very devotional easy to understand great outlines new International Bible commentary based on guess which version the new International which is a great Bible commentary I love it the Bible knowledge commentary based on the NIV it's two-volume it's put out by a couple of staff members from Dallas Theological Seminary great commentaries I have them both and I refer to them they're great a single or double volume commentaries now here's my recommendation since I'm not really leading you into which one to buy visit a Christian bookstore when you have time when you have time look up a familiar passage one that you've been reading lately take out three or four commentaries sit on the floor on a couch and have time alone with each one as if you are interviewing them for a job you're gonna hire them so to speak you're gonna purchase one of them to give you good information read through the section that you are reading in your quiet time that you're familiar with a section that you know well read through each one and see which satisfies you the most which gives you the most information which leads you closer to the heart of God and then make your decision based on that then there are computer Bible programs oh man if we had our projectors up in screens I had actually plug in a computer and show you what they can do but it is staggering we live in the computer age I know you know that but let me just say this whether you like it or not computers are all around you and I think if you're going to want to speak to your children and grandchildren learn the computer they're learning it at such a young age I mean they're doing interactive programs and they're not going away they are here to stay and they're not that difficult and I remember when somebody said you ought to get a computer for your study that oh listen there's two things that don't get along computers in me I hate them I don't like all that stuff reading books and you know glasses in the Green and trying to feel I won't do that I can't he said try out a couple of programs so I made myself do it and now I'm hooked there is so much information that you can put on a computer and so many great programs let me go through a few of them with you now what I'm going to do is afterwards leave all this stuff up here so that you can come up and look at it on your own and check it out but please don't run away with okay you say we'll see it's as thick as the books but what you don't know is there's a little disc in here or a cd-rom you put it on your computer then you store it somewhere and it's all invisible let me start let me go from the lesser to the greater let's start with quick verse quick verse is a fast searchable database of Bible programs you can get King James New King James New International Version and a few others all on one thing you've loaded into a computer call up a passage boom you have all these versions sitting right there click on a word that has the Strong's Concordance word and you'll get the Greek or the Hebrew or the Aramaic just like that it will give you a full list that a concordance will give but it will spell out all the Bible verses for you an excellent excellent tool then there's the PC Study Bible by Bible soft let me share what it has with you it's got an NIV King James new American Standard RSV in it it's got a concordance naves topical Bible Nelson's Bible dictionary treasury of Scripture knowledge strong Hebrew and Greek dictionary Englishman's concordance vines expository dictionary interlinear bible Matthew's Henry Matthew Henry's full sixth volume commentary set Thayer's Greek definitions Brown driver and Briggs Hebrew definitions Bible reading study plan Bible maps Nelson Bible outlines hunger Bible dictionary all in one program so you call up your verse and you just kind of fly through all these different modules and you can get your information quick you can have quiet times on these things and write your own notes or it's even like little margins for you to write it then there is the Lagos Bible Software this is the last one I think I'm gonna touch on tonight this is a cd-rom it's got so much stuff in its got over 75 volumes or sets of volumes in it 20 some different translations the great thing about it is you can say would you imagine being able to go up to a secretary or a friend and say could you search for me in all of these books are in my bookshelf where the word love appears in every one of them and I've got about 30 seconds this will do it for you like that and call up every instance every Bible verse it'll go through the entire cd-rom and tell you where they're displayed and you can click on them and I've got a list of all of them up here but you know I just don't have enough time but there's just so many books that are on the computer program let me close with this tonight the most important thing you can get is a Bible a good Bible one that you'll read one that you'll keep and read every single day now I have traveled throughout the world I've been to third-world countries I have spoken to pastors I have talked about how to study your Bible to different cultures around the world and I have found that the Lord still moves where there are no computers where there are no Bible dictionaries or there are no massive libraries because though it's good to have books it's worse to have books that you don't use because you just have very expensive doorstops so get them if you're going to use them but the most important thing is your Bible and then of course the most important thing is to study it so that it becomes a part of you and you just don't get head knowledge period I'll close with this quote Bill Hooton said it this well lay hold on the Bible until the Bible lays hold on you that's the purpose of studying it so that you're mastered by the Bible rather than just becoming a Bible nerd where you've got all the text and the information and you've got Bible elbow because you've been opening it so often oh man but when the Bible gets ahold of us and we're mastered by its principles and in our marriage and with our children and in our work and in our relationship it makes a difference when it lays hold of us

Channel: Calvary Church with Skip Heitzig

Views: 6,710

Rating: 4.891892 out of 5

Keywords: How to Study the Bible, Bible Study, Calvary, Albuquerque, Skip, Heitzig, Sermon, Acts, Calvary Church, Having the Right Tools, Bible, Bible study, Study Bible, Bible study tools, Bible study resources, Bible translations, Bible concordance, Bible dictionary, Bible commentary

Id: oxG419t_brY

Length: 45min 24sec (2724 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 03 2018