Knowing Scripture VI: Rightly Using the Best Tools

Welcome to the Whole Council Podcast. I'm John Snyder, and this is our final episode on knowing

Scripture, or what are the principles that God has given us in His Word for approaching the

Word? In other words, how does the Bible want you to approach it? And we call that our hermeneutic, our approach, our principles for interpreting an ancient text.

Hermeneutics applies to any ancient text, but obviously we're talking about the Bible. The reason we've been talking about this over the last weeks in the podcast is that without a proper approach to Scripture, without good principles for how to study the

Bible, and not just to read it casually or even to read it through in a year, then what we're left with is the slogan,

Sola Scriptura. Scripture alone is our great authority, but it's only a slogan.

And we end up being people who are completely reliant on whatever the preacher says at my church, or whatever the newest book says at the

Christian bookshop, or whatever someone has said online. And really, that's a very dangerous path for us to find ourselves on.

We want to be good students of the Scripture. Another reason we've been studying the principles for how to approach

Scripture is that there are certain misapplications that a Christian can kind of subtly slide into if we're not careful.

And these flow from the reality that the Bible is a book that God wrote, and not merely a book that men were involved with.

And the reality that God does give his Holy Spirit to his children, and each believer then has within himself or herself, in a sense, the teacher.

And these great realities, you know, when they're in front of our thoughts, they can tend to be misapplied in this way.

We think, well, I ought to read my Bible. I ought to read it consistently. I ought to read all of it.

But hard work in study, using other tools, that's not essential for me, because it's a book that God gave, and it's a book that God teaches.

So, we think it's almost as if the process of studying individual passages is not as necessary.

And that would be a misapplication of that truth. Well, in our final podcast together on this topic, we want to look at the last chapter in Sproul's book, where he talks about some basic tools.

What are the tools that we have that would help us to really approach the Scripture in the right way?

Now, let me give you a couple of warnings. Good tools must not replace good principles in approaching

Scripture. If you haven't really gotten under your belt the things that we've been talking about up to this point, and you just go get a good commentary, well, you will benefit from the good commentary, but it would be much better for you to understand why the commentary says what it says about this passage.

What are the principles that that commentator, that Bible teacher is using as he or she is approaching a text?

Why are they saying what they're saying? And you ought to be able to recognize the fundamental principles.

They're hermeneutic for approaching a text. If you skip the hard work of the things that we've talked about leading up to this point, then the commentary or the tool that you're using will simply replace the hard work.

And I have found that even though commentaries are often much better informed than I am, after using all the tools that I have, still, it is the process or the journey of hammering out what a text is saying, of, you know, enduring labor, of going back to a

Bible verse day after day, doing your best, asking the

Lord to teach you, using all the tools that you have and the right principles. It's as if you dig your own well and you drink from that well, and the process that is involved in that sometimes is as valuable as the truths that you're learning at the end of the process.

So, if you only drink what other people have given you or you only eat the pre -made meals that they hand you,

I think that you are bankrupting yourself as a Christian. So, what are the tools that Sproul mentions?

Well, the first tool he talks about is getting good translations of the Bible. And really, in this category, we're spoiled for choice.

And Sproul's book is dated in this way because there are some translations that we have today that he did not have been, and I think they are superior to them.

And so, I want to give you kind of a quick summary of the basic categories of translation, and I'll use

Sproul's words for that, and then maybe some of my own thoughts on it, and you're welcome to disagree.

There are categories of translation, and we can kind of, you know, sort the different translations into one or more of these categories.

And this is where you may disagree because I have views of some translations that belong in some categories, and you may feel they belong in a different one.

Well, let me give you the categories. The first is what Sproul calls verbal accuracy.

We could think of those translations which try to strictly go as close to the original languages of Hebrew or Aramaic or Greek, word for word.

And at first sight, this seems like it's the only category of translation we should be interested in because it's accurate to the

Word of God. And it is very accurate in many ways, and that's its strength, this category strength.

But it also has weaknesses because if you try to follow an ancient language word for word, then the translation into your own language can become cumbersome or kind of clumsy and cluttered, and you can lose the message.

You can lose the concepts that are being given in the original language to the original audience, which they would have picked up easily by being a bit too strictly tied to the word for word, almost following the order of the original itself.

One Bible that is in that category would be the New American Standard Translation, and that is my favorite translation, but it can read in a way that's a bit stiff or wooden, and so it makes a great translation for personal

Bible study. And I use it across the board. I use it for preaching and for personal reading and for personal study, but it is a little more difficult if you're just reading throughout the

Bible or you're reading publicly the Scriptures. Sometimes the New American Standard can be a bit stiff and cluttered.

I remember in Greek class in college, and this was before I had really come to the

Lord. You know, I thought I was a Christian. Obviously, I was studying theology and preparing for the ministry, as other men have many times before me, studying to understand how to be a preacher before I knew who

God was. But I remember in that Greek class and not being very diligent in my studies at this time,

I would show up, and we would have a portion, usually of 1 John, which is kind of where you start in Greek because it's very simple.

We would have to study and translate and explain a portion of 1

John that week, and so it was a small class, maybe four guys, and we had been given, you know, eight to ten verses in homework, and I would sit there, and I would have my

New American Standard open and my Greek Bible, and not having done my homework, when the professor said,

John, take the next verse. I would read my New American Standard in a labored way, you know, really slow, and he would say, well, that's pretty good because the

New American Standard followed the Greek so closely that it was almost as if I was translating it.

All right, that's my Greek confession. That's the first category. Second, another category for translation we could say is concept accuracy, or sometimes it's called dynamic translation, and this is kind of the middle ground, and these are translations that are trying to hit that sweet spot, which is we cannot hit perfectly.

There will always be strengths and weaknesses, but trying to stick as closely as possible to the concepts that were being given in the original language while also staying tethered to the actual words themselves, and so this is hard to do, but Bibles that have tried to do that would,

I believe, would include the ESV. You may feel that the ESV ought to be in the same category with the

NASB, the New American Standard, but I think that the ESV and its predecessor, the

Revised Standard Version, as well as the old NIV Bible, they're attempting to give you the concepts but also staying close to the words.

A third group is we could call the paraphrase, and paraphrase translations, perhaps we shouldn't call them a translation.

A paraphrase is where the author is looking at a portion of Scripture, maybe the entire verse, maybe an entire paragraph, and trying to convey the basic message of the whole verse or a paragraph, and not sticking closely to the original words themselves.

That's not the priority there. It's conveying the general idea of the passage, and there are paraphrases that can be helpful.

They do not suit Bible study or, I think, teaching other people from the paraphrase, but they can act almost as a commentary.

So, it's as if here's a Bible scholar who's translated this text, and he's giving me the basic message of this verse in his paraphrase.

It's a loose translation, but it shows me what this

Bible scholar believes is the main point, and sometimes that's helpful as you're using a more careful translation to consult a paraphrase.

It's like getting a bird's -eye view of the section. Oh, so that's the basic flow of thought, and that helps me to put in the very specific words that are in my translation, which is more careful.

One older paraphrase, which is hard to find now, but was a very good one, was J .B.

Phillips' translation or paraphrase of the New Testament. Phillips did not like his paraphrase being called a paraphrase, but it is a paraphrase.

Now, Phillips and others in his day—I think it was mid -20th century—they did a paraphrase of the

New Testament, and they were academic men, and they were wanting to get the academic realities over to common people.

And so, there was a lot of balance there that made their paraphrase beneficial. Later, we've had other paraphrases that are much more popular, but I feel even less beneficial, and that would be the

Living Bible or the Good News Bible, which I read growing up. I remember the thing

I remember about that is it always had these stick figure kind of drawings of what was going on, you know, in the scene.

And so, if it was Abraham, you know, meeting with the three men, it would be like little kind of, not quite stick figures, but very basic sketch of that.

And so, I could always remember what was on that page. The Good News Bible, the message, and the message is the most modern of those, and I think the weakest of them.

I don't think I would be able to recommend the message even as a paraphrase to be read alongside of a translation.

So, there are cautions that we have to give with the paraphrases, but they can be used if they're good paraphrases alongside the study of a more careful translation.

There are also Bibles that are called amplified Bibles, and these are Bibles which try to capture the meaning of the original language, which is often more full than our

English translation might at first suggest, by giving you multiple options. So, they amplify a verse.

So, they may use three or four English words that could legitimately be used to translate a

Greek word, and so they give you a verse, but then they give you, you know, added material. They amplify that, or they expand on that.

And so, it's like commentary written into the text, and those can be helpful. Also, a parallel Bible, where you have a

Bible, and these will be, you know, giant, hunking Bibles. They'll be the size of big old dictionaries.

If you get the entire Bible, that's a parallel. The print might be very small, so that might be difficult for you.

Oftentimes, we can find New Testament, parallel New Testaments, and those are really helpful. You can read three or four good translations of the same passage, and they're usually in columns right next to each other.

So, you can see how different Bible translations have approached a particular text, and kind of get a full picture there.

It's somewhat like a commentary on the text, and I think those can be helpful as you study.

Now, another tool. Sproul mentions study Bibles, and it's funny that he gives a lot of warning here, because study

Bibles have strengths, but they have a lot of weaknesses. And what we mean by a study

Bible, and what Sproul gives a lot of warning about, would be the kind of study Bible that has a lot of commentary in the margin from some single author, or a group of authors.

So, we can think of the MacArthur Study Bible. Well, it's going to be John MacArthur, primarily, his comments on texts.

I think it's kind of ironic, because Sproul eventually, you know, highly involved in the

Reformation Study Bible, and it has a lot of commentary. But here are the warnings that come alongside the benefits of a study

Bible. First, that is, study Bibles can be kind of two different categories.

They can be Bibles which give a lot of basic information that you might get from a

Bible dictionary, or concordance, or other tools.

And so, these are given either at the bottom of the page, you know, or in the margin somewhere, and these really aren't commentary.

It's not a man saying, this is what this passage is talking about, or even giving you kind of a summary of his sermon on that passage.

Three major points from Romans chapter six. So, these are more kind of nuts and bolts.

Not very much can be given in a study Bible, but what can fit there is put there, and it's basically tools, helps.

And then there's the study Bible, which is primarily comment by other authors placed in the scriptures.

And Sproul warns that as you read over that, if you have a commentator, the

Schofield study Bible, where Mr. Schofield puts his comments all through the margins, and then if Mr.

Schofield is wrong, and I think he is wrong in a number of places, then the comments are only as good as that commentator.

So, there are better commentators than Schofield, but even they are imperfect.

And so, a study Bible with a lot of kind of sermonic notes in it may at first be very helpful, especially to a baby

Christian, but ultimately, it's only as good as the commentator.

Where the commentator is weak, the study Bible will be weak. Another problem that Sproul points out is that it's hard when you're remembering later, maybe even years later down the line, if someone mentions something from a passage you haven't studied recently, like Leviticus and the day of atonement, such a significant chapter.

So, you're remembering that, you're remembering having read through that, and you've been using a study

Bible with so -and -so's notes. And Sproul warns that it is easy for us to remember what the notes said, maybe more than what the passage itself said, and we don't realize we're doing that, so we kind of think that what the commentator said about the passage was actually the passage.

So, the Bible commentator's notes kind of slide into the category of Scripture, especially as we're just kind of recalling it years later.

So, there are strengths and weaknesses. I think that a good study Bible can be a good help, but for the young Christian.

Otherwise, I think we should probably be weaning ourselves off of those, and you may have another opinion on that.

Another tool, commentaries. And I mentioned commentaries in study Bibles, but commentaries.

So, it's a separate book, and I think we would probably all be pretty familiar with this. This is a commentary. This whole stack here, these are commentaries, and these are some of these are commentaries.

So, a commentary is simply a book where a Bible scholar has worked through a portion of Scripture, either a single book or multiple books of the

Bible, and they have explained things you need to know to understand the text more fully.

So, they will have explained background issues. What was going on when Paul wrote Galatians? It's pretty significant to understand those at times, especially in the epistles.

The epistles, the letters written to the young churches, were often written because of a particular situation.

And so, understanding the basic background of that letter helps you to understand why

Paul or James or John or Peter would use that wording or make that application.

There are various different types of commentaries, and maybe I could just give you three categories that I usually use as I'm considering them.

And the first category is the critical commentary or a highly academic.

I don't mean critical as in if as it's criticizing the Scripture, but it's critical thinking.

It's the highest level of reading in the commentaries. It's very academic.

It will rely heavily on the original languages. So, if you're not used to reading on that level, that kind of a commentary can be more discouraging than helpful.

And many of them spend a lot of time where the commentator is an academic person responding to other academics who have written on the same passage who have a very different view.

So, let's say a conservative commentary writer writes his commentary, and he's giving you all the

Hebrew and the Greek, and he's giving you all the grammar, and he's giving you historic perspectives.

And so, you're looking at all of this, and then you find that a large portion of his comments on a single verse actually aren't explaining the verse, but they're arguing against liberal commentators who have already written or maybe have died a long time ago, but they've become popular.

And so, he's saying, this author says this, and this is why he's wrong, and this author is wrong here, and this is why we believe that they're wrong.

That can be helpful for the pastor, for a teacher.

If the passage is a passage where all the people you're speaking to, they know there's disagreement there.

And so, you need to go to a commentary that's going to give you more of the academic explanation why we come to certain views.

Most of them, though, I find are not as helpful. Now, I want to mention two that are helpful. For the

Old Testament, Kyle and Dalich. This is an old commentary. It's a series that's kind of the gold standard for Old Testament critical or academic commentaries, but Kyle and Dalich will be often used by other commentators as they explain a passage.

So, I think this is part of a 10 -volume set. It's not easy. You have to be able to read

Hebrew or you have to be able to skip the Hebrew and still understand what they're saying. For the

New Testament, my favorite of all commentary writers is a man named

John Eadie, a Scottish professor in the mid and late 1800s.

So, he represents a period in Scotland where theology was still very good, very reformed and careful, very

Christocentric. And yet, he doesn't skip the hard work and just, you know, go straight to the cross and give you warm thoughts about Christ.

He does his work. And Eadie writes only on, I think there's only five volumes,

Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and the Thessalonian epistles. So, sadly, he didn't cover the entire

New Testament. But these are called Greek text commentaries and they are heavy on the Greek. But what sets

Eadie apart is, while being extremely academic and mentioning other commentators all the way back to the early church fathers, you know, then up through the

Reformation and then post -Reformation until him, he gives you the very best of the very best of the past.

He gives you the multiple views on a verse and why they viewed it that way. And then he gives you his view and why he views it that way.

But he gives it all with the ultimate goal of being really devotion to God.

There's a lot of warmth in Eadie's books and that is rare in an academic or a critical commentary.

Now, another group of commentaries at the opposite end of the spectrum would be the the devotional commentary or the sermonic commentary.

And that would be commentaries like this one by Martin Lloyd -Jones. This is

Ephesians chapter 6 verse 10 through 20. Well, it's, you can tell by the size of it, that's a pretty hefty, you know, book for 11 verses.

But what it is, it's Lloyd -Jones sermons on Ephesians 6, 10 through 20.

And he's one of the rare kind of preachers who is not only warm -hearted and devotional, but also logical enough.

And, you know, and his progression through passages is very logical and very slow and very thorough.

So you can read his sermons and they are in many ways like a commentary, but they are a devotional commentary, which means he's done all the work for you.

If we could compare academic commentaries to someone bringing you all the ingredients that will go into a meal, but it has no recipe.

It's just ingredients. So there, you know, there's black pepper here, and there's paprika here, and there's salt here, and it's just everywhere.

It's just dropped on the table, and there's pieces of meat, and there's vegetables, and then there's these weird, you know, grains that everybody thinks that they need to eat today.

And if you're like Teddy James, there'll be some strange thing growing in the corner that you're supposed to drink, and he promises me it'll make me healthy and live forever, but I don't like it.

So you have all these weird things, and that requires you to do a lot of work.

The devotional commentaries, complete opposite. MacArthur's New Testament commentaries, any commentary you have by Lloyd -Jones, these will be commentaries.

Matthew Henry, of course, is perhaps the most popular and well -known version. These are commentaries where the men have done all the work to put the ingredients together in the best way they know how, and to bring you the result, a meal, and all you have to do is eat it.

It is the easiest. It's the one that requires the least work for you, but that strength also becomes its weakness.

If you start with that kind of a commentary, you tend not to go back and do the hard work yourself, because Lloyd -Jones has already done it.

I remember preaching through Ephesians, and I was using the set that this comes from, and I would do all my studies during the week on that passage in Ephesians, and then

I would read Lloyd -Jones at the end, and I think that's the best order. Move from commentaries that just give you the nuts and bolts.

What does this Greek word mean? What's the cultural situation? You know, how does the grammar affect the way

I interpret this passage? So you're reading those basic, general commentaries, and then you're moving toward the more devotional, where the men have already done that work for you and given you the final product.

And as I would study, I would write basically the sermon as I was wrestling with the text and using the more academic or general commentaries, and then

I would read Lloyd -Jones at the end, and he would be so wonderful. I would take what he said and boil it down, and I would preach two sermons, and this was a

Wednesday night. So I would preach a 55 -minute sermon, and it was really a packed 55 -minute sermon, because I preached

John's sermon, and then I preached Lloyd -Jones' sermon as the conclusion, and I remember the other elder, the other pastor at the time was a godly and gentle older man.

His name was Lanny Autry, and Lanny one time came up to me, and Lanny rarely criticized me.

He was very patient with me as a young pastor, and Lanny came and said to me, he said,

I think you've got too much material, you know. It's like you preach two sermons on Wednesday night, and I realized that's exactly what

I was doing. My sermon, Lloyd -Jones' sermon, so be careful. Then there's this middle category in between the highly academic and the very devotional, and these are the commentaries that I think most of us will find most beneficial, and there's a wide array of them.

This yellow one is by Baker Books, and this is probably out of print.

This is an older version, but I imagine you'll be able to find it online in some fashion, and it's the

New Testament Commentary by William Hendrickson, and Hendrickson did not live long enough to finish all the books, and Simon Kistemacher finished the ones that Hendrickson didn't do.

Hendrickson, in this set, I think really is the pinnacle of this kind of middle ground commentary.

He gives you the nuts and bolts. He gives you the basic facts. He's done all the academic work, but he presents it to you in a way that average people can understand.

You don't have to understand Hebrew and Greek. You don't have to be really good at reading to benefit from this type of commentary, but he does not give you a sermon, so you do have to do the work.

It's like, if we use our illustration from earlier, it's like he brings you all the ingredients for a great meal, and he brings you the recipe, and the ingredients are kind of separated into their packages, and so if you are willing to put in the hard work, you can make a great meal from this, but you do have to put in the hard work.

Everything you need is there, but it's up to you to do it. Other commentaries that I think are helpful, we've done a giveaway with these.

This is only one of two volumes, the New Testament Commentaries. This is the second volume. It covers just the epistles, most of them, and Revelation.

It doesn't cover the Gospels, and this is by a man named Jeffrey Wilson, and Wilson quotes from the older writers.

It's very succinct. It's to the point. It helps me, when

I read Wilson, to stay with the flow of the argument, especially in an epistle, so I don't get bogged down in individual words, and phrases, and doctrines, and forget the big picture.

Here's another, and this is in a set by Banner of Truth called the

Geneva Commentary Series. You'll recognize them because they have these red hardback covers, and the

Geneva series are generally by Puritans or older writers, and they're often very wordy, so that's the weakness.

The strength is they do deal with the text, but they're also sermonic, so they're like the best of both of those categories put together, but they are often older writers, and so they require a little more sweat.

This is by a man named John Davenant, and I brought this as my example because this is on the book of Colossians, and I remember a very godly man saying, come on, you know, do you think

Paul meant for us to do this to Colossians? Colossians is a couple pages in your

Bible, but it's, you know, it's, I don't know, you know, 900 pages in this book, and it's hard going, so it's worth it, but if you are teaching a

Sunday school class, and you get the Geneva commentary on Colossians, you're going to have to be a good reader, or you're going to have to have a lot of extra time, but it can be difficult, a bit too much at times for some people.

Not every Geneva commentary is that large. Let me say a couple more things about commentaries before we finish with our last category.

If you don't know which commentary to use for a book, there's a couple of ways to approach.

You can approach it, as we've mentioned before with other books, by the publisher. Banner of Truth, Reformation Heritage Books, those aren't the only two good publishers, but those come to mind.

I always search their websites or websites that carry only good books, those that I think are trustworthy, and I go to that website, and I type in the name of the

Bible book that I'm studying. So, let's say it's 1 Thessalonians. Well, what I did for 1 Thessalonians, for my own personal study, is

I went to a website called Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

It's a discount website where only books that I would think are trustworthy are put.

Now, there would be Baptistic books and Presbyterian books on there, so I couldn't agree with every part of every book on there, but these are good books, and they're safe, and it's a much safer place to look for books than maybe a larger, kind of more generic, you know, here are just basic Christian books, or even much larger and much less helpful, something like Amazon.

So, if you don't know what you're looking for, if you're not looking for a specific author that you know is safe, you could go to a place like Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service .com,

and they will have good books. You type in 1 Thessalonians, and maybe 30 books will show up.

And what I try to do is, generally, I would get two or three, and I would try to get one that's pretty sermonic.

I know it's going to be the sermons of that author, kind of boiled down, or something like the

Wellwyn Commentary Series, which I believe, you know, it's very sermonic, but it's written in a way that's a good commentary, helpful, but on the devotional end.

And then I would try to get one that's kind of in the middle, and maybe one that's a little more academic. And I would use those in whatever way

I felt was most helpful as I was working through my own personal study of a book. If I'm working for sermons, and so as a pastor,

I have more time to devote to it, I generally get about seven or eight. I used to get, you know, 13 to 15 commentaries, but I have found, as I get older, that I will not live long enough to read all of those.

So I get around maybe five to eight good commentaries. A couple on the academic side, a couple on the devotional side, and the others in the middle.

And I'll read all from all five to eight of those in the early days of preparing for that series.

And as I do that, I usually find maybe three of them really rise to the top as the most helpful in the most succinct manner.

And then I tend to lay the others aside unless I need to look at them. So I don't know how you study for classes or sermons if you do that.

That tends to be how I approach it. I would say in your own personal studies, always move from the more nuts -and -bolts commentaries toward the devotional so that the devotional commentary doesn't replace the scriptures.

The more nuts -and -bolts kind of basic commentary requires that you interact with the

Bible text constantly, and that's what you want. You want to help to the scripture study, not a replacement.

But if I read Lloyd -Jones first, it's almost as if Lloyd -Jones sermon becomes the scripture, and we don't want to do that.

So the last category I want to mention as we kind of draw everything to a close is other general study tools, reference tools.

These are things that you wouldn't necessarily read straight through. They're kind of things that, like in a library, you go to them when you need them.

A dictionary. So you have Bible dictionaries, concordances, word studies, atlases, interlinear translations.

They're all helpful. And these are things that are not sermonic at all. And so they ought to, if you're going to use them, use them first.

As you're dealing with the text and you're trying to apply the right approach to the text, what's the context?

What do these individual words mean? How do I understand the way that fits with other things?

How do I see the meaning of a word as I look at how it's used in other places in the

Bible? Are other passages on this same topic, not just using the same word, because sometimes that word might show up in other places, but not really be talking about the same situation.

But are other passages really dealing with the same topic? And are they easier to understand?

Do they give more information? Do they supplement what I'm reading here? So I'm reading in the

Psalms, reading a Messianic Psalm. It's about the coming of the Messiah and his work.

And then the New Testament, obviously, is going to speak about the same thing. And as I look at some of these cross -reference guides, these concordances,

I find these New Testament passages that mention the Psalm I'm studying in a particular context, and they apply it.

And that is so helpful. Scripture is the best explainer, best commentator of Scripture.

A couple of those that are helpful. Strong's Concordance, that's the really big book down here. It not only tells you where that word shows up everywhere in your

English translation, but it also, in the back, Strong's gives numbers.

And these numbers are numbers that give you a reference for a Greek or Hebrew or Aramaic translation.

So it's kind of a very small and basic word study.

So this word can also mean these different things, and it's used in different ways. The problem with simple word studies is that you can't just say, well, this word here is used here and here and here, and it's translated differently here, and therefore, that's what it means here.

Words always have a basic meaning, but the context is so important to how

I apply that. So let me suggest that with word studies, there, obviously, now we have really good computer software that helps with this.

Logos is the OG. It's the granddaddy of all, and it's the big one, and it can be expensive.

You can spend over $10 ,000 for Logos software, and it can be a bit difficult to use.

I use Logos, and I use not the $10 ,000 version. I use the very basic one because it helps me do good investigation into different words and passages quickly, but I prefer to use books that I can hold still for commentaries and for my

Bible, but Logos helps with these kinds of things, Bible dictionary kind of things, word study kind of things, atlases.

It's always good to look at these maps when they apply so that you remember this is real world stuff.

You know, Abraham's actually traveling. Moses and the Israelites are here. The next chapter, they're here. That's a long way away, or that's right next door.

You know, Israel builds two temples in the day of Jeroboam, and Jeroboam builds rival temples up north so that the

Jews don't have to go down south where Rehoboam is now ruling. You remember the split of the kingdom.

Well, one is in Dan, and one is in Bethel. So what? Well, if you look at a

Bible atlas, you'll see that why those places are significant. So Bible atlases, maps, they can be fascinating, but they can be more than fascinating.

They can really help us understand what's important about that place or to see that this is really real world event.

And then, you know, there are cross -references in your Bible, but this is one that I want to mention.

It's the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, and then there is a New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.

You can get it in a book like this. You can get it in most Bible software, but it is not the kind of book you would read.

It is a cross -reference. So all it does is it gives you the passage of Psalm 1 -1, and then all the words that are showing up in Psalm 1 -1 that are of significance, those words are then cross -references are given.

This same word is used in all these other passages in the Bible. Now, not every time it shows up, but every time it shows up, that would be a significant benefit for this understanding a particular passage.

So this word is used in this way in these passages, and there are, you know, just it says 500 ,000 scripture references and parallel passages organized to help you discover the truths of the

Bible. It's a very toilsome book. You have to look up each passage, but if you're wanting to use cross -references to see how other passages talk about the same concept, the same word, the same thing, it is really helpful.

But again, I use that, but I use it in Logos or other Bible software. A warning about Bible software, online

Bible software, is really, I think, one of the least safe ways of studying your

Bible, because there are just so many hundreds, hundreds, maybe thousands of little websites that are trying to help you.

I don't think that these people have bad motives, but they will represent the theology of the person that created the website or the theology of the people they choose to put on the website, and so you'll want to know what that is before you just kind of swallow it whole.

And so I find that using an online Bible tool requires a lot of work from you to make sure that the authors that are being used are the best authors, and the way that they're being put on the website, they may not be put on there without alteration.

They may be slightly edited when they're put on there because of the length or maybe archaic language. You need to know that.

You need to know if the author's good and if the author's material is being presented accurately.

Otherwise, you can say, well, I saw that John Owen on this website explained this passage this way, and it may not be an accurate picture of what

Owen said, and you can get off track. So be careful with that. Let me say one last thing.

The better the tool, the more apt you will be to let the tool either replace the hard work that you should be doing to understand the

Word of your God and to apply it, or even worse, the tool, because it's so good, becomes a substitute for Scripture itself.

So the better the tool that we've been talking about, the more frequently we let that tool or that person who wrote that or that group of people, we let them do the work for us, or we let their words about the

Bible become our Bible. And both of those are very dangerous. We don't want to do that.

So be careful in how you approach. Don't forget the principles of hermeneutics, the right way to approach the ancient text of the

Bible. Don't forget that dependence upon God with a humble heart. God, teach me that that will be primarily expressed not only in our praying as we're studying, but in our effort.

If we know that God will help us and we're crying out to Him to help us, then you ought to put in the hard work to study.

Dependence on God in this area does not mean that we sit back passively.

It means we are confident enough to put in the hard work. We know it will be beneficial.

Well, I hope that this has been beneficial for you, and you can go back and read what Sproul says in Knowing Scripture. There are other little books that are more modern than that that deal with how to read and how to study the

Bible and its different genres. And you can pick up good tools on the internet, and hopefully we can give you some of those shortcuts.

But before we sign off, we want to say we have our last giveaway. We've been doing a number of giveaways in this series, and our last giveaway is not on the table.

It is we would like to give a gift certificate that would cover the cost of a new

Bible if you are looking for a new Bible and you would like a nice one. There's a company named

Schuyler, and they do different Bibles, different layouts, different translations.

You can find them on evangelicalbible .com, for example. They are really good

Bible makers, and we've been impressed with them. A lot of people in the church here have gotten them, and there's just every version under the sun, every layout.

So, if you like single -column Bible where you don't start each verse on the left -hand side, well, they've got those.

If you like it where the verse does start on the left side, they've got a new version called the strident version.

They have the credo version. They have a Canterbury version where within the you have beautiful red letter, you know, kind of fancy old

Bible -looking first letter of the first word of each chapter. They just have everything.

They're pretty pricey because of the work that goes into them. So, you can see in the show notes instructions for how to be a part of that giveaway, and we will be sending one of you a gift certificate for a

Bible from Schuyler. Well, we're glad you were able to join us for this series of podcasts.

We'll see you next week as we are having an interview with a name that you may not know yet, but you ought to know, a pastor, and a teacher, and an author named

Dr. Stephen Yule from Canada, and I have found his books very beneficial.