How to Choose a Commentary

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Welcome to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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This podcast is dedicated to helping believers better understand Scripture, defend truth and engage culture.
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Get your Bible ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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I'm coming to you today from the Learning Center at Sovereign Grace Family Church where I am the pastor and the reason why I'm coming to you today from this location is because I'm going to be looking at a lot of different books today and I wanted to be able to spread them out over my teaching lectern here.
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The reason for today's podcast and the purpose of today's podcast is to answer a question from a listener.
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A few weeks ago I received a question from a listener regarding the interpretation of a specific Bible verse.
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He had a question about the Bible verse, he sent me in the question, I spent some time researching his question and then I did a podcast to respond to his question.
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Well in following up to that, he had an additional question and the question was, well, how do you come to the conclusions that you come to? What is it, what's the process that you use in coming to the conclusion? And very specifically, the question was on the use of commentaries and because I had referenced using Jameson Fawcett Brown, which is an old whole Bible volume commentary.
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It's used by many people because it's free and it's available readily online in a lot of different locations and he wanted to know, well, you know, why did you choose that commentary? Why that specific one? And so today, over the course of the podcast, what I'd like to do is talk about the different commentaries that I would use.
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I'm even going to reference some that I have never used.
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I went into the library of the church today and just pulled a few off the shelf because I want to show you not only what commentaries I might use regularly, but I also want to talk about how you choose a commentary and maybe how you approach a commentary that you have never read.
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And so all that's going to be part of today's program.
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And I want to encourage you, if you've never listened to the program before, this is what I like to do.
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I like to help people understand how to study the Bible and how to be better Bible students.
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So if you have a question about a Bible passage or you have a question about study methodology or maybe you have a question about systematic theology, biblical theology, I would love to engage with your questions.
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So please feel free to send an email to calvinistpodcast at gmail.com and I will quickly, as quickly as possible, respond to your question.
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So the first thing I want to talk about is what a commentary is and why we use them and why I would say they're important.
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When I was in seminary, I remember very specifically some of my professors saying that they never like to use commentaries.
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Sometimes they would say, you know, commentary is just one man's opinion.
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I don't want another man's opinion clouding how the Holy Spirit might help me understand a particular text.
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And these were few and far between.
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Not a lot of guys said that.
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But I remember specifically there was sort of an attitude among some that commentaries were bad.
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So right away, I want to say from the outset, I'm not going to take that approach.
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I do not think that commentaries are bad.
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In fact, I think that for most of us, commentaries can be very necessary and very useful.
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So I don't think commentaries are bad.
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But where commentaries can be bad and can be misused is if you're reading the Bible in one hand and you're reading your commentary in the other hand and you're not doing any of the initial work of exegesis on your own.
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If you're not doing any of the initial work of study on your own, but instead if you're relying upon the commentary to sort of be a running interpreter of the text and you're not going to the text prayerfully and you're not going to the text to seek to understand what it means as the Spirit teaches you, I think that that's bad.
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And I do think that that can lead to too much dependence upon commentaries and really a lack of an ability for you to understand the scripture for yourself.
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And so the first thing I tell people to do when they ask me about which commentaries they should use, which commentaries they should buy, which commentary should have a place on their shelf and in use in their private devotional studies, as I say, first of all, make sure that you have a good Bible that is without any notes.
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So even a study Bible, and I did bring a study Bible today.
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This is the NIV Zondervan Study Bible.
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This is edited by D.A.
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Carson.
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Now, if you don't know who D.A.
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Carson is, you need to fix that.
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D.A.
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Carson is one of the greatest New Testament scholars in the world.
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And so this particular study Bible edited by D.A.
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Carson, even though it's in the NIV, which is not necessarily my favorite translation.
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And if you want to know why, ask and maybe on a future program, we'll talk about why translations matter.
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But even though this is in the NIV text, the notes in this Bible are generally very good.
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Again, having been edited by D.A.
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Carson.
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So right away, we have a study Bible and a study Bible is essentially a Bible and a commentary put together.
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You have the Bible at the top and notes at the bottom.
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And the difference between a commentary and a study Bible really is the volume of the notes.
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You can only put so many notes at the bottom of the page.
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You can only make a study Bible so big, even though the people over at Crossway, when they created the ESV study Bible, they made a study Bible that would choke a horse as giant.
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And it's a wonderful study Bible.
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I would have brought mine, but it's at the house for today's program.
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But again, a study Bible is essentially a Bible with a commentary built in and they're not necessarily bad.
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But again, it's not my preferred method of studying the scripture.
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If I am going to choose a book to study, I'm going to choose a Bible that has no notes inside.
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You can see this particular text, it doesn't have any notes.
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It's got nice, big, bold letters, easy to read as my eyes are getting older with age.
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I can see the words very easily.
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And let me tell you something I do.
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This is just a little, this is not really anything to do with commentaries.
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But something I do when I'm studying a text is I print the text on a piece of paper.
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Now I do that because I have a computer program, but if I didn't have my computer program, I could use my photocopier that I have here at the church, take my Bible, put it on the photocopier and copy the piece of paper.
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Because the thing I want to start with is the text and only the text.
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And again, you have to choose your translation in that regard.
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And you may want to look at multiple translations if you don't have access to the original languages.
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Now I did bring today, this is a copy of what's known as an interlinear New Testament.
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So this is just the New Testament, but this has both the Greek and the English together.
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So if you have a little bit of training in Greek and you're at least able to look at the Greek and understand it, you can use an interlinear to at least help you to see what words are being used.
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Like if the word love is used, you can know if it's agape or phileo.
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If you're looking at a specific preposition, you can see what preposition is being used.
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And if you know a little bit about the Greek language, an interlinear can be helpful.
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Even though again, some people would say, if you don't know enough about Greek to not need an interlinear, you probably shouldn't use an interlinear.
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But I disagree with that.
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I think they can be helpful for some folks.
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So again, this is a way for you to know more about the original language.
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But because most of us do not speak fluent or rather read fluently English, you get yourself a Bible that is a good, solid translation.
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This particular ESV is the one we use in the pew at Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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It's big, bold letters and easily read.
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This is a Bible that was given to me.
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This is a different translation.
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This is the new English translation.
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One of my favorite translations to study.
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Don't use it for preaching because not many people have it.
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I don't want to be confusing.
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But it is a good translation and I really like the way that it feels and I love the fact that it was a gift.
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Shout out to Daisy for giving me this gift.
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And so this is where you start.
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Start with the Bible.
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Don't start with the commentary.
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Start with the text.
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If you have the option, print the text.
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Have an ability to write down on the text.
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Your questions.
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And that's really where I start when I'm preparing a sermon.
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I look at the text and I honestly, I do.
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I ask questions.
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I write down, what does this mean? What do I think this might mean? What could this mean? And what are some of the possibilities? And I begin to jot those notes down.
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By the time I get ready to actually study the text, I usually have a paper that's all written, drawn lines.
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I'm connecting pronouns to antecedents and I'm doing all kinds of stuff with my pen to help me understand the text.
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And so before you get into any commentary work, and I know I'm 10 minutes deep into a commentary, I haven't talked about commentaries yet, but just understand before you do anything, you need to understand that you go to the text first.
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When I was teaching our class on how to study the Bible here at Sovereign Grace Academy, we looked at Dr.
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Howard Hendricks' book and his book spends a lot of time on observation, observing the text.
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And after observation, you move to interpretation and then finally application.
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That's the three steps to Bible study.
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And you start with observation.
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You read the text and you seek to see what it's saying.
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Who are the people involved? Is it a narrative or is it a teaching passage or is it a poetic passage or is it a prophetic passage? What is the genre of literature? All of that is part and parcel of what gets you to the point where you can begin understanding what the text says.
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After that, you move to the next step and that is interpretation.
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After you've done all the work of observation, you move into interpretation and when you're interpreting the text is when a commentary can become helpful.
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Again, it's not where you run first, but often what I use commentaries for is to check my own thoughts because I have already read the text.
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I have already written down my thoughts.
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I've already began to do the work of interpretation.
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Okay, what does this mean? I know what it says, but based on what it says, what is the meaning of the text? And from that meaning, I begin to draw conclusions about how to apply the text.
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And so, between the meaning step and the application step, I'll often check my own work by going to the commentaries.
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Okay, what does the different commentary writers have to say about this text? Here's the thing that we've got to consider also.
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There are any number of commentaries on any book of the Bible.
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And so, the first thing I want to kind of point out when it comes to commentaries is depending on what kind of commentary you get, it's going to depend on the breadth and volume of information.
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For instance, as I already said, a study Bible is really just notes at the bottom of the page which are interpretive helps.
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Here's what this likely means.
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And oftentimes, a study Bible will come from a particular theological position.
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For instance, if you have the MacArthur study Bible, John MacArthur is a Calvinist in regard to his soteriology, but he is a dispensationalist in regard to his understanding of the continuity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant scriptures.
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And so, if you don't know what a dispensationalist is, this again not the podcast to explain it, but that will influence how he interprets specific passages relating to the nation of Israel and the fulfillment in the New Covenant and the relationship to the church.
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So, John MacArthur, tremendous Bible teacher, but he will be coming from a specific hermeneutical vantage point which we would call dispensational.
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Likewise, on the other side of that, if you have the Reformation study Bible which I have somewhere on one of my shelves, the Reformation study Bible comes from, it was edited I believe by Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul, put out by Ligonier.
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It comes from a Presbyterian, therefore Covenant theology perspective which is typically seen to be on the other end of the hermeneutical vantage point of dispensationalism, sees more continuity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
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Dispensationalism sees more discontinuity.
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And so, there is a difference from the vantage point.
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So, when you come to certain passages that deal with particularly like Revelation 20 and the definition of the millennium and what that looks like and what that's going to look like, the notes in your MacArthur Bible are going to be different than the notes in your R.C.
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Sproul Reformation study Bible.
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So, you say, well, who's right? That's a million dollar question, isn't it? Because again, some of this is based on some presuppositions.
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Some of this is based on hermeneutical foundations.
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You know, again, you have two hermeneutical schools, the dispensational school, the Covenant theology school, both of them coming to the text with a certain framework that they have set up to understand the text.
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And therefore, they're going to read the scripture and understand the scripture through that framework.
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Is that bad? No.
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We all do that to one degree or another.
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Some of us haven't been studying long enough to have a framework set up.
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But even then, the people that we study do and we tend to fall under their leadership and we tend to learn.
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You know, if somebody spends 10 years in a Baptist church that teaches dispensational eschatology and then they leave and they go to a Presbyterian church that teaches Covenant theology in a different eschatology, they're going to be lost when they're looking at the same verses and they're saying, wow, you guys see this totally differently.
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And I'm in no way indicating that the Bible cannot be understood or cannot be trusted, but there are certainly passages that lend themselves to discussion and disagreement.
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This is why there are disagreements within the body of Christ and why we say there are things that are essential and things that are non-essential.
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You know, eschatology certainly is not an essential thing.
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Somebody can have a wrong view of eschatology and still be saved.
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So these are things that are, these are things to start with.
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Who, whose, whose commentary am I looking at and what is the background of this particular person? Where are they coming from? John MacArthur's dispensational, R.C.
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Sproul is Covenant theology.
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Both of them are going to be coming from two different perspectives.
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Now we've been talking about study Bibles, again, still haven't gotten to commentaries and I'm not trying to avoid it.
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I'm just, I'm building up my case because you start with the text, then you look at perhaps the notes in a study Bible, maybe the notes in more than one study Bible.
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Then you can build up to a whole Bible commentary.
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One of my favorite whole Bible commentaries that I actually require my students to purchase in Sovereign Grace Academy when we're doing our Survey of the Old Testament, Survey of the New Testament, is the Believer's Bible Commentary put out by Thomas Nelson.
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This is, you can see, it's a pretty big book.
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And this particular commentary I have found to be very useful.
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However, I disagree with some of it and I tell the students coming in, this comes from more of a dispensational view.
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I hold a different view than the dispensationalists on several things.
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So I know going in that there are going to be places in this commentary where it's going to take certain truths for granted that I wouldn't necessarily agree with or certain beliefs for granted that I wouldn't necessarily agree with.
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And so somebody might say, well, how can you promote a book that you don't agree with everything? I have yet to find any commentary where I agree with everything.
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But for the most part, the facts and figures and places and history in this commentary seem to be pretty accurate.
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And I feel comfortable handing this to a person and saying you can use this tool as an aid to understanding a text.
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If you're reading a text of the Bible and you're having difficulty understanding it, you've already done all the exegetical legwork, you've looked at the language, you've tried to understand it in English as best you can, you've looked at multiple English translations, you've come to some conclusions, but you don't know if those conclusions are accurate, you can pick up a Believer's Bible commentary, you can open up to the passage that you're looking at, and there you can start with at least a basic understanding, again, one perspective, but more than a study Bible.
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If you looked at the notes of the Believer's Bible commentary compared to the notes of a Zondervan study Bible, you're going to be looking at two different volumes of material where one passage in this might have a paragraph, one passage in this, the whole volume might have a half a page of material.
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And so there's the difference, right? You're looking at more information.
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And a whole volume commentary is going to be looking at the big picture.
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How does this fit into the big picture? This commentary, this whole volume commentary is not about individual books as much as it is about the whole Bible.
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And so even though it's going to give a commentary on individual books, individual passages, it's looking at the whole and it's got notes on the whole Bible.
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Any Bible verse that you're studying, you can go here and see, I just happened to open it to Romans 12, here's Romans 12, verse 13, there's two paragraphs on that one verse that it gives a commentary on.
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Not a lot, but it is more than I imagine if I opened up this book to Romans 12, 13, do that very quickly.
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I didn't, I didn't do this beforehand.
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I'm just, again, I'm kind of looking at this cold, Romans 12, 13 is, doesn't even have a note.
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And you'll notice that in study Bibles.
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A lot of times because of space constraints, a study Bible will have to look at the more difficult passages and give understanding of those.
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And therefore, this one goes 10, 11, 12, 14, 16.
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So it skips over 13 and 15 in this study Bible.
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That doesn't make it wrong.
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It's just not concerned with understanding Romans 12, 13.
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So because I guess it either assumes that it's not difficult to understand, or if you want to go deeper, you can go deeper.
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So there is an example of you're going further, you're learning, you're going to learn more with the whole Bible commentary.
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But again, a whole Bible commentary is limited because it's looking at a much broader picture.
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Now we're going to step down to a book commentary.
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A commentary that was written on one book of the Bible.
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I brought with me today John MacArthur.
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I had a commentary set, John MacArthur New Testament commentary set, which was donated to the church.
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And it's a wonderful, very nicely bound set.
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I rarely use them, not because I don't like MacArthur, but because a lot of my stuff is digital.
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I have access to Logos, which is an online platform.
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So most of my commentaries are digital.
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I print them out on white paper.
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And that way when I'm studying a text, I don't have to carry 14 commentary books.
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I can carry my commentaries in a little file folder, which I do, or staple together.
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I carry them around with me and I study them and I make notes on them.
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So that's another little thing.
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I actually got that from Steve Lawson.
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Steve Lawson, he takes his books and he photocopies them so that he is able to carry his notes with him wherever he goes and he can be studying when he's on the run or when he's making visitation or whatever.
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He can have his notes with him wherever he is.
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And I always thought that was pretty brilliant.
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So I've kind of picked up on that.
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But again, if I wanted this commentary, I don't happen to have this commentary on my computer.
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I don't have it on my Logos.
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I could simply take this and photocopy it if I wanted to carry it with me rather than carrying the whole book.
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You know, it's hard to carry 14 commentaries with you.
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And this is where a whole volume commentary comes into play too.
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Going back a step, this whole volume commentary, if you can only afford one thing, you might not be able to afford a whole set of MacArthur commentaries.
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They're several hundred dollars.
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If you can only afford one book, get yourself a good one volume commentary.
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I mentioned Jameson Fawcett Brown earlier.
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That is a one volume commentary that's available for free online.
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You can go to blueletterbible.com.
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You can go to what my favorite is biblehub.com.
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I use BibleHub all the time because I can take one passage of scripture and I can put it in the search and look at all the different translations of that particular verse and I can click on commentaries and it brings up several different commentaries on that particular verse.
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And if I don't have my Logos software, for whatever reason, maybe I'm using somebody else's computer.
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Maybe I'm studying away from my computer and I'm on my phone.
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My phone, I use this a lot.
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I can pull it up.
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Boom, I have access to several.
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And ones on Blue Letter Bible, the ones on BibleHub tend to be older commentaries, Matthew Henry, Jameson Fawcett Brown, ones that are available without any copyrights because these are older, no longer subject to copyright.
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You're not going to find MacArthur's commentaries for free, I don't think.
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Now all of his sermons are free and that's another thing, just, again, my mind's racing because I'm thinking of a thousand things.
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But with a MacArthur commentary, MacArthur's commentaries essentially are structured and rewritten versions of the sermons that he's preached on these texts.
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And so when you read a MacArthur commentary, you're reading what is essentially the longer version of his sermon.
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So if you can't afford MacArthur's commentaries, what you can do is you can go to gty.org, their website.
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You can click on sermon, go to the passage that you're studying, and they actually have his sermon written out.
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Somebody has taken the time to type out everything that he said in his sermon, which is a lot like his commentary.
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So if you can't afford this, there's an access to something there.
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So again, the John MacArthur commentary set, this is from the Gospel of John.
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This is, I mean, the Gospel of John isn't this long.
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This is a lot of information you're going to get from John MacArthur.
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You're going to get dates and places and writings and historical information.
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Think about how full his sermons are.
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Well, this is adding to that because he can put things in here that he wouldn't have time to preach in a normal 50-minute sermon.
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So these commentaries are wonderful.
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They are, though, what I would describe, and there's probably a name for this, a technical name.
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I'm just not thinking of it right now.
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But I would say these are sermon-based commentaries, meaning that this particular commentary is meant to read like a sermon.
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It's going to have an outline like a sermon.
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It's going to have points.
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It's going to have not only points of interpretation, but it's going to be like reading a sermon as you're going through.
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Information is full and useful.
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Again, John MacArthur is dispensational, so that's going to be something that will at least be, needs to be known going in.
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But that is the difference between a full Bible commentary, a study Bible, and a single book commentary.
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Now, I also have brought with me today, this is the Word Biblical Commentary.
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This particular commentary is more of what we would call a technical commentary, because this is going to deal with the language in the text.
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And throughout the text, as you're looking here, if you were looking at the same page as I am, and I know you can't see this on the screen, but what you see here is not just interpretation, but it's based on the words that are used.
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And it actually writes out those words in Greek and seeks to interpret them exegetically.
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And so, this is an exegetical help, understanding the exegesis of the text, going through and understanding not only what words mean, and this is where a lot of people have trouble understanding.
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Determining the meaning of a text is not just about determining what words mean, but it's determining how words relate to one another.
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And so, probably the best example of this is John 3.16.
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For God so loved the world.
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We'll just take that portion, don't have to read the whole thing.
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We know the text, right? For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish but have everlasting life, John 3.16.
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But the first clause, for God so loved the world, the word so there has often been denoted by Bible teachers to relate to amount, and they'll typically say it this way.
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God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son.
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The word so, they're being used for amount.
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But that particular word in the Greek language would not indicate amount, but rather the type or way in which something happens.
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So it would actually be better translated, in this way God loved the world, rather than for God so loved the world, in the sense of God loved the world so much, because the word means in this way.
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And so you could say, for God in this way loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son.
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Or, if you said it more naturally, in this way God loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son.
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And so a more technical commentary might be more useful in coming to those types of conclusions, understanding how the words work together, the semantic domain of particular words and how those words function together in a sentence.
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One of the things that happens often times in conversations that I've had with folks and people who want to argue about particular Bible verses is they'll come to me and they'll say, well, the Strong's Concordance definition of this word is X.
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And I say, okay, that is probably true.
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What you're saying is probably accurate, but the Strong's Concordance definition is limited because we don't understand words simply by definition, but we understand words by use and how those words are used contextually and semantically.
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So there's a semantic domain of use.
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If I said, if I walked up to you, looked you in the face, and I just said, cool, and I didn't give you any context, if I just walked up to you and I said, cool, one, you might think I'm crazy.
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But two, you might think to yourself, I have no idea what that word means in the way it's being used.
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Now I know that there's a range of meaning for cool.
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It can relate to the temperature in a room.
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It can also relate to how a person feels at a specific time.
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It can relate to whether or not someone thinks something is good or exciting.
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And it can also simply be a state of being.
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If somebody says, I'm cool, usually means I'm good or I'm okay.
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So cool has an interesting semantic domain.
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And then you say, well, what about the word hot? Cool is the opposite of hot.
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Not necessarily.
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If you look at a car, you might say, that car is cool.
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And then you might say, that car is hot.
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And both of those words indicating some form of goodness or excitedness in relation to that car.
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And it's interesting, because if you look at just what someone might say, the strongest concordance definition of cool and the strongest concordance definition of hot, you're looking at two words that should mean the opposite.
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But in the proper context, those words can mean the same thing.
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So that is an example of the importance of having a more technical commentary when you're studying a text and really trying to dig down to what the words mean and how the words are being used and how they relate to one another, especially, rather, if you have no training in the original languages, technical commentaries can be useful to help you to understand what's happening in a particular text.
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So this is my lesson to you on the value of different types of commentaries.
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Are there more? Yes, there are commentaries that are specific to helping write sermons.
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There's commentaries that are specific to more devotional life and application.
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There's all kinds.
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There is, in fact, a commentary series called the Life Application Commentaries.
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So there's all kinds of different commentaries.
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How many commentaries do you need? I say it's really going to depend on what you're doing, what you're trying to accomplish.
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And, you know, where you are financially.
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Everybody has access.
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Everybody who has access to the Internet has access to several free commentaries available on Bible Hub and available on Blue Letter Bible and other places.
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So I would say start there.
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And when you're doing your Bible study, maybe look and see which ones you find the most helpful.
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And from there, maybe look at if you're going to purchase something in print, you know, which ones you find the most helpful.
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I would say maybe start with a good study Bible, get your feet wet with a good study Bible.
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The ones I recommend, John MacArthur Study Bible, always solid.
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ESV Study Bible by Crossway, very solid.
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The Reformation Study Bible by Ligonier, also very good.
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There are several others.
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If you like the King James, Joel Beakey has a Reformation Heritage Study Bible that's very good.
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So there's all kinds of different study Bibles.
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There's all kinds of different commentaries.
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But know who you're reading.
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Know where the commentary is coming from, who the authors are.
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Do a little research into that before you just go out and say, well, this has a pretty cover.
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I should buy that.
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Not that you would do that.
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But some people just look at it.
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Well, this looks nice.
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OK.
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But, you know, some of the most dangerous places in the world are Bible bookstores because there's snakes on the shelf and people don't know.
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You know, there's there's dangerous, venomous snakes on the shelf because you walk by, well, this is in the Bible bookstore.
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It must be good.
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I take it and open it up and oh, this is good information.
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And it's really not.
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There are there are bad commentaries out there.
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Understanding who the writer is, where he's coming from, what his background is, that's very useful.
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And places like Ligonier and other ministries online that are good, solid ministries will likely have lists of commentaries if you want to look up which ones are better, which ones are worse.
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I would say, again, free ones online.
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Jameson Fawcett Brown, solid, good stuff.
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Matthew Henry, a little wordy, but good, you know, depending on what you're looking for.
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So that's again, there's so much I could say.
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And I hope that I've inspired maybe some questions from you.
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So if you do have a question about commentaries, if you have a question about a specific commentary, please feel free to send me an email at calvinispodcasts at gmail.com.
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I'd love to be able to interact with you and help you out in the future.
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May God bless you.
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And thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.
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Thank you for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.
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If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe.
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And if you have a question you would like us to discuss on a future program, please email us at calvinistpodcasts at gmail.com.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
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May God be with you.