The NOW Podcast: Practical Advice for New Pastors -- Episode 06 "What if I don't have a library?"

The Pastor’s Main Job Is to Preach the Word

Welcome to Not Only Water. This podcast is dedicated to providing practical advice for new pastors. In 1st Timothy chapter 5 verse 23, Paul tells Timothy to drink not only water, but to use a little wine for his stomach's sake.

This short piece of practical advice is the inspiration for this series. Get ready to dive into today's topic. Here's your host, Keith Foskey. Welcome back to Not Only Water, practical advice for new pastors.

My name is Keith Foskey and I'm your host. Today we're going to be talking about the subject of a library. Now, every pastor knows that his job is to, first and foremost, study the Word of God and be able to present the Word of God in a sermon.

That is what we do every week. In fact, if you don't think that's your job, I would say go back a few episodes and look at the podcast where I talked about the main job of the pastor. Some people think as a pastor our main job is to visit.

Some people think our main job is to counsel. Some think even our main job is to personally disciple. All those things are part of what we do, but the main job of the pastor, we are to preach God's Word.

So therefore, we need to have the tools necessary to do our job. And the first and most important tool is, of course, a Bible, having the Word of God. And the next tool that we need is a good library.

However, libraries are not cheap. Libraries are expensive, and even digital libraries can be expensive. If you've ever looked at software like Logos or Accordance or any of the big-name Bible softwares that you can buy for your computer, you'll find out very quickly that those are expensive.

And sometimes they can range not only in the hundreds, but even in the thousands of dollars to get a good library. So the question of today is, what do you do if you're a new pastor, you're starting out, you don't have a extensive library, but you still have a job to do?

And it's said a carpenter is only as good as his tools. Well, what if your toolbox isn't as extensive as the next guy? What if your shelves are a little bare? What are you going to do? Well, that's the topic that I want to address today.

Building a Library Over Time

And I want to say this, I've been to a lot of pastors' studies that were just overwhelmingly amazing. I've walked in and just wall-to-wall, gorgeous bookshelves filled to the brim with tremendous study materials.

And my bookshelves don't look like that. In fact, I'm actually sitting in my studio, which actually doubles as my library here at the church. And I can look to the right here, and I can see my bookshelves.

And there's, right here, there's three good-sized bookshelves, and they're full, and there's books on top, and books sitting on the floor around them. And then I have a couple of bookshelves in my office, and they're also full.

I also have three or four bookshelves at my home that are full. But that is years and years and years of collecting books either through purchasing them myself or by having people donate books to me. I'm looking right now, I can see my Calvin's commentaries, which were a gift from my mother when I graduated seminary.

I see the John MacArthur commentary series. Those were actually a gift from Brother Mike Collier, one of my fellow elders here at Sovereign Grace. And then there's the McLaren's expository, or expositions of the Holy Scriptures.

I see the Boyce commentaries, which I think I purchased those. I can't remember. I see the Kiel and Delitzsch commentary. So I've got a pretty good basis of a library. But again, I've been doing this for, you know, 16 years, and I've been collecting things for a lot of years.

And I know that there are men who have libraries that are much more extensive than mine. But today I want to talk about what if you've only got a little bookshelf, you don't have that many books, and you're asking yourself, you know, what can I do?

Well, I want to talk to you today about free resources, and specifically about one free resource that I use all the time, almost every week. And I'm going to bring it up on the screen as I have been. BibleHub .com.

Now this is not the only software that is available. There is StudyLite .net, there is Blue Letter Bible. There's a lot of free resources, but this just happens to be the one that I have gotten the most use out of.

So what I want to do today, on this short episode, remember the episodes are going to go about 20 minutes, so that's my goal, is to look at this particular free software, talk about the things that I get the most use out of, talk about where I get the most benefit, and hopefully commend it to your use if you're a new pastor and you don't have an extensive library yet, but you want to be able to find good helpful tools in the production of your sermons.

Using BibleHub for Textual Study

So let's look first at the website. When you type in BibleHub .com, you just come to this generic front page. There's nothing really fancy about it, but you'll notice up here all of the Bible translations that are available, starting with the NIV, the New Living Translation, the ESV, and then on down you have the King James, New King James, and down.

And then there are these tabs right here which are Parallel Sermons, Topical, Strongs, Commentary, Interlinears, and the Hebrew and Lexicons. I'm gonna get to some of those, I'm gonna show you how some of those work, and again, you're gonna have to go in and figure out what works best for you.

But I want to go back, in one of our previous episodes I talked about how I would start a sermon preparation, and how I would start gathering materials. Well, if I didn't have my own library, or if I didn't have my own commentaries, what I would probably do is I would probably, as I looked at new books that I was going to study, like let's say I was starting a study of the Gospel of John, I would look up the best commentaries on that particular Gospel, and I probably would make a few purchases.

And you can make digital purchases, or you can make the physical book purchases, that's up to you. But along with that, I would utilize this free online resource. And so let's say I was studying John 1 -1, so I go to John 1 -1, and I click on that, and you'll see that it brings up here.

The first thing it brings up is all of the translations of this particular text. So right away, here on the left side, I have that verse in the New International Version, New Living, English Standard, Berean Study Bible, the Berean Literal Bible, King James, New King James, New American Standard, NASB 1995, NASB 1977.

So it shows me where, if there has been any changes, what those changes are. And then on the right side, it has from the Berean Study Bible, the a little bit more information here, and it also has cross-references.

So if I know if I'm looking at this, you know it says, in the beginning was the Word, it automatically cross-references for me. Genesis 1 -1, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Proverbs 8 -23, from everlasting I established, from the beginning before the earth began.

So over here are some cross-references that I can begin to look at. And then the Treasury of Scripture, that is a specific work which addresses cross-references. And then there's some advertisements here, because it's a free service.

And then down here, I see a couple of commentaries, and I can click on parallel commentaries if I want some more. This brings up Ellicott's commentary. And then down here, this is where I find a lot of value.

And that is, it breaks down the Greek and tells me the parts of speech that are being used in this particular verse. So if I'm studying John 1 -1, which I've studied quite a bit, the phrase is in arke ein ha logos, that's the Greek.

So the first word here is in the Greek, it's in, and in English it's in, it's just spelled differently. This is a preposition. It gives me the Strong's Concordance number, it gives me a basic definition of what this word is.

And so this automatically is giving me some information that if I were using a paper version of the Strong's Concordance, or in my paper Bible, in my paper Strong's Concordance, and perhaps any other, maybe I have an interlinear Greek New Testament, if I'm looking at that that has the markings of the Strong's numbers, I would be having to open page, open page, go back and forth.

And that's a lot of time, and that's a lot of effort, and it's worth the effort if you want to do it that way. And it's good to learn how to do it that way, but this is a way that the software, the free online software, is doing the work for you.

So I see here in arke, the word arke is the word for beginning. It's where we get the word architect, archetype, you know, this is going back to the beginning. And it tells me, the Strong's here, it talks about arkemae, a commencement, or chief, the beginning of something.

And so I see that here, and I can begin to learn more about how this language is being translated, and therefore I learn more about how to present this particular text to the people of God as I'm preaching it.

So all the way down, we have this particular verse. Every word of the verse is given the original language word, and it's given what form of that word. So like here, the word chi is a conjunction. The word ha is a definite article.

And then lagas, so chi ha lagas, and the word ein pros theon, and this is the word for was with God, and on down the line here. So we see this is helping us to understand how these words are being translated.

Now, this is all on the front page of this particular website, or not not the website, but the front page. When I pulled up John 1 1, all of this was on the main page. Now, if I go back up to the top, I look here.

Okay, I want to know more about this particular verse in the Greek. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually click on the word Greek. When I do that, it gives me, again, this particular verse right here, and then below that, it gives it to me in the different texts.

There are different Greek texts, there are different Greek families of manuscripts, and oftentimes there are no differences. Like in this particular verse, you'll notice whether it is the Nestle 1904, or the Westcott Hort 1881, or the Westcott Hort NA27, you'll notice all of these are essentially the same.

Some of them are in all capital letters, some of them are in what's called minuscule, or upper and lower case. And then we have the Byzantine majority text here, then we have the the text of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Tischendorf's 8th edition, Scribner's Textus Receptus.

So if I want to look and compare, I can compare all of these right here on this one page, simply by clicking the word Greek on this website. So you see how handy this can be, at least I hope you do. And as I go back up, and I'm looking at this, I notice, okay, this is one way to study, is by looking at the original language.

And that's what I want to do. I want to get as much information that this is my investigation process. If you remember, I said the way that we study is observation, interpretation, and application. My observation begins by studying the text, looking at the text.

And so that's what I'm doing, and I'm looking at it in its original language. Now, if I were looking at multiple verses, I may do this a little bit differently, because to look over multiple verses like this, I would have to go one at a time, and it may take me a little more time.

But if you click here where it says interlinear, it's this I-N-T-E-R-L-I-N, the word interlinear, now I can look at this verse as it is written in English. You'll notice in the red it's, in the beginning was the word, and right above that is the Greek, in Arche Ein Halagas, Kai Halagas, Ein Prostan Theon, Kai Theos Ein Halagas.

So we've got the Greek across in black, you've got the English in the red, and then it's got the transliteration of the words in blue here. That's just simply spelling it out in English for people who don't read Greek letters, and I know many people don't.

But here's what's cool. Let's say I want to look at John 1, 1 through 3. I click on that. Now I'm able...let me see here. I'm sorry, let me go back here. If I look...okay, I had to click on look at chapter.

That was a mistake. But you see here, if I say click on look at chapter, I can go through the verse in Greek, and I can look it over and see the words in any one of these words. Like if I see the word hutas here, and I want to see what is hutas, I can click on that.

That will now take me to a concordance, which will help me to understand what that word is and how it's being used. And it gives me other places where it's used in the Bible. And you'll notice this goes on for a while because that word is used often, and so it gives me the use of that word throughout the New Testament.

So I'm going to click back real quick. Okay, so I'm back to the concordance. I'm sorry, back to the interlinear. I see these words in Archaea and Halagos. Any one of them I want to study. If I want to study the word pros, which is the word with God, when it says the Lagos was with Tantheion, the God, or was with God.

If I click on pros, I can look here. That word pros is a preposition, and I begin to look at how it's used in other places. And this is just, again, showing me how to understand this particular thing, understanding this text.

Commentary and Interpretation Resources

Now, let's say I'm moving past my observation phase. I've done my legwork. I've done my research, and now I want to begin to look at the interpretation phase, and I want to start understanding it better.

Well, I've done the original language. I pulled out from that the information that I need to begin to understand and make my interpretation, and now I want to begin to investigate some commentaries. Well, you see right here, there is a little tag that says comment.

Well, that's short for commentary. If you click on commentary, it's going to bring you to the commentaries that are available for John 1 .1. And you'll notice, notice this little tab right here. This shows how far down this goes.

There are so many good ones that are available. Now, they're not all great. There are some that I probably wouldn't use, but again, this is going to come with time with you understanding which ones are most helpful.

You've got Ellicott, Myers, McLaren's. Again, I have McLaren's on my shelf, but if I were looking up McLaren's, I would probably go here. It's easier to go here than to go pull my books off my shelf, and I have this with me wherever I have the internet.

Moving on down, there are some other commentaries here. You'll notice some of these go, are really long and in-depth. Some of them are more, some of them are more application style commentaries and pastoral preaching commentaries.

Some of them are more exegetical commentaries dealing with the actual language. You'll see this one here deals with the Greek and how the Greek fits together. Here's Matthew Henry's concise commentary.

Here's the Expositor's Greek New Testament. Here is the Cambridge Bible for schools and colleges. There's all kinds of good commentaries. JFB, Jameson Fawcett Brown, is a tried-and-true, single-volume commentary, which is really good, and it's available here in its full, right here, available for you for free, absolutely, to use on this website.

And again, I want to mention, I'm not being sponsored by BibleHub. I could probably say the same things here about other websites. This just happens to be the one that I use quite a bit. We have John Gill's expositions.

We have the Vincent Word Studies. Again, moving on down the list, there's so much on this page. Even the Geneva Study Bible, which, if you're not familiar, the Geneva Study Bible was actually the Bible that used the notes of the early Reformers to provide commentary within the text of the Scriptures to help people understand Reformed theology.

So the Geneva Study Bible is very valuable. It has a lot of history. And so again, there's so much here that is available, and everything here is absolutely free. So if you are having a need, if you don't have a large library, which again, we mentioned, not everybody has a large library.

So if you don't have a large library, you can go to BibleHub .com, and it will give you many different translations for you to look at and compare to get a better understanding of what it is you're studying.

It will give you the original language. Both the Greek and the Hebrew are both available. I just showed you the Greek because that was the text we looked at. It gives you a plethora of good commentaries.

Not all great, but there are good commentaries. And it provides you with wonderful resources to be able to begin to do the work that you need to do, and gives you the tools to do the things that you do.

Other Free Study Tools

Now there are some other websites that I want to mention. As I already said, there's BlueLetterBible .com. A lot of my friends prefer that one, and that may be the one that you prefer, and that's great.

I think the Blue Letter Bible is David Guzik's commentaries are there. He has an online commentary for free that's called the Enduring Word Commentary, and it's based on his own studies, and some of it I would endorse, some of it I would probably disagree with.

But that's out there, and it's available for free. There's BibleRef .net, I think. Let me quickly pull that one up, see if it comes up. BibleRef...yeah, no, it's BibleRef .com. This one here, I'll mention this one.

I'll go ahead and show it to you real quick. BibleRef .com. This is actually connected to the website GotQuestions. Now GotQuestions...let me bring that up real quick. GotQuestions .org is a tremendous website for questions that you might have about specific Bible questions, or if you're studying a passage and you realize that there's some controversy that surrounds this passage, GotQuestions will probably have an article about that particular issue.

In fact, almost every issue I've ever dealt with where I had a question and I hadn't really thought about it before, if I just happen to look it up on GotQuestions, it almost always will come up with some kind of an answer.

In fact, let me just give you an example. John 1 .1. I'm just going to put that into their search right here and see what happens, because John 1 .1, there's a lot of questions about it, especially because of how the Jehovah Witnesses have mistranslated this particular text.

And so here, there are several articles here just on the subject of John 1 .1. What does it mean that the word was in the beginning, John 1 .1? What do John 1 and 1 .14 mean when they declare that Jesus is the Word of God?

That's a great question, and if you're preaching on that particular subject, understanding why John calls Jesus the Word, the Logos, is very good, and this article could be a help to you. And so GotQuestions .org is great, and their commentary that's connected to them is called BibleRef .com.

You'll see here, BibleRef .com is a ministry of GotQuestions, and so this is another resource. It's a commentary, absolutely free. I don't think they have every book of the Bible commentary, but I think they have all the New Testament books, and then most of the Old Testament.

It looks like it has all of them. So there you go. So all of these are available, and available for absolutely free. Now another resource, I mentioned it earlier, StudyLite .org is similar to BibleHub, but where StudyLite has something that I don't think BibleHub does, and that is StudyLite has John Calvin's commentaries.

I mentioned John Calvin being on my shelf, and so if I'm looking at a particular text and I want to study, let's say I want to go John 1 .1, and I pull it up. Okay, here it is, and the beginning was the Word.

Now if I want to go to a commentary, if I go here to Bible Study Tools, and trying to find John Calvin's commentaries, here we go. Under Bible commentaries, let's see, verse by verse, Calvin! Calvin's commentaries on the Bible, right here.

And so I want to go to John 1, and chapter 1, and there's verse 1. This is John Calvin's commentaries on John 1 .1, and you'll see all of Calvin's writings are right here. You go over here, you've got all of this, all of John Calvin's commentaries on verse 1, right there for you to look at.

So that's just another resource that's similar to, as I said, similar to Bible Hub, but the one that I use the most, as I said, is BibleHub .com, and there are others. And I know many of you might be saying, you know what, Keith, I know how the internet works, and I found these things myself.

That's great, but I wanted to show you that it's okay if you're a young, a new pastor, and you don't have an extensive library, or even if you do have a library, but you find these tools to be more helpful, that's all right.

You are working to do your main job, and your main job is to preach the Word. And if these tools are helpful to you, and I think that they can be, then use them, and be willing to go out and research and find what the Lord can provide for you through these services, and use them for His glory.

Encouragement and Closing

So I want to thank the people that do that work, that put together Blue Letter Bible, put together Bible Hub, put together studylight .org. They're doing a great thing, and for guys who don't have a lot of resources, they're providing resources that we would not have otherwise been able to get.

So hopefully this has been helpful. I'm gonna bring the this show to an end, and I want to encourage you, if you find this show helpful, please take a moment to like, comment, and subscribe. Also, share this with someone else, especially if you know a new pastor or a young minister who may need some help, may need some encouragement.

I just want to be an encouragement to guys in the ministry, and to be able to give them resources to help them to do the job that God has called them to do. Thank you again for listening today to Not Only Water.

My name is Keith Foskey, and may God bless you.