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NASB | John 7:17 "If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | John 7:17 "If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know whether the teaching is of God or whether I speak on My own accord and by My own authority. |
Bible Question:
This so crazy! I thought I was asking a question that most would find unimportant...I have enjoyed so very much reading all these post on you guys' study habits. I must admit, as I said before, I do write notes in my Bible and I underline key words to a verse(sometimes highlight). I don't want my Bible to look like a coloring book though. If that is what works for some, who am I to judge? I would like to take the question a bit further and ask... What is the most valuable tool you use when you study NOT THAT THE BIBLE IS NOT THE MOST TREASURED AND VALUABLE...I am referring to concordances, dictionaries, commentarries, lexicons, etc. For example, I have an e-sword computer program I use daily it seems. It has ... a ton of resources! And there are some other favorites too, I am just curious what resouces you guys use. Cuddle |
Bible Answer: Cuddle, some questions put before SBF fall flat on their face while others, such as yours about Bibles and Bible study tools, not infrequently draw a lot of responses. I guess we're all interested in that sort of thing, which is very good, and each has developed his likes and dislikes in Bibles and study aids, as well as his method of approaching Bible study, over the years and, judging from the volume of responses, he is eager to share them with his friends on the Forum. ..... Much good stuff has come forward in this thread and I have nothing really new or earth shaking to add. Long ago I gave up trying to hitch onto every new version, commentary, study Bible, or other materials that were promised to make me as wise as King Solomon. I've found my Bible study -- and my life in general -- goes a little better the more I try to heed Henry David Thoreau's advice to "Simplify! Simplify" .....My methods are quite ordinary and my Bible tools few, and I'll list them both in a moment. But first I'd like to quote a line from Rudyard Kipling: "I keep six honest serving men, (they taught me all I knew). Their names are what and why and when and how and where and who." ..... It's remarkable how much these six men, along with a good Bible translation read in context, can teach us. ..... A concordance (I've used the same volume of Cruden's that I bought 50 years ago and it's still ticking) and a Bible dictionary (I use Holman's) are indispensible. I like John MacArthur's notes as well as Charles Ryrie's. And I get a lot of good stuff from the annotations and other study helps in the King James Study Bible (Nelson). I read from several versions, but in the main I study from the NASB and KJV. I also do a little Bible study and research on the internet, but nothing like some of my colleagues do. ..... I try to do some serious Bible study nearly every day. I am not a devotee of what has been called 'devotional reading' or 'quite time reading' in which one reads a snippet of Scripture, perhaps a poem or a 'devotional' quotation by some well-known writer of devotional tid-bits. I'm an admirer of Dicken's novels, but had I used such timid methods of sampling the works of Dickens, I'd still be toying around with "David Copperfield" which I've already read three times, the first time years ago. To learn Scripture one must study Scripture with at least the earnestness, resolve and industry that he would normally devote to Dickens or any other secular writer. Why we tend to think that we must nibble on Scripture as though we had spiritual anorexia instead of partaking of a hearty meal is beyond my comprehension! ..... But I've left out the two most important things in Bible study, spade work and Spirit work. The spade work means that we have to dig deep, long and hard to uncover the precious gems of truth that Scripture has for him who is willing to seek earnestly for them. "Ask, (also translated as 'keep asking') and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you" (Matthew 7:7, NASB). ..... And 'the Spirit work' means praying to God for illumination by His Spirit: "Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things from Your law" (Psalm 119:18,NASB). ...... A certain man, a Bible expositor of note, is on record as saying that he never put pen to paper about any book of the Bible until he had read that book through at least 50 times. The man's name, by the way, was Dr. G. Campbell Morgan. ....... Someone asked a great Shakespearean scholar years ago, "How do you study Shakespeare?" His answer was terse: "Read Shakespeare." ..... A seminary student went to his professor one day and asked him to recommend a good book on the life of Jesus. The professor responded, "Have you tried the one Luke wrote?" ....... "There is no royal road to learning" so says the old aphorism. Yet there are some people today who seem to believe that God will transform them into Bible scholars overnight without effort on their part. It's as if they expected to put a copy of the Bible under their pillows at night and while they slept, by some strange means of mental osmosis, the names of the kings of Israel and Judah would come up through the duck feathers! I agree with Dr. J. Vernon McGee: "The Bible needs to be studied. We need to realize that the Spirit of God will not teach us something that we could get for ourselves by study." ...... How important is it to study the word of God? I could write on this subject for days! But I'll close by relating a sobering experience. For more than a quarter of a century I taught an adult Sunday school class in a church where the Bible was not preached from the pulpit and the people simply did not know the word of God. That church, from which my wife and I eventually pulled away, has fallen into apostasy, can't pay their bills, and is dying for lack of nourishment, word of God. --Hank |