Today’s video will be a somewhat unscripted take on the shelf of Bible study books behind me.
Why Believe the Bible, Understand the Bible for Yourself, and Living by the Book
This first one, Why Believe the Bible, is an excellent book I just finished teaching through in our Rooted class. The first half goes through the inspiration of the Scriptures, why we believe the Bible, and the second half is on how to study the Bible. It is practical and helpful. We would not line up with the author on every single thing, but he is a defender of the Word of God, and I have appreciated this book. Understand the Bible for Yourself by David Cloud is thick with practical and doctrinal teaching on the Scriptures from a King James perspective. It is an excellent reference on cross-referencing the Bible, on how to mark your Bible with various colors, and on why we study the Scriptures. It covers a philosophy of understanding the Bible, observation tools, and big-picture tools, and it is very practical and very, very helpful. I have taught through this book as well. Living by the Book is by Howard Hendricks. Again, it is a very thick book, but it is extremely approachable as an all-in-one Bible study book. It is almost too thick to give to a brand-new believer, but it is thick because it includes everything you might need. Again, we would not line up theologically with him on every single thing. It is intentionally written for a beginner, but it has very advanced Bible study techniques and covers a lot of ground, so it can be used as a reference book as well. Living by the Book is a very, very helpful resource.
Hermeneutics and the Bible Dictionary
Hermeneutics is the book I used in Bible college on how to interpret and study the Scriptures and how to get meaning from them. Pastor John Waterloo taught us from it, and as a nineteen-year-old kid I probably did not glean as much from it as I should have. But it has excellent principles on word studies, on getting the context, and on figuring out whether an interpretation fits into the broader idea. It is perhaps a more academic approach and a little less of a practical, hand-it-to-a-new-believer approach, but it is a careful study of God’s Word, and it will keep you out of doctrinal error. It is a good reference for that. Also by David Cloud is the Way of Life Bible believers’ Bible dictionary. If you have any question about any word in the Bible from a Baptist and King James perspective, this Bible dictionary and others like it will be very, very helpful. Take inspiration, for example, or Jerusalem, or Jeroboam: for names in the Bible, it tells you where they connect and what they mean, and for a doctrine it gives a quick one-paragraph summary. Sometimes the definition goes on for multiple pages, but for the most part it gives quick little answers, just like a dictionary, but for Bible words. You need that as a Bible study tool.
Ten Reasons to Trust the Bible and Rightly Divided
Ten Reasons to Trust the Bible is by Don Stewart. He is a prolific writer and has good material on the end times. Ten Reasons to Trust the Bible is very approachable and easy; you could teach through its ten lessons in a Bible study format. It is just a simple, good book. Rightly Divided is by Brother Michael Lester. He taught at West Coast Baptist College for a number of years, and I think he is out East now; I forget which college he is involved with right now. He promotes Rightly Divided as a tool you can use sitting across the table from somebody over coffee, talking about Bible study: “How do I get into Bible study? I am brand new to it. Where do I even start?” This book does a good job with that. My BIBS book and this book are very similar in that sense: we both just wanted to get new people into Bible study and understanding. As you can see, it is not very thick, but it gives a good perspective, and I appreciate it as well.
Jensen’s Survey, An Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, and Nave’s
Next is Jensen’s Survey of the New Testament. I used this extensively in Bible college. It is an overview of each book of the Bible with maps and charts. It will not go verse by verse through the Scriptures, but it gives you the theme of each book, the main ideas of each book, some of the doctrines each book covers, and an outline of each book. I always start a sermon series by looking at the overview of the book, and I use Jensen’s Survey of the New Testament as one of my resources for that. An Introduction to Biblical Interpretation is a thick one, and I did not find it until years later. I was teaching a series on biblical interpretation and found myself referring to it over and over, because of the way it explained things, the depth it went to, and its carefulness with the Word of God. It tries to handle the Word of God accurately and not flippantly, and the principles and tools it gives are very, very helpful. I found it better than expected, we could say. And then there is a big thick book in the background, Nave’s Topical Bible, which is similar to the Bible dictionary I mentioned earlier. It lists topics of the Bible, with a paragraph or two or a few columns on each topic. Rather than looking in a regular dictionary, you need some good Bible reference books to help you with Bible study.
Well, that is the Bible study shelf behind me. In future videos we might go over different shelves; I am going shelf by shelf through the books I have. I have not read every single one of them, but I have covered or referenced most of them, and I will try to share the new library setup with you as we go. God bless you. We will see you in the next video.
