[Darris McNeely] One of the most frequently asked questions we get about Bible study is, what type of aids should I use for Bible study? In other words, a lectionary, a concordance, a Bible commentary, a Bible handbook, there are many of those out on the market today that are, many very good, some not so good, for any budget that you might have. We could have a whole library full of Bible study aids. And many of them will be very, very helpful. There's not anyone that we would recommend to our audience necessarily to use, but I like to talk about three different aids that I learned about years ago in my own study, my own ministry that I have found to be especially helpful, and it's very simple. It won't cost you a dime because all of them can be found on the internet. 

But the first thing I think that a person should learn to use is a concordance, a concordance. This is where you can take a word and look it up, find wherever that word, let's say, "faith" is being used in the Bible, and you can get real highly developed in advanced concordances that go into the Greek and into the Hebrew, and they can be very, very helpful to do a word search on a particular word throughout the Bible.

The second aid that I found to be useful is what's called a topical Bible. Probably, the best well-known is what is called Nave's Topical Bible. It's available free on many of the downloadable Bibles that we have available to us on the internet. So it doesn't cost you a dime. It's been around for a very long time. A topical Bible merely brings together all of the scriptures on a particular topic. The Kingdom of God you're looking for, you can turn to it, and you will find all the relevant scriptures right there. Very helpful study aid, but it puts you right into the Bible

A third one that I have found very helpful is one most people don't know about. It's called a Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, been around a long time, Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. What is it? You know the Bibles that you have on your laps, and on desks, and you use. And if you look into the center margin of your Bible, you see all these little verse references, and key to little codes, and numbers, and letters in the verses you're reading that will show you and help you go to other scriptures that comment on that verse or provide a relevant information to a particular verse. The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge is that on steroids. It is a very thick book. It's available also for free download through many Bible programs, and it will show you every relevant scripture that comments on one you may be reading to help you get the full sense of what that scripture is talking about.

The beauty of all three of these is they help you labor in the Bible. You labor in the Word of God, not some denomination, church, or even human scholars' views about God. All of which can have certain benefits, but this puts you into the Bible. What I like to always point people, my students, to getting the use of a good concordance, a topical Bible, and this venerable Treasury of Scripture Knowledge to help put your mind right into the scriptures to find out what the Word of God says. That to me is one of the best Bible study aids, the three best that I always can recommend to people to build, as a foundation, for anything else that you might use.

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.