In this lesson, we will introduce you to several Bible study tools and show you how to use them.

(Show paper copies of the following books:)

Each of these tools started as a book, but they are much easier to use on a computer. To be honest, I haven't opened a paper copy of any of these books in at least ten years.

There are many computer programs available for Bible study, and most of them are excellent. Popular options include:

Many of these can get VERY expensive. (I have friends who have spent thousands on Logos or Accordance.) E-Sword is free but can be overwhelming.

There are also many great web tools, including:

However, I don't use any of those tools. My favorite tool is completely free and much more user-friendly than all of those; it is called BlueLetterBible.org.

BlueLetterBible.org is a free tool provided by a non-profit organization called the Sowing Circle. It seems to have roots in the Calvary Chapel denomination. It is donation-supported. It's been around since 1995, and I've been using it for over twenty years. You can download apps on your iPhone or Android device, but I find the best experience is on the website.

It's called BlueLetterBible because, back in the day, web links had blue underlines, and people used to sell red-letter Bibles where the words of Christ were in red.

So let's go through each of these tools, talk about what they do and how to use them, and then we'll discuss how to use them with BlueLetterBible.

Let's start with by far the most important one.

Strong's Concordance

If I were stranded on an island with my Bible and could only have one other book, it would be Strong's Concordance. It is BY FAR the most useful Bible study tool I can think of.

The way most people used to use Strong's Concordance is no longer all that useful. We used to use it to look up words and phrases in the Bible. You can still do that, but a search is much faster.

This is what a page of Strong's looks like. It has a phrase and then every Bible reference with that phrase.

Strong's Concordance Example

Again, that's not that useful to us because you can just use a search field. What is useful is the part you may have never noticed. See the number to the side there? That is called the "Strong's number."

Strong's Concordance Numbers

If you go to the back of Strong's Concordance, you will find a dictionary. But it isn't an English dictionary. It's a Greek and Hebrew dictionary. Every Greek and Hebrew word in the Bible has been numbered and defined, and you can look it up with that number.

Strong's Dictionary

So in this one book, you get a basic Greek and Hebrew dictionary that you can use to do a word study.

But those definitions are pretty basic. That's where this next book comes in:

Thayer's Dictionary

Thayer's Dictionary is an in-depth Greek dictionary. It gives you a lot more information about a word than Strong's, and it is considered the gold standard.

The neat thing about it is that it uses the same numbering system as Strong's. So you can look up a word in Strong's, find the number, and then look up that word in Thayer's using that number to get a lot of information about that word.

Sometimes that is helpful. But often, I want to figure out how that word is used in other places in the Bible. Maybe there is a sentence where one key word is shared between two key verses, but those verses use different English translations.

So I need a different kind of concordance for that. I need a concordance where I can look up a Greek word (not an English word) and see how that Greek word is used in our English Bible.

That's where the next tool comes in...

An Englishman's Greek/Hebrew Concordance

This also uses the same numbering system as Strong's, but instead of being organized around English phrases, it's organized around Greek words.

So you can look up a word, find the Strong's number, look that up in the dictionary in the back, then look it up in Thayer's, and then look it up in the Englishman's Greek Concordance.

OR

You can just use all of those tools in BlueLetterBible.

Here is how you do that.

You go to BlueLetterBible.org, find the verse in question using the search box, and click the "tools" button next to the verse:

When you do this, you get six tabs of tools:

What most people don't realize is that there is a lot of power hidden in this menu if you know how to use it, and it completely replaces all of these books.

So, to find the word you need, you start in Interlinear. The phrase I'm interested in here is "highly favored among women."

As you look at this, you see the English word or words, the Greek word (it would be Hebrew if this were the Old Testament), a Strong's number, a button to play it out loud, and a parsing button.

Let's find the "highly favored" words and look; they are actually one word in Greek.

I could, if I wanted to, play that Greek word to find out how it is pronounced, but that doesn't really help me do anything other than show off.

What I want to know is more about what the word means.

So to do that, I click on the Strong's number, and here I have a whole bunch of stuff that is very helpful.

But the most helpful things are:

  1. The outline of biblical usage.
  2. The Strong's definition.
  3. The Thayer's definition.
  4. How the word is used in other places.

All of that is available on this screen. So you can do a whole word study right here, anywhere you have internet access.

You have this book, and this book, and this book and this book - and it is way easier to use. Just look up the passage, look up the Strong's number, and you are off to the races.

What if you want to use an English dictionary? Remember, a modern English dictionary isn't very helpful for the King James.

What I recommend is the...

Webster's 1828 Dictionary

That isn't available on BlueLetterBible. What is available is pretty good. If you click on the dictionaries tab, you can see the King James Dictionary. That's helpful.

But if you go to webstersdictionary1828.com, you can search there.

So if I wanted to look up the word "favored," I could see this definition:

1. Countenanced; supported; aided; supplied with advantages; eased; spared. 2. adjective Regarded with kindness; as a favored friend. 3. With well or ill prefixed, featured.

Let's get back to BlueLetterBible.org, and I'll show you a few other tricks.

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

My two favorite books for looking up cross-references are the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge and R.A. Torrey's Topical Textbook.

Again, both of these are downstairs in the library if you want a paper copy.

The way the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge works is you go to a verse, and for each phrase in that verse, it has a very extensive list of cross-references. You look up each cross-reference in your Bible.

The Topical Textbook is the same, but instead of looking up a verse, you look up a topic, like grace, and it has a long list of verses to look up.

Both of these are in BlueLetterBible.org.

So we are looking at the verse tools for Luke 1:38. Look at the cross-references tab.

Notice the words at the top of the tab: "Treasury of Scripture Knowledge." This is just the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge in digital form.

You have the phrases for the verse and the references - but this makes it easier. You don't have to look the references up - you can just scroll down and see all of the verses here.

If you click on the "Dictionaries" tab, there is a heading for "Torrey's New Topical Textbook."

I can click on this, find something interesting - like "Christ is God" - and then click on the links for each reference.

So that is how I would do a cross-reference study.

Let's look at a few more of these tools.

Bible Encyclopedia

These are helpful for looking up customs, geography, and things like that. You probably already know what to do in BlueLetterBible. You go to the dictionaries tab, and you click on the Bible Encyclopedia and find the topic you are looking for. In this case, we could look for Mary, and here we have a whole page of information about Mary.

There is one more tool that I use all the time for study, and that is...

Commentaries

Commentaries are like sermons or lessons in print written by great preachers.

Here is a commentary on Luke from downstairs in the library.

I'm not a big fan of most whole-Bible commentaries, and I tend to read ones written on individual books like this one.

There are several commentaries on BlueLetterBible.org, and my favorite - one I read almost every time I preach - is by David Guzik. Let me show you how to get to it.

You click on the verse, click on tools, then commentaries (you can see lots of other commentaries here), and then under "text commentaries," you click David Guzik, and there you have it.