HOW TO READ THE BIBLE — a short course from Dardanelle Missionary Baptist Church • Pastor Chuck Trusty • A Helper Page — read it any time, come back to it often
The Question Nobody Asked Out Loud
Somewhere around Lesson 4 a good many of you sat there and thought something like this - "He says let the Bible define its own words . . . find where the Bible uses that same word somewhere else . . . well, HOW? He knew to go to 2 Timothy and to the cross and to Hebrews 13 - I would not have known where to look in a month." And then in Lesson 8 I handed you a Greek word, agape, and in Lesson 9 a Hebrew one, hesed - and you may have thought the same thing again . . . "that is fine for him, he has the books - I have a Bible and a kitchen table."
Now I want you to hear this plainly. That thought is NOT a sign that this is over your head. It is a sign that I left a tool out of the box - and this page puts it in. There is ONE helper that does the digging for tools 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 12 all at once . . . it is FREE, it fits in your pocket, and a farmer can run it as well as a professor. It is called a concordance.
What a Concordance Is
Every parts catalog has an index in the back. You do not read the catalog front to back to find a fuel filter - you turn to the index, find "filter, fuel," and it tells you every page that part is on. A concordance is the index in the back of the Bible - EVERY word the King James uses, in alphabetical order, with every verse that word shows up in - listed under it. Look up "forsake" and there they all are - EVERY one - Genesis to Revelation.
Now the man who put the big one together was named James Strong, back in the 1890s, and he did one more thing that turned out to be the real gift. Every Hebrew and Greek word behind the English got a NUMBER - like a part number. "Forsake" in Hebrews 10:25 is Greek word number 1459. And here is why that matters . . . the King James sometimes uses one English word for two or three different original words (that is what Lesson 8 was about - one small English word, "love," standing over more than one Greek word), and it sometimes uses two or three English words for ONE original word. The number cuts through all of that. Same number - same word - no matter how it got put into English. So when you follow the number, you are not following English spelling . . . you are following the very word the Spirit gave to the human author.
And Strong's is keyed to the King James - so it fits the Bible in your lap exactly.
The Paper Way
You can buy Strong's Exhaustive Concordance for less than the price of a tank of gas, and a lot of study Bibles print the Strong's numbers right in the text or in the margin. Look up your English word, run your finger down to your verse, read the number beside it, then turn to the little dictionary in the back - Hebrew in one section, Greek in the other - and find that number. It gives you a short plain meaning and, in most editions, a list of every other English word the King James made out of that same number. That last list is gold - keep it in mind.
The Phone Way (this is the one most of you will use)
Go to blueletterbible.org - or put the Blue Letter Bible app on your phone. It is FREE. Then . . . (tap on the verse and it opens up a study section - choose "Interlinear/Concordance" and you will be given the Strong's number, the English word and the part of speech.)
1. Type in your verse - say Hebrews 10:25 - and make sure the Bible is set to KJV.
2. Depending upon the current version - there may be a small button marked Tools - if there is, tap it (or just tap the verse). In either case - the verse opens up into a table - every English word on its own line, and beside each one, the original word and its Strong's NUMBER.
3. Find "forsaking." Beside it you will see G1459 (the G means Greek - the Old Testament words start with H). Tap that number.
4. Now you are on the word's own page. Near the top is a short plain definition - what the word means. Scroll down and you will find the part you came for - a list called something like Concordance Results - and there is EVERY verse in the King James where that same word, number 1459, appears. Every one. Read down that list.
That is the whole trick. A few taps . . . and you are standing exactly where I stood when I wrote Lesson 4.
Watch It Work - the Lesson 4 Word
Do it right now with G1459 and see what comes up. There is 2 Timothy 4:10 - "Demas hath forsaken me." There is Matthew 27:46 - "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" And there is Hebrews 13:5 - "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." You just found the same three verses I used - on your own - and you found them the SAME way, because that IS the way. Nobody handed me those verses . . . the number did.
One Guard - Who Has the Last Word
Now hold on to this, because it keeps a good tool from turning into a bad habit. The little definition at the top of the page tells you the RANGE a word can carry - the ground it can cover. It does not tell you which part of that ground your verse is standing on. The Bible's OWN USE decides that - which is Lesson 4 all over again. So the order is always the same . . . read the short meaning (that is the dictionary - it gives you the range) . . . then read the verses where the Bible uses the word (that is the Book - it gives you the MEANING). The dictionary is the helper . . . the Book is the JUDGE. If a definition ever seems to pull against the way the Bible plainly uses a word, the Bible wins - every time.
How This One Helper Runs Half the Toolbox
Tool 4 - let the Bible define its own words. Follow the number, read the list. That is the tool.
Tool 5 - clear explains the complex. You are in a hard verse and you need a plain one on the same subject. Look up the heavy word - the list will hand you the plain verse, because it uses the same word. (And your Bible's center column, those little cross-references, does the same job on paper.)
Tool 7 - the Bible agrees with itself. Two verses seem to pull against each other. Look up the word they share - and nine times in ten you find they are not the same word at all, or the list shows you the verse that locks them together.
Tool 8 - when our words are too small. Look up "charity" in 1 Corinthians 13:13 and you get G26 - agape. Now look up "love" in John 21:15 where Peter answers the Lord - "thou knowest that I love thee" - and the number is DIFFERENT - G5368, phileo. The number showed you what the English hid. That is Tool 8 in one tap.
Tool 9 - one word can hold a whole story. Which word do you stop at? Stop at the word the verse leans on - the one that, if you took it out, the verse would fall over. And stop at the words you would not say at your own supper table - mercy, redeemed, propitiation, justified. Those are the deep wells. Look the number up, read the whole list, and watch the story climb out.
Tool 12 - weigh the whole counsel. "Gather every verse on a matter" sounded like a lifetime of work. It is an AFTERNOON. Look up the word - the list IS the gathering.
Three Small Keys for the Other Tools
These do not need the concordance - they need a thing I should have said out loud.
Tool 3 - who is being spoken to? Look BACK. Run your eye up to the top of the chapter, or to wherever the speaking started, and find "and he said unto . . ." - the address is nearly always sitting a few verses ABOVE the command.
Tool 10 - watch the tense. The King James marks its verbs plainly once you know the marks. A word ending in -eth (heareth, believeth, cometh) is going on RIGHT NOW and keeps on going. Hath or is (hath everlasting life, is passed) means already done and in hand. Shall means still to come. Three marks - and John 5:24 reads itself.
Tool 11 - is this a picture? Look for the signposts - "as," "like," "figure," "even as" - or a plain statement that cannot be literal ("I am the door"). The Lord is not a slab of wood on hinges . . . He is preaching with a picture, and you are to read it as one.
Try It This Week
Take Matthew 6:24 - the mammon verse from Lesson 4 - and do the taps recommended in the Blue Letter Bible. Find "mammon," tap the number, read the little definition, then read every verse in the list. There are only a few. When you are done you will know what mammon is, and you will know it the way you are supposed to know anything in the Bible - because the Book told you.
You have a Bible and a kitchen table. That is ENOUGH. Now you have the index too.
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