Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved,
a worker who has no need to be ashamed,
rightly handling the word of truth.
2 Tim 2:15 ESV

Thinking about what you preach and teach, and believe, can you honestly say that you are doing "your best to present yourself to God as one approved… , rightly handling the word of truth?" Or, are you are "a worker who [is] ashamed?"

This verse is not just a suggestion! "Do your best" is in the imperative mood, hence a command. Therefore, you must do your utmost to "present yourself to God as one approved" by "rightly handling the word of truth?" Of course, the lazy at heart will not take this to heart since it is hard work to comply with the command contained in this verse.

To start your road to recovery, if you haven't treated this command with the respect it deserves, visit:

Hermeneutics I: Need, tools and principles
Hermeneutics II: Different Genres

Logos 4 Bible study software released, but a bit pricey

Logos 4 Bible study software has been released. See Dan Phillips' post and Adrian Warnock's post on this.

Now, while this may be an amazing piece of software, here in South Africa it is a ridiculously over-priced piece of software. Of course, I wouldn't mind a sponsor or two for the Logos 4 Gold software package, although, the Platinum edition would be much better! Oh, well! A man can dream! Some men dream of cars. This is what I dream about.

However, for the average salaried South African, and even the above average paid South African, Logos is terribly over-priced. Whether I decide to buy Logos locally or online internationally, it can cost me half or more of my salary for the month. Looking at South Africa, taking a rough guess, probably 98% of people in South Africa cannot afford the Logos software.

It is for this reason that I would recommend a much better priced Bible software package. How about a FREE Bible software package? I thought I'd get your attention!

e-Sword is a free Bible software package for Windows, and has a whole range of translations that can be installed with it for free.

# of free English translation modules	24 (i.e. ESV, ASV, KJV, RV, Geneva, etc)
# of Greek NT modules	6 + a Hebrew NT
# of Hebrew OT modules	2 + Greek OT Septuagint
	Latin Vulgate
# of other languages translation modules	47 (i.e. Afrikaans, Arabic, Chinese, German, Italian, etc)
# of Commentary modules	16 (i.e. Matthew Henry, John Gill, Adam Clarke, etc)
# of Bible dictionary modules	14 (i.e. Brown-Driver-Briggs, Easton's, ISBE, Nave's, Strong's, Thayer's, etc)
# of graphics modules	9 (i.e. American Bible Society Maps, NASA, CIA World Factbook, etc
# of devotion modules	5 (i.e. Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, Day-By-Day By Grace, etc)
# of extra modules	16 (i.e. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Works of Josephus, Calvin's Institutes, History of The Christian Church, etc)

As you can see, this is a lot to get for free. This is also what I use. Although it is not completely sufficient when doing original language work (for this I use the original way of books), it really is a good package to use.

So, without throwing your budget out of whack, download e-Sword and you have a lot to work with.

UPDATE
6 Nov 2009 - Mark Penrith has written a short review on e-Sword.

Some resources

Robertson's Word Pictures in the New Testament

VINCENT'S NT WORD STUDIES

How to Study the Bible (MP3 series)

Confronting the Religion of Islam (MP3 series)

Hop, skip and… rather not!

Peter Mead says Bible study is not a hop! Bible study does not start with us, it starts with them!

Fighting error in the church

If I've heard it once, I have heard it a thousand times. We should just love other Christians. It doesn't really matter what they believe, as long as they are sincere. It has become a truly hackneyed response by those who just don't seem to care for the truth. To them, standing for the truth is an otiose effort in light of the fact that we must love God. They just don't like loving God with their minds, though!

Jay Adams, from the Institute for Nouthetic Studies wrote a short summary of how the NT sees fighting for the truth and standing against false teaching.

I think that one of the main problems we have with people who say that we should not point out error in the teachings of others, is that they love reading the Bible devotionally, yet they never actually STUDY the Bible. Perhaps if they spend the time and effort to study the Bible, and not just treating it as a 30-day devotional script, they will start realising how important standing for the truth and against false teaching really is in the NT!

Maps and Geography for use in Biblical Studies

Here is a great online resource in the use of maps and geography for Biblical studies. Simply click on the map!


HT: Justin Taylor