How to Understand the Bible
Laboring in the word requires just a little familiarity with a few study aids–but pays big dividends.
Do you ever get stuck trying to remember a verse or a phrase or a word someplace in the Bible that you know is there, but you can’t remember the verse, or how to get to it? Well, there are tools that we have at our disposal that can help us in getting to those places in the scripture and starting a study of the Bible. We’re at number ten of our points here on keys to understanding the Bible. What we are wanting to talk about a little bit here today is using Bible study aids in a proper way. I’ve touched on this in previous episodes here in this series, but I want to give you a tip here today that was given to me many, many years ago when I was in college, studying the Bible. One of my Bible instructors gave us some very, very good knowledge, and his basic point was flowing from what the Bible tells us to do, and that is to labor in the word.
Laboring in the word involves that we really work at studying the Bible, the word of God. It’s easy to read a lot of other people’s ideas and thoughts about the Bible and their commentaries, their renditions and their descriptions of various things of the Bible, and many of them have their place. But nothing is a substitute for laboring in the word of God and pure study of the Bible. And so, to use Bible study aids in a proper way is one of the most effective keys to studying the Bible, but here’s the clue: it takes work. It takes a little bit of effort that we might not be used to doing, but it pays big dividends.
Let me tell you what my instructor told us. He referred us to three different types of books that we could use to study the Bible. Now, I’ve already touched on one of them in this series, and that is a topical Bible. This is the old venerable Nave’s Topical Bible, and there are others on the market - all of these aids are available online for ready access, as well. But if you like to just turn pages the old fashioned way, take a topical Bible, take a topic and study it. We talked about this already, but it puts you through the many, many scriptures that are associated with a topic on prayer, on Bible study, on fasting, on humility - whatever it is that you want to study, a topical Bible is a very, very good aid.
Let me give you another tip. Have you looked in your Bible and noticed in the margins of your Bible the little bitty numbers that are in there that point you to another scripture connected with the one you might be reading that is back in Isaiah, Genesis, or some other book of the Bible? Well, what you find in some of our Bibles can be very helpful, but it’s not complete. There’s a book that is kind of the granddaddy of this - it’s called the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. This is a version of it here. Again, this is online. But this really opens up so many verses that are connected to a particular one that you are studying in every book and verse of the Bible and shows you how the Bible comments on itself. You want to labor in the word? You want to see what the word has to say about a particular verse or concept? Let it interpret itself, which is another one of the keys to understanding the Bible that we’ve gone through. This book - and a book like this - a Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, pure scripture knowledge, allows you to do that.
The third book that my instructor told us about was just a basic, simple concordance, where we can take a word that we want to look up and run an entire reference throughout the entire Bible to find every place where that particular word, in both the Old and New Testaments, may be used. And that too can be a very effective form of Bible study.
Taken together, all three of these can be one of the most effective ways and means by which you and I labor in the word of God and come to understand its richest depths of understanding and meaning, from just the word of God, and we dwell there. Coupled with God’s Spirit guiding our minds, guiding our hearts to understanding, it can be a very effective key. So use Bible study aids, but learn to use some of them in a unique way that helps you to labor in the word.
Sometimes there is no substitute for the personal touch in explaining the word of God.
The old gentleman met me at the door. I introduced myself as a minister, and then he launched into the reason that he asked me to come. He had been sick - he wanted to be anointed and have a minister of God pray over him and ask God to heal him. But he received a letter that talked about something called an anointed cloth. And the scripture that went along with that letter explained that out of the book of Acts 19:12, the example of the apostle Paul, where Paul healed people, prayed for people, and sent from his own body handkerchiefs and aprons, and people were healed. And that was the basis for the explanation. He didn’t know anything about that. And so, here I was, standing on his front porch on a late summer afternoon, and we were there to answer his question. Well, we did.
And that brings me to number eleven in our keys of understanding the Bible, and it’s a very simple and direct one. Seek guidance from God’s church, from God’s ministry. Seek guidance. Ask questions. Be willing to put yourself out, and if something is not understandable or if you’re seeking deeper counseling about something from the word of God in your life, ask us. We’ll be glad to give you an answer, we’ll be glad to come to your house, we’ll be glad to write and respond in any way, just as I did that night, many years ago, on this gentleman’s front porch. Once we explained to him, and he understood it, we were there, we laid hands on him, we anointed him with oil, we prayed for God’s blessing and healing upon the gentleman, and then went our way.
Sometimes that’s what’s needed. You know, there’s a verse in Romans 10:14-15 in this case, that again, from the apostle Paul, he explains that the human element of the ministry and teachers are important in preaching the gospel and helping people. It says, “How then shall they call on Him” - God - “in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?” Well, that night, on that porch in South Carolina, I was a preacher. I was there to help a person understand. That’s been repeated many, many times. Paul goes on, “How shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!’”
Do you have a question about the Bible as you’ve been studying it, reading the literature that we sent you from Beyond Today ? Or something else is needed in your life? Don’t hesitate to write to us. We have trained, dedicated elders who will respond via the internet, or a hard letter, or as I did those many years ago, what we might call the old-fashioned way, and even come and visit and explain certain things to you, talk to you about the Bible and God’s way of life.
Seek understanding of the Bible by asking for the ministry of God to come and help you in that, just as the Bible shows us to do. It’s an important key of understanding God’s Holy word.
It’s OK to write in your Bible. If it helps your study then go for it!
Some people feel that it’s not right if you write in your Bible. Well, it’s OK if you do. In fact, one of the keys to understanding the Bible. And we’re at number twelve in this episode - series of keys to understand your Bible. It’s to take notes, and sometimes you can take those notes right into your Bible. You know, taking notes is an active, participatory action when it comes to learning. And we want to learn as much as we can from God’s word. Taking notes, reflections of your own meditations and thoughts about what you’re reading or from some other material can really be a great aid to understanding the Bible and really enhance your Bible study.
Take the notes into a notebook. You might want to just have a spiral notebook and use that, take notes on Exodus or the book of Kings, or a psalm or Proverbs, as you’re studying. Many of our digital versions of the Bible that are online on our pads or computers, they offer ways by which you can enter digital notes right into the Bible program and it’s with you no matter what device you might be using. That’s another form, as well.
There’s another form of using notes, and that is, as I mentioned, just writing right into the Bible. This is a friend’s Bible he’s had for a number of years, and you can see how he has color-coded certain verses, written right into the margins of the Bible, his own notes and observations to help him understand and remember and to keep track of what he has studied. It’s okay to do that right into a Bible.
In fact, there’s a very interesting verse back in the book of Deuteronomy that talks about when the kings of Israel came into the throne, they were to take and write from the law before the priest, their own version of the Bible, as it was at that time, the law, the Old Testament scriptures. It says in Deuteronomy 17:18, “When the king sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book from the one before the priests and the Levites.” So again, he was being active, he’d have to do that, and by writing it out, he would be learning a great deal about the law.
So take notes, learn to reflect, meditate, and think about what you are reading and observing in the Scriptures, and take an active role in your part in understanding the Bible - God’s Holy Word.