I opened my topical study Bible recently. It was like meeting an old friend again.
I’m a minister and occasionally I have to prepare talks, sermons to people about various topics regarding the Bible. Yesterday I pulled a book off of my shelf that has been there for a long, long time. It’s called Nave’s Topical Bible . It’s a well-known, established topical Bible that divides the Scriptures up by topics. As I was preparing a talk about prayer, I took out my trusty Nave’s Topical Bible and opened it up to the section about prayer, and it reminded me that this is perhaps one of the most effective ways and keys to understand the Bible, when I went through this topic on prayer.
We’re at number seven in our series on keys to understanding the Bible, and it’s basically this - it’s very simple: study the Bible by topics. By topic. Such as prayer, such as study, meditation. You want to do a study on fasting? You can do that just by looking it up in what is known here as a topical Bible and go through every verse in the Bible that speaks to that topic. As I was going through the topic on prayer, it was a refreshing Bible study, going over material I’ve gone over hundreds of times, and I’ve given dozens of sermons through the years on prayer. But just looking at it from a topical point of view, it opened up a whole new understanding for me again, and kind of a personal refresher on the topic of prayer, one of the keys to spiritual growth.
The Bible can be studied by topic, and when you do so, you’re accomplishing something that is mentioned over in 2 Timothy 2:15, where the apostle Paul wrote to a young minister, and he said, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the truth.” Divide the truth, the truth of God’s word by topic, by prayer, study, fasting, or virtually any other topic that you might want to go and do an in-depth study in Scripture. It’s one of the most effective keys, no matter how well you think you know the Bible, or how long you’ve been at it.
Getting a new perspective helps us better understand the Bible.
Have you ever stood on a high hill or mountain and - even a large building in the city - and looked out over the landscape and seen where your house is, or roads you travel and are familiar with as you go back and forth every day, but from a higher perspective? Gives you a sense of place and perspective on the environment that you’re familiar with from a whole different point of view. It’s enlightening, and it’s very useful, and it helps get us into key number eight of our series that we’ve been talking about on how to understand the Bible. And that is to read the whole Bible. Read it from cover to cover, from Genesis to Revelation, on a regular basis - maybe once a year with the use of an annual Bible reading program, which you might find in the back pages of your Bible or certainly are readily available out on the internet, that can help you read a short passage every day, and within one year, have taken you through the entire Bible.
Reading through the entire Bible like that can be very, very useful, again, to get a perspective. I’ve done that, my wife does it every year, and it’s amazing - no matter how well-versed you are in the Bible, and what a good Bible scholar you think you might be, just to read it through on a regular basis can give you another view that opens up relationships of various books to each other, characters, situations, even passages that in your normal course of study, you don’t normally read, and may not have read for years, and they almost become new to you.
Read the whole Bible. A lot of people have done that. I was reading about President Harry Truman, US President Harry Truman, who, while he was president, read the Bible through every year. Now, you would think a man as busy as the president of the United States - in his case, ending World War II, dealing with Russia, the Cold War, and the events of rebuilding Europe occupied him - he had the time to read the Bible. You and I might, as well. And we should. It can really make us smarter about things, give us a perspective that is fresh and unique and useful in helping to put together all the sections of the Bible. Make it a practice. Make it a regular, annual even, practice to read the Bible through. It’s going to help your understanding.
Was the King James Bible really good enough for Jesus?
“If the King James Bible was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!” Have you ever heard that line? I have, as recently as within the last six months, where someone came to me and was very insistent that the King James Bible is the only bona fide version of the Scriptures to read. It’s interesting to get into a discussion with anybody about various translations of the Bible. When it comes to that, everyone has a favorite, and there are some translations that in some peoples’ minds, are of the devil, and should never be used. Translations are very interesting. We’ve come to number nine, point number nine, in our series on keys to understanding the Bible, and this one is dealing with different translations. Know how to use and refer to various translations to help resolve certain difficulties or issues that you might find with one translation or the other, or especially using a more modern English translation to help us understand exactly what’s being said in language that we might find more familiar, especially as compared to some of the phrasing of the King James Bible.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I still read the King James Bible, and there are for me personally, some passages of the King James Bible that are better and have not been equaled - certainly not equaled in other translations. But that again illustrates personal reflection and opinion, sometimes bias, on what we grew up with, what we feel comfortable with. There are passages, I admit, about the King James Bible that I like better than maybe the New King James or the Revised Standard Version.
There are so many translations that are available to us today electronically and in books. I have dozens of them on my shelf at home, and in the library, you can find even more than that. They are useful and they are helpful. My point is to know how to use them. Settle on perhaps one. In our editorial efforts on Beyond Today , we normally use what is called the New King James Bible as a standard, but we will also refer to the NIV - New International Version - or the Revised Standard Version at various times. We find that the NIV at times, in some passages, does render a better translation then even the New King James or the venerable KJV, as we call it, or the King James Bible. The point is to educate yourself about the text and the manuscripts used by various translations and how certain translations that might be popular, like the Amplified Bible or the Good News Bible or what is called the Living Bible in some cases are not exactly word for word translations but are translations that are kind of sense for sense. It’s a matter of understanding and it can be an educational experience to know what’s behind each of the translations, who has done it, and what are their motives.
Understand that no translation is going to be exactly perfect. Some translations will have a denominational bias, and understanding that, again, helps you to understand many valuable things about the Bible and in a sense the miraculous transmission of that text from its original writings down to us today. Rather than discourage you or cause you to lack faith, quite frankly, delving into the history and the understanding of how we have come to have the Bible that we do can be a faith builder when you get all the information and put it together, and recognize that the word of God does endure forever.
So, a key to understanding the Bible - learn how to use translations, find one that you’re comfortable with and that is useful and helpful in your study of the word of God, and don’t get hung up thinking that just any one translation - no, not even the venerable, yet to be discarded King James Version - is the only or the best, or certainly the one Jesus used. To be honest, if we were to see a copy of the scrolls and the manuscripts that were extant in Jesus’s day, none of us could read it. It’s in a completely different language. Be grateful for what we have and study and learn from the various translations in your effort to understand the word of God.
