Greetings

Greetings, everyone! Welcome to Monday’s edition of EDiBS! It’s great, as always, to be with you today, and I do pray that the Lord will richly bless your time in His Word as we study together this week. Let’s pray as we open our Bibles, turning once again to Acts 17.

Prayer 

Lord Jesus, thank you for this day. We are grateful to be in you – to have in you the promise of a great inheritance, one that is being kept in heaven for us until the great day of your appearing. Bless our time in the Scriptures as we look to them for life and hope and encouragement in our journey. In your precious name we pray, amen. 

Getting Started 

As we get started today, with things quickly deteriorating in Thessalonica, the believers there decide it’s time to take protective measures on behalf of Paul and Silas, sending them away under cover of darkness west to the town of Berea. Our focus: what a difference a few miles can make! 

Acts 17:10-12 

10As soon as it was night, the brothers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12Many of the Jews believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men. 

One of the privileges I have in my work as a pastor is that of encouraging and supporting young men and women who have the desire and sense the calling to go into full-time ministry. My daughter is a person, for example, who felt called to youth and family ministry early in her life, and at 15 she was already searching out colleges which would prepare her for that important work in the church. As I speak to you on camera today, she recently finished her fourth year as a teacher at a Lutheran elementary school, and with new ministry opportunities before her, I know she’s always praying about God’s plan for her future. I’ve also known several young men who have spent considerable time preparing for pastoral ministry, men full of faith and enthusiasm and who have had a passion to see lost people brought into the kingdom of God. It’s been wonderful to be involved in their lives and to watch them grow and mature as they go into the harvest fields of the Lord. 

Today I have the privilege of sharing with you a brief essay by one of those young men, an essay based on the passage we’ve just read. It’s so well done and has such good personal application that I want to spread it around so that others can benefit from it. While my young friend wrote this several years ago, when I asked him to share with all of you he didn’t want to come on camera. He did, however give me permission to share it with you, with one stipulation: he prefers to remain anonymous. So — from my friend and now fellow minister of the Gospel, here’s a piece titled “Be a Berean.” 

During his second missionary journey, the apostle Paul faced opposition from the Jews in the city of Thessalonica. Due to their jealousy of the Greeks receiving the Gospel there and joining Paul and Silas, they created a riot that disrupted the city (v. 5). They even attacked a man named Jason whom they assumed was housing Paul and his companions. The group handed many of the believers over to the authorities, accusing them of going against Caesar in proclaiming Jesus as king (vv. 6-8). This persecution led the believers to send Paul and Silas away from there to a place called Berea for their safety. While there, Paul went to the Jewish synagogue to explain from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Messiah which God had promised would come. 

Luke in his recording of this incident commended the Jews in Berea for their eagerness in receiving the word that Paul preached. He called them noble minded for this trait. Unlike the Jews in Thessalonica who rejected the message and basically ran Paul out, the Bereans considered what Paul was saying and even checked the Scriptures that he was preaching and teaching from to make sure that what he was saying was true. The Greek word here for “examine” is often used in the context of someone being evaluated in a judicial trial. Just as the detectives on the popular television show “Law and Order” labor at thoroughly searching crime scenes and interviewing witnesses to discover the truth of what really happened, these Jews searched the Old Testament prophecies to verify that the claims that Paul made about Jesus being the Messiah were true. In fact, this examination of the Scriptures was done daily. They were constantly evaluating Paul’s message with the truth of Scripture. This eagerness to listen to Paul’s message and to check it with the teaching of Scripture led many of them to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

In making this statement pertaining to the Berean Jews and how noble they were, Luke presents them as a model for us to follow. We would do well to approach God’s Word eagerly in anticipation for what God is saying; to allow our hearts to be receptive of its truth. We also would do well to emulate their example of searching the Scriptures to verify what we are taught. Knowing that the Bible is God’s Word (2 Timothy 3:16) and thus true (John 17:17), we need to evaluate any message we hear in light of what Scripture teaches. We need to make sure that the claims of any teacher or preacher line up with the Scriptures. Are you being a Berean? 

Wrapping Up

Lee wraps up his piece by sharing a quote from Swiss Reformer John Calvin, and it’s a good one for us to learn and take to heart as we wrap things up ourselves: “Therefore, let this remain as a sure maxim, that no doctrine is worthy to be believed but that which we find to be grounded in the Scriptures.” Amen to that, forever and and ever to be sure! Have a great day everyone – and thank you to my young pastor friend, who has great work ahead of him as a minister of God’s Word! I’ll be back with you tomorrow to continue — until then, take care!