Berean Blessings

If you have your Bibles with you, you could turn together with me to Acts chapter 17.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 17, we'll be reading verses 1 through 15.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

Acts 17, verse 1. Remember, as you listen to this, this word that's read,

Acts 17:1

this is God's holy and inspired word.

So do give it proper attention.

Now, when they had passed through Amphibolus to Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica.

Where there was a synagogue of the Jews.

And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with

them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for Christ to suffer,

and to rise from the dead and saying, This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.

And some of them were persuaded, and joined Paul and Silas, as did many,

a great many of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women.

But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble,

they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason,

seeking to bring them out to the crowd.

When they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before

the city authorities, shouting, These men have turned the world upside down, and have come here also.

When Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of

Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.

And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these

things. When they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.

The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea,

and when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue.

Now, these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the

word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek, women of high standing as well as men.

But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed

by Paul at Berea, also they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds.

Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea,

but Silas and Timothy remained there.

Those who conducted, Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving

a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.

This is the word of the Lord. You can be seated.

Let's pray together holy spirit we ask now that you would help us,

guide us and direct us in your holy scriptures that we might understand them

and that in them we might find and know and love jesus christ in whose name we pray amen,

so this morning the the first i'll be focusing on most closely will be act 17 11.

Now these jews were more noble than those in thessalonica for they received

the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Part of me wanted to just spend the whole time exclusively on this particular

portion and towards the end, the bulk of it will be there.

Just asking the question over and over again for you this morning,

do you love the word of God?

Do you read the word of God? Do you study the word of God? Memorize the word

of God? Meditate on the word of God?

Like these Bereans are exampling for us this morning in our passage.

There's a more to this little section than just love the Word of God or love the Bible.

And I hope by the end of this sermon that if you're not reading your Bible, I hope you feel bad.

Is that bad for... Yeah, guilty. There's good guilt and there's bad guilt.

I think it would be worthwhile for us to feel somewhat guilty for not reading

and loving the Word of God the way we're told the Bereans did.

They analyzed it. They searched it.

They were eager about learning it. They were eager about getting into the Word

of God. And as you see this, just like you do many scripture passages or stories,

and I ask you from time to time, where are you in this story?

Are you like the Bereans? I'm not just going to preach a sermon that says, be like the Bereans.

Because in the end, the Bereans weren't just giving us a good example.

They were seeking Jesus Christ.

That's where we need to end on Jesus Christ. But there is a sense in which when

you see the Bereans, you're reminded of what the Bible says in many different

places through illustration.

And ask yourself, keep asking yourself this question. I will.

Where am I? What is my heart like? Psalm 1 says, blessed.

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,

nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of mockers, but what?

But his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on that law, he what?

He meditates day and night.

And he is like a tree, it says, planted by the streams of living waters.

It says, it's fruit, he yields his fruit in the season and its leaf does not wither.

Those are beautiful illustrations. And the Bereans here are providing for us

an example of a congregation like that, a congregation that you would hope that

if Paul were to judge us as he did, and Paul was a bit naughty here.

He wasn't very politically correct because he judged cultures.

Not all cultures are the same. Some cultures are worse than others in certain areas.

And Paul, in reference to the love and eagerness to know God's word and to love

God through his word, He said that the Bereans were more noble than those in

Thessalonica. It's a judgment he made.

What would Paul's judgment be of us as a congregation as he surveyed you and

your Bible study and your reflection on the word and your love for the word

of God and your eagerness to search them, to find God in them?

What would he say about us? Well, the church over in Dayton is more noble than

the church in Wilmington.

No, hopefully he would be saying the church in Wilmington, And these people,

they are more noble than fill in the blank. We won't pick on Dayton.

But that's what Paul does. And as he goes through this, I want to focus on this,

but I also want to back up. As usual, we are studying the book of Acts.

We're looking at the Great Commission.

We're going back to our theme of Christ's ascension and sending his disciples

out, his apostles out on the Great Commission, sending the Holy Spirit,

constituting the church. Baptism goes out as the word of God goes out and many are saved.

One of the things we're noticing, though, as we see the Great Commission unfolding

before our very eyes in Acts, is we see also bits and pieces of examples of

the church of Jesus Christ, local congregations like ours,

dedicated to certain things we see in the book of Acts that every local congregation

should dedicate themselves to.

For instance, in Acts chapter 2, if you recall, there was a very simple summary

Acts 2 · chapter mention

of what this local church was like.

It says in Acts 2.41, so those who received the word were baptized,

and there were added that day about 3,000 souls. Beautiful story.

And it says this, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching,

one, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers.

Four simple things that a local congregation, if the congregation would do it, would be so blessed.

And Luke is giving us this all along the way. Yes, he's giving us the Great

Commission, the fulfillment of all the promises of God through Christ and the

kingdom of David, all kinds of magnificent stories from the Old Testament,

how we're seeing all of them flow together in Jesus Christ.

But we also see in the story, as it unfolds, that Luke wants us to see what

the church is growing to be.

We see, for instance, the church has pastors, apostles, elders, deacons.

They're organized. They had a council in Jerusalem. So there is an ecclesiology

to the church that's growing.

So that by the time you leave Acts and move into the letters of Paul,

who writes the letters back to the churches that we're seeing established right

here, that Paul will tell them how to continue to organize themselves into churches.

So the book of Acts is telling us the story of the Great Commission,

the beginning of it, the apostolic foundation for the church,

and then the ongoing mission of the church.

In our story, chapter 17, there are two cities that are mentioned,

Thessalonica and Berea. And then Paul goes down to Athens, which we'll cover next week.

You could say this first section, verses 1 through 15, is like a tale of two

cities, not London and Paris, Dickinson style, but a tale of two Greek cities,

Thessalonica and Berea.

As usual, the pattern that we already know right now is that Paul doesn't just

randomly go places, if not specifically directed by the Holy Spirit.

He looks around strategically and says, which are the most important cities,

along trade routes and travel routes and political centers and commercial areas?

And Thessalonica was one. It was one of the largest Greek cities in the ancient world.

Some say there might've been as many as 70,000 people. You need to keep in mind

like ancient London at its height in the Middle Ages was barely 100,000.

So this is a huge city by ancient standards.

It is not only a capital area, but it's the capital of the whole province.

So Paul as a missionary was quite strategic. He wanted to go to cities,

go to the synagogues, find Jews who were faithfully studying the scriptures,

explain to them how Christ is the fulfillment of those scriptures and establish

churches from there who would then move out into the area.

We know Paul had a good relationship when he says that the Bereans were more

noble than the Thessalonians.

He wasn't saying that the Thessalonian church was rubbish.

He loved them. They were a good church. What he was saying was that this Berean

church exhibited something that was quite amazing.

He loved the Thessalonians. He wrote two letters to them, 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

And in 1 Thessalonians 1, he says, For not only has the word of the Lord sounded

forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth

everywhere so that we need not say anything.

And he went on to say how much he loved them. He said, We give thanks to God

always for you, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing

your work and your faith and your labor of love and the patience of hope you

have in the Lord Jesus Christ and the sight of our God, our Father.

He goes on and on and on how wonderful this church is in Thessalonica.

So it's not as if Thessalonica, bad, Berea, good. It's just simply that as he

compares the two churches, there's something unique that stood out in Berea

that we'll also see is even connected to the greater peacefulness he finds in Berea

than the disturbance, annoyance, and persecution he finds in Thessalonica.

Luke also notes that,

as he does in verse 4, and some of them persuaded Paul and Silas,

as did a great many of the devout Greeks, and not a few leading women.

He'll say that in the next section.

Now, just to go back to our story of the glorious, beautiful woman named Lydia,

that you all loved, I hope, so much. By the end of the sermon,

Lydia was a paradigm of feminine virtue.

Luke has a way of highlighting things about women and certain people that in

the ancient world would have been considered not worthy of highlight.

Remember from Lydia's story, we know that Luke wasn't doing this so that women

could become elders and pastors and apostles and so forth.

Luke was doing this to continually highlight the centrality of women in the church.

You women are so necessary to the life and prosperity of a church,

and he wants us to know that.

Luke is one of these authors, if you read his gospel, for instance,

Luke is always highlighting those who are what we might consider marginalized,

people on the edges or fringes of the center of a culture.

Luke's gospel is the only gospel, for instance, with the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Luke mentions women in his gospel more than any other gospel.

Luke has certain stories, the parable of the widow that's not in any of the other gospels.

There's something about Luke's sensitivity to the needy and to the outcast where

he wants to push them into the center and say, these people are central and

important to the kingdom of God. And women are one of them.

Luke has this style where he continues to say over and over.

Lydia, not a few women there. And then later he'll say also not a few women in Berea as well.

And you'll notice he's highlighting as he goes through it, that the church isn't

made up of one class of people either.

It wasn't just a bunch of rich people, although he does highlight that many

of these wealthy people and these rich women were able to support the church

in a way that prospered the church or blessed the church.

He's not just saying we need rich people, because he also highlights the fact

that many other different kinds of people come to the church.

The church is made up of multiple layers of social classes, races,

and men and women and other people.

So the church is not just one class of people. We see that as God is converting many, many people.

You also notice again, there's this pattern of persecution in the church.

It's a pattern that I honestly wish didn't exist.

I wish it weren't there. I wish we could just go all sail up and just keep going

and then soar out into the wild blue yonder.

But you'll notice that the ministry of the church mirrors or images the ministry

of Jesus Christ himself, who came to do good, who came to save the needy,

who came to give rest to the weary.

And all he got from the arrogant and the proud was hatred.

And you'll notice Jesus' ministry was characterized by this class or group of

people who were interested in their own personal power, like the world.

The Sanhedrin, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were always following him around.

Even at the very last, they called him to trial and they said,

they even said, make up something.

Somebody please make up some false, make up something so we can condemn this

guy. We have nothing on Jesus.

We're begging people to give false testimony. That's who these people are.

That's who the people are that hated Jesus.

That's who the people are that hated Paul and Barnabas and Silas.

That's who the people are who hate the church.

It's not that the church does something deliberately wrong or bad.

The accusations aren't true, but it's that these people are interested in the

fact that if Christ is made Lord, it will dislodge their own personal power and usually wealth.

That's what they said about Jesus. That's what they said about the apostles.

And here in our story, you'll notice as we move down, they actually accused

them. They said, these men have turned the world upside down.

I love that accusation because it's absolutely false in the way that they framed

it, but it's radically true in what was happening.

In other words, they were saying these men have come to create a revolution

against Caesar. They want to dethrone the king, Caesar, which was not true.

They never said any such thing. They did say, however, something quite radical,

and they said it. Remember the story when we went over it said,

when they said, there is no other name in heaven, whereby men must be saved, except,

Now, if they had followed the Roman coinage, it would have said, except Caesar.

But they did replace Caesar with Jesus Christ. There's no other name in heaven

whereby men might be saved except Jesus of Nazareth.

This lowly, terrible person from Nazareth has come. And they said,

this is now the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

They weren't staging a political revolution with riots.

They weren't staging a political revolution with political parties or even real

weapons. But this was certainly a spiritual revolution.

And it would be good, by the way, for our church and any faithful church of

Jesus Christ to have this criticism leveled against us today.

In a day when men are called women and women are called men and children are

in danger of surgeries against their parents' wills, it would be good if the church said no.

Jesus Christ is Lord, and in that sense, spiritually speaking,

turned the world upside down, which in reality means turn the world right side up.

Jesus rules this world. Jesus is king.

Jesus is the only one to whom every man will answer sooner or later.

And in that sense, the apostles, it's really exciting. These guys were turning the world upside down.

Not in exactly the same way they were arguing, but in a more radical way.

They weren't abolitionists, by the way. You'll notice abolitionists in history

tend to be people who stir up a lot of trouble immediately because they want

something gone. When do we want it gone? When do we want it now? Now, it's always now.

They weren't abolitionists. They weren't saying, fix this, fix that,

stop slavery. They weren't doing any of that.

They were just preaching the gospel that proclaimed Jesus will forgive you of

your sins and Jesus will create in you a new creature and a new person and he

will reestablish a family, husbands and wives and children and harmony and peace,

living a forgiven life under the lordship of Jesus Christ, the gospel, the good news.

And yet it's offensive. You realize that the gospel is offensive because people

don't want their lives turned upside down. They don't want Jesus to rule them.

They want to rule themselves. And so the answer of the world is persecution.

And it's what we should expect.

It's what we should expect. Again, it's not what we should go looking for.

I'm now, by the way I'm now a, I raised my hand I'm now a card carrying member

of Rotary And I go to Rotary And I don't really want to go there And cause riots.

I wanna get to know the people of the community and develop networks and relationships.

But if need be, if there's a need to stand, pray for the grace to say,

no, the community doesn't need this. The community doesn't need that so that

the voice of Christ is there.

But if we do that, and if there is that, expect people to hate us.

And the hatred that comes, remember, I'll keep reminding us,

is not a hatred that we provoke because we've done something wrong,

because we're awkward or clumsy or oppressive or aggressive.

It's because we love the Lord Jesus as Christ, and we say yes to him and no

to anything else contrary to him. So we'll expect that persecution.

Let's look at Berea then. As Paul goes to Thessalonica, persecution is stirred up.

Many people are converted and the church is growing, but Paul pulls himself

out, is taken down to Berea.

And he notes something for us, and we'll spend the rest of the time focusing on this.

These Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. Why? Well,

it says they received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures

daily to see if these things were so.

There was a peacefulness to the congregation in Berea that I believe stems from

their love for God and his word.

When a church, when a local congregation loves God and loves his word,

it brings a peacefulness to that congregation.

And that's what Paul notes. It brings a blessedness to the people who love the

word of God. Oh, how I love your word, right?

It's more precious to me than honey, more than silver and gold.

You might even ask yourself the question. Sometimes when I read the Psalms, I'm just being honest.

I'm not a super, super pious superhero. I feel the same way you do.

Sometimes I read the Psalms and I'm like, man, I don't feel like that.

You see the Psalmist and they're like, I have soaked my couch with tears all

night long over my sin. you're like, well, I didn't cry that much.

It's hard to sometimes relate to the psalmist because he's expressing the best

of what we ought to be. So when he says, oh, how I love your law.

Well, ask yourself the question, is that a foreign thing to you to say?

It shouldn't be. And I'm not saying, by the way, that after this sermon,

everybody all week is gonna wake

up every morning, fall on their knees and say, oh, how I love your law.

No, once in a while.

And that should be the heartthrob. That should be the heartbeat of our congregation,

of our church. Oh, how I love your word.

I want to read your word. I want to study your word. I wanna find out what's

in there. I wanna know God through it.

It should be a passion to it, like it was to the Bereans.

And when it says here in verse 17, 11, they were more noble.

Again, this is a bit politically incorrect because Paul's saying the Thessalonians

are weak, the Thessalonians are weak, and the Bereans are strong.

But he says noble, he doesn't mean noble-minded in, he means noble-minded in

a strange way. It's not maybe what you think.

The word noble-minded, it could be translated open-minded. Again,

not open-minded in today's culture, right? The moment you say,

I believe in God, people say, you're closed-minded. No, they believed in God.

They wanted to find God. And as such, they were open-minded.

The word in Greek could mean this, a willingness to learn and evaluate something fairly.

It's interesting. A willingness to learn, to be open-minded, to be noble-minded.

The word sometimes is translated open-minded. They wanted to see what was there.

They had heard the apostles. They believed the apostles. That's important to

note. They weren't just saying to the apostles, oh yeah, we'll see about that.

They was like, oh, wow, that sounds true.

That rings true. That echoes in my heart as exactly what the scriptures say.

And then because they're noble-minded, because they have this approach to God

and to the word, they come and say, I want to see it. I want to open it up and find it.

Open-mindedness is not just open to everything, but open to what God has to

say for us in his holy word.

Noble-mindedness, is that a characteristic that you have?

You hear something and it rings true and you say, I can't wait to find out more

about it. Can't wait to study it.

They loved the word of God. They loved the word of God. Do you?

They loved it with a passion and an eagerness. When we think about the word

of God and the more we actually think about what it is, and I did this week, I was amazed.

Even as I looked at my phone and I checked my Bible app, I was just curious,

how many translations in English, not just other languages, but in English can I find?

And there were over 70 translations in English that I could find,

including Eugene Peterson's The Message.

I don't know if some of you have read that, but when you think about the Bible

and what it is, the scriptures, it's amazing. Our confession reminds us that

the Bible has like four primary attributes.

Sometimes if you're at a theological exam, you can remember it with the acronym

SCAN, S-C-A-N, sufficiency, clarity, authority, and necessity.

The Holy Scriptures contain in them everything sufficient for salvation.

Everything there is to know about Christ and salvation are in the Scriptures.

Everything necessary for life and salvation is in the Scriptures, okay?

Not everything is equally clear, but everything is there. And whether you're

educated or uneducated, rich or poor, if you open God's Word.

Sufficient. It's also clear. Again, you don't need to have a PhD in theology to understand it.

You can open it up and see that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth,

and the life, and there's no other way to the Father except through him.

Scripture also has authority. This is a question we need to ask ourselves.

When you search those scriptures, are you looking to find out the truth and then do it?

Even you little children, when you read your Bible, are you reading it not just

to get through, mom says you have to read a chapter for homeschool or something,

but you read it and you say, I wanna know it and then I wanna do it.

Because the scriptures themselves say, don't just be hearers of the word only, but be doers of the word.

It has authority and it's necessary. Without it, there is no salvation.

God has revealed himself in nature. Everywhere we look, God has made known to us.

But only in the scriptures is Jesus Christ and his work made known to us. So it's necessary.

It's why we sometimes say in our church circles, the old Latin phrase,

sola scriptura, the scriptures alone.

Are we together? Are you there? All right, scriptures alone.

I'm excited. I don't know that everybody is quite as excited.

You know, I get to read this week.

I was amazed, by the way, just at this simple fact. You pay me to do this.

It's a great job. I get paid to read and study the Bible. I can't believe it sometimes.

It's all the other stuff that I don't like to do. but this is a joy. It's a pleasure.

Do you appreciate the Bible? Do you see it as your sole and final authority?

And by sole authority, I don't mean it's the only thing you ever listen to.

In fact, you'll notice from the way this unfolds to us that this is not a group

of people who are singularly standing with their Bible saying,

it's just me and my Bible.

This is a group of people in community under the teachings of the apostles searching together.

Do you appreciate your Bible? Struck me. It also struck me this week,

if you can reach over to your phone or reach anywhere and take a copy of this

Bible, it's because people died for it.

William Tyndall, in particular, William Tyndall, the first person to translate

the Bible into English, died for it in 1536, chased all over Europe,

studying the Greek, studying the Hebrew, translated the Bible into English.

When it was finally published, after it was published, they found him,

caught him, and burned him at the stake.

So you and I can sit here at ease and read this. It was outlawed at one time.

And his translation became the translation that was the basis for the great

translation, the greatest English translation, the most popular ever used on

earth, which was not the King James.

Gotcha. It was after the Geneva Bible in 1560.

And that Bible was based on Tyndall's translation, which was also then translated

also in 1611, the King James version of the Bible.

This English Bible that we have comes from the idea that Bereans like William

Tyndall and others believed that it wasn't good enough to have scriptures in

Greek and Hebrew or in Latin or in a different language, but they wanted the

Bible to be in your heart language,

the language of your mother tongue, the language where you can read it and hear

it in your heart, echoing in your own words.

We still have phrases today that are popular among even the pagans that come

from this English translation.

Ever heard someone say, he's salt of the earth? William Tyndall.

Fight the good fight, William Tyndall. Am I my brother's keeper?

William Tyndall. From strength to strength, William Tyndall.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. My grandma and grandpa used to

say that all of a sudden. William Tyndall.

A man who died to have the Bible translated into the English language,

which was his heart language, his mother tongue, and our mother tongue now as well.

What inspired it? A love for the Word of God, like the Bereans.

Our confession says of this about the scriptures, because the original tongues

are not known to all people, the people of God, who have a right unto them,

an interest in them, are commanded in the fear of God to read and search for them.

Therefore, they ought to be translated into the vulgar or common language of

every nation unto which they came, that the word of God dwelling plentifully

in all, that they may worship him in an acceptable manner and through patience

and comfort of the scriptures have hope.

The word of God, the word of God, the word of God. It's so important.

We love it so much. We want everybody in their own language to hear it and believe it and love it.

This is the spirit of the Bereans. This is the spirit of the Protestant Reformation.

This is the legacy we have as Protestants, that God's word is so important.

Everyone, in fact, William Tyndall even said he hoped that the plowboy would

know the scriptures better than an ignorant clergyman, an ignorant priest that he was arguing with.

The prince and the plowman should have the word of God in their own language. Why?

Because those Protestants love the word of God like these Bereans.

They were eager to find out.

Isaiah 1 tells us, he says, when you spread out your hands, I hide my eyes from

you, even though you make prayers, I will not listen.

Wash your hands, make yourselves clean, remove the evil from your deeds.

Learn to do good and justice, correct oppression.

Verse 18, this is what he says, come now, it's reminded me of the Bereans,

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord.

Though your sins are scarlet, they shall be white as so.

Though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool. If you are willing

and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.

When Paul said the same thing, come, let's reason.

Let's open the word of God. Let's look at the word of God. Let's see what it

says. And let's see how it bears on our lives.

Dramatic and transformative things happen. The entire Reformation,

by the way, it's often overlooked, but the Reformation's emphasis on the Word of God,

sola scriptura, the translations of that word into the common tongues of the

people had radical transformative effects on culture.

We know, for instance, and I'll just briefly, I want to say more,

but just briefly, as I was studying Scottish history, there was a historian

named Margot Todd. I'm not recommending her.

It's not like coffee table reading. It's not a book you have on your coffee table.

She wrote a book called The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland.

It's a huge book. Again, not a small, quick read. It's a scholarly read,

but it fascinated me because she wanted to see, in 1560, you see,

the parliament declared that Scotland was a reformed or Protestant nation.

And she wanted to see, like, up into the 1600s, did it really make a difference?

What difference did it make to be Catholic versus Protestant?

I found the book fascinating because as she goes through it,

she was like, it made a huge difference.

It made a huge difference even in the daily lives of Scottish people.

The whole of Scotland was changed as people began to see the Bible and the Word

of God as central to everything.

And particularly this moment when the pastor stands in the pulpit and preaches.

In the ancient Catholic services, the focus was the mass only.

But in Protestant services, it moved to a pulpit in the center that was elevated

so that the Word of God was central.

And the Word of God became central in so many ways that little children,

little children, are you ready for this?

If you were in Scotland in 1630, your parents would take you on the way home,

usually you would walk, and ask you questions about the sermon.

Are you listening to this sermon?

Think about this. Think if you got a spanking if you didn't know the main points

of Pastor Jackson's sermon.

I'm not suggesting that, but the children on the way home were requested to

recite the points of the sermon. What were the scriptures the pastor used?

What was the point that he was making? Why was he making it?

How does it lead us to Jesus? What does it mean to you?

What does it mean to our lives? Little children. And that meant,

by the way, also that the Scots Protestants and all Protestants began to emphasize

education for children.

If the Bible is so important and it's in your language, you need to learn to

read and you need to learn to write and you need to learn to reason and you

need to learn to understand it.

All of the educational advancements that we take for granted today all came

from the idea that God's people should love God's word.

Of course, now you can't even read the Bible in public schools. Yeah.

So we've had many things stolen, but the point of it is the love for the Word

of God began to transform everything in Scotland.

And Margot Todd goes through Kirk Session records and court records and letters

and Birdsmann's interactions and everything.

And she says this idea that the Word of God was central to the Protestant Reformation

transformed early modern Scotland.

It changed everything. It changed the rhythm of their lives away from certain

holidays to the Sabbath day, to the day of resurrection, to the focus on the

word of God, to going to and going from.

Ethics and parenting and everything changed. A love for the word of God like

this, like the Bereans, transforms everything.

And these Bereans had this. They were predisposed. They were noble-minded.

They wanted to look at the scriptures. And by the way, I don't.

This is a bit of a line. I want to encourage each one of us needs to take our

Bible and read it individually.

But the librarians weren't saying, I am in charge of understanding my own Bible.

That's a more modern evangelical Protestant approach. All I need is me and my

Bible and the Holy Spirit.

That's it. I don't need no preacher telling me what to do.

Sorry, I always go to the Southern accent when I think of that because my old

Baptist preacher was from Tennessee. So I just, I revert to that.

Just need me and my Bible and the Holy Spirit. That's all I need.

But these people, no, Oh, they weren't stubborn like that. By the way, that's a stubbornness.

I'm not going to believe it until I see it for myself. That's not at all what the Bereans were doing.

They weren't, that's like a, one of you recently told me about a Bible study.

So typical of Bible studies. You're reading through a passage, let's say Ephesians 1.

And they say, well, predestination, I don't believe that. What?

It's right there. Of course you believe it if you're a Christian.

Maybe you don't understand it.

I get that. But you don't go to the Bible and see a word and say,

I don't believe, that's not true.

I believe in free will. We have to make a choice. We're not just robots. Off they go.

Off in that direction. Just why? Because they're stubborn. That's why.

It's right. If you find something in the Bible right there in black and white,

right there that says, in love, I predestined you, then you should say what

Paul said, praise the Lord.

You could say, I don't understand it. I don't fully understand it.

I don't, but I have to believe it because it's from the word of God,

because we love the word of God.

That's what the Bereans were like. By the way, what a great blessing for the

preacher to have Bereans in their congregation.

It's a great blessing to have people. Even now, I can see some of you have eager

eyes. You're listening. You're looking. You want to hear.

That's a blessing to the pastor. It's a blessing to the people.

It's a blessing to our whole community as a local congregation.

When people want to hear the word of God, they're eager to listen and they're eager to find out.

No, I'm not saying you believe everything I say immediately.

Nice, but no. If I say something, what the Bereans did is they heard Paul say

it was necessary for the Christ to suffer.

And they had not thought about that before. Wait, the Christ was going to suffer?

I thought he was going to come and destroy all the Romans.

No, this was necessary for redemption and for atonement and for the forgiveness of your sins.

And now he's been raised from the dead and he's conquered death and the devil

and his kingdom is coming underneath the preaching and power of the Holy Spirit.

And they didn't say, well, I don't believe that. No, they said,

wow, I want to search this out. So when the Bible says here,

they searched eagerly to see if it were so. It wasn't a stubborn,

like, well, I'll believe it when I see it.

It wasn't that. It was like, oh, wow, that's what it says. Let's look,

let's search. And by the way, you have to remember in this context,

they didn't have a Bible.

There was no such thing as a Bible in those days. It wasn't even completed.

We're in the book of Acts where Paul hadn't even begun to write many of his letters.

They may have had parchments and scrolls depending on the synagogue and how

wealthy the synagogue was.

So they had to gather together what scrolls and what materials they could read.

And most likely, this is beautiful, most likely most of the Jews memorized vast

portions of the scripture orally.

They knew it. They had it in their minds and heart, and so they could recite

it. Did he say this psalm, Psalm 2, why did the nations?

It was a marvelous prayer meeting or Bible study. Can you imagine?

And it wasn't one of these Bible studies where the leader reads the passage

and says, well what does that mean to you,

everyone needs to think about what it means to you no they weren't saying what

does it mean to me they were saying what does it mean what is it saying and

they were so excited it was a great it was talk about a great bible study and

by the way pastoral practical note come to sunday school,

Not everyone. I don't want everyone to feel guilty about everything.

But if you can make it to Sunday school, if you can make it to Sunday school,

and some of you little kids far away don't feel guilty. Old people don't feel guilty.

But if you can make it, my goodness, we do this in Sunday school.

It's not as exciting as having Paul here. I know that.

But we do talk and discuss and we open up the scriptures and we say,

what does it mean to be a husband? What does it mean to be a wife?

What does it mean to raise a family? All these things are exciting and good.

And it's all coming hopefully from the word of God. That's a good thing.

So Sunday school, elders, I checked that off. I get these guys to Sunday school.

What a dream a pastor would have if everybody wanted to come to Sunday school.

It's because he wanted to study the Bible.

He wanted to hear what God said. That's what the Bereans were like.

Not a stubborn individualism, like I don't believe it, but it's like,

wow, wait, what passage did you say again? Could I hear that again?

What does this mean? How is that connected? What a great thing to do.

What a glorious blessing to the church.

And the word it says, by the way, that's used about to see if things were so

is a word that's not just critical. They're not just unnecessarily critical,

like, I don't believe that until I see it.

It's a word that says this, to try to learn the nature or truth of something

by a careful process of study, evaluation, and judgment.

That's what they were doing. They wanted to go into the Bible and look at it

and study and see the nature of it and make, connect the dots and evaluate it and then do it.

Believe it and do it.

They received the word so beautifully. With this humble approach to Bible and

Bible study, you can imagine, you say, well, how can we be like the Bereans?

How can we get there? Actually, now that you ask, the Westminster Shorter Catechism

says this, and it's helpful.

It said, how is the word of God to be read and heard that it may become effectual

to salvation? How do we get like this?

The answer in question 90 is, it says that the word of God may become effectual to salvation.

We, you, me, all of us, we must attend thereunto with diligence,

preparation, and prayer. Do you do that?

Even coming Sunday morning, have you gotten a good night's sleep?

Have you prepared? Have you prayed? Have you asked the Lord,

Lord, send your spirit, feed me. I'm hungry.

I want your food. I want to know. I want to believe. I want to follow.

And it says, receive it with faith and love. Are you open-minded like the Bereans?

Not to everything I say personally, but what the word of God says to you through

the preached word and through the red word.

Lay it up in your hearts. Are you memorizing the Bible?

Do you ever give an effort to memorize it? It was an amazing culture.

In those days, like I said, most of these Christians would not have had Bible.

We know they didn't have a Bible.

They may have had parchments and scrolls and maybe one of the apostles with

them, but most of what they had, at least I'm convinced historically is what they had memorized.

The songs they sang were the songs of the Torah, the songs of the instruction

of the Lord. They knew it in their heart and they were going over and over and

over it. Much like what Psalm 1 says, your word I meditate on your word day and night.

There's another song that says your word I have hidden in my heart that I may not sin against you.

Receive it with faith and love, lay it up in your hearts and practice it in your lives.

This is the attitude the Bereans had. And you'll notice also,

lastly, and this is where I don't want,

to end a sermon or have a sermon that's just a how-to Bible study or how to

be like the Bereans, but you'll notice something central to the Bereans,

and that must be central to our Bible study, our love for the Word,

our memorization, and our,

meditation, and that is this. We want to know Jesus.

We love God.

It's not just that they love the Word. The Pharisees loved the word.

The Sadducees loved the word. The Sanhedrin, they always quoted the word.

They knew every part of every word that they needed to quote at the right time,

but they didn't love God.

Our desire in loving the word is that we love God and we long to see him in these scriptures.

In John chapter five, it says this, you search the scriptures because you think

that in them you will have eternal life.

And it is they that bear witness about me. Yet you refuse to come to me that

you may have life. You can study the scriptures for the wrong reason.

Jesus says here, you need to study them to find me. Much like the disciples

on the road to Emmaus. I love that story. It's one of my favorites.

Where afterwards, Jesus had taught them and Jesus had said everything concerning

him from the whole of the law and the prophets.

And then afterwards, when he left, one of them says, did not our hearts burn within us?

Well, he talked with us on the road and when he opened the scriptures, our hearts burned.

That's the feeling the Bereans had. That's the feeling we need to have.

Our hearts longing and burning to find something of Jesus Christ in these scriptures

that we may know and love God more.

This is not a sermon about Bible study or Bible memory or loving the word of God.

It's a sermon that reminds you that if you love Jesus Christ,

obviously you'll love his word.

You'll be in it consistently daily, meditating on it, memorizing it, loving it, studying it.

Your children should know it too. Fathers, do your children know you love the word?

Is your family aware? It's not just something you recite once in a while,

but the word of God is what structures you and your leadership and your love

for your wife and mothers, your love for your husband and your love for them as children.

And everything about the structure of the home flows from the word of God.

They should hear it. They should see it. They should know it.

Then they should grow up in it.

Just like the little Scottish barons, as they were called. the little children

of Scotland in the 1600s.

By the way, it didn't last long in Scotland.

It's a matter of the work of the Holy Spirit. If you go to Scotland today looking

for this kind of love for scriptures, you'll be disappointed.

The Spirit has left that area, at least in the pervasive way that it once did.

There are old churches along the road of the Royal Mile that one is a pub and

the other is this beautiful old, actually it was a Reformed church.

It's a Frankenstein museum.

So this isn't something that just continues to, we have to sustain it with our

own love for Jesus Christ.

Did not our hearts burn within us? We have to want to do this.

We have to want to do what we ought to do.

I remember the first time it struck me that I wasn't a Christian when I was

in college was when I got up one morning and my roommate was sitting there with

his little desk lamp on reading the Bible.

I thought, oh yeah, you're supposed to read the Bible. Everybody knows that,

but I had never wanted to.

And that's when I was like, I guess I'm supposed to want to.

I'm not a Christian. I couldn't believe it. It was like, what?

It was a big shock because I kind of thought I was because after all,

I had said the sinner's prayer.

But then I thought, that's what a Christian does. Not because he ought to do

it, because he wants to do it. No one made him. No one was telling him,

get up early and sit there on your desk with your desk lamp,

reading the word of God. No one made him do it.

And that's what we have to have in our own hearts. It's not,

if I could tell you all day long, you ought to read your word.

You ought to memorize the Bible. You ought to recite it. You ought to,

ought to, ought to. Do you want to?

That's the question. You have to want to do what you ought to do.

And that only comes through love and submission to Jesus Christ and his word.

It is ultimately all about commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ.

From that will flow a love for his word, because in his word,

you will find him. Do you have that?

Do we have that as a local congregation? Whatever stage you are,

whatever point in your life is, there's never a better time than right now to

renew your commitment to love for Jesus Christ,

and from that love, to love his word. Amen? Let's pray together.

Lord, as usual, your word takes us directly back to Jesus Christ He is the central

issue of our lives And we ask, O Lord, by your Holy Spirit That we would long

for him, even as the Bereans did,

Make that true, O Lord, of our little children Of our teenagers,

of our grandmas, grandpas, mothers, fathers, husbands, and wives Right here,

O Lord, in this local congregation,

Cause Christ to be the central issue among us, that we love him And Lord as

we come to the table Help us to drink more deeply Of the grace of the Lord Jesus

Christ And by that rekindle in us A love for Christ,

And therefore a love for your word We pray in Jesus name Amen.