The city of Berea gets a short but significant shout out in the book of Acts. (17:10-15)<\/p>\n\n\n
The people of Berea are contrasted with those of Thessalonica where Paul and Silas had just stopped to “reason with them from Scripture” about the Christ.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The Thessalonians had listened – and quite a few people had been persuaded – but ultimately … surprise! … a group of leaders had stirred up the crowds and run the disciples out of town.<\/p>\n\n\n
The Bereans, on the other hand, “received the message with great eagerness” AND “examined <\/b>the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true”. (17:11)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
This word “examine” is a strong verb. It means to scrutinize. To investigate.<\/p>\n\n\n
It is so much more than a casual reading.<\/p>\n\n\n
They rightly recognized Scripture as the final authority on matters of Truth and held Paul’s teaching alongside the Scriptures to see if what he was saying was Truth.<\/p>\n\n\n
They weren’t going to accept <\/b>Paul’s teaching just because it was persuasive or novel.<\/p>\n\n\n
And they weren’t going to reject <\/b>it just because it conflicted with their prior understanding.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
They were going to listen closely and then read closely. To the extent Paul’s points matched Scripture, they would welcome his teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n
Nice system.<\/p>\n\n\n
Please note: We are not told that any of these Bereans held a seminary degree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The city of Berea gets a short but significant shout out in the book of Acts. (17:10-15) The people of Berea are contrasted with those of Thessalonica where Paul and Silas had just stopped to “reason with them from Scripture” about the Christ.\u00a0 The Thessalonians had listened – and quite a few people had been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7494,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7493\/revisions\/7494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}