Dennis Tuuri

Let us consider now the words of holy scripture which are a command word to us as well as a grace word. Today’s sermon is found in Acts chapter 17 beginning at verse 10 going through verse 15. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word. Acts 17 actually beginning at verse 11, speaking of the Christians or actually first of the Jews at Berea.

Acts 17 beginning at verse 11: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily whether these things were so. Therefore many of them believed also of honorable women which were Greeks and of men not a few. But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached of Paul at Berea, they came thither also and stirred up the people. Then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea, but Silas and Timothy abode there still. They that conducted Paul brought him unto Athens, and receiving a commandment unto Silas and Timothy for to come to him with all speed, they departed.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word and we would not dare touch this word or begin to work with it without giving you thanks for it, without also praying, Lord God, that your holy spirit would teach it to us. We know that you tell us in the scriptures that these things must be spiritually discerned. The carnal mind cannot understand the things of the spirit. So we pray for your spirit to teach us truth from this book which is unlike every other book, which is your very word to us in the word of our king, the Lord Jesus Christ, and is accompanied by the power of the holy spirit.

We pray then that the spirit may illumine our hearts and we might understand this word, and as a result reform our lives and our culture as well. We also pray for the Sabbath school teachers who will be teaching children at their own particular level the law of God and his grace as well as contained in your scriptures. We pray that those teachers might have a clearness of thought and speech so that the children’s hearts might be open to hear things from your word and so praise you this day with knowledge, in Jesus’s name we pray, and for the sake of the advancement of his kingdom.

Amen. It’s always amazing to me the fascination that they say America has. I don’t know that it’s just America, but certainly America has a fascination with nobility, with the queen and the monarchical family in England, princes, princesses, etc. Of course, the tabloids want to serve up a lot of that sort of information so they can make a lot of money off people’s curiosity. But I don’t think the people’s preoccupation at times with nobility of princes and princesses, queens, and kings is simply related to slander.

Anybody that has raised young children, particularly boys, will know that they love to hear the stories of dukes and knights and chivalry times, and people were princes fighting for the sake of the king in the king’s honor. These are tremendous stories and there are tremendous accounts of just such things in the Old Testament as well. As much as I firmly believe the scriptures teach representative government, we must not think somehow that the scriptures thought that kings were a bad thing.

In Deuteronomy there were provisions for the kings of Israel, how they were to reign. It wasn’t that Israel accepted a king that was wrong for them. It was that they rejected the great King of Kings, Yahweh, and so selected Saul as a king like the other nations around about them. God demonstrates this within the coming of King David, who was a good king and a great king. And so it’s almost as if we have some kind of urge within us at times to sort of think in terms of kings and monarchs and princes and princesses, etc. Nobility is an attractive thing to us.

Now the thing that kings represented—a problem with, of course, is that when kings were ungodly, when they didn’t rule for the greater King of Kings, the Lord Jesus, there wasn’t much you could do about it except to cut off his head, because he had received the office not by election, not by selection of the people representatively, but rather through inheritance.

The scriptures teach the idea of nobility. They teach the importance and the goodness of a princely group of people. There are—when we meet together for worship every Lord’s day, a number of princes and princesses in our congregation. Even though you may not think of it that way, we’re all sons and daughters of the king. We’re all kings under the Lord Jesus Christ in our homes and in the civil arena, in the church.

And we’re all princes and princesses in the greater sense because we’re children of the Lord Jesus Christ. The book of Micah tells us, referring to the savior as the lion to come, that his offspring, his cubs, so to speak, will go and exercise his vengeance upon those people that are disobedient to the king. And so we’re seen in that particular section of the book of Micah as the king’s whelp, so to speak, offspring.

We have a sense of nobility and purpose that should be part of our identity as Christians. And it is a sad thing that for much of the last centuries, in these decades in this country, the Christian church has seen itself as somehow martyrs only—not in the sense of biblical martyrs, witnesses of the grace of God and his victory even in death, but rather somehow a ghetto mentality has kind of suffocated the church and given us, if you want to think of it in modern terms, a poor self-image.

The scriptures say that our image is wrapped up in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and he is the King of Kings, and we are his ambassadors, his representatives on earth. And if the world fails to treat the sons of the nobleman with respect, they should at least treat each other with that respect. To do that, you have to know that’s who we are. We’re nobility.

Why am I speaking about nobility in the context of the church at Berea? Those that became the church at Berea. Because this text talks about nobility. The Bereans that all of us know about—the Bereans of course were said to be more noble than those at Thessalonica. He’s talking here of the Jews at Thessalonica who had pretty much rejected the message. The proselytes are the ones who came to the faith in large numbers at Thessalonica. And then there was persecution of course on the part of the Jews.

And he’s saying that at Berea, the men that inhabited the synagogue and the women as well were more noble. That word noble means well-born. It’s a contraction of two different words, well and born. And it means those people who are well-born. It’s only used two other places in scripture—once in a worldly sense and once in a different sort of sense.

The first place it’s used—or one of the other two places—is 1 Corinthians 1:26, where Paul writes that in terms of those that are called to be Christians, there are not many wise, not many mighty, and not many noble. And then the important thing about this is he says there are not many who are wise after the flesh.

But what he’s saying here is that wisdom, might, and nobility are not the criteria by which when a person is called to grace by the Lord Jesus Christ. God normally calls people that aren’t well-born in the physical lineage sense and who don’t think of themselves as wise in a fleshly sense and who are not mighty in the sense of trusting in their might.

He’s not putting down nobility, might, or wisdom. But he’s saying that when nobility, might, and wisdom become the basis for what you think of yourself after the flesh, that’s a bad thing. And it creates pride in people. And so, not many of them are called. But he’s not putting down the idea of nobility; he’s putting down the idea of a nobility based upon physical lineage. Okay?

In a positive sense, the only other place besides the reference in Acts 17 and 1 Corinthians 1 where this word for noble or nobility is used is in Luke 19:12. Christ is telling a parable here. He says that a certain nobleman went to a far country to receive for himself a kingdom and to return. And you know the story—he then gives talents to men to use for him until he returns. And the people in the country that he leaves his ambassadors in say we don’t like this man to reign over us.

The picture here obviously is of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this parable reminds us that he is the true nobility from which all other nobility is defined. The Lord Jesus Christ is King of Kings, and those people that are his ambassadors also have that cast of nobility to their character as well.

And so when we read that the people at Berea who heard the message of Paul were more noble, it’s a reminder here that what they are is they are well-born—not of the flesh, but well-born of the spirit. And all people that are born of the Holy Spirit are nobility. The scriptures tell us they are well-born because their birth comes from on high. They’re sons and daughters of the king.

Now, this text gives us a definition specifically of how nobility is identified. Or maybe a better way to put it would be how nobility manifests itself in the sons of men that are called to accept the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, who are born again by the free act, the sovereign act of God, not of man.

How is nobility identified in people around about us? And then that tells us by way of analogy how we should exhibit nobility in our lives as well. And so let’s take this fascination, this desire for nobility on people’s part and see how the scriptures give it as a means of exhortation to us to act in a particular fashion, defined for us in the text.

Nobility is identified by two characteristics specifically in the text.

First, Paul says they were more noble because—and he’s going to give us the reasons why they were more noble in his estimation. What are these signs? What are these identifying marks? The first is that the noble receive the word with all readiness. I have “with readiness” on your outline, but it should be “all readiness.” That’s what the text says, and it’s important as we’ll see in just a moment.

They receive the word. That’s important—first of all, of course, is that the base sort of people will not even receive the word. They don’t take the word at all. But the noble men, the ones that are born from on high, who are well-born because of being born from God on high, evidence this with a reception of the word, and not a simple passive reception of the word, but rather they receive the word with readiness.

The word readiness is used a number of times in the scriptures. On your outlines I give you every reference that my particular concordance would list for me. I will just tell you off the top here that the first one, Luke 23:41, I don’t understand. I think that is a mistake in my particular concordance. So I would ignore that if you’re going to do further study on your own.

But in the rest of scripture we have a number of references. In second Corinthians 8, for instance, these references have to do with distributing to the need of those Christians who had financial need. And Paul is writing to the Corinthians to encourage them to follow through with what they were ready to do, to contribute to the needs of needy saints.

And so there is a specific reference to readiness. Later, the same base word here is used in Matthew 26:41 and Mark 14:38—the famous quotes which all of us should know, where Jesus reminds his disciples to watch and pray in the garden. He says the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. The spirit is ready is what the word means. Same word that’s used here.

There’s a readiness on the part of the Corinthians to distribute to the needs of the saints. There is a readiness on the part of the disciples to stay the course with Jesus. But their flesh is weak.

Interestingly, the only other occurrences where these particular words are used, in Romans 1:15 and then in 1 Peter 5:2, have to do not with reception of the word, but with the readiness on the part of Paul and the apostles to preach the word, to serve it up or dish it up for the people. Paul writes in that book of Romans that he is ready also to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome.

Then in 1 Peter 5:2, Peter reminds the ministers to feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint but willingly, not for filthy lucre but of a ready mind.

And so readiness in the scriptures is seen in the context, at least the particular Greek word that is used here, of a readiness to distribute to people, a readiness to preach the word on the part of these Bereans, a readiness to hear the word. And so the idea of readiness means you really want to have that thing. It means you’re not passive to it. You are ready to receive it. The nobility are marked by a readiness to hear God’s word.

It’s not like I have to go to church and hear the sermon, or I’ve got to go home and read my Bible because it’s duty. Now, those are good things. Duty are good things. God gives us duty to keep us on track where the flesh is indeed weak. But the nobility are marked by a course of life that have a readiness to hear the word of God preached, to read the word of God at home, to share the word of God with your flock at home, and a readiness that will move itself then in terms of the reception of that word.

The Bereans and all those that are noble, well-born of God, are not only ready; they have all readiness. There’s a strengthened term used here. That’s why your translation of the King James says that they are noble. Why? Because they receive the word not simply with readiness, but with all readiness. That’s the first identifying mark of nobility: receiving the word with all a desire, a strong desire, all readiness to hear the word.

Secondly, the nobility are those who search the word daily. And I want to talk about three things here: they’re searching. What are they searching? They’re searching the word. How often are they searching the word? Daily. And what’s the purpose of that searching? Searching the word daily to discern whether Paul is telling the truth or not in his message.

Now, we know what his message is, even though the text doesn’t tell us explicitly. We’ve had the first missionary journey. We had that extended sermon given, the excerpt of it back when talking about Paul’s sermon to Pisidian Antioch. Remember, it’s the first missionary journey. Then last week we said that at Philippi, Luke gives us a short form of the same message.

Paul tells the Christians at Thessalonica that Jesus must suffer and die, that Christ must suffer, and that Jesus is Lord. That’s the central two points of Paul’s message. The Bereans hear that message. Paul comes and tells them the same thing: the Messiah must suffer and die. Why must this happen? Because of your sin, because of the providence of God, because of God’s—we talked about that last week. That’s the first part of his message.

The second part of his message is that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is not simply savior. He is Lord. He is anointed prophet, priest, and king. And that has implications for every bit of your life, not simply, you know, a fire insurance when you go to heaven. That’s the central tenants that Paul has spoken.

And these Bereans hear that word, and they don’t simply say, “Oh, yeah, that sounds good to us.” Nor do they reject that word out of hand. Rather, they perform this action, indicating their noble birth. They search the word. They search the word, and they do that daily.

Let’s look at these component elements one at a time.

First, they search the word. And this doesn’t mean the search word here does not mean they run about trying to find a particular thing. The word search here has a forensic sense. It’s the same term that’s used, and again I’ve given you the references. Every reference that I can discover where that particular Greek word is used—the word is used most often in the sense of a judicial investigation.

A judicial investigation. So in Luke 23:14, Pilate talks about how he examined Christ. And there’s nothing wrong with him. He says to do the forensic examination, a legal examination. In Acts 4, Peter says, “If we’re examined of the good deeds done to this impotent man… If we’re judicially examined by this court for what we’ve done, this is what we’re going to say about that.” And so the word examined is the same when used here.

In Acts 12, remember when God had miraculously delivered Peter from prison, Herod examines the soldiers—a forensic examination, probably involving some degree of torture, by the way, on the part of Herod being the wicked man that he was. And so over and over in the scriptures, the idea of forensic or judicial examination is what is connoted by this particular word.

Discernment also is the other secondary use in which this term is used. In 1 Corinthians 2:14, we read that the natural man receives not the things of the spirit of God. They are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned, examined, searched out—to use the term that is used in the King James relative to the verse we’re looking at just now in Acts 17.

And then there are other references that I give you in 1 Corinthians and following that talk about discernment or questioning. And so when Paul writes that the mark of nobility is to search out the scriptures, he means to do so, to examine them, to see if the claim made by Paul or by anybody else are really true. They bring out all the evidence from the scriptures. They turn to the scriptures and use that as the standard by which they judge the evidence of what is being asserted to them by Paul.

Now, very importantly, because that verse in Corinthians tells us that there’s a spiritual examination of discernment, we know that the Bereans are not doing this in the flesh. They can’t do it in the flesh. You can’t do it in the flesh. If you’re going to exercise the mark of nobility, spiritual discernment of claims made by people, you must do so by being given the ability to do that by the Holy Spirit of God.

God says it of yourselves. You can’t make that discernment. So, what we know by way of correlation about nobility is that they are enlivened by God for the examination they must perform upon claims made to them. They’re enlivened by God to that. It’s not of themselves. It’s God’s sovereign work.

Again, in any event, they search the scriptures. Matthew Henry says that those that read and receive the scriptures must search them, must study them, take pains in considering them, both that they may find out the truth contained in them and may not mistake the sense of them, and so run into error or remain in it, and that they may find out the whole truth contained in them and may not rest in a superficial knowledge in the outward court of the scriptures, but must have an intimate acquaintance with the mind of God revealed in them.

So he’s saying there are several reasons to search out the scriptures—not simply one purpose—is to make sure you don’t run into error or sin. And so you search it out to make sure what’s said is correct. But secondly, you search the scriptures out to make sure that your knowledge of them is deep. It’s not a surface knowledge; it’s a deep knowledge.

And so you must study and search the scriptures. And it is the scriptures—the nobility, the true princes of the Lord Jesus Christ—it is to the scriptures that they turn to make evaluations and discernments of claims made to them. In the case of Paul, but in all other things as well, it is the word of God by which we are able to understand and discern all things.

And so the mark of nobility is certainly to search out claims. You know, a good prince, an upcoming king, is not just going to take somebody’s word for something. He’s going to say, “Well, I wonder if that’s true.” And he’s going to make evaluations and discernments. He’s going to be no man’s fool. He’s also not going to be obstreperous and rebellious to whatever people tell him. He’s going to search things out that are asserted to him. And he will do it not by turning to his own mind, to his own reason, to the wisdom of the world, to pragmatism, none of that.

He will do it by searching out the scriptures to discern whether what is asserted is correct or not. And I’ve listed some other scriptures there for you.

Job says that he esteemed the words of his mouth—that is God’s mouth—more than my necessary food. Job has such an appreciation for God’s word to him that he says it’s more important than the food that I eat to strengthen my body. Now, is that our attitude? Can we say, as somebody who’s going to say, “I’m going to take either all your food or all your Bibles. Which would we take?”

Well, Job says, “I’ll hold on to the Bible because without the Bible, I have no way to use the energy the food gives me to make proper discernments. You eat. You give yourself energy. You enliven your mind. But to what end, if you don’t have a standard in the scriptures to make evaluations about what you should eat or not eat, what you should do or not do, how you should go about getting the food you get, etc.?

Conscience is not enough. The word is what is necessary to make discernments.

The psalmist wrote in Psalm number one that in his law do the wise men meditate day and night. And so these men at Berea, these princes and princesses, these noble people being born from on high, well-born of God, not well-born of man, they demonstrate that by a love for God’s word, of esteeming it higher than their very food and esteeming it as something to be studied day and night and meditated upon day and night.

Psalm 119: “Oh, I love thy law. It is my meditation all the day.”

Psalm 119:100: “I understand more than the ancients because I keep thy precepts.”

Who could make a better discernment of the various political claims? You’ve all gotten hundreds—well, scores—of election campaigning material this past few weeks, haven’t you? You’ve gotten information on ballot measures and candidates. Now, who makes a better discernment of those things? Men that are 80 years old and who have walked in the wisdom of the world, who are the ancients, who have seen a large breadth of experience and maybe have even based that upon the experience of the culture for the last 200 years in this country, and then can look and make discernments? Or is it the young man, 15 years old, maybe 20 years old, but who have been trained in the scriptures that are profitable for reproof, correction, thoroughly equipping a young man?

He makes discernments based upon the word of God. Which one will make better discernments? Well, this psalm says Psalm 119 verse 100: the young man who understands the word. I understand more than the ancients because I keep thy precepts.

Now, you know, it’s interesting there. It doesn’t say because I study thy precepts. That’s assumed. This is in the same psalm where it says it’s my meditation all the day and night. But it’s because I keep thy precepts that I have wisdom and can make discernments.

Children, men and women, it’s not enough to study the scriptures. You got to obey them. That’s obvious, I suppose. But it’s very important to point out that the wisdom that comes from above is not simply a matter of intellectual pursuit. It is that the Bereans demonstrate that to us. But their nobility is also matched with their actions of obedience.

And without the enlightening of the Holy Spirit, we can’t discern the scriptures. And God’s not going to enlighten us with the wisdom of him if we don’t keep his scriptures as well.

Psalm 119 says the scriptures, a knowledge of them, a searching them out is a shortcut, so to speak, to wisdom. You don’t have to live a hundred years, be wise in this life. God says you can be wise even when you’re young because you keep his precepts, meditate upon them.

These things are nothing new to us, but it’s good that we remind ourselves of the importance of God’s word in making evaluations.

Isaiah 8:20: Again, you probably heard this scripture from me a lot of times, but it’s an important one to remember. “To the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it’s because there is no light in them.”

As the Bereans hear Paul assert various things about the Lord Jesus Christ—his suffering, death, and also that he’s resurrected and he is Messiah, the anointed prophet, priest, and king, the great King of Kings—it has implications for all their lives. They may have recalled this very verse: “To the law and to the testimony. If Paul doesn’t speak according to the law and the testimony, there is no truth in him.”

See, Paul doesn’t rest. And Paul doesn’t mind this. He likes this. What’s Paul’s reaction? “These guys are well-born. He doesn’t say, “Why these terrible Christians? They don’t—I’m an apostle. Don’t they know that I’m apostle? Don’t they know I suffered in my body and have all this experience to demonstrate my marks of apostleship, and as a result why don’t they accept that word for me on the basis of my character, my reputation?”

No, he’s very happy that they don’t take his word for it, even though he is an apostle, but rather they turn to the scriptures. They diligently search and make evaluations of claims, and they do it based upon the word of God.

Again, stressing the need for obedience: John 3:21—”He that doeth the truth cometh to the light that his deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.”

What keeps us from making accurate discernments and evaluations? Darkness. Why do we stay in darkness? Because our deeds are evil. Sin drives us away from the word and from properly evaluating things based upon the word.

Now it’s very important that we have a counterbalance to this. I want to stress this very importantly.

John 5:39: Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, saying that you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me.

Now, we’re not saying the scriptures are some sort of evaluatory tool apart from the work of Jesus Christ. They’re spiritually discerned. The person of the Holy Spirit takes them and helps us to apply and evaluate things based upon them. But they minister to us of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they speak to him. So it’s not the word in absentia from the Son. It is the work of the Son of Jesus Christ by which we make proper evaluations.

And note here that these Bereans don’t simply search the scriptures once. Paul comes to town, he preaches in the synagogue, they go home. “Yep, it’s right. What he’s saying is right,” after 3 or 4 hours of study that night. No, they search the scriptures daily.

The scripture says—early church fathers said this about that—they don’t search merely upon a sudden impulse or a burst of zeal. Rather, the nobility, those who are noble, well-born, are marked by an intensity of searching the scriptures day by day. And as a result, they make accurate judgments or evaluations.

Now, I don’t want you to think by this that you’re supposed to go home and as soon as you get off work, you go home and study the scriptures all night and then you go back to work in the morning and you search the scriptures daily. What’s happening here?

What’s happening here is the worldview of the Bereans is being filled in by a message, an understanding of the scriptures that they had not had up to then. This is a particular stage in their growth as believers. And so during this particular time, they’re searching the scriptures daily to see if these things are so. In other words, we have to make sure we understand the context for that statement.

The context is this message that Jesus is Messiah and that Messiah must suffer and die. And so in the context of that, they search the scriptures daily.

Analogous to us—we are going to have a baptism, several baptisms today. And when many of us came to a full Bible understanding and a biblical and a Christian worldview, a big part of that was trying to think through again based upon scripture what baptism is all about. And most everyone here at some point in the last 10 years had to diligently search the scriptures to see if the claims of infant baptism, covenantal baptism, were correct.

You know, we don’t teach that means they’re Christians. It means that baptism, like circumcision, is a mark of inclusion in the visible church of Jesus Christ and to be applied then to all members of the household who are young. And so, but I don’t want to get into a big polemic for that. But the point is that people at this church studied this out very thoroughly, daily in many cases, to see if this was so.

There are times at which elements of our doctrinal system are challenged or added to and we have to make evaluations of what claims are made about our Christian worldview. And during those particular times, we’re going to be searching the scriptures daily on a regular basis.

Another one was, for me at least early on, the whole idea of God’s sovereignty. That was something that for many weeks I would search the scriptures daily to see if what was being asserted about the sovereignty of God was true. The place of God’s law in our life—I’ve been taught by the tradition of the churches that I went to that the law was somehow opposite from grace. The Old Testament was here, the New Testament was here. And when I began to bridge those things, I had to study the scriptures daily to evaluate the claims of people that were saying, “No, no, no. The law is still an important evaluatory standard for our lives.”

Theonomy is another one. Had to rethink everything. When I realized the church never had a fixed eschatological position for the last 2,000 years, it’s varied from century to century, generation to generation. And I said, well, I can’t just rely upon the tradition of the church that I go to. I’ve got to search the scriptures daily.

It’s really interesting. I was listening to J. Vernon McGee last night on the radio on the way home from my office, and he was saying he’d had a question about postmillennialism or postmill or whatever. And he said, well, you know, he said, it’s interesting all these people that like postmillennialism. There’s none of them that really preach the scriptures and they never have prophecy conferences. And I thought, you know, I wanted to—of course he’s dead. He’s with the Lord now. But it would be nice to call in: “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I know a lot of people that have an optimistic eschatology precisely because when they heard the claims of eschatological systems, they didn’t just take the existing church’s word for it. They studied the scriptures, evaluated on the basis of the scriptures daily, to see if these things were true.”

And we actually have held several different conferences here that have focused on eschatology. And we’ll have more in the future because we think that’s a biblical truth that needs to be reasserted—that Christ, the preaching of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is effectual to convert men and nations and disciple the nations. That’s the command we have from God, and it will be fulfilled.

Well, in any event, this is a particular period in the life of the Bereans, and they had to study the scriptures daily, regularly, and so demonstrated their noble birth, so to speak, being birthed from on high.

Lensky in his commentary says that there was no initial blind, unreasoned hostility here, looking only for objections, no matter of what kind. Here was no cold indifference, careless as to whether these things were really true or not, or taken up by other interests. Time, study, search, discussion were fully devoted to the scriptures and to finding out what they contained about this new teaching. The attitude of heart thus revealed is the mark of spiritual nobility.

The Bereans didn’t know it, but they have occupied a shining place in the New Testament scriptures for nearly 2,000 years. This is exactly what Paul and Silas desired—to have them examine, truly examine the scriptures. That examination properly made could result in only one verdict: these things are so. And that meant faith, intelligent faith, resting on the one true ground of faith, the scriptures.

Bereans were noble, well-born, because they searched the scriptures daily, having a readiness to receive the word of God and to understand it.

And as a result then “many of them believed also of honorable women which were Greeks and of men not a few.” There was a large conversion of people at Berea.

Now this nobility also then—it’s identified by—we can see it and we can encourage ourselves to exercise our noble birth from on high by having a great readiness to receive the scriptures, by having a mindset to evaluate all claims based upon the scriptures, and to do it when it’s required on a daily basis.

But then secondly, so the noble are described in this text. But then what happens here, happens as it has in just about every place we’ve read about in the book of Acts: Persecution comes as a result of the effectual preaching of the gospel.

Verse 13: “When the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached of Paul at Berea, they came thither also and stirred up the people.”

The noble suffer persecution. But you know, the noble are not shaken by that persecution. I’ve listed several words here, or several references rather, all the references again that I could find where the word stirred up is used in the New Testament on your outline.

The Jews come and stir up the people. That is, to agitate, to rock. The root word has the idea of being a wave as it goes through water. And what happens is they come and try to stir the people up and confuse them.

Now, very interestingly, a very specific text that’s quite important for purposes of showing the difference of the noble is Luke 6:48, talking of the wise man. The wise man is like a man which built a house and digged deep and laid the foundation on a rock. And when the flood arose, the storm beat vehemently upon that house, and it could not shake it, for it was founded upon a rock. You know that song: the wise man builds his house upon the rock, and it stands firm.

Well, these in Berea were able to suffer the persecution and not be shaken by it. Why? Because they hadn’t built their worldview on tradition, upon what the synagogue said, “we believed at this particular synagogue,” not upon their culture, not upon their feelings. All those things—when the floodwaters come, are washed away or potentially can be washed away, and you get very shaken. But if you built your house upon the foundation of obedience and understanding of the word of Jesus Christ—He himself is the rock—then when the storms come, when persecution comes, when God in his providence raises up persecutors, when he shows the antithesis again between the two seeds, the seed of the woman, the seed of the serpent, you will stand firm.

These were well-born people. The Jews come and demonstrate their poor being born. The Jews who had rejected the gospel at Thessalonica. The two seeds clash once more. The seed of the woman, the seed of the son Jesus Christ, those of noble birth, they are not shaken. They expect those clashes. And since they built their system upon a person, the Lord Jesus Christ, and upon his word, then they’re not shaken when persecution comes.

Now, people become Christians for a wide variety of reasons. And people come to particular positions of their doctrine for a wide variety of reasons. All too frequently, those reasons have not been the result of a diligent search of the scriptures, but because they want something. They want respectability. They want their conscience eased. They want perhaps a friendship with the Christian. They want to be part of a church that believes, for instance, in covenantal baptism as we do, but they’ve never really studied the issue out. They want a church that is dedicated to Christian worldview and the exposition of that in biblical homeschool materials, but they’ve never really discerned whether or not that’s really based upon scripture.

The claims that God wants us to take every thought captive to the Lord Jesus Christ—people become Christians and then engage themselves in Christian churches for a wide variety of reasons. And what God does is he blows through churches and he blows through people’s lives and he blows through cultures regularly in his providence, letting the seed of the serpent trouble the seed of the woman, to the end that our works are evaluated.

And when we get shaky, when we find ourselves now shaken and stirred up by the claims of those that dispute, the claims of those that teach that Christ is the Messiah, that Jesus is the Messiah, and that has implications for how we educate our kids and recreate and vote, etc.—when we get shaken up, it’s to the end that we realize that we have not built thoroughly upon the rock. We’ve not digged down deep enough. We’ve laid a foundation of our own rationality or our culture or what we want to do. And so God brings these chastisements upon us to the end that we might more thoroughly evaluate our foundation and be driven back to a knowledge of the word and not our traditions, and so might stand in such a time.

The nobility stand in a time of crisis. They stand, even though the attempts are to stir them up and agitate them. And some people got stirred up in Berea and turned against Christ. Others saw people get stirred up, but they stayed firm because they had diligently demonstrated their nobility by searching the scriptures and laying a proper foundation.

And then finally, the nobles spawn ministry.

“Immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea. But Silas and Timothy abode there still.”

So they send Paul away—not in retreat. They send Paul to another mission field. Nobility. Being born from on high, having searched the scriptures, receiving the word, laying a proper foundation, as a result standing firm in it—standing firm then dispatches ministry to Athens in the person of Paul, Silas, and Timothy, eventually.

So, what I want us to take away from this particular lesson then is that this is a demonstration to us of nobility. The noble people either receive the word of God. What is our response to God’s word? Do we reject his word outright? Probably not in this church. Probably not people who hear this tape. But what about our reception of the word? Is our reception of the word something that is ready? Do we have an all readiness, a great desire to hear the word? A king’s son should hear the word readily.

You know, you have children. Many of people here have children. I’ve got children. Our children hear our instructions, and we say things to them. And there’s a difference. We know when they really want to hear instruction from us. And we know when they don’t particularly want to hear it—they just get sort of sullen and receive it.

What I’m saying is certainly it’s wrong to reject the word of God. But to be truly demonstrating our nobility, our birth from on high, we won’t have a sullen passive taking of the word of God. Nor will we simply take it and say, “Well, I guess this is okay.” We will have a mindset of gladness and joy to receive the word. That is one of the demonstrations.

How much do we value the word of God? There was a poem that I heard once. “What is the price of experience? It’s bought at the expense of all that a man has—his wife, his children, his home, all that he has—is the cost of experience.” And in a way, that’s true. If you make mistakes and you learn by experience, it’ll cost you in terms of your relationship to people, your relationship to the other things that God gives you in vocation as well.

And yet, experience is extremely important and valuable. The scriptures give us by way of correlation that the pearl of great price is the Lord Jesus Christ, and his word is the communication of our Lord to us. We should value his word above everything else in this life.

I wore a little fake pearl tie tack to remind us of this today. As we look at this, we can say to ourselves: What is our response to God’s word? Do we value it as the pearl of great price? And if not, why not? What sin may be clouding our reception of God’s word? What sin may be causing us to become sullen to the word of our Father in heaven, and so making us appear not to be well-born but to be low-born?

Let’s demonstrate our nobility by having a love for God’s word.

And how do we evaluate the claims in the world about us? Do we simply, when we hear the word of God, say, “Oh, that’s interesting. I guess that’s so. Or my experience doesn’t jive with that, or that’s going to be tough to apply that in the culture in which we live, so I don’t think I believe that scripture because if I do that it’s going to be pretty tough living a lifestyle that I want to live if I believe the scriptures teach this or that about debt or whatever it is”?

Do we reject it out of hand? Or when claims are made about the word of God that affect us, that challenge our lives, as the Bereans were challenged by Paul, do we diligently search out the scriptures to see if these things are so?

This month a Credenda Agenda—I have copies over in the foyer. They have a whole issue dedicated to Eastern Orthodoxy, an evaluation of it. And I don’t, you know, I think that some of that I read in here goes kind of beyond the point. I think that sometimes there are characterizations made of Eastern Orthodoxy that may not be correct.

But suffice it to say, this word right here, tradition, is what I believe the Eastern Orthodox Church’s large besetting sin is—that when challenges are made, they don’t turn to the scriptures to diligently search them out and discern what’s right and wrong. They turn to the church fathers. They turn to the church canon law. They turn to the church’s tradition.

Now, tradition is important. We have to understand all that. But our basic foundation of truth must be the word of God.

I’ve laid the outline out today differently for a particular reason. Maybe you don’t know how to dig into the scriptures to study to see if something is so, and I just want to share with you very briefly here how I go about doing my studies. Not that I’m anything great. This is my method, and I want to share with you just very briefly, and hopefully you’ll be able to use this or another method by which you study the scriptures.

First of all, we’ve talked about the importance the Reformers gave us—a Bible in our own language. If you have an English Bible and you’re going to read that Bible to discern claims made about your religious faith, political votes, etc., if you’re going to discern on the basis of scripture decisions that you have to make, you’ve got to know how to read that English Bible. You’ve got to know English, don’t you?

To the extent that this country has become illiterate and no longer has a knowledge of the English language, it is Satan stealing the word from the children of the church. That’s what’s happening in our culture. That’s why phonics is so important. It’s not just some sort of conservative issue. At the root of all literacy issues is an ability on the part of the people of a culture and of a nation to read the word of God and understand it.

If you can’t understand the word, you can’t make evaluations based upon that word. And if you don’t know your own language, you cannot understand the word delivered to you in that language.

So first, as you study a biblical text, look at what it says in the English. Diagram sentences. Look at it in the context of the English statement. Look at the paragraph around it in your particular translation. Look at the context, you know.

So very important: when you read a verse—we read about the Bereans being more noble because they study the scriptures, they search the scriptures, and we think, well, that means you got to have a little bit of a critical attitude. But it means much more than that, as I’ve tried to demonstrate, because you dig into the context around the Berean situation, its place in the missionary journey, etc. The context is important as you study a particular passage of scripture to see if claims made about it are correct.

Your systematic theology—the scriptures are a unit. You’re not going to come up with conclusions about a particular text that are out of sync with the rest of the scriptures. Your systematic theology must be brought to the study of scriptures.

The Greek is important. Now, you know, maybe you don’t have Greek tools. Maybe you do. They’re very readily available. I wasn’t taught Greek at Bible school. I took one year. I didn’t really learn much there. But most Greek studies are easy to use. It’s very important that when we find particular words—what does it mean when it says they searched the scriptures? What does it mean when they had all readiness? What does it mean—these words that we find in a particular verse?

That’s why I listed those all those verses out for you under each point in terms of specific words that are important in the text. You have to do, or you don’t have to, but it’s very useful as you’re going to study the scriptures to find what particular Greek words mean by looking at the rest of scripture.