Testing What You Hear: The Berean Way | Ep. 124

What happens when a message sounds right but the text says otherwise? In this episode, we look to Acts 17 and the Bereans’ example of testing every teaching against Scripture. Learn how to read in context, anchor unclear ideas to clear passages, and grow discernment without drifting into cynicism. If you want a faith that’s both humble and confident, this conversation will help you become a responsible steward of what you hear.

Transcript

Welcome And Free Bible Guardrails

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is episode 124, and I'm your host, Letoya, and this is Equip the Next, where you get equipped to lead, disciple, and move the mission forward. So, are you testing what you hear? You don't want to miss this. If you are new, thank you so much for stopping by. If you're returning, you know what time it is. But if you haven't already and you want a clear, grounded way to approach scripture, feel free to grab my free guardrails. It's the Bible study guardrails. It's linked in the show notes or description box, or you can go to equipthennext.com forward slash freebie. Grab it. You know, you don't want to miss grabbing it because it's really good. It's only one page, and I think you will benefit from it. Anywho, I am going to go and get started because today I want to talk about or have our focus be on how we can mature as believers by testing um, you know, by testing the teachings by scripture, testing teachings by scripture, um, not by our suspicions, but just in stewardship. That's the thing that I want to focus on and talk about today. There's nothing wrong with examining the text. In fact, scripture invites us to do that. We don't want to just blindly accept something that someone says, me, anybody. We want to test scripture. Listen, it's okay to ask questions. Trust doesn't mean to remove responsibility or accountability. And actually testing or testing scripture, meaning if somebody says something, being able to look at it and search it for yourself, is actually strengthening your faith. And it's strengthening that discernment muscle. It protects that growth. So I like to start with a question because I think it's important to just make it personal. So I want to ask yourself, I want you to ask yourself, do I measure teaching by scripture or scripture by teaching? Yeah. I'm just gonna pause that. For real though, ask yourself, do I measure teaching by scripture? Or scripture by teaching? What do you mean and what are you talking about, Latoya? I know. I always have to throw you a curveball, right? I always like to say when it comes to studying scripture, you gotta be like a Berean. You gotta be like a Berean. Does it mean that we're gonna be right all the time? No. But we should all want to learn more about the Bible. We might have a different view in which we look at the Bible. I think I mentioned this um in a previous episode. As far as how we interpret the Bible, whether that's reform, dispensationalist, um, or that could be liberal or conservative. And it's not, it has nothing to do with politics. It's just how you view the text, or like how you look at the scripture. That's completely different than taking con taking the taking stuff out of context. What I'm highlighting today is how we can make sure that we don't take text out of context. Scripture always interprets scripture. Always remember that. Scripture always interprets scripture, but I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to ask questions, it's okay for you to seek out and search scripture to get the context. There is nothing wrong with that, it builds that muscle. It's not that you're fault-finding at all. You might somebody might teach something and you might really want to know more about it. And you might be like, Yeah, I want to know more about that, and you dig into the word. But it's important that you search the scriptures out. You can't blame anyone for your personal growth, it's your responsibility at the end of the day. I heard um someone use this as an example. He said, if you're speeding and say the speed limit is 60 miles, and you're going 80, and you never saw the speed limit, and you got pulled over by a police officer and he gives you the ticket, you can't say, Well, I didn't know because I didn't see it. It doesn't matter, it was still there, whether you saw it or not. And that's the same thing with scripture. It's there. Podcasts like this are great. Attending Bible studies, amazing. But then you have to get into your own personal time and search the scriptures, not to fault-find, not to point fingers, not to criticize others, but so that you can strengthen your faith so that your discernment grows and so that you can understand the context. So, of course, we've gonna we're we've gotta go to Acts 17, where the Bereans are. And I'm just gonna highlight two real um key verses. I'm not gonna go into the entire uh text like I did last episode. I'm just gonna kind of highlight two verses. You can go to, if you're able to, go to Acts 17, verse 11 and 12. It says now these Jews, talking about the reans, 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. Because um, Paul was teaching in the in the synagogue that that's the um chapter before. And then verse 12 says, Many of them therefore believed with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. So, because as we see, Paul was in was in Thessalonica first, and that didn't work out too well. If you want to know about First and Thessalonians and get a little backstory, feel free to listen to my episodes starting at episode 92. So it goes from 92 to 95, episodes 92 to 95 cover 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. If you would like an overview of those books. But when we look at this, we're gonna focus on a couple things. It says more noble-minded. See, the Bereans were objective in their evaluation of Paul's message, they judged his message by the standard of scripture rather than their preconceived prejudices. And they also had an appetite to learn. They carefully evaluated Paul's message to see if it was true. They didn't care about what he looked like or what he sounded like, whether good or bad. See, a lot of times we look at the messenger, and if they look a certain way, if they sound a certain way, if they live a certain lifestyle that we want, then we listen to them. If they have a title, they might not even sound like anything. For real, for real. No, no, I'm just gonna be honest. They might not even sound like anything. They might just look like something. They may have some money that you want, they may have a title, a fancy, shiny title. They may have a lot of viewers somewhere. But see, right here we see the Bereans, they left those things behind. They left those things behind, whatever, whatever things they were thinking of. And these were people of noble character. Now, that original, originally the Greek term used there denotes noble birth, but it later came to refer to anyone who had royal bearing. You know, these people were refined. They were refined, as we can see here, as we look here. Um, we see with with not a few Greek women of high standing, as well as men. They were high standing, right? They were posh of the posh. They could have easily looked down on Paul and Silas, right? They could have easily looked down, but they didn't. They left all of you know how humbling that must be. These are noble people. They humbled themselves, and they had an appetite to learn. Now that could be, and I'm just gonna be transparent, that could be because they were noble in the sense of they want to learn, they want to grow. Um, sometimes, you know, you have people who it doesn't have anything to do with you have to have a degree or anything like that. It's just some people they love to learn, to grow, to expand their mind. Whether you're in a trade or you have a whatever profession you love to learn. And so, but these people, they actually love to learn and they didn't care about whatever prejudices or whatever you know biases they had towards these men of God. They wanted to learn, they were eager to learn, they were eager to step aside all their thoughts and beliefs behind, and they searched the scriptures, they searched the scriptures. So again, when you ask yourself, do I measure teaching by scripture or scripture by teaching? Do I look at who's the the biggest title? Do I look at the person that has the most followers and subscribers? Do I see the person that has the nice car, shiny things, beautiful speaker? Do I look at skin color? Height? Do I look at if they're a man or a woman or how old they are when I'm determining what they say? Or do I leave my bias, my opinion, my thought behind? Do I look at a person because they don't have a title in front of their name or behind their name? Does that stir me in the right direction? Sorry, steer me. Does that steer me in the right direction? Ask yourself that. It's a hard question. We have to stop uh making leaders celebrities in the body of Christ. We have to start embracing the truth in the scripture. If I had to find the Christ thread, we know that Christ is the light. He's the true shepherd, he's the word of truth, he leads us, he guides us. He opens up our eyes and and allows us to know him better. I want you to really take your time this week. And I want you to take one teaching or quote that you've recently heard, and I want you to trace it back to scripture this week. Find the roots. See, it's easy to hear people say it. But will you do it? Will you apply these things? That's why leaders and teachers are here, or they're supposed to be, to teach you so that you can then do it. To give you more understanding and more clarity so that you can have the confidence for your family, your friends, the people that you mentor. That's the goal. So listen, be sure to subscribe to this podcast. It would mean so much to me, so that you don't miss an episode. I am so grateful that you're able to listen so that you can get equipped. Because at the end of the day, I just want you to grow in God's word and lead boldly.