The Bereans were open-minded and noble. They did not practice blind faith. They did not listen to Paul and Silas and then blindly follow them. Rather, they were eager to hear the message, and knowing the scriptures, they searched them to see if this message was true.
10 That very night the believers sent Paul and Silas to Berea. When they arrived there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. 12 As a result, many Jews believed, as did many of the prominent Greek women and men.
Acts 17:10-12 NLT
The two missionaries were sent to Berea from Thessalonica because their lives were at risk. The people in Thessalonica made claims about them being anti-Caesar and they caused great trouble for those who welcomed Paul and Silas into the town. The message of Jesus was viewed as disruptive to the peace in the Synagogue there by some of the community. They likely saw that several people were accepting the good news about Jesus and were fearful of what that would mean for their community and perhaps their control over it.
This shouldn’t surprise us, given that this is exactly what happened in Jesus’ ministry in Israel. He wasn’t a problem until people started to follow him. When the crowds developed and his teaching was being followed and listened to more than the establishment, religious leaders started to conspire against him so they could control the people and the power.
Once in Berea, Paul and Silas followed the same pattern by going to the Synagogue to attend services and share Jesus as the fulfillment of Judaism. The people of Berea were different in their response. Instead of trying to arrest or oppose or slander the missionaries, they were open-minded and listened. Then they searched the scriptures for themselves to see if what they were hearing was true.
If you google ‘Berea church,’ you will find churches who use the name Berea in many places around the world. My search page included British Columbia, Brazil, Ontario, Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. They’re everywhere. Why? Because the Bereans were considered more open-minded and noble than the folks in Thessalonica. People want to be viewed as open-minded and noble.
One of the things I notice about these Bereans is that they did not practice blind faith. They did not listen to Paul and Silas and then blindly follow them. The message of Jesus is a transformational message in which the entirety of the story of God and his interaction with creation is interpreted through the understanding of Jesus’ identity before the incarnation, his purpose in the incarnation, his death, burial, and resurrection, and his teaching about what is and what is to come.
This is a message worth fact-checking, and that’s what the Bereans did. They were open-minded. They were eager to hear more from Paul and Silas. And they knew their scriptures and searched them to see if what Paul and Silas said was true.
Don’t miss the result. When we do this – when we search the scriptures to see if the message of the apostles is consistent with the scriptures of old – we find that it is true. We find that Jesus is everywhere in the Old Testament. He is everywhere in the story of God and his people from creation to today. Many believed in Berea during that time.
Amen.
Marc Kinna
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