Check It Out!

Check It Out!

Berean Women

Read: Acts 17:10-12

Our society is saturated with deception. Every day, unsuspecting people fall prey to skillful con artists who convince them that they need to send money to claim a prize. Other people are tricked into paying for home repairs that are never completed. We buy products that don’t come close to the claims made about them. We read “memoirs” that turn out to be fabricated. Our carelessness about checking things out makes us vulnerable to fraud.

The women in this passage from Acts were careful to check out their sources. Although they listened eagerly to the gospel message, they didn’t take what Paul and Silas said at face value. Each day they searched the Scriptures to make sure that the two men were teaching the truth. Since the Bereans carefully verified the message as being based on the Scriptures, they recognized that the missionaries’ claims about Christ were true and joyfully accepted God’s gift of salvation.

Many people who claim to be Christians know little about the Bible except for the familiar stories they heard as children. Others attend Bible studies but only accumulate facts without applying the Scriptures to their daily lives. Still others study the Bible for years but then slack off, feeling that they have sufficient knowledge. We will never reach a point of having gained all the understanding, discernment, and wisdom that the Bible offers us.

Without consistent study of the Bible, believers can be taken in like anyone else by books and movies purporting to reveal the truth about Jesus or Christianity. The fact that it’s a best seller written by someone with impressive credentials doesn’t mean it’s true. We will be protected from deception only when we follow the example of the Bereans and spend time in God’s Word.

They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth.

Acts 17:11