Greece & Italy Day 4a: Berea

The following is the devotional site presentation I gave to our group at Berea today.

“As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.”

“But when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. The believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.”

Apart from a later passage mentioning that one of Paul’s travelling companions was Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Berea (Acts 20:4), this passage from Acts 17:10-15 is the sole mention of Berea in Scripture.

After facing opposition in Thessalonica, where their host and other believers were dragged before the city council, Paul and Silas departed for Berea where they once again began preaching in the Jewish synagogue. In Acts, Luke praises the receptivity of the Bereans, declaring them to be “of more noble character” – the New Living Translation says they were “more open-minded” – since they received Paul’s message with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if what he said was true. Many of them believed – as is also attested by the fact that Paul later has a travelling companion from Berea – but then Thessalonian Jews followed them there to agitate against them. Acts doesn’t go into detail here, so we don’t know the extent of the trouble caused, but it was enough that Paul immediately departed for Athens, from which he later went to Corinth. It wasn’t so severe, however, that Silas and Timothy felt compelled to leave, so they stayed behind for awhile and then later rejoined Paul once he’d gone to Corinth.

Comparatively, this is a relatively minor Scriptural mention. There are no New Testament letters written specifically to the believers at Berea, as there are for those at Thessalonica, Philippi, Corinth, Rome, and elsewhere. In fact, when describing his travels within his own letters, Paul never singles out Berea for mention, even though it seems likely that he passed through there on other occasions as well.

And yet despite this, the Bereans served then and serve now as a model for the proper response to the Gospel message, summarized in a single verse: “Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (Acts 17:11).

Luke declares the Berean Jews to be “of more noble character” than those in Thessalonica, which admittedly may not have been a very high bar given what they had just experienced there. But what’s notable is what they are praised for – they received the message with eagerness and they examined the Scriptures daily to verify Paul’s truthfulness.

Now one danger many Christians have in reading this passage is that we see the word “Scriptures” and think “Bible.” It’s important to remember, however, that any such references in the New Testament are not referring to the New Testament itself, which was not in existence at the time.

In studying this, that fact reminded me of the importance of studying the Old Testament and not developing a faith that’s based simply on the New Testament. On a trip like this, where so much of our attention is focused on the players in the New Testament and where they went and what they did, the Bereans serve to remind us that the “Apostle to the Gentiles” often went first to the Jewish synagogue, where he preached the Gospel to people grounded in the Scriptures and acquired his first converts.

The Bereans also demonstrate that those who responded properly did so not by blindly accepting Paul’s message, but by comparing it to the Scriptures and making sure it was in alignment. While from our standpoint we may be tempted to ask “if you can’t trust Paul, who can you trust?”, it’s important to remember that Paul was the new guy in town, preaching a revolutionary new message. Regardless, this still functions to remind us that we can’t solely depend on the word of any human authority, but need to investigate to ensure that what they are declaring agrees with the Scriptures, which for us today means both the Old and New Testaments. This means that those, like myself, who often find ourselves gravitating toward easily digestible devotionals rather than digging into the Scriptures ourselves, need to be careful that we’re not accepting someone else’s teaching in contradiction to the testimony of Scripture.

It’s also important to note that the Berean Jews didn’t just boot up their BibleWorks software, decide Paul’s message matched Scripture, and call it good. Acts says that they examined the Scriptures not just once, but every day. As someone who – how shall I put it? – tends more toward an experiential than an intellectual faith, I find this especially convicting. Scripture is never something we are done examining. For those of us in seminary, that’s also a reminder that upon graduation we are not done growing in our knowledge of the Bible. The Bereans challenge us to return again and again to the Scriptures to ensure that the teaching we are receiving reflects Biblical truth.

All told, despite the brevity of their Biblical appearance, the Bereans teach us valuable lessons in their proper response to the Gospel message – we must value the Old Testament, test all teachings against Scripture, and study Scripture regularly. Then we, too, can be “of more noble character than those in Thessalonica.”