Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: This evening, open your books to the Book of Acts, Chapter 17, and Verse 10. Acts Chapter 1, Verse 8 gives us the outline of the Book of Acts. You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem—that is Chapters 1 through 7; in Judea and Samaria—that is Chapters 8 through 12; and then to the remote parts of the earth—that is the longest section of the Book of Acts, Chapters 13 through 28. This includes the three missionary journeys of Paul, his trip to Rome, and the Jerusalem Council. That is where we are in that section dealing with the second missionary journey.

All the missionary journeys start from Antioch there up north, and that is where the second missionary journey starts from, and that is where Paul went. This is a section that starts at the end of Chapter 15 and ends towards the end of Chapter 18. This is the ground that we have covered on the second missionary journey: the split between Paul and Barnabas, the journey into Syria and Cilicia, and then he gets the Macedonian call and moves into Europe. We spent some time studying his ministry in Philippi in Chapter 16, and then last week he was in Thessalonica. Now we pick it up with his Berean ministry, Chapter 17, Verses 10 through 15, which we are going to try to cover this evening.

Let’s go ahead and start with Chapter 17, Verse 10. It says there: “The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea.” You notice the reference to “the brethren.” The brethren would be a reference to the fruit that he bore during his six months to a year ministry in Thessalonica. He won some Jews to Christ, some Greeks, some women, and in fact, as is common, the unbelieving Jews get jealous of his success. When he is outside of the synagogue, they stir up the crowd and got him pushed out of Thessalonica, as you remember from last time.

So, he was in Thessalonica, and now he has gone about 50 miles to this place called Berea. I put a bigger circle in the general area he was in when this section of scripture is recorded. From Philippi in Chapter 16, he kept moving to Thessalonica and then to Berea. What is the first thing Paul does when he enters a new city? He goes to the synagogue. You have got a reference to that in the second part of Verse 10 of Chapter 17. And when they—notice Luke is no longer saying “we” but “they” because Luke was part of the team in Chapter 16. That is called one of the “we” sections where Luke, the author, joined the group, but Luke stayed behind in Philippi to pastor the church there.

So now he keeps referring to the missionary team as “they.” Chapter 17, Verse 10: “And when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews,” which is something that Paul always does. That is what he did in Thessalonica. You remember last week we studied Verse 1, which says, “Now when they arrived through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews.” Why does he keep going to the synagogue first? He does that because of a principle that he is going to lay down in the Book of Romans, Chapter 1, Verse 16, which is simply this: “to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

Over there, he says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and then to the Greek.” So, the nation of Israel is the elect nation of God, and they were always given the first opportunity to receive the gospel. He goes to the synagogue because they accept what we call the Old Testament, and he had common ground with them. He tries to reason with them from the scriptures that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah in their own Old Testament. Then you hit Verse 11, and I want to spend a little time on Verse 11 because it is one of the best verses that you will find anywhere in the Bible on the whole subject or topic of discernment.

Notice Chapter 17 and Verse 11. This is how they reacted to Paul in Berea in the synagogue. It says, “Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.” That is a beautiful description of biblical discernment. Let’s look at a few important words here. He says, “Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica.” So, who are the “these”? The “these” would be the Bereans in the synagogue in comparison to the Thessalonians. He is running a comparison between the Bereans in the synagogue versus the Thessalonians, having just left Thessalonica.

In the process, he gives us this amazing description of Christian discernment, which I want to drill down on because this kind of thing is sorely lacking today in modern-day Christendom. He says, “Now these”—that’s the Bereans—“were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica.” What does that mean, “noble-minded”? The word literally means “well-born,” and what he is saying is the Bereans were a cut above the Thessalonian believers or the Thessalonians in the synagogue. They stood out because they did something that the Thessalonians didn’t do.

He’s running a comparison with those in the synagogue 50 miles away, and in the process, he gives this amazing description of Christian discernment. So, what was different about them? Well, for one thing, they received the word with great eagerness. Receiving the word is important. The Book of James, Chapter 1 and Verse 21 says, “Therefore putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your soul.” As New Testament Christians coming to a church environment where the word of God is taught, we are called to receive the word of God in all humility.

Unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t that way. They want to argue or they want to be heard. We have had situations here in adult Sunday school environments where somebody comes in and they try to take over the class. That is not the attitude of humility that we are called to exhibit when we come to church. We are called to come with humility, not so much wanting to take control or wanting to teach, but wanting to be taught ourselves, wanting to hear from the Lord. That is just an attitude of humility that we need today, and so that is what the Bereans did. They weren’t closed-minded, they weren’t argumentative, they weren’t trying to protect their own presuppositions and understandings, which is what a lot of people do.

They will find a preacher that reinforces what they already think is true, and they are really not interested in having their assumptions questioned. If Preacher A doesn’t reinforce their pre-existing assumptions, they will go down the street and find Preacher B who will comply. That is an attitude of arrogance, and it is not supposed to be that type of mentality amongst God’s people. We are to come to church with humility, with an attitude that we want to receive from the word of God. And so that is what the Bereans did. They received the word, and notice what it says here: “with great eagerness.”

These people are discerners, as we are going to discover. Sometimes there is a movement out there today called the discernment community. They promote themselves as discernment ministries, and what they are doing is they are always on the internet or social media attacking everybody over everything. To me, that is not discernment; it is somebody with an anger management problem masquerading as discernment. So, there is a lot of fleshly, carnal activity that goes on out there under the masquerade of discernment, and that is not what you find with the Bereans. I mean, they weren’t close-minded people at all.

They came with humility, they came to receive the word of God, and they did it with great eagerness. The Greek word for “great” there is *mega*—mega eagerness. In other words, they had a generous spirit. We might put it this way: they were teachable. There are a lot of people out there that just aren’t teachable. They are not open to anything new, a new understanding of anything, and they are just kind of in cement and they call that discernment. Well, here is your textbook example of discernment with these Bereans, and they weren’t that way at all. They had a very teachable, generous spirit. They wanted to learn new things, they wanted to be taught.

But they weren’t so open-minded that their brain leaked out, if you know what I am saying. So, they were generous, teachable people, but they ran everything through a grid, as we are going to see. So they received the word with great eagerness, but they were those who examined the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. Now that Greek word “examined” is *anakrinō*. *Krinō* means to judge; *anakrinō* refers to something like this: to sift up and down. Another way of saying it is to make a careful and exact research, as in a legal process. So that is what these folks were doing. They were eager to learn, they were open-minded, but they were noble in the sense that when they heard something, they did a thorough search of the scripture to see if the things that Paul was saying to them concerning Jesus being predicted in the pages of the Old Testament were in fact true.

So, *anakrinō*—to sift up and down, to make a careful and exact research, as in a legal process. And so what were they searching? Well, they were searching the scripture, or the scriptures. The Greek word translated “scriptures” is *graphē*, where we get the name “graphic.” And so what scriptures were they searching? Well, they were searching the only scriptures that were available to them in synagogue, which is what we call Old Testament, Hebrew Bible, better known as Tanakh. The T stands for Torah, meaning the law. The N stands for Nevi’im, meaning prophets. And the K stands for Ketuvim, meaning the writings.

Those are the three major divisions of Hebrew Bible. The “im” ending functions like a plural noun, like “s.” We put an “s” after a noun to indicate plurality; in Hebrew, “im” is there to communicate plurality as well. Cherubim would be more than one cherub angel. The cherubim were stationed there at Eden. I think it is cherubim there, but at any rate, you will see them in the Ark and that kind of a thing. So that is what these Bereans did. They did a top-to-bottom legal search of the existing Bible that they had, Hebrew Bible, to see if the things that Paul said were so concerning the fact that Paul was arguing with them that Jesus is the one that is predicted in the pages of the Old Testament.

So they didn’t just believe something because Paul said it was so, but at the same time, they were hospitable about it. They weren’t ugly about it. They weren’t in-your-face fighting type of people. A charitable spirit but at the same time a discerning spirit, and that is really the great balance with where you want to be with discernment. You don’t want to be so rigid about things that you are unloving, but you don’t want to be so loving about things that you are open to anything and everything regardless of what the scriptures actually say. So, they function really as a beautiful balance of discernment. For these reasons, this is probably one of my favorite verses in the entire Bible because it gives you a nice balance on what discernment really is.

It is hard to find people that function in this kind of balance, as I have tried to explain. The scriptures—Hebrew Bible plays a really prominent role in this chapter, at least in Thessalonica and Berea. You remember last week we studied Paul in Thessalonica where it says, “And according to Paul's custom, he visited them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the scriptures.” So, he took Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, and tried to show that Jesus is predicted. What made the Bereans different than the Thessalonians is they were very eager to learn, but very eager to examine at the same time.

So these scriptures are spoken of frequently in the early New Testament, referring to Hebrew Bible—we call it the Old Testament because the New Testament hadn’t even been written yet at the time these sayings and statements were made and recorded for us. So, Jesus to the Pharisees says, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me. For if you believe Moses”—now that is the T in Torah right there—“if you believe Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.” So when he says “You search the scriptures” to the Pharisees, what he is dealing with is Tanakh, Hebrew Bible.

He says, “If you had just read Moses, you would read about me because Moses wrote about me.” And it wasn’t just Torah that mentioned Jesus; it is all of Hebrew Bible, all of Tanakh. In Luke 24 and Verse 27, it says, “Then beginning with Moses and all of the prophets...”—now this is a great Easter Sunday type of passage here. This is Jesus in his resurrected state walking on the Emmaus Road with the disciples. It says, “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures.” Scriptures being Hebrew Bible.

Then down in Verse 44, it says, “Now he said to them, ‘These are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the Law of Moses’”—there is Torah right there, first five books of Hebrew Bible—“‘the Prophets’”—there is Nevi’im right there—“‘and the Psalms’”—there is Ketuvim, meaning writings. Psalms was used as a synonym for the writing section because Psalms was the most prominent book in Ketuvim. So there he is giving the three major divisions of Hebrew Bible. Our Old Testament as Protestants is organized totally differently. You have 17 historical books, five wisdom books, and 17 prophets, and it is a nice arrangement, but it doesn’t really help you put the storyline of the Bible in order for you.

The Jews organized it completely differently. They organized it on the basis of Tanakh—same material, different organization. Now he said to them, “These are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the Law of Moses (Torah), the Prophets (Nevi’im), and the Psalms (Ketuvim) must be fulfilled.” So, he is making the same claim that the Apostle Paul made, that Hebrew Bible points towards him. You are not going to find Jesus under every rock and tree in the Old Testament, but you are going to find him spoken of prominently a lot of the time. Psalm 22 Verses 16 and 17, Isaiah 53, Daniel Chapter 9 Verse 25, Genesis 3 Verse 15, Numbers 24:17—on and on we could go.

Those are the types of scriptures he was bringing to their remembrance as they were questioning whether he was the resurrected Messiah or not on the Emmaus walk. Paul—this is a great verse for Resurrection Sunday—talks about this in 1 Corinthians 15, Verses 3 and 4. He says, “For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins...”—what does it say there?—“...according to the scriptures.” Could you point to some sections of scripture of the Old Testament that indicate Christ died for our sins? I would pick Isaiah 53. “That he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.” I would pick maybe Psalm 16 for that one, but you can do your own study on this and find Messiah in Hebrew Bible.

This is what Paul is seeking to convince these Bereans in the synagogue of. So, the Bereans when they heard this, they weren’t hostile to Paul, they weren’t close-minded, they weren’t angry, they weren’t vindictive, they weren’t so in cement that they were unwilling to examine something they have never heard before. So, they had a very charitable, teachable spirit. But as Paul taught, they would say, I think in the quietness of their minds: not so fast. I need to see this for myself in the Bible. And that is a posture you should have in any church. Any teaching ministry should welcome that.

You shouldn’t just blindly accept something because it comes to you from a pulpit. You should always want to look in the scripture to see if the things being taught, the things being preached, the things being proclaimed are true. That requires mental discipline. You can’t just mentally check out during church and think about where am I going to go to eat afterwards, and why is the sermon lasting so long, and I need to talk to so-and-so, and I need to do this and that. Worship is a mentally active process. So, this idea that you sort of empty your mind and the first thing that comes into your head is spiritual, that is not biblical worship.

That is something that comes out of Eastern religion and mysticism. Christianity is always about filling the mind with truth, being grateful for the reception of truth, but going through the mental discipline necessary to see if these things are really true that are being spoken of. So, an open mind—great, these people had it, but they also had an open Bible. They were eager to receive, but they were eager to search the scripture to see if these things are so. So, you should have the freedom in any church to ask questions. People come up to me after the service and they ask questions. I love it.

Sometimes I can answer the question, sometimes I can’t, I have to go do my own work to answer their question. But I love the fact that people ask questions because it shows me that they are not just passively listening. There is a difference between hearing and listening, right? Hearing is you hear an audible voice; listening means you are actually mentally processing what is being said. So when people ask me questions about the sermon, it shows me that they are not just hearing but they are actually listening and they are scrutinizing. How much deception within Christianity would be cured if your average churchgoer did that? A lot of the false doctrines that people believe, they wouldn’t believe anymore because they can’t find it in the Bible.

Unfortunately, people have this mindset that they will believe something as long as it sounds good. It is like: I really don’t know what he said, but I sure like the way he said it—that kind of approach. That is not biblical worship. So, you notice that these Bereans were searching the scripture every day. It doesn't say every week, every month, every year. This wasn’t like a quarterly thing they were doing. This was like a daily thing. And so you should be in the scriptures on your own daily. Don’t substitute coming to church for the daily discipline of Bible reading.

We teach the priesthood of all believers, meaning you have the ability to understand the same Bible that I can understand. I might have a little bit up on you because I have been doing it longer and I have access to technical tools like Greek and Hebrew and things like that to help me. But the truth of the matter is it is exactly the same message I have that you have. So, you can learn the Bible just on your own reading it and studying it. That is not to put down teaching because there is a spiritual gift in the body of Christ called teaching. We need teachers, but a teacher is not to be a substitute for a daily Bible reader.

See, the Thessalonians really weren’t doing this, but the Bereans were. That is why Paul is drawing this comparison. So they searched the scriptures every day. The Book of Hebrews, Chapter 5 and Verse 14 says, “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have trained their senses to discern good and evil.” So what do you do with solid food? You have to keep practicing it, ruminating on it, going over it over and over in your mind. It is what the psalmist calls *Selah*. You notice that a lot of the Psalms will stop and the psalmist, usually David, will say “Selah.” That is a Hebrew word that means “consider carefully.”

Ruminate on this, contemplate on this. Don’t let it go in one ear and out the other. And so that is how you develop discernment. Solid food is for the mature who because of practice—some translations say “constant use”—have trained. You can’t train for anything unless you are willing to do a ritual over and over again—who have trained their senses to discern good and evil. They were so familiar with the truth that when the counterfeit reached their ears, they could recognize it. It is very similar to—we have used this example before—of detecting counterfeit currency in the banking industry.

I have been told that the way they train people is they make them familiar with the real currency. You are touching it, it has a certain color, it has a certain texture, it might even have a certain smell to it for all I know. You are so familiar with the real that when the counterfeit goes across your hand, you immediately sense something isn’t right. That is what discernment is. It is impossible to understand every false teaching that is out there. In fact, if you were going to be an expert in false teaching, you could spend your whole life becoming an expert probably in one false teaching.

That is how in-depth false teaching is. If you were going to be an expert in the false teaching of Mormonism and you were going to be considered the expert in the field on it, you would have to spend your whole life studying it. And we just—that is not reality. We don’t have time to be experts in every false teaching. But here is something you can do: you can be familiar with this finite revelation, these 66 books. 39 Old Testament books, 27 New Testament books. You may not know everything there is to know about the finite revelation that we do have, but you know enough of it to know that when something is said that doesn’t really comport with this, your mind detector or discernment detector, whatever we are going to call it, kind of goes off and you say that doesn’t sound right.

So, that is the practice of discernment. It is not easy, but it is part of the calling of the Christian. It is part of the calling of the work of the disciple. That is what these Bereans were so good at. And as a result of examining the scriptures daily, they were able to see. Which means you really can’t develop spiritual sight without the scripture and familiarity with it. Psalm 119 and Verse 105—by the way, do you know what the longest Psalm in the psalter is? It’s Psalm 119. You know what it is about? It is about the word of God. It is an acrostic, meaning there are eight lines that begin with the first Hebrew letter, and then the next eight lines begin with the second Hebrew letter. The third eight lines begin with the third Hebrew letter, all the way through—what, 22 Hebrew letters in the alphabet is it?

So, that is why Psalm 119 is the longest Psalm in the psalter. The whole thing is about Torah. I used to think it was a word of God Psalm, but it is not a word of God Psalm; it is a Torah Psalm. It is extolling the virtues of Torah, which is just division one of Hebrew Bible. So it is kind of interesting that the longest Psalm in the psalter is dedicated to Torah. There is a line in it—Amy Grant sang about it; I won’t sing it for you—but it says, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” That is why the Bereans could see because they were given to what we call Old Testament Hebrew Bible.

Notice it says they searched the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so. Now what are “these things”? The things Paul said. So they did this with an apostle. Someone claimed to be an apostle, they didn’t just blindly accept everything he said. So they held Paul up to the standard of God's truth. If they did that with Paul, how much more should we do it with the people that want to preach and teach relative to our lives? So you should be doing that with me, everything I say or any teacher in this pulpit. You should be examining these things to see whether these things are so.

Because God can't say one thing on Monday and something totally different on Tuesday. With the scripture, we have a fixed standard to hold teachers accountable to. So who were these Bereans? I wrote down something here, see if I can read my own writing. They were people that were open to the truth. They didn’t issue an immediate judgment based on prejudice. They were open, they were teachable, they had a teachable spirit, but they were people that examined Hebrew Bible on their own to determine if what Paul said was true, that Jesus is in fact the long-awaited Messiah.

So, this is the art of discernment. When you start to study discernment, you will see it is mentioned all over the Bible. It is mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 13, Verses 1 through 5. It is given by Moses as the nation of Israel was right here in the Moab area, about to enter Canaan. Moses says this: “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods whom you have not known, and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord with all of your heart and with all of your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear him, and you shall keep his commandments, listen to his voice, serve him, and cling to him. But the prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death because he has counseled rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.”

What Moses is saying is you are going to enter the promised land and there are going to be people in the promised land that are going to announce prophecies that will actually happen. Signs and wonders that will materialize before you. But you are not to blindly follow those prophets when those same prophets tell you: let us follow other gods. Because the moment they say let us follow other gods, they are contradicting what God has said earlier. Because all the way back in Exodus 20, Verses 3 and 4 at Sinai, the Ten Commandments, God was very clear: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water or under the earth.”

Someone is in the land and they are performing signs and wonders, and their books are all bestsellers on Amazon, and they are predicting the future. You look at their social media accounts and they have got 10 million people following them, and they are being interviewed on all the talk shows, and they sound really good. But at the same time, if they contradict what God has already said in his word, then obviously it doesn’t matter how popular they are, it doesn’t matter how successful they are, it doesn’t matter how miraculous they are. You are not to follow them because they are contradicting what God already said, and God can’t contradict himself.

So you are to test what you hear from them through a grid that already exists. Which means that these prophets are false prophets. Well, if they are false prophets, then how is it that they were able to perform signs and wonders? Well, that is easy; the devil can give them the power to do that. I have given you this chart many times how miracles can happen in scripture that God is not the author of. This is every example I could find in the Bible where a miracle occurs and God has nothing to do with it. Does God perform miracles? Of course. Is God the only one that performs miracles? No. Satan performs miracles. Not on par with God's miracles; obviously, God is all-powerful, but Satan can put on quite a show.

And so that is how you determine truth. You don’t determine truth by an experience, because the devil gives all kinds of experiences. You determine truth by: does it align, does the doctrine align with what God has already revealed? That is what made the Bereans special. Paul in writing to the Galatians says the same thing. He says, “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another. Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.”

Listen to this: “But even if we”—Paul says that includes him—“or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed. As we have said before, so I say again: if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed.” In other words, you know the truth because it has been revealed to you in scripture. Paul says if tomorrow I show up in your church and I say the exact opposite of what you know to be true, then you are to reject me and my message.

If an angel materializes tonight at your bedside, a beautiful angel, but that angel preaches to you a doctrine contrary to what you already know to be true in scripture, you are to reject that angelic manifestation, although that angel seems so beautiful. Because Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. So experience doesn’t determine truth. That is where our culture is being hoodwinked today. We think something is true because someone had an experience. As if the devil can’t give experiences. A lot of the body of Christ thinks this way; they are looking for an experience, they are looking for a miracle, they are looking for a liver quiver, and they tell me about their experiences.

When I was younger, I used to try to talk them out of their experiences, but I quit doing that because I think a lot of them really have had an experience. But the experience itself means absolutely nothing. The only thing that matters is: does the experience and the doctrine associated with the experience conform with God's prior revelation? If it doesn’t conform, then you are to reject the present messenger or angel, no matter what kind of wonderful experience they may give you. You have to understand that when the Antichrist shows up, he is going to give all the experiences. I mean, he is even going to—do you realize this?—he is even going to call down fire from heaven in Revelation 13, and the whole world is just going to say this is amazing. And yet he is going to say let us follow other gods.

If you don’t know a little something about the Bible, or better than that, a lot of something about the Bible, you are just a sitting duck for deception. I mean, you will be sucked in to any kind of deception that is out there. And so we need discernment today desperately. That is why I entitled this “The Death of Discernment.” Study the Bible. Discernment is all over the Bible. Paul to the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians 5:21: “Examine everything carefully, but hold fast to that which is good.” 1 Corinthians 2:15: “But he who is spiritual appraises all things,” like a real estate appraiser, you’re evaluating as an appraiser.

“He who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.” Because there is a big line today that circulates in the culture: don’t judge, don’t be judgmental. But the Bible is telling you to judge. Now you can do it like the Bereans, you can do it with a teachable spirit, but you better be in the judgment business constantly. And you can’t be in the judgment business if you don’t have a grid to compare what you’re hearing to. I mean, you have to be familiar with this book to recognize counterfeit money. There is even a gift in the body of Christ called the gift of discernment. Did you know that? The gift of distinguishing spirits. It says, and to one, 1 Corinthians 12:10, “the affecting of miracles, to another prophecy, and to another distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another interpretation of tongues.”

Spiritual gifts are interesting. It is like playing softball. Everybody takes a turn at bat, but some people can hit the ball a lot further than others. So we are all called to discern, but some people are exceptional at it. We are all called to believe and have faith, some people are exceptional at it. That is what spiritual gifting is, but you may have the gift of discernment, you may not have the gift of discernment, but we are all called to be discerners. Just like we are all called to be evangelists, even though you might not possess the gift of evangelism. But you still take your turn at bat.

1 Corinthians Chapter 14, Verse 29 says, “Let two or three prophets speak and let the others pass judgment.” So the prophets are speaking in Corinth, and the others aren’t just supposed to sit there and say, “Great message.” They are supposed to pass judgment. How can you pass judgment unless you have a standard to compare what you’re hearing to, which is God's written word? Hebrews 5:14, which I gave earlier, says, “But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have trained their senses to discern good and evil.” Here is a great passage on discernment, 1 John 4:1: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit.”

What is that saying? Don’t be gullible. Don’t believe someone just because they have the three Gs. You know what those are, right? The gift of gab, good looks, and a guitar. A lot of people follow people because they have the three Gs. And here 1 John specifically tells us: “Beloved,” written to Christians, “do not believe,” in other words appraise, evaluate, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” Now, how can I do that? How can I test the spirits? You can do it with this book. Anything you hear or see in church or out of church, it has got to be run through a grid before it goes into your heart as truth.

Now, why would I do that? Because false prophets have gone out into the world, and not a couple, not a few, not a handful. What does it say? Many. I mean, what does Jesus say? Broad is the road that leads to destruction in Matthew 7, Verses 13 and 14. Broad is the road that leads to destruction, many there are that go that way, but narrow is the road that leads to life and few are they which find it. The road to destruction is like the five-lane freeway, and the road to life is kind of that narrow access road on the side. And so since that is the case, many false prophets have gone out into the world. We can't believe every spirit, but we have to be in the business of testing the spirits.

I don’t think this situation written 2,000 years ago is going to get better as we get closer to the end of the age. Everything I know about Bible prophecy and the future tells me that false teaching is going to explode; it is going to proliferate, kind of like the proverbial mushroom as we get closer and closer to the end of the age. So we better be in the business of discerning. I will tell you one of the most dangerous places you could be is a Christian bookstore or even a Christian college or hearing things on Christian radio or Christian television. Because you think that when you walk into a Christian bookstore, let’s say, you can kind of let your guard down because we are all Christians here, right?

But I am here to tell you that some of the worst heresies I have ever seen are on the shelves of the Christian bookstores. I mean, the “little gods” doctrine and “God wants us all rich and healthy.” These are like runaway bestsellers. You ask the guy running the Christian bookstore: well, where is your theology section? And it is like this little tiny shelf over here, you know. But all of the false teachers sell like crazy because that is what people want to hear. But it is false teaching. Jesus had a word to say to the church at Ephesus, the church that lost its first love.

But before he condemned them for that, he said something very positive about them. He said it in Revelation 2, Verse 2. He says, “I know your deeds and your toil and your perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, but you put to the test those who call themselves apostles and they are not, and you have found them to be false.” Ephesus, before I rebuke you for leaving your first love, you got a lot of things going for you. Number one, your deeds. Number two, your toil and work. Number three, your perseverance. Oh, and Ephesus, there’s something else you’re doing that’s really good: it’s your discernment.

You don’t tolerate evil men. Today we would call that close-minded, but they just wouldn’t tolerate evil men. Now, how did they know certain men were evil? Because they put them to the test. There were people that came into Ephesus calling themselves apostles and are not apostles. And you have found them to be false. Now, how could they do that? How could little Ephesus stand up against someone claiming the mantle of apostle? Well, they could see because they had God's word. Psalm 119:105: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path.”

Have you ever tried to stumble around in the dark in your house? Get up, forget to put the night light on or whatever, and try to go to the fridge and get something to drink, and you just have a terrible time trying to find your way back to the bedroom without a light. But boy, you put that light on—it’s not that hard to find your way from the fridge back to the bedroom. That is if you don’t have the light of the word of God, you are just stumbling around. I mean, it is like you are, as I think in Acts 17 even in this chapter when Paul is in Athens, he talks about people groping in darkness, stumbling around in the dark.

And little Ephesus here had the light of the word of God. People came in calling themselves apostles. They screened it through the scripture, they found out they weren’t, they called them false, and they didn’t tolerate them. They wouldn’t let them into the church. Jesus doesn’t say: you all are really close-minded. He says: Ephesus, thumbs up. This is one of the things you’re doing that’s really, really admirable and respectable. So, that is why I love Verse 11. It’s just a great teaching there on discernment. And then you move down to Verse 12 where you see the first believers there in Berea.

It says there: “Therefore many of them believed, along with a number of Greek prominent women and men.” So, Paul is in the synagogue, and this is the fruit that he gains. Here is how the New King James reads: it says, “Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men.” So this is an example of what you call a figure of speech known as a litotes, which is an understatement or a negative statement to express a positive affirmation. This is the opposite of hyperbole. Dr. Roy Zuck says—I recommend his book to you, *The Basics of Bible Interpretation*.

When we say, “He is not a bad preacher,” we mean he is a very good preacher. The understatement is made for emphasis. When Paul wrote, “I am a Jew of no insignificant city,” he meant that Tarsus was in fact a rather significant city. A litotes is at times a belittling statement, as in Numbers 13:33: “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes and we looked the same to them.” Luke in Acts, which is what we are studying, used a number of litotes. He spoke of “no small disturbance” amongst the soldiers. No little business, no small storm.

When Luke wrote that Paul and Barnabas stayed in Antioch a long time, the Greek has a litotes; it is literally they stayed there not a little time. Paul belittled himself with a litotes in 1 Corinthians 15, Verse 9: “For I am the least of the apostles.” This statement of genuine humility was written to highlight God's grace in his life as an undeserving sinner. And so if you’re reading this in the New King James Bible, you’ll see a litotes there. It’s not translated that way in the New American Standard Bible, but the New King James says, “Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks.” So that is a negative to express a positive, meaning a lot of people believed.

It is a common figure of speech. So, it is really important as a Bible reader to become familiar with basic figures of speech. Sometimes the Bible wants to be understood in a straightforward way; other times it will use figures of speech. So, there are plain statements in the Bible and then figurative statements in the Bible. John, at the end of his gospel, uses a hyperbole. He says, “I suppose if I told you everything Jesus said or did, the world itself could not contain the books written thereof.” What is he doing? He is deliberately exaggerating something to demonstrate that Jesus did a lot of other things that I am not recording. It is a hyperbole. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.” Have you ever tried to eat a horse? I mean, that wouldn’t work out well. So it is a deliberate exaggeration to communicate a point.

And the classic book on this is *Figures of Speech Used in the Bible* by E.W. Bullinger, written in the early 1900s. It will tell you every figure of speech in the Bible: simile, metaphor, hyperbole, metonymy—I mean, things you have never even heard of. And when someone writes a book and it is still the top book a hundred years later, you have done a good job. And that is what you have with E.W. Bullinger’s book, *Figures of Speech in the Bible*. If you can get your hands on that, I recommend you read that—or not read it, but it is a great resource, let’s put it that way. I mean, some books you just use as resources. I mean, you don’t sit down and read the phone book, do you? Well, you could if you wanted to, but it is really not what it is for; it is a resource.

And we will end here with the end of Verse 12. Therefore many of them believed, along with a number of prominent Greek women and men. And do we need to say it again? There is one condition for salvation, which is to believe. That is what it says here: they believed. It doesn’t say they walked an aisle, it doesn’t say they repented of all of their sins, it doesn’t say they filled out a card, it doesn’t say they raised a hand. There is no altar call here. It is just the proclamation of truth. They searched the scripture to see if it was true. It ended up being true, and many believed in Jesus as a result. That is the only step that the lost sinner must fulfill to be made right with God.

Lewis Sperry Chafer says upwards of 150 passages of scripture condition salvation upon believing only. That number is probably higher. J.B. Hixson, in his book—I think it is called *Getting the Gospel Wrong*—has an appendix where he lists every scripture if you are interested in looking up all of those. There is nothing here about the ABC method of salvation: first admit you’re a sinner, then believe, then call on the Lord; first admit you’re a sinner, then believe, then confess the Lord. Nothing here like that. It is amazing to me that we don’t pay attention to these 150 verses, but we go to some obscure verse to develop our evangelistic tracts.

So, we have some tracts there between the restrooms on the wall; we work hard at screening out tracts that add conditions that the Bible doesn’t add for justification. Here are the famous ones: Abram believed in the Lord, and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. He believed, he trusted. John 3:16, which you know well: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” One condition. Acts 16:30 and 31, which we studied in the prior chapter: “‘Sirs,’ said the Philippian jailer, ‘what must I do to be saved?’ They said, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.’” Let’s keep the gospel simple because God keeps it simple.

Notice the women getting saved along with a number of prominent Greek women and men. Luke brings up the role of women in the body of Christ constantly because one of his themes is he’s showing the gospel is for everyone, even including those rejected and marginalized in society like women were in Greco-Roman times. The Bible has probably done more to elevate women than any other book that has ever been written, and Luke brings up that frequently: the women in prayer, the women believing. Paul’s first convert in Europe there in Philippi was Lydia, a dealer in purple.

So we will, Lord willing, pick it up next week in Verses 13 through 15. When something good is happening, expect the devil to fight back, and Paul gets an attack from unbelieving Jews in Verses 13 through 15. We will finish that and then we will move into his Athens ministry, which you are going to love because we get his great speech on Mars Hill. So we will see that as the study develops. Let’s pray. Father, we are grateful for your truth, grateful for your word. Help us to take in your word with a receptive heart. Make us like the Bereans, where we search up and down and don’t accept things until we see it in your word. We will be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. God's people said, amen.