Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Listen to Preaching Part 1. He will be reading out of Acts 17:11-15.
When you’re searching to see if those things are so that you distinguish what is a preference and what is a principle, what is in the Bible, you are measured not by the preferences of the teacher. You are measured by God’s holy word.
Hello, this is Pastor Mike Sanders. Welcome you to the Hope Worth Having Radio program. We’re broadcasting from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and we are really honored that you are with us. And today we’re going to be starting a new series, and it’s how to listen to preaching.
Now in Acts chapter 17, we’re introduced to the Berean believers, and they were unique because of their ability to hear the word of God and to obey it. So let’s learn how we can emulate that in our own life.
Let’s grab our Bibles. Let’s get to Acts chapter 17, and let’s continue this study. If you have your Bible, I want you to join me in Acts chapter 17. We have been going through the book of Acts, and last week we started in chapter 17, and we didn’t get to cover everything, and so we’ll be in it again.
Anyways, Acts chapter 17, I want to just cover verse 11 through 15. While you’re turning there, I want to tell you I heard a story about a frustrated judge, and he was preparing to hear about a divorce case.
And the judge asked, why do you want a divorce? On what grounds are you getting divorce? The wife replied, all over. We have an acre and a half. No, no, said the judge, do you have a grudge? Yes, sir, if it’s two cars.
I need a reason for divorce, said the judge. Does he beat you up? Oh, no, I’m up at six every day to do my exercises, and he gets up later. Please, said the exaspt. judge, what is the reason that you want a divorce?
Oh, she replied, we can’t seem to communicate to each other anymore. Well, listening is an important part of all relationship. It’s an important skill. The Bible tells us that he who answers a matter before he hears it, it’s folly and shame to him.
Listening to people is valuable in your life. But let me tell you something that’s even more important, is listening to God. Listening to God has eternal significance in your life. Jesus said, therefore, take heed how you hear.
Take heed how you hear or listen. In our text this morning, we are introduced to a group of believers who took listening to God’s message very seriously. I want you to pick up with me in verse 11 of Chapter 17.
The Bible says that these were more fair-minded or more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. But when the Jews from the Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds.
Then immediately the brethren sent Paul away to go to the sea, but both Silas and Timothy remained there. So those who conducted Paul brought him to Athens and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed, they departed.
Now tucked away in these set of verses is a very important lesson for us. And that’s learning how to listen to the teaching and the preaching of God’s word. Remember Jesus said, take heed how you hear.
Every one of us this morning is going to be accountable for what we hear from God’s word. And therefore, as we look at the life of these Berean believers, we can understand how we should hear, how we should listen to a sermon, listen to a message, listen to a Bible lesson or a Sunday school lesson.
As Paul was preaching the scriptures to the Bereans, Luke gives us three statements about how they reacted to his message that he gave. If you like to take notes, I want you to write these three words down because this is our emphasis this morning.
Number one, they received. they examined and they believed. That’s what they did. They received, examined and believed. So let’s look at that first word, received. After the apostle and his team had a short ministry in Thessalonica, if you were paying attention, they were there for three weeks, three weeks.
But you know, I told you a few weeks ago that wherever the apostle and his team went, it was either a revival or it was a riot. And that’s what happened. There was a riot because of a revival, because people were getting saved, coming to Christ, spiritually awakened, that all of a sudden, those within Thessalonica were getting upset.
And so it was at nighttime that Paul and Silas had to sneak out of the town so that they would not have to suffer any more physical persecution. And so then the Bible tells us they came to this place or verse 10, that they came to and arrived in Berea.
And what did they do? Remember, we know the Apostle’s strategy because we see it time and time again. He goes to the synagogue. He goes to the synagogue, gets a hearing. Verse 10 says that when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.
And while he is there, what does he learn? That there were these group of people who were more noble and they were more fair-minded than the Thessalonicans. Not that the Thessalonians were somehow, the church was a bad group of people because we know later that the church would become a model to other churches, but the community of people were very resistant to the gospel.
And so Luke makes the contrast of the Bereans to the Thessalonians, the different communities of people. That’s what you’re witnessing in chapter 17, is you’re seeing this narrative unfold of a contrast of those who rejected the truth and those who were receptive to the truth.
The Bible tells us in verse 11 that they received the word with all readiness. They received the word with all readiness. When the Bible refers to the word, it’s not just the Old Testament. It’s not just talking about the New Testament.
It’s not just talking about God’s word. It’s talking about really in essence the gospel of Jesus Christ, in that they were receptive to this message that the apostle was teaching them, that Christ was the fulfillment of all that the Old Testament prophets had declared and that he was the one who was to come and to die on the cross for our sins and he would rise again three days later and that one day he will return and establish his kingdom on this earth.
So this reception. that was given by the Bereans, first of all, we see that it was certainly a welcoming reception. Better than maybe some places, even in our own communities and our own families and our own country.
We have a country that’s not very receptive to God’s word, would you agree? I mean, they’ve already said, you can’t have it in the public schools. You can’t have God’s word in the courthouse. We can’t have the 10 commandments up anywhere.
That would be horrendous. And that might be a microaggression on somebody. But anyways, they have all these things. They want to push God’s out. People say, pastor, what’s wrong with America? You see, God, He can take a hint.
He can take a hint. You don’t want God, you push Him out of your life, you put everything else before God, He can take a hint. And you see, America enjoyed the blessings and the protection and all of the favor of God upon her.
But I’m telling you that when you push God out, He withdraws. And the Bible says that in Romans 1, He gave them up. It says it three times that He gave them up. And you see, I’ve always said this, and I know that sometimes some of you get upset when I say these kind of things, but it’s true that if you want to be stupid, God will get out of your way.
And if America wants to make a mess of its life and try to do it on its own, how many times have you raised your children and they refuse to listen to you, you try to show them what to do, but they are persistent and they are bullheaded.
They’re gonna do it their way. And what do you do? You just step back and say, okay, go ahead. And that’s what God does. But here what we see is that the Bereans were receptive. They were welcoming to the word of God.
They were welcoming to God’s truth. They were welcoming to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the Bible says with all readiness of mind, the word readiness has the idea of promptness or eagerness. There was an earnestness in their hearts.
They were ready to receive and to hear what God’s word had to say. So I wanna challenge you this morning in this reception that each of us are called to be, as we come together as believers, as we come, we’re to be receiving the word of God, that we have to cultivate a sense of expectancy when it comes to hearing God’s word.
Now, there’s a few of you that you like sports and you know that if you were to go to a football game, maybe a college football game, or you were gonna go to a professional football game, you would have a high sense of eagerness and a high sense of expectancy.
You’d get all ready and you’d probably, maybe weeks before you’d be getting things together and you’d be like, well, it’s gonna be cold out there. I’m gonna make sure I got this ready and I’m gonna make sure I got that ready.
And you know, I gotta make sure I gotta have a few snacks and you know those hot dogs, they’re like 10. box now. So I’m gonna sneak in a little bag of peanuts and I’m gonna maybe have a water bottle and I’m gonna make sure that we’re in good shape.
I’m getting ready. There’s a sense of expectancy that I’m cultivating. Let me ask you a question. When you come to hear God’s Word, do you cultivate that expectancy? Do you say, oh man, it’s Sunday. I was hoping that it would be Saturday and I could sleep in today, but it’s Sunday.
Do you find it like a drag to come to church and man, I just hate to have to be here. If I don’t go, my parents are gonna be on me or my spouse is gonna be upset at me. Or do you come and say, you know what, I am ready to receive God’s Word.
I am cultivating that in my heart and that I am preparing for that. Which is my next point to you is that not only do I cultivate an expectancy in my heart, is that I need to prepare myself to come, to receive.
the word of God. I need to prepare myself, that’s what was going on, is that there was not only this desire, but there was a follow through on the desire. There was a decision that we’re gonna not only are we looking forward to going and hearing God’s word taught to us, but we are going to follow through on it with a decision in preparing our hearts.
You see friends, many make the mistake that they’re preparing to go to church on Sunday morning at the last minute. And you really need to start way earlier than that. I remember that when our children were little, we were always getting things ready on Saturday so that Sunday would not be a train wreck.
And I know what some of you are saying because we had the same experience. It didn’t matter, did it? Well, I tell you that it did help, especially as the children got older, that having things already ready on Saturday made things run so much smoother on Sunday morning and getting ready to come and be at the house of the Lord.
But you know, there’s not only a physical preparation, but there’s a spiritual preparation. Think about that. I mean, you might get ready to go watch a football game, make sure you got all the stats and you know who’s the quarterback and you don’t wanna cheer for the wrong team.
I took my boys many years ago to a football game down in West Virginia. We were the opposite team, Oklahoma State against West Virginia. And by the end of the game, the West Virginia fans had become, we were in the student section because I was too cheap to buy a good ticket, amen.
But I was in the student section and they were so drunk that they were cheering for the Oklahoma State Cowboys. It was like it was a home game for us. How wonderful is that? But we were prepared. We had everything ready.
Physically, we wanted to be ready for this game. And I wanna tell you that when it comes to being ready to receive God’s word, you need to prepare yourself spiritually. And I would say, say that begins always with prayer.
It always begins with prayer. Honestly, you should be praying for the service throughout the week, and especially on Saturday, praying that the Lord is putting things together. You wouldn’t believe the kind of things the devil’s always trying to do to wreck the service.
It could be sickness, it could be something’s not working, it could be that the computer, the technology crashes. It could be, as one lady told me, it’s too cold in here, Pastor, and if you don’t get it warmer in here, I’m not coming back.
Okay, I’m doing my best, okay? I’m not a heating and air conditioning man. Nothing I can do relating to that, doing everything we can, but here’s what I want you to understand. Rather than saying, hey, here’s what I don’t like about this or that, are you praying?
Praying for the pastor, praying for the sermon, praying for those who are coming, who are gonna hear the gospel for the first time, praying that visitors who come and check out the church that they’ll…
a sense of welcome and that they’ll sense a warmth in here, not just physically, amen, but spiritually. But we’re praying that God would speak to our own hearts, that we would be ready to receive God’s word, that we would not have a wall up, that we would not be resistant to what the preacher, the pastor has to say as he opens the word of God to us, but rather that we would be receptive.
So we are praying, we’re praying for someone who needs encouragement. You don’t know what everybody’s walking through in their life and you don’t know what the challenges that people are facing day to day in their life, and so they come looking for hope, they come looking for help, they come looking for the strength and the blessing and the encouragement that you can find.
Listen, for this place, for some people it’s the only place where they find a hug, a smile, a blessing, a word of encouragement. Some of you are blessed with wonderful homes, wonderful families, and I’m grateful for that, but not everybody has a functional family, right?
Not everybody has everything going great. And so I want you to understand, when you start thinking about the big picture, somebody walks in and they’ve just lost a loved one, and they’re really struggling, they’re grieving in their hearts, and they’re looking, and that’s why we’re praying, church, as we are praying that we are receiving, but that God is blessing and God is ministering and God is working.
How else can I prepare myself? I think confession is important, a part of that. We don’t like to talk about confession because we think it’s some liturgical thing that we’re not supposed to be doing, but the truth is we are to be confessors.
The Bible says if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to do what, church? And to cleanse us from all of our unrighteousness, and so we’re called to be people who are confessing our sins. We’re grateful that we can confess our sins.
Jesus Christ. There’s one mediator between God and man. We don’t have to go to the pastor, we don’t have to go to a priest, we don’t have to go to any religious figure. We can go straight to the Lord Jesus Christ in our prayer time confessing our sins and maybe there’s something you need to confess.
In my preparation I want to confess to God, Lord is there anything in my heart that I need to bring to your attention? Is there anything any sin that I need to bring to you and confess it to you and agree that it’s wrong in my life?
That’s what it means to confess. It means to agree with God. I’m agreeing with God. A lot of us, we like to argue with God. You know I talk to some people it doesn’t matter. They just always like to argue.
It doesn’t matter. They’ll argue about anything, okay. I can say hey it’s raining out there and they’ll argue with me. They’ll argue with me and that’s just the way it is and you just say okay you do you.
If you want to live your life like that and be arguing mad at the world that’s fine but here’s what we need to understand with God we can’t be like that. You can’t argue with God. You gotta agree with God because see, God is, he’s always right.
God is always right. And when he brings it to our attention that there’s sin in our life, we need to confess that. There might be an attitude that we need to change. We’ve had a bad attitude. Maybe God is calling us to change that, confess that to him and make that right.
And so we’re not only called to confess to God, but we’re called to confess to others. It doesn’t mean you have to get up in front of a church service and bear your soul to everybody. What it does mean is that if I’ve hurt you, offended you, and I’m aware of it, I need to make every effort to try to make that right with you.
And that’s what’s the key to growing relationships is to be able to confess our faults one to another. As the scripture says, confess our sins to God. But let me tell you a third way to be prepared is to read your Bible.
The first time you hear God’s word read should not be in our service. It shouldn’t be in Sunday school. It should be your time with the Lord this morning. And I know some of you got out of bed at the last minute, you rolled in here and you just made it and you say, isn’t that good enough, pastor?
Well, I understand and I appreciate that step, but that’s not where I want you to end. I want you to be a next level Christian. I want you to go farther for God. I want you to be stronger for God. And I want you to be that person who rises early and calls upon the name of the Lord in the morning, that person who spends time with God, that person who’s already read the word of God.
And you are just hearing from God all the time through his word and you are ready. You’re coming in here ready to receive God’s word. You say, pastor, why would I need to read the Bible? Let me tell you, the Bible is the only food that can fuel a believer’s growth and faith.
You see, you’ll never be able to be that optimum Christian without the word of God. You have got to be in it. in God’s word, feeding on it, and you have got to spend time in it, and it has got to become a priority in your life.
And let me tell you something about this, this challenge of a habit of reading your Bible. It is a battle you’ll have all your life. You see, all your life. You know why, because the flesh, the world, the devil, always battling against you and saying, you know, you don’t need the Bible, and you know, that Bible, it’s out of date, or that Bible is good, you got it, you got it all.
But the truth is, we need a daily dose of God’s word in our life, and it helps us that when we come to hear Bible study, we come to hear the teacher, we come to hear the pastor, the preacher, whatever the situation is, we are ready to receive the word of God.
The Bible says they received the word. But I want you to see also that they researched I want you to go back and look in verse 11. It says, not only with all readiness and search the scriptures, how often?
Daily, daily to find out whether these things were so. You see, you thought, man, just coming in, hearing the Bible taught, isn’t that good enough, pastor? Isn’t that good? I mean, don’t I get a pin for that?
Shouldn’t I get some points with God for that? And we’ll see, God is calling us through His grace to not only be receivers of His word, but to be researchers of His word. And the Berean’s response here is powerful because this is an important principle you need to learn as a believer, it is a distinction and a uniqueness of a church like ours.
And that is that as we look in this text and we see, they searched the scriptures. Who searched the scriptures? Again, it wasn’t a pastor who searched the scriptures for them. It wasn’t a priest who searched the scriptures for them.
It was not even any kind of a religious figure or some kind of a Bible scholar, but it was them. They searched, the Bereans searched the scriptures, which is what is often been referred to by Bible scholars as the priesthood of the believer.
What is the uniqueness of our faith in Christ is that we believe that you are a priest and that you can come directly to God and that you can understand the Bible and that you can through the power of the Spirit of God, understand the deep things of God, that you don’t have to have a Bible college degree.
I’m not against that, amen. And you don’t have to have all of this religious training to somehow understand the Bible, but you can understand God’s word. Now, you might find that, well, that’s not too profound, Mike, but I’m telling you, there was a time in the world when people were told that only the priest could read the Bible, and only the priest could understand the Bible, and only the priest could interpret the Bible.
But yet, there came along a generation of mighty people for God, like Martin Luther, and Calvin, and Tyndale, and these great men and women who were willing to understand that God has called us as believers to have a personal relationship with God.
And that’s why I want you to see that, is this research is something that is your responsibility. It is your job to search the Scriptures and to see if what the pastor is saying is true. Isn’t that something?
Because in these times that I was talking to you about, it was considered, you know, only the priest could know and that the priest was never wrong. And yet they started teaching a false doctrine that you had to work your way to heaven.
People didn’t know any better because they were so ignorant to the word that they became, you know, they just became numb to it and they just did whatever they were told and it became religion and it became a ritual.
And they just kind of went through the motions. There was no vitality in their faith. There was no connection with the Lord in their faith. And as a result, people thought they were okay with God. But the truth is they were on the wrong path and that they were not truly believers and they were not truly living for Christ.
So I wanna encourage you to understand that you have this personal responsibility to not only receive the word, but to research the word, to evaluate what is taught in your Sunday school classes and what is taught in your Bible studies, what is taught from the pulpit at the Open Door Church to make sure that that aligns with the word of God.
Jesus said in John five, verse 39, you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life and these are they which testify of me. Jesus was not upset that they searched the scriptures, but that just that they thought because of the Pharisees and their religion, they thought because they were the arbiters of truth and they were the only ones who knew the truth that that would give them eternal life.
But what he’s saying is that when you open the scriptures and search it, what you’ll find is that the Bible from Genesis to Revelation teaches us about the person, the nature and the work of our Lord and savior, Jesus.
Can God’s people say amen? You want to know Christ? You want to know God? You do not have to stay up all night eating pizza and drinking root beer and look on a billboard sign to see Jesus. All you gotta do is open your Bible and Jesus is revealed to you.
From Genesis to Revelation, I wanna encourage you to be people who are evaluating the scriptures, who are searching the scriptures and so we see that they were passionate about it. They were diligent about it.
They were dedicated. It wasn’t just a casual, hey, we’ll get to the Bible around Christmas time or we’ll get to the Bible when things slow down, when we don’t have sports and we don’t have dance and we don’t have ballerina and we don’t have drama and we don’t have all these other things and I’m not against any of those things, okay?
I don’t want you to be upset, but let me tell you something. God. needs to be number one in your life. And if you neglect His word, what you’re gonna find is it’s gonna impact your family in a very negative way.
What you see here is the Bible says they search the scriptures daily, every day. In our day when the Bible is always being attacked or people are trying to undercut it or discredit it, it is more important than ever that you be a daily consumer of the word of God.
And that you understand that the Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. That is not only as you are in the word, reading it, as you are searching it, as you are researching it, as you are validating what is true, that you are hearing God’s word, your hearing is truth, and that is affirming your faith, that is sustaining your faith.
The reason that many believers, hear me, are vulnerable to the attacks of the devil. And the Bible tells us to put on the full armor of God every day, why? Because we know there are fiery darts out there that He’s firing off to us.
He’s trying to discourage you. The number one tool of the devil, listen, is discouragement. Well, listening is an important skill, the Bible tells us he who answers a matter before he hears it is folly and shame to him.
So God wants us to learn how to listen. And I don’t think there’s anything more important than listening to the preaching and teaching of the word of God. And so what we see in the Berean believers is an example, a model, a model, a model for all of us.
And I pray that we will continue to emulate this model and seek for different ways to be better at listening to the teaching and preaching of the word of God. I want to encourage you to remember that we are streaming live every Sunday on our website or our YouTube channel or Facebook channel and know that you can catch up.
And we’re not trying to take you out of church. We want you in a local church. We want you plugged in with the people of God and we want you serving and supporting your pastor and the elders and deacons and all who serve there.
We want you to do that. But we also know that there are times that maybe you’re not able to be there. And if your church doesn’t have a streaming program, I want you to know that Hope Worth Having has one that can be a supplement to your faith.
And so check us out live every Sunday morning at 11 a.m. Or if you want, you can go to our YouTube channel and catch up with what was taught that Sunday morning. So we are praying that God is working effectively in your life.
And we’re grateful for your prayers and your support. And this is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.
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