Daily Devotional

Check It Again

by Jon Hathorn on October 14, 2020

"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. " Acts 17:11-12

The last two days I told you about a couple of high school math teachers, well today I am going to tell you about college class.  It was called, "Senior Seminar" and it was a culmination of study. There was this one assignment where a student wrote a paper, and then another student wrote a reaction paper to the paper.  The original paper was to be turned in on Friday at 8:00am, at which time the student writing the reaction paper had until Monday night to write his/her response.  Well, it was 8:00 Friday morning and the reaction writer didn't receive a paper, and then it was Saturday morning and still no paper, and then Sunday afternoon about 3:30 the responsive writer finally received the paper.  This writer was pressed for time and was pretty bothered by the lack of concern for time.  The professor knew about the timing of this exchange.  Here's the deal - the reaction author wasn't really very happy, after all, she had received it late. in addition, she actually thought the paper was not very good, and that the original author really didn't do a very good job.  At this point, the reaction papers had all been very kind and polite - and yet this was different, she didn't agree with the author's timing, points, support of points, quality of understanding and depth of explanation.  So, she did something different, and just attacked the paper.  I mean, she attacked everything about the paper. She read the paper in order to attack everything: grammar, word choice, content, sources, support, and details of the information.  Monday night came, and after the original paper was presented, the reaction paper was.  The room was silent, as the reaction  presentation hammered everything.  It was clear the paper had been examined in thorough detail.

That's what the Bereans did with the Word of God.  They examined it.  They wanted to know what it said, why it said it, what it meant, and the application of it.  So often we listen to the Word of God, and we fail to study it - to know it, to examine it.  It has great meaning and great perspective. The Word of God also changes our life.  In 2 Timothy 2:15 it says, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the Word of Truth."  Let's work on being noble like the Bereans and examine the Scriptures.

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