God’s Word over men

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, NIV

Recently, I’ve been exposed to posts about how tend to value men’s quotes over Scripture. I’ve also had conversations where I’ve been challenged if some of my beliefs about things (like tithing) was from men (what church says, Christian writers say, etc) or from God. I had to admit, I was not fully backed up with Scripture but let men influence me in some of the issues.

I would like to challenge us all to be like the Bereans. Yes, they received the (authoritative) apostle Paul’s message. It sounded good and true. Yet even for him, they did not accept it just because he said so or it felt right. Instead, they went back to the Scriptures and confirmed that Paul was actually correct.

Likewise, even when godly, spiritual people tell us what to do or how to live or share God’s truth, let us always go back to Scripture. We may find they are right and respond accordingly. We may find they were, in fact, mistaken. Or probably like  most cases, we may find that there is freedom in God’s law of grace about the issue and each person should act as he/she feels God is leading him/her to act.