What Did You Say??

Life Lessons from 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14

Way back when (I’m old enough to say that now!), I remember a “Senior Saint” telling me, “if we agree with everything the pastor says, we’re not listening.” I didn’t understand what she meant. At first, I thought she was criticizing the pastor, which offended me a bit because I loved and trusted our pastor! But as time went on, I realized she wasn’t disparaging or critiquing the pastor but instead applying a truth we find in the Bible.

In Chapter 14 of 1 Corinthians, Paul encourages the believers in Corinth to “weigh carefully what is said.” (1 Cor 14:29). Paul’s advice is not only good instruction for his readers then but for us today. With all the noise in the world, we need to be careful of what we allow our ears to hear!

I remember a pastor telling the congregation that he liked to hear the pages of their Bibles turning when he preached. It communicated to him that they were checking what he said against Scripture. The Bible calls it “testing the Scriptures”. We must listen carefully to what is said and then evaluate it against the truth of the Bible.

The Bereans give us excellent “steps” to emulate to test the Scriptures.

^“As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. ¹¹Now 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. ¹²As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.” Acts 17:10-12

Did you notice the steps?

They received the message with eagerness.
They examined the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul was saying was correct.
Then, they believed in the Scripture, knowing it was true, resulting in their salvation.

The fact that the Bereans were eager to receive the message and their consistency – every day, enabled them to discern if what they were hearing was true. And the Scripture, being alive and active (Hebrews 4:12), pierced their hearts with the truth of salvation.

Many times, we hear what we want to hear. But, we must be careful that what we listen to isn’t “tickling our ears”. Consistently spending time in God’s Word will guard our hearts against the lies of the enemy in this world.

How do you prioritize spending time in God’s Word each day?