Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 320 · November 16
They Checked Him
“These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”
A London printing of the King James Bible in 1631 left the word not out of the seventh commandment. The printers were fined, most of the copies destroyed, and the few that survive are named after the mistake. Somebody had to read the thing closely enough to catch it.
I want to write to you about the town that did. Paul had just come from Thessalonica, where the preaching went well and then a mob assaulted the house of Jason and dragged him to the magistrates, and the brethren moved Paul out by night. He reaches Berea with that behind him and walks into the synagogue anyway.
Then Luke's verdict, which is your verse. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. It takes both halves to earn the compliment. Readiness of mind is the open door. The searching is what happens once he is inside. They are not weighing whether to let him speak; they are checking a man they have already welcomed, against their own scriptures.
What they were checking was no small point of practice. It was whether Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead. And it bought them no protection: the men from Thessalonica came down, stirred up the people there too, and Paul was moved on again.
I am better at being told than at looking, and I would rather be loyal to a teacher than to a text, because loyalty is quicker. Give me both halves. Open the door wide, then hand me the book and make me the sort of person who reads to the end of the sentence. And keep me from calling it discernment when I have simply stopped listening to anybody. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 320 is Desires of the Heart (Psalm 37:4).