Articles
Am I a Good Hearer?
We sometimes ask if a preacher is a good speaker. Let’s reverse that and ask ourselves, Am I a good hearer?
The Bereans were. “Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).
The Bereans teach us two things good hearers are not.
First, good hearers are not prejudiced. Some people decide what they believe before ever opening the Bible. Some are so wedded to what they have been taught that they will not even consider the possibility it might be wrong. Some start with what they want to do, then formulate their view of various passages to make them justify that conduct. Jesus accused His generation of closing their eyes and hearts to the truth (Matthew 13:15). Might He say that about me?
Second, good hearers are not gullible. Paul came to Berea preaching that the Scriptures predicted a suffering Messiah, and that Messiah is Jesus. That was a new concept to most. The Bereans, while open-minded enough to consider the possibility, were not so gullible as to just accept anything from a persuasive speaker. They wanted to verify Paul’s assertions by reading the Scriptures for themselves. They did what Paul urged us all to do: “Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid every kind of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22, NIV).
The Bereans also teach us two things good hearers are.
First, good hearers are zealous. Do we appreciate what was involved in their “examining the Scriptures”? Few if any of them had their own Bible. They would have used the synagogue copy. It was a large, cumbersome set of scrolls. It was not divided into chapters and verses as our Bibles are, so finding specific references would have been an arduous task. And they had no concordance or Bible dictionary. The fact that they continued such studies day after day reflects their zeal to know the truth. What about us, with our myriad of Bible study tools? Do we have their zeal?
Second, good hearers are doers. V. 12 says, “Therefore many of them believed. . .” Good hearers take the message to heart. They apply it to themselves. They act on it, putting it into practice daily.
Resolve this year to be a Berean, a good hearer.
