How to Listen to Preaching Part 2

Pastor Mike will be speaking on How to Listen to Preaching Part 2. He will be reading out of Acts 17:11-15.

Many have set out to try to discredit the Bible only to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. The evidence is overwhelming that God is true and that He has sent His only begotten Son, that the Word of God is accurate.

Hello this is Pastor Mike Sanders from the Open Door Church where I serve as the senior pastor and today we are honored to be able to host with you the Hope Worth Having radio program. Thank you for tuning in and joining us today we’re going to be in Acts chapter 17 continuing our study how to listen to preaching.

Listening to people is valuable but I want to tell you listening to God has eternal significance but I want you to learn from the Berean believers as we study together. To come and be at the house of the Lord but you know there’s not only a physical preparation there’s a spiritual preparation.

Think about that. I mean you might get ready to go watch a football game make sure you got all the stats and you know who’s the quarterback and you know you don’t want to cheer for the wrong team. I took my boys many years ago to a football game down in West Virginia.

We were the opposite team Oklahoma State against West Virginia and by the end of the game the West Virginia fans had become we were in the student section because I was too cheap to buy a good ticket amen but I was in the student section and they were so drunk that they were cheering for the Oklahoma State Cowboys it was like it was a home game for us.

How wonderful is that? But we were prepared we had everything ready physically we wanted to be ready for this game and I want to tell you that when it comes to being ready to receive God’s Word you need to prepare yourself spiritually and I would say that begins always.

with prayer. It always begins with prayer. Honestly you should be praying for the service throughout the week and especially on Saturday praying that the Lord is putting things together. You wouldn’t believe the kind of things the devil is always trying to do to wreck the service.

It could be sickness, it could be something’s not working, it could be that the computer, the technology crashes, it could be as one lady told me it’s too cold in here pastor and if you don’t get a test okay.

I’m not a heating and air conditioning man. Nothing I can do relating to that doing everything we can but here’s what I want you to understand. Rather than saying hey here’s what I don’t like about this or that, are you praying?

Praying for the pastor, praying for the sermon, praying for those who are coming, who are gonna hear the gospel for the first time, praying that visitors who come and check out the church that they’ll…

a sense of welcome and that they’ll sense a warmth in here, not just physically, amen, but spiritually. But we’re praying that God would speak to our own hearts, that we would be ready to receive God’s word, that we would not have a wallop, that we would not be resistant to what the preacher, the pastor has to say as he opens the word of God to us, but rather that we would be receptive.

So we are praying, we’re praying for someone who needs encouragement. You don’t know what everybody’s walking through in their life and you don’t know what the challenges that people are facing day to day in their life.

And so they come looking for hope, they come looking for help, they come looking for the strength and the blessing and the encouragement that you can find. Listen, for this place, for some people it’s the only place where they find a hug, a smile, a blessing, a word of encouragement.

Some of you are blessed with wonderful homes, wonderful families, and I’m grateful for that, but not everybody has a functional family, right? Not everybody has everything going great. And so I want you to understand, when you start thinking about the big picture, somebody walks in and they’ve just lost a loved one and they’re really struggling, they’re grieving in their hearts and they’re looking.

And that’s why we’re praying, church, as we are praying that we are receiving, but that God is blessing and God is ministering and God is working. How else can I prepare myself? I think confession is important, a part of that.

We don’t like to talk about confession because we think it’s some liturgical thing that we’re not supposed to be doing, but the truth is we are to be confessors. The Bible says if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to do what, church?

And to cleanse us from all of our unrighteousness. And so we’re called to be people who are confessing our sins. We’re grateful that we can confess our sins. Jesus Christ. There’s one mediator between God and man.

We don’t have to go to the pastor, we don’t have to go to a priest, we don’t have to go to any religious figure. We can go straight to the Lord Jesus Christ in our prayer time confessing our sins and maybe there’s something you need to confess.

In my preparation I want to confess to God, Lord is there anything in my heart that I need to bring to your attention? Is there anything any sin that I need to bring to you and confess it to you and agree that it’s wrong in my life?

That’s what it means to confess. It means to agree with God. I’m agreeing with God. A lot of us, we like to argue with God. You know I talk to some people it doesn’t matter. They just always like to argue.

It doesn’t matter. They’ll argue about anything, okay. I can say hey it’s raining out there and they’ll argue with me. They’ll argue with me and that’s just the way it is and you just say okay you do you.

If you want to live your life like that and be arguing mad at the world that’s fine but here’s what we need to understand with God we can’t be like that. You can’t argue with God. You’ve got to agree with God because see, God is, he’s always right.

God is always right. And when he brings it to our attention that there’s sin in our life, we need to confess that. There might be an attitude that we need to change. We’ve had a bad attitude. Maybe God is calling us to change that, confess that to him and make that right.

And so we’re not only called to confess to God, but we’re called to confess to others. It doesn’t mean you have to get up in front of a church service and bear your soul to everybody. What it does mean is that if I’ve hurt you, offended you, and I’m aware of it, I need to make every effort to try to make that right with you.

And that’s what’s the key to growing relationships is to be able to confess our faults one to another. As the scripture says, confess our sins to God. But let me tell you a third way to be prepared is to read your Bible.

The first time you hear God’s word read should not be in our service. It shouldn’t be in Sunday school. It should be your time with the Lord this morning. And I know some of you got out of bed at the last minute, you rolled in here and you just made it and you say, isn’t that good enough, pastor?

Well, I understand and I appreciate that step, but that’s not where I want you to end. I want you to be a next level Christian. I want you to go farther for God. I want you to be stronger for God. And I want you to be that person who rises early and calls upon the name of the Lord in the morning, that person who spends time with God, that person who’s already read the word of God.

And you are just hearing from God all the time through his word and you are ready. You’re coming in here ready to receive God’s word. You say, pastor, why would I need to read the Bible? Let me tell you, the Bible is the only food that can fuel a believer’s growth and faith.

You see, you’ll never be able to be that optimum Christian without the word of God. You have got to be in it. in God’s word, feeding on it, and you have got to spend time in it, and it has got to become a priority in your life.

And let me tell you something about this, this challenge of a habit of reading your Bible. It is a battle you’ll have all your life. You see, all your life. You know why? Because the flesh, the world, the devil, always battling against you and saying, you know, you don’t need the Bible, and you know, that Bible, it’s out of date, or that Bible is good, you got it, you got it all.

But the truth is, we need a daily dose of God’s word in our life, and it helps us that when we come to hear Bible study, we come to hear the teacher, we come to hear the pastor, the preacher, whatever the situation is, we are ready to receive the word of God.

The Bible says they received the word. But I want you to see also that they researched I want you to go back and look in verse 11. It says, not only with all readiness and search the scriptures, how often?

Daily, daily to find out whether these things were so. You see, you thought, man, just coming in, hearing the Bible taught, isn’t that good enough, pastor? Isn’t that good? I mean, don’t I get a pin for that?

Shouldn’t I get some points with God for that? And we’ll see, God is calling us through His grace to not only be receivers of His word, but to be researchers of His word. And the Berean’s response here is powerful because this is an important principle you need to learn as a believer, it is a distinction and a uniqueness of a church like ours.

And that is that as we look in this text and we see, they searched the scriptures. Who searched the scriptures? Again, it wasn’t a pastor who searched the scriptures for them. It wasn’t a priest who searched the scriptures for them.

It was not even any kind of a religious figure or some kind of a Bible scholar, but it was them. They searched, the Bereans searched the scriptures, which is what is often been referred to by Bible scholars as the priesthood of the believer.

What is the uniqueness of our faith in Christ is that we believe that you are a priest and that you can come directly to God and that you can understand the Bible and that you can through the power of the Spirit of God, understand the deep things of God, that you don’t have to have a Bible college degree.

I’m not against that, amen. And you don’t have to have all of this religious training to somehow understand the Bible, but you can understand God’s word. Now, you might find that, well, that’s not too profound, Mike, but I’m telling you, there was a time in the world when people were told that only the priest could read the Bible, and only the priest could understand the Bible, and only the priest could interpret the Bible.

But yet, there came along a generation of mighty people for God, like Martin Luther, and Calvin, and Tyndale, and these great men and women who were willing to understand that God has called us as believers to have a personal relationship with God.

And that’s why I want you to see that, is this research is something that is your responsibility. It is your job to search the Scriptures and to see if what the pastor is saying is true. Isn’t that something?

Because in these times that I was talking to you about, it was considered, you know, only the priest could know and that the priest was never wrong. And yet they started teaching a false doctrine that you had to work your way to heaven.

People didn’t know any better because they were so ignorant to the word that they became, you know, they just became numb to it and they just did whatever they were told and it became religion and it became a ritual.

And they just kind of went through the motions. There was no vitality in their faith. There was no connection with the Lord in their faith. And as a result, people thought they were okay with God. But the truth is they were on the wrong path and that they were not truly believers and they were not truly living for Christ.

So I wanna encourage you to understand that you have this personal responsibility to not only receive the word, but to research the word, to evaluate what is taught in your Sunday school classes and what is taught in your Bible studies, what is taught from the pulpit at the Open Door Church to make sure that that aligns with the word of God.

Jesus said in John five, verse 39, you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life and these are they which testify of me. Jesus was not upset that they searched the scriptures, but that just that they thought because of the Pharisees and their religion, they thought because they were the arbiters of truth and they were the only ones who knew the truth that that would give them eternal life.

But what he’s saying is that when you open the scriptures and search it, what you’ll find is that the Bible from Genesis to Revelation teaches us about the person, the nature and the work of our Lord and savior, Jesus.

Can God’s people say amen? then. You want to know Christ? You want to know God? You do not have to stay up all night eating pizza and drinking root beer and look on a billboard sign to see Jesus. All you got to do is open your Bible and Jesus is revealed to you.

From Genesis to Revelation, I want to encourage you to be people who are evaluating the Scriptures, who are searching the Scriptures, and so we see that they were passionate about it. They were diligent about it.

They were dedicated. It wasn’t just a casual, hey, we’ll get to the Bible around Christmas time or we’ll get to the Bible when, you know, things slow down, when we don’t have sports and we don’t have dance and we don’t have ballerina and we don’t have drama and we don’t have all these other things.

And I’m not against any of those things, okay? I don’t want you to be upset, but let me tell you something. God. needs to be number one in your life. And if you neglect His word, what you’re gonna find is it’s gonna impact your family in a very negative way.

What you see here is the Bible says they search the scriptures daily, every day. In our day when the Bible is always being attacked or people are trying to undercut it or discredit it, it is more important than ever that you be a daily consumer of the word of God.

And that you understand that the Bible says faith comes by hearing and hearing the word of God. That is not only as you are in the word reading it, as you are searching it, as you are researching it, as you are validating what is true, that you are hearing God’s word, your hearing is truth, and that is affirming your faith, that is sustaining your faith.

The reason that many believers, hear me, are vulnerable to the attacks of the devil. And the Bible tells us to put on the full armor of God every day, why? Because we know there are fiery darts out there that He’s firing off to us.

He’s trying to discourage you. The number one tool of the devil, listen, is discouragement. He wants to discourage you in your faith. He wants to discourage you in your walk with Christ. He wants you to give up, quit, and just walk away.

That’s what He wants you to do. And that’s why it’s so important to be in the house of Lord, be around God’s people, to be encouraged, because we just need that blessing of being encouraged. But let me tell you something.

What is the key? How does Pastor Mike stay encouraged? Let me tell you, by the shield of faith. How is my shield of faith? It is sustained and strengthened by my intake of God’s word. Because the Bible says, put on the armor of God, use that shield of faith to hold off on those fiery darts.

and how is this faith built? How is it strengthened? How is it able to resist the discouragement, the diseases of the world, and all the things that might try to drag you down? It is God’s word. I don’t have to really, really be magical about it.

I don’t have to have anything profound. It’s just the old-fashioned, get into the word of God, read it every day, study it, let God’s word be coming into me, and then research the scriptures. They were passionate about it every day.

I want you to see that they had a plan in their searching. It’s not that they were half-hazard. It’s not that they were just like, hey, we’re gonna just kinda throw this together. Now, you gotta understand, in this time, as the Bible says that the Bereans there in verse 11, that they were searching the scriptures daily.

Now, they didn’t have a mass printing machine like we do today that can just print these Bibles out. They didn’t have 10 Bibles on their shelf, and they didn’t have a device to pull up different passages of scriptures like we do today.

In order for the Bereans to search the scriptures daily, they had to, A, get out of bed. How about that one? They had to get out of bed. They had to get ready, and they had to go to the synagogue. The only copy of God’s Word was in the synagogue.

They had to convince their rabbi that they needed to look into the Bible, and they had to research what the apostle was saying. He was throwing some things out there that was stunning them and shocking them, and so they wanted to see if what he had to say was true, and so they had to have a plan.

Now, God’s not asking you to come to the open-door church every day. You’re welcome. You’re welcome, okay? But I want you to know that you got a Bible wherever you’re at. You and I live in a time where we are inundated with scriptures.

It’s all around us, but yet we are the one generation that least accesses the Word of God. The problem is not information. The problem is that there isn’t enough of God’s Word. The problem is that God’s people won’t put a plan together to be in the Word of God.

You have a plan. You’re all excited. New year, new resolutions, new commitment. I’m gonna read the Bible. You wake up one day and you don’t feel like doing it. You let your feelings determine your choices, and that’s what’s reckoned some of you, is you’re letting your feelings determine your choices in life.

And I’ve told you time and time again, people, that I don’t always feel like a Christian. And I know that’s stunning to you. But I’ll tell you something even more maybe amazing to you. I don’t always feel like a pastor.

But I choose to do the right thing and the honorable thing, even if I don’t feel like it. You don’t always have to believe everything you think and everything you feel, because everything you think and feel is not always true.

That might surprise you, but it’s true. You power through it. You make a choice. You build good habits, which become good character in your life. And you read your Bible. You do the right thing. You are researching the scriptures in your heart because you know you have a plan and you’re gonna be in God’s word and you’re gonna be verifying what did the pastor say.

Now let me say something about this plan. You hear the sermon. You guys are gonna walk away today and I’m gonna ask you, what did you learn today? and you’re gonna say, I don’t know, I forgot. What was it that you were teaching on, pastor?

Might be because some of you are fiddling on your phone and you’re getting your Christmas shopping done. Others, you may be bearing a burden and you’re just so distracted about that burden, you’re not even thinking about what the pastor’s saying.

Others of you, you may be tired. You’re on a lot of medicine and it has an effect on you and I understand. Let me tell you something, that you need to have a plan that causes you to think about this message in Acts 17, about these Berean believers.

Search it daily and see if what the pastor says is true. I would love for you to come back and prove to me that it’s wrong to search the scriptures daily. I would love for you to come convince me that.

Now you gotta back it up with the Bible. You can’t back it up with your emotions and you can’t back it up with your feelings and you can’t back it up of the famous actor that you’re quoting, okay? I gotta have the word of God.

My faith is built on the word of God, amen? And so I wanna encourage you to do that. So be in God’s word, be thinking about it, have a plan because that’s what they did. Everything that Paul taught in the synagogue, they were researching it every day.

They were looking at what it was saying and so I want you to see that and then I want you to see the confirmation of their research and that is that the Bible says they wanna see whether those things were so.

Those things were so. Now look church, it’s hard sometimes and I know and I feel for you, okay? It’s hard sometimes to distinguish between what is God’s truth and what is the preference of a preacher or a teacher of the Bible.

Do you understand that? And many of you have said, well how come you don’t teach what so and so used to teach? And I said, well number one, they don’t even teach that anymore. Number two, it’s not in the Bible.

Now, when I came to the Open Door Church, there were different people who always want to tell me what I should be preaching on. They love to have a list for me. Why aren’t you preaching on these things?

Here’s what I told them. I said, listen, I don’t know, maybe the pulpit committee didn’t hear me quite right, but this is how Pastor Mike teaches. He opens the Bible, he gets into a book of the Bible, and he teaches the verses in that book of the Bible.

If the Bible draws the line, I’ll draw the line. If the Bible doesn’t draw the line, I don’t draw the line. I have a lot of opinions. I want you to know that I do not lack in opinions, okay? But I don’t feel like my opinions belong in the pulpit.

Are you with me? I want to teach you the principles. Like, how many times have you guys had to endure me telling you how awesome the Dallas Cowboys are? Right, it’s about all you can take, all right?

And I’m sure some people said, I’ve had it. If I hear one more thing about the Dallas Cowboys, then I am not coming back to that church. And this is it, this has been the straw that breaks the camel’s back for you this morning.

But here I want you to know that there’s opinions and then there are principles that are drawn out of the word of God. And that’s what I wanna challenge you is that when you’re searching to see if those things are so that you distinguish what is a preference and what is a principle, what is in the Bible, you are measured not by the preferences of the teacher and the preferences of the preacher, you are measured by God’s holy word.

God will hold you accountable to his word, okay? And so that’s where you gotta distinguish it. Now we thank God for those who teach the Bible and preach the Bible, and we know that they have their preferences, okay?

And but you gotta be wise enough, discerning enough to know that distinction and not let that get you off track emotionally and spiritually in your life. Final point, I gotta let you go. That is that they responded.

I want you to again look at verse 12. Therefore, as a result of, that’s what he’s trying to tell us that having done all this receiving, all this researching, the result was that many of them believed, many of them believed, they responded.

Luke is careful to help us see the connection between the research of the Bereans and the response of faith by the Bereans. The more that you study the word of God, I promise you will not be disappointed and what you will come out with is faith in the Lord.

Many have set out to try to discredit the Bible. Many have set out to try to prove the Bible is inaccurate or that it’s contradicting only to come to know. the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior.

The evidence is overwhelming that God is true and that he has sent his only begotten son, that the word of God is accurate and that the word of God is true. So I wanna challenge you to see the response.

When we hear God’s word taught, it’s not enough that we say, that was a nice sermon, but rather we need to ask ourself the question, how can I put this in to practice? How can I practice? Because you don’t just hear the word, you must do it.

The scriptures teach us to be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. How many times have I talked to people in the community? They can quote Bible verses, plethora of Bible verses to me, but they’re choices in life.

are destroying them and their families. You see, it’s not enough to just know and hear. You got to obey God’s word. You got to respond. And that’s why every service, what we do is we offer to you the opportunity to respond to God’s word.

You see, the church is a fellowship where the Bible is loved. The church is a fellowship where the Bible is read. The church is a fellowship where the Bible is studied and the church is a fellowship of believers where the Bible is obeyed.

I have literally had Christians tell me, I don’t care what the Bible says. And that’s so sad. People who claim the name of Jesus, and yet at the same time, they don’t care what the Bible says. And friends, you just got to make a decision today.

In the end, the question is, will you submit to God’s word like the Bereans did? Or will you disobey it and rebel against? That’s the bottom line. That’s the bottom line. And this morning, I want to challenge you to think about your response to God’s word, not just today, but every day of your life.

Let’s pray together. Let’s pray together. Let’s pray together. Listening to people is valuable. However, listening to God has eternal significance in our life. Jesus said, therefore, take heed how you hear.

It’s very important for us to receive the word of God in a way that is honoring to him. And how we listen to the teaching of the word of God is important in our life. own spiritual lives. So what we’ve been sharing with you these last couple weeks has been to kind of help us to be better listeners of the Word and to be able to be very much like the Bereans and follow their example of how to listen to the Bible being taught to us.

And I hope it’s been a blessing. It’ll be an encouragement to your life. We just want to remind you if you’d like a copy of today’s message, you know, in the old days we’d send a CD, but now we just encourage you to go to our YouTube channel and you can see this message.

Just type in the message title, how to listen, and that will be there. It’ll come up and you’ll be able to listen to an entirety. And I know it’ll be an encouragement to you. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.