Mark 12:24 - Homilies By A.f. Muir

Sorces of heresy.

I. PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF RELIGIOUS ERROR .

1 . I gnorance of Holy Scripture.

2 . Lack of spiritual experience. "Nor the power of God." This ignorance may consist partly in ignorance of the facts of the Divine history of mankind as recorded in Scripture; but it is chiefly due to absence of personal, experimental consciousness of God in the spiritual nature. It is the " darkness of the heart" which exaggerates and intensifies the effects of general ignorance. "The power of God" works its miracles in the inward as well as the outward life; in conversion, sanctification, communion, and providential grace.

II. IN WHOM THESE MAY EXIST . The Sadducees were, according to the standards of their day, educated men. With the letter of the books of Moses they were familiar ( Mark 12:26 ); and they were most careful to preserve them from addition or intermixture.

1 . Highly educated men may err in Divine things. "Thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes" ( Matthew 11:25 ). Secular culture has not furnished an atom of the transcendental knowledge upon which religion is based; the Bible is not its product, nor can it be interpreted by it. Yet is not literature, art, or science to be discarded as a secondary aid to the interpretation of Scripture. If God does not require our knowledge, neither does he, as it has been finely said, require our ignorance.

2 . There are many who know the letter of God ' s Word without knowing its spirit. Religious training may bestow an acquaintance with Scriptural history and doctrine and the chief outlines of moral duty, but it cannot ensure the inward knowledge of the heart. The interpretation of Scripture is only possible to those who are spiritually enlightened. Knowing the Bible externally may actually prove a hindrance to an inward knowledge of it, if it be made too much of, or imagined sufficient in itself. Superficial acquaintance with Biblical literature, doctrine, etc., " puffeth up;" and it requires the sternest and most frequent assaults ere its true character is exposed to itself.

III. HOW THEY ARE TO BE REMOVED .

1 . The teaching of Christ ; awakening a sense of inward need and repentance, and revealing the correspondence of the Word of God to the expanding and maturing spiritual consciousness.

2 . The gift of the Holy Spirit ; which takes of the things of God and reveals them to us. "Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and which entered not into the heart of man, whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him. But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" ( 1 Corinthians 2:9 ). Not least of the enlightening influence of the Holy Ghost is due to the purification of the heart.—M.