AP

Mark 11:17-18  And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’?  But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”  The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

How important it is that God’s people in every age keep the inspired Scriptures open before them and remain under their supreme authority in all things.

What the religious hierarchy were really frightened about as Jesus moved and taught among the people was the way he was able to use their own Scriptures to expose how they were actually doing the very things that these Scriptures were warning against.  Jeremiah 7:9-11 provides a clear instance of such blatant failure to conform to God’s Word: “Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, ‘We are safe’ – safe to do all these detestable things?  Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD.”

Here, they had written in this part of the four Major Prophets, a very important division of their ‘sacred’ Scriptures, words that condemned their established Temple practices.  The ‘establishment’ at that time was threatened by the truths expressed by this courageous, faithful Prophet, Jeremiah, and so they tried to kill him.  Now Jesus faced the same ferocious opposition.  And perhaps the biggest threat in both cases was that the common people, who had been manipulated into submission by arrogant enforced power structures, could readily see the hypocrisy when it was exposed.  The power-brokers’ main strategy was always to keep the common people, as far as posible, in ignorance of God’s Word.

At various times throughout Church history, ‘Jeremiahs’ have arisen to get the Scriptures into the hands of the common people in a language they could undertstand, and many have given their lives, being burnt at the stake, for attempting to do so.  It is not surprising that all the Reformed Creeds, like the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Belgic Confession, the 1689 Baptist Confession, the 39 Articles of the Church of England, etc, all devote their opening chapter to emphasising the Supreme Authority of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.  And those churches, which have deliberately and persistently adhered to this position, have been more effective in resisting the subtile infiltration of harmful heresies

 Let us continue to ensure that the Scriptures remain our ‘Sure Foundation’ of everything we do; and let us always follow the example of the Bereans who “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what [was being] said was true (Acts 17:11b).

– Bruce Christian