The word is living and active

Hebrews 4:12
“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

Explanation and Commentary on Hebrews 4:22

The Word is a mysterious and powerful force. It refers to the will of God (Gal 1:4), the truth of God (Jn 17:17), the good news of Jesus Christ (1 Pt 1:25), the decrees of God (Jer 22:29), the Holy Scriptures (Mt 15:6), and the Son of God (Jn 1:14). The Word is eternal.

It has been said that if we read the written Word with faith, then it begins to read us. Nothing is hidden from God. Nothing about our own motives, our own desires, our own hearts, is hidden from the Word of God, though it is hidden from ourselves. God is alive and active, so his Word is alive and active. Our hearts are laid bare before his Word, his Truth, and his understanding.

Breaking Down the Key Parts of Hebrews 4:12

#1 “For…”
The author has been explaining that the Israelites were saved out of slavery in Egypt and promised a great “rest” in the Promised Land as God’s children. But they did not enter that rest because of their unbelief. They fell away and perished without the promise having been fulfilled. Therefore, because the Word is living and active, the promise still stands, as does the warning.

#2 “…the word of God…”
Christ is the Word made flesh. The Bible is the Word written. This case of usage refers to the revealed will of God, and the message to his people to persevere to the end. It is part of the grace of God for the eternal security of the true Christian that we would be admonished not to fall away as part of his plan to keep us from falling away. By his Spirit and his warnings, the true believer will do what the Israelites had been unable to do and enter into his eternal rest.

#3 “…is alive and active.”
“Today, if you hear his voice,” (Heb 3:8). Today is still today because the Word is for every day. It is alive. It moves and breathes. It never changes, but the specific application and the audience change with each passing moment.

#4 “Sharper than any double-edged sword,”
Christ appears in Revelation with a two-edged sword from his mouth (Rev 1:16). Sometimes a double-edged sword refers figuratively to something with a positive and a negative consequence. Perhaps the meaning is the same here, but in any case, a double-edged sword is more effective at laying open the heart to expose what is in it.

#5 “it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
The Word will read you through and through. It is both powerful and rare for someone to truly know themselves. The Word will show you who are really are, your thoughts and what’s behind them, along with your heart attitudes and postures. Christians don’t grow when they don’t want to know themselves. Allow the Word to penetrate into your soul and let God in.

Hit the play button below to get a full explanation of Hebrews 4:12.

This incredible 8-minute video below will make you an expert on the book of Hebrews.

Biblical Translations of Hebrews 4:12

NIV
For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

NLT
For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.

ESV
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

KJV
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

NKJV
 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

The Secrets of Swordmaking

I am so excited to preach this message. I said that last week didn’t I? I just am. I just feel blessed to the core of my being, for the privilege of unfolding the Word of God before you week after week. And I celebrate today that the topic is the Word of God itself, for I love the Bible, and I love everything that it says.

Throughout history, no technology was so carefully developed and guarded, protected as that of swordmaking. The sword itself, the most powerful weapon in the world before the advent of gunpowder. And thus, it became a symbol both of military conquest and of the governmental power that followed it. To live by the sword, or to die by the sword, meant to live or die by that military conquest. David said, «The sword devours one, as well as another,» referring to the power of the sword to take life. Swords are mentioned over 400 times in the Bible.

The merest mention of the word sword conjures up in our hearts, our memories, the thoughts of heroic courageous figures or terrifying figures from history, the Roman gladiators, the Roman legions who carried that short stabbing sword. English Knights. King Arthur who pulled Excalibur out of the rock, as you remember. Or the terrifying power of the Viking warriors. Or the stealth of Japanese ninjas, the sword.

When I was a missionary in Japan, I was fascinated by the katana. The legendary Samurai sword that was forged with astonishing precision by ancient technologies. If you looked at the edge of one of these exquisite swords, you could see them on display in museums. They had an interesting kind of ripple quality to them. You know, smooth as silk, smooth as glass, but still, you can see these ripples within the crystal structure of the actual steel. And that’s because they use two different kinds of steel and they sandwich them one after the other, and pounded them down under the heat of the forge. They use high carbon steel which is exceptionally hard and could be honed to a razor-sharp edge, but was very brittle and it just won’t do in the middle of a battle to have your sword snap in half. And so, they would put in then a layer of low carbon steel, which was softer, more malleable, which absorbed the blow and could give the sword a kind of a toughness and through secret technologies were able to make these remarkable swords, a katana.It took centuries for the Japanese blacksmiths to develop this art and they guarded the secrets of it very closely and then stories, a kind of mythology, grew up around the katana, around this special Samurai sword, specifically of two individuals, one named Masamune and the other Muramasa, two men who actually lived at different times from each other, but no matter for the myth or the legend. The legendary contest that occurred between them had the elder Samurai blacksmith, Masamune, as the mentor and trainer to the younger Muramasa. Masamune’s swords are regarded as the most beautifully crafted, most skillfully katana ever made. Surviving swords are priceless national treasures. By contrast, Muramasa’s swords were regarded as violent, brutish and evil. The swords of Masamune considered to be deeply spiritual, pure, and benevolent. In the legend, Muramasa was Masamune’s student. The student became arrogant and at some point challenged his master to see who can make the finer sword.

To test the swords, each sword was held into the current of a mountain stream. And the student Muramasa’s sword was so perfectly sharp, honed to a razor sharp edge, it was said to have cut a leaf in half that floated down the stream and just met the edge of its blade. But the Master Masamune’s sword did not cut a thing. When the leaves would get near to its edge, it would miraculously avoid the sword and float around it, showing that the sword somehow possessed a benevolent power that it would harm nothing that was innocent or undeserving a punishment.

The Cutting of the God’s Word

Friends, that’s just a legend, it never happened. But I say to you in the passage that we read of today, you just heard read, we hear of a more perfect sword, sharper, more penetrating and more pure, more spiritual than any of these legends can describe. As a matter of fact, this sword is actually said to be alive even better than the Samurai legend, the sword only ever cuts in order to heal, it only ever cuts in order to bring life, it cuts in order to engraft faith, it cuts in order to surgically remove the tumors of sin. The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to the dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything’s uncovered and laid bare, before the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account. Every time you pick up a Bible, you’re holding in your hands a miracle, a living miracle spiritually alive. Only the power of Almighty God can explain the existence and the potency of this book. Over the centuries, God forged this sword in the furnace of human history, on the anvil of human experience and hearts. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we have this Scripture.

Now why does the author celebrate the Word of God here in Hebrews 4? What is the context of this celebration of the living and active Word of God? Why here? Well, remember the overall context of the Book of Hebrews, the author to the Hebrews is deeply concerned about a congregation of Jewish people who had made an outward profession of faith in Christ, but who under the pressure of persecution were waffling in their commitment to Christ. Their commitment to Christ outwardly seemed to be decaying. Some of them weren’t attending church anymore, they were afraid to do so. And so they were in a decaying orbit with Christ, and so he writes this letter of warning, this letter of exhortation to stimulate and strengthen them in their faith so that they will not fall away.

And for the last two chapters in Hebrews, Hebrews 3 and 4, he has been marvelously meditating on just five verses in the Old Testament, Psalm 95. He’s just ruminating very deeply on phase after phrase of Psalm 95. And he’s taking the spiritual lessons of that Psalm from the Old Covenant, and moving them over to New Testament, New Covenant believers like you and me, and applying those lessons to our spiritual situation to our condition. He’s taking Psalm 95 and bringing it over. «Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts» as that generation did when they refused to enter the promised land. And so it says, «I declared on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest.» So, the author has meditated powerfully on some key words like the concept of today as long as it is called today, today is the day we have to believe Christ. Today’s the day we have to take in the Word of God to live for Jesus. We have today. It’s all we’ll ever have.

So, he’s meditated on this idea of today or he’s talked about God’s rest. «I swore an oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest.» What is God’s rest? We found last week very clearly that it’s the Sabbath rest, of eternity in God’s presence, in heaven. And the danger then, of a hardening of a heart. «Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.» And so he’s warned them about the danger of a hardening heart and the only remedy there can be to the deceitfulness of sin that comes and hardens our heart is this, the living and active Word of God. It’s the only remedy.

And so he’s wielding this sharp double-edged sword. He’s been wielding it now for these two chapters, he’s been wielding it really from the very beginning, The Book of Hebrews is saturated in Old Testament quotations, saturated in the Word of God, but I think he’s really specifically saying, «Look at all that Psalm 95 can do in your life.» And it’s just five verses of the Old Testament. Oh, the beauty of the Scripture, the power of it, how it can be unleashed in your life. So he’s talking about it, that’s the context. And so what does he say? What does he say about the searching qualities of the Word of God?

I. The Searching Qualities of the Word of God

Well, look again at verse 12, «The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow.»

The Word of God is Living – It Imparts Life

First he says that it’s living. The Scripture is living. The Word of God as a living thing. It’s alive in some mysterious way, it is a mystery, this life of the Scripture, it’s a mysterious thing, but it is alive. These are living words. JI Packer, the Puritan scholar, speaking of Richard Baxter’s ‘Reformed Pastor’ said this, «Its words have hands and feet. They climb all over you, they work their way into your heart and conscience and will not be dislodged.» Well, dear friends, if that is true of Richard Baxter’s uninspired book, ‘Reformed Pastor,’ how much infinitely more is that true of the Word of God?

It has hands and feet and it climbs into your heart. These words are living things, they run into your brain through your eyes as you read and your ears as you hear. They find their way quickly through your spiritual bloodstream, into the vital organs of your spiritual experience, and they settle in there, they are alive, they begin to multiply their effects on you, they send off related thoughts and implications, they challenge an ever widening circle of issues in your heart and mind. They’re multiplying, replicating, they’re moving and churning, they’re running roughshod over every objection you may have. They take your whole way of viewing everything in the world captive and transform it and make it like God’s.

The Bible is living and it’s also life-giving, Basic principle and biology is life comes from life. If any biologist anywhere in the world is studying looking through a microscope at a living cell, plant or animal, that biologist knows one thing, that living cell came from something living. If something is alive, something living gave it birth. So also dear friends, if you are alive spiritually, it is the living Word of God that gave you life. That’s where you got it from. Life comes from life, so the Word of God is living. We were spiritually dead, and now we are alive forever more.

It says in Ephesians 2:1 1, «But as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live.» You were the living dead. You were biologically alive, but you were spiritually dead. But in Ephesians 2:5, it says God «made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved…» and God used as an instrument of that spiritual life-giving, that spiritual resurrection of you, the Word of God, the Word of the Gospel. Jesus said in John 5:24, «I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has eternal life and will not be condemned, he’s crossed over from death to life.» So the Word has power to give life to the dead.

You remember that story in 2 Kings 13, where some dead person was being buried and it was a time of turbulence, military turbulence, as frequently happened in Israel’s history, some raiders rode into that town and so the people in the middle of the funeral hurriedly took that dead body and threw it into Elisha’s tomb where his bones were and suddenly that dead person sprang to life. That really happened. But it’s also a kind of a living parable. If Elisha’s bones can give life to a dead corpse, how much more can the living and enduring Word of God give life to a spiritual soul. Just spring to life when you hear the Gospel. We live on a living planet, don’t we? This green, glowing, pulsating, alive, Emerald-like thing, just in the middle of blackness of space. Where does all that green come from, all those plants? Well, they come from seeds. Where do the seeds come from? They come from plants, and on and on. Read about it in Genesis 1.

But the most remotest piece of land on earth is an island in the South Atlantic called Tristan da Cunha in the South Atlantic. It’s 1509 miles from the nearest landmass, which is also another tiny little island in the South Atlantic, St. Helena, where Napoleon was exiled because it was so distant itself from every other landmass. It is just like half the continent of North America away from any land, and yet it’s just covered with lush green vegetation. How in the world did that happen? So, biologists study this, and they wonder how the seeds got there to begin with. Well, I have no idea. Maybe they were carried there on wind currents. Maybe they were lodged in logs that floated from South America or from Africa, I don’t really know. Maybe they were in the intestines of birds that ate some plant and then died, flew there and died and then the plant sprang to life. People have different theories, but it doesn’t matter how distant or how far life can get there, how much more than to the distant shores does the gospel go with life in Jesus’ name?

And it doesn’t matter how old it is either. I was reading recently about an archaeologist that found some old wheat seeds in the burial shrouds of a mummy from Egypt, he decided to plant them and he got wheat out of them. They were 3000 years old. But apparently no water had ever touched them and so they were vital, they were ready to go. In the 16th century, there was a copy of the Scriptures in some old Augustinian cloister, Martin Luther blows the dust off the pages, reads and comes to life spiritually, and the Reformation just jumps up out of that.

It doesn’t matter how old the Bible is, it is still vital, still alive. Bible also has power to revive you spiritually, to renew you, to give you new life in your walk with Jesus. As it says in Psalm 23, «He restores my soul.» Or in Isaiah 40, «Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on wings as eagles, they’ll run and not be weary, they’ll walk and not be faint.» All of that gets ministered to you through the Bible. That’s how it comes, the Scripture comes and gives you life.

Have you ever heard it said of a great teacher, a preacher, «That individual makes the Bible come alive»? I hate that expression. The Bible is already alive. We are the ones with the problem. No, a skillful teacher is using the Bible to make you come alive. The Bible’s forever young, it’s forever ancient. It will never lose its youthful vitality or its ancient wisdom and experience. It’s never gonna get old and feeble, or decrepit. It cannot become out of date and uncool or is the word «vintage.» The Bible is never gonna be vintage, dear friends. The Bible is alive and active today. It’s younger than you are, and it’s older than you are. It doesn’t matter how old you are, how young you are. It’s vital, it’s strong.

And also beautifully, the Bible cannot be killed, though many have tried to do it. You just can’t kill it. The Roman Empire sought to do it, they couldn’t do it. The barbarian Dark Ages that spread over Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire couldn’t do it. Vikings and all their depredations on the monasteries, they didn’t care about the Word of God at all, so they sacked the monasteries, because there is no one there that could fight them, or would fight them. And they burned all these worthless scrolls, and took the gold and silver they found, and off they went. About 150 years later, they’re converted to Christianity. That’s what happens with the Vikings.

You can’t destroy the Word of God. You can burn some copies of it. You can burn some scrolls. Many have done that. The Medieval Roman Catholic church burned Luther’s German translation of the Bible, they burned the Bible, because it was in the vernacular, but still it lives. The enlightenment’s mockery under Voltaire couldn’t stop it. The enlightenment philosophy under Immanuel Kant couldn’t destroy it. It’s still here. And the murderous and totalitarian regimes of the 20th century Nazism and Communism, they tried to destroy it. Nazism is dead and gone, communism is going to join it soon, but the Bible still stands and it will stand forever.

Persecution can’t kill the Bible, neither can worldliness. Our worldliness will not kill the Bible. It may kill us but it’s not gonna kill the Bible. Doctrinal error can’t kill the Bible, lazy neglect of its teachings cannot kill the Bible, nor slanderous misrepresentations of its teachings, that cannot kill it, nor unbelief by whole regions and generations of people, that cannot kill it either, it still lives. Charles Spurgeon put it this way, «The gospel is such a living gospel that were it cut into a thousand shreds, every particle of it would spring to life and grow. If it were buried beneath a thousand avalanches of error, it would shake off the rubble and rise from its grave. If it were cast into the midst of a fire, it would simply walk through the flame, as it has done many a time as if it were in its native element.» So, the Bible is living.

The Word of God is Active

Secondly, the Bible is active. And now, you’re wondering how long this sermon is going to be. Now you’re wondering, Okay, we’re only on the second descriptor. Well, don’t worry, Eric already said you’re going to get out before the Super Bowl, right? When is that? 6 O’clock, 7 O’clock. Worry not, dear friends.

The Bible is active, the Word of God is living and active. What does it mean active? Another translation, would be powerful or perhaps energetic. I take it to mean effective. The Bible is effective, it’s able to produce the effect it desires. When drug manufacturers want to test the effectiveness of a drug, they have to remove any questions about what’s called a psychosomatic effect. In other words, people who take pills and medication think they’re going to get better and that helps them to get better. So in order to test that they come up with things called placebos; they have the same shape and size and color of the other pill and they do tests. The placebo however is studied because it has absolutely no chemical effect on the body at all, at least in the areas that they’re trying to study. So, it just removes that at all, and then they can compare.

Let me tell you something, the Bible is no placebo. It is effective, it’s an effective agent, it steps in and does what God sends it to do, every time. And the clear testimony of this, Isaiah 55:10-11, «As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth, it will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.» God sends forth His word and it comes back to Him having done the job.

By the way, in that passage, Isaiah 55, I discovered this morning. I hadn’t thought it through. The Word of God is compared to rain there, precipitation. In other places, it’s compared to the seed, so the Word of God is everything, it’s the rain that comes down, it’s the seed that it receives. God’s all over the whole process. The Word of God produces an unmistakable effect and God said, «Let there be light and there was light.» Genesis 1:3, or in Genesis 1:9, «And God said, Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear, and it was so.» The Word of God produces the effects specifically on human hearts spiritually, for the elect, those chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. The word brings them to life, and sustains them in life until they are glorified in the presence of God.

For the non-elect, they are hardened and offended by the Word. They are confirmed in sin and in patterns. They are given over to their sin, as it says in Romans chapter 1, by the same Word. And so it says in 2 Corinthians 2:15-16, «For we are to God, the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and to those who are perishing, to the one the smell of death and to the other we are the fragrance of life.»

Now, preachers need to trust wholly in the Bible to transform the church. Put your trust here. Anyone who wants to see a church transform, they must put their trust in the Word and not in some technique or gimmick coming from a Christian book store that you can buy for $39.99 and you get out of a box. Reformation of a church doesn’t come out of a box, it comes out of the Scripture. Spurgeon says this to his fellow pastors, «You may study your sermon, my brother, and you may be a great rhetorician, you may be able to deliver it with wonderful fluency and force, but the only power that is effectual for the highest design of preaching is the power which does not lie in your word nor in my word, but in the Word of God.» Have you never noticed when persons are converted that they almost always attribute it to some text that was quoted in the sermon? It is God’s word and not our comment on God’s Word, which saves souls.

So, what effect does the Word of God produce? Well, it releases those that are held captive to sin, it unlocks the doors of hearts and the prison cell of unbelief, and lets the captive go free into a free life of Jesus. It unlocks the doors of depression and discouragement and sets the captive free into lives of joyful selfless service to the Savior. It convicts sinful twisted hearts of deep patterns of selfishness, it reveals hidden lusts and the cliff edges of materialism and other things in the heart to keep that soul walking in Jesus, that’s what the Scripture can do. And all servants of Christ, pastors or not, it doesn’t matter, should put their full trust in the Word of God because the Word of God alone is effective.

The Word of God is Sharp

Thirdly, the Word of God is sharp, sharp. It says sharper than any double-edged sword, the sharpness of the Word of God. Its ability to divide and render asunder things that ordinarily would be together, that’s what’s discussed here. What is a double-edged sword? Literally, the Greek is two-mouthed sword, one that cuts both ways, two sharp edges, two honed edges. No dull side. Friends, there are no dull passages in the Bible. There are only dull minds as we come to those passages.

Spurgeon was relating a story of a man who was just reading a Sunday school lesson, just reading the Sunday School lesson. And he came to that genealogy in Genesis 5, which goes from Adam to Noah. And it’s just this kind of rhythmic so-and-so lived so many years after the birth of so and so, and they had other sons and daughters, and then he died, and then he died, and then he died and then he died, and then he died, and the man was converted because he was considering his own death. He was cut to the heart by that passage because it has piercing, it has cutting abilities. The Word is sharp. It is sharp and it cuts both ways. A preacher unleashing the powerful convicting word of the Bible ought to see, does see, if he’s a godly man, that it’s cutting both ways. It’s not just the people that are being cut, but it’s the preacher as well. He stands under the convicting, converting, the transforming power of the Word, because he is having those same things happening in his life.

And I was meditating on this cutting because there’s a Greek word that relates to the cutting. It made me think of another passage of Scripture, 2 Timothy 2:15, which says, Paul’s talking to Timothy, a young pastor. He says «Study to show yourselves approved unto God, a workman who doesn’t need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth.» Orthotomeo is a Greek word, rightly cutting it, cutting it right. So I thought, Now this is strange. In Hebrews, it talks about how the word is sharp, but then in 2 Timothy, it’s that he’s to cut the word straight.

So I was meditating on this and I came up with my onion illustration. About two or three months ago, I was making spaghetti with fresh onions, big white onions from the produce section. And I got a sharp knife and I sliced right through the center of that onion, and opened it up, and I was weeping within 30 seconds. I was just weeping as the pungent chemicals just oozed and flowed up into my face. And so I think that’s how these two relate. A skillful pastor cuts open the Scripture so it can cut you open, just unfolds the Word of God so that you are cut open before it and brought to tears over sin, brought to conviction and brought to joy over what Jesus has done at the cross. And so the Word of God does have power to hurt you and it also has power to heal you from that hurt. He wounds, and then he binds up the wounds, and he does it by the Word.

Take someone with a malignant tumor growing up inside their body, strangely, the body is supporting and nourishing that malignant tumor with blood vessels, feeding that tumor with blood vessels. The surgeon comes in with a scalpel and cut those blood vessels and there is bleeding. But the intention is healing because that tumor will kill you. And so the Word of God is sharp to heal you from sin.

The Word of God is Penetrating

And it’s also penetrating. The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates to the dividing of soul and spirit, joints and marrow. So it’s not just a slashing kind of thing, but a piercing kind of thing. There’s a sense of piercing. Well, what’s being pierced? Our hardened hearts. That’s what’s being pierced.

It says in Hebrews 3:12-13, «See to it brothers that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.» Sin is deceitful. And the effect is a hardening of the heart. The Word of God has a remedy, it pierces the hardness that sin has produced. As in the days of Peter’s sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2:37. When the people heard his sermon, it says, «They were cut to the heart,» they were pierced in their hearts, «and they said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?'» «Repent and believe in Jesus» is the answer. But because they were pierced. The Word of God can pierce like a rapier point.

One of my favorite stories from church history concerns George Whitefield, he was a powerful preacher of the Word of God, very dramatic but very biblical, very God-centered. He was an expository preacher but very passionate and dramatic in his presentation. He’s just going verse by verse and going through this and unleashing the power of the Word of God. And the Great Awakening, just by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Great Awakening was just pouring down as this man and others preached this Word. However, everywhere Whitefield went, he stimulated tremendous opposition, people hated him, and opposed him. Some would blow trumpets in his ear while he’s up on the stand preaching, others would throw dead cats at him or worse. He had enemies, and as he was doing it in one particular ministry in Bristol, England, he had stimulated some specific opposition.

Now, George Whitefield had a defect with his body. His eyes were constantly crossed. He had crossed-eye like that, and so those that sought to mock him called him Dr. Squintum. And so he had these squinty kind of crossed eyes, and there was this one particular group of young men who made it their business to mock Whitefield everywhere he went. They organized themselves in something called the Hell-Fire Club and there was a particular man named Thorpe, who was kind of the ring leader of the Hell-Fire Club, and they just kind of mocked him wherever he went in Bristol, England. And apparently, Thorpe was very good at doing impressions, he was good at it, and he had all of Whitefield’s mannerisms and gestures down pat. So he went with his buddies, the Hell-Fire Club, to a certain pub like a bar and he got a copy of one of Whitefield’s printed sermons, and he has the copy in his hand, gets up on the table and starts to mock Whitefield by preaching one of Whitefield’s sermons. Ten minutes into it, he is converted by the power of what he’s mocking.

He just sinks down on his knees in tears and begs Jesus to forgive him, forgive. This piercing power of the Word of God, and then he became himself a preacher of the Word, and led many to faith in Christ.

It’s the piercing power of the Word of God. You can’t escape it, if you’re one of God’s elect; and the Word of God has power to discriminate in your mind between this and that, to set it apart, to divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow. I don’t know what that means exactly. Some theologians say that there’s a difference between the soul and the spirit. They say that the soul is that part of you that relates to God and they even, some of them, talk about it being implanted at the new birth, relationship with God. And then they say the spirit’s the natural kind of immaterial part of you that enervates you, that gives you life, etcetera. Look, I don’t know, I think that the word soul and spirit are frequently used interchangeable in Scripture, but I know this, if there can be a distinction made between soul and spirit, it’s the Word of God that can do it, and it can divide between joints and marrow too. And so it discriminates.

Charles Spurgeon put it this way, «The Word not only lets you see what your thoughts are, but it criticizes your thoughts. The Word of God says of this thought it is vain and of that thought it is acceptable. of this thought it is selfish and of that thought it is Christ-like. It is a judge of the thoughts of men and the Word of God is such a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart that when men twist about and wind and wander yet it tracks them down.»

II. Judgment Day Before the Word of God

And so, the written Word of God is vibrant, and its job is to bring us now, now, today, while there’s time, spiritually in our minds to bring us to Judgment Day. That’s its job. It brings Judgment Day to you or you to Judgment Day because it says it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. The function of Scripture is to save your soul. 2 Timothy 3:15, «How from infancy, you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.» That’s what they can do. And so, before salvation can happen, a sinner has to be made to see himself as guilty in the eyes of the holy God. That sinner has to be brought to the judgment bar of God and stand guilty, and the Word of God has power to do that. It’s a mirror that shows you your corruptions, and it has power to illuminate your thought-life and reveal it to be godly or corrupt at any moment, it has the power to lay open the twists and turns of your tricky heart.

It says in Jeremiah 17:9 and 10, «The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?» That’s not a rhetorical question, it’s a real question. Who can understand the human heart? Next verse, «I the Lord search the heart and the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.» God knows your heart. He knows everything about it, even in its sinfulness.

Hunters catch foxes by studying their habit patterns and how they are clever and tricky, and how they double back on their ways and all that, what their layers are, and so human beings can hunt foxes successfully. But we can’t hunt our own hearts successfully, can we? But God through the Word can hunt our hearts successfully and the Word of God works together with the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit uses the Word, and the Word and the Holy Spirit go together. And so the Spirit brings conviction of sin and it brings us to the judgment seat of God. And why is that?

III. The Searching Omniscience of God Himself

Look at verse 13, «Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account,» of God. This is God’s universe. He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and His holy eyes search out everything there is on this planet. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. We in our sin yearn to hide, we yearn to hide.

Adam and Eve made those fig leaf coverings for themselves and then when they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, they ran and hid behind trees. They’re looking for a covering and they think that God cannot see what they do in the dark. But even the darkness is as light to God, there’s nothing in all creation hidden. Our secret lusts, our secret deeds, our secret desires, our secret histories, the things we’ve done in the past, the Word of God uncovers them in His holy presence so that we can bring them to the cross of Jesus for forgiveness. So that we can bring those things to Jesus and say, «Lord I am a sinner, oh Be merciful to me. Oh, Jesus, you shed your blood for sinners. I am a sinner. Save me, save me.» Even the best men in the Bible forget that God sees everything. We always think we sin in the dark, don’t we?

So Moses right before he kills the Egyptian, what’s he do? He kind of looks here and there. Well, what’s he looking for? For eyewitnesses. Seeing that there were none, he proceeded and killed the man, but he forgot the most important eyewitness of all, Almighty God. Or Jonah, he runs down and gets on the ship. Why? To get away from God. You can’t do that. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. There’s nowhere you can go from His Spirit, nowhere you can flee from His presence. And we yearn for a covering. And why?

IV. Judgment Day Before God Himself

Because some day in verse 13, we are going to give God an account. We are going to stand before Him and we will give Him an account.

Later in this book of Hebrews, «Man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment.» And we are not ready, in our naked sin, we are not ready to stand before Him. We need a covering, amen? We need a covering. And there is a covering; the covering is the blood of Jesus, and so it says in Romans Chapter 4, «Blessed is the man whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.» We need a covering and the covering is provided. His name is Jesus, His blood was shed that we might be covered, that we might be forgiven, that we might stand clothed in the righteousness of Jesus.

V. Application

And so, what application can we take from this? Prize and reverence the Word of God, revere it. I don’t mean set the book in front of you, and bow down to it like some heathenish idol. Not saying that. I’m saying open it up and read it, listen to its message and realize that God’s speaking to you by it. And let the Word of God convert you. You may be here in an unconverted state, you should tremble about that, it should cause you to be worried and concerned about your soul. I plead with you to flee to Christ. Jesus shed His blood for sinners like you and me, God raised Him from the dead on the third day, trust in Him. The Word of God has power to convert you. And if you’re already a Christian, but you’re feeling saggy in your Christian life, you’re feeling drained, you’re weak, especially in your prayer life, let the word of Christ revive you spiritually. Go to the Word to derive new strength from it and let the Word of God strengthen you for His service. You’re given a ministry but you’re getting weary in it, you’re not seeing the fruits of the results, you’re tired of it. Go back to the Word through the Spirit, and let the Word of God revive you and renew your strength so you can go out and serve Him. And let the Word of God be your main strategy for fruitfulness.

If the Lord tarries and if the Lord calls me away from this pulpit, either by death or by some other calling, which I don’t intend at all, it’s not in my mind… I’d like to stay here till death. But if you’re here and the time comes to get another pastor, get one that’ll preach the Word, that’s what you’re searching for. And if you’re looking, you’re searching for a church, if you should leave from this place as our covenant says, or you’re not a member yet, find a church that preaches the Word above all else, that’s what you need. And finally let the Word of God search your innermost heart. I would suggest you physically lay down on your bed from time to time and say Psalm 139:23 and 24, «Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me, and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way and lead me in the way everlasting.» And then having been renewed and revived and strengthened, then take the Word of God out to a world that needs it. You’re surrounded by people without hope and without God in the world, minister the Word of God to somebody this week, say the words of Scripture to a lost person this week, get into a great conversation like Jesus did with that woman at the Samaritan well. Close with me in prayer.

Father, we thank You for the power of the living and active Word of God. We thank you for everything it does in our souls. I pray that you would take the words that I’ve spoken and that You would blow away the chaff, the influences and effects that I have given that are unhelpful for human hearts. Blow them away, but let the eternal seed of the Word of God take root in hearts and grow to bear fruit for eternity. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

A pastor begins work on his sermon. He opens his Bible and reads the passage. And God’s Word goes to work. This sermon will not merely delve into the content of the passage. It will not be just about what the text says, nor will it only be an informative speech.

 

No, the Word is living and active. Its intent goes with its content. It seeks to perform in the people what it is informing them of God’s will for their lives. God’s Word does what it says.

The spoken Word, proclaimed as the sermon, is not primarily dispensing information for our intellects to remember, although that is part of the event. It is more. Preaching is bringing the living and active Word to people’s lives so that those who hear this message will have their lives of faith strengthened and encouraged by the Gospel. We preach Christ crucified and risen, and that message changes people’s lives because it is alive and powerful.

Take the Hebrews 4 passage that says, “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Heb. 4:13). Read this and remember you are not hidden. You are exposed and naked before God. You must give an account. The Word goes to work. It frightens and warns. It accuses and condemns. It sends you in prayer for what comes next in the passage.

We have a great high priest named Jesus who sympathizes with our weaknesses. The sinless Son of God gives us confidence to draw near to God’s throne of grace. We receive mercy in Jesus. We find help in time of need. Yes, this Gospel Word goes to work too. It comforts and assures. It invites and strengthens. The Word does its work in our lives.

You may have recognized the distinctive Law and Gospel movement in those last two paragraphs. I hope you even experienced them at work in your life. You simply cannot go to God’s Word without encountering those two activities. But we need to be careful when preaching that we don’t make those two activities too simple.

Let’s move from the pastor preparing a sermon to a group of students in a classroom. Students in Homiletics 1, the Seminary’s introductory course in preaching, discuss how to preach the Gospel. The professor asks, “What are the functions of the Gospel?” The class is somewhat uncertain. They know the three functions of the Law (curb sin, mirror our sinfulness, instruct the believer). But the phrase “functions of the Gospel” is less familiar to them. So the professor asks the question differently: “What does the Gospel do?” He writes the more familiar answers on the board: forgives and declares us not guilty. But he wants the whole board to be filled, so he lists a couple more answers: redeems and rescues. “Can you think of any more that begin with the letter ‘R’?” the professor asks. A few students venture answers: restores, reconciles, ransoms, renews.

Now any letter. Hands start to rise. Cleanses. Frees. Gives victory. Empowers. Sanctifies. Oh yes — saves! Perhaps your mind is starting to get into the discussion. Can you think of some more?

Soon the discussion broadens to various metaphors for the Gospel. (For a helpful discussion on Gospel metaphors, read Just Words by J.A.O. Preus.) Marriage. Children. Adoption. Inheritance. The “I am” statements from John: Bread, Vine, Life, Living Water, Resurrection, Truth, Good Shepherd and Door go on the board. Citizenship. Light. Birth. Soon the board is full (there are 30 named above!). Time for the point. See what the Gospel does? The Word is living and active. It is alive and powerful. We preach Jesus ­­— Promised, Incarnate, Prophet, Priest and King, One who teaches and does miraculous signs. We proclaim His wondrous works of suffering, death and burial. Even more we proclaim the now living and active Lord, risen from the dead, sending His Spirit into our lives. Don’t stop there.

We announce that He rules at God’s right hand, right now, for us, interceding for us. And wonders of wonders, He will return, and on that last day we will, with body and soul reunited, not just draw near to the throne of grace, but add our voices to that glorious, triumphant choir singing into eternity. Yes, we preach this living and active Word, and we do so with the incredible variety and richness of God’s Word determining which facet of this Gospel diamond to revel in for each particular sermon.

Now back to the pastor preparing his sermon. So what text will be the basis for his sermon? The words of 2 Cor. 8 are beginning to do their work. Which words? The Macedonian church has given money beyond its means to the collection taken for the poverty-stricken church in Jerusalem. The Macedonians are in “extreme poverty” themselves, but they are begging to take part in this relief for the saints. Their giving has resulted in a wealth of generosity. They have excelled in this act of grace. Paul is encouraging the Corinthians to excel in generosity too. Then come the Gospel words from which this generosity flows: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9).

Yes, these words go to work first in the heart of the pastor. He is not just studying these words to preach them. No, God’s Word is studying the pastor. It is exposing his hesitancy in giving, especially looking around at his house and comparing his rich American lifestyle to that of the Macedonians. But the Law effect is not the intention of this passage. Paul is encouraging generosity. He is urging his readers to help those in need, particularly those in the Church. He is proclaiming the poverty of Christ so that we see the riches we have in our Savior. The pastor begins to see where he can be generous. He looks at his own giving. He is encouraged, urged to excel in his generosity. The Word is alive and active, and its performative intent is living anew in the pastor’s life before he even delivers the sermon to the congregation.

Dr. C.F.W. Walther, the first president of Concordia Seminary and The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod,
in one of his lectures about Law and Gospel, said this:

But when a preacher proclaims what he has often experienced in his own heart, he will easily find the right word to speak convincingly to his hearers. When his words come from the heart, they, in turn, penetrate the heart of the hearers, according to the old saying: “It is the heart that makes eloquent.” This is not the fake eloquence gained in speech class, but the healthy spiritual skill of reaching the heart of hearers.

Now the Word is living and active in and of itself and not dependent on the prior experience of the pastor. However, the pastor who has been acted upon by the Word, who has it living within his heart during the study of the passage, will bring authenticity and conviction, urgency and personal involvement, that same message to the people — where we pray it will do its work on the hearers of the sermon.

And, then, when the sermon is delivered, the Word does its work on the hearers. This time the scene is the professor’s office. He is reading a sermon, not from an introductory student, but from a pastor who is in the Doctor of Ministry program. The story in the sermon goes something like this:

I had an experience recently that I want to share with you. I was making a hospital visit to a member, and while you don’t know all the details, suffice to say that you have experienced something similar. My parishioner is still cognizant of some things, but other things are starting to slip away. Maybe in her most lucid moments she knows, comprehends where she is, but not all the time, and how she got there to that hospital bed was, for the most part, a total mystery.

She was being well cared for by a loving husband and a good nurse, and the husband shared with me an experience of a day or so prior: The hospital chaplain had stopped in and during his visit, he asked whether she had a favorite hymn. Now that she knew. She said it was, “Jesus Loves Me.” The chaplain began
to sing and after only a moment, she sang too. When they finished the first verse, the chaplain went on to sing the second verse. (The hymn is Lutheran Service Book 588 for all who right now are wanting to know the second verse!) As I listened to the chaplain and my parishioner sing, I was sure it was the most beautiful duet ever sung.

The story pauses while the pastor spends time bringing the account of John 6 to life for the hearers.
Then the pastor returns to the story near the end of the sermon.

“Don’t spend your life on things that go away, rather work for the bread that endures forever,” Jesus says, and “I am that bread, and I am that drink.”

“And they say, and we say, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’”

“What’s next?” my parishioner asked. She asked that over and over again in that hospital room. We told her that she would soon have lunch, and said it was important for her to eat and get her strength and on and on we went. “What’s next?” she asked again. And we’d talk about the food again, all the best the hospital kitchen had to offer. And then she spoke a little more, but it was difficult to hear. So we got close, trying
not to miss a thing, wouldn’t want to miss a thing, and what did she say? “I want Holy Communion.”

The professor sits back, with eyes closed, and imagines all the sermons this woman would have heard over the
many years of her life. Clearly, the Word is still alive and active in her, deeply embedded in her faith. The professor is reminded of just how many ways God’s Word powerfully works in people’s lives. Perhaps it is during the hearing of the sermon, with assurance of forgiveness or comfort during grief. Perhaps it is a couple days later when the sermon on excelling in generosity leads a member to buy gas for a stranded traveler. Perhaps it is near the end of life with the words, “I want Holy Communion.”

Yes, the Word is living and active.

Dr. Glenn A. Nielsen is the director of vicarage and deaconess internships at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.

На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать грубую лексику.

На основании Вашего запроса эти примеры могут содержать разговорную лексику.

You are the Word Living and Active inside of me.

His Word is indeed «living and active.»

By participating in the Eucharist, we proclaim our Tradition as living and active members of the Church.

Участвуя в Евхаристии, мы провозглашаем наше Традиция как живых и активных членов Церкви.

According to our estimates, 2018 will become a truly living and active time for productive work and development of the industry.

По нашим оценкам, 2018 год станет по-настоящему живым и активным временем для продуктивной работы и развития отрасли.

Ничего не найдено для этого значения.

Результатов: 19741. Точных совпадений: 1. Затраченное время: 358 мс

Documents

Корпоративные решения

Спряжение

Синонимы

Корректор

Справка и о нас

Индекс слова: 1-300, 301-600, 601-900

Индекс выражения: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200

Индекс фразы: 1-400, 401-800, 801-1200

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.

Failure to Trust—Failure to Enter God’s Rest

Last week we ended with Hebrews 4:11, «Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest [God’s restful salvation of forgiveness and hope now, and heaven when we die], lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience.» So it’s an urgent plea to be earnest and careful so that you don’t throw away the offer of God’s rest.

The verse says that if we are not diligent to enter God’s rest, then we are following an example of disobedience. Whose example? The example of Israel in the wilderness. Hebrews 3:19 says, «And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.» The disobedience that 4:11 is talking about is the disobedience of unbelief—a failure to trust. Don’t be like them, the writer says, because their failure to trust kept them out of God’s rest. And it will keep you out of God’s rest.

Be Diligent to Hear God’s Word

Failure to trust what? We saw the answer in Hebrews 4:2, «We have had good news preached to us, just as they also [had good news preached to them]; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.» What they failed to trust was the good news, the Word of God, that was preached to them in the wilderness—the promises of God that he would care for them and give them victory and forgive them and be merciful to them. They didn’t believe God. They murmured in their troubles and wanted to turn back to Egypt rather than follow God. This is their unbelief and their disobedience.

Now this is extremely important to see if we are going to understand the link between Hebrews 4:11 and Hebrews 4:12. Let’s make sure we have 4:11 clear before us before we make the connection with verse 12. Verse 11 urges us to be diligent to enter God’s rest so that we don’t fall through the same sort of disobedience the Israelites showed in the wilderness. That disobedience is described in verse 2—they were unbelieving. But let’s be very specific. Verse 2 indicates that what they disbelieved was «the good news that was preached to them,» or the middle of the verse says: «the word they heard did not profit them, because it did not meet with faith.» Mark carefully this focus on the word. The word did not profit them, because they did not believe it.

What verse 11 urges therefore, when it says, «Be diligent to enter that rest,» is, «Be diligent to hear the word, the good news, and be diligent to believe in it, to trust the good news, to embrace it and hold to it and be satisfied by it, so that you don’t murmur and want to forsake God and go back to the Egypt of sin.

Now we are prepared to see the connection between this verse 11 and verse 12. Be diligent with this word of good news (from verse 2), to hear it and believe it, verse 12: «For the word of God is living and active . . . «

Let’s stop here just to make the connection between these two verses plain. Then we will see what verses 12 and 13 say. Verse 12 is giving a reason or a support or a ground for the call to diligence in verse 11. Verse 11 says in essence: Be sure that you know and trust the word of God referred to in verse 2—the good news of God’s promises and forgiveness. Then verse 12 says: Yes, and one reason to do this is because this word (the good news referred to in verse 2) is living and active, etc. So today’s text is an argument for why we should be so diligent to enter God’s rest by hearing and believing God’s Word.

The Big Picture

Now let’s step back a minute and get the big picture. Some of you are analyzing people and you like to analyze the parts of a text. And some of you are synthesizing people and you like to see the synthesis—the big picture, when it is all put back together again. So listen up, all you synthesizers who like the big picture. There are four stages.

Stage #1

The aim of life, according to this chapter of the book of Hebrews, is to enter God’s rest—to be saved from our sin and spend eternity joyfully in God’s restful presence. That’s the great goal of life—and to lovingly take as many people there with us as we can (which is why this author wrote the letter!).

Stage #2

To enter this great and joyful rest we must trust God. Verse 3: «We who have believed enter that rest.» So the utterly indispensable means of getting to heaven is believing God. Trusting him.

Stage #3

To believe God, to trust him, we must hear his Word. We must hear the good news. We must know the promises that he makes for us to believe. That’s why verse 2 is so definite about this matter: «For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also.» If they, or if we, didn’t have the good news preached to us, then we would not be able to believe the Word of God. So this stage is utterly crucial. The Word of God, the good news, the promises of God, have been preached to us. This is what makes faith possible.

Stage #4

Finally, we must now be diligent lest we give way to unbelief. This is the front-burner issue for the book of Hebrews.

• Hebrews 2:1, «Pay much close attention to what [you] have heard»—the Word.
• Hebrews 3:1, «Consider Jesus, the Apostle . . . of our confession»—Apostle = the one who speaks the Word.
• Hebrews 3:12, «Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart»—a heart not hearing and believing the Word.
• Hebrews 3:15, «Today if you hear his voice [his Word], do not harden your hearts.»

So now we can see the burden of this book in the light of the big picture.

1. The great aim is that we will enter into God’s rest and enjoy his restful fellowship.
2. The great means to get there is trusting him.
3. The focus of our trust is his Word, his promises, his good news (as it’s called in 4:2).
4. To keep on believing the promises of God we must be diligent, pay attention, consider, take care, and not harden our hearts. In other words the pathway to heaven is a path of unremitting focus and earnestness and vigilance toward the Word of God.

About the Word

Now the point of today’s text (Hebrews 4:12–13) is to help us do that by telling us about this Word. Be diligent, verse 11 says, because (verse 12 says) the Word of God is . . . And then it tells us about this Word.

So let’s read again what it says about this Word. Verse 12:

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Now I am tempted to take every word here and probe into why it is used. Like, why mention joints and bone marrow? And what’s the difference between spirit and soul? And what precisely is the difference between thoughts and intentions? And do the words «living and active» perhaps correspond to any of these other pairs: spirit-soul, joints-marrow, thoughts-intentions? Is the «heart» (mentioned at the end of the verse) different from the soul and spirit? And so on. These are good questions and they are worth meditating on for hours.

But this morning I don’t want to lose the forest for the trees. I wonder if we couldn’t all agree on this much from verse 12: one of the functions of the Word of God when it comes into us is that it penetrates very deep—like a sword through tough, hard layers—and makes judgments about what’s there.

The word «judge» in verse 12 («to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart») does not mean «condemn.» It means «assess.» When we show somebody a painting and say, «What’s your judgment?» we don’t mean, «What’s your condemnation?» We mean, «What’s your assessment of the quality? Is it good or bad?» So the Word of God penetrates to the deepest place in our lives and assesses what’s there. Is it good or bad?

Eternity Is at Stake

But now let’s be more specific. What’s really at stake in these chapters? What’s at stake is entering into God’s rest. Eternity is at stake. And the way to enter that rest is faith, or belief, or trust in God’s promises. The great danger in these chapters is not just bad thoughts. The great danger is unbelieving thoughts. Hebrews 3:19: «They could not enter because of unbelief.»

So what we need is protection from unbelief. Day in and day out we need to fight unbelief in the promises of God. It’s unbelief that will keep us out of God’s rest. That’s what’s at stake in the call for diligence in verse 11 and that’s why the Word of God in verse 12 is so critical for us. The Word of God penetrates to the bottom of all our defenses and deceptions and exposes belief or unbelief. It assess our thoughts and intentions as to whether they are believing thoughts and intentions or unbelieving. Are we trusting the promises of God or aren’t we?

Are We Trusting God’s Promises?

This is what I need help with. This is what I am desperate for in my life. For example, this week, I had two or three very difficult telephone calls to make—the kind I do not like to make. They involved disagreement. They were the kind of calls that feel like a no-win situation. If you go one way, you will compromise your integrity or the truth. If you go another way, you will almost surely be misunderstood and disapproved. So you struggle and agonize over whether to call and what to say and which way to go.

And in those moments the most important thing is this: am I trusting God? Or am I subtly beginning to put my faith in compromise, or half-truths, or expediency? And all the while I know that I am utterly fallible and prone to self-justification and liable to deception, so that I may think I am walking by faith when I am, perhaps, in fact becoming callous to the truth and slipping into unbelief in the promises of God.

So what should I do? At least two things. One is to immerse myself in the Word of God with prayer. The other is to email my small group. So I read my Bible. I prayed. And I sent out a plea for counsel to Tom Steller and David Michael and Brad Nelson and Erv Mickelberg and Chuck Morris. Within 24 hours I had four brotherly exhortations, rooted in God’s Word. With those, and the encouragement of my wife, and the effect of the Word, I made the calls and I believe I acted by faith in future grace.

Now what was really happening here? Look at Hebrews 3:12–13.

Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called «Today,» lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

The Deceiving Power of Sin

Notice three things here.

1. In verse 12 the danger day in and day out is that an evil, unbelieving heart would lead us away from God. Unbelief is the issue. The issue is failure to trust God’s promises.
2. Then (in verse 13) notice that something like small groups is essential: «Encourage one another day after day.» So you get your small group involved. You need their help. Why?
3. That’s the third thing: the way our hearts become unbelieving (verse 12) is by being «hardened by the deceitfulness of sin» (verse 13). We need help to keep from being deceived by sin. How are we going to be rescued from the deceiving power of sin? How can small groups help? How can we help?

That’s what today’s text in Hebrews 4:12 is meant to answer. The Word of God is living and active and penetrates to the bottom of our lives and rips the pleasant mask off the ugly face of sin. The only reason anybody sins is because at some level they are (culpably) deceived. They start believing the lies of sin instead of the promises of God.

Sin whispers through the desires of the flesh and the rationalizations of the mind, your only hope of future happiness is to have an abortion. It whispers that you will not have a chance in the future if you don’t cheat on this test. It says that you won’t be noticed and liked if you don’t dress provocatively. It says you will lose the one person who seems to care for you if you don’t compromise your sexual standards. It says you won’t have job security if you speak up about the dishonest practices at work. It says your life will be wasted in this relationship if you don’t get a divorce. It says that only a fool would go on looking weak instead of getting some kind of revenge.

Every one of those statements is a lie. It’s what Hebrews 3:13 calls «the deceitfulness of sin.» Now those lies sometimes lodge themselves very deep in the heart as thoughts and intentions that seem unshakably true because of the hardness of deception that encloses them like a dark, sealed casket. In that condition unbelief has the upper hand. We are not believing in the promises of God, we are trusting in the promises of sin. And we are in mortal danger of becoming so hard that repentance will become impossible (Hebrews 6:6), and heaven will have been thrown away for the sake of a few fleeting pleasures, like an inheritance sold for a bowl of stew (Hebrews 12:16).

How Will We Escape the Deceit of Sin?

What is our only hope? Our only hope is that there is something sharp enough and powerful enough to penetrate through all the deception and shed light on my thoughts and intentions. And that’s what our text is about in Hebrews 4:12. The Word of God is our only hope. The good news of God’s promises and the warnings of his judgment are sharp enough and living enough and active enough to penetrate to the bottom of my heart and show me that the lies of sin are indeed lies.

Abortion will not create a wonderful future for me. Neither will cheating, or dressing provocatively, or throwing away my sexual purity, or keeping quiet about dishonesty at work, or divorce, or vengeance. And what rescues me from this deception is the Word of God. The Word of God’s promise is like throwing open a great window of bright morning sun on the shiny-back roaches of sin masquerading as satisfying pleasures in our hearts.

In other words, I see Hebrews 4:12 as a tremendous encouragement coming after verse 11. Be diligent to enter God’s rest by fighting off the disobedience of unbelief. Why? Because (verse 12) God has given you his good news (verse 2), his promises, his Word to protect you from the deep deceptions of sin that try to harden the heart and lure it away from God and lead it to destruction. Be of good cheer in your battle to believe. Because the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and it will penetrate deeper than any deception of sin has ever gone and reveal what is truly valuable and what is truly worth trusting.

And so we end this message at a point of crisis. You have heard the Word of God. Much has been exposed to your own conscience this morning. And now as verse 13 says, «no one is hidden from God’s sight; but all things are open and laid bare before his eyes.» His gaze is upon you. What will you do with what he has exposed, and what he now is watching?

I hope the answer is: turn from the deceptive promises of sin, and trust in the all-satisfying promises of God.

So we’ve just heard Hebrews Chapter 4 verses 12 and 13 — and these are astonishing verses! 

They conclude the section from Chapter 3 verse 6 to Chapter 4 verse 11, and they set up a new section in verse 14 through Chapter 5 — and in this way, verses 12 and 13 are like a bridge. If you use a highlighter in your Bible, these are two verses to highlight.

I want you to imagine, if you can, that verses 12 and 13 are standing off the page in 3D and they’re linking together the verses that come before and after it, and every reader of Hebrews has to cross this bridge. This bridge is the only way into town! Nobody gets from Chapter 4 verse 11 to Chapter 4 verse 14 without going over this bridge, and that’s why verses 12 and 13 are the only verses we’re looking at today. 

We’re gonna look at just these two verses and we’re gonna see two life-changing truths about the word of God, and I mean it literally when I say “life-changing.” These are truths that make all the difference in our lives and I can’t wait to show you this. But first let’s pray. 

Father, thank you for your word and its power. By your Spirit, send out your word this morning and accomplish all that you will, in Jesus’s name, amen. 

Here’s the first truth:

1) The word of God is living and active like God himself. 

The first thing to see here is the first part of that first sentence in verse 12. Everybody look at verse 12, at those first nine words. Try to read this with me:

“For the word of God is living and active.”

The big question right away is: What is “the word of God” that the writer of Hebrews is talking about? 

That phrase, “the word of God,” is used four times in this book in a pretty tight amount of space. The only other book in the New Testament where this phrase shows up as many times as it does here is in the Book of Acts — the phrase “word of God” is used 12 times there; if we count “the word of the Lord” that’s used another nine times in Acts.

So like in the Book of Acts, the “word of God” and its activity is important in the Book of Hebrews, but what does the writer have in mind when he says the “word of God”? 

What Is “the Word of God”?

In the immediate context, he’s at least talking about the Old Testament passage he quoted in Chapter 3 verse 7. Glance back to 3:7 and see that long quote from Psalm 95. Remember that the writer starts that quote by saying, “as the Holy Spirit says” (the “to say” is present active). We could translate that “as the Holy Spirit is saying…” So, Chapter 3 verse 6-7:

“We are God’s house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting in our hope. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit is saying …” [then he quotes Psalm 95, and then in his exposition of Psalm 95 he quotes certain parts of Psalm 95 four more times.]

So without a doubt Psalm 95 is in the writer’s mind (and in our minds) when he says the “word of God.” He is referring to Psalm 95 but he’s not only referring Psalm 95. He’s not even just talking about the Old Testament, but I think when the writer of Hebrews says “the word of God” he means both the Old Testament and the apostles’ teaching, which is what becomes the New Testament. 

Remember what Chapter 1 tells us: Jesus has come; God has now spoken to us through his Son, which doesn’t mean that God has spoken two different words. It doesn’t mean that the Old Testament is one word from God and now the message of Jesus is another, but together God has given us one unified word. The Hebrew Scriptures that point to Jesus and the announcement of Jesus preached by the apostles are one word. The Old Testament and the New Testament are one message from God about Jesus and that’s why it’s both biblically warranted and theologically correct to call this book the word of God. 

And you’ve probably heard that before. If you’ve been around church, it’s almost churchy jargon to call the Bible the “word of God,” but do we really know what that means? Do we know what we’re saying when we call this book the word of God?

In this book, in these words, through actual language, we have God’s word spoken to us. We read this book and we can perceive the mind of God. This book is what the Holy Spirit is saying. The word of God is living and active.

The Extension of Himself

And it makes sense to us that the word of God is living and active when we remember that God himself is living and active, and God’s word is always, as it were, an extension of himself. That’s true of language in general. 

And we know what this is like. If you’ve spent any significant amount of time with young children you especially know what this is like. Have you ever noticed how exhausting it can be to spend a solid chunk of time with a three-year-old? Well here’s one reasons it’s exhausting. It’s because you are constantly speaking directives: don’t touch that, put that back, come over here, get out of the bathroom, eat your lunch, stay in your seat, quit changing your clothes.

You speak a lot of words one-way, and every time you speak it’s an extension of yourself. You expend energy in your words. In a way, when you speak you’re constantly committing yourself. You have to stand behind what you say. And if you keep doing that for a long stretch of time you’re gonna get tired. It’s verbal action. 

Speaking is an extension of ourselves, and as parents, it’s an extension of our authority, because here’s the thing: if little Ruthie disobeys what I say — [and just so you know, she never does because she’s perfect; she’s our best kid and all the other kids know it] — but just pretend: if little Ruthie disobeys what I say, she actually disobeys me.

This is how it is with words. We see this right away in the Bible.

God gave Adam and Eve a spoken command, he gave them words, and when they disobeyed God’s word they disobeyed God. 

The word of God is an extension of God himself. It is God’s verbal action. And because God himself is living and active, his word is living and active.

Which means this: because the Bible is the word of God, what the Bible says, God says. God is actively speaking through this book in such a way that to receive and listen to the words of this book is to receive and listen to God himself. That’s astonishing! 

Trusting God’s Word Is Trusting God

It means, for example, that when you read a promise from God in the Bible, when you trust in that promise you are trusting in God. 

Take Matthew 28:20. We say it every Sunday in our commission. It’s an amazing promise from Jesus. After he commissions us to make disciples, he says:

“Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Now that’s a promise to us from Jesus, and we read that promise — we hear that promise — in words, in human language. And when we hear those words and trust in those words, we are trusting in Jesus himself. He stands behind his words. They are the living activity of him. And that goes for the whole Bible, for all it’s promises and warnings and wisdom and narratives. The word of God is living and active like God himself.

The Action of Preaching

And there are so many implications here! This really does shape how we live as Christians and how we worship together, like what’s happening right now. 

We call this thing I’m doing right now a sermon. It’s the action of preaching. And the reason we preach the Bible, and not just stuff we make up, is because we believe that speaking and explaining the text of Scripture — speaking and explaining these words here on this page — is speaking and explaining what God is saying. 

That’s why the sermon is the center of our liturgy. The preacher is delivering to you the word of God that is living and active. I’m not giving to you my thoughts or my opinions or my advice — that’s not my job. I’m a messenger, and in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, with this book being opened before us, we together, including me, in this moment, sit under and hear the word of God. 

Like right now. God, by his Holy Spirit, is speaking through his book as I’m, with his help, trying to show you what it says. What this book says is what God is saying. The word of God is living and active like God himself. 

And in particular that means something very important in Hebrews Chapter 4. This is the second and final big truth to see here.

2) The living and active word of God is our only hope of believing. 

Look back at verse 12. Notice that it starts with the word “for” and that little conjunction, as we’ve seen before, is meant to be a grounds for what was said previously. It’s like saying “because.” What was said before verse 12 is because of what is said in verse 12.

So then what has the writer of Hebrews been saying before verse 12?

He says, verse 11,

“Let us [which includes both him and his readers] therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.”

Remember he’s still talking about Psalm 95. The idea of entering God’s rest means to receive God’s salvation. It’s to “be God’s house” (3:6) or to “share in Christ” (3:14). To rest in God is to be saved by God, and remember, as Pastor David Mathis showed us last week, the opportunity to enter God’s rest remains open. It’s available now. We can experience God’s salvation today!

And the way the writer of Hebrews makes that case is to show that the rest (or the salvation) that was offered in Joshua’s day was incomplete. Now Joshua led the people of Israel into the Promised Land, and he led in the conquests over their enemies, but how did that end up going for Israel? We know the story. It didn’t go well for them because they didn’t have faith. 

How Will We Be Any Different?

I was just reading Psalm 78 this past week in our Bible reading plan. Psalm 78 is a reflection on Israel’s history and it just repeats their unbelief:

Psalm 78:22,

“They did not believe in God and did not trust his saving power”

“In spite of this [all of God’s provisions], they still sinned; despite his wonders, they did not believe”

“They did not remember his power”

“They tested and rebelled against the Most High God…”

Everybody knows this about Israel’s history. It’s clear in the Old Testament. And the writer of Hebrews is saying: Yeah, Joshua did not give Israel lasting rest. His leadership was ultimately ineffectual, and so there remains a rest for us to enter. The salvation of God is available today! And therefore, let us strive to enter that rest! Don’t be unbelieving like Israel!

And I don’t know about you, but I’m reading this and I know how it went for Israel, I hear what he’s saying about Israel; so when he says in verse 11 to not be like Israel, I want to know HOW?

Israel failed to believe, and on what basis do we have any hope that our situation will be different from theirs? How do we know that we will not end up being faithless just like Israel was?

Verse 12 tells us. 

It’s because the word of God is living and active, and in a particular way, and that way is described in verse 12 and 13 by a metaphor. And this metaphor is the message here. One commentator I read called these verses an absolute masterpiece. Look at this: 

The Sharp, Two-Edged Scalpel

Hebrews 4:12,

“For the word of God is living and active [in what way exactly?], sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.»

Now the main metaphor here is this sword; that’s the image. Everything else here is what this sword does. But the meaning of this sharp two-edged sword is really important, and it’s actually better translated as a sharp, two-edged knife. 

Now in the Greek that word for sword or knife can be used in different ways. In some cases it means a big sword of judgment, but in other cases the same word means a small dagger or knife. In fact, in the Book of Joshua this same word is used to describe the knife that is used to perform circumcisions. They didn’t do circumcisions with a big sword. It was a small knife, and because it was really sharp on both sides, it was used as a scalpel. 

And the image here of a scalpel actually fits with the way it’s described.

This ‘sword’ or this two-edged scalpel — what does it do? — it pierces or penetrates to “the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow.” 

Now what does that sound like? This is a small knife that is meticulously cutting. What’s being described here?

This is a surgery. And it’s a delicate surgery. 

That’s the point of mentioning this ‘division’ of soul and spirit, and joints and marrow. The idea is that they’re kind of all the same. They’re sorta inseparable. Or at least, it’s not easy for us to discern the differences between soul and spirit. We can’t look at a bone and see a clear dividing line between the bone and the bone marrow; you have to get into it — and what we can’t see, where we can’t go, the word of God can! 

The word of God — the scalpel that is the word of God — can cut into the innermost parts of who we are. And that’s to say, the word of God can discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

The Circumcision of the Heart

That last line at the end of verse 12 that mentions the heart, that is meant to make this metaphor plain! The point is that the word of God reaches our hearts in ways nothing else can.

And that is good to know because, if you remember, our hearts are the problem. We saw that a couple weeks ago in Chapter 3 verse 12. The reason that Israel fell away from God, the reason they did not believe, is because they went astray in their hearts (Chapter 3 verse 9). It’s a hardened heart that leads to unbelief. 

And so if we are going to end up differently than Israel, if we’re going to believe, then we need something — Someone — to work on our hearts. We need Someone to pierce through, to cut through, the hardness and layers and complexity of our hearts. Or, to use the biblical imagery, if we’re going to believe we need a heart surgery. We need a heart circumcision.

Which is what God promised, Deuteronomy 30, verse 6. Moses says, speaking of a future day:

«And Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.»

This is the promise of the New Covenant! Moses prophesied about it. Jeremiah and Ezekiel described it. God promised that one day in the future he would send his Spirit to effect in us what we can’t. He would remove our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. God said he would give us new hearts that believe! Changed hearts!

And that’s what the writer of Hebrews is describing here. 

Hebrews 4:12–13 is describing how God circumcises the heart, and it’s the only hope we have to not end up faithless like Israel. 

How do we know that WE are going to be different? 

How do we know that we’re going to believe when they didn’t? 

Because the word of God circumcises our hearts!

Our Confession of Faith

That’s what makes us vulnerable and receptive to the word, which is what verse 13 is saying. No creature is hidden from “his sight” — and the “his” is speaking of God. So the writer has been talking about the word of God, and now he talks about God himself (because remember they’re closely related!) And God’s word, God’s own sight, sees all. 

When the heart is circumcised the person is naked and exposed before God. This is a sensitive surgery. The word of God puts our hearts just out there in the open, laid bare before God. And then it’s God to whom we must give ‘account.’ 

And this is interesting. We saw the writer of Hebrews do this a couple weeks ago; that last word in verse 13 is the same as the first word in verse 12. Both are the words logos, which mean “word.” Verse 12 starts with God’s word and verse 13 ends with our word, or our account. And what’s implied here is our faith. Our account, or our word to God, after the work of his word on us, is to believe! We confess faith.

We actually see this in the Book of Acts. After Peter’s Pentecost sermon, Luke says of the crowd: 

“Now when they heard this [that is, the gospel Peter preached] they were cut to the heart, and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” (Acts 2:37)

Their hearts were exposed, laid bare, circumcised — “and how should we respond?” they say. Peter says believe. After God’s word cuts into our hearts, we respond with the confession of faith!  

This is how we’re not going to be like Israel. This is how we’re going to believe. God’s word cuts through to our hearts and makes us believe. That is the promise of the New Covenant, and that’s our only hope. And because that’s the case,

“Since then we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession” (Hebrews 4:14).

We’ll see that next week. This is about hope!

There are two life-changing truths in verses 12 and 13:

1) The word of God is living and active like God himself.

2) The living and active word of God is our only hope of believing.

Application: The Power of God’s Word

Now how exactly are these truths life-changing? What difference do they make? 

Well, there’s a lot we could say, but I want to close by focusing on just one application, and I’m going to say it broadly to start with: in light of what we see here in Hebrews 4:12–13, we should truly appreciate the power of the word of God. We should honor and surrender to the power of God’s word.

To get more practical, that means, first, we should be thankful. 

The only reason we’re here is the power of God’s word. We know that, right? God’s word has changed our hearts. And the power of his word is not just for our initial conversion, but it’s for our endurance. The living and active word of God continues to pierce the heart and be effective in us, and we should receive the word of God with that expectation. In our private worship at home and our corporate worship here, and everything in between, would we gratefully humble ourselves before the word of God!

Ancient words ever true,
changing me and changing you.
We have come with open hearts,
oh let the ancient words impart!

And then, lastly, when we truly appreciate the power of the word of God, that will shape our ministry of encouragement to one another. 

We saw a couple weeks ago that we have a profound obligation as the church together. The means that God uses for us to endure in faith is our encouraging words to one another — and what do you think we should say to one another as that encouragement? 

What better words could we say to one another than the words of God?

Look, this is not just a pastor thing. This is how we’re all called to live together, and I pray that God would do this in our church, that it would just be in the air of this place. That we would encourage one another by speaking the word of God to one another and see the power of God’s word do his work. 

The word of God is living and active, and it’s our only hope of believing.

That’s what brings us to the Table. 

The Table

At this Table, the bread and cup represent the body and blood of Jesus, and when we eat the bread and drink the cup, we are receiving Jesus by faith. We are receiving the Word of God in person, symbolizing our faith in him. And when we do that, it’s an evidence and declaration that God has given us new hearts.

And if that’s your story, if you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we invite you to eat and drink with us. 

Let us serve you.

“Let us therefore strive to enter that rest…” Remember the rest he has in mind: no enemies, no sickness or death, creation bountiful, everything rightly ordered, everybody made whole—all in the presence of God. That rest is held out to you in the gospel. Jesus opened the way for you to enter that rest, a rest he already enjoys. That rest belongs to those who trust and follow Christ. It’s not here yet, but it will be. So he says,

¹¹ Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience [meaning the disobedience of the Israelites in the wilderness]. ¹² For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. ¹³ And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.*

Being a pastor, people will sometimes ask what pushed me in that direction. Several factors. I enjoyed teaching God’s word. I loved serving the church. I had a great burden to see the gospel upheld. Also, several godly men affirmed certain giftings and suggested I consider serving in that role one day.

But the initial push wasn’t unique to those who might eventually become pastors. The initial push was God’s word powerfully impacting me, my dad, and a group of students. I grew up in the church; and many would’ve called me a Christian because of my behavior. Outwardly, I conformed to the morality of my surroundings. I participated in church functions. But inwardly I wanted nothing of God.

Eventually, I started letting people know that. I told the church leadership I didn’t believe in God. I argued at school that Christianity was just a crutch for weak people. My dad talked to me about the money I was making as a welder; and I remember walking out the door saying, “If God wants my money, he can come and take it.”

Then at 17 I heard the gospel. Others had preached Christ to me, especially my mother. But for reasons only explained by sovereign grace, I listened this time. I went into a church chasing a girl with all the wrong reasons, but I came out of that church a new creation. The word of God wrecked me. It exposed me. The word of God penetrated my calloused heart. That word changed my life forever.

Then I watched the word powerfully impact my dad. My dad would pray with us at night. But he wasn’t the spiritual leader of our household. My mom functioned that way. But after seeing the word transform my life, he started sitting under the same preaching—preaching that explained the Scriptures clearly and presented Christ in all his saving glory. That word not only awakened my dad. He started leading the family; and to this day he continues to mature in Christ, lead my mother, and serve the church with zeal.

I also watched the word powerfully impact a group of students. Picture a Wednesday night student meeting—what some would call a youth group. For years they played games for an hour and forty-five minutes with Jesus tacked on the end. I came in and simply started teaching the word. Within months, I watched a game-night turn into a two-hour Bible study with parents sticking around afterwards—both elbows on either side of the Bible wrestling with what God’s word says and longing to obey it.

How is the word of God powerfully impacting your life? I don’t mean how much more do you understand what’s in it? That’s important. The question is more so how is what you do understand moving you to obey? In our passage, we’ll see that if God’s word isn’t changing you, that doesn’t mean the word is ineffective. It means the word will expose you at the judgment for what you really are. That’s a sobering thought. It demands a response. Either we bow or it judges.

Setting the Context: “Strive to Enter…For”

Verses 12 and 13 are the focus. But we must remember: they have a context. It’s not uncommon to encounter these verses in a book or sermon to support a doctrine of Scripture. Rightly so. But often the context goes missing. If not careful, we walk away knowing a few more things about God’s word, but without allowing God’s word to address us as written. I don’t want that to happen.

So, notice first of all how verse 12 supports verse 11 with the word “for”: “For the word of God is living and active…” It belongs to a larger argument. In fact, it closes the argument he began in 3:7. In 3:7 he quotes Psalm 95, “The Holy Spirit says, ‘Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…” He quotes the word of God. He explains the warning in that word of God: don’t harden your hearts, otherwise you won’t enter God’s rest. He explains the promise in that word of God: God’s rest for the believer.

Then finally he tells us what to do in light of that word of God: “therefore, let us strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active…” What word? Specifically that word. The word from Psalm 95 he’s been explaining for two chapters.

Now, we can make a more general application to the whole of Scripture. After all, he does use Genesis 2 and Exodus 20 and Joshua to explain why he interprets Psalm 95 the way he does for the church. But the immediate context points to the word of God in Psalm 95, and how that word should affect us in light of Scripture’s storyline and the finished work of Jesus. On that note about Jesus…

Some have viewed “the word of God” here as referring to Jesus.[i] Much like God’s Son is known as “the Word” in John’s Gospel or “the Word of God” in Revelation 19, that’s the way some read it here. And one could argue that Christ is the final word given by God in Hebrews 1:2. Christ too is living. Christ has a sharp sword from his mouth in Revelation 19. More importantly, doesn’t verse 13 suggest a person? Without a break it says, “…and no creature is hidden from his sight”? Might “his sight” in verse 13 look back to “the word” of verse 12? Perhaps the person of Jesus is in view.

But a few observations lead me to take a narrower reading. One is the context of him explaining the written word from Psalm 95. Secondly, each time he refers to the “word” leading up to verse 12, it refers to God’s word declared by angels or the gospel message spoken to the people in the wilderness that also abides for us. The same expression also appears in 13:7; and there the gospel word from Scripture is in view.

Also, Christ does have a sword from his mouth in Revelation 19. But that’s just the point: he isn’t the sword itself. The sword represents his word coming from his mouth—it’s imagery from Isaiah 49:2. With regard to “his sight” in verse 13, it could simply point to God in verse 12: that is, God’s word is living…and no creature is hidden from God’s sight. Or, it may simply continue the personification of the word.

We have to admit, though, part of the complexity here is that God is Trinity. We could easily say that God in Christ by the Spirit is personally present in his word. Then how do you decide? Also God will judge the world in Christ; and that very well fits with verse 13 as well. But you have the two interpretations. I’ll leave it for you to do your homework and weigh them for yourselves. The outcome isn’t all that different.

So for now, we’ll walk through the passage seeing “the word of God” in verse 12 to mean the written word. But more specifically, it’s the written word as it continues speaking by the Holy Spirit—3:7, “the Holy Spirit says” as in “still says today.” It’s also the written word as that word finds its climax in the person and work of Jesus—1:2, “in these last days, God has spoken to us by a Son.” Jesus is God’s ultimate Word. That word, given by promise in the Old Testament and by fulfillment in the New—that word is in view. That word is living and active.

Still, how does that support verse 11? Like this. Verse 11 says, “Therefore, let us strive to enter that rest…” If we don’t strive to enter God’s rest, we will fall into the same patterns of disobedience that kept Israel from entering God’s rest. Verse 12 comes in to say, “and God wasn’t kidding around.” He swore his word of judgment over them. They didn’t enter his rest. God is just as serious when he says to us in Psalm 95, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

How do we know he’s serious? His word is living and active. That’s why we must avoid patterns of disobeying him. His word is powerfully penetrating. His judgment is inescapably exposing. You won’t get away with it. If you treat God’s word lightly, it will find you out. If you ignore the warning of Psalm 95 it will expose you. The hope, though, is that when it finds you out, you submit to it. Before you reach the judgment seat of Christ, you submit to it and keep submitting to it.

God’s word is alive and powerfully penetrating.

That’s the context. Let’s now look at verses 12-13 more carefully. Why strive? Why make every effort? Why persevere to enter God’s rest? Because God’s word is alive and powerfully penetrating. He lists several qualities in verse 12.

One, God’s word is living and active. It’s true that God’s word is life-giving. But that doesn’t seem to be the emphasis here; and we know that because of the way he couples “living” with “active.” “Living and active” together speak more to the word having an abiding and powerful relevance. There’s not a sense in which God’s word ever amounts to a dead letter. A society might have a written law in the books, but in practice it doesn’t really matter. It’s not enforced. It has no abiding relevance.

God’s word is the opposite. It’s not just black ink on white paper, or mere pixels you swipe on your Bible app. Even though he spoke Psalm 95 thousands of years ago, that word is living. Quite apart from how you respond to it—it’s living. The living God stands behind it. It’s active. It’s not just power, but power exerted. It’s fully effective in what God means his word to accomplish. In the word of God, Jesus by the Spirit sits in active judgment over us. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Christian or not—there’s no neutrality when you pick up the word. In the word, Jesus actively sits in judgment over us. As he lives, his word lives. As he acts, his word acts.

When God swore that the disobedient wouldn’t enter his rest, that word did something. Remember Numbers 14? God swears they wouldn’t enter his rest. The people mourn. They even confess, “We have sinned.” Then they say, “We will go up to the place the Lord has promised.” In other words, “Okay, okay, now we’re going to do it.” But Moses had to explain it was too late. The Lord had spoken. They tried it anyway, and the text says, “you shall fall by the sword.” And they did fall. It’s living. It’s active.

Meaning, when it says, “Don’t harden your hearts as in the rebellion;” when it says, “Take care lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God,” pay extra careful attention. These aren’t human words, which are often ineffective and don’t pan out. God’s words are living and active.

His promise of rest is living and active. Not just the warning, but the promise too is living and active. God stands by his word. He holds out the promise to all who believe. He will secure them in his presence. Question is, do you take him at his word? Does that promised rest move you to labor well for his name’s sake?

God’s word is also penetrating. Verse 12 says it’s “sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow.” The point here isn’t to explain human nature, what we consist of—that humans have a soul and a spirit that are two separate entities. The New Testament often uses soul and spirit interchangeably. Better is to see the writer stacking up language to describe our innermost person. It’s a division within; not a separation of.

The soul and spirit are like the joints and marrow: they’re inward, hidden, out of sight. But like the double-edged sword slices through thick armor, then flesh, then muscles, down to the very marrow, so also God’s word penetrates to the core of our being. Our defense mechanisms that often keep other humans out; our façade and pasted on smiles that often fool other people; our calloused self that wants to suppress the truth—they’re no match for the word of God. It penetrates to such a depth that soul and spirit lie exposed. You can do nothing to protect the most secret part of your being.

God’s word is also discerning. It says, “discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” The Bible will often refer to our inner-most person as “the heart.” It’s not so much the seat of affection as it is “the control center for life.”[ii] Our thoughts, words, actions, reactions, motivations—all stem from the heart.[iii] Depending on its moral condition, depending on its willingness to submit to God, the heart determines whether we live in ways that please God or in ways that displease God.

God’s word penetrates to that depth and then discerns/judges the thoughts and intentions of our heart—what’s good or evil, what’s pure or impure. That’s significant because it comes in a context warning us not to harden our hearts. 3:8, “do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” 3:10, “they’re always going astray in their heart.” 3:12, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart…”

God’s word penetrates to that heart—it discerns whether there’s actual faith or not, whether there’s belief or unbelief, whether there’s true worship or idolatry. That’s crazy unsettling, because I know how prone my heart is to wonder and my knowledge is incomplete. It’s limited. I don’t even know half my heart’s problems.

At the same time, it’s good to know there’s actually something to cut that deeply. It’s good to know there’s actually a Surgeon who can get in there and address my heart problems. If hardness of heart keeps us from entering God’s rest, be thankful there’s Someone who’s sword can address that hardness. There’s actually something sharp enough to penetrate our callouses, to cut through the hardness, and lay us bear to humble us, to change us. Only God knows the true state of our hearts. But he addresses them with his word. No part of us can escape the careful scrutiny of God’s word.

God’s judgment is searching and inescapably exposing.

Why else should we strive? Why make every effort to enter God’s rest? Because God’s judgment is searching and inescapably exposing. Verse 13, “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” No man, woman, child, president, poor, rich, angel, devil—no creature is hidden from his sight. It’s not even that you might try to hide later and can’t. You’re not hidden now. As you sit there today, he sees you through and through. As I preach he sees to the depth of my soul and knows every wayward thought I think.

To give into sin is to live as if God isn’t there. To borrow time at the office when you’re on the clock is to live as if God doesn’t see. To only disclose part of the truth and not all the truth is to live like an atheist. To be sweet to your wife in public but harsh at home is to pretend like you can hide from God. In reality, we’re naked before the Lord. We be running like Adam and Eve to cover ourselves in his presence. But we can’t.

In fact, the word “exposed” in the ESV, or “laid bare” in other translations was used in other literature to describe the twisting of the neck. Think of a wrestler twisting the neck of his opponent up. Or in another context, think of a priest twisting up the neck of the animal to slit its throat. We stand before God absolutely vulnerable. There’s no escaping his eyes. He sees everything. God never has to learn anything about you. He just knows. He knows it all—everything you’ve done, say, think, desire. You must give an account to him. Jesus said, “on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak” (Matt 12:36). Paul said, “[Jesus] will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart” (1 Cor 4:5).

Be moved to faithfulness by God’s all-searching gaze.

Among others in the New Testament, one motivation to persevere in faith is God’s inescapable judgment. One motivation for making certain that you are trusting Jesus and truly following him is God’s inescapable judgment. I don’t mean it’s just a motivation for those without Christ to come to Christ. It’s also a motivation for those who know Christ to remain faithful to him. We will give an account for the way we love others, the way we use our money and spend our time, the way we speak to our children, the way we nurture and protect our wives, the way we work and use our skills.

That’s why the Bible says we work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord we will receive the inheritance as our reward. We serve the Lord Christ (Col 3:24). Or, 2 Corinthians 5:9-10, “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” His judgment is searching and inescapably exposing. Therefore, don’t be a pretender. Don’t put up the facades. Don’t grow lazy and indifferent to the kingdom as if that Day isn’t coming, as if he can’t see you now.

Bring yourself to the word of God; prioritize Bible intake.

Also, if a hardened heart, if a heart of unbelief, if a heart that’s always going astray and giving into patterns of disobedience—if that kind of heart keeps you from entering God’s rest, what are you doing to address it? I said earlier that with our limited knowledge, it’s impossible for us to know our heart fully. Even the stubbornness we may see, it’s impossible for us to assess it rightly and sort through all the motives driving it. There are times when I have to tell Rachel or other brothers, “Look, I’m feeling this way about a matter and I know it’s not godly, but I can’t quite put my finger on where it’s coming from. Can you help me see it?”

We’re limited in our ability to assess and discern. We’re limited in our ability to penetrate to the depth of our unbelief. But the word of God isn’t limited in its ability. Therefore, if the state of your heart is a matter of eternal importance, and if God’s word is living and able to penetrate and discern your heart, then bring yourself before the word of God. It’s no small thing when we tell you to keep reading your Bible. We’ve got all kinds of junk in here, and you’re limited in your ability to change it and the elders are limited in our ability to change it and counselors are limited in their ability to change it, but God isn’t. God in Christ by the Spirit is present in his word.

By his word he goes to work, personally; and he is able to penetrate to every place we need to change. Prioritize Bible intake. Your life depends on it. Making it to God’s eternal rest depends on it. Just as you plan for other things in life, plan to sit before the word. Set aside time to read and meditate on Scripture. Memorize it. The church has a Fighter Verse schedule to work through. It’s printed in your worship guide every week.

Talk about the word with one another. Be honest with each other when you’re finding the Bible boring, and then pray for God to give light and joy. Perhaps serving other people, enduring a rushed morning, or just a poor use of time prevented you from getting in the word. Don’t shy away from admitting it—Jesus is our justification, not Bible reading plans—and then ask your brother or sister to feed you with what they read. God’s word is living and active. It alone cuts to the heart.

Know that in God’s word, he examines you.

But be careful here. It’s not simply about getting more Bible data in you. I know Bible scholars who have nearly both Testaments memorized in Greek and Hebrew, but they’re not Christians. It’s also not simply treating the Bible as an object of our study. Should we study the Bible? Rigorously! It’s necessary to make God’s word the object of our study. But if that’s all it is, then we’re missing the words of this passage.

Who’s the real object of scrutiny according to verses 12-13? It’s not the word of God. It’s you and me. That should inform our posture when we open the word of God. It is not merely “This is the word I study and scrutinize.” It’s “I am the object upon whom the word acts and scrutinizes and penetrates.” In the word, Jesus by the Spirit sits in active judgment over us. Ultimately, we are the object when coming to the word. Ultimately, God’s word puts us in our place beneath his rule. Ultimately, he opens us and sees us for who we really are inside. He wields the sword on us, slices through our defenses, exposes our inner secrets, and wars against our sin. Painful as that sounds, this is how we approach the word of God: “Lord, you know all things. Lord, I am not hidden from you. Do your work on me. Everything that needs to happen in me to keep me persevering to the end, do your work on me.”

We are commanded to take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God—Ephesians 6 says. But in taking it up, we must remember: it is the sword of the Spirit. Ultimately, he wields and makes it effective. Meaning, long before the word becomes a sword in our hand, it is the sword in God’s hand to penetrate us.

Before his searching gaze, remember his merciful provision.

Hearing a message like that of verses 12-13 leaves many of us laid bare. We find ourselves even now unhidden and exposed before the Lord. Perhaps his word penetrated where it hadn’t before; and you find yourself wholly undone. What you deserve before his holy, searching gaze is judgment. What you need is mercy. And that’s where Hebrews 4 goes next: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Lord willing, we’ll talk more extensively about that next week. For now, let’s take the Supper together, knowing that the one before whom we are exposed also made provision to enter God’s presence.

________

[i] Most commentaries since Calvin have abandoned this interpretation, but some of the best arguments for seeing “the word of God” as referring to Christ appear in John Owen, Hebrews, vol. 4 (Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1991; reprint of Johnstone & Hunter, 1854), 349-56.

[ii] Tedd Tripp, Shepherding a Child’s Heart, 2nd ed. (Wapwallopen: Shepherd Press, 1995), 3.

[iii] Prov 4:23; 20:5.