The Power of the Word

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning, South Berlison. I listened to Drew's message last week, and I understand that you guys are going through a sermon series on the Word of God, and just the Word, the focus for the summer, is that nine-week series, us going through the Word. And so I'm excited to be able to be here for the next two weeks, speaking on some passages, some different attributes as we go. One thing that I enjoyed as I was listening to Drew is that the audience participated. There was some activity. Drew said something. I think one of the younger members here responded, and so he kind of made fun and picked on and stuff. So I don't know if we're going to do any of that. We'll see if I make fun of ... I don't know. Maybe you guys will just make fun of me. That's fine too. Amen, he says. So we are going to be in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 and 13 today. I know what you're thinking, only going through two verses.

This should be quick, right? But we're going to go through it word for word, and just a little bit. And I think it's going to be good. But before, as you guys are turning there, let me tell this story just to kind of introduce what we're going to be talking about today. When I was in college, I moved out of the town that I grew up in, and I went away. And so the church that I grew up in was, again, kind of being separated from my home church. Then coming back maybe after a few months and revisiting, it was a good experience and it allowed me an opportunity to catch up with some friends. So these two girls, two sisters that we had grown up in church together and the two of them and I were good friends. In fact, I can admit this to you now because this isn't, I don't think it's being recorded. I had a crush on one of them, I never told her, but it's fine. And so I took them out, coming back to visit,

I took them out to, it was called Carolina Wings, right? I thought I was being super fancy. It was just basically Buffalo Wild Wings. And we went out to dinner and I took, you know, just to kind of catch up. And we had a great time. I got to tell them all about the college experience and they were kind of catching me up on how things were going with church and everything. And at the end of the meal, the waiter who I didn't realize, I guess maybe, I don't know if he was competing for their attention with me or something, but he came up to me, he presented the check, and I pulled out my debit card and thinking I was gonna pay. He comes back and he says, sir, I'm sorry, but your card was declined. Like out loud, I swear, the four or five tables around us all heard, here I am, my two friends, that I haven't seen in a few months, and I am just embarrassed. You know that feeling, right,

where you get uncomfortable and the cold sweat, Like that gland at the middle of your back just activates and you feel the sweat kind of coming down. Like that happened. And here I am just looking at them in horror. I was supposed to pay for this meal and the guy is telling me that my card was declined. He said, yeah. I said, well, why was it declined? Can you try running it again? He says, you have insufficient funds in your accounts. And I said, that's not right. I mean, this is, it's a $20 meal. I probably only have like $50 in my account, but I'm sure I can cover this meal. And he must have kept it going for 20 to 30 seconds, but it felt like it was so much longer until he finally looked at me and he said, I'm just kidding. It's fine. And that was very frustrating, right? I didn't know what to say. Here I was, embarrassed in front of my friends. And so when he gave me the receipt,

and you write on the receipt how much you want to tip your waiter, I wrote probably the smallest I've ever written in my life. I wrote on that little line, insufficient funds. But I did leave him a $10 bill tucked underneath a salt shaker. So I wasn't cheap about it. But I share that story because in that sense, in that moment, I remember being very uncomfortable. And as we go through this passage today, I think that this passage has the potential, if I do well to teach this passage to you, then it should make us uncomfortable. These verses, I know there's just two of them, and I know it's here in Hebrews, and it's in the Bible, and Hebrews has a lot of encouraging verses, but this passage has the potential to make us uncomfortable because it's going to point out to us that we are insufficient. And I know that that's probably not a popular message nowadays, right?

Like you don't want the preacher coming up and telling you that, man, you're not good enough, you're not powerful enough, you're not strong, you're not all that you think you are. But, but, but we're not going to end that way either. And so as we go through this passage, I just want you to think about that story, think about how I felt, the Carolina wings being a little uncomfortable, a little insufficient, and let's see if we can kind of get that same mentality as we go through these two verses that the writer of Hebrews has to share with us. So I'll begin by reading the passage and I think that this is a very familiar scripture verse to us. And we're going to go through it in such a way that, again, my hope and my prayer is that it just becomes alive and it changes and challenges the way that not only we think about but deal with and interact with scripture

on a day-to-day basis. I mean, that's the focus for us this summer, right? is for you guys dealing with the word of God. Last week, Drew preached about the person of the word, and this week we're going to be speaking about the power of the word. Because the beautiful thing about Christianity is that we have the scriptures in front of us. Now, probably more than ever, we have the easiest access to the Bible, to the words of scripture, at any point in human history. You can get on your phone, the Bible app, and you can listen to the Bible in 20 different languages and 50 different accents, and they'll read it to you, and you can do that for free. You can, again, you can have scripture pour and wash over you, and I think sometimes that this ease of use maybe makes us neglected, right? Maybe it makes us not appreciated as much, right? If you got in trouble for having a Bible in your home,

like that would communicate a sense of importance. it would make us realize just how much more valuable these words are. Well, I want to do that today by looking at this verse and seeing and understanding how valuable, valuable because they're powerful, because they're alive. These words are the writer of Hebrews in Chapter four, verse 12 says, 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 and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 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." So the Word of God, the writer of Hebrews, he begins, and in this passage he's talking, we see, about the Word of God, but this comes from him teaching on the rest that is afforded to the people of God. And

And so I'm trying to understand like how does this passage fit into the larger narrative of Hebrews? And we're not going to go through and look at, you know, chapters three and the beginning of four, but it is important to see this story in its context, this verse in its context, because what the writer has done is he has said that there have been a group of people, he's pointed back to Israel, and he's even pointing and talking about Christians and non-believers in his day and age, that there are people who have missed out on the rest that God provides, the break from work, the just the satisfaction of knowing who God is. People have missed out on that because they haven't rightly understood the word of God. And so then this passage we see in verses 12 and 13, and then he goes on to talk about that we're not hopeless and we're not alone in our understanding of the word of God

because we have the person of the word, namely Jesus, who is our high priest. And so that story, these two verses fit in there, but what is it about this passage that I think is so familiar and so striking to us? It's for the word of God is living. Think about that for a second. Think about the imagery here and the parallelism that the writer uses. When he says that it is living, why does he use this word? I mean, is it like a seashell that we can put our Bible up to our ear and kind of hear the breath of God through it? Not exactly. But how many of you have read a passage of scripture and then you've returned to it days or weeks or months later and that passage has come alive? It's meant a completely different thing or it's impacted you in a completely different way. Yeah? The word of God is alive. I think that's such a cool image. The words, it's like somebody is speaking to us face to face,

person to person, conversing, talking out loud, and so that at different stations in our life, even though these words were written thousands of years ago to an entirely different group of people, that they still speak truth to us today, that we can read the Psalmists, we can read the Gospels, we can read the Epistles, and they speak to the human condition, to our hearts, to our sin nature, to our desire to be in relationship with God. These words are alive. You know who didn't think these words were alive? Was a guy by the name of Voltaire. Voltaire was a Renaissance thinker in the early 1700s, and Voltaire devoted his life to undoing the teachings of the Bible. In fact, he even wrote what's called like an anti-commentary where he went through every single passage of scripture and he said, this is why this isn't true. This is why that's not true. And he bragged.

Now, Voltaire wrote a lot of words, But he bragged, he was very famous for saying this, that with his pen, he would undo the work that Jesus' 12 disciples had unleashed on the world. He kind of put it in poetic language, right? Like Voltaire, his one goal in life was to undo, unravel the mythos of Christianity, so to speak. Well, Voltaire's died and we don't have his works. We don't have his works. We don't read him every Sunday morning, of course. In that sense, he failed. But not only that, what was also pretty ironic is that Voltaire's home, after he died, it was purchased by the Bible Society of France, and his home was used,

set up with printing presses, to print Bibles out of his home. Isn't that cool? Like, don't tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor. Voltaire's home was used to print Bibles and spread the word of God. God's word is alive. And many of your translations, especially if you're using the ESV or like I am the NASB, then it says it's alive. And what does that mean? It also means that, or living, it means alive, it also means quick. I think the King James says quick. So kind of cool words that that are used there. Again, the scripture cannot be killed, it cannot be destroyed, it can't be taken apart, it's alive. But also, Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the word of God is active. That the word of God is active. And some translations also say it's powerful or effective. I like the word active because I think it communicates this idea of moving, of movement, of things happening and changing.

The word of God causes things to happen. In fact, 1 Thessalonians chapter two verse 13, Paul writes kind of using the same language. He says, I thank God that the word of God is active in you who believe, that it affects change, right? That we cannot come to the word, interact with it and then leave the same. That in our communication, in our interaction with God's word, we are thereby changed. just like again any conversation you have, any relationship you have, that we are fundamentally changed, we grow, we develop, we come out of that interaction different afterwards. So the Word of God is active. We also go on and we see that the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. Great imagery, but I think sometimes that we lose a little bit because, you know, I don't know about you, but I didn't hang up my sword when I walked in today. We don't go around carrying swords on our belt loops anymore.

So what is it that the writer is trying to communicate when he says the word sword, and not just sword, but a two-edged sword? Well, a couple of things. In fact, the Bible, the word that's used here for sword is the same one that's used in Ephesians 6, 17 in talking about the armor of God. But I think that the word also in Greek can be used to describe a fisherman's knife, okay? or a dagger, a short sword. So it's not so much like a, you know, what the Romans would carry around, the big broadsword. Those were more blunt, and they weren't sharp on both sides. This is more of a precision instrument. So think of a longer dagger, or I like the analogy of a fisherman's knife. The same word is used in, again, in scripture, in Greek to describe a fisherman's knife. And this is also the same word that Peter, the sword that he had when he cut off the high priest servant's ear in the Gospels there. So basically a sharp object. And I

like the word sword as well because it communicates kind of a personal interaction, right? Like when you have a sword, you're doing battle. It's more of a one-on-one type confrontation. And so the sword here, I think a sharp, you know, fish knife. Why sword? Because it communicates that cutting, that precision with a knife of digging down deep. And we see not only is it a two-edged sword, but it pierces as far as the division of soul and spirit. What is it about soul and spirit? I mean, if I were to ask you, point to your soul, point to your spirit. You can't do it, right? Like those things are invisible. But the word of God separates, distinguishes between those. And commentaries are kind of divided, because truthfully, the Bible is kind of fast and loose with its language on soul and spirit. Sometimes it uses those interchangeably. Sometimes, you know, Paul, he'll say soul or he'll say spirit,

kind of in the same passage. Sometimes we use them as a group, right? Body, soul, and spirit. You know, Christ used those words. And I don't think it's important here to make so much of a distinction between, you know, soul and spirit, but I think it's saying that the Word of God is It's so powerful, it's so active, it's so alive, it can divide even the indistinguishable things. And then you go on in that context, joints and marrow, same kind of thing. What is it about joints and marrow? Is that these things are hidden, they're invisible. You really, you need a knife. You need something to get down in underneath the flesh because by and large they're covered. You're not gonna look at somebody and say, I see your joints and I can see your marrow. No, a knife would have to get in there, precise cutting and surgical precision in order to separate those two.

And that's what the Word of God does, is it divides, it separates, it distinguishes. It uncovers hidden things. As we kind of see, again, the imagery that the writer is using here, these things that are invisible, they're hidden, but not from the sight of God. And he goes on to reinforce that in verse 13. He says, 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. Now, I think on one hand, let's just be honest. That's kind of scary, right? The word of God, that God sees everything, that he knows our thoughts and our intentions, and I'll be honest, you know, we probably don't like to dwell on that as much because, man, we are insufficient. We don't come clean to our Savior. We're not perfect. If you were to look at our thoughts, our intentions, you realize that, man, down deep at our core,

we're probably a lot more selfish than we care to admit. We're good at putting on fronts, at perfecting our social media profiles, but God sees beyond that. The word of God distinguishes beyond the surface. It gets down deep. It's active, it's alive. It distinguishes the invisible things and it judges our thoughts and our intentions. And I think, yeah, if I were being honest with you guys, that makes us a little bit uncomfortable. But the writer doesn't end there. He says in verse 14, since therefore we have such a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. It's not about us. And it doesn't matter what we've done. It just matters who we believe in and what Christ has done. And so the writer of Hebrews doesn't leave us without hope. He points back to Christ. The word of God, like Drew said last week,

the word of God points to the word of God. And so we see Jesus as our provision, as our great high priest. There's an example, I've used this, I admit in youth ministry, and I think it really does a good job to kind of emphasize and bring to life this verse, verse 13 about no creature being hidden. And don't worry, I'm not doing it today, but I saw this while I was in college. I went to church at a, it was a mega church, again, in college, and the pastor, very trendy individual, kind of like Drew jeans and a t-shirt, and he always preached in a very casual atmosphere, and much like most preachers do nowadays, right? Well, one day, he came out in like a three-piece suit. I mean, it must have been thousands of dollars. It was nice. It was, you know, black and had the tie, the shine shoes and everything. And everybody was such a cool reaction because everybody, like, hooped and hollered.

And knowing that this was a special occasion, this pastor, you know, he was no longer wearing, like, the stonewashed jeans or the, you know, the bleached whatever. It was, he was dressed like a preacher, right? And so this mega church just went crazy. They thought this was the coolest thing. The pastor preached his entire sermon. And then at the end of it, he took off his shoes. And he realized that he had holes in his socks. He was preaching his entire sermon, looked dressed to the hilt, wearing thousands of dollars worth of clothing. But he had holes in his socks. He never would have known. And then, you know how you wear the jacket and you kind of cover up the tie? He'd taken his tie out and his tie was in tatters. Like the part that you couldn't see, it was all just shredded. And then he unbuttoned his jacket, he took off his jacket and his shirt had coffee stains

all over it. The sleeves were ripped and torn. And he was the exact same person five minutes ago, the same person that was wearing just this immaculate suit. And yet he was standing before us and just, again, taking off one or two pieces of clothing looked completely different. And it was a very powerful image, because here we were tricked into thinking that this guy had it all together. This guy looked nice. And then once he took off his jacket, you realize what was underneath. And I think that's sometimes what the word of God does to us, is that it pierces us. It makes us confront what is underneath. And so as we look at this passage, and I wanna kinda draw us to the application portion of the message because I think it would be very easy. Well, let me first share with you kinda my struggle, right? The struggle in trying to apply this well-known passage is what can I say, what can I,

again, I thought about coming up here and dressing up in a suit, but. What can you say to make the word of God more alive, to make it more powerful than Scripture already says it is? Like what kind of imagery could I use? What kind of illustration or story could I tell? And this is what I came up with. Just read it. And you guys are already doing that. The focus this summer of reading through the 17 books in nine weeks, that's great. Like what application can we bring to the word of God? Is to read it, to let the power come out from it. Like sometimes you don't need to add anything to it. Sometimes you just need to point to the scripture and say, this is enough. It's alive. It's living and active, and therefore it speaks power into our lives. So my first encouragement to you is to read the word of God. Daily Bible intake is so important. And I've always heard the illustration

that if scripture was our spiritual food, would you only be content to be fed once a week? No, no one lives like that. we have to eat at least three, sometimes five or six times a day, right? Why not with the word of God? And again, we talked about how easy it is to get the Bible in our lives. There are apps now, again, where someone will read the scripture to you. How many of us commute to work every day? How many of us spend time in the car? Like we have time to hear scripture read over us. The second thing is to hear the word of God. You hear it by coming to church, by interacting, by singing songs. Songs, hymns especially, are so beautiful because they communicate scripture, and the songs that were chosen this morning, they share the gospel, they talk about Jesus and the cross and the resurrection. We hear the word of God. And the third thing is to know the word of God,

to spend time memorizing and studying scripture. Because like we said, you can read the same passage over and over again, but it interacts with us differently at different points in our life. And I think that that's important to recognize. We know it's true, so why don't we just do it? And that's, again, my encouragement to you, there's no flowery language. There's no more incentive than just to say, do it. Because if we truly believe that this is the power of God, that the scriptures are God speaking to us, then why wouldn't we want to hear from Him on a daily basis, that the creator of the entire universe who spoke galaxies into existence has spoken to us by his word. He has spoken to us, he has given us his will revealed. He is not some guy that is hidden out in the cosmos, but he is present with us. And he's present with us through the scriptures, through the writings of Paul and Peter,

through the Psalms of David and the wisdom of Solomon, through the writings of Moses, through these stories of God personally interacting with his creation and doing so in a way that shows us he wants to continue to interact with us as well. I mean, what if I told you that the amount of time that you spent reading scripture directly correlated with like how much money you made, or how nice your car was, or how big of a house you had, would we spend more time reading scripture? Like what if I said that whoever reads the most scripture between now and next Sunday, Drew will give $1,000 to. Would you read more scripture between now and next Sunday than you normally would? Well, probably not, because you don't believe that Drew has $1,000 to give. I mean, let's get uncomfortable for a second. Yes, I think the answer is yes, we would. Are we supposed to? No, probably not.

But the scripture is important. And examples like that, yeah, they mess with us, But I think more so than that, they encourage us, they show us that the Bible is important, that it is spiritual food. It's something that we need to be consuming on a daily basis. You see, Martin Luther, who was probably just as busy, if not more so than the rest of us, right? I mean, the guy went up against the most powerful organization of his time and gave us some amazing doctrine and really pointed us back to scripture. How did he do it? Guy was super busy. In one of his journals he wrote, I have a lot to do today. He went through just the laundry list of activities, of time that he needed to spend, of all of the things that were on his plate, Martin Luther, and he said, I've got so much going on today, I don't know how I'm gonna have the time, I'm gonna be able to do everything.

I'm gonna need to spend three hours in God's word instead of two hours today. Like that was how he said he was going to get through this day, spending more time in scripture when he had a lot going on, not less. I think that should be our heart as well. Let's pray. Father God, we come before you and Lord, my prayer is just that in spite of me, in spite of just whatever insufficiency or lack of imagination, that it would exist, Father, that we would just step back and realize that your word is enough, that there is power in these pages that you speak to us every day and that you long to have a conversation with us through the words that you have already spoken over us. And so God, again, we know, we know, we know how important the scriptures are. And we just pray that you would fan the flame, that you would stoke in us this desire to hunger for your word. Lord, we know that you long to speak to us,

and so may you just fill us with a desire to draw closer in our relationship with you, knowing that that happens through us reading and hearing and studying what you would have to say to us. So God, again, we thank you that you are a faithful God, that you have recorded these events, your interactions with humanity, with creation. You have recorded them in the pages of our Bible that we can turn to again and again. We can be encouraged and challenged, made uncomfortable, and come to the table knowing that we are insufficient, but that that's okay because you are sufficient, because you have provided Christ as our high priest for us. Lord, you love us, you care for us, you long to bring us into communion with you. And so we pray that we would be receptive to that calling, that we would be open, that you would open our hearts, and that we would long to desire you as you desire us.

It's in Christ's name we pray this, amen. Amen, thank you Steve. Really as we move into our time of worship, there's not much left to say other than, let's respond, let's do business with the Lord as you are moved, as you need prayer, you need to take another step on your spiritual journey. I will be down here and you can come forward on any aisle And we can pray and we can talk about what needs to happen. As we sing, I pray that we'd all sing with a joyful heart. Let's stand as we sing. Oh, so lie you weary and troubled, No light in the darkness you see, There's light for a look at the Savior Life more abundant and free Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in his wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace Through death and to life everlasting He passed and we follow Him there Over us in no more hath dominion

The more than the conquerors we are, turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face. And the things of earth will go strangely dear in the light of His glory and grace. His word shall not fail you, He promised. Believe Him and all will be well. Then go to a world that is dying, His perfect salvation to tell. Turn your eyes upon Jesus, Look full in His wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.