The Word of God (Hebrews 4:12-13)

The Church’s Loss of Confidence in Scripture

Turn now please to the book of Hebrews chapter 4. Read together verses 12 and 13, and then we will pray. Verses 12 and 13 of Hebrews chapter 4. 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.

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. Let's pray. Father, it is our desire that you would make your word live to us, to our hearts, that we may behold in your word wonderful things, open up our eyes to that, and make your spirit to be our teacher in these things, that we may see in your word that which you would have for us, that we may leave here with an appreciation for the word of God, both living and written, and that you would be honored through our study and our meditation here today, we ask it in Christ's name, amen.

If the modern church would understand, I think, and live out the fullness of what is taught in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12, it would be the cure for most, if not all, of what ails the church in our day.

And there is plenty that ails the church in our day. And I wouldn't even just say that this would just be in America, I would say the Western church, because I would hate to leave our Canadian friends out of this assessment, but the church is sick.

And for one particular reason, it is that we have lost the church. And when I say we, in some of these contexts, I want you to understand I'm not talking about we as in we who are gathered here, but we as in the royal or corporate or the universal or the them out there, we, however you want to view that.

That's the we that I'm talking about. We have lost our confidence in the authority, the sufficiency and the power of the word of God. That is what ails the church in the West. We have lost our confidence in the authority, the sufficiency and the power of the word of God.

The church in our age is characterized by a lack of confidence in those things. And I'll give you a couple of examples. A couple decades ago, it was just a couple of decades ago that the church survived an attack on the doctrine of the inerrancy of the scriptures.

Back in the 70s and the early 80s, it became quite fashionable for seminary professors and church pastors to begin to question the inerrancy of scripture. The doctrine of inerrancy teaches that scripture is without error.

It is without error in its theology and in all that it teaches, as well as without error in any of its historical details and in anything that is said. It is completely without error. Related to that doctrine of inerrancy is the doctrine of infallibility, which means that the scriptures cannot err.

Now, see, that's a stronger assertion than that it is without error. I may put together a grocery list that is without error on it, but to say that it cannot err, that means that it is unable to err. We believe that scripture not only is without error, but that it cannot actually be found to be an error, nor can it commit an error, nor can God commit an error because the source of scripture is God himself.

And because God is truth, and because God is a God of truth, because God is able and does clearly communicate everything that he needs to and wants to clearly communicate, scripture is without error. So back in the 70s and 80s, it became quite fashionable to affirm inspiration that the Bible was inspired by God, but to deny its inerrancy, that it was without error.

And so a number of seminaries and Bible colleges and even big publishing houses and parachurch ministries began to just quietly drop the word inerrancy from their doctrinal statements. Now, thankfully, inside the church, we won the battle over the inerrancy of scripture.

That's not to say that nobody questions inerrancy anymore. There are plenty of organizations that question inerrancy, but they're apostate. And anymore today, if you don't at least give a hat tip or a nod or mention the word inerrant in your doctrinal statement, it's very difficult to pass yourself off as anything remotely or closely Christian.

So amongst those who affirm all the cardinal doctrines of scripture, we have won the battle over inerrancy because Christians affirm the doctrine of inerrancy. I don't know if you saw recently a series of tweets that was put out by Union Theological Seminary in response to a statement on the whole social justice controversy that's going on right now.

But Union Theological Seminary lived up to its reputation by basically denying in that series of tweets every cardinal doctrine of scripture. And among those was inerrancy. And of course, they denied God's standard for human sexuality and homosexuality and marriage and the inerrancy and the authority of scripture.

They denied all of that. Now, you're always going to have... I mean, apostate's going to do what apostate's got to do. Apostate's got to be apostates. And they're going to do that. They're going to reject and deny all the cardinal doctrines of scripture.

And among those will be the doctrine of inerrancy and infallibility and eventually the inspiration of scripture. Once you jettison those doctrines, then of course, you open the door up to anything. It's really interesting how quickly something, errors can be found in the text of scripture once you suggest that it's possible for scripture to err.

It doesn't take long for somebody to suggest that maybe a scripture is an error regarding Genesis or the flood or the calling of Abraham or some historical details that maybe it might also be an error regarding human sexuality and God's prohibition against homosexuality and marriage and the standard of women in ministry and all of these other various issues.

Suddenly, once you open the door up to that, you've opened up Pandora's box. But within evangelicalism, within what we call conservative Bible-believing Christianity, we won the battle over inerrancy.

So the battle today is not over inerrancy. The battle today is over the sufficiency of scripture. Whether or not scripture is everything we need or whether we need something more. Today, that's where the battle is being waged.

And unfortunately, the church is losing that battle because we have a widespread amongst evangelicalism, a desire to have more outside of scripture. And we have lost our confidence in the sufficiency of scripture to do everything that we needed to do and our confidence in the power of the Bible to do everything that it is promised to do.

So even amongst Bible-believing fundamentalist, Baptist, Bible-belt churches that have in their statements, high statements regarding scripture, like we believe in inerrancy and authority and the sufficiency of scripture and that it is God's word for us today.

Even in those circles, you get a lack of belief in the sufficiency of scripture. And I'll give you a couple examples of that. Here's one. Within the broader scope of evangelicalism today, there is this desire to hear the voice of God outside of scripture.

That is a patent denial of the sufficiency of scripture. To think or to affirm that God speaks to us through still small voices or impressions or some feeling that comes drifting into my addled brain in the middle of the night or through a vision or a dream or a modern day prophet, that is an outright denial of the sufficiency of scripture.

And I'm not just talking about the type of stuff that goes on in the new apostolic reformation and the mainstream charismatic movement and all the wing nuttery that characterizes those extremes. That's not just what I'm talking about.

This is just within, you can go into your average Southern Baptist church and they will affirm two things, that I believe the Bible is the inspired word of God for his people today and I believe that God still needs to speak to me outside of scripture in order to communicate to me what his will is so that I can obey it.

And of course, if God needs to speak to me in order to communicate to me what his will is so that I can obey it, I need to learn how to hear the voice of God through all of these other means. These two doctrines or theologies cannot occupy the same heart at the same time.

A belief in the sufficiency of scripture and a belief that God speaks to his people outside of scripture or that God needs to. If I affirm sufficiency, I must deny the other. If I affirm the one, I must deny sufficiency.

Those two ideas cannot occupy the same heart. I'll give you another example. The way in which the word of God takes a backseat in the worship service, the preaching, the ministry and the life of most churches in our land.

The word of God is put on the back burner, the back shelf. Now, this happens not because there is a group of leaders within the church who all meet in a dark room around a table in their dark robes, wringing their hands, offering blood sacrifices to Satan and wondering how can we hide the word of God from our people.

That's not what goes on. Instead, it becomes a practical denial of the centrality of scripture in the preaching and in the teaching and in the life of the church in just the way things are done. They don't read long passages of scripture up in front of everybody because that just doesn't set well with congregations that really want to be entertained.

And so it's not that they don't quote scripture, it's they do. It's just that they don't spend as much time exegeting scripture and explaining scripture as they do explain in the context of the movie clip they're about to play or the music video they're about to play or a song lyric or a life lesson from the life of the pastor or something, anything other than scripture.

It's that the word of God just doesn't take center stage in all that it has done. And so though they would say they would affirm the orthodoxy of a belief in the inspiration of scripture and its inerrancy and its centrality and to say it is the word of God, but then to live that out in the life of what is done inside the church on a Sunday morning, scripture is remarkably absent.

It's just not there because they have a confidence in almost anything other than scripture. Just yesterday, we were down in Pullman at one of my kids' volleyball tournament down there and I was talking with a young man who attends our church who was attending the University of Washington and I asked him about some of the churches that he's visited around there and there was a large church that was right next door to where the tournament was being hosted and he said, I actually came to this church, to the youth group here one night and to check it out and to see what this was about and I said, well, what was it?

And he said, well, after the normal chicanery of what goes on in youth groups, the guy got up to teach and he said, I'm not exaggerating and not a word of a lie, he spent more than half of the time reading from a Dr. Seuss book.

This was the youth group, Dr. Seuss book. I hate myself for asking the next question, but I had to ask the next question and you know what the next question was? Which Dr. Seuss book? Are You My Mother?

That is not even a classic Dr. Seuss book. Like that's not even one of his best works. That is a dereliction of duty to read Are You My Mother? It wasn't Cat in a Hat or Green Eggs and Ham or Horton Hears a Who or Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You or The Wocket in My Pocket.

It wasn't even one of the classic great Dr. Seuss books. It was one of his lesser works. I hate myself for asking the next question, but I had to ask it and you might know what it is. What was the lesson all about from Are You My Mother?

Well, there is this one creature in Are You My Mother that is running around asking all of these other creatures, Are You My Mother?

Right?

He's lost. He doesn't know what his purpose is. He doesn't know who he is. Doesn't have any sense of identity until he finds his mother. And so it is with us and God. We are lost. We are without purpose.

We have no sense of identity until we find God. And then we're just like the little creature in Are You My Mother? And I said to this young man, I said, you know why that youth pastor did that in that youth group that night?

It is because he believes that Dr. Seuss is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit of joints and marrow and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intentions of the heart.

He believes that. It's not that he has a high view of Dr. Seuss. It is that he has a low view of scripture. He believes that Dr. Seuss is equally able to accomplish his goal as the word of God is. That is why the word of God takes a backseat and Dr. Seuss gets center stage.

Dr. Seuss gets 50 of the lesson time.

Why?

Because the word of God has been jettisoned and you need something to change people's lives. So why don't you just go with a Dr. Seuss book? If we only believe that the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, we would never give our time to all of this other silliness and the chicanery and the gimmicks and the themes and the entertainment and the drama and the skits and the giveaways and the props and the themes and the sermon series and all of the other nonsense.

If we only believe that the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. That is our text for this morning. Hebrews chapter four, verse 12. And that is why I say that if we honestly believed this and we were able to live this out, every Christian in every church around our country would cure all of the nonsense that plagues American Christianity.

The Warning Passage and the Search of the Heart

Hebrews four, verses 12 and 13. I want you to read it with me again. 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.

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 it's been a while in our normal course of going through books of the Bible that we have come across a passage that deals with the nature of scripture.

So I thought it was a good idea to slow down just a little bit. And I understand that for me, slowing down in the passage means almost coming to a standstill, but to slow down for a little bit and at least pause to consider what scripture says about itself.

So at least for this week and next week, and I don't know which weeks after that we might be doing the same thing. We're going to do that. We're going to look at what scripture says about itself, why it is that it is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.

Today we're doing two things and this is kind of mostly by way of introduction. Today I want to set these two verses in their context and show you how it connects to and is part of this warning passage that we've been looking at as we're working our way through Hebrews four.

And the second thing is to consider what it is that the author is here means by the word of God. So we are going to get all the way through for the word of God. That is our text for this morning. The first part of chapter four, verse 12, as we consider what the author is speaking of when he describes here the word of God.

So let's begin by looking at this verse in its context. And I'd remind you that this is part of the warning passage that goes from chapter three, verse seven, all the way through to the end of verse 13.

It fits in this warning passage where the author is warning us about missing God's rest. And he encourages us in verse 11 to be diligent to enter that rest, that rest, which is a salvation rest that God has and offers to men and shares with men.

It is a part of God's nature and it is available to us. It has been since the garden. It's not something that was passed up. It is something available to us today, this salvation rest. We enter it in and through Jesus Christ by faith.

And the author wants us to enter into that rest lest we follow the same example of disobedience as the children of Israel in the wilderness generation who heard the word of God, but turned away from it.

He doesn't want us, his readers, to turn away from the rest that God offers to us. And so then there is in verse 12, this reference to the word of God, doing this judging, this critiquing, this thorough examination of the heart.

It is sharp and pierces to the division of soul and spirit. It pierces right through the inner part of it. It is able to critique and to judge and to discern even the thoughts and intentions of men's hearts.

That is the role of the word of God. Now, how does that fit in the context of the warning passage? He is simply saying to us that there is no way that those who are pretending to be saved and pretending to have entered that rest will be able to skate through God's judgment on the last day, because the word of God is searching and true and living and powerful, and it discerns men's hearts.

No fake faith will avail for you on the day of judgment. When you stand before God, the word of God analyzes your heart, reveals the motives and intentions of your heart, and you will be judged by that word, that living and powerful word of God.

So that is the incentive for, in the words of verse 11, to be diligent to enter that rest. Be diligent to enter it because the word of God is a searching and trying word. It's powerful and active and alive, and you will not skate through.

You cannot pull off a sham on judgment day. You cannot have fraudulent faith on judgment day and expect to pass, because the word of God will do its work. And everything, the motives and intentions of men's hearts will be laid bare and naked before the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Verse 13. That's how it's connected to the passage around it. Also, you'll notice that most of this warning passage has been an exposition of Psalm 95, which is an exposition of the children of Israel, right?

He quoted that in the middle of chapter three, and then he has referred to that passage, and now he gets to the end of really explaining Psalm 95, and this is his confidence that the word of God has the power to reveal the condition of men's hearts.

That's verse 12. The word of God has the power to reveal the condition of men's hearts and to change the condition of men's hearts, which is why he has been using the word of God in this context. So that is how it fits in this context.

The word of God lays bare the intentions and the thoughts of men's hearts. Now, the second thing we want to do is consider what it is that the author means when he speaks of the word of God in verse 12, and he says, for the word of God is, and I just want your eyes to look over this list, this description of scripture in verses 12 and 13.

It's living, it's active or powerful, depending on your translation. It's living and active and powerful. It is sharp, sharper than a two-edged sword. It pierces right to the division of soul and spirit.

Look at the vivid imagery that the author is using here. This is, the word of God is so sharp and so powerful that it pierces even to the innermost parts of men's beings, the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and it is able to judge, that word is to criticize or to critique the thoughts and intentions of men's hearts.

And there's no creature hidden from his sight, but it is open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. That is, all of that is vivid imagery used to describe the word of God that he mentions at the beginning of verse 12.

Christ as the Word and the Written Word

So what is the word of God? Can we all be in agreement that what he is describing here is scripture? Can we all agree on that? Nod your head if you can be in agreement with that. Yeah, that's what I thought until the beginning of this last week as well.

So thanks for taking that bait. There's actually a whole strain of interpretive tradition within Christianity that sees the reference here to the word of God, not just exclusively to scripture, but also to Jesus Christ himself being the word of God.

Now, I wanna cash that out for you because I think it is intriguing and interesting. The one person that I saw who did the most work of this that I read this last week was a Bible expositor, John Owen.

Those of you who may not know, John Owen was a Puritan pastor from the 1600s. He wrote seven volumes on the book of Hebrews. That's like this much. The complete works of John Owen take up this much room on my shelf.

And for those of you listening by recording, that's this much room on my shelf. The complete works of John Owen. Now, seven volumes on Hebrews, and these are not seven volumes like the little Bible study booklets that you would have that you put inside the pages of your Bible that you can consult once in a while.

These are seven individual inch and a quarter, inch and a half volumes, small print, small margins, really small, fine print with no space in between the lines, just an explanation of the book of Hebrews.

Two of the volumes are just an introduction to the book of Hebrews. So all of that is just to say that John Owen is an incredibly thorough exegete and a man of staggering intellectual capabilities. So I don't, John Owen is not somebody that you cross swords with lightly or just simply overturn what he has to say.

And I had never even heard or considered this view of Hebrews chapter four, verse 12, until I was reading through a sermon by Charles Spurgeon. And he said, now, John Owen takes this position that this is referring to Jesus Christ.

And I thought, oh, that's interesting. I would like to read what John Owen wrote. So I looked it up and I read the 10 or 12 or 15 pages where he kind of gives the arguments for this. And I'm gonna present to them kind of in a summary form, not nearly as thorough as what he did, but I do wanna present his position that four verse 12, the word of God is not referring just to written scripture, but it's referring to the Lord Jesus Christ.

So here are his arguments. The first one would be this, that Jesus is called the word, is he not? In John one, verse one and one verse 14, in the beginning was the word, the logos, and the word was God.

The word was with God and the word was God. And that word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth. So this is one of the titles that is given to the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is the word.

And the idea behind that title is that he is the communication. He is the representation of what God is and what God has to say. He is the word in the sense that he reveals to us like a word is a token revealing something else to us.

It stands in as a means of communication. So the Lord Jesus Christ does for all that is God. He is the word or the revelation of God and he is God's communication to us. And then Owen suggested that the author of Hebrews has actually already made this point previously in the book back in chapter one, verse one, where he says, God, after he spoke long ago to the prophets and the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days has spoken to us in his son.

So he has already made the point in chapter one, verse one and two that Jesus Christ is the final and perfect and fullest revelation of God that we could get. God has spoken to us in Christ. That is his communication to us.

We saw all that is true of God, all that is true of the nature of God revealed to us and manifested to us in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is, we call him the incarnate word. That is that the word, the communication, the revelation of God was incarnated in human flesh and he walked among us.

So Owen says, when we refer to Christ as the incarnate word, we are doing no injustice to him because he is in fact the full communication and revelation of God to humanity. We call him the word. Second, Owen suggests that the context itself would suggest that this is referring to Christ and not to written scripture.

And he would point to the previous context, the verses just before it, where he talks about entering into God's rest and how it is or how is it and in whom do we enter God's rest? It's in the person of Christ.

So even though he has not mentioned in the immediately preceding verses, he is obviously behind those immediately preceding verses because the author cannot conceive of a rest, a salvation rest that is in God apart from the person of Christ.

So it is Christ who calls out to us, do not harden your hearts as they did when they tested me in the day of Meribah. It is Christ who is there in the wilderness calling to the children of Israel, enter into my rest.

It is Christ who encourages us in the pages of scripture to come unto him if we are weak and heavy laden and weary because he will give us peace and he will give us rest. It's Christ who is behind this whole idea of rest.

So then for him to say, if you do not enter into rest in Christ, you will find that it is Christ himself who judges you on the last day. It's completely in keeping with the context. Further, it is completely in the keeping with the context that follows.

Look at verses 14 and 15, where Christ and his high priestly work is mentioned. Verse 14, therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

And then the rest of that is an explanation of Christ as the high priest. He's right there in the context. And I would suggest to you, he's even closer to verse 12 in the context. Look at verse 13. After describing the word of God in verse 12, which is the subject matter, verse 13 says, and there is no creature hidden from his sight.

Who is the his in verse 13? Who's the his? Not Horton hears a who, but who is the his in verse 13? Everybody would agree that that is a reference either to the searching eyes of the father or to the person of Christ.

There is no visible change of subject matter between verses 12 and verse 13. In fact, people who think that verse 12 is referring to the written word of God have to explain how it is and why it is that the author so smoothly without any transition whatsoever just switches to talking about him and his and whom in verse 13 rather than its.

In other words, after describing the word of God in verse 12, the author doesn't say in verse 13 that there is no creature hidden from its sight, but all things are naked and open to its eyes or the eyes of it with whom we have, with it we have to do.

It doesn't say that in verse 13, does he? It's a person he is describing in verse 13. If he is describing a person doing this searching and critiquing and judging and examining work in verse 13, why is he not describing a person doing the seeking and examining and searching work in verse 12 when he describes the word of God doing that?

I would submit to you that's a good argument. Verse 13, speaking of a hymn, who is the hymn? It's Jesus Christ. Owen would say that verse 12 is speaking of Christ as well, but he has described here in terms of being the word of God.

So the sub, the context fits it. A third argument that Owen uses is that the description in verse 12 itself fits an understanding that this is referring to Christ. Look at the description. Would we be able to say that Jesus Christ is living?

Yeah, he's the resurrection one, right? He's the resurrection and the life. He is called in the book of Acts, the prince of life, the Lord of life. He is the one who gives life to his people. He is the risen one.

He is the living water. In him is life, scripture says. He is the living one. He is the God of life. He is the savior of life, the prince of life. So can we say that Christ is living? Yeah, that would describe him.

How about active and powerful? Though he is seated at the father's right hand, doesn't scripture also say that he upholds all things by the word of his power? And the scripture say that he does this from his position at the father's right hand.

It would be appropriate to say that Christ is one who is active and powerful. And though he sits at the father's right hand, he is certainly working out his plan as he upholds and directs all things to the accomplishment of his eternal purpose.

So we'd say that he's active and powerful. Would we be able to say that Christ in the use of his power or in his person is sharper than any two edged sword? Can we say in fact that Christ is the one who knows exactly how to pierce and to divide to the very heart of every issue and the very heart of every person?

Does Christ have that ability? Is he sharper? Would it be appropriate to say that he is as sharp as any two edged sword? That his work and his use of his power is that discriminating and that judging and that precise and that able?

We would be able to say that. Or that he is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Does Christ do that? He does. Which is why I think there is this natural transition into verse 13. All things are naked and laid bare before the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Because he is the one who is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So Owen would say that he is called the word. He would say that the context suggests it and actually demands it with verse 13.

And then Owen would say that the description that's given in verse 12 is just as able to describe the work and activity of the Lord Jesus Christ as it does to describe the written word of God. And John Owen is not alone in church history.

There's a number of commentators throughout church history who view this as speaking of Christ and not just the written word. As I read through chapter 10, 12 pages of his book explaining these arguments, there was not a single thing that he said that I thought I could overturn.

There was not a single argument.

That he gave that I thought,.

Well, reasonably or rationally, you can't really prove that. That's an assumption or presumption. He made a very ironclad case that verse 12 is speaking of Christ and not the written word. But is the speaking of Christ in exclusion to the written word?

In other words, is he just describing Christ? Or can we say that he is describing the written word as well? Now, here's the case for it describing scripture. Typically, that's how this is understood. In fact, of all the commentaries on my shelf, most of them would say that this is a reference to the written word of God, the Old Testament scriptures.

Typically, here's the arguments that would be used. Typically, this is a standard phrase used in the New Testament to describe the Old Testament writings, the word of God. Sometimes in the New Testament, it's also used to describe New Testament writings, right?

Peter viewed Paul's words as the word of God. Paul viewed Luke's writings as the word of God. So this phrase, the word of God, is something that was used to describe the written scriptures, both Old and New Testament.

And it's used predominantly that way in the New Testament. Second, it would also fit the context since the author has used or quoted from Psalm 95, it would seem quite naturally that he would then transition right into describing the word of God, which he has just been quoting and explaining with the intended purpose of changing the hearts of his hearers.