I don’t know anyone who likes to visit the doctor, let alone, visit a surgeon, much less, go through surgery. I have had only one surgical procedure performed on me during my lifetime thus far, and that was to remove my tonsils and adenoids when I was nine years old. I didn’t like anything about it. To this day my memory can almost conjure up the smell and taste of the gas they used to knock me out in the operating room. Even more, I remember waking up in the recovery room with the worst sore throat I have ever had and being told I could only quench my gnawing thirst with ice chips. Then I had to spend a sleepless night in the hospital in a room filled with other children.
Well, you get my drift. And if you have ever had any kind of surgery, you can relate. My whole experience in the hospital was horrible! But the results were wonderful. I went from being a sickly child with asthma and numerous allergies to a healthy boy who enjoyed food and the outdoors much more than he ever had before.
In the two verses from the book of Hebrews which we are going to read today we are going to see the word of God acting very much like a surgeon’s scalpel. And just as none of us like to have a surgeon cutting on our body, so none of us enjoy the cutting that the word of God does upon our soul and spirit. But as in the case of most physical surgeries, so also in the case of spiritual surgery, the results are worth the agony.
Hear what the writer to the Hebrews has to say about this. Listen for God’s word to you from Hebrews 4:12-13…
Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.
As we examine these two, brief, but very important verses, I want to address three key questions:
1. What, precisely, is the word of God of which the writer to the Hebrews speaks?
2. How, specifically, does the writer to the Hebrews describe the word of God?
3. What does the word of God do?
Let’s tackle the first question first: What is the word of God referred to in this passage?
First, let’s make clear what the writer to the Hebrews doesn’t mean by the phrase “word of God”. He can’t mean what we mean by “the Bible”. Not all of the New Testament was even written at the time the writer to the Hebrews was penning this letter. The author of this book may not even have known of any of the other New Testament books, as we call them. Many of those books or letters may have been written after Hebrews. Though the writers of the New Testament books thought of their writings as authoritative for the church, there was, as yet, no collection of authoritative books such as we have now. The first evidence we have of such a collection comes in the second century, not in the first.
So then, by “the word of God” did the writer to the Hebrews mean to speak of what we call “the Old Testament”? Yes, in part. Part of the point of verse twelve is that the Hebrew Scriptures are not some dusty scroll that belongs to the past. Our writer clearly thinks the Hebrew Scriptures written in the distant past have startling relevance for his time, just as they continue to have relevance for our time.
However, the way that the New Testament authors, including the writer to the Hebrews, used the phrase, “word of God”, clearly communicates that they were thinking of more than just the Old Testament. According to Luke 5:1, Jesus spoke “the word of God”. And according to the book of Acts, the first apostles and disciples spoke “the word of God” (Acts 4:31; 6:2,7; 8:14; 11:1; 12:24; 13:5,7,46; 17:13; 18:11). And the writer to the Hebrews says to his readers in 13:7, “Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you.”
But we must always remember that the ultimate word of God is Jesus. John makes this clear in the opening verses of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. This one was in the beginning with God. All things through him became, and without him became not one thing which has become… And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld the glory of him, glory as of an only begotten from a father, full of grace and of truth.” The value of the Bible consists in it pointing us to this ultimate Word.
This leads to our second question: How does the writer to the Hebrews describe the word of God?
He uses several key words. First, the writer to the Hebrews describes the word of God as living and active. In other words, the word of God speaks to us today in our everyday situations. Since our God is one who acts with power, his word cannot fail to be powerful either.
Some people’s words, once spoken, are soon forgotten. Others are remembered for centuries. But the Bible is revered, read, studied, preached, and treasured by more people in the world today (some two billion) than any other word, any other book, or collection of books. This gives one pause to ponder: why?
Perhaps this is the case because God’s word creates, sustains and regenerates. It always changes our lives for the better when received in faith. As the Lord says in Isaiah 55:11, “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.”
I love what Bible translator J. B. Phillips once said about translating the New Testament letters. He said he felt like “an electrician re-wiring an ancient house without being able to ‘turn the mains off’.” There is a living power in the words of Scripture.
Secondly, the writer to the Hebrews describes the word of God as sharper than any double-edged sword.
When I was in tenth grade I had a moped that I rode to school. One morning, just as I was approaching the school parking lot, I ran out of gas. But I was so close to school, I thought I might be able to pedal my moped into the parking lot. As I tried to do so, my right foot slipped off the pedal and got caught on the metal kickstand of the moped. I stopped the moped because I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what until I looked down and saw my white sock turning red. It was soon full of blood. As I soon found out, the metal kickstand had sliced through my ankle stopping just short of the artery in my foot and my Achilles tendon.
That day, I learned the reality of something I have only just recently read about: the sharper the blade of a knife or a sword, the less you feel it when you cut yourself, at least at first. The same was true of the kickstand on that moped. It was so sharp it went right through my skin, deep into my foot. If the end of the kickstand had been longer, which thankfully it was not, it would have sliced my foot clean off.
That’s the kind of image the writer to the Hebrews is using here. A two-edged sword was one of the sharpest cutting instruments known to ancient humanity. The writer to the Hebrews tells us the word of God is even sharper than that. It is double-edged. It never fails to cut. There is no blunt edge to it.
Do you remember how the people responded to the preaching of Peter on the day of Pentecost? We read in Acts 2:36, “When the people heard this, they were cut to the heartand said to Peter and the other apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” And three thousand people committed their lives to follow Jesus that day and were baptized.
This leads us to consider our third question: What does the word of God do?
First, the word of God penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow.
Do you remember how, a few weeks ago, when we were looking at the New Testament letter of James, we saw how the New Testament views human beings as tripartite? For example, Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
So, there are at least three parts to the Christian person. We have a spirit (pneuma); we have a soul (psyche); and we have a body (soma). Now, the fact of the matter is, we often have a difficult time distinguishing the spirit and the soul. In fact, because we do not distinguish these two, we often use these words interchangeably. But, the word of God, like a sharp, double-edged sword, is able to divide between soul and spirit; the word of God is able to distinguish between soul and spirit. We read an instance of this a few weeks ago. In 1 Corinthians 2:14 Paul says, “Those who are unspiritual[a] (ψυχική or soulish)do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” In other words, to understand the things of the Spirit you have to have the Holy Spirit living in you; you can’t merely be a soulish person; you must be a spiritual person to understand the things of the spirit. The word of God can reveal what is merely soulish in you and what is spiritual in you.
This leads to a second, very closely related thing that the word of God does. Once the word of God penetrates us it also judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
As a pastor, and simply as a human being who has lived for fifty-five years among other human beings, I have learned how impossible it is for me to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. One of the most dangerous things you can ever do, especially when you are in conflict with someone else, is attribute motive to that other person. If you have ever had someone else attribute wrong motives to you and your actions then you know how dangerous, how destructive of human relationships and human persons this can be. If you want to live wisely you won’t ever attribute any motive to another person in any situation. You will simply acknowledge that you don’t know the heart of another person. If we are honest, we will realize we don’t even know our own hearts very well.
When you come right down to it, judging others is just too heavy a weight for any mere human being to bear. We were not meant to bear that weight. So why not give up judging others altogether? Our life’s load feels so much lighter once we do that.
But here is the point the writer to the Hebrews is trying to make: he says that the word of God CAN judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. As human beings, we see only the outside of other people. But God sees the heart. And his word can accurately judge or discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart—our inner motivations.
A human surgeon’s scalpel can reach and dissect a physical heart. But the writer to the Hebrews is talking about the heart as the center of the human personality, the source of what drives our intellect, our spirit, our moral being, as well as our emotional life. There is no surgeon’s scalpel that can touch the soul. Not even the most advanced computer can discern what is going on in our spirit. But God can; the scalpel of his word can reach and divide the innermost part of us. And that is one reason why his word is better than all other words.
Now, I am not saying that there aren’t times when each of us can benefit from the work of a good psychological counselor or therapist, just as we can benefit from a doctor who deals with our body. But it is God who does the ultimate healing. The word of God can penetrate and do a healing work in us that is deeper and more long-lasting and totally life-changing, much more so than the work of any psychologist or doctor.
Perhaps that is why Augustine once prayed, “O thou elect blade and sharpest sword, who art able powerfully to penetrate the hard shell of the human heart, transfix my heart with the shaft of thy love… Pierce, O Lord, pierce, I beseech thee, this most obdurate mind of mine with the holy and powerful rapier of thy grace.”
A third thing that the word of God does is that it lays us naked and bare before the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.
Verse thirteen drives home the message of verse twelve. As Philip Edgcumbe Hughes has written, “The fact that the word of God penetrates, like a sharp sword, to the innermost center of man’s selfhood means that every single detail and aspect of the human person is fully and inexorably open to the gaze of God.”
There is an old spiritual song that was sung in the movie made about my father’s life and conversion. The title of the song is: “You Cannot Hide from God”. And the message of that song is so true. There is no one anywhere who can hide from God. He knows everything about us, even the things we try to keep secret from ourselves. And it is God’s word that reveals all.
I remember one time while I was still in seminary and I preached one Sunday at the church where Becky and I met. My brother was there that morning and brought to church a friend of his who was not a Christian nor even a churchgoer. She came up to me after the service and said, “It was the strangest thing, but as you were preaching it was like you were reading my thoughts.” I said, “That wasn’t me. That was God.”
The idea that nothing about us can be kept secret, in the ultimate sense, is disturbing at first. But if you have ever really confessed sin, before God and others, you know what a load it takes off your soul. To realize that you don’t have to go on hiding anymore is a great relief.
I read these words from Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, at a time when I really needed to hear and act on them…
I must choose to be honest with God. The first building block of a deeper friendship with God is complete honesty—about your faults and your feelings. God doesn’t expect you to be perfect, but he does insist on complete honesty… God listens to the passionate words of his friends; he is bored with predictable, pious clichés. To be God’s friend, you must be honest to God, sharing your true feelings, not what you think you ought to feel or say.
Are you ready to be honest to God? You might as well be, since he already knows everything about you. And one day you are going to have to give an account of yourself to him: face to face. So, we might as well get used to that kind of exchange now—by being honest with him in the present—honest about our sin, honest about our feelings, honest about our lack of faith, honest in our questions, our anger, all of it. For it is only by being honest with God that the scalpel of his word can begin to cut out of our lives what needs to go so that his Spirit can in turn heal us, make us whole. We have to cooperate with the surgeon. We have to submit to the operation, or else the work cannot be done.
C. S. Lewis once wrote,
Christ says ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.
No one likes to go to the doctor, let alone a doctor who isn’t going to give up until every part of us is completely healthy. But God is that kind of doctor. And thank God he is! Thank God he is the kind of surgeon who is going to keep on cutting with the scalpel of his “better word” until the whole cancerous tumor of our sin is completely cut out, thrown away, and replaced with healthy tissue, the healthy spirit of his Son, the Lord Jesus. Though it is painful to have him as my resident surgeon, I’m glad God is that kind of doctor who never gives up on me. How about you?
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