Hebrews - Part 9 Christ the Word of God

Okay, we are in Hebrews 4, and it feels like it's been a long time since we met, and that is because it has been a long time since we met. Because normally we were meeting every other week until we hit a month with a fifth Sunday, so we had an extra week in there that we didn't meet. And so if you recall what Hebrews 4, 1 to 11 was teaching us, it was about entering God's rest.

And what we saw was that the Israelites failed to enter God's rest because they had unbelieving hearts. They were not united by faith with those who listened. and this culminated with verse 11 of Hebrews 4, let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. And so the exhortation from 3.7 really to 4.11 is a comparison of the people of God of old who were in the Old Covenant working toward heading toward the promised land and some made it and some didn't and the difference was faith and this is the author's attempt to continue to teach the fact that it has always been by grace through faith that people have been god's people now in verse 9 of chapter 4 the verse states so then there remains a sabbath rest for the people of god and something that was really interesting when i studied this passage more is that the words used in this section are different words at times and in english we don't get all of the nuances of the translations and the one thing that I thought was really interesting is that in verse 9, it's actually not the same word Sabbath as is used everywhere else in the New Testament.

In verse 9, the word used is called a keeping Sabbath. That's kind of the definition of it. And so what's interesting about verse 9 is that it does seem to indicate maybe a little more strongly than I thought a few weeks ago, that this is a reference to the fact that we still have a Sabbath today. Now, I don't think that the Hebrews author felt the need to prove that point either.

Now, I don't like arguments from silence, so the same argument would say, well, the New Testament doesn't talk about baby baptism because it was assumed. well we don't necessarily buy that one so i'm not going to say the new testament doesn't mention the hebrew or the fourth commandment sabbath because everyone just assumed it for the same logic as as i'm not into the baby baptism but this verse does seem to indicate that you know there's a keeping sabbath there's something left to be had in this world that will point to the ultimate rest. And so at the same time, I do think that this passage is speaking of our rest in Christ, very much so as pointing to our eternal rest. But getting to verse 12 now, 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.

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. So still in the same vein here, we go from being told to strive to enter that rest so that we won't fall by the same sort of disobedience, the disobedience of not being united by faith, of not living lives that show that we believe something different. So faith and works are intricately intertwined with one another in such a way that we separate faith and works because we're Protestants, basically.

And so we make this big deal about faith and works, and the Bible makes a pretty big deal about we're justified by faith and not by works in the sight of God, that it's Jesus' work that justifies us. But the other fact that the Bible teaches persistently, though, is that you cannot have a saving faith that does not also have the accompaniment of the works. You cannot have an unfruitful Christian life where your life is not marked by Christian virtue coming out and say that you have faith.

So these things are so closely intertwined that you can actually understand how people can get confused. For example, people in the Roman Catholic religion, they actually have a lot of good understanding that if you are not out there trying to basically keep God law that shows that you don truly have faith They are correct in that account Where they more incorrect is that they think it those works that justify them before God for salvation But what we see here then in verse 12 is one of the reasons why it's so important that we're diligent to make our calling and election sure and strive to enter that rest so we don't fall by the same sort of disobedience, the lack of faith inside, is because the word of God is living and active, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So this is the reason the people of old who were walking around with Moses, the guys that were wandering in the wilderness, people who legitimately maybe crossed the Red see with them, there was a mixed multitude of people whereby some of them showed the outward behavior of, we'll say, religiosity.

They followed what Moses told them to do. They did the things that God commanded in many ways, by the way that they worshipped, by the sacrifices given. Most of them, because it was a theocracy, would have kept the law, because they didn't want to get executed, right? You didn't want to die for violating the Sabbath law, so you kept the Sabbath, right?

Just like here in this country, there's things you do because you don't want to go to jail, not because you think, well, that's morally right, and in my heart I really believe that. So there were people like that in this Old Testament passage that the author points us to, and what Hebrews what the Hebrews author is trying to say here is the word of God is living and active and it's sharper than any two-edged sword so that it will discern the thoughts and intentions of your heart now the question becomes what is the word of God and there's two primary probably two reasonable interpretations of this You know, one of them is that this is simply referring to the Bible, which is true that when you read God's word, it it will have an effect on your life. If you are a believer, you will be able to experience that, you know, just reading the same passage as I read.

Like we could do a Bible reading plan together and we could get together every night and say, well, what did we read this morning? And we could probably summarize it. And if we said, well, how did that have an effect on your life, your faith? We would have a different answer maybe every single day. And one of the reasons is that the Word of God is powerful.

It is sharper than any two-edged sword, meaning it cuts no matter which way you slice it. All right? Whether you're reading it, whether you're listening to it, whether you're hearing it preached, whether you're actually attempting to grow from reading it, or whether you just happen to be in the presence of it, it has the power to do whatever God wills that it would do.

And so while you can walk around and outwardly trick everyone around you into thinking you're one of God's people, right? And if you think you can't, or if you think that's impossible, Remember Judas. Judas was a devil inside, and he tricked even the very apostles. Nobody suspected Judas as the one who would betray Christ. He outwardly was able to keep the commands of God to such an extent that nobody thought he was the bad guy. and yet inside he had an evil unbelieving heart so the word of god has that capability to work on your life in my life this is one of the reasons why i can preach a sermon and i can have five different people come up afterwards and they can say oh that really helped me because xyz and it would be five different life situations five different things going on in their hearts that the word of God was able to work on.

And praise God for that. Because I'll just share a testimony, like usually when that happens, it's some point that I wasn't even really thinking was the point of the sermon. It was something that maybe I just tossed in there, maybe even thought of it at the time I was preaching. And it's because God is the one who's actually in charge of preaching. God's the one who is in charge of what his word is going to accomplish.

So when we use God's word, and we try to use it faithfully, we're trusting he'll do his will with it, not our will. But the second interpretation of what the word of God is, and the one that I take, is that the word of God is actually just referring to Jesus Christ specifically. and I'm going to give you a few reasons why I believe that in verse 13 first reason, referring back to the word of God that's living and active, verse 13 says and no creature is hidden from his sight, so now we have this reference, we have a personal pronoun okay and so you know if we're supposed to respect everyone's pronouns we ought to respect God's right no creature is hidden from his sight well whose sight well the whole the whole books about Jesus Christ up to this point the entire book is a bit about Jesus Christ and about how he is better than everything he was better than the angels he better than Moses his covenant is better than the old covenant And if you look back to chapter 3 verse 1 we see that we're talking about Jesus Christ. He says in chapter 3, verse 1, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.

We see in verse 6, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son. And then there's this little, we'll call it a parenthetical, about God's rest and referring to Psalm 95. So we have a preacher going on what we'll call a rabbit trail just to go teach a topic, and he's going to bring everything back. And now we're back to understanding Jesus Christ is the Word of God.

He's living and active. He's always active. It's he's always working in in the sense that his word is always performing what it what it desires to accomplish, what he desires for it. Sharper than any two edged sword piercing to the vision of soul and spirit of joints and of marrow and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. So the first reason I think it's Jesus is no creature is hidden from his sight.

I think this is talking about a man, Jesus Christ. If you look at Revelation 19, we have a verse here in 13, referring to Jesus Christ. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God. so we have explicit mention by John now in Revelation that Jesus is the word of God that's the name by which he's called and so we have some reason to believe that the Hebrews author would have been saying the same thing calling Jesus the word of God turn back to John chapter 1 now what you see in John chapter 1 is, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. And it says, in him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. And if you keep reading in the first chapter of John, you'll see that he's talking about Jesus Christ.

You get to verse 18, no one has ever seen God, the only God who is at the Father's side. He has made him known. It's Jesus Christ who reveals to us God. And he's called the Word of God here at the beginning of chapter 1. In particular, notice, all All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. Now, for a moment, you say, well, it doesn't exactly say Jesus Christ there.

Turn to Colossians chapter 1. I'm not trying to create some kind of puzzle book out of this or decoder ring. I think some of this stuff is a little bit obvious, and I think that God wants us to go back and forth between the different passages and try to put everything together. in Colossians 1 15 well we'll go back to 13 he has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son so now he's talking about God's son who we know is Jesus Christ in whom we have redemption the forgiveness of sin so it's clearly Jesus Christ right now that is being referred to now Now, he is the image of the invisible God.

Well, no one has ever seen God. He has made him known, right? He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. And now listen, for by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things.

And in him all things hold together. Jesus Christ, in John 1, referred to as the Word of God, as the Creator. All things were made by him. In Colossians 1, it's referring again to Jesus Christ as the Creator. He is the Word of God of Hebrews 4, I think, without a doubt. So now, if you think about this, it's saying Jesus Christ, who is equated with the Word of God, because the word tells us his will.

Now, something I want you to think about is, we talk about mind reading sometimes. I don't know, maybe you don't talk about it much, but people talk about mind reading, and there's psychological experiments about it. And so the idea of reading someone's mind is that they keep what's in their mind secret to them, And some magic man or some kind of psychic or whatever is going to read their mind.

So they're going to literally just capture these immaterial thoughts from wherever those things happen to exist in some really supernatural way. But when you think about the concept of the words mind reading, if I write you a letter, you're reading my mind. because if I take my thoughts and I put those thoughts into words on paper, I have now given you my thoughts because I can communicate through words, which is how God has chosen to communicate. So what I want you to think about is that if I write you a letter and I say hey I having a good day today well you not reading my mind right now You reading what my thoughts were at the time I wrote the letter right But when God writes something, it's unchanging.

Forever, oh Yahweh, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. When you open God's word, it's unchanging. His thoughts don't change. So I know it's impossible for us to really grasp, but it's even hard to believe sometimes, but his thoughts don't change. Just imagine if God changed a thought that would, in fact, define a change in God, which is impossible, but even if you think about it logically, if God could think something different, that would mean that God would either be thinking something better or worse.

He can't get better. He's already perfect. And he can't get worse. God's thoughts don't even change. He has eternal perfection. And so when God penned his word in the Bible for us, he penned his thoughts.

And so we can actually, you know, don't take the phrase weirdly. We can read God's mind. And what I mean by that is when we read the Bible, and we take the words that God has used to communicate, and we understand the thoughts behind those words, because words just represent thoughts. That's why the whole free speech argument is so serious, is when people try to control your speech, they're trying to control your thoughts.

That's why people get so offended by it. If someone just said, they didn't want me to talk, we can live through not talking a little. It's the idea behind it that people want to control what we think. And so we can read God's thoughts. We can read God's mind when we read his word. It says in 1 Corinthians 2, you know, nobody knows the mind of another man except his own spirit.

But we have the spirit of God. So you have the spirit of God in you. You have the word of God revealed by the apostles. You have basically Jesus's thoughts written for you. And when you read Jesus's thoughts, you now know his mind. So if you're wondering, should I do this thing?

You can read God's word and you can actually try to understand what God's thoughts are about that thing. And one of the things you can trust by faith is that when you read God's word, He will use that to work on your spirit and to change you from within so that your faith will be exhibited in the fruits of the Spirit of God being in you. So if you are a Christian and you are not regularly having an intake of God's word, you're not availing yourself to the power of God that exists to actually deliver you from the slavery to sin that you once lived in, and now you will lack assurance.

I understand some people have different levels of faith, but a lot of the lack of assurance in people's life comes down to their behavior doesn't match what God's Word says, and they rightfully shouldn't have assurance in that case. And I think some of the lack of assurance in God's, in people's lives, in God's people's lives, we'll say, some of the lack of assurance that we cannot help people with as men, we can't really help fix it or say the right things, is people in their hearts are devising evil. they're still struggling with sin in such a way that there's some part of them that wonders am i one of these disobedient ones and they don't have assurance and i think that the antidote is that we need to study the word of god that we might know the mind of christ now christ can certainly do whatever he wishes so he wants to just zap us today and make us all super holy he could It doesn't seem to be the way he does things. Jesus Christ consistently gives his people a hunger and thirst for righteousness, and that hunger and thirst for righteousness causes them to seek to satisfy that righteousness.

And the satisfaction they get is through learning more about their Savior and what he thinks by reading the Bible, by going to a Bible preaching church, by participating in the means of grace that God has provided for us to grow in the faith, by participating in those by faith. And so when we get to this point where the author says, let us strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience, for because the word of God is living and active, because Jesus is living, because he's alive today. He's not dead.

He's raised from the dead because he's living and active. Because the word is sharper than any two-edged sword, it's going to slice, it's going to cut. It's going to hurt. and the only antidote to the pain caused by it is the balm of jesus christ forgiveness for our sins because of that it knows the thoughts and intentions of your heart we need to understand what his word says so that we can have these thoughts and intentions of our heart that are even so deceptive that we deny they're even there, the Word of God can help us fix those things.

Now, something I wanted to point out, there's a phrase in verse 12, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and then discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Sometimes, taken that verse and they've decided that this means that man has a difference in a soul and a spirit. People have created these ideas that there's a tripartite concept of man, it's body, soul, and spirit.

And one of the reasons is this verse right here. The point of this verse is not that a soul and a spirit are two separate things. Okay? The point of the verse is Jesus Christ, His Word, has the power to separate the inseparable. Nothing is impossible with God. Just like we don't separate joints and marrow, the joints don't function without the marrow, we'll say.

Right? The way the body works is that these things, it's like they're inseparable. Okay? And so the point here is not, oh, you have a soul and a spirit, and they're two different things, and let's spend a bunch of hours trying to define which is which, so we can properly give soul care and spirit care, and figure out which one goes to heaven when we die, and which one will be...

That's not the point. And there's arguments about this that people have made, and I think Stephen taught it, actually, if I remember, in our... Maybe it was Stephen, I don't remember, when we did our 1689 study, somebody went through all this stuff, but the point here is that they're inseparable but Jesus has the power to separate the inseparable Jesus has the power to go ahead and dig down to the deepest level and see what's going on and so whereas I can't do it for you, you can't do it for me my wife can't do it for me we can all try to help one another but it's only Jesus Christ through the ministry of his word that is going to get to the deepest level of your sin issues and help you.

And if you want to go to heaven, if you want to enter that rest one day, then you strive to enter that rest, and you strive by actually letting that word work on your heart, by being humble and asking yourself questions like, am I, you know, an easy thing to do is, am I obeying the Ten Commandments, right? But actually read the catechism where it says, what are all the duties required in each commandment? And ask yourself, am I doing those things?

And where you're not, just be honest, say, Lord, Lord, help me. Because what we'll see, and we're going to do this in two weeks, Lord willing, but the end result here of the chapter is that you go with confidence in verse 16 to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need So the word of God is the thought and discerner of your heart It's going to slice you open. It's going to cut you.

And the word of God also will have what you need to heal. But it's the prayers. It's once you become desperate enough to realize that you need help in these areas that we are so confident in ourselves in, And that's when we go to the throne of grace and realize that by grace, we can ask God for help with these things that we realize how much we're failing at when we let the word of God dig deep inside us.

And so in verse 13, no creature is hidden from his sight, Jesus's sight. Jesus sees everything and all of them are naked and exposed. It's like it's like a real blatant term here. You're naked. like if any one of us was naked right now on this zoom call we'd like turn the camera off quickly you know what i mean if you were naked and somebody walked in the room wasn't your wife you cover you like you immediately cover yourself up i mean it's it's the most like it's shameful thing when you're naked you're exposed well jesus says we're all naked to him you can cover yourself up with all the fig leaves you want.

You can wear clothes. You can cover yourself with good works. Jesus sees what's underneath. No one is hidden from his sight. You're naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Jesus sees it all.

And so that's the thing. Here's the thing. You can go to hell in your sin. And you could brag to yourself, I guess, in hell, in isolation and darkness and torment for eternity that you tricked Michael Coughlin for however many years you knew me on this earth. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who you trick.

You will not trick the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. he will execute justice and justice will be executed perfectly because nothing is hidden from his sight we go to court and and and people get have there's travesties of justice all the time right there's people that go to jail that shouldn't there's people that don't go who should have and it's because there wasn't enough witnesses or the witnesses weren't reliable or the justice system just doesn't quite work in the case of god's court will say of law justice will be perfectly executed because there will always be a perfect witness and a perfect judge And so you strive to enter his rest And so one final note as you strive as you you know as you remember that you have to trust the word of God, that that is how Jesus reveals his thoughts to us. And I want to focus a little bit on the fact that you do need to pray. if I was going to teach this passage, I'd probably try to teach the whole thing in one block, maybe in a sermon, because I'd really want to get to the end where it says this is the high priest who's going to help you. Jesus is the one who can help you with all these pains you're going to find.

But in verse 13, the author of Hebrews says, and no creature is hidden from his sight. and I don't think it's a mistake that God puts every word in his word that he put there. The word creature is so, it's not the same as saying person. All right. So like, you know, if there was some guy on the street and you said, who is that person? Or if I said, who is that creature?

You'd be like, why do you just call him a creature? You know what I mean? We don't call people creatures. You know, we fight to say humans are different from all the other creatures. Like, we need to be treated uniquely because we're made in the image of God. We can't murder baby humans or any humans.

We shouldn't murder. But we could kill animals to eat them, right? And we could take rocks and just crush them into smaller rocks, or we can make them bigger rocks, whatever we want to do. There's no created thing that we really think very highly of except human beings, unless you're these weird liberal types now. But the point is this, in God's perspective and in the real perspective of what's going on with the creator-creature distinction, there's two kinds of beings in the world.

There's a creator, one, and then there's creatures. And so to some extent, you have more in common with a roach or the leaf on a tree than you have with God, because you're a creature. because you were created and you're under his authority. By him all things were created. Everything is his servant. And so I think God wants to remind us, you're a creature.

Quit acting like a god. Quit acting like you have so much control over things. Quit acting like there isn't a creator watching you. because it doesn say a no human is hidden from his sight It doesn say no person is hidden from his sight Those would all be accurate statements No creature. This is a reminder that you're really small. And God's not saying it to be mean.

He's saying it to humble you. The Word of God that's living and active and discerning the thoughts and intentions of our hearts realizes that inside our heart somewhere, there's a little, you know, Calvin called it an idol factory. There's a little factory that's popping out thoughts that's saying, hey, maybe God isn't really watching right now. Maybe God doesn't see this thing you're doing, or even this thought you just want to entertain in your mind.

Maybe you can slip this one by God, or hey, maybe there is no God. You know, he said he was coming back soon, and it's been a long time, and a lot of people say the Bible's wrong, and it's been mistranslated. And there's all these thoughts that come up in our mind, and I think God wants us to remember, no, you're a creature. You're a creature. He is the creator.

He's God. You're not. Now, are we vastly more special than any other species in any other creation? Absolutely. But it's only because God chose to bestow upon us dignity by making us in his image. And even more so, he sent his son to redeem us and to make us his sons.

And so the response is worship. The response is reverence and awe and praise and humility. And since there will be no boasting in the presence of God, Why don't we just start not boasting in ourselves right now and just boast in Jesus Christ while we remain? So that is my hopeful exhortation from Hebrews 4, 12 and 13, and I will open it up for comments now.

Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website michaelcoghlan.net You can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.