Knife and Fork

Scripture Reading

New Revised Standard Version: Updated Edition Hebrews 4

12 Indeed, the word of God is living and active and 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.

Kids to the Knowing Place

Introduction: The One Illustration I Remember!

I remember exactly one sermon illustration from my time as a child here at Beulah.

And it had to do with this verse, so it’s been on my mind this week.

To give full credit: This was from a sermon Bill Drew preached.

Imagine an operating room where a patient has just recently been put under and is ready for heart surgery.

The nurses have prepped everything, and the surgeon has just scrubbed up and walked in to the room.

The doctor walks over and inspects the scalpel. Then he sets it down.

The doctor walks over to the forceps, inspects them, and then sets them down.

Last he walks over to the sutures, inspects them, and then sets them back down.

The doctor says “Thanks team! Great job today!”

The nurse stops him on the way out and says “Doctor, you didn’t perform the surgery!”

The doctor replies “Oh of course not! If I used the scalpel, I’d hurt the patient, and I can’t do that!”

Listen, as a world class needle-phobe, I know that sometimes we do a great deal of work to avoid the tiny pains that exist for us to achieve full healing.

And I think that’s what this verse is all about.

Which Word Are We Talking About?

I have been joking with the staff that after a whole bunch of weeks of long scripture readings, we did something short today.

But there’s a lot to unpack in this little guy!

The word of God is living and active.

Some thoughts about scripture

The church has spent thousands of years trying to make sense of this book.

And I spent a majority of my time in seminary working on biblical interpretation and hermeneutics, so I have some thoughts on this that we will cover in a whole bunch of sermons later down the line.

But for today, can we spend a few moments discussing what the Bible is not?

Not an owner’s manual

You and I have both heard it referred to as that, right?

But just yesterday, yesterday! I got a new part for my car.

And because I’m the typical, stubborn, arrogant handy man, what did I do with the owner’s manual?

THREW IT AWAY!

An owner’s manual is something we tend to turn to only when we’re in trouble.

An owner’s manual is technical, and uninspiring.

An owner’s manual is something we rely on as infrequently as possible.

To treat the Bible this way is to totally miss the point.

Not designed to be a weapon

So often there are folks who treat the Bible as if it is meant to hurt other people.

There are people who delight in reading verses that prove their opponents wrong.

There are people who have obscure passages locked and loaded to throw out at those they disagree with.

And throughout history, people have used the Bible again and again and again to subjugate, oppress, degrade, and humiliate others.

In fact, just the opposite is true.

The Bible is meant to be freeing, liberating, empowering, engaging, and re-humanizing, connecting us with our God-given and designed humanity, not taking it away.

Not the highest object of our praise

There are some circles of the Christian faith that almost seem to put the Bible on the throne meant for Jesus.

They will point to the Scriptures as the ultimate authority in the universe.

And to a degree, they’re close.

The Scriptures themselves are not the highest authority in the universe.

But they do point to Him, and if we want to know what the Scriptures are all about, we should look to Jesus.

The Living Word

We get a reminder of this connection in John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Christ is the Word of God, a term that we often use for our Scriptures too.

In fact, Jesus is the Living Word.

In essence, Jesus is what would happen if we could perfectly live out the entirety of the Scriptures in their fullness.

He even says, Matthew 5:17 ““Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

And so we might come to understand that the way Jesus teaches, the Scripture also teaches.

Jesus corrects, but he always does so in love.

Jesus is about the truth, of course, but always in the context of relationship.

Jesus is above all about healing, and redemption, and restoration, as the Scriptures themselves are as well.

An important pronoun

In this text in Hebrews, we get a clue as to who the author is talking about:

Hebrews 4:12-13 “Indeed, the word of God is living and active and 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. 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.”

This text is about Jesus.

Indeed, Jesus Christ is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.

Jesus Is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Before Jesus no creature is hidden.

Again, to be sure, the Scriptures themselves point to Jesus.

But Jesus is the one with the power and the authority here.

A Scalpel

Not just power and authority, but extreme precision.

A scalpel is the tool of the surgeon because it’s precise.

It can separate joints from marrow when it needs to, but it’s not going to wound or injure any of the other critical body parts around it.

Or maybe use another example:

Imagine you went out to a really really nice steak dinner.

This is some seriously fine dining!

You can even smell it now, can’t you?

The sizzle, the garlic butter, the big juicy steak

(Hang with me vegetarians)

And right there beside the plate, the waiter hands you a dull butter knife.

You can have the finest meal, but with the wrong tool in hand, you’re not going to enjoy it very much!

Christ is like the scalpel of our souls.

When healing is required, when the right parts of us need to be cut away without damaging the wholesome parts, Christ is both powerful and precise enough to make that happen.

A clobber verse?

Scalpels make bad weapons

I always like those cartoons where two heroes are going to battle, and before they go into the ring they have to choose their weapons.

They have a table in front of them that has like a lazer gun, or a sword, or a spear.

Imagine if that table had a scalpel on it.

How many fighters do you think would pick that as their chosen weapon?

That’s absolutely not what a scalpel is used for.

You would feel exposed and vulnerable and unprepared, right?

That doesn’t mean they can’t cause some damage.

There’s a reason doctors aren’t known for running around the operating room with a scalpel in their free time.

If they aren’t careful with that tool, it can do some damage.

In the same way, if we have ill intentions, or misplaced motives, the Word of God can do some pretty serious damage too.

Again, we might spend some time in other sermons talking about what that has looked like historically and what it looks like today, but here’s a simple summary:

If the scalpel is pointed outward, it’s more likely than not to do some damage.

The sharp, soul piercing Word of God was meant for our own souls, not for us to go around “fixing” others.

Matthew 7:1-5 ““Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For the judgment you give will be the judgment you get, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.”

All of that is to set the table for what we need to hear today:

We need healing

As a result of the fall, the nature of our sinful state, each and every one of us needs healing in our lives.

Each and every one of us stares down the gulf of who we want to be and who we are.

Each and every one of us can look at the world as it is and imagine it in a better place.

Each and every one of us carry the wounds of our past, the pressures of our present, and the anxieties of our future.

We all need healing, don’t we?

Do we want it?

Jesus in one story offers a pointed question.

He’s walking along one day and comes across a man who had been ill for thirty-eight years.

To put that in perspective, I had a man-cold once that lasted a week and I was pure misery to be around. Imagine 38 years!

Jesus, the most powerful being on the planet, and the most compassionate, and the most forgiving, and the most humble, God himself among us, has a question for this guy:

Do you want to be made well?

You see, Jesus can offer all the healing he wants.

He can offer to heal you of your brokenness.

He can take your anxieties about tomorrow.

He can bear the burdens you assumed were yours alone.

The trick is, we have to be willing to let him.

The pain involved

I think to do any kind of deep healing work, to allow Jesus in to heal us, will require a bit of pain.

Much like surgery, there is a pain inflicted before the real healing can begin.

Greed

If you suffer from greed, it can be a deep down illness, one that can frequently go undiagnosed in our culture.

Not a whole lot of people will fault you for trying to look out for number one, will they?

They might even celebrate it!

If you answer Jesus’ question, do you want to be made well from your greed, there may be some up front pain.

The best way to combat the illness of greed is with the medicine of generosity.

It might mean saying goodbye to something that you’ve thought you needed more of.

It might mean denying yourself.

And yet, healing can be so good.

Ask any generous person, the reward they get from giving to others is far grater than what they could have gained for themselves.

Central to Jesus’ message about the Kingdom of God is a generous kingdom, where every need is met and every mouth is fed.

So when we’re generous, when we’re healed from our greed, we are closer to the Kingdom.

Pride

Once again, this is a sneaky little illness, isn’t it?

To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t a 12 step group for arrogance.

Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 4821 “Congratulations” for Nothing

The newspaper cartoonist H. T. Webster once amused himself by sending telegrams to 20 of his acquaintances whom he selected at random. Each message contained just one word: “Congratulations!” As far as Webster knew, not one of his friends had done anything special for which to be complimented. Yet each person was so flattered that he immediately wrote him a letter of thanks. All had assumed they had done something worthy of a congratulatory telegram!

Here, we might assume that the pain is to belittle yourself somehow, but that’s not quite right either.

Humility, C.S. Lewis taught, is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

And so perhaps the healing of Pride comes from supporting and celebrating other people.

Perhaps there’s a twinge of pain when someone at work gets the promotion you thought you deserved.

Perhaps you feel the sting of the needle when someone corrects one of your deeply held assumptions.

Maybe for you there’s a paralyzing fear of coming in second or third sometime.

But there is so much joy in our ability to celebrate others!

For starters, when you celebrate those around you, you’re almost never out of reasons to celebrate!

But it also just fills the atmosphere with more joy, with more happiness, with more celebration.

We can live like that all the time, if we choose to.

Forgiveness

When someone has wronged us, our tendency is to hold on to the grudge for as long as we can sometimes.

Even now, I can sense some of you twitching a bit.

You don’t know what they did to me Pastor!

You couldn’t possibly imagine the pain I feel.

I can never ever trust that person again.

And you’re right, I don’t know what you’re going through or what pain you might have experienced.

But what I do know is that forgiveness is never the other person’s responsibility.

Writer Anne Lammot put it best: Refusing to forgive someone is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the other person to die.

It’s sure vivid, but it also happens to be true.

More often than not, when someone is holding on to forgiveness and refusing to give it to someone else who wronged them, they’re miserable.

I can so hear Jesus whispering over those kind of situations: Do you want to be made well?

Do you want to be relieved of this burden that your carrying?

Do you want to be able to set down resentment?

Do you want to be able to live free, unafraid of when you might bump in to that person?

Lay it down.

Quick Aside:

The Bible never says to forgive and forget.

Just forgive.

If there is someone who is abusively wronging and wounding you, there is a way to offer them forgiveness while also removing yourself from their warpath.

You don’t have to forget.

The recovery room

Not only is Jesus the knife that cuts in the surgery of our souls, he’s also the recovery room.

Not only is Jesus willing to challenge our deeply held beliefs, he’s there to comfort us in the aftermath.

Not only is Jesus challenging us to live a more generous life, he’s showing us what real generosity looks like.

Not only is Jesus inviting us to think of ourselves less, he reminds us that even if we were the only people on the planet he would have died for us.

Not only is Jesus pushing us in the direction of forgiveness, he literally put his body on the line to show us what it was all about.

You don’t go through surgery without a trip to the recovery room.

Jesus will never offer us healing without also offering us recovery.

May it be so for us today.