Who do you turn to?
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12 because God’s word is living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point that it separates the soul from the spirit and the joints from the marrow. It’s able to judge the heart’s thoughts and intentions.
13 No creature is hidden from it, but rather everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of the one to whom we have to give an answer.
14 Also, let’s hold on to the confession since we have a great high priest who passed through the heavens, who is Jesus, God’s Son;
15 because we don’t have a high priest who can’t sympathize with our weaknesses but instead one who was tempted in every way that we are, except without sin.
16 Finally, let’s draw near to the throne of favor with confidence so that we can receive mercy and find grace when we need help.
One thing that I have been learning working as a counselor is how many people do not have a healthy support system.
Their disease has caused them to destroy relationships with the healthy people in their lives. Now that they are living sober those healthy people are not ready to let them back into their lives.
One of the tools that we help our clients with is identifying those people who will be healthy supports. It is very sad when a client cannot identify even one person who they can turn to. Sadly it happens very frequently.
Who do you turn to when you’re facing difficult times? What do you do when you don’t know what to do?
Job was someone who knew he could put his trust and faith in God even though he lost everything. Towards the end of the book that tells his story he’s had conversations with his three friends that showed up and Job says this about God:
1 Job answered:
2 Today my complaint is again bitter; my strength is weighed down because of my groaning.
3 Oh, that I could know how to find him— come to his dwelling place;
4 I would lay out my case before him, fill my mouth with arguments,
5 know the words with which he would answer, understand what he would say to me.
6 Would he contend with me through brute force? No, he would surely listen to me.
7 There those who do the right thing can argue with him; I could escape from my judge forever.
Job says that he can go to God and bring his case before him. There is something calming and reassuring to know that we can go before God with our needs.
Job 23:6 “No, he would surely listen to me.”
The writer to the Hebrews earlier in this chapter that we’re looking at has been writing about entering into the rest of God. That concept of “entering into the rest of God” is more we can even think about dealing with this morning, but let me just give you a brief glimpse of what he’s talking about.
The writer is talking about the Sabbath, that seventh day of creation when God completed His work and rested.
10 The one who entered God’s rest also rested from his works, just as God rested from his own.
He talking about the Promised Land and those that were obedient entered into. He’s talking about a Sabbath-rest for us today. The one theme that I see running through this concept is being obedient to God.
I’m going to meddle a little bit. Is that OK? Thanks for your permission!
Would you say that the 10 Commandments are valid for us today?
The first four relate to our relationship with God.
No other gods before me
No idolatry
No taking His name in vain
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy
The last six relate to our relationships with others.
Honor your parents
Don’t murder
Don’t commit adultery
Don’t steal
Don’t lie about others
Don’t desire your neighbors wife or his property.
Those last six seem pretty easy. For the most part we do pretty good with most of them.
That Don’t commit adultery one seems to get a pass in our culture and in the Church.
Our marriage just isn’t work out, we’re not really compatible. We’ve outgrown each other. Those are things that we hear from people in the church and not just people in the pew, but people in the pulpit.
The sad thing, the damaging thing is when a pastor sins in this regard and then divorces and continues right on in the pulpit. What does that communicate to the Church and to the world?
Look at our culture today. So many couples are just living together. They live together, have a child or two, buy a house and then save up to get married. They’ve gotten it backwards. I had someone tell me that they had it backwards because that was the situation they were in. They freely acknowledged that they didn’t have it right. But do you know what they told me then? They told me that God understands and that God had blessed them.
This is not just people out in the world, I can understand that because they don’t know the truth of God’s word. This is people in the Church. They come to church, take part in worship praising God, asking God for blessings but then they go home and the sin continues in their lives.
That is not God honoring, that is not living in obedience to God’s will for us. That is sin.
If we agree that those last six commandments are very important, that they are things that we recognize as sin if we violate them, then why is number four not all that important?
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy
I sometimes wonder if we get stuck with the wording of it? Do we read
Exodus 20:8 “Remember the Sabbath day”
Do we put a period after the word day and just stop there? Remembering is easy. Yep, I remember that day, God rested. That’s great.
Let me read the entire commandment
8 Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy.
9 Six days you may work and do all your tasks,
10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Do not do any work on it—not you, your sons or daughters, your male or female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you.
11 Because the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
You read all the way down to verse 10 where God says “Do not do any work on it.”
Apparently the Sabbath day is very important to God and if we don’t honor it, if we don’t remember it then we are disobeying God which is a sin.
Ok, I’m done meddling.
It’s in this context that the author writes:
For the word of God is alive and active.
Oh, wait, hold up. That is not the beginning of that sentence. We need to back up a little bit to get the full context of this passage.
11 Therefore, let’s make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall by following the same example of disobedience,
12 because God’s word is living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point that it separates the soul from the spirit and the joints from the marrow. It’s able to judge the heart’s thoughts and intentions.
13 No creature is hidden from it, but rather everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of the one to whom we have to give an answer.
He’s talking about I believe the written word of God and the literal spoken word of God. What God says is alive and it’s active.
The Sabbath-rest for us is part of that entering into an obedient relationship with God and laying our trying and our wants and our burdens down and resting in His presence.
The sad thing is that it’s not about what we do, it’s all about what has been done. It’s been done by what Jesus did for us on the Cross and rising again from the dead. It’s about what the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives today. God has done everything necessary for us. He now invites us into a personal relationship with Him grounded on obedience.
Have you ever felt like this when you talk to kids, teenagers in particular that you might just as well be talking to the wall? I know that they can look at us and we sound like that invisible teacher on the old Charlie Brown shows – wa wa wa wa wa…. There was a saying that was popular when my older kids were teenagers and they tried it on us. They’d say as they held their hand out in front of them to “talk to the hand cause the head ain’t listening.”
There are times that we talk to people and it seems like it would be just as easy to talk to a brick because no matter what you say it doesn’t penetrate their ear drums and get into their minds.
The author here says that the word of God is alive and active and that it’s “sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Is the writer talking about the written Word of God, meaning the Bible? Yes. Is he talking about the spoken Word of God? Yes. You have to remember that the Bible wasn’t pulled together into one comprehensive volume for several hundred years down the road so he couldn’t have been speaking just about the Bible because it didn’t exist yet. He’s talking about what God has said, whether or not if it was written down.
God’s word is alive and it’s active is the key thought here. God is alive and He is active today. Praise God!
What does he mean that God’s word is alive and active? I wonder if the author had the words of John running through his mind as he wrote this. John wrote in his Gospel these word’s:
1 In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.
2 The Word was with God in the beginning.
3 Everything came into being through the Word, and without the Word nothing came into being. What came into being
4 through the Word was life, and the life was the light for all people.
5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.
Who was John talking about? He’s talking about Jesus. Jesus is alive, he’s active today. Jesus said that where 2 or 3 are gathered in his name that he is there in their midst. Jesus is alive and active and here with us today. Jesus is that living word of God.
Jesus has kept his promise and he has sent the comforter, the Holy Spirit to live within us, transforming us from the inside out.
It’s obvious that the writer is not talking about a book being sharper than any double-edged sword when he writes this. I could go get the biggest Bible in my office and hit you upside the head and the most it’s going to do is give you a headache and make you very annoyed at me. It’s not going to cut your head off.
It’s the word of God that gets inside us. That means we’ve got hear the word, we’ve got to read it, and we have to listen to it. The final thing is that we have to obey it.
Paul in his letter to the Romans wrote that “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. He then quickly follows up with a bunch of questions:
Romans 10:14–15 (CEB)
14 So how can they call on someone they don’t have faith in?
And how can they have faith in someone they haven’t heard of?
And how can they hear without a preacher?
15 And how can they preach unless they are sent?
As it is written, How beautiful are the feet of those who announce the good news.
The answer to each of Paul’s questions is they can’t. They can’t call if they haven’t believed. They can’t believe if they haven’t heard. The can’t hear without preaching. They can’t preach without being sent. There is a lot of people involved in those activities and it’s all about getting the Word of God out there.
The believing involves the word of God getting into our lives. The thing about the word of God is that it gets to the heart of the problem in our lives. We are very good about putting on masks, putting on false fronts to everyone around us. The thing is we can’t do that with God, because the Holy Spirit gets inside us and separates the false front from the real us.
Let me give you just one example for you to chew on today. It might seem that I’m meddling a little bit here again. Take it for what it is. It’s something that each of us is confronted with each Sunday as we sit here in the service. It’s the issue of tithing.
Before I say anything further listen closely, the only people that I know how much they put in the offering plate is Darlene and myself. I don’t look at the individual contributions so you can relax and know that I don’t know what you put into the offering plate because it really is an issue between you (your spouse if you’re married) and God.
Now the church has placed one stipulation on the tithing issue. The stipulation is that if you’re not a tither then you can’t serve on the church board which I guess makes sense. If you aren’t supporting the church financially then you shouldn’t have a say in how the church spends its money.
If you are a regular tither, Thank You! Thank you for being obedient to God.
I know I have made the statement the past that church really doesn’t have a money problem, the church has an obedience problem and that if everyone who claims to be a Christian, a member on the church rolls would tithe and give offerings then the church would have more money than they’d know what to do with.
I say that because when we’re obedient to God and give by the principle that He established then God will bless us. They more we give in obedience the more you’ll see God bless. It’s a principle that I’ve have always found to be true. You cannot out give God.
Tithing is just a part of the entire issue of stewardships. Everything we have really belongs to God.
When you die and the hearse is taking your casket to the cemetery it won’t be pulling a U-Haul trailer behind it with all your stuff.
If you haven’t made plans then your family will be left fight over your stuff. It belongs to God, give it to Him, let Him have control of it. It will uncomplicated your life.
The author here says that the word of God gets inside us and it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. When you try to rationalize why you don’t tithe or you try to justify why you did something that you know God told you not to the word of God will judge that. How often have you heard a person try to justify their actions by saying that God will understand? I hear it a lot. Do people really think that God is going to wink at their sin? God who sent his son Jesus to die for our sins is just going to excuse someone who says God will understand? I don’t think so.
The word of God gets right inside of us and judges our thoughts and attitudes. Do you remember when David was about to be anointed as King of Israel? The prophet Samuel went to Jesse’s house at God’s direction. Jesse’s sons are standing in front of Samuel and Samuel takes one look at the oldest son Eliab and thinks to himself that this is the one.
God spoke to Samuel and said to him
7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Have no regard for his appearance or stature, because I haven’t selected him. God doesn’t look at things like humans do. Humans see only what is visible to the eyes, but the Lord sees into the heart.”
God’s not impressed on our outward appearance. He looks within us. The author goes on and he writes:
13 No creature is hidden from it, but rather everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of the one to whom we have to give an answer.
What was the first thing that Adam and Eve did after they ate of the fruit and hearing God walking in the garden? They hid! They had made some coverings for themselves because they realized they were naked and then the tried to hide from God. That situation reminds me of our one cat. He will hide part of his body under a blanket hanging off the coach thinking we don’t see his entire back half sticking out. We can’t hide from God. Nothing is hidden from Him.
He goes on saying not only is nothing hidden, but that we must give an account. I don’t know about you but that gives me pause to realize that I’m going to have to give an account to God someday. God’s not going to wink at our lack of obedience or wink at our sin and excuse it. He’s going to judge not only our actions but also our thoughts and attitudes.
If I stopped right now that would be pretty discouraging. Thankfully the author continues and he writes:
14 Also, let’s hold on to the confession since we have a great high priest who passed through the heavens, who is Jesus, God’s Son;
15 because we don’t have a high priest who can’t sympathize with our weaknesses but instead one who was tempted in every way that we are, except without sin.
16 Finally, let’s draw near to the throne of favor with confidence so that we can receive mercy and find grace when we need help.
When you see the word “therefore” or “also” in the scripture you need to find out what it’s there for. He’s saying that because of all I’ve written up to this point that we can do it. We can live this Christian life because we have a great high priest, Jesus. Because of Jesus he says to hold on firmly to the faith we profess. Don’t treat your faith as an add-on to your life. It should be the core of who you are as a person.
Jesus understands the things you and I struggle with because he’s been there. He was tempted in every way that we are and did not sin. He lived a holy life. We can live a holy life because of Jesus. Jesus overcame temptation and we can to. It’s not by trying harder, but it’s by allowing the Holy Spirit to work in our lives.
The last verse here is so full of promise for us.
16 Finally, let’s draw near to the throne of favor with confidence so that we can receive mercy and find grace when we need help.
I love it in the old King James version it says:
16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
Let us come boldly. We can do that because of Jesus, because the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives.
Do you need some mercy today? Do you need to find some grace today? Are you in need today? Who are you going to turn to? Are you going to look in the mirror and point to the person staring back at you and say that is the one that can help you? You’ll be woefully disappointed.
Come boldly to the throne of grace, find mercy, find help in your time of need. Only God can do that for you.