Clough Hebrews Lesson 24

Biblical Rest – Hebrews 4:5-13

Hebrews 4, we’ll continue our section. This passage of exhortation is again showing those of you particularly who have the spiritual gift of exhortation, how to use it. And again I remind you that spiritual gifts, in and of itself, is just a potential ability; spiritual gifts is not a sign of spirituality. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13 said that any spiritual gift can be used out of fellowship, so spiritual gifts are not in themselves signs of spirituality, nor do spiritual gifts automatically give you a high capability. You kind of have to chug around and you’ll stumble on it some day, what your gift is in a certain area. But the real gifts that are the most critical are the ones that are the most unpopular today, and the gifts that are the most critical are the gifts of exhortation, the gifts of helps, these kind of gifts, the gift of ruling, the gift of wisdom, all these gifts are needed, and they’re probably quite prevalent, it’s just that we’re not exercising them. But those are the tools, the basic tools that the Church needs and it’s a shame that the charismatic movement has to take on gift, an infantile one, and use this one as a sign of spirituality. It’s very easy to see why there’s a hidden interest in having this gift because it the gift that doesn’t obligate you to do anything. But all the other gifts, like the gift of giving, the gift of faith, the gift of helps, when you say that I have those gifts that means that you’re stuck because it shows you very clearly what God’s will is for you. So the gift of exhortation, then, has to be trained, like all gifts. Remember that, so as you study Hebrews try to absorb the attitude of the author, try to really immerse yourself in the text and come away from it with the attitude this writer has because that will teach you how to use your gift.

Now let’s look at Hebrews 4:4-5, we’re dealing with the problem of the rest. We said that the rest mentioned here is eternal rest with God; it has in view the fact that mankind is destined to be the king of the universe. Man is destined to be king over all of nature; angels are part of nature, therefore man is to rule over them too. And so the whole destiny of man given in Genesis 1 must be fulfilled. And Jesus Christ, in His humanity is our leader, not as God but in His humanity He is leader because He is the perfect man, the second Adam, and under and behind him comes the new race by regeneration who are the only men, ultimately, who fulfill their created destiny.

This is in verses -45, “For He spoke in a certain place on the seventh day, and God rested the seventh day from all His works.” Now that rest is God’s rest, it’s the Godhead resting. Why? Because all their work has been basically done from the point of creation. We spent considerable time showing how a lot of things that were potential in creation, we showed you how, for example, the deaths, when God created the six days of creation back here, all these days were days in which God put potential in His universe for everything that would follow. He put a potential for death in the universe by making human bodies mortal. Now it didn’t mean people died but meant they could have and indeed we all now do because of the fall of Adam. God made the flood potential in that He brought mechanisms into the physical creation that didn’t have to cause a flood but they were built in devices that He could trigger if and when the occasion arose, we won’t say if but when the occasion arose. And He also has built into the present state of the universe some sort of a fiery destruct mechanism so when the last shot is called all He has to do is trip the mechanism that He’s already built into the universe and it’ll go out in a big ball of fire. So all these devices have been implanted in the creation from the time of its origin. So God is basically resting, all this time resting, resting after the job is finished.

So to show that this is an eternal rest the author is arguing that all the rests in the Old Testament, such as in verse 5, “They shall enter into my rest, [6] Seeing, therefore, it remains that some must enter therein, and those to whom it was first preached entered not in because of disobedience.” And then he goes on and describes in verse 7 and 8, “Again, he limited a certain day,” in David, and so his argument is this: he says there was a rest, and we’ll put the rest, this one in quotes, there was a “rest” that was offered to people in Numbers. Now when that rest was offered to the people it was potentially everything. In other words, it could have been the eternal rest, just like when Jesus Christ came He offered the kingdom and he might say if they had accepted Jesus nationally as their Messiah the kingdom would have come right about then. In other words, prophecy has everything jammed together in it. It’s like one big ball of wax but the thing unrolls with time.

So the rest was presented as a rest to these people but as a matter of fact it turns out in history that it was only an adumbration of the final rest. Numbers gives us the rest of the land of Canaan that was secured under Joshua. But Joshua’s rest was not the eternal rest. It was a temporal rest; it was a rest that was not perfect. And therefore it was only an adumbration or a sign of that which would come ultimately. And then in verse 7 he’s talking about David, and here David, four or five hundred years later, in 1 Samuel and Psalms, he talked about a “rest” and we’ll put that in quotes because the Lord said in 2 Samuel 7:1, He gave David “rest” from all his enemies round about. But the author here is arguing that even that rest isn’t the ultimate one, there’s a bigger one behind even David’s “rest.” And that rest is the eternal future with God.

Now to show you these two rests, to make sure we understand from the Old Testament, if I haven’t made myself clear do raise questions, but let’s first look at these texts. Joshua 11:23, here’s where a rest is stated, and it definitely states that God gave “rest” to Israel. It’s definitely here. After Joshua conquered the backbone of the enemy resistance, not all the details but just the backbone, then you have in verse 23, “So Joshua took the whole land according to all that the LORD said unto Moses; and Joshua gave it for an inheritance unto Israel according to their divisions by their tribes. And the land rested [from war].” “…the land rested.” Now notice that the word “rest” is used there and that “rest” which is an adumbration of the future eternal rest teaches us something to anticipate. Now what can we anticipate about the future rest that we’re taught from this little “rest.” What’s the big feature of this little “rest?” [someone answers] Well, that’s how they got there, but why is it described as a rest at all? No more spiritual warfare.

All right, there’s no spiritual warfare, so what’s the rest then described in Hebrews 4. Eternal rest means there’s going to be no more spiritual warfare. Why? Why no spiritual warfare for eternity. Satan and the demons are bound during the millennium and then permanently incarcerated in the lake of fire for all eternity. So there is a time definitely in the future when spiritual warfare will be eliminated. But what does this tell you about, then, sitting around doing nothing now. See, to do nothing now and not fight, it’s basically laziness is what it amounts to, the rest is there and this author wants to encourage us, the job isn’t going to go on and on and on and on and on an on, an endless never ending type thing But on the other hand it’s also a kick in the pants to get going to do what we’re supposed to do, because we’re not going to rest until the job’s done.

And by the way, what job has to be done before Satan and the demon powers are conquered. If Satan and the demon powers as angelic agencies are part of nature, as we’ve shown earlier in Hebrews 1, they’re spirits, angels and spirits are interchangeable in the text of the New Testament, when a spirit is used as a messenger it’s called angel. The word “angel” is just a functionary title of spirit. But when a spirit part of nature, when the evil spirits are put away, how are they put away. Just think back, who was the ordained instrument to subdue all nature? Man was. And therefore when Satan and the demon powers are conquered how are they going to be conquered? By other angels? No, by man. Why? Because man is the kind of nature. And this is why Jesus Christ in His humanity, notice the stress in this epistle, the humanity of Christ, not just His deity, His humanity. Jesus Christ as high priest is helping us conquer and the central passage we’ve seen so far on how Jesus Christ helps us conquer, remember Hebrews 2 we said He helped us conquer by eliminating guilt, and forgiveness; this is the internal cleansing that’s described and this is the thing that Satan holds over believers, is guilt, and Jesus Christ cleanses from guilt.

And so essentially we have partial, part of the eternal rest available to us today. Our conscience now can be put at rest. So there’s one work now that is finished and that’s the work of securing forgiveness. So we actually, positionally, today enjoy part of our eternal rest. Now here’s where we do that: we rest in the finished work of Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean in the warfare all around but there’s one part of the warfare we can rest and relax in that all of that is past, the forgiveness has been made available at the cross and therefore any accusation of guilt is just trying to raise a dead horse because the guilt problem has been solved by Jesus Christ at the cross.

Let’s look at another one of these little “rests.” 2 Samuel 7:1, this is David’s “rest.” [“And it came to pass, when the king sat in his house, and the LORD had given him rest round about from all his enemies.”] And again this rest is described the same way, it’s a rest, but notice it is not the eternal rest. Let’s just look at it straightforwardly and see what the Bible is talking about here by this kind of rest. What is the rest that God gives David? Rest from all his enemies again, same theme. What does the theme show? That the eternal rest is a time when the warfare is over, so the theme is war, isn’t it. And the rest is going to be the end of the war. Now keep in mind that theme because he’s going to pop it out at you in a couple more verses and you’ll loose the next couple of verses in Hebrews if you don’t keep in mind the theme of warfare.

There’s one other passage which we want to show you before we got back to Hebrews and that’s Revelation 14:13. Here is the concept of the rest and this tells us something about the eternal rest we haven’t seen before. So far the eternal rest means freedom from all spiritual conflict, when it’s all over. We also have seen from Hebrews that part of that can be enjoyed today through the high priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is now an active functioning high priest with a sacrifice that has been finished. And as we develop Hebrews further I will show you why this epistle was used by the Reformers to attack Roman Catholicism, because Roman Catholicism insists and has dogmatically done so, that the mass is a re-crucifixion of Jesus Christ, that Christ’s atonement is not yet finished, and therefore this epistle collides solidly when it says Christ work was finished once and for all. We have a right to enjoy a total atonement through Christ’s finished work. So therefore, Satan cannot bring a bona fide accusation against the believer that a believer is eternally separated from God because of his sins. That accusation is not bona fide and the only people that get hooked are stupid Christians. But since there’s enough stupid Christians around Satan has lots of business. But Bible doctrine is what protects you from this if you know the Word. There’s no way you can come up for judgment again. Now you can be taken out to the woodshed for disciplinary purposes but that’s different from the eternal judgment.

In Revelation 14:13, here’s something else we learn abut this eternal rest, “And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead who divine institution in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors,” and now notice this, “and their works do follow them.” Now that is a very important thing about the rest and it’s that verse and that clause that describes what is on the mind of the author of Hebrews. The author of Hebrews has no doubt but that true believers in that congregation are going to spend eternity in the rest, but what the author of Hebrews is concerned about is that you don’t rest until the job’s done. And as long as a person is resting and not working and not producing for Christ, that means they’re wasting time and wasting opportunities to gather works that are legitimate, that can be brought into eternity with them. Notice the phrase again, “their works do follow them.”

Now what works follow them? Two kinds of works come at the grave, here a person, a believer dies and there are human good works and there are divine good works. Both kind of works follow you to the grave. Both kind of works follow you to the bema seat. But following with you into eternity is only divine good because the human works are burned. So at the bema seat of judgment, the believer’s works that are not done through the Holy Spirit are discarded and those do not follow you into heaven. The works that follow are the works done in obedience to the Word of God by the power of the Holy Spirit. Those are the works that follow, and the writer of Hebrews is interested that these believers have plenty of works to follow them into eternity with. In other words, when they rest they can rest with complete an utter satisfaction that they have done the job that God called them to do. Now that is an incentive for Christians to move so that when the rest does come you can look back and say that the job was pleasing.

Now at this point I want to inject something. Don’t confuse pride with the pleasure that comes from a job well done. The two are different and sometimes I notice believers confuse it, they think it’s a sin to be pleased with what you’ve done. That’s not right, that’s fine, you can be pleased with what you’ve done. It’s just as long as you’re pleased knowing that by God’s grace it was done, but there’s nothing should rob you of the pleasure of a job well done. And don’t let Satan come along and tell you you should feel guilty about it. Someone was saying the other day about one of the things that I think points something very interesting about American democracy and that is part of the human viewpoint we have to fight as Americans is our own democratic Americanism, and here’s where it works to our detriment. We are taught from childhood on up that all men are equal. And we’re also taught to be embarrassed about being better than someone else. And it’s part of our national culture to feel that you should not excel over the next person and if you do, you’re somehow discriminating against the weaker person; to claim for yourself a superior position to your neighbor is somehow evil. Now that is sheer human viewpoint, not found in the pages of God’s Word. Everywhere the Bible teaches that free men are not equal and equal men are not free. There’s no such thing as equality in freedom in Scripture. Wherever you have absolute equality of people you have tyranny. The only place where you have freedom is when people are not equal, when people excel, when you have people who are more prosperous than others. You always have this condition, it’s a corollary to freedom, it’s exactly opposite to our American character.

So don’t be embarrassed to take what God has given and excel over your neighbor, and be pleased with it. That is what God has given you the talent for; not to hang your head and apologize because God has given you unique ability in some area and you’re using it. He wants you to use it for His glory, that’s the issue, but don’t be apologetic because you excel over someone else, just give thanks to God and move on, excel over him some more. That’s the way to do it. You’ll get a lot of pressure, of course, from idiot Christians and from idiot non-Christian but just consider the source and move on.

Let’s turn back to Hebrews 4. Notice it says in Hebrews 4:10 exactly what was taught in Revelation 14:13, “He that has entered into his own rest, has ceased from his own works, as God has from his.” And that’s the point when no more work can be done in history; the game’s over. And you can’t, after the whistle blows go to the bench and say gee, I thought of some neat plays. It doesn’t swing it because the game’s over. And when God calls the shots and the game is over, there’s no more extra good works that can be done. And that is kind of a sickening feeling when you know that you could have done better. That’s the most frustrating that I’ve ever known, is to know that you didn’t do as well as you could have done. So the author of Hebrews to get Christians to do as well as they can before the rest starts, because once the rest begins the work stops. Now is the hour, in other words, to be grace oriented and move.

Hebrews 4:11, now we come to the admonition. Now watch how this is developed. “Let us labor, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of disobedience.” “Let us labor,” it’s a word that refers to alertness, be alert at this critical point. In context he’s talking to Jews who profess faith in Messiah at the 11^th hour before the judgment upon Jerusalem and the tendency would be to forsake the Messianic movement for the old form and turn back against the light. And he’s saying don’t you do this, be diligent so that you can enter the rest. And the sign that they are saved people will be that the endure this final judgment. And a people that fall away, that apostacize, that turn their back on Messiah, are going to be considered, by this author at least, never to have been saved in the first place. This is a Jewish mode of thought, it occurs in 1 John 2:19; it occurs in John 15, it occurs in the four Gospels, it occurs in Acts and it occurs with Hebrews, it’s a thorough going Jewish mode of thought that those who endure to the end will be saved, the idea being that the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.

“Let us therefore be alert, to enter into that rest,” what rest? The eternal one, in other words, we missed the other rest; the wilderness generation screwed up and didn’t enjoy the temporal rest, but for heaven’s sake, let’s not miss “the” rest. “…lest any man fall,” now those of you with a Greek text, if you’ll notice verse 11 the words are out of order here and it’s a very difficult verse to translate because for some reason you see that the word order is wrong. You’ve got part of the object split, it’s split in three parts and it would read, if we translated it literally: “lest the same any man, example, fall of disobedience.” And what he’s done, he’s taken the phrase which in the English is translated “the same example of unbelief” and he split it in three parts and he’s distributed it through the sentence. Now when you see this happening, the idea of the author isn’t to make it tough for new Greek students to translate it; the idea is to emphasize it; see, you didn’t have dashes and capitals and underlining. So in the Greek language you have what is called syntactical emphasis. In other words, the only way they could emphasize a word is shift it in a sentence; that’s the only mechanism available. So here, to get your attention, he split this thing in three parts and threw it in a long sentence, so you’re reading along and every time you bump against it, this makes you try to read the predicate and bang, you hit it here, and then you hit it again and then you hit it again. So you have to get that doggone predicate three times to get to the end of the sentence. And that is a way he has of saying now look what I’m saying to you.

All right, let’s look at what he’s saying to us, “the same example of disobedience,” the word “belief” is not in the best manuscripts, it’s a word that means disobedience. And he says you’re going to go after the same way, the same example of disobedience. And what is the same example of disobedience? When people were right on the boundary at Kadesh-Barnea in Numbers they could have walked across that border; it was only hundreds of feet away, they were that close to that rest, and they turned away. And he’s saying right now at this point in history we are that close to inaugurating the kingdom of God; we’re that close. Now beware lest any of you fall away.

Applied to day it would be this. Someone comes in with a group of Christians, they hear the Word of God, it sounds good, they like to be around Christians but they haven’t believed in the gospel, they haven’t trusted in Jesus Christ as their Savior and they’re that close to trusting Him. And then somebody steps on their toe or something and they turn away. And they were that close to coming to trust Christ and they never did. So that’s the warning that he’s giving. That rest… the same disobedience, disobedience to move into the rest, the same disobedience toward a rest in that past time is a mirror of the present disobedience against the eternal rest.

Now just to show you that our interpretation of the rest is not just made up here, I’m going to read a passage from Four Ezra; don’t look for it in your Bible because you’re not going to find it. This is an apocryphal piece that dates from the time of this epistle. And as I said, this epistle is written into synagogue life of the first century and the author of Hebrews is well aware of the literature current in the synagogues of that period of history. Therefore, if we read the literature of the time we get an idea what he’s talking about and to confirm that we are on the right track when we’re interpreting this rest as the eternal rest, listen to this from Four Ezra, 8:52.

(Quote) “It is for you that paradise,” now watch, he’s going to describe things synonymously, “It is for you that paradise is opened, the tree of life planted, the age to come is prepared.” Now where have we seen the age to come? Remember hearing that somewhere in Hebrews, it was in 2:5, “the age to come,” that was a phrase we’ve seen already. “The tree of life is planted, the age to come is prepared, plenty is provided, a city is built,” and we’re going to see later on that Abraham sought for a city from heaven, and then finally, “rest is appointed, goodness is established and wisdom perfected.” And he’s talking about the final salvation of the people of Israel. So there, which was literature current at the same time of this epistle, using the word “rest” exactly the same way. So the rest is when history is finished.

Now let’s look at the next verse because now we come to Hebrews 4:12; many of us have quoted this; well now we’re going to see the context of it and the context is rather surprising. We’ve dealt so far with a warning, you notice verse 11 has shifted more into the exhortation. The whole passage has been warning but now in verse 11 the warning heightens; the anticipation increases, the application gets right down, now let us do something. And he has said you have to be alert to stay grace oriented; you have to stay alert to stay grace oriented, now here’s the reason why you should be alert to remain grace oriented, and here’s the reason:

“For,” this explains what’s going to happen, and all of what follows in verse 12 destroys middle ground and neutrality; the big idea of verse 12 is you can’t fool God. You can fool the elders of the synagogue, and you can fool your loved ones, and you can make up all these stories that you’re trying, and you can convince these people, you can make people feel sorry for you, go along with you in self-pity, but you’re not going to get God to do it. You can fool men but you can’t fool God. And the big point of verse 12 is going to be don’t think you can snow God. Okay, let’s watch at the details now.

Hebrews 4:12, “For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a critic,” notice if you’re following in the Greek it’s the very work, if you follow the sound of the word, “critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Now what is the Word of God, is it the Second Person of the Trinity or is this a general meaning for the Word of God in all forms of revelation. What do you think? Just look at the context and the interpretive question we have is what is Word of God? That can be used in a narrow sense for the Lord Jesus Christ or it can be used in a larger sense for all verbal revelation. Anybody venture an opinion. [someone answers] Okay, why would you say all verbal revelation? [because that’s the truth that the Holy Spirit can’t hear] Okay, but can you pin this down to this book, this passage and this place. What do we have in the context that swings it. You’re right, in favor that it’s the whole canon of revelation. [someone else] All right, back in chapter 1, remember the theme, let’s go back there in case we’ve forgotten it.

Back in Hebrews 1 what was the theme? God in many places has given His revelation. Now He has taken two parts of that revelation and just shot us with them, hasn’t he? Numbers and Psalm 95. And he’s saying with the present tense, remember we saw this, the Holy Spirit says and then he quoted Psalm 95 that was written ten centuries before his time and he quoted Numbers that was written fourteen centuries before his time. And yet the Holy Spirit says, not said, says; is now saying to us through these canonical Scriptures. So the Word of God refers to the verbal revelation but more than this, the Word of God and its verbal revelation comes to us like this: here’s our mind and here’s our conscience.

This is one of the central passages of the New Testament that tells us something very important. And I know as a teacher of the Word myself, this has been a source of great comfort to me, that the Word of God penetrates through the mind all the way to the conscience, whereas normally when you get information it filters around the mind and then is judged by the conscience. The Word of God goes all the way to the conscience and this is why the Word of God is actually different than anything else. That’s why it’s living. It doesn’t have to be digested. Now it’s true that the mind has to operate on it and understand it, we’re not saying it’s irrational mysticism. But what we’re saying is that the Word of God slices right through and develops in the conscience a God-consciousness. Remember the conscience is the place where you are conscious of God. We would call the conscience… some people would refer to the conscience partially by the term the sub-conscious or the unconscious part of the mind. In other words, the Word of God bathes it all when it comes in.

But the thing that is very interesting about this passage in the light of what I warned you to watch for, what did I warn you to watch for as we began tonight; there was a certain theme—war. Remember the rest, the rest comes after the war is finished. Now do you notice in verse 12 “the two-edged sword,” that’s an instrument of war and we’re going to trace the expression of the sword used this way to several portions of God’s Word.

Let’s begin by turning to Genesis 3:24 and let’s see if we can develop an interpretation of what this is, how is the Word of God sharper than a two-edged sword; what is the theme behind this expression. When I found and worked out this it made a lot of sense of things I’d been observe in my ministry here, of various people who’ve had problems and this really gets down to it, so let’s watch now how the Word of God is a sharp two-edged sword. After God drives out Adam from His presence… by the way, why did God drive out the man from Eden, besides the moral problem, a holy God can’t stand the presence of a sinner, what else was there. He didn’t want Adam to eat the tree of life which apparently had a chemical antidote in it that would have kept him alive for ever and if he had that would have been a miserable situation as a fallen spirit in an ever-living body; it would have rendered man unsavable. See, Christ could never have come if that’d been the situation. It would have just plugged the whole plan.

[someone asks a question] Because… anybody see, why didn’t He remove the tree of life? The tree of life is an adumbration of the cross; in history the tree of life is the cross and for all eternity the tree of life is still there. The tree of life reappears in Revelation 21:22, and it means that man is made to live by eating the tree of life. Now in communion we are eating the body and blood of Christ and it’s an eating of a person who has died, so in communion, so to speak, we are, as it were, feeding on death, on a sacrifice, but even had we not sinned we would still have to feed on the tree of life and the reason is because we’re finite creatures and we’re dependent, and the expression, “eating of the tree of life” means that that places us as creatures totally dependent for our existence for input from outside of ourselves. So our dependency on the tree of life must always be there. Now the problem here is during the antediluvian period, evidently the tree of life physically existed all the way up to the time of the flood, and when the flood came and destroyed the earth the tree of life was removed at that point, but by that time revelation had already established another way, through Christ’s finished work

Now notice, “So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep” or “guard the way of the tree of life.” Now notice what the sword here is doing, it’s turning every way, in other words, there’s no way man can come up through this gate; the cherubim, so to speak, are standing guard and the whole antediluvian population, for centuries, could never go through that road into Eden, because every time they did they’d be killed. The cherubim had their sword, no one is allowed to partake of this tree of life; they are to guard the way to the tree of life. Why? Because you have Eden and you have, let’s say there’s a gate here and you have the cherubim guarding it and a road up to it. If fallen man comes up to the gate and crashes the gate to get into the tree of life without going by grace, he is, at this point claiming that God owes him life, that having the right to partake of the tree of life is a gracious act of God; you can’t waltz in here and pick the fruit any time you please from now on, we have a sword that separates the sinner from life. And what is this sword doing? I want you to pick the theme up. The sword destroys the rebel and the sword destroys to keep the rebel away from God. Now there’s only one way we can come to the tree of life and that is by God working something out graciously. That’s the only way, but if we try to burst and crash our way into God’s presence the swords stops! Now that’s the first picture of the sword in Scripture.

Now let’s develop it further by turning to Isaiah 49:2, this is a Messianic prediction, the theme of the sword once again, this time in the linkage with the Messiah figure. In verse 1, “The LORD has called me from the womb; from the bowels [body] of my mother has he made mention of my name.” Now notice, [2] “He has made my mouth like a sharp sword; in the shadow of his hand has he hidden me, and made mea polished shaft; in his quiver has he hidden me.” Now what does that sound like? That sounds like the Messiah is a tool of destruction. And then he says in verse 3, “You art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” Now there’s one [can’t understand word/s], it’s the Messiah but we don’t want to get into that right now, I just wanted to show you the theme of the sword.

Let’s summarize how we’ve come. In Genesis we’ve found that the sword destroys rebellious seekers of life. In other words, these people are seeking life autonomously on their terms; they want the tree of life but they’re going to get it by their way. Standing between them and the tree is the sword. Now Messiah, in Isaiah, is said to be a sword. Now we’re going to take up that theme of the sword further. Isaiah 49:2 introduces you to a complex. I’m going t show you where else that appears but first, to show you where it appears I’ve got to take you to an apocryphal work called The Wisdom of Solomon 18:15. This shows you how that phrase sword was current and prevalent at this time in history, again we’re not building doctrine out of the apocrypha, we’re simply using it to give you a feeling for how the word was used.

Now you listen to this passage: “The all powerful word leaked from heaven, from the royal throne, into the midst of the land that was doomed. A stern warrior carrying the sharp sword of God’s authentic command, and the warrior stood and filled all things with death, and he touched heaven while standing on earth. The experience of death touched also the righteous and a plague came upon the multitude in the desert, but the wrath did not long continue, for a blameless man was quick to act as their champion. He [can’t understand words] the shield of his ministry, prayer and propitiation by incense, and he would still be angry and put an end to the disaster. He conquered the wrath not by strength of body and not by force of arms, but by his word he subdued the punisher, appealing to the promises and covenants given to our fathers.”

Did any of you pick up the theme of what’s spoken there? Is there an event that you remember from Scripture where the righteous are threatened with total destruction unless they stand on grace? [someone answers] That’s one, but the key event of all history that has this theme, it’s not identical to what this is talking about but the theme is the same. The Exodus, isn’t it, wasn’t everybody threatened with destruction unless they did what? Put blood on the door? Was the angel of destruction sent from God’s throne? You bet he was? He was an angel of destruction and he was sent directly by God to kill, to destroy and to annihilate, the sharp sword that must cut and destroy rebellion. So the theme of destruction is there.

The theme is picked up again in the book of Revelation; turn to Revelation 2:16, Jesus Christ says to one of the churches, “Repent, or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth.” Now again, what is the sword? It’s a destroying thing, something that is used to annihilate rebellion. And where does it come from? The mouth of Jesus Christ. Why from the mouth? Because remember Isaiah 49:2, the Messianic passage, “You have made my mouth into a sharp two-edged sword.” Now why is the mouth there? What’s the connection that Hebrews 4:12 gives you; the mouth and the sword, and what does Hebrews 4:12 with the third word? The Word, so this is why in the apocalyptic literature Christ is pictured as having a sword come out of His mouth. The sword that comes out of His mouth is what Christ speaks, and as the reviewer of God, God’s Word is spoken through His tongue and that word destroys.

Now let’s see it further. Revelation 19:15, the picture of the final end, the final act of history, when Jesus Christ comes on the white horse and the picture that you have in verse 13 is that His garments are filled with blood, and this time it’s not His. [14] “And the armies that were in heaven followed Him…” and then in verse 15, “Out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should smite the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron; and he treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” All right, now what is this sword associated with in every one of these verses. Can we kind of summarize it; do you get the idea that the sword is a blessing. In every case we’ve looked at the context of God’s Word teaches us that the sword is there to destroy, it is a destroying thing, not a building thing. It is a destructive weapon, not something that edifies; it’s something that has been given to annihilate, look at it, “smite the nations … the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God,” that’s what you associate with the sword.

Now let’s turn back to Hebrews 4:12. Now this is what’s on the author’s mind. Remember Hebrews, the first one, God has spoken unto us by a Son, so the Word of God in verse 12, “The Word of God” refers not to Jesus’ person but it refers to the revelation of God through the Son, not total revelation of God but particularly the revelation via the Son. And do you remember back when he was talking in chapter 2, that first warning passage, what did he say in verse 1? Hebrews 2:1, “Therefore, we must give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. [2] How shall we escape if you neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him.” The Word of God here refers first to the actual teachings of Jesus, plus the teachings of the apostles, which had gone out and then had stopped, aorist tense, and this whole thing together is the Word of God. That’s what he says is destroying.

Now how does the Word of God destroy? Let’s look further in verse 12, “The word of God is alive, it’s powerful, and it’s sharper than a two-edged sword.” Now what has he just got through saying in verse 11, before he got to this sword business? He’s warning them that if they hear something, that is hear what? What is it these people have heard? The Word, right. He said if you have heard the Word of God and what did the people do in Numbers? Had they heard the Word of God? Look Hebrews 4:1, “Let us, therefore, fear lest, a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of us should seem to come short of it. [2] For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them; but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.” See verse 2. All right, the Word didn’t profit those people. Did they hear the Word? They heard the Word, didn’t they. And what did they do with it? Nothing. And what did God say? Out!

Now do you get the flavor of what he’s talking about in 4:12; he’s saying boy, you’ve heard now the revelation of Jesus Christ, and you have heard the apostles and you just heard me teach you and teach you and teach you, now you’d better get with it because now you are stuck. Before you could plead ignorance, before you could say well, I didn’t know that, or I was in darkness, but you can’t do it now; the light has come and God help the person who rebels once the light has been given to him. That’s what he’s warning. This is not a passage of blessing, this is a passage of condemnation. He’s saying the Word of God that hits your mind and goes all the way over to your conscience, goes in there and it sits and forms God-consciousness in your soul and that word stays there and that word can never be erased, it stays in your conscience forever. And now this is why, and we’ll skip to the last part of verse 12, then we’ll come back to the middle part, but it is the last part, it is now “the critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart,” whose heart? The person who’s heard. So now the God-consciousness has moved into the conscience, has built up and fortified the conscience and now it turns around. See, the Word of God came in this way, it gets in the conscience, and now it starts coming back this way. So this person is worse off, if they thought they were going to hear the Word of God and play games now they’re in trouble because now the Word of God is coming to their soul and is now turning around and saying hey, this has to be changed, this has to be changed, this has to be change, this attitude has to go, this has to go, this has to go, this has to go, this has to go, and the Word of God starts making demands. That’s the living-ness, the Word of God is living, it just doesn’t sit in the conscience dead, it is alive.

Now this will provide some of you who get discouraged about perhaps loved ones that don’t get with it and so on, and you think the situation’s a dead situation, not at all. We’ve analyzed that experience completely wrong if we’re saying so and so’s heard the Word, they’ve heard the Word and they’ve heard the Word and nothing seems to happen. The trick is nothing seems to be happening that you notice. Now if this verse is correct that can’t be true; that is a false statement, to say so and so heard the Word and nothing happened. This statement says so and so has heard the Word and something very definitely has happened, the Word has gone into his soul and begun to judge him on the inside. Judge, judge, judge, judge, and it judges two things, “the thoughts and intents of the heart.” And if we want… there’s a problem in lexicography, we could go into the word studies on these things but suffice it to say that the word “thoughts” just means thoughts and the “intents” are the attitudes. So there’s two things that the Holy Spirit uses the Word to start judging. The thought itself, so we’ll put thoughts, because the conscience comes back now and begins to start attacking the bastions of rebellion. Remember what the sword did, when the person wanted to come to the tree of life in Eden the sword stood there, and when Jesus Christ comes again the sword out of His mouth does what? It destroys those who rebel against His authority.

Now he’s saying your soul becomes the battleground with the sword because in your conscience is the Holy Spirit. Let’s go to the soul diagram; you see, you have the indwelling Holy Spirit here, in the human conscience, there’s the presence of God. The presence of God comes to a person the moment they’re regenerated. The moment a person accepts Christ as Savior they are regenerated and they have the Holy Spirit within them. This business of the baptism of the Holy Ghost is a bunch of bologna. I read a neat phrase of Martin Luther, he encountered some of these baptism people in his day and they were attacking Luther because Luther preached Christ as the central point of the Trinity, not the Holy Spirit. And so they kept coming up to Luther and one of them met Luther and said sir, the Spirit, the Spirit, the Spirit, and they yelled at him and you don’t yell at a man by the name of Luther, and so Luther said: I smite your spirit on its snout.

Now why did Luther say that? Because he recognized the second personality of the Trinity is the center of revelation. The Holy Spirit has not come to glorify Himself. So the Holy Spirit that is in the person wants to do what to the Christian? He wants to make the presence of Jesus Christ real. That’s Christ in you, Ephesians 3, Christ in your heart, but it’s not the way a lot of people misunderstand it. The Holy Spirit wants to come over here and make Christ’s presence real throughout the soul and the Holy Spirit’s in there waiting to do it. But just as the sword stops the way into the presence of God for the rebel, so before the person, so to speak, can go to the Holy Spirit and be aware of the presence of Christ in their life, they have got to pass through a door and standing at that door is this sword. That’s the picture; the sword stands at the door of the conscience and says if you want in here it’s going to be by grace alone because a sinner and a rebellious person cannot come into God’s presence whenever they please. This must be dealt with and so what does the sword do? The sword begins to make demands and let’s see how this works.

The Word of God comes through, picked up to your body, comes through your mind, goes into your conscience. The sword is God-conscious; the God-consciousness then starts coming back and demanding things of the mind; it starts attacking the mind, it says look, this attitude has to go, this attitude has to go, this attitude has to go, this attitude has to go. All right, we’ve seen that if that doesn’t work, and the sword is ignored at the level of the mentality, and while you are conscious of this you reject it and you flush it down into your unconscious, put it away, don’t want to hear it, then the conscience begins to activate the emotions and turns them all out of kilter. See, here’s the destructiveness, the sword destroys remember, it doesn’t build, it destroys, and so the sword of the Word begins to operate and screw up the emotions, and so the person has what they call emotional problems. They don’t have any emotional problems at all, it’s spiritual problems. And then if they still don’t get with it, then the sword comes on over here and starts hitting the body, the third channel and now we’ve got psychosomatic illness started.

So here’s the sword and this is what the sword of the Spirit is all about, it is not something that builds, it is something that destroys. Now let’s look at 4:12 again, “The Word of God is quick,” that emphasizes the fact that when you learn the Word of God it begins to operate immediately, something is happening on the inside, “it is powerful,” this emphasizes its energy because see, it has the Holy Spirit behind it. It is “sharper than any two-edged sword,” and this picks up the theme that it cuts. The last part, it “is a critic of the thoughts and the intents of the heart,” that’s where it starts, hitting the attitudes and the mind.

Now in between the first and the last of verse 12 you’ll see the clause, “piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow.” Now that phrase speaks of… the word “marrow” is the old Greek word, you can look up in Hippocrates, it is a word that was used for nerve tissue, and just as the nerves drive your body, the joints is where you have motion, see there’s actually no motion in your bone, the motion is all at the joint so by putting the word “joint” in there he means body action; the marrow is the nerve tissue that precipitates the body to move and there’s an analogy being made now between the body and the nerves. We’ll put the body is to the nerves as the soul is to the Spirit. So just as the nerves cause bodily action, so the Spirit causes motions in the soul, not emotions but motions. And what the Holy Spirit, what the Word of God goes, it penetrates to the dividing of these two, which is at the conscience, it penetrates the dividing of these two and so both the Spirit and the soul now are affected. In other word there’s no part of man that is not affected by hearing the Word of God.

Now obviously this is quite an admonition here, it’s quite a powerful and quite a sobering one. In other words, what this guy would say, you want to screw up in the Christian life you’d better stay away from the Word of God while you’re doing it, because once you have learned the Word of God, don’t think you can beat it because it is sharp and sure.

Now the closing verse, Hebrews 4:13, “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight, but all things are naked and laid open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Now the word “opened” is a perfect participle, passive voice and that can be used as a wrestling hold, the idea was a wrestling term and it meant to grip a person around the neck so if you had a knife you could slit his throat. And this word was used when you got him in the position where his neck was exposed and there was only one more blow needed to kill him. Now there is, again, this idea of death and destruction. And so what does he say, all things, God has a wrestling hold on everything and all He has to do is poke His knife in the throat and it’s killed. That is the power of God’s Word. And that’s what this man is afraid of for his congregation; he’s afraid that they will hear the Word and not respond and he’s saying don’t you think you can’t do that. So this is probably the most powerful admonition I have ever seen and ever studied, ever worked with and ever taught in the New Testament about people who come in and hear the Word and hear the Word and hear the Word and hear the Word and we think nothing happened. Oh a lot of things are happening, you’d be surprised; that’s the source of a lot of the trouble. People were okay until they started hearing the Word then they all got fouled up, and the more they hear the Word the more fouled up they get. Do you know why? Because they’re failing to obey and to submit to it, blaming it on all sorts of things except themselves.

With our heads bowed