The Living, Active, Sharp and Exposing Word of God

I hope you're anticipating the Lord's blessings tonight. I have to admit the great part oftentimes with having a speaker come is I get to spend the day with them and it's just been a fun day. But I love this guy not just because he's a lot of fun to be with, but over the years he has taken a stand for the sufficiency of the word of God and has been I think it's safe to say Heath is a battle scarred veteran and I've always appreciated his stand squarely on the sufficiency of scripture I'm also sympathetic towards him because he's a dad married to Lauren but that's not where the sympathy comes in lauren is a delightful woman that he's married to and they have three children carson chloe and connor and uh i empathize with him of course because he's right in the middle of raising a family i'm trying to remember i'm i'm trying to remember 41 i'm not sure if i can remember that far back but and so our brother's going to come and minister the word of god and And again, I just really appreciate him and the stand that he's taken for that word.

And I appreciate his ministry to us. So come and minister the word to us. All right. Hello again. So this is the LaRue Friday night pandemic crowd. I wondered what you guys look like.

But there's more of you here than there would have been last year when I was originally scheduled to be. So I'm glad. Hebrews chapter 4 verses 12 to 13. Hebrews chapter 4 verses 12 to 13. As I mentioned last night, every time we're together, we're going to look at a text of the Bible that is about the Bible. And I want us to sort of celebrate together, to remember together the practical glory of the Scriptures. the bible is an amazing gift to us we we take it for granted all the time always more than we should and we just going to look at some passages looked at one last night looking at this one tonight look at a few tomorrow that are just helping us rediscover what the Bible is what it says about itself and why that matters to us.

So Hebrews 4, 12 to 13, one of the classic texts in Scripture about Scripture, and we'll look at it for a few minutes tonight. This is what God says. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

And there's no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we're thankful for the opportunity to be here in this place, at this time in our lives. And I pray that you would take the word of truth, that you would take these ancient words that we just sang about, and you would cause them to be as powerful as they really, really are.

I pray that they would come into our hearts now and make us different. I pray that you would cause the living, active, sharp, and exposing word of God to change us, make us different, make us more like Jesus. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. So I'll tell you two stories that might seem like they don't have anything to do with each other, but I think they have everything to do with this passage.

The first story is a story about a married couple that I knew. they were at that point when I got to know them they were a little bit ahead in life of where I am right now they had just become empty nesters raised three or four kids or whatever it was and they sent their last kid off to college and they looked at each other and they realized they didn't have anything in common they didn't love each other anymore and they wanted to go and get a divorce. And we got, me and Lauren got connected with them through a series of relationships. And as we got to know them, this was a couple that had fallen in love and they were professing Christ and they wanted to serve Christ in their marriage But what happened once kids started coming along and work got busy and careers started to advance is they just quit talking, spending time with one another.

Dad was in this car with the boys taking them to baseball practice. Mom was in this car with the girl taking her to piano. Everybody was eating on their own. And when the kids left the house, they looked at each other and realized they hadn't been talking for a long time and didn't have anything to talk about now. Communication in marriage is one of those things that it seems like you can live without for a while.

It seems like we can make it. It seems like of all the things we've got to do, when I'm coming in after a hard day and I just want to flop on the sofa, the one thing I really don't need to do right now is have a big long conversation with you. And you do that for a little while, but eventually you have to pay bills on it because you need that communication and that relationship more than you think.

Second story, not about a married couple, about my son, Connor. We have right at the beginning of COVID, we were at a friend's pool and he slipped next to the pool and broke four bones in his foot. So COVID hits and he's on ice dragging his foot around all over the place. That got better. And right as soon as he got out of the foot cast, he was riding his bike and a car was coming down the street and he went to hit the brakes but hit the curb and wobbled and went to break his fall. and instead of breaking his fall, he broke both bones in his arm.

That was six. The other night at church, after church, after church they had a pick-up game of dodgeball, and his best friend tried to peg him with the dodgeball. He caught the ball, but in a weird freak accident, caught it just the wrong way and broke one of the bones in his hand. That was seven, seven in just under a year. he got the guy out though by the way like he broke his bone getting his buddy out I'm like Connor all right I'm sick of paying the orthopedist bills but I'm glad you got that guy out so seven bones in a year so after he got the uh the foot cast off that was the thing that was most restrictive that really kept him doing from doing the things that he wanted to do He had a Saturday in our neighborhood and we sent him out He was running all over the place with his friends.

They were riding bikes and doing all their things. This was before the two breaks in the arm. And in the evening time, actually, this never happens. But whatever happened, Laura and my wife was not around. so for whatever reason it was me and Connor alone in the house and he comes in and he feels terrible and I'm going oh my goodness this guy getting sick and I'm texting Lauren like he doesn't typically complain and I'm like what is he doing she's like do you think he has COVID I don't think he has COVID but he's just freaking out he started to cry and I'm like what are you doing crying like this is really weird is he holding his head I'm going oh my goodness maybe He's having an aneurysm.

I don't know what in the world is going on with this kid. Long and the short of it, I gave him dinner. And like after two bites, he felt like 100% better. And as we like reconstructed the day, like this is one of the reasons I remember that Lauren wasn't there because this never would have happened if she'd been there. He just hadn't eaten anything all day.

He'd been running around with his friends. He'd been playing in the woods. He'd been riding his bike, and he never stopped to eat. And his little 10-year-old body started screaming at him at 6 o'clock at night that it's time for some food. So lesson for dear old dad is, hey, you can overlook food for a little bit, but after a while, if you do it for too long, you're going to find out that this was not a wise decision to overlook it after all.

Okay, so communication and marriage, food and 10-year-old boys. What they have in common that relates to this is there's all sorts of things in life that it feels like you can do without, but you pay bills on it eventually. And that's the way it is with the Bible. That's the way it is with the word of God. Actually, and this is true whether you're a Christian or not.

So Christians have repented of their sins and trusted in Jesus Christ, and they know that God speaks to us by his word. And we know that man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Christians know that. unbelievers don't know it but everybody needs the word of god whether they know it or whether they don't but what happens when uh especially when you're a christian is is you is you know this But we forget about it.

We ignore it. We don't spend regular time in the scriptures. We zone out during the preaching. Of course, I'm not talking to people like you who drag yourselves to church on a Friday night to hear the Bible. You're excluded for this for now. But all of us have in our lives moments when we overlook this Bible and we think, well, it'll just be okay.

And the reality is it won't. So this harkens back to last night when I said wherever you are in your walk with the Lord, wherever you are in your Christian life, you need more of the Bible than you're currently getting. The change that God is going to accomplish in your life is connected to words in the scripture that you need to see, read, remember, and live out.

The Bible is this thing. It's this book that we really, really need, and we find it easy to neglect it and often find out in a moment of serious pain that we can't live without it as much as we should. And so this is a passage of scripture that encourages us about how useful and practical and important the Bible is in our lives. The Bible here in verse 12 is referred to as the word of God.

We're used to that language. If you've been a Christian for any amount of time, you know this is language that the Bible uses to identify itself, but we don't want to blow over it. The Word of God. Every word in the Bible is a word from God. The author of Hebrews has an amazing view of Scripture. In the first chapter, he makes repeated references to passages of Scripture in the Old Testament. and before he talks about those passages of scripture in the Old Testament, he talks about the fact that God spoke and said.

He talks about the fact that God said these words. And what happens is when you go back and you look at those original references in their original context, you find out that there isn't a single place that the author of Hebrews references where the author of scripture is identified specifically as God. It David or somebody else but the author of Hebrews looks at that and says hey you might have a human author called David you might have a human author called Moses but the Bible is the word of God and God uses the human authors to write his word but whoever it is and whatever they do by the end of it you can look at the Bible and say you've got the word of God as Benjamin Warfield said what the Bible says God says.

And the author of Hebrews just makes that very clear a couple chapters later in Hebrews chapter 4 when he calls the Bible the word of God. And then what he does is he takes this word of God. Again, this is language that we're so familiar with, but we better not take it for granted. If your dad says, hey, son, I want to have a word with you, we take that seriously, or at least we should.

If we get called into our boss's office because he says, hey, I want to have a word with you, we're going to perk up. if if anyone would ever be summoned by the president of the united states who would say hey look i need to talk to you i want to have a word with you we would perk up we we know when someone speaks someone in authority that is a big deal and what we're told here just in this language the word of god is that the king of heaven and earth the lord of glory the holy one of Israel, the triune God, the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who pours out his spirit, has spoken to us. He's spoken to us in a book. He's spoken to us with words on a page, and we get to hear what God says.

My goodness, how we forget to be shocked by this. My dad died about eight years ago. And, you know, it's funny. We were talking with my kids because somebody observed that when I die, there's all these sermons of mine on YouTube. There's all these podcasts of me preaching. And our kids were like, Dad, we'll be able to hear your voice when you're dead.

And I'm like okay I not sure I not sure I appreciate the calculation here but yes it is true that when I dead you be able to hear my voice And I was thinking about it I don have that with my dad. Like they had, you know, they had the like two ton VHS camcorders when I was coming up, but I don't have any images of my dad. I don't have any recordings of his voice.

I don't have like letters that he wrote. It's like, it's over. It's silenced. And if you told me you could hear a word from your dad, I would, I mean, there's probably a few things I wouldn't do to get it, but it would be incredibly precious to me. It would be worth a lot to hear what he has to say. Well, my dad, one of the nicest men I ever met, is not the God of heaven and earth.

And the God of heaven and earth has spoken. and we have the opportunity to hear what he has to say just by opening up the pages of the bible we got to remember to be stunned by this we got to remember to be gripped by it and this word of god this divine speech contained in the pages of scripture is described for us in four different ways in this text and I'll just look at each one of them and then we'll be done so the word of God the first word used to describe God's speech in the Bible is that it is living the word of God is living the author of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 3 verse 12 has been talking about the living God he says take care brethren that there not be in any of you an evil unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God so God is alive he is pulsing with energy and vitality and now as he turns and talks about the Bible, he says the word of God has the same characteristic as God himself, namely that it is living. What does it mean that God's word is living, that the words on the pages in scripture are alive What does that mean Well it means at least two things It got to mean at least something physical and it got to mean at least something spiritual Physically we could say that God Word has life in it God Word has life in it. God's Word produces physical life.

In Genesis chapter 1, the Word of God speaks into the darkness it speaks into the nothingness it penetrates the void of the absence of anything and among other things says let there be fruit and vegetation and flowers and seed bearing plants and when God says it it happens he speaks and just by the power of his word life springs into existence cell structures and reproductive systems and all the rest that happens by the power of god's word it's really quite something in acts chapter 7 verse 38 it says this is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness together with the angel who was speaking to him on mount sinai and who was with our fathers and he received living oracles to pass on to you the the words of god have life in them and they they create life this is why by the way sin kills. Sin kills because the word of God speaks and it woos you towards life and righteousness and peace. But sin, as it disobeys the word of God, it disobeys life.

It moves in the opposite direction of that which is living towards that which will kill. Just like if your kids are playing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and you say, come this way. Your words are urging in the direction of life. And if they disobey you, they're going to go off the side of the cliff. Same way with God's words. It's what it means to be living.

God's words have life in them. But God's word... also creates life in people. This is true not just in the creative physical sense, but it's true in the spiritual sense for those of us who know what it is to be dead in trespasses and sins. In Psalm 119, verse 25, the psalmist says, my soul cleaves to the dust. You know what that means? It means I'm on the ground.

I'm in the dirt. From dust you were and to dust you shall return. This is a person who feels like in their struggle they are on the edge of death. He says, my soul cleaves to the dust. Revive me according to your word. What he says is, God, I'm about to die.

And if I'm going to live, it has to come from your word. God's word has spiritual life in it. we read in 1 Peter 1, verse 23. It says, you've been born again. So you were born the first time. And now you've been born again, born from above. You've been born again, not of seed, which is perishable, but imperishable.

You can't kill it. That is through the living and enduring Word of God. It is the Scriptures, it is the Word of God that is living. and when the scriptures are spoken, when the scriptures are preached, when the scriptures are read, when they are remembered, it connects immediate lifelines to your soul. So that if you are going to survive this world, this world that is moving towards death and destruction, how do you get out of the cycle of death and destruction what what is there what is there in this life that extends into the life to come so that when your life on planet earth is over your eternal life is just beginning well it's the words of god you've got to lay hold of the word of god that springs that brings you into being and preaches life into your heart so that you can be born again and have a life that physical death physical death takes away physical birth it erases it but spiritual life endures forever when we're born again by the living word of God.

So this living word is what we have that helps us escape the cycle of death and destruction of our current existence. The word of God is living, that's the first thing. second it's active the word of god is living and active active here does not mean just aimless random movement like kids playing in the playroom we we had we had a good friend in from out of town this past week and since the last time we saw her she's had two little kids and we were all excited to see them and we played for a little bit and then I had to go do some things and when I came back Lauren had gotten out all of the kids toys from when our kids were little and playing with those kinds of little kids toys and our house looked the way it used to look all the time when they were playing with those kids toys you could just tell there was aimless random movement there'd been a lot of activity When the Bible says the word of God is active, it's not talking about that kind of movement, that kind of activity. It's talking about movement and activity that is successful and moves towards a goal.

It is to say that the word of God accomplishes something. The word of God gets you someplace. The movement of sanctification that we talked about last night happens by this word of God that is active. If you are feeling stalled, if you're feeling stuck, you need more of the Bible which is active and which will carry you to a different place than where you are. it is the word of god which is active which is why we have to be bible-based people we have to be bible-based people who go to bible-based churches that preach the word of god it actually really easy uh to be tricked into thinking that your church is a Bible church when it really isn I actually a church that I was in before I was in ministry everybody thought they were Bible just because nobody ever stood up and said the Bible isn true nobody ever did that but the almost all the sermons that I heard the entire time I was there was the preacher coming up reading a section of scripture and then telling a whole bunch of stories that didn't necessarily have anything to do with anything we just read together they'd be traditional sort of homespun sorts of things that made you feel good or that were true in a general sense or whatever, but you walked out of there and you couldn't say you learned what the passage was teaching.

What we have to do is be very careful that when we are in a moment where there's preaching, you should be doing it right now. I always tell people your eyes need to be in the text and your ears need to be up at the pulpit. And if the two aren't matching, you've got a problem. It might be your problem. It might be that you don't like what you're hearing.

It might be that you're not paying attention, but it could be that the guy up front is not talking about the Bible. We've got to be Bible-based people who listen to Bible preaching. We've got to be Bible-based people who use the Bible to solve our problems. this living and active word is a sufficient word it's a word the apostle peter tells us that equips us with everything that we need for life and godliness that couple that i was telling you about the reason their marriage was in trouble the surface of it was yeah we're not we're not doing what we need to do as a married couple and we're having communication problems The deeper issue was that they were not walking in a relationship with Jesus as they needed.

They were not coming up close to the Bible and having the Bible take them someplace that they weren't. And in God's kindness, once they started getting more of the Bible and more of Jesus, their marriage got better. the problems in your life and we all have them are connected to problems of having less of this living active word and not more We need to be Bible people who read the Bible and memorize it Has this ever happened to you? This happens to me.

This is in the spectrum of, hey, I'll be okay. It's a busy week. one thing leads to another and I just haven't had time in the word this week and hey everything was everything was fine and so I do it again the next week have you ever done this am I the only one and eventually you are aware if you're a Christian and you are not getting up close to the word of God eventually you are aware that things aren't working eventually you are aware that it what Jesus said is really true. Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

You need the Bible to take you someplace that you can't go on your own. Sometimes we feel like it's not effective. Sometimes we're listening to Bible preaching and we're doing Bible reading and we're doing Bible memory and we're doing Bible counseling. and it seems like maybe we ourselves are stuck or the person we want to see move further down the road from where they are is stuck.

And it seems like, well, how can the Bible be active when it doesn't look like it's working? Well, this is where a passage in Isaiah is really, really helpful. Turn to Isaiah chapter 6. Isaiah chapter 6 verse 8 the prophet says I heard the voice of the Lord saying whom shall I send and who will go for us you might remember what's happened before this the prophet Isaiah is in the temple in the year that King Uzziah died and he sees the Lord high and exalted and he has the vision of the God who is not just holy and not just holy, holy, but holy, holy, holy.

And he's gripped by this vision and he's overwhelmed by this vision and he is overwhelmed. with his sin and there's this ritual of atonement that happens and then after that the voice says who's i got a job who's going for me and the prophet says here am i send me one of the sermons that i heard on this was actually you know i mentioned this church that i went to that said they were bible but really they just never disagreed with the bible but they'd read it and then talk about whatever. This is just one of those funny little things that happen in life. The pastor preached a sermon on this text.

And he read up to, he read the first eight verses of Isaiah chapter six, ended with, here I am, send me. And the whole point was God needed to grow our church. And God was looking for somebody to be used by him to grow the church. and he said, I'm just saying with the prophet Isaiah, here I am, send me. So the theme of the sermon was here I am, send me.

God, if you want somebody, this is what the preacher was saying. God, if you want somebody, I'm your man. Here I am, send me. If we're going to grow this church, here I am, send me. I'm going to do it. Verse nine.

He said, go and tell this people, keep on listening, but do not perceive. Keep on looking, but do not understand. Render the hearts of this people insensitive, their ears dull and their ears dim. Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and return and be healed. Then I said, Lord, how long? And he answered, until the cities are devastated and without inhabitant.

Houses are without people, and the land is utterly desolate. The Lord has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. Yet there will be a tenth portion in it, and it will again be subject to burning like a terebinth or an oak whose stump remains when it's felled. The holy seed is its stump. This is not the passage to read if you want to be the church growth guy.

Okay, here I am, send me. Okay, but here's what you're being sent to do, Isaiah, big boy. You're going to preach the Bible, and no one's going to listen to you. you going to preach in my name until the cities are destroyed And you know by the time you done by the time everybody is done going like this to you la, la, la, la, la, la, la, by the time they do that to you, there's going to be a tenth of the people left.

And we'll call it a stump that's left. That's your ministry, Isaiah. Don't forget, you said, here I am, send me. So Isaiah is given, I mean, a pretty stinky ministry. No glory in this. You're going to preach the living and active word of God, and ain't nobody going to listen to you.

And what does Isaiah think about that? well Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 55 verses 10 to 11 says remember this the guy nobody's going to listen to this isn't going to be a growing vibrant make ministry great again ministry and in Isaiah 55 verses 10 to 11 so will my word be which goes forth from my mouth it will not return to me empty without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it look at that this is also from the mouth of the prophet Isaiah this is one of the words that he preaches to the people who don't listen hey you're not listening doesn't mean the word isn't effective doesn't mean the word's not active the word does everything God intends it to do. You walked in here last night and tonight, and maybe we'll walk in tomorrow, and we are talking about how you need more of this word in your life. You need to be gripped by more of this word in your life.

You need to be shocked by it. And already you've heard this word and the word will be effective in your life. It's too late. It's too late. The word's gone out. It's in your head.

It's in your heart. The only question is, will the word be effective to soften you or will the word be effective to harden you? But the word's going to work. It's too late to unhear it. It too late to make it unactive You can do it God help us to God use your word to soften us and bring us close to you Make us more faithful The word of God is living The word of God is active Next, the word of God is sharp.

The Bible says, for the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart the bible says that the bible is sharp and it says that it's so sharp it's sharper actually than any double-edged sword so this would have been the weapon of choice in the ancient world and they knew how to make swords sharp and the author of Hebrews is saying no matter how sharp an earthly physical sword can get the Bible is sharper than that. Well, what does it mean? Well, it means physical swords cut your body, but the sword of the scripture cuts your soul.

It pierces into your soul. This is what it says. It pierces as far as the division of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow. The language here is there's two sort of groups. There is soul and spirit, and there's joints and marrow. Well, if you know about these things, you know that the Bible here is talking about things that actually can't be cut.

Soul and spirit is a reality that can't be cut. The Bible teaches that there are two constituent aspects of a human being. There's the outer person and the inner person. The outer person is physical The inner person is spiritual And the Bible has all sorts of words to describe that spiritual reality of who we are Soul spirit will conscience inner man We could multiply examples of the words that are used to describe that inner immaterial part but just because we come up with non or whatever it is in the New Testament that describes that doesn mean there non parts that you can carve up Soul and spirit are two different words that refer to the same inner immaterial non-physical part of who we are.

You can't divide up soul and spirit. You have one inner man. It's not possible to divide that. It's also not possible, I understand, from the medical doctor that I asked about this, that joints and marrow, that's not the kind of thing you can cut up. Joints and marrow aren't strictly speaking connected. So if you were going to use a knife on a bone, it's not going to sever joints and marrow.

They're not connected in that way anyway. The point is, the Bible is so sharp that it can cut things that nothing else can cut. that's how sharp it is it's it's so sharp it's so piercing that even things that can't possibly be cut apart can be divided and pierced by the word of god and and it moves from the more metaphorical explanation to to the more literal when it says able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. That is what we're really talking about.

The word picture is, think about soul and spirit. You can cut that apart. You can't cut that apart. I know, that's the point. Think about joints and marrow. You can cut that apart.

Well, you can't cut that apart. I know, that's the point. It's so sharp, it can do things no other blade can do. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means the thoughts and intentions of your heart can be judged by this word. nobody's a judge of me nobody can judge me you don't know what's going on in my heart yeah that's probably true but that's not true of the bible that's not true of god's word god's word is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of your heart if you look back at hebrews chapter 3 this is a crucial part of what the author of hebrews is doing in chapter 3 verse 12 he says take care brethren that there not be in any one of you an evil unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God but encourage one another verse 13 every day as long as it is called today so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin The language here is that sin is a deceiver.

It's out there, it's wooing you, it's tempting you, it's singing this siren song that you should follow me and everything's going to be great. You should follow me and everything will be fun. If you do what I want you to do, sin says everything's going to be better than wonderful. What that does, that deceitfulness of sin creates hardness of heart. It creates a hard, crusty, stony heart.

And what can penetrate that? Well, the word of God can. The word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, can pierce your heart and help you discover the truth. It is possible that any one of us deceived by all manner of sin can be corrected by the truth of scripture. That's another reason why we need the Bible. You know people who are deceived in their sin?

Give them the Bible. If you're struggling with sin in your own life, turn to the Bible. The Bible is sharp enough to cut through the lies and the deceit and the crust that can form over your heart as you believe the lies of sin. The Bible does that and nothing else can. the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

There's one more characteristic, a fourth characteristic, it's in verse 13, and there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. this is this is language that talks about the exposing function of the word of god the the language here is that we are open and laid bare i was i was fascinated i found out at dinner that tonight or this weekend anyway is the state wrestling tournament right so if you care about the state wrestling tournament that's happening and i know there's some people in the room that do it will matter to you that this language of being open and laid bare is actually a wrestling term in the ancient world it actually is the same language that was used for a wrestling hold that would pin somebody down and make them tap out Yeah, this is what the Word of God does. The Word of God pins you down and gives you no place to go. It exposes you.

It lays you flat. You've got nowhere to go. This is fascinating because of how it does it. It's been talking about the Bible. Hebrews has. Verse 12, the word of God is this, it is that.

And it changes gears just a little bit, at least in the language. In verse 13, it says, there is no creature hidden from his sight. Bible, Bible, Bible, God. This is what the word is, this is what the word is, this is what the word is. And verse 13 says, there's no creature hidden from his sight, but he didn't stop talking about the Bible. He's just talking about the Bible in a new way.

I went to a college that was nervous about the truthfulness and the authority of Scripture. They were very sensitive to this charge. Maybe you've heard this. You know, you Christians that take the Bible seriously. you know i think you're actually sometimes guilty of bibliolatry have you heard this you're guilty of bibliolatry i mean the bible isn't god and you need to be sure that you're honoring god more than the bible you need to be sure that you're not putting the bible above god do you know something the bible is never concerned about this the bible never talks like this the bible doesn't talk about it here in fact here in hebrews 12 to 13, the word of God, the scriptures are actually conflated with the person of God.

And that makes all the sense in the world. It's not bibliolatry. If I say to Carson, my oldest son, Carson, I want you to take out the garbage. And an hour later, I come downstairs and the garbage has not been taken out. And I say, Carson, I told you to take out the garbage. Oh yeah, Dad, but I didn't want to do it.

Well, I didn't want to do it either. That's why I asked you to do it. Well Dad it okay I not disrespecting you I just disrespecting your word What do you think I'll say? A. Oh, good point, son. or there's there's no way to listen to my word do something other than what it says and then separate my word from me you see you can't do that uh what i say is of course the bible is not god himself but what god says cannot be separated from who god is what god says cannot be separated from who God is, and the Bible never makes any attempt to do it.

In fact, here, shockingly, breathtakingly, there's no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Do you know what that means? It means every time you open up your Bible and read it, every time your eyes are looking at the word of God, God's eyes are looking at you. This is a breathtaking passage of scripture.

Every single time you open up and look at the living, active, sharp, exposing word of God, God's eyes are looking right into your heart and you are exposed and laid bare to the very eyes of him, the Bible says, with whom we have to do. what does this mean well it means all sorts of things i'll tell you i'll tell you a moment here a couple of months ago when i was really reminded of this and and then you can extend this out to your own life um the the church that i serve in jacksonville florida is absolutely remarkable church. I love it. I am thankful.

I think it's the best church I've ever been to in my life. I say, hey, look, if I say I think my wife is the prettiest wife in the world, I hope you are not offended that I'm calling your wife ugly any more than I hope other pastors are not offended that they who think their church is the best. I just think this is the best church ever. but it has had a lot of problems In the second half of the last century a remarkably faithful pastor had a remarkable blessing of God and the church became one of the largest churches in the country.

But that was honestly 25 years ago. And for 25 years, the church has just been in decline. It's still a very, very large church, but it's a fraction of what it was. And when I was trying to decide whether or not I was going to go there, I had to decide what kind of leader I was going to be at this place and whether I was going to tell the truth. They'd never been liberal.

They've always loved Jesus. They've always loved the Bible. But it was just practical decline over two and a half decades. And they had $90 million. When I started there, they had $90 million of unfunded liability, $90 million of expenses that they had no idea how they were going to pay. and so I have this hard choice of like am I going to try to just like keep putting lipstick on the pig and we'll just pretend that everything's fine we won't change anything or are we going to have a shot at being relevant and vibrant as a church going into the future and I decided the latter and that meant we had to make dramatic have made and are making dramatic changes we had to lay off about 120 people almost half the staff we had to sell about eight blocks of property we had to we had to do all sorts of things we had to change the schedule and I found out the reason nobody before me would touch this is because when you do it people are going to hate you.

They really hate me. I mean, I'm laughing. Oh, I don't mean to laugh. I'm laughing because you'd rather laugh than cry. But I'm telling you, what has happened in my life over the last four years has been absolute. It's been a horror show.

I mean, it's been absolutely terrible. The things that have been said about me are unbelievable. The things that have happened to my family are unbelievable. There have been real moments like, like a year. In fact, I told pastor Tim, I was like, you can be so thankful that I wasn't here this time last year. Cause this time last year, it was about this time last year was the worst season of my life ever.

And I was like, you were about to have like a four day counseling case in your living room. I don't want to do it anymore. I need to get out of here. I mean, I was totally, and again, I'm laughing, but I was crying. I'm just telling you, I would have been a basket case if I'd been here a year ago. I'm dealing with all this brain stuff, and they were trying to figure out what was going on with that there, and so it was terrible.

And there were moments when I literally, I mean, I really thought I was going to die. I mean, I just didn't know how to make it. And it was just so bad. And the thing that was so bad for me, there's all sorts of hard things that I don't like, but the thing that's terrible for me is I actually, like, I didn't go into ministry because I hate people and I want them to hate me back.

I went into ministry because, I mean, under Jesus Christ, I love you. And I think it's just great if we could love each other and not hate on one another. And to hear all of the horrible things that people were saying about me in these blogs and these Facebook posts and letters that were circulating and petitions trying to get me fired and this list of things that I've done.

And I'm going, man, if I get my hands on the guy who did this, I'm going to beat his face in. They're like, oh, that's you. I'm like, that's me. I mean, it was terrible. It was terrible. And none of it was true.

And it was killing me. I mean, it was just spiritually killing me. And I was overwhelmed by it. and I had this moment where we preaching through the gospel of Matthew but before all of it got really bad it was starting to heat up but before it got bad I preached through the Beatitudes And I was going back to look at the Beatitudes for a separate reason when all this is at fever pitch This would have been last summer, last fall.

And I'm even just trying to figure out how am I going to make it? How am I going to do this, Lord? Like, how am I going to, why me and what's going on? And I read for the umpteenth time, Matthew chapter five, starting in verse 10. Coming to this and I'm just like, I don't even know if I should stay here. I don't know if this is ever going to end.

I don't know if I can survive it if I wanted to stay. And Jesus Christ pinned me down. and looked right in my heart and said, blessed are those who've been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. now I don't read that to try to make it sound like I'm some righteous person who's like a prophet I'm not saying that at all I'm saying I read this and I knew immediately I was guilty uh the the joke uh in in our house and with uh and with some of the folks in the church is that Facebook is that place which confesses all of the sins I never committed and none of the sins I actually have And I read this, Jesus shows up, pins me down, and looks me right in the eye and has the truth about my sin. And the truth about my sin is not that I have a secret desire to get the church down to 300 people. is not that I have a secret desire to hire, to be involved in a pedophile ring or anything like that. And it's one of those things that's out there too.

The truth is I have not trusted the Lord. The truth is Jesus says you're in good shape when people say bad things about you. And I don't believe that. I want people to say good things about me. I want the Facebook posts and the Twitter posts to be like, wow, he has courage and is a good leader and is smart. and is balancing the budget. That's what I want him to say.

But he says, I'm a terrible person and I do horrible things to my kids and I steal money and I lie to the IRS. And it is not enough for me to have Jesus say you're blessed. I need other people to say you're doing a great job. And so I had to be pinned to the ground by Jesus Christ in the word and have his all searching eye look into me and go, you're not trusting me.

You're not believing me. You Heath like worldly applause more than the approval of heaven Oh that a deep cut But I needed it. I needed it. And you do too. We need this word in our life. Because there's sins like being thankful for being persecuted. or failing to be it's a sin to fail to be thankful for being persecuted and it wasn't on my radar i need this word to pin me down and identify my sin and help me change and you do too perhaps in a different way than i do perhaps a different set of sins and struggles and a different set of sufferings but you need this word in your life and every time you neglect it every time you neglect that you will find out the hard way that that is not a good idea.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, we're thankful for your word, the Bible. We're thankful for the scriptures. We thank you that you have given us a word that is living and active and sharp and exposing. Father, I pray that we would take it up. I pray that we would take it up, that we would love it, that we would read it, that we would memorize it, that we would listen to it, that we'd believe it.

Father, make us different than we are. Make us more different than we ever could have imagined we could be through your living, active, sharp, and exposing word of God, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.