I. As we’ve seen already, it seems that the epistle of Hebrews is written to Jews who have come to faith in Christ but who are now being strongly pressured — and tempted — to return to Judaism.
II. Questions about the meaning of this passage
A. Is the author suddenly changing the subject?
1. It might seem so at first. But it starts with “for” so we know he hasn’t.
2. But he’s been talking about not following the example of the Israelites in the wilderness and all of a sudden he’s talking about the word of God. Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on.
3. The use of OT Scriptures in Hebrews so far is remarkable.
a. In the first two chapters alone he quoted about 15 OT verses.
b. In chapters 3 & 4 he has been reflected in depth on the story of the Israelites in the wilderness, and repeatedly quoting from Psalm 95, including the whole second half of that psalm, and quoting Ps.95:7 three times! And the whole thrust of it is to try to show his readers from the Scriptures that they are in danger of making the same error as the Israelites.
c. The whole letter thus far has been saturated in OT Scripture. He’s been using the word of God (in this case, the OT) to try to do the very thing he talks about in 4:12: to penetrate to the deepest part of their being to expose the thoughts and attitudes of their hearts.
4. So it’s really not that surprising that he would pause and express this truth: “The word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” – Heb.4:12–13
a. Here he clearly refers to the Scripture as the word of God and sword of the Lord.
B. What is meant by the division of soul and spirit?
1. Some modern Christian teachers have challenged the traditional understanding of man being made up of two parts, body and soul (dichotomy), claiming that instead man is composed of three parts: body, soul and spirit (trichotomy). Heb.4:12 is one of the passages they point to.
2. Historically in Christian theology, soul and spirit have been considered the same thing. They are used interchangeably in the NT (e.g. Luke 1:46-47, a case of Hebrew parallelism). And man is described as having two parts in Gen.2:7; Matt.10:28; and 2Cor.7:1.
3. Why then does Heb.4:12 talk about the division of soul and spirit? These words from James Boyce help clarify: “Some have supposed that man has more than the twofold elements of body and soul. Pythagoras, and after him, Plato, and subsequently the mass of Greek and Roman philosophers, maintained that man consists of three constituent elements, the rational spirit (νος or πνεμα, mens), the animal soul (ψυχή, anima), and the body (σομα, corpus). Hence this usage of words became stamped upon the Greek popular speech. And consequently the apostle uses all three when intending to express exhaustively in popular language the totality of man and his belongings. “May your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame.” 1Thess. 5:23; Heb. 4:12; 1Cor. 15:44. Hence some theologians conclude that it is a doctrine given by divine inspiration that human nature is constituted of three distinct elements. The use made of these terms by the apostles proves nothing more than that they used words in their current popular sense to express divine ideas. The word πνεμα designates the one soul emphasizing its quality as rational. The word ψυχή designates the same soul emphasizing its quality as the vital and animating principle of the body. The two are used together to express popularly the entire man. That the πνεμα (spirit) and ψυχή (soul) are distinct entities cannot be the doctrine of the New Testament, because they are habitually used interchangeably and often indifferently. Thus ψυχή, as well as πνεμα, is used to designate the soul as the seat of the higher intellectual faculties. Matt. 16:26; 1Pet. 1:22; Matt. 10:28. Thus also πνεμα, as well as ψυχή, is used to designate the soul as the animating principle of the body. James 2:26. Deceased persons are indifferently called ψυχάι, Acts 2:27, 31; Rev. 6:9; 20:4; and πνεματα, Luke 24:37, 39; Heb. 12:23.” [Hodge’s Outlines, pp. 299, 300.] Other passages, not mentioned above, upon which light is supposed to be thrown by this distinction, are 1Cor. 2:14, 15; James 3:15; and Jude 19. Others, which show a promiscuous use of these words, and thus that the distinction is incorrect, are Matt. 27:50; Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46; John 19:30; Acts 7:59.” – Boyce, J. P. Abstract of Systematic Theology (p. 198)
III. Important truths in this passage
A. The Bible is the word of God.
1. Earlier I mentioned the parallel passage in 1Cor.10:11, which refers to the same incident of Israel in the wilderness: "Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come."
a. They were WRITTEN. That’s what Scripture is. It is God’s word written.
b. God ordained those things to happen and inspired their errorless recording in written form, and preserved those documents down through the ages for us.
2. All of these wonderful passages about Scripture in the Bible — they never mention the need for an infallible interpreter in order to understand what it says. The author applies the Scriptures to his readers lives – much like a preacher does – and then recommends the Scriptures as the instrument of God to expose what’s going on inside of us.
B. The Bible is not a dead book, "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 intentions of the heart. " – Heb.4:12
1. In some ways the Bible LOOKS dead & irrelevant. It’s an old book about a bunch of things that happened far away and long ago. But we’ve seen in Hebrews that even OT stories are alive and active 1000's of years after they happened.
2. But it’s God’s book. It’s how He reveals Himself. It’s God speaking to us. It is the tool of His Spirit in our lives.
3. Last week I talked about finding yourself in the Bible. Let me give you an example.
a. The author of Hebrews has been trying to get his readers to see themselves in the story of the Israelites in the wilderness. He has been showing them that they too are being tempted to abandon the One who delivered them from bondage.
b. Have you found yourself in the story of Job? Joseph? Jeremiah? Joash?
4. The Bible is not just God’s word spoken, it is God’s word speaking to us today — and to our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the future.
5. Therefore God’s people are people of the Book.
6. Each of us is going to be faced with the question of whether or not these things are true. Is the Bible the active and alive word of God Himself to mankind? There will be enormous pressure, and enormous temptation to reject this. And it’s so easy to do so. And that leads to our next point.
C. There is Someone to whom all of us must give account.
1. “Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
2. Every one of us will be summoned to answer:
a. How eagerly did you welcome the word of God?
b. How intently did you listen to the word of God?
c. How diligently did you seek out opportunities to hear the word of God?
d. How openly did you allow the word of God to penetrate your heart?
e. How warmly did you cherish the word of God?
f. How responsive were you to the word of God?
3. You will know the word of God well after you’re dead. It won’t seem boring and irrelevant then. It will be the basis on which you are judged.
4. Don’t get me wrong! I’m not trying to get you to love and listen to the Bible because it’s a good thing to do and because God commands it. I’m trying to get you to love and listen to the word of God because it is the way you obtain the most valuable treasure ever.
5. The author of Hebrews isn’t all about getting the readers to learn their Bibles in order to be good boys and girls. He is all about trying to get them to take hold of Christ and never let go. And the Bible is the tool he uses and urges them to use in order to achieve this.
6. You can have all the Bible knowledge in the world and still be cast into the fires of hell — if your interest in the Bible wasn’t to know God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, whom it reveals.
7. The goal is knowing Jesus, not knowing the Bible. But the most important way to know Jesus is through the Bible.
D. God sees through us. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” (v.13)
1. You can't fool God. Nothing can be hidden from Him.
2. It won't work to pretend you're being faithful when in your heart you're falling away.
3. To others, drifting or falling away might seem like sincere intellectual processes at times, but God knows better. “Nothing is hidden from His sight.”
4. You might even be able to hide things from yourself, but you can’t hide them from God.
E. God has given us His word to perform the surgery we so desperately need, to cut into the deepest parts of us to expose the tumors which threaten our lives.
1. There are hidden cancers in our hearts which need to be removed or we will die.
2. The fact is, our enemy is not only outside us. we have three great enemies: the world, the flesh and the devil. The flesh is inside us. That means there’s something inside us that can kill us, unless we work to kill it.
3. What a blessing that God has given us a tool (His word) by which these deadly tumors might be removed!
4. But this means being willing — and even wanting — to have the necessary work done. “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” – Psalm 139:23–24
a. Many people refuse to go to the dentist or the doctor because they don’t want to find out that something’s wrong and have to go through some uncomfortable procedure. But if there is a problem, it won’t go away on it’s own. It will only get worse and worse.
5. People do too much grooming and not enough surgery.
a. It’s easy to work hard to make the outside look good, and yet do little to address the issues that are inside.
b. This is what Jesus said to the Pharisees, didn’t He? (Matt.23:25-28 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. 27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. 28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”)
6. But the word of God is not a fancy grooming tool! It’s not an eyebrow plucker or a wrinkle-reducing cream or a nose-hair trimmer. It is a sword, it is a scalpel.
7. That means it’s going to hurt. It’s going to make us ashamed. It’s going to require us to do things we’re not comfortable doing.
8. Remember Eustace in CS Lewis’ The Dawn Treader? Remember when he was a dragon and Aslan peeled his dragon skin off. It hurt more than anything he’d ever experienced.
9. If our top priority is to avoid pain, we’re going to miss out.
10. You can certainly avoid the sharp, piercing surgery of the word of God, and you can even get away with it, in the sense that most people will still think of you as intellectually honest.
a. But I can guarantee you that on the last day, when you are called before God to give an account, all of your intellectual dishonesty will be uncovered and laid bare.
b. You will see, and all the world will see, that God was speaking to you in a thousand ways and you refused to listen. He was shining His light and you preferred the darkness. (John 3:19)
11. The question is: Do we WANT this kind of surgery to be done in our lives?
a. Do we realize how desperately we need it?
b. Do we realize that to whatever extent we refuse it, to that extent we miss out on Jesus?
c. The blessing of being deeply convicted of our sin is that in it we see Jesus! We see His forgiveness, we see His grace, we see His beauty.
IV. Conclusion
A. You’ve heard the expression: “Either the Bible will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from the Bible." That statement is very true. But it’s not enough. There is more:
1. Sin not only keeps us from the Bible, it keeps us from Jesus.
2. And the Bible doesn’t just keep us from sin, it leads us to Jesus!
B. Many people on earth have no access to the word of God. They still have the light of God shining in His creation, but they will never hear the word of Jesus in the Scriptures.
1. But we are a very different story. If we are here today, it means that the word of God is readily accessible to us. What’s it going to be like for us in the judgment day if we refuse to listen? Let me end with two verses that give us a glimpse:
a. Acts 7:51 “You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit!”
b. Hebrews 10:28–29 “Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?”