Heb 4:11–13 — The Word of God Is Powerful

The letter to the Hebrews is truly amazing. It is an incredible letter in the way that it combines two things.

The first thing is such a deep and profound understanding of the person and work of Christ. Such a profound penetrating insight into Christology, into covenant theology, how Christ is the mediator of the new covenant. Insight into typology, that is how all of the types and shadows of the old covenant point to Christ and his finished work. This letter is one of the most theologically profound writings in the entire scripture. Right up there with Paul’s letter to the Romans, or the gospel of John, and the way that it speaks about Christ, his person and work, and going in great depth theologically, and giving us deep insight into what Christ has done for us. That is the first thing, but then the second thing is that it combines all that deep theology with an equally deep and penetrating analysis of our inner life.

And we see that here in our text today, how the Word of God is living and active. It is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. This is the word of God. The word of God is not only the word that teaches us about who Christ is and gives us that profound theology, but it is also the word of God that comes to our heart, exposes our sinfulness, and it shows us our need of this glorious Christ.

These two things are kept perfectly together. The author hears repeatedly, he will delve into the theology and then he will pause and then he will apply it to our hearts. Remember those five warning sections that we talked about? We are in the second one, the second warning passage of Hebrews.

Today, if you hear his voice, let me just pause for a moment, the author of Hebrews is saying, let me just take a break from the theology and say, do you hear this? Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts like the wilderness generation did, but hear this gospel.

Let it sink into your heart. Let it make a difference in your lives. The author of Hebrews is just as concerned with a deep analysis of our hearts and of our sin and of our thought life and of the ways in which our hearts pull away from God as he is in delving into the intricacies of Christology and covenant theology.

Strive to Enter God’s Rest

Now, just to remind ourselves of the context here, the context is that we need to make every effort to enjoy God’s rest by faith, as we talked about last week, the call to enter God’s rest by faith. And that word enter is being used in a sense that does not refer to a one-time thing like entering at the moment of your conversion, but continually entering, continually enjoying. Maybe that’d be a better way of paraphrasing it. When he says, therefore it is we who have believed who enter that rest, that is in verse three, we could translate that or paraphrase it as, it is we who believe who are enjoying that rest.

And this is a continual call that comes to the people of God. It comes to us again and again. It comes to us every Lord’s Day when we gather into the presence of God to hear the word of God, to hear the gospel and to believe in it and to not become dull in our spiritual senses and to begin to draw away from the Lord. So the author of Hebrews is calling God’s people, do not be like the wilderness generation, which heard the gospel, but turned away from it and rejected it, but rather enter God’s rest by faith.

Listen to the gospel and believe in it. Continue to believe. Faith is like a muscle that we must continually exercise. And if we let it atrophy, then we begin to die spiritually. But the Lord is calling us and exhorting us to hear the voice of God speaking to us in the gospel. The urgent call of the gospel to lay aside your sin and to fix your eyes on Jesus, who was crucified but is now exalted as Jesus, the Son of God, as our forerunner. This is the central exhortation of the entire letter. The entire letter just goes over this exhortation again and again and looks at it from different angles.

Hear his voice, enter his rest. It is the call to trust in Christ from the heart, to deeply rest in him as the captain of our salvation who is leading many sons to glory. Or another analogy that he uses in addition to the analogy of the captain, the forerunner.

He also uses the analogy later on in chapter six, that he is the anchor. The anchor of our souls. He has passed into heaven and he is there in heaven like the anchor and he is reeling us in. He is drawing us into that heavenly sanctuary. But he is already there. He is already lodged there in heaven and guaranteed for us a place with him. He is bringing many sons to glory.

This is the same thing that the catechism talks about. In question 21, what is true faith? The catechism says that true faith is not only that we believe everything that God has revealed in his word, but it is also a wholehearted trust. And that phrase wholehearted is so important. It is a wholehearted trust. It is a heartfelt trust. It is a, It is a trust in Christ that comes from a place of complete reliance upon him.

It is the opposite of, as the author of Hebrews described, it is the opposite of what? Of hardening your heart in unbelief, of shrinking back, of not really believing in God’s promise. Remember that was the problem with the wilderness generation. That although they had seen God’s mighty acts of delivering them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, performing astounding miracles of judgment upon their enemies and of deliverance for them. And then even after that, when they were in the wilderness, he provided for them water from the rock, manna from heaven. And yet, in spite of all of that, They started to harden their hearts in unbelief, shrinking back, not really believing that God would bring them into the promised land, not really wanting to go into the promised land. They said, let us appoint someone else in place of Moses so that he can take us back to Egypt where things were better. They were shrinking back from going into the promised land because their hearts were cleaving to this world. And not trusting in God. This glorious God, who had demonstrated his power, had made promises to them.

When he made those promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then he showed them his great power by delivering them out of Egypt, and they hardened their heart, they shrunk back from trusting in the Lord. And so the author of Hebrews is calling upon us as God’s people to not be like the wilderness generation, but rather to strive to enter that rest.

Hebrews 4:11, let us therefore strive, let us make every effort to enter that rest, to enjoy that gospel rest that we have in Christ, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience that we saw with the wilderness generation. And then he turns to these two verses, verses 12 and 13, that are so striking and startling. Let us therefore strive, let us make every effort to strive to enter that rest, for, he says, the word of God is living and active and sharp as a two-edged sword.

What is going on here in this part of the text? Why does he suddenly talk about this idea of the word being like a sword that is so sharp that it can penetrate into our heart and our thoughts and show us our sin and expose us before God? Why is he doing this? What is he getting at here? The author of Hebrews is using the law in its first use, the first use of the law for not only the unbeliever, to convict the unbeliever of sin and drive the unbeliever to Christ, but even for the believer, for those of us who have already come to know the Lord, we are already baptized, we are already members of the people of God, and yet he is using the first use of the law to show us our sin.

Remember the three uses of the law. The first use of the law is the law as a mirror to show us our sinfulness, The second use of the law is the law is a curb in society to restrain sin. And the third use of the law is the law as a guide and a rule for godly living. The third use of the law is the use of the law that helps us in the Christian life to give us the pathway in which the Lord wants us to walk. In the third use, we do not do those things to be right with God or to be justified or to salve our conscience, but rather we do those things, we keep God’s commandments out of gratitude and love for Him. But the first use of the law is perhaps the most important, because without the first use of the law, we will not be able to appreciate the fullness of the gospel. The first use of the law is the use of the law to show us how great our sin and misery are.

Question number two of the Heidelberg Catechism, to show us how great our sin is in the eyes of God. And of how miserable we are of being under God’s judgment because of our sin. And the reason for that, the reason why we need to see and really feel how great our sin is, is so that we then may have more desire to seek Christ and his righteousness. So we may more eagerly seek the righteousness that is found only in Christ. That is Heidelberg Catechism question 115.

The first use of the law not only applies to the unbeliever, but also to believers. Remind us again of who Christ is and what he has done for us. Without this first use of the law, we will not be able to appreciate the good news that is offered to us in Christ. Without the first use of the law, then Christ will become less significant to us in our eyes.

And that is why the author of Hebrews suddenly shifts. He has been talking about this glorious Christology of the person and work of Christ, but then he suddenly shifts to this first use of the law to spur us on to a greater appreciation for who Christ is and what he has done for us.

There are so many ways that we try to blunt the law. The law is a sharp sword. It is like a scalpel that goes in deep and it exposes all the nooks and crannies of our heart. It exposes our sinful thoughts and sinful desires. But we try to blunt that. We try to make it not quite so painful. There are so many different ways that we do that. One way we try to do it is we try to minimize our sin.

We acknowledge, yeah, I know I am a sinner, I know I have sinned, but we try to minimize it and make it seem not quite as bad as it really is in the eyes of God. One way we can do that is by failing to recognize that within every sin, there is a seed of rebellion against God. Every sin contains within it a little bit of that in us. A little bit of rebellion against God. Of not really wanting to honor God, of feeling that God is not fair or God is not right in making this demand upon us, or a feeling that we just want to do what we want to do. I am not accusing everyone here in the congregation of being a rebel against God. We are all believers. We love the Lord. We want to serve Him. But we do need to recognize, we do need to recognize that every sin contains within it that little seed, that little feeling of, No, I do not want to do what God is asking me to do.

Another way we minimize our sin is not only by minimizing it and making it seem not as great as it really is, but also we make excuses for our sin, do we not? We make excuses. We say, well, the reason why I do this is because of something that happened to me before, of my past trauma, or because of this bad relationship, or things that have happened to me that I had no power over. And so I am a victim. And so it is excusable. It is understandable why I would do this. We make excuses for our sin. Another way that we try to blunt the sharp edge of God’s law in its first use is that we try to compensate in our own minds.

We say, yeah, I know that I have this thing here that I am struggling with or that I do, but look at all the good works I also do. I am really faithful in going to church. I do all kinds of things in ministry. I give a lot of money to the church. And we try to compensate and try to say, well, yeah, there is this, but there is also, look at over here, there is some good stuff. I am not a terrible person. I also do all these good things for the Lord.

Naked Before the Word

Another thing that we sometimes do to try to blunt the sharp edge of God’s law as it pierces into our hearts is that we try to deflect by pointing out other people’s sins. And we say, Well, yeah, I know that I have this in here, but look at that other person over there. They are just way worse than me. We think that our sins are not as bad as others. And so we comfort ourselves and think that everything is OK. And it is understandable that we would want to do this. We do not want to stand naked and exposed. It is a scary thought. Our text is so scary there.

It says, the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed. To the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

The Law Exposes the Heart

So we naturally, just like Adam and Eve in the garden, we naturally start to sew on those fig leaves and try to hide from God. We do not want to stand naked and exposed before the piercing sword of the law of God. But here is the thing, if we do that, if we blunt that first use of the law through all of these ways, minimizing our sin, making excuses for it, trying to compensate for our sin with good works, or deflecting by turning the tables and pointing out the sins of others. If we do that, then we blunt the gospel too.

We rob ourselves of the great blessing of knowing that though we are sinners and naked and exposed before the Lord, yet we have a great and glorious Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us from our sin, who has taken upon himself that sword of judgment. A sword that pierced through his very heart as he hung upon the cross and cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Another analogy we could use is that So how, like, during Thanksgiving, or if you are preparing to go out to a really nice restaurant where there is going to be, like, amazing steaks or something, how that what you do before that is you do not eat very much. Thanksgiving Day, maybe have a very slight breakfast, but you are not going to have a big lunch because you want to save up your appetite for the big feast, for that glorious feast that is coming before you. It is the same here with the law.

As long as we do all those things of minimizing and excusing and blunting the sharp edge of the gospel, instead of letting ourselves get hungry before the feast, what are we doing? We are filling ourselves up on empty calories. Empty calories that are meaningless. We are just snacking upon these chips and Doritos that have no spiritual nourishment for you because you are over here trying to minimize your sin and trying to compensate for your sin and trying to make yourself feel better instead of allowing yourselves to get truly hungry before the feast.

The Living and Active Word

We need the first use of the law because we need it to understand the great gospel that we have in Christ. The Word of God is alive and active. It is powerful. It is God’s own voice speaking to you, first condemning you, but then also comforting you with the perfect work of the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s twofold word of law and gospel. The law searching, exposing, shining the light on the dark corners of your heart, but not stopping there and leaving us simply condemned and naked, but rather also clothing us with the righteousness of Christ. As God speaks his second word of the gospel of grace. The author of Hebrews does just that.

We are going to talk about this next week, but the very next paragraph. The very next paragraph after the sharp piercing law of God, he then says in verse 14, since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the son of God, let us hold fast our confession for we do not have a high priest who was unable to sympathize with us in our weaknesses, but one who in every respect was tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence.” Is that not amazing? It is just, it is so radical to see how the text shifts from the naked and exposed to So then let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, because the throne is a throne in which our crucified and risen Savior sits. At the right hand of God for us.

He is there for us, not as our judge, but as our mediator, as our savior, as one who knows what it is like to be tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin. The author of Hebrews gives us that first use in all of its rigor, in all of its exposure of our sin, but then he immediately gives us the comfort and grace of the gospel.

From Law to Gospel

But you cannot get to the comfort of the gospel without first the discomfort of the law. Martin Luther has a wonderful Quote on this issue of the first use of the law, this is from his commentary on Galatians, because in Galatians, Paul talks about this distinction between the law and the gospel, especially in chapter three. He says that the law was given to shut us up unto sin and to lead us to Christ.

And in that passage, Luther in his commentary on Galatians says this, he says, as long as a person thinks he is righteous, So long there abides in him incomprehensible pride, presumption, false security, hatred of God, contempt for his grace and mercy, and ignorance of the promises and of Christ. As long as you think that you are righteous, then you do not understand the gospel. In fact, the gospel means nothing to you. The preaching of the free forgiveness of sins through Christ, continuing with Luther, the preaching of the free forgiveness of sins through Christ cannot enter into the heart of such a person.

Neither can he taste or savor it, for that hard wall of self-righteousness resists it. This then is a great and terrible monster, this self-righteousness that we have, this pride. This is a great and terrible monster. And for the overthrowing of it, God has need of a mighty hammer.

And that is the law, which fulfills its proper office when it accuses and reveals sin. We have two analogies here. Luther uses the analogy of the law as a hammer. Our text uses the analogy of the law as a two-edged sword that penetrates. But either way, it is the same idea, that God uses the law to overthrow that pride, that feeling that we are righteous, that feeling that we are okay, that pride, that presumption, that false security. God uses the law to overthrow it. And thus, this is the purpose of the law. It is given for this very function and purpose to accuse us of our sin, to reveal our sin, so that then we can understand and appreciate Christ as our savior from sin.

What the law could not do, God has done by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. The law cannot save you. It cannot give you faith. All it can do is show you your sin.

But having done that, with the Spirit working, It then prepares us to receive the gospel and to truly hear it, to hear the gospel as God’s own voice speaking to us to enter into his rest, to rest in Christ. I believe that this is exactly what these Jewish Christians needed to hear. Remember the context, this letter to the Hebrews, to the Jewish Christians, who were contemplating the possibility of turning their backs on Christ and returning to their former Jewish religion without Christ, to a non-Messianic Judaism that rejects Christ. To simply the law, the Torah, attending the temple, worship, offering the sacrifices. The temple was probably still standing at this time.

Part of the reason why they were tempted to that was because it was hard to be a Christian. Can you imagine being a Christian, a Jewish Christian, living in the land of Israel, probably in Jerusalem, and feeling all this pressure from all of the non-Christian Jews? Who are saying to their friends and probably even some cases family members, what are you doing being a Christian? You need to join with us and defend your nation and your country. At this time they were probably gearing up for the rebellion that ended up with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The Jewish war that happened from AD 66 to AD 70. So these Jewish Christians were being persecuted, socially marginalized, all this pressure was being put upon them to forsake Christ and return to Judaism.

And the author of Hebrews is saying this, the reason why you are even tempted to that, the reason why you are even thinking about that and contemplating the idea of turning away from Christ is because you do not have a sufficient conviction of sin. If you had a sufficient conviction of sin, then you would appreciate Christ. And you would not even consider leaving him. Because that without Christ, you have no hope of salvation.

So the author of Hebrews is warning them. You guys are becoming dull of hearing, as he says later on in chapter five, verse 11. You are becoming dull of hearing. You are forgetting the basics of the elementary doctrines of God’s holiness and righteousness and of the need for repentance.

If you did understand, then you would not even dare consider leaving Christ, because that you have fled for refuge to Christ. He uses that language later in chapter six, in verse 18. That we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to lay hold, to hold fast to the hopes that before us, to hold fast to Christ. We who have fled for refuge. What does that mean? It means you are fleeing from danger. You are fleeing from, what are you fleeing from? You are fleeing from the wrath of God, the wrath to come.

I think that is part of the problem with Christianity in general today, at least in countries like the U.S., that no one talks about judgment anymore. No one really believes that there is a hell anymore. No one’s afraid of the wrath of God because of our sin.

And that is what the author of Hebrews is warning these Christians about. They have an insufficient conviction of sin. He even says that in chapter six, verse one, that they need to go back and learn the basic principles again. The basic principles about repentance, about faith, about judgment. Because you have forgotten the foundation of our faith, which is that Christ is only a meaningful savior if we understand the first use of the law, if we understand our sinfulness and what that really means in the sight of God. These Jewish Christians need to hear again the conviction of sin.

They need to hear the word of God, the voice of God speaking to them, both in that word of judgment, exposing their sin, but also in that word of grace, offering to them the fullness of what Christ has done. A lot of people today are very much interested in hearing God’s voice. They want to hear God’s voice.

And a lot of people, especially those in the more charismatic and Pentecostal tradition, try to experience that in a mystical way. Simply in their own inner recesses of their heart, hearing that still, small voice, hearing God speak to them, and saying to them that they should do this or that, or maybe that they should marry this person, or that they should take this job, or God told me just on a whim to go and walk down this one street, and lo and behold, there was somebody there that needed the gospel. So it feels very mystical and experiential. And they feel like those of us in the Reformed tradition who believe in hearing the Word of God through the means of grace, through the preaching of the Word of God, and through the administration of the sacraments, they think that is so rational and it is not sufficient. They want an experience of God. They want to feel like they are close to God. They want to hear God’s voice speaking to them directly, to them by name.

The author of Hebrews also talks about this. The author of Hebrews says, we must hear his voice. But notice how the author of Hebrews defines it. The author of Hebrews defines that experience of hearing God’s voice in these two words, the word of the law and the word of the gospel.

That is the true way to hear God’s voice in your life. Not through mysticism, not through amazing miraculous providences where something remarkable happened because you heard God’s voice telling you to do something, but rather it comes through this basic process of hearing the word of God, exposing us for our sin and letting it really sink in and not minimizing it, not trying to blunt it, not trying to escape it, but really hearing it. Hearing God’s law as we do when we come into the presence of God every Sunday morning. We hear the law of God, and then we confess our sin. We acknowledge our guilt before the Lord, and then we hear again the comfort of the gospel. But you cannot get the comfort of the gospel, and the comfort of the gospel will not be meaningful to you without first hearing God’s word in the law.

What a wonderful passage we have before us. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest. Let us make every effort to enter that rest. For the word of God is living and active. It is sharper than any two-edged sword. It pierces all of the ins and outs of our heart and our thoughts. And no creature is hidden from his eyes, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

Therefore, since that is true, let us draw near to our Savior in heaven, the mediator, the high priest of our salvation.