"Active and Effective"

Hebrews  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  50:30
0 ratings
· 30 views
Files
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
View more →
Illus: My first visit to a charismatic church.
When we tackle our distinctives as a church, which are those things in which Christians will disagree while still being Christians, we will find there are some very distinct differences.
Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Baptists, and Methodists are going to disagree with where we land on communion and Baptism and such, and we disagree with where they land on this.
Yet we're brothers and sisters in Christ who love one another, are going to spend a lot of time in heaven with one another celebrating the same Savior.
But know this. We're just unwavering Bible folk. That's going to make the world think we're a little weird. It's going to challenge us personally as the Word of God bears its weight on us.
So what do we do when we start talking about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and how they interact in our lives? How do we respond to the tough ones? What do we do with stuff like prophecy?
To talk about the sign gifts of the Holy Spirit, I want to go to Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 12 and 13. Don't freak out if you’re more charismatic.
I can here you now, "Wrong text, bro. No, no, no. You need 1 Corinthians 12 through 14. You need to get in the book of Acts, Pastor. You will not captivate our imagination with Hebrews 4."
Yet I'll tell you if Hebrews 4 stands in opposition to the sign gifts of the Holy Spirit, then the sign gifts of the Holy Spirit have no place in the church.
The Word of God interprets the Word of God. So, we're not afraid of any text ever on any subject, right? I'd better get an amen on that, or I'm preaching a different sermon okay?
Now here we go. We are going to look at the text now and allow the HS to do what He does best. He will work it out in us. Read: Hebrews 4:12-13
Hebrews 4:12–13 ESV
12 For the word of God is living and active, 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. 13 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.
Now it's important to note kind of where this very well-known passage among Christians is situated in the book of Hebrews.
Namely, this passage is found amidst a ton of warning about the people of God and how the people of God relate to and interact with their King.
This is not just kind of a random text about the Bible in the Bible. It's found within the context of warning about how the people of God interact with God. It continues our movement from last week.
It is rooted in Psalm 95. It is rooted back into Exodus. We'll talk more about that here in a moment, but I think what I want to do at the beginning here is define.
So, this is what's happening when we read here, "For the word of God is living and active…" I would say the Word of God in Hebrews, chapter 4, is talking about Jesus.
When we read this text, we can read it as saying, Jesus is living and active. Jesus is sharper than any two-edged sword.
The point is when you read the Word of God as living and active, you're to think about the Son of God revealed by the written Word of God. Are you with me? That's what's being had here.
What we see is the Word of God is a serious matter. It is not to be taken lightly. Now for time's sake, I had to cut some things.
But if we had time and could go read Hebrews 3:12 through 4:11, where you're going to find nothing but the warning of God on his people for how they hear his Word and don't do it.
Later this week, I want you to read all of this, but here's what's said in those verses. He says to them, "Hey, take care. Be careful." He is going to say, "Do not harden your hearts."
He is going to say early in chapter 4 that the message they heard did not benefit them. He is going to say, "Did not their bodies fall in the wilderness, and did they not enter his rest?"
See, the book of Hebrews up until this point is just a blanket warning that the people of God have a tendency to hear the Word of God and not submit to it, to hear the Word of God but reject it.
That's what he is saying. "Hey, be careful. Don't do that." The refrain up until this point is, "Today if you hear his voice, don't harden your heart. Today if you hear his voice…"
Now that's all a quote from Psalm 95 where King David is referencing Exodus where the people of God heard the Word of God and rejected it.
He is saying this is what the people of God do. Now look. Here's what we'll do. What we'll do is we'll kind of look at this kind of like we look at the Pharisees when we hear about the Pharisees.
We're just like, "Had I been there, Jesus, in the first century, I would have been your guy, King Jesus. I would not be like those weak vessels who ran, who turned their back, who denied."
Yet what about your life is leading you to believe that? What revisionist history we must have? What self-aggrandizing tendencies must exist in our hearts?
No, he is saying, "Since the beginning, my people have heard my Word, gotten energized by it, and then fallen away from it." In the middle of this idea of warning, take care. Be careful.
Don't harden your heart. Today, today, today, today, today, today. If you hear his voice, he then ties it to the solution to this problem.
"For the word of God is living and active…" Let's just talk about this text. The Word of God is alive. I love this. This is what the Bible is teaching about.
This book is not just a book of history, although it has history in it. It's not just a book of laws, although there are laws in it.
It's just not a book of stories, although there are stories in it. This book is alive. It's living. It produces. It does stuff. This is not the only text where the Bible is talked about in these ways.
This is Acts, chapter 7. This is Stephen, who is not an apostle. He doesn't work at the church. He is just a layman.
Stephen basically ran the potluck for widows at the church in Jerusalem. This is a lay guy. I don't know what his regular job was but, man, his theological chops are breathtaking.
I want to encourage you. Just because you don't work for a church and haven't been through seminary doesn't mean you can't know theology and the story of God you find yourself in.
As Stephen is preaching this sermon that starts with creation and ends with the resurrection of Jesus, he says this in Acts 7 referencing Moses on Mount Sinai.
"This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received…" What? "…living oracles to give to us."
Do you hear it? The Ten Commandments, the things God gave to Moses to give to the people of God was given as living oracles. They weren't static. They were meant to accomplish something.
Again, 1 Peter 1:22-23. Read: 1 Peter 1:22-23
There it is again. "…living and abiding…" The Word of God is alive. It's accomplishing things. Now I love this because you and I are here today because the Word of God is alive.
The Word of God is living, but he also says it's active or it's effective. Again, if you have a church background, you'll know this text. Isaiah 55:11:
"…so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it."
Listen. This is my verse here. I love this verse. Do you know why? Because here's what this verse is saying. The Spirit of God does the work of God through the Word of God.
Look at me. The Spirit of God does the work of God through the Word of God. Now let me tell you why that's such good news for me: because I have to teach the Bible.
Here's what that means. It isn't on me. I don't have to perform for you. I don't have to motivate you into the kingdom. I don't bear the weight of trying to save your soul.
I preach the Word of God prayerfully, hopefully, and God reaps. That frees me. That means I don't have to have a lot of pressure on me that you like me.
In fact, one of the more deadly things for you and for me is for you to prefer my style and how I do things over and above the Word of God. You will doom me, and you will doom you.
No, no. What CPCC wants to celebrate is the Word, not the one preaching the Word, although we can rejoice, honor, and do all of those things.
I certainly have my own stylistic preferences, and yet the thing I want to treasure above everything else is the fullness of the counsel of God in the Word being fearlessly proclaimed.
Look. I'm going to die. I already came close once. You should not put a lot of hope in me. I will let you down. Here's what I've learned after 20 years of ministry.
The further you put me up, the more you'll hate me when I disappoint you. I'm not carrying that. That will be on you.
That won't be on me because I'm telling you now, I'm weak and frail, and I know I'm good at talking. I can motivate you, but I can't transform you.
Now remember all of this is in the context of warning God's people. Do not harden your heart. Today if you hear his voice, move toward him, not from him.
Don't let the Word you hear today be meaningless to you. Apply it. Eat it. Devour it. Walk in it. Live courageously in gladness, in obedience to the Word of God.
So, again I ask, what do we do with tough things like speaking on the gift of prophecy? Because it's that living, active Word that pierces and lays bare, that bids me to eagerly desire to prophesy.
It's that Word of God that commands that. I'm not pulling that out of nowhere. The Bible says eagerly desire to prophesy so that the church might be built up, encouraged, and consoled.
It's my Bible that tells me the gift of tongues builds me up and strengthens my inner man.
It's the sacred text that tells me God will give dreams to his children and impressions to their hearts, and words of knowledge build us up into Jesus.
First Corinthians 12 through 14 clearly line out what the sign gifts are and what they're for. I don't have time to kind of walk through all of this, but here's what I would lay before you.
The Word shouldn't be making you angry. It should be making you free. If the Word of God is making you crusty, then I think you're missing something out of the Word of God.
I'm longing for CPCC to be a church that sees the convergence of Spirit and truth, Word and wonder. I'm hungry for it and asking God to do it.
So, let's look at one more text. First Thessalonians 5:19-22
1 Thessalonians 5:19–22 ESV
19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil.
So, there are two things here you're not to do and one thing you are to do. Let's do this quickly. The first is, "Do not quench…"
Now the word quench here means to extinguish, to put out. You can quench the Spirit or extinguish the work of the Spirit by resisting the Spirit, by neglecting the Spirit, or by ignoring the Spirit.
You can do that! You can really stop some beautiful gifts in your own heart and for the church by resisting, quenching, or extinguishing the work of the Spirit.
Now before God and before you, I have in my leadership and in some fear been guilty of neglecting, ignoring, and not opening up this conversation like I should have.
I've owned that before the Lord, and I'm owning that before you today because one of the graces on my life is, God continues to send to me people who make me uncomfortable. Like seriously!
I've had these moments where it was just like nothing I want to be a part of and yet God profoundly used it.
Illus: Man approached me at my front door blew in my face and said that I was supposed to receive that gift from God.
Now look. Look at me. That's crazy. I don't think we should start a ministry here called "Holy Ghost blowage." I just don't. That doesn't make any sense to me, but here's what I'll tell you.
From that day forward, the effectiveness of my ministry, the power of my preaching, and the response to my preaching increased in a way that's hard to communicate.
I don't know what that was. I don't have a category for that. I'm certainly not asking you to run around town blowing on people's faces.
I am saying that according to this text I can test that up and against the Word of God. I can test that upon the fruit of what the Spirit does.
What does the Spirit do? It makes much of Jesus. Not much of gifts, not much of men, but much of Jesus.
I can look at my life and say God did something that day through that weirdo guy who I wouldn't even know what to talk about if I ever saw him again.
I’m telling you that's the kind of thing, God has just done over and over and over again with me where he is just not going to let me drift toward the camp I think I'm more naturally bent toward.
Do you know how much easier it is to just kind of preach the Book and not do the Book? Do you know how much easier it is to know the Word and not live the Word?
You do know, because not just in this area but also in a ton of areas, we know to know the Word is easier than to do the Word.
We know this in all sorts of areas in our lives, and yet the Spirit of God would beckon us in the book of Hebrews, "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…" Don't quench the Spirit.
Then he says, "Do not despise prophecies…" Now prophecies are easy to despise. I know when we hear the word prophecy, we might be all over the place in how we define it.
For our conversation today, prophecy is a supernatural word given to a person for someone else to build them up and encourage them in the Lord.
It's them knowing something they shouldn't know for the purposes of encouraging our hearts. That's what prophecy is according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 14.
Words of knowledge and prophecy are given to encourage and build up the body.
It's a supernatural understanding of something the person should not know, they then speak to encourage a saint. He says don't despise those things!
Now let me tell you why prophecies are easy to despise. In churches like CPCC we're going to say we believe the sign gifts of the Holy Spirit are for people today. We will.
But we rarely have the courage or the conviction to actually teach and train in such a way that people can mature in their gifts. Then people use their gift in immature ways, leading to that gift being despised.
Now let me highlight this because I think it's significant. I don't know if you've picked up on this, but every other gift in the Bible gets the grace of coaching and patience while the gift matures.
This is the case, except in the sign gifts. When it comes to the sign gifts, we're like, "That's messy. It's complicated. It's goofy. Just ignore it."
But here he is saying, "Don't despise prophecy." Then we have what we are to do. Look how he ends this text.
I'll put it back up. "Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil."
I love this idea. He says test or, rather, discern. He doesn't say be careful. He doesn't say be skeptical of. He doesn't say put on the seat belt and helmet. He doesn't say just be really guarded.
Here's the great news about that. We get to test and discern. Do you know how we test and discern?
If what is going on makes much of Jesus Christ and doesn't stand in opposition to his Word, it's the Holy Spirit.
What I'm talking about is convergence. I'm talking about Word and wonder, Spirit and truth. That's what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the power of God and the presence of his people as defined in his Word for the glory of Jesus Christ.
Test. Discern. Don't be skeptical. Don't be careful. Test. Discern. Pursue. Don't neglect. Don't ignore. Grow. Be curious, but test. Test!
"Hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil." How do we know what's good and what's evil? Well, the Word does it, doesn't it? The Word helps us with that.
That's why we don't have to be afraid: because he has given us the Book. I love it! I'm going to just end with this. Maybe this would be a more heart felt thought for you.
What would it be like to not be afraid but to pursue, to be curious, to open up our hearts? If you find yourself curious about these things, I couldn't recommend more highly Sam Storms' book Practicing the Power.
It's just a beautiful book. It will give some theological undertones, and it will also talk practically how we work these things out in the church.
Here's your pastor's heart: that the Central Park Christian Church would be a place of true convergence, Spirit and truth, Word and wonder. Can we do it? Let's pray.
Father, thank you. Thank you for how in a thousand ways you've shown yourself to be alive and that you penetrate and lay bare, that your Word leads us into wonders.
I pray you would quiet any fears we might have about charismania, that you would replace those pictures and fears with the beauty spelled out in your Word.
I ask, God, you protect us as you lead us and guide us. It's for your beautiful name I pray, amen.
Related Media
See more
Related Sermons
See more