Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

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Introduction
I will always remember hearing the testimony of how someone I know became a believer.
They did not grow up in a Christian home and certainly did not grow up reading the Bible.
If I remember the story right, a friend convinced him to read the Bible even though he was a total skeptic about anything religious.
He had read about other religions and had studied some religious thinkers and had basically rejected all things religious.
But he had never read the Bible so he decided to just give it a try—mostly so he could say that he had tried it and could check it off his list.
His friend told him to read the Gospel of John.
But something happened in a moment in time, something swift and sudden and more than a little scary.
He said that as he was reading he started to get the sense that the book was reading him.
He read about Jesus and the disciples and a miracle where Jesus supposedly turned water into wine.
He read something about needing to be born again.
He read something he had heard somewhere before about God so loving the world that he sent his Son into the world so that people could be saved and have eternal life and not perish.
But then a few verses later he read about those who do not believe, but reject Jesus.
It says that they are condemned and will be judged.
Then he came to these three verses:
And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.—
He said that he closed the book and quickly put it down.
Here was something he had not told anyone.
He knew that the life he was living was not good.
As long as he felt like he was the judge of religions, things were fine because he was the one holding the searchlight.
But this book turned the searchlight on him and he did not want that because he wanted what he was doing to stay hidden—to not be part of the discussion.
He didn’t read anymore that day, but as time went on he kept coming back to this strange book that had read him while he was reading it.
Eventually, God broke through, and he came to see Jesus as not just true, but irresistibly beautiful and glorious.
And he came to Jesus—he came into the light.
And his darkness (his dirty laundry) was brought into the light, not simply to be exposed, but to be washed whiter than snow.
The testimony you just heard is in story form.
Here is how I would state the
Main Point: The Bible is a book like no other.
We not only read it; it reads us.
How does this verse and its structure express that point?
The verse is clearly about the word of God, and it highlights two basic things about the word.
The simplest way to divide the verse is to see the division that is there between (1) what the word is and (2) what the word does.
Do you see it as we read the verse again?
What the Word Is
What the Word Does
For the word of God is living and active,
piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow
Sharper than any two-edged sword
and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
That insight gives us our outline for the sermon:
1.
What the Word Is
a. Living
b.
Active
c. Sharper Than the Sharpest Sword
2. What the Word Does
a. Pierces
b.
Discerns
What the Word Is
The word is (1) living, (2) active, and (3) sharper than the sharpest sword.
Living
Because the word in question is the word of God, it bears qualities that the Bible tells us God has.
Hebrews uses this same word to describe God himself three times (3:12, 9:14, 10:31).
Two of the three uses are in contexts of judgment: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31).
Things that are alive are not inert or static.
One of the ways that you know something is alive is activity.
It is only when a person is not moving and lying motionless on the ground that you have to ask if they are dead.
If they are moving around and active, you don’t ask whether they are dead or not.
That leads to the next word Hebrews uses to describe what the word of God is.
It is active.
Active
The word of God is active in the sense that it is doing something—it is working.
The word active here means “effective” or “full of ability or power.”
The word of God is living and powerful.
The third term is also complementary to the first two in that it goes on to describe what kind of living, active quality the word of God has.
It has a piercing power.
Sharper Than Any Sword
One commentator I read (N.T. Wright, Hebrews for Everyone) shared a story that put this verse into perspective for me:
I washed the kitchen knife, put it down for a moment and then picked it up to dry it.
As I did so, I felt what seemed like a slight tickle at the end of one finger.
I looked down, and to my surprise and alarm saw blood spurting out of a neat, straight cut across the end.
I hadn’t realized that our new kitchen knife had a double blade, and in picking it up—carefully, as I’d imagined—I had for a moment run my finger across the reverse side, which seemed to have been every bit as sharp as the main edge.
The sharper a blade is, of course, the less you feel when you cut yourself.
It had gone straight through skin and into flesh with no trouble at all.
If a kitchen knife can cut a finger like that, imagine what a sword can do.
But this sword is different.
I don’t care how sharp you sharpen a physical sword—it will be able to cut through someone’s body, but it will not be able to cut through to someone’s soul, their inner being.
But the word of God is a spiritual sword.
makes the same point about the word of God as a sword: “The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
What the Word Does
What the Word Is
What the Word Does
For the word of God is living and active,
piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow
Sharper than any two-edged sword
and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
Power to Pierce (completely pierce; it cuts all the way down)
I think we are in error immediately if we try to read this verse like a human anatomy textbook.
If we do, then I have no idea how to define the different nuances between soul and spirit.
No one else does either.
Furthermore, because there is no biblical text that does, here or anywhere, then it shows that the author’s point lies elsewhere.
It is probably misconceived to seek precise definition in such a poetic passage.
The general meaning is clearly that the active power of God’s word reaches into the inmost recesses of human existence (Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews).
The apostle Paul uses a similar construction when he says that the God of peace is able to sanctify or cleanse people completely—spirit, soul, and body ().
Hebrews’ point is to say that the word can completely pierce us—down the very deepest part of our existence.
It does not just have the ability to enforce a judgment; it has the ability to make a judgment—the power to discern the deepest things we try to keep hidden or secret or sometimes are too deep to even see clearly ourselves.
Power to Discern
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