It is taken from the book of Joshua and Joshua, the first chapter and verses one through nine of that chapter. This is the beginning of the entrance into the promised land. God has led his people through the wilderness wanderings for a number of years, and now they're ready to cross over and go into the promised land. And these first verses of Joshua chapter one are God's commission to Joshua. And in particular, I want us to notice the instruction that God gives to Joshua concerning where his direction is going to come from and how he's going to know what he should be doing. Joshua 1 verses 1 through 9. Now it came about after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' servant, saying, Moses, my servant is dead. Now, therefore, arise. Cross this Jordan, you and all the people, to the land which I am giving to them, to the sons of Israel. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you just as I spoke to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the great river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the great sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory. No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses, My servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you be strong and courageous? Do not tremble or be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Notice particularly just those last verses. I was struck by a statement that Pastor Ken Smith made when clear back in the dark ages when I was in seminary. And he pointed out to us that I think this is, I believe, the only place in the scripture where we're told a formula for success. In America, lots of people are very interested in how can I be successful? Well, God is telling Joshua that he can have success, but it comes at the hand of God and in accordance with God's word. Notice verses seven through 10 or seven through nine again, only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth. But you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not tremble or be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. Then turn over to the New Testament, this time looking at Hebrews chapter 4. And we'll look at the first 13 verses of this chapter. Hebrews 4 and verses 1 through 13. Therefore, let us fear, lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed, we have had good news preached to us, just as they also. But the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have believed Enter that rest, just as he has said, as I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest, although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has thus said somewhere concerning the seventh day, and God rested on the seventh day from all his work. And again, in this passage, they shall not enter my rest. Since, therefore, it remains for some to enter it and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience. He again fixes a certain day today, saying through David, after so long a time, just as had been said before today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken of another day after that. There remains, therefore, a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered his rest has himself also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience. 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 intents of the heart. 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." We'll end our reading at that point. Let's take just a moment in prayer and still our hearts and ask God's blessing on us as we look together at His Word. Lord God, we do pray once again that You would open our hearts and our minds of understanding We pray that you would apply your word and the truth of your word in a particular way to our hearts and minds and lives, that we might grow by it, that we might be nourished by your word and that we might be strengthened in it. We ask all these things in Christ our Savior's name and for his sake. Amen. Well, this morning, I'd like us to take just a little time to focus on this idea of the Word of God. There are many passages that we could have turned to that speak to us about the Word of God, and I've just read a couple of them. We actually sang from Psalm 19, which is another portion of God's Word that speaks to us about the importance of God's Word. The 19th Psalm directs us to how God reveals himself to us, and he reveals himself to us through all of his creation that is all around us that we see day by day. And we have the wonderful declaration of the might and the power and the glory of God is the spacious heavens declare the very handiwork of God. But even though no one is able to excuse himself for knowing that there is a God, as Paul tells us in Romans, the first chapter, that the whole university declares to us that there is a God. Still, that natural revelation that we see through the creation and the handiwork of God is not sufficient to tell us of our sinfulness and our need for salvation and the way of salvation and how we might come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. And so we need the written word of God in order to learn those things. And the second part of Psalm 19 speaks to us about how the Word of God is able to enlighten us and instruct us and direct us in all of these different things there. But the passage that I want us to focus on particularly this morning is this phrase here in Hebrews 4, verse 12, where we're told the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword and piercing as far as the division of the soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. There's nothing that can be hidden from God by this word. It's described as the word of God. It's also described as a sword. And you may remember back in Ephesians, the sixth chapter where Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus. One of the things that he says there is that they're to put on the full armor of God. And he describes many different military terms, I guess you would say a shield and a breastplate and all of those different things. But in that passage also, he refers to the word of God. And there he calls it the sword of the spirit. And so that that's what we're thinking about this morning. This this idea of the word of God and in the importance of the word of God to us and the way in which it's also called a sword of the spirit. I want us to kind of focus on this imagery of sword as we think about the Word of God in this way. What is the sword that's being described here? We've already said it a number of times. It's the Word of God. The sword is the word of God. And we can see that idea in both the text in in Ephesians six and also here in Hebrews four. But this idea is also prevalent throughout the scripture and other places as well. But I'd like you to think for just a moment about some of the things that we know about this word of God in this way. The first is that we need to remember and understand that the Word of God is, in fact, divine. That is, it's totally different from anything else that we might have that we could turn to either for our defense or for our protection or for use in instruction or any of these other things. This is the divine Word of God that we're talking about here. It's the very Word of God which spoke all of our existence, all of our creation into being. We could look at the passage in Genesis, could also look at the first chapter of Colossians. And we see that the word of God, which is both the written word that we have here, but the spoken word of God. And then as we discover in the New Testament, the living word of God, which is the person of Jesus Christ, All of this idea is tied together in this idea of the word of God. And so as we think about this, this word of God as being divine, I'm. suggesting and promoting and giving to you the direction of Scripture that the Word of God that we have in the Scripture is God's own Holy Word. It is divine. And He came to us in the living Word of Jesus Christ that we might know this word as well. Another passage that that speaks of this same idea is back in John, where Jesus is talking to the. To the excuse me to the religious leaders of his day, and he reminds them there that that they search the Scriptures because they think in the Scriptures that they're going to find salvation. And he says that that's really true. But they've missed the whole point of salvation because the scriptures are speaking of him, he says, John, the eighth chapter in verses thirty one and following, he says, you're looking in the right place, but you're not seeing it. And really, that's what the author to the Hebrews was saying in those first verses of Hebrews four as well. The message had come, but because of unbelief, and right unrighteousness, they'd missed the point of the message. They had not entered into the rest that could have been theirs in God through Jesus Christ. So this this word of God that we're talking about is a divine living word of God. But here in Hebrews, it also tells us that that it's a living word as well. That is, it's. It's in contrast to just empty words or the words that we say we we can speak, I can even preach to you. But unless the words that I speak to you in a in a message, unless they're anointed by the Holy Spirit of God, they're not alive. But when we're talking about the living word of God, We're talking about that word of God that is is powerful. It has the ability to be what it says it is. It can never be destroyed. It's not just a word in a book in that sense. And because of that, the author says it's effectual as well. I kind of like the old King James translation is quick and powerful. It says quick. When I was going to college at Geneva, some of you have been back there and seen the changes that are there now. But we used to talk about those who were the quick and the dead crossing the highway there in front of Geneva. The idea of quick is the same idea that is used in that description of mercury when it's called quicksilver. It's like it's alive. And that's what is included in this idea. It's effectual here. The Word of God brings conviction. It brings conversion. It brings comfort. It works comfort in a person's life. It has the power to raise out of the depths of sin into the heights of holiness. So the word of God is effectual. It's effective in that way. It's quick as the old King James translation was, but it's also a very sharp and powerful word. It talks about the sword and the sword that we see in the armor that is used in battle in those days and on into the Middle Ages and perhaps even later than that. The sword was a double-edged sword. It would cut either direction. not like our knives that we have today. We might describe it as a dagger that is long when you're thinking about a sword in that way. It's sharp on both edges. It cuts either direction. And so here, when the author talks about this word of God being sharper than any two-edged sword, It means that it's able to penetrate and pierce even to the dividing a heart apart of heart and soul. So the picture here is the picture of a surgeon. that's being able to get in and cut out the things that are rotten or harmful, to cut out the cancer, as it were, in our thinking today, to remove the tumor that might be in there. And so this word is sharp and powerful in that way. But it's also discriminating. It's not just a weapon of mass destruction that goes out and just destroys everything in its path, but rather it's discriminating so that it is able to decide and divide between soul and spirit, that it's able to separate Between those things that are right and those things which are wrong, it's able to discern whether something is good or evil and able to cut away the outer shell and get rid of that that shiny finish that we so often use to cover over the blackness of our hearts. So this word of God we see is a revealing word. It discerns The thoughts and the intents of our heart, it cuts away and lays open to the very bone, the innermost thoughts that we might have there so that we're naked before the vision of God and approval is given to that which is good and condemnation to that which is evil. And so this sort of the spirit is is a spiritual. work in that way. And as I already alluded a little earlier, it's it's a work of the Holy Spirit in that way. It's it's God's spirit that works through this word. You perhaps wondered. From time to time, why you hear a powerful, penetrating sermon that touches you in such a way that it It gets right to the heart of things, and yet the person sitting next to you is not affected by it at all. It's the work of the Spirit that makes that difference, that brings it to bear on the heart of one and does not on the heart of the other. It's only as the Holy Spirit works through that Word that it is effectual in the work that is sent to do. It's the very Word of God. And we see this idea throughout the scripture in so many different ways. I'm reminded particularly of the way in which Paul talks about the inspiration of the word of God in second Timothy and the third chapter in verse 16. But perhaps even more than that in first Peter or rather second Peter, the first chapter in verses 19 through 21, where Peter describes that that glorious experience that he and James and John had there on the Mount of Transfiguration as they were with Jesus and they heard the very voice of God speaking to them. And and he's reflecting on that and he's remembering that. And then he goes on to say, but we have something even better than that, even more powerful than that. And he's describing the Word of God. 2 Peter 1, verses 19-21. And so the Word of God is the Word that speaks to us and directs us in all of the needs that we have. It's the instrument of the Holy Spirit, which the Holy Spirit uses to make effectual His purposes. It's by the Word of God that the Holy Spirit alarms the soul and convicts a person of sin. It's by the Word of God that the Holy Spirit converts the soul and regenerates a person. It's by the Word of God that the Holy Spirit sanctifies and builds up a person. And it's only by the Holy Spirit's influence that the Christian can make any profitable use then of this Word of God. And so we pray for the Spirit's leading. We ask that the Holy Spirit would enlighten us and illuminate the Word of God to us. Let's think for just a moment too about When we use this sword, if we think about it as a weapon that might be used in that way, there are numerous occasions certainly when we need to be using that word and making it profitable and making diligent use of the Holy Spirit's word in us in that way. We certainly use it in defense. But we can also use it in offense as we attack and try and move the word of God forward. But the probably the chief illustration. Of when the word of God is used is when we're being attacked by Satan and Jesus gives us the example of that. Particularly, you remember after Jesus was baptized, he went into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness for 40 days. And as he ended that time of fasting, he was hungry. And so Satan came to him. I think the scripture would indicate that Satan had been tempting him throughout that time as well. But particularly the record that we have in Matthew, the fourth chapter and in the other gospels is that as he comes to Christ, He comes to him and he tempts him, particularly in the area of his physical hunger, in the area of his work that he's getting ready to do, and in how he's going to be used of God to minister to the needs of his people there on the earth. And in each of the three temptations that Satan brings to Christ, we find Christ responding from the word of God. And he's meeting the attack of Satan by using a response from the scripture. I'm told that Dawson Trotman, who was the founder of the Navigators, used to say when people would bring a question to him or a particular problem that they were trying to work on and solve, that he would often just kind of ponder for a little bit. And then he'd say, well, it seems to me that the scripture says, and then he would quote a scripture passage to them. And he had spent a great deal of time memorizing scripture. And so he was looking to the scripture to find the answer to that particular situation that he was faced facing at that time. And so as we face temptations from the world, whether it's a direct attack that we can see Satan very much in that attack or whether it's circumstances that we're going through that Satan is then able to use to attack our faith and our strength. We need to learn to respond to that in that same way. Jesus warned us that in the world we would have tribulation, but we need to be of good cheer because He who is in you is greater than the one that is attacking us. And that's a reference to the Holy Spirit dwelling within us, and I believe in giving us the ability to to turn to the Scriptures and remember those things that God has set before us in this way. When we're discouraged, when the attack is coming, from us within us from the circumstances around us. However, Satan may be seeking to attack us. We need to turn to the Scriptures and use the Scriptures as a response to that as we take that sword and find comfort in the Word of God as it cuts away our fear and our despair. We use the sword also as we Attack seems to be a negative way of saying how we converse with other people, but it's the use of the word in an offensive way. offensive way as we as we take the word of God to others, whether it's preaching the word or whether it's witnessing to another person or sharing with another person as we witness with non-Christians or as we as we comfort those Christians who are going through particular times of trial or suffering. In all of those uses of the word of God, that's an offensive use of the word as we as we take it and proactively use it to try and encourage others and direct them. And we pray that the power of the Holy Spirit would be working in them. Well, as we as we kind of wrap this up, let's think for just a few moments about how we go about making an effective use of the word and how we can be active in doing that. The first thing that I would remind you is that we must be intimately acquainted with the Word ourselves. that illustration that I gave you a moment ago about Dawson Trotman. He was only able to do that because he knew the word of God. He memorized it. He laid it up in his heart. He knew where to where to turn in God's word to search for answers. And each one of us can do that as well. And we need to be intimately acquainted with the Word of God if we're going to do that. I didn't have the privilege or the not privilege, whichever you might say, of serving in the military. I was never involved in that directly myself. But I understand that when a soldier is training, part of his training is to become so intimately familiar with his weapon, whatever that weapon might be, whether it's a handgun or a rifle, to become so intimately familiar with that weapon that he can, in the pitch of darkness or blindfolded, take it apart, clean it, and reassemble it so that it's useful, so that it doesn't jam on him, so that he's ready to use it at any moment. To our shame, many times we're not prepared that way with the Word of God. I read in the newspaper just I think just this last week that there had been a survey taken of different people, various religions, some of them atheists and agnostics. And in that particular survey, they ask a number of questions. I don't know exactly how many the questions were, but they included questions about different religions, but also questions about particular religion that they might be professing, whether it was Judaism or Protestant faith or Roman Catholic and that sort of thing. But the interesting thing that struck me as I was reading just kind of a high-level summary of that study was that by far Protestants were in the low range of knowing very much about other religions or even about their own. Even such things as where the Ten Commandments might be found and various things like that. Even the agnostics and atheists scored better than they did on many of those things. And what a tragedy that is that we don't In many cases, really know where to turn to in the Word of God for answers and for the things that we need to know. And so we need to keep our sword polished and bright. We need to, by that I mean we need to be familiar with it. We need to know where to turn in it to find answers to the questions that we're looking for. We must practice using it day by day. And how do we do that? Well, we spend time reading it. We need to be regular and faithful in our reading of the Word of God personally. We need to have our own personal time of reading the Scripture, both from the standpoint of having the overall view of what the whole Scripture is saying. Have you read through the entire Scripture? That's one of the questions that we ask our candidates for becoming a licensed preacher in our presbytery. Have you read through the entire Scripture? in that way, but we not only read it, we need to be studying it. It's not just the overview of the whole scripture, but we need to be spending time individually and personally studying the passages of scripture that we read so that we not only see the forest, but we also look at the trees. And we begin to understand what it is that the author is saying to us in that particular passage. And the author ultimately is really not Matthew or Moses or Paul, but rather the Holy Spirit. Because remember, it's the divine word of God that we're reading here. So we read it and we study it. We need to be hearing it as well. By hearing it, we hear it as it's read here in the worship services. You can also get MP3 files of the Word of God and simply listen to the Word of God being read to you by others. And so we take it in through our ears as well. Yeah, we ought to also be memorizing it. And I have to raise my hand and confess, I haven't been doing much of that recently. After all, that's for children, right? It's the children that know. We all should be memorizing God's Word. We should be laying it up in our hearts. Because really, when you come to the idea of meditating upon God's Word, That idea of meditation, I think, really takes place when we're able to call up from memory and contemplate from memory as we think about maybe you're having trouble sleeping at night. And you can spend some time meditating and reflecting on the scripture that you've memorized and that you know is there as you meditate on this way. Paul, in writing to the Colossian Christians, put it this way. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, Singing with thankfulness in your heart to God and we. We often, as reformed Presbyterians, focus in on that Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs and and say, yeah, we sing them. We sing the word of God, and that's a very important thing. But Paul is also saying to us there that the word of Christ, which is included in the Psalms, but not only in the Psalms, needs to be richly dwelling in us. And that, it seems to me, is is really kind of a reference to memorization and meditation. And so we need to to have the scripture. Sharp and Polish in our lives in this way, and we we we certainly need to pray for spiritual strength in this way. When Paul was introducing the armor of God there in Ephesians chapter six, he said, Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. And so we pray for spiritual strength there. We cannot wage war with unhallowed weapons. We wage our war with the sword of the spirit, with the word of God. And our weapon is the sword that is all sufficient We don't need to try and add our own embellishments to it in any way. So the Word of God is our source of power, our source of strength, our source of hope, and our source of everything that is necessary in our lives. I pray that we would be careful, each one of us, to make an effective use, an effectual use, of the Word of God as our Sword and Spirit. Let's look to Him in prayer. Lord God, we do acknowledge and confess to You that far too often we're quick to put aside the time that we should be spending in reading and studying and meditating and memorizing, reflecting upon Your Word. We pray that You would give us a hunger and a desire that we might more fervently become intimately acquainted with your word in such a way that we might see it revealing sin and unrighteousness that needs to be cut away in our hearts, that we might find the comfort and the encouragement that we need in times of despair or discouragement. We pray that you would enable us to become proficient in using it as we would give comfort to others in need and as we would speak to those who need to know you that we might be able to proclaim your word to them in such a way that they would be touched by your Holy Spirit and drawn to yourself. Father, guide us and direct us in these uses of your word. We pray in Christ's name and for his sake. Amen.