All right, if not, then we'll go ahead at this time and we'll turn our attention to the word of God. And I'd like to actually use that for my title this morning, the word of God. And we're gonna take that title out of the fourth chapter of the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter four, and we're gonna read verse 12. And it's the only verse we're gonna focus on today. Hebrews chapter four and verse 12, because a lot is said about the word of God in one verse. And now sometimes we take this verse and we extrapolate it out. And we're going to get into that. But we're going to try to look at this verse and get to the context of what the author, what the Hebrew author is saying. And first and foremost, I mean, we don't really know, we cannot say for certainty who wrote the book of Hebrews. Most believe it was the Apostle Paul, and I believe that that's probably possibly true, but we can't state with definite knowledge who the author was. So the twelfth verse of the fourth chapter of the book of Hebrews reads thusly, The word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing sunder of soul and spirit and of the joints in the marrow. and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. And so, that's our verse for today, is that verse right there. For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and the marrow, and it is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Now, as we think about this, the first thing that we have to... Let's start at the end, right? Because one of the very things that it says that the Word of God is, is it's able to discern the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Now, we'll get into what the discernment of the thoughts and the intents are, but the object that it's focused towards is the heart. Now, here's what the Bible says about the heart, that the heart of man is desperately wicked, and it's not something that should be followed. But if you listen to people in the world today, they will typically say, follow your heart, won't they? Now, I believe if you're talking about in terms of follow your heart, if you're referring to that in a spiritual sense, that seed of the heart is actually going to be what you would oftentimes refer to as your gut, and that's your gut, that's your heart talking to you. When you would say, oh my gut, I'm going to follow my gut instinct, that's following your heart. That's actually what your heart's telling you to do. Oftentimes what we mix up and can misconstrue as following our heart is actually just following our own passions. And doing the things that we deem pleasurable. That's not scriptural. That's not biblical. That heart is desperately wicked. Right? And it is wicked up until the point that it can be remade and refashioned into something else. And that operation of the heart takes place. And God takes out the stony heart and he gives us a heart of flesh. And with that heart of flesh we can feel. And so those that have been saved should have a heart within them that allows themselves, that is, that they can feel the sting of the rebuke when they get outside of the will of God. And so we see that here. And so we get back up into the beginning of this verse and it starts out that the Word of God is quick. Okay, well what does that mean? And what is the Word of God? Now, we can read and we can say, well, this is applying to all of Scripture, the Word of God. Now, I think you can certainly do that. I think it's quite possible to do that. And I believe that you can look at Scripture and say that it's alive because it's so many ways it can apply in so many different ways. We'll use just for an example, Paul in Romans 7, verse 7, when he says, And so Paul is referring back to Scripture, and he's saying that Scripture made sin alive for him. And what constitutes and qualified as sin, that Scripture, those verses of Scripture, the law, especially the one there about thou shalt not covet, that made sin alive. Alive and real to him and I just want to say here today that if you're here and you've never been saved That has got to be a it's got to happen. It is just one of those necessary things You have got to get to a place into a point in your life where you have actual working knowledge that you have sinned and offended the Almighty God now a lot of people want to look at sin today and they want to say well we can't offend God we don't offend God because so many of have taken this agnostic view that God just put everything in motion, and God stepped back away from the table, and God's unknowable, and all of this kind of mumbo-jumbo garbage, but none of that is true, because God had a plan for each and every person that he's ever born into the world, and whether or not that plan was realized or not wasn't a failure on God's half. Matter of fact, we're going to look at this quickness that the Hebrew writer uses to describe the Word of God. Now what that word means, it means the Word of God is alive. We see that immediately at the beginning of the Bible. We used this during the VBS lessons. The very beginning of the Bible states, in the beginning, God. Right? So we can see that God is present before time. He's present when time is created. And we know that God will be present when time ceases to be. And he demonstrated and illustrated that fact to Moses when Moses went into the deserts of Midian after he was found out that he had slain the two Egyptians and buried them in the sand, and he ran and fled off into Midian, and he was there in the deserts, and he sees this burning bush in the desert, and Moses beholds it, and he's awed by it. And he says this in the third chapter of the book of Exodus, in the 13th and the 14th verse, And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, whom God was sending him to, to deliver them from Egypt, when I come unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, that being the children of Israel, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them? So Moses had a quandary here, didn't he? He said, What am I going to say to those you're sending me to about your name? And God responded to Moses out of the midst of the burning bush, and he said, You tell them that I am that I am. And I am just simply means I exist, that I exist, just as I have in time past, as I have existed in times past, just as I exist now in times present, just as I will exist in times future, and I will be as I am. And so we can see that he is demonstrating that he is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And so we know that the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And I would say even forever, evermore. And we're going to touch on that. And so, you know, this word is alive. And so he says, you tell them that I am that I am. The Word of God is alive. On that point, we see that Jesus uses this very fact that God is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. He says He is the God of the Father, and the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And so we look in John 1, and we get back to in the beginning. John chapter 1 tells us in the beginning. And John goes into great detail about the Word of God. And so if you haven't figured it out yet, Jesus Christ is the Word of God. And John's going to lay it out for you very plainly here in the first chapter of John. In the beginning, just like in the beginning in Genesis, John starts out and says, In the beginning, in the past, back in eternity, before time ever began, was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. And then we drop down to the 14th verse, and John says this, And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And so John is talking about Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God, or the Logos of God, And here he is describing him being born into the world and that he is alive. And so we can see that he was alive in spirit in times past. He was manifested in life in the days that he was born of a virgin there in Judea. And then we know for a fact This is not even up for debate. We know for a fact that he is alive evermore, because he said so himself in Revelation 1, verses 17-18. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. That's John talking about the description of the resurrected Christ. When John got a vision of him, it terrified him to such a degree that he fell down at his feet as one that were dead. And so that's how frightening it's going to be. So the people who think that they're going to stand before God on the day of judgment and they're not going to be afraid, but they're going to look forward to the party that they're going to have in hell, I got news for you. If John stood before the resurrected Christ and fell down as one that was dead, even though he knew Him and he had beheld Him and he had broken bread with Him, I'm going to tell you right now there's not a person in the world that's going to stand before Him and stand there of their own will and not fall on their face before Him and not proclaim with their tongue that He is the Lord of lords, He is the King of kings, He is the kingly resurrected Messiah. And so that's what we see here. But listen how Jesus describes himself. First off, he says this to John after John has fallen as dead. He lays his right hand upon me saying, fear not, I am the first and the last. Let me put that another way. I am the beginning and I am the end. I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Jesus is immortal. Actually, no, he's not immortal, is he? Jesus is eternal. See, there's a difference between being immortal and being eternal. Mankind is immortal because we have a generation point, don't we? We have a point of when we came into existence, and prior to that point, we did not exist in the world. Jesus existed before time began. He will continue to exist after time ceases, and He is the same yesterday, today, And tomorrow. And so this word is alive. And so the Bible says that he brought in by a new and a living way. In other words, if you're going to get saved, you're going to get saved not of the will of man, not of the will of the flesh, but by the word of God. You've got to go to Jesus Christ if you want to get saved. You're not going to get saved any other way. There's no person in the world who can look at you and forgive you of your sins. I don't care what dogma they prescribe themselves to. I don't care what bribe they're willing to take on your behalf. They can't pray you out of purgatory. They can't pray you out of the grave. They can't do any of those things. I'm going to tell you right now, and I cannot stand up here, and if you can't come to me and say, Brother Fugate, why don't you forgive me my sins? And I'm just going to look at you and say, because I don't have the ability to do that. That's not what I was charged with. My charge was simply to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and there is not another person in the world that will come to the Father except by and through Him. He's it. He's it. He was alive before time. He was born that He would suffer and die on the cross for our sins. He is our substitutionary sacrifice. A lot of the world has a big problem with that. Why would God the Father want to sacrifice His only begotten Son? That's not a requirement that He lays on men, but God's ways are not like our ways, are they? God's ways are higher than our ways. God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts. So whatever you think, you may think about yourself. I want you to understand this. If you think too highly of yourself, I will promise you God probably thinks fairly lowly of you. And if you are somebody who carries yourself with a low degree, you're probably somebody who God places a lot of faith and trust in. And so we look here and we go on and we move on because we can stay on the word of God being quick and being alive. The only thing you need to know is the word of God is alive forevermore. Now this applies to the scriptures because we're getting it from the source, people. If the scriptures are alive, it's because the author of the scriptures are alive. If the author of the scriptures are dead, then why aren't we up here reading from any other book that is written by the hand of man? Sixty-six authors, one central character. Don't care if you're talking about Genesis, don't care if you're talking about Revelation, anywhere in between. Second thing that the Hebrew writer tells us about the Word of God is that it's powerful. It is powerful. How powerful? Well, the 11th chapter of Hebrews in the 3rd verse tells us this, that through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God. That everything that we see that has been made were made by the Word of God. and that nothing was made without Him. That's how powerful He is. He spoke and everything came into existence. That all the ages of time are framed by the Word of God. But furthermore than that, we can touch back here in this first chapter of Revelation, and he's going to make this statement here, that he is omnipotent, meaning he is all-powerful. I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, amen, and have the keys of hell and death. In other words, he reigns over everything, doesn't he? He is all-powerful. And if we go over into the Great Commission, He says this, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Jesus Christ is omnipotent, just the same as He is omniscient. And so we look here. The Word of God is powerful. I didn't get under conviction because of a person. I got under conviction because of the Word of God. You're not going to get saved because of me. You're going to get saved because God uses whatever scripture is needed to reach you And he brings you into a knowledge of conviction. What you do with that knowledge is what's going to determine whether or not you have a, you become a, you become, you have an immortal, you're going to be immortal. But what you do with that knowledge is going to make the determination of whether you're going to spend eternity in heaven or hell. One of those two things is going to take place. So it's powerful. Everyone who has believed in Him, they are recreated, aren't they? They're recreated a new creature in Christ Jesus. That's what that means. And that scripture alone should tell you that if you're going to get saved, you're going to have to be saved by a power that's much higher than mine, that you're going to have to get saved by somebody who possesses within them the powers of creation, and you won't find anywhere in scripture where God has resigned over the power of creation and has given it to any man in the world. Now there's a movie that Avery loves to watch, and we'll watch it and we'll have some theological conversations about it. And I'm sure that a lot of the kids in here have watched it, especially the young ladies, young girls. The whole point and premise around this movie is that mankind seeks out and actually comes into the possession of the powers of creation, but they cannot contain it. It's called Moana. But that's all from a pagan viewpoint. That mother nature. Or in that movie, the mother island is the one who possesses the power of creation. No, that is part of the created. God is the creator. The Word of God is what created it. And without the Word of God, it wouldn't exist. So the Word of God is powerful. It's sharp. The Hebrew writer tells us that the Word of God is sharp. He uses this, it comes from Isaiah chapter 49 verse 2, one of the places where it's spoken of in this regard. For he hath made my mouth like a sharp sword, and in the shadow of his hand he hath hid me, and he made me a polished shaft, and in his quiver hath he hid me. So right there Isaiah relates that to the mouth being like a sharp sword. And then if we look over in the description in Revelation chapter 1 verse 16, John making this description, showing that the Word of God is a weapon too, isn't it? It is the weapon that God, that Christ uses. It's the weapon that Christ uses to bring sinners to grace. John says this, and he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp, two-edged sword. And the Hebrew writer says that sharp two-edged sword that goes out of his mouth pierces to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, the joints and the marrow. In other words, the Word of God is so powerful and so sharp that it fillets you open before God and there's no defense that can be made before God when God makes known to you how you really stand in His sight. There's no mountains you can run to for cover. There's no caves that you can crawl down in to hide yourself in. There's nothing that you can do. All of that is done away with. And we can see when the day of judgment comes that there will be those that have not sought out the Lord for salvation. They have either put it off or they have disregarded it in totality, and they have decided for themselves that it's not necessary. And I want you to understand something. Just as John fell dead at the feet of the resurrected Christ, At the sight of Him, I'm going to tell you, the people that are alive that day will cry out to the rocks, cover us. They'll cry out to the hills, hide us. You know what? There won't be anywhere to hide when the elements melt with the fervent heat. And so it's a weapon. It is the weapon of choice of God. is the Word of God. What you do with it is up to you, but you will bear the consequences of what you do with it. You can either seek grace and forgiveness and mercy and pardon, or you can decide that you're going to reject all that, live your life how you want to live it, live it on your own time, and the end for you would be much, much, much worse than the beginning. But it divides, doesn't it? Piercing and dividing asunder of the soul and spirit. Jesus said that's one of the chief things that he came to do. And the world likes to preach a Jesus, this Jesus that accepts all, and he doesn't really, there's nothing that is rejected in his sight, and they wanna take all kinds of things that the Bible speaks expressly against and says, oh, Jesus didn't speak against those things. Listen to what he says. Think not that I have come to send peace on earth. This is out of Matthew 10, verse 34-39. Think not that I have come to send peace on earth. I have not come to send peace, but a sword. See, right? What's the job of a sword? Well, it doesn't hold things together, does it, when you slice through something with a sword? It lays it open and bare. So he says, here's the job of the sword. He says, for I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Not because it's God's will that there would be war in a household, but if one decides to follow God and follow Christ, and one, you know, the mother or the father decides to be, you know, we don't believe in decision or regeneration here, We don't get saved by deciding, but I'm going to tell you right now that you have to make him the Lord of your life. You have to make him the Lord of your life. That is a decision that you make, and that's something that you do before people every day, so you show that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord of your life. Well, I mean, if you have the Father that does that and the Son rejects it, or any of those other instances, All you gotta do is go back to creation and you can see that God set darkness and light at variance against each other, didn't he? And it's not fun. It doesn't make for a peaceful household. But there's a standard that's to be upheld, isn't there? If we're gonna be children of God, if we're gonna be children of the Most High, Jesus Christ, We cannot do things the way we want to do them. We've been created a new creature in Him. And so we should live our life in fear that we might lose that status. I don't think you're going to lose that status. I don't believe that you're going to lose that status. But in reverence to Him, you live your life in fear. You spend your time of sojourning here in fear. For a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me." And so here he's getting into the explanation, right? You can't love mommy and daddy more than you love the Lord Jesus Christ. You just can't. Look, you can't disrespect your mother and your father. The Bible tells us we should honor our mother and our father, and that that's the first commandment with promise. But you can't love your mother and your father more than you love the Lord. Can't do it. Gotta love the Lord more than what you can see. Gotta love what you can't see more than what you can see. Gotta walk by faith, not by sight. He that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me, and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. So even from the parent's perspective, you can't look at your children and put them on a pedestal above Jesus Christ. If you do that, you're doing things that is 100% conversely antithetical to what it means to be a Christian. And so here he goes into this division aspect of what it means to be a Christian. You know, we've got to love him. He's got to be the preeminent doesn't he? Just as God created man and man was the preeminence of creation, we've got to understand by virtue of our fall there in the garden that God had to sacrifice His only begotten Son so that we could get back into a right state of fellowship with God. If paradise was going to be regained, it was going to be regained by virtue of the shedding of blood. And there wasn't any righteous blood in the world. that could purchase paradise. Jesus Christ was the only one that could. And he takes up residence in you when you get saved. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. You can live your life. He tells you right here, you can live your life how you want to do it, and you'll lose it. You can lose your life for my sake, and you can have life more abundantly than what you ever thought was possible. And so those are the options that you have. The Word of God lays out that these are the options. And we can go all through the Scriptures, and if the Scriptures don't point to Christ, then the interpretation is wrong. If it's emotion, if it's something other than Jesus Christ that we think the scripture's pointing to, we need to go back to the scripture and reevaluate it and say, where are we supposed to point to? And I'll tell you where we point to. We point to the man that hung on the cross that we could be saved. We'll finish up with a couple more verses and then we'll close. It's a discerner. I just got one verse that I'll use for this because this is a thought that is relayed time and time again throughout scripture and that comes from Psalms 26 verse 2. Examine me, O Lord, and prove me. Try the reins of my heart. Peter, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat. but I've prayed for you. God, Jesus, when he was in the world, he oftentimes was able to do things just solely on the basis that he knew what lied in their heart, not what they were masking and putting out there for the world to see. Try my reins. Prove me. That means test me. Examine me. I think this is why God takes no offense at Gideon when he says, Hey Gideon, go and take 300 men and deliver the children of Israel from the grip of the Midianites. I believe it was the Midianites. But before he did that, he said, Okay, Lord, but first, Let the ground be wet and the fleece be dry. And then second, let the fleece be wet and the ground be dry inside the tent. God knew Gideon had some things that he needed assurances on, didn't he? And God will give us those assurances, but he tries us. And that's just another way of simply saying He tests us and He proves us to make sure that what's true is true. It's the same reason why He allowed the men from Babylon to go to Hezekiah, the great king that Hezekiah was, so that they could prove Hezekiah And this is what the Scriptures tell us, so that God could know everything that was in the heart of Hezekiah. And Isaiah comes to Hezekiah, and he says, "'The men from Babylon, what did you show them?' And Hezekiah, full of his pride of his possessions, says, "'I showed them everything.'" And Isaiah said, they will carry all of your possessions into Babylon. And I'm paraphrasing that. Because God knew there was some pride there in Hezekiah, didn't He? Great a king as Hezekiah was, there was some pride there. And so we'll close with this. He was in the world. The world was made by Him. when the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But listen to this, but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God." Or the children of God. Aren't you glad this morning to be able to say you're a child of God? How did you become to be a child of God? Was it by virtue of your fleshly birth? No, we're not born of flesh and blood, are we? Was it by virtue of your own will that you became a child of God? No, not by the will of man, is it? That's something that stuck with me when we went over to Unity when they were having their revival and Brother Reed made that statement about when there's a person that comes up, I don't care if they're young or whether they're old, when a person comes up and they're under conviction and they're seeking God for salvation, and he said something along the lines of that was That's when we feel helpless, and I'm like, yeah, because all of our attention shifts away from God to where it should be, to looking at that person as if the will of that person is going to save them. That's not going to save them, is it? Maybe if they pray harder they'll get saved. Nope, that's not going to do it. It's when they resign everything over to the Lord. When they come to the knowledge, I can't save myself. and they mean it. You know, that's when you get saved. Now for some people, I've heard of people getting saved when they just stepped out in the aisle because actually the very act of coming to the front really was when they resigned themselves over that they couldn't, they made the acknowledgement that they couldn't save themselves. And I'm telling you, I've known people that have wallowed on the altar for years because they just struggled with giving over, with resigning themselves over to the Lord. Maybe it's something that I can do. I'm gonna tell you right now, you're not gonna get saved by works and you're not gonna negotiate your way into heaven. I don't care what the world tells you. But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons and the children of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born, listen to this, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." By the Word of God. By the Word of God. Close with this verse. John chapter 12, verse 48. Jesus says this, He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my words, he being the Word of God, hath one that judgeth him. And he's him. He's the one that judges you. He's the one who God has reserved over to be the judge of the quick and the dead. And we get back to that word quick. What does that mean? Those that are alive in Christ Jesus and those that are dead to the world will be judged by the one and the same resurrected Christ that John fell dead at his feet. not literally dead, but he was frightened as one that was dead. He hath one that judgeth him. The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. We will be judged by the word of God. There is a standard that God expects us to live our life by. And I know we oftentimes want to say it's the 66 books that make up this book, only in the context that the 66 books that make up this book have one central character, and that's the man, Christ Jesus, who was alive, and was dead, and is alive forevermore, and He is the Word of God that is alive, He is powerful, He is sharper than any two-edged sword and a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart of man. You're not going to get saved anyway other than by Jesus Christ. That's our sermon this morning. That's our message. We pray that you'll take that and use it and that you'll get saved. Brother Williams, if you've got a song.