During the reign of King Josiah, who lived seven centuries before Christ, the law had become hopelessly mixed up with common opinions. Idolatry was flourishing; contempt for theology was common. There was little or no resistance to moral erosion. Josiah, who was made king at age eight, was worried. He desired to be a good king and he was. He wanted to lead his people out of darkness. He turned to the Temple for help. The results were disappointing. The Word of the Lord could not be found! A renovating program on the Temple was started. At last the high priest, Hilkiah, said to Shaphan, his secretary, “I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord” (2 Kings 22:8).

How ironic, they lost the word of God in the time of Josiah, and today many churches an leaders have lost the word of God, in that, they not longer believe it.

Voltaire, french the mid 1700 French atheist who was one of the greatest writers of his time, wielded a bitter pen against Christianity. In a moment of triumph he once boasted, “In twenty years Christianity will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took twelve apostles to rear.” But Voltaire’s arrogance was swallowed up in his death. He died, in his own words, “abandoned by God and man.” Shortly after his death, the very house in which Voltaire wrote was made a depot of the Geneva Bible Society!

God’s Living Powerful Word

2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

Timothy was committed to the divine authority of the Word of God. He saw the authority of the Word of God. Paul says to him by way of reminder, All Scripture is breathed out from God.

All Scripture, this is distinct from the term in verse 15 the sacred writings. The sacred writings, refer to the Old Testament, here Scripture refers to the Old and the New even though the New was not yet fully written, there were still some books to be penned, still the word Scripture is an all-encompassing word. It refers to all of the writings, all of the writings that God gave us.

1 Timothy 5:18 is discussing elders, their compensation and their service, Paul says, “For the Scripture says,” and then he quotes two things, “you shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing,” that is a quotation out of Deuteronomy 25:4, the Scripture referring to the Old Testament. Then he says, “And the laborer is worthy of his wages,” that quote is from Luke 10:7.

Why is that important?

Scripture says, and Paul quotes Deuteronomy, that’s Old Testament, and he quotes Luke and that’s the New Testament. Second Peter 3:16, speaks of the beloved brother Paul in verse 15 and he wrote to you as also in all his letters, so now he’s referring to all Paul’s letters. This is Peter calling Paul’s writing Scripture, just like the rest of the Scripture. Paul says Luke wrote Scripture. Peter says Paul wrote Scripture.

So God has given us His Word, all Scripture. If you go into the gospel of John you’ll find that Jesus affirms the New Testament is inspired Scripture. When Jesus was giving promises to the disciples, you remember He said things like this, “The Holy Spirit shall bring to your remembrance all that I said,” that’s a promise for inspiration to the writers of the gospels.

The Word of God

It is a battleground to really believe that Scripture is the Word of God. Now what does it mean “inspired by God”? The word inspiration means “God breathed out.” All Scripture is expired from God. It isn’t that God breathes into a writer and he writes. It is that God breathes out the word and the writer is caused to write it down.

John 6:63 The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life.

1 peter 1:23 because you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable—through the living and enduring word of God.

Scripture is God-breathed, it isn’t God breathing into man some kind of inspiration so he can write, it is God breathing out truth which men then carried along by the Holy Spirit wrote down. Psalm 33:6, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made by the breath of His mouth, all their host.” God breathed out all creation and He breathed out His Word. The book of creation He wrote with His breath and the book of Scripture He wrote with His breath.

“Forever, O Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven,” says Psalm 119:89. 2 Peter 1:21 it describes the process, “No prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” God spoke and they reiterated His Word.

Many nominal Christian, and even some preachers, don’t believe all of the Bible.

“Christianity can stand on its own two new covenant, first-century feet. The Christian faith doesn’t need to be propped up by the Jewish Scriptures.”

“When you anchor the authority of your teaching to the Bible, you reinforce an assumption that has the potential to weaken rather than establish faith.” Andy Stanley

Many try to say the scripture is true when is speaks of religious things, but not about, the world, creation or anything else.
John Woodbridge wrote a book to respond to this called Biblical Authority. John Woodbridge probably knows more about the primary sources of the history of the doctrine of the Bible than anybody on God’s green earth.

It’s a 250-page book, and all the sources are primary, so he works through what Jerome thought and what Augustine thought, and he quotes all the primary sources all the way through.

The Power of Scripture

John 18:6 When Jesus told them, “I am he,” they stepped back and fell to the ground.

Revelation 19:15 A sharp sword came from his mouth, so that he might strike the nations with it. He will rule them with an iron rod.ai He will also trample the winepress of the fierce anger of God, the Almighty.

Hebrews 4:11Let us, then, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall into the same pattern of disobedience.

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

We are not to follow their example of disobedience. They fell by the sword of the Amalekites, which was God’s own pronouncement, it is recorded in Numbers 14:43–45. Because they disregarded Moses’ warning, the Word of God,

43 The Amalekites and Canaanites are right in front of you, and you will fall by the sword. The LORD won’t be with you, since you have turned from following him.”

We can’t play around with the Word of God. God’s Word is powerful, and if you fall back into disobedience and unbelief as they did, then you stand under this Word which brings its own judgment.

This is not a passage that’s trying to explain human nature. It’s trying to explain, rather, how God’s Word penetrates. This is a powerful image of our total exposure and defenselessness before the Word of God.

We cannot fool God. His Word comes to us with both blessing in the gospel and with judgment if you combine that Word with unbelief.

One of the functions of the word of God when it comes into us is that it penetrates very deep—like a sword through tough, hard layers—and makes judgments about what’s there.

The word “judge” means “assess.” When we show somebody a painting and say, “What’s your judgment?” We don’t mean, “What’s your condemnation?” We mean, “What’s your
assessment of the quality? Is it good or bad.” So the word of God penetrates to the deepest place in our lives and assesses what’s there. Is it good or bad?

What’s really at stake in these chapters is entering into God’s rest. Ete rnity is at stake. And the way to enter that rest is faith, or belief, or trust in God’s promises. The great danger in these chapters is not just bad thoughts. The great danger is unbelieving thoughts. Hebrews 3:19: “They could not enter because of unbelief.”

So what we need is protection from unbelief. Day in and day out we need to fight unbelief in the promises of God. It’s unbelief that will keep us out of the God’s rest. That’s what’s at stake in the call for diligence in verse 11 and that’s why the word of God in verse 12 is so critical for us. The word of God penetrates to the bottom of all our defenses and deceptions and exposes belief or unbelief. It assess our thoughts and intentions as to whether they are believing thoughts and intentions or unbelieving.

The Deceiving Power of Sin

How are we going to be rescued from the deceiving power of sin?

That’s what Hebrews 4:12 is meant to answer. The word of God is living and active and penetrates to the bottom of our lives and rips the pleasant mask off the ugly face of sin. The only reason anybody sins is because at some level they are deceived. They start believing the lies of sin instead of the promises of God.

Sin whispers through the desires of the flesh and the rationalizations of the mind, your only hope of future happiness is to sacrifice your child. It whispers that you will not have a chance in the future if you don’t cheat on this test. It says that you won’t be noticed and liked if you don’t dress provocatively. It says you won’t have job security if you speak up about the dishonest practices at work. It says your life will be wasted in this relationship if you don’t get a divorce. It says that only a fool would go on looking weak instead of getting some kind of revenge.

Every one of those statements is a lie. It’s what Hebrews 3:13 calls “the deceitfulness of sin.” Now those lies sometimes lodge themselves very deep in the heart as thoughts and intentions that seem unshakably true because of the hardness of deception that encloses them like a dark, sealed casket.

We are in mortal danger of becoming so hard that repentance will become impossible (Hebrews 6:6), and heaven will have been thrown away for the sake of a few fleeting pleasures, like an inheritance sold for a bowl of stew (Hebrews 12:16).

How Will We Escape the Deceit of Sin?

What is our only hope? Our only hope is that there is something sharp enough and powerful enough to penetrate through all the deception and shed light on my thoughts and intentions. The word of God is our only hope. The good news of God’s promises and the warnings of his judgment are sharp enough and living enough and active enough to penetrate to the bottom of my heart and show me that the lies of sin are indeed lies.

That the Word is living shows that it reflects the true character of God himself, the source of all life.. But a revelation which is living has constant application to the minds of the recipients.

When the divisive activity is extended to joints and marrow and thoughts and intentions, it is again clear that the idea of thoroughness is in mind. The theme that the Word of God affects us to the extent of discriminating our intentions is challenging. Nothing, not even our innermost thoughts, is shielded from the discernment of the message of God. It affects in a most comprehensive manner the whole man, as the next verse so clearly brings out.

We do not know ourselves.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

We do not even know how to distinguish, by feelings or rationale, between that which comes from our souls (psyches) and from our spirits. Even our bodily functions (symbolized here by joints and marrow) are beyond our full knowledge. Only the all-seeing eye of God knows us thoroughly and totally (Ps 139:1–18), and before him we will stand and ultimately give account.

The images the author employs in this marvelous passage are effective ones. Like a sharp sword which can lay open the human body with one slashing blow, so the sword of the Scripture can open our inner life and expose it to ourselves and others.

Plainly, Scripture is the only reliable guide we have to function properly as a human in a broken world. Philosophy and psychology give partial insights, based on human experience, but they fall far short of what the Word of God can do.

The word translated open had two distinct uses in ancient times. It was used of a wrestler taking his opponent by the throat. In this position the two men were unavoidably face to face. The other use was in regard to a criminal trial. A sharp dagger would be bound to the neck of the accused, with the point just below his chin, so that he could not bow his head, but had to face the court. Both uses had to do with grave face-to-face situations. When an unbeliever comes under the scrutiny of God’s Word, he will be unavoidably face-to-face with the perfect truth about God and about himself.

Our only hope to assess ourselves with truth is to rely on the Infallible Word of God. Then, when we see the real us, we can decide, will we be obedient to God’s Word which will give us rest not and in eternity. Or, we can be disobedient, and suffer the consequences as they did in Numbers 14.