WWI probably is a forgotten war in the lives of Americans today. It was a war of loyalty to the treaties that were signed by the nations involved on both sides.
It was a war that introduced trench warfare. Germans dug in and our American troops were called on to storm the enemy’s
position.
That’s still the call of the church today. Storm the enemy’s position. Satan and his forces have dug in and God is looking for soldiers who will stand their ground and fight.
War is often decided by measurements. How far an army has advanced. How much territory has been taken, or taken back. The same is true in our heats.
How far has the enemy advanced, or persuaded us to give up or give in. The ultimate goal for the enemy is for us to surrender our hearts over to him.
But there’s another point we must observe. How does God measure a heart? If the enemy is out to get us and he is, then how can we know where our hearts are at any given time?
We may think spiritually we are here, but maybe we aren’t as close as we’d like to think. Is there a way we can know? Every Christian knows God looks on the inside but man looks at the outside, but what does our heart, our inside look like to God?
Our text examines that very fact. There is a measurement. A standard by which the Lord Jesus Christ, the final Word to man uses and the unit of measurement is written word if God.
Hebrews 4:12 says,
God uses two standards of measurements here in our verse two examine the hearts of His people:
I. Our Obedience to the Word of God
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow,”
Clearly the first part of our verse tells us that our Bibles, are not a dead book that should just sit on the shelf. Our verse says that God’s word is alive!
If our Bibles have become dead to us it’s because our hearts have been surrendering territory to the enemy. God’s Word is living and powerful!
His Word cuts to the heart and literally reveals it self to us and through us. God’s word is always clear, and the path we are to follow is always shown in front of us. The only problem we humans have is our obedience in following his Word.
One of my heroes was the most decorated hero of WWI. He is one of my heroes because he illustrates what it means to be a hero for God.
Many have never heard of him. That’s the real tragedy in America today. His name is Alvin C. York. Born in Pall Mall TN. A place I have visited several times. The valley of the three forks of the wolf river near the KY border.
Simple man from a simple time. He went off to fight in WWI but at the bottom of his draft card he wrote this words, “Don’t want to fight.” He believed the Bible said “Thou shalt not kill,” and he believed that obeying God’s Word was the first thing any man should do.
He wasn’t always that way. In his twenty’s he spent some time drinking, smoking and fighting.
After his father died Alvin became the man of the house. One day his mother had enough of his wayward ways and sat him down. She said, “Alvin when are you going to become a man like your dad and granddad were.”
God used those words of truth to cut to his heart. Shortly after he was saved and gone was the old Alvin.
The Word of God comes from His written word but the reference here also includes the total way that God uses to communicate His truth to our hearts,
It might mean a love of a mother, or father that through us speaking His truth God uses that to convict or encourage a heart.
It begs the question; Don’t you want God to use you? If the answer is yes then we must obey His written Word in order to be ready to speak his living Word.
But pastor how does God measure our hearts in obedience? I’m glad you are still thinking. You ready? No one is obedient if they are not first loving.
All through the O.T. if I counted right there are 59 times that God tells us to keep His commandments. Jesus said, “If you love Me, keep (obey) my commandments.”
5 times in 1 John the Bible tells us keep His commandments.
But the clincher is found in: 1 John 1:5, “But whoever keeps His Word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.”
God’s word becomes alive by how much we love Him and others. A Christian who isn’t loving isn’t truly living. If I surrender myself to his living word then it is evidenced in how much I love other people.
Obedience to His Word is always measured in the depth of love we have in hearts….Romans 5:5 reminds us, “the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts.” The Word of God divides the flesh from the Spiritual things in our lives and that division is perfected in god’s love.
2nd way our hearts are measured:
II. Our Obedience to His Will
“and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
God’s Word is a discerner, a judge of our thinking and our motives. What we do is important but why we do what we do is just as important.
I as a dad want my boys to do the right thing. But what I really want is for them to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing.
We are living in a moral fog in America today. We have a real dilemma that all of us face. Will we let God’s Word be our judge? We may know our Bibles but do we follow the will of god in our lives?
Alvin York was drafted to fight in WWI. He struggled with the idea of having to kill another human being. Her left his beloved home in TN. and all that he knew.
At boot camp in Georgia he was known as a marksman. He was a sharpshooter from hunting in them there hills. But he told his commanding officer of his dilemma of killing. He needed to know clearly what God’ will was for him. They granted him 10 days leave to go home in the hills and figure it out.
He had to decide for himself if God would let him fight. He was given a book the History of the U.S. and he had his Bible. The answer wasn't in the history book. He found his answer in the book with the answers...his Bible.
He obeyed God’s word and shipped off to France to fight the Germans.
In the movie SGT. York the pastor is reading a letter from Alvin to the mom, fiancée, and two siblings. The fiancée Miss Gracie is worried that something might happen to Alvin.
Mom says, “Alvin’s in good hands, the Lord takes care of those who are believing in Him.”
We need to decide if we believe that or not. Is America going to follow the will of the Lord, by being obedient to His Word or should we just let the ways of the world continue to infiltrate and pollute our lives, homes and children?
We need to decide as a church what sort of church we will be. Will we be like so many other churches and fail, to reach the next Generations, not pass on the Godly heritage that has made this country great.
Are we so interested in keeping everything the same that we continue to watch the moral decay around us? Will we not stand and be the beacon on the hill? I ask you when will America turn back and follow the will of the one who founded our country to begin with? When will we acknowledge our dependence on the Holy God Jehovah and quit following the prophets of worldliness and political correctness!
We have followed our will for too long and willfully surrendered too much territory and tragically too much of our own hearts to things that will never satisfy.
That’s a word that isn’t used much anymore; surrender. We either surrender a part of our heart to the world, or all of our hearts to the Lord. The way the will of God works is...all to Jesus I surrender. Our hearts, our will is measured in length by who we
surrender our hearts too. How far will we go to follow His will?
Conclusion: October 8, 1918 in the Argonne Forest Alvin C. York was in the battle that would measure his heart forever.
America entered WWI near the end. But in that forest something amazing happened. Corporal York saw many of his unit killed, and oinned down by machine gun nests on the hill.
The enemy had much territory and had dug in those trenches. Alvin York, a nobody from the hills of TN. ordered his men to stay there and watch some of the prisoners they had captured. He crawled up the hill and systematically took over the machine gun nests, killed 25 enemy soldiers, and captured 132 Germans.
His commanding officer asked him, why? Knowing his firm surrender to the Word and the Will of God.
He simply said, “Those guns were killing hundreds maybe thousands and there weren’t nothing anyone could do but stop those guns.”
He killed to save lives…I ask you church what’s our motive for being a church? Why are we here?
I’ve struggled with that question all week with God.
Here’s my personal answer. I’m going to be the pastor, the preacher God wants me to be. I’m going to follow His Word and His will.
You have to answer that question personally also.
Because that’s how God measures our hearts.
How deep is your love for Him?
How long will you follow Him?
PRAY
