The Word Cuts Both Ways: An Exposition Of Hebrews 4:11-16

The Word Cuts Both Ways

Hebrews 4:11-16

The passage we are studying this morning is often cut out from the Book of Hebrews and preached by itself. This isn’t improper as it adds to our understanding of the power and discernment of the Word of God. We tend to equate “Word of God” with the Bible as the infallible and sufficient Word of God for our salvation. I would certainly affirm both. But I also feel that this passage becomes even richer when we understand it within the context of the Book of Hebrews. Let us not discover this better understanding. turn your Bibles to Hebrews 4:11-16 and let us read the text.

The Book of Hebrews should best be understand as a sermon rather than a letter. It is also helpful to remember that this sermon would have been read by the elder of the church or by someone who could read. A good reader would add the gestures and tome to the letter to make the hearer sound as if the writer of the sermon was physically present. Speaking and writing are processes by the brain differently. Speaking is rich because the speaker uses these gestures and inflection of voice to add meaning to the words themselves. A writer has to add these cues to a written document to tell us this information such as: “He pleaded with them....” But there is no rewind button on speech, at least not in the days before sermons could be recorded. But we are blessed to have this book in writing because it is a very rich book. But even the writer admits that it can be difficult to understand. The use of repetitions in the sermon addresses the lack of a rewind button. The author knows that this sermon will be spoken and writes it the way he does.

The Book of Hebrews is written in excellent Greek. It is highly structured and uses what grammarians call :discourse markers.” these markers are used to connect the previous thought to the next one in some matter or another. This provides for a rich context to the passage. For example, verse 11 uses the discourse marker “therefore.” We automatically process this marker to tell us that the following words are a conclusion to the previous words. In this case, it tells us how and why we are to respond to what has just been said in chapter 4. In this passage, The author uses the 95th Psalm to warn the readers of the dangers of falling into unbelief. this unbelief will cause one to fall short of the Sabbath rest (heaven) that awaits for those who persevere in the faith. In the Old Testament, the wilderness generation for the most part fell into unbelief and perished short of entering into the lesser rest of Canaan land promised to Israel. So we need to understand the passage we are studying this morning is connected to this theme.

Verse 11 then tells us that we must be most diligent in order to enter this rest that God has prepared for the believers. The warning of the dangers of unbelief goes back to Hebrews 2:1. The author repeats this warning throughout the sermon, including here. The exhortations to remain faithful unto the end serves as a warning that the Christian can fall short of heaven and perish even as the wilderness generation. This causes those who hold to the doctrine of eternal security (Once saved, always saved) some pause to think. Can a believer commit apostacy? If it were not possible, the writer to Hebrews would not have argued this way but would argue it in the sense that if you backslide, one’s current life will be miserable and one would lose his heavenly reward although that person would be saved as through fire. It would be deceptive to make an appeal based upon an impossibility. One could say that such a person was never truly a Christian, but that is another argument for another day. We need to take the warnings of Hebrews seriously. the conclusion is that the one who perseveres in faith enters the Sabbath rest. The one whose faith fails perishes eternally.

What does it mean to be diligent? In other words, “What shall we do to make sure of our salvation? there are many, like John Wesley, who tell us we should be diligent into attending to what is called “the means of grace.” One of these is attending to the public worship. Hebrews would agree with this when it tells us to “not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the habit of some is.” Other means of grace include prayer, fasting, communion, and others. The context here tells us that the Word of God is a means of grace. We see the connection here in the use of the discourse marker “for” at the beginning of verse 12 which provides us additional information on what diligence is. “For the Word of God is living and powerful. It is sharper than any two-edged sword. But what is meant by the Word of God here? We have already affirmed that the Bible is the Word of God. But the Word of God is also a person. This person is Jesus Christ. The idea of the Word of God links back to the very beginning of the Book of Hebrews. The subject and main verb of the very long first sentence in the book is “God spoke.” The rest of that first sentence tells us to whom God spoke, when God spoke, and how God spoke. Then Hebrews begins to tell us about Jesus which is God’s final word to us. God speaks to us in the things Jesus taught us, and he also speaks to us by what He has done and who He is. Later on, Hebrews tells us that God speaks also by the Holy Spirit.