Enough Hide and Seek

December 8, 2013 Evening:

Steve Preaching

Title: A Sharp Sword and a Savior Who Knows the Truth

Old Testament Passage: Psalm 53 – God sees and knows

Gospel Passage: Mark 14:66-72 – Peter denies Jesus

Sermon Text: Hebrews 4:12 – We do not experience God's rest by being clever, cynical, or arrogant. Jesus and the Word will find us out.

Sermon Point: There is no point in hiding from Jesus and the Word. May His grace find us and keep us.

[12] For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

You cannot hide from God. His Word is alive, and He will find you out through that good Word.

The Bible is the Word of God. Jesus is the Word made flesh. There is unity between the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is living in us. The Holy Spirit is in us.

It will not be helpful to separate Jesus from the Spirit from the Bible too carefully. There is a great work from God going on inside you as the Word is preached and received. It is a living work from a living God. It is an active work that insists that we not view the Christian life as passive. It is a very sharp and holy work, insisting that God is right even if everyone else thinks that He is wrong. It is a discerning work, making distinctions that are beyond our human capacity to fully comprehend. Can we separate the soul and the spirit? But God can, and His Word will do the work to find the problem and bring healing to the willing child of God.

The Lord cares for us. He disciplines those He loves. He is not a mean Father. But He is a Father. We should be mature children that are ready to respond to the discipline of His Word. He is a surgeon that sees a growth that would harm the body in the depths of the bones of His precious disciple. He will put in the knife and cut out the offending cells. Do we dare object to that life-saving procedure?

No, we agree to the surgery. We also go back for our follow-up appointments to minimize the disfiguring and disability that would come to us by being spiritually lazy.

No act on our part can change the facts as God sees them. We may have learned how to be clever, or even have become used to a pose that could rightly be called cynical or arrogant. But we are not smarter than God. And we do not love as well as God loves.

Our Father is wise. He deserves the respect that should be given to the Uncaused Cause who came to die for us. His Word is a perfect extension of Himself, and that Word has come to us in the depths of our unseen person, that entity that lives beyond the grave. His grace will find us even there. Let us not be too clever in staying in some hiding place imagining the disciplining grace of the Word of God to be something to be rejected.