Well, it's our second week on a series about the Bible, the uniqueness of the Bible.
Last week we talked about the authenticity of the Bible.
How did we even get the Bible?
Where did it come from?
How did we get these books?
We talked about that last week.
And today we're going to talk about the power of the Bible.
What can this book do?
Hebrews 4 12, that we just read.
Let me read again.
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.
So point number one is this the Bible is historical answers.
Forty years ago when I was a boy, I grew up on Mr.
Rogers.
What you grew up on, you grew on some show.
I grew up on Mr.
Rogers.
That was the show I grew up on, always watching.
I loved how he always came into his house and he would change his shoes and put on the sweater.
I love the change.
I still change my shoes like five times a day.
You should have a pair of shoes for every part of the day.
I just firmly believe that thing came from Mr.
Rogers.
Mr.
Rogers always said, you are special just the way you are.
Right?
That's what he said over and over again.
You are special just the way you are.
Now, years later, some critics came along and they said that Mr.
Rogers was placating kids.
He was placating young people.
He was promoting laziness.
He was creating entitled millennials.
So if you're wondering where it came from, you know, it's old people would say, oh, it came from Mr.
Rogers' fault.
That's where it happened.
But we have to ask, like, what did Mr.
Rogers actually mean?
What did he mean?
We can't just project what we think he meant on top of his words.
What did he actually mean at that time to those people?
We have to ask, like, what else did Mr.
Rogers teach?
What is the context of this that he said?
And then it's much more likely that we would conclude something like Mr.
Rogers was saying that you have worth just as you are beyond or more profoundly than your achievements.
That's much more likely contextual once we think about Mr.
Rogers as a whole.
Now I love a Bible study.
I love a discussion.
I love to open up the Bible, read a verse, and what does this mean to you?
And what does this mean to you?
And let's share, let's open up our heart, what does this mean to you, right?
We're gonna do a.
But there has to be a question before that.
We have to read the Bible and understand the Bible through the lens of what did God intend to say?
We can't just project everything that we think or feel on top of it.
Meaning this, we read the Bible, right?
We read it in church, maybe you read on your own, you read a devotional, we read the Bible, and then we ask, what did God intend for this to say to those people at that time?
Now that can be tough.
That might take some studying.
Maybe you need a study Bible, maybe you need a commentary, maybe you need a little help for that to figure that out, but that's an important step because then only then can we ask, what does it mean to me?
Because the Bible can never mean something it was never meant to mean.
Our job is to say the context, the history, the literary style, the setting, who is this person who's writing it, and then we can say, what does it mean to me?
This is the difference between exegesis and homilytics.
You can use these words this week, impress your other friends, especially with a Christian friend, you know, make them feel like they go to a really shallow church, you go to really deep, profound church.
We were talking about exegesis in our church.
You know, you can use these words.
Here's what these words mean.
Exegesis is what did this passage mean to those people at that time?
Exegesis is the work of studying that, of figuring that out.
What does this mean to these people at that time from this person who's speaking it or writing it?
Now, homilytics, a lot of times homilytics is used more like with preaching, it's a term used in preaching or homiletical bridge.
Homilytics is given that exegesis, what it meant to those people at that time, given that, let's bridge it over to me, 2025 and Marietta, what does that mean for me today?
So there's a bridge from what did it mean then, exegesis, and then that homiletical bridge over to you, what does this mean for you now?
You're doing that process all the time.
When you're in a Bible study or a small group or a devotion, but that whole process is really needed.
Don't just skip the first step and just project everything you want the Bible to mean for you.
You need to first ask that exegesis question.
Yesterday morning, this really came home for me.
I was out hiking up the back of Kennesaw Mountain.
I was about halfway up, pretty secluded trail.
I look up, there's a 20-year-old young lady hiking down with a little dog.
And as I get near, we're about to cross each other.
She steps to the side, she pulls her dog toward her, and she says, Hey Russ.
And so I look up.
I don't know her, but I figure, well, she must come to redeem her.
So I stop, I look her in the eyes, I say, Good morning.
I said, How are you?
And she was terrified.
Didn't know me at all.
And this was the point that I realized that her dog's name was Russ.
Which means that I'm a creepy old man on a secluded hiking trail, looking a 20-year-old girl in the eyes, saying, Good morning, how are you?
Now, she should could have said, hey gus, like I'm open to that at this point.
I've been reviewing it in my head.
There it was definitely an us.
It was either ru hey rus or hey gus pulling her dog to the side.
So let's think about this.
I hear hey Russ, which I took to mean, hey Pastor Russ, you don't know me, but I know you and I go to your church and I love your church so much, and I want you to stop and talk to me pastorally on this secluded wooded trail.
That's what I took it to mean.
What she meant by hey Russ was, hey Russ, my dog, let's let this old guy through.
That's what she meant.
Now, I can't project what I meant on top of what she said.
What she said has original meaning from her in that context.
So I don't get to say, well, my meaning is what is true.
What is true is what she meant as the speaker.
That's exegesis.
It is exegesis to say what did she mean when she said this in the original context.
Now, to homiletical bridge over to me in 2025, Marietta, if I was to learn from this young lady, hey Rust, and I was like, oh, what are the lessons for me?
I could say something like, Well, be polite but careful when on a secluded trail.
Like that would be a lesson I could learn from what she did and what she said.
I also learned this week about the Kassa people in India.
I don't know if you know about these people, their land is mountainous, it's gorgeous, it's one of the wettest places on earth.
And the construction of bridges over all these rivers and creeks was very, very difficult.
So they learned that they could plant a rubber fig tree on each side of the river and let the roots grow out, slowly merging the roots together, tie them together, and they would have a living bridge.
This is actually a really, really good metaphor and illustration for us when we think about reading the Bible.
That it's a living bridge, because the word is living and active, of what did it mean to them at that time, 2,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago, sometimes more in the Old Testament.
Now, the living bridge over to me, homilytical bridge, what does it mean for me and Marietta right now?
I think there's two bridges, really, when we think about it.
The first bridge is them to us.
That's what I just covered.
That's that homilytic.
Exegesis, bridge it over, bridge them to us.
And we're asking those questions.
What did this mean to those people at that time?
And then we're saying, how does this fit into the biblical narrative as a whole?
Like every part of the scripture is part of a bigger story, so how does this fit into that?
And now we've done that work, we've done that study.
What does it mean to me?
What is it saying to me?
So we have that first bridge, 2,000 years ago to today.
But then there's another bridge, there's a second bridge, it's gonna be much more difficult.
We're much more resistant to this bridge, and this is the bridge from the head to the heart.
The second bridge is from the head to the heart, and we need to meditate the scriptures into us.
That's not just intellectual ascent, it's not just information, but we're actually learning something, and we want it to be more than a thought, we want it to be more than just information, we want it to get into the core of who we are.
So we might ask or journal or pray questions like, what does this say about God as He's my creator and my Savior?
What does this say about me?
About my created worth?
What does it say about my sinful condition?
What does it say about my need of God's grace in Jesus?
How can my heart trust more in God's goodness to me in Jesus?
So we learn something in our minds, we bridge it to our hearts.
Point number two is this the Bible works in us with a surgeon's precision.
Back to our verse, Hebrews 4.12.
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul, spirit, of joints, and marrow, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
All three of our girls came into the world by C-section.
That might be too much information for you.
It's true.
We all gathered in a surgery room, five or ten people in there, and my wife would be on the table there, and they they'd say, Well, you know, you can stand up by her head, and they'd have a sheet up by the belly, halfway up, they'd have a sheet up, and they'd say, Would you like to watch?
No, I really don't want to watch you cut my wife open.
That's not something I need to see.
Um, and so I would sit down right at her or her head, I'd be right next to her, and the surgeon three times just would slice her open.
Cut her open.
Reach in and grab a baby.
That's wild.
Pull a baby out into the world, and then carefully stitch her up.
What an amazing process.
What surgeons can do, right?
He took a sharp tool and with precision cut.
And equal precision, it appealed.
This verse in Hebrews is about a people, it's written to a people that they're gonna give up on living a strong faith.
That's the exegesis.
They're giving up.
I'm gonna give up living on strong faith.
That's what the writer's writing to them, and he's writing to them in these truths of, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's worth it.
Stay strong, stay strong.
And he's cutting into them.
The truth cuts into us.
It gets to the area of false belief, it gets to the area of sinfulness, it gets to the bad motive, the bad behavior, and it speaks to that, right?
It convicts, it challenges, and then it corrects, and then equally it comforts and it appeals.
It's powerful, living and active.
Point number three is this the Bible is helpful to me and to you as it is divinely powerful.
It's not just a historical book, it's a personal book, and it's divinely powerful.
Right?
The Hebrews 4, 12 is that it has the power to divide soul and of spirit.
This isn't a verse teaching, uh, let's let's decipher the difference between soul and spirit.
There's other verses for that.
This is much more poetic in language.
The writer's saying the scriptures can get into the inmost part of you.
The inner part of you, your thinking and your motives, and your intentions.
Right?
We could say that the Bible has effective power.
It has power to get in us and affect us.
A month ago, my wife bought two new lamps.
She got them shipped to the house.
I forget, I think she was at work that day or something, and she texted me.
I said, Did the lamp, I see the lamps got there, and there's two big boxes on the porch.
And so I pulled them out.
I was gonna be the good husband, so I opened the first box up and I pulled out this new lamp, and it looked just like the old lamp.
I'm looking at them like.
But I replaced the old lamps with the new lamps.
Beautiful lamps, beautiful lamps.
And all the lamps work the same way.
Every lamp works the same way.
Your lamps work the same as mine.
They have no power, right?
New lamp, old lamp, tall, short, it doesn't matter.
They have no power.
They're receivers.
And we're a bit like a lamp.
We submit ourselves to the word of God.
We're not bringing power to generate all this transformation or salvation and of ourselves.
We're submitting ourselves over to say, will you do work in me?
Will you slice me open?
Will you root around in my thoughts the inner being of me?
Will you correct me?
Will you challenge me?
Will you comfort me?
Will you heal me?
The Bible has effective power to do that kind of work.
Look what the Bible says about itself.
God's word imparts life.
Psalm 119.
Psalm 119 says several things.
Also says, God's word is a counselor, God's word is a source of strength, God's word gives peace.
Matthew 13 says, God's word bears fruit.
God's word has power and authority over the demonic.
Luke 4.
God's word builds faith.
Romans 10.
God's word is our source of nourishment.
1 Peter 2.
It's what we feed our souls with.
Point number 4 is this.
Last point.
The Bible is alive for you to treasure.
The Bible always talks about itself as being alive.
It's not just powerful, it's not just information.
It's alive.
It's living.
It's a treasure that's alive.
My family's like most teenager families in the world.
We have Outer Banks playing on the den television, just playing.
Sometimes there's a teenage girl in there, sometimes there's not, but it's just routinely playing.
At first, I thought this show was like a risque 90210.
It's like, oh, this is a more modern hip risque Dawson's Creek, right?
Like that's kind of what I thought it was.
But it is more than that because it's a treasure hunt.
And I love a treasure hunt.
There's treasure maps, there are bad guys, there are real treasures.
They're chasing treasures.
Five seasons, three main treasures, the royal merchant, El Dorado, and the blue crown.
But every treasure is an object.
It's just an object.
It's not relational.
And that's one kind of treasure.
One kind of treasure is an object that has a lot of worth.
And it's one way we can think about the scriptures as a treasure.
But there's another kind of treasure that's relational, that's alive.
And as I was thinking about this week, I remembered the movie.
If you're old like me, you remember Romancing the Stone, 1984?
It's been a while.
That's Jack Colton and Joan Wilder.
I grew up watching this, we had it on VHS tape.
I think this was back when like my dad and I would we would get two VCRs and just like record from Blockbuster, just steal them.
We're just stealing, is what we were doing.
Huge library of VHS tapes at the Mastersons.
And so Michael Douglas is Jack Colton, and they are after a stone, an emerald, a huge green emerald stone.
It's the treasure, it's the stone.
But notice the title, Romancing the Stone.
You can't romance a stone.
Like romancing is relational.
And what we see in the movie is that the real treasure is actually Joan.
The emerald would have never changed Jack.
But Joan did.
Because she was alive.
She was a treasure that was alive.
So she, as being alive, she could correct him.
And she is a little feisty in the movie.
She corrects him, she challenges him, she comforts him.
So we have a treasure, but it's not just like this object treasure that just sits.
We have a treasure that's relational when we come to the scriptures.
It can speak to us.
Two quotes to close us.
The first is by theologian Raymond Brown.
He'll summarize Hebrews 4.12 much better than the last 20 minutes that I did.
Listen to this.
The word not only lives, it works.
It is an effective as well as perpetually relevant word.
Its activity is such that it cannot return void.
It must accomplish his sovereign purposes.
The word is energetic.
It is like a sharp sword cutting its way through this substance or that without any kind of difficulty.
This sword of the word can penetrate deeply into the human heart and mind.
It can scrutinize the unspoken thoughts and hidden conceptions of the heart.
It can reach deep down where, because of Earth's bewildering and preoccupying noises, no other voice can easily be heard.
This word probes more deeply than a mere human voice, however interesting or eloquent.
It goes to the inmost recesses of our spiritual being and brings the subconscious motives to light.
Now, John Calvin, 500 years ago, he summed up the Bible like this.
He said, All scripture, when correctly understood, testifies of Christ.
So he's saying there's a meta story to the Bible.
There's all different parts of the Bible and different types of literary structures, but all of it is telling, is a part of a bigger story of Jesus' rescue for us.
Paul says in the New Testament, all our sin is put upon him who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God.
That means that there's a transfer at the cross, that your sin and failings and inabilities, mine too, are put on the cross and his righteousness is given to us.
So all the forgiveness you ever need, all the righteousness you ever need, all the belovedness to be with God and secure and happy for him to love you is done in Jesus, not in yourself.
Here's what that means when it comes to us talking to the Bible.
You don't have to score keep or scorecard your Bible studies.
That's amazing.
You don't have to feel bad if it's five minutes or no minutes.
You don't have to feel bad if it's been five days or fifty days.
And you don't have to feel more righteous or self-righteous than other Christians because you have deep, long, wonderful Bible studies.
Studying the scriptures gets to be an expression of the belovedness you already have in Jesus.
Isn't that good news?
There's a freedom here.
We don't read our Bible to be approved by God or accepted.
We read our Bible because we're already approved and accepted and delighted in by God in Jesus.
And we're just growing in the wealth of our great and deep identity that we have in Jesus.
Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for the freedom we have in Jesus, that we are not as we should be.
We don't read the Bible enough, we don't study it enough.
And yet you love us as you love your Son.
That we are forever forgiven and forever righteous of Jesus alone.
We thank you that the story of the Scriptures is not for us to do more and work harder.
The stories of the scriptures is for us to surrender more and rest more deeply in Jesus.
Would you help us to want to read the Bible?
Would you help us to treasure it, not for information, but as it is living and active?
And by your Holy Spirit, would you open our hearts to what it would have to say to us?
In Christ's name we pray.
Amen.