For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12. “The word of God is living and powerful.” We use that phrase of Scripture on every piece of literature that goes out. I designed a little emblem picturing a Bible with rays going from it, with a sword behind it and this verse encircling it, because the whole key to what God is bringing forth is the word that comes.
It is a Living Word. It is living and it is active and it is sharper than any two-edged sword inasmuch as it pierces into areas which a physical sword could never penetrate. It comes to divide the soul and spirit. It reaches down to the blend that we call a human being, a blend of spirit, soul, and body. It is like the shades of a spectrum: you cannot tell where red ends and purple begins. You cannot tell where yellow ends and red begins when you look at a pure ray of light traveling through a spectrum and it is split open. You see the same thing in a beautifully formed rainbow. Through the diffusion of light, through all of the prisms of moisture in the air, it succeeds in breaking that light down into all of its component colors. Every color is found in white—in a pure white light.
This is exactly what the Word of God does—it brings a clear-cut division between soul and spirit. It is almost impossible for anyone to be exactly accurate where soul-life ends and spirit-life begins, there is such a blend of it. And it is almost impossible to tell where the physical ends and the soul begins. But in the spectrum of it, God brings His word to your heart where it separates the soul and spirit. It divides asunder even of the joints and marrow and is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
A man can go to a psychiatrist and try to open up his heart and discover what is there. At the end of the three years, the psychiatrist says, “Well now, a real fact you must face is that you had a mother. That is the cause of all your trouble.” (Of course that is also the reason the man was there in the first place, but he forgets about that!) This is supposed to be analysis? I am glad to see it is being discarded rapidly. The baby science, psychology, is turning out to be anything but a science in most of its premises.
We have seen that this kind of analysis doesn’t work. But when you come to the Living Word, you are under analysis. Don’t fool yourself for one minute; you are under analysis. Every word that comes seems to slice down deep and show you the component parts. The human blend of the physical, the mental, the soulish, and the spiritual begin to be defined, and we realize how much of the religious effort today is not really worshiping God in spirit and in truth (John 4:24); it is worshiping God in soul and deception. It takes the Living Word to come to your heart to really show you what is phony, what is false about the thing you have been in.
People say, “Hindsight is better,” and that statement is true. The hindsight in this Walk is even more illuminated than the foresight, and this is a prophetic move. This is a time when the future is being unveiled to us by prophecy and by revelation. But as sharp as the future is to us, the past is becoming even sharper in its definition because God is showing us the pit from which we were digged; He is showing us the things within our soul life that are wrong. We have come to a Living Word that takes the whole blend of the human spirit and chops it up; it goes right down to the joints and the marrow, discerns the thoughts and the intentions of the heart, the ulterior motivations that people try to present as valid reasons for why they do things. The ulterior motivations prove to be something other than what they seem on the surface. How many selfish, basic drives pass themselves off as being something beautiful, or something really worthwhile? The Word brings this out very clearly.
Sometimes it is a puzzle as to why certain Scriptures were placed in the Bible where they are. In Hebrews 4:1–11, the writer has brought a beautiful picture of how we labor to enter into that Sabbath rest for the people of God, a rest that God has reserved for us. And as we labor to enter into that, He says (verse 12), “Now, the word of God is quick, it is living, it is powerful, it is sharp, it cuts you right down and lays you open.” You say, “What does that have to do with entering into His rest?” You will never really realize how much wasted energy, misdirected effort, and wrong goals you are involved in, until God slices you down with the Word. This is when you see what is wrong in your thinking, everything that is wrong in your emotions, everything that is wrong in your basic instincts.
People are like seagulls that would keep coming back to the same place and dying, even though nothing is there because of a change in the land mass. There is a blind instinct that they cannot correct. That is how the human race reacts in its fallen state. We keep reverting, generation after generation, to wars, crime, and to all the depravity in the human heart. Only when we get into this Walk do we realize how much of it is wrong.
A little child who is really in this Walk could do a better job of running the United States than our politicians, who have never had the Word cut them down so that they could realize their wrong motivations. What all politicians really need is to open their hearts to God and receive a real Living Word. Then they would realize their corruptness; they would realize all the false starts, the wrong goals, and the blind alleys they have been in. Then they would repent and God could begin to give them wisdom. But if you were to tell our leaders that this is what they need, in their arrogance they would deny it. The human blend is condemned before God as inadequate, insufficient, unworthy, and utterly depraved—the Scriptures have taught us that from the beginning.
When we come into this Walk, the Living Word begins to slice us down. Hebrews goes on to say: And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4:13. Has this Word cut you down recently? Do you find that you are laid open at every service before you are even healed up from the last one? It is like a perpetual operation, like open heart surgery at every service. This is how the Lord deals with your heart. You don’t need anything in this Walk except the Living Word to come to you. It seems to lay open your need to your own understanding, and then it turns around and meets that need. It is living, it is creative, it is active: everything is there.
How does it lay open, “even to the joints and marrow”? How is it able to “judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart”? It slices right down between the soul and the spirit, until we are not just instinctive, emotional creatures reacting in a religious sense, but we come to be sons of God, spirit crying unto Spirit. God is a Spirit; we come to worship Him in spirit, receiving revelation and guidance, being able to move into His omnipotence and His omniscience. We begin with a little measure and then go on until we know even as we are known. This is the beautiful thing of a Walk in the Spirit. This is why we must get out of the old; we must see what it is.
This whole Walk is dependent upon a Living Word coming from God. It has to be more than expositions of truths or sermons that explain the Scripture text; it must be a forthtelling of the Word of God itself. It hits our heart, it digs in, and it does something real to us. It changes everything, and we are laid open like the sacrifices in the Old Testament.
It is a beautiful thing—the Lord cuts us open and we just lie there and bleed. This is the sheer indignity of all indignities: “To think that I came here to worship God, and instead of making me feel good, I go home feeling as if I’ve been in a slaughterhouse.” That is what it was like to worship in the tabernacle in the Old Testament—the Jews must have felt as if they had been to a slaughterhouse, when all of the people brought their sacrifices for sins.
Those priests were probably the most efficient butchers in the world, slicing open the offerings and sacrifices of various kinds. Sometimes we get the idea that the priests were little weaklings. But I believe they were really muscle-men.
I don’t know if you remember the days of the “strong men.” Many were from Germany, and they sold beer or were butchers. It was no mean feat to heave a barrel of beer off the wagon and carry it into a delivery. The butcher was not just a guy with a power saw; he went out and lassoed the bull, killed it, and butchered it. He had to take the hide off, hang it up, and cut the meat, down to the last moo. Then he delivered the meat—and that gave him time to recover for a day or two before he had to go back to slaughtering and dressing animals again! There were some real muscle-men in those trades.
When the time came for sacrifice in the tabernacle, I don’t believe the priests were any weaklings. Imagine what it would be like, handling some bullock that didn’t want to be a sacrifice, especially a burnt offering. They could smell that. The sheep could be led right to the slaughter, but not a goat. A goat has an instinct against death; it can smell it. (The goat was a clean animal and was accepted for the Passover along with the lamb.) Whoever tried to kill a goat that didn’t want to die had a job on his hands!
We may get a false idea of what worship was in the Old Testament. Imagine going to worship in the tabernacle. Can you hear the bleating? sniff the smell? It was like taking a walk through a barnyard. As you come into the tabernacle, you see the animals being slaughtered. The priests are confessing the people’s sins, trying to get God’s favor. There is the stench of the animals being burned as the burnt-offering. All of those things are a part of the scene. All of this is a sacrifice unto the Lord, and a type of Jesus Christ who was to come.
Then you go to the laver where the priest would wash; he has to wash because he is a bloody mess. Then he goes into the Holy Place to worship the Lord. Suddenly everything changes completely. Left outside are the stench and the smell of the sacrifices, all typical of Him, who knew no sin, being made a curse for us. There is nothing pleasant on the outside, but the Holy Place is different. An odor fills the room; the lamps are burning. The altar of incense is coming up before God.
Until you have had the Living Word slice you down and you have met repentance, until you have met the need and the filth of your own heart and Christ has become the substitute, until you have faced the gruesome aspect of your need, you cannot come into the worship of God, the incense of worship and prayers that come up to the Lord. That is what Hebrews 4:12, 13 is talking about.
Now let’s imagine coming to the Holy of Holies. Here we are, standing so close. There is just the curtain on the other side of the room, and on the other side of the curtain is where all the tapestry and the walls are of woven gold thread. This is a masterpiece of creation. As you step inside, you hardly need any light because of the glitter of the gold. There is the Presence of the Lord, symbolized by the Ark of the Covenant, and the shekinah glory of God shining forth from the mercy seat and reflecting off the golden walls. But the floor is earth, solid dirt.
As you stand there, you realize that this is what it was all about. First, the sacrifice and the revelation of your need, and then coming into His presence, into His worship, and finally the presence of God dwelling within you—and yet, the floor is of earth. We will have this treasure in an earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of ourselves (II Corinthians 4:7). Underneath is the human, earthy aspect of our being. We find the sacrifice has been made, the atonement accomplished; we have been redeemed unto God that He may make these earthen vessels His tabernacles, His Holy of Holies, so that He will dwell within us. We will be His temple; He will be our God (Revelation 21:3). He will walk up and down in the midst of us and perform His function to the earth because we have become a habitation of God by the Spirit (Revelation 1:13; Ephesians 2:22).
Do you wonder why you come to services just to have the Living Word slice you down, to find yourself made bare, exposed to God? There will be no great revelation of the Lord to you or in you, until you are first exposed to what you really are and what God wants to make of you, and you submit. “Here I am, Lord. Let the Living Word slice me down. Let it lay me open. Let it separate between the soul and spirit, so I may become a pure spiritual being, worshiping God. Reach down and know the thoughts and the intentions of my heart. Lord, deal with my motivation. Lay me out here.”
He was that living sacrifice delivered up for us, that we might come and present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto Him, which is our mode of worship; not conformed to this age, but transformed by the renewing of our minds, to know the good, acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1, 2). And that is what He is doing with us, through His Living Word.