CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Hebrews 4:12. Word of God.—Either
(1) the personal Word, the Λόγος; or
(2) the revealed word, to which the writer has been appealing; or
(3) the spoken word of God, which may come to men through human agents now. Probably the second is the more preferable explanation, because to this writer Scripture is constantly thought of as a direct Divine utterance. It is not simply the written word, but that word as the voice for every age of the living God. Quick.—Alive, active. Soul.—ψυχή, the animal soul, spirit; πνεῦμα, that part of our nature in which the Divine Spirit works. Not a separating of these things from one another, but a dividing so as to lay them both bare to view. “The awakening and alarming of the conscience, the felt opening up, the dissection of the ultimate principles of the moral and spiritual life, is the effect of the word here intended” (Webster and Wilkinson). For the sword-figure see Isaiah 49:2; Ephesians 6:17; Revelation 1:16; and Wis. 18:15-16. Joints and marrow.—A very strong figure. Dividing the joints or limbs from the body, and piercing through the very bone to the marrow. “The divine commination is of the most deadly punitive efficacy.”
Hebrews 4:13. Naked.—Or laid bare; as the throat of a victim is bared for sacrifice; Greek, “to take by the neck,” as do wrestlers. Perhaps the better meaning is “fully exposed to view.” No self-deceptions can hide the truth from God. Farrar suggests that the figure may be taken from the anatomic examination of victims by the priests, which was called momoskopia, since it was necessary that every victim should be “without blemish.” But he prefers the usage of Philo, which decides the meaning to be “laid prostrate” for examination. R.V. “naked and laid open.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 4:12-13
The Searching Power of the Living Word.—This passage asserts the searching, testing power of the Word of God. Observe the connection in which it stands. Beware of falling from the Christian profession. Beware of unbelief and presumption. Your dangers are many and great. The Divine observations and testings are most exact and searching. “Thou knowest my downsitting and my uprising; Thou understandest my thought afar off.” “Quick,” with either the idea of enduring or of activity. The Word is in actual operation; it is not a thing of mere possibilities. “Sharper than two-edged sword”; the Bible idea of keenness—perfect discrimination. “Soul and spirit”; material and spiritual life. “Joints and marrow,” or bone and marrow; metaphor from the bodily frame. “Thoughts and intents”; mere ideas, and ideas when formed into resolves; metaphor from the intellectual life. Notice the impression of present, perfect, subtle searching which is produced by the terms of the text. No language could have been more effective.
I. What is this Word of God.—Divest the mind of the idea that the Scriptures are chiefly or only referred to. That is the common use of the text as quoted in extempore Christian prayers. At one time the term Word was a much more important expression than it is now. To the early Christians, and in early Church philosophy, the term Word, or Logos, had its own special significance. We know how much St. John makes of it in the prologue of his gospel; and he wrote at a time when a half-Jewish and half-pagan philosophy was getting influence in the Church. As it is used in Scripture the term includes:
1. The conditions under which our first parents had their rights to Paradise. The Word of God given to Adam. The mode of communication we cannot now know. Somehow the thought and will of God were intelligently conveyed to their minds.
2. The manifestations of God and His will to men in the patriarchal age. The modes of communication being visions, dreams, angelic appearances, living voices—all being Words of God. Illustrate by the Jewish idea of the Memra, as the Second Person of the Trinity.
3. The special disclosure of the Divine mind concerning a particular people. The modes of communication being by a mediator, Moses, and by a ceremonial worship.
4. The human life on earth of the Son of God, whom we call the Incarnate Word. This is, in the very highest sense, the Word of God.
5. The active energy of the Divine Spirit working in the hearts of men. So far as it is revealing and teaching it becomes the Word of God.
6. The Written Word, as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Through printing and education this has come to be the most effective form of the Word. From this sketch of the forms of the Word, it may be shown that it is essentially this: the manifestation of God to men; the communication of the thought and will of God to men; the translation of the mind of God into some form of language that men can understand. It is affirmed of nature, “There is no speech nor language, (yet) their line is gone out into all the earth.” There are more or less perfect degrees in which words utter thoughts. They serve both to convey and to conceal our meaning. So in God’s Word there are different degrees of clearness. We find it given under a variety of conditions, and in forms appropriate to each condition. The Word in Christ, and taught by His Spirit, represents the highest form of Divine communication.
II. How does the Word of God search and try men?—The Word, we have seen, is God bringing Himself into such relations with men as men can realise. The Word is God. It is essential to God that He must be a searching power wherever He comes. This is affirmed in Scripture, and by the experience of believers. “All things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” What is true of God Himself is true of all modes of His Word.
1. The Written Word. It searches by the force of its commands, examples, counsels, warnings—wonderfully fitting into all the circumstances of life. Sinning man dreads the Scriptures.
2. The Incarnate Word. Searches by the contact of His purity and perfection. No man can fail to admit the moral perfection of Christ. A man feels it. All the power is exerted which attends on putting the standard, the model, beside the copy. Jesus is the one and only model of a man who reached heaven by His own goodness.
3. The Living Word, or Holy Spirit. This is declared to be the effect of His inworking—He “convinces of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment”; and this is His constant operation in the Christian soul. This searching quality ought to attach to the preached Word: it does whenever it is really the Word of God.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 4:12-13. The Divine Thought-reader.—“All things are naked and laid open before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Much is now made of the skill in thought-reading which seems to be the special endowment of particular persons. The assertion is made that God is, in an absolute and unqualified sense, the “discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” If we can explain man’s thought-reading power, the explanation will help us to understand the perfect thought-reading power of God.
I. If thought-reading be an unusual gift or endowment, a particular form of human genius, it is a Divine bestowment, or rather trust; and God cannot give what He does not possess: what God possesses constitutes Him what He is. He has this genius of thought-reading in a perfection of which man’s limited power can give no adequate idea. Man’s power is in body limitations.
II. If thought-reading be dependent on sympathy, it must be a Divine attribute. Familiar to men long before “thought-reading” was heard of was the power of persons in close sympathy—as friends, or husbands and wives—to understand each other without the use of words. Sympathetic friends constantly know what friends are thinking. With God we associate the revelations of a perfect sympathy.
III. If thought-reading be a result of knowledge of mental laws, God has the perfect knowledge. Thinking is entirely in the control of laws. And every man’s thoughts are the strict operation of laws, which always work as they do in any one case. God knows what we think, for He knows all the working of the thought-laws.
The Testing-power of the Logos.—Show how the discerning of the thoughts and intents of the heart is ascribed to God. That such discerning is characteristic of the Incarnate Word, or Gospel; of the Written Word, or Scriptures; and of the Living Word, or Spirit. It ought to be a marked characteristic of the preached Word, or ministry.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 4
Hebrews 4:12. The Double-edged Knife.—The Jewish priest required a strong and skilful hand to do the ordinary work of his holy calling. It needed both strength and skill to lay the victim on the altar, to guide the sharp two-edged sacrificial knife straight through the carcass, till the very backbone was severed, the whole laid bare, and the very joints and marrow exposed and separated. For this reason (as well as because he was a type of Him who is perfect), because such persons ordinarily are deficient in bodily strength, no deformed person could be high priest, he could not do the work required of him. There is a knife sharper than that two-edged sword, and a hand to guide its blade and apply its edges and point stronger and surer than the Jewish priest’s. That knife is the word of God: it is a “living” word; it has a power to lay open hearts far greater than that sacrificial knife had to lay bare the bodies of the sacrifice; its edge is sharper than that of the two-edged sword; and when driven home and directed by the hand of the Almighty Spirit, “it pierces even to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow, the soul and spirit,” and lays bare “the thoughts and intents of the heart.”—W. W. Champneys, M.A.
The Force of Conscience.—A man who was remarkable for his ignorance and wickedness was visiting some of his relations on the last day that our mission-tent was used. They tried to persuade him to come to our closing meeting; but finding their entreaties prevailed nothing, one of them asked if he would go, provided some one would give him a sum of money. He answered, “Yes, he would do anything for money.” “Would he go for a shilling?” “Would he go for a meal’s victuals?” “Yes.” “Then I will give you one.” A loaf was then broken in two, and one half of it, with some butter and cheese, was deposited at a cottage near the tent, it being understood that the man was to have it immediately the service was over. This being done, the man came to the tent. My sermon, being founded upon “The end of all things is at hand,” etc., turned a good deal upon the future judgment, and made way for some remarks from Mr. Pocock, in the course of which he described the Judge descending, the judgment set, and the books opened; and then remarking that every word, and every work, and every secret thing would then be exposed, he exclaimed, “Who was it at such a time opened his neighbour’s potato-pit, and deprived a poor family of their stock of winter provisions? There he is; bring him forward—what! is that he?” etc. Conscience now smote this man; he had been guilty of this very crime, and, filled with alarm, went home without his victuals. The next morning he went to the woman whose potato-pit he had robbed, and confessed his crime, adding, “Mr. Pocock wouldn’t ha’ knawed I, but my hankercher weren’t tied like anybody else’s!” What is specially remarkable in this case is, that Mr. Pocock knew nothing of the man, nor had he ever heard of such a circumstance as a potato-pit being opened and robbed in the neighbourhood; but he simply hit upon the observation as involving a general thing, without the slightest idea of any individual case. Surely there was something more than chance in all this. Who can tell but this very occurrence saved this poor fellow from the gallows?—Memoirs of the Rev. John Pyer.
Hebrews 4:13. Examining the Entrails.—The Greek word here is taken from the practices that accompanied the offering of animals in sacrifices. It is said that, in ancient nations, when the animal that was to be sacrificed had been killed, the priest examined microscopically all the entrails and bowels, and watched certain spots or symptoms, from which he argued success or misfortune in the enterprise in which the offerer was embarked; and therefore the apostle says, that all things are as clearly noted by God as the entrails of the victim were laid bare and examined by the priest.—Dr. Cumming.