Lesson for September 21, 2014
The Book of Hebrews
Chapter 4:10-13
Verse 10
“For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.”
The act of resting means that God is doing all the blessing and you are doing nothing to earn or deserve it. You cannot work for blessing. Once a believer understands that God’s entire program, policy and protocol is based on grace, he can cease from his efforts to coerce God into blessing him.
Since God rested from His works, He also expects the same from us. We do not glorify God by our good deeds. We glorify God by our divine production which is accomplished by God the Holy Spirit through us. Therefore because God the Holy Spirit is doing all the work, He gets all the glory. And we get His blessing! What a great and simple plan. God does the sowing, we do the reaping!
Verse 11
“Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall, through following the same example of disobedience.”
Be diligent means to be motivated. Once again entering the rest of God means utilization of the Faith-Rest Technique, occupation with Christ and a relaxed mental attitude toward God, self, others and circumstances.
Lest anyone fall means sliding into reversionism. Reversionism begins with negative volition toward doctrine which starts a series of conditions that eventually produce a reversionistic life. The first of these is scar tissue of the soul through the neglect of Bible doctrine and your spiritual life. From scar tissue it goes rather rapidly to demon influence (a believer cannot be demon-possessed). Demonic influence is human viewpoint and/or false doctrine entering the soul. This “blacks out” the soul; so we call this stage of reversionism “blackout of the soul.” By this time a believer is looking at life strictly from human viewpoint. This is about as far down as you can go, spiritually. And this brings major divine discipline. Self-induced misery begins at the point of emotional revolt of the soul, but divine discipline comes in three stages: 1) the warning stage 2) the intensified stage and 3) the dying stage. The same example of disobedience is a reference to the Exodus generation who were obstinate, which is the type of disobedience referred to in this verse.
Reversionism is the condition of a believer who is negative toward and neglects Bible doctrine and as a result has stopped growing spiritually. It is failure to follow God’s plan of executing the Christian Way of Life. The reversionist is a believer in perpetual carnality, out of fellowship with God and controlled by his sin nature. If you are not advancing toward spiritual maturity as a Christian, you are retreating into reversionism.
Verse 12
“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.”
The Doctrine of Inspiration
- “Inspiration” means “God-breathed” (II Timothy 3:16). This indicates mechanics. The mechanics start with God the Holy Spirit, and move to the human writers, and eventuate in the Canon of Scripture. This was accomplished over a long period of time, starting with Moses and ending with John in 96 AD. The Scriptures are the thinking of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:16) God the Holy Spirit communicated to human writers His complete and coherent message. (II Samuel 23:2,3; Isaiah 59:21; Jeremiah 1:9; Matthew 22:42,43; Mark 12:36; Acts 4:24-26; 25:28) Then the human authors of Scripture put this information in writing. They wrote without waiving their human intelligence, their vocabulary, their personality, their individuality, or their personal feelings. God’s complete message to man was perfectly recorded with perfect accuracy in the original Scripture.
- The origin of Scripture is not human viewpoint. God the Holy Spirit uses human agency and human language. (II Peter 1:20-21)
- The Word of God is also said to be the mind of Christ, therefore the absolute criterion for believers. (I Corinthians 2:16; Psalm 138:2)
- Consequently, the Bible as the mind of Christ existed in eternity past prior to being written in human form. (Proverbs 8)
- Pre-canon revelation from God occurred through the Holy Spirit. (II Samuel 23:2; Ezekiel 2:2; 8:3; 11:1; Micah 3:4; Hebrews 3:7.
- There are four categories of Old Testament revelation: 1) God’s spoken word 2) dreams as in Genesis 15:12; 31:10-13; Numbers 12:6; Daniel 10:9; 3) visions as in Isaiah 1:1 and 6:1; 1 Kings 22:19; 4) angelic teaching as in Deuteronomy 33:2; Psalm 68:17; Acts 7:53; Galatians 3:19.
- The doctrine of inspiration includes a number of things. a) The Bible teaches accurately the historical past before any historical records were kept. b) While the Bible is not a textbook, it gives accurate historical information about ancient history which is not intended to be a complete history but its accuracy is guaranteed by God the Holy Spirit. c) The Bible contains many laws for individuals in a nation. These can be summarized under the concept of the Laws of Divine Establishment. d) Some portions of the Scriptures contain direct quotations from God. The doctrine of inspiration guarantees that the commands and the quotations were properly and accurately recorded just as they were given from God to man. e) There is also some devotional literature in the Bible: the Psalms, for example. They are related to the experiences of human life, and they portray doctrines pertinent to us today. f) The Bible also records falsehoods. The Bible does not condone these falsehoods but instead it indicates that they were recorded accurately. g) Inspiration involves both prophetic materials as well as their complete accuracy. We do not have a complete and detailed account of everything in the future but we do have enough so that we can put together a picture for the believer’s life in eternity.
Bible doctrine is alive and has always been and always will be pertinent to our life. It gives us capacity for life and without that capacity for life there cannot be any happiness. Happiness depends on capacity for life. The word powerful means four things: 1) Bible doctrine is effective in producing spiritual maturity and occupation with Christ 2) Bible doctrine produces motivation for execution of the Christian Way of Life 3) Bible doctrine is efficient in getting believers into spiritual maturity 4) Bible doctrine is effectual. That means that Bible doctrine is intended to bring all believers to spiritual maturity.
Many people think the Bible is just a lot of nice sweet words, stories and poems. And many ministers use certain ecclesiastical phrases that are impossible to understand but sound very “holy.” But the objective of the Bible is to be understood. Every part of the Word of God is important, every part is effective and it is to be used as an offensive weapon (sword) against Satan’s world system and its human viewpoint thinking.
Piercing means penetrating or breaking through. And it means penetrating so as to separate. The Word of God as a sword is meant to reach the soul of the individual believer. It distinguishes between what you are in the soul and what you are in the human spirit. In the original creation of mankind the human spirit was the basis of fellowship with God. It was the basis of having a relationship with God, and when man sinned the human spirit was destroyed immediately and man was spiritually dead with no possibility of having fellowship with God. So the unbeliever is minus a human spirit. (Jude 19; 1 Corinthians 2:14) Since the unbeliever does not possess a human spirit it is the ministry of God the Holy Spirit at the point of hearing the Gospel to take Gospel information and make it a reality. Then positive volition toward the Gospel causes the person to believe in Jesus Christ, so that even the very basis for our salvation is not understandable until God the Holy Spirit has made it a reality. So the Holy Spirit must act as a human spirit in the area of the unbeliever understanding spiritual phenomena. When a person believes in Christ, God gives them a human spirit.
The human spirit is the target for storage in the function of learning and applying doctrine. When a believer hears Bible doctrine, God the Holy Spirit makes that doctrine a reality, but our positive volition transfers it to our human spirit where that knowledge becomes spiritual knowledge (usable knowledge).The spiritual IQ of a believer is determined by the amount of doctrine in his human spirit. Understanding and application function only when a believer is filled with the Holy Spirit. The Bible can define as well as give us the answer to every problem in life.
When the Bible makes distinctions, no matter how small, no matter how great, they are extremely important to each one of us as believers. God has designed us as priests, we are to represent ourselves on the earth, and we are to be spiritually self-sustaining. That is the objective. God not only wants us to be spiritually self-sustaining but He wants us to have the greatest possible happiness. Great happiness was designed for each of us in eternity past. So the Bible recognizes the most minute distinctions. Just as there is a difference between the joint bone and what the bone contains by way of marrow, so there is a great distinction between certain doctrines in life.
Judge is the Greek word“kritikos”meaning critic. So Bible doctrine becomes our critic or our judge. It tells us when we are right and when we are wrong, it tells us when we are headed in the right direction or the wrong direction, it keeps us constantly aware of what we should be doing and should not be doing, and what our attitude should be regarding every person and circumstance in life. The Bible is a critic of everything we think and therefore it becomes a critic of our motivation.
The word intentions means motivations formed from what you think. The heart is where you do your thinking (not the pumping organ). It is referring to the frame of reference, memory center, vocabulary and categories, conscience, and norms or standards. Bible doctrine, then, is our very life and it should be the most important factor in our lives after salvation.
Verse 13
“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.”
Verse 13 means that every thought you have ever had, every function of the soul that has ever existed, was known to God in eternity past, long before these functions of the soul actually occurred in your life. So God is aware of every true and false thought, false motive, of how much doctrine there is in your soul, and it is God’s desire to pour out blessing into that soul. But He cannot “pour” where there is no doctrinal capacity in the soul.
All doctrine comes from God and it is doctrine that makes the difference in our lives. Our accountability before God is based on what we have in our soul. And God the Father is no respecter of persons; any believer can fill his soul with Bible doctrine. (I Samuel 16:7; II Samuel 14:14; Acts 10:34; Job 27:23, 24) Doctrine is His Word and He is impressed with His Word in our souls. And when we reach spiritual maturity God pours out the blessings into our lives. It is doctrine in the soul that becomes the capacity for life. That is when God is able to pour and pour and pour, and that is when life becomes exactly what God wanted it to be for us – we have reached the point of glorifying Him, and that is why we are here.