2025-11-02 Sermon Notes - Daniel Lyons' Notes

type:
  - "[[Sermon Notes|Sermon Notes]]"
speaker: "[[Archibald Allison]]"
date: 2025-11-02
location: "[[Emmaus Orthodox Presbyterian Church]]"
passage: Hebrews 4:12
sermon series:
sermon link:
subjects:
title: God's Word is Living and Powerful
takeaways:

Speaker	Archibald Allison
Date	2025-11-02
Location	Emmaus Orthodox Presbyterian Church
Passage	Hebrews 4:12
Title	God's Word is Living and Powerful
Takeaways	[object Object]
Subjects	[object Object]

💡Big Idea

Takeaways and Next Steps

📖Bible Passage

Hebrews 4.12

For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Points

The Reformation was a sola scriptura movement

the movement was grounded on the word of God
- otherwise the reformers would have never split from the Roman Catholic church
The reformers taught these five truths:

The authority of scripture

The word of God has the authority of God.
- Supreme authority. Every other authority is subordinate
- The authority of scripture is not derived from the Church or from experts.
The church merely recognizes the authority of scripture

Scripture is infallible and inerrant

• Infallible: This term means incapable of making mistakes or being wrong. When applied to a text or authority, it suggests that it cannot err in its pronouncements or teachings. It implies a guarantee against fundamental error, particularly in matters of faith or morals.

• Inerrant: This term means containing no errors or falsehoods. When applied to a text, especially in a theological context (e.g., biblical inerrancy), it specifically asserts that the text is completely free from any mistakes, inaccuracies, or contradictions, including historical, scientific, or factual details.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, that each person who belongs to God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Self-Authenticating and Self-Interpreting

Self-Authenticating: The bible authenticates itself.
Self-interpreting: The bible interprets itself.
- The Bible is sufficiently clear.
  - This refutes what the Roman Catholic church taught which is that you cannot understand the Bible without the church telling you what it means.

The reformers liberated the bible

The Roman Catholic church forbid the common layperson from owning their own bible and reading it in their own language. This was deemed to dangerous.
- Masses were preached in Latin, a language that only the rich and academic even understood.
The reformers were different.
- They preached in the common languages of the people
- they translated the Bible into the common languages of the people
- they preached the bible expositorially and exegetically
- they mass printed the Bible so that anyone could own their own copy and read it for themselves.

The Power of God's Word

the reformers taught that the Word of God is not mere words on a page but it has transformative power.
- It does not merely inform us, it transforms us. Fundamentally changes us.

The Word of God calls us to transformation

We are called to transformation.
- Romans 12.2 Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God.
We need the Holy Spirt to come in with the Scriptures and to change our will and our mind.
- When the spirit and the word come together, then we are enabled to see God's glory revealed in Jesus Christ
- 2 Corinthians 3.18 But we all, with unveiled face seeing the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.
This is why we come to church every week: because we need to regularly hear the Word of God so that we will be transformed.
God's Word and God's Spirit are inseparable. They work together.
- It was the Spirit that wrote the Word.
- It is the Spirit that teaches us the Word and reveals its truth to us.
- The word is powerful in itself, but it becomes efficacious by the Holy Spirit.
- The Word declares the promises of God, and the Spirit helps us to plead them.
- The Word is the seed of the Spirit, and the Spirit brings the seeds to life.

The transforming operations of God's word

Lamp and Hammer

God's Word is a lamp. It provides illumination. It shows us the way and takes us out of darkness.
- Psalm 119.130 The entrance of your words gives light. It gives understanding to the simple.
- Psalm 119.105 Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path.
God's word is a hammer
- Our hearts are hardened but God's word can smash all that hardening to bits
- Jeremiah 23.29 "Isn't my word like fire?" says Yahweh; "and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?

Sword and Seed

Sword
- Ephesians 6.17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; Ephesians 6
- the word pierces us and cuts us
  - It humbles us and shows all our failures and weaknesses.
  - it is the weapon that conquers our sin
- the word exposes us.
Seed
- James 1.18 Of his own will he gave birth to us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
- The word causes us to be born again
- It moves us to follow God's ways.
- It transforms our entire being to make us more like God.

The perfections of God's transforming Word

Living and powerful

Hebrews 4.12 For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Perfect and Sure

the bible is absolutely complete. Lacking nothing.
- When you hold the Bible, you hold all that you need in this life.
It furnishes believers with all that they need for life and faith.
Sure means that it is true and trustworthy.
- The Lord does not change, therefore His Word does not change.
- His word reflects who He is.

True and Righteous Altogether

Psalm 19:8-9 Yahweh's precepts are right, rejoicing the heart. Yahweh's commandment is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of Yahweh is clean, enduring forever. Yahweh's ordinances are true, and righteous altogether.
- right in Hebrew means straight. It does not deviate to the right or left.
- clean: free from every corruption. inerrant.
- true: without error
- righteous: It is all good. Justice.

Application

The transforming, powerful usage of God's Word

So what should I do with this Word of God?
- Consider the transforming powerful word of God.
that is fine that you say that the Bible is transformative, but when i read it, it is very hard for me to understand it
- Richard Greeman's treatise on how to read the word of God
  - Dilligence
  - Wisdom in the choice of 3 things
    - Choice of matter: Don't spend all your time in the most difficult passages.
    - Choice of order: Don't just skip around. The Bible has a flow.
      - You need to eventually read the whole bible
    - Choice of Time: Set aside time to read the word.
  - preparation: Approach the scriptures with reverence and fear of God's majesty
    - trust that He will teach you
  - meditation: After you read the Bible, think about it.
    - the difference between reading and meditation is the difference between a boat adrift and a boat rowing toward a destination
    - meditation is how we digest the Word of God.
    - Don't just read and say well i've read my bible now. meditate on it.
  - conference: discuss the bible with other believers.
  - Faith: Exercise the word of God.
    - Faith is the main ingredient.
    - Come to the Bible, not questioning it, but making yourself vulnerable to it.
  - Practice: You must be doing the word
  - Prayer: Pray before, during and after reading the word.
    - If you don't know what to pray for, then pray that verse back to God.
- Thomas Watson's principles for hearing the Word of God during sermons.
  - prayer
  - appetite for the word of God
  - Be attentive
    - Luke 19.48 They couldn't find what they might do, for all the people hung on to every word that he said.
  - Meekness.
    - Be willing to change, be corrected and reproved
  - Faith
  - Retain and pray over what you have heard.
  - Practice: live out the sermon
  - Beg the Holy Spirit to change you through it
  - Familiarize yourself with the sermon.
    - Speak to others about it.

The fruits of the transforming power of God's Word

How can you know if the sermon has been effectual for you? By your fruits.
- Psalm 19.7 Yahweh's law is perfect, restoring the soul. Yahweh's covenant is sure, making wise the simple.
- Joy is a fruit of the Word's transforming power
  - Modern man is plagued with emptiness, and despair but the Word brings us joy.
    - ❓: Do you rejoice in the Word's teachings, blessings, wisdom, unity, hope, worldview, thanksgiving, freshness, realism, idealism?
      - The Happy Christian is the one who finds his joy in the word of God.
- Light for the dying
  - Psalm 19.8 Yahweh's precepts are right, rejoicing the heart. Yahweh's commandment is pure, enlightening the eyes.
  - The Word of God is comfort to us dying sinners.

Further Study

💬Discussion Questions

2025-11-02 Sermon Notes

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