Our text begins at 2
nd Peter chapter 1 and verse 19. The picture there is of a ship that is being blown along. Its sails are filled with the wind. That's the picture that is used here. They were moved by the Wind! They didn't cook this up. They didn't fabricate it. 'Suddenly,' they say, 'the Word of the LORD came to me.' There were times when they didn't want to say anything. Jeremiah says, 'I've had enough! I'm not going to speak anymore in His Name! But,' he says, 'His Word was in my bones as a burning fire. I was weary with forbearing; I could not stay.' That's what happened to GOD's servants. They had to speak; they were bursting with a message of GOD. It was the Holy Spirit. It wasn't fabricated.
We read about the Word of GOD also that It is 'the sword of the Spirit,'
and we come across this, if we go back to Isaiah, Chapter 49; we find that the Messsiah speaks about GOD's Word in those terms. Isaiah 49: - Here's the voice of the Messiah, seven hundred years before He was born; He was speaking through Isaiah, the Prophet. 'Listen, O coastlands to me, and take heed you peoples from afar.'
(Do you know to whom He is speaking? To the world! For the time being, He is not speaking to Israel. He's talking to the world. Later on in this Chapter, He comes back to Zion and He speaks to her; but here is His Word to the nations.) 'The LORD has called me from the womb; from the matrix of my mother, He has made mention of my name; and He has made my mouth like a sharp sword.'
What He means is, that 'He has made my words like a sharp sword.'
In Revelation we have the same picture of the Messiah: 'Out of His mouth goes a sharp sword with which He would smite the nations.'
That would be the disobedient among the nations. We read about the Word of GOD; 'The Word of GOD is quick and powerful, living and powerful; sharper than any two-edged sword. It pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.'
That is, It distinguishes between that which is soulish and that which is spiritual. Lots of people are religious, but it is soulish; it's just a thin coating. Scratch that coating and you find a heathen underneath. Soulish religion won't save you; it is spiritual religion that will save you. Those who worship GOD 'in Spirit and in truth.'
So the Word of GOD cuts through the false camouflage of such people. It is the 'sword of the Spirit.'
That means, this Book to me and to you, is only a dead letter - it doesn't mean a thing, until the Holy Spirit comes and helps us to understand It. Sometimes people have said to me, 'I don't understand this;' I don't understand that.' So I suggest to them, 'Why don't you ask the Author?' After all, the Author wrote It! If you don't understand something in a book, and you have a chance to ask the author, 'What did you mean by that?' That's the best way of finding out exactly what they meant, because they know what they had in mind when they wrote it. So it is with the Holy Spirit. We must always, constantly, unfailingly, pray what David prayed: 'Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law. LORD, open my eyes.'
Unless You do, I'm just going to read It like any other book.
There are lots of theologians who are not Believers, and they have a most excellent grasp of this doctrine. But it has nothing to do with them. It's outside them. It hasn't made any difference to them. It hasn't brought them into a living relationship with GOD. That's the thing we have to avoid. This is what we must honour - we must honour the Blood of Messiah. We must always speak of It in terms of highest gratitude and reverence - that He shed His Blood for our sins. And we must honour the Holy Spirit, Who alone can make the things of GOD live to us.
As we share this Word of GOD together; the Holy Spirit is using It. And if we find ourselves gripped; stirred; moved by It; He is doing it, and we ought to thank Him for it; that we can feel it, as well as hear it. And if we just can hear it like cold scientists and we are unmoved, we are in a dreadfully dangerous position.
So honour the Holy Spirit. Honour the Blood of the Everlasting Covenant; the Blood of our Messiah! 'He poured out His soul unto death,'
says Isaiah. That means He shed His life-blood unto death. He is the One that gives us true understanding. Here is a verse; if we go back to 1st Corinthians, Chapter 2, verses 12 and 13. Here is a guide for us that we can follow in understanding GOD's Word. 1st Corinthians 2, verses 12 and 13: 'Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit Who is from GOD, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by GOD. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.'
