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The scripture reading of the morning is from the book of Hebrews, the fourth chapter. I begin the reading at the verse which is number 12. "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are

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open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession, for we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw

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near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. It's all a matter of perspective. I'd like you to think with me for a few minutes this morning

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about temptation. Now some temptations which beset us are very plain. We recognize them immediately. They are quite overt in their approach. But there are other temptations which are more secretive, more insidious, more subtle. I call these the more contemptible temptations, because they move so silently yet so purposefully into our lives that they distort and twist our

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perspectives till we do not see things as in fact they really are. You know how it is. You go to work. You see the people you work with going to the restrooms and coming back from their visit there with red eyes and a runny nose, and you know why. You talk to other people in the office and discover that there's a promiscuity there like one might find in a rabbit hut. You are pressured to

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do unkind things to other employees, or you are rejected when it comes time for promotion precisely because you are too Christian in the way you live your life. You go home. You pick up the paper. You're confronted with its insinuations and its innuendos. You turn on the television set. The language is often foul. The plots are many times bordering on the lewd. The violence is

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besticted before you in almost every conceivable way. The lifestyles of the rich and the famous are held up as something we ought to admire. Or you go to school, and you're confronted by a teacher who is unprepared and also underpaid. You work hard at your books only to be belittled by other students as being an egghead. They kid you because you took the time to read the whole book.

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You're surrounded on every hand by those who cheat. It's a kind of world of compromise and hypocrisy. I don't care whether you're watching a soap opera or listening to a joke at the water cooler or seeing on television cowardice in high places. We're surrounded with a kind of moral ambiguity and an ethical relativism which subverts any Christian values that are in the world. We

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live in a kind of constant, distorted perspective. And we find ourselves being sucked into it so that our faiths and our beliefs are somehow anesthetized. There are three lanes always leading to what is wrong and only one lane leading to what is right. It is a contemptible state of affairs. These are very tough times for people who are serious about their discipleship. And

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what does Paul say to us for a moment such as this? He says, "Take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Now Paul lists for us in Ephesians 6 various pieces of armor which the Christian is to wear. This is the only one he identifies, however, which has not only a defensive but also an offensive use. When he talks about the girdle of truth or the blessed plate of

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righteousness or the sandals of the gospel of peace or the helmet of hope or the shield of faith, all of these things are essentially defensive weapons. But when he gets to the sword of the Spirit, he is speaking about that which can be used to ward off attack, yes, but it also can be used in hand-to-hand combat aggressively, offensively against the forces

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of evil. The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Now it's important that we recognize that when Paul writes the phrase "the word of God," he is not referring exclusively to the Scriptures. Many people make the mistake of thinking that in this passage when Paul speaks of using the word of God as our sword that he is limiting it to the word of God written on the

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pages of Scripture. That is not so. The Greek is very specific here. It should be translated, and in accurate editions is translated, "the sword of the Spirit which are the sayings of God." This is the same word that Paul uses when he says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." That word was not written down at the time he said it. It did not appear in any Bible. But he was saying,

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"Take these sayings which you have received from God's Son, Jesus Christ, and let them have residence in your heart." What he is saying here is not only that we are to use the word of God written as our weapon, but we are also to listen to sermons, we are to study lessons, we are to read books of Christian literature, we are to enter into Christian discussion and fellowship groups,

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we are to listen to what the Holy Spirit says to us privately in our heart of hearts. All of these things are part of the sayings of God. You see, God did not stop saying things the day that his book went to print. I could tell you this morning the names of individuals who have said things to me at one time or another which I know in my heart of hearts to have been given to them to give to

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me a saying of God. I have never heard the voice of God audibly. That is, I've never heard the vibrations of it beating upon the tympanum of my ear. But at the same time I have been in those circumstances in my own study or listening to someone else speak or in Christian fellowship where I have had imparted to me some knowledge which comes from the divine and it brings me a

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special peace in the center of myself. And all of this is included when Paul says, "In hand-to-hand combat with the contemptible, rely on the sword of the Spirit, the sayings of God." Now of course the scriptures are the most recognizable sayings of God and we are to learn to use them. Jesus is our example here. You remember how he was tempted in the wilderness. Evil comes to him and says,

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"If you are the Son of God, then turn these stones into bread." Jesus immediately draws the blade of the Word of God. He says, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone.'" Satan counterattacks. He comes back with, "Bow down and worship me and I will give you all things." And once again Jesus flashes that blade in the presence of evil and he says, "It is written,

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'Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve.'" The scriptures, the written Word of God, are our primary source always. But in addition to scripture there are these other sayings. This is why the church calls people to worship. This is why the church offers a Christian education program in order that we might sharpen our swordsmanship and develop our techniques with

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the sayings of God. You hear people say from time to time things like, "Well I can hear God most clearly when I'm out in the woods. My most profound spiritual experiences happen in the Cathedral of the Pines or on the 13th hole." Now I'm not going to deny the fact that God can speak in all of those places. But there is one difficulty about hearing him there. When a word comes, we, when we

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are alone, hear that word exclusively in terms of our own thoughts. In other words we run it through the sieve of our own prejudices, of our own ignorance, for we do not know all things about all things. In other words, oft times any word that would come to us under such a circumstance turns out to be us speaking to ourselves because it is crippled by the fact that it has only our

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minds through which to speak. But when we come into the context of worship, or when we sit down in a Christian class or a Christian discussion group, people there are going to be presenting things, different viewpoints, ideas which we have not thought of before. Our preconceptions will be pushed aside. We may not always agree with what we hear. But Plato said a long time ago that

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argument is the stairway on which knowledge climbs. And it is as we confront these new ideas and new thoughts that we are best able to hear these sayings of God. To go back to Paul's military metaphor, he says if you're going to be a good swordsman, then first of all you read the handbook about swordsmanship. That's the Bible. That's the Word of God written. And there is some advantage

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also in setting up straw men and doing battle with them. You will develop some skills and techniques by presenting yourself in opposition to ideas which you yourself have set up just to oppose them. But you can't be satisfied with that, Paul says. We're talking, he says, about the sayings of God. In other words, there are times when you've got to duel against others, others who are of the same

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faith as you, and learn the tricks of their movement and learn the wisdom of their heart, which has also been given to them by God. I say to you this morning that I don't believe I have ever sat in an active worship or in a Christian class or in a fellowship group that I have not been profited in some way. Now I'll be frank to say that sometimes what I have seen has been a

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bad example, and I have learned from its very poverty. But many times a new idea, a new perspective is given, and that strengthens me. So we use this sort of the spirit, which is the sayings of God. But remember that little phrase at the end of God. Not all sayings. We're not talking about every bit of excellent oral repartee, every bit of rhetorical grace that we encounter. We're not talking about

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just being skillful. We're talking about a word which is in fact God's word. How do we know when something is God's word? Well, when we turn to the scriptures, of course, we can be sure. Because when the scriptures speak about matters of the practice of our faith and what we believe, they are absolutely infallible. That is our Presbyterian conviction. Now we have room in our church for

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people who have all kinds of different views with regard to the scriptures, and this is good. But the official position of the Presbyterian Church has been for hundreds of years now that the word of God is infallible when it speaks about matters of faith or the practice of them. Not in matters of history, because the Bible is not a history book. Not in matters of science, because the

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Bible is not a science textbook. Not in matters of cultural accommodation, because the Bible is not a textbook in sociology. The Presbyterian Church stands with people like Augustine or Martin Luther or John Calvin or C.S. Lewis, great swordsmen all, and understands that one can trust the word of God as being perfect when it speaks about faith and the practice of it. And let me

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digress for here just long enough to say that it's sad to encounter some people in the church who attack other people in the church because their view of scripture happens to be different. There are some, you know, who very rarely do battle outside of the church because they're so busy fighting people inside the church. They're kind of agents provocateur. And as I look at them across

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the 28 years of my own ministry, I have discovered that very few of these people are effective evangelistic agents outside of the church. That's because they spend most of their time struggling within it. I suppose there are some people who are already thinking about the letter they're going to write to me this week about what I'm saying. Well, I want you to not do that. The

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question has been settled for hundreds of years and I stand with the church. If you're going to write a letter, write a letter to an unbeliever and present to them the faith once for all delivered to the saint. You don't have to defend the Bible. The Bible itself says in Isaiah 55 that God's word will not return to him void. Don't become paranoid about the scriptures. The Bible

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does not need us. We need the Bible. The Bible is not bound by us. We are to be bound by it. So that's our first source. You see scripture when it speaks about what we are to believe and how we are to practice what we believe. Now, as to these other sayings of God, how can we be sure that someone is giving us a real word of God when they say something else, something which blesses

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us but we're not sure it's of God or not. I've had the experience and maybe you have too of having a person come up to me and say the Holy Spirit told me to tell you this. And within an hour, someone else comes up and says the Holy Spirit told me to tell you this and they're exactly the opposite. Now, both of them can't be right. And in fact, both of them might be quite wrong. So how

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do you know when the word you're hearing is a true word? This is preeminently the problem of a preacher. A preacher knows that a sermon is 20 minutes in which to raise the dead. Now, the preacher cannot raise the dead. Only God can raise the dead. And that means that the only time anything is going to happen that brings life out of death in a sermon, the only time that's going

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to happen is when God blesses, anoints whatever the preacher says. But how do you know when you're sitting in your study during the week after you've prayed and prepared and done everything you can, how do you know that what you are writing down is precisely a saying of God? The fact of the matter is you don't know for certain. I stand before you this morning and I say in the utmost sincerity,

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I do not know if I have ever uttered a saying of God. If in any sermon that I have ever preached, God has anointed that word. Oh yes, I've seen things happen. I've seen people who were dead in their sins become alive in Christ. I've seen people whose lips were given to over, over to evil suddenly begin to speak words of praise. I've seen people whose dreams were dead

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come alive again. I've seen those things happen, but they could have happened for a lot of other reasons in my preaching. Could have been the solo that was just sung. Could have been the comment of a person in the next pew. It could have been something they remembered from the Sunday school class they went to before church. It very well could have been that the Holy Spirit blots out

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what I am saying so that they cannot hear it and says something else in its place. And it's that word which saves. I stand before you without any certainty that I have ever uttered a word that is a saying of God. I have to proceed in this as every other Christian does on the basis of faith. Still, there are some things I have discovered which help me to determine when I'm getting

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closer to what is a saying of God. One obvious test, of course, is to put it against Scripture. If what you're going to write down or what you're going to say is debatable as to whether it's a saying of God or not, set it over against Scripture. If it denies Scripture, then it's not a word of God. The Holy Spirit is not fickle. He doesn't say one thing at one place and the

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opposite thing in another place. So one thing we want to do is measure all of our words and the words that other people speak to us by the Scriptures. There's a second thing. Seek when you are speaking a word for God or trying to discern his words from others. Seek to be free. The Holy Spirit moves, and the Bible teaches this again and again, in great freedom. So don't bring

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to your thinking all of your old clichés and all of the theological formulae you've been dragging with you for the last 30 years. Don't be prosaic and tedious. The Holy Spirit of God is never prosaic and is never tedious. I've known people whose understanding of the parable of the Good Samaritan is no different now than it was when it was first taught to them when they were in the

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fourth grade. That is not spiritual life. There's no progress in that. So open yourself to new experiences. And the third tool that you want to use, the third instrument of measuring whether a word is a saying of God is this. Go after it actively. Search yourself. Confess your own sins. Pour out before God those things which cloud and befuddle your visions. I believe that whenever a

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word of God is truly said, the person who said it dies a bit. Why? Because they are passing aside as God is moving in. That's good. That's as it ought to be. We need to have more and more of Him if we're going to utter or hear the sayings of God. The sum of the matter then is this. We defeat the contemptible in hand-to-hand combat by holding a proper perspective. And that perspective

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comes from our use of the sword of the Spirit, which is the sayings of God. That means we study God's Word. We read the lives of the saints. We do not absent ourselves from worship. We put ourselves in Christian education situations. We use the church library. We practice our swordsmanship. And we encourage our children to do the same. You remember how the Duke of Wellington said after the

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Battle of Waterloo that the battle was won on the playing fields of Eton? And what was he saying with that? He was saying this, that the skills that the soldiers used there at Waterloo, they learned as schoolboys playing games on the playing fields of their educational institutions. All right. Put your children in the place where they begin to pick up the skills of spiritual swordsmanship

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early. Remember what the psalmist says, "Thy word have I hid in my heart, O God, that I might not sin against thee." Wouldn't it be wonderful if your children could say that also? And when you go forth to battle each day, don't only clothe your body, but also dress your soul. Take each day some word, with God all things are possible. Thou shalt not bear false witness. In quietness and in confidence

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you will find your strength. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. I always remember Woodrow Wilson's great statement. He was not only a great president, but also a great Christian. And he said on one occasion, "Once the scripture has entered into your life, you can never really forget it. It follows you like a mother's love. It haunts you like an old

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song. It speaks to you like the words of a revered teacher. It becomes part of the warp and the woof of your experience." I believe those words are a saying of God. It's good to remind yourself that the Word of God follows you like the love of your mother. And when you have these things, you see, when you have these words hidden in you, you repeat them as you're traveling through traffic,

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or as you're going up and down in the elevator, as you're sweeping the back porch. And when you confront temptation, you draw them immediately in order to defend yourself. And you use them also when you are attacking that which is ungodly. You're empowered by them. You are enabled to be yourself one who speaks the sayings of God. So a minister was visiting in a home in his

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congregation, and the mother and father went out into the kitchen to get some cookies and lemonade, and the little girl was sitting there. And the minister said to her, "Would you please get me your family Bible?" And the little girl said, "I don't know what that is." He said, "You know, that big book, that important book, that very precious book that your family has." And there

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wasn't the slightest glimmer of recognition on her face. And then the minister said, "You know, the book from which your mother and daddy read every day of their lives. Oh, that book," the little girl said, and ran out of the room, only to return a moment later with the Sears catalog. You see, it's all a matter of perspective. "Gladius spiritus verbum Dei," the sword of the

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Spirit, the words of God. Christians on guard. Let us pray. Oh God, speak to us that we may speak. Lead us to and through thy word that it might become so much a part of us that we become receptacles of thy word that the Holy Spirit might speak through us. Give to us, if you will, by your grace, the inestimable privilege of saying a word for thee. And we will give thee

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all the honor and glory forever and forever. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]