Be Concerned - The Word is Fire, Hammer and Sword

The name Jeremiah means the Lord will lift up. And yet the prophet Jeremiah was probably the most cast down of all the Old Testament prophets. In fact, we call him the weeping prophet. Now, he had a good reason for weeping. The people of Judah were headed for destruction. Jeremiah ministered for about 40 years. They wouldn't listen to his message and Jeremiah lived to see his beloved city and his beloved temple destroyed and his beloved people taken into captivity.

The rulers, the religious leaders were to blame. They were leading the people astray. Jeremiah 23 talks about this. In the first eight verses, he says, "woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture." Then in verses 9 through 15, he tells us what's happened not to the people but to the land. Verse 10. "The land is full of adulterers."

Now, who are these people? Well, Jeremiah 23:9. "My heart within me is broken because of the prophets." All the way through this section, you find him talking about the prophets, the prophets, the prophets.

Jeremiah 23:10, "the land is full of adulterers, for because of a curse the land mourns." A big drought was going on apparently. "The pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, their course of life is evil." Now you'd think prophets would live holy lives. "And their might is not right." They were using their authority in the wrong way. This goes on sometimes in churches, you know.

Jeremiah 23:14. "Also I have seen a horrible thing in the prophets of Jerusalem. They commit adultery and walk in lies." The NIV translates this, they live a lie. They go after lies. They were mixing Baal worship with the worship of the true and living God. They were profaning the land.

Notice Jeremiah 23:15, the end of the verse. "For from the prophets of Jerusalem, profaneness is gone out into all the land." Now the Hebrew word means pollution. They were polluting the land with their preaching. They were polluting the land with their teaching. They were polluting the land with their bad example, with their godless compromising living. They were polluting the land that God wanted to be a holy land.

Verses 16 through 40, Jeremiah tells us what they had done to the word of God. That's where the trouble always starts. The word of God. They were using dreams and visions that they had made up themselves.

Jeremiah 23:16. "Thus says the Lord of hosts, do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless." By the way, the preaching you listen to will either make you cheap or rich. If you are fed with the treasures of the Word of God, you'll be enriched. If you listen to the worthless visions and foolishness of false teachers, you will be exploited and you'll come away poorer than you went in.

"They speak a vision of their own heart." Doesn't come from God. Not from the mouth of the Lord. "They continually say to those who despise me, the Lord has said, you shall have peace." Here is a message of peace and prosperity. These preachers were popular. Oh, people wanted to hear them.

Why? Because they were preaching what people wanted to hear, peace and prosperity. "And everyone who walks according to the imagination of his own heart, no evil shall come upon you." They're saying you can sin and get away with it. Look, we sin and get away with it. Ah, but they haven't heard the word of the Lord.

Jeremiah 23:21. "I've not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I've not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my counsel and had caused my people to hear my words, then they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their doings." They don't practice what they preach. Well, the land was being polluted because of deception and and because of compromise. And the cause of the fall of the nation was the religious leaders and their false message.

Now, into this sorry situation, God dropped the prophet Jeremiah. Remember early in Jeremiah's ministry, Josiah was the king. And you say, well, Josiah led a great revival. It was not a great revival. Forgive me. I disagree with people who say that Josiah led the people in a great revival. He led the people in a great reformation.

They tore down the idols, but the idols were still in their hearts. They got rid of all of the foreign religion. But the minute Josiah was dead, the nation went right back to their old ways again. Their hearts had not changed.

Josiah, the king was killed in battle and the people immediately went back to their old dirty defiling ways. And the preachers, the prophets, the priests taught false doctrine and the people loved it. Now, God says through the prophet, Jeremiah 23:28. "The prophet who has a dream, let him tell his dream. And he who has my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat, says the Lord." That's quite a picture of the false teachers. It's just chaff. "Is not my word like a fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces."

Here we have two pictures of the Word of God. The fire and the hammer. Our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:29. And his word is a fire. Now, Jeremiah, the prophet, had the fire of God's Word in two places. First, he had the fire of the Word of God in his heart. Look at Jeremiah 20:7. "Oh Lord, you induced me, that is you persuaded me. And I was persuaded. You are stronger than I and have prevailed. I'm in derision daily. Everybody mocks me."

"For when I spoke, I cried out, I shouted "violence and plunder" because the Word of the Lord was made to me a reproach and a derision daily. Then I said, "I will not make mention of him, nor speak anymore in his name." I'll resign. I'll quit. "But his word was in my heart like a burning fire, shut up in my bones. I was weary of holding it back and I could not." The Word of God was in his heart as a fire."

Now, the Word of God was also on his lips as a fire. Jeremiah 5:14. Jeremiah 5:14 says, "Therefore thus says the Lord God of hosts, because you speak this word, behold, I will make my words in your mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them." Now, every preacher, every Sunday school teacher, every Christian ought to have the Word of God burning in his heart as fire and on his lips as fire.

Now, I prefer in my own ministry to feed people the precious food of the Word of God or share with them the treasures of the Word of God. But there comes a time when you have to use the Word of God as fire. Fire was in his heart, energizing him. In his heart he had the Word of God and on his lips he had the Word of God. God gave to Jeremiah a message of judgment. Now we don't like messages of judgment.

We like the false prophets who say, "peace, peace, there is no peace." We're glad when they say, oh, don't worry too much about that sin. I mean, God is very understanding and he doesn't judge people for sin. We we like that kind of a message. It encourages us to live selfish lives.

Jeremiah had the Word of God on his lips and that word was going to devour the chaff of the false prophets. That word of fire was going to come and take their message and just turn it into ashes.

In Jeremiah 6, God tells Jeremiah why his job was so hard, why he was having such a difficult time. Jeremiah 6:27. "I have set you as an assayer and as a fortress among my people that you may know and test their way." Jeremiah 6:29. "The bellows blow fiercely, the lead is consumed by the fire, the smelter refines in vain for the wicked are not drawn off. People will call them rejected silver because the Lord has rejected them."

He says, Jeremiah, when you preach, it's like an assayer taking the ore or taking the metal, putting it in his little furnace and it shows all of the dross, all of the stuff that's no good. By the way, preaching does that. And when my life goes through that fire, when the preacher acts like an assayer, he's testing me and sometimes as I'm hearing the Word of God preached, I can see that that dross, that slag coming to the top and I say, Wiersbe, you better get rid of that.

The Word of God is also a hammer. My word is a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. Sometimes God has to break down before he can build up. Sometimes you have to tear down before you can build up. Something got built up and it's in the way.

Paul talks about that, doesn't he, in 2 Corinthians 10:4, "for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God."

There are times you have to just tear things down. God called Jeremiah to tear down and to build up. Jeremiah 1:10. "I've called you to root out and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down." Sometimes you have to destroy before you can build. Well, Jeremiah had the fire and the hammer. Perhaps that's what the church needs today.

You don't see many swords these days and if you do see any swords, they're probably purely ceremonial. But back in Bible days, you depended on your sword. And this is one reason why the Bible is compared to a sword. Hebrews 4:12. "For the Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword. Piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." That's an amazing statement.

The Word of God is living, powerful, sharp, piercing, penetrating, discerning, exposing. And then in Ephesians 6, Paul has been describing the armor of God and after we've put on this armor he says in Ephesians 6:17, "and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit." The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

Now you and I must be skillful in using the Word of God. The Word of God is a sword and if we are going to triumph in the Christian life. If we're going to accomplish what God wants us to accomplish, we must be skillful in using the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

Now if that's going to happen, you and I have to submit, you and I have to get involved in three responsibilities. We have three responsibilities to fulfill, if we are going to be adept, skillful at using the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit. Responsibility number one. We must submit to that sword. You see, we before we can use the sword, must let God use the sword on us. Now, Jesus Christ is the one who wields the sword of the Spirit.

Revelation 1:16 describes our Lord Jesus. "He had in his right hand seven stars. Out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword." That's the word. It's symbolic of course. If we could see the Word of God coming from the lips of the Lord Jesus, it would be like a two-edged sword coming out of his mouth.

Revelation 2:12. "And to the angel of the church in Pergamus write, these things says he who has the sharp two-edged sword." Now, Revelation 2:16 says to this church, "repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth."

God has to come and fight against some of his own people in the church using the Word of God. We don't like to submit to that, do we? One of my favorite scenes in scripture is found in Joshua 5, where Joshua was out looking the situation over before the invasion of Jericho, the conquering of Jericho.

"And it came to pass," says Joshua 5:13, "when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted his eyes and looked and behold a man stood opposite him with a sword drawn in his hand." And Joshua went to him and said to him, "are you for us or for our adversaries?" So he said, "no, but as commander of the army of the Lord, I have now come." And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, "what does my Lord say to his servant?" In other words, use the sword on me, speak to me, tell me what you want me to do.

You and I cannot use the sword of the Spirit until God uses that sword upon us. Now, what does he do? Well, to begin with, he cuts us with conviction. In Acts 2, Peter is preaching the Word of God and what's the result of all of this? Acts 2:37. "Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do?"

You see, Peter didn't use his physical sword on the day of Pentecost, he uses the spiritual sword. And these men were cut to the heart, convicted and then they were converted.

It is an energetic sword, it has its own power. The power doesn't depend upon my hand, my arm. If I pick up a physical sword, I better have power and skill. But the spiritual sword of the Spirit, the Word of God has power in it. It is alive, it is powerful, it is sharp. A physical sword gets dull, has to be sharpened. The Word of God doesn't get dull.

We get dull. Hebrews 5:11 talks about people who are dull of hearing. We get dull. Our spiritual life gets dull. And so God has to use the Word on us. We have to be born again through faith in Jesus Christ. Have you been cut to the heart with conviction?

Now the Word of God not only cuts to convict us, but the Word of God cuts to make us better. In Matthew 5, the Lord Jesus says in Matthew 5:27, "you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you, that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

Now, how do you stop that? "If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, cast it from you. For it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, cast it from you. It's more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell."

Obviously, he's not talking in literal terms. He's not telling us to go and have surgery because a wicked heart can be wicked even if both of your eyes are blind. A wicked heart will sin even if both hands have been cut off.

You see, the problem is not the right hand or the left hand, it's the heart. How do you perform spiritual surgery in your life? How do we cut out of our inner man those things that grieve God through the Word of God? We must submit to the sword. That's our first responsibility.

Secondly, we must take the sword. Now that's what Paul says in Ephesians 6:17. Taking the helmet of salvation and taking the sword of the Spirit. Now let's notice this. When we take the sword of the Spirit, we need the Spirit's help. We must take the sword with the help of the Holy Spirit.

This sword is his weapon, not ours. He wrote the Word of God. He energizes the Word of God. He empowers us to understand the Word of God. The Holy Spirit is the teacher. He's the one who tells us how to wield the Word of God.

Simply reading your Bible and outlining it and memorizing certain verses doesn't mean we're going to be effective. We have to have the power of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, quoted the Word of God to Satan in the wilderness. Matthew 4, and Satan was defeated.

We must take the sword with all of the armor. Not just the Word of God by itself. First of all, he says, you put on the whole armor of God. You better put on that breastplate of righteousness and the girdle of truth. You had better put on the shoes of the preparation of the gospel of peace, and take the shield of faith, and then take the helmet of salvation, and then take the sword. Every day by faith, I put on the parts of the armor.

We must take the sword with prayer. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit. Now, the Word of God and prayer go together. Always have. I think there's a beautiful picture of this back in Exodus 17, when Israel was coming out of Egypt and then the enemy attacked them.

And so Moses said to Joshua, you take your army and go out and fight. I'm going to go up on the mountain here and I'm going to pray. And so Moses went up on the mountain and they held up his hands in prayer, and Joshua and his soldiers down there in the valley used the sword. And as long as Moses' hands were held up, Joshua won. When Moses' arms went down, Joshua lost.

You can't separate the sword of the Spirit from praying in the Spirit. The Word of God without prayer is not effective. The Word of God without the armor is not effective. The Word of God without the Holy Spirit is not effective. We must submit to the sword. We must take the sword. And thirdly, our third responsibility is we must use the sword by faith. Now, let's use the sword on the right enemy.

Our enemy is not people, our enemy is principalities and powers. He tells us that in Ephesians 6:12, "for we do not wrestle, fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age."

The only way to fight spiritual battles is with spiritual weapons. Paul says that in 2 Corinthians 10:3, "for though we walk in the flesh, that is in a human body, we do not war according to the flesh." We don't depend on our talents, our abilities, our personality, our experience. For the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.

That sounds like Jericho. Casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Our only spiritual weapon to defeat the devil is the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit. We must use the sword by faith. That means reading the Word of God, believing the Word of God, learning the Word of God, memorizing the Word of God. And then using this blessed sword of the Spirit in the power of God to be victors and not victims.