Open-Heart Surgery

Hebrews 4:11-13

Several years ago, I came back into the house from doing something outside and found red stains and handprints everywhere. There were red stains on the handles and doors of various cupboards around the kitchen. Red stains on the white appliances in the kitchen. Red stains on the floor. Red stains on the wall. Red stains on the sink. I walked through the kitchen into the next room wondering what could possibly have gone wrong in the 10 minutes I was outside, and found more red stains on the desk, the filing cabinet, and again on the floor. And there, standing in the middle of the room with hands dyed red was the source of the path of red handprints, marks, and stains through the house – was a 4 or t year old Eli. When he saw me he startled and immediately put his hands behind his back, trying to hide them from me.

“What are you working on, Eli?” I asked. “Just a project,” was his answer. I walked into a third room, following the guilty gaze of his eyes, and found his “project.” A whisk, a small child’s paintbrush, a garlic press … and red food coloring. “What are you making?” I asked. “I don’t know yet. I’m still figuring it out,” was his reply. With red food coloring adorning a windowsill in a new coat of paint (I’m not sure what how the whisk and garlic press figured into his plans, some things are better left unexplored), he’d made a real mess. Fortunately, he’d avoided the carpet, and aside from our new red windowsill, the rest of the red handprints, marks, and stains wiped right up.

His hands were another matter. For several days they were stained red, and no amount of bathing, washing, scrubbing would turn them back to their natural color. Eventually his hands went back to normal and things were cleaned up … until his next “project.”

The truth is, we all have stains, marks, and mistakes we’re dealing with. We all have things we’d love to keep covered up, to hide behind our backs. But for most of us those things aren’t the byproduct of imaginations run wild. We have far more to deal with than red-stained hands. We have sinful human hearts. That sinfulness might express itself in the stained red hands of pride, or jealousy, or anger that is out of control, or lust, or self-centeredness, or unfaithfulness. And it is this soul-sickness, this spiritual heart disease, that God wants to deal with in our lives in Christ.

Fortunately, we have a heart surgeon who sees everything, knows everything about us, and knows exactly what to do about it. Turn with me to Hebrews 4:11-13.

This is a passage I’ve preached several times in the 12 years since we first started Christ Church. Mostly, its been in the context of short sermon series’ on our three core values here at Christ Church. And what are they? That’s right. Worship, Word, and Witness. This passage is one of three classic biblical texts on the power of the Word of God.

But this morning we come to this text as a part of our sermon series on the New Testament sermon that we call the book of Hebrews. We’re calling the series – Holding On To Jesus Through Life’s Stoms, because that’s really the central theme of the sermon. The ancient pastor who wrote this message wants us to realize that hanging on to Jesus through whatever life throws at us is always worth it, regardless of what we face … even if we face direct challenges to our faith itself or persecution.

And in it’s context, this passage is both a source of comfort AND a warning. It is a source of comfort to those who place their faith in Christ, and a warning to those tempted to ignore the Word of God and turn back to their old way of life.

Look at V. 13. Now, that sounds like a really scary thing, and it can be. There is nothing in my life, large or small, that escapes his searing gaze. He sees it all. Like the sunlight that streams in through our windows after a long dark winter, the light of Christ shines into our lives and illuminates the junk, dust, and cobwebs that have accumulated and need to be cleaned out. After a long winter, as much as I crave the sun, I am always shocked and somewhat disgusted by the dirt and grime that appears when the sun shines in for the first time. It can be intimidating to know that God sees, and knows everything about us. That there is no part of our lives that is hidden from his sight.

A.W. Tozer, in his devotional and theological classic book Knowledge of the Holy, says, God Knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters, all mind and every mind, all spirit and all spirits, all being and every being, all creaturehood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities, all law and every law, all relations, all causes, all thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas, all feeling, all desires, every unuttered secret, all thrones, and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, heaven, and hell.[i]

That can be a scary thought – that absolutely nothing about me, even those things that I myself am not aware of, are hidden from his searing, knowing gaze. But most of us, when we go to the doctor, want that doctor to see everything. We want nothing to escape his gaze. When we know we are sick, when we know that something is wrong, we want him to do whatever it takes to make us well. Whatever it takes to heal the disease. Whatever it takes to get the sickness out.

When we place our faith, our trust, in Jesus Christ, God, the divine surgeon, goes to work, slowly but surely removing the filth from our lives, and day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year, we begin to look more and more like Jesus. Never perfectly in this life. But God puts us on his operating table and, wielding his sharp, accurate, piercing scalpel, he performs open his heart surgery, shaping us more and more into the people he wants us to be.

And what is that scalpel? Look at V. 12. God’s scalpel is his Word. We have a tendency to view the Word of God, the Bible, as just another book. God’s recommendation for a happy, healthy life perhaps, but nothing more than that. We tune out when the pastor teaches the Word of God. We’re glad that other people attend classes and groups that study the Bible, but we have no plans to join in. Our own Bibles sit at home on the shelf collecting dust. They’re decoration, home décor. Or today, are apps on our phones that almost never get opened.

To be honest, not all pastors teach the Word of God. Some teach the words and thoughts of human beings. But when the Word of God is taught, studied, read, ingested, and meditated upon, it becomes a razor sharp scalpel in the loving but determined hands of God. God doesn’t operate on us with a butter knife. He operates with caring precision with his razor-sharp Word.

Our ancient pastor gives us two characteristics of God’s scalpel – his Word. First, it is accurate. “It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” In the Bible, the heart is the seat of our sense of self. It is the core of who we are. One commentator calls it the “radical center of human self-hood.” The Word of God isn’t meant to sit on the shelf. It isn’t meant to play around at the edges of our lives. It is meant to penetrate to the core of who we are, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and cut out the stuff God wants to remove so that the stuff he wants to grow has room to grow. God doesn’t play around. He doesn’t treat symptoms. He goes after the root cause. He cuts deep.

But when he does, when his word penetrates deeply into the core of our beings, good things come out … a greater ability to love God and others, even our enemies. A deep joy. Peace that others don’t understand … life can’t rattle us. Patience … even the most trying of circumstances can’t get our blood pressure up. Kindness and goodness and gentleness. Life, and our lives, become beautiful. Faithfulness … we become people able to keep our word, regardless of the cost, so others trust us. Self-control … we learn to regulate and appropriately express our emotions. Who doesn’t want a life that looks like that?

Secondly, the Word of God is effective. “It is living and active … piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow.” The word translated as “active” here means more than just alive or moving. It means that it accomplishes God’s intent in our lives. The Bible does exactly what God created it to do in our lives. It is God’s revelation of himself to us, and it pierces our hearts, cutting with razor-sharp precision, and it accomplishes exactly what God wants it to accomplish. But that doesn’t always feel good.

Look at the words St. Paul used to describe the work of the Word of God in our lives: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for TEACHING (that isn’t so bad), for REPROOF (ok, that hurts), for CORRECTION (who likes to be reproved and corrected?), and for TRAINING IN RIGHTEOUSNESS (training sounds kind of strenuous).

I often hear people talking about wanting to hear sermons that make them feel good. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. God often uses his Word to bring comfort and hope into our lives. He also uses it to make us uncomfortable. To push us. To make us grow. And most importantly, to cut out of our hearts, out of the core of our deepest personality, those things that must be removed. Every surgeon comforts and seeks to ease pain. But every surgeon also knows that all too often, the best thing for the patient is to cause pain first.

Earlier in Hebrews, in chapter 2, our pastor encourages us to “Pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (2:1). Do you remember that? He knows that we as human beings have a tendency to drift like a piece of wood floating on a lake. In fact, the word translated here as “pay much closer attention to” has a nautical meaning … it suggests mooring a ship or a boat to something solid. Something that won’t give way.

He’s saying, “We need to pay much closer attention to what we have heard.” MUCH CLOSER attention to …” You know, there are several levels of paying attention, levels of listening. First, there’s noticing something. You see that something is there, but you don’t really go much beyond that. Then there’s thinking about something. You’ve noticed it, and now you’re considering it. It’s in your conscious awareness. But the highest level is responding, doing something with what we’ve noticed and considered.

Back in May, I drove down to Wilmington Ohio, where I’m from and where Sterling was attending college, for his graduation. As I drove down I-75 near Saginaw, I NOTICED a sign indicating that there was road construction ahead. As I started to grumble, I NOTICED another sign saying that I-75 itself is closed, and traffic was being re-routed to a different expressway. This meant that I needed to THINK ABOUT driving and where we were going to go, and I began looking for detour signs. Then, when the road was finally blocked and traffic was being routed to another highway, I was ready to RESPOND to the information I had been given along the way, and I kept traveling on with no problems, albeit on a different path than we had anticipated. That’s what it looks like to “pay close attention.” I notice, comprehend, AND RESPOND.

But I haven’t always gotten it right. Several years ago – actually right around the same time as the red food coloring incident, Eli was feeling sick and stayed home with me for the day. Becky had trimmed his hair the night before, but Eli didn’t like how long she had left his bangs, and decided to do something about it. So while I was doing something else, he trimmed his bangs … all the way back. The problem is that I didn’t even notice. Well, I noticed that he had about 3 inches of a very narrow strip of hair coming down the center of his forehead. Apparently he’d missed a spot, but I thought Becky had missed it the night before and I wondered about her ability as a barber to miss such an obvious strip. I know, dumb. So I snipped that strip of hair back even farther than the existing trimming.

So later in the day I had an elder’s meeting, which meant I needed to drop Eli off with Becky in town. And when we met, Becky opened the door to my truck and just stared at Eli … and then at me, with her “my husband the idiot look.” And she wasn’t moving. Or blinking. Eli and I both looked at her and said “What?” And she looked up and said “Eli cut his hair!” I said, “He did?” I don’t know what surprised her more … that Eli had cut about 3 inches off his bangs or that I hadn’t noticed said cutting. I wondered why he ran out to the play room to grab the hair cutting scissors when I was looking for them. I DIDN’T notice. I DIDN’T comprehend. So of course, I DIDN’T respond. At least not in the right way.

We tend to be the same way in life. We’re going through life not paying attention at all to what God has said or is saying to us through the Word. The problem is, when we do that, we get ourselves into trouble.

Our ancient pastor tells us to pay much closer attention to and then submit to the authority of the Gospel. His or her concern is our attitude of “over familiarity,” of taking God’s grace for granted. Not of an outright rejection of faith but of slowly drifting away without even noticing. “Drift away” can mean slip away, as in a ring slipping off your finger without you realizing it, causing you to lose something precious. OR be used of a ship which has been carelessly allowed to slip past a harbor or a haven because the mariner has forgotten to allow for the wind or the current or the tide.

The authority of the Gospel comes from its source: the person of Jesus. In the Jesus, we find the truth, and we also meet Truth, for Jesus said of himself “I Am the Truth.” We live in a world that says, “So long as you’re sincere in your beliefs, it doesn’t really matter what you believe. Just be sincere about it. But you know, for centuries, people sincerely believed that the world was flat. That didn’t change the world’s roundness one little bit.

The world didn’t suddenly become round when ancient astronomers and physicists discovered the world’s roundness. The world didn’t change at all, nor did the universe when the same scientists pointed out that the earth is not even the center of our solar system, the sun is. The only thing that changed was our perspective. Faced with a reality we could not deny, we changed our belief, our point of view. There is universal, objective Truth out there.  Jesus Christ claimed to be the source of that Truth.

Sometimes, when we put down the Word of God, when we leave church, we are bleeding and in deep pain, like a patient who has just undergone surgery. And that pain has come about not because the pastor is aiming at us, but because God, in his love, knows that to bring his hope and healing, he has to cut deep, right to the core of my sense of self. The Word of God does bring comfort and hope. It is filled with hope. But eventually God will use it to cut, and cut deep.

But as surgeons restore health and bring life to sick bodies, God’s deeps cuts bring forth life. Real life. Fulfilling life. Life that will never end, even when these bodies die. But that requires us to do more than just tolerate a sermon. It requires us to study the Bible deeply on our own. And then to attend group studies where we can check our sense of what it is saying with the larger community. And then that we look forward to hearing the Word of God taught from the pulpit on Sunday. We listen intently, take notes, and allow it to penetrate deeply. As we do that, we become people of the Word.

We don’t want to be like the ancient Israelites, standing on the cusp of the promised land, but afraid and unwilling to trust God, to listen to what God was saying to them. And they missed out. That’s the warning.

Pastor and Christian leader Gordon MacDonald calls that “real world faith.” And he says this: “The forging of a real-world faith means not only that one follows Christ into the Heavenlies to meet God, but that one follows Christ into the corridors of one’s inner space in order to develop the spirit of Christlikeness. And Christlikeness in the inner life means an advancing knowledge of one’s inner self and a growing ability to master it.”[ii]

May we be a people who notice, comprehend, and respond to the Word of God. Let’s pray.

[i] A.W. Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy

[ii] Gordon MacDonald, Forging A Real-World Faith