“For the word of
God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword…” Heb. 4:12
In one of his excellent essays, George
Morrison made the above statement, and I agree, and not just in the case of
Hebrews 4:12. The same workings of God in the lives of men and women do not
always produce the same results. This is because God, in His wisdom, chose to
bestow on man the gift of free will (as far as we’re concerned), while all the
time, operating under His Sovereign Will (as far as He’s concerned). Under this
arrangement, both our actions and
their consequences are the result of our response to God. D.L. Moody once said,
“The same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay.” Here are three of the (I’m
sure) many cases where this principle is in play.
We read in Romans 2:4, “…the goodness of God leadeth thee to
repentance”; yet when Jesus offered to gather up unrepentant Israel
(Jerusalem) under His wing, as a mother hen would gather her chickens, they
refused (Matt. 23:37). The prodigal son, by his own admission, forsook his
father’s house of plenty for a place at the table with pigs. And did anyone
know more of the greatness and goodness of God than the first pair, who
succumbed to the reasoning of the devil instead? We all know people who gave up
a wonderful home and the blessings of God to experience the “freedom” of
self-indulgence. Such individuals have known the goodness of God and turned
their backs on it, while others praise God continually for the blessings of a
godly home and find its influence impossible to abandon. God’s tool of goodness
and mercy is two-edged; it cuts both ways.
On the other hand, pain and suffering
will produce a similar contradiction. The testimony of the Psalmist in Psalm
119 was that to him, affliction was a sign of God’s faithfulness (v. 75), a
preventive against straying (v. 67), and a tutor in the God’s statutes. But we
read in Revelation sixteen of people whose pain causes them to blaspheme God
and refuse to repent. We love to read of how God used those who suffered pain,
especially those from whose pen has come some of the loveliest verses and hymns
in Christendom…Fanny Crosby, Francis Ridley Havergal, Martha Snell Nicholson,
etc. But I’m thinking now of a blessed man of God who was president of a large
Bible College, but who ended his own life because he could no longer endure his
chronic pain. I’m not judging the man, I’m merely illustrating that pain can
have mixed results in the life of both the godly and ungodly. It, too, is one
of God’s two-edged tools.
Finally, we know this truth is seen
most vividly in the effect of God’s Word on men and women. He promises that the
words that come from His mouth, the Bible, will not “return void.” They will
accomplish His will the end for which they were attended. But He does not
specify what that will be. To the extent of our freedom of volition, what we do
with those words will determine what they accomplish in our lives. I use the
word “do,” because that’s what James says: “But
be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves”
(1:22). The Word of God is a fine-tuned instrument of division and
discernment and delight in those who give it free course in their lives; but to
those who put up their shields of disbelief and disobedience it becomes a
clanging noise of irritation that does them more harm than good, since it
increases their accountability before God.
Mark it down, my treasured readers; God
is using His tools on you and me. And they’re all two-edged. We must determine
what their results will be. May His goodness lead us to repentance…every time;
may any pain we suffer make us look to Him and become a chiseling tool to make
us more like Him; and may His Word cut us not “to the quick,” but to the heart.
Oh, to be putty in the hands of God, ever yielding to His workings! May we be
willing to borrow Jeremiah’s words to princes and address them to God instead.
“As for me, behold,
I am in your hand: do with me as seemeth good and meet unto you.” (26:14)
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