The Learned Servant

Hebrews 4:11-13 (NKJV)11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. 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. 13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

Much has transpired in the last week. We have moved out of the time of Advent and into the time of Christmas. And in the season of Christmas we celebrate! We celebrate the arrival of the long anticipated One; we celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises in the life and death of His Son, in the work of His Servant.

Last Sunday we noted that Jesus was called to be a Learned Servant. He was called to meditate and muse upon the Word of God. The Servant of the Lord was awakened morning by morning by His Lord, his ear was awakened to hear as the learned. And so we found that in the ministry of our Lord Jesus, He spent thirty years in preparation, thirty years studying the Word of God and meditating upon it, so that He might fulfill three years of ministry and achieve that which the Father had set before Him. And during His earthly ministry He kept His eyes fixed upon the promises of God – and this enabled Him to endure the pain and sorrow and humiliation through which His path took Him.

Our text in Hebrews today urges us to have this same type of faith. We are to be diligent to enter the rest of God – the final rest when heaven and earth will be one and God will be all in all. We are to strive to enter into this very rest, to keep our eyes fixed on the goal. Even as Jesus, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, we are to keep our eyes fixed on the joy, the rest set before us.

But notice the next thing the author of Hebrews tells us. He directs us to the Word of God, which is able to slice and dice us, able to show us our faults and illumine our shortcomings. Why direct us here? Why direct us to the Word? Because this is the same place that our Lord went to direct His own walk with His Father. He was a student of the Word of God. He allowed the Word of God to make and fashion Him into the type of man His Father desired Him to be. And though He was free from sin, free from the necessity of going back and redoing things that he had messed up, He nevertheless grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man through the things that He learned in the Word.

And so the author of Hebrews directs us to be students of the Word of God. We are called to be disciples. To hear what He says to us that we might correct our faults and that we might be reminded of the great promises that He has made to us.

Reminded of our calling to be learned disciples, let us kneel and confess that we have failed to meditate on His Word as we ought.