The Living Word is Better - March 22, 2026

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

I want to tell you that we live in a zetabyte era.

Zetabyte? What's that? Well, you know, you've got your bits,

you've got your bytes, you've got your megabytes, you've got your gigabytes.

Well, we also have these things called zetabytes.

You've never heard of that. Some of you think I'm speaking in tongues this morning

and you would like an interpretation. I'm sure.

Why am I bringing up zettabytes today. What do you think, Rich?

A zettabyte, you know what a megabyte is, right?

You send an email or a phone and so many megabytes.

Well, it's how much information can be held within data that you send.

We live in an era that is now filled with zettabytes.

And that's a crazy word. How can I help you understand that?

Well, let me tell you, I've got my Thompson Chain reference NIV Bible here.

And it's my preaching Bible. It's the one I preach from, I study from.

But if this were reduced to a little file on your email, it would be 22.9 or 22.6 megabytes.

That's how much information is stored in here when you take all the characters together.

When you think about what a zettabyte is, it is, I don't have my phone with

me. My phone's not an iPhone anyway.

But one zettabyte is equal to about 2 trillion new 512 gigabyte iPhones.

That's a lot of information. And why do I bring up this zettabyte thing?

Well, I bring it up because it's said that in just a few years,

the amount of all the information, of all the knowledge that human beings can possess,

will be held within 200 zettabytes of information,

trillions upon trillions of gigabytes, throughout the whole knowledge of human beings everywhere.

So I'm saying it is an astounding amount.

Of information. Now, we think about this in terms of just the last century or so.

In the last century, last 100 years, maybe give it 120 years,

the turn of the last century, it was said that knowledge doubled once every 100 years.

By the time it was 1950, knowledge, they said, would double about every 25 years.

By the 1980s, it said that knowledge doubled about once a year.

Now we can't even keep track of how fast knowledge doubles or information pours

in, but it's still estimated.

The collective amount of human knowledge within the next few years is just going

to continue to be astounding.

Some schools have thought some areas of knowledge doubles about every eight hours.

It's incredible. It just blows your mind. All this information that's coming

and all this information that we as human beings have access to a lot of times

in the palm of our hand. It's incredible.

It's not always equal information, but it does prove this point that we suffer

from information overload.

So much coming at us, so many bytes, zetabytes, gigabytes, everything of information

that our brains just cannot hang on to it.

And you know, even though we have more information, it does not equate to more wisdom.

And even though we have more connectivity to knowledge, it does not mean that

we have deeper relationships with one another.

As a matter of fact, when we have our phones and they were created so that we

could connect more easily with one another, the opposite thing happened.

Rather than having more connectivity with one another, now there's more isolation.

And maybe you've experienced this. All of you are in your own rooms texting one another.

Perhaps even you and your spouse are on the couch watching a TV show,

and you're texting one another messages or videos rather than just talking to each other.

You see, it's kind of a defeating invention in some respects.

So what has this led to? Well, not just here in our own nation,

but it has also led globally to more stress, to more loneliness,

to more worry, and to more sadness.

As a matter of fact, in 2023, the Surgeon General at the time declared this a health epidemic.

Loneliness, an epidemic affecting about half of the adults in our own country.

As a matter of fact, they said the severe effects of this loneliness was equal

to someone who smoked 15 cigarettes a day.

That would be equating to a heavy smoker.

The same physical effects this loneliness brought on.

That's just astounding to me that loneliness would have a physical effect on us.

You see, greater access to information does not automatically provide the moral

or the spiritual direction or discernment that we need.

Just because we can look up anything

that's ever been said about the Bible doesn't mean that we get it.

Just because we can look up all the medical knowledge there ever was does not

mean that we have found a cure for cancer or a cure for some chronic illnesses

that plague many, many people.

As a matter of fact, as we think back on the spiritual aspect of things,

a recent poll by Gallup said that fewer than half of Americans say that religion

is very important in their lives.

As a matter of fact, about one-fourth a quarter, 25%, now claim no religious

affiliation at all, no spiritual affiliation in their lives.

In a world that is drowning in information and words that come and go and mean

different things, we desperately need a living word, truth that doesn't expire,

guidance that doesn't shift with the trends.

We need that living word from God in our lives today.

And Hebrews tells us about such a word this morning.

God's written word and God's word made flesh in Jesus Christ.

Would you stand with me as we read Hebrews chapter four, verses 12 through 16 this morning?

Hear the word of the Lord from Hebrews. For the word of God is living and active,

sharper than any double-edged sword.

It penetrates even to dividing the soul and the spirit, joints and marrow.

It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight.

Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

Therefore, since we have such a high priest who has gone through the heavens,

Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,

but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin.

Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive

mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Father, thank you for your word this morning. Thank you for your living and

active word. And Lord, may it do just what it's intended to do.

And may it cut right to the heart of the issues in our lives.

Lord, give us the wisdom and the knowledge we need, Father, to press ahead in our life with you.

God, we pray that you will draw near to us as we draw near to you today.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Thank you for honoring God's Word today, and please be seated there.

Today, we're going to dive into the living Word is better, and why?

Why is that living Word better than any other word you're going to receive,

any other word that you can think of today?

First and foremost, what the Scripture said was, the living Word is better because

it is powerful and active. Amen.

This living Word of God, God's written Word, was not just written on ancient

parchment so that we could have some great things to talk about when we gathered together.

It was not just some words made up. It isn't just a book.

In the Scripture passage we started our worship with today from 2 Timothy,

it says that the Word is God-breathed.

It has God's Spirit within it.

It is inspired, as we say. When we think about God's Word living and active,

it's not just a book that we read.

We understand that this inspired Word is God's Spirit working through the words,

the pages of the Scriptures that we read, these passages that come alive that

really read us rather than we read them.

And we know from the passage today that it searches, it reaches into our motives,

and it really exposes what's in our hearts, brings it to the surface.

Because many times we're going through things, we can't articulate it.

We're going through good times and bad times, and there's just something that

seems off, and we can't really understand it.

But when we go to the Word of God, when we open the Bible, when we begin to

read it, when God leads us in that, His Spirit speaks to us through these pages

of Scripture, through these words that are written there.

And we begin to understand the power of God's word in our life.

Again, the scripture says God's word is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword.

And perhaps if this was written in our time, they might've said sharper than a scalpel.

That cuts right through bone and marrow, cuts right to the heart of what we're going through.

God's Word is living and active. And one of the most dramatic examples of the

Bible's divine ability to transform men and women, it comes from a story.

Several, several centuries ago, back in the 1700s, there was this great big

ship called the Bounty, and there was a mutiny on that ship.

And this mutiny, the guys that were on the ship were just sick of Captain Bly,

and they didn't want to have any more to do with it.

And so they rose up against him. And there's been several movies made.

I'm not a movie critic to recommend or not recommend them, but suffice it to

say, this really happened.

These men rose up and there was nine of them, the mutineers.

They took some men and women from Tahiti with them, and they didn't know where

they were going, So they just set out on the ship and they found this little

island, Pictaran Island, out in the South Pacific over there.

This little island that's two miles wide by one mile long.

And they began just to live there.

But 10 years later, something happened.

The drinking and the fighting, the brawling that went on, because,

of course, now they were wanted men.

They had committed bounty. Their sentence on them would be death by the British Empire.

Their society that they tried to raise up just living there had devolved into

one man, 11 women, and 23 children.

That was the population of this little island.

The story ended there. That's an interesting historical story, but it doesn't.

It made a good movie and it made a good book, but the story continues.

As used to be said on the radio, are you ready for the rest of the story?

You see, the one man that was left after all the brawling and the drunkenness,

the alcoholism took its toll on this population there.

He was searching through some of the things that he found that they had taken,

excuse me, from the boat with them.

And in this chest, they found the Bible that was on board the bounty.

And as he read through the Bible, he began to experience the divine power of God on his life.

It reached in and cut him to the heart.

This hardened murderer on this tiny volcanic island in the middle of the vast

Pacific Ocean, had his life changed forever by finding the Word of God tucked

away in the chest for over a decade.

The peace and the love that this man found in the pages of the Scripture totally

changed his entire perspective,

replaced his old life of quarreling, his old life of brawling,

and his old life of the homemade liquor that they would make out there on that island.

What he began to do was he began to teach the children and the women that were still alive there.

He taught them the Bible until they also had a personal experience of salvation in Jesus Christ.

They learned about Jesus from the pages of the scripture here.

And the amazing change that was found. And at the time this story was told,

they said that this population of this island was less than 100.

But every person on that island was a believer in Jesus Christ.

Do you see the power of God's word being living and active?

How in a godless society that was there, Christ was raised up when one man decided

to read the pages of Scripture.

And upon reading it, it read him and it transformed his life and transformed

the life of all of those on that island.

You know, if God's word can reshape a whole island community,

it can reshape your home.

If God's word can change the heart of one man, 11 women, and 23 children living

on this island, then it could change and transform your habits and your heart.

God's word is powerful. It is living. It is active.

Now, why is that? Why is it that God's word can do that?

We know because it's living and active, but also we know this is true because

secondly, this morning, it is direct from heaven.

The scripture went on to say in verses 14 and 15.

Since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens,

Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith that we profess.

The living and active Word is not just words written in an ancient language

telling us about Jesus, but the Word of God we know from the Gospel of John is Jesus.

That the Word became flesh, as John says, and dwelt among us,

and we have beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father.

We know the Bible. If we want to learn about Jesus, we go to the Bible because

the Bible is all about the Word, and He is the Word.

It says here that He passed through the heavens.

Now, you know, the ancient Hebrews kind of looked at the heavens in three different ways.

It's not like some teach today and some have taught for a while that there's

three levels of heaven, and you don't know which level you're going to get to.

It's not like that at all. It's more simpler than that. You see,

right where we're at on the earth, we have the sky, and that was the first heaven, right?

When a rocket ship blasts off and goes to put a new satellite into orbit or

goes to land people on the moon or just explore space,

we know that that's the second heaven where the planets are,

where the stars are, where the asteroids go zipping by.

We know that's the second heaven. And we also know that there's the place where God dwells.

That's the highest heaven. That's the third heaven that we talk about.

As a matter of fact, the apostle Paul says he had this vision and he went up to the third heaven.

Well, that's what he's talking about, is that he went to where God dwells.

But the opposite is true for what Jesus did. He came down from where God dwelled

through all those heavens down to earth to be born as a baby, to grow up to be a man.

And then as we'll celebrate here in the next few weeks, to give up his holy

life for a bunch of people who are sinners who maybe really didn't give a rip about him.

That's the story of Jesus. That's the word. He came from the place where God

truly reigns and reigning in the presence of the Father.

And even though this holy God came to us, we also know that in coming to us

and being born as a baby and being a human being, he's been tempted in every

way that we are, yet without sin.

And every single way we could be tempted might not be the exact same temptation.

Jesus didn't have the Internet back then, after all.

Jesus didn't have, you know, the Twinkies we have sitting on the store shelves

to be tempted to gluttony and eating a whole box by yourself.

I don't know that from personal experience, but I may have been tempted that way a time or two.

Jesus has been tempted in every way that we are tempted, yet it says he never gave in.

He never, never gave in completely. Now, some of you are probably thinking,

well, of course not. He's God.

That's kind of unfair, Mike. Like, yeah, God's tempted, but he's not going to

give into it. And I'm like, well, wait a minute.

When you give into a temptation, it's...

It's kind of the easy way out, don't you think? Imagine that you're in a place,

you've gone to Florida, you're there, and it's in Florida that you're just enjoying

a great vacation on the beach, and all of a sudden there's a warning that comes

out and a hurricane is blowing through.

Not just any hurricane, but it's a Cat 5 hurricane, the worst hurricane you

can possibly be involved in.

And you're there and the wind begins to blow, and all of a sudden you don't

evacuate quick enough, and you've got to protect your family.

And so you're doing your best to hold the door back because it won't stay closed

on itself through gale force winds all the way up to the hurricane,

one, two, three, four, and then to a cat five.

And you're trying your best to hold that door back from blowing in and destroying

the place that you're in.

That temptation kind of feels like that, doesn't it?

You're tempted by the pride of life.

You're tempted by the lust of the flesh or the lust of the eyes to give in.

And then you know it will be gone for a season.

And so you're doing your best to hold this door back, but you just give up after a while.

You're tired of fighting it because it's so stinking intense and your strength is gone.

Maybe you felt like that from fighting temptation before. The temptation,

you say, I'm not going to do this anymore. And then it just keeps coming up

and keeps getting in your face.

Well, we know that Jesus is the only one who bore the full weight of temptation.

And what Jesus did was to hold that door back through the entire hurricane,

never giving up, never getting tired, never giving in until the hurricane passed.

Even on the night of his crucifixion, or excuse me, before his crucifixion,

when he was tempted in the garden just to give it all up, to not go through what was coming,

to walk the Via Dolorosa, to go through everything he was going to go through

from the mock trial to the beatings,

to a public humiliation on a cross that wasn't even his own.

In the face of that temptation, as the sweat was as blood coming down his forehead,

he still resisted those hurricane-force winds of temptation,

begging him just to give in.

Jesus bore the full weight of that temptation. He fully understands our weaknesses,

and he also understands the way to overcome that.

See, back in the day, there was great Greek and Roman philosophers,

and they talked about all these great gods, small g, of course,

that lived upon distant mountains away from all of the people,

away from all the creation.

And they were unfeeling. They were distant. They were uninvolved except to go

down once in a while and mess with people.

That's the ancient picture of how God would interact or gods would interact

with human beings. It's like they're untouchable.

They're unreachable. You can't relate to them.

And even with the Jews, they emphasize God's holiness so much that he was unreachable,

that we could not ever get near to God.

That's why Moses, as we talked about a few weeks ago, was so highly honored

because he was in the presence of God and lived.

But it's Jesus who says, I know what you're going through.

And he could really say that because he was tempted in every way like we are,

and yet did not yield, did not give in to sin.

Jesus held back the door all the way through the storm.

That's a shocking claim that God and Christ suffered, that he was tempted.

He understands us and he understands how to overcome those temptations,

but also that he's merciful toward us.

As human beings, because of what we've gone through.

So what does this heavenly word come down to earth offer us today?

Well, third, he offers us a sympathetic invitation. Therefore,

we are invited to approach the

throne of grace boldly, expecting mercy and timely help, not rejection.

Isn't that awesome? Think about this for a moment. Picture what this verse is saying.

We're invited to approach the throne of grace.

Just that phrasing, God's throne. The king's throne was the place where he dictated

authority to his kingdom.

King would sit on that throne and say, what would happen as people were brought

before him? Do they get help or not?

Do prisoners get to live or do they get to die?

The authority of the throne is powerful. And yet the scripture says,

let us boldly approach the throne of grace.

What does that mean? We're going to the authority of God, to the holy place

of God, the holy place of the King of kings, the Lord of lords,

the most exalted one there ever was and ever will be.

We're invited into the great throne room of God, people. It's very humbling, isn't it?

We're invited to come there, the authority place, the authority seat of God.

Let us then approach the throne of grace with what? With confidence.

Whoa. You're telling me the King of kings, the Lord of lords,

the God of the universe, that God that knows every one of us so intimately,

he knows how many hairs are on our head.

He invites us to come before him, before his seat of judgment even.

We boldly, we know we come before God's throne of grace with reverence.

This isn't, hey, buddy, how you doing? How was that game last night?

Wasn't that pretty good? We're not flippant when we come before the Lord.

While Jesus is our best friend, he's not our best bud in that sense.

Where we lose, we drop our honor. We drop our respect for Jesus Christ.

We come before him knowing that this is the God of the universe.

But also we come with this confidence that we belong here, that this is a place we've been invited.

There was once we went to, this is a long time ago, this just came to me.

We went to Anaheim Duck Stadium for something. It was like a Christian conference.

There's Christian speakers and bands going, oh, it was just a great time. And.

I don't remember if you were with me or not, if it was just me and some guys

from the youth group. I was a youth pastor, and one of the skyboxes was open,

and we're like, hey, we're never going to get to do this again. Let's go check it out.

And so we entered into this big skybox, you know, the kinds that are thousands

of dollars for one game per person, where they bring out the buffet for you.

You get a chow down while you're watching the Anaheim Ducks play,

or Arena Football League was there too.

I don't know what's still there. But as we're there and we're checking out how

the rich people live, we're just having a good old time. Now, there was no food.

There was no televised games going on. It was a Christian conference that was happening.

But here we were in this place of honor, checking out the sights,

watching the Christian speaker from far away on the Jumbotron,

just kind of enjoying a make-believe time, what it would be like if we were

here during the Ducks playing hockey.

But while we're there, of course, you hear steps coming your way and we're like,

oh, we better bug out of here. We're going to get busted.

Why did we think that? We didn't have confidence that we belong there because

we didn't. We were just snooping around.

But when you come before the throne of grace, when you come before God's throne,

he says you belong there.

You're authorized to enter into the place, enter into the presence of the king of kings.

You are welcome to come in. How can this be?

Well, we know because he's direct from heaven, but he's also given us the sympathetic

invitation to boldly come.

And what do you find when you get there?

You find grace. The scripture says where we can expect mercy.

You know, the simple definition of mercy is not getting what we deserve.

Simplest definition. Hey, God could strike us down as soon as we enter into

anywhere near his palace.

But he gives us mercy. He doesn't give us what we deserve because of our sin. Why?

Because Jesus Christ paid the price for our sin and invites us to come before my throne of grace.

Come, enter in. Grace is getting what we don't deserve.

Instead of finding judgment at the throne of God, we find grace.

We find His mercy has been extended and He gives us help in our time of need.

Now, isn't that powerful?

We're talking about the written Word of God.

That's powerful, living, and active. It convicts our hearts.

It cuts us right to the core of who we are.

It allows us to have this personal relationship because it is inspired.

The Spirit of God is in those words that we read that read us.

We get to have a relationship with this living and active word,

this King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ.

And then he invites us into his presence because he's our high priest.

We'll talk about that in three weeks, what that all means.

But the sympathetic invitation, Jesus knows who we are. He understands what

we've gone through and he knows what we need.

You know, we started today talking about information overload.

How we live in the zettabyte era, drowning in more and more information,

more and more content, more and more opinions, more noise, so much that we can't

even make sense of anything.

But isn't it great how even in the anxiety of society, how the loneliness of

society, how even when we're sure not which voice that we could go to for help.

That we still have a living word.

As Hebrews chapter 4 said, that we can go to, to find the discernment,

Hebrews 4 · chapter mention

to find that mercy, to find that

grace before the living King of kings and Lord of lords, before Jesus.

That living word that came down from heaven and now has ascended back after

the crucifixion, the resurrection,

after saying, see all to his disciples, he sits at the right hand of God,

interceding for us, inviting us to come in to his throne room,

that we have this living and active word,

this living Savior who sees us, who cheers us on, who understands us,

and who comes to us in our time of need.

Here's a challenge I have for you this week. Are you ready?

This week, I want you to trade 10 minutes of information overload for 10 minutes

of the living word every day. Can you do that?

Hey, don't spend 10 minutes scrolling through things. Take that time out.

Maybe some of you need a half an hour or an hour of doing that.

Take that time out and instead let God's word read you.

I would start in our passage from today, Hebrews 4, 12, and 13.

Just take that little section.

Take 10 minutes and read that and then pray, Lord, what are you exposing in me from your word?

And what are you inviting me to bring to you as I draw near to you before your throne?

Whatever God shows you, I want you to act on that. So to kind of restate that

10 minute challenge, it's very simple. I want you to disconnect.

I want you to connect with God's living word, read it.

I want you to pray that God will search your heart in that.

And whatever he shows you, I want you to take that step of faith in action.

Would you try that this week?

I know it's a challenge. I know you love homework, right?

Hey, I can guarantee you'll have a blessing if you do that. I can guarantee

that God will speak to you through his living and active word and that God will

give you an action step with which to obey him in.

You know, Jesus offers us the sympathetic invitation.

You don't have to hide from what the living word has exposed in your heart today,

what he will expose this week as you take up that challenge.

So as we pray in just a minute here, I just want to invite you to respond.

Maybe today is the day that you step out of the crowd, that you step out of

hiding, and you come to Jesus and let him take you from being searched by the

word to being saved by the one who spoke it.

Would you take up that challenge even right now, this morning?

You see, the word from heaven may expose your hell, but he is ready right now

to bring you all the way home.

Would you let him do that this morning?

Stand with me, would you, as we pray?

Father, in the mighty and the powerful name of Jesus, we just come before your throne of grace.

God, we come before it very reverently and humbly, but at the same time,

God, we come before your throne of grace because we know this is where we might

find mercy, where we might find help in our time of need, where, God, we might find you,

that forgiveness from our sin, the power to live a holy life,

the power to live, God, as you have called us to live.

And so, Lord, I pray that you would help us by faith to do that.

Help us by faith, God, to leave the hell that is behind us, the brokenness of

our lives, the brokenness of all the good things we try to do.

And we find heaven with you.

We find the wholeness that comes with you.

Father, speak to our hearts now. And as we sing this last song,

Lord, if you're speaking to any heart this morning, Lord, may they have the

courage to come forward.

Come forward, Lord, to pray. Come forward to receive Christ.

Lord, come forward to receive the forgiveness of sin or just to receive the

power that you give them to live the life you've called them to live.

Father, we ask all this today and this morning in the mighty and the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.