Arthur came to London with his foster brother Kay to take part in a tournament. Kay forgot to take his sword to the grounds and Arthur raced back to their lodgings to get his sword but found them locked up. On his way back he noticed the sword in the stone and attempted to remove it. It came free easily and he took it to the tournament. It was recognized and he was proclaimed King. One day he saw the Lady of the Lake holding aloft a sword and he rowed out to her. Her arm held the sword above the waters and he took it and its scabbard to use for himself. It had magical properties and was named Excalibur.

The sword mentioned in the New Testament is the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. It is a weapon that is a gift from God. Its purpose is to interpret reality to us, to guide us on our journey through life, and to empower us in the challenges we face. Without this sword of the Spirit, this word of God, we are deficient in our knowledge, we get lost on the way, and we are vulnerable to attack.

Sceptics would say that such a sword does not exist, that any word from beyond, is a myth, a legend, a fairy tale. They deny the world of the Spirit, therefore they deny that there is a sword of the Spirit. They reject the presence of God so they refuse to allow the possibility of communication from God to this world. They say that the Scriptures are just another book that can be deconstructed as a literary text and have as many meanings as a reader brings to it. Sceptics say that any pretensions to the Scriptures being a communication from God have as much credibility as voices conjured up by a medium in a séance. From this point of view the Scriptures are the reflections of various people on their experience, and their words are culturally conditioned works of the imagination, attributed to God.

Everything depends on the presuppositions one begins with. If you do not believe in God who can speak, you do not believe that there can be a word of God. However if you do believe in God who can speak, then you can accept that when he spoke the world into being, he continued to communicate to his creation in ways they could understand. “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son.” (Hebrews 1:1,2) These words were preserved for us in the Scriptures.

All understanding of life depends on these words of God. The author of life has written them through his intermediaries. We cannot know the meaning of life without them. You cannot dissect the nature and purpose of life without the scalpel of the sword of the Spirit. Therefore any attempt to debate or discuss the issues of life without listening to the word of God will fall short, will be incomplete, will lead into a blind alley. Humanity is dependent on divine revelation to understand what life is all about, who God is, and what we should do. Without divine revelation we are in the dark as to what this universe is all about, why we were born, how we are to live, and where we are going.

No human beings by themselves can begin to know anything about God, life, death and eternity, unless God reveals it to them. Natural knowledge, the scientific method, observation, philosophy, or research, will not tell us anything about God, and the meaning of human existence. It is logically beyond their competence. There is no rational or logical proof available for them to deny spirituality reality. All that human knowledge can do is to describe what we see. We cannot describe what we cannot see. That requires divine revelation.

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) Where does faith come from? “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.” (Romans 10:17) All that we know by faith comes from the word of God as communicated to us by Christ through all the Scriptures, because he is the Word of God.

The sword of the Spirit, the Word of God is mentioned four times in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 1:16 Jesus is described as having a two-edged sword coming from his mouth. In Revelation 2:12 Jesus is described as the one who has the two-edged sword. In Revelation 2:16 the church at Pergamum is warned that Jesus will come to make war on them with the two-edged sword. In Revelation 19:11-16 Jesus is portrayed as a rider on a white horse who is called Faithful and True, on whose robe and on his thigh he has written: King of King and Lord of Lord. His name is the Word of God. “The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.” The sword is seen to be a means of judgment upon a rebellious people. The Word of God is seen to be the most powerful weapon that Jesus can use.

It is also a means of salvation. When Jesus spoke he forgave sinners, he healed the sick, and he delivered the possessed. He gave us the sword of the Spirit to use in the conflicts we experience in life. “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

We cannot argue with unbelievers only from the level of our experience. When others say that they can’t believe because they haven’t experienced what we claim to have experienced and that what we call God in Christ, they call intuition, we cannot demolish their arguments by backing off, ceding the ground to them, by allowing that what is true for us may not be true for them. Either God through Christ is speaking by his Spirit to all, and some are listening and others are rejecting his voice, or he is not. All human beings are given the opportunity to make a decision about the Word of God, Jesus Christ. Either they acknowledge his voice, listen, and respond in faith, or they reject him, and close their ears to his voice.

In Hebrews 4:12 we are told: “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any two-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

The first thing to notice about the word of God is that it is dynamic. It is the sword of the Spirit, and therefore has all the energy and power of the living God. The Scriptures are inspired by the Holy Spirit (“all Scripture is God-breathed,” 2 Timothy 3:16). We are told that the writers “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21) God used the prophets and the apostles to communicate his message just as the wind moves a sailing ship along the water. Divine inspiration makes the written Word of God unique in all the literature of the world.

Yet the written word can be dead and meaningless to us. It takes the work of the Holy Spirit to apply the word of God to our hearts. God reveals his message of love and grace to us as we prayerfully seek the illumination of his Spirit. We have to want to be in love with the author for these words to become living and active to us. We have to be aware of our need for forgiveness, for healing, for deliverance. We have to be eager to listen and learn.

The next thing we notice is that the word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrates to judge the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. The church fathers Tertullian and Augustine maintained that the two edges of the sword represent the Old and New Testaments. The Scriptures have many sword-like qualities. “It pricks the conscience, and wounds the pride, of sinners. It cuts away our camouflage, and pierces our defences. It lays bare our sin and need, and kills all false doctrines by its deft, sharp thrusts.” (John Stott, What Christ Thinks of the Church, Eerdmans, 1972, 63) This is the skill of surgery, which cuts into us to remove any disease or correct any abnormality.

For the sword of the Spirit to do its work well it must be kept sharp. A dull blade will not be effective. The current controversy in the churches over the authority of the Word of God is an attempt to dull the blade. There are those who would dull the sword of the Spirit by claiming that when Jesus said to the disciples, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth.” (John 16:12,13) that Jesus meant that he would reveal to them over the centuries truths which would supplement, and even contradict what he said before. But Jesus was speaking to the apostles, whom he uniquely designated the writers of the New Testament, not to anyone who would come later. Therefore anyone who claims divine inspiration for adding to the truth of Scripture, e.g. the Book of Mormon, or changing the Scriptural understanding of marriage, comes under the condemnation of Revelation 22:18,19.

Learning to use the sword of the Spirit effectively requires training. That is why it is important to build into your life a time of daily exercise with it. Make sure that you have a good weapon: a copy of the Bible that is easy for you to read, that has good print, and uses language you can understand. I recommend the New International Version, and The Message. Other good versions abound. Subscribe to a method of Bible Reading that meets your needs e.g. The Upper Room (www.upperroom.org),Scripture Union (www.biblereadingcenter.com), Our Daily Bread (www.rbc.net). There is no substitute for beginning the day with the word of God. It is a time of checking in with the one who loves us and wants to communicate his love to us. It is a time of renewing our relationship with the Savior. It is a time of being energized by the Spirit. It is a time of receiving our orders for the day from our Commander-in-Chief. It is a time for taking spiritual inventory and receiving a check-up from the Great Physician of our soul. It is a time to get directions for the journey. It is a time to get prepared for whatever the day might bring forth.

If this isn’t at present your daily habit, let me urge you to begin today. Get started. Don’t put it off. Attend a Bible class. Become familiar with the sword of the Spirit, so that you will be able to defend yourself, and defeat the enemy.

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