That Pesky Context

Today's entry is from David. Enjoy. I did.
________
We're familiar with Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

We pull great ideas from that passage, like how His Word is able to pierce us and lay us bare before Him, how we are tripartite, not dipartite (we have body, soul, and spirit, not just body and spirit), how His Word helps us to understand our thoughts and intentions. And those are all great things, but we are missing something because we've taken it out of context. Just before verse 12, the author is describing the God's rest that has been promised and is to come. He says that Joshua was promised a rest that was not attained, which means that there is yet a Sabbath rest to come. Verse 11 says that because we have this promised rest to look forward to, we should strive to enter it so that we don't fall to the same disobedience as the Israelites.

As we're all familiar, when we see "for" or "therefore" or "because", we need to see how what follows is derived from what preceded it. And we have a "for" in verse 12. So how does the sharpness of the Word of God relate to the Sabbath rest promised by God? Because we are told to strive for the rest in verse 11, we must use God's Word to test our thinking and our hearts so that we know we are working toward that rest. The Word is able to pierce our hearts and minds to convict us or acquit us. And as we're still being sanctified, it will most often be convicting us.

Are we doing that? Do we use the Word to divide our actions from our intentions? Do we use the Word to strive for the rest that is to come in Christ? Are we ready to give account for our actions that did or didn't work toward entering His rest? I know I'm not, but I'm trying.