Title Logos Rema (Hebrews 4:10-12)
If you look at the word “word” written in the New Testament in the original language, it is divided into two parts. To explain again, if you look at the words of our Bible in the original language, some places are written in logos and some are written in rhema. Of course, you can see that they differ markedly in their intent and application. Today, the Word of God is recorded in the Bible. The logos is when the word is in the Bible or lingers in our ears, whereas when the word in the Bible is received through the ear and into my heart, it transforms the soul, spirit, mind, thoughts and actions according to the word, rhema. Therefore, the written Word, the Logos, is plentiful in bookstores, in my arms or in the library, and in all churches. However, it cannot be a rhema. It's like seeing and hearing about a drug propaganda on TV, and if you know it, it's logos, and when you eat the drug yourself, you become rhema.
When the Lord tells Peter that he will deny me three times, he is just a logos who does not understand. After the incident, the rooster crows twice, and the words become rhema, and he weeps and cries. If you look at the example in the Bible, when the Ethiopian eunuch read the Old Testament alone, he was a Logos who did not understand the meaning, but after meeting Philip, he became a Rhema, saved and baptized.
Now look at our case where the Logos is experienced as a rhema. John 3:16 is known by many of us and has been memorized for over ten years. If this is the word of God, anyone can easily say Amen. Even though we all know these words, one day, while reading John 3:16, I feel different from before. Oh! I realize that these words are exactly what he said to me. How moving is this love because God loved me and gave his only begotten Son as a sacrifice for me on the cross? Now I believe in that Jesus, and now I have finally gained eternal life. No, now I feel that John 3:16 is alive and wriggling in me. You killed your son on the cross for a terrible sinner like me. Thank you, God. I will cry out your grace until the day I die. Do you also say Amen here? Even though the circumstances around me changed or there was no special miracle, one day the Word lived and worked in my heart. This is what it looks like to become a rhema in the Logos.
Even after salvation, we often feel the rhema experience continuously. Even though it is the same word of God, there was no realization when the pastor preached it from the pulpit. This is the time of rhema when God works. That is the meaning of today's text.
The important thing is that if the logos of salvation are not experientially rhema, there is no salvation, but if you go to church, you will end up with the most pitiful life going to hell. The problem is that in the churches around us today, logos abound, but rhema is small. Whether it is the Gospel of Atonement or the word of sanctification, when the Logos becomes a rhema to me, it inevitably entails enlightenment, emotion, and a change in holistic and personal behavior.
What about your case?
In my view, even in the church I have seen, there are people who have not become rhema. It is not a resource to know the Bible or the habitual church life, but a feeling of being born again and receiving forgiveness of sins, and there should be an overflow of hope for heaven, but it is not. Above all, for these people, the death of the cross 2000 years ago is just a past event, and they are not able to be moved by the cross that died on the cross for me today, not because of my cross today. Also, the saved person should have become a practical rhema obedient to the Word that disciplines, trains, and refines me for sanctification and to become a devoted servant to God, but there is no such thing. No, I reject God's discipline or the rhema of refinement from the beginning, and under the guise of serving God only, I want to sculpt God as I please. Also, if his ears are pierced by the rhema of sanctification without the rhema of atonement, he is a foolish person who devotes his zeal to the church and his soul goes to hell.
Now let's experience the rhema. Those who are cold-hearted because they do not have the experience of salvation or the confirmation of salvation need a rhema that is touched and experienced the love of the cross. Let the practical rhema experience
So how do we experience rhema? Look at the disciples of Jesus. Those who heard and learned from Jesus for three years did not believe and all ran away from the cross. The three-year teaching to the disciples was the logos or the rhema. Couldn't be a lemma. It may be the appearance of a modern church that has matured only quantitatively while being qualitatively premature. How did such disciples experience rhema and come back to the cross again?
Mark 14:50 "All the disciples forsook Jesus and fled."
They all run away after being in Logos state. It didn't end up being a rhema.
Mark 14:72 "The rooster crowed immediately the second time. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said to him, that before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times."
John 14:26 "The Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and will remind you of all that I have said to you."
Romans 10:14-17 “How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? How shall they hear without a preacher? How shall they preach unless they are sent? But they all did not obey the gospel. Isaiah said, "Lord, who has believed our message?" Therefore faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ."
Those who are uncertain about salvation, doubts about Heaven and Hell, and those who are not impressed with the experience of salvation, those who do not have joy in church life, those who often fail in the fight against sin Those who are still in a better world I hope you become a Christian.