Jeremiah 23:29: “Is not My word like a fire?” says the LORD, / “And like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?”

October 22nd, 2024 by Pastor Ed in devotional

The Bible is God’s word, and it is very much like a fire and a hammer. Fire is used to purify metallic ore by exceeding the melting point of the metal that’s being refined, so that the imperfections, which don’t melt, can be removed. Believers down through the ages have all discovered that throughout their lives, their melting points have been exceeded over and over again. Fire was also used to burn up the chaff, the useless stuff, during the harvest season so the crop could be gathered. God desires for our lives to yield fruit, so He burns up the chaff that keeps our spiritual harvest from being all it should be.

God’s word is also like a hammer that pounds and makes hard hearts malleable and stubborn minds pliable. American hymn writer H.L. Hastings described God’s word as an anvil in 1890. What he said is still true to this day:

Infidels for eighteen hundred years have been refuting and overthrowing this book, and yet it stands today as solid as a rock. Its circulation increases, and it is more loved and cherished and read today than ever before. Infidels, with all their assaults, make about as much impression on this book as a man with a tack hammer would on the pyramids of Egypt. When the French monarch proposed the persecution of the Christians in his dominion, an old statesman and warrior said to him, “Sire, the Church of God is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.” So the hammers of the infidels have been pecking away at this book for ages, but the hammers are worn out, and the anvil still endures. If this book had not been the book of God, men would have destroyed it long ago. Rulers have all tried their hand at it; they die and the book still lives.¹

“LORD, please make Your word come alive in us this day.”

¹John Williams Lea, The Book of Books & Its Wonderful Story (Philadelphia, 1922) pp. 18-19.