Disclaimer: This transcription is provided for informational purposes, reference, and convenience. Please note that it may contain errors, omissions, or spelling mistakes due to the nature of live audio transcriptions. While we strive for accuracy, this document should not be considered a fully authoritative record of the sermon. For clarification, we recommend referring to the original source. Thank you for your understanding and patience. 

My, my, my, what a joy it is to be able to lift our voices and allow those doxologies of praise just erupt from the very core of our being, praising our glorious God and King. Oh, dear friends, the hope that we have in Christ, the joy that we have in Him, and to think that he is the one that created everything. And as we're going to see this week, he was able to create the moon and the sun and the earth in such a way as to allow them to line up absolutely perfectly. Folks, that is a miracle of divine providence. Don't take that for granted. Truly, the heavens declare the glory of the Lord, right?

My, my, my, well this morning, in the providence of God, he has brought us to Hebrews chapter 12, beginning in verse four. We will be examining verses four through 11 this morning, under the heading "The Father's Loving Discipline." So while you're turning there, let me ask you a question, how do you respond to adversity in your life? How do you respond to suffering, to hardship? We all experience it from time to time, and some of us live with it. For some it's greater than others. But the question is, how do you handle it? Chronic Illness, maybe terminal disease, bereavement, poverty, wayward children, loneliness, depression, poverty? Some of our listeners are living in places where they're the people are constantly at war. How do you handle it? To be sure, some problems that we face are the consequences of our own sin. Many times, it's the consequences of the sins of others; but many times, it's just part of living in this fallen world. How do you deal with it? Do you anesthetize it with chemicals, with pills, with alcohol? Do you run to the television set and veg out on the couch and live in some parallel world? Do you go on a crusade to blame others? Maybe blame God question God demand that God give you some relief and an answer. Or maybe you just blow it off with a sense of angry resignation and just say, well, that's life. That's just the way it is. Or, do you say, Lord, I am in pain. I am in agony with this ordeal that I'm facing. I have no idea why it's happening, but I know this, you are in it, and I know that because of your unfailing love, you use trials, even as the one that I'm experiencing right now - even the suffering in our life - you use those things as a means of disciplining your children, of instructing us, of correcting us a way of protecting us, so that we can exercise our faith more and more;  depend more and more upon you and experience the fullness of your blessing in our life. Lord, I understand that even though I pray for relief, I pray also that you will teach me great and glorious things that I might know you more fully and serve you more perfectly and experience you in the very core of my being. Father, make me sensitive to that end. I hope that's what you say, and folks, that's what this passage is all about.

May I remind you of the context of the letter. It was written to Jewish converts to Christianity, and they all struggled with things just like we do. Let me give you a little idea of what it would be like to live in the first century as a Jewish believer in Christ. First of all, they paid 50% of everything they made to the Roman government, pretty high. For them, you either worked or you didn't eat. They did not have any social welfare. They had all the same disease and health issues that we would have and then some. But there were no hospitals, there were no clinics. There were not necessarily any doctors. No real medications. You wouldn't see any of them wearing a pair of glasses because they didn't have glasses. They had no surgeons. They had no hip replacements, no liposuction, no face lifts. What you see is what you get. That's the way it was back then. They had no indoor plumbing. They didn't take vacations. You literally got up every day, and you worked in order to somehow support yourself and your family. No real entertainment, no personal freedoms per se; no restaurants, no fast food. They may have had some form of pizza, but you didn't get pizza delivery, no refrigerators. In fact, you might be interested to know that the Jews ate two meals a day. They ate what you might call a lunch at midday, and then another meal at night, and they ate mainly fruits and vegetables. On special occasions, they'd have a little meat, a very unhealthy diet. No electricity, no cell phone, no internet. Can you imagine that? And the average life expectancy of even the Romans in that day was 25 years. And you factor in the high infant mortality rate, and that skews that a bit, but it was 25 years. By the way, it's 78.8 in the United States today.  Over half of the people died by the age of five, and of those who lived to the age of 10, half of them would die before they ever reached the age of 50.

But folks, one thing that those folks had in common with us - those believers - is their faith in Christ and their devotion to him; and for that the world hated them. Their families, their friends, ridiculed and rejected them. They became social outcasts because they were following this Jesus of Nazareth cult, so they were suffering persecution and some even imprisonment. We get a sense of this in chapter 10. Remember in verse 32 There we read,

"But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly being made a public spectacle through the reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated.

"For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one.

"Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised."

So dear friends, it is in this spirit that the Holy Spirit inspires his writer to encourage and even exhort these early saints regarding the Father's loving discipline. Now the term discipline is used nine times in these eight verses. It comes from the Greek word "paideia." According to one of the most accurate and most scholarly of all theological dictionaries, this term denotes, quote,

 "the upbringing and handling of the child which is growing up to maturity, and which thus needs direction, teaching, instruction and a certain measure of compulsion in the form of discipline or even chastisement."

So that's the idea of discipline. Now you rarely hear a sermon preached on this. Indeed, the superficial sentiment of modern evangelicalism today prefers to hear about what God can do for us rather than what he would have us do to honor him. People today, of course, want to be exalted, not exhorted. They want to be coddled, not convicted, especially when it comes to dealing with hardship.

And it's for this reason it's a great temptation for pastors to be man pleasers rather than God pleasers. But you must understand that God, because of his great love for us, has revealed to us much of what is going on from his perspective when we experience great difficulties in our life. And that's why I am solemnly commanded to preach the Word, whether it's popular or not, because it is inspired by God. We're told in Second Timothy three, and "it's profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped, may be adequate and equipped for every good work." So hang on, prepare to be taught, reproved, corrected and trained in righteousness. I had to deal with this all week. So now it's your turn. Okay? It was convicting to me. I'm sure it will be to you as well. And as a result, we will be able to better face the circumstances and difficulties that God brings into our life, knowing that he is in it in special ways for special reasons. So let me read the text. Hebrews chapter 12, beginning in verse four, he says,

"You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;

"and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,

"'MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM;

"'FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECIEVES.'

"It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

"But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

"Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not, much rather, be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.

"All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."

Now I would like to examine this text under three headings that I hope will prove helpful in your understanding and application of what the Spirit of God has to say to us this morning. In this passage, we want to look, first of all, at the proper attitude toward discipline. Secondly, the Father's love in discipline and the ultimate purpose of discipline.

Now we must remember in the previous verses, the writer has exhorted the reader to "lay aside every encumbrance in the sin which so easily entangles us and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith." In other words, examine your life, and in order to effectively run the race of faith that God has set out for you, you need to jettison anything that weighs you down. Get rid of excess baggage in your life. It might even be good things, anything that might impede your progress in living a life that is pleasing to God, anything that might cause you to forfeit temporal joy and eternal reward. Get rid of that stuff; and we also need to discard any sin that prevents us from keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, walking with him, serving him, obeying him, and therefore running the race of faith that has been set before us. And if we do this, we will not grow weary and lose heart. So that's what he's been saying.

Now we come to verse four, and he says, "You have not resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin." Now let's think about this. Here he continues his illusion to the Grecian games; he first spoke of running a race, and now he's speaking of wrestling or boxing, or perhaps he even has the imagery of the gladiators in the arena. But here sin is personified, treated as a formidable foe that requires striving "antagōnizomai" in the original language. It means to struggle against. It's the idea of combat. It's the idea of warfare, contending against something that is formidable in order to defeat it.

Let me digress for just a moment. Think of this in our own lives. Think of the pet sins that you have. We all have them, don't we? Secret sins, the ones that you love, the ones that you want to hang on to, the ones that enslave you. Gossip, gluttony, unforgiveness, anger, addictions, pornography, laziness, poor stewardship. Do you ever come before the Lord and beg him to help you kill those things, whatever it might be, or do you just kind of dismiss them as no big deal? You remember in Romans 8:13, Paul exhorts us to be, quote, "putting to death the deeds of the body." I love the old King James, here, it translates that "mortify the deeds of the body." I like that old English word. It means to put an end to something. Folks, sin needs to be killed. It can't be coddled.

Now, the Hebrews were striving against the sin of apostasy. That's been the theme and where the writer has been going here. So this was what was going on on the inside, and on the outside, they were striving against the sin of the world that would try to induce them to apostasy and perhaps even threaten to take their life. So this is what they were fighting against, but their heart, like ours, battled all the types of sins that we would struggle with. I mean, Paul told them, for example, in Galatians five and verse 17, that, "the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these things are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please." So we know that sin is constantly trying to regain mastery over us. It is sin that quenches the Spirit, that grieves the Spirit. It causes us to doubt God and to fear man, rather than to fear God. It is sin that causes us to disregard and disobey his word and so forth.

So back to the text here. He's saying, yes, you've resisted sin thus far, especially the sin of apostasy, but you've never resisted in your striving against it. In the face of martyrdom, in the face of death, you have never had to endure like Jesus had to endure as he endured the cross. Now we know that persecution is always Satan's great champion that he uses to wear down the saints with fear and doubt so that he can defeat our fidelity to Christ and cause us to apostatize; cause us to denounce our faith, and by implication, as we will see as we go on here, what the Spirit is saying is, if you cower and collapse in lesser trials, what are you going to do when you face perhaps a violent death again?

Verse four, "You have not resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin." Folks, I pray that we are never placed in that position, but I shudder to think how most professing evangelicals would respond. Could we say, with Paul in Acts 21:13, "I am ready, not only to be bound, but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." We are used to the comforts of Western affluence, and the moral ambiguity of religious pluralism, where you can kind of believe anything you want; and it's all truth, so to speak. And therefore, most of us have never experienced any significant loss or persecution, or sorrow or pain, as a consequence to our allegiance to Christ. Denying self and taking up a cross daily to follow Christ is just kind of not that hard, so to speak, from our perspective in our culture, and frankly, that's foreign to us.

I was thinking about this, I asked myself this, and I'll ask you the same question, have you ever deliberately chosen to do anything that would cause you to suffer because of your devotion to Christ? Even little things like not laughing at the dirty joke, even little things like inserting some biblical truth in the midst of some screwball discussion like we hear all the time, or posting something on Facebook that might be, I mean, certainly very biblical, but might fly in the face of some nutty thing that your friend has put on there. So you see, folks, we need to be toughened up, don't we? We need to be prepared, we need to be protected, we need to be instructed, and this is what God the Father does in discipline. And again, the point here is, if you grow faint with the lesser trials and you want to give up, what are you going to do when the battle gets even harder? When Jeremiah was growing weary in his battle for the truth, in Jeremiah 12 and verse five, God said to him, "'If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, then how can you compete with horses if you fall down in a land of peace, how will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?'" By the way, the thicket of the Jordan was a place notorious for ferocious beasts, venomous snakes and huge briars that would basically make your path impassable.

So God disciplines us by bringing hardship into our lives, to correct us, to instruct us and to protect us. I've talked with friends that are in Special Forces, and they say, "We never stop training." They are constantly, training for very similar reasons. Now, the basic issue at hand here, in this text, number one, is the proper attitude that we need to have toward discipline. So notice verse five, he says, "and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons." And here it is, 'My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him.'" So we're going to examine in a moment there's two dangers that we face when God disciplines us. We, number one, regard them lightly, or number two, we end up fainting under them. But they had forgotten what God had said to them in the Old Testament. They had forgotten the word of the sage addressing his disciples as his son in Proverbs three and verse 11, There we read, "My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord or loathe His reproof for whom the Lord loves He reproves even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights." Goes on to say, "How blessed is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding. For her prophet, (referring to wisdom) is better than the profit of silver and her gain better than fine gold." Have you ever been around undisciplined children? Of course, I know your kids are all disciplined, but you know those other people. It can be tough. And we know, according to Proverbs 22 and verse 15, that "foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child, but the rod of discipline will what it will remove it far from them." Proverbs, 29 verse 15, and I don't have this for you, but it says that "the rod and the reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets his own way will bring his mother to shame." I was thinking about this because, as a believer - all of us as believers - we have remnants of foolishness still in us, right? It's certainly not all gone. I made a little list, 25 characteristics of a fool out of Proverbs. Let me read it to you real quickly. He despises wisdom and instruction, hates knowledge, grieves his mother, enjoys devising mischief, he's right in his own eyes. He's quick to anger, hates to depart from evil. He's deceitful, arrogant, careless, rejects his father's instruction, despises his mother and his father, does not respond well to discipline, does not understand wisdom, has a worldly focus, a carnal value system, grieves his parents, hurts his parents, will not discuss any viewpoint but his own, provokes others to strife and anger by his words, has a smart mouth, usually that gets him into trouble. He's quarrelsome, contentious. He's a spendthrift, repeats his folly, trusts in his own heart, cannot resolve conflicts, and gives full vent to his anger. Some of you say you just described my kids, right? And some of you say you just described my husband, or my wife, or somebody else that we know well. Indeed, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will remove it far from him.

Now, sometimes God disciplines for us for our sin, and therefore that kind of discipline is what you might say, is corrective in nature. Remember the story of David, how God punished him because of his adultery and his murder - adultery with Bathsheba and killing her husband, ultimately, by the name of Uriah - and remember what God did? He took their infant son and allowed untold misery and heartache into David's life and Bathsheba's life, by means of very wicked children. Remember the story of Absalom and on and on it goes. And speaking through Nathan, is his prophet. God said to David in Second Samuel 12:10, "Now, therefore the sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised Me and have taken the wife of Uriah, the Hittite to be your wife." And of course, we know that David did repent and began to walk even more intimately, independently with the Lord.

In First Corinthians 11, we read about the very worldly, arrogant, selfish believers that were in the church, and how they made a mockery of the Lord's table. You will recall that the early church would have love feasts, kind of like we would have on a Sunday afternoon, and then at the end of that they would they would have communion, but some of the wealthy saints were bringing baskets of food for themselves so that they could have a banquet, but they refused to share with the less fortunate people that were in the church. And so those dear folks would go away hungry, and some of those people would even use that sacred time, that should be devoted to remembering the Lord and so forth, they would use that as a time for gluttony and even for drunkenness. So they were actually mocking Christ's sacrifice for sin by indulging in it; just inconceivable. And of course, that brought great division into the church. And so God disciplined them. And Paul said that they had brought quote "judgment upon themselves." And he says, "that is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died." He went on to say, "but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world."

And by the way, I've witnessed that kind of divine chastening, even in this church, with people who have acted in a pattern of ungodliness and divisiveness. So God is serious about purity in his church. And think of Ananias and Sapphira and so many other examples. But we also must understand, while discipline will include various kinds of hardship, it will include, certainly, problems and even suffering, not all suffering is divine punishment as a consequence of personal sin. Job is a great example of that. You remember that incredible story? God used his suffering to teach him and to teach us many glorious truths about God's character and about His purposes. And as a result, when you read the story of Job, it moved him into a whole new level of intimate fellowship with the Lord and adoring worship.

Now, discipline, certainly, while it can be corrective, it is also protective, and sometimes these things overlap. We're never sure completely but remember Paul's thorn in the flesh in Second Corinthians 12, beginning in verse seven, Paul says, "Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations..." in other words, all that God had said to him communicated to him; he was trained personally by Christ in the Arabian Desert. Because of all these things "for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself..." there's the protection,

 "to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me--to keep me from exalting myself!

"Concerning this I  implored the Lord three times that it might leave me.

"And He has said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.' Most gladly, therefore I will rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

"Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong."

So God disciplines us to correct us, sometimes to protect us. And it's always intended to instruct us. Who among us have not learned more during times of difficulty than in seasons of ease? To be sure, God strengthens the steel of our faith in the fires of adversity, and he forges our character on the anvil of suffering; and this is how he conforms us into the image of Christ. But folks, we must be aware that regardless of the difficulty that we're dealing with, God is in it in some way, and we want to pray that he will help us understand his purposes in our pain and be able to experience his power and his presence, lest he turn up the heat. And we've all had that, haven't we? When we didn't learn it very well the first time, so we have to go around again. Boy, my mind gets flooded here. I think of times, even in my own life, and certainly times in disciplining my kids when they were young, to warn them because of my great love for them, and if they didn't get it, when the discipline was kind of light; man, I'll tell you there'd be a time where I'd go to the nuclear option. And I mean, we are going to have a change of attitude and behavior, now. This is not a democracy. This is a total dictatorship. Here's how it's going to be. Why do we do that? Because we love our kids, right? We want to protect them, we want to correct them, we want to instruct them. Beloved, discipline is never pleasant, but it is always out of love that God brings these things into our lives. As you hear me say very often, it's for our eternal good and God's eternal glory, and he's always up to things that we may not fully understand. We may never know, but what we know is that he is in it. And it's for this reason, Peter instructed the suffering saints in First Peter 5:5, he says,

"...clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

"Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God."

And by the way, at that time, it was the hand of divine testing, these people were scattered. They lost their homes. They were losing their lives.

"Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him because he cares for you."

And it's in the context of great adversity that we have an opportunity to really begin to live that out. And it's for this reason that James says, remember in James one and verse two, that we are to "Consider it all joy." "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance," and so forth.

Now back to our text. In verse five, he says,

"and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,

"'My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord nor faint when you are reproved by Him.'"

In other words, you need to be reminded once again of Proverbs 3:11, and 12. That's the point. By the way, isn't it interesting, if you think about it, more often than not, we need to be reminded than taught, right? I hear you say that a lot of times. Boy, Pastor, thanks, you know, I knew that, but I had just kind of forgotten that, and how that applies to my life. And so that's what's happening here.

Now, as I said earlier, as we look at the text, there are two dangers that we need to be aware of when God disciplines us. We can either respond by regarding it lightly, or we might faint under it. So let's look at the first one. Number one, he says, "do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord." Now this doesn't mean that we take our problems lightly. That's not what he's saying. Rather, what he's saying is, you have a tendency to take God's involvement and purposes lightly. Think how this works. We have some great difficulty in our life, and for some they think, well, you know, God doesn't have anything to do with this. This is something bad, he doesn't have anything to do with any of that. And of course, when you say that, you deny his sovereignty. And other people will say, well, whatever this is, God sure doesn't care. He may not even know what's going on. Well, what does that do? That denies his omniscience and his goodness, right? Others might say, well, God, I need to talk with you. This isn't fair. I need an explanation. And of course, that denies God's righteousness and his justice, and on it goes. You see, those types of attitudes impugn the character of God. People come to me with problems on a regular basis, everything from disease to divorce, from addictions to anger; you name it, everything in between. And after hearing them, almost always, I will ask, I'm curious, what do you think God is up to in your life, in this situation? And many times, people will, in essence, say, you know, I really have no idea. I never really thought about that. They're thinking so much about the problem. They're not thinking about what God may be trying to teach them or protect them from, or whatever. And then sometimes they will give some pathetically immature, undiscerning religious dribble that, you know, may kind of sounds good, but it's meaningless.

So do you want to know how you find out? How do you find out what God is up to, at least to whatever degree you can? Just examine how a person is handling their problem. And wherever it is unbiblical, that's what God is up to. You get the idea? If they give no consideration to God's involvement in the problem, that's what God's up to. If they're questioning God, if they're somehow resenting him, blaming him, that's what God's up to. If they're seeking relief from anything other than a humble submission to his grace and his love and whatever he's doing in his life, that is what the problem is. If they're handling it with alcohol and drugs and entertainment or an eating disorder, whatever it might be, legalism, libertinism, whatever it is, that's what God is up to. Beloved, whatever problem you face, realize that God is up to something in your life and do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. Know that because of his great love, he is trying to correct, protect or instruct you; a combination of them, maybe.

And for this reason, Paul exhorts us, remember, in Romans 5:3, he says that we are to "exalt in our tribulation." That is an amazing passage. I'll resist the temptation to go into great detail, but simply to say, he's not merely saying, rejoice in spite of them. He's not even saying, resign yourself to them and just kind of get a stiff upper lip and just choose to be happy as if you could do that. He's not even saying, rejoice in the midst of them, even though that is extremely important. What he is saying is that we are to exalt because of them. We are to rejoice on account of them. That's hard to do when you find out you've got cancer, right? How do you do that when you find out that your wife has left you or your kid is on drugs. How do you do that? How do you exalt in that? Well, certainly you don't rejoice over the horrible situation, but you rejoice in the fact that God is somehow involved in all of this. Lord, thank you, even though this is a horrible thing, thank you, that I can count on you, that you promise to never leave me or to forsake me.  That in the midst of all of this, you can reveal yourself to me. You can help me understand more of who you are. You can prove yourself powerful on my behalf. I have an opportunity to understand more of how to live for you in the midst of this horrible thing. Thank you for that. But Lord, heal my cancer, right? Bring my wife back. Bring my child back. So when you experience some great sorrow, realize that it is a crucible of God's grace in ways that you may never fully understand. And then what do you do? You run to your Father, and you thank him, and you plead for help, and you also run to Christ, for "we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are yet without sin. Let us therefore, draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need."

So some people regard the Lord's discipline too lightly. Others, secondly, faint when they're reproved by him. Some folks, they just kind of wither up and die, so to speak. They just collapse in a heap of despair. They just can't function. And instead of running to the Lord, they run to the liquor store, they run to the doctor to get some more pills. And instead of dropping to their knees and saying, "Lord, thank you for the help and the hope that I have in Christ. Thank you for the reality that in the midst of this terrible situation, I have an opportunity to experience, to know, to serve, to glorify you." Rather than that, they begin to blame God or question God, vent their anger on the people closest to them. They've forgotten what God had said in Proverbs 3:11, through 12, let me remind you of it again. That's what the writer is saying. You've forgotten what he said, "My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord or loathe His reproof. For whom the Lord loves, He reproves even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights."

So the writer first addresses this issue of having the proper attitude toward discipline. Secondly, we learn more about the Father's love in discipline. Notice verse six, "For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines and He scourges every son whom He receives." It's interesting in Proverbs 13:24, we read, "He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him, disciplines him diligently." You see, every loving father is going to do whatever it takes to help, correct, protect and instruct his son so he doesn't grow up to be a fool. And of course, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. We see this all the time, don't we? And unbelievers who are at enmity with God, they're fools. They live in a fool's paradise. They serve their father, the devil, Jesus says. And it's interesting, God doesn't discipline them, does he? Because they're not his kids. I don't discipline your kids because they're not mine, even though sometimes I would like to. You see, God doesn't discipline Satan's kids. He abandons them. Romans one, right? He gives them over to the consequences of their iniquities. He hardens their heart, and eventually they have no moral compass, they have no conscience. Then he gives them over to a worthless mind. And we see that in Romans one spelled out, and then he judges them in the solitary confinement of an eternal hell. I mean, just look at the absurd and wicked, irrational things that people are doing today. I think I read there were, I believe there were, six policemen that were shot yesterday in two different places. One's dead and the other five are seriously injured. As I listen to people today, I mean the standard that people are using; if you put that on God, do you realize that the God of the Bible would be politically incorrect? He would be misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, bigoted; he’d be a racist, guilty of genocide and other war crimes. If that's the standard that we're using, that's who God is. I mean, how do you get there? There's no discipline. God's given you over. Second Timothy three, remember in verse one, Paul says, "But realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God." There's no discipline there, right? But, you know, folks as a believer, I use myself as an example, I can start thinking some wicked stupid thing, or start moving in a direction, and all of a sudden, I'm so overwhelmed with guilt, and the Spirit of God is bringing such conviction. I have to deal with it. I'm on a short leash, and so are you as believers. Unbelievers, they don't experience any of that. They can do the most hideous, heinous things. It doesn't bother them. I know, even as a pastor teacher, James three one, says that I'm going to incur a stricter judgment, so I have to be very careful. Well, why does the Lord put me on such a short leash, or you for that matter? Because he loves us, right? Because he loves us, and "He scourges every son whom He receives."

Verse seven, "it is for discipline that you endure." The great Greek word "hypomenō," it means "to choose to remain under a trial." It means to persevere, to submit, to humbly, patiently wait upon the Lord to work in you and through you. It can be translated, "steadfast." In fact, Paul rejoiced because of the Thessalonians in First Thessalonians one, verse three, because of their "steadfastness." There's the same word, "steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the presence of our God and Father. Knowing brethren, beloved by God, His choice of you. I rejoice in that." In other words, the Father's discipline here is proof that you are his child. Now, isn't it interesting? He uses the term "endure" which is the opposite of taking it lightly or fainting, right? It's the opposite of that to endure as Christ endured; to continue to trust God's loving care and his unblemished goodness in your life.

Verse seven, again, "It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?" Verse eight, "But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons." So beloved, no matter what the situation, rejoice, God is in it. He's up to something because he loves you. And we know that "God causes all things to work together for good, to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purposes." And what's his purposes? To become like Christ? That's what he's constantly up to.

And finally, he speaks of the ultimate purpose of discipline in verse nine. "Furthermore," he says, "we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?" Practically speaking, he's saying, don't turn away in apostasy, continue to live by faith in Christ. And the idea here of living is to really live. Remember, Jesus said, "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." That's what the Lord wants for us. He wants us to experience the overflowing surplus of his grace in our life right now and throughout the remainder of our days here on earth and into eternity. That's what he wants for us. He wants us to really live. That's why he disciplines us.

Folks, some of you are not living. You're just existing. It's a tragic thing. You live for yourself. You don't live for God. Some of you have no zeal for God's glory, but you have the zeal for your own. Some of you live in cyberspace. Your eyes are glued constantly to some screen, living in some parallel universe. Some of you do nothing for Christ. What a boring life. I mean, watching your life is like watching reruns of the Weather Channel. I mean, there's just nothing that's just really worth looking at here. That's not what God wants for us. Oh child of God, get excited about your faith. That's the point with this. God is up to something in your life. Get lost in the wonder of his provision and his power. Take a stand for Christ. Get off the bleachers and get in the race right. Join the battle. Be a good soldier of Christ. The first thing you need to start killing. It's not the enemy without, but the enemy within. Start mortifying your own flesh, right? Start killing your own sin. Live the adventure of serving and knowing Christ, watching him work in magnificent ways in your life. John MacArthur said this, "I once asked a missionary, to Indochina, how he liked living there. And the gist of his reply was, quote, 'I don't think I could ever come back to the boring existence of the United States. We have seen God work so many wonderful miracles over there. Why would we want to come back here to this humdrum routine?' He had been through war," MacArthur says, "famine, disease, political and military upheavals, and countless other experiences that most of us would do almost anything to avoid. Yet he knew that he was really living in the fullness of God's presence." I mean, that's the idea. By the way. I'm not saying let's all go to Indochina, but I think you get the point.

And he goes on to say, "For they disciplined us," in verse 10, "for a short time as seemed best to them," referring to our earthly fathers. But God, the Father, "disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness." I mean, sometimes we punish our kids in the wrong way for the wrong reason and so forth, but God is always perfect in how he deals with us; always for the perfect reason that we might be holy as He is holy.

And he finally says, "All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness." So dear friends, let me challenge you by asking you a question, what fruits have been produced in your life because of the hardship, because of the suffering that God has brought into your life? Can you look at the fruits of the Spirit and see that they are more abundant and shall we say, tasty in your life? Or have you not really gained much from what God has been up to in your life? And if that is the sad reality in your life friend, know this, you simply must learn these lessons.

Well, learn to submit to the loving hand of the Father as he brings discipline into our life. Be thankful for it. Learn from it. And then and only then will you be able to really live and be able to yield, as it says, "the peaceful fruit of righteousness in your life." Let's pray together,

Father, thank you for these very practical truths. Sometimes it's so difficult to know in our flesh how to how to deal with all of the stuff that we have, and all of the suffering, the pain, the sorrow, But Lord, these truths help us understand more of what you're up to. And I just pray that for everyone who might find themselves in some great difficulty today, that you will speak to them and help them to understand these great principles and apply them to their life. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for disciplining us and thank you for the hope that is ours in Christ that someday it'll all be over, and we will be in your presence forevermore, even so come Lord Jesus. Amen.