God Disciplines Those He Loves

Text (Hebrews 12:1-11)

Subtext Job 5:17 "Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty

1 Corinthians 11:32 But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.

Revelations 3:19 those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.

Let me first of all express my thanks to God and to Steve for allowing me to minister God’s word tonight. You may be wondering what someone like me, a sinful, unworthy man is doing sharing God’s word with you.

Well first of all God no longer holds my past against me, and if God only relied on men who were worthy

God’s word would never be shared. After many years of running, God has given me a chance to once again follow Him, and do His will. I am nervous, but very happy to share God’s word with you. After so long I am finally where I probably should have been years ago.

The text we will be using tonight is Hebrews 12:1-11.

The title I have given this message is “God disciplines those He loves for their benefit.”

Allow me to share with you a quote from the late Tom Landry, coach of The Dallas Cowboys.

The job of a football coach is to make men do what they don’t want to do, in order to achieve what they’ve always wanted to be.

This text is pretty much self-explanatory, but hard to swallow and even harder to understand. It is hard enough for us to understand God’s blessings toward us, but when we are under His discipline it is even harder for us to understand Him. So I hope that after hearing this message we will all be encouraged to believe this statement, “God disciplines us His children for our benefit, because He loves us.

The first verse of chapter 12 are a continuation of

Chapter 11, allow me to do a quick review of chapter 11, this chapter is commonly called “The Hall of Faith”, just as in sports today God has created His own Hall of Fame, so that we can be reminded of these great men of The Old Testament, so that their lives can benefit us today. There are men of great renown, and men and women of not so great virtue, but we can be assured of one thing they have all been made righteous through faith. There are people in there that we expect, Abraham, Moses, and Joseph, but there are also people that we wouldn’t expect Samson, and Rahab. But the two things that link them to us, Christians, today are that they had faith in God and they all received God’s discipline. The champions of old are now, watching us, as go through the arena of life. They are definitely cheering us on because they went through the same struggles and they too had to endure God’s discipline some of which was brought on by their own sin, and some that was hardship just because of who they worshiped. These heroes of the Old Testament are in glory now and they have realized the benefits of God’s discipline. So they are in heaven rooting for us to do the same.

Job says in 5:17 "Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.

Job was considered righteous and suffered not because of his own sin, but for his own benefit.

After Steve’s two weeks of Survey through the Book of Job, we now see that God’s wisdom is impossible for us to comprehend, and God himself had to step in and be the final answer to Job’s suffering.

Moving on from verse 1 to verse 2 we go from the old order to the new.

In verse 2 we are reminded of Jesus’ suffering, but we are also reminded of His reward for that suffering. In verse 3 we encouraged to remember Him, Jesus, who endured, so that we not grow weary and lose heart, or give up. That is whenever we suffer God’s discipline whether for punishment or just hardship brought on by circumstances of our lives, we have an example to look at for comfort, and strength in our times of trial. Jesus did not look forward to the day He was crucified, and even He prayed that if there was any other way to fulfill His Father’s plan, let that be, but Jesus did not quit, He did His Father’s will.

If God disciplined His own Son, Jesus, even though He was sinless. How much more are we to expect discipline for us, sinful, unworthy, humans. Jesus understood that His Father loved Him and only wanted what was best for Him.