DOMINANT THOUGHT: No matter the context, God’s discipline shows his Father’s heart for us.
PURPOSE:
- Head: For the people to understand that God cares for us as a father cares for his children.
- Heart: For the people to have confidence and hope in God’s promises through tough times.
- Hands: For the people to see what God is teaching them through their pain.
MANUSCRIPT
Discipline. The word comes with somewhat negative connotations. Images that come to mind may be dad’s belt, or being grounded, or suffering under the loving care of a drill sergeant while in basic training. When I hear the word, I think about Mr. Angle. Mr. Angle was my high school science teacher—he was a tough-as-nails Texan who used to coach football down in the Lone Star State. He had a wooden paddle lovingly crafted from some 1x6 black walnut. It had holes drilled in it that made it whistle through the air while it sped on its way to its intended target. He used to have a smaller, plainer model, but he broke it one day while administering some discipline.
No matter what images come to mind when we think of discipline, they all share one common theme: discomfort.
Of course, discipline is not what it used to be. Comedienne Renee Hicks said, “[My mother] had something like a time-out, it was called a knock-out.” The great philosopher and social critic “Weird Al” Yankovic humorously takes note of the softening of discipline today in his song “When I Was Your Age:”
What’s the matter now, sonny, you say you don’t believe this junk?
You think my story’s wearin’ kinda thin?
I tell you one thing, I never was such a disrespectful punk.
Back in my time, we had a thing called discipline!
Dad would whoop us every night till a quarter after twelve,
Then he’d get too tired and he’d make us whoop ourselves.
That reminds me of two men who were out on the golf course. One turned to the other and said, “You know, when I was a kid, my parents sent me to my room without supper if I misbehaved. But my son has his own color TV, telephone, gaming system, computer, and stereo in his room!” His buddy nodded in understanding and asked. “So how do you deal with him?” The other man smiled. “I send him to my room!”
This Fathers Day I want to challenge all of us to take another look at this thing called discipline. I want us to appreciate discipline, to rejoice that our heavenly Father cares enough about us as his children to administer discipline to us. That’s right, I said I want us to rejoice that God counts us worthy of receiving his loving discipline.
Our text this morning comes from Hebrews 12, starting in verse 4. We’ve been bouncing around the book of Hebrews for the past four weeks. We’ve learned that God has spoken to us though a better medium: his Son Jesus Christ. We’ve learned that through this superior form of communication we have received a better warning, that through the incarnation of Jesus God has a better understanding of our brokenness. Today we will learn that through Jesus Christ we have been adopted as the sons and daughters of God, and as our Father, he offers us a better discipline. Hear the Word of God, starting in Hebrews 12, verse 4:
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: "My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, 6 because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son."
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8 If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10 Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
12 Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 13 "Make level paths for your feet," so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.
14 Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. 15 See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. 16 See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. 17 Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears.
I believe this text demonstrates four revealing facets of God’s discipline to us. Let’s take a look at them.
God’s Discipline Shows His Adoption of Us (vv. 5-8).
Our first clue about this truth comes from the very word used here for discipline. It does not come from the same root where we get the word “disciple” in other places of the New Testament. That word primarily describes a learner, and refers to the person being instructed. The word the writer of Hebrews uses here refers to the means by which a child is instructed. In fact, the root of this word is where the English words pedagogy and pediatrician come from. In the time of the New Testament, it meant to bring up, to train, to instruct, educate. The Greek Old Testament gives us a clue as to its meaning, where it is used to describe chastisement, correction, and discipline, primarily of a father to a son. It’s found 41 times in Proverbs, a book rich with references to instructing children. It’s not surprising, then, that the writer of Hebrews quotes Proverbs 3:12 to us right here.
Our text this morning has what we call a pocket of occurrences of this word; in fact, a full third of its occurrences in the New Testament are right here in Hebrews 12. That tells me that if we want to grasp the concept of God’s plan to raise us as his children, we need to understand what’s being said here.
Another word occurs six times here in verses five through eight: the word sons. We’re addressed as sons, expect punishment as sons, to endure hardship as sons, to expect discipline as sons, and described as true sons. Now ladies don’t get caught up in a dead language used 2,000 years ago. When the New Testament writers wanted to include sons and daughters together, the Greek language forced them to use the plural masculine. So he’s not just writing to men, but to women as well, to all who call upon the name of Christ.
Because it is when we call upon the name of Christ that you and I become God’s children. John said it best in the first chapter of his gospel: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-- 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:12-13).
James Herriot was the world famous veterinarian who worked in the Yorkshire Dales of Great Britain. He tells the story of a shepherd who had one ewe die while giving birth and another ewe who lamb was stillborn. Though the ewe did not have her own lamb, she refused to allow the lamb who had no mother to nurse from her. But when the shepherd took the skin from the dead lamb and tied it around the one that was still living, the old ewe gladly adopted it as her own, allowed it to nurse from her, and it grew and prospered.
That is sort of the way God adopts us. We don’t become his adopted children by our own merit. We don’t smell that good to him, if you want to know the truth. Our sin makes us smell like complete strangers to God, not like any child of his at all. But when we accept Jesus, and put on his righteousness, when we clothe ourselves with Christ, God the Father embraces us as his own. He takes us in, feeds us and nourishes us, and we begin to grow and prosper.
Part of taking care of a child is to administer discipline, so that the child may be trained in the way he or she should go. The writer says to expect it, to anticipate it, and reminds us that if we don’t receive God’s discipline, we’re not really his adopted children in the first place.
God’s Discipline Shows His Affection for Us (6).
By this I want to point out what verse 6 says: “The Lord disciplines those he loves.” Some of us may have had father figures in our lives that administered discipline, but did not do it out of love. Some of us may not have had father figures in their lives at all, making it really hard to grasp the love of a father that God has for us. The first time I saw my dad, I was three years old and he was behind inch-thick glass at the visiting room of Tejachape State Penitentiary. He died of a heroin overdose in 1985. My grandfather was the main father figure in my life, and he spent most of my formative years making sure I was well aware of how useless I was in his eyes. During our last conversation of any substance, he told me that I was going to end up just like my father.
My story is not by any means unique. You need to know that you are not alone if you have had a hard time reconciling a good God with a Father God. For those of you who have had good earthly fathers who gave you a positive impression of what a father is, consider yourselves blessed. You’re not surprised when I say that God’s fatherly discipline is a sign of his love for you. For some of you, though, that may be a hard pill to swallow. Your father may have abandoned you, abused you, or pretty much ignored you. Someone once said that any fool can impregnate, but it takes a man to cultivate. I spent a good deal of my life looking for a father figure who would supply me with the love and support I needed. Thirteen years ago I realized he had been there all along, right beside me.
I can assure you of this, brothers and sisters. God will never abandon you. He’ll never abuse you. He’ll never ignore you. He’ll never let you down. His love for you knows no bounds. And even when you wander away from him, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, God waits on his porch, looking down the road, hoping to see you on the horizon.
God’s Discipline Shows His Intention for Us (9-11).
In verses nine through eleven, the writer provides us a fortiori argument—from the lesser to the greater. If our earthly fathers, in their limited knowledge and fallen nature, disciplined us as they thought best, how much more will our heavenly Father, in his omniscience and holy nature, discipline us so that we might live?
God is a God of love. He’s a God of grace. He’s a God of mercy and compassion. But he’s also a God of justice, a God of perfection, a God of righteousness. As Eugene Peterson once paraphrased, “God is kind, but he ain’t soft.”
Any father will tell you that we experience bittersweet moments when we see our children imitate us. We swell with pride when we see our son holding the door open for an elderly lady. “That’s my boy!” We say to ourselves. And then we want to crawl under a rock when we hear him repeat that four-letter word he learned from us.
Father God never experiences the pang of regret when he sees his children imitating him. He disciplines us so that we might see his nature, his holy, perfect nature, and so that we can see how it is we should live. God swells with pride every time we act like him. His only regret is when we go our own way and do our own thing.
God’s intent through his discipline is that we ourselves might become holy. Verse 11 points this out. No discipline seems pleasant at the time—amen? It doesn’t matter if it’s getting spanked, doing a hundred push-ups, or memorizing the Sermon on the Mount. Discipline is tough. But if we allow ourselves to be trained through God’s discipline, we will reap a harvest of righteousness—that’s right living with God and others, and that righteousness will provide us peace with God and man. That is the chief end of God’s discipline—that we may become more and more like him.
Discipline Shows God’s Expectations of Us (4, 12-17).
Up until now, all the action has been on God’s part. He adopts us, he loves us, he has plans for us. Now we come to our part in the deal. Here’s where the rubber meets the road.
Back up in verse four, the writer tells his readers that they have not resisted to the point of shedding blood in their struggle against sin. That word “resist” means to stand against something to the uttermost, unyielding, unbending, unbreaking. God expects us to fight against sin with everything we have. And we have quite a bit, because God himself is on our side.
In verse 12 and 13, the writer quotes Isaiah 35. Let me read you some of the larger context of that passage: “Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; 4 say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you." 5 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 6 Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. 7 The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow. 8 And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness. The unclean will not journey on it; it will be for those who walk in that Way; wicked fools will not go about on it (Isaiah 35:3-8). God expects us to be faithful encouragers of our brothers and sisters, to be there when people are going through tough times, to remind them of God’s love and promises.
Again in verse 14 we are reminded of God’s call for us to live in holiness and peace. The writer tells us to pursue these things—the same word used for intense persecution elsewhere in the New Testament. Holiness and peace cannot be divided in the Christian walk, any less than loving God can be separated from loving our neighbor. Holiness and peace are relational terms; they describe how we interact with God and with one another. God expects us to pursue deepening relationships with him and with our brothers and sisters.
In verse 15 the writer encourages to make sure no one lacks the grace of God. Further he warns against allowing any bitter root to grow up and defile the church. The bitter root is a reference to apostasy. And best I can make out, we are being challenged to proclaim a message of grace and to ensure that Jesus is on the throne of every heart on the membership roll. God expects us to keep his gospel and his church pure. We cannot stray from Jesus and the grace he offers to all people.
The writer wraps up his exhortation on discipline with the sad example of Esau. Esau did not hold his birthright in high regard. He was the firstborn of Isaac; as such, he was due a double portion of the inheritance. But since his stomach was his god, he sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of stew. Later on, when Isaac was on his deathbed, Esau went to get the blessing of the firstborn. But it was too late; Jacob had already received it. No amount of tears could change the fact. Isaac couldn’t take it back. This tells me one last expectation of God: he expects us to value our relationship to him above any other thing.
Conclusion
As we reflect on what Hebrews 12:4-17 has to tell us about God’s discipline, I want to leave you with two thoughts.
First of all, we must avoid the temptation to blame God for every bad thing that happens to us. One could easily walk away from our text this morning and conclude that when hardship comes our way, God is behind it. David Faust, president of Cincinnati Christian University, points out bad things happen to us for one of five reasons: (1) They can happen because of our own personal sin. (2) They can happen because of the sins of those around us. (3) They can happen because of fallen nature of the created world. (4) They can happen because of diabolical attack. (5) They can happen because of God’s chastening. Let me add a sixth—bad things can happen for no apparent reason at all—it’s just a mystery. If you don’t think so, just ask Job.
So unless you know for sure that God’s hand is directly involved in bringing tragedy upon you, don’t be too hasty to blame him the next time something goes wrong in your life. But be assured of this: God will always work through our suffering to help us learn something about him.
That brings me to my last thought for this Fathers Day. Hebrews was addressed to a church that was going through a bad time. Believers were being pressured by their families to give up the faith. Believers were being persecuted by the government for having their faith. No matter where they turned, they faced opposition. It was literally a life-and-death struggle, and that’s why the writer wanted to remind them that they were God’s children, to assure them of his love and care, and to make the most of their painful opportunity to learn more about God and his love for them. The next time you’re going through a difficult time, I encourage you to look for the things God will teach you through the experience.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t expect you to start doing cartwheels the next time tragedy, heartache, or disaster strikes. But I don’t want you to miss the silver lining for all the clouds, either. God the Father is there, in the midst of our sufferings, with his arms open wide. We’re his children, and just like any good father, he stands ready to protect us, to nurture us, to train us, and to teach us. For he is good.
