Title: Who is the Enemy? – 2
“How Does God Correct His Children?”
Text: Hebrews 12:6
Last week we started on a subject of “Who is my enemy? Is God my problem or is Satan? Is there a shady area between the two?”
We started on another question that we did not get a chance to finish. So, this morning I want to finish this topic. The question that rings through everyone’s ear at some point or another is does God use Satan’s tactics to discipline His family? What is the chastisement of the Lord? Does it mean the same in the New Testament as it meant in the Old Testament? To answer these questions, we must know how to rightly divide the Word of Truth. The way you divide it is before the Cross and after the Cross.
Isaiah 53:5; “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”
Isaiah 53 is a prophecy of Jesus, the Messiah. Isaiah is prophesying here and is speaking of the things that are to be laid on Jesus.
The English Dictionary defines chastisement as “punishment by inflicting pain.” Chastisement means punishment. Jesus bore our sins so that we don’t have to bear them. Jesus bore our sicknesses so that we don’t have to bear them. Jesus bore our punishing chastisement so that we don’t have to bear it!
Isaiah 53 is a prophecy of what will be taking place on the Cross, while Isaiah 54 is a prophecy concerning the Resurrected Jesus, the Redeemer. So, Isaiah 54 speaks of what will take place after Jesus dies and rises again and ascends into heaven. In Isaiah 54 God is no longer speaking to Israel, but to the Church of Jesus Christ. Listen to what the Resurrected Jesus says to us, His Church!
Isaiah 54:8; “With a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; But with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you," Says the LORD, your Redeemer.”
Isaiah 54:13-17; “All your children shall be taught by the LORD, And great shall be the peace of your children. 14 In righteousness you shall be established; You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear; And from terror, for it shall not come near you. 15 Indeed they shall surely assemble, but not because of Me. Whoever assembles against you shall fall for your sake. 16 "Behold, I have created the blacksmith who blows the coals in the fire, Who brings forth an instrument for his work; And I have created the spoiler to destroy. 17 No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, And their righteousness is from Me," Says the LORD.”
This is the review from last week and we want to start off here this morning. So, how does God correct His children?
THROUGH HIS WORD
We found that the word chastisement means, “Punishment by inflicting pain” and that Jesus bore our chastisement, or our punishment, with pain on the cross.
The Greek word translated chastise in the New Testament actually means, “to instruct or to train.”
I have heard to question for years: “How does God chastise His own?” How does God instruct and train us? Does He unleash His bad dog to bite us on the leg, so we will learn to wear our boots? No, He doesn’t! Listen to this Scripture:
Hebrews 12:6-9; “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. 7 If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? 8 But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. 9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
Jesus said in John 3:6, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
Our earthly fathers correct us in the flesh, but God is a spirit and He uses spiritual tools, not carnal, fleshly tools. He uses spiritual weapons, not carnal weapons. Jesus said, “My Words are Spirit.” He chastises with His Words.
“For whom the Lord loves he chastens.” A loving God does not send tornadoes, tsunami’s, or cancer to His children. God never told Jesus not to pray for someone’s healing because He had put sickness on them and needs to teach them something. He never told a leper that he would have to keep his leprosy for a time because God is trying to work something out for him.
Acts 10:38; “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him.”
God is a single minded God. If Jesus did this while He was upon the earth, then He hasn’t changed any since then. There are times when the situation looks like God is behind it. It may have all the signs pointing towards God, but Satan is a deceiver, he wants you to think that God did it. If he can get you to go against God, he will run rampart over you. The religious idea that God chastises His own with sickness and disease and poverty is completely against the Word of God.
Hebrews 12:6; “For whom the Lord loves He chastens and scourges every son whom He receives.”
Last week you may have gotten the idea that God doesn’t chasten us any longer. That’s not true. What I said last week was that God doesn’t inflict physical pain on us anymore, but He still does chasten us. How? Scourge means, “To beat on.” God is the Father of Spirits. He doesn’t scourge the flesh, He scourges the inner man. How does He do this? I am glad you asked! Listen:
II Timothy 3:16-17; “Every Scripture is God-breathed (given by His inspiration) and profitable for instruction, for reproof and conviction of sin, for correction of error and discipline in obedience, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete and proficient, well-fitted and thoroughly equipped for every good work.” (Amplified Bible)
This Scripture makes it very clear to us that the Lord chastises us with his Word. Put yourself in subjection to the Word. The Sword of the Spirit is two-edged – one side is for Satan and the other side is for you. It trims away the flesh and lusts and it sanctifies us. This Word is of utmost importance in the life of the believer.
I will give you an example found in Scripture of what I am talking about. The Apostle Paul writes this to the Corinthian people:
II Corinthians 7:8-9; “For even if I made you sorry with my letter, I do not regret it; though I did regret it. For I perceive that the same epistle made you sorry, though only for a while. 9 Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing.”
This is the way in which God convicts, brings repentance, chastens and scourges us, it is with His Word. He sent His Word to the church of Corinth and it hurt them so badly that it brought them to repentance. They knew how to handle sickness and disease, but when God reprimanded them with His Word, it cut deep into their spirits and they were very sorry.
Proverbs 17:10; “A reproof enters deeper into a man of understanding than a hundred lashes into a (self-confident) fool.”
God doesn’t use devilish things like sickness, disease and poverty to chasten and scourge you. He uses His Word. I find it amazing that some people have an overwhelming desire to believe the worst from God. They will fight to prove that God is the One that inflicted them. If you were to try to tell me that my earthly father put sickness on me or my children to get my attention, I would be tempted to slap you and so would he. Don’t try to tell me that my earthly dad lied to me or that he stole my property or made my babies sick. My father is a good man. He has worked hard all his life to give me the very best life that he could, he wouldn’t lie to me. He wouldn’t hurt me, he loves me! So don’t try to tell me that he is destroying my life. I won’t believe you! We need to give more credit to our Heavenly Father then our earthly father. My earthly father would never hurt me, so why would I believe that my Heavenly Father would want to.
James 1:13; “Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone.”
How long are you going to listen when someone says, “God put that on you or God allowed that to happen to you?”
CONSIDER JOB
I have heard people say, “Look at what God did to Job!” What did God do to Job?
Job 1:10 “Have You not made a hedge around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.”
Well, first of all, the devil even told God that He had blessed him. For years now, we have read about Job and have blamed God for Job’s situation, thinking that God commissioned Satan to attack Job. That is not true! Satan tells God to do something:
Job 1:11 “But now, stretch out Your hand and touch all that he has, and he will surely curse You to Your face!”
Satan comes to God and says, “Put your hand against Job and he will curse you.” He tried to get God to do it, but God would not! God responds:
Job 1:12; “And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your power;”
Some of us read this and we automatically think, “There, see, God allowed those things to happen to Job.” God had nothing to do with it. Job was already in Satan’s power. God was saying to the devil, “I am not doing a thing against my servant Job, he is already in your power.” He was already in Satan’s power by letting that hedge fall that God had put around him. Job quit acting in faith, began operating in fear and that protective hedge fell. It was Job that allowed the hedge to fall, not God. After fear sets in, we are always vulnerable to Satan’s attacks. Listen:
Job 1:5; “So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, "It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." Thus Job did regularly.”
Job wasn’t offering these sacrifices in faith. The Word says that he made the same ones continually because he was afraid that his sons would sin and he offered it up just in case. That’s not faith, that’s fear! I know this because he says:
Job 3:25; “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, And what I dreaded has happened to me.”
You know from past messages that faith brings what we hope for in the now. The same principle holds true for fear, except for fear brings what we dread or what we hope doesn’t happen into reality. This is what happened to Job. My point is, God didn’t do it! Again, God is not the enemy! Job began to figure out how to get from fear back into faith again. He tried crying about it, he tried cutting and hurting himself, he sat down in ashes and cried some more. None of this did him any good at all. Satan even sent him some very religious men, and they certainly didn’t help him at all. They were the ones that said that God did all this stuff to Job. Later on, God Himself told these men that they had not spoken of him rightly.
The very moment Job moved back in faith by praying for those men, he moved back on the Word of God and God gave Job twice as much as he had in the beginning. When Job began operating in faith again, his deliverance was instantaneous.
This is the stuff that we need to preach. We need to stop identifying with Job’s sickness and failure! People say, “Well, I am just like poor old Job.” Well, if you are going to be like Job you better starting getting some faith in the character of God and you will have to be healed, delivered and set free. Job wasn’t poor! He was the richest man in the East when this began and then God doubled that after it was over. All God has ever done and all He has ever said has been deliverance, freedom and power for His people.
I refuse to believe that my heavenly Father would hurt me, even though I may not know all the circumstances. It may look as though He is behind it, but I refuse to fall to the deception of the REAL enemy and that is the devil.
