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.
Let me first of all confess to you that even as I prepared this message my heart was heavy because I am not a good example of accepting God’s discipline, and further more any discipline as for my benefit. But the greatest thing about God is that whether I accept this method of love or not, it is for my benefit.
Let me emphasize one thing here before we continue with the text, it is not mentioned in this passage, but if we as Christians view God’s grace as something good, we too should view His discipline as something good, because it is that same grace which has saved us that sustains us, and one of His methods of sustaining us is discipline. I agree in my humanness that it is hard to understand this concept, but in my spirit I have to agree with it or I will never be able to enjoy God fully in this life.
Before we continue in the text I need to mention that the word discipline, appears four times in this very short passage. Therefore the writer of Hebrews and The Holy Spirit from which inspiration came must really want to emphasize to the readers how important and fundamental God’s discipline is to our lives as Christians.
The Greek word for discipline here is paideia, which is translated training. Used in other scripture in reference to a father training his children, or training in righteousness, or God training His children. Therefore the writer of Hebrews is saying that God lovingly disciplines His children to train them in right character. George Guthrie, NIV Application Commentary
Moving on we see in the next verse the phrase struggle with sin, while reading this I wondered what kind of struggle, whether it was the physical or spiritual, that the writer of Hebrews was talking about.
I took this statement from The Expositor’s Commentary.
The “struggle retains the imagery of athletic games against sin’ seems to refer not to sin the readers might be tempted to commit but to the sin of oppressors who tried to terrorize them into abandoning their faith.
The readers of this letter were Jewish Christians who at the time were being swayed to abandon Christianity and revert back to Judaism. Shedding blood would not accompany the normal course of temptation, but it was a very real possibility for those facing persecution. Jesus had been killed, and many of those honored in chapter 11 had likewise been killed for their faithfulness to God. But the suffering that we endure now and will endure in this life in the future does not compare to that which Jesus endured, His blood was shed for our benefit.
In verses 5 and 6 we read that the readers of that day and more than likely today as well, we forget what it says in Proverbs 3:11,12. As humans we hate discipline whether it is for something we did, or if it is something to better us. When I was in the Army I hated waking up at 4:30 in the morning to do PT, but it was part of my training to make me a better soldier, so I had to do it. As humans we look for the easy way, discipline is usually never easy. I know when we go to a doctor we don’t really want the one who took the easy way. As long as we are in this life being a Christian won’t be easy.
Donald Guthrie, of The Tyndale Commentaries, says this of verse 5. The exhortation not to not to treat discipline lightly is constantly needed since men have an inborn dislike of discipline and never more so than today. It is all too easy to regard it lightly, or insignificant. This is all the more evident when it is the discipline of the Lord. To many the concept is a contradiction, since they have so poor an understanding of the character of God. This whole chapter is bent on rectifying this. It is because men do not naturally recognize the need for discipline that they lose courage when punished. They cannot see
the long-term benefits, nor the concern of God over them.
The concept of love and discipline together is hard to comprehend, but it is true.
Verse 7 is easy to understand, for who of us has not been disciplined by our earthly parents, the only thing that is difficult to understand is that usually our punishment from our parents was usually short and deserved for being disobedient to them. But sometimes God’s discipline is long lasting and sometimes in our own minds not deserved. All of us understand being punished for doing wrong but it is very difficult to connect with discipline for our own goodWe see in society today what can happen when our children go undisciplined, in some homes the children are in control, and in our schools today the children are in control. If God were to allow us to go undisciplined eventually we would be in control, and then we would be doomed.
Paul states in: 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.
Untamed sin in our lives is dangerous, and therefore God must discipline us so that we will trust Him, that much more for His guidance and power to overcome sin, and hardship. How many of you have heard this statement, “I am doing this for your own good,” just before that first whack from your Dad.
Verse 8 is kind of scary if you think about it, the writer of Hebrews is telling us that we are to not only accept God’s discipline, but also look forward to it. I grew up
in home where discipline was expected. When I did wrong I knew what the consequences might be. I don’t know about you but on Judgment day I don’t want God to consider me as illegitimate. So even as hard as it might be at first I will welcome God’s love through His discipline.
At the time of discipline from our earthly father’s we may not really be too appreciative of it, as a matter of fact we may even tell him we “hate him,” but in time we realize that he still loves us, and the punishment we received was not all that bad, and in some cases kept us from doing the same thing again. I think that it is very natural for us to do the same with God, especially when it is hardship, such as loss of health, or loss of job, or persecution due to our faith, but in God’s time we will see that God only did it for our good. God wants us His children to rely on Him for all our needs and when we are faced with adversity it is much easier for Him to the focus of our lives. In some cases God puts us through different forms of discipline because we are too proud or too stubborn to call on Him in good times so He causes us to face trials to get our attention and put down our pride and call on Him.
Verse 10 There is a contrast in the kind of discipline we receive between our earthly fathers’s who discipline us for a “short time.” They do their best, but being human, make mistakes, and maybe not always the right kind of discipline. But God’s discipline is always good for us, God knows what each and everyone of us need.
And He knows just what we need for us to draw nearer to Him. One of His goals in disciplining us is so we share in His holiness. So He does not want to discipline us so harshly that we give up on Him.
A young child accidentally took sleeping pills from the family’s
medicine cabinet. The doctor instructed the parents to keep the child
awake by any means necessary for the next four hours—including the pain
of slapping if necessary. That pain was necessary for the child’s
survival.
Verse 11 is fairly easy to comprehend, even in our feeble humanness we can see that this is true, it only takes 3-4 years to obtain a college degree so that we can reap the benefits for the rest of our lives. It may not be pleasant to obtain but once we have it we are glad that it wasn’t more painful, and definitely like the rewards.
When I was sentenced by the judge, for my crime, my reaction was not one of gratitude. But nearly 3 years removed from that day in court I can honestly say that the punishment the judge handed down to me, became for my benefit, because of God’s hand and love on me, His son. Many people who go to prison go back but that is because they continue to rely on their own abilities, to keep them from doing wrong. It is God who sustains my behavior. He keeps me on the straight and narrow.
The Apostle John in The Revelation tells us in Christ’s own words.
Revelations 3:19 those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.
When we are under conviction of sin or under hardship because of life in general, we need to remember that in the long-term, we will look back and be thankful for it.
So if you are feeling the hardships, or sufferings of this life, don’t quit on God, He is not going to quit on us when we fail Him. And remember not to look at our problems as God neglecting us, God was, is, and always be there to comfort us. So instead of complaining or blaming, let’s just ask Him for His strength, and His comfort to handle whatever it is we are going through.
I am going to close with the same statement that I began with.
God disciplines us for our benefit, because He loves us.
To put Coach Landry’s words in a better perspective.
God’s job is to make His children do what they don’t want to do, obey Him. To make us into what we want to be, like Christ.
Let me close with these words from :
D. L. Moody:
"When I was a boy my mother used to send me outdoors to get a birch
stick
to whip me with, when I had to be punished. At first I used to stand
off
from the rod as far as I could. But I soon found that the whipping hurt
me more that way than any other; and so I went as near to my mother as
I
could, and found she could not strike me so hard. And so when God
chastens us let us kiss the rod and draw as near to him as we can."
