God's Loving Discipline, Part 1
Hebrews 12:5-11
Recently, it seems as though there have been many difficult tragedies that have occurred in our church family. It wasn't but a few weeks ago we were with a young couple in our church, the Neednoggles, who are dear friends to our family, and they lost their precious little Steven, just a little newborn baby they put down at 7:30, and by 10:30 he was blue and died on the way to the hospital. Two friends of mine that I went to high school with died of cancer. One lived three weeks after diagnosis. The other lived eight weeks after diagnosis and left behind a family of Christian people struggling with the reasons for all of these things...I was in the hospital last night with Tom Ellison from our congregation who was rushed into surgery the night before because there was some very confusing kinds of infection in his spinal column, and he's very challenged, of course, to get through all of this and suffering greatly with pain and things like that.
People have asked me numerous times in dealing with all of these things, "Why do you think the Lord is letting this happen?" People asked me that when I recently went through an illness, "What is the Lord trying to say to you? What is the Lord trying to teach you? Do you really understand what the purposes of God are in this?" In fact, somebody asked me that on the telephone just two days ago.
We have had a number of funerals in our congregation, as...as some of you know who have attended them. And families have been bereaved. And life is full of those difficulties. This morning we had elders prayer for dear Bud Buzby. Been a part of our church for many, many years. In fact, he was here before I came, and he's still here. He's having surgery in a week. They're gonna remove part of his esophagus where they found cancer, and they've radiated that. Now they're gonna go in and take that section out.
And the question always comes up, "Why do bad things happen to God's people? Isn't being a Christian some kind of an insulation? Shouldn't we expect that, if God's on our side, those kinda things aren't gonna happen in our lives? What is God's purpose in all of that, and why is it happening, and how are we to view that?
Those are very important questions. People asked me that when, a few years ago, Patricia broke her neck, and they told me she didn't have much of a chance to live. And...and people were saying, "What do you think the Lord is gonna teach you through this?" Well, we all face that in life. We all face that. That's just the way it is. Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward. The Bible says, "As sure as sparks go up off of fire, trouble's gonna come." We all understand that. We know that. The longer we live, the more of that we accumulate.
And I...it's very important for us to get a perspective on that, and...and answer the question, "What is God doing?" And so I wanna do that this morning. And, in order to do that, I want you to open your Bible to Hebrews chapter 12. I wanna go to the Word of God this morning. Hebrews chapter 12, and to what must be for many Christians a very familiar portion of Scripture that speaks directly to this issue, I think. Now, I confess to you that the passage is...is so important, and the issue is so important that I can't cover it all this morning. I'm gonna give you an introduction this morning, and I think it'll be a very helpful one. I trust it will be. And then next week, we'll look more tightly to the text itself.
But I wanna read the text to you, and it really begins in verse 5...Hebrews chapter 12 verse 5. The writer of Hebrews says this: "And have you forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, 'My son, do not regard lightly the discipline or the training or the chastening 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 receives.' It is for discipline or chastening that you endure. God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 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...that's God...and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, 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 afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness."
Now this is really very foundational for us to understand the issues of life. And since life is filled with trouble, this passage answers what is a very profound and important question. Why do bad things happen to God's people?
Now lemme get a little bit of a running start here. This book is addressed to Hebrews, that is to Jews. A community of Jews that constituted a church. They had come to understand the Gospel. The Messiah had come and had died and...and risen from the dead. And they had believed that, and the church began. No sooner did the church begin than persecution followed. After all, they came out of a Jewish background. They would've been un-synagogued. They would've been put out of their synagogue. They would've been alienated from family, alienated from friends. If they were employed by Jewish employers, they would've lost their job. They might have lost the normal issues of life in terms of where you go and what you buy and who you interact with. Because if those were Jewish contacts, they would've been isolated. They might even have...have suffered some other forms of persecution and alienation.
And so these people in this community of Jewish believers are starting to feel the heat of what it means to identify with Jesus Christ. And the writer of Hebrews wants to put a perspective on that. He wants them to understand that there's a process going on here, and it's not one that should surprise them. It's really an age-old process. In fact, back in chapter 11, he talked about heroes of faith. And the writer of Hebrews sorta gets a running start into the 12th chapter, and he reminds them about Jewish and even pre-Jewish people, all the way back to the time of Adam and his son, Abel. He talks about Abel's faith and Enoch's faith and Noah's faith. And then the Jews began with Abraham. Abraham's faith and Sarah's faith, and it keeps coming down to verse 20, Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses and down to even a harlot by the name of Rahab, who was a Gentile. And then others among the Jews, verse 32, Gideon, Barak, Sampson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets. All of these are people of faith. All of this is sort of like the hall of fame here in chapter 11. all the great heroes of faith. Those who believed God.
And...and in every single case where they believed God, they suffered the condemnation of the world. In every case, when they took a position on the side of God and His truth and His Word and His person, they suffered some condemnation from the world in various ways. It's all summed up starting in verse 33. This group of people "conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions...particularly in Daniel's case...quenched the power of fire." In other words, they were burned like the three friends of Daniel, "escaped the edge of the sword, they were made strong in their weakness. They became mighty in war. They put armies to flight." Some of them literally were killed and experienced the resurrection. They were tortured. It says in verse 36, "They experienced mockings, scourgings, chains, imprisonments... verse 37...they were stoned. They were sawn in half. They were tempted. They were put to death with the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins." Apparently wrapped in those kinds of skins, they would...they would attract, by the scent of those skins, some wild animal that would then eat them. "They were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated. They wandered...verse 38...in deserts, mountains, caves, holes." Welcome to the family of faith, folks. Anybody wanna sign up?
I mean that was the point. When you enter into the family of God, you're gonna receive the condemnation of the world to one degree or another. He's just reminding them of that. He's just saying, "Look, this is kind of how it is." And in chapter 12, verse 1, he says, "Now, we have this great cloud of witnesses, this...this...this pe...this group of people I've just identified, and they are witnesses to the validity of the life of faith in spite of its difficulties."
That brings us down to...to verse 5, and he identifies what this is. From the standpoint of the world, it's persecution. From the standpoint of the person who is suffering, it is pain. But from the standpoint of God, in verse 5, it is called the discipline of the Lord. The discipline of the Lord. And he's saying to them, "You're not the only people to go through this. In fact, you're not the first people to go through this. This kinda goes with the territory." Some of the people in this congregation, we know from reading the book of Hebrews, were genuinely converted to Christ. They had genuinely embraced Him as Messiah. They were true Christians. But they were feeling the pressure of this persecution and alienation, this condemnation by the...the world that they were formerly a part of. And it was pushing them back toward Judaism, and some of them were...were tending to sort of renounce Christ and go back. Others of them were sitting on the fence, sort of teetering on the edge, believing the Gospel was true but afraid to embrace it for fear of the fact that they, too, would be alienated.
The Lord doesn't take away the prospect of persecution. The Lord doesn't say it's gonna be mitigated somehow. He just defines it. From the world's view, it's persecution. From your view, it's pain. From God's view, it's discipline. And we wanna understand it from God's view, don't we? I mean that is the way to understand it. So the phrase that I want you to grasp in this text is in verse 5, right there kind of in the middle of the verse: The discipline of the Lord. The discipline of the Lord.
We wanna understand the issues of life from God's perspective. We want to understand them from His viewpoint. And this is where we learn about His discipline. Lemme talk about the word discipline. Do some of your Bibles say chastening? I'm sure they do. Lemme...lemme give you that word. It's the word piedaya. Piedaya. It is the word from which get, for example, pedagogy, which basically is a form of educating children. It's a word that means to educate. And pedagogy would be to educate children. It's the word from which you get the medical term pediatric, pedo, which is the original Greek term for children.
It is not a word loaded with negative connotation. The word chastening sounds pretty negative. It almost vicious. It certainly sounds like a synonym for punishment. But the actual Greek word, piedaya, is a very broad word, and that's why the translators in the New American Standard that I'm reading translated it discipline, because it embraces both the positive and the negative, not just the negative. It's a broad word. It basically means to train children. And training children is a combination, isn't it? A balance of the positive input - showing them truth and virtue and character - and, on the other hand, giving them enough pain to cause them to be redirected away from things that are bad for them, things that are wicked, things that are evil, things that are destructive, so that they associate those things with pain. They understand there's a price to pay for those, and they don't wanna pay the price, thus they avoid it.
But the word piedaya or chastening or discipline, I suppose we could sum it up by saying refers to whatever efforts are made toward children to cultivate their soul. Whatever efforts are made toward children to cultivate their soul. That would involve teaching them truth and virtue. That would involve correcting mistakes and curbing passions. That's what the word basically means. What...whatever effort is made toward children to cultivate their soul, and that would involve teaching them truth and virtue, correcting mistakes, and curbing passions. It would have a positive aspect and a negative aspect. It would include instruction, and it would include punishment. Includes all of that. It does not have the idea only of punishment. It does not have the idea only of corrective measures which are designed to eliminate evil in the life and encourage what is good. It has also the idea of instruction with what is right. It is the full-orbed term parents should use in the process of rearing their children. A loving parent disciplines, trains, rears his child, both to love what is right and to hate what is evil.
Now, the Lord is doing this in our lives. The writer of Hebrews is saying, "You have to look at all of this from God's perspective and see it as training." And see it as training. I mean it would be not unlike any kind of rigorous training. Training for those people who have to do rigorous tasks in the military. Training for those who have to do rigorous tasks in an athletic endeavor. Training for those who have to do rigorous tasks such as going into space. We've all been aware of that this week. Any of those kinds of things involve positive input and also warnings of what would violate and become destructive. And that's how training is. It's a positive and negative balance.
Now, in the training that the Lord brings into our lives, there are several reasons that He does that. I had three when I got here this morning. I thought of another one in the early service, and I'm gonna include it. That's always kinda fun, you know, when just kinda pops in there. But I wanna show you four reasons...why the discipline of the Lord occurs in your life as a Christian. Four reasons.
Now before I look at those four reasons, I...I wanna make a...a sort of a very clear distinction here. There must be a sharp distinction made between divine punishment and divine discipline. All right? Between divine punishment and divine discipline. Let me say this as clearly as I can. God's people can never be punished for their sins in the full sense, in the judicial sense, because God has already punished Christ fully for our sins. Right? He bore His own body our sins on the cross. God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us. He paid the penalty in full and, therefore, Romans 8:1 says that we are under no condemnation and never will be.
So when we're talking about divine punishment or divine chastening or divine discipline, we're not talking about that judicial punishment of our sins which relates to our salvation. We're talking about a discipline and a chastening and a punishment that relates to our sanctification. God has already punished Christ for all our sins which takes care of our eternity. But God has to punish us for our sins here in time in this world to conform us more and more to holiness and righteousness which is to bring us into greater blessing and usefulness.
Those are two things you have to keep distinct. The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, has cleansed us from all sin in a judicial sense. Our sins are paid for. They're completely covered. And neither the justice of God, because it's already been fully satisfied by Christ bearing our sins, nor the love of God will ever permit Him to again exact payment for what Christ has already paid for. You mark that out?
So when you are chastened and when you are punished by God for sins in this life, it is not because Jesus somehow didn't bear all the punishment for your sins. It is not related to your justification, that is your standing before God. That was accomplished in Christ. It's related to your sanctification. That is your personal righteousness, so that you can enjoy His blessings and be useful to him...
That distinction needs to be made. To put it another way, in...in...in punishment related to our salvation, God is judge. In discipline related to our sanctification, God is a loving Father. In punishment related to our salvation, the objects are sins to be punished, the price to be paid. In discipline, the object really is holiness, to conform the believer to purity. In punishment, condemnation is the goal. In discipline, righteousness is the goal...
Now, let's look at four reasons why the discipline of the Lord happens in our lives. And I...and I wanna tell you before we go into this, this is a very personal thing for most part. A very personal thing. And even at...that is to say I can't look at you and say, "Oh, I know why the Lord's doing that to you," unless I know something flagrant about you, and I'll point that out. But, in many cases, this is something you have to deal with in your own heart. And sometimes, while certainly not clear to everybody around you, it may not even be too clear to you, as we'll see. But these are the reasons that we have to work through in understanding the discipline of the Lord.