Hebrews 12

Now, Hebrews chapter 12.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

Are you ready?

All right.

Hebrews chapter 12.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

How many of you have ever been to the chiropractor?

A couple of you, yeah.

Yeah, I I uh particularly appreciate the chiropractor.

The idea of a chiropractor, one of the words that's really familiar at a chiropractor is the idea of alignment.

Of alignment.

We're gonna take the pieces of your body, the pieces of your back, and we're gonna get them realigned, lined up so that you are not in pain anymore.

The writer of Hebrews, he's really, he is a pastoral counselor, and one of the things that he is doing is he's trying to say, here, let's get ourselves realigned with how God works.

There is a lot in Hebrews about God's methods.

God's methods.

The pastor who wrote Hebrews, he's attempting to reframe God's methods with humans.

Hebrews is this intense pastoral counseling that is aimed at perspective and of the alignment of a person's life.

It's more than just realignment with priorities, it's getting a sense of here's how God works.

So this book is very much written to those individuals who have decided to make Jesus Christ the Lord of their life.

And the invitation of the Bible, the Bible describes the world and says, the world is not how God designed it.

The world you experience is full of brokenness because humans have rebelled against God.

We call that sin.

And God said, look, you're gonna sin.

The day you sin, you're gonna die.

And the world is living in a state of brokenness.

But God said, Hey, I want to rescue and redeem and pull you back towards that design.

And so I'm gonna send Jesus into the world to be the serpent slayer, the one who destroys Satan's destructive lying path over humanity, and I'm gonna redeem humanity and bring them back towards God's design.

But you have to say yes.

You have to give God permission to do this work in your life.

This is something that you personally need to accept.

You have to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, and you begin on this process of the kingdom of God being established in your life and in the context where you're at.

So in Lashawn's story, he said yes to Jesus, and that meant stuff began to be aligned in his life that lines up with the kingdom of heaven.

Stuff went out the door as Jesus was king.

And that's the experience that many of us have gone through as we are following Jesus and we're hearing his call.

So the book of Hebrews is written, and this pastor is saying, Look, listen, I want you to understand, as you're facing suffering and difficulty, I want you to understand how God works because you're tempted to drift away.

You're tempted to cast off this idea of Jesus and this spiritual vitality, this fervency.

You're tempted to drift away.

But I want you to understand this is how God works.

And I'm gonna give you some broad brushstrokes here.

First of all, one of the things that we see is that God sets on the center of the stage, embodies humans, reigning and ruling.

We saw this in Hebrews 1 and 2.

That God says, hey, it's not gonna be angels at the center of the story.

No, and it's not gonna be just that you're floating around as a disembodied spirit.

You're not a we're not a bunch of ghosts in God's universe.

And he says, No, I'm gonna put humans at the center of the stage, and they're gonna be the ones that God works through, but it's this need for Jesus.

Jesus does his redemption and God's will with a body.

See, Jesus couldn't have redeemed you and I without the incarnation.

Incarnation means he took on flesh, he became human.

So this is a part of God's method.

Another part of God's method is that God is verbal.

He communicates and expects, first of all, that the Old Testament scriptures are 100% on par with the New Testament scriptures.

When this pastor writes, he doesn't look at the Old Testament and go, oh, you know, forget about that part.

You know, there's the Leviticus in there, that's hard to understand.

We'll just focus on the New Testament.

No, no, no.

This pastor takes the Old Testament, he holds it up and says, This Old Testament, it is proof.

It's proof.

It's God speaking to you the things you need to hear and the things you need to know.

So the Old Testament is on par with the New Testament.

It's not the old thing that has passed away, but it is just as authoritative.

But then he also expects us to listen in a way that discerns warning and guidance.

So as this pastor is writing chapter three and chapter four, he's he's communicating with this underlying expectation that God talks a lot and that you are the listener, and that you're actively listening and you're discerning on a daily basis that God's warning you about stuff, he's guiding you.

That is how this pastor puts forward.

But that that's not all that he expects.

He expects that you have that you're you're tending to your heart, that your heart is tender enough to listen.

That means that you're attuned to the condition of your heart, that you know what anger and stubbornness and bitterness and pride looks like in the mirror.

And you're actively guarding and protecting your heart from those attitudes so that it doesn't get in the way of this verbal communication from God, that God's speaking through the Bible, He's speaking by His Spirit.

But that's not all.

He also expects actions of faith that you're gonna respond to what God's saying and that you're gonna believe it, but there's these actions that come.

It's it's these faith actions that literally your belief, you I could touch it, we could see it.

There's change that's occurring in your life because you're responding to God's communication.

So that's a part of God's methods that this pastor is holding up.

The third thing is this idea that Jesus the Messiah remains active in our spiritual life by being our high priest versus, this is the temptation he pushed against, Jesus is gone like all the other Levitical priests.

No, he says, listen, Jesus right now is active, active in your spiritual life by being your high priest.

He leads us into a place of a resting lifestyle.

Jesus today, while he is not here in our midst physically, he is physically in heaven, advocating as your high priest and my high priest for our resting lifestyle.

This coming into a place of rest.

He wants to lead you into a place of rest.

He's actively interceding on our behalf.

You can't see him.

I can't hear him praying right now, but he is doing it.

Jesus is praying for you and me.

He's interceding on our behalf right now.

And he's active on our behalf in heaven while we do life on earth.

That is a part of the method that this pastor is like, I just want you to know that just because Jesus isn't here, he is your high priest still.

Another part of the method, methodology that this pastor brings forward is this relationships, according to God, need to move towards the idea of healthy families.

Or, or he holds up on a pedestal the image of families.

And he says, This is how relationships, this is what good relationships look like.

Like Lashawn said, Jesus is our big brother.

That is chapter two.

Jesus declares us to the assembly, he's not ashamed to call you his brother, his sister.

And so there's a very much like a family mentality in this in this book, in this letter.

And that relational dynamic is held up as a part of God's method and how he works with us.

Another aspect is while we learn from the Old Testament saints, and the Old Testament scriptures are authoritative for us, we have it better.

We have it better.

Because one, we have their example, we have the Old Testament Saints' example and God's faithfulness to them.

So we have so we can read about these Old Testament saints and we can see the pattern in which God works with other people and we benefit from that.

We have it better because we have the promised Messiah, Jesus, who has come.

We're not waiting for Jesus to come like the Old Testament saints.

We have a new covenant and we have the new covenant family.

And so this pastor, as he writes this, he is hitting these things.

One last thing here is the salvation trajectory.

He very much talks about salvation, not as just uh I went forward at a harvest crusade or a Billy Graham crusade and I was saved, but he says salvation is this thing that's being worked out in our life that we're holding on to, that we're on this trajectory of salvation.

And so there's language around this idea of maturing or uh not just eating baby food forever, but moving towards solid food, maturing into solid food, spiritual maturity, diligence, not lazy, imitating those who inherit the promises through faith and perseverance.

So this pastor sees you on this path of not just doing life, but maturing, maturing, spiritually maturing towards a destination.

And so we come to Hebrews chapter 12, 3 through 13.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

Let me read it to you.

It says, For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you won't grow weary and give up in struggling against sin.

You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons.

My son, do not take the Lord's discipline lightly or lose heart when you're reproved by him.

For the Lord disciplines the ones he loves, and he punishes every son he receives, enduring suffering as discipline.

God is dealing with you as sons.

For what son is there that a father does not discipline?

But if you are without discipline, which all receive, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Furthermore, we had human fathers discipline us, and we respected them.

Shouldn't we submit even more to the father of spirits and live?

For they disciplined us for a short time based on what seemed good to them, but he does it for our benefit, so that we can share his holiness.

No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful.

Later on, however, it yields the peaceable or peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Therefore, strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but be healed instead.

Let's pray together and ask that God would speak to us through this text.

Lord, we do pray and ask for a work of your Holy Spirit as we consider the things here from Hebrews 12.

Lord, we want to give you permission to invade our life, that you would be the authority and that you would exert your leadership in our life.

Direct the affections of our hearts, direct our thoughts, the questions that we have, Lord.

We ask that you would speak into those things, that you'd give us wisdom, that you'd give us answers.

Lord, we pray that you would speak to us now as we consider these things.

And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We've been looking at this theme of discipline.

Last week I emphasized the ability that God has to take any circumstance of suffering and turn it into a training opportunity.

How many of you have ever watched the TV show How It's Made?

How It's Made.

Have you seen that one?

I love that show.

And one of the things about that show is that raw material goes in one side of the machine and out comes something cool on the other end.

It might be like raw aluminum goes in one side and out comes, you know, a Yeti mug.

And it's like, wow, that's awesome.

And this pastor is saying, listen, because you have a relationship with God, and because God's in control of your story and the Spirit of God lives in you, your life is like that machine.

And suffering comes in one side, and out comes God's training and shaping out of the other side.

And that's not cruel.

God is able to redeem anything.

Now, he's not saying that the me, the way that people were treating these Christians was good because some of these Christians were thrown into prison.

Some of these Christians had their stuff stolen and taken from them.

God's not saying, hey, that's that's you know what I love.

I love you losing your stuff and getting throws.

No, he's saying this is useful in your training.

It's useful for your shaping.

And that's what we talked about last week.

The pastor quoted from Psalm 3, 11 and 12.

It says this.

He says, You've forgotten the exhortation from Proverbs 3 that addresses you as sons.

This is my son, do not take the Lord's discipline lightly or lose heart when you're reproved by him.

For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he punishes every son he receives.

So he quotes this passage, and he says, your relationship to this passage is you're in jeopardy of forgetting this.

You're following Jesus as the Messiah, you're facing suffering, but you're failing to recognize a method of God that God can take and use your suffering as discipline.

Now, here's the question.

When you hear the word discipline, is that something that is negative or something that is positive?

It needs to be positive.

I think when I hear it, sometimes I think of it as something that's negative.

I did something wrong, and so now I'm getting in trouble.

I'm being disciplined.

That's how I, that's the framework in which I understood discipline.

But for these readers, at the time, they understood the word discipline not just to mean sometimes it involved a rebuke or a punishment, as the text from Proverbs declares, but it involves a positive teaching and training that loving parents will give to their children in a whole range of circumstances to bring them to maturity.

So discipline can both be punishment, punitive, but oftentimes it's this idea of training.

In fact, in other places, in a second, I'm going to show you that this word, discipline, is sometimes translated to training.

It's translated to training.

You see, God wants for us to not just accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

That's called being born again.

He births you anew to live this robust new life.

Why would he give you his spirit for no reason?

To every once in a while just like tap into the.

No, the God's intent is that you would do every day anew in a new way.

And so in Romans chapter 12, it says that he changes our thinking.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

Our thinking is no longer conformed to this world, but we have a transformed way of thinking.

He says in Romans 8 that we are being shaped into the image of his son.

He talks about here this idea of training, or that just like how parents love their kids and train their kids, rather than being absent, they're training their kids, shaping their kids so that they can do life.

That's the idea here that this pastor is reminding them about.

So if they could forget it, does that mean that we could forget it?

Yeah, it does.

It does.

And so let's be reminded of it this morning.

I want to just show you the two places in your Bible where this same word padia, that's a Greek word, here in our text in Hebrews, it's it's translated discipline, but I want to show you the two places where it's translated training.

Are you ready?

Okay, let me show you.

The first is in Ephesians 6, 4.

And it says to fathers, don't stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord.

Bring them up in the training or discipline and instruction of the Lord.

It's very positive, right?

It's not, and this is important.

You may have grown up in a home where the idea of discipline was not about training, it was about venting anger.

You may have grown up in a home where you had a parental or an authority figure that did not have your best future in mind.

Instead, they were upset that you were inconveniencing them and that you were not fulfilling their dreams and hopes and wishes or being quiet, or they were just upset about life and they vented on you.

They beat you, whatever.

And that is not the biblical concept of training or discipline.

The Bible talks about training and discipline that is for our good.

In fact, later on here in this text, we will see that it is for our good.

He says it's not pleasant in the moment, but it is for our good.

That is how God uses discipline and training.

So this is the first one.

Here is Ephesians 6.4.

The second is 2 Timothy 3.16.

This is really important.

Paul writes a letter to Timothy and he talks to Timothy.

He says, You know the Bible.

You know the Bible.

You've grown up around the Bible.

You can quote verses.

And he says, the scriptures are inspired by God.

They're breathed out by God, and they are profitable.

What does the word profitable mean?

They make you wealthy, therefore you're good.

And here's specifically four things that they're good for.

The Bible is good for teaching you, rebuking you, correcting you, and there's our word, padiah, training in righteousness.

Training in righteousness.

Do you see that the scriptures are useful in your life, in my life, to train us?

To train us.

That's that same word to discipline us.

The Bible, God's written word, disciplines us.

This is the first point I want you to understand as we look at this is that before you get to the stage where you need a spanking or you need to take a break and be put in time out, God's discipline is verbal.

Isn't that how a parent does it?

You, when you're disciplined, the first stage when a kid's getting close to the line, you warn them.

Right?

You say something with you give them words.

You say, Hey, don't use that attitude with me, sonny.

Is that what you say?

I've never said that as a parent.

I don't know why that was my example.

No kid has ever been called Sonny in my house.

But you give them a verbal warning, right?

You give them a verbal warning.

I want you to see this.

This goes back to the very beginning of the Bible.

When we go back to Genesis chapter 2, when we go back to Genesis chapter 2, this is before Adam and Eve sinned, okay?

Genesis 2 · chapter mention Genesis 2 · chapter mention

God's relationship with his children.

Before they've sinned, Adam and Eve, the Lord God took the man, placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and to watch over it.

By the way, this is the word for worship.

Go into the garden, worship and work, same word, and watch, tend to that garden.

Okay?

Turned loose in the garden.

Beautiful picture.

Here they are.

Take care of this garden.

But then what happens next?

The Lord God commanded the man, you are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.

Do you see what in verse 16 this is called?

The Lord God commanded.

That's right.

What did he do?

He commanded them.

That's verbal instruction.

We could say that's training in righteousness.

That's God disciplining, not because something's wrong, but it's warning to get something right.

And the command is don't, you can eat from any tree you want, but hey, this tree over here, don't eat from it.

Don't eat from it.

Now, here's a question for you.

Are you missing the verbal discipline of God?

What is God saying to you?

Not because you've done something wrong, but maybe God's warning you against something so you don't do something wrong like Adam and Eve.

Let me read this very long quote to you.

This is gonna be like four slides, so just hold on to your seats and brains and go with me here, okay?

But this is really good because this is the point I can't make the point better than this.

The inference of God's commands in Genesis 2.16 is what we just read.

The inference is that God alone knows what is good for human beings, and God alone knows what is not good for them.

You tracking?

God knows what's good and bad for us.

To enjoy the good, we must trust God and obey Him.

If we disobey, we will have to decide for ourselves what is good and what is not good.

While to the modern, to modern men and women, such a prospect may seem desirable.

To the author of Genesis, it is the worst fate that could have befallen humanity.

Having put this in general terms, in verse, chapter 2, verse 16 and 17, the author turns in the remainder of chapter 2.

Remember what happens in the rest of chapter 2, in the rest of chapter 2 to give a specific example of God's knowledge of the good, the creation of the woman.

Not only has the first chapter stressed that God knows the good, where it says God saw that it was good, but now in the present narrative of chapter 2, the creation of the woman has become an archetype, archetypal example of God's knowledge of the good.

God's knowledge of the good.

So here is the picture for you and I.

God wants to be for us the source of what is good and bad.

He says, Don't go eat from that tree.

I don't want you to go and figure out what's good and bad from a tree.

I want to be your source of what's good and bad.

That was the idea.

That was how he was supposed to be.

That you are always a student.

It's being a lifelong learner in the school of God.

That you're there listening for God, showing you what's, and then in the in this garden setting, he goes, Hey, this is what's not good, right?

That's the next thing that happens.

It's not good that you're alone.

He's he is saying, I want to be your source of good and bad, not that tree, and let's just start doing it.

Okay, first step, you're you're alone, that's not good.

Isn't that amazing?

That's how God intended for it to be.

Did the humans obey?

No.

They fell from that, right?

We've all fallen from that glorious place.

And yet Jesus has come, and the first step that we did was we came back to Jesus.

And now Jesus is the author of this new garden setting.

You've been brought into the garden again.

And God wants to be your source of what is good and what is bad.

He wants to train you in righteousness, and he wants to just talk to you.

He doesn't want to just, he doesn't necessarily want you to get smacked up aside the head because you're so dumb and you didn't obey.

He will, because he loves you.

And he can take, he can take suffering and he can use it, but he wants you to just listen.

Listen.

Now, I have to say something important that's very clear from Jesus' teaching.

Just because you do listen does not mean that in this life you escape pain and suffering.

You will escape a lot.

You will escape a lot, but it doesn't mean that you escape all.

What this pastor is saying is like, listen, I want for you, I want for you to be able to understand this family dynamic where God is your father and he is able to correct you.

God knows what is good and bad for you.

He tells you, are you listening?

We're short on time, so let's go to verse 7 through 11.

And this is that whole analogy of the of the dad disciplining the son.

Endure suffering as discipline.

God is dealing with you as sons.

For what son is there that a father does not discipline?

He's like, this is this is what comes with being a father.

What it's uh it's uh we call this a rhetorical question that the pastor is posing.

Because it's like, of course, a father is gonna discipline a son.

But if you're without discipline, which you all receive, then you're illegitimate children and you're not sons.

So this pastor is just appealing to the the culture of look, a father, of course he's gonna discipline his son.

It would almost be an evidence of illegitimacy if a son went undisciplined.

Verse 9.

Furthermore, we had human fathers discipline us, and we respected them.

Shouldn't we submit even more to the father of spirits and live?

So here's where we've got good to greater logic all throughout the New Testament.

This is the case.

This being the case, how much more is it the case with God?

If you receive discipline from your parents, wouldn't you receive it from the father of spirits and live?

There's some crazy stuff here that's fascinating, where he's um, you know, you've got human fathers, the earthly father relationship, the idea of parental authority, and then we jump over to the father of spirits, and there's this active spiritual work that God is doing in our life at the same time.

Verse 10.

For they disciplined us.

Our parents disciplined us for a short time based on what seemed good to them, but God He does it for our benefit so that we can share in His holiness.

He's explaining just really clearly.

Look, this is when it comes to God's discipline in our life, it is for our benefit, so that we can share in his holiness.

You could probably think of different friends that you had as a child, maybe even yourself, where your parents, you know, they were doing maybe the best job that they could, but maybe it was misguided.

But it was kind of like their best effort.

But the cool thing about God's discipline is that he's got the template, like he's in charge of the story.

He knows what good is, like he knows what your good is, he knows the best way to shape you and I.

He's our designer, and he's the one who is using a process to take us back to this idea of holiness.

Holiness is not just the moral absence of sin, but it's also the idea of beautiful fulfillment of your full potential.

That's the Hebrew idea of holiness, right?

Um, a flower is not an ethical thing, it doesn't do something that violates God's uh moral law.

But a flower can be holy as it blossoms in that it fulfills its beautiful potential.

That is that is the idea partially here.

That's that's the kind of the second part of holiness that's spoken of here.

And verse 11 no discipline seems enjoyable at the time.

Yeah, no kidding.

But it's painful.

Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

God works is at work in our life.

And there are times you go through seasons where it's just like, man, this really sucks.

This is no fun.

This doesn't feel good.

But if you are yielded, if you're yielded to the Lord, if you're submitted to the process, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness through those who have been trained on it.

I think the pastor is begging his readers and you and I, submit to the process, submit to God's good plan.

Embrace those difficult moments.

Let it be the instrument that God uses to shape you into the person he's designed you to be.

When we're parenting, right?

When we're parenting, sometimes a kid is stubborn.

And so they go, we give them verbal warning, they don't want to, they don't want to listen, and so we start to give them consequences.

Maybe it's, hey, I need you to go take a break.

You're gonna be by yourself, you're gonna be restricted from maybe you when you were a kid, it was called being grounded, or maybe it's like sit in the corner, and it was time out.

But the idea is you're gonna be restricted from the freedom that you've taken for granted, and you're gonna be miserable.

But not because I enjoy watching you be miserable, but I want you to feel some pain in your life right now.

And not because I'm masochistic and I want you to feel pain, but it's because that pain is gonna motivate you in the direction you need to go.

It's gonna motivate you towards the good.

The stubbornness that you need to let go of in your heart.

You're gonna be a little bit more willing, hopefully, as we ratchet up the pain, right?

That's the idea here of what God is doing, and we subject ourselves to that when we go to the gym, right?

We put ourselves through some stuff that's painful to be able to get bigger muscles.

Pain isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's a part of getting through, it's a part of the process.

He closes out.

Let me see if I have what's my next slide here.

The let me, this is from uh Warren Wearsby.

He says, the father does not want us to be pampered babies.

He wants us to become mature adult sons and daughters who can be trusted with the responsibilities of life.

I love that quote because of the end.

Because God just not, it's not just so that you're shaped in the image of Jesus, but there's this whole theme throughout Jesus' parables about that God entrusts opportunities, relationships, um, experiences to us to see are you going to steward over those things well?

And God expects a return on his investment.

He says, here, you take this thing, and I want to see what it results, what results come from it.

Will you be responsible with these things in your life?

Here's the here's the I'm gonna give you three of the most scariest Bible verses that I've ever seen.

We'll let the uh kids come on in.

Are you guys coming in?

Hey Melissa, if you could help people be quiet as they're coming back in, that's fine.

This is a perfect time to come back in because I'm gonna share with you all.

The three scariest Bible verses.

You were just in time.

Come on in.

Come on in.

Come on in.

These are the three scariest Bible verses.

These terrify me.

Because what we saw in Hebrews 12, 11 is that no discipline is enjoyable in the moment.

It kind of is it stinks to be disciplined.

It hurts.

It hurts, right?

But it yields a peaceable fruit.

But listen, look at look at the prophet Jeremiah.

God's been working, God has been working with these people in Jerusalem and Judah and Israel for generations.

For generations he sent prophets to them.

They have the word of God.

He's been verbally warning them.

He's let their enemies attack them.

They've had famines, they've gone through all the stages of discipline.

Verbal warning, natural consequences, unnatural consequences.

Nothing works.

And here's what he says: I've struck you down, your children.

I've struck down your children in vain.

They would not accept discipline.

Your own sword has devoured your prophets like a ravaging lion.

Do you see this?

I've struck down your children in vain.

Kids, their kids were suffering, and they still were not getting the message.

That's terrifying to me.

Because God loves us enough to discipline us.

God loves us enough to let us go through painful experiences.

But there are living human examples of people who have gone through God's chastening, who've been struck down by God, and they don't obey.

They don't get the message.

They continue being stubborn.

Here's another one.

Jeremiah 5, 3.

Lord, don't let your eyes look, uh, don't your eyes look for faithfulness.

You have struck them, but they felt no pain.

You finished them off, but they refused to accept discipline.

They made their faces harder than rock, and they refused to return.

Jeremiah 7, 28, same thing.

Therefore declare to them this is the nation that would not listen to the Lord their God and would not accept discipline.

Truth has perished, it has disappeared from their mouths.

Why is this so scary?

The reason why this is terrifying is because it shows us that it is possible for you and I to go through painful seasons that are intended by God to train us, and instead we come out of it harder than we went in, more stubborn than when we went in, and it was not received to its proper end.

And what does God do with these people?

He puts them in exile.

He says, I'm sorry, I'm sticking you back.

I'm putting on putting you on the shelf.

You got to literally be exiled out of the promised land for an entire 70-year generation.

You're going to be gone.

Brothers and sisters, I don't want that for you, and I don't want that for me.

I want to be able to recognize and go, God, I'm going through this thing right now.

Teach me everything you want to teach me in this moment.

Teach me everything you want to teach me.

Let's look at the last two verses here.

Jerem, uh Hebrews 12, 12 and 13.

It says, Therefore, strengthen your hands.

Strengthen your tired hands and your weakened knees.

In other words, he goes back to the race metaphor.

He says, Let's go.

Let's go.

Let's get it on.

Instead of having your being all mopey, instead of having your hands hanging at your side, giving in to your weak knees, let's go for it.

Let's go for it and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame right now may not be dislocated but healed.

In other words, let's run the race with perseverance.

Let's go for it with the Lord.

In closing, this is God's method with discipline.

Being trained and shaped by God is called discipline.

God's discipline is primarily verbal and then progresses to useful suffering in our life.

And all suffering can be used as discipline.

God's discipline is not necessarily a response to our bad acts, it's not symmetrical.

In other words, you did this wrong, so therefore God's gonna whack you.

It's not not like that.

It's asymmetrical.

Sometimes you do really stupid stuff or I do stupid stuff and we don't suffer the consequences because God's so merciful and patient on us, hoping that we'll repent.

And then sometimes we go through suffering and we've we've lived a good life and we're obedient.

And yet it's still an opportunity to grow some more.

It is asymmetrical, the suffering.

But it is still discipline.

That is training.

Suffering happens for all sorts of sinful or fallen reasons, but it gets transformed into positive shaping and transforming means to a good end.

The pastor, the pastor loves this church that he's writing to.

And these things are a benefit to us as we frame up and have a perspective on our own lives.

When you're going through something difficult, it's easy to read into that that God's against you, to think that you that God's getting back at you, that God doesn't love you anymore, and that you are some for some reason you're this special case that just falls outside of the mercy and the grace of God.

And what this pastor is saying to you and I this morning is he's saying, listen, no, let's put it back.

Put suffering right back in the right category and understand that your father, your heavenly father, loves you and is showing you his love through his discipline.

It is an evidence of your being in his family.

Okay?

Let's go before the Lord.

Lord, we we receive that word.

We pray that you would align us with the authority of Scripture, even as we don't like suffering and it feels yucky, and we want out of our painful circumstances.

We submit to your word.

Use the suffering in our life as a form of training.

We surrender to you.

We trust and believe that you are the good, good father.

You are the good good father.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.