Hebrews 12:3-13 "The Discipline of God" - Jimmy Alexander

Before we get started this morning, let me pray for us.

God, thank you.

That we can gather another week and proclaim your name until you return.

Thank you, Father, for this small expression of your church.

I pray, Lord, that you would continue to build us up, that we would grow in our obedience, that we would grow in our love for one another, and that we would be a witness in our community and within our circle of influence, that we would be a useful tool in your hand.

And God, we pray for those who are sick or couldn't make it this morning.

We just pray that you would comfort them.

Lord, that you would encourage them.

And Father, that through the sickness they would um uh just cling to you, Lord.

And we we ask for just a quick recovery.

And Lord, we pray for our state and for our nation.

We are commanded to pray for uh our leaders and lawmakers.

Lord, we pray, God, that you would do a work in the lives of our leaders, of our government.

Lord, that they wouldn't just rule as they see fit, but they would realize that they're under a supreme ruler, you, and that they would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and that they would live and govern from that reality.

And so, Lord, as we open your word this morning, I pray that you would speak to us, and that our hearts would be prepared to hear your wonderful truth.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So, as I mentioned before, uh Rick was sick, and so he uh texted me about a day ago.

I was scheduled to preach at Citizens, and uh unfortunately Rick got sick, and so uh filling in again.

And uh instead of continuing through Colossians, I just uh just got to chapter two, and I don't feel uh quite confident yet in my exegetical study to preach on that yet.

So this morning we're gonna be in Hebrews 12.

We're gonna look at Hebrews chapter 12, and we're gonna be looking at verses 3 through 13, which is titled The Discipline of God.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

This is a topic that really hits home for me, probably because I'm very stubborn and I have experienced the discipline of God quite a bit in my life.

So, as a way of introduction, I think it's important to note that God's discipline has been one of the most neglected and misunderstood doctrines in the Bible.

Historically, there are two major misconceptions.

So the first error, if you will, is those who believe that God is just angry all the time.

He's in heaven, he's got this magnified glass, and he is just waiting to burn us like ants when we mess up.

So everything bad in life is God punishing us.

And many people who perhaps had an abusive father, or at least one that was overly harsh and strict, tend to project this view on their Heavenly Father.

Now, the second error is to believe that God would never discipline.

God is love, he's grace, they say.

So if we go astray, God will never resist us or make us uncomfortable.

He's cheering us on.

He knows we're not perfect and we'll make mistakes.

So he overlooks that.

He's not concerned about that.

And both of these views are terribly wrong.

It leads us to think that God is either abusive or passive.

It causes us to think that God is either a tyrant or a cute cuddly teddy bear.

And so my hope this morning for us is that we would understand biblically why God disciplines us, the purpose of his discipline, the results of his discipline, and our response to his discipline.

And only then can we see the goodness of God and the great benefits that are produced from his loving correction in our lives.

And so the author of Hebrews begins to unpack this great doctrine by first showing us why.

Why do we need discipline by God?

And he starts his argument by pointing to Jesus Christ in verse 3.

He says, Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted.

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

And so the author starts his argument by pointing to Jesus.

So take a moment and just consider how Jesus lived.

He was mocked, beaten, persecuted, and eventually nailed to a Roman cross.

He endured so much adversity and hostility, and yet he did not sin.

He never acted once outside of God's will.

He was utterly perfect, totally pure, and infinitely holy.

He never yielded to sin, which made him the perfect sacrifice for our sins.

But then the author points to us.

He says, in your struggle against sin, we fall short.

We have never done that.

We have not resisted temptation the same way that Jesus did.

Never.

Quite the opposite.

Sin comes knocking at the door and we waffle.

We have a bad day, so we overeat and we overdrink.

We get offended by someone, so we murder them in our heart and then we gossip about them.

We see something beautiful and we chase after it with lustful pursuit.

So Jesus resisted sin so aggressively to the point of bloodshed.

But we don't even resist at times.

Sometimes we welcome sin into our lives willingly.

And so what is the author trying to do here?

He is trying to show us why we need God's discipline.

We need it because there is still sin in our lives.

There are areas in my heart that still enjoys evil.

There are idols that I continue to hold on to.

There are departments of my life that I still want to control.

And without God's loving, gracious discipline, those things will remain.

And so what we need is divine influence, God's gracious correction.

Because we are prone to wander.

We all are just a few thoughts away from complete destruction.

Sin is trying to kill us and consume us and hurt the testimony that we have in Christ.

So why does God discipline us?

Because there is still sin in us.

God is not done with you yet.

And just to clear any confusion, not everything bad in our life is God's discipline.

Okay, just to clear the air.

Sometimes God is testing us.

Sometimes he allows things to happen that aren't connected whatsoever to our obedience or the lack thereof.

And so God's discipline, biblically speaking, is always connected to our ignorance, our wayward tendencies, or our willful rebellion.

And so next, the author wants to show us how.

How does God discipline us?

What is God's attitude?

What are his thoughts as he comes to discipline his children?

Well, the author shows us in verses five through seven.

He says, Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.

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

It is for discipline that you have to endure.

God is treating you as sons.

So how does God discipline us?

We'll look at the verse.

The first thing he says is as sons, not as sinners, not as objects of wrath, but as adopted children of his family.

This is a crucial distinction to understand.

It means that when God is disciplining you, it's from a heart of deep love and compassion.

And so the New Testament never addresses Christians as sinners.

Okay, once we've passed from death to life, we're not addressed as sinners.

They're always addressed as saints.

And this isn't because we don't sin, because we do.

Bad at times.

But we are saints because we've passed from death to life.

God's wrath against us has been satisfied in Christ.

And we are not only fully forgiven, but we are adopted literally into God's family.

And so he no longer sees us as wretched sinners who deserve eternal hell, but he sees the righteousness of Christ that's been applied to our accounts, and he sees us and deals with us as his children who are destined for glory.

And so don't get it twisted.

When God disciplines you, it's not coming from this emotion of divine fury or wrath.

He's not treating you like a guilty criminal.

Romans 8:1 says, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8:1

He rebukes you, he corrects you, he even resists you because he deeply loves you.

We need to understand that.

And so, parents in the room, have you ever disciplined your children?

And they say something along the lines of, you hate me, you're mean.

Why are you doing this?

Just a couple weeks ago, my youngest was running towards the driveway when one of those crazy Amazon drivers was pulling up.

So I ran over, I scooped him up so that he didn't get killed.

And he was so mad at me.

He was kicking and screaming.

But what he couldn't understand is that I wasn't being mean.

I didn't do it because I don't like him.

I did it because I deeply love him.

I was protecting him, I was shielding him from potential harm, even death.

And so God disciplines us because he loves us, he has chosen us, Christ's blood has washed us clean, and he has given us his spirit, he has adopted us into his eternal family.

And what this should give us then is great comfort that we are saved.

Okay, look at the end of verse 7 through verse 9.

The author says, For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

If you are left without discipline, in which we have all participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.

How much more should we be subject to the Father of spirits and live?

And so God's discipline is evidence and assurance that we are His.

When I'm at the grocery store and I see another kid disrespecting his parents, I don't intervene.

You know, unless, of course, it was like totally out of control or something, but I don't go over and bring correction.

Why?

Because that's not my kid.

So the fact that you are being divinely disciplined is evidence that we are truly children of God.

I can't sin like I used to.

I can't do whatever I want anymore because God won't let me.

And if I do get away with sin, his conviction is so strong, and he brings circumstances and situations to teach me and to show me the sinfulness of sin.

So we can find comfort in God's discipline.

We can find encouragement, believe it or not, in the pain of his chastitizement.

Because it means that he cares and loves me.

Let me give you an illustration.

Imagine for a moment that there is an unbelieving man who wakes up in the morning, he's grumpy, he spills his coffee, he's late for work, and on his way out the door, his wife asks him, says, Honey, could you take out the trash?

And he just cusses her out, he mistreats her, and he goes to work totally justified.

Doesn't she know how much stress I'm under?

Doesn't she know?

But let's say that evening he goes to, I don't know, an evangelistic event, and he hears the gospel, and he's truly, genuinely saved.

God does a supernatural work in him.

And let's say the next morning he wakes up again, he's grumpy, same thing occurs, he spills his coffee, he's late for work, and his wife asks him to take out the trash, and he does the same exact thing.

He cusses her out and gets in the car and drives to work.

What is the difference?

Here's the difference.

On his way to work the second time, instead of being justified in his own eyes, he is utterly miserable.

A sharp, piercing conviction is penetrating his heart, his peace is removed.

The Lord is dealing with him, humbling him, pressing him, and will do so until he repents and apologizes to his wife and stops grieving the Holy Spirit.

So one of the main differences between a believer and an unbeliever is that God is dealing with those who are his.

Both Esau and Jacob went into the world and lived very sinful worldly lives.

But Jacob was divinely disciplined out of it.

Esau was not.

Everyone experiences that.

You are illegitimate children, says the author.

And you need to be made right with God through Jesus Christ.

And so, in light of this, says the author, we should respect God.

We respected our fathers for their discipline, or perhaps not, but looking back, I'm glad my dad didn't let me touch the hot stove.

I'm glad he took away my toys when I hit my sisters.

I'm glad he scolded me when I was playing on a busy road.

Most of us can look back and respect our fallen, sinful human fathers for their discipline.

How much more should we respect our heavenly Father, who is perfectly good, and he knows all things and he knows what is best for us.

How much more should we subject ourselves to the Father, who knows everything, and whose chief interest is for our ultimate good.

And this is exactly what the author points to next, the desired results of God's discipline.

In verses 10 and 11, he says, For they, our human fathers, disciplined us for a short time, as it seemed best to them.

But he, God, disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

So our earthly father disciplined us as what they thought best.

Okay, what is the author trying to do here?

He is saying that our earthly parents, who are broken, right, they're fallible, they tried to implement discipline the best they thought they could.

Or maybe they didn't at all.

But the point here is this their discipline wasn't perfect.

And we still respected them for it.

They tried based on their limited knowledge, but God, on the other hand, disciplines us according to his perfect knowledge.

He knows exactly what we need to experience, exactly what we need to go through, so that we might be conformed more into the image of Jesus Christ and share in his holiness.

God knows us better than we even know ourselves.

He knows what correction we need, how to apply it, so that we won't keep repeating the same destructive behaviors.

He knows the exact length and frequency and severity of discipline to apply to us so that we won't keep shooting ourselves in the foot.

And I love how honest the Bible is about this.

The author says, this is not fun.

It's painful, it hurts.

Scripture is brutally honest.

It tells us point blank, it's not fun.

Okay, the psalmists did not enjoy it.

David didn't enjoy it after he slept with Bathsheba.

Peter didn't enjoy it after denying Christ three times.

Moses didn't, after he misrepresented Christ in anger, and as a consequence, he couldn't enter the promised land.

Jonah didn't, after running from God's command, soon to find himself in the belly of a whale.

The Israelites didn't, wandering around for 40 years in the wilderness.

And this gets into some of the ways that God disciplines us.

You know, sometimes he removes our assurance.

That's a way that God disciplines us, not our security in Christ, don't get it confused with that, but he removes that sweet fellowship and peace that we have with him.

That's not very enjoyable.

God will remove the blessings of his sweet fellowship with us so that we would be reminded how horrible it is to live life apart from him.

And sin creates a barrier, it blinds us.

So if we are so hellbent on doing things apart from God, he will give us.

A taste of what that feels like.

Sometimes God makes the consequences of our sin more immediate and severe.

I had a Christian friend once who was sneaking off on the weekends to get really drunk with his high school friends.

None of his friends were Christians.

And he did this for a few weeks until all hell broke loose.

He came to me and he said, Jimmy, I don't understand.

They can drink and they don't get any hangovers, they don't seem miserable, their wives don't care.

But I drink just a couple weeks in a row and I feel so sick, my conscience is making me so miserable.

A picture was somehow put on Facebook, the whole community knows, and my wife is really upset with me, and I can't sleep, and my blood pressure is out the roof.

Why can they get away with it and not me?

Friends, that's God's discipline.

I had another Christian friend who decided one year to lie on his taxes.

Again, he had unbelieving friends, he was a businessman, who had been doing this for decades.

No consequences, no conviction, nothing.

But he did it one time, and the IRS is knocking at his door, he must pay back all his money, and he's in big trouble.

That's God's discipline.

Sinners will do what sinners do, but God will not allow his saints to act like that.

Sometimes God will remove the effectiveness of our ministry.

Okay, God is not an enabler.

He isn't going to let you bear fruit if you're not abiding in the root.

So he will orchestrate barriers in our life to show us that we need to repent first.

We need to dig out some of those secret sins that we've got hidden in the closet.

Sometimes God will take away privileges.

We see this throughout Scripture.

Perhaps He will financially hinder you.

Maybe He will remove you from a place of leadership in some fashion.

He will take away time.

Because the free time that you do have, you keep using it to sin and be lazy.

And so none of this is enjoyable.

As a child, timeouts, getting grounded, toys taken away, I hated it.

But thank God for it, because it means that my parents loved me.

It means that God loves me, and he's not going to allow me to hit the self-destruction button.

He will not allow me to delight in wickedness because my life isn't my own anymore.

I've been bought by the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

And so you will try to run out of it, but he will not allow it.

He will bring orchestrated events, convictions, barriers, restraints, and even consequences to keep me right in the center of his will, keeping me on the narrow way.

Why?

To share in his holiness.

Think about it.

Would you want it any other way?

You know, Alieester Bagg once said, the most miserable person on earth is not an atheist.

It's a child of God who is willfully in sin.

God, because he loves you, will not allow you to live like the devil or misrepresent his name or continually quench and grieve his spirit.

He will not let you be happy in sin.

Unbelievers love sin, they celebrate it, they enjoy it, even though it doesn't fulfill, but not so for the one whom God has chosen.

First John says this those born of God cannot go on living a lifestyle of sin.

Why?

Because they have been born of God and his seed lives in them.

Listen to what Blackabee says concerning this matter.

He says, God is not interested, or God is interested, I'm sorry.

God is interested in developing your character.

At times he lets you proceed, but he will never let you go too far without discipline to bring you back.

In your relationship with God, he may let you make the wrong decision.

Then the Spirit of God causes you to recognize that that is not God's will, and he guides you back to the right path.

So, what does this teach us?

It teaches us that God's discipline is good.

We don't need to curl our lip up and curl up in a ball and mope around when God disciplines us.

We don't need to question God's goodness and accuse him of being mean-spirited when we don't get our way.

Even though it's painful and it's not fun, we can look to God in his correction and say, thank you, God.

You know what you're doing.

Thank you for not letting me go down the dark path.

Thank you for intervening, for opening and shutting doors.

This verse implies that our natural response, like children, is to be all upset and hopeless, to fall on the ground and pout because God corrected us or rebuked us.

That's why he says earlier in the passage, he says, don't be weary, don't be faint-hearted.

And any parent knows this.

Sometimes when you ground your kid or you put him in timeout, they act as if their whole world is crumbling.

You would think that a five-minute timeout was a lifetime sentence in prison.

And although it's painful, it is a good thing.

You prune branches so that it might produce more fruit.

You perform surgery to fix the problem or heal the disease.

And in the same way, God disciplines us to make us more holy.

So what is our response then?

When we experience or feel crushed by God's discipline, what do we do?

Well, verses 12 through 13 tells us, therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather healed.

In other words, what I like to say is, get up.

The purpose of God's discipline isn't so that you can wallow in despair, but that you would get up, dust off your shoes, learn from the mistake so that you don't repeat it again, know that you're forgiven, and that whatever is crooked, whatever's been exposed, would be straightened out and healed.

Friend, if you've fallen back into sin, fill in the blank, whether it was today, last week, a month ago, and you are feeling the weight of God's conviction, confess, get back up, and walk in God's grace towards holiness.

Parent in the room, if you've lashed out at your kids, totally lost your cool, and you feel God strongly poking and prodding your conscience, that what you did was wrong, confess.

Dust off your shoes, and move forward in purity.

Church, if you have been neglecting God's word or neglecting him through prayer, and you feel miserable because of that, and you're feeling the fruit of that, confess, get up, be healed, and come back to the heart of worship.

If God's discipline in any way has curled your lip, wipe away the tears, don't stay there very long, and straighten your paths and be healed.

The purpose of God's discipline, the reason he applies pressure and brings conviction and resists your fleshly pursuits and brings about consequences is not for your misery.

It's for your good and your ongoing sanctification as God makes you more and more fit for his kingdom.

And so confess your sin.

Learn whatever it was that God is trying to teach you, thank God that he intervened, and move forward in the grace that he has provided you.

So the Lord continues to work with us as a potter does with clay, and his discipline is for our good, and it's for his glory.

So, proclamation church, here's our takeaways for today from this passage.

First, rid yourself of the idea that God is condemning you.

Cast away the idea that God is treating you with contempt or perhaps not dealing with you at all.

And have a right biblical understanding that if you are a true Christian, God is dealing with you because he loves you.

He cares.

And he's doing it because he's conforming you more into the image of Christ.

Secondly, when you experience God's discipline, and you will, don't be discouraged.

Realize that it is a true mark of salvation.

Thank God for it and respect him for it and allow his discipline to have its way in you.

Be trained by it, because it will only produce in you further righteousness and holiness.

And thirdly, respond to his discipline appropriately.

Don't be weary or faint-hearted.

Get back up.

You know, sometimes when I discipline my oldest Jay, he will just weep and weep, and then he'll start shaking uncontrollably, and he'll flop on the floor, and he's just totally out of his mind.

And what I do is I pick him up gently, I sit him down, and I look at him and I say, listen, Jay, what's done is done.

Let's move on.

I've disciplined you.

I hope that you've learned your lesson.

But listen, we don't need to keep replaying this.

I love you, I care about you.

Someday I hope you see why I disciplined you.

But it's time for us to move on, to move forward and do what's right.

And so don't feel crushed by God's discipline.

Learn from it, respond to it, and walk again in the light of Christ.

We all make mistakes.

We all go astray at times.

And we all need God's discipline.

And thank God for it, because you wouldn't be who you are today without it.

And so, church, let's pray.

Father, thank you for your loving discipline.

Thank you that you will never leave us nor forsake us.

That you will never cast us away as orphans.

Thank you for treating us as your children.

Oh, what great love the Father has lavished on us that we can be called the sons and daughters of the living God.

Help us this morning to view this matter properly.

Help us to respond to your discipline more productively.

Thank you for being so involved in our lives.

And may we see how much you actually love us this morning.

And may we lift our weak hands and our broken hearts this morning to the one who has all power and all knowledge and deserves all glory, I pray, in the name of Jesus.

Amen.