A Better Discipline - September 6, 2026

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast. I have made the

Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

When was the last time you wanted to quit?

I mean, just give up, just cash it in, say I'm through, wash my hands of it, I'm out of here.

There's a story told of a middle school boy.

You know middle schoolers, right? They're still trying in many ways to find

themselves socially, to find themselves physically as their bodies are changing,

as they're growing at a rapid rate.

And some are tall and lanky, some are short and stocky. But this kid,

he decided, he was a little bit more on the short, stocky side,

he decided that he was going to try out for the track team.

And of course, you don't try out for the track team in middle school.

You make the track team in middle school, no matter what.

And the coach said, yeah, come on. Now, you got to understand, this kid...

He wasn't very fast. He wasn't very disciplined.

And he really wasn't very motivated. But yet he had friends on the track team.

And there were cute girls on the track team as well.

And so he decided. And so he stuck with it for one day.

He stuck with it for two days. Three days. It was a short week in that school

year. And so he got the weekend off.

And as he came walking in on Monday afternoon to track practice,

he was sore and his muscles felt like concrete. His legs just,

he couldn't hardly lift them.

His lungs burned still from the workouts that they had had.

And he decided, I'm going to

quit. I can't do this anymore. Three days is enough for my track career.

And as he walked up to the coach, he said, coach, I just can't do it anymore. I'm going to quit.

The coach looked at him and said without judgment without yelling without shaming

the kid he said you're not going to quit today get out there and work out,

oh okay and he went out he worked out one more day and after track practice

the kid was through the whole time just thinking why would he do that to me

he knows i'm not fast he knows i'm not disciplined,

he knows i'm just here for the chicks why would he make me do this.

Well, the coach kind of came up to him after practice and said,

I want you to stay this practice because I see something in you that you don't

see in yourself right now.

I see something deep in there that you just, you might be here for other reasons,

but I see something and I want to bring that out in you if you'll let me.

For many of us, maybe you've had people in your life like that.

Maybe it was a coach. Maybe it was a parent.

Maybe it was just a friend who wanted to make that investment in you.

Who saw that you needed something that you did not know that you needed.

The coach in this story wasn't trying to break this poor middle school kid,

but he was trying to help build him up.

He would not let him quit so easily.

And that's kind of exactly where we're at in the book of Hebrews here.

We see some Hebrew Christians that are going through some hard times in life

because of the choice they made to follow Jesus.

We see this group of Hebrew believers that are being persecuted because of their

faith and life is just stinking hard right now,

and you know when life gets hard a lot of times God's people the Hebrew believers

here but even us as well sometimes we look to it as why is God punishing me.

Why, God? Why? We may cry out in our prayers, or even quite literally.

And we don't understand, like the Hebrew believers here, that God is training them and training us.

He saw something in these Hebrew believers they didn't see in themselves,

and he sees something in us that perhaps we don't even see ourselves.

And God loves us, and he loved these Hebrew believers enough to not let them quit.

And if you're at that point of quitting today, I just want to say,

don't give up. Hang on. Hold on.

Because most of us don't naturally look at hardship or trouble as something

God can use for good for us because it's uncomfortable,

because hardship is painful, because like the junior high kid trying to try

out for the track meet or trying to run, And our legs feel so heavy,

our heart sometimes feels heavy.

Sometimes it feels like we can't breathe.

And so I want to tell you this morning, when life gets hard,

when things don't add up financially,

when that diagnosis comes from the doctor, when that relationship you have with

someone else begins to crack and shatter, when that job becomes unbearable.

And when the pressure mounts, our instinct is to ask, what did I do wrong?

God, why are you letting this happen to me?

Those are valid questions for sure. And I think the Hebrew believers actually felt that as well.

They were tired, tired of being picked on. They were discouraged because they

were following a God who had transformed their lives, and yet other religious people,

did not see it that way and called them.

Names because of their following Jesus.

And when they were tempted to believe that their suffering meant that God was

giving up on them, they just got really, really discouraged.

And so it's into that discouragement that we see the scripture this morning.

In Hebrews chapter 12, starting in verse 4, we see how Hebrews reframes all of this.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

You see, the word that is spoken here is that God's discipline doesn't break you.

It molds you and makes you into the person that God is creating you to be.

And so this morning, if you're willing and able, would you stand with me?

And let's read Hebrews 12, 4 through 13.

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

And you have completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses

you as a father addresses his sons.

It says, My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline and do not lose

heart when he rebukes you because the Lord disciplines the one he loves and

chastens everyone he accepts as a son.

Endure hardship as discipline.

God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?

If you are not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline,

then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.

Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them for it.

How much more should we submit to the Father of Spirits and live?

They disciplined us for a while as they thought best, but God disciplines us

for our good in order that we may share in his holiness.

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on,

however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and a peace for those who have been trained by it.

Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees, make level paths for

your feet so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

Father, thank you for your word. Lord, may it bless our hearts,

our souls today, our lives.

God, may we find within these words today a power for living, power for overcoming.

Lord, may we hear from your spirit as you speak to us today, God.

Give us what we need for this minute, for this hour. Lord, for the rest of this week and longer.

God, we pray that your word would do what it says. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you. You could be seated. I just have four points I want to make this

morning from the Scripture.

Just kind of go in succession as the movement of the passage goes.

And the first one is, when life gets hard, our instinct is to assume that God is displeased with us.

I love what the Scripture says because it kind of puts that attitude in check.

The attitude that says, God, why?

Why is this happening? Why?

There are some things that happen to us that are natural consequences.

If I go out on I-84 and I pull over to the side of the road,

and then I get out and just walk into traffic and get hit by a truck,

that's not a trial that God gave me. That's my own stupidity.

Walking out in front of the truck to get hit?

That's not a test that God has given us. That's not disciplined by God.

That's an own natural consequence.

And it's those natural consequences our parents fought so hard to discipline

us not to reach our hand up on the hot stove and grab the boiling pot of water,

not to reach over and put our hand on the wood stove.

These are things from my childhood that I'm remembering, trauma that I'm living out again before you.

There's things that happen because of natural consequences. Those are things

that we don't necessarily need to say, why, God? Because we just know these

things happen. It's part of life.

It's part of the waywardness of creation at times when things happen to us.

And we do say why, but it's just kind of God didn't cause them.

God didn't want us to experience that. We live in a broken world.

But then there are certain things that happen in life that God will use.

For the Hebrew believers here, they were undergoing persecution because they

committed their life to Jesus Christ.

They left the sacrificial system, the Judaic system, the Old Testament law,

and they were living out the New Covenant. As a result, they were suffering,

suffering in their relationships, suffering in their societies and their communities.

But I love what the author of Hebrews says when we look back again at verse 4.

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

Basically, you're hurting, but you ain't dead yet.

You're hurting, but you are still here. And boy, does that summarize life so

well for, I think, many of us.

Seems like life is a tribulation. There's a trouble that comes,

especially to believers at times.

But the author here reminds these Hebrew believers and us today of Proverbs.

When's the last time you read Proverbs? Well, if you're looking for an easy

devotional, just read one chapter of Proverbs a day. There's enough for the

whole month, sometimes extra left over.

But in Proverbs chapter 3, which is the passage I read earlier,

Proverbs 3 · chapter mention

the author of Hebrews quotes that, do not regard lightly the discipline of the

Lord, for the Lord disciplines the ones he loves.

When life gets hard, remember, our instinct is to say, hey, God's displeased

with us. Well, maybe not.

Maybe it's the indication that he's counting us as one of his children.

Why does the author quote Hebrews? Well, Hebrews is all about wisdom,

wisdom in life, wisdom for living the kind of life that God wants us to live.

Proverbs gives us a way of interpreting these crazy things that happen to us in life.

And we can look at suffering through that lens that Proverbs gives us.

When suffering, when hard times feel punitive, when they feel random,

we can see that suffering really is relational.

It's tied to our relationship with the Father.

In essence, what the author of Hebrews is saying is, you're reading your pain

through the wrong story. Let me give you a new story.

Let me give you the right story to look at.

And so that brings us to our second point this morning, and that is that discipline

is God's investment in you, not his anger towards you.

Because in the scripture, what it says, the text says, the Lord disciplines the one he loves.

God disciplines those that are

his children. It doesn't say the Lord disciplines the ones he's angry at.

Boy, we'd like that sometimes in life, right? Stick it to them,

God. Come on. Why are you letting him get away with that?

It doesn't say the Lord disciplines the ones he's disappointed in,

nor does it say God disciplines the ones who have failed, but says the Lord

disciplines the one he loves.

But then the writer of Hebrews goes a step further. As we look to the scripture

again, it says, if you're without discipline, basically, you're an illegitimate kid.

You're not one that belongs to the Father.

In other words, discipline is not a sign that God's done with you,

that God is over and out. It's a sign that God is deeply committed to you.

So if life isn't all roses and butterflies right now, count that as a good thing

that God's doing something in you.

God is perfecting you. He's bringing about completion in your life.

Some of you by now, you're probably thinking, man, well, I should just be the

perfect man or the perfect woman considering the things that I've gone through in life.

That may be true, but God's still working out something within you.

See, when God trains you, that's what discipline means. It's not punishment.

We'll talk about that in a second.

When God trains you, he's treating you as his child. He says,

I love you so much. I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you.

I'm going to see you through this.

I'm going to invest in your future.

Discipline is an investment in somebody else.

When we discipline our kids, we're trying to shape their character.

You know, when they say a bunch of words, we go and wash their potty mouth out with soap, right?

Or use other discipline strategies, maybe not so corporal. But for some of us,

we needed the soap in the mouth.

We're shaping character when we discipline our children.

God's disciplining us to shape that character because he's preparing you for

the life he's created you to live as a new creation in him.

You know it's really it is the opposite of punishment though it feels like punishment

at times though we say why god what did i do wrong,

sometimes it has nothing to do with anything that we've done wrong and we know

that it's not punishment because punishment look back looks backwards punishment

looks back to what you did,

but when we think about training or discipline it looks forward to who you are becoming,

to who you need to be.

So when your kid messes up, you just don't beat them to beat them.

You just don't kick them while they're down and say, you loser, idiot, knucklehead.

Sorry if I've offended you with any of those words.

Again, personal experience. We don't do that, but we know who they can be. Man, this is my son.

He is acting like a knucklehead. He shouldn't do this, but I need to look forward

to see what he can be or who he should be.

Fathers, as we'll see in a minute, we're imperfect as we discipline.

But God is perfect because when we know that training aims at transformation,

which is the third point, and not punishment, we can see how God in the Scripture

here compares earthly fathers to the Father of Spirits or God the Father.

Every parent, we got some awesome parents in this congregation here, I can tell you that.

And grandparents who were awesome parents.

Even the most awesome parents that we have in this church still discipline imperfectly,

imperfectly, not always on it.

Sometimes we work so many stinking hours, we come home and we don't want to

discipline like we need to.

Or we pawn it off on our wife or spouse and say, you take care of it.

We've all messed up and fallen short in that. And Adam, it's okay if you want

to say amen to that this morning.

But what is the goal here? As we look through the scripture,

especially as we look to verse 10, we see what the goal of transformation is,

what the goal of discipline is.

The goal here is that we may share in God's holiness, that we as sinful people,

might be able to share in the sinlessness of God, in the perfection,

the completeness of God.

That's the goal of discipline.

That's the goal of this training.

The goal is not that we'll just behave better.

Man, some of you have a front row seat, I think, not from up here,

but from your vantage point to see how parents and grandparents discipline their children.

That's awesome. Because you just know some kids are getting a spanking after church.

You know, just some kids, you're on their side. You're like,

yeah, stick it to them. Yeah. Yeah, because you used to get in trouble for the

same thing them kids are doing.

We think about the goal, it's not just for us to behave better in church or out of church.

The goal is not just to avoid sin. There's a lot of Christians and what's preached

from the pulpit is let's manage our sin, let's take care of it because we'll never be holy.

But we know that's not scriptural because God says, be holy as even I am holy,

which means there's a possibility to live above the fray of sin,

to not get entangled again and fall again, but to live the way that God would

truly have us to live as free people.

The goal isn't just for us to follow the rules, but the goal,

as the scripture says, is to share his holiness, participate in his life, become like him.

That's what the word Christian is all about, right? Little Christ, followers of Christ.

But the author of Hebrews then tells us the honest part.

The honest part here is what we probably all experienced and thought about as

I was reading the scripture earlier.

The author of Hebrews says, no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Amen.

The time I got on those tractors that weren't my family's, I got the switch

taken to me. That was not pleasant.

Yes, daddy, hit me more, please. No, I wasn't supposed to be there.

I was getting in trouble. I was doing something that I was not allowed to because

my dad growing up Around farm equipment knows what farm equipment can do to a little boy.

Should he get mixed up in the wrong parts?

The honest part is that no discipline is pleasant. It's painful.

The Bible doesn't sugarcoat it. Training hurts.

Those of you that are athletes, that were athletes, you know, training hurts.

Your muscles are being torn apart as you work out, as you develop skills and strength.

That growth hurts. Transformation hurts.

But the writer gives us the goal again in different words.

The writer says later that discipline produces a harvest,

it produces the peaceful fruit of righteousness now i know those are all churchy

words right that we may or may not know or that perhaps in church we pretend to know what they are,

but just think about it it's not a frantic righteousness not like we're freaking

out running around ah what do i do i want to do what's right for the Lord,

and we're just at wit's end. It's not that that we have.

The harvest is not frantic righteousness. The harvest is not pressured righteousness,

where we just feel like we're going to explode because of all the pressure we're

under, but yet we're staying right with God, but we're just under all this pressure.

The wrong thing will set us off. That's not what it says here.

It's not guilt-driven righteousness where you better toe the line or I'm reporting you.

It's not that kind of righteousness where you feel you got to fall in place,

whether your heart's in it or not, just to go through the motions.

It's not that kind of righteousness.

But the scripture says it's a peaceful righteousness.

What does that mean? It means it is the settled, steady life of someone shaped by the Father's hand.

Break that down. It's settled. You're not guessing what you got to do anymore.

You know what's right, and you do it. That's the righteousness part.

You know what it means to live a life that pleases God, and so you walk in that way.

You're settled, and you're steady. It means from moment to moment,

you're not changing your mind about that.

But you know what's right, and you're going to live in that.

And by walking in that way that God has opened up to you and showed you,

by being the person God is creating you to be, living out in your strengths,

living out in your giftedness, and serving in that way, by doing that,

that steady life is a life of shalom.

It's a life of peace, everything working together for you as it should,

even with the yucky stuff that comes, even with the tribulations,

even with the problems that arise.

And so we're given this final exhortation in verse 12 and 13.

And the final point this morning is this, strengthen what suffering has weakened.

You see, when we think about what this passage says next, it says,

Strengthen your weak hands and your feeble knees.

Man, this last month I turned a year older.

I've discovered something. It's really easy to get down.

But getting up is a different story.

So when I read this scripture, feeble knees, man, I need to do some crunches

or something. there's some, I got to lift some weights.

Going down to Ereptir and then trying to get up. Whoa, my feeble knees,

I need to strengthen them.

Feeble hands, they've got to be strengthened. It says, make straight paths for

your feet, the scripture says.

It says, hey, this is a pastoral advice to all of you Hebrew believers here,

to all of us today, right here, is we need to be strengthened.

Strengthen your shaky hands, your feeble hands, your feeble knees.

Why do we do this? The scripture says, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but be healed.

There's a healing that comes. And I want you to know that healing is not a solitary thing.

It's beautiful because while God's discipline is personal to each and every

one of us, It's never private.

It really isn't. We may be going

through stuff and think nobody else knows about it, but someone can see.

Someone knows. Why? They've been through some of the same things and they can

tell the signs just on your face.

Folks, whatever you're carrying, you don't have to carry it alone.

These couple of verses kind of hint toward not just the Hebrew believers,

but us today that we walk through hardship together.

Okay, if I get down.

And I'm working on something, and I'm there for an extended amount of time,

and then my knees don't want to work, I'm going to cry out, Noah, come give me a hand.

Melanie, help me up. And then they'll help me up.

See, sometimes we need people to come alongside us and to help us when our knees

are feeble, when our hands are weak, because we walk through this hardship together.

We help each other stand and stay standing, stand up.

I think of the Old Testament when Moses needed his hands raised for there to

be victory, and he had to have some guys come alongside to help keep his hands raised.

What a beautiful picture that is for us in the church. We need help,

and we need to help each other heal, process things.

You don't have to always have the answers, everybody.

Sometimes we just need to be there to listen. And as prompted by the Holy Spirit,

offer what God gives us from his word to help bolster you, to help cheer you

up, to help strengthen you, lift you up.

You see, a church that is shaped by God's discipline becomes a rehab center, not a courtroom.

Okay, there's a big distinction there. This should be a place where the weak

are lifted because every one of us at some point and sometime are going to be weak.

Whether we show it on the outside or not, there's going to be times we come

in here looking all great, but inside we're just ready to cash it all in.

We're ready to say, God, take me home because we just can't take it anymore.

That's when you need the church.

That's when you need your brothers and sisters to come alongside,

to lift you up, not judge you. Like I said, we're not a courtroom.

We're not here to point our fingers at you because there's three pointing back

when you're pointing your finger at somebody else. You heard that before, right?

Judging doesn't do anything. We've all been judged already and are in need of

a Savior, every single one of us.

But we should be a place where the hurting are healed, not shamed.

We've got to be a place where the weary find strength again.

So if we think about this passage, It comes in an incredible time.

Last week, we talked about in the beginning of chapter 12, there's such a great

cloud of witnesses cheering us on, saying, come on, you can do it.

And we know that we need to be in this together. Got to strengthen what suffering

has weakened, and it's going to take others helping us.

So if discipline that we've been reading about, if this is really about growth

rather than punishment, if it's about being brought up and trained to live the

life that God wants us to live,

how do you view your current challenge that you are going through?

And how will you look at that differently this week?

I want to close with this story. Back in the day, there were these things created

called biodomes. Have you ever heard that term before?

Basically, it was out like in the desert of Arizona, New Mexico,

and they built this self-enclosed giant bubble, if you will,

to see how people and plants and other things would kind of react in a very

protected environment.

And some of it was so that if astronauts were ever sent to Mars,

they would know some experiments to do and that kind of thing,

or how people might live.

But there was an arborist, someone that works on trees, that told the story,

about one of those biodomes.

They planted a grove of trees inside of this biodome, this massive one,

and they had the perfect soil for these trees.

They had just the right temperature, just the right amount of water for the,

specific species of trees that was being planted there.

The humidity was perfect. There were no storms. There was no wind.

And the arborist said that the trees grew very quickly, and they were very healthy.

But then something strange began to happen.

Those same healthy trees began to collapse under their own weight.

A branch would break off. Pretty soon, the trunk would split.

These trees had everything they needed in this protected environment.

Scientists eventually discovered what the problem was. You see,

the problem was the trees had grown at a good rate. They were tall,

but they had never grown strong.

You see, a tree in the wild faces resistance.

The wind blows one direction, another direction, all around sometimes. times.

Trees need wind. These trees had no wind.

The pressure of a storm forces the tree's roots to grow deep, to get stronger.

It makes their trunks need to thicken up, grow together.

But without resistance, they become fragile and they break.

You and I both know that our lives are not lived in a biodome. We face wind.

We face storms. We face pressure.

But Hebrews chapter 12 says, pressure is not punishment.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

It's discipline. It's training. It's strengthening.

It's the Father strengthening your

roots. It's the Father thickening your character to be able to endure.

It's the Father preparing you to stand tall in a world that desperately needs

people who are rooted, who are steady, and who are strong, who know what they

believe in, who know what they live for, and are willing to do that.

So this week, I've got an action point for you. When you feel overwhelmed,

I pray that you won't, but when you do, take a minute and pause Just say time

out If you have to remove yourself from a situation Please do.

Take a minute, remind yourself this quote here, this is God building my strength.

I don't believe in mantras, but if that word fits here, just remind yourself,

this is God building my strength.

And then take one small step forward instead of giving up.

Take one small step in faith saying, okay, God, I believe you're strengthening

me through this temptation, through this hardship, through this pressure.

And so I'm going to take a step forward.

We do this because by pausing it, it gives us a moment for our brain to catch up.

Take some deep breaths in and out as you're thinking this in your mind,

as you're reminding yourself that God is molding you.

Because when God does mold us, I want to tell you, and maybe you can have experienced

this, our anxieties diminish.

They begin to disappear and go away.

We get to move forward calmly, make thoughtful progress in our lives.

When we can just take that moment to pause in that prayer, God,

you're building my strength.

Help me to make it through. Help me to endure.

When the wind blows this week, everybody, not just talking outside,

but in your storms in life, don't assume God's angry.

Assume that God is working. Assume that God is training you.

Assume that God is building you into the person He knows that you can be and that you are meant to be.

Because I want you to remember each moment is part of God's careful molding of your life.

Again of who you created to be so my final advice to you this morning is to

stay rooted and grow strong and in that you'll see the peace of god which passes all understanding,

as the praise team comes and we get ready to sing our our final worship song

this morning let's pray together father help us to do what the scripture says

lord help us to endure discipline as your children and.

We know that discipline is not punishment, but discipline is you,

God, shaping us and molding us into the people that you have planned for us to be.

And Lord, help us not to try to short circuit that process, but Lord, to trust you through it.

As the first part of Proverbs 3 said, trust in the Lord with all your heart

and lean not into your own understanding.

Lord, help us to do that.

And by trusting you, God, we can endure that shaping, that transformation,

that molding, no matter what circumstance we are in.

Lord, we're human, we have emotions, and we need you.

And God, help us not to give up.

Lord, truly help us to stay rooted and to grow this week. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.