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"The Discipline of the Lord"

Hebrews 12:1-11

by Clancy Nixon

September 10, 2006

Church of the Holy Spirit

Ashburn, Virginia

www.holyspiritanglican.org

Last week, I began to speak about the discouragement that I see in the body of

Christ here in Loudoun County. You know what it's like - things can be going great for

you you're just riding the wave, and its smooth sailing. Then, suddenly, WHAM! You

are getting slammed. There seems to be a pattern of this lately in believers' lives here

locally. What is going on? I believe that we are going through a season that consists of

two things: both 1) intensified demonic attacks, and 2) the discipline of the Lord. Both

intensified demonic attacks, and the discipline of the Lord. Last week I spoke on how to

deal with demonic attacks. This week, we look at the discipline of the Lord, so please

turn up Hebrews Chapter 12 in your blue pew Bibles, that's page 1193. Thanks to Jack

Deere for much material for this sermon.

At the time this letter was written, the Hebrew recipients were evidently going

through a time of persecution and loss of property. In Chapter 12 verses 4 and 5, God

addresses them and us with a word of encouragement and says, "My son." My son! My

son. Just that means of address is an encouragement! Isn't this what we long for, to hear

the Lord himself address us as "My son," or "My daughter?" Well, that's how the Lord

addresses us in this letter. He wants you to know his fatherly care for you, that he knows

you intimately, like a loving father knows a son or daughter; that you are part of God's

forever family. Through his inspired and inerrant word, God tells us in verse 5-11 that he

is training us, he is disciplining us because he loves us as sons, as heirs of his kingdom. If

we were not going to inherit his kingdom, we would not need this much discipline. I

think that this is what many of us are experiencing as we get slammed it's nothing more

than the discipline of the Lord.

So what is the discipline of the Lord? What does that mean? The Greek word for

discipline means nothing more than child-training, so that is what we look at today,

because Paul likens our growth in faith with that of a child. When we train young

children, our goal is to teach them self-control, orderly conduct and submission to

authority, isn't it? We train our children in two kinds of ways. First, we enforce rules to

protect them from their immaturity and to help them grow up. Second, we correct them

for rebellion in a different kind of way. Let's look at the first kind, enforcing rules. For

example, parents restrict the amount of TV and video games that their children can

watch, and the kinds of shows that they can watch. Parents watch over the food that our

children eat, restricting sweets and encouraging greens. We don't give our children

everything that they ask for. If we did, they would be poorly prepared for adult life.

Neither does God give us all that we ask for. He knows, verse 10, that when we endure

hardship, it produces holiness in us.

The other form of discipline is punishment. Verse 6 says, the Lord punishes

everyone he accepts as a son. The Greek there for "punishes" is also translated scourges,

or whips. Now we never punish for immaturity. When a child spills milk because they are

not coordinated enough to hold it carefully, we don't punish for that. Neither does the

Lord punish us for immaturity. But we are punished for rebellion. We might spank small

children for rebellion, but not when they get older verse 10, we "discipline them for a

little while as we thought best." When our children were small, Ginger or I would spank

them for defiance and rebellion. This was administered in love, not harshly. Ginger

would sometimes carry around a wooden spoon in her purse. Proverbs 29:15 says that

"The rod and rebuke give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother."

Just the sight of that wooden spoon would produce amazing results! Another way to

punish is to take away privileges like telling our children that they must go into time

out, or if you break that rule about too much electronics, you will have no electronics for

a week.

Why is it necessary to punish for rebellion? Proverbs 22:15 says that "Foolishness

is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of correction will drive it far from him."

Without discipline, foolishness will come to rule the heart of that child, and he will harm

everyone around him. God disciplines his children in the same way. He enforces rules of

conduct to protect us from spiritual immaturity, to protect us from our own sin and that of

others. In Hebrews 12:6, it says that the Lord disciplines those he loves. It's out of love

that we are corrected, and it's for our own good. It's for my good that the police officer

stopped me when I was speeding, and my insurance rates went up. Painful, but for my

good. I'm driving slower now, no longer in rebellion to the speed limits.

There is a kind of discipline that is a part of life, and it has nothing to do with

rebellion. It's a normal part of growing up under God's hand. With that, the writer of the

letter to the Hebrews tells us, comes suffering and hardship. Not that the Lord causes you

suffering, but that the Lord allows it in your life because he knows that you need to grow

in a certain way. Look at Job. Job was a model believer, and he lost all of his children,

and all of his property. Look at what Job went through, from boils to judgmental friends.

He didn't deserve all that, but he benefited from it. When Job begins to complain to God,

we see that Job isn't perfect after all he complains for 38 chapters! Finally the Lord

comes to Job and asks him, "So you really think you're perfect, do you Job? Where

were you when I laid the foundation of the universe?" Job teaches us that God uses

experiences of suffering to train us to submit to his authority.

Why is suffering necessary? Jeremiah 17:9 tells us that there is a divine verdict on

the human heart. "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure." We are

deceived about ourselves so often, we don't see our own sin. Proverbs 4 says, "Guard

your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Last week, we read Mark 7, where Jesus tells

us that it is what comes out of the heart that defiles a person, not what they eat.

Hebrews 12:5 tells us that there are two mistakes we are tempted to make as we

respond to suffering and the struggle against sin. First, we can make light of it, and

second, we can lose heart over it. In the movie Casablanca, Peter Lorre plays Ugarte, the

"cut-rate parasite" who steals the letters of transit so that eventually, freedom fighter

Victor Lazlo and Ilsa can escape the Nazis. Ugarte asks Humphrey Bogart, who plays

Rick, the cynical owner of the American Café, "You despise me, don't you?" and Rick's

response is, "I probably would, if I gave you any thought." In Hebrew, the word for

despise means to make light of, to treat as of no moment. Verse 5 tells us not to make

light of the Lord's discipline, don't ignore it, don't try to suppress it, understand it for

what it is. Your suffering is the Lord's program of child-training for his sons, for his

heirs, because he is preparing you to rule with him.

The other mistake people can make when they encounter trials, verse 5, is to lose

heart. They fail to endure, they give up. When we respond to discipline that way, often

we are believing a great lie. The lie is that if God really loves you, and you really love

God, then nothing really bad will happen to you. We can sometimes think that if we get

to a certain level of Christian maturity, we will arrive at a pain-free zone. I've lived a

mature Christian life for fifteen years now, and I have yet to enter a pain-free zone. So

when something bad happens to us, we can lose heart and say, "God, I thought you loved

me!" God responds, oh, I do. Then we say, "Then why did you let this happen to me?"

He says to us, "Where did you ever get the idea that if something bad happened to you,

that I didn't love you? Look at my son Jesus have you suffered like my son? Do you

doubt my love for him?"

Verse 7: we are to endure hardship as the discipline of our heavenly Father. Verse

10 This discipline is for our good. Verse 11: "No discipline sees pleasant at the time,

but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those

how have been trained by it." Ginger and I go to the Ashburn Sports Pavilion to lift

weights. I've made some friends in the gym there, and sometimes I will ask another guy

to spot me when I do a bench press. When I'm on my fourth set, and I'm stuck at rep six,

and I'm not lifting it myself any higher, my spotter will say, "You can do it! It's all you!"

for a rep or two, and then he'll put a couple fingers under the weight, and that's all I need

to finish my last few reps. When I work that hard, I feel it the next day. That is the only

way to get bigger, when you can feel the soreness of that lactic acid in your muscles.

Discipline seems painful at the time, but says verse 11, it yields good fruit. That is the

positive side of the discipline of the Lord. The negative side is the pain of it. When we

welcome discipline, it is painful on a regular basis, but life is also consistently better.

When we press in with exercise, we feel better, we sleep better, we are healthier, we have

more peace.

Go back to verse 1 of Hebrews 12: The secret to welcoming discipline, to

enduring pain is to remember that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. What

is he talking about here? Back in Chapter 11, the author lists the members of the Faith

Hall of Fame. Noah lived with rebellion all around him and yet kept his way pure so we

know that it is possible to keep yourself from begin stained by the world. Moses in Egypt

was offered every worldly pleasure imaginable money, political power, sex - and he

turns them all down to follow God into the wilderness. It`s like we're in an amphitheatre

running a race, and these witnesses are all around us, yelling, "You can make it!" The

great saints of the past, your grandparents and family members who have gone before

you to glory, they are all here, cheering you on even now, praying for you, encouraging

you to endure.

Continuing with verse 1: We are to throw off everything that hinders us and the

sin that so easily entangles. It's easy to see how we are bogged down by sin, but the

hindrances can be even harder for us to throw off than our sins. It's precisely because

those hindrances are not sinful in themselves that it's harder to see that we need to throw

them off. Now if I were to run a marathon, it would be foolish to run in my suit and

collar. No, I'd wear shorts and a t-shirt. Wearing a suit would not be sinful, it is just a

hindrance for that kind of race. The same is true in the spiritual life you may have a

hobby that isn't sinful, but it does impede you in your spiritual life. Maybe you are

addicted to reading the newspaper in the morning, and that is a hindrance to you reading

your Bible. How do you win the race?

Here's the key to it all in verse 2: Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and

perfecter of our faith. When you go through hardships, remember: Jesus is your personal

trainer. He designed a workout program just for you. If you need to learn the same

lesson over and over again, he will provide painful opportunities for you to learn it until

you get it. Jesus is the one who spots you when you can't lift your burden any more by

yourself. Every runner knows that you must focus on the goal line in order to finish the

race well. For the Christian, the goal line is a person. Jesus stand as the goal line with

his arms outstretched, saying "You can make it!" "Come, run to me, here I am!"

Why does Jesus do that? It is because he loves us like a brother. He loved us so

much that it was a joy for him to go to the cross and to suffer its shame. How is it a joy

to endure suffering? Before the world began, the Father and the Son had a conference.

The Father offered the Son a cross, and said, if you will go there, I will take your pure

blood, and I will cleanse the most corrupt thing in the universe the human heart. Jesus

looked down through history and saw all the hearts that would be washed and changed by

his going to the cross, and he decided that he would give these hearts to the Father as a

gift. So when you suffer, fix your eyes on Jesus; remember how he suffered; welcome

the discipline of the Lord, and God will prepare you for eternity. Amen.