Sermon: Hebrews Part 7 – God’s Discipline

If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Hebrews Chapter 12. We’ll read from verses 5-11. Some of you may have the heading “God Disciplines His Children” in your Bibles. That’s where we’ll read from today.

Some of you here might know my parents; I’m sure you’ve met them at one time or another. When I was growing up, believe it or not, I occasionally acted up. Now being maybe three or four years old, I had no idea that what I was doing was wrong. I just did what I did. In fact, Mom would get after me over doing what I felt was no different than anything else I ever did. I remember one time my older brother did the same thing. Got after me about nothing. I still don’t know what I was doing, just being myself, which made it confusing for a little guy like me. I might have been getting into things that I shouldn’t, being loud or rambunctious, maybe a little destructive, I don’t know. My mom would tell me to stop. Stop what? Really, what was I doing? I was just being me, right? I wasn’t doing anything different than what I normally do. She’d tell me to stop again. Maybe I thought she was playing games. She didn’t really mean it, right?

She would say something to the effect of “Just wait till your father gets home.” Now, to a three-year-old. My dad was big. He had a deep, loud, booming voice. He had muscles from working in a sheet metal trade, and there were days when he had the occasional sour attitude after coming home from a long day of work. Gee, I don’t know what that’s like.

When my dad came home and told me to stop, I stopped.

And then my mother would ask, “Why does it always work when your dad says it but not when I say it?”

Needless to say, dads are often the discipliner of the house, though the few actual spankings I got–mostly just a single whap on the bottom–came from my mom. That’s because if dad spoke, I listened because I didn’t want it coming from him.

Of course, unless you are Mormon, we don’t have a mother figure in Christianity. Maybe you could say that Catholics do. So God, our Father, is our discipliner while The Holy Spirit–still referred to as a ‘He’–that is His preferred pronoun–sad that we even have to think about mentioning that in our society today–He is our comforter.

Let’s look at a passage that reflects God our Father as a discipliner and go from there.

Hebrews 12:5-11

5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,

and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,

6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,

and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”

7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. 9 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! 10 They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

So, what can we say about this? God disciplines His children. When God is doing something within us that’s painful, we can also rejoice, knowing that that pain will produce something beneficial. Just as we discipline our children, God’s discipline in us produces good character. And we should actually rejoice that if we undergo that discipline from God, then we actually are accepted as His children.

It might not be the kind of thing we want to hear, but God’s discipline is good news. We have God’s love through discipline.

You know, I mentioned God’s preferred pronoun just a minute ago. And as a side note, before we get going on our sermon today. I think we’re in this gender mess today because of the topic of discipline.

Do you remember about 30 years ago, the concept of spanking your child became controversial? So they came up with the idea of “Time Outs.” Then, about 20 years ago, no one spanked their children anymore. And at that same time, they came up with the idea of giving out participation trophies.

About 10 years ago, we began doing away with ‘timeouts.’ At least some of our institutions did. We couldn’t do that–or any other form of discipline in our daycare. Nothing. We had to ‘redirect’ the child, whatever that means—one of the reasons why we quit, one of the hundreds–literally.

So what’s the opposite of discipline? Permissivism, or enabling. It used to be frowned upon to enable your children.

But here we are. The ‘participation trophy/undisciplined children’ have now become adults, and this is the society we live in now where we have to cater to and enable the adults. The adults are acting like spoiled children if you don’t cater to their whatever–sexual orientation, preferred pronoun, we have to have ‘safe spaces’ at workplaces, you name it.

Why? Well, discipline is good for us. This is the society we live in when an entire generation of children–who are not disciplined–become adults. They heap these demands on the rest of us to cater to their feelings because they don’t know how to be corrected, especially by the Word of God.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, ​​”16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

So, what does God’s discipline look like? How do we even know we are going through it?

I mean, it’s not like God opens up the clouds and points his finger down at us and says, “Now I am going to do this as a disciplinary action against you. It’s going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.”

And for my kids, it really does hurt the parent more than it does you.

But what does it look like when an invisible God is our Father?

I’ve talked a lot about perseverance. Paul said to the Romans, “3 let us also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

Did you hear that? Suffering produces perseverance and perseverance produces character. Suffering leads to character. Not like what Yoda said. Though Yoda has a point. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of The Purpose Driven Life said, “God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy.”

I don’t like to hear that. That hurts a little too much. But it’s worth it in the end.

Here’s something else regarding perseverance:

James said in his epistle:

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Let perseverance finish its work. In other words, let perseverance develop character in you so that you may be mature. Maturity–that’s why we discipline our kids, isn’t it? So that we can develop maturity within them.

It’s the same way with God, our Father.

So how does God discipline us? As James said, through trials of many kinds.

Gotquestions.org, said that The Bible clearly teaches that God loves those who are His children, and He “works all things together for good” for us (Romans 8:28). So that must mean that the trials and tribulations He allows in our lives are part of the working together of all things for good. Therefore, for the believer, all the trials and tribulations must have a divine purpose.

I talked about spanking and time-outs. Either of those are disciplinary, so is being sent to your room or being grounded. There is no one particular right or wrong way to discipline, and there is no one particular way that God disciplines. Usually, God’s discipline mirrors what we actually need. For example, financial hardships teach us to be grateful and thankful for what we already have and to not take things for granted. It teaches us what to do and how to act when God gives us financial blessings.

Maybe he puts us in frustrating situations at work to strengthen our resolve, or strengthen our faith, or strengthen our confidence, and toughen us up a little to prepare us for a future Godly assignment. Sometimes the best way to beat fear is to face our fears. So God throws us into city traffic or in front of a crowd of people to speak, or we are faced with leading a team of people–all things I’ve had to do. In fact, this past couple of weeks, I’ve had to drive in Buffalo traffic quite a lot, and let me tell you, if I never go back there again, it’ll be too soon. And maybe, just maybe, we face failure. That’s a form of developing character.

Maybe God brings us failure to soften our hearts, to humble us and so that we can relate to one another. I’m reminded of a passage in 2 Corinthians where Paul said,

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

In other words, as we suffer and are comforted, we can better comfort others because we know what it’s like.

John Newton said: “When people are right with God, they are apt to be hard on themselves and easy on other people. But when they are not right with God, they are easy on themselves and hard on others.”

See, even God has to discipline his children. You thought you were done being disciplined when you became an adult and moved out on your own. Little did you know that this was just the beginning of your discipline as a Christian. In Deuteronomy 8, God told the Israelites, “Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.”

God’s discipline is His way of showing us that He loves us in much the same way that we, in what might seem strange to them, show that we actually love our children. We have to teach them what not to do. And we have to do it in a way that gets their attention, and usually, it ends up being a little harsh before they get it. But like I said, it’s hard on us parents to do it. And that’s why we’re at a point in our society where we’re mandated by the state to not discipline children in our daycares.

Benjamin Spock led the way among child-rearing professionals in instructing parents not to discipline their children. He said that doing so would damage children’s ego. Later in his life he realized that he had made a mistake and said:

“We have reared a generation of brats. Parents aren’t firm enough with their children for fear of losing their love or incurring their resentment. This is a cruel deprivation that we professionals have imposed on mothers and fathers. Of course, we did it with the best of intentions. We didn’t realize until it was too late how our know-it-all attitude was undermining the self assurance of parents.”

How could we be called God’s children if he did not discipline us? If we behaved the same as the world? Think about that, if we are the children of God, then we ought to act how the God of the universe–the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Holiest of Holies would demand his children to behave. We are His ambassadors on earth. How would God behave? Jesus came to show us the heart of His Father. Jesus was the Father’s ambassador on earth. We are now Jesus’ ambassadors, which is why we are called Christians, which means ‘little christs.’

The World knows how we Christians ought to behave and sometimes we don’t act like it. Of course, none of us are perfect. We’re all going to be hypocrites at one time or another. But that’s no excuse to not grow and mature as Christians. So, how else would God shake that stuff out of us? Remember a few months ago when I preached on God shaking the bad stuff out of us? He’s got to hit us a little hard sometimes in order to get things through our thick skulls. He’s got to adjust us spiritually. We have to think of God as a spiritual chiropractor. And sometimes, going to a chiropractor hurts a little.

To knock us into Godly maturity, we need to let God deal with us in a way in which He sees fit. Sometimes we don’t understand what’s going on. Sometimes we look at situations in our lives and not until afterward do we see that the pressure we just went through had made something better out of us–it had purified us in some way. It changed us for the better. But maybe it was something that we didn’t see or understand at the moment.

Think about this:

Diamonds are formed under great pressure and heat. If these conditions do not exist, they are simply not formed. It is not that they will be low quality, or smaller in size, but they will not form. God brings His refining fire into our lives to create in us what He sees fit. When He sees our lack of character, He will bring into our lives what we need. So next time a fiery trial comes, thank God. He is producing exactly what He knows you need in your life. The only difference between a diamond and a piece of coal is pressure.

On a similar note, just like the process in which diamonds are made, gold goes through a refining process. Peter says:

So be truly glad! There is wonderful joy ahead, even though it is necessary for you to endure many trials for a while. These trials are only to test your faith, to show that it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—and your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold. So if your faith remains strong after being tried by fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world (1 Peter 1:6–7 NLT).

John Bevere commented: The higher the percentage of foreign substances in gold, the more susceptible the gold is to corrosion and corruption. Because God desires for us to be clean and uncorrupted, He allows us to enter the heat of trials that will remove our impurities….He allows us to go through trials so that we can grow, stretch, and learn—so that we can become more like Jesus.

Using another quote from Gotquestions.org, they make the distinction that “[God’s] Discipline is not to be confused with cold-hearted punishment.” Discipline and punishment are two different things. For us, our punishment was taken upon Jesus at the cross. That’s why I believe we’ll be raptured before Christ returns so that we’re not here when God sends his bowls of judgment upon the earth.

Parentingforbrain.com states that discipline should be to:

• modify children’s behavior,
• develop their characters,
• protect their mental health, and
• help you develop a close relationship with them.

Sound familiar? Sounds like how it works with us and God? In the Bible, we see God punish and we see God discipline. As his children, we experience His discipline, but we don’t experience his punishment.

V. Raymond Edman, a mentor to Billy Graham, said in his 1948 book, “It is His sons whom God disciplines that they might bring honor to His name. He wants to teach and train them, to soften and sweeten them, to strengthen and steady them, that they may show forth the excellencies of Him who told them, ‘’Learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls’’ (Matt. 11:29).”

So God’s discipline is not a punishment. God’s discipline is a discipline. In other words, it’s shaping and reforming, and as the passage in 1 Peter tells us, it’s a refining process.

When I hear the phrase “a discipline,” I think of boot camp. I think of all those years Caleb took karate. He had to train his body. He had to train his mind. He had to train his behavior because in order to train for karate, you have to live by a certain set of beliefs and you have to be of high moral character. You can’t become a black belt or advance higher in black belt degrees if you don’t live by those standards.

And like any sport or art or any form of practice, God’s discipline requires us to also participate in self-discipline. One of the words I keep hearing over and over again is the word, disciple or discipleship. We have to take our discipleship seriously. Being a disciple of Christ is to intentionally be under the discipline of Christ. It is a form of instruction and learning and following and submitting, and it is to be taken seriously.

So, to be disciplined is to be trained. And to have rigorous training. Sometimes, it hurts. But as they say, no pain, no gain. It’s the same with spiritual training. There’s a pain in the process.

But as we read out of Hebrews, “11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

So, are you feeling the pain of discipline? Is God, your personal spiritual trainer, making you go through a rigorous spiritual workout? Are you feeling yourself stretch and burn? Are you feeling your spiritual muscles growing and your unwanted spiritual pounds dissolving away? It has to be done with a discipline of hard training. And if you want to grow in a healthy spiritual way, you’ve got to submit yourself under that kind of training and direction. You have to go through some things that might not seem pleasant at times. But you know that in the end, it’s where you want to be.

The Christian life shouldn’t be all easy and comfortable and sweet, though it has moments of that–plenty of moments of that because of His Spirit of peace and joy. But there are times when God pushes you. There are those Monday through Friday moments. And like I mentioned I’ve been going through that myself, where he’s stretching me to the point where I want to quit, but he’s saying to you, “Don’t quit.” Then, you look back and see how far you’ve gone with Him as your coach.

God is calling us to not be afraid of His discipline but to expect it and welcome it. And many of us, if we’re honest, can look back at painful experiences in our lives and see how that has made us better Christians. And we can look back and say that challenge seems so easy now.

Let me close by reading this.

Proverbs 3:11-12: “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.”

This is an updated edition of a post originally published on First Baptist Church of Watkins Glen

Featured Image by Ramiro Pianarosa on Unsplash

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