Hebrews - The Discipline of the Father

Let's read the word of God at Hebrews 12:7. "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons. For what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, of which all are partakers, then are ye illegitimate children and not sons.

Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection under the Father of spirits and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure. But He for our prophet, that we might be partakers of His holiness."

He's talking here about this matter of chastening. We are in God's gymnasium. And God is training us as Christian athletes. We are runners on the racetrack, and he wants us to reach the goal.

He tells us here that chastening has three purposes behind it. Number one, the purpose of enduring. He wants us to keep going. And number two, the purpose of assuring. He wants to keep us knowing, knowing that he is our Father, we are his children, and what his will is. And thirdly, the purpose of maturing. He wants us to keep on growing.

I think these phrases will lodge in our mind as we think about Hebrews 12:7-10. He wants to keep us going, that's enduring. He wants to keep us knowing, that's assuring, and he wants to keep us growing, that's maturing. That is what chastisement is all about.

First of all, God wants us to have the experience of enduring. Hebrews 12:7, "if ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons." God wants to keep us going. Now the people to whom this book was written were in the danger of going backward, not forward.

They wanted to go back to their old profession of religion. They did not want to move ahead. The key verse is Hebrews 6:1, "let us go on to maturity, to perfection." Let's move on the racetrack and reach the goal that God has for us.

Now you and I are often tempted to go back. When the going is tough and God is disciplining us, he's helping us to grow, but we don't want to go forward, we want to go backward. We must endure and keep going in spite of the circumstances of life. After all, God's in control of the circumstances. In spite of the difficulty of the race, after all, other people have run this race and they've kept on going.

In spite of the contradiction of sinners. Back in Hebrews 12:3 we read about that, "for consider Him, Jesus, that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself." It's not easy for us to run the race because we are running right into that crowd that is on the broad road that goes to destruction. And they get in our way sometimes. They contradict us. We must keep running the race in spite of the sin that so easily besets us.

Now how does chastening help us to keep on going? How is it that God can use chastening, education, instruction, discipline, to help us endure? Well to begin with, chastening removes the hindrances in the race.

You can't run this race and experience the development and the discipline that God has for you, carrying the weights, or being tangled up in the robes. He tells us to strip for action, lay aside all the weights and the sin that so easily trips us up. Chastening makes it easy for me to get down to essentials. Chastening forces me to trust God more, to get my eyes off the detours. We look unto Jesus who is the author and the finisher of our faith.

Chastening reminds us of what God did for others. Back in Hebrews 11, all of these people went through some kind of chastening. I don't care which one you pick, God had to put them through His gymnasium to equip them for life and ministry. And so God says to us, I'm going to chasten you, I want you to endure. I don't want you to be a baby. I want you to endure and keep on going because that's going to lead to maturity.

Now the second purpose God has in mind is the purpose of assuring. He wants to assure us and keep us knowing that we are His children. Would you notice that chastening is an evidence that we are saved? Hebrews 12:8, "but if ye be without chastisement, of which all, meaning all true believers, are partakers, then are ye illegitimate children and not sons."

There are people in our churches who sin against God. They deliberately rebel against God. They they just laugh at God. And yet they claim to be Christians, they claim to belong to the Lord, and yet nothing ever happens to them. They just sail right through, no storms, no problems. And my Bible says those people are not saved.

If we can deliberately sin against God repeatedly, habitually, if we can argue with the coach as it were, and say we're going to run our own way, we're going to choose our own lane, we're going to move over on the fast lane. And nothing happens, God says you are not my child.

I don't know about you, but whenever I have disobeyed the Lord, the devil says to me, oh, if you were a Christian, you wouldn't have done that. Whenever I've disobeyed the Lord, the the devil whispers in my ear and says, oh, you must not be saved. And just at that point, God comes along and he spanks me. He says to me, you shouldn't have done that, you knew better, and I'm going to have to discipline you.

And that discipline is a proof of sonship. It proves that God is dealing with me as one of His children. God takes His children and He says, look, I want you to know that I can't tolerate that kind of conduct in my family. And so chastening keeps us knowing that we are saved. It assures us, it reassures us that we are truly born again.

I fear that we have today far too many people who think they are saved and they are not saved at all. Jesus said in Matthew 7, "not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. But he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." For in that day, that last day of judgment, in that day many, not a few, many will say, "Lord, Lord, we've prophesied in your name." We've been preaching. And we've cast out demons and we've done many wonderful works, even performed miracles of healing. And I'm going to say to them, "depart from me, ye that work iniquity, I never knew you." Now he didn't say I once knew you and you lost your salvation. He says you never had it at all.

The church today is filled with religious counterfeits. We have a lot of religious racketeering going on today. And I want to warn myself and I want to warn you that if you can sin, if I can sin and quote get away with it, unquote, then we are not God's children. God chastens those who disobey Him. Chastening has the purpose of assuring us that we're saved.

Secondly, it assures us of God's love. "Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth." You see, Satan comes when we've sinned and he says, well, God doesn't love you anymore. You told that lie, you did that deed you shouldn't have done. Now God doesn't love you anymore. Then along comes chastening and God in His chastening is saying to us, I do love you. This is why I'm spanking you.

God will not pamper His children. He rebukes us, He chastens us, He scourges us, not only to reassure us that we are saved, but to remind us that He loves us. God also sends chastening to assure us that we better listen to His word. "And ye have forgotten the exhortation," says Hebrews 12:5, "which speaketh unto you as unto sons." God wants to talk to us and we aren't listening and so he has to spank us to get us to listen. God has to get our attention to make us listen to the word of God.

And so chastening has the purpose of enduring. He wants us to keep going. Assuring, He wants us to keep knowing, but most of all, maturing. He wants us to keep growing. Chastening is a child training process. Now the keyword here is the word son. Not just child, but son.

Hebrews 12:5, "and ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto sons." Not children, immature babies, you can't talk to babies. Oh, you can do it, they won't understand you. God wants to deal with us as sons. "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord." He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. Hebrews 12:7, "God dealeth with you as with sons." You see, the emphasis here is on maturity, sonship. God wants me to grow up.

Every once in a while, I'll meet some doting grandmother or grandfather who brags about the grandchildren and then wistfully says, oh, if only they wouldn't grow up. If they just stay at this cute little four-year-old stage. I think to myself, how selfish can you get? God does not want us to stay babies. God wants us to grow up. That's the theme of Hebrews. Let us go on unto maturity.

Now he tells us here that our earthly fathers wanted us to grow up. Hebrews 12:9, "furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh," that's earthly fathers, "who corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits," that means our spiritual Father, "and live?"

Now the suggestion here is that if we do not subject ourselves to God, we may not live. He didn't go on to expand on that, but there is a sin unto death, according to 1 John 5. And Paul wrote to the Corinthians and said, for this cause, some are sleeping among you. That is, some of the saints died because they were not dealing with their sin and growing up as they ought to grow.

The contrast here is rather obvious. We've had earthly fathers, we have a spiritual Father, a heavenly Father. During childhood, our earthly fathers disciplined us for a little while. But God disciplines us during all of our Christian life. We never outgrow the need for God's training. You never graduate from God's gymnasium, because God is working on eternity.

You see, our fathers and our mothers disciplined us and trained us and instructed us during childhood to get us ready for adulthood. Then their job was over. We left home, we got married, we established our own homes, and then the process started all over again.

God never lets us leave home. God says, I am your Father, I will be your Father throughout all eternity. I'm getting you ready for heaven. Now I will discipline you if you disobey me, and I am going to put you through disciplines to perfect you, to correct you, to protect you. I am going to discipline you to get you ready for glory.

Now our earthly fathers disciplined us as it seemed good to them. That is the meaning of that phrase in Hebrews 12:10, "that they chastened us after their own pleasure." That doesn't mean they enjoyed it. No father or mother enjoys chastening a child.

What it means is they chastened us as it seemed good to them. I confess there are times I disciplined my children ignorantly, either at the wrong time, or in the wrong way, or for the wrong purpose, or with the wrong attitude.

Earthly fathers make mistakes, but our heavenly Father makes no mistake. He disciplines us for our prophet. It's for our good. When our parents used to say to us, well, now this is for your good that I'm doing this. We didn't believe them. Now we believe them. And we wish we would have paid more attention.

God wants us to become more like Him. Now this is a wonderful thing to think that God in His love would discipline us that He might encourage us to keep going and to keep knowing and to keep growing. Now how should we respond? Well, we can treat it lightly. Hebrews 12:5 says, "don't you despise the chastening of the Lord." We can treat it lightly or we can faint under it. These are two extremes now. We can despise it or we can despair of it.

He says, no, you should endure it. You should subject yourself to God. Notice what he says here. "We've had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection under the Father of spirits and live?" That's Hebrews 12:9. Let's subject ourselves to God. Let's not fight God, let's not faint. Let's rather by faith yield ourselves to Him and let Him accomplish His purposes in our lives. We should exercise ourselves unto godliness.

The results are really beautiful. The afterward in Hebrews 12:11, "nevertheless afterward." We are partakers of His holiness. We experience joy. No chastening for the present seems to be joyous, but afterward there's the joy. There's a fruitfulness of our lives, righteousness, and strength. You see, what he's saying to us is this, oh my child, I want you to grow up. I want to deal with you as with a son.

He's talking about a deepening relationship in Hebrews 12:7. "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons." That is mature children, not little babies. Does God have to deal with us as you deal with a baby? Do we have to be pampered and entertained and constantly changed and burped and fed, or does God deal with us as with mature sons?

You see, every father, every mother looks forward to that time when the child enters into adulthood. And there is a deeper relationship. You're able to talk about things, pray together, work together. There is a deepening that goes beyond toys and trips and all of the things that children enjoy. This is what God wants for you and me. God wants us to grow up so that He might be able to relate to us as sons, not as little babies.

Now the only way to grow is to feed on the word of God, get the nourishment of the word of God, and exercise yourself unto godliness. He talks about that in Hebrews 12:11, "afterward, it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them who are exercised by it," that is exercised by this chastening.

Our problem is when chastening comes, we give up. We say, oh Lord, why should this happen to me? And God says, why shouldn't it happen to you? Don't you want to grow up? You've been praying, oh Lord, help me to be a better Christian. Oh Lord, help me to grow up, help me to mature. Well, the only way, says God, that I can help you to mature is to put you through chastening.

We are in God's gymnasium. And God's purpose in chastening is that we might be enduring. We don't quit. Quitters are not people who bring glory to God. He wants us to keep enduring, to keep going. He wants us to keep assuring, to keep knowing that we're God's children, that we belong to Him, that He is our Father, and that He is working in our lives.

And most of all, He wants to accomplish the purpose of maturing. He wants us to keep growing, to become more like the Lord Jesus Christ.