The Book of Hebrews 12:4-11 God's discipline

This next month, we're going to be taking today's passage as a point of departure, and we're going to be doing a five-week series on parenting, taking it off from God's discipline and the Father's discipline here in the passage we'll be looking at today. And we'll be starting off with topics like, Parenting Starts with an F. So that's not a school lesson, by the way. OK. So we'll be going through the five-week series beginning next Sunday.

So let's talk about the word sons as it shows up in this passage here. This passage refers only to discipline of sons, but not of daughters. Well, let's talk about that. The reason for that is the quote from the Old Testament in this passage is a father writing to his son. And so that's the reason for this orientation in this passage here in Hebrews. There is no reason, however, to think that the principles in this passage do not apply to daughters as well. The reality is the spiritual nature of sons and daughters is not different.

I think that's something for us to get. There are differences physiologically and physically between males and females, and that's by God's design. Spiritually speaking, however, There is no difference between male and female. In Christ, there is no male or female. One of the reasons for that is that gender differences are for earthly times. When we get to be with the Lord, the gender differences will go away.

So, sons, let's talk about the word discipline here. The King James uses the word chastening or related words, chastened, chastened, chastened, okay? And so those are the different translations. So if you have a King James, it'll use that family of words. Discipline is what the New American Standard has, and that's what we'll be using for the most part.

Discipline is intended to put a person who is off of the right place and path back onto the right place and path. It's a restorative thing. The intent is to restore, right? Sometimes falling off the path gets pretty precarious, however, right? And that's important for us to take note of. It can be quite a fall off of the path and quite a chore to get back onto it. Punishment, on the other hand, is something different.

It is about getting what a person deserves for bad behavior or failure to do good. Now let's ask this question. In our relationship with the Lord, do we get what we deserve? No. That's the difference that grace makes. We don't get what we deserve. That's good. That's a good thing. Because the Lord's mercy and the Lord's grace, mercy is punishment withheld. Grace is giving us beyond what we deserve. There's the difference. So the distinction between discipline and punishment is discipline is gracious. Punishment is not.

So we're not being punished by God. I was talking to a fellow believer last year, and he had been struggling for some time. He says, you mean God's not mad at me? I said, no. God isn't mad at you. That's not the issue. If you have something difficult going on in your life, it's not because God's mad at you, if you're a believer.

Now, since we live under grace, we who believe are disciplined in order to help us get back on the right place and path in our daily condition, but not as a punishment. If God is disciplining us, our position, our eternal position in Christ is not impacted. Now, here's how the passage starts out.

Hebrews 12.4, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin now that may seem like a little strange we're going to connect it up with verse three at the end of last week's passage it said for consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself so that you will not grow weary and lose heart you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin as christ did see the distinction there that's the connection you hebrews have not shed blood in your striving against sin.

However, Christ did. Christ did. He shed blood for you and for me in His striving against sin. So Christ did indeed shed blood in His dealing with the sin problem, and He shed it for you and for me. He shed it for us. The author of Hebrews is dealing with some issues with these saints of Jewish ethnicity, these Hebrews. and he's been giving them various kinds of warnings. He's going to do that again here.

These believers apparently had suffered to some degree, but their struggle against sin could not compare to Christ's suffering for our sins, in which Christ did shed blood for you and for me. Now there's a hidden nugget in this verse that didn't come up in the translation here. What the English translation does not reveal is that there is a definite article in front of sin. The word sin has a definite article.

So it actually is saying you're striving against the sin nature. You're striving against the sin nature. You have not yet shed blood and you're striving against the sin nature. Sin has a source, and that source is the sin nature attached to this body. We strive against the sin nature when we reckon ourselves, consider ourselves dead to the sin nature and, and this is an important second half, critical, alive to God. It does not do any good to keep telling the sin nature no if we don't turn around and live out alive to God.

It is not our job to just sit there and battle with the sin nature. You're going to lose. It's the life to God part. This is from Romans 6, 1 through 11 in our Law and Grace series, which is on the website. 74 through 86 are the lessons that talk about the sin nature. All right, now let's go to Hebrews 12, and this is 4 through 6. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood, and you're striving against sin.

And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him. For those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives. And by the way, if you can't hear me in the back, please raise your hand at any time, okay, if my voice drops off.

Now, let's talk about this word forgotten. These believers had been taught to the point that they ought to be teachers. We learned that back in Hebrews 5, 11-14. They had been taught to the point, he said, that you ought to be teachers. But they had been dull of hearing.

And by the way, that was intentionally dull. They had intentionally dulled their hearing to the point they needed to start all over again. Now, he says, you were intentionally dull of hearing, now, he says, you have forgotten, okay? It gets worse. There were principles about discipline that these same believers seem to have forgotten. They've had it before, but they've forgotten it.

Which is why they need to start all over again. So, the author is reminding them of the Old Testament passages. Those are given in your handout and up on the slide there, off to the upper right. Proverbs 3.11 and Psalm 119.75 are a couple of those Old Testament passages. What you see here quoted is not one single one, but actually a compilation of several Old Testament passages and even some New Testament truth added to it. So, now, the discipline of the Lord. When the Lord disciplines a believer, it is possible that a believer does not see it as God's discipline, but as something else altogether.

This is very important. Got this? Very important. It's possible a believer does not see it as God's discipline, but as something else altogether. Is the Lord's discipline just taken as bad luck? Oh, I had bad luck. And not understand that this is a message from the Lord. Have I got your attention? Right? Are tough turns in the road just, oh, that's the way life is?

Instead of seeing it as God's discipline. Or, is God just really messing up on His job? I'm mad at God because His job is to make it nice for me. Right? and he's doing a terrible job of it. So I'm ticked. So people can greatly misunderstand God's discipline by interpreting it as these other things. And if you're really creative, you can come up with some more ways to misinterpret God's discipline. In order not to regard it lightly, you must regard it rightly. See? Not make the mistakes like we just pointed to.

Have you ever heard or even said to yourself, what will it take for God to get that guy's attention? What will it take? Or maybe you've heard something like this. Or, she won't listen to God until she hits rock bottom, and it isn't her rock bottom just yet. Maybe you've seen that. And this little thing here, touching wire causes instant death, $200 fine. I think that's overkill, right? How are you going to find a corpse anyway?

I don't know. But believers who are off the track often don't see God's message through the circumstances for what it is. It's lack of spiritual insight into what God is doing. Because they're not thinking spiritually, and they're not thinking about what God is actually doing in their lives. They don't see God for who He is. Perhaps they see God as sort of a winking Jesus.

Thumbs up, buddy! Hey, dude! And that's just kind of, He's my buddy. And that's all they think of. Perhaps they see God as the jolly old man upstairs. Perhaps that's what they're thinking. Maybe, maybe they think of God as sort of a heavenly 9-1-1. When I'm in really big trouble, and I've run out of all the other things I can do, then, in case of spiritual emergencies, PRAY! And of course, if they're in that kind of a spiritual state, they might even be thinking, pray like, oh, never mind.

Anyway. Okay. No feet! The Greek word that is translated fate here is translated lose heart in verse 3. Same word. It has the idea of losing the ability to continue or to move forward. Just, oh, I'm overwhelmed. I'm in shock. Due to the circumstances. What are you doing under the circumstances anyway?

If discipline is designed to put a believer back on the right path, then losing the ability to continue or move forward is not the outcome God intends. Usually on a path you're intended to move, right? You move along the path. So losing the ability to continue and move forward is not going to get you anywhere on the path. Now, there's another word we have to take a look at, and reprove does not mean to do the mathematical proof again. And that's a good thing, especially with the way this one was done.

Okay, so in Revelation 3.19, we have a very good example, and it's a similar message. Jesus says to the church at Laodicea, those whom I love, now get that, is God mad at them? No, God loves them. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. Be zealous, and by the way, that word zealous means be hot. Be hot, and therefore, and repent.

I put the Revelation 3.20 picture there because the next verse is, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. And often that's presented as a salvation verse.

It's not. It's written to Christians. It's written to believers. And he's not talking about entering their heart for the first time to establish a relationship, but he's talking about fellowship. That's what he's talking about. This verse has a very similar meaning to the Hebrews 12, 5, and 6.

Reproof and discipline from the Lord are because He loves us, and the intended outcome is that we repent. Now, it's very important that we understand that repent just means to change your mind, okay? It doesn't mean that I invite you to repent and you come up here and sob and sob and sob until everybody's tired of it and they left, right?

That's not repent. Repenting does not mean that you got the blues and you're feeling really bad. Right? Okay? That's not repent. It's change of mind. Okay? That's repent. Change the mind. Change the mind. Ending up believing and being in fellowship. That's what repent means. Okay? That's what repent means. And if you want to feel bad about what I just told you, go ahead. Okay.

2nd Timothy 3 16 and 17 has some insights for us here It says all scriptures inspired by God and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction Training and righteousness so that the man of God and by the way, that's Anthropos So it means the man or woman of God may be adequate equipped for every good work Have you ever felt inadequate Yeah, okay adequacy comes from God. And it starts with God's Word.

Now, reproof is from the same family of words as reprove in Hebrews 2.6.

It's the same word used in Ephesians 6.4 that we'll be looking at next week. Hebrews 12 verses 5, 7, 8, and 11. So it shows up repeatedly here. The next thing is this word correction has the double asterisk. Correction means to straighten up again. Straighten up again.

And the third point here is training is the same word in Ephesians and Hebrews above. That is Ephesians 6, 4, Hebrews 12, 5, and 7, 8, and 11. And in the King James, it's chastening or discipline in the New American Standard. Meaning generally, child training. Child training. That's the word there. So, going back to our Hebrews passage here. The Lord loves and receives us. That's clear from the passage. The Lord does not discipline us out of anger and wrath, nor does He do it to just play with our heads.

Farm story. When we would go out morning and night to milk the cow, twice a day, milk the cow. You go out to milk the cow, we'd discover once in a while the cat's just sort of hung around. And then we thought, well, you know, we're sitting there aiming the stream into the bucket, milking away. And by the way, that's how Nancy had to get initiated. There's no way I could even consider her as a possibility until I really saw her get milking away on the other cow. Okay, so we're out there milking the cows, and the cats come by, and they're kind of showing interest.

So then direct the stream at the cat. Hey, the cat just loves it. Oh, they're going for it. Next step. If I raise the stream, will the cat stand up? Yes, the cat will. The cat stands up. If I raise the stream higher, the cat will just get on its hind legs. This is great. But we're not done. If I wave the stream back and forth, will the cat dance? The cat does dance. This is wonderful. This is great. So I got to see the cats dance twice a day. This is wonderful.

So anyway, I was just playing with their heads. God doesn't do that with us. God doesn't do that with us. He doesn't play mind games, okay? He's not a mentalist. There's genuine relationship between ourselves and God because we believe God desires that we fellowship with Him based on the relationship that we have. See that? He desires that we fellowship with Him moment by moment based on the permanent relationship that we have with Him. So loving us and receiving us are the motives that cause God to want to discipline us so that we will return to a path of fellowship with Him.

That's why we have discipline. It isn't because God messed up. It isn't because I'm just having bad luck. It isn't just because that's the way life is. God is allowing these things to give me a message to return back to fellowship with Him. That's what's going on. That's why he's doing it. It's because he loves us and has received us. Those are his motivations.

Not to make us just baffled and ticked off. Now there's a word here, you might go, whoa, that's a bit intense. Scourge. Wasn't Jesus scourged before he was crucified? Yep. Isn't that kind of a bit way too intense, especially to start thinking of scourging your kids? Well, fortunately here, the word is used as a figure of speech, meaning to discipline.

Just like Paul's use of a rod in 1 Corinthians 4.21. It didn't mean that he was going to come after the Corinthians with a literal rod. He meant that he was going to bring about correction in that church body. So that's what this word scourge is about. He wrote every son as well, not a few or most, every. That means all of us get included in this.

You might think, you know, how can I sidestep God's discipline? Not happening. Not happening. There are times when someone will come to me and say, you know, hey, you're a pastor. Can you help say a few good words and get God off my back? You want me to get God off your back? Well, really? I'm not doing that.

There's a reason God has this rock in the road. There's a reason why the rock is in your road. And it's not my job to take it out of the way. He put it there. You need to talk to Him about why it's there. All of us will need to be disciplined at some time or another because God loves and receives us. That's key. Here is Hebrews 12, 7. It is for discipline that you endure.

God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? In the King James, this sentence starts off with an if. There is no if in the Greek text, so the New American Standard updated is correct here. It is for discipline. It is for discipline.

Now, what son is there? Remember, this was written to the Hebrews in the Hebrew culture, shaped by the law of Moses. It was assumed that a father disciplines his children because he loves them. It was assumed that the father disciplined his children because he loves them. The alternative is that the father and mother would be initiating the public stoning of their son, per Deuteronomy 21, 18-21.

Yep. Okay? Let's read that. If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and his mother, and when they chastise him and will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway in his hometown. They shall say to the elders of his city, This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of this city shall stone him to the point that it hurts. to death. So you shall remove evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear of it in fear.

And you're not kidding. You're not kidding. If that were true of the son, then the daughter as well. Adultery, which is not addressed in that passage, you notice. For the man and the woman meant death for both anyway. So either way, you're going to end up dead if you carry those things out.

Hebrews 12, 7-11 compares God's discipline of a believer to the Jewish father's discipline of his son. So we see an alternating back and forth there. That comparison is our connecting point with a much larger subject of parenting that will occupy our Sundays in the month of June. Here's Hebrews 12, 8.

If you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. So, without discipline, since both the human fathers and God disciplined because they love their sons and their daughters, the only reason not to discipline is because a child is not loved. That's what this verse is telling us here. Without discipline, it means without love.

Verse 8 is not urging or proposing anything, but only asking them and us to follow the logic. Follow the logic. And the verse says that the author and these believers are partakers of discipline. Now that brings up a very interesting subject. What I've been keeping from you is Hebrews 1 And then in Hebrews 3, two places, Hebrews 6, and now finally in Hebrews 12, we have this word, initially in chapter 1 it's translated companions, but several times here after that, partakers.

For example, partakers of a heavenly calling in Hebrews 3.1.

Hebrews 3.14, partakers of Christ.

And then Hebrews 6.4, partakers of the Holy Spirit. And then finally here, discipline of which you all have become partakers. You see, partakers of a heavenly calling. Anybody have any objection to that? Does that sound pretty good? We all get to share in that. We all get to share in that. We are all our joint participants in this heavenly calling.

Partakers of Christ. We all are joint sharers in Christ. We are partakers of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit indwells all believers. All of us, you and me. But we also have become sharers, joint participants in God's discipline. All of us. The word that is typically translated partakers in the book of Hebrews means to be a sharer, partner, or joint participant.

Now, that picture you see there, that's my high school football team. And between elbows and knees and knuckles and necks, we were all joint participants. See, that's the way it works. I have a little story to tell you, though. That's me. That was a few years back, but it was me. See this guy here? He was my arch-enemy in high school. Bill. Arch-enemy. I didn't like him. He didn't like me. So we were both happy. Right?

A few years ago, Bill got a hold of me. And he says, if you don't want to talk, I understand. But he had become a believer. God had radically changed that guy. And we became good friends. January this year, he called me up and he said, Vern, I'm going home to see my father. Excuse me. So the Lord took him home on May 9th. So he's home with the Lord.

Anyway, he was a joint participant. Until now, the word has been used for things like partakers of a heavenly calling, partakers of Christ, partakers of the Holy Spirit. And so that's what we've seen in our earlier study of that word. But here in verse 8, we are sharers, partners, and joint partakers of God's discipline.

As true sons of Him, we are genuine family. We're genuine family. That's why He disciplines us. Hebrews 12, 9, and 10 reads like this. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us, the earthly fathers, for a short time as seemed best to them. But he disciplines us for our good, so that we may share his holiness.

Now there's some things to talk about here. Let's take a look at it. You have on page 3 this structure to this passage. What we see after furthermore is, and we have it here indented and on the screen in a green color, we had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. And then the next part here that is earthly fathers is for they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them. And then we have the next two parts which are not indented.

Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of Spirits and live? But He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness." So here's the alternation between earthly and heavenly, earthly and heavenly in these two verses here. Now how about this Father of Spirits and live? The Father of Spirits corresponds to earthly fathers, which is actually, literally, fathers of our flesh. So we have fathers of our flesh, that's the earthly fathers. and the Father of Spirits.

So that's the reason for that pattern. And that Father of Spirits term is only used here in the whole Bible. So very interesting. So what does it mean to live? Living, for the believer, living is fellowship with God and death, remember death is separation, means no fellowship. It doesn't mean you're going to hell. But it means no fellowship. That's what it means when we say debt.

The wages of the sin nature, Romans 6.23, the wages the sin nature pays is a death of no fellowship. So that's what it's talking about here.

God's motive and discipline is His love for us so that we might live in our daily condition, that is, we might be in fellowship with Him. That's what it's about. God disciplines us so that we might not be off the path, but on the path. God disciplines us in order that we might be in fellowship with Him, that's living, instead of off the path, which is death, which is no fellowship. So our position is unchanged, but our daily, moment-by-moment condition is what varies here.

So we are disciplined to put us back into a path of fellowship that is living in fellowship with Him, as Romans 6.11 puts it, alive to God.

Now, the earthly fathers did as seemed best to them. The best of earthly fathers discipline as seems best to them. You know this parenting thing? I'm going to do five weeks on parenting. It's not an exact science. It's not an exact science. So what do fathers and mothers do? They do what seems best to them. They're seeing things as they are and making a judgment call. Our Heavenly Father, however, disciplines with perfect insights into the hearts and motives of those He loves.

Got that? You see, people will from time to time say, I don't need this. Guess what? We need what's happening to us. We need what's happening to us. We need the discipline that's happening to us. So when we say, I don't need this, we don't understand. Because we most certainly do. God, who knows our hearts, is the one who determines these things. And we most certainly do need what He says we need from perfect understanding of our hearts and a perfect understanding of the outcome.

We need what's happening to us. While earthly fathers have a time window, and at some point it's gone, in which they raise their children, the heavenly father disciplines from an eternal perspective, knowing everything. Knowing everything. By the way, when is discipline going to end? Well, you see the Lord face to face. That's when discipline is done. But between now and then, count on it. Count on it.

For our own good, isn't that interesting? God is not doing things to us just to satisfy His curiosity, like I was doing with the cats, right? Or to express wrath towards us. God isn't up there saying, Man, Vern, you're gonna get it! You do that again, boy, you're gonna be toast! Right? No, that's not God's perspective.

God actually does things in our life out of, get this, unconditional love for us, for our own good. Unconditional love for our own good. So what is that good? That we might share His holiness. Does that sound like a good thing? Do you want to share His holiness? Good. Then we also have to embrace His discipline. That's the reason it's there. In our position, we already have His holiness.

That's why here is the Apostle Paul, he's writing to the church at Corinth, which has an incredible list of problems, and they're bad. But what does he do? He starts off writing to the holy saints in Corinth, in their position. They've already been made holy. He's just working it out in reality, so they're going to grow in it, out of their position.

That's why I sometimes will put it, we're spending the rest of our lives catching up to what God has already done back when we believed. We're spending the rest of our lives catching up to what God has already done completely back at the moment we believed. So here's the last verse, Hebrews 12, 11. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful, yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Now, this next slide, discipline isn't for now, it's for afterwards.

Both the discipline of a parent and the discipline from God measure really low on the fun meter. Not so much fun. So you don't go disciplining your kid and saying, wasn't that a lot of fun? Didn't we have a great time? No, you don't do that. It does measure low on the fun meter. It's not done for short-term gratification of anyone. Not done for the short-term gratification of anyone.

As we put here in the picture, discipline is always for down the road. Discipline is always for down the road. The benefits of discipline are for later on. And for God's discipline, the benefits are the peaceful fruit of righteousness, or those who are included.

Righteousness, you see that word? Life? Holiness? Peace? Are those good things? Yep. You're not getting there without discipline. Not getting there without discipline. Discipline is a great trade-off, isn't it? I hope so. Discipline is to correct and train. If God brings difficult times and events in our way, and he will, He has a purpose in them, and this is key. God is never playing with us like I did with the cats. I didn't tell you the ant story either. Anyway, God is never playing around with us. He's not curious to see, you know, what will Vern do?

He is instead having a purpose in every single thing that comes our way. We need what's happening to us. God is writing the prescription. for exactly what we need, knowing our hearts and loving us to the point that it would send Christ to die for us. It's that immense, intense love that's unshakable that motivates God to bring discipline into our lives. His perspective is that he is also doing all that he does from a full and absolute knowledge of us. We can't come to God and say, but God, you didn't know that. Can't do that. He knew. He knows.

Further, his motive is he's doing these things for our good out of a heart of great love for us. And this is I love you to the point I'll die for you kind of love. It's that kind of love. He knows the outcome intended from this discipline, righteousness, life, holiness, and peace.

It's not for now. It's for later. It's not for self-gratification or because it rates high on the fun meter. It's because these are qualities of God himself. He's sharing these qualities with us and he gets there by discipline. That's how he does it. Because he loves us.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you as we look at this passage, as we look at the principles that are here. We just pray that you would take these truths and bring them into clarity in our hearts so that we would understand it. And even learn to thank you for the discipline that you bring into our lives. And Lord, we just pray that you would teach us these truths deeply to the point that as we see discipline, we learn to think, oh, no, God messed up again. But rather, we learn to think, oh, God loves me so much. We thank you. We praise you. In Jesus' name, amen.