Faith's Discipline, Part 1

You are here today because you truly want to adore the King of Kings. And one of the ways we do that is living in obedience to His Word.

This morning, Hebrews chapter 12, verses 4 to 11 is our text. It's a very familiar text to most of us who have been raised in the church. But there are so many things that we miss. So, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to draw those things out for you so that you can see them, understand them, and work and watch and see how the Lord disciplines his own.

Hebrews 12, verse number 4 says, "You have not resisted to the point of shedding blood in your 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. He scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with us or with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 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 for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. 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."

You know, as a father, I have disciplined my children. I discipline them because the Lord commands me to do that. But I discipline them because I know what's best for them and I want them to act properly. Our Father in heaven, He disciplines us because He loves us, and He's not so concerned that we act properly, but that we understand how to act perfectly. Everything about God's discipline leads to our perfection. That's very important to understand this.

The writer of Hebrews has just come off this text about running the race. And how do you run the race? By fixing your eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher, the perfecter of your faith. You run this race by fixing your eyes upon Jesus. You run this race by considering Him, His person, His passion, His provision. Just consider Christ.

But he also knows that there will be those who take their eyes off of the Christ. And whenever they do that, then they are hindered in running the race of faith. And so as we study this, we realize that Paul says something very similar in Colossians chapter 3, when he says these words, Colossians 3, verse number 1: "Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory."

Paul says, "I want you to set your mind on things above. I want you to gear your affections towards the heavenlies." The writer of Hebrews says, "Fix your eyes upon Jesus, consider only him."

Because there's a principle involved here. And the principle is very simple to understand: that you cannot function horizontally unless you focus vertically. In other words, you cannot function in the earthly realm unless you are focused on the heavenly realm. There is absolutely no way that you can get through each day of your life unless you are focused above. You can't. Because the world will come crashing down around you, and you will be so depressed and so defeated and so discouraged because all you see is that which is round about you.

Well, the writer of Hebrews says, "I want you to run the race of faith by fixing your eyes upon Jesus, considering only him." Paul says in Colossians 3, "I want you to set your affections on things above, not on things below, where Christ is seated in the heavenlies, because one day He who is your life, is going to be revealed, and you will be revealed with Him in glory."

Everything about Christianity is in the heavenlies. We are citizens of another country, not this country. We serve a king who rules over all.

Yet the writer of Hebrews knows that there will be people who step out of the race, who have a hard time continuing on because of the storms of life. It's kind of like Peter. Remember Peter in Matthew chapter 14 when there's a great storm and they're in the boat and Christ comes to them walking on the water. And Peter asks the Lord, "bid me to come to you." Remember the story?

Peter said to him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come on the water." And he said, "Come." And Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened. And beginning to sink, he cried, "Lord, save me." Immediately, Jesus stretched out his hand, took hold of him, and said to him, "You of little faith. Why did you doubt?"

As soon as he turned his eyes from Jesus and focused them on the wind, he began to sink and cried out to the Lord, "Save me." And as soon as you refocus your eyes off of Christ and onto the things of the world, you will sink. You will fall down. You will fail. You will falter in the race of faith.

You must consider him. Consider the Christ, following only him, fixing your gaze solidly toward the heavens, because there is your strength, there is your foundation, there is your comfort. And you need to do so.

And so, the writer of Hebrews is going to help them understand how God is going to discipline to keep them focused. Because so easily, they will get out of focus. And he's going to remind them right out of the start in verse 4: "you have not resisted to the point of shedding blood" - your blood.

In other words, "I've just talked to you about all the people in the Hebrew Hall of Faith. I talked to you about all those people who some of them were sawn in two. Some of them died by the sword. They wandered in caves and the holes in the wilderness. And they were rejected and isolated by their families because these Hebrew people, having come to saving faith, were rejected by their families. They were kicked out of the synagogue. Some had lost their jobs. And they were wondering: wow, is this faith life really worth it?"

And so he says, "Hey, listen, you have not resisted to the point of blood. You haven't given your life for the gospel yet. You're still alive. Nobody's cutting you in two. No one's cutting off your limbs. So stay focused. It's going to be okay."

He wants them to realize that their suffering is not near like it was for those people who came before them, who fixed their eyes on the promise that they never received, but they lived in anticipation of the coming promise, the Messiah, the new covenant. Well, now that the Messiah has come, the new covenant's been revealed, it's all here. You need to focus upon the Christ who made the provision possible for you.

And so he uses the word discipline. Nine times in eight verses, the word discipline is used. It's the word paideia, which denotes the training of a child. It's a broad term. It deals with the education, the instruction, the correction. It deals with the upbringing of the child. So, whether you're a parent or a teacher, you're involved in this training process.

He shows us the training process that our Father in heaven uses to move us closer to Him, to keep us dependent upon him. And so this morning, what I want to do is, I want to give you the three ways that God disciplines us that you might understand them. Two, you're probably very familiar with. One, probably not so much. But I think it's imperative for us to understand how it is a Father who loves us disciplines us.

So he moves from the metaphor of a race to the metaphor of a father who disciplines his children so that they will understand what it means to walk in perfection. And it all comes through discipline.

The first avenue is what we'll call correctional discipline. Correctional discipline. In other words, when you step out of line, you are corrected, and God disciplines you. None of this is condemnatory. God does not condemn us. God chastises us. God disciplines us. But nothing can separate us from the love of God. We are secure in our relationship with the living God. But yet he does discipline his own because he loves us so. And the very first way he does that is through correctional discipline.

Let me give you a couple of illustrations. One: David and Bathsheba. We understand correctional discipline. They sinned against the Lord. And they were disciplined because they sinned against the Lord. David said, "I have sinned against thee and thee only, O Lord." And he was disciplined because of a sin. It's called correctional discipline. You sinned against the Lord, and the Lord's going to discipline you, to correct you, to put you on the right path once again.

And sure enough, the sword never departed from David's house, and his family, and his life, and his child that Bathsheba conceived, died, and he reaped the consequences of his sin. But through that correctional discipline, David became what? A man after God's own heart, right? He became a man who was truly repentant, who never sought revenge and was characterized as a man after God's own heart because he'd been disciplined because of his sinful behavior. It's called correctional discipline.

Maybe some of you have gone through that. You've sinned against the Lord, and you have realized that God disciplines you because of that sin.

Let me give you another example. Because we're about to partake of the Lord's table this morning, the Bible says this in 1 Corinthians 11, verse number 20: "Therefore, when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper, for in your eating, each one takes his own supper first. And one is hungry and another is drunk. What? Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God, and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this, I will not praise you."

And therefore, he says this: "Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment or chastisement to himself, if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason, many among you are weak, sick, and a number have died."

That's called correctional discipline. The Lord's table is very important. It's a commemoration of what our Lord has done for us. So, the command of Scripture is that before you eat or drink of the Lord's table, examine yourself.

That's why, if you were with us last week, we gave you this pamphlet on expanding self-examination, right? We wanted you to read it. It's a series we did a year ago in 2021 about examining your life based on 1 Corinthians chapter 11. And as you examine your life, you are putting your life under the scrutiny of the text, the scrutiny of the Word of God.

So, that when you come to the Lord's table and you partake of the bread and you partake of the cup, you don't eat and drink in an unworthy manner. In other words, there's not bitterness in your heart toward the person you're sitting next to or someone across the room. You have gone and asked for forgiveness. You've gotten the relationship right so that you can eat and drink in a worthy manner, not an unworthy manner.

Because he says, if you do this, you're in danger of becoming weak, or sick, or maybe even death. People say, "God doesn't do that today." How do you know that? How do you know that your last illness wasn't a result of you eating and drinking in an unworthy manner? How do you know that people in our church who have died didn't die because they ate and drank in an unworthy manner? You don't know that, right? That's why you examine yourself.

We're not trying to scare you into obedience, but you need to understand the authority of the text. And so Paul says, make sure that you eat and drink in a worthy manner, not an unworthy manner. Because some of you, he says to those in Corinth, have taken the cup in an unworthy manner, and some of you are sick. Some of you have even died because of it. Because God wants you to revere the bread and the cup, because you do it in remembrance of Him.

You see, our Lord loves us enough that He wants us to realize that when we gather together to partake of the Lord's table, it's a very important time. In fact, listen to what the Bible says in Psalm 89: "If his sons forsake my law, and do not walk in my judgments, if they violate my statutes, and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. But I will not break off my loving kindness from him, nor deal falsely in my faithfulness. My covenant I will not violate, nor will I alter the utterance of my lips. Once I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His descendants shall endure forever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established forever, like the moon, and the witness in the sky is faithful."

God says, "I made a promise to David. It's called the Davidic Covenant. There will always be a son of his on the throne until Messiah comes to rule and reign. But if at any time one of his children or one of my sons steps out of line, I will discipline them with the rod. Because that's what a father who loves his children does." And the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, does it so that we will be corrected in our walk with him.

The psalmist said these words in Psalm 119, verse number 50: "This is my comfort in my affliction. Your word has revived me." Psalm 119, verse number 71 says, "It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes."

You see, why does God chasten us? Why does God discipline us? So we learn the statutes, because within the statutes is the comfort. And so he disciplines us so that we'll keep his commandments, so that we'll follow what he says. It's called correctional discipline.

And that's why it's so important to realize that when difficulty comes our way, we need to realize that God is at work in our lives. Put it this way, God is never not at work in your life. He's never not at work in your life because he is bringing you to a place of perfection.

That's why, over in James, James 1, it says what? "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

And then over in 1 Peter chapter 5, he says, verse number 10, "after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you."

See, that's the aim. The aim is perfection. The aim is maturation. The aim is completion. The aim is holiness. God wants you like Him. So when you sin and you don't obey the Word of God, He disciplines. It's the discipline of correction. So the first arena is correctional discipline.

The second one, one that we're not very well versed in, and that is called preventual discipline. Preventual. In other words, he's going to prevent you from sinning. So God is going to discipline you to prevent some sin from coming into your life.

Perfect example: Apostle Paul. 2 Corinthians chapter 12. The Apostle Paul had been caught up to the third heaven. He had seen the glories of heaven, but he wasn't allowed to speak about those things. But, it says in verse number seven, "because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself. There was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself."

That's called preventual discipline. God is preventing sin in Paul's life by enacting discipline through allowing the messenger of Satan to torment him. And Paul knew that. He understood it. Paul knew it would be very easy for him to exalt himself, to be filled with pride, to be filled with arrogance. After all, he'd received these glorious visions of heaven. And he could come down and tell everybody about what he saw in heaven. He could even write books about being in heaven for 60 minutes or 90 minutes, whatever the case may be. So, everybody could read about it, but he didn't.

To keep him from exalting himself, what did God do? God allowed a messenger of Satan to buffet his body, to torment him. He lived with that torment his entire life to keep him from exalting himself.

Do you know that we don't understand this very much today? There is a reason why you don't get the promotion at work. There is a reason why you are prevented from the starting lineup on your ball team. There is a reason you interviewed for the job and you didn't get it and someone else did, even though they might be lesser qualified than you, they got the job and you didn't. That's called preventual discipline.

There's a reason there was a car accident that you were involved in on the way to work last week. Because God was keeping you out of something else that could be even more detrimental to you than that car accident or your car not starting. You see, we forget that God's at work in every aspect of our lives.

And we need to be more willingly and more joyfully accepting of the things that come our way, even though they are difficult sometimes to understand. Even though they are hard for us to grasp, God is in the business of moving us toward maturity in Him. He wants us to consider Him. He wants us to be focused entirely upon Him, looking only to Him, the author and perfecter of our faith. So that we will trust him and depend upon him and live solely for his purposes.

You need to start looking at the events in your life, the things that happen in your life, as God preventing something else from coming your way, that would be a greater sin, a more difficult thing for you to handle. And God brings those things into your life that are called preventual discipline.

They're barriers, they're boundaries. We set them up for our children, right? We don't let our children play with matches. We don't let our children run in the street, right? We set up boundaries to keep them out of certain arenas. We tell them when they have to be home. We tell them what they can do when they go out. "Make sure you contact me. Let me know where you're at." We set up all those boundaries because we want to hold them accountable, right?

The Lord has boundaries too, but God's not speaking to us specifically about every single boundary, so what does He do? He uses preventual discipline to keep us in line, to keep us from moving outside that arena and engaging in some sin, maybe even gross sin, that would be detrimental to us physically and spiritually.

So there's correctional discipline, there is preventual discipline, and then there is instructional discipline. And the perfect example of this is the person we're studying on Wednesday nights: Job.

God wasn't preventing Job from doing anything. It wasn't preventual discipline. It wasn't correctional discipline because Job was a blameless man, upright, fearing God, right? The greatest man in the East. By God's own testimony, he was the greatest man on earth. So there was no correctional discipline. There was no preventual discipline.

So, what was it with Job? Why was Job going through all the things that he was going through? It's called instructional discipline. There are certain things that Job needed to learn that he did not know. How do we know that? Well, all you got to do is go to the end of the book and read what it says in Job chapter 42.

Job 42. Job says this, "I know that you can do all things, and no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore, I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know."

Why did God do to Job what he did? Because he needed to be instructed in the ways of God. He had to come to know the true and living God in a way he had not known him before. That's why he goes on to say, "I have heard of you with the hearing of my ear, but now my eyes have seen you."

Think about this. If Job, the greatest man on the face of the earth by testimony of the Lord God of Israel, needed instructional discipline, how much more do you and I need instructional discipline? And it comes our way through trials and tribulation and suffering and difficulties and hardship and pain. Why? Because God just wants to drive us to Himself. He wants us to understand who he is, that we might depend solely upon him.

And Job never had an answer as to why things happened the way they did. Satan, he wanted to harm Job. He wanted to destroy Job's life. So what did God do? God allowed Satan to do what he did to Job so that he could better instruct Job as to who he is and what he does. See that?

This is so important for us to understand. What is the intention of discipline? It's to correct us or to prevent us from engaging in some kind of sin or to instruct us more about the knowledge of God, who He is and what He wants us to do. So important.

So the writer says this. This is so good. He says, "you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin." Right? "And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons." You've forgotten. And you know what? Truth be known, so have we because the only verse in the book of Job quoted in the New Testament is what verse?

Ah, see? Either you weren't here or you didn't listen. Well, you forgot. One of the three, right? So I'm going to attribute it to the last one that you just happened to forget, right? Hebrews 12, verses 5 and 6. Only verse in the book of Job quoted in the New Testament. Why? It's all about how a father disciplines his son. It's all about being disciplined by the Almighty. It's all about how he instructs us in the ways of God so we might understand him and know him and embrace him and love him and serve him.

It's not that Job wasn't already doing that. Just like most of you are already doing that. But God wants to drive you further, deeper, more intimate with Him. And Job had no idea all the things that God was doing until it happened. And God revealed Himself in those chapters where He instructed Job. And Job began to realize: "you know what? I did not understand what I thought I knew. And now I've been instructed, and now I know." And God drove him even deeper into intimacy with him.

So the writer of Hebrews says, "you see, as a child of God, you can't afford to forget the discipline of the Lord." Why? Because you see, spiritual growth is like a coin that has two sides. One side says scripture, that's the human side. The other side says suffering. That's the divine side. Both are true.

Scripture and suffering is how God drives us closer to Himself. From the human side, we study the Scriptures. We read the Scriptures, we memorize the Scriptures, we live by the Scriptures. But on the divine side comes this suffering, comes this discipline, comes this correctional, preventual, instructional discipline where God is moving us closer and closer to Him every single day.

God is at work in your life, my friends. Don't ever forget that. Whatever happens today, God's at work. He's either permitting it to happen, allowing it to happen, or causing it to happen. But he is sovereign. He rules over all.

But you cannot afford to forget Proverbs 3:11 and 12. That's Hebrews 12, verses 5 and 6, because that's where he quotes from. But it's taken from the book of Job, the oldest book in the Bible, because it deals so prominently with the discipline of the children of the living God. He says, "Don't forget what I've already told you."

So the psalmist says in Psalm 119, verse number 52: "I have remembered your ordinances from of old, O Lord, and comfort myself." You want to be comforted today? Remember the ordinances from of old. Remember Proverbs 3:11 and 12. Remember the book of Job and how the Almighty disciplines those who He loves. That's what the psalm says.

That's why it says in 1 Corinthians 11:24, "this do in remembrance of me." In other words, the Lord says, "The reason you partake of the Lord's table is because you do it in remembrance of me. I don't want you to forget who I am, I don't want you to forget what I've done." You cannot afford to forget.

What was Israel's biggest problem? Read Psalm 106. They forgot. They forgot the works of the Lord. They forgot the word of the Lord. They forgot the wonders of the Lord. They forgot the ways of the Lord. They forgot everything about the Lord. And so the Lord disciplined them. They would repent. God would bring them back. Then they would forget again.

That's why Paul told Timothy: "Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, descendant of David, according to my gospel." Why does Paul tell a pastor to remember Jesus? Because we so easily forget.

What did Peter say in 2 Peter 1, verses 12 to 15? "I consider it right, as long as I am in this earthly dwelling, to stir you up by way of reminder." By way of remembrance. You can't afford to forget. Because to forget is always to fail. To remember is always to rejoice.

But if you forget, you will fail in your walk with the Lord because you haven't considered Jesus. You haven't fixed your eyes upon him. You haven't focused vertically. You haven't focused on the heavenlies. And everything that's going on around you is driving you mad, driving you crazy. Why? Because you can't control it, you can't contain it, you can't do anything with it.

And trials come, and troubles come, and the winds blow, and the storms come, and the difficulties arise. And you're like, "What is going on here?" And you're pulling your hair out. Why? Because you're focused horizontally and not vertically. You're not focused above and knowing that our Lord is at work disciplining his sons because he loves them so, by either correctional discipline, preventual discipline, or instructional discipline. But God is always at work.

So the psalmist says in Psalm 77, verse number 11: "I will remember the deeds of the Lord; surely I will remember Your wonders of old."