The True & Greater Disciplinarian (The True & Greater #18)

When hard things hit, most of us reach for the same handful of explanations. God must be mad at me. God must be too weak to help me. God must have abandoned me. God must not really care. Sometimes we even get as far as, maybe there isn’t even a God.

Hebrews 12 will not let us keep those explanations. The author wants a different way of seeing the struggle: not God against you, but God for you.

Last week we looked at Jesus as our true and greater example in three ways, and they all started with P. It’s okay if you don’t remember them. I sometimes don’t even remember my own sermon by Monday.

Perseverance. Peace. Personhood.

By looking to Jesus, we see that He persevered through the events of the cross. He seemed to have a sense of peace even in the middle of the struggle. That peace came from His personhood. He knew His identity as the Son of God. If we look to Him as our true and greater example, we see how we can persevere through the hard things in life, and how we can have peace in the middle of them. That’s why, as Philippians 4:7 puts it, we can have a peace that surpasses understanding. It comes from having our identity in Christ.

If you’re not a follower of Jesus yet, putting your identity in Christ is going to help you navigate the hard things in life. If you already are, learning more of what it means to be in Christ is going to help you persevere.

Last week’s talk about suffering was not the first time the author of Hebrews brought this subject up.

Don’t Be Surprised When Hard Things Come

Back in May we were in Hebrews 10:32:

But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings.

He’s saying, you remember the past. After you were enlightened, after it made sense that Jesus died on a cross for your sins and rose again from the dead, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings. Then he describes some of those sufferings he knows about.

Now, in chapter 12, he comes back to the topic. What sat in between? Chapter 11. We spent our whole summer there, looking at men and women of faith, most of them from Genesis. That’s why that stretch of this series was called Jesus in Genesis. He was saying, I know you have been going through hard things. So let me tell you about these people we study and revere. Abraham. Noah. Sarah. Jacob. They went through hard times too, and their faith in God carried them through.

After all of those examples, he says, now Jesus is your greatest example. He suffered. He went through the trial. In other words: don’t be surprised when hard things come.

Then he tries to give us two paradigm shifts that help us view the suffering in a different light.

Paradigm Shift One: Discipline Means God Is For You

The first one is sitting there in Hebrews 12:7. It is for discipline that you have to endure. If you’re using a different translation, yours might say, consider suffering as discipline.

Too often, when we hit the hard things in life, we begin to act as though God must be mad at me. What the author is trying to help his readers know is this: don’t interpret the suffering as God being against you. Realize the suffering is actually God being for you.

In verse 10, as he’s talking about our earthly fathers, he says they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them. Then he says God disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.

If I put that into Riverwood language: this is God helping you become more like Christ, so that you will love like Jesus loved and live like Jesus lived.

God is far more concerned about who you are becoming than He is about your present comfort. It isn’t that God is trying to make your life miserable. But when Satan tries to make your life miserable, God is not going to let it go to waste. He’s going to use it for your good.

So when you suffer, when you’re struggling, try to view it not as God being against you. It’s God for you. He’s treating it as discipline. That’s paradigm shift number one.

Paradigm Shift Two: Only Sons Get This

The second shift is family. We see family language all over this passage. In the ESV, sons shows up six times. Children shows up once. Father shows up three times. If you’re using a different translation, those numbers might vary. I grew up on the NIV, and it has a couple fewer sons and a couple extra children. If you’re using the New Living Translation, one of the Bibles we give away, you’ll notice there’s no use of the word son at all. They’re all children.

Why? Because culturally, for our American mindset, that’s more accurate. When we hear the word son, we only think male children. The author includes females as well, so translating it as children helps capture that idea.

So why does the ESV use the word son? Because that’s more accurate biblically. In ancient times, in a family, it was the son who inherited, not the daughter. As the author writes to his audience, he’s letting them know this is not only for men. This is for women as well. You all become sons. Women, you get to inherit. If you put your faith in Christ, you get to inherit the presence of God. You get to inherit His grace. You get to inherit spiritual gifts. You get to inherit everything the sons will. You’re included.

But that means you’re also going to receive the discipline. Because that’s paradigm shift number two: God only disciplines those who are His sons.

Did you notice the one time the ESV uses the word children? The word right before it is illegitimate.

Back in the Roman Empire, when Hebrews was being written, it was very common for wealthy Romans to have not only a wife, but concubines. We’ll just call it what it was. They had sex slaves. If the wife ended up pregnant, those children were legitimate. If the concubine ended up pregnant, those children were illegitimate. And oftentimes, if the rich man was extremely selfish, he would act as though that child didn’t even exist. He would not even own them. They were illegitimate.

What the author is trying to communicate is this: if you are going through hard times, this is not God being mad at you. This is God actually saying, I am closer to you than you realize. I love you. I’m for you. I’m doing this for your good, because you’re my son.

Punishment Beats Down. Discipline Builds Up.

Too often I think we interpret God based on our earthly fathers. I sought my best to be a good dad. I think I did it better and right more times than I screwed it up. And yet I still messed it up. There were still times when I disciplined my children out of my own frustration, or out of my own anger, or just when I was tired. And I didn’t discipline them for their good. In a sense, what I did was I punished them. I didn’t discipline them.

Punishment is all about beating down. Discipline is about building up. What I’ve discovered is that punishment usually happens when it’s more about the authority than it is the other person. Discipline is more focused on the potential of the other person. It’s not about the authority.

God is not here the majority of the time to just punish you and beat you back into dust. He’s trying to discipline you and build you up into Christ-likeness. So don’t view Him as some angry God who’s upset at you because you didn’t give enough, you didn’t read your Bible enough, you skipped church that one time. No. He is so intently focused on making you more like Jesus that He’s going to use all things for your good. Because you’re His son.

That’s the observation. God is going to discipline us for our good because we are His children. The question is how we approach it. This passage gives us four ways.

Take It Seriously

In verse 5, after asking his readers whether they have forgotten the exhortation that addresses them as sons, he quotes from Proverbs 3: My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord.

When you go through hard things, don’t avoid it. Don’t fluff it off. Take this seriously. What is God seeking to do in your life?

Don’t Step Off the Course

The second way is patiently. The rest of verse 5: nor be weary when reproved by him.

When we’re going through really, really hard things, you just feel beat down. It’s easy to get weary. But as we heard last week, we are to persevere. We’re to endure. We’re to keep going. So be patient.

Some of you know Nick Allen, part of our church family. This weekend up in Madison, he did his first ever half Ironman. A 70.3. A 1.2 mile swim, a 56 mile bike ride, and then a 13.1 mile run. I went online, saw that he finished, and texted him. Hey, great job. You did it. Because that was his goal: finish. He said thanks. The swim went great. Bike went fine. Halfway through the run, I died. But he did it. He crossed the finish line.

How foolish would it have been if, 500 yards out, he just goes, you know what, this is far enough, and steps off the course. He’s right there. Finish it.

Too often we do this in life. We get weary. We go, that’s it. I give up. I’m done. And yet to quit here is going to rob you of the joy that could come. You don’t know where the finish line is, so keep going. Keep persevering. Be patient.

The author helps us see this again in verse 11: For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

You think? Fruit does not grow overnight. You cannot stick an apple seed in the microwave and 30 seconds later have a full-blown apple. Fruit takes time. So be patient. Let God do His deep work in you so that He can do His great work through you.

The Scariest Prayer You Will Ever Pray

Third, we need to approach it willingly. In verse 9, as he’s talking about these earthly fathers who disciplined us, he says we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?

In other words, should we not submit ourselves, surrender ourselves, willingly humble ourselves to the work of God in our lives? This is basically you saying, God, I’m Yours. Do in me what You need to do.

That is the scariest prayer you will ever pray. And yet it is one of the most significant prayers you will ever pray. Lord, here I am. Send me. Use me for Your glory and the good of this world. Willingly submit yourself to His work.

Respect Him Enough to Give Him All of Yourself

Then the last one: respectfully. Still in verse 9, as he talks about these earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them, the unstated is, therefore we should also respect God. We should have reverence for Him. We should worship Him even in the middle of the suffering, because He is doing something we can’t see. He sees the finish line. So trust Him.

If you claim to be a Jesus follower, you are saying, I put my faith into this story that Jesus died on a cross for my sins and rose again from the dead. That’s the most significant thing about me. So I trust my life to that. If you’re willing to say I trust my life to that, then you can trust God to do in you what He needs to do. Give Him all of yourself. That is the greatest form of respect you can give Him.

So do you need to get a little more serious about your relationship with God? Maybe God’s calling you to be a little more patient with the season you’re in. Do you need to willingly just lay yourself down? Or do you need to worship Him through the struggle?

Come to the Table

There’s an old line parents used to say right before they disciplined you: this is going to hurt me a lot more than it’s going to hurt you. If you have children, you know that is true. You love them dearly. You still have to do the hard thing, or they will not learn, and they will not follow.

God’s sacrifice, Jesus’ death on the cross, takes away our punishment. That’s different than the discipline. It takes away the righteous judgment of God for us. He legitimately was hurt and died and suffered. But it is through His suffering that we are healed. It is through His suffering that He has the right to discipline us as we live out our days.

That’s what the table remembers. Jesus said, do this in remembrance of Me. This is the cup that is My blood. This is the bread that is My body. We remember all that He’s done for us.

If you have not surrendered your life fully to Him, hear this conversation about discipline as an invitation: He wants you to be His son. He wants you to inherit His presence, His goodness, His grace. Give it all to Him. If you have known these stories a long time and life has just been interrupting, stand before Him and say, here I am, God. Do in me what You need to, for Your glory, for my good, and for the sake of the world.

We are not our own. We’ve been bought with a price. We’ve been bought by the blood of Jesus. So we submit to our good heavenly Father, the true and greater Disciplinarian, who is not beating us down. He is building us up into Christ.