Learning from God's Chastening
Hebrews 12:1-13
ONe thing every born-again believer learns early in his new life is that the Christian walk is not an easy one. Indeed, in the Beatitudes, our Lord Jesus uses three verses to stress that blessed are those who are persecuted for His name's sake. And on the eve of His sacrifice, He reminds believers that in the world they shall have tribulation.
Persecution and trials come to us because, as Jesus explains in John 15, the world hates us. The world is ruled by Satan, the arch enemy of Christ. So, in a sense, the devil, walking about as a roaring lion, is seeking to devour us.
Nevertheless, our God is absolutely sovereign. Neither Satan nor the world can do anything to harm us without God's permission. In fact, everything that happens to us has been decreed by God. He is using these persecution and trials to chasten us. Thus, the Bible reminds us in Job 5:17, "Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty."
This truth is amplified in Hebrews 12:1-13. In this message, we'll see what we can learn from this passage.
I. Do not despise God's chastening.
Referring to Job 5:17, the first part of verse 5 reads, "And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord,"
Having learned that we are supposed to have tribulations, we very often resign ourselves to our difficulties with a stiff upper lip, so to speak. That's a whole lot better than grumbling, of course. But we need to also remember that God is chastening us for a reason. "Happy" it says, "is the man whom God correcteth."
But Job didn't do anything wrong, one might say, since his ordeal stemmed from an interchange in heaven between God and Satan. Yes, but God was indeed teaching Job something. That book ended with Job acknowledging that God is indeed sovereign in all things, and that he shouldn't have despised the Lord's chastisement.
II. Do not get discouraged.
Verse 5 of Hebrews 12 continues: "nor faint when thou art rebuked of him." In other words, God does not want us to be discouraged either.
Remember the parable of the sower? Jesus likens the seed that fell on rocky places to the man who at first receives the word with joy, but who, because he has no root, quickly falls away when trouble or persecution comes. Such a person was never saved.
Thus, verses 6-8 of our text explain:
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. 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, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
God chastises us because He treats us as His sons; He is doing it in love. Otherwise, He won't even bother with us. (He'll deal with unbelievers on Judgment Day.) Hence, our ability to endure is an evidence of our salvation.
III. Submit to the Heavenly Father.
One thing God wants us to learn is our submission to Him. Verses 9,10 say:
Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.
There is no question that human parents who discipline their children win the latter's respect much more than those who don't. Increasingly, social scientists now concede that letting youngsters run amuck, doing their own things freely, ultimately contributes to juvenile delinquency and broken relationships. God knows it all along. He says in Proverbs 29:15, "The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame."
Father in heaven. What this passage teaches then is that if we revere our earthly fathers for correcting us, then we should all the more subject ourselves to our Holy Father, who gives us eternal life in Christ. Our earthly fathers, being humans, can still discipline us for the wrong reasons; but our God always does so justly and for our good.
Again, being in subjection to God means more than just going through our trials with a stiff upper lip. Rather, we are to willingly surrender every facet of our life to His total control. We can do that without fear when we keep in mind that the trials that God uses to discipline us are never meant to hurt us, but to make us trust in Him more.
Going back to Job 5, we read in verses 18 and 19: "For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth, and his hands make whole. He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee." This, you see, is the context in which God tells us in verse 17 not to despise His chastening. We can submit to God willingly in our trials because we know that sooner or later, He will get us out of them.
IV. Put sufferings in perspective.
To keep from fainting, it helps if we put our personal trials in perspective. Hebrews 12 begins with this statement:
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
By the great cloud of witnesses, God is referring to the men of faith He has just given a "good report" in Chapter 11. They included people like Abraham, who offered up Isaac when he was tried; Moses, who chose to suffer affliction with God's people rather than to enjoy the pleasures of being the son of Pharaoh's daughter; and those who "were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented".
When we compare our difficulties with those witnesses', we cannot help but acknowledge that we're not so bad off after all. This is truer still when we compare our sufferings with what our Savior went through at the Cross. Thus, verses 2-4 say:
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.
Try as we may, we can never fully comprehend the suffering our Savior had to endure for our sins. How horrifying it must have been for Jesus, who is God Himself, to cry out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
And yet, it says here that He "for the joy that was set before him endured the cross". Our Lord actually endured the punishment due us with joy. He had that attitude because He knew that He would sit down at the right hand of the Father afterwards.
This then is the attitude God wants us to have. He wants us to learn to look beyond the valley we are in or lies immediately ahead of us, and see the glorious time when we shall have been delivered. No wonder James 1:2-4 says, "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing."
V. Anticipate the peaceable fruit.
What lies beyond the valley? We have this assurance in verses 11 and 12:
Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees.
This is something I can attest to. God saved me some twenty years ago when I was quite a successful businessman. He literally used the riches of His goodness to lead me to repentance. But shortly after my conversion, He caused my firm to lose so much money that a few years later, near-insolvency forced me to sell it. He then directed me to start serving Him full-time.
Those years of testing were indeed not joyous, but grievous; but believe me, the harvest of righteousness and peace that it has since produced in me has been super bountiful. I am truly thankful that God started putting me through His training program so early in my Christian life.
Among other things, you see, God sends us trials to help us realize on the one hand that we are totally helpless without Him, and discover on the other hand that we can enjoy all kinds of spiritual dividends when we lean entirely on Him. So, once we have learned to submit to God and look beyond the valley, we don't have to go around with drooping hands and feeble knees. Instead of being discouraged or defeated, we live a victorious Christian life.
VI. Find guidance in God's word.
In verse 13, our text concludes, "And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed."
While we are waiting for our trials to end, we are liable to become lame, that is, become weak in faith. And that, in turn, can cause us to turn away from the way of God. How then can we be healed and make straight paths for our feet? A good answer is that familiar Psalm 119:105: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."
When we study and obey the Word of God, using the Scripture to help us discern good from evil, we will be better equipped to resist temptation. The more familiar we are with the Bible, the more we can walk by faith, not by sight, because faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
VII. Remember God's counsel.
Before I close, let me offer one last advice by going back to verse 5, where God reminds us not to despise His chastening. Well, that verse begins with this remark: "And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children..." You see, when we try to solve our problems with our own strength, we tend to forget the advises God has given us in the Scripture.
For example, Psalm 1:1 says, "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful." Yet, when troubles come our way, we often rush to seek advice from worldly experts. The problem is, the solutions that they recommend are typically at odds with God's way.
In II Chronicles, God gives us a fine example of this kind of stumbling. Verse 2 of Chapter 14 first assures us that King Asa of Judah was decidedly a child of God, saying, "And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God." But then we read in Chapter 16, verses 12,13:
And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians. And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign.
God no doubt recorded that sad incident in the Bible to show us that He was not pleased with Asa's efforts to seek the physicians, instead of turning to Him. So, whenever we need any kind of consultation, be sure to turn first to the Bible itself. And if we don't know how to apply the Word to our problems, then seek out mature Christians that are well versed with the Scripture.
In the final analysis, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places" (Eph. 6:12).