Submission to God's Fatherly Discipline / Pruning

Introduction: The Necessity of Spiritual Breathing

0:01 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, February 23, 1997, at the Trinity Baptist Church of Montville, New Jersey. Will you follow with me, please, in your own Bibles as I read two portions of the Word of God, the longer from the book of Hebrews, Hebrews and chapter 12. I shall read in your hearing the first 13 verses and then a very brief portion from the Gospel of John. First of all, Hebrews chapter 12, beginning with verse 1.

0:43 Having set forth the great examples of persevering faith from the ancients down to the very time in which the writer to the Hebrews wrote his epistle, the exhortation then comes to the people of God,

1:28 who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Or consider him that has endured such gainsaying of sinners against himself, that you wax not weary, fainting in your souls. You have not yet resisted unto blood striving. against sin, and you have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with sons.

2:08 My son, do not regard lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved of him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. It is for chastening that you endure. God deals with you as...

2:29 with sons. For what son is there whom his father chastens not? But if you are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are you illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence.

2:53 Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of Spirit? And live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them. But he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.

3:14 All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous, but grievous. Yet afterward it yields peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby. Even. the fruit of righteousness.

3:32 Wherefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees, and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame be not turned out of the way, but rather be healed.

3:55 John chapter 15 And I read just the first three verses. John chapter 15 After 15, verses 1 through 3, our Lord Jesus, speaking to his own, says, I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman, or the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears not fruit, he takes it away. And every branch that bears fruit, he cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit.

4:33 But already you are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you. Now, while Pastor Jeff pleaded for God's blessing upon the ministry of the word, upon us, his people, and upon his servant, let us once again pause to entreat the Lord for his special blessing upon his own word this morning. Let us pray together. Our Father, we are thankful that you are never weary, when your people come to you.

5:11 For your word says that when we lack, we are to ask of you in the confidence that you will not scold us, you will not upbraid us, you will not turn us aside, saying to us, Why have you come again and again and again? We know that your word does contain many complaints when your people do not seek you. You complain that they've grown weary of you. You complain that they ask and receive not because they ask amiss, and they have not because they ask not.

5:47 And therefore, in the light of your word, we are emboldened to come again and to plead out of a felt sense of our own deep need. O Lord, do not leave preacher or people at the mercy of their own pathetic, creaturely limitations as we come to the study of your word. But may the presence and power of the Spirit be mightily operative in this place upon preacher and listener alike, as together we confess our need and cry to you to supply that need according to your riches in glory, through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

6:31 Now I begin our study in the word of God this morning by asking each and every one of you a very simple but a very pointed and personal question. And I mean you children, you young ones, you preteens, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, and budding geriatrics, and anything in between, above, below, and beyond those descriptions. In other words, I want you to listen while I ask this question, whatever your age may be. And the question is this.

7:12 1. What's the first thing that you ever did that brought joy to everyone who was present when you did it? Do you know that the answer is the same for every one of you?

7:45 You say it is? Yes, it is. Some of you are shaking your head. The mothers caught on more quickly than the daddies.

7:51 The first thing you and I ever did that brought joy to everyone who was present when we did it is when we let out that piercing little shrill in the place where our mothers gave birth to us. When the doctor or the midwife slapped your buttocks and out came that piercing little baby's wail, wah, ha, it brought joy to everyone who was present. And why did it bring joy? You can't remember it, but it did.

8:30 Ask some of those who were there. Well, it brought joy because it was an undeniable evidence that you were breathing. And if you were breathing, it meant you were alive. And the joy was rooted in the confidence that that piercing little newborn cry, that that piercing little newborn cry, was an affirmation that you were not stillborn, but that you were alive.

8:59 And from that moment on, no matter what you've learned, no matter what you've done, no matter what skills you've acquired, no matter what places you've gone across this whole globe, and if you were even now up there attending to the Hubble Spacecraft and all of the rest, one thing is true of every one of you sitting in this room. And it is this, that you never outgrew that fundamental activity of breathing, which enabled you to let out that piercing cry. You have never advanced beyond the necessity of that activity. You've never become so sophisticated that you could suspend that activity, fundamental to everything you do. You've never become so sophisticated that you could suspend that activity, fundamental to everything you do. Everything else you have become and everything else you have done, and all that you are doing right now is that in this basic physiological activity of breathing, you haven't stopped from the time you let out that piercing wail unto this very moment. For breathing, inhaling and exhaling oxygen is a non-negotiable necessity of earthly living, or any of it's sin soliloquies.

Back to Basics: Appointed Means for Spiritual Health

10:23 Well, in a similar way, there are some very basic life and death issues relative to the Christian life and experience. And using the entrance upon a new year as a natural springboard to address some of these things, we've been considering together, since the first lord's day of this new year, 1997, a series of studies entitled, A series of studies entitled, to basics at the beginning of a new year and in opening up this subject you have been exhorted to remember afresh the exclusive source of your spiritual strength so that throughout the coming year and whatever years God may yet give to you in your earthly pilgrimage as a child of God that you will continually remember that Christ himself and Christ alone is the source of your spiritual strength the truth taught in such passages as John 15 5 and Philippians 4 in verse 13 and now for some weeks we've been concentrating on this second line of exhortation as we go back to basics namely to remember afresh or perhaps more precisely

11:45 to commit ourselves afresh to the appointed means for our spiritual health it is not enough that we constantly remember the exclusive source of our spiritual strength which is Christ himself but we must commit ourselves to the appointed means for our spiritual health and I've suggested that those means can be categorized in three broad categories the individual or private means appointed for our spiritual health the corporate means and then the domestic means and we've been studying some of those major private means appointed by God for our spiritual health the first was the discipline assimilation of the Word of God the second habitual engagement in secret prayer the third the careful maintenance of a good conscience. And now today, I direct your attention to the fourth and last of these individual means appointed by God for our spiritual health, and it is this. I'm describing it as the enlightened submission to God's fatherly discipline and pruning. The enlightened submission

13:11 to God's fatherly discipline and pruning, or more briefly stated, embracing the rod and the hook. Embracing the rod and the hook. And I trust to demonstrate from the Word of God that as clearly as the scriptures teach us, that Christ himself and Christ alone is the ultimate source, of our spiritual life and strength, and as surely as the disciplined assimilation of the scriptures, the maintenance of secret prayer, and the careful keeping of a good conscience, are appointed by God for our spiritual health, so likewise the enlightened submission of the believer to God's fatherly discipline and pruning, or the believer's embracing of the rod and the hook, are indeed vital to the maintenance of spiritual health. Now let me take just a moment to explain the key words in the statement that I've made. By the words enlightened submission,

14:33 what do I mean? Well, I'm seeking to express the fact that our response and reaction to God's God's discipline and God's pruning must be marked by these two things. It must be an enlightened submission. That is, we must have a fundamental biblical understanding of the nature and purpose of the rod of correction and the pruning hook of cleansing.

15:08 God does not call His people to a blind or ignorant submission to His chastisement and to His pruning. Rather, He calls us to an enlightened submission. You remember the opening words of the Hebrews passage. You have forgotten something, something that you need to know.

The Rod of Correction: God's Fatherly Discipline (Hebrews 12)

15:32 And only when there has been an opening up of what constitutes an enlightened response to God's discipline are we called upon to embrace that discipline in a disposition of submission to our loving Father. And by the word submission, I'm simply trying to describe a disposition marked by a heart embrace of the specific application of God's rod of correction in any given set of circumstances a hearty embrace and even welcome of the cutting presence of God's pruning hook. So by the words, an enlightened submission, that's precisely what I mean. Now then, let us move to consider together the biblical basis for identifying the rod and the hook as appointed means for our spiritual health. First of all, consider with me the biblical witness relative to the rod of correction. And here, of course, the watershed passage is the portion read in your hearing from Hebrews chapter 12.

16:50 Turn there with me, please.

16:54 Here in Hebrews chapter 12, particularly verses 5 through 13, we have the most extensive portion in all of the Word of God dealing explicitly with the subject of God's work, of God's work, of God's work. of disciplining His children. God appearing with the fatherly rod of correction in His hand in order to advance the spiritual well-being of His children. And I want you to note with me, first of all, as we take up the passage, the immediate context of the call to embrace the rod of correction.

17:33 What is the immediate context of this call to embrace the rod of correction? Well, it's given to us in verses 1 to 4. And that immediate context of the call to embrace the rod of correction is one in which the central issue is the summons of chapter 12 in verse 1. Let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight in the sin that does so easily beset us, and here is the central thrust of the, exhortation.

18:11 Let us run with patience, with steadfastness, the race that is set before us. And here the Christian life is likened not to a 55 meter dash or a 100 or 200 meter dash or even a mid-length run, an 800 or 1500 meter run. No, it is a marathon. And we are to run with it.

18:40 Endurance, this race that is set before us. The call to a life of persevering faith is set before us under the imagery of a summons to run the entire race to the end, this marathon race of the Christian life. And, the writer says, you are to run with special attention to the voices ringing in your ears, to the condition of your body, but particularly the fixation of your eyes. He says you are to run with the voice of the witnesses ringing in your ears.

19:20 Let us, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, these witnesses, the march your own, are not those who are witnessing by looking in upon us as we run. They are the ones described in the passage, in the previous chapter, who did run and ran well. Each one of whom says to us by his life and existence, it is worth anything to run well to the end. And seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, those who bear testimony to the blessedness of persevering in the Christian race, we are to run. The voice of the witnesses ringing in our ears. But then we are to run with attention to our feet and to our bodies. Lay aside every weight and the sin that does so easily beset us.

20:26 We are to make sure that we are not attempting to run encumbered by excess clothing. We are not to be running with our hiking boots on. We are not to be running with a winter parka on. We are to be stripped down of all excess baggage that we might run effectively.

20:47 And then we are to run with our eyes fixed upon Him who is the prize. Looking off unto Jesus. Looking to Jesus in His unique place as the pioneer and completer of faith. Looking off unto Jesus in His own example of persevering faith.

21:12 You have not yet resisted unto blood striving against sin. So here's the context of this call to embrace the rod of correction. It is set in the context of this vigorous summons to persevering faith under the imagery of commitment to run with endurance a marathon race. And to run with the voice of the witnesses ringing in our ears with excess baggage laid aside and with our eyes fixed upon Jesus.

Two Major Truths about Divine Chastening

21:51 Then in that context there follows the call to remember the function of divine chastening in the purpose of God and that extends all the way from verses 5 to 13. After that introductory summons, there is now a call to remember the function of divine chastening in the purpose of God. Now without attempting anything like a detailed exposition, I want you to seek to grasp with me the two major truths contained in verses 5 to 13 in this call to remember the function of divine chastening in the purpose of God. And the two main truths are these. Number one, in his fatherly love, God chastises or disciplines all of his true sons. Verses 5 to 8.

22:48 And secondly, in his fatherly wisdom, God has appointed chastisement as a means to make us holy. Verses 9 to 13. And if you grasp those two central truths, you'll have a handle on the very essence of the teaching of the Spirit of God in this passage. Let's spend a few moments on each of those central issues.

23:12 First of all, in his fatherly love, God chastises or disciplines all of his true sons. Verse 5. You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with sons. My son, do not regard lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved of him.

23:35 For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. Verse 8. If you are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are you illegitimate children and not sons. Now 6b and verse 8 make this principle very plain.

24:01 In his fatherly love, God chastises or disciplines all of his true sons. He scourges every son whom he receives. If you've been received into the family of God by adoptive grace, based on the work of Jesus Christ, if you are a true son of the living God, count on it, he scourges every son whom he receives. If he's received you in redemptive grace, he will chastise you in fatherly love, without exception. And to underscore that, in verse 8 the writer says, if you are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, this is a proof that you are not a true son. You are an illegitimate child and not a son. Whatever you say, whatever you profess, whatever others may think you to be, if you are a stranger to the father's chastening rod, you are a stranger to the father owning you as his son.

25:19 Now do you see that from the text? Not because I said it or said it in fact. Do you see from the passage this central truth, a call to remember the function of divine chastening in the purpose of God, begins by establishing this fact in his fatherly love. God chastens and disciplines all of his true sons.

25:43 Therefore, the writer says, don't despise or treat lightly this chastening. And then he says, don't fate or cave in with discouragement and with hard thoughts of God and with despondency. My son, don't regard lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved of him. What are the wrong responses to this fatherly chastisement, this fatherly discipline that comes to all of his sons?

26:21 Well, on the one hand, we can despise them, treat them lightly, take the stiff upper lip, take the posture, well, life is full of troubles and I'm going to have my portion of troubles and I'll cut it out without any thought of the purpose of God in that afflictive dispensation that has come upon us. He says, don't despise, don't treat lightly, don't be hard-hearted, thick-skinned and unresponsive to God's chastening. But on the other end of the spectrum, he says, don't faint or cave in with discouragement, with hard thoughts of God and despondency because this is a badge of his fatherly love, not an indication of his ill will or his insensitivity or indifference. In his fatherly love, God chastises all of his true sons, therefore, don't despise his chastening, don't faint under his chastening. Then the second central truth of the passage is that in his fatherly wisdom, God has appointed chastisement as a means to make us holy. Verses 9 to 13.

God's Wisdom: Chastisement for Holiness

27:36 In his fatherly wisdom, God has appointed chastisement as a means to make us holy. Look at this emphasis in verse 10. They, our earthly fathers, indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed good to them, but he for our profit, and what is that profit? That we may be made chaste, happy, happy, happy, all the time, time, time, that we may have the fuzzy wuzzies all the time, time, time.

28:06 That's all the heavenly father's concerned about with all the children he receives is give them one continual giggle, one continual baptism of fuzzies. That's the way some people would teach the Christian life. But that's not what our text says. It says that he does this, notice, for our profit, that we may be partakers, takers of his holiness.

28:32 When he has the rod in his hand, he has a commitment to make us holy in his heart. And divine wisdom dictates how much that commitment of his heart shall effect its end by the rod that is in his hand. 11b. All chastening seems for the present not to be joyous but grievous, yet afterward it yields, now notice, peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby.

29:11 And what is that fruit? Even the fruit of righteousness. Another way of describing holiness. Conformity of thought, disposition, perspective, attitude, life, in all of its minutia, in the hidden areas of life, in the most visible areas of life.

29:32 Righteousness is conformity to God's standard of right. And he has his rod in his hand that in love and wisdom he may advance in us holiness and righteousness. In his fatherly wisdom God has appointed chastisement as a means to make us holy. Therefore, in these verses we are told three things.

30:00 Number one, submissively embrace God as a loving father even when he has the rod in his hand. Submissively embrace, notice I didn't say his discipline, but embrace him. Submissively embrace God as a loving father while the rod is in his hand. Look at verse 9.

30:24 Furthermore, we've had the fathers of our flesh, our earthly fathers, to chasten us and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection not to the discipline in abstraction, but in subjection unto the father of spirits and live? You see what he's saying? Don't detach the rod from the hand that holds it.

30:49 It is your father that holds the rod. You are called to a fresh act of submission to your father since his fatherly wisdom has appointed chastisement as a means to make us holy. Submissively embrace God as a loving father while the rod is in his hand. Secondly, patiently endure the real pain of the chastening until it passes.

31:17 Verse 11, all chastening seems for the present not to be joyous but grievous, yet afterward it yields peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby. Even the fruit of righteousness. If I ever see a parent spanking the kid and the kid sitting there smiling and laughing, whatever he's doing he isn't chastening after the pattern of God. When God puts the rod on us, nobody giggles.

31:46 It doesn't seem joyous. It's grievous. He lays the rod of chastisement upon us to the extent that we feel it's pain. And the writer to Hebrews is a realist in this.

31:58 And yet he tells us, patiently endure the real pain of the chastening until it passes. And most often when the purpose of the chastening has been accomplished in any specific act of divine chastisement, the pain will pass and the joy will come. But then thirdly, he says, vigorously press on in the Christian race even when accompanied by chastening. Verses 12 and 13.

32:30 Wherefore, in the light of what I've told you about the purpose of God and the inevitability of divine chastening in your life, lift up the hands that hang down and the palsied knees and make straight paths for your feet. And some of the commentators suggest that the Greek words here probably have reference to the very paths that may have been cut in the race courses and that the race imagery is still in the mind of the writer to the Hebrews. But be that as it may, in the larger context when he says, lift up the hands that hang down and the palsied knees, surely no one runs a race with patience who's got his hands hung down at his side and his knees are shaking. Surely he's not running. Whatever he's doing, he's not running with endurance. Wherefore, when you've got your head sorted out about the inevitability of divine chastisement, when you've got your heart sorted out with the divine purpose of it and you've embraced these directives, now you're able to lift up the hands that hang down and the palsied knees make straight paths for your feet that that which is lame be not turned out of the way but rather be healed.

The Rod as a Crucial Means of Grace

33:48 Now then, do you see from this brief overview of the passage with these two central truths why I'm prepared to say that if we are committed afresh in this business of the basics, if we are committed afresh to embrace all that God has appointed for our spiritual health, why we must see the rod of correction as a crucial means of grace. If I may say it in a way that I hope will make it stick, you might be in a very real sense engaged in a disciplined assimilation of the Scriptures, habitually engaging in secret prayer, to some degree carefully maintaining a good conscience, but if you are not with enlightened submission embracing the discipline of the rod and of the hook, to some extent, there are going to be impediments and shortcomings and failures in your Christian experience. Grasp the truth of this passage coming down upon these two central issues. In His fatherly love, God chastises and disciplines

35:14 all His true sons. Therefore, do not despise the discipline, do not faint under it. Secondly, in His fatherly wisdom He has appointed chastisement as a means to make us holy. Therefore, submissively embrace God when He has the rod in His hand.

35:35 Patiently endure the real pain of the chastening till it passes. Vigorously press on in the Christian race even when accompanied by chastening. But then someone, I hope more than one person is asking the question, but what specifically is chastening? Well, obviously in this context for these Hebrew Christians it was those peculiar privations, sufferings, opposition that was coming to them particularly from their fellow Jews.

36:14 They had left Judaism. The temple is still standing. All of the rituals and forms of such sacred memory and solemn associations as rubrics, and rituals revealed by God Himself. All of that has been left behind.

36:31 And we learn from other places in this epistle some of them had suffered the pillaging of their goods. Some of them had suffered physical opposition and physical affliction. All kinds of privations and they needed to understand that these things that from the hands of men were human cruelty were in the hands of God His loving rod of chastisement and discipline in order to accomplish His own saving purposes. But surely the chastisement of God is not limited to just the specifics that were experienced by the Hebrew Christians.

37:13 And here I read from John Brown's most perceptive insights in his commentary on Hebrews and I trust you will find it helpful as I have had it helpful in my own thinking. He says Our Heavenly Father never chastises His children except for their profit. His object is uniformly their real advantage. The form the degree the duration of the affliction is all ordered by infinite wisdom so as best to gain this object.

37:48 He does not afflict willingly arbitrarily nor grieve without cause. All the afflictions of His people are intended and are requisite for promoting their highest interest. Kind wise intention does not always in an earthly parent secure the employment of the best means to realize that intention. Here you have a godly parent.

38:13 He is kind he is prayerful he is wise and he wants to secure a given end but because he is human he is fallible and he is sinful he doesn't always secure that. But in God they are always united in the highest degree. Parents may err but he is wise nor lifts the rod in vain. The concluding words are commonly considered as stating in what the profit of God's children which is His object in their afflictions consists.

38:40 It consists in their becoming partakers of His holiness. The holiness of His children is the same as the holiness of His children. The holiness of His children is the same as the holiness of His children. And this is set over to continue the message.

39:00 The holiness of God consists in His mind and will being in perfect accordance with truth and righteousness. To become partakers of His holiness is just to have the mind brought to His mind and the will brought to His will. To think as He thinks to will as He wills to find enjoyment He finds enjoyment. This is man's profit.

39:30 This is the perfection of His nature both as to holiness and happiness. This is to live to live the life of angels to live the life of God. To partake of His holiness is to enter into His joy. And this is the design of God in all the afflictions of His people experimentally to convince them of the true nature and the absolute necessity and sufficiency of God in order to know true happiness.

40:08 Now that affliction may come in the obvious way of physical trials financial pressures and disappointments shattered relationships dashed hopes frustrated plans it can take any strand of any reality in that universe and weave it into the scourge by which He is going to discipline any one of us. It may be a little invisible living thing called bacteria a virus and a sovereign God sees to it and it levels us and may bring into our lives something that utterly reverses all that we had ever hoped and planned for and God dashes it into a thousand pieces. We need to see as the passage tells us that it's in His fatherly love that He makes us holy and if ill health and shattered dreams and disappointed hopes and shattered

The Hook of Pruning: God's Cleansing Work (John 15)

41:37 relationships are the things God knows that we need in order to be partakers of His holiness He loves us with enough principled love disciplined on the one hand with His own measure established todzie and flesh in His blood in His own universe divine and in His heart mind and mind He is the God Himself in His will in His presence and in the other ends we are unto holiness, unto righteousness, unto progression in sanctification. But then, having looked briefly at this passage, even more briefly, turn with me to consider the hook of pruning, or the pruning hook. Having demonstrated the biblical basis for identifying the rod as an appointed means of spiritual health, now consider with me what the scripture teaches about the hook of pruning, or the pruning hook,

43:04 as a divinely appointed means of spiritual health. John chapter 15, and here again, two major things that I want you to grasp, since Pastor Lamar will be opening up John 15 shortly in great detail, and I trust, as the previous expositions will be to have been to us, that this will likewise be to our prophet. But I want you to notice the essential elements of the figure of speech used in this passage, and then the fundamental assertions made by our Lord in the brief section we look at. What's the essential element, or what are the essential elements of the figure of speech used?

43:49 You have an extended metaphor. Christ says, I am the true vine, and my Father is a word that can mean just a farmer, or it can mean, as it obviously does in this place, a more particular kind of farmer, a vine dresser, a man committed to cultivate, prune, and do whatever is necessary to see the vines rise to optimum fruitfulness. I am the true vine, my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that bears not fruit, he takes it away, and every branch that bears fruit, he cleanses it, that it may bear fruit.

44:29 More fruit. Here, the essential elements of the figure are clear. Christ is the true vine. Second element, all true believers are living shoots, or branches, united to the vine.

44:43 What about those branches that don't bear fruit? Who are they? Pastor Lamar is going to answer that question for you. I'm not going into that this morning.

44:50 I want you to see the essential elements of the figure. Christ is the true vine. All true believers are living shoots, or branches, united to the vine, and the Father, uniquely the Father, is the vine dresser. Not the Son or the Holy Spirit, but the Father.

45:08 Now, since in the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit always will one thing, and there is perfect confluence of will and purpose and delight and desire, we can't put these things in airtight categories, but Jesus does say that my Father is the husbandman. So that in a unique way, the pruning hook is in the Father's hand. Not the Son's hand, not the Spirit's hand. It's in the Father's hand.

45:38 So those are the essential elements of the figure of speech used. Christ, the vine. Every believer, a shoot, or a branch, in the vine. And the Father, the vine dresser.

45:49 Now, what's the fundamental assertion, or assertions, what are they made by our Lord? Look at the first one. It is that all true, real, living shoots, are the vine dresser. Every branch in me that doesn't bear fruit, He takes it away.

46:07 Whatever that means, pass it over for now. And every branch that bears fruit, He continually cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit. Every branch that bears fruit, that is every true, real, living shoot, drawing life from the vine, that's a real Christian. Every true, real, living shoot.

46:29 Every living shoot or branch bears fruit. There is no such thing as a fruitless Christian. Now, there are degrees of fruit. Thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.

46:40 This passage speaks of fruit. More fruit. Much fruit. But an utterly barren, fruitless Christian is something that doesn't exist on the face of the earth and won't be found in heaven.

46:54 Where the Spirit of God unites anyone to Christ in vital union, that union will produce fruit. That's the great point of this part of the passage. All true, real, living shoots or branches bear fruit. But now get the second thing that is equally clear.

47:16 To increase their fruitfulness, the Father will continually cleanse or prune them. Every branch that bears fruit, that is every branch or shoot that is in reality, and not in mere profession or appearance, united to me, so that my life flows into that branch, and there is a living union with me, He, the Father, continually, a present tense use of the verb, to cleanse, He continually cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit. Now obviously the primary function, the primary function of the vine dresser in cleansing the vine is to cut back the excess growth. But that's not the only aspect of the vine dresser's work. And here again the comments of John Brown are most perceptive. It has been common to explain the word cleanses or purges or purifies as though it were synonymous with pruning.

48:22 Removes the useless wood and leaves. It includes this. But it includes more than this. It refers to the cleaning of the fruit bearing branch of the deposits of insects, of moss, and of all other parasites that may have a tendency to prevent or lessen its fruitfulness.

48:43 The meaning of the figurative language is not difficult to discover. God employs appropriate means for removing whatever is calculated to prevent Christians from growing in holiness and in usefulness. My Father is the vine dresser. He is determined to have a fruitful vine.

49:08 And therefore all who have been united to Me and are shoots on that vine that I am, My Father is committed, He is committed, that they shall not merely bear a few grapes here or there, but where necessary, the pruning hook will cut, will cut deeply, will cut radically, where necessary, My Father with His own hands will lift off the parasites, will peel away the moss, whatever keeps that shoot, that branch, from bearing optimum fruit, My Father is a wise and a diligent and an utterly committed vine dresser. And I can count on Him to do His work of continual cleansing or pruning. And how does He do it? And you know, when John Brown quotes someone else, my ears always perk up.

50:10 As far as I'm concerned, he's one of the most perceptive, accurate, balanced expositors who has graced the church in relatively modern church history. And he quotes another man saying that even the believer in his present state, when left long unvisited by severe applications of God's word and providence, is apt to feel a spirit of easy self-indulgent indolence creeping over his spiritual faculties, under which the display of Christian character and the exercise of Christian principles and the exhibition of Christian conduct become faint and languid. Now get the picture. While like a luxuriance of idle foliage, enfeebling his soul's productive energies, a profusion of worldly lust and principles and habits effloresces and overruns his soul. You see the picture? Here's a vine that's healthy. It's a living, I'm sorry, a branch, a shoot.

51:15 It's a living shoot. So living that there's an excess of growth. And though it may appear beautiful to the eyes, come grape picking time, there won't be many grapes. All of the life and sap of the vine flowing into that shoot is being absorbed by the leaves and all of the suckers that are going out from it.

51:36 And if you've ever seen a vineyard after its formal pruning, it looks like it's been brutalized. You say, somebody's out to kill this poor bunch of vines. No, not kill them. Make them optimally fruitful.

51:53 And so God, by His word and His providence, is determined to put forth the pruning hook and to cut, and to cut, and to cut wherever necessary that all that has begun to grow out of us that would hinder our true fruitfulness may be cut away. When God comes with His pruning knife to lop off these luxuriances, to remove those pollutions of the world which present our fruitfulness, we're sometimes ready to think that He's come to destroy us as though we were barren branches fit only for the fire. But the Great Husbandment is wise and merciful. He knows what He's doing, though we do not.

52:37 And all His thoughts towards His trees of righteousness, the branches of His own planting, are thoughts of peace and not of evil. However keen then the stroke, however deep the wound, this is the true Christian's comfort. And then he parallels this with Hebrews chapter 12. He chastens me that I may be partaker of His holiness.

53:03 These chastisements, not joyous but grievous as they are, will end in a more abundant production of the peaceable fruits of righteousness. If a vine could talk, what do you think it might say come pruning time? Especially if it were a vine that had been looked over for a year or two at pruning time. And there was an unusual measure of profuse growth.

53:39 If the vine could think and talk, what do you think it might think and say when it saw the vine dresser coming and he has his wet stone in one hand and his pruning hook in the other until its razor sharp edge glistens in the morning sun. And he sees the vine dresser coming straight for him. He'd love to hide, no doubt, behind the other vines. Maybe he'd wish the earth would open up and swallow him because he knows the vine dresser's coming after me.

54:17 And he's coming to cut. And where necessary to cut radically and to cut deeply but to cut thoroughly. Why? That in the time of grapes I may be bent over, laden with healthy clusters of the fruit of the vine.

The Rod and the Hook as Companions

54:41 Now my friends, if Jesus means anything, he's saying that God has appointed as a means of your spiritual health and mine not only the rod, but the hook. Are you convinced of it from the scriptures? If you're going to get to heaven, you will not only get there by the grace of Christ, the strength of Christ alone. You will get there with the rod and the pruning hook doing their work all along the way until there's nothing more worthy of chastisement and nothing more that needs the pruning hook. Until then, the rod and the hook are going to be your companions. Now if that's so, bringing this to a conclusion, then I want to make a couple of very practical applications. And the first is this.

55:44 Observe and grasp with a death grip the vital principle of the Christian life embedded in both of these passages. Observe and then grasp with a death grip the vital principle of the Christian life embedded in both of these passages. What's the principle? Well, think back with me.

56:04 Hebrews 12 began with the summons, run the race, run it with your eye fixed upon Jesus. He is pioneer and perfecter of faith. He is the great exemplar of the one who resisted even unto death, but who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despised the suffering, has now come to the end of his race in triumph and glory and is seated at the right hand of the majesty on high. Now some would tell us that's all you need to run the race is be convinced you need to run and fix your eye on Jesus. And if you're a preacher worth anything, all you'll do to your people is tell them look to Jesus, look to Jesus, look to Jesus, look to Jesus, look to Jesus, look to Jesus, look to Jesus, look to Jesus, and if you tell them anything else, you're weighing them down with legalistic requirements. Is that so? Then blame the Holy Ghost.

57:09 ghost speaking through the writer to hebrews he doesn't stop at verse 4 in chapter 12 in fact he spends more time opening up the doctrine of the rob than he does the doctrine of running the race looking to jesus said pastor why you worked up because in the history of the church right down to this moment in trinity church there is a constant pressure of supernatural people who are cloaking some controversy with god who want to then jesus look to jesus look to jesus because they've got sins they don't want to deal with there are issues that they want to cloak by pitting christ against christ speaking in his word stand to jesus and drawing and encouragement and the pattern of suffering leading to triumph never out of your eye but in looking unto jesus look unto your loving father who said i'm going to take you in hand my son my daughter and out of

58:32 love that i might make you more and more partaker of my holiness i'm going to chastise you all the way to heaven while looking to jesus expect divine chastisement understand its origin it flows out of the loving heart of your father understand its purpose it's to make you partaker of his holiness intelligently submissively embrace it and while abiding in christ the whole emphasis of john 15 the early passages early verses drawing all of your life and your strength from christ who said without me you can do nothing school in constant community with christ remember that our fellowship is not only with christ but our fellowship this week the father and with his son jesus christ and our fellowship with the father according to jon fifteen his scholarship with the retro his head when he sees fruit ducky does field older than use proven in linen trees through the united to his son he is continually cleansing continually pruning continually picking away the parasites

Contrast with the Health, Wealth, and Prosperity Gospel

59:55 continually stripping away the moss while abiding in christ and feeding upon christ also look to the father as the loving principled committed vine dresser with a pruning hook in his hand and when the hook comes remember it's not to cut you off as a lifeless branch and throw you into the fire it's to make you more fruitful observe and grasp with a death grip the vital principle of the christian life embedded in both of these passages they point us to christ but they point us on the one hand to the father with his rod and the father with his pruning hook and anyone who tells you that the christian life and the secret to living it is simply looking to christ without the father with his rod looking to christ without the father in his pruning hook reject the teaching at best as imbalanced and at worst a first step to antinomianism second thing we observe from this passage observe how the doctrine of the rod in the hook stands in stark contrast to the health wealth and prosperity gospel so popular in the our day observe how the doctrine of the rod in the hook stands in stark contrast to the health

61:24 wealth and prosperity gospel so popular in our day this teaching in its many forms basically states that the proof of the father's love and the measure of your holiness is the absence of the rod and the hook if the rod and the hook are god's afflictive providences if the rod and the hook are the absence of the rod and the hook if the rod and the hook are god's afflictive providences the application of the word to the conscience reproving rebuking exhorting admonishing then you see their teaching says that the proof of the father's love and the measure of your holiness is the absence of the rod and the hook all the bills are paid because you put in your seed money and they've prayed over it and god's turned your ten dollars into ten million and because you send in your money and got the handkerchief blessed with their prayers are you going to put it on your boil and on your abscess and on your cancer and or on the radio while they pray and if you believe enough and you see it and name it and claim it all is well my friends there's only one word for such teaching and god spoke it through the prophet ezekiel and i want you to see what god thinks about that kind of teaching ezekiel chapter 13

62:43 when indicting the false prophets this is what god says about them ezekiel 13 and verse 22 because with lies you've grieved the heart of the righteous whom i have not made sad and strengthen the hands of the wicked that he should not return from his wicked way and be saved alive therefore you shall no more see false visions nor divine divinations and i will deliver my people out of your hand and you shall know that i am the lord the mark of the false prophet is he grieves the heart of the righteous whom god is not grieved and he strengthens the hands of the wicked what's one of the mark of the many wicked according to psalm 73 they prosper in this life they know no afflictive dispensations if you are without chastisement you are illegitimate children and so they strengthen the hands of the wicked believing because they have some oblique reference to christ in this gospel and all is a bit of heaven on earth now this is a proof of indication of their doctrine and they make sad then that poor afflicted child of god who goes from frying pan into fire and from fire into furnace and back around again to another frying pan and wonders if this doctrine is true

64:05 then surely god must be against me if i even dare to claim to be his child whereas just the opposite is true whom the lord loves he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives and every branch that is bearing fruit the very fact that it's bearing fruit the very fact that it's bearing fruit he's all the more jealous that it bear more fruit and that which bears more fruit that it bear much fruit and so he continues that work of pruning no the apostolic teaching is recorded in acts fourteen twenty two when they confirmed the souls of young believers how did they do it by telling them that through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of god now is that some kind of morose down in the corner of the mouth christianity no no not at all but it's the real is but what it is to be a true christian and to know that god is committed to something other than giving me the perpetual fuzzies i've got a whole eternity to have perfectly sanctified fuzzies down here god's got a lot of work to do to knock off and to prune away in the cut off and to refashion so that here on earth people will have some

65:26 idea of what god meant when he said i'm committed to take a people who have given themselves over to the devil and to reflecting his image and by the grace and power of my redemption in christ i want to fashion them over into the likeness of my dear son and i want to do enough of it here and now that it validates before the eyes of men that this salvation is something more than a mere juggling of the record books in heaven it is a salvation that makes new creations in christ jesus he creates us in christ unto good works which he before ordained that we should walk in them and as a loving father he's determined to make us partakers of his holiness here and now as a loving vine dresser he's determined to make us fruitful here and now and so the same god who so loved the world as he gave his only begotten son the same god who in love bore so patiently with us until he drew us to himself with the same heart of love he administers the rod and the pruning hook and will continue to administer it until they're no more needed and then i close with this final simple observation note the pathetic

The Pathetic Condition of the Unconverted

66:46 condition of those who are not related to god as a loving father and to jesus christ amen as a life giving five it's as a loving father that he chastises his children it is as one joined to christ the true vibe as a shooter branch united to him that we experience our pruning the chastisement comes from the hand of a loving father there is not one ten millionth of a gram of judicial anger in god when he's giving us the worst beating of our life he spent every last drop of that at golgotha dear child of god if you come to grips with that when god seems to be beaten the tar out of you can you look up and say my father this rod stings this rod smarts but i know there is not a gram of judicial wrath in that rod you broke that rod over your son and you threw it into the uttermost hell of hell

67:57 into the utter abyss of divine forgetfulness that rod has been broken never to be gray put on my back and when the rooming hooked seems to be cutting until i wonder if it's going to actually got somebody who's recently face that no matter how painful the couple maybe his own glory manifested in my brief all of this stinking wretchedlly preoccupation with our own feelings to where God's glory and our greater fruitfulness is more important than how comfortable we are.

68:40 In this thumb-sucking pleasure-mad age, I wonder at times, is there any hope that people will aspire to eminent holiness? Because it means you're going to welcome the pruning hook. How blessed to welcome it when I know that the Father who comes with His whetstone and the glistening sharp edge of the pruning hook is the one who vented His heart of love in withholding not His only begotten Son.

69:17 But what a pathetic thing to be related to that God as a judge and not as a loving Father. Not as the vine dresser concerned to make you more fruitful, but to take every dead stick of mere empty professing Christian experience with no vitality and cut you, out of the vine and cast you into the fire to be burnt. What a pathetic place to be. I say pathetic.

69:49 Yes, it moves some of us with pathos to think of what it is to sit in this room this morning, man, woman, boy or girl, and God's rod to you is made of nothing but pure, inflexible justice and He'll break you with it in the day of judgment unless you repent. And here in this life, instead of your afflictions being a means to make you more holy, they make you cynical and hard and think harder thoughts of God and ripen you for a worse judgment. What a pathetic condition to be anything other than a son of a loving Father with a rod that is the Father's instrument to make us more holy. To be anything other than a living branch united to Christ the vine. Amen. To have a loving vine dresser who prunes to make us more fruitful.

70:52 If that's your pathetic state, my friend, you need not leave in that condition because in Jesus Christ God offers the fullness of His mercy and grace to all who will have His Son. As many as received Him, John says, to them gave He the right to become the children of God. To become the children of God. As many as received Him, Christ, in the fullness and plenitude of His Son, in the fullness and plenitude of His grace, stands before you in the Gospel and says, Come to Me.

71:22 Come to Me. Embrace Me. Trust Me. Cast yourself upon Me.

71:28 And He will make you a child of God. And God will take you into His family and into His loving paternal care. And He'll start to work on you with the rod. And He'll unite you to His Son.

71:44 From the human side we're united to Christ by faith. From the divine side, by the indwelling of the Spirit. And united to Christ you'll begin to bear that fruit of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith and self-control. And the Father will then begin, according to your peculiar individuality and where you are and what you know and what you're able to bear, He'll begin to prune and cut and pick away the parasites to make you more and more fruitful.

Call to Embrace God's Dealings

72:16 Back to basics, folks. Back to basics. We've got to commit ourselves afresh to those appointed means for our spiritual health. And in addition to that disciplined assimilation of the Scriptures, habitual engagement in secret prayer, the maintenance of a good conscience, there must be the enlightened, submissive embrace of the rod and of the hook.

72:51 Let us pray. Our Father, we feel unworthy to speak the things that we have spoken about this morning. We marvel at Your grace and Your patience to the likes of us. We marvel at Your patience when men twist Your word and dare to invade the consciences of ignorant and sensitive people and torture those whom You are not afflicting and comfort those who are not.

73:31 We pray that the day will come when the massive structures of the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel would come tumbling down before the sheer weight of the truth of Your word preached powerfully and embodied in the lives of Your people until men would laugh it out of existence. O Lord, we ask that You would have mercy upon those who sit here this morning and have no comforts that their afflictions are wisely and lovingly ordered for their profit but are in a sense but the rumblings of the future afflictions of hell itself. O God, strike fear to their hearts. Make them hungry and thirsty to know the blessedness that we, Your people, know. And then we ask that You would help us. We confess, Lord, we're so, so much in love with our ease. We confess to You that we are soft.

74:34 We confess that so often our greatest passion is that we be comfortable rather than holy. Lord, take Your word and rattle the cage of our own little dream world and come with power and grace and make us as a people utterly and thoroughly committed to embrace You with the rod and the pruning hook in Your hands and to welcome all of Your dealings that will make us more like Your Son, more fruitful, more useful, and we know, ultimately, more blessed and more happy. Seal then Your word to our hearts, we plead, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.