God's Paternal Discipline

Scripture Reading: Hebrews 12:1-13

0:03 I would encourage you to follow in your own Bibles as I read this morning from the twelfth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 12, and the first thirteen verses, Hebrews 12, verses 1 through 13.

0:29 Having described what are commonly called the great heroes of faith in the previous chapter, the writer goes on to say, Therefore, let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, 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, looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down on the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such gainsaying of sinners against himself that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls. Ye hath not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin,

1:27 And ye have forgotten the exhortation which reasoneth with you as with sons. My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art reproved of him. For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. It is for chastening that ye endure. God dealeth with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father chasteneth not?

1:57 But if ye are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye sons without a legitimate father. In other words, you are false sons. And in that sense, the word bastard is used, children, not as a dirty word or a curse word, but it is used in its true sense as an illegitimate father. child. So whenever you hear that read in the scriptures, that's not a time to snicker because the fellows and girls at school use it as a bad word or a dirty word or a curse word. It simply means someone who is not the true legitimate son of a given family or has no family. And so he says, if you are without chastisement, where of all the true sons have been made partakers, then are ye illegitimate sons or bastards and not sons. Furthermore,

2:49 We have the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, 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. All chastening seemeth for the present not to be joyous, but grievous. But afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit,

Review and Transition to the Second Experiential Privilege

3:19 unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness. 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. Last Lord's Day morning we resumed again our series of doctrinal studies under the general catch-all of what we have come to know as the Here We Stand series of studies, and our meditation in the Scriptures focused our attention again on a specific aspect of the great salvation which we receive and proclaim when we take the teaching of the Word of God seriously. Now, that specific aspect of

4:16 Gospel privilege to which our attention now has been riveted is that which the Scriptures call adoption. Having seen that regeneration and calling are the blessings by which God brings us over the threshold into His kingdom, out of the kingdom of darkness, we are now examining those blessings which come to us immediately upon passing over that threshold. We studied the doctrine of adoption. We are now concentrating upon the doctrine of justification. We are now contemplating the doctrine of adoption. We examined the key text which demonstrates that adoption has a very central place in the plan of salvation. We then examined the passages which teach that adoption has to do primarily with a once-for-all legal transaction.

5:12 in which God officially, and in that sense, legally incorporates us into his family. The technical word in the New Testament literally means the placing as a son. Well, with that being placed as a son in the family of God, with all the legal work above board, this is no longer the counter-adoption, but one that is rooted, in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus and proclaimed in the Gospel, God grants some marvelous privileges. And it is those privileges which we are seeking to examine at this point in our study. We looked at the legal privileges. We have an inviolable sonship. Having once adopted us, God will never disinherit us. And this is the clear teaching of many passages in Scripture.

6:07 But in addition to that, we have a shared heirship with Christ, the elder brother in the family of God, and we have a conferred brotherhood. He is not ashamed to call us brethren. And as wonderful as those legal blessings of adoption are, there is yet more. And they are to be found, those blessings are to be found in the category of the experiential blessings. In other words, Not only the blessings that have to do with the declaration of the court of heaven, but the blessings that are conferred in the theater of our own hearts and in the experience of our own lives. Last Lord's Day we examined the greatest of all of those blessings, namely the gift of the spirit of adoption, Galatians 4, 4-6, Romans 8, 15, and 16.

7:02 Now, in a real sense, what we do this morning is we come to point two. That's all, and God willing, next week, point three. Of the three great experiential blessings of adoption, the first we have considered the gift of the spirit of adoption, the second we consider this morning the reality of God's paternal discipline. Now, paternal simply means, for the sake of you kids, that which pertains to the actions and the activity of a father. So the second great blessing experientially in the realm of adoption is the reality, or you may want to use the word, the certainty of God's paternal discipline. And this is why I have read in your hearing Hebrews chapter 12 for

7:56 This passage is the classic passage in Scripture concerning the great reality and the certainty of God's discipline as a privilege of adoption. Now, it is not my purpose to give a detailed exposition of Hebrews 12, as though I were preaching through the book of Hebrews, so I will not spend a lot of time setting the context of

Principle One: God's Love Constrains Him to Discipline

8:23 My study, my conclusions, my homework has been done in the light of that context, though I will not drag it out and parade it before you, because it is not essential to our coming to grips with the thrust of what I believe to be the Lord's Word to our hearts this morning. Now, as we attempt to think through the teaching of this passage with respect to the reality and certainty of God's paternal discipline, As a privilege, an experiential privilege of adoption, consider the three great principles that are here in our text. First of all, God's paternal love for all His true children constrains Him to discipline them. God's paternal love for all His true children constrains Him to discipline them.

9:19 That's the teaching essentially of verses 5 through 8. You have forgotten the exhortation which reasoneth with you as with sons. My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art reproved of him. For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

9:49 You see, the teaching of this passage is asserted very clearly in verse 6. Everyone who is the object of God's love in the framework of the family relationship will be the object of his paternal discipline. And then the next two verses simply underscore what has been asserted in verse 6, quoted from

10:20 Proverbs chapter 3. And he goes on to say, if you are devoid of the chastisement, you are outside the orbit of fatherly relationship and affection. In other words, these verses can be put into a mathematical equation.

10:42 Now, it's a terrible thing to bring math in on Sunday, kids. I know that. You thought you got an escape from it, at least Saturday and Sunday, and you'll have to face that ugly creature tomorrow when you go back to school. But this may help you to feel the force of the teaching of these verses. The first mathematical equation which they warrant is this. The Father's love plus adoption equals...

11:13 discipline. And that formula never changes. The Father's love plus adoption equals discipline. Isn't that what the text says? Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. So when the Father's love

11:37 finds expression in the realm of his act of adoption, it always issues in discipline. The Father's love plus the reality of adoption equals discipline. So if you want to get away from discipline, the only way you can is to get out of the orbit of adoption in the Father's love. Now, do you want that? I hope you don't. And then the second equation that puts it in the negative is...

12:08 professed adoption minus discipline equals deception. Professed adoption minus discipline equals deception. Verse 8, But if ye are without chastening, ye are a professed son of God, but no chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards and not

12:37 Sons, you are deceived as to your true spiritual status. So the emphasis of these verses is very clear. And the principle I've articulated is warranted by the obvious language of the text. God's paternal love for all his true children constrains him to discipline them. But now someone says, yes, pastor, but what?

Defining the Chastisement of the Passage

13:06 is the discipline. If only I could understand that, then I think I might feel more at home with those mathematical formulas. Well, the word itself that is used for discipline, translated chasten in the verb and chastening is the noun in this passage, and it occurs seven times,

13:31 And the word sons occurs five times. So you see the concentration of sonship and chastening. Well, it's the general word used in the New Testament for what we might call in contemporary language educational training. The word itself, in itself, in its general usage, has that broad connotation. All of the disciplines connected with learning are involved in this word.

14:01 Rules, lessons, correction, reproof, and if necessary, even corporal punishment. But in this context, you don't have that sense of its broad use, but a more limited aspect of what is involved in instruction. And that's why the translators in most versions have used the word chastening or discipline, because you will notice whatever this chastening is...

14:31 According to verse 11, it is a chastening that is never pleasant. Verse 11. All chastening in the sense of this context seemeth for the present not to be joyous, but grievous. Now, not all education is grievous. At least I hope none of you finds delight only in being ignorant. The scripture says knowledge is pleasant unto the soul.

15:00 I doubt there's a child here this morning who doesn't have at least one course in school that you really like besides gym and recess. But in this context, all of the instruction, all of the paideia is grievous. So you see, he's speaking of this educational process in terms particularly of a dimension of it that is grievous.

15:30 All chastening seemeth for the present not to be joyous, but grievous. Furthermore, it has the tendency to discourage, verses 12 and 13. This chastening, this discipline, this instruction, this paideia, has the tendency to make people, when they're not relating properly to it, to hang their hands down in discouragement. And their knees to become weak, and they're laying feet to be unable to walk a straight path. So in the context, what is the chastening? What is the discipline which is part and parcel of the privileges of the adopted sons and daughters of God? Well, I can do no better in answering that question than to quote from this excellent little digest of commentary, one of Wilson's

16:28 commentaries, this one on Hebrews, where describing this matter of chastening, we read, God punishes his enemies, but he chastens his children. The one is the judicial infliction of his wrath, the other is the proof of his parental love. The same hand, but not the same character, gives the stroke to the godly and the ungodly. The scourge of the judge is widely different from the rod of the father. Moreover, this fatherly discipline pertains only to the present life. John Owen says, there is no chastisement in heaven nor in hell. Not in heaven because there is no sin. Not in hell because there is no amendment. Chastisement is a companion of them that are in the way and of them only. But what precisely is that chastisement?

17:23 Well, let me suggest that the best description I have found anywhere is to regard the chastisement primarily as afflictive dispensations of God. That is, circumstances that have as part and parcel of their impingement upon us an unpleasantness about them. They have that element of

17:52 of unpleasantness according to verse 11, and in the general context of this passage, that chastisement has to do with those things such as are described in the latter part of Hebrews 11, the oppositions that come to men in the way of obedience to the gospel, those trials and testings that come to us from many sources, but they are never pleasant, though they are sent and ordered and controlled of God for our good. Well, there's the first great principle that's in the passage, namely, God's paternal love for all his true children constrains him to discipline. Now, the second principle is this. God's discipline has as its specific goal our conformity to the family likeness.

Principle Two: Discipline Aims at the Family Likeness

18:48 God's discipline has as its specific goal our conformity to the family likeness. Verse 10 and verse 11. They, our earthly fathers, 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. And then the lighter part of verse 11 says,

19:13 It yields the peaceable fruit in those who have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness. So those are the two keys to understand God's goal in our discipline. It is that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now does that mean we will actually become gods so that people will call us your holiness, as they call the famous man who recently visited our shores?

19:43 No, to be partakers of His holiness means, and I quote here John Brown, 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 our minds brought to His mind.

20:08 Our wills brought to His will. To think as He thinks. To will as He wills. To find enjoyment in that which He finds enjoyment. This is man's profit. 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 joys.

20:35 And this is the design of God in all the afflictions of His people, experimentally, that is, in their experience, to convince them of the vanity of the creature and the absolute necessity and sufficiency of God in order to true happiness. To be partakers of His holiness does not mean that we become gods, but that we become like Him.

21:02 to think as he thinks, to will as he wills, to love as he loves. And that is nothing less than the fruit of righteousness, that is, practical conformity to the norms of God. Now, that's the end God has in view in all of his discipline. And the whole context places the focus upon this very principle. It is the matter of conformity to God's likeness, which demands that we put aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us. It is this that demands, in the following context, that we follow after peace with all men in the holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. In other words, there is no progress in being partakers of God's holiness,

21:56 without understanding those things that are contrary to His holiness. We've got to see our sins and discover them, as it were, experientially before we can put them aside. And so the rod of correction upon us is calculated to enable us to discover our sins, to purify us from our sins, and then on the positive side to work in us Those graces that are the direct opposite of the sins we have discovered. So God brings an afflictive set of circumstances that impinge upon our carnal desires and ambitions and our carnal comfort. What happens? Well, impatience and grumbling against God rises to the surface. And we see it and we are shocked and horrified and we cry to God for cleansing. But we don't stop there.

22:54 We then pray, Lord, grant me the grace of patient, trustful submission to your will. Not only do we pray, Lord, forgive me for my impatience and my grumbling, we ask for the contrary grace to be implanted and worked out in us by the Holy Spirit. And so God uses that afflicted dispensation to one end, that we may be partakers of his holiness.

23:23 When God says, lay aside every weight, every impediment, someone says, I don't know what my impediments are. So God brings about the school of affliction, and the impediments begin to come to the surface. And we say, now I know what they are. By the grace of God, I want to lay them aside and get on with running with patience or endurance the race that is set before me. You see, God's discipline has as its specific goal our conformity,

23:53 to the family likeness. The God who has given us the status of sonship by the act of adoption, who has given us the consciousness of sonship by the spirit of adoption, now says, I am determined to work the family likeness in you at any cost. Now, isn't it marvelous that he starts with our privileges? He places us as sons and daughters then by the gift of the spirit of adoption gives us the joyous consciousness of our privilege. But now he says, I'm going to make you like my son. And I see in this passage a beautiful parallel, or with this passage a beautiful parallel in Romans 8, 28 and 29. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to his purpose for. Here's the connective.

24:49 Whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. What is the good to which all things are working? It is the good of the realization of God's purpose of making us like Christ. Not in some mystical, ethereal, intangible way, but in the very way I've described in the previous chapter.

25:20 or the previous part of our exposition, so that we love what he loves, hate what he hates, react as he reacts in any given situation, choose what he would choose, the ethical and moral likeness of the Son of God perfected in us. And one of the great instruments God uses is his discipline. But then there is a third great principle in our text, and it is this. It not only tells us,

Principle Three: Expect, Understand, and Submit

25:50 that God's paternal love for all his true children constrains him to discipline them, and that his discipline has a specific goal, our conformity to the family likeness. But thirdly, the text tells us that there is a proper response to God's paternal discipline. And we ought to know what that response is, and by the grace of God renders.

26:20 And it's a threefold response in the passage. Expect it, understand it, and submit to it. First of all, expect it. He says in verse 5, the reason you people are stumbling over the matter of your afflictions is you've forgotten something. Something that you ought not to have forgotten.

Response One: Expect It

26:48 With your privileges through the gospel, now that you are the adopted sons and daughters, you must remember that all whom he adopts, he afflicts and chastens. So he's saying, in essence, expect chastisement as part and parcel of your experiential reality as an adopted one in the family of God.

27:15 You see, this was the great stumbling block to many of these professing Hebrew Christians. Under the old covenant, though the true Israel, those who truly knew God understood something of the purpose of affliction. Psalm 73 is an indication of that. The psalmist was stumbling because of the problem of affliction until he got his spiritual perspective sorted out. But by and large, the promise of the covenant in terms of the external life of the nation was, if you obey me, I'll bless you.

27:45 I will protect you from afflictions. He says, I will not put the diseases of Egypt upon you. There will be no miscarrying wounds. There will be blessing in the field and in the needing trough and all the rest. These external blessings were part and parcel of the promises of the old covenant. Now they embrace the reality in Christ and what happens. Read what the believers receive as a result of their faith in Hebrews 11.

28:12 And those who would tell us that all the blessings of Deuteronomy promised in the Old Covenant can be carried right over if only people would obey the law of God in the New Covenant. That sheer ridiculous theological and exegetical rubbish. What they got when they embraced Christ was affliction, hardship, imprisonment, hunger, and some even death itself. Read Hebrews 11.

28:40 Some were sawn asunder. Some were sewed up in the skins of animals, thrown to the animals to paw them and to make little playthings out of them until their mangled bodies become the laughingstock of heartless, cruel, bloodthirsty people. He says, look, you forgot something. You thought that in the blessings of the new covenant, chastisement, afflicted dispensations would be absent. He said, no. Your response to them must be one in which they do not come as a surprise. Expect chastisement. Whom he loves, he chastens. Remember the mathematical formula. The Father's love plus adoption equals discipline. And unless you want to get out of the blessings of adoption in the orbit of the Father's love,

29:38 Now, don't go looking for it in creating it. But expect it. Now, that doesn't mean you sit around trembling and say, Oh, when's God going to crack the rod over me? No, no, no. That's a servile fear that has no place in the intelligent, well-instructed heart of a true Christian. Perfect love casteth out that kind of fear. We've not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. No, the Holy Spirit who attests

30:07 To our spirits and with our spirits, the reality of our sonship is the same spirit who enables us to live in the expectation of the Father's discipline without a cringing kind of servile fear. Now you say that's impossible. No, it isn't. Every well-ordered home in our congregation is a living monument that expecting discipline and having a delightful

30:37 wholesome, open, loving relationship to the parents are not antithetical. Every well-ordered home is a home in which the children know that part of the framework of that home is discipline. Yet they also know that the context is paternal and maternal love. That never disciplines as a trigger reaction of anger. It doesn't discipline to get rid of psychologically pent-up pressures

31:08 But mom and dad are determined that they shall under God rear a well-integrated, balanced, responsible adult. And so they are disciplining to that end. So my child, my friend, child of God, expect it. That's the first thing God demands of you. Then second, he demands that we understand it, both in its origin and in its end.

Response Two: Understand Its Origin and End

31:37 the discipline in its origin? It is the Father's heart that is its ultimate origin. Whom the Lord loveth, He chastened. You see, the same heart that conceived your adoption in eternity, Ephesians 1, 5, in love, having predestined us unto adoption, as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself. O child of God, lay hold of the wonder of it. The same heart that in its first motions of eternal redemptive love to you in Christ marked you out for adoption is the heart that dictates the when and the how of the rod of correction.

32:35 And we need constantly to come back to that. Understand that discipline has its origin not in a God who is capricious, who loved us with eternal love and purpose, such wonderful things for us in the councils of eternity, loved us in the giving of His Son through the virgin's womb, there upon the cross, the object of wrath. and the billows of divine anger against sin, manifesting the depth of His love to sinners. But suddenly now this God has become irked and irritable, and so He sends afflictive despot. No, no. It is the one heart of the one God who in Jesus Christ is our Father. So understand the discipline in its origin. Understand it in its end.

33:28 Its end is that you may be partaker of his holiness. You see, God conceived of this whole business of our salvation in the first place. We do not enter into it when we come over the threshold in regeneration and calling and then dictate the purposes of that salvation. The God that conceived in eternity marked us out in Christ to be the recipients of it. He determined way back then what he

33:58 and His ends in that salvation were. And what are they? He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. Not to make us a bunch of giddy happy people who all the time go around with a 32 tooth grin, happy, happy, happy all the day, day, day. No. Nowhere does the Bible say that He chose us in Christ to be happy all the day, day, day.

34:29 You'll search the Bible in vain for any such definition of the ultimate purpose of God in redemption. He chose us that we should be holy. And generally speaking, none is so happy as he who is most holy. But in the process of holiness, in this mixed situation, where the remains of corruption are yet with us, and where a cursed earth is our environment, Paul says...

34:59 We that in this tabernacle do groan. Romans age, as we saw last week, he says, we who have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan within ourselves. How do you groan with a 32-tooth grin? Blessed are they who mourn. Present tense. Jesus marks out the members of His kingdom as those who are never far from holy mourning. Thank God they are never far from holy joy either.

35:29 But the idea that joy and peace and happiness are the pinnacle attainment of sonship will not stand the test of the Word of God. And if you make it your goal, then you won't know what to do. When afflictive dispensations come as the rod of God to make you like His Son, you'll start resisting the devil in the name of Jesus and commanding the demons of affliction to go and all the rest. And God in His mercy, I marvel at His patience,

35:59 When people start calling his rod a messenger of a demon or the activity of the devil. When in reality, it is God's gracious dealings to make us like his son. So, expect it, understand it. Its origin, the father's love. Its end, the family like this. Thirdly, submit to it. Expect it, understand it, submit to it. Verse 9. Furthermore...

Response Three: Submit to It

36:29 We have the fathers of our flesh to chasten us. We gave them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the father of spirits and live? Now the contrast in the text seems to be fathers of the flesh and father in the realm of the spirits. It's a difficult phrase to exegete, but I think the commentators who take the position...

36:52 That what we have here is our spiritual father contrasted with our fleshly or earthly father. That makes the most sense in the context. And the language will bear that interpretation. So you see what he's saying. Here we have earthly fathers with earthly goals. And in the implementation of them, chastening was a tool in their hands to attain those goals. But our heavenly father has a more noble, a higher goal.

37:22 And chastening is part of the means that he uses to accomplish that goal. Now he says, if you gave reverence to your earthly fathers, shall we not much more be in submission to our spiritual father? So you see, what is required of us is to submit. That means don't treat God's discipline lightly like a stoic, verse 5.

37:48 My son, regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord. It's amazing how some Christians, because of temperament and because of insensitivity that has encrusted itself around their hearts, they become almost like stoics who can take almost anything without wincing.

38:10 And they never pause to think if indeed these circumstances that are afflicted in their nature are the rod of God getting through a message to them that they might discover their own hearts and seek cleansing from the Lord. And seek grace to cultivate the contrary graces of the Spirit. Don't treat it lightly. Submission to His discipline on the one hand means we'll not treat it lightly, but on the other hand we won't become discouraged and disheartened in the midst of it. The latter part of verse 5. On the one hand, don't regard it lightly like a Stoic, but on the other hand, don't faint when you're reproved of Him.

38:56 What pastoral insight Solomon had. There's that constant tendency to harden ourselves against it or to be so sensitive to it that we allow ourselves to come into a state of discouragement described classically and graphically in verses 12 and 13 by the picture of that man who's just had it. He's all out of breath. He's discouraged. His shoulders are humped over. His hands are hanging down. His knees are weak.

39:24 And he's about to turn out of the way, the only way that leads to life. That's why he says, shall we not much more submit to our spiritual father and live? This is a matter of life. Why? Because of verse 14. We must pursue that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. And there's no pursuit of holiness without the means that God has ordained to effect that holiness. One of them is discipline.

39:53 So if you don't submit to it, you're resisting the very means that keeps you in the way, that leads unto life. Now for some who may be visiting with us and you say, Pastor Martin, are you saying that you can be saved and lost? No, no one holds more firmly than we do in this church to the perseverance of the saints. But the only proof that you were ever once saved is that you continue to be saved. God who begins the work carries on that work.

40:22 And the only solid evidence that he ever has begun something in me is that that work is continuing in me as it does in everyone in whom he truly begins it. So when that person says, oh, I'm adopted, I have the spirit of adoption, and there is no discipline effecting in them more and more likeness to Christ, the writer to Hebrews says, no, you're a spiritual bastard. You're an illegitimate son. You've got the language of adoption in your mouth.

40:52 But you don't have the spirit of adoption in your heart, or neither are you within the orbit of God's fatherly love. For fatherly love plus adoption equals discipline. Chastening. So submit to it, child of God, in the language of verse 11, in its very graphic language, be exercised by it. It yields the peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby.

41:18 That word in the original is the word from which we get our word gymnasium. Now what do people do in the gymnasium? Well, that's where they consciously engage in exhaustive physical disciplines. Now this is what he says. Our chastening should have this effect upon us, that it keeps us in spiritual shape. We are exercised thereby in that discipline.

Pastoral Application and the Privilege of Discipline

41:45 Now, let me say in concluding exhortation, child of God, have you begun to grasp this aspect of the experiential privileges of your adoption? Your trials, your afflictions, your disappointments are not penal or judicial. They do not come from God the judge as an official lictor to scourge you.

42:13 They do not come from God an angry sovereign sending his soldiers to imprison you. All of these afflictions and trials and disappointments that cause your remaining corruption to surface, that press you to be honest about your weights and your sins, those are sent from God's loving heart, who's predestined you to sonship,

42:39 sent His only Son to do all that was necessary to provide a just basis for your adoption, who has sent the Spirit into your heart to attest to your Sonship. It is that God who disciplines and chastises in love in order to effect the family likeness. Have you been able to grasp that this morning? Oh, that we might as God's people grasp it and to regard it as a privilege.

43:10 Now you kids, listen to me this morning, will you? Do you know it's a wonderful privilege to have parents that discipline you? You say, if you were my place, you wouldn't feel that. Can't sit down sometimes. Ah, listen, listen. It's a wonderful privilege. Not to have parents who beat you in frustration or anger. That's a tragedy. We do not teach in this church nor believe in some kind of wicked child abuse. We believe in the biblical doctrine of the wise and prayerful and principled use of the rod as one of the many means of training our children. Not the only, one of the many means. But children, listen now. When your mom and dad, among the many things by which they try to instruct you, when they correct you by sending to your room, withdrawing a certain privilege, when they withhold

44:06 Other privileges, when they afflict certain forms of punishment, whether spankings or whatever they are, what a privilege it is to have parents who have a goal for you and are using that chastisement as a means to attain that goal. And what's their goal? Well, they don't want you to go through life crippled because you think that every time you get a whim, you can do it and exist in this world. You can't live that way.

44:36 You can't live in God's world simply obeying the little whims and little fancies that cost your little head. I have to deal with adults who are crippled in life, not physically, but in terms of coping with life. Why? Because when they grew up, every little whim and fancy they had, mom and dad bowed to it, never said no, never put checks upon them, never disciplined them. And they are emotionally and in every way crippled to face life.

45:07 Those mornings they don't feel like getting up. They lie in bed. Can't hold down a stable job. Why? Because as kids, they were never made to do what their darling little hearts didn't want to do. And now they suffer. You kids, listen, what a privilege it is to have parents who don't want you to go into life emotionally and psychologically crippled. They want you to become a man or a woman who under God in the strength of the Spirit can be a responsible, useful part

45:37 Of society. That's their great end. And that's why they say no. And that's why when you say, yeah, but everybody in the neighborhood does it. And they say, well, that may be so, but we don't live by the standards of... Well, why can't I do what everybody else does? It's not fair. Yes, it is fair. It's the best thing that ever happened to you. And someday you'll be able to do what I can do.

46:07 Hardly a day, a week passes, but what I don't think of some discipline that was exerted upon me as a boy, as a little guy. And it seemed so unreliefable at the time. But as a grown man, an old man in the eyes of some of you, I mean, 45 is down the hill and on the way out. How I thank God.

46:31 For the times when my dear mom said, son, doing things you don't like to do develops character. Do it. Yeah, ma, but do it or else. And I knew that was no idle threat. I had many proofs that that was no idle threat. Did I like that? No, discipline for the present seemed joyous. I never got a spanking and jumped around the house saying, oh, this was wonderful. Isn't this great? No. No.

47:00 It hurts. But afterwards, now the afterwards in some of those areas is 40 years after the discipline. But it's reaping its fruits to this day. Now that's true spiritually. Child of God, get hold of that. God didn't save you to make you irresponsibly giddy. The 700 Club notwithstanding. And I don't say that to be funny. I say that out of a deep burdened It is projecting a concept of the Christian life that undercuts the reality of what we're dealing with this morning. And when you're under God's chastening rod, it is grievous. But when is an old Puritan who titled his work, A Christian Mute Under the Rod of God? When in silence you say, O my Father,

47:55 though I do not understand all the details of what you are doing in this particular set of trials. I do know this. You are determined to make me like your son. O Lord, I have expected discipline. By your grace, I have tried to understand it in the light of Scripture. Now I submit that you will bring out of this rod of correction all that you as a loving,

48:26 principled Father, are determined to bring out of it. You see, then nothing can hurt you. When it comes, you can say, this is from my Father. This comes out of a large heart that beats with eternal, never-changing love. And it's a wonderful privilege. If you're not a Christian, you

48:57 What a terrible thing to have to face either on the one hand the goodness of God that has, as it were, set a hedge about you and kept you from those afflictions common to most people. What a terrible thing to see and to experience and receive all of that, only to have it hardening you in your sins because you think, oh well, I must not be causing too much disruption to the God who's out there and up there.

49:26 because he sure is good to me. My friend, the scripture says, don't you know that the goodness of God leads you to repentance, but after the hardness and impenitence of thy heart, you treasure up for yourself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Don't mistake the absence of affliction as an evidence that all is well. It may just be the very opposite. On the other hand, if God has allowed your lot to be one of affliction, And you're not a Christian, my friend. What can you do except be a stoic? How can you cope except to bite the bullet and bury it? But you know better. Oh, there are many reasons why being a Christian is the most wonderful thing upon the face of the earth. This is one of them. To be able, by the grace of God, to understand and embrace those afflictions and see them issued.

50:26 in our prophet. This is the second great privilege of adoption in the realm of our experience. All who receive the gift of the spirit of adoption, bearing witness with their spirits that they are the children of God by enabling them to cry, Abba, Father! They're in the orbit of the discipline. You'll never have one without the other. May God grant that we shall settle in our hearts That until we are like him at his coming, the rod is going to be our companion through all of our days. Settle it. Embrace it. And by the grace of God, submit to it. Let us pray. Our Father, how we thank you.

Closing Prayer

51:24 that you love us enough and are so determined to make us like your Son that you will exert the rod of correction upon us, that your great concern is not to spare anything that is temporal. For though the outward man perishes, the inward man is renewed

51:53 day by day. We thank you for the hope that is ours, that as the consummate expression of all that you have designed for us in the blessing of adoption, we shall, with perfected spirits and resurrected bodies, join together, forever serve and magnify you, O God.

52:21 granted until the hour of consummation comes, that we may expect, understand, and submit to your discipline. Forgive us when we've questioned the heart out of which it flows. Forgive us when we've allowed ourselves to have a servile dread of the rod of correction. We confess that these things are sin. Give us such a

52:50 an unshakable confidence in the changelessness and in the greatness of your love to us in Christ, that we shall know, whatever our circumstances may be, that your heart is a heart of love. Seal to our hearts your word. Make it effectual in the hearts of those who are strangers to your grace.

53:15 And for these mercies we shall praise you through Jesus Christ our Lord.