The Loving Disciplinarian

A Loving Disciplinarian

What comes to mind when I say the word “discipline”?

Does discipline have a good or a bad connotation?

(example of discipline)

Discipline, when from the Lord, always has a good connotation.

And yet even if its from the Lord, it doesn’t feel good, does it?

I think we’ve all been there … a moment in time when we experienced discipline, which was uncomfortable for us, but which we learned from. I bet you haven’t made that mistake again.

As good as those corrective measures can be, we live in a world where discipline isn’t always executed well. It can be done too much or too lightly, either crushing the human spirit or letting it wander further into sin. But discipline, when exercised well, is corrective and growth-minded. And for the right exercise of this, we need to look no further than the Lord, the Loving Disciplinarian.

We as humans discipline imperfectly, but the Lord’s discipline IS perfect. As our Father, he’s not too harsh and he’s not too soft. He doesn’t trim our branches too far back nor does he let them overgrow. And the fact that he does trim our branches shows us that he loves us perfectly.

Our passage this morning reminds us that our Lord is a loving disciplinarian, and that his hand has been working to refine his people so that they may walk in love of him.

So let’s read about that this morning. Its a short passage, Deuteronomy 11:1-7.

Deuteronomy 11:1–7 ESV

“You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always. And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm, his signs and his deeds that he did in Egypt to Pharaoh the king of Egypt and to all his land, and what he did to the army of Egypt, to their horses and to their chariots, how he made the water of the Red Sea flow over them as they pursued after you, and how the Lord has destroyed them to this day, and what he did to you in the wilderness, until you came to this place, and what he did to Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, son of Reuben, how the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households, their tents, and every living thing that followed them, in the midst of all Israel. For your eyes have seen all the great work of the Lord that he did.

This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. (pray)

Firstly, it’s important to note what this passage is for- love and obedience.

Deuteronomy 11:1 ESV

“You shall therefore love the Lord your God and keep his charge, his statutes, his rules, and his commandments always.

Love and obedience are intertwined.

Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey my commands.”

So if we truly love God then the way we live should reflect that.

Sounds easy enough … love God, do good … but its much harder to obtain because we can’t get there on our own. We are imperfect people who need guidance and the tempering of our souls.

This is done in part through the display of God’s blessing, but also through his discipline as seen in verse 2:

Deuteronomy 11:2 ESV

And consider today (since I am not speaking to your children who have not known or seen it), consider the discipline of the Lord your God, his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm,

All of the things about to be listed after this verse fall under the word discipline, which in Hebrew doesn’t just hold a negative connotation but means chastisement, reproof, correction. And this discipline from the Lord is brought about through the display of his greatness through his mighty hand and his outstretched arm.

Let’s think about that for a moment. The Lord’s hand and his outstretched arm. What kinds of things can be done with a hand?

Traditionally a hand has been a signal of power … through it you are able to work, to accomplish things whether that’s sewing or washing dishes or lifting heavy beams.

A hand can also be used for signs and symbols - stop, come, hold on a moment. in Roman times in the Colosseum to live or die. And when a ruler stretched out his hand, to signal what was to be done in the kingdom, it was a sign of his power.

So when it says that the Lord exercises discipline through his mighty hand and outstretched arm, its showing how a ruler might dictate orders to his subjugates.

The verses that follow are all callbacks to the things that God had done. Note how much action is shown in this passage.

Pharaoh and Egypt, The Red Sea, all of the sustenance and continuation in the wilderness for 40 years, dealing with the rebellious within Israel … all of these acts are God actively doing something.

And we know, from the context, that God is actively doing it as a form of discipline.

Why?

To bring God’s people to a place where they can walk in righteousness. So that they may see the Lord, and fear his name, and worship him always.

And because God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, that means that he still uses discipline to train his people to love him more and to walk in his ways.

God brings discipline into your life so that you may learn from it, may grow, and may be brought to a place where you are walking in righteousness after him.

So I have three points for us today, all showing different qualities of who God is as The Loving Disciplinarian:

The Fatherly Disciplinarian

The Perfect Disciplinarian

The Refining Disciplinarian

The Fatherly Disciplinarian

Often, in order to train and teach his children, a father in the household must uphold the rod of discipline that has been entrusted to him by the Lord.

This topic reminds me of one of the proverbs:

Proverbs 13:24 ESV

Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

A Father who truly loves his children will step forward with the correct measures to make sure that they are walking on the right path.

When you think of unloved children, do you think of the ones that have not been disciplined by their parents?

There’s a new Willy Wonka movie coming out soon. I’m excited to see it. But the story of Willy Wonka teaches us important morals and values regarding children. Veruca Salt was the child who was never told no. She wanted it all. And because of that she was a bad nut and a rotten egg. She turned into a vicious version of herself all because her parents had never set their foot down by saying no or by introducing corrective measures to temper her behavior. Ultimately her parents neglected her by not enforcing discipline, and that came at her own detriment.

Proverbs 23:13–14 ESV

Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.

The Lord, as a sign of his love toward his people, sends discipline as a loving Father. There’s a passage in Hebrews which we conveniently just covered in our Wednesday night Bible study, which also picks up on this theme of discipline. It reads:

Hebrews 12:5–8 ESV

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

For most of my life, I learned to hate discipline. In part because it came through the hand of imperfect people who exercised discipline too severely, but also in part because discipline is uncomfortable. Wouldn’t it be better to forgive and forget and just move on and not have to deal with the consequences of your actions? In order to avoid the uncomfortable and not have to worry about paying anything or suffering anything, I would much rather “learn” not to make the same mistake.

But if there is no price to pay for our errors, no sting when we need a corrective course of action, how are we to learn?

Any parent can tell you that there are times when the sting is not necessary and that the child has learned without the use of corrective measures. But on the other side of the coin, there are times when the child will only learn through the use of such measures.

The Lord knows that if there is no sting this time, we are bound to repeat the same mistakes that were made before. Out of his Fatherly love he brings those difficult things along.

Furthermore, the display of God’s discipline is a sign of his love, that he is treating you as one of his children. He is not a neglectful God that set the world in motion and takes a step back, watching everything spin and fall apart. No, he is involved in each and every movement, weaving the whole string of human lives and creation together so that it may all tell a story and that each thread, each person, has a voice and a part to play in the grand scheme of things. There is nothing that exists or takes place apart from God, including his discipline.

And even God’s discipline, the hard corrective measures, are a sign of love to you, as a Father loves his son or daughter. You may not see it while you are suffering, but you will learn from it and grow.

The Lord is the Fatherly Disciplinarian, not like our earthly fathers but perfect in love and steadfastness and in measure. Which brings us to our second point: The Lord is ...

The Perfect Disciplinarian

The passage in Hebrews continues.

Hebrews 12:9–10 ESV

Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

I bring this passage up, not because it is in any way criticizing the discipline of the earthly fathers here … but to show that discipline from man is limited. Here one judge may be too harsh, another too soft. The earthly fathers and figures enact correction based on what seems best to them. And we all know that there are things that a human person makes decisions upon based on only knowing part of the truth, and not knowing an important piece of the puzzle can lead them into error.

But God doesn’t miss that piece of the puzzle. He has the whole picture. And because of that, because he knows the thoughts and hearts of all men, he can execute discipline perfectly.

But while we live on this earth, we live underneath imperfect disciplinarians, as established by the Lord. The Lord is the one who establishes fathers as the head of the household and men as representative heads in the church. These heads are to lead their families into faithful love and obedience of the Lord, and to use measured discipline.

This passage in Hebrews continues by warning us of what happens if the church does not keep up discipline:

Hebrews 12:15 ESV

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled;

If church discipline for behaviors fails to be enacted, then there is room for the root of bitterness, the sin which causes saints to stumble, to spring up into the church and to create much havoc.

So fathers must not be too soft when enacting discipline.

But at the same time, they should not be too harsh.

Colossians 3:21 CSB

Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they won’t become discouraged.

It’s a difficult task to be a parent or to have headship, the charge, over a group of people. Sometimes that head puts the foot down too severely, hurting those underneath his charge. Scripture warns against this too, and we should recognize the failings of our own humanity.

But the Lord is perfect in his discipline. He knows us better than we know ourselves, and he knows what we can handle and that there’s always a way out of temptation. Much like Goldilocks choosing the best bed, He’s not too hard, he’s not too soft, but he’s just right.

He is perfect where we are imperfect.

And because he exercises discipline perfectly, the results of his work are more effective. Because God is a Fatherly Disciplinarian and the Perfect Disciplinarian, he is also effective in his work as the Refining Disciplinarian.

The Refining Disciplinarian

When I think of discipline, its usually done as a corrective response to something that a person has done. But there’s discipline from the Lord that comes not necessarily because we’ve done something wrong but because the Lord has a greater picture in mind. The greatest example of a person who experienced discipline in this way is Jesus, when he took your sins upon himself at the cross. But Jesus trusted that God would be at the other end of the tunnel because he knew that the suffering was for but a moment, and that the result of enduring God’s discipline would be far more beneficial.

Hebrews 12:11 ESV

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

There is no one who could explain this better to you than Job.

Job truly suffered when his family was taken from him, when his property and wealth and riches were all taken away and his wife and friends turned on him. And yet, what was the end result of his suffering? He came out the other end of it more refined.

The Lord’s discipline is never against us, but is restorative. It’s not meant to take us down but to take us through to a brighter tomorrow.

Romans 8:28 ESV

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

It’s hard to see how anything good could come from something that brings pain and yet it does.

For the Christian, the discipline from the Lord comes in various forms — it can come through testings or trials, it can come through the corrective discipline exercised under the authority of church leaders, it can come through the punishment as put down by a father in the home or by the government in the world — and all of these forms are uncomfortable. They mean facing the consequences for something that you did. It would be much easier to sweep your problems under a carpet so that you can never look at them again, but what happens the more you sweep that thing under the carpet? It builds up more and more and more so that your carpet becomes more of a mountain than a molehill with how much you’ve swept and put off.

A Christian doesn’t sweep away their sin nature but addresses it head-on because ultimately the power doesn’t lie in the sin … no, the power lies with the Son who has victory over the sin. That’s the hope that we as Christians live in.

If your hope is truly eternal, what does it matter if you lose your home, your source of income, your food, your possessions here and now? What you have, your soul and your life in Christ, can never be taken from you. You have a hope beyond what is seen. The Lord often sends tough times into our life to point us toward that hope and to help us relinquish the things that we hold too tightly to.

We are faced with a choice when the discipline of the Lord arrives: either we can harden our hearts against the Lord and his hand, and learn to hate discipline and to become bitter, or we can temper our hearts with humility to recognize who it is who brings that difficulty and to praise him for it.

Either we can be burned up in the refining fire, or we can let our dross be purged from us and learn to walk in righteousness so that we can bear much fruit.

John 15:2 ESV

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

The Lord is the pruner. He’s the one who loves you enough to put measures into place that you might grow and bear fruit, that you may be more refined. Part of living life in submission to Jesus Christ as Lord means submitting to his correction as well. Fully trusting that God will take care of you and will provide for you in the end, no matter how uncomfortable it may be in the meantime. That’s why Christians confess their sins. And when they do, the Lord is faithful and just to forgive them of sins and to cleanse them of all unrighteousness. The dross is purged away.

So, we’ve seen the Lord as the fatherly disciplinarian, the perfect disciplinarian, and the refining disciplinarian. How are we to live in light of this?

Well, I have three questions for you.

Application

Do you value discipline?

Proverbs 12:1 ESV

Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but he who hates reproof is stupid.

Meant to refine you. Should not hold a negative connotation in your mind but we should be willing and eager to enter the fire.

Do you exercise discipline well?

Proverbs 22:15 ESV

Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.

Meant to be exercised perfectly, as the Lord has shown. The right exercise of discipline is good for those under your charge. Do not be unloving to them by refraining from ever using the rod.

Do you love the hand that disciplines you?

Jesus says to the churches in the book of Revelation,

Revelation 3:19 ESV

Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.

Discipline comes from the Lord.

The Father disciplined his own son, and yet the Son never ceased loving him in return.

Is there anyone you need to ask forgiveness of? Have you become embittered against someone who exercised discipline over you, and you’re still holding a grudge against them? Seek forgiveness and healing in the Lord.

Conclusion

The Lord is a Loving Disciplinarian, who exercises his fatherly love toward his people through perfect correction that they may be refined and saved from the dross of sin. We as Christians are to live in light of who God is, following his example of discipline and not neglecting to exercise it or growing bitter against it in our own lives.

As Job 5:17-18 says,

Job 5:17–18 ESV

“Behold, blessed is the one whom God reproves; therefore despise not the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he binds up; he shatters, but his hands heal.

May you be healed by the Lord today and tomorrow and the next day and proclaim the marvelous mystery of the Lord our God to the ends of the earth, Amen.

We are dismissed.