Hebrews 12:3-17

Introduction

A few years ago, shortly after we got married, Lauren and I offered to babysit for a couple that used to come to our church so that they could get out of the house for the night. This was long before we had kids of our own, so it was the first time that we got to spend time around young kids and take care of them together. It was almost the trial run, you know? As if we were testing the waters to see how each of us would relate to a child as a guardian. Now I had been around kids more than your average boy in my teenage years. I used to babysit my youth pastor’s five kids when they were all under age ten, and I was a camp counselor for several years at a moms and babies camp for a week during the summer. I didn’t consider myself a professional, but it also wasn’t my first rodeo. Plus, I love kids. The Sunday that Lauren and I met for the first time, I was preaching down at my church in LA and said from the stage that I wanted twenty kids. So I was primed and ready for this evening of babysitting. The couple had two kids, but that night we were only watching one of them, the younger one, who was roughly a year old at the time. Shortly after we arrived and the couple left, it was time to put him down to bed. Lauren gave him a bottle and burped him, we both went into his room to say goodnight, we gently put him down in his crib, and left the room. Immediately the dude lit up, crying. So we go back in and try to soothe him, sing songs, rock him back and forth, then lay him down again in his crib and leave. More crying. We did it a third time. Still crying. Today, having two young kids of my own, this would be another completely normal day in the Geib house, and I wouldn’t bat an eye. But six years ago, I was all out of options and beginning to get concerned. The kid just kept on crying, and it felt like we couldn’t calm him down unless we were holding him. I began to worry if he was okay—maybe he was sick, maybe something happened when we were putting him down to bed, like he bumped his head or got his hand stuck in the side of the bars and got hurt, but something was definitely wrong. I began to wonder if we should call his parents and let him know. Meanwhile, Lauren was completely calm. She kept telling me that everything was fine and that he would go to sleep eventually. But then the dude got hiccups. And with every hiccup, he cried harder. Now, I thought, something was definitely wrong, and we needed to call someone right away. I took out my phone and began Googling, “how long should you let a kid hiccup until you call the doctor?” The first article I read said an hour. The second article I read said six hours. The third article I read essentially said forever, because there’s really no danger in a child hiccupping. That made me spiral all the more. How could you know which answer was the right one, and what if we make the wrong choice by waiting too long? I kept sharing my findings with Lauren, but she kept on reassuring me that the kid was fine, that he would sleep eventually and that the hiccups would stop. And she was right. I don’t remember exactly how long it took (probably like 30 minutes start to finish, to be honest), but eventually he fell asleep, we put him down, and we were able to go out to the living room to watch a movie and wait for his parents to come home.

Lauren and I look back on the night and chuckle when we think of it. But I learned something that night: Don’t Google every symptom your kid has. That’s a joke, but for real. No, what I really learned is that parenting can be hard because everyone has a different opinion on how to do something, and it can be hard to know which is the most effective and best way to relate to your child. And in no other area of parenting is this more true than theories of disciplining your child. I Googled (for fun, no pun intended) “categories of how to discipline children” this past week, and the very first thing that popped up at the top of the Google search was a list of not five, not ten, but fifteen different and unique approaches to child discipline, each with a few articles attached to them, each with their own followers and critics, each with their own pros and cons. Things such as “Gentle discipline”, “Positive discipline”, “Natural consequence discipline”, “Choice-based discipline”, “Uninvolved parenting”, “Permissive parenting”, and so on. I don’t know what category I would fit into because I didn’t read the definition of each result, but my tendency is to fall into more of the authoritative types: There are rules and expectations for Charis and Caspian. Charis breaks a rule. I let her know clearly what she did (sometimes with an accompanying punishment, such as getting to read two books at nighttime instead of three, or needing to take a break at the dinner table, etc.), what our expectations are, and encourage her to act differently next time. For instance, Charis is in the season of her life where she tests how far boundaries can bend before we break. She’s beginnnig to say no, beginning to not respond when we ask her to do something or behave a certain way, express intense emotions like frustration with her fists, etc. Disciplining your children in this season is one of the most demanding and exhausting things we’ve encountered so far because there are constantly new boundaries being tested, and you have to be consistent and hyper-aware of your own behavior so that you model the right way to behave for your kid. And usually when Charis does something truly egregious, such as pushing or hitting Caspian, or hitting us out of anger, then I become very firm and direct. Usually when she learns that she may only be able to read two books instead of three at bedtime, she becomes irate, throwing her body and hands around haphazardly (usually connecting with either Lauren or I or the food on her dinner plate) and screaming loudly. You feel like you’re not only the sheriff, but you’re also the judge, the correctional institution, the mental health therapist, and the security blanket all at the same time. It’s exhausting.

Hook

It’s exhausting because you’re always checked in to what’s going on in your child—what they’re thinking, what they’re feeling, and how they’re acting. A popular parent Instragram influencer guy says that your tiredness as a parent means that you’re parenting well, because you’re involved in your kids life intentionally. But you know what’s so encouraging about that? That’s how God treats us too. Our time this morning is going to be in Hebrews 12:3-17, which is all about how God disciplines us as his children. But God’s discipline isn’t meant to discourage us or push us away or lead us to believe that he’s angry with us and disowning us. Surprisingly, it’s the opposite. We’re invited to see God’s discipline as confirmation that we are his children, because he’s involved and checked into the life of his children.

Body

Exposition

Let’s begin reading our section and pulling it apart. We’re actually going to go back to verse 1 and star there so that we can get a running head start int our section:

12 Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, 2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

The author of Hebrews compares our Christian commitment to Jesus like running a race with him as the prize that we keep our eyes and our hopes set on just like he kept us, church, as the prize for enduring the cross. And it’s precisely because he endured the shame and pain of the cross for us that the author continues on to say this:

3 For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you won’t grow weary and give up. 4 In struggling against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

It’s almost as if he commands us to compare our willpower and endurance against Jesus’. Spoiler alert, you’ll lose every time. Consider, think deeply, meditate and hold at the front of your mind the fact that Jesus endured such hostility and shame from sinners for you. He endured that intense, deep level of suffering that led ultimately to his murder. Just like Jesus stayed faithful when it was hard instead of giving up, you do as well because you have not yet resisted sin to the same extent of suffering that he endured. If Jesus who was both fully man and fully God endured the cross, you can endure your struggle against sin a little bit longer. Toughen up, buttercup. He goes on to ask them a rhetorical question:

5 And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons: My son, do not take the Lord’s discipline lightly or lose heart when you are reproved by him, 6 for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and punishes every son he receives.

Let’s stop right there

Exhortation

Conclusion