God's Dealing With Sons

Read: Hebrews 12:5-7

Hebrews 12:5–7 KJV 1900

And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?

Introduction:

Christians suffer for all kinds of reasons.

Sometimes, we suffer just because we’re part of the natural world. I mean, lets face it, we live in a world that has been cursed with disease and sickness and trouble and thorns and briars. One lady in her 80s was bedfast, and the pastor came to visit her, and she said, “Pastor, can you tell me why I’m suffering?” He said, “Yes, ma’am, I can.” She said, “Why?” He said, “You’re getting old”—“You’re getting old.” Hey, folks, hang on, hang on—you’ll wear out. We’re just a part of it. That’s natural suffering.

And then, sometimes we suffer because we’re godly, and the kind of suffering that we suffer is persecution, for the Bible says,

“All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” If you’re not being persecuted, try to keep it a secret because it’s just simply a sign that you’re not living godly in Christ Jesus, for the Bible clearly, plainly says, without stutter or stammer, “All who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” And, if you read over here in the 11th chapter of the Book of Hebrews, say about verse 36, of some of these people, and it says, “And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented. Of whom the world was not worthy; they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and cave of the earth.” Had they done anything wrong? No, they had done something right. They stood up for the Lord Jesus Christ and they suffered for it. Others suffer, perhaps like Job, as a trial of their faith. Job was tempted. Satan was allowed to tempt Job, not to show that Job could sin, but that Job would not sin. Some of us may be allowed certain sufferings, sickness, distress, reverses to shut the devil’s mouth, because the devil says, “Well, the only reason he serves God is he’s never had any trouble. Now, God, You’ve bribed him; You bought him off.” God says, “No, you don’t know my servant. Let him suffer, and he will still praise me, and say, ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.’ ”

But there’s another kind of suffering, and that’s what we call chastisement, where we, like Jonah, who disobey the Lord, and we get into trouble because of our disobedience. And, many times, when this chastisement comes, we fail to remember the exhortation that God had already given us in the Old Testament, and sometimes we tend to want to hang it up, to faint, to quit.1  Adrian Rogers, “The Loving Chastening of God,” in Adrian Rogers Sermon Archive (Signal Hill, CA: Rogers Family Trust, 2017), Heb 12:5–15.

I want us to consider three things about the chastisement or discipline of God.

1. The Motive of Chastisement

Notice what the writer of Hebrews says is the motive of God’s chastising us - It is love - God’s love for us motivates him to chastise us which sometimes although not always brings pain and suffering.

You should know that this wasn’t original with the Hebrew author - he was saying you should know this look at Hebrews 12:5 “ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as children...” What exhortation? What is he talking about? Well you have to go back a few years but you can find it even today:

Proverbs 3:11–12 KJV 1900

11 My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; Neither be weary of his correction: 12 For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; Even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.

Isn’t that amazing - in the Old Testament we find that God correcteth or chastises or disciplines those he loves.

When you face rebuke or chastisement from God - don’t get down in the dumps. Don’t feel like giving up -

Don’t despise or lightly esteem or look down on it - nor faint when you are going through it...

You can say, “God loves me enough to correct me”

We see the Motive of God’s chastisement is love - but how does he chastise?

2. The Means of Chastisement

I look at it like this -

What does the text say?

It says those whom the Lord loves he disciplines

But then it goes on and says he “scourgeth” every son whom he recieves

That word “scourgeth” means “to whip or beat”

God has designed thousands of ways for the animal kingdom to come into existence, but in my estimation the birth of the baby giraffe is of all births the most impressive. See it once and you'll never forget it.

The zoo health center was called at 9:30 A.M. and we were informed that the female Angola giraffe was giving birth. If the veterinarian and I wanted to watch we could. Neither of us had ever witnessed a giraffe birth before, we headed quickly for the giraffe barn. We parked and walked quietly to a location where about seven of us were afforded an earthbound view of an elevated event. I sat on a bale of hay next to Jack Badal, a man considered by most of us to be the greatest animal keeper alive. He was a man of few and well-chosen words, and when I sat down, he only nodded and continued to suck the sweetness from the alfalfa stem he had pulled from the hay bale on which we sat.

I noticed the calf's front hooves and head were already visible and dripping with amniotic fluids. I also noticed that the mother was standing up. “When is she going to lie down?” I said to Jack, who still hadn't said anything.

“She won't,” he answered.

“But her hindquarters are nearly ten feet off the ground. That calf might get hurt from the fall,” I said. Jack just gave me that look that told me I had probably said something that revealed my ignorance.

I wondered why no plans were being made to procure a fireman's net to catch the baby, so I asked. “Listen, Gary,” he said. “You can go try to catch the calf if you want, but remember that its mother has enough strength in her hind legs to kick your head off, which is what she'd do if you get anywhere near that calf. They've killed lions that tried to get their calves.”

I was able to sit quietly for a while and observe the calf's journey down the birth canal. Its neck and front legs were fully extended and dangling freely, ten feet above the hard ground on which it was soon to fall. It seemed unbelievable to me that in just a few minutes this newborn was going to be introduced to such trauma. Ten feet! To the hard ground! (It had taken me twelve years to get up the nerve to jump off a high dive approximately ten feet high into clear deep water. This giraffe calf was going to top that during its first thirty minutes of visible existence.)

The moment we had anticipated was not a disappointment. The calf, a plucky male, hurled forth, falling ten feet and landing on his back. Within seconds, he rolled to an upright position with his legs tucked under his body. From this position he considered the world for the first time, shaking some of the last vestiges of birthing fluids from his eyes and ears.

The mother giraffe lowered her head long enough to take a quick look. Then she positioned herself so that she was standing directly over her calf. She waited for about a minute and then did the most unreasonable thing. She

swung her pendulous leg outward and kicked her baby, so that it was sent sprawling head over heels (or hooves, in this case). I turned to Jack and exclaimed, “Why'd she do that?”

“She wants it to get up, and if it doesn't she'll do it again.”

Jack was right—the violent process was repeated again and then again. The struggle to rise was momentous, and as the baby grew tired of trying, the mother would again stimulate its efforts with a hearty kick.

Finally, amidst the cheers of the animal care staff, the calf stood for the first time. Wobbly, for sure, but it stood. Then we were struck silent when she kicked it off its feet again.

Jack's face was the only face not expressing astonishment. “She wants it to remember how it got up,” he offered. “That's why she knocked it down. In the wild it would need to get up as soon as possible to follow the herd. The mother needs the herd, too. Lions, hyenas, leopards, and hunting dogs all would enjoy young giraffes. They'd get it, too, if the mother didn't teach her baby to quickly get up and

get with it.”

Sometimes we have to be bruised and broken to be build up

Sometimes we have to fall and fail to be fixed

We are chastised because God loves us - GOd is motivated by Love to teach us - and he uses some methods that may seem hurtful or painful to us - but what it brings about is the reason why we must go through them:

3. The Materialization of Chastisement

We find the materialization of this chastisement later on down in the passage - Hebrews 12:11

Hebrews 12:11 KJV 1900

11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

When Mama Giraffe is finished kicking her newborn baby Giraffe it will be able to get up and run for its life if need be.

But she isn’t finished - there are many more things it has to learn.

So it is with us - we have to learn and that learning that chastisement brings us more and more into Christlikeness.

Are you being chastised? Hang on - hold on you just watch one day you will look in the spiritual mirror and notice you are looking more and more like your Heavenly Father!!!