God's Discipline

Welcome/Prayer/Questions/ Intro

Good Morning Church! How is everyone doing this morning? It is so good to be back with you church family! It is such a joy to worship Jesus Amen? Amen!

Prayer- Lord, We come before you this morning and ask that you would come and be in our midst. Holy Spirt open our hearts and minds for what you have for us this morning!

As we look at this passage this morning we are going to be addressing some big questions:

What do we do when we are tired, worn out and discouraged?

What does discipline mean and what does God’s discipline look like?

Connection Point: Now when we hear the word Discipline we might think of different things.

Wooden Spoon

Leather belt

Anger and yelling

In my house the most common form of discipline was grounding- It didnt really teach me anything.

Transition: No matter what our experience with the word discipline is this morning I want to invite us to look at this word with fresh eyes leaving our baggage at the door. Remember this is God’s house not the one you grew up in. (Turn to Hebrews 12 starting at verse 1 and we are going to walk through this passage t and see The writer uses multiple analogies and images of God to help us understand discipline.

Walking through the Text

Context: What is the first question we have been learning to ask? Context! (Whats going on here?)

The author, we dont know who, is painting a picture for us. One that would be very familiar in the greco-Roman world.

Stadium- large arena with a large crowd surrounding athletes. The writer says to this congregation you are running a race.

There is a big cloud of witnesses cheering you on (all the heros of faith in the previous chapter)

Run with your eyes fixed on Jesus (forerunner) He started this race for us, in fact he has already run this race. Thus, he becomes our trainer.

He is the one we look to as we run. That is the contexut of how we read the rest of this passage. God is our trainer in this race.

Discipline: What does it means?

The author says that we must remember that God is discipling us as sons and daughters. But what does that look like? Does it mean punishment?

The word for discipline in this passage is the Greek word padeia, meaning education- This word is comes from the same word for child - Pidov

Essentially, this word means teaching, educating, and nurturing. It is almost always used in reference to training a child.

This word never refers to any kind of corporal or punative punishment.

So the second image of God the author uses to help us understand is the relationship between a father and a child.

In Hebrew culture it was the father’s role to teach a son. The author says God is playing that role for us.

This really hit me in 2015, when I lost my father and began to see the Lord as my heavanly father.

So God teaching is teaching us as a Father should! Thus part of being a Child of God means we must learn from the Father.

The writer even admits, that our parents probably tried their best- I think every parent struggles with how to raise a child- I know I will. There are times when you have to teach children tough lessons, but punitive and violent punishment is not a good way to teach.

but when God’s the teacher its for our benefit.

What is God teaching you?

Transition: Yet learning from the Creator isnt as easy as learning 1,2,3 or ABC! Its hard! Its tough. I think sometimes God teaches us the hardest lessons.

Learning from God takes intentional commitment. When we want to learn something it takes commitment. Whether its riding a bike or learning rocket science.

I have learned this as God has taught me about patience over the past several months.

Ironically he has done this through woodworking.

I have been learning how to make a Mortise and Tenon joint for several months now.

Here is my first one (Slide)

Here is some of the things people said about it, but if we want to learn something we have to “lean in”. Instead of giving up I leaned in!

Leaning in on M&Ts

What do I need to know

What tools do I need?

Practice, practice, Practice (Slides with pictures)

Yet, Im still not done learning! Its the same way with God teaching us too!

We need to learn as a community, this race is actually a group project look at verses 12-15. The writer is drawing us back to this arena analogy.

We are running this race together church!

We need to strengthen our weak knees and drooping hands!

The writer quotes Proverbs again in this final section when he says, we need to make make level paths for our feet, so that the lame might not be disabled, but healed.

This is cool because think about this, we are as a community making a path forward.

Think about it this way when you blaze a trail in the woods

clear out the way of things that would trip you up rocks branches, ect

Then you mark the way forward by paint or signs

This is all so that people can follow the same trail after us! Church that is what we are doing! Blazing the trail for future runners in this race of faith!

Transition: Now I want us to really pause and reflect on this passage this morning so we are going to break up into groups and discuss. (Slide)

We are going to break into small groups and talk about this passage.

Leaders

Groups (Slides)

Locations

Go!

Prayer

Benediction: Hebrews 13:20-21

20 Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, 21 equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.