Now let us turn to the word of God in the 12th chapter of Hebrews and verse 5. Hebrews 12 verse 5. 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. Ye have forgotten the exhortation that speaketh unto you as unto children. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. There are two things principally, of course, mentioned in this text. First of all, what we've forgotten. And secondly, the instruction which what we have forgotten gives to us. The quotation in the text is from the third chapter of Proverbs as you may have noticed as we read in our reading. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. Now this is a singular expression, ye have forgotten the exhortation. Let us concentrate for a moment upon this extraordinary faculty that we have as the people of God of forgetting the things which are most important for us. A good deal we remember, we might be better to forget, no doubt at all. But we are being rebuked at the moment for the things that we forget. These Hebrews to whom Paul was writing were in considerable trouble. Things were not working out with them as they expected in the Christian life. The Kingdom of God for them meant something far different from what they originally supposed. And their troubles, since their conversion, instead of growing less, were multiplying. Sometimes the so-called simple gospel is presented to people, especially to young people, in a way that suggests, come to Christ and lose all your troubles. The opposite you know is usually the case. Come to Christ and find trouble, for you will indeed. He that taketh not up his cross and followeth after me, he cannot be my disciple. And if I know anything at all about the Bible and its terms, I know this, that the cross means trouble. Hence we ought to be very careful about how we present the Word of God especially to the young, the immature and the inexperienced. Though I'll grant you that some even in the latest phases of their life exhibit all these same characteristics of immaturity and inexperience in these things. We ought to make it clear and plain from the beginning. That conversion is a process of repentance. It is also a process of trial and error. That conversion brings us into many dark places. That it doesn't rid us of our troubles but introduces us to trouble in a new sense altogether than we have ever known before. These Hebrew Christians to whom Paul was writing had been to the latest conventions and crusades. They had been listening to those fancy preachers who come along with stories of easy spiritual El Dorados where all is gold and all is wealth and everything is so, so convenient and happy. The formula of these preachers is always conversion, power, and sometimes they add unhealing. Beware of them dear friends. I saw a headline only this weekend of one of them. I've no doubt he was a good man. I've not the slightest doubt he was very earnest and sincere man. But these were his three watchwords in his great campaign. Conversion, power, healing. You know, they speak about distress of the body and of the mind, as though it were something entirely of the devil, whereas very often it is of God. They speak of illness, distress and pain and suffering, as though it were something to be conjured away by a wave of a wand. some text of scripture, some experience which you can get in a moment of time just by going in for it. This is the kind of preaching from which we have suffered all too long. With these gentlemen everything is conquering and overcoming. All is joy and shouting and singing. A paradise here, in readiness for a paradise above. One wonders what really awaits them in heaven, for according to what they say they seem to have got everything down here below. Other of these friends of had taught the Hebrews that conversion was the solution of all their problems. It would put their families right. It would convince the people at the office. Everything would be oh so so successful. What they had forgotten and what their popular preachers had forgotten was that through much tribulation we must enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And so often a man's homes shall be they of his own household. And Christ comes to divide and not to unite. The kingdom of heaven was certainly righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost for these Hebrew believers. But they were learning and learning fast that it also exposed its citizens of this kingdom of heaven to the full fury of the devil. and that one of the most convincing proofs of the genuineness of conversion is the peculiar conflict which ensues upon it and the heavy discipline of life to which it introduces us. You can call it, if you like, the cross. Grace is free. That's what the Gospel proclaims. The wine and milk of gospel grace are without money and without price, the prophet tells us. And yet, despite that fact, Christ is dearly bought by those who trust in him. Not with the coiling of our own merit or our own obedience, but with the pain which results from the losing of this world. with the gaining of this world's opposition, its enmity and its cruelty, and with the implacable opposition of the devil and of our evil, depraved hearts within. Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you, that he might sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not, And when thou art brought back, strengthen thy brethren. Things that we are always apt to forget. Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children. There are many things we are apt to forget as Christian people. We need to be constantly reminded of them. That's why it's so important that we should come regularly to hear the Word of God. You might just miss something. That might make all the difference. And join everything together in your own mind, in your own experience. Because you have not neglected the house of God, you come into the benefit. I still remember it deeply. I was not often away from school when I was a lad. I thank God that, although I've got a weak stomach, I've always got good health. I always seem to get around somehow or other. I don't know how long this may continue, but we are thankful that so far, at any rate, we have got through. On one of the few occasions when I was away from school, or something, I forget what it was, I suppose it was only a day or two, some point of grammar had been explained, apparently, in my absence. I was pretty good at grammar and English from the beginning. But you know, I went for years without that point being properly clear to me. It wasn't until long, long after I left school, I began to get much more mature in my mind, in the pursuit of knowledge, that I eventually caught up upon the thing that I'd missed. Strange thing that, isn't it? Well, I could have gone to the teacher and asked, but then we didn't do things like that in those days. We were very, very awe-inspired by the teacher. We used to raise our hats, caps to them every time we saw them. Now we don't have a cap to raise, do we? For what they do today. But at any rate we, the remoteness and the respect, the veneration was so great in those days. We just didn't volunteer anything like that. It never even occurred to my mind. You don't know what you miss, dear friend. If you are voluntarily absent from the house of God, God will see that you don't miss anything when it's through no fault of your own. He will see it made up to you. But, we ought to be acquainted with every detail of God's Word. Here's a text, I'm sure that you've never heard a sermon upon it before, I'm sure I haven't neither, never even read one on this text. And yet, how important it is, ye have forgotten the things that Christians forget. And they might be reminded of it, but they weren't there at the crucial time. Now the things we are apt to forget, besides that which the apostle is particularly referring to, are these. We are apt to forget that the world crucified Christ, our Lord. And therefore they won't be friends for you and for me, if we bear his cross. There is no mistake about that. Paul said, I am crucified unto the world, and the world unto me. God forbid that I should glory, saving the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. And again I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. It is enough that the servant be as his Lord, the world crucified Christ, And you're on the road to the same faith when you take up your cross and follow Him. That's a thing we're apt to forget. The preachers are apt to forget it. When they give rosy, painted views of the Christian life to those yet unconverted to try to induce them to get rid of their troubles and have all their questions answered and all their problems solved. by coming to Christ. Christ is the answer. You know the slogans don't you? And there's nothing more deadly than a truism which only goes so far and doesn't tell us all the truth. That's one thing we're apt to forget that the world crucified Christ and if we are converted we are on that road. Another thing we are liable to forget is that we have a world of sin within us. A world of sin which is subtle, deceptive, delusive. We are apt to be ensnared by the condition of our own heart. We think that we are doing well. We think as we jog along the Christian pathway that Everything is alright with us. We forget that the work of repentance is continual and most needful. We don't watch and pray lest we enter into temptation. We are apt to think that salvation is some automatic thing. And our sanctification goes on alright, having begun is bound to go on. But if we apply that type of mind, it may well be we'll discover some day that it hasn't begun at all, and what did begin was only a counterfeit. We have a world of sin within, which is subtle and deceptive and delusive. Be on our guard against evil, against the rising tide of anger, wrath, strife, sedition, heresies. Let not the sun go down upon your rock. Don't nurse an offence and a resentment against somebody to the following day. If you must keep it till nightfall, make sure that that's the end of it, that it's put in its grave there, or it'll rise up with seven devils exceedingly stronger than itself with the next morning light. Let not the sun go down upon your rock, neither give place to the devil. Moreover, we forget that we have a condition of our flesh. which always is crying out for the easy road and would, if it could, avoid the cross and trial and affliction. There is a natural shrinking against pain. We don't enjoy martyrdom. There's something wrong with the people who enjoy martyrdom and persecution. We don't naturally take to these things. But that's one thing. It's another thing to forget. That there is within us a tendency to cry out for the easy road. And by avoiding trouble, we avoid the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us remember it is the way the Master went should not the servants tread it still. We are apt to forget too the history of the people of God. Their history of warfare, travail and distress. Oh we like to travel through the catalogue of the heroes of the faith in the 11th chapter of Hebrews. Haven't we just taken about six months to do it dear friends? six happy months of going along with the troubles of other people as they overcame. We are apt to forget that their history is our history, that their troubles are our troubles, and the lessons they learned are the lessons we can only learn as we travel the same roads. We are all there, dear friends, With them of whom the world was not worthy, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. We are apt to forget that this world is not our rest. How many people seek all their comforts in this life? How many of the people of God, in the very proper building up of their homes and making of them comfortable, and I'm all in favour of this, by the blessing of God we are able to do so. But not to the extent that we begin to think that this is all, and this is our rest. This is not our rest, we are a remainder of rest. for the people of God and this world is still our wilderness because we do not see the glory of Christ therein but we travel on to see his face whom some of us, says Bunyan, have come so far to behold. We forget too that the wilderness road offers no attractions to the flesh compared with what we leave behind in Egypt. We are apt to forget however the other side of the coin. We are apt to forget the bondage to Satan and sin from which mercy has delivered us. And so the children of Israel, in their hearts, turned back to Egypt. And they said, we remember, we remember. Oh, they do remember something. We remember the onions, the leeks and the garlic that he had there. And now in the wilderness we've got nothing but this light bread which they call Nanna. The same everyday breakfast, dinner and tea is always Nanna, Nanna, Nanna. We remember the onions, the leeks and the garlic. We remember the flavouring. We remember the well-spread table that we had in Egypt. But what they forgot was the hard bondage, the making of bricks without mortar, the lashes of the taskmaster. and groaning within themselves saying to themselves good God it were evening and when it was evening good God that it were morning. This was their life. Oh how quickly some professing Christians get into that state where they forget the bondage to Satan and sin from which mercy had delivered them and begin to repine and to complain at the bits of things which happen in this life. Why does God let me suffer these pains? Why does God permit me to have toothache and earache and headache and stomachache and all the rest of it? Oh how ready we are like little children to complain and cry out at the least little thing and forget the bondage to Satan and sin. from which divine mercy at awful cost has delivered us. We forget, aye we forget that we are sinners still and that God is carrying on his work of holiness within as he only can, as he only knows how. We forget that there's a problem deep down in the heart of every one of us which can never be driven out except by whips and scourges, by trial and affliction and moreover there are levels of divine knowledge and grace and joy and peace to which we may never be elevated except by those grim and dark ministers of God's providence, which seem to us so forbidding and foreboding, and yet they are the ministers of God, who bring us to his holiness and peace. We forget above all things, says Paul in this text, that we are children under the gracious hand of an all-wise father, who knows what is best for us, better than we can ever know ourselves. We forget that we are children under the gracious hand of an all-wise father. We're so used to the idea, some of us, that we're grown up, that we're adults, that we're men and women. We're so used to the idea when we see children, grandchildren, growing up around us. But we are indeed the people who have passed through life. We've got the experience. We've got the knowledge. We've got the know-how of living. Especially Christian living. For don't you see we've been so long on the road that we are quite grown up. And we forget dear friends that we are children still. Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, not unto grown-ups. The oldest of us here is a child. The most experienced under this roof this morning is only a little one. Only a child in these days. The divine wisdom is the wisdom of the Eternal Father who reigns over us all and knows our hearts and knows what is good for us. We have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children. We are children then, right? What is the characteristic of a child? You know the quick answer, don't you? especially you who have brought up children and are beginning to bring up grandchildren too perhaps. You know better than anyone else what is the characteristic of a child, what constitutes the whole difficulty of bringing up a child from the cradle until the time of his independence and discretion. The characteristic of a child is simply this, it wants its own way. Isn't that right? A child wants its own way. Why we have examples more than enough recently. I was staying in a household somewhere in the south of England only this weekend. They are two delightful little children, little girls. I like little girls. I'm used to them. I've got seven of them amongst my grandchildren and only one boy just arrived. I'm getting quite used to little girls. I think they're great. Hope they grow up as I think they are now. Well, they had two little girls. One was about four and the other was about two. And their parents were very good parents, very wise. Yet with all their wisdom, there was the indication they wanted their own way. While we were sitting down to tea one day and the very younger of the two, the one about two years old, looks up and asks, what would you like? Would you like honey or would you like honey? So Mother carefully spread the bread with honey and presented the slice. to the little one. No, I don't want honey, I want you. Would you ask for honey, dear? And honey you shall have. No, no, wouldn't have honey at all. And then she began to pull the place to pieces, of course. But mother had an effort with these little things of being very wise. Right, she said, out you go. Takes her by the little hand. The little one flops onto the floor, she has to be presently dragged out and sat upon the stairs outside with a piece of bread and jam in her hand and said, now, you don't come in until you've eaten your bread and jam. Mother knows what's best. You can't change your mind like that. And so after about five minutes the door opened and sure enough the bread and jam had disappeared. Where we smile, we probably did the same ourselves. You'll see many more examples of this. It's just an indication that even from our earliest days, the child wants its own way. Wants its own way. That's the whole of the trouble. Solve that and you've no difficulty at all about bringing up a family. And in saying that, we've said a lot, haven't we? It wants its own way. Now that's the characteristic of the flesh within. And you're a child, and I'm a child. I still want my own way. I say, oh Lord, no, not this way, no, no. Not honey jam, not jam honey. not dry bread but something on it. But the Lord says no dry bread, no jam, no honey, whatever it may be, because this is death. This is the way, the only way. So we sit in our rebellion, the rebellion of the flesh within, which complains, which struggles against it. It says no, no, no, I don't want this way. By saying that, what we really mean is, I want my own way. But then this isn't God's way, but that doesn't matter, it isn't my way. Let it be God's way the other way, but that's not the way I want. I want my own way. Why do you want it? Because I think that's best for me. I'd sooner have it that way. After all, I've got a mind of my own, I've got the will, I've got wisdom, I've got maturity, I've been a long time living. It's about time I was left to myself to choose my own way. No, no, it won't do. And the Eternal Father looks down and says, not your way, my way. And there was one in the garden who said, not my will, but thy will be done. If it be possible for this cup to be taken from me, so let it be. But if not, let thy will be done, O Father. So he prayed in our nature, on an hour behind, and in all things sought to please him, who had sent him for the work of our redemption. And you don't know, beloved, you don't know at all. What service you may be rendering to somebody and what glory you are bringing to the name of Christ by patience, enduring, of chastening, pain, sorrow, trials, misunderstanding, difficulty, Three quarters of our address is still to come. The time has gone. I don't need to prepare a sermon for next Lord's Day. I've got a couple more here coming. I close with a quotation from Suso, the Italian contemplator of the Middle Ages. who before the Reformation was one of the men whom God raised up to purify his church when it was in bondage. He takes his figures from the time that then existed. He'd been to the tournament. He'd seen the jousting of the knights in armour with their lances couched upon their great horses charging and throwing one another down. He'd heard the plaudits of the people. He'd seen the glances of admiration at this great man or that who overwhelmed all opposition. And this is what he wrote. Never was there so much gazing at a knight who has come off well at the tournament as there is gazing of the heavenly host at a man who comes off well in suffering according to the will of God. See brethren we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses who we can't see but who can see us. Seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us 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 finisher of our faith. Amen.