Some of you are too young to remember Jimmy Buffett, but he sang a song called Changes in Attitudes. And it just came into my mind about what I'm talking about this morning. And sometimes you get exactly what you wish for, just like I think Jimmy Buffett has. Let's think about changing attitudes for a little bit here as we start the sermon. Certainly attitudes change all the time, and they change a lot these days. They change towards all kinds of things, and it only takes one generation for this to happen. So you can pick a topic, and we're thinking about discipline this morning. One generation knows a thing, and then they hate that thing, and then they rebel against that thing, and they refuse to teach it to their children, in contradiction to what we read in the law of God this morning. And then what happens to those children? They no longer know the thing. And so the new thing that wasn't true before now becomes normal, and people start to think that this is the way that it has always been since the world began. When you're a child, you think that way, and then you grow up. Many people don't realize this, but when people change their attitudes about something God has spoken about in His Word, their attitudes about God change, too. The horse starts to be led by the cart. So let's compare one specific attitude people have had and how this mirrors the view of God contemporary with it. And we will look at our cultural attitude in the past and the present about the issue of discipline. Not long ago, you had discipline that was not only allowed, but it was encouraged in the public school system. And little kids are saying, what? That's not possible. Believe it or not, it's true. Remember the infamous dunce cap that you had to wear in front of the whole class while sitting in the corner of the room and it humiliated you in front of your friends. There were other forms of corporal punishment that were encouraged and one very obviously unbiased historian writes this as a summary of it. She says, other strange, and I like that word, strange punishments. Why would it be strange? It wouldn't be strange 100 years ago, but it's strange writing about it now. Other strange punishments took place in these one-room schoolhouses. If a child was to misbehave, they would have to outstretch their arms and the teacher would place heavy books in their arms. The student would have to hold it in that uncomfortable position for about an hour and a half. The children were also smacked on the head or knuckles with a ferrule, which was 15 to 18 inches long and wasn't used for measuring, just to whack them. Sometimes troublesome boys would even be banished to the girls' cloakroom. The punishment is very peculiar because it was unbearable back then. Sometimes the teacher would draw a big circle on the chalkboard and have a troublesome child come up and place his nose in it for 30 minutes to an hour. If a pupil littered or spat, they would have to clean the whole floor too. A child who misbehaved would have to write the phrase, I will not, and fill in the blank with what they had done and repeat this phrase 100 times. In the 1800s, the worst punishments a child would ever receive was if a boy was naughty, the teacher would make him go and sit by a girl. Now, some of you may be old enough to remember these kinds of things that were done to your friends because they obviously were never done to you. Others have probably been exposed to this from television or movies. So I think of the classic stereotype, the strong disciplinarian. He would usually be a man if he was a headmaster or a woman if it's the teacher. And they're often portrayed as some kind of a fundamentalist Christian, aren't they? In the worst sense of the world. They see a child misbehaving and they actually start to take a kind of sadistic glee in whacking them or humiliating them in front of the class. Probably because they're remembering what it was like when they were a kid and some sort of weird psychology thing goes on in their head. I will have discipline in my class! You've seen it? Now, as we were learning, who can quote for me the name of the twelve apostles, Billy? Right? This strange mixture of religion and discipline. It always goes like that when it's portrayed. So clearly the view of God and the discipline go together. What's the image being portrayed here? The fundamentalist religious zealots are that way because their God is a mean tyrant who likewise takes glee in punishing people. His followers are just like him. And it's out of this particular association of an attitude of punishment that the particular view of God is likened for right or for wrong. Now we can take the total opposite extreme is that in our day where it isn't even possible to have any kind of discipline in class whatsoever. So this misbehavior is now met not with a rule or a rod but with a reward or not with telling off but with a trophy. Oh, that's good, Johnny. You're acting out how you feel. Let's all encourage Johnny Class to be himself and not pretend in front of us. Class, the Be Who You Are Award of the day goes to who? Johnny! Yay! Today, all punishment is frowned upon, and not only in school, but in public, and if the state has its way, even in our private homes. Adults don't scold their children, let alone reprimand someone else's misbehaving brat like they did when I was one of those brats long ago. In fact, patterns, the parents are so leery of these social taboos against discipline, which are reinforced by the media and even by our legal system, that you don't even find many sorts of discipline going on in private homes anymore. So you couldn't get any farther away from one stereotype in the 1800s to this stereotype of the 21st century. And along with it is a completely different kind of God that is in mind. Make no mistake. The God of today is not a mean, masochistic, tyrant father. It's a mean, it's a gentle, nurturing, loving mother who never raises her voice, who never judges, who never, who has no rules whatsoever, who lets us do whatever we want. These two gods are total opposites. And my point is, attitudes reflect theology, and attitudes change theology, and attitudes reinforce theology. It's kind of a chicken and egg thing. You ask, well, do bad views of God shape our attitudes, or do our attitudes and the likes and dislikes create a god in our own image? And I think the answer to that is yes, it's both of those things. Now neither view of God that I've given is a particularly biblical view of God. Both extreme attitudes about punishment that I've talked about here have strengths and weaknesses. Let's take this to interpreting the Bible now. So we come to this passage like the one that's before us today in Hebrews 12. But we also come to this passage with particular attitudes about what is being said and various views of God that are floating around in this room that prejudice our reading of the passages before we even start. Don't think that you come to the Bible as some sort of a neutral blank slate. because you don't. So how could we possibly hope to understand this passage properly? This is a pressing question for me to answer. And my hope is that in some small measure, the passage itself will be of help to us. Again, the subject is God's discipline in our lives. And I think that if we understand the passage rightly, it will shape our view of God, even as it shapes our view of discipline. And that is as it should be, as opposed to us shaping our view of the passage by the kind of God or view of discipline that we had before we come to the text. If you will listen to what this passage tells you today, the Word will shape both of your views. And it will help your own life when the inevitable discipline that some love to divvy out and others dread receiving comes to you. And believe me, it will come to you if you are one of His. Beloved, that's through a question of mine today. How are we to think about it when God comes to us and disciplines us? Because if you're really his child, you cannot escape it. You will not escape it. And to do so, to want to escape his discipline, is to beg to be an illegitimate child of the living God. The passage is Hebrews 12, 4 through 13. Now the context provides the reason that discipline comes up now. It begins in your struggle against sin in verse 4. Now, some may immediately try to connect this statement to discipline this way. They'll say discipline comes because we sin. See, it's what it says. When you sin, you need someone to set you straight with discipline. And so discipline is related directly to sin. But that's not what it says. It says in your struggle against sin, it does not say that you have sinned. This is really, really important. to get across to you. It says that you are struggling against sin. And that refers back to the pilgrimage, where we are strongly resisting the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil that have been discussed since the beginning of at least chapter 11, probably back into chapter 10. The context of discipline is thus our struggle against sin. Now, the next part of what is said is then the key to everything else that we will talk about today. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. Now, to whom does the shedding of blood refer? Well, one commentary suggests that it's still talking about you. Listen to what it says. The metaphor in this verse, resistant to the point of shedding your blood, comes from the sports arena. The author goes from one sport to the other, from the image of a race to that of boxing. In boxing, blood flows from the faces of the contestants when they withstand vicious blows. At times, serious injuries result in death. The imagery of withstanding the opponent to the point of shedding blood serves as a parallel to the reader's struggle against sin. And that's the end of the quote there. I think that this is pretty misguided. What we've seen is that it's quite possible that there isn't even a sports metaphor at all going on in Hebrews 12. Instead of a race, it's actually a pilgrimage metaphor that we talked about last week, where you have a long, hard journey, just like all the saints in the Old Testament did. They weren't in a race. They weren't running a marathon. They were on a pilgrimage to get to heaven. Now furthermore, whatever the metaphor is, there are two other verses that are in the way between the race and supposed boxing here. And that's verses two and three. They've been talking about Jesus's suffering, not about running a race. And it seems to me that he isn't talking about us shedding our blood. Rather, he's talking about Jesus. I think he's talking about something like Jesus in the garden prior to the crucifixion. What does Luke say? And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly and his sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground. Clearly, Jesus is struggling against sin at this moment. Father, if you're willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done." You think that that was an easy prayer? He's sweating drops of blood. What is his temptation? What is the temptation facing him? It's to not go through with the horrible suffering and death that he would face just a few short hours from that moment. It would have been the greatest sin in the history of the universe For Jesus to have given in and not done what He swore to do and what the Father sent Him to do in eternity past. Have you ever struggled against sin so mightily as your Lord Jesus did? And the answer is, of course you haven't. And that's precisely the point. But Jesus did. And this, so great, it opens the way for us to truly understand the Lord's discipline. If you understand that Jesus is at the center of this, then you can get the Lord's discipline straight in your own mind. If you don't, then it just becomes abstract, something that God is doing. Apart from Christ, apart from the Incarnation, apart from any kind of humanity, and you can go off in very terrible directions. For no harsh fundamental religious zealot or soft easygoing attitude understands Jesus at all in its discipline. Jesus and his struggle against sin is the key to the entire thing. Now, in the previous three verses we saw, this goes back to last week again, four commands to rid yourself of sin, to run with endurance, to regard Jesus and to reflect upon faith. And now we see that we are to do this in light of our struggle against sin. But says the preacher, this is something we already knew beforehand. One of the remarkable things about this text is that almost every single verse in it has some connection to the Old Testament. So we're going to be in the Old Testament quite a bit today. He says, have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? The thing is, he hasn't talked about this exhortation in this sermon called Hebrews, but God has talked about it. the Bible that they already knew it quite well. So this goes back to Proverbs chapter 3 verses 11 and 12 and he's quoting the Septuagint. My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord nor be wary when reproved by him for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. Now as we look at these two verses we need to see two things. The first one is I want us to get a handle on the meaning of the word discipline, and then I want us to look at the addition that the subdugent has from the Hebrew text, and it's the word chastises in the ESV. So first, what is discipline? What do you think it is? When that word comes to you, how do you interpret it before I even bias you? Only you can know the answer to that. Now, I think that many people, maybe most even, view discipline as exclusively related to punishment. Punishment is, of course, punitive. And so here are some words that sometimes come to mind. Retaliatory, vindictive, revengeful, harsh, and ruthless. Now, recall how I said many people relate discipline to sin. And now add this to this, that many people think about discipline as harsh, and vindictive, and a response to send. And you start to see where both of the extremes that I brought up at the beginning start to come into play. The gleeful schoolmaster who loves nothing more than to swap bratty kids, or the hypersensitive laissez-faire social worker that pampers spoiled brats and encourages rebellion in acting out. Both of those, in my opinion, stem from the same root belief that discipline is related only to sin and that it's necessarily harsh and ruthless. So it's either one or the other in those extremes. Now, maybe some of you had experiences like these on either one end of the spectrum growing up or the other, whether in school or at home. But this is very skewed view of discipline, and they can both create terrible harm upon the disciplined. So here's how the earliest use of the word was used. It was used for the acquiring of culture or becoming cultured. In other words, think of My Fair Lady or a Jane Austen novel or something like that. We still use the word like that in this way sometimes. What is your discipline? Are you a doctor, a lawyer, or a writer? or we speak of things like spiritual disciplines like prayer and meditation. As for the Greeks, discipline and the acquiring of culture came through education and it came especially through or for young sons. Now at first, just like in America, this was all about fathers homeschooling young Spartan boys. And later when the philosophers came along, it became increasingly a matter of the state At that point, only free people were allowed to be educated. But the family idea was retained where the pedagogue or the teacher would become like a father to a young boy. He would just take him on and he would educate and culture him. He would discipline him. Now, at no time was pampering the student ever tolerated, and yet simultaneously, as one dictionary puts it, quote, spiritual love of young people promotes education, fashions virtue, and everything depends on a good example. Fathers must not be teachers of wrongdoing to their children. Now, that's what the Greeks thought. It doesn't sound anything at all like the two examples at the beginning of this sermon, and yet that's the way it was in Greece for 500 years. Now, the Bible has a much more realistic view of human nature than the Greeks did, and so the sinful condition is taken into consideration in the Old Testament when it comes to discipline. And yet, education is not abandoned as the first meaning of the word. But education takes on a higher end. It's not simply the culture. I think it is that. And even in the Bible, you culture someone through discipline. But it's more than that. Discipline, in God's word, is to create holiness in a person. And that comes through teaching the law of God to the covenant children. So listen to Psalms and Proverbs. Teach me kindness and discipline and knowledge for I have believed your commandments. Do you hear how kindness is related to discipline in that verse? Teach me kindness and discipline and knowledge. Or here's one of the Proverbs. Hear you children the instruction or discipline of a father and attend to no understanding. In that one, you hear how discipline is parallel to understanding. Or again in the Proverbs, he that loves instruction or discipline loves sense, but he who hates reproof is a fool. And now in that instance, reproof is the opposite of discipline. We might call it discipline that comes because a person has sinned. And what's interesting is that Hebrew has a whole series of words for teaching and direction and for chastising and correction, but there's only one word in Hebrew to educate. And that's the word used in Proverbs 311 for discipline. The word is musar, to educate. And that's translated as paideia in Greek, or discipline. And therefore, even in our context, The word discipline that you see in these two verses, you see it twice, is about educating and enculturating and instructing and training in a righteousness. First and foremost, then, discipline is a setting right of the mind, as my dad likes to say. So why doesn't this come to our mind first and foremost when discipline comes up? Why is discipline a bad word in our culture today? It's because we think of punishment first. But why do we go straight to the idea of punishment? Well, maybe our very passage is something to do with this, though not for the right reasons. I think we're misinterpreting it. There's a four-part exhortation. It comes in two pairs. So it says, Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, and then at the beginning of the next verse, for the Lord disciplines those he loves. That's the beginning of two pairs. The next is, do not be weary when reproved, and then that one at the end, and chastises every son whom he receives. So two pairs, the first and second lines parallel one another. This is where we need to now think about how the Septuagint and the Hebrew are a little bit different from one another. If you go back to the Proverbs and you read it in just your regular Bible, it will say in the last line, as the father, the son in whom he delights. Very different than what's quoted here. As the father, what? It just says, as the father, the son in whom he delights. As the father, what? What does it say? And so the Greek translator supplied a word that he thought was synonymous with reproof. Now, reprove and chastising both seem to have in mind correction through punishment. And sin is clearly in mind here as we're being tempted to sin. If we fall, we need those things to correct us. And certainly discipline has that side to it if a person has sinned. So the Bible understands that corporal punishment done properly is good for a person. We've all heard the verse, whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves his son is diligent to discipline him. And that word there is the same word that we have here in discipline in Hebrews. Now you might misunderstand the rod there, that's not like a switch or a club, it's a staff that a shepherd would use on a sheep. Think about David in Psalm 23, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. The point was not to beat the tar out of the sheep, but to get the dumb animal back in step, right? It is corrective and sometimes it might have hurt a bit, but it's not punitive. So included in discipline can be corporal punishment, but it's not only corporal punishment. In fact, that's only a last measure, not a first or only measure for discipline. Discipline is about lovingly teaching and bearing with someone as they grow. Perhaps the most interesting thing about discipline in Hebrews 12 is that the first subject of it is not us. It's Jesus. That's the point here of really verse 3 and 4. If the analogy is the whole, he's making an analogy here, then Jesus has to have been disciplined by his father. Now, does that stun you if I say that? You know, that can't possibly be. He never sinned. If that's what's going through your mind, then you're not understanding discipline properly. Okay? Consider the language. You are struggling against sin, but you haven't struggled like Jesus has to the point of shedding blood over it. The analogies between Jesus as an incarnate man and you. Again, Jesus is the Son of God throughout Hebrews, but have you forgotten, he says, my son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. Again, the analogies between the Son of God and his other sons, which is you and I. And then finally, this quote from Proverbs ends with this language again, as the father, the son in whom he delights. Now again, in Proverbs, it's about discipline and that it ends as the father, the son in whom he delights. Does that, or in the, in the literal translation, the father, the son in whom he is well pleased. Does that remind you of anything in the new Testament about Jesus? That's exactly what the father says to Jesus at his baptism and at the transfiguration. In fact, the Hebrew translation of the New Testament uses the very same word as Proverbs does there, for, this is my son in whom I am well pleased. So again, the context of Proverbs 3 is discipline, but Jesus never sinned. And therefore, discipline does not always involve sin. That's why it's so important to understand Jesus here. So the way we should read the quote from Proverbs, I think, It's not like some English translations do when they translate the word discipline as something like chastening, because that seems to imply some kind of wrongdoing. If you have the ESV, it just uses the word discipline, and I think that's good and right. You should think of the first lines in a positive way. Discipline, setting forth your mind, being educated, being trained in holiness through God's law or whatever. The second lines, that's where the sin comes in, reproof and rebuke and scourging. That's the more negative side of the discipline. And yes, God does the latter. But with Jesus, he only did the former because Jesus never sinned. And so looking at the four lines again, you would have discipline, which is not because of sin and reproof, which is because of sin. And that starts to get you thinking about discipline in a whole different way than you might have before. Now, again, let's take this back to Jesus, and this now becomes the good news. Remember, we read this for the gospel. of the rest of the passage. So as we turn to the last verses of the text, we want to take a look at three things. We want to look at the necessity of discipline, and then the benefits of discipline, and then the proper response to discipline. So let's look at the necessity of discipline, verse 7. If there's a necessity of discipline, that means it's necessary. You have to have discipline in your life. It is for discipline that you have to endure, it says. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom the father does not discipline? Now sadly, with the deeply perverted view of discipline where it's vengeful retaliation against someone, That's so many people have these days when they think of the word this once upon a time rhetorical question, it's rhetorical here, right? We need to have to prove it to a bunch of people in our day. Maybe even some of our friends, maybe even ourselves. What are you talking about? We have to endure it. What are you talking about? The father would discipline me. And that's why we spent that time understanding what the word means. Now that's the point of showing you what it's all about. And my friend, discipline your children. If you have children, you've got to discipline them. If you don't, then you really don't have a right to be called their parent. Because you certainly aren't acting like it. Your job is not to be their best friend. I don't know how many friends I know that are my age and younger, that that's what's in their idea in their mind. Like, I have a child and my job is to be their buddy. It's not. Wait till they're adults. You can be their friend when they get older. Okay? But that's not your job. Your job is to create mature, cultured, holy adults. That's what it means to be a parent. Now, this verse here, Verse seven is actually an echo. I said, all these come from the old Testament of Deuteronomy eight, five. Just listen to what it says. No, then in your heart that as a man disciplines, his son, the Lord, your God disciplines you. And that fits well with the overall context of Hebrews, where time and again, he's used the whole Exodus story as an example, the Christians today, God tested them. They fell, but now we know that this testing was actually a form of discipline. Israel is the Lord's firstborn son. That's how the whole Exodus story starts. Let my firstborn son go. He lets him go. He goes into the wilderness and God starts to discipline his son. The first person in the Holy Trinity is the father. And the father, by definition, has a son. And he has acted in history in such a way as to show you that He is the father of all whom he disciplines. He won't even let the son of God be undisciplined. If you understand it rightly, that becomes a model of sorts for how you can discipline your own children. How does God discipline? He's always patient. He's always kind. He's never vengeful. He's slow to anger. He's abounding in love. And yet he's resolute in purpose. And he will grow his child up so that his child is conformed the way he wants him to be conformed. Now, the end of this discipline is heaven. It's not earth. Earth is the crucible of our discipline. This is the suffering that we are given in this life, and we are given it by God. I came across a book this week called, Does God Send Sickness? And then the back cover reads like this. God has been taking the blame for sickness and disease for centuries. We've been told that he sends sickness as an aid to spiritual growth and piety or as punishment for sin. Vast amounts of scripture have been cited to support this claim. The idea has contributed to the lack of faith prevalent in the church today for healing and deliverance. After all, if God gave a person sickness, then his willingness to heal is questionable. This is just typical health and wealth nonsense. more in line with today's view of discipline, to be honest with you, than anything that we see in the Bible. We've seen these kinds of things that he has in mind already with regard to how does God discipline? Loss of property in chapter 10, imprisonment, torture, death, all these things in chapter 11, death for the name of Jesus. But sometimes the discipline can also take forms of natural suffering, like it did with Job. And so when you think about all these kinds of things that can come upon you, how will you respond when you lose your house or your family simply because you are God's son? How will you respond when these kinds of torments and temptations Horrible things happen because you're a Christian. How will you respond? What are you longing for? Heaven or happiness here and now? Thomas Manton said, afflictions do not make the people of God miserable. A Christian's worst state is happiness. He who loves God is like a die. Throw him high or low, he still lands on a solid square. Sometimes he may be afflicted, but he's always happy. But you say, I don't want to be disciplined. I'm glad you say that. Who does? Not even the author of Hebrews wants to be disciplined. That's why verse 11 says, well, for the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. Okay? He's not living in some kind of pie in the sky world. He knows that it's not fun. Literally, it does not seem a joy. That's what it says. Rather, it seems sorrowful. But that's exactly why James says, consider it pure joy. my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." And again about Jesus, do we not read, in bringing many sons to glory, God should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. And again in Hebrews, earlier in Hebrews, being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. You read those verses, you go, how is he made perfect? I thought he already was perfect. It's not talking about that. It's talking about reaching heaven. How does God do that? How did the father do that for the son? Through discipline. So our passage continues in verse eight. If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, That goes all the way back to Chapter 11. If you are without discipline, then you're illegitimate children, and you're not sons. Now, the King James, if you have that, translates the word illegitimate as bastard. And that's someone born of noble character from his father, or from a noble father, but his mother is a commoner. He's not the king's wife. He's the product, then, of adultery, and he holds no claim upon the ancestry of the father. Basically, a bastard is a counterfeit. Now, because the word has become a curse word in our day, I think that's why you find something like illegitimate being used in the ESV. But I think, frankly, that just softens the meaning of it, in my view. Sometimes harsh words are needed to wake us up. If we're never disciplined, then we have no claim to God as our father. This is the necessity of discipline. Without it, you can't be a Christian. Now that leads to the second thing, the benefits of discipline. We may not like discipline, but as James said, it creates something that's vital in us. Hebrews uses an analogy here in verse 9. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Now I want you to notice what it doesn't say. Maybe you had a pretty brutal father. It doesn't say you love them for it. It doesn't say you like them. It says you respected them. And even when done horribly and brutally, there's a kind of respect that comes when a parent knows he's to discipline his child. But complete lack of discipline gives you complete lack of respect. There's no respect for somebody who doesn't discipline you. Hebrews certainly doesn't have child abuse or anything like that in mind. He's looking at it from the best light. Our earthly father's discipline is according to what seemed best to them in verse 10. They did what they thought was right. Now, I'm going to say this. First of all, parents probably often don't get the discipline right. And you know what I think? I think when you're wrong in your discipline, when you misdiscipline your child, maybe you discipline them out of sin or anger or something like that, you need to fess up and confess that you've done wrong to the child. And I mean, you need to say it to your child. You need to say, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it that way. It's not okay for me to do that. That's not weakness. That is godliness to confess your sin. We can't expect them to do what we do if we're sitting there sinning in front of them and never admitting it. Right? Because all that's going to do is create that very attitude in them. The point is how much more the Heavenly Father, okay? We mess up, but He never messes His discipline up. He does it according to all that He is and never less. He disciplines us for our good that we may share in His holiness. So that's the first and second benefits that are given here. For our good and that we may share in His holiness. The proverb says, folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from Him. When it's done rightly, when it's firm, but in love, never in anger, it's for our good. It's not to harm us. It's not to destroy us. It's not to lord it over us. Well, how much more the Lord's discipline in our lives? And again, this is where Jesus is once more so vital. If we have a savior who knew what it meant to be disciplined by his father, then he knows how to discipline us as someone who understands that discipline. That means that even when we sin, his discipline comes from empathy as a man, just like it should. When the father disciplines us, he knows what it meant to discipline his only begotten. And he does not do that harshly or with premeditated intent of malice. Could you imagine the father doing that to the son? He loves the son. He loves all his sons. He loves them as sons. And his discipline is for their good. What's the result of that? Second, that we may share in His holiness. Whose holiness? Well, certainly God's holiness, but this is understood best, again, through union with Christ. You are being conformed into the image of the Son. You are in union with the Son. And so again, going back to His discipline, He knows what it was like, and through it was made perfect. that he ever sinned. That isn't, again, what it's talking about. It's talking about the final result, the end, his resurrection and glorification. He did everything perfectly as he was going through his discipline, even to the point of death, and for it, he was raised from the dead. He finished. Now, your discipline is not going to be exactly like that, because you're not like Jesus. He didn't sin. You sin all the time. And yet it will be kind of like his because he became a human and you are a human. He's the son and you are sons and daughters. You see the connecting point there. And then the next benefit of discipline is that after the moment has passed, no matter how harsh it was, even if the result, even if it was, if, if the discipline results in your own death, verse 11, later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Now, this is the work of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit. Now, let's say you die. Your discipline leads to your own death. In heaven, you will certainly bear fruit in season and out of season. But even now, most discipline doesn't lead to death. And when we go through the discipline of the Lord, its product in our life is the fruit of righteousness because we are God's children and He has put His Spirit into our lives and He creates fruit through these things. Now we all long to be righteous, and the benefit of God's discipline is to make us that way. So you say, Lord, make me holy, make me righteous. What you're basically asking for is for God to discipline you. How's the proper response to discipline now for the last thing to look at here? You long to be righteous. That means you need to respond properly to discipline. Now, this is the last two verses. Both have connections to the Old Testament again. Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees. That's a quote from Isaiah 35. He says, strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Now, you might be tempted, and I think this is a neat one. This is one to go back and look at, okay? Isaiah 35 verse 3 is the quote. You might be tempted when you just read that verse to think the context of Isaiah is, all right, I guess I better kind of just pull myself up by my own bootstraps and suck it up because he's sending something brutal to me. That's not what the context of Isaiah 35 is about at all. Listen to the whole section. It's pure gospel. Isaiah 35, 1, the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad and the desert shall rejoice and bloom like a crocus. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it. The majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God, strengthen the weak hands, make firm the feeble knees, say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong, fear not. Behold, your God will come with vengeance with the recompense of God. He will come and save you. You do not endure God's discipline like Japanese-Americans endured internment camps in World War II, or like POWs endured the horrific tortures of the imperial military. That's not what you're to do. You don't grin and bear God's discipline. You don't just suck it up. God is not out to get you. He's not torturing you. His purposes are not those of the vessels he might be using to test you. The strength to endure does not come from bearing up and buckling down, but from the realization that vengeance is God's. Salvation is yours. If you know him, it's because he's chosen you in Christ, and he's set his love upon you, and he intends to finish what he started with you. So our last verse reads, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather healed. I thought about Jacob wrestling with God. God touched his hip and put it out of joint. That was also the night Jacob was saved. The commandment then in light of the gospel for these verses, this is the proper response to discipline, is this. Lift your drooping hands. So our hands droop like Moses's because they tire of the battle. Jesus is fighting the battle for you, so lift up your hands and praise him. Worship him in the discipline. Don't complain. Second, strengthen the weakened knees. Our knees get weak because we tremble and fear at the enemy. We want to run. Jesus is Lord Sabaoth, the Lord of hosts. He's already defeated the enemies at the cross, but he's not your enemy. So do not fear him. Do not tremble in cowardice or fear of your life when he disciplines you. If he's your God through Christ, you have nothing to fear. If He is not, then you aren't even being disciplined as a son anyway, and He's simply giving you over to your sins. And that's a wretched condition. And it exemplifies our culture to a T, doesn't it? It is not enviable to not be disciplined. That is what you truly want to fear, is to not have the Lord's discipline, to let Him give you up to do whatever you want, because, you know, all that is is rot and decay and worms and death. That's all it is. Finally, make straight paths for your feet. That refers to going back to God's law and doing what it says. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. How do we make our feet straight? By obeying God's law. And since we could mention thousands of things, I particularly want to think just today about how you carry out discipline and how you receive it. So what kind of a disciplinarian are you? Are you the mean tyrant? Are you that person who never disciplines at all? Do you get easily angered and in your discipline scream and yell so that maybe you're not harsh with the stick but you are harsh with your mouth? Do you understand now what it is to discipline? Do you understand what it's for? Some of you may have had parents or teachers who were brutal. And this has affected you to this day. Are you emulating that brutality as fathers or mothers to your children, as bosses to your workers, or as anyone who is over someone else? Is that how God the Father treated the only begotten when he disciplined him? Was he brutal to the Lord Jesus? Did he flog him? Did he beat him? Did he scream at him? No, but neither did he leave him a soft and easy life. The Father subjected him to the whims of men to test him. And our Lord Jesus came out of the fire unscathed to resurrected life. He never sinned in how he responded to that discipline, but you often do. Sometimes your discipline is because of your sin. Other times it's not. How do you respond to the Lord's discipline? Do you grumble? Does it consume you with worry and fear and doubt? Does it make you never want to discipline your own children? Is that what made Jesus perfect? Never being disciplined? The phrase Father of Spirits is appropriate to end here. Back earlier in verse 9, it calls God the Father of Spirits, a very strange phrase. It also comes out of the Old Testament. It says, they fell on their faces and said, oh God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin and you not be angry with all the congregation? How you respond to discipline has ramifications not only for yourself, but for others as well. But if you keep the Lord Jesus at the center of this and His relationship to the Father in heaven, understanding that He didn't escape discipline because He is the Son, then it will help you greatly in how you carry out your own discipline and how you also receive that discipline. And in this way, it will be for your good. To make you holy, it will lead to the peaceful fruit of righteousness to anyone who has been trained by it. Father, I ask that you would bless the hearing of your word today among your people. I ask that you would help us to think biblically and correctly and Christ-centered about this topic of discipline that's so maligned in our day, in our culture. If we understood discipline rightly, People wouldn't have to mock the discipline as they connect it to our Christian faith. They would understand why we do it. They would see how we do it. And it might even lead people to ask good questions instead of just scorning and mocking. I pray that you would help us to be parents who rightly discipline, not out of anger, not out of harshness. I pray you would forgive us when we do that and help us to go to our kids when we do that. And I pray that you would help us also to discipline, to realize the necessity of it and how we need to be disciplining our children because fathers do this to their sons just as our Father in Heaven does it to us. Help us not to want to avoid it, to escape it, but to embrace it and to consider it joy that we are being conformed into the image of Christ. I thank you that we get to look at this passage today and that it would be in our minds. Ask that your Holy Spirit would keep it in our minds for the week to come. And we pray you'd hear us in Jesus' name. Amen.