Text: Hebrews 12:1-11
Focus: Discipline
Function: To help people trust God during rough times.
Form:
Intro:
I heard that Mother Theresa went through 20 years of what she called “the Dark Night of the Soul.”
It was a period of time where, although she was faithful to God, she had a hard time sensing His presence. Wednesday Morning, in my devotions, I read where Paul begged God to remove an affliction that he had for several years and God said to Him, “My grace is enough for you. When you are weak, I am the strongest.”
Isn't that odd? It is an upside down Kingdom that we belong to. The minute we start thinking that success in our Christian journey is up to us, we lose sight of God's power and work in our lives.
I love the way this passage describes holiness. The way this passage describes purity. The way this passage deals with our struggle against sin.
He calls it the sins that distract us, and then he talks about how God helps us overcome our own sin.
Sin is real. It is an offense to God. Sin separates humanity from God. Sin causes us to think only of ourselves, to rely solely on ourselves and to concern ourselves as to what is the best for ourselves instead of others.
So, let us look at the text. The first 4 verses speak about the confidence we gain from the faithfulness of the crowd of faithful who went on before us.
Last week we saw right from the beginning, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah. Those are the saints who existed right up until the 2nd generation after the great flood.
In the eleventh chapter, he goes to to tell of people who, by faith, put armies to flight like Gideon, women who saw the dead raised back to life, Daniel who saw the mouths of lions stopped and so on.
These were people who saw God vindicate them and do tremendous miracles to defend them. But then he goes on to the people who didn't receive a miraculous deliverance. Some were stoned, some were, sawn in two, some were killed in cold blood and others wandered the earth.
The fact is, God is faithful to His children. But not in the way we would always imagine. God is interested in saving the entire of humanity. And God's plan for that works through us.
Those people in the 11th chapter really didn't receive the promise, because the promise wasn't fulfilled until God Himself put on human flesh and walked with us.
Jesus is God who came to earth to draw us back into His family.
And now, we are His body on earth fulfilling that promise of God.
So, this passage says, He treats us in a special way. He treats us as His family.
And He tells us to set aside the sins that keep us from fulfilling that mission.
There is a lot of speculation about that term in verse one “the sin that clings so closely.”
The Message calls it, parasitic sins. Others say, the sin that entangles, the sin that wraps itself around our feet and trips us up, but the most preaching on it comes from the King James: “The besetting sin.”
I remember the first sermon I heard on that verse. It was so freeing. The preacher talked about the mystery that it seemed to him, and other believers who were mature and honest, that there seemed to be something in everyone's life that they couldn't get over. I have heard it all, people ask me about uncontrolled anger, uncontrolled lust, uncontrolled abuse of credit cards, uncontrolled use of alcohol or drugs, uncontrolled gossip, uncontrolled cussing and so on.
They ask me the question, “Pastor, if I can't overcome this sin, am I really a Christian?”
Remember, 1 John 3:6 says, “the one sins does does not know him.”
So, you can imagine my confidence in my Christian journey when this preacher spoke about the besetting sin. He preached, it is almost as if its a thorn in the flesh, something to remind us that we still, no matter who we are, need a savior. That doesn't mean it isn't sin any longer, and that doesn't mean that it isn't an offense to the Cross of Christ.
And God gives us a way out of it. Verse 2: Set your eyes on Jesus. The author and perfecter. He is the one who started it in you, and He is the one who will finish it. Consider Him who endured so much of a trial against sinners and don't lose heart.
I love that.
I remember being a new Christian and one day, I was caught up with God in my prayer time, just raising my hands in worship and loving Him when all of a sudden, I had a nicotine fit.
Immediately, I had a selfish craving that distracted me from my relationship with God. I hated it so I prayed that God would set me free from that addiction.
I was already a believer, but God had an area He wanted to bless me with, an area He wanted to mature me in. (Perfecter means finished, or mature).
So, as I was praying two scripture came to mind, the first was verse 4 from this text “you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.” and the second was “those who suffer in the flesh have ceased from sinning.” 1 Peter 4:1. Actually he introduces it with: “Since Christ suffered in the flesh arm yourselves with the same purpose.”
So, when the craving for a cigarette distracted me from my prayers the next time, I praised God that I too, was suffering in the flesh for Christ and immediately, the craving stopped.
I had no desire for tobacco for 3 days. Then the craving came again, and I rejoiced in the same way and immediately the craving stopped.
I still wonder if there was some sort of spiritual, even Satanic, compulsion behind that craving because after that, I was free.
Listen, focus on Christ and what He went through to reconcile us to God. As Peter says: “Arm yourself for the struggle against sin by taking up the same willingness to suffer that Jesus had.”
I was in Englewood yesterday at the city festival. There is a new church planting starting there. They were giving away a free I-phone. Of course, there is nothing free about it, you still have to pay the $30 or $40 per month extra for the data.
I thought, I guess you can't market a church with the sign, “Come here, take up your cross and follow Jesus.” And yet, Fox's Book of Martyrs speaks of people in the coliseum, watching Christians being tortured and killed for their faith who left the stands, accepted Christ and joined them because they saw the genuineness of a faith that lives sacrificially for others.
Jesus suffered for us in order to purchase our redemption, in order to bring us back into God's family.
So, does that mean that I no longer have sins, even certain sins that I struggle with?
No. I mean that prayer at the start of every sermon. It is private business between God, me and my confessors. And it is good to have a confessor, not your spouse, not someone of a different gender, but someone you can trust. It is Biblical: “confess your sins, one to another... ...that you may be healed.”
So, what is “The Trouble With Trouble?”
Well, let us jump down to verse 7-8: 7Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? 8If you do not have that discipline in which all children share, then you are illegitimate and not his children.
This is an obvious reference, except it is better than what we could ever do. He says, “our own parents disciplined us according to what seemed best to them, but God's discipline is perfect.”
Understand this, the consequence of sin for a believer is no longer judgment, but discipline.
A good parent never disciplines a child because to satisfy his or her ego. They never discipline a child to prove something to themselves, or out of retaliation for some sort of abuse that happened to them. Discipline isn't revenge, it is training.
When I think of the discipline my father gave me, I remember several deserved spankings. Boys in school wore their spankings at school as badges of honor to prove how tough they were. Neither parent could really hurt me. But the concept, the idea that I let them down, the idea that I missed the mark was what was more painful for me.
I was never afraid of the pain, but always afraid of not measuring up.
Because I loved my parents, I wanted to please.
God's discipline for us happens because He loves us and wants to be proud of us. His discipline is never for revenge, but always for our benefit.
But when we are in it, it doesn't feel good.
Mother Theresa' “Dark night of the soul” was very hard on her, but God was making sure that her work was about Him, not about her.
And the end result was amazing. I remember her looking a former President in the eye and pointing to the picture of a child in a womb and asking him if this child was human.
He had no answer.
I remember seeing her in San Francisco standing before the City Zoning board who were absolutely refusing a permit for an AIDS center because of pressure by other Christian groups who felt like it wouldn't help because they didn't have an active position against homosexual practice. She, as a representative of the poor and displaced brought an AIDS victim before them and asked them if this person was indeed, their neighbor.
Her discipline from God gave her a clear, keen sense of God's mission on the earth. And although she was one of the most famous saints of the 20th Century, her focus was never on herself. It was always on the one she was serving because when she was serving the poor, she was serving Jesus.
She armed herself with the concept that her life belonged to Christ, not herself.
Jesus said, “in as much as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me.”
I went to hear Jim Wallis at Cedarville University last fall. He told the story of this simple woman who always showed up when they were getting ready to feed the poor in the line at a local soup kitchen. She would pray “Lord, in a few minutes, you will be coming through that door for a meal, help us to treat you well.”
There is something about suffering in this discipline that puts our perspective right with God.
When we have these times of trouble, they always remind us to keep our eyes focused on Jesus. God uses these times to remind us that He is God and we are “not God.”
I love the story of Jesus' temptation.
In Chapter 5, verse 8 of this book, the author says: “Even though He was a son, Jesus learned obedience through the things He suffered.”
That doesn't mean that Jesus was ever disobedient. But training is important.
The word discipline doesn't always mean a punishment designed to correct a bad behavior. Scientists who study a particular subject study a discipline. Discipline is positive.
So Jesus was tempted as well. He was in the desert 40 days without food and there, God permitted the Devil himself to test Him.
So here is Jesus, in the Desert and Satan says to Him: “You are hungry, and if you are God, turn this stone into bread and eat it.”
And you know Jesus' answer: Say it with me: Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 8:3
Here is what that passage says: I placed you in the wilderness and I MADE YOU HUNGRY and then I fed you something you never knew before, Manna, so that you would know that humanity doesn't just live by bread, but by God's word.
Now what does that mean?
First off, when they cried out for bread, they were hungry. The same thing happened when they cried out for water. As a matter of fact, they had been 3 days without water, in the desert.
After 3 days, they had exhausted their provisions of water, and they were in the middle of a dessert. They had small children, older more feeble people, flocks of animals, again with young. There was no way they were going to survive this, unless a miracle happened.
Here they were, trusting the Word of God, and now they were in trouble.
If we didn't know better, we would say they were presumptuous and stupid for taking such a risk.
But they were obedient to God. God put them in this place.
Have you every been in a place that you know God wants you in and you don't see any way to survive it?
Are you there right now?
Here is Jesus, faced with the choice to either obey the devil's suggestion, which on the surface doesn't really seem so evil. It wasn't like the Devil was asking him to steal someone else's food. No one would be harmed by turning stone into bread. I am sure the stone wouldn't mind.
But God has called Him to this fast, and He is tempted to break the fast.
He is tempted to take care of the physical before the Spiritual.
He is tempted to place His wants and desires above the will of God.
Troubles are never easy. They can either take our minds off of our dependence on God, or cause us to lean on Him more.
So Jesus reminds the Devil that God made the people hungry before He fed them.
God was proving to the people that there are two kinds of lives for believers.
There is a spiritual life, and there is a physical life.
And if we want eternal life, we place the spiritual first.
So here we are. In a land of abundance. The abundance has diminished in the last few years.
For some, there is genuine trouble. A miracle needs to happen in order to just survive.
And it isn't easy during this time of waiting.
I keep praying, God, help us!
The trouble with trouble is, we don't receive discipline.
If we don't learn the lesson, and we are loved by God, then we are going to have to face it.
Hugh Norris, what a sweet man. In one sense, he lead a full life and then was blessed by God to suffer the effects of old age for only a little while.
One day he fell, and couldn't get up. He laid on the floor for over 10 hours until his son found him.
He went to the hospital for recovery and never got to return to his home.
It was sad. He kept saying to me: “I got myself into trouble.”
He thought the fall was his fault. It was almost like, “If I didn't get any older, I wouldn't have the problem with old age.”
These things are inevitable. Sometimes, the trouble comes because of our own sin and selfishness.
Sometimes, trouble comes because that is the nature of the universe.
But in either case, for the believer is this loving relationship with a perfect parent, God.
In every case, His work with us is for our good and His glory.
When we adopt the attitude of being His Children, living and working and representing Him, we find the kind of prosperity that Mother Theresa had. A prosperity of the soul that gives life meaning and that meaning extends into eternity.
CONCL:
Are you in trouble today? Do you need help? Do you need prayer? Do you need an anointing? Do you need to come to this altar, and place your burdens on the Lord and tell him that whether or not there is or isn't sheep in the pen and grain in the field, you will trust Him?
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