Clough Hebrews Lesson 64
The Father’s Chastening – Hebrews 12:2-6; Proverbs 3:11-12
In Hebrews 12:1-11 we have a section that deals with Jesus Christ as the perfect model for the child of God, and this is one of the greatest passages on the New Testament on mental attitude. This gives what should be familiar to most believers and that is the portrait of the battle that goes on in your soul daily. The exhortation to continue the race, main verb in verse 1, “let us run with patience, the race that is set before us,” “let us continue to run,” present tense, or let us keep on running, let us make this a learned behavior pattern in our lives; “having put off” was an aorist, meaning having put off those things which hinder the running, and it would be two things, the “weight” which would be things that are not necessarily sinful, but that are just obstructions to spiritual progress. And then, “let us put aside the sin which does so easily corrupt,” or “easily encompass,” these are –R learned behavior patterns.
Now in verse 2 there was one verb that was important from looking at life the way Jesus looked at life because it says that He “endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” The word to “despise” is a word which again we can take apart and see how this word tells us something about how Jesus thought. kata means down, and prhoneo is think, and it’s the idea that you have a set of priorities in your life, various things that you set up, things that are good in themselves but nevertheless, life is a set of organizing priorities. kataphroneo means to think down. In other words, the idea is that Jesus Christ thought so much of the “joy which was set before Him,” which equals the accomplished task, He accomplished His assigned mission, that was so much a joy, that was number one priority.
And the last priority was the shame of the cross. The shame of the cross was, as the creature and Creator together in one person, Jesus Christ was physically beat up, He was physically abused, He had all his clothes taken off and was in public view on the cross. And that was the shame that Jesus Christ experienced on the cross. Most of you have never seen a true picture of the cross of Jesus Christ; until you see Jesus Christ painted first as a strong person, second painted with his face bashed in so badly you can’t recognize it and thirdly, without any clothes, you have not seen an authentic picture of the crucifixion because that’s what the shame of the cross was. Jesus Christ thought so much of us and the plan of salvation that He went through for you.
Now at the end of verse 2 we have what that joy is amplified, Jesus is “set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Remember that’s a theme of this epistle of Hebrews, it occurs again and again and again and it is perfect tense. Now so far this is the first perfect tense that we’ve had. Now remember what these tenses look like, the present tense is more or less a continuous type thing; the aorist looks at action from the point, and the perfect looks at action which is accomplished with results which continue. Why do you think this “set down” is in the perfect tense in the original language, of all those three tenses. Just think a moment, look at the text, why? Why do you think that it is written in the perfect tense. What doctrinal point about Jesus Christ does this emphasize by being placed in the perfect? [someone answers] All right, the ministry that Jesus Christ has as a result of His sitting down. Here’s his sitting down.
By the way, what was the historic proof
that Jesus sat down; nobody was there to observe His sitting down? What happened down here after Jesus Christ
sat down up there? [someone
answers] Pentecost, the giving of the
Holy Spirit, was not due to the disciples tarrying in
Pentecost existed to give empirical evidence in history that Jesus Christ had arrived on the throne something that we couldn’t observe and we won’t observe until the rapture, except for special people like Stephen, they observed it because they saw Jesus standing at the Father’s right hand, but apart from these exceptions, we personally probably will not see it until the rapture of the Church, or until some time after death. So Pentecost, far from conveying experience, the main objective is to get this throne concept; Jesus Christ is set down at the Father’s right hand, that’s the big point and that’s what ought to occupy our attention. Instead, believers look at experience and they look inwardly, they get very subjective, introspective and emotionally centered, thinking of their feelings, thinking of something else, and they’re looking at the wrong place. If you look correctly, according to this passage you ought to be looking up, not inward, at Christ at the Father’s right hand.
Before we go any further, when Jesus sat down, besides Pentecost several other things happened; certain lasting results happened because at this point something new had occurred. What new thing had occurred in the universe that never occurred before and marks the turning point of history as far as the entire cosmos goes, and this means every planet, every galaxy, every part of the space/time universe was affected by this act of Jesus sitting down. What is true from this point forward in the cosmos that was never true in the universe before this point? [someone answers] All right, at the helm of the universe from that point forward there is a human being. This is important, when we talk about life on other planets and so on, the Bible is very clear, life or no life, the issue is that Jesus Christ is made after the image of the human race and He, not a Martian, is at the helm of the universe.
The universe is not run by some creature from galaxy 449, it is run by Jesus Christ. It is run by a member of the human race, so regardless of the other problems that enter into the issue of life on other worlds and so on, the issue remains that as far as the helm and the highest rank held in the cosmos, it is held by a human being, a member of the human race. We know this because of the resurrection and ascension of Christ. Jesus Christ also, in addition to this, as the second Adam, He now heads the cosmos. The first Adam had been given the choice of heading the planet earth; Jesus Christ as the second Adam now heads the entire universe. And this means all angelic powers, all other creatures that may be in the universe must subordinate themselves to a human being by the name of Jesus Christ.
The third thing, Pentecost is one thing, the reigning of Christ as the head of the cosmos is the second thing, the third thing that’s happened is that the angelic conflict enters a new stage. Satan is a defeated foe and from this point forward his entire strategy is to try and cover up his loss. Before Satan’s strategy was to prevent his fall; before Satan’s strategy was to keep Christ from dying. This is why he worked on Peter to give Christ the suggestion that Christ surely should not go to the cross, and Jesus cut Peter off because Jesus realized that at that point Satan had influenced His closest friend and Jesus wasn’t in the habit of listening to friends when those friend’s words conflicted with the Word of God. So Jesus Christ now, from Pentecost forward, is in a position where He has authority over Satan, Matthew 28:18, “All authority has been given to Me,” Jesus said. So Satan must be underneath the person of Christ.
Now Satan is given certain operating room and margin, and he is taking advantage of that margin to try and get believers not to look at Jesus Christ, because what Satan wants to do is prevent the body of Christ from being finished. Therefore Satan will hinder evangelism and Satan will hinder you taking in doctrine, because if he can hit you at either one of those two points, that is stop witnessing, stop all evangelizing, stop sharing of the gospel, stop missions, if he can do that he can avoid having to faced a finished body of Christ and if he can slow down or retard our sanctification by that degree he increases the time left for himself. Satan knows that he has limited time left and as long as he can stall, and so far he’s been able to hold it for 19 centuries, as long as Satan can continue to hold off the completion of the body of Christ, he is still reasonably free.
Another point is that Jesus Christ will remain at the Father’s right hand until His Second Coming. That’s the fourth thing, when Jesus Christ comes again He’s going to get up off the throne and the world will once again realize that it’s being visited, and this time there will be no mistakes, He will not appear as a meek, Jewish, Galilean carpenter, He will appear unmistakably as divine, and he will be unmistakably the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. So this is the career of Jesus Christ and the career began with this mental attitude that He had “the joy that was set before Him,” on His priority list, it was joy first. And then it was shame down here; it was not, from the human point of view, comfortable to go through the cross experience. And that by analogy is a model for you because there are many times when to obey the Word of God is not comfortable, and you’ll be embarrassed. Jew as embarrassed, that’s what the word “shame” means, He was embarrassed on the cross, it was uncomfortable for Him. But nevertheless, Jesus Christ went ahead and died for us.
Now in Hebrews 12:3, we are commanded to do something. Remember chapter 12 of Hebrews, as well as the previous chapters, this section is there to encourage us to move on in the Christian life; it’s an exhortation passage. Therefore those of you who think you have the gift of exhortation, pay attention, watch how Biblical exhortation precedes. There are one of three techniques that occur in Biblical exhortation. These are all the techniques the Bible uses. Now there’s variations, a hundred variations on these but these are the basic three. One is the motivation from the overall plan of God. Paul, for example, in Romans 12:1 says, “Brethren, I beseech you by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God.” All right, there Paul is appealing to the plan. He’s saying I beseech you on the basis of the plan of God, on the basis of the mercies. So that’s one way of motivation action biblically, is to perceive the plan of God, how vast it is, how all encompassing it is, how fantastic it is, how immovable it is. And contemplating all these factors we are then motivated to submit and operate on the basis of the Word.
A second way of operation is modeling. And that is looking at past believers including their mistakes, that was Hebrews 11. And the Bible paints men as they are, there’s no phonies presented in Scripture. And so the Bible, through the Holy Spirit lets it all hang out and lets us see these men in their weak moments and their strong moments, and that is to correct our self-righteousness because we think sometimes we’re so much better than they are, it’s just simply saying look, you’re made of the same stuff, they did it, you can do it.
And then finally, one other method that is used here is the system of reward and punishment. There are rewards for believers that get with it and believers who don’t are going to be chastened. Now God uses these three ways of motivation, over and over and over and over and over and over again, repeatedly in Scripture. So if you have the gift of exhortation, or as a believer every one of us will find ourselves at least one time in our life of being in a position where we have to exhort someone else, just like you’ll find yourself in a position where you can witness to someone else; exhortation, use one of these three or all three together if you can.
Now in Hebrews 12:3 he says okay, we’ve looked at Christ, now verse 3 is the command, “Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.” The word “consider” in the Greek looks like this, analogizomai, this particular verb has a lot of background to it; the prefix, ana on the front of it means point by point; logizomai means to evaluate, so putting it together what does this verb tell us to do? It tells us to evaluate Jesus Christ’s life point by point. It’s written in the aorist tense which means it doesn’t have to be done all the time, but at least some time this ought to be done. Believers who are discouraged, down-hearted, defeated, giving up, crybabies, these kinds of believers ought to, at some point, consider the claims of Christ and His life an example. Read the Gospels, in other words, “Consider Him.” How do we consider Him? There’s only one way of considering Him, only one place to study Him, it’s not what men say, it is what God says and the only place you can find out what God says is by reading the Scriptures yourself, over and over and over. You must be exposed to the Word.
Then it says, “Consider Him that has endured,” the word “endure” here is the same as used in verse 2 for the cross, except here it is in the perfect tense. Now the verb “to endure” is in the perfect tense. “For consider Him who has endured,” who has endured and has survived, and is now at the Father’s hand, the results continue forever. So Jesus Christ has endured at a point in time, this point He endured; that sums up all of His life from the time of His virgin birth until the time that He died on the cross, lumping all that time into a point and then perpetuating the results of that point in time. So saying that “Jesus Christ has endured” means that Jesus Christ, even right now, at the Father’s right hand has a character that was built up from His endurance. That’s obvious, I mean, if we could look at Jesus Christ tonight you’d see nail prints in His hand, where’d that come from? It came from historical experience. The way Jesus thinks in His humanity tonight is a product of His historic experience. Jesus’ attitude that He has right now, as He controls the helm of the universe, were developed in history as He as a member of the human race, relying on the indwelling Holy Spirit, obeyed the Word at point after point after point after point.
So, “Consider Him who had endured such contradiction of sinners,” this is the affliction. Going to the doctrine of suffering now, let’s see how sharp we are in applying a doctrinal point here. Why do believers suffer? There are six reasons why believers suffer. What’s the first one? All suffering is due to the fall; believers and unbelievers alike. What’s another reason? Rebellion against God’s will personally, obviously the fall is rebellion against God’s will to but that’s corporate. The second reason is your individual rebellion against God’s Law. Third: association in the divine institutions, that would be, for example, because a believer would live in a country, country X, country X receives discipline from God, a believer living in country X receives discipline from God. A person who is linked to an unbeliever in marriage, God is working with the unbeliever to bring the unbeliever to Christ and He has to do it by suffering, so this person is married to the unbeliever, they suffer along with it. That’s what it means to suffer by association with someone else.
What’s a fourth reason? Identification with Christ in Satan’s world. What’s a fifth reason? To learn doctrine, and as a testimony or to witness; a testimony to three classes, unbelievers, believers and angels. Now those are six reasons for suffering. These ought to be automatic with you, just think of them, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 so that when suffering hits you’ve got something to think back, you don’t just feel your way through the problem, you now have root, you can grapple with the problem. The problem doesn’t defeat you, you defeat the problem. That’s the way God wants it.
So of these sufferings, what kind of these sufferings is mentioned in verse 3? Think through your six reasons and as you read verse 3, “For consider Him that endured such contradictions of sinners against Himself,” what’s the most obvious one, which one do you think. [someone answers] Six, well, yeah Jesus Christ’s suffering was a testimony to us. Four is the key one, Jesus Christ obviously is the lightening rod for all kinds of hostility. Christians will always be the lightening rod for Satan’s hostility; it ranges from little picky things to big things. I was talking to a man that was telling me about the Christians at A&M, Madeline Murray had come to the campus to speak, that was all right; Josh McDowell comes to the campus to speak a week later and the campus authorities won’t let him speak. Fortunately there were some Christians down there that were aggressive and they got themselves a lawyer and sued the college. And Josh McDowell then spoke, they forced the administration to let Josh McDowell speak and that’s what Christians ought to do instead of sitting around backing up all the time. So if that’s the case, obviously who’s motivating an administration. Anybody in their right mind, any nitwit can see that if Madeline Murray, who is an atheist, has a right to speak on the campus, then why not Josh McDowell, why can’t he speak on the campus. Well, obviously there are all sorts of justifications that come in here to justify that action on the part of the administration but basically it’s a satanic orientation. And this is where Satan works his little thing.
“Consider Him who has endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest,” now there’s the purpose of the whole thing, “lest you,” plural, that is all of you believers, “lest you all be wearied and faint in your minds.” The obvious implication is that if you don’t consider the person of Jesus Christ you are going to be wearied and faint in your minds; you are have to consider the person of Christ, you have no choice. So sometime in your Christian life this has got to happen, you have got to study the life of Christ. And you’ve got to consider what He did and some of the things that He did.
Now how are you going to “consider Him” again, that we might be sure how to perform the command of verse 3. How is it that you and I can fulfill verse 3? There’s only one way and that’s go back to Scripture, daily you ought to be in the Word. And you can’t subsist without it. Every once in a while we have some hotshot males that run around here and they think they can survive without getting in the word, and they’re hotshots all right, they show it, they poop out after about two days, they show it in their attitude, they show it in how they run their family, they show it on the job. So we have people like that, the know-it-alls, they think they know more than anyone else, and here’s the Scripture. I didn’t write it so don’t blame me. This is the author of Hebrews who is writing this and he said you must “consider Him” or you are going to be continually be wearied and faint, it’s present tense. In other words, not just once, this is going to be a matter of a lifestyle with you; you are going to constantly collapse. The word there means collapse, constantly collapse, fainting and collapsing, despairing, that’s the attitude, give-up-itis.
And what is the solution? There is only one solution given in Scripture and that basically is to go back to go back to the text and content of the Bible. What is counseling? Nothing except taking a person back to text and portions of Scripture; that’s all counseling is, nothing else, Biblical counseling that is. So nothing mysterious that happens, anybody can do it, basically, it depends how much you know of the Bible; just go back to the text of Scripture.
Now Hebrews 12:4, this is kind of an admonition to the other side. See, these are down-hearted believers, persecution is hitting and they’re tending to flake out. So, he’s reminding them of something. He said now if you consider the person of Christ, certain things are going to be true, namely Jesus Christ suffered until death; He suffered in death, He was ridiculed while He was dying; Jesus Christ suffered all the way to death. But, he says in verse 4, and this is just an after thought, it’s kind of an anticlimactic statement deliberately put in here for emphasis, because verse 3 exalts Here you have the ideal model, Jesus, and then he says, just kind of like a minor note at the end, but a very effective minor note. “But” he says, “you haven’t resisted unto blood,” in other words you take a long hard look at the person of Christ and you consider that He resisted all the way to death and you haven’t even come close to that. So don’t argue that you have some sort of a special suffering that isn’t covered in Scripture.
Now this always the temptation, a temptation that everyone has, all of us, when we are out of fellowship with the Lord would like to believe and like all others around us to believe, oh, our temptation, it’s so special, no verse in Scripture covers my testing, I have such a special testing, such a high testing, that there’s not one promise of Scripture that I can claim and I’m going to go around and talk to every believer I possibly can, hoping I can find that all of them can’t give me a promise that I can explain away. And then that way I can prove that my suffering is so great it’s not covered in the Scriptures. Now that’s a little game that people like to play, go around and hope that no one will nail you to the wall because if you talk to 15, 20 different believers and they buy it, they believe your little story, and boy, that’s pretty ego building, you know, you’ve swayed 15 0r 20 people and not one of them has really caught your number yet. And so you’ve got everybody fooled, except one person who is the most important person, the Lord Jesus Christ, you haven’t fooled Him at all. He’s sitting there laughing at you, that’s His attitude because He knows sooner or later you’re going to crash, not that He gets a kick out of watching you crash but sometimes that’s the only way believers learn.
You know, we are named after all for the stupidest animal existing, the sheep. So there’s a reason for that, we’re stupid, and the Bible portrays us… the one animal in God’s creation that is the most stupid thing on four feet, the sheep, which is the one that’s picked out to show believers? The sheep, and the sheep is not picked out because he is so pretty; or so gentle, these pictures you see of Jesus holding the lamb, doesn’t that look sweet. Now Jesus is not picked out holding the lamb, He’s picked it out because the dumb thing fell in a hole. Jesus Christ is the perfect shepherd, He cares for the sheep but the picture the artist tries to convey to you is all wrong, it’s that He has to pick it up, the thing’s got four legs and it still can’t walk.
So verse 4, “You have not resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” Now the word for “strive” is again a deliberately chosen word in the text and a word which, if you’ll look at it for a moment, antagonizo, antagonize we get it in the English. And it’s a word again that has an athletic metaphor in the background, the antagonist. What this verb is telling us is something we’ve all suspected from our experience for a long time; it’s something everybody wanted to ask but never dared to, and that is isn’t there something wrong with my Christian life, it seems like I’m always striving, it seems like this is a long struggle. Gee, the evangelist that won me to Christ didn’t tell me about this, if he had I’d never have walked the aisle. That wasn’t part of the deal. Well it is part of the deal and here’s the vocabulary word to prove it. If you have that experience and you feel like it’s a struggle, join the club. That’s what it’s saying, “striving against sin,” sin is singular, not plural, and that means sin nature. And that means struggling against the –R learned behavior patterns that come so easy and go so hard. Ever notice you never have to teach children to be bad; it comes naturally. But you do have to train them how to be good. How come? Because the brats have a sin nature, that’s why.
Hebrews 12:5, now we have a quotation from the Old Testament, “And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him; [6] For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” Now the word to “forget” here is in the perfect, and it is a word that means, and this is an insult to the readers, you have totally forgotten. It’s not just to forget, this means totally forget, it’s completely lost, that’s the concept. So the concept now that he’s bringing in is that something that he says, this is so foreign to you, the last time you studied this, he said, or learned about it was ten or fifteen years ago, in the last ten years of your life you haven’t thought about it once, it has totally escaped you. And all of this crying that’s been going on because of your great pressures, remember these believers were under pressure, the Hebrew Christians, all this crying and bellyaching that has been going on, all of it has been going on in complete ignorance of one point. So, he says, “you have completely forgotten the exhortation which preaches to you,” and it is present, which keeps on preaching to you.
Now look, how could they have forgotten something that continually is preaching, remember this is present tense, continually preaching, or exhorting. Now how can you forget something that is continuous, over and over and over and over and over and over. Well, let’s look at the verse again; where is the exhortation preaching from, where do you find this exhortation? Old Testament, so it’s continually there in the Old Testament but if they have forgotten it, what does that tell you about their study of the Old Testament? They haven’t done it, that’s what it tells you, loud and clear. This has never happened, this is phased out, they are not in the Word daily. And because they’re not in the Word they’ve forgotten, even though the exhortation keeps on preaching.
It’s like for 19 centuries Acts 16:31, “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” it’s been continually preaching that for 1900 years. But men have either forgotten it in the church and they don’t know it and they won’t know it until someone brings it to them, but the text is continually doing the preaching. So that’s the point, “You have completely forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as unto children.”
Now this is a quotation from Proverbs 3:11, “My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD, neither be weary of His correction. [12] For whom the LORD loves He corrects, even as a father the son in whom he delights.” Now in context this refers to and is a balance to verses 9-10. Proverbs is always written in a very balanced tone. Now verses 9 and 10 give a simple cause/ effect relationship. I want you to see verse 9-10, then you’ll see why God says what He does in verses 11-12, it corresponds exactly to your experience. Verse 9, “Honor the LORD with thy substance, and with the first fruits of all thine increase. [10] So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst with new wine.” The principle of verses 9-10 is that submission to the Word results in blessing, as a general principle it results in blessing. But the problem is and you all have had this experience where it seems like you obey the Word and obey the Word and obey the Word and follow along and no blessing, at least immediately. Now of course we know long term eternal blessing, but we’re talking now about short term blessing, there just doesn’t seem to be any short-term blessing.
So Proverbs 3:11-12 are put in here to avoid you saying aha, verses 9-10 don’t work, I tried it. So verses 11-12 are put in to say okay, what about those times when it seems like you are obedient and there’s no immediate blessing, what about those times; is that the exception that breaks the rules. No, because verses 11-12 give you another principle, and that is there will be times of hardness, there will be times in your Christian life of dryness, and it’s not necessarily due t sin. This verse is not just talking about discipline for sin; it’s larger than just discipline for sin.
Now let’s read it slowly and watch what we encounter here. “My son,” it is set in the course of the third divine institution which is the family. And please notice, it is the man that is training his son, not the woman. Women have a place of course, and when children are young the woman obviously does the majority of the training. But still, the child ought to realize that behind the woman stands the father and oftentimes what happens is when the man doesn’t stand behind his wife, when she tries to train the children, the children obviously can sense this and they will try to take advantage of the woman. Now when that begins to happen there is only one of two things that have got to happen right away. Either the man has to step in and make it very clear that what his wife says goes, and backs her up to the hilt, or he doesn’t do it and from that point on his wife will be turned into a man by her behavior.
And she has to because she is trying to do a man’s job, she will begin to act like a man in the home, and it will be disagreeable, and that’s why many, many children wind up with all sorts of odd relationships with their mother and the reason is because the mother had an odd relationship with her husband, because he refused to take the leadership in the home. And the result is tragic, the mother has to take the leadership and she’s not built to be a man, she’s not build for that kind of authority. And this is why Proverbs says okay, now look, it’s the father that does the training. And he may, as Proverbs 31 in fact says, he may turn most of it over to the woman, so that in practice the woman is doing a lot of it, but the point remains the children, everyone else is clear that when the mother operates she’s operating with the father’s full cooperation, leadership, and so on, that she’s operating under an umbrella of authority that is given to her by the man.
Now the third divine institution is the place where we learn, or should learn, where and how God works with us. See, if you come from a screwed up home life you can’t appreciate verses 11-12. Jim Voss who has worked in many cities with the incorrigibles and the juvenile delinquents and just the tough crowd, he finds that it’s very, very difficult to train these children what God the Father is like because they don’t know what a father is like, they don’t even know who their father is, leave alone what a father is. And so what do they have to do? They have to take these kids off in a Christian home some place, put them in there for 3 or 4 months and let them see what a father does, and then after they see what a father does, oh, now we’ve got communication; now we can teach doctrine. But the actual teaching of the doctrine is stalled and hurt by a lack of experience of a properly functioning third divine institution. See how important the third divine institution is?
I’ve often said it and I’ll say it again, that you take a kid that’s been raised in a home that’s [can’t understand word], obviously it’s never going to be perfect, but it’s a home that he goes on here for 20 years and gets out and gets involved in a pressure type situation, and then you take somebody else that’s raised out of a badly operating home, and maybe at 18 they trust the Lord and they really grow, really on positive volition for two years, and then they face pressure situations, which one of those kids is going to perform. I’ll put my money on this one, even if this one doesn’t know as much doctrine as this one, because what doctrine this one knows knows how to apply it. And they know how to apply it because it’s been a long slow haul over many years in a properly functioning home. And those are the children who have character, who have stability and they’ll make mistakes, but they’ll come back. These people will be eccentric, they want to serve the Lord, for a while, and then eventually they’ll get with it, but it takes them a long while because God’s grace is grace but where the divine institutions have been violated prices will be paid.
So, “My son,” is looking now and presupposing we understand the third divine institution. And by the way, why, biblically, ought fathers to train their sons? Let’s just go back and look at this; it sounds like an obvious question but let’s just look at it a moment. What’s the Biblical reason why a father would be interested in training his son? Think back all the way to creation; think of some very, very, basic, basic reasons. Why does a father want to train his son, or why ought he? Without getting involved and lost in the forest for the trees, let’s just think of some basic things. [someone answers] Okay, good point, you see the first man Adam, now look at this, look at it as a series of umbrellas, Adam was placed over all history, wasn’t He? Haven’t we, as Adam’s seed, don’t we suffer daily by what our father did? Hasn’t our father Adam destined us in a way? We bear in our body the marks of what he has done because all of us bear bodies that are mortal and are in the process of dying and decaying, some at faster rates than others, but the point remains that we bear in our flesh what our father has done to us. Adam was over all his children and we’re his children. Now let’s go on down in history
Let’s take Noah. Noah comes down here, Noah was father over all, not in the same sense as Adam because Noah was married to a woman, remember Adam, Eve came out of Adam, she was not a separate creation, she was part of Adam so her genetic tissues are identical to Adam, not so in Noah’s case. But for the sake of the father illustration, Noah was the father of the postdiluvian man. So what Noah did, he entered into contract with God, every time it rains and you see a rainbow you see something directly related to our father Noah. Noah did something, Noah made it possible for us to live because he took our grandparents in the ark and saved them. Noah functioned and for that reason we are living today in the postdiluvian world.
Now let’s go on to a smaller scale, get this down from Adam to Noah, and now let’s take Joseph, Jesus father, not his physical father but father of the family. Do you suppose that Jesus, who was raised by Joseph, bears some of Joseph’s decisions, bears in His history influences of his father?
Can some of you say what some of them are?
What are some things that Joseph, Jesus’ adopted father, what are some
decisions that Joseph made that permanently marked Jesus history. [someone answers] All right but be careful you don’t get [can’t
understand word] inheritance, Joseph probably had a strong body and he gave
that to Jesus. Jesus is the legal son of
Joseph, not the physical son of Joseph, that knocks out the body, he is the
legal son of Joseph. But decisions,
Joseph did what in Jesus’ childhood that caused Jesus to fulfill a
prophecy. [someone says something about
I’ll tell you another area where apparently Joseph influenced Jesus is the vocabulary. Do you know how we know that? Jesus had brothers and two of those brothers wrote books of the Bible, who are they? James and Jude. And if you examine the vocabulary of those two books and the vocabulary that Jesus used in His teaching they fit, and the marks of the vocabulary of that particular family is that they were very nature centered. Jude uses images and metaphors from nature and so does James. And so does Jesus, much more so than the other books, say what Paul writes, and Paul’s vocabulary. It’s a kind of vocabulary and you’d expect that, wouldn’t you. Where did Jesus learn to talk in His humanity? From his father.
Now look, let’s take a father down here in 1975; now if the Lord waits and the
Second Coming doesn’t happen, there may be three, maybe four, five, maybe
hundreds, we don’t know. But look at
something; all of your children that you have, that you sire, and their
children, you are determining their history in a way; to a degree you are
determining their history by the decisions you make, by what you do with your
life, by how you run your home. You’re
not only just influencing one generation, you’re influencing your children’s
children and their children. You can get
processes begun in your home that will carry on for generations. So fathers have tremendous influence and it
is part of this fact that they have been given the mandate to subdue the
earth. Now the father subdues the earth
himself, but obviously, could Adam have physically subdued the whole globe? No.
What do you find in the Genesis text when it says Adam, subdue the earth, and it says I have given them dominion over all fishes and so on, all the rest of it, what do you find right in the same verse? “Be fruitful and multiply.” Now if those two commands are put together, doesn’t it sort of suggest that one of the ways the man subdues is through his progeny? So isn’t the command to subdue the earth not just addressed to me but also to me on my progeny, that I am to subdue the earth through not only my own efforts, but by training my sons and they will train their sons, so that they can subdue the earth. So every man has a command to subdue the earth that comes to him personally and to his progeny; his progeny is part of his mission to subdue the earth with that progeny.
So these are some reasons why, there was another reason and that’s given in this last phrase of Proverbs 3:12, we’ll go back to it more carefully but I’m just right now pointing out the relationship, “even as a father in the son in whom he delights.” Now “the son in whom he delights” was the son that the father had set forth for the inheritance. Now does that ring a bell? Why would you specially want to train the son who would inherit your property? Well, the first thing you want to train them is how to get the property away from the IRS, inheritance taxes are unbiblical. And so you’d want to work it out so that your son, that you want to inherit your property that they get it while you’re alive, never mind this business of letting some probate court decide it. By the time they get through with everybody in town will have your property except your sons or your daughters. If you have parents and they don’t have a will, you’d better make sure they get one. You have a right to your inheritance, that is your God-given right, and if you have children you ought to do everything you can to outwit the government legally to pass that inheritance to your children and make sure they get their inheritance and you have to start planning now how to do that because it involves a lot of little moves that can be made, little moves, it doesn’t require much but just a few smart little deals that you an do to bypass the government’s grubby little hands that get in there.
All right, so the child is going to be the inheritor or the manager, he is going to manage the property, he is going to manage the family property, and so therefore he is being trained for that job. Now I’m going through this and I’m taking my time because I want you to get this culture picture in mind and then we’re going to apply it spiritually. Proverbs 3:11, “My son, don’t despise the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of His correction.” Now the word “chastening” and the word “correction” are two words that have basically God’s training in mind but they look different. In the Hebrew one looks like this, musar, and that means physical training, the emphasis on musar is on the severity of training, boot camp training, that’s what musar is. So it’s severity of physical training. So musar emphasizes the severity of the training. There’s another word, however, tokechah, tokechah emphasize the corrective function of the training, so one word emphasizes the severity and the other word emphasizes the training has a prupose to correct and to guide. They’re used synonymously, don’t despise and don’t be weary.
Now the word to despise is the word to look down upon; it’s almost opposite to the other word. Jesus looked down upon the shame of the cross, so he’s saying look, get your priorities right, Jesus Christ looked down upon the shame and He looked up to the joy that was set before Him. Now he says don’t you get your priorities crossed, in which you start looking down on the Lord’s discipline, and start looking up to the easy things. Don’t despise that, in other words, count it as a privilege, the kind of training that you’re getting; count it as a privilege. And this isn’t just training for being out of fellowship. It’s true, that’s included; but that’s not all of it.
Now Proverbs
Let’s look at the spiritual application. What this is saying is that it is going to be through us that Jesus Christ finally completes his victory in the universe. That’s why He’s after us all the time, and that’s why it seems like when you’re a Christian He just never seems to leave you alone, and it seems like the more you get in the Word the worse it gets at times. Now why is it that the Lord keeps after you? Because it’s through you that He is going to gain his victory. What a privilege to be part of that kind of a plan. See the motivation involved. God is going to use you as an integral part of His plan to bring history to a consummation. You are infinitely valuable for His plan. If you weren’t valuable God wouldn’t spend two seconds on you. The very fact that He is spending so much time putting you through so many different things is precisely because you are so valuable a person.
Now if you were in charge of a group of soldiers and you realized they were going to go into combat, you realized you had limited numbers of men and you couldn’t gain any more men, you would train those men as well as you possibly could. The men who made the raid on that prison camp in Vietnam, they called for volunteers from all over the world in the army to get the best men for that mission, to go in there, and they told those men when the did, you can consider yourself that you’re going to be dead by the time this mission is over. Do you know they had four times the number of men that they needed, that volunteered for that mission, one of the most fantastic things they’ve pulled off, the only thing was that they had bad intelligence. But they had perfect training, they trained and trained and trained and trained in Panama, over and over and over until they could land at night, get out of that helicopter, go and knock off the guards, do it perfectly, over and over and over and over and over and over. And probably, and don’t you doubt that many times in the training the question would come up, is it worth it. This is awful hard, is it worth it, should I keep at it. There were POW’s whose lives depended on those men getting out of that helicopter fast and getting them out of that compound and even as it was, the POW’s look back and say that was one of the great times because that was when the communists really got shook up and moved them all into Hanoi. So a lot depended upon it. But, imagine their training, as they trained day after day after, night after night, in the heat and humidity, going over and over, getting the time down, and as they worked and worked and worked the mental attitude must have been there, is it worth it, I give up, is it worth it?
All right, the same thing in the Christian life, and that’s what God is saying here, don’t be weary of His correction, He’s got a fantastic mission going and you are going to be trained perfectly. This training you have is the best kind of training that you can possibly get, you are enrolled in a perfect curriculum; no flunkies in this system. There are no lousy non-teaching PhD’s in charge of the program. The man who’s in charge of this program is the perfect teacher. And everything in the program is perfectly designed to train you to the maximum. That’s the concept.
Now to conclude this section turn back to Hebrews. The author of Hebrews has lifted out Proverbs 3, he’s got the concept and he says when you feel like you’re faint, and you have that attitude, how long can I gone on, how long will this persist, he says keep the big picture in mind, you are enrolled in a program and God thinks so much of you that He wants you perfectly trained.
Now I’m going to take the next sentence which is mistranslated in verse 7 and I’m going to stop with the first line of verse 7. It is translated in the King James, “If ye endure chastening,” that’s not the proper translation. [he writes on overhead] That’s what he’s saying, “it is for musar,” the word is the word that’s translated from the Greek word which in turn was translated from the Hebrew word musar. “It’s for musar that you endure,” he says, and that you keep on enduring. Every time you can make it one more day trusting the Lord, in His word, you develop musar, you are being trained, that’s one less day of training, one more accomplishment, that’s why you endure.
Now do you notice so far in all of this exhortation that we’ve gone on, all of this exhortation in Hebrews, have you notice that there is not one time, not once, where this man offers you a cheap release. Did you ever notice that. Nowhere in this text does he say hey, come down the aisle and you can have this tremendous religious experience, see lights, feel the Holy Spirit, and go through all this stuff and after this you will be a transformed individual. Now is any of that in here? Not at all, this whole text argues completely against this. There are no short cuts, cheap solutions to sanctification. And the reason we see so much of that stuff today is because we live in a very lazy generation. That’s all it is, just laziness. And people flock to hear this kind of thing, they flock to get some gimmick that’ll be the easy way out, and that’s all it is, a bunch of weak-hearted crybabies looking for a way out from under the training program. Oh, it’s too hard, kind of thing. That’s what’s motivating it, so let me get the 88th blessing tonight, that kind of thing. It comes about because of a failure to endure.
Father, we thank You…