Proof of Your Adoption – 1

Hebrews 12, please turn in the Word of God to Hebrews 12. Clothes and garments of salvation—that’s your need. That is your need. Are you clothed in all the sin of your past and present, or are you clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ? It’s going to be the defining and critical difference on the Day of Judgment, whether or not your life is hid with Christ in God, and you’re clothed in His beauty and glory and obedience, or whether you’re standing trying to argue a case: “Lord, Lord, have we not X, Y, and Z? Look at what we have done. Is this not sufficient? We did it in your name. Is that not enough? We did all these good things.” And he will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”

And so it’s faith in Christ, Christ alone. The glory of the gospel is that it is all of Him. You believe He does the saving, He does the preparing, He does the reconciling, and you receive it as a gift from God. Make sure you are in Christ.

Hebrews 12—as we continue going through this epistle, we are in the 12th chapter, and we’re going to read again from verse 1. I’m going to read through verse 11. And so, may the Lord give us ears to hear His Word as it is read.

Hebrews 12, verse 1: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him. For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons: for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” Amen.

May the Lord bless the public reading of His Word. What you’ve heard is the inerrant Word of the living God, which you are to receive, believe, and, where appropriate, obey. And the people of God said, “Amen.”

Let’s pray.

God, we thank Thee for saving us. Thou Thy prodigals hast pardoned, loved them with a Father’s love, welcomed us with joy overflowing, even to dwell with Thee above. Oh, what a standing is ours. Why would anyone not want this? I pray that the prodigal spirit of rebellion would be driven from all this morning—they would turn their eye to the eternal horizon and see a Father who so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Today, O God, as we venture into another section of this tremendous epistle, we pray that there would be a hallowing of this moment, that Your hand might be upon us, that Your presence might be known, that You might graciously draw near, feeding the sheep, feeding the lambs. Thou knowest the need of each heart, and as perhaps many here just now ask, “Lord, speak to me,” hear that prayer and answer in great abundance. Magnify then Christ through the heralding of this divine truth, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Am I really God’s child? Have you ever asked that question? Have you ever asked yourself, “Am I really God’s child? Am I truly His?”

This question may arise for different reasons. One of the reasons is because of the experience in this fallen world of hardship and loss. You lose a job. There are ramifications of that—strain, the stress that it brings. And as a Christian, you then ask yourself, “Why? Why would God let this happen? Am I really a child of God?”

Maybe a health matter—afflicted in body in such a way that this question arises: “Why would God allow this? Am I really His child?”

Watching a child reject the gospel, seeing them turn away from everything that you have taught them, and you wonder why. “Am I a child of God? Would this happen to someone who is a child of God?”

Sometimes we wonder why things happen as they do. And we look at others who seem to be untouched by trouble, by strife, by difficulty, and we ask again, “Why do they have that lot and not me? How come? How come? What did I do wrong? Does God love me at all?”

What if I told you that there’s another way of reading your circumstances? Not a way that makes it easy by any stretch, but a way in which you can understand—you can understand that something more profound is going on in the trials of life.

What if the pain you’re enduring—the trial that makes you question God’s love—is actually strong proof that you belong to Him, that you’re actually His?

The Hebrew Christians, the apostle’s addressing, were asking questions, it would appear—and I mentioned this last week—asking questions along these lines. Again, because their context was such that they’re drawing from a narrow or selective reading of the Old Testament scriptures that would bring them to the conclusion that God intends to bless His people. He’s gonna prosper them, favor them, protect them, guide them. And then when things don’t seem to fit with your understanding of that, the question arises: “Are we really—am I really His?”

So in the midst of the persecution that was mounting, the hardship that these believers were facing, the increased animosity, the social isolation and ostracization that they were feeling from fellow family members and from their community at large, and all the other consequences that were going on, and the mounting persecution that was really rising within the Roman Empire—all of that, when assessed through a selective reading of the Old Testament, seemed to indicate, “We’ve made a mistake in abandoning…” This is how they would look at it. Of course, this is not what they did. “Have we abandoned our ancestral faith? Have we departed from the gospel that was given to Abraham and perpetuated through the prophets? Have we got it wrong?”

So they were going through experiences that made them question their standing and added to the pressure to relinquish their belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the long-awaited Messiah. And it’s not coming from God’s Word. It’s coming from the experience. The experience is speaking loudly.

And so what is the answer to experience? What are we to do when someone is reading their experience and trying to figure out what’s going on in their life? Do we counter it purely with another aspect of looking at, or another angle of looking at their experience purely? Do we just say, “You just need to look at it this way?” No. You go to God’s Word.

Every time the apostle has done this—every single time—in the things that pertain to the attack upon believing Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, he went back to Scripture, he argued the case. I can’t go over old ground. And now in relation to the present experience that these Hebrew Christians were feeling, what does he do? He goes back to Scripture. He turns our attention to Proverbs 3 and says, “It’s always been there, that God preserves the right and deed, will always chasten His own. He will chasten them.” And this is what’s going on in your life.

What we need to do then is to see our trials through the lens of objective truth. We have a God who loves His people, who sent His Son to die a substitutionary death, representing them, bearing the curse for them, living for them, rising from the dead to secure their life—and to believe that undergirding all of that, as I quoted in prayer, is love. John 3:16, “God so loved,” and that He loves His people. As we sang, “welcomed with a Father’s love.”

And when you believe that the Father is loving and nothing can challenge that or mount such a challenge that would diminish your trust or belief in that—when you’re so convicted that He is loving—through that lens you read what is going on in your life.

When we see that way, the question is no longer, “Why is this happening to me?” or “Am I even a child of God?” But “What is my Father teaching me through this? What?” He’s doing something.

My hope this morning, as we look at verses 7 through 11, is that you will learn to see your trials not as evidence that God has abandoned you, but as proof that He has made you His child.

Some of you are going through hardship. The rest of you will go through hardship. And God has a word specific to an experience you’re either in or you will be. And so every one of us needs to listen up.

I’ve titled the message, “The Experience That Proves Your Adoption.” The Experience That Proves Your Adoption.

Three simple primary headings. We will see a revelation. We will see a comparison. We’ll see a transformation—a revelation, comparison, and transformation.

So we look first then at a revelation that we see from verses 7 through 8: “If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons: for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.”

“If ye endure chastening…” The language here invites us to see really an exposition of the text that the apostle is given from Proverbs 3, mentioned there in verses 5 and 6. He is expounding on that, expounding on what does that mean. What does it mean for you to be a child of God and to suffer this chastening or scourging that He may apply to you at various times in your life?

“If ye endure chastening,” we’re to see that God is doing something. He is not punishing, He is parenting. He is doing what is His duty as our Father. He is carrying out His responsibility.

And this is something that they ought to have known. Again, remind you of verse 5. “And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son,” and so on. “You have forgotten this.” They did know it. They did know it. They could probably, most of them, quote it. But in terms of applying that truth to the current circumstances, they had forgotten. And we do this. We do this.

You’ve gone through it. You’ve gone through an experience where you’re assessing something, and it’s difficult or trial—it is a trial or hardship, or you’re really struggling with it. And then a verse comes to you, and all the pieces just fall in right there. You say, “I mean, I just… I forgot. Yeah, in light of that, I understand. In light of that, I get it.” And peace comes through that truth.

And so the apostle reminds him, “You’ve forgotten something, something you need to remember that will make all the difference if you keep it in mind through your trial that you’re enduring right now.”

The discipline—the experience rather—is discipline. And the discipline is not arbitrary. It is God doing what is His responsibility for His children in love.

In drawing from Proverbs 3, he is declaring very plainly that this has always been the way. God has always addressed His people. And so, in such a way that He addresses them through what is described here more frequently as chastening, we are to endure it. We are to endure this chastening.

It is something, of course, that we are to see connected with what He’s already said. This is important. Look. Look at the Word. “Endure chastening.” What does He say about the Lord Jesus Christ? Go back to verse 2, “who endured the cross.” Verse 3, “endured such contradiction of sinners.”

Was that easy for Christ? Was it easy for Him to endure the cross? Was it easy for Him to endure the contradiction of sinners? Why didn’t the Father appoint an easier way? Why didn’t He just pave out the way so it was smooth sailing for Jesus to be the mediator of His people?

But that was not the way, and so He endured, He endured it. It was a form of chasing. He learned, this book earlier tells us in chapter 5, He learned obedience through the things that He suffered. He’s being taught through the trial He was enduring, constantly Christ was enduring. What we mentioned last week, the headwinds—He’s pushing on. Despite all that’s coming against Him, He pushes on in that forward motion of trusting the Father, believing and obeying. And so you—you’re to endure chastening.

That is what the child is to do. It’s not optional, it’s what is required of you. It challenges any notion that the Messiah would bring immediate earthly comfort. No, it’s not going to be that way. God’s people are going to endure chastening. They’re going to experience it and have to endure it.

And it’s tied then to the Messiah’s suffering, because He also endured the cross. He also endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself. And you then are to experience something similar. It’s not for the same purpose. You’re not offering a sacrifice. You’re not making atonement. But you’re entering into His sufferings, what Paul describes as the fellowship of His sufferings—understanding more the sufferings of Christ in part, not through merely reading theological treatises that expound to you the sufferings of Christ, but by your own suffering.

Your own suffering becomes a way in which God opens your eyes, helps you to see and submit to the wise counsel of a loving Father.

The Messiah’s sufferings were essential to His inheritance. All that was laid up—the joy that was laid up before Him—He could see beyond. He saw what was laid up. He put His arms around the great harvest that would be definitive and sure. By His death, by His resurrection, it was not a matter of whether people would be saved, but they must be saved. There’s going to be a great harvest of souls, and so He with joy went to the cross, laid down His life, knowing the value of what He was doing would be seen in the multitudes redeemed by His precious blood.

So His suffering was essential to His own inheritance. And so it is for you. In order to obtain inheritance, God has appointed suffering. And so, again, any view that was aligned with the Messiah’s going to bring all this prosperity and it’s going to be ease—it wasn’t true for Himself, nor is it true for His own people.

“Endure chastening.” But if you endure chastening, what are we told? “God dealeth with you as with sons.” He dealeth with you as with sons. There’s a relationship here, and He is making it very plain through what’s implied that that sonship has nothing to do with biological descent.

Because again, the argument of the Hebrews would be that we are the sons of God by virtue of being descended from Abraham. And what the apostle says when you’re going through chasing, “God is dealing with you as with sons.” That being a child of God is not inextricably linked to this physical descent from Abraham. There’s something more going on.

So while the Jews were familiar with the idea of adoption and as a nation would see God as their father, you’d miss—many of them were missing this fact, that the trials and the difficulties is God dealing with you as His child.

The word “deal,” “dealeth with you,” it’s one of those words that as a preacher you come across and you’re looking at the original language and you stop as you start studying it, you start asking yourself, “I’m pretty sure there’s more here, more than my knowledge or even what I have in terms of time to study will allow me to fully mine out.” I say that because though you have it here in the word, “dealeth with you as sons,” the actual Greek word is nearly always aligned with the sense of offering a sacrifice.

And that’s not accidental. If it’s purely in the way we read it here, that He’s addressing you as sons, as I think is how we initially read it. There are other words that could be put here, but the language has a sense of being tied to sacrifice, and I’m not sure all that’s going on and all that is implied.

Possibly it carries a sense of the sacred value of something being offered, so just as the Father offered the Son for a higher purpose, so it is in the redemption of the elect. The Father offers His children for a higher purpose. The higher purpose is different than Christ. Christ is being offered to make provision for sinners. We, in our offering, God dealing with us, if it’s seen as an offering, if I’m writing this, in that case it is for where we get to verse 11. It’s working for us, a harvest, a peaceable fruit of righteousness.

In other words, He’s dealing, He is offering, He is working in us, He’s presenting us in such a way that we are dealt with as sons in order for this higher purpose. Something more is going on.

Whatever the case, the expression shows the relationship. The Father does not stand aloof. He actively approaches His children. He disciplines them because He is a Father. As I said earlier, the chasing is not arbitrary, it’s not just doing something… You know, just letting things happen. He is at work. If we are His children, then we’re going to endure chastening. And that chastening shows us that God dealeth with us as He deals with His children.

Our Lord Jesus had to embrace this, that He was a Son. And He lived His life, and like I said last week, it’s crucial that we keep the order in our minds. The way the apostle addresses us, by first looking to Christ and seeing Him enduring the contradiction of sinners and enduring the cross and so on, and keeping that in mind. And how Christ went that path helps us then when we’re assessing what we’re going through ourselves. Because we do not doubt that the Father loved the Son. We don’t doubt that. The Father loves the Son, the testimony of the Son Himself, He knew that He was loved. And yet the path for Him was suffering. The will of the Father for Him was hardship and affliction and the offering Himself in the most horrendous fashion. The injustice of the only innocent man ever to die truly innocent, not just as in relation to the charges, but in His nature, He was innocent.

And keeping that in mind, then we go back to things like Isaiah 53, verse 10, “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him.” It pleased the Lord to bruise Him. It pleased the Father to bruise His Son.

The cross then, get this, the cross then became a confirmation of Christ’s Sonship. All that He lived through and all that He endured and experienced right up to the pinnacle of His sufferings in the cross was a confirmation of His sonship because He would not turn away from the Father’s will. He would not rebel. He submitted and confirmed Himself to be the Son of God. Now that undergirds the apostle’s argument in relation to you and me as well.

“God deals with you as sons.” If He endured chasing, He deals with you as sons. There’s a sense of us entering into the suffering that our Lord Jesus endured. He endured suffering, appointed by the Father. Yes, at the hands of evil men, but the Father, the whole plan of it, weaved out by Him. We then show our union, show our sonship, show our adoption by enduring the chastening that the Father has appointed for us as well. So sonship is revealed through endurance.

I want you to note that. Sonship is revealed through endurance, the endurance of the chastening. But sonship also is denied by neglect. It is denied by neglect.

“For what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” Go into verse 8. “But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.”

The word that we have translated, “bastards,” carries strong covenantal implications. You’re causing the Jews, you’re reading this, to sit back and assess what are the implications of being an illegitimate child. To be an illegitimate child, Deuteronomy 23, verse 2, means that you have no right to the assembly of the Lord. You’re barred from covenantal privileges.

The apostle here argues that if you’re without chastisement, then you’re like those who are illegitimate. Again, these people are of the line of Abraham, and this sounds so shocking, but it’s exactly what John the Baptist said. “Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” Don’t boast. Don’t think that your privileges, that your standing is because of physical being descending from Abraham. Don’t argue that. Don’t think that this has some merit.

And he is saying here, the apostle’s entering into the similar argument, “If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.” You are illegitimate. You Hebrews, keep the context in mind. You from Abraham, you are illegitimate. So it’s very sharp.

Those who would brag about being from Abraham, being of Jewish blood, attending the temple, having the right to such privileges, observing the ceremonies, none of this proves sonship. Discipline from the Father does.

Now, we’re not going to take time, but I encourage you to make a note of Psalm 73 in relation to this passage. Effectively the context is the same. Asaph in Psalm 73 is like these Hebrews who are assessing the experience. Asaph’s going through hardship and he looks at the world around him and all the ungodly seem to prosper. Those who’ve turned away from the truth, those who want nothing to do with the truth, they seem to have it easy. And Asaph’s question arises, “How come? It seems backwards.”

And read through that Psalm, you see how he reconciles it. One of the ways he does, by the way, is by getting himself to the public means of grace. He’s coming in, gathering with the saints, seeing them sing and preparing their hearts for something that is laid up in the future. Gives perspective.

Well, this is what we’re to see as well. The bottom line is that while bastards may escape the rod, they have no eternal inheritance. That’s what Asaph understood. These people don’t have inheritance. They do not have what we have.

This past week I received correspondence from, I’m just saying, an older pastor. And he was, just a short note, thanking me for the message last week from Hebrews 12, verses 4 through 6. I’ll not—some of you will know who he is, but I’ll not mention him, just keep his privacy.

But in his email, I thought it interesting. In his email, he noted a word of testimony. A word of testimony that ties into verses 7 and 8 that we’re looking at just at this juncture. This revelation, this revelation of God showing us that sonship is revealed through endurance and is denied by neglect. If you’re not going through hardship at all, are you really a child of God?

Here’s what he said. “Hebrews 12, verses 7 and 8 awakened me to the reality of the false profession I had held to since I was a teenager. I would tell people that I was saved when I was a child and baptized and I was just a backslider. Then a Christian friend who knew the life I was living challenged me with, ‘If you’re truly saved, why hasn’t God chastened you? And if you’re just backslidden, why aren’t you miserable?’ The Holy Spirit used that to bring conviction of sin and awaken me to my need to call on the name of the Lord, and I was truly converted.”

Good, good counsel. If you’re really a child of God, you’re going to be chastened. “If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons: for what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not?” All will be chastened, every single one. That’s why I said this message is either pertinent to where you are today, or it will be.

Secondly, we have here a comparison. A comparison, verses 9 and 10. “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.”

Two things here, very simple. Earthly fathers correct with limited benefit. Earthly fathers correct with limited benefit.

“Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence.” Now, to the children here, pay attention. You see what the apostle is writing here. It’s an aside. He’s not really addressing children, but he is drawing from something that is easily concluded. The children have a duty to give reverence and obedience to just parental commands and reverence to, or rather submission to, their correction. There’s no escaping it.

There ought to be in every child a sense of reverence and obedience to the correction of their parents. There also ought to be a proper spirit in receiving parental reproof, not becoming discontented, not becoming stubborn, not becoming rebellious. The whole manner in which we receive it is important.

Children learn that early. I’m going to suggest something, I think, that generally bears out—that if you learn this, if you learn in the context of the commandment we just finished, the fifth commandment, if you learn what it is to submit with a joyful spirit to authority, you’re going to find it will aid you when God deals with you as well. You’re going to find the young person or whatever age one might be, who struggles with dealing with authority, that will translate when God starts bringing hardship into your life. Because what you’re doing is you’re conditioning, in a sense, expectations.

When my father speaks, I listen, I submit. It’s a lawful command. I don’t like it. It’s not what I would want, but I will do it. I will do it joyfully. I will do it as it is the very will of God for my life.

I mean, I don’t think people get that. When authority speaks a just command for an inferior, asking something of you, unless it is wicked and sinful, it is the will of God for your life.

Now, there are some minor exceptions there when you are dealing with a very unreasonable circumstance in that case. But I don’t like those exceptions because everyone wants to make their own case the exception.

Let’s say, for example, there’s a young person who wants to be married. And a suitor comes along, seems perfectly fine, there’s no legitimate reason, and the parents stand in the way. And there’s no real just reason for it. It can’t be argued any logical way. The young man, the young woman’s godly, fears the Lord. Every testimony about them is upstanding. There’s no real reason to oppose this, and your child has an affection, desire to pursue that, and you’re standing in the way. I would say submit. Go and talk to other superiors who your parents might listen to to get them to rethink.

The general rule then is, “We have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” This analogy of the fathers of our flesh shows God condescending to teach in a way or in terms that we understand.

Our earthly fathers train us for a time, imperfectly in many instances, and they are inferior to the Father of spirits. He’s the only one, I was thinking of the word reading over this, thinking of the words of Jesus, “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” God rules over a realm that man cannot touch. And we’re to fear Him. And if we fear and reverence our earthly fathers, and rightly so, how much more ought we to fear and submit and be in subjection to the Father of Spirits?

That title, “Father of Spirits,” likely drawing from a couple of passages in Numbers. This ought to be a word to every person in authority, every father, every elder. If our heavenly Father does not withhold correction, neither must we. A home, a church without discipline, without having proper recourse of dealing with those who are rebellious, will be in disarray. And it’s not the will of God.

And in our current society, with the pressures that we’re dealing with, I understand the difficulty. I understand it. Oh, the twisting of Scripture. The psychology of the current day, constantly trying to stand against everything that God’s Word says. I’ve been in conversations, I’ve been in conversations where people have had a difficult experience and so the pendulum swings the other way and you’re trying to reason with them. Show them God’s Word and they take every scripture that tells them that, “This, I don’t have to discipline in this way.” You’re rebelling against the wisdom of God. It is an act of unbelief. That’s when God’s people say, “I will not discipline my child.” It is an act of unbelief. You have crossed the line of not just simply neglect of duty. You have shaken your fist at the wisdom of God.

Our Heavenly Father does not withhold correction, and neither must we. If we underestimate the purpose of discipline, we despise God’s use of means. If we overestimate the purpose of discipline, we reject the truth that only God can change the heart. And I fear sometimes that’s how discipline is exercised in homes. It is merely to bring some outward conformity. And so with the sense of the fear of the moment, bring the outward conformity.

But God never chastens without His Word. His Word is the instruction. The chastening actually is what opens the ears to hear the Word. And so it is in the home, so it is in the church. The purpose of discipline in the church is to bring repentance. That repentance comes by heartening to the Word, the calls to repentance that may be being reverberated and echoed by believers and especially the elders of the church. And it’s only through the discipline they start to hear what’s being said.

So if you’re a parent and you’re given to discipline for the purpose of merely conformity outwardly and not realizing that its primary purpose is to get them to hear, and so the discipline comes and afterward they must follow the Word, you’re misusing its intention.

God disciplines His people. Note then the heavenly Father corrects for lasting good. Our earthly Father is correct with limited benefit. The heavenly Father corrects for lasting good.

The end of verse 9. “Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.”

By nature, we’re not in subjection. This is the problem. We inherit a spirit of insubordination. Thank you, Adam. Appreciate that. Well, we all have it, right? This spirit of insubordination. Wanting our own will. Wanting our own way. And we still, even with conversion, we still fight with this, don’t we? The flesh lusteth against the spirit. What is going on there? The flesh lusteth against the spirit. The will of the flesh. What I want. The old me, the natural man.

So we need to learn to be in subjection. Great disciplines, great design is to bring us to subjection to God. This denotes, I’d love to expand on these, but we have to acquiesce to God’s sovereign right. He is sovereign, not me. He is sovereign, not me. There’s so much in that one statement. You’re not sovereign.

There’s a renunciation then of self-will. You have to give it over. There’s the acknowledgement of His righteousness and His wisdom. He is perfect, I am not. He is wise, I am not. How can I? What am I doing? What am I doing when I try to inform God or correct Him?

We must recognize His care and love and actively, not passively, perform His will. Not just in some passive way accept it, but actively embrace it and say, “This is His will. Thank you, Lord.” There’s so much here. I may have to come back to finish this message. In fact, I’m just going to do that. I’d end up rushing. I wanted to preach this in one message. I wanted to because I wanted to get the whole flow of the argument and put your arms around everything that God is intending through your trial.

“Our fathers after their own pleasure,” that is, as seemed good to them, they did their best. But this Father of Spirits is doing it for real profit.

Bring it into your mind right now. What is it you’re struggling with? I think sometimes we fear to even articulate it publicly because there’s a part of us either A, is afraid it may be misunderstood, B, it may seem petty. You long for something. Something that many others have. And you know, you know that there may be an element that is petty that you have this desire. And it rises up within you, this struggle, this tension. “Why is God not treating me in the way I want?”

We’re not called to be Stoics in which we use philosophy to numb us to what’s going on. Nor are we antinomians who think that God’s grace is such that He would never, ever discipline me. These are errors we have to avoid.

Look at what he says in verse 11, “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.” Is that not the apostle giving you license to accept how hard it is? Is it not the Holy Spirit underlining that He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities? He was tempted in all points like as we are. That we have, as chapter 5 points out, it’s necessary that a priest be taken from among men that he might understand the infirmities of the people.

And you have a God who not just with His omniscience understands what you’re going through, you have a God who took your nature and came right into the heart of man’s experience and walked through a life of hardship and chastening.

“It does not appear joyous, but grievous.”

Even our Lord Jesus looked at the rebellion of those around Him on one occasion and He was grieved. Grieved by what was going on, grieved by the unbelief, grieved by being surrounded by such sinners and their rebellion against Him. This was hard for Him.

This morning’s takeaway is this. “Shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” Language “live,” my mind goes right back to Deuteronomy. And what did the people need in order to live? A circumcised heart. By a circumcised heart, then they would obey the Father’s will. They needed new life in order to obey. And that’s the same for us.

The challenge for you may be the fact that you’re not even saved. You’re not converted. You need to be born again. And from that position of having a new heart, you can begin to submit to the Father of spirits and process His disciplining in light of His eternal love.

May the Lord help us. Let’s bow together in prayer.

Just take a moment and review the challenges and the trials you’re going through, and do so in light of this passage. The Lord knows what He’s doing. He is wise beyond comparison. And you and I struggle. We struggle to see His wisdom. We struggle to believe that His providence in our lives is an outworking of what is good for us. But this is what Paul said, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.”

Lord, help us in the mystery of Thy purpose to submit to Thee. Rid us of the remaining attitude and frame of rebellion. There’s not a person here who every single time manages to overcome. We are tempted, we are tried, we are stretched, and at times we feel crushed. I pray, oh God, help us. Help us to submit and by and by understand that you’re drawing out a harvest, the peaceable fruits of righteousness.

Hear us and hide Thy word now in our heart that we might not sin against Thee. May the grace of our Lord Jesus, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit be the portion of every child of God, now and evermore. Amen.