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  HEBREWS 12:3-11
  by Don McClure
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Summary: The purpose of discipline in the Christian life is to hone
faith, deepen faith, and strengthen faith, bringing us out of human
thinking and feeling into a dimension of life where our entire life is
disciplined by faith.

Duration: 41:29 Topics: "Spiritual Discipline", "Godly Obedience"
Scripture References: Hebrews 12:2-3, Hebrews 12:5-6, Hebrews 12:10-11, Hebrews 12:14, Hebrews 12:28-29

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DESCRIPTION
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In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of discipline in
our lives. He explains that when God instructs us to do something, we
should obey and not continue to indulge in worldly pleasures. The
speaker highlights that through discipline, we can experience tremendous
rewards and growth in our spiritual journey. He also compares the
discipline of earthly fathers to the discipline of God, emphasizing that
God's discipline is for our own good and to help us become more like
Him.

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CONTENT
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Well, once again, remember here as we're looking through the book of
Hebrews, we are reading a book that was written to the Jewish believers
who had come to Christ out of Judaism and all the explanations there of
how Christ is the fulfillment of all of the things in the Old Testament
and the necessity of those things and how that these people had come to
Christ as wonderful as it was to become God's children and have faith in
Christ and to be growing. They were also, though, people that were going
through a lot of struggles. They were undergoing some very, very
difficult times.

Born and raised in Judaism, now having effectively rejected Judaism for
Christianity as the fulfillment of Judaism, they were being persecuted.
They were going through a lot of trials and a lot of struggles. And
because of the people that they had now essentially walked away from,
who were now, you know, trying to pull them back into Judaism and who
had now actually given them some great trials as well in their life
because they had walked away from it.

Back in chapter 10 in verse 32 and 3, he says there, it reminds him of
the former days. He says, when after being enlightened, after you'd come
to Christ, you endured a great affliction of sufferings, partly being
made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations and partly
by becoming sharers of those who were so treated. But here the writer of
Hebrews says, you know, when you came to Christ, you entered some
trials.

When you became enlightened to Christ, you have suffered some great
affliction and some great sufferings. Some of the trials were social,
were relational, were with family. Some of them were economic.

Some had even been imprisoned, they're told as well in chapter 10 about
it. But all of them were in some form or another seemingly of pressure.
And there were some of them even almost wanting to give into it, just
say, you know, this is, I didn't know this is worth it, all of this.

And maybe we just ought to go back to Judaism, back to the, you know,
the old ceremonial law and these other things of the Old Testament. And
these trials had no doubt caused some believers to wonder why. God, you
know, wasn't giving them a greater victory in these things.

Why God with all of His power and all of His capacity to do anything He
wanted, why was He allowing them to suffer and doing seemingly nothing
about it? Well, He attempted to answer some of those questions and
struggles in chapter 11 when He told them that those, you know, those
struggles were the very things that refined their forefathers, that
purified, that strengthened, that increased the faith of their fathers
and that made them such phenomenal men and women of God in the Old
Covenant anyway. And that now He leads into an exhortation for them to
be strong as well and to receive the discipline that they need in their
lives as well. And He gives us this exhortation.

And He reminds them as well of a couple of things there that the saints
of the Old Covenant, they knew very, very well what it was to suffer.
They faced warfare, weaknesses of all sorts of ways and beatings,
imprisonment, stoning, destitution, all sorts of afflictions. And just
because of their trust in the Lord, this was not a new thing, these
trials that they had.

And not only that, it was also something that now He goes on to tell
them, but now you are to be able to go through this. And as you do it,
be looking unto Jesus, somebody they really couldn't even see like you
can see. You're to be looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of
our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the
cross, despised the shame and is set down at the right hand of the
throne of God.

And here as He's telling them, He reminds them now here in verse three,
He says, therefore, consider him who endured such hostility from sinners
against himself, lest you become weary and you become discouraged in
your souls. He realized that the writer, he said, I know sometimes when
you're wanting to grow and you're truly committing your life and
commending, you know, your walk to God, wanting to be very sincere about
it, there will be times in your life that you'll become discouraged.
You'll become weary.

It's part of the aspect of a disciplined life. And anybody who knows any
sense of discipline knows that. Anything at all, worth anything in this
life, it always comes with some measure of discipline.

I care whether you want to be an athlete, you want to be a musician, you
want to be a doctor or a lawyer or something, whatever career it is that
somebody may have, the better they're at it, the harder the discipline
there was. When somebody there wants to be an athlete and everybody
else's school's out, I'm going off and there's a party going on and
you're out there, you know, you're working out, you're in the gym,
you're training, you're trying to, you're buffeting your body, you're
disciplining your body, you're bringing in subjection there to realizing
there that you want to go out on that field and you want to perform and
you want to perform well. And the reward of discipline is what you are
looking for.

So you discipline yourself when everybody else is going off and, hey,
let's go do something, but you're up burning the midnight oil and you're
learning, you know, biology or chemistry or whatever else it is and
studying these things, you know, so that you can know medicine. And
while the other people are off saying, hey, you don't, I'm just going to
be a drug dealer, you know, you can prescribe them as they ought to, but
hey, I know a shortcut to it and I can be very successful at both
dealing drugs, you'll just be smarter than me. But some people, but the
one who disciplines themselves and gives himself to, you know, and puts
themselves in under the disciplines of life is the one that reaps the
reward of it.

Well, so also in the Christian life, when there is somebody there that
they really say, I want the greatest life experience I can have. I want
to have the most wonderful experience on this planet that there can be
afforded to a human being. And he says, well, then you've got to know
what it is to be disciplined by God, to look there within your heart and
you're within your life.

And he says, I know with a person, anybody that does this, just like the
athlete or the student or whatever else that gives themselves to some
higher degree of training and discipline, they will have times where
they're weary. They'll have times where it says here that they could be
discouraged and sold. This thing is worth it.

I'm tired. I'm going to go to bed. I don't need this.

And all these things. But when they overcome that with the discipline to
say, no, I want it. One day they'll reap the reward of it.

They'll have that. And they'll be that, you know, the athlete maybe that
they want to be. They'll be that, you know, musician.

They'll be that doctor. They'll be that lawyer or whatever else it is,
if you want to be a lawyer. But the, nothing.

Actually, I was just doing a conference this weekend, and the pastor,
biggest paradox in the world, the pastor of the church where I'm doing
it, he's a lawyer. I said, you're a Christian and a lawyer? He said,
yes. I said, that's amazing.

I was quite impressed. Then I started, I'm just kidding, but kind of.
But anyway, then the next, we slept in the same room where we're at this
conference.

And it was a neat men's conference we're at. But I woke up the next
morning, I'm thinking, this is the most humbling night of my entire
life. And he says, why? And I said, well, to tell you the truth, I spent
my whole life thinking that lawyers were the lowest thing in the world.

And here I slept under a lawyer all night. He was on the upper bunk. But
anyway, God humbled me tremendously.

But the disciplines of life, when we know what it is to want to achieve
something by all you godly Christian lawyers, I don't know if there's
all, many, some. When am I going this morning? I've got to wake up. But
anyway, but the disciplines, that's what I'm talking about, discipline
in a very undisciplined way.

I did not do this for a service. But anyway, but the disciplines of
life, when we realize there that I want them. The word discipline in
this section of Scripture we just read, it's repeated nine times.

Discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline over and
over. He is telling them, you want to achieve something? And he says,
then the disciplines of life have got to become a part of your life. And
it's very, very important.

And here he gives us in this section, three things, three aspects of
discipline. He's going to tell us the purpose of discipline, first of
all. And the discipline honestly has a purpose.

We should all know that. But he reminds us here in verse five, he says,
he says, and you've forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you
as sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor
faint when you are reproved by him.

Here he tells us, he says, discipline has a purpose there in life. He
says, and don't ever forget that. Realize they're all the saints of old.

There was a great purpose when God disciplined them. And he says, have
you forgotten the disciplines that God gave them? When you look at all
of these old Testament saints, the things that they essentially, you
know, had gone through, and he went through chapter 11. And all of these
things are the disciplines that they had to go through.

He says, have you forgotten these things? Do you, have you forgotten
that God cannot be pleased with anything less than faith and a trust in
him? And God disciplined them to hone their faith, to deepen their
faith, to strengthen their faith, to bring them out of this realm of
just human thinking and feeling into a dimension of life where their
entire life had been disciplined by faith. I want to live and walk and
talk and breathe and live and love and care by faith. I want it to be
the powerful aspect of life and the struggles and the disciplines they
went through.

God's choices saints suffered many disciplines. He says, don't forget
that. And wanted to remind them so, you know, that they're suffering.

There's nothing new about it, essentially. It isn't new to you. It's not
new to me.

It's gone through God's saints of old. And being disciplined by God is
not new at all. God has been disciplining people forever because they're
his sons.

But he tells them, he says, my son, do not regard lightly the discipline
of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. And here the writer
of Hebrews tells us in discipline, there's two things that can happen
when discipline is being applied that will ruin its effectiveness. That
there's two things that when somebody is disciplining somebody else,
that if the person that is being disciplined allows either of these two
things to happen, forget it.

Discipline will not work. An exhortation there, you ways that you can
learn nothing through discipline and yet you can go through it. Many
people, they repeat discipline over and over and over again.

They go through the same supposed lessons, but there's two things that
happen to them that remove the ability to learn in discipline. And so
they just have to repeat it. And the first thing he tells them, he says,
my son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord.

The first thing he says, there is many people when they are being
disciplined, they regard it lightly. That is, there is something there
that they, that when the discipline comes, something they're sent by God
for their good, like hopefully even any parent, as he goes on in the
text. When a parent takes his son aside and he disciplines him, he wants
to tell him there is a message there that I've got to give you.

There's something I want to achieve. May hold their face and say, look,
this is what has happened and this is what you got to do. And this is
where you're wrong.

It is for your good. But if when the discipline comes, you regard it
lightly. It will not work.

A lot of people, what happens when they're being disciplined is they
regard heavily the experience, you know, that they are actually going
through and they regard lightly the message that they're trying to be
taught. In the sense, they'll be going through something and all they
know is, is the idea they weigh heavily, the experience, the trial, the
problem. I'm being spanked.

It hurts. I don't like being spanked. This is terrible.

And rather than being able to emphasize, no, what is the message you're
trying to communicate when you're disciplining me, when I am being
spanked, how many times as parents do you look at your child and when
you discipline, you realize they are regarding it lightly, even though
their tears and their pain, you know, but they are regarding heavily,
you know, the pain, heavily the spanking, but you realize they didn't
learn anything. They did not get the message. There isn't something
where they say, right, I got it.

You know, I didn't hear it when you said it, but I, when I felt it, I
understood it. Now, you know, you don't want me to do this. Bingo.

I've got to stop doing that. Is that what you're trying to tell me
through this pain? Yes. But if people don't get that and they just walk
away and you know, they're just mad at the situation.

I'm mad. Johnny told mom and me and got me in trouble and I got a
spanking and they regard lightly the lesson, heavily the trial. How many
people that go through repeatedly through the years, marriage problems,
marriage problems, marriage problems.

It's that woman. There's so much tension in the home. That woman now
gave us me.

Where did I get this woman? There's so much tension. There's heartache.
There's hostility.

And there's this constant discipline and sense of pain and struggle
rather than ever stopping and saying, God, are you trying to tell me
something through this woman? No, that couldn't be. You know, it's the
woman or it's the job. It's that boss.

This is not fair. This is not right. The way they treat you.

You can't treat people that way. And so God disciplines us through the
wife disciplines through the marriage, through the children, through the
job. There's pain, there's discipline, there's struggle.

But rather than listening and stopping and saying, God, is there
something you're trying to teach me that I can grow, that I can hear,
that I can change my behavior, my thoughts, my relationship, I can
develop as a human being and I can mature in this struggle in the home,
struggle at the office, struggle with the finances, struggle with
whatever else it is. And so often many people, they just they take the
discipline lightly. They regard it lightly.

They miss the message. And thus they're going through it again and again
and again. How many times do we rather than really stopping and
regarding it heavily or as we ought to.

And yet they can go through a very difficult time and learn nothing. And
sometimes they can even, not only that, they can even harden themselves
to it. Another thing that can happen when you, when somebody does
repeatedly get disciplined, they repeatedly get things they'll actually
first they can start off just regarding it lightly and then they can
actually get hardened to it and just say, I hate this job.

I hate this woman. I hate this man. I hate these children.

I hate whatever else it is that's causing this pain in my life. And they
can get hardened to it and blame God and all sorts of things. I wonder
right now how many with, you know, when you look at the things, hundreds
of thousands of people have just gone through with these hurricanes,
lost, you know, their homes, lost everything they own, all lost their
jobs, lost their children's schools, lost all of this.

And what a painful thing to go through. I wonder how many of them are
either angry and they're callous and, and upset. And I want to know how
does, why, and this is what, and they're looking at people, it's the
government, it's the mayor, it's the governor, you know, or the
president, or it's this commissioner, where were that? And everything's
everybody else's fault.

Rather than sitting there and saying, God, is there something through
the issues of life that you can teach me that's going to make me better
and stronger, deepen my faith, enriching my experience with you. That's
a person there that's learning the right sort of a thing. And then
another thing can happen if we regard discipline lightly, we'll get
careless.

In the sense that we'll find ourself there, you know, where we just lose
care. We could have enough, you know, God will discipline us. Anybody,
when you get married, you'll go through disciplines.

You don't realize how selfish you are till you get married, do you? You
know, I mean, all of a sudden there's somebody else there, you know, who
shares the same refrigerator, same thermostat, same house, same clock,
same everything. And I thought I was a very nice, wonderful Christian
till I got married, you know, and I didn't think I was selfish at all
till I got married. And then all of a sudden there's this woman in the
way, you know, of all the time, every day, seemingly.

And how God uses these things to show me, Don, there's nothing wrong
with her, you're just extremely selfish. The world does not revolve
around you. Do you know what it is to care for her, know what she's
going through? No.

You know, but then either you learn to respond to that or you'll get
careless. One day, you know, I mean, you'll have struggles in marriage.
She'll say stuff to you like, that hurt.

Well, so, you know, or whatever, you know, you'll just either you'll
respond and you'll learn something or you'll get hostile or you'll get
angry or you'll get judgmental. And then if you repeat it over a period
of time, within a certain period of time or one day, you don't care
anymore. You will not, because you do not regard the chastening of
discipline and regard it lightly.

The next thing you know, you'll look at marriage and say, you know, I
didn't care anymore. I didn't care for this woman. I don't care for this
marriage.

I don't care for these children. I don't care for this job. I care for
anything.

You actually are so callous and hardened instead of somebody there that
literally knows what it is to regard discipline. The discipline comes,
their ears open up and they say, God, what are you wanting to teach me
in this discipline, in this struggle? That's the person that's always
going to come out the better because of it. Or a second thing that can
happen is he tells them, secondly, he says, it with discipline, you can
either regard it lightly or he says, nor faint when you are reproved by
him.

Here in the issues of life, I mean, God never spanks anybody directly,
never disciplines anybody directly. He does it through the issues of
life, doesn't he? He does it in our relationships. He does it in our
career.

He does it with our health. He does it with our finances. He does it in
marriage and with the children.

And here when somebody is going through these things, God's reproving
them. He's disciplining them. He's teaching them.

You really want to be in my image. You want to be the son of your father
in heaven. You want the love in you that is in me.

You want the maturity. You want to think like me, walk like me, talk
like me, love like me, care like me, be conformed to my image. Then I've
got to show you where you don't love.

You don't care where you're selfish, where you're arrogant, where you're
demanding, where you're hostile, where you're angry. And then it'll come
out in these places in life. And he says, either you'll regard it
lightly and you'll learn nothing, or secondly, you can just faint.

You can just become fainthearted. In a sense there, you can allow it
just to overcome you in such a way that you just faint. You just give
up.

You just say, ah, I just give up. And usually when we do it, we say,
I've tried and tried and tried. Well, we haven't tried, but we say that,
you know, but we tried the wrong way.

So he just said, what's the use? I give up. I just give up. How many
times do we do that? That we walk out, you know, on somebody and say,
you're whatever, say, and then as we walk out, I give up.

I'm exhausted. I'm fainting. You know, this is just can't go on.

And that's also, you can become weary. You can become discouraged here,
as he tells us in this text in discipline. If you don't know what it is
all about and respond to the right things in it.

Even David, when God was disciplining him, when he was training him, and
he found himself weary in it and discouraged in it. And he said in one
of his psalms, he says, why art thou disquieted within me, O my soul?
Why have you become disturbed within me? He asked there. He's looking,
he's speaking to himself.

He says, why are you so down? Why are you exhausted? Why are you weary?
Why have you given up? He asked himself that. But then he wonderfully
knew the answer. And he turned there and he responds a couple of verses
later.

He says, hope thou in God. I'll yet praise him. And he'll be the help of
my countenance.

He looked there and he says, God, you lift me up and you get me back in
the battle. Yes, I'm tired. Yes, I'm weary.

But it's a noble thing life is. I want to go on with it. I want to
succeed at it.

And when we can just look at life, at the difficulties, at where we're
banging heads and where we're struggling and striving and realizing,
could this possibly be God's discipline? And could this be God there
who's really, it is my husband, my wife, my children, my parents, my
job, my career, and all these other things. God, you, what are you
telling me? And when I can step back from that and say, what are you
saying? What in the world is it that you're doing? And I don't want to
take it lightly. And I don't want to be discouraged.

I want to faint. I want to learn the lesson. I want to subject myself to
it and grow.

That's the person that's going to find their whole life, I believe,
dramatically affected when we can look there and relieve all the rest of
the world, you know, and be mad at the stick that God used to spank us.
You know, I remember when we first started training, we had a Doberman
for years. And when you'd take it and you'd use a newspaper or something
there to spank the dog with, well, then when it found the stick or it
found whatever you used, it'd tear it up, chew it up.

It was so mad at that thing. You caused me the pain, you know, that I
felt there, you know. But rather than wait to know, that was just what
was in my hand.

I did it. And when somebody can look and say, God, it isn't people. It
is my job.

It isn't this. You're the one, the sovereign in life. What are you
trying to tell me? That person is always going to come out the better
for it.

Instead of taking it lightly, we determine, I want to seriously look at
it. I read a story of a fellow named Lord Joseph DeVeen. He, back a
hundred years ago, he owned a very famous art company in New York and
went all over the world gathering his things.

And in 1915, he sent one of his best experts to go check out some works
of art and things for him to England. And so he booked a passage for him
on the Lusitania. But soon after that, they found out after he'd booked
the passage that the German embassy issued a warning that the Lusitania
might be torpedoed.

Well, DeVeen gets a hold of this guy and he says, I can't take the risk
of you being killed on this thing. So we're going to hold the trip that
he said to his young employee. But his employee said, no, I already
heard about it.

And I heard it could be torpedoed and it could go down. And he said, but
he says, don't take me off the ship. He said, I'm a strong swimmer.

And he told him, he said, ever since I heard that report, he says, I've
been getting, sitting in a barrel of ice every day. And he said, at
first I could only do it for a couple of minutes. He says, this morning,
I sat in it for two hours.

As he disciplined his body, and he says, I'm ready to go. Well, the
Lusitania was torpedoed. It did sink.

And five hours after it sank, the man was in great health in the
freezing waters where others had frozen to death. He determined, I want,
rather than getting out of the trials in life, out of the difficulties
of life, I want to be disciplined for them. And to me, when somebody
looks at somebody, they're just to go check out a piece of art in
England is willing to go through this.

How much more should a Christian, when they look at their marriage, they
look at their family, they look at the difficult things that may be out
there in life to say, God, discipline me, equip me to be the one that
can go through this and grow in it and stay in it and stand through it
rather than, oh, I can get out of it. How? I don't have to do it. Great.

No discipline required. Wonderful. You see, we live in a day and age
sometimes where Christianity, we want all, we want an exciting life, a
rich life, a wonderful spiritual life with no discipline.

God, I want to be a great Christian. Just no discipline. Okay.

What do you think? I want a happy, fun, Christian life, no trials.
Sorry, never invented one of those. Every one of my children, he says
here, twice in this, every one of them, I discipline.

And it's God's way. He has a plan. He has a program and discipline, but
there's also proof of it.

He goes on here in verse six, and he says, for those whom the Lord
loves, he disciplines and he scourges every son whom he receives. Here
he looks there and he goes on and he says, without discipline, you're
illegitimate. You don't even have a father if you don't have any
discipline.

And he says, but rather than that, every one that he loves, he
disciplines and he scourges. That proves his son that I love you. That
proves that I'm your father.

There's something there within us that as soon as God brought us into
his family and adopted us, and we say, God, I want to be like you. He
says, okay. He rose up his fleece.

We got some discipline here to do. We got some work to conform you into
my image. And either today, you are in his image.

You have, you're filled with his love, his kindness, his gentleness, his
patience, his peace. You are literally, you know, nothing difference
between you and your heavenly father. You're the same or to the degree
that you are not is the degree you need to be disciplined.

God says, well, I've got to disciple you. You want to be my child? You
want to be like me? You want to be in heaven with me forever? You like
what you see when you see me? You like that power and that joy and that
love? I can do that, but I got to train you. And while others are out
partying and doing this and that, you know, I wanted you to be looking
at your own heart and your own life.

I want you to be equipping yourself. I want you to be praying, seeking
me, learning my word. When you see something that's wrong in your life
that other people can live with, that you say, you know something, my
arrogance or pride or my ability to be nasty and angry and hostile, it's
got to go.

I got to get that out of my life. Discipline me, God. Teach me not to
talk like that.

Behave like that. I want to have this wonderful relationship with you. I
want to have something, a marriage that people look at and admire to
say, you two deeply love each other.

Say, yes, we do. And along, a few trials along the way, God used us to
whip each other and to scourge each other and, you know, to bring some
sense into one another at a time through these processes as iron
sharpens iron and sandpaper, you know, one against the other. But it's
God's obligation to us.

He says, because you're my child, I'll discipline you. And because
you're my child, I'll train you up. I'll raise you up here.

It says there that he scourges every son. Now that word scourge, it
refers literally there. And this is every single child.

God says, you want to be my child? I'm going to discipline you. As a
matter of fact, I'm going to scourge you. Now the word scourge, it's a
flogging with a whip.

God says, you want to be my child? I'm going to take the whip to you.
And if you still want to be my child, I'm going to, you know, you will
be scourged. You will be flogged.

And it is something that is extremely painful. Sometimes God puts us
through things in life, in our relationships, in our home that are
extremely difficult, extremely painful, will test us sometimes to the
limits of our humanity of where we look there. And God says, will you
stay the course? Will you stay the standard? Do you want my image so
much there as you will go through any pain and struggle you may have to
go through? Will you be flogged? Will you be whipped? If that is what it
may feel like.

God says, I do that to all my children. Proverbs 13, 24 says, he who
spares the rod hates his son. And he who loves him disciplines him
diligently.

God says, I love you and I will diligently, diligently be working in
your life, diligently speaking to you. If you really want to be in my
image, you really want to grow, I will be working night and day. Helping
your love grow, your maturity grow, your patience grow, your kindness
grow, your tenderness grow, your merciful heart grow.

I'll be teaching you all sorts of things about myself. Do you want to
learn them or not? And when as a child, hopefully we sign on and say,
yes, I do. But on the other side, Proverbs 29, 15 says, you know, a
child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother.

Somebody there that God doesn't discipline, just like a parent that
doesn't ever discipline their child, they bring shame. And so also I
will shame God. My untamed, undisciplined heart or mind, behavior,
anger, hostility, lust, you know, envy, it will shame heaven.

But when I look there and say, God, I want these things to go. I want
you to discipline me. I want to be your son.

And none of us, as he says in the text, nobody likes it. Never met
anybody. Have you ever met anybody that liked discipline? Have you ever
met somebody there? Well, like, you know, I got to go home.

I'm late already. I told my dad I'd be home two hours ago. And you know,
I just really feel bad about this and I need to go home and get some
discipline.

You know, I just this is very undisciplined to me. I told him I'd be
home. I lied.

And I'm just going to go home and say, Dad, give me a weapon, please. I
need it. I mean, I've never met one of those.

But yet that's precisely what they need in one way or another, perhaps.
And here, you know, I can remember when I growing up very well, when we
grew up, where our neighbors across the street, there is three boys in
our family, three boys in their family. Actually, we had my sister as
well in ours.

They didn't have a sister, but they're between the six boys. We were all
within six months of each other. And so there were like this little gang
and we are all into sports very much.

And we did everything like this. And one time I will never forget this.
And this is how it was all the time at their home, though.

We're out in the street playing football and their dad yells at him,
Hey, mow the lawn. I want you to come home and mow the lawn. We're out
playing.

Oh, you got to go. And one of them turned and yelled back at his dad,
mow it yourself. And he did.

He mowed it himself. We're watching this thing as he's mowing the lawn.
And we're just thinking, is that the coolest dad or what? You know, I
mean, why couldn't my dad be like that? Why can't everybody? And no
wonder.

I mean, this is home. This is family, you know, sort of. This was just a
young kid.

You're just envious of this. And we actually talked amongst ourselves,
our three boys. Can you imagine? Is he cool or what? He's the coolest
dad in the world because we talk.

Could you just imagine one of us saying that? My dad comes out and says,
you mow the lawn. Oh, mow it yourself. I mean, to us, that would have
been on our tombstone in a week.

Famous last words, mow it yourself. And I mean, we just, you didn't
even, you wouldn't even say mow. I mean, I'll pay you whatever you want.

You say it. It was just something you just knew that was the end. But
the thing was, my dad loved us.

I had cared and he looked there at a responsibility. Or the other thing
that is possible is he also said in the text here, he says, even your
earthly fathers disciplined you and sometimes just for their own
mentality. He says, sometimes it's just easier for them.

I don't want to mow the lawn. You mow it. But sometimes, he said, no, my
job is to discipline you.

My job is to see your life come under disciplines because you will have
many tendencies through the rest of your life where you'll have an
impulse to go on playing in the street when it's time to come home and
do your duties. When it is time to be a husband, it's time to be a
father, it's time to do other chores in life that if you do them and do
them well, the rewards will be tremendous. But if you keep on playing,
you'll lose everything.

And here, just through the disciplines, God is looking there in life.
And when I'm disciplining you and I'm teaching you and I'm showing you,
they will all have an impact later on in the other aspects of your life
and of your growth and your maturity. And he says, and then he goes on
lastly, and there's some great products and results of discipline.

Verse 9, he says, furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us
and we respected them, yet we not much more rather be subject to the
Father's spirits and live. For they disciplined us for a short time, it
seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may
share his holiness. Here he looks there and he says, there's two things
here.

There's a couple phenomenal rewards for spiritual discipline. When I
look there and say, God, I'm here and I'm not going away. I have
whatever it is you want to do and teach me and scourge me and put me
through and teach me perseverance and teach me strength and teach
whatever it is, you know, that I've got to learn within this matter.

But he looked there and he tells us, he says, there's two great things
that will happen to the person. Number one, you will live. You will
live.

And it isn't just so much the aspect of your heart keep on beating and
the blood keep on flowing through your system. It's an issue there of
more the life that you will live. You will have a quality of life.

You will have an experience of life. The person that is disciplined in
their life spiritually always adds to the dimension of their life, the
quality of life, the abundance of life, the power of life, the victory
of life, the rest of life, the love of life, the joy of their existence
on the planet. It is magnified by their disciplines.

Isn't it true with every one of us, when you look at the best places in
your life right now are the areas of life where you're disciplined.
You're disciplined. Those are the ones where the best discipline, that's
where, you know, everything else is in trial.

I'm going to work. I'm good at work, you know, or what I'm disciplined.
I can produce something.

I'm going to the office. I don't know how to handle this thing, but we
retreat to our disciplines so often. And, but what embarrasses us is the
undisciplined area.

The area there where we can handle it, or we, our own, the undisciplined
areas of life, when there's something that happens that we know we
shouldn't do something, but we're not disciplined enough to not do it.
You know, there's tension in the home, and we, you know, there's some,
this little lady needs to hear a word or two. She needs a piece of
information from me.

Yes, she does. And there's a voice inside that says, no, you don't want
to do that. Oh, you don't think so? Watch this.

And you do it. And two minutes later, you're dead. It's over.

You're going out. What happened? The quality of life is diminished
terribly. But here he says, a disciplined, you will live.

If there is something there that when God says, get out of the street
and quit playing and go mow the lawn, go handle this. Go do what it is
that you are there to do. Stop talking about her, feeling bad about her.

Say, you know, I should have done it. James, in the book of James, he
talks about the man who beheld himself in a mirror. But when he walked
away, he forgot what manner of man he saw.

There was something about us. We have this great capacity to sit there
and hear the word and to hear God's love and to know it's there and
says, I want to help you. I want to see you live.

I want to see you, you know, there. Stop being mad at the person and
this and that and the stick that I spanked you with. I want you to turn
to me and I want don't regard that lightly, you know, what's going on
there.

Turn to me and say, God, are you teaching me something in my home, in my
marriage, in my life, in my walk? Something there. He said, if we can do
that and then we walk away and we remember what we heard and we apply it
to our lives. There's the person that's changed.

But the one that can end week after week, month after month, year after
year, go through the same lesson. Yeah, the old lady's mad at me again.
Oh, boy.

Oh, well, who knows? Gone on forever. Who cares? That's the person
that's never been disciplined. But the one where the tension is and they
can go off and say, Lord.

Is there anything I can do to help this anger in the home? Anything you
can teach me of your spirit, of your life, my behavior, discipline me,
teach me. If a man can sit in ice just to go look at a piece of art, you
know, I'd allow me to sit through this thing. So I till I hear you and I
learn something and grow.

And then one day, because I want to live. And then the second thing and
the last thing we'll look at today that he promises. He says that not
only that we'll live, but he says that we may share his holiness.

There's two things that God is doing within life. And that is God. He
wants to increase my relationships with you.

You want with people. He wants to strengthen the marriage, strengthen
the love, strengthen the home, strengthen the relationship, build them
and make them deep. But in the process, the only way it gets done is
when these things are under pressure and going through difficulty.

I can turn and say, God, will you help me? And through that, I learn a
greater dependence and faith in him. And I'm drawn into holiness. All
that holiness is, is sharing the life of God.

That's all it is. All the word means holiness is separation into God,
sanctified, set apart for God. God has designed life in such a way.

So you want a better life here? It requires being set apart for me. You
want, because then I will give you all you need to do this. God has just
kind of linked the two together.

You'll never go deeper with one than you're willing to with the other.
And when I'm sitting there saying, God, I want to go deep with you. Then
he says, well, if you mean that, then we're going to deal with your
relationships here.

Somebody once said, oh, so-and-so is so heavenly minded. He's no earthly
good. Not possible.

Anybody that is heavenly minded is earthly good. The most heavenly
minded person there ever was on this planet was Jesus himself. And the
person of the greatest earthly good was the same.

And so also when I'm looking there and saying, God, I want to go deep
with you, then he says, okay, here they are. Here's the battles. Here's
the struggles.

Here's the things where you'll have to learn love, learn kindness, learn
gentleness, learn patience, cap the anger, bury the old nature, die to
yourself. You'll be conformed to my image. You still want it.

And when somebody looks and says, yes, with all my heart, that's what
I'm alive for. What else is there? And that's what the Christian life
is. And it's a word today, unfortunately, discipline.

It's kind of like who wants to hear the word discipline? It's kind of
like your fingers on a chalkboard, you know? Oh, man. But to the person
who is succeeding in life, it's the exact opposite. They look there and
say, you know, every blessing that lasts and continues and thrives in my
life is where God had to teach me, discipline me, put me through things,
show me my inability, show me my incapacity.

And rather than blaming it on the stick, blaming it on the husband,
blaming it on the wife, blaming it on the child, blaming it on this,
chewing up that stick like a mad dog who is mad that he did something,
doesn't care what. But the one there that looks and says, God, you're
sovereign. Speak to me.

Speak to me. Because everything you teach me, you'll give me the power
to do. You'll give me the love.

You'll give me the strength. God, give me a greater love, greater
patience. And in the process of this, the danger, as I said, when we
began is you can grow weary.

You know, the person who aims at nothing doesn't grow weary in
tribulation and trial. But the one that looks there and says, I want the
best, the one there that the athlete that keeps on working, the student
that keeps on burning the midnight oil, they can grow weary. But here
the writer of Hebrews says, but it's the noblest reason to be alive.

And when you one day wake up and you've got life and you've got
holiness, say, wow, it was worth every day of it. Amen.

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Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/8/SID8827.mp3
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/don-mcclure/hebrews-123-11/
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