Divine Discipline - Part 1

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Divine Discipline - Part 2

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn to Hebrews 12.
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This morning, we are going to begin looking at the subject of divine discipline.
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We're going to be looking at verses 7-11 in Hebrews 12.
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And this morning is going to be somewhat of an overview of those verses.
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And in the weeks to come, I'm going to be looking back at a few of them and spending some additional time with some important points that are in the text that I think deserve an entire message to deal with.
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So this morning, we're going to be looking at verses 7-11.
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And what we're going to be looking at is we're going to see that God doesn't allow suffering and calamity into the life of the believer to rob us of our joy.
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Somehow today in modern society, we've come to the place, especially in the realm of faith, where people have begun to believe that if you have enough faith, God's not going to allow anything bad to happen to you.
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And if anything bad happens to you, it's a result of your lack of faith.
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It's a result of somehow you did something wrong in your faith.
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And one of the things we're going to look at today is that again, suffering and calamity in our life isn't meant to rob us of our joy.
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It's supposed to, according to the Scripture, bring us to a more mature faith.
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That's what it does.
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It's not there to cause us to be torn down.
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It's there to cause us to be brought up.
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So we need to look at suffering a little bit differently than does the world.
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And I would even go as far as to say as does the modern faith church movement that is out there saying that if you have faith, nothing bad will happen.
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So that's what we're going to be looking at, the subject of divine discipline.
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And I want to encourage you to stand.
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We always stand for the reading of God's Word.
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We're going to be reading verses 7-11 together.
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Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 7.
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It is for discipline that you have to endure.
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God is treating you as sons.
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For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
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Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.
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Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them.
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But He disciplines us for our good that we may share in His holiness.
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For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant.
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But later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
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Father, as we seek to understand this text together, I pray, O Lord, first and foremost, as I do every time I preach, that You would keep me from error as I am a fallible man incapable of preaching error.
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And I pray, God, that You would open the hearts of the people to the truth.
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That You would sanctify this message and sanctify the time that, Lord, our minds would be focused on this subject of divine discipline.
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That we would grow in our understanding of You and, as a result, grow in our understanding of our life's most difficult and trying times.
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We love You, Lord.
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We thank You.
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We praise You.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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Now, have you ever read a passage of Scripture multiple times, thought you had a good understanding of it, and then later read it again and come to an even better and more deep understanding of that same passage? I find that to be pretty regular in my own study and I find that most people that I know who study Scripture go through the same thing.
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You can read the same passage, have a decent understanding of it, but at some point, you sit down to study it and the passage really just sort of leaps off the page and it begins to really click and make sense to you in regard to its more profound, more accurate meaning.
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Well, this has happened to me in regard to today's passage.
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I'm willing to admit, when I have misunderstood things in the past and when I think that I've gotten a better understanding, having done more study and having spent more time with a particular text.
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Over the years, I have quoted and discussed many times, Hebrews chapter 12, this particular passage, in regard to the discipline of the Lord.
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Most often, I have used it in conversations when I was discussing the fact that true, genuine believers in Christ have the witness of God's discipline to help give them the assurance of their salvation.
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That's what this text says.
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It says, if you don't have discipline, then you know you're an illegitimate child.
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You're not God's true and genuine follower.
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And thus, if you do have discipline, that can be a witness to your heart that you are, in fact, a true, genuine believer in Christ.
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And that's how I've normally understood the text.
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That's how I've used it.
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And I'm not saying that that's particularly wrong, but here's where I think that I was really missing the big picture.
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When I was looking at this text in the past, I was always kind of considering the discipline to be somewhat of an internal conviction for sin.
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Because this is the way I always understood it.
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If you can sin without the internal conviction of the Spirit, without God's convicting your heart, then you're certainly not a believer, because the Scripture is clear that if we go on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, if we can sin without impunity, if we can sin without sinning, if we can sin without a heart's conviction, then our hearts have not been changed.
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And that's what I thought the discipline was talking about.
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I thought it was talking about the discipline of internal heart conviction.
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But as I've spent time looking at this text, as I've spent time studying this text, I began to realize that the context of this particular set of passages is not internal conviction.
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The context of this particular set of passages is actually suffering for the Gospel.
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That's the context which has been the focus.
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It was the focus of the last part of chapter 11 where he goes to that litany of people who gave their lives for the Gospel.
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Remember, he said there were some who had gone through extreme torture.
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Some had even been sawn in half for their belief in the Gospel.
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And he uses that at the end of chapter 11.
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Then at the beginning of chapter 12, he begins to talk about running the race.
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This great crowd of witnesses that cheers us on.
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And Christ who was able to endure the cross, despise the shame, and now sits at the right hand of the Father.
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And we too are supposed to stand and be ready in case suffering is to come for the Gospel.
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And he said, what did we talk about last week? He said, you haven't even bled yet.
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You haven't even given your lives for the Gospel yet, so continue to fight.
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So that's the context of this passage.
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So in essence, it's more than an internal conviction that is the discipline that's in focus here.
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The writer is looking at calamity.
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He's looking at suffering.
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He's looking at persecution.
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He's looking at all of these things as avenues that God uses to bring us to a more mature faith.
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This was actually a very positive illumination for me because one of the more difficult things I've ever faced when considering this passage over the years was the subjectivity of my old understanding.
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Because internal conviction can be very subjective.
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Internal conviction sometimes is not something that we can't use that to talk to someone else about because my internal convictions are mine and I'm the only one who knows when I'm convicted about something.
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You may say you're convicted about something, but it may only be words.
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It may not be what's actually going on in your heart.
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So it became very subjective and it was hard to get people to understand.
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But I think that this text is much more clear when we look at it in the idea that it's not an internal conviction, but it is in fact our suffering which God uses to bring us to a more mature faith.
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The reality is that if we are believers, we should expect...
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Excuse me.
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If we are believers, we should be convicted over our sin battles and God will use them to discipline us and guide us out of them.
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But the specific reference to discipline here is that which is external and recognizable not only by ourselves, but by others.
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Sorry, I lose my voice I think.
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This is why the text can say if you haven't experienced this, meaning if you haven't experienced a suffering, if you haven't experienced a trial for the gospel's sake, then you can feel free and confident that you are an illegitimate child, that you are not truly a child of God.
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And you may say, well, wait a minute, that's pretty harsh to say that if I haven't suffered for the gospel, I'm not a child of God.
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Well, just listen to this text in Romans because I think any time we make a statement like that, we need to be able to back it up with Scripture.
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What we call the analogium scriptorum or analogy of Scripture.
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You should be able to compare Scripture with Scripture and get your appropriate...
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It should all agree.
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And what the Bible says in Romans 8, in verse 16 is this.
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It says, The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
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And if children, then heirs.
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Heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we also might be glorified with Him.
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Notice it uses the phrase provided we suffer.
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Does that mean that our suffering adds to our work of salvation and thus becomes a work of righteousness by which we are saved? Absolutely not.
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In no way does our suffering provide a work by which we can say this work is brought about our salvation.
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No, not at all.
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Paul is not adding works to our salvation What he is saying is that if we are true and genuine believers in Christ, we will experience suffering with Him.
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Because we will stand for Him and the world will not stand for us.
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Hear that again.
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We will stand for Christ and the world will not stand for us.
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It's just the way it is.
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Jesus said, They will hate you because they first hated Me.
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He didn't say they might hate you.
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He said they won't have any choice because you will be the antithesis of everything that they are.
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The sin that they love, you will hate.
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The attitudes that they desire, you will despise.
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The way that they behave, you will be the contrary.
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And as such, the world will not accept you.
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It's just the way it is.
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If you don't believe that, taking a stand for Christ leads to suffering, just look around you at people who are actually doing it.
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All around the world, we see people who are suffering for the Gospel, who are suffering the sword for the Gospel because they have stood with Christ and the world hates them.
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Even in America.
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We don't see the sword of persecution, but what we see is the claws of persecution lock into people and it begins to bring them down in whatever way possible.
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If not through death, then by character persecution and the like.
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For instance, how many of you are familiar? I'm certain that you are.
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Most of you watch the news.
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I'm sure you're familiar with Kirk Cameron.
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Kirk Cameron is an actor.
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He was a big time actor back in the 80's when I was a kid.
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Now he is an evangelist.
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He is an evangelist with another man named Ray Comfort and they have a ministry together called the Way of the Master.
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We've actually used in this church, we've used Gospel tracts and we've used literature and even teaching material from the Way of the Master because I do believe that their method of evangelism mirrors Christ.
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That's why they call it the Way of the Master.
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That's what they do and they teach people evangelism and how to share Christ with people that you've never met and things like that.
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And I think they have a wonderful ministry.
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Well, recently Kirk Cameron was on television and while he was on television, he was simply promoting a movie that he has just produced called Monumental and as he was promoting the movie, which is about the foundations of American society and where we came from, one of the reporters asked him, well, what about this issue with gay marriage? It had nothing to do with the movie.
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It had nothing to do with what they were talking about, but it was a baiting question because he knew that if Kirk Cameron was going to be consistent with what he had taught before, as we all would have to be, if we were going to be consistent with what he said before, he's going to have to say something that's politically incorrect.
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And he did.
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He said that homosexuality was unnatural and that homosexual marriage itself was opposed to God.
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And in saying so, he has erupted with all kinds of negative criticism, character assassination and an attempt to destroy what he has sought to build in his ministry in film.
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The world cannot stand to be opposed, particularly when the world is so supportive of sin.
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And when Kirk Cameron and other Christians stand for the Gospel, when they stand for the truth of God's Word, when they take a stand for truth, they will suffer for the Gospel because the world can't stand it when we stand for Christ.
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This is why, going back to the text, when the text says, provided we suffer, or back into Hebrews, where Hebrews says that you will have to endure.
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You will endure discipline.
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What it is saying is very clearly that if we haven't suffered, if we haven't endured, it's a result of the fact that we haven't lived for Christ.
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It just is.
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If we have not stood for Christ in the world, then we will not experience persecution.
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If we stand for Christ, we will.
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Because the world will not tolerate that kind of behavior.
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Thus, the text is very clear and very simple when it comes to that case.
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So God uses that.
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He uses the persecution of the world.
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He uses the calamity of the world.
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He uses our times of suffering, our times of difficulty, because none of us likes persecution.
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None of us likes to be called out.
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None of us likes any type of pain or suffering or calamity.
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None of us likes that.
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But the text is teaching us that God uses that as an opportunity to cause us to grow in our faith.
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He uses times of difficulty to cause us to grow in our faith.
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The same way, by the way, that every good father uses discipline to bring his child to maturity.
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God is not saying, or the Bible is not saying that what you're going through is God's discipline in the same way a father disciplines his son.
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Not that everything that you receive is a spanking from God.
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But what the text is saying is making the equivocation.
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It's saying if you experience suffering, this is God allowing you to go through this difficulty because through it, you will be strengthened in your faith and you will be brought to maturity.
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The same way that when you were a child, if you had a father who loved you, he didn't let you get away with things.
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He didn't let you go through life never having to experience difficulty.
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But he disciplined you so that you would grow into a mature adult.
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God wants us to be mature Christians.
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Do you know that? Do you know the Bible actually is never satisfied with immature Christianity? The Apostle Paul couldn't stand it.
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When the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul wrote to them and he says, I can't even speak to you as people of the faith.
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I have to speak to you as carnal people because you're still on the baby food.
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You haven't even grown into any type of spiritual maturity.
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And he wasn't saying it's for people to laugh.
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I've heard people laugh, oh, I'm still on the baby food.
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Get off the baby food and grow up! This is Paul's admonition.
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Grow in your faith.
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Mature in your faith.
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I heard a guy one time, it made me sick.
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I heard a guy one time say that his church was only for new believers.
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He said, this church is here for winning people to Jesus.
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I want you to know, if you're here and you're saved, this church isn't for you anymore.
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We're here to win people to Jesus.
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And you know everybody's, Woo! You know what I said? This is the most disgusting thing in the world.
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Because while we do seek to win people to Christ, Jesus said, go ye therefore into all the world and make disciples.
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He didn't say go make believers.
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He said go make disciples.
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And you make disciples through discipleship.
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And discipleship is a process of learning and growing into maturity in the faith.
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You know what happens to somebody who's just made a believer? They quickly become unbelievers.
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Because it's not a genuine, true faith.
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It's one of those things Jesus said, the seed springs up and then it dies because it never had any root to begin with.
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This is why we see people who come in, join church, they're here for six months to a year, and then you never see them again.
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It's like they went to the CIA for witness protection.
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None of their phone numbers worked.
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You couldn't get a hold of them if you had to.
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We're supposed to be bringing the church to maturity.
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We're supposed to be bringing along a mature faith.
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And that way, when we all suffer, which we will.
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That way, when we all experience calamity, which we will.
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That way, when the church really begins to have persecution coming, not just from unbelievers, but from the state and from other countries.
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If we have to face persecution, will the church stand? It will not stand without a mature faith.
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Thus, this discipline that the text is talking about, this discipline is necessary.
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Because without it, we will not be able to stand when the pressures of persecution come.
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I once heard a good analogy.
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A person said, you know, if somebody had only ever had a cut on their finger, if that's the only thing they'd ever had to suffer, that cut is going to be the worst thing in the world to them.
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They're going to, oh, I'm bleeding.
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It's blood.
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I hurt.
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There's an ache.
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I can feel my heartbeat.
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You ever had that? You cut your finger and you can feel the heartbeat.
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And to them, that's the worst thing in the world, because that's all they've had to deal with.
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That's not very mature, is it? But you see, as we grow, we go through cuts.
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We go through bruises.
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We get broken arms.
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We get bloody noses.
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And we grow.
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And we're stronger as a result.
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Discipline leads to our strength.
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That is why verse 7 says, it is for discipline that you have to endure.
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What do we have to endure? If you look back, it's talking in verses 1-6, it's talking about the difficulties of persecution, the things that we have to deal with.
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Back into chapter 11, the people who stand against us, they oppose us for the gospel's sake.
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And it's saying it's discipline.
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This is God's way of disciplining us and bringing us to a more mature faith.
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And then he asks the question, for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? That's an important question.
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When he asks the question, what son is there whom his father does not discipline? That question is actually answered in Proverbs.
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I want you to open up your Bible back to Proverbs.
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Hold Hebrews 12, because we're only going to be in Proverbs for a second.
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But turn back to Proverbs 13.
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Proverbs 13-24.
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Most of you know this verse.
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If I started it, you'd probably be able to finish it.
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Whoever spares the rod, spoils the child.
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That's what you think.
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There's two verses actually in the Old Testament.
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One says if you spare the rod, you spoil the child.
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But one is even more specific, and this is the one.
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Proverbs 13-24 says if you spare the rod, you hate your son.
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Notice what we have here in this proverb.
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This proverb provides us a counterbalance.
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It shows us what hatred looks like, and what love looks like from the view of the father.
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It says whoever spares the rod hates his son.
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What that means is if a person has a son, and that person does not discipline that son, then that son is not loved, but rather is hated by the father.
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On the contrary, the person who loves his son will be diligent to discipline his son.
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It's a counterbalance.
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It's showing the hatred and the love.
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Hatred is demonstrated by a person who doesn't discipline, and love is demonstrated by a person who does.
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That's what the Proverbs tells us.
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Now going back into Hebrews 12.
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Hebrews 12 asks the question, What father is there who doesn't discipline his son? Well, this answers the question.
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The one who doesn't love him.
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That's the kind of father that doesn't discipline his son.
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The kind that doesn't love him.
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So what kind of father is God? God is the father of love.
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God is the one who loves us more than anyone in the universe.
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Thus, God will certainly discipline us, because if He didn't, it would demonstrate He didn't love us.
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I've heard parents say before, and I remember it all too clearly.
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I remember the person who said it to me.
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I love my child so much, I love him too much to spank him.
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I love him too much to take things away from him.
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I love him too much to punish him.
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I'm often not politically correct, and I make people upset sometimes, because my response is not what they want to hear.
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This is one of those times.
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Because the guy said, I love my son too much to spank him.
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I love him too much to punish him.
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I love him too much to take things away from him.
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I said, that's a lie.
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I said, the truth is you love yourself too much to put yourself through the punishment of actually having to punish your child.
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Because it's difficult to punish your children, because it hurts you.
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You've heard the old adage, it hurts me more than it hurts you.
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If you're a good parent, it does.
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I don't like to lay a hand on my child.
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I don't like to have to put my child in the corner.
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I don't like to have to take things away from them.
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But at the same time, I know that their discipline requires it.
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And if I love them more than I love me, I'm willing to administer that discipline.
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Whereas, if I love myself more, I won't administer discipline, because it hurts to do so.
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This text very clearly in Proverbs says, whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves his son will diligently discipline him.
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And because we experience the discipline of the Lord, we have confidence that God loves us.
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That's the beautiful thing.
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That's what we have.
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We have the beauty of knowing God loves us.
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And He demonstrates it by His discipline.
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Now, I want to ask the question, and this is probably going to lead into a part two, because I've got three points and a lot more to go.
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So I'll probably have to break the points up.
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But I want to ask the question, what forms of discipline does God use to bring us, or what forms of discipline does God use and can we expect to experience? What forms of discipline does God use and can we expect to experience? Well, the Bible demonstrates for us three types of discipline that God uses.
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And we need to be cognizant of these and understand that there are three ways, three types of discipline God uses to bring His children to a spiritual maturity.
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I'll go ahead and give them to you.
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I don't expect to get to all three of them today.
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But if you want to write them down, if you're a note taker, I always know I've got my folks out there with their notes.
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And you want to know what they are so that you can have your outline written down.
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Number one, God uses corrective discipline.
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Corrective discipline is one we're going to focus on mainly today.
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Number two, God uses preventative discipline.
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And number three, God uses instructive discipline.
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So corrective discipline, preventative discipline, and instructive discipline.
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The first one we see, the first one I want us to look at is corrective discipline.
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This is the one we're all really familiar with.
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Most of us understand how corrective discipline works and how God renders this type of discipline to people.
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And we all know how corrective discipline works.
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When our child does something wrong, we identify what he did wrong, and then we do whatever we have established is the rule of the house.
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That will be whatever the recourse will be for that particular child.
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If the child was told not to run out in the road, and he runs out into the road, and you said, if you run out in the road, I'm going to spank your behind, and he runs out into the road, then you've got a choice.
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You become a liar or a truth teller at that moment.
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Right? Don't make a liar out of yourself.
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Let him know you were there and that he shouldn't have been.
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That's corrective discipline.
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We're all familiar with that as parents or children.
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All of us were one or the other.
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As parents or children, grandparents, we've all exercised corrective discipline.
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Well, the Bible teaches that God also exercises a form of corrective discipline over His people.
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And remember, I always make a distinction between God's people and the world.
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Because there is a different way that God behaves towards His people and the world.
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God behaves differently towards believers and towards the world.
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There is this ministry towards the world that we see God giving, but there is a special type of love that God has for His people because we're going to spend eternity with Him.
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I mean, the Bible is just very clear that He treats us...
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When we come into His family, we become His children.
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And as such, there's a new relationship that's formed through that having been born again.
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And now that we're His children, He begins to correct us for our errors.
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Because guess what? Even though you're a believer in Christ, and even though you've been born again, your spirit's been regenerated, and you're a new person, you've been justified, and you're going through the process of sanctification, you are yet not perfect.
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If you're perfect, stand up.
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Wait, I'm standing.
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I better find a place to sit up.
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Nobody here is perfect, right? And we always joke about the fact that the church isn't perfect.
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And if you ever find one, don't join it.
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You'll mess it up.
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Nobody's perfect.
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We know that we're not going to be perfect in this flesh.
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There are certain points of Scripture that tell us that.
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I think this is one of the most dangerous things in Wesleyan theology.
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I don't know if you're familiar with Wesleyan theology, but the theology of John Wesley was that there was a particular point in your Christian walk where you could become totally sanctified, and never again willfully sin.
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That there was a second giving of grace whereby you were completely sanctified, and you would sin willfully no more.
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I don't think the Bible ever teaches that.
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In fact, I'm confident to say the Bible does not teach that.
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Specifically because Jesus said, When ye pray, pray this way.
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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our...
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Some people say trespass.
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Some people say debts.
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That's the old King James versus NIV question.
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How about amartia? Greek.
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Sins.
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Amartia.
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Forgive us when we miss the mark.
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That's the word.
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Actually, it's amartia in Luke.
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It's a different word in Matthew because they're both translating from the Hebrew, but it doesn't matter.
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One means to go past a border.
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That's trespassing.
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When we go past a border, that's to trespass.
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One means to miss a mark.
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That's amartia.
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That means...
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It was an archery term.
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If you shot an arrow at something and it fell short.
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That's actually the word.
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We get the word sin.
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The mark is God's righteousness.
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We fall short of God's righteousness.
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So trespass is going further than we're allowed.
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And sin means not living up to what we're supposed to do.
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Both of them are demonstrations of something that's wrong.
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And if Jesus told us to continually pray, forgive us of our sins as we forgive those who sin against us, then the demonstration from that simple text is that as long as we are in this life and we're following after Christ and we're praying that prayer, we are continually recognizing that we have yet to arrive at our highest point of sanctification, which is actually glorification and being with Him.
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And God as a loving Father deals with us in our imperfection by disciplining us in an attempt to bring us back into line with His will.
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Throughout the Bible, we see God leveling corrective discipline on those who have gone astray in an attempt to bring them to repentance.
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And I have an example.
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I want to kind of bring it all in towards this one person's life.
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And I want you to think about this one individual from Scripture and how his life is an example of corrective discipline.
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If there's one person in Scripture we know God loves, I mean, we know God loves all of us, but if there was one person that God had a special affection for, it was King David.
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The Bible said David was a man after God's heart and that God chose David even from among his brothers.
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David wasn't the oldest.
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He wasn't the strongest.
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He wasn't the largest.
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He wasn't the one that anyone else would have picked, but God chose David to be the king over all of Israel.
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But yet, King David, even though chosen by God, even though filled with the Holy Spirit of God to do the service as king, King David still in his life fell into a very robust sin.
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Actually, he allowed one sin to become another and then another.
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It began with the sin of lust, which led to the sin of adultery.
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And then that went to the sin of lying and then to the sin of murder.
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Whereas he sent a man into battle with the intent of him being destroyed.
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But here's the thing, David suffered discipline for that.
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In fact, we all are familiar with the first level of discipline that he had to deal with and that was the loss of the child that was conceived in the affair.
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But the Bible also indicates that his home was struck with violence.
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2 Samuel chapter 12 and verse 10 says this, Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house.
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This was Samuel speaking to David and he's telling him...
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I'm sorry, it's not Samuel speaking to David, this is a prophet speaking to David and he's saying, The sword shall never depart from your house because you have despised me and you've taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife.
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Do you know the Scripture never calls Bathsheba David's wife? Every time you see Bathsheba in Scripture, it always says that it was the wife of Uriah.
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Even in the New Testament, when you go through Jesus' lineage and it says who was the father and the mother, it says the wife of Uriah.
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This was a serious abuse of power, a serious neglect of righteousness, a serious sin for which God corrected David.
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And when we see that text in 2 Samuel, that was fulfilled in the life of David something fierce.
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The sons of David brought violence and shame upon his home.
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His son Amnon raped his half-sister Tamar and then her brother Absalom in revenge of the rape came back and killed Amnon.
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And then with the father of Bathsheba, tried to overthrow the entire kingdom of David.
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And what's amazing is David's response to all of this.
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And most of us are familiar with Psalm 51.
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And if you're not, I recommend go home, spend time this week in Psalm 51.
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Psalm 51 is David's prayer of contrition over his sin.
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It's his prayer of repentance.
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And if you are dealing with sin and you need to pray a prayer of repentance, I've always encouraged people, if you're having trouble praying, pray the Word of God.
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Open it up and read it.
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Psalm 51 is a powerful prayer of contrition.
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But there's another place in Scripture that's often overlooked.
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It is Psalm 119.
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Because in Psalm 119, verse 67, David writes this.
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He says, Before I was afflicted, I went astray, and now I keep Your Word.
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And then in verse 71, two verses later, a few verses later, he says, It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn Your statutes.
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You see, David learned the discipline of the Lord.
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He learned that because of his sin, he had brought difficulty into his own life, but God didn't bring that difficulty in his life because He hated him.
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God brought that difficulty in his life because He loved him.
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He brought that discipline into his life the same way we would bring discipline into our children's lives when our children start going astray.
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The same way we discipline our children, God disciplines us.
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Now, I do want to say this before I end because I won't get to get to these passages today.
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The next two types of discipline we see, as I've already said, preventative and instructive.
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One thing you need to realize, not every type of discipline is for correction.
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Not everything you go through in life, not every suffering, not every calamity, not every trial is being given to you for your correction.
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Sometimes it's preventing you from doing something wrong, and sometimes it's simply instructing you.
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So you don't always have to assume, just because you're going through something bad, that you did something bad.
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But at the same time, we do need to examine our lives.
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We do need to see if there are areas in our lives that are not pleasing to God.
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And we do need to seek to bring those parts of our lives under the subjection of the Lord.
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For the Lord's desire for us is that we be conformed to the image of His Son.
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And He uses discipline to bring that about.
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So we should look to our discipline, though sometimes we look to it with tears, we should also understand that it has a blessed side.
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It demonstrates that God hasn't left us to ourselves, but that He loves us enough to treat us like His sons.
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We'll finish the rest of this sermon next week.
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Let's pray.
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Father God, thank You for this opportunity to be in Your Word today.
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Thank You for having given us this opportunity to consider men like King David, men who have had to deal with severe calamity as a result of sin, to be examples to us as to why, Lord, or how You love us.
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You love us so much that You treat us like Your own children.
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We pray, O Lord, that now as we bring ourselves to the closing of the service, that we would not leave this message sitting here in the church building, but that we would take it in our hearts and be reminded of it throughout the week.
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And Lord, that we would be hungry to continue this message and to continue our understanding of it.
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We thank You for all that You've given us, particularly, Lord, Your discipline, which leads us to a more mature faith.
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We love You, we praise You, we thank You for all that You've done for us.
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In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.