Spiritual Depression: Pt.17 Chastening

We're back in spiritual depression, part 17, Chastening. We're going to start off by reading portions of Hebrews chapter 12.

And again, I'm giving the introduction to it, even though we're not going to use some of these verses. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run the race with endurance that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

For consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin, and you have 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.

For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives.

It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as sons, for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

But if you are without discipline, of which you all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the father of spirits and live?

For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, so that we may share his holiness.

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful, yet to those who have been trained by it afterwards, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Okay. Here's our introduction given by the good doctor himself.

A most prolific cause of the condition of spiritual depression is the failure to realize that God uses various varied methods in the process of our sanctification.

He is our Father who has loved us with an everlasting love. His great purpose for us is our sanctification.

This is the will of God, even your sanctification, 1 Thessalonians 4 .3. And that we should be holy and without blame before him in love,

Ephesians 1 .4. God's great concern for us primarily is not our happiness but our holiness.

Well, I should have underlined and scored that because that's one of the biggest problems we have in the church today.

Everybody wants to be happy and nobody wants to be holy. In his great love to us, he is determined to bring us to that, and he employs many differing means to that end.

Our failure to realize that often causes us to stumble. And in our sin and folly at times even to misunderstand completely some of God's dealing with us.

Like foolish children, we feel that our Heavenly Father is unkind to us and we pity ourselves and feel sorry for ourselves and feel that we are being dealt with harshly.

That, of course, leads to depression. And it is all due to our failure to realize

God's glorious purposes with respect to us. All right, let's break this down a little bit.

Firstly, spiritual depression is often the result of God's chastisement upon the individual.

Notice the point that he's making. Spiritual depression, which obviously that's the whole subject of the whole book, is often the result when

God is doing something, chastening us for whatever particular reason.

And the Scripture is clear that God chastens his children. That's why we started reading Hebrews chapter 12, because that's the classic work on it.

I mean, it's also in other portions of Scripture, but that's the classic work. So now, if that's true, if God chastens his children, then why does it lead to depression?

That's the question. The answer, again, is rather simple. It's often misunderstood.

This isn't rocket science. Why do people go into depression when they're under the chastisement of God?

Because they fail to recognize, one, whether God is the one who is bringing the chastisement, or two, the purpose of the chastisement, or three, the necessity of the chastisement.

So it's misunderstood, and that's why sometimes even something that God is doing in your life, for your own good, people rebel against it.

So that begins with the purpose of chastisement in the life of a child of God.

So if we're going to understand and not fall into this trap of being spiritually depressed, we need to understand the purpose.

Chastisement comes as a means of sanctification. We saw that in those opening quotations from The Good Doctor as well.

But it's not always viewed that way by the Christian. Hence, that's why Christians go into depression when they're under the chastisement of God, because they don't have a full understanding that it is a means of sanctification.

In fact, let me even just say that. Let me expand upon that. More often than not, the means that God brings into our life for sanctification are things that the

Christian will rebel against. Not understanding that.

In fact, how many times have you heard somebody say, I'm angry at God? If God loved me, he wouldn't do this to me.

When the exact opposite is true. If God didn't love me, he wouldn't do this to me.

If it's come into your life, if you're a child of God, and of course all of these remarks are prefaced as being a child of God.

These truths do not pertain to a non -believer. Okay. But if you're a child of God, whatever he allows or brings or ordains in your life is meant for your sanctification.

In fact, think of it this way. Everybody knows Romans 8 .28. That's our go -to verse, right?

And it should be. For we know that all things work together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

What that means is that everything that comes into your path in this life is ordained for your sanctification.

Okay. Most people don't look at that verse in that way, but that's exactly what it means.

Everything that happens in this life is for the good of the church of Jesus Christ and for the glory of God.

And this is why it's so important that we develop a biblical worldview. One of the most important things that we try to do here in this church, and every church should be doing it, but we're very proactive in it, and you hear it from the pulpit, you hear it in the

Sunday school, you hear it in the various Bible studies, and that is the first thing that you have to do is you have to develop a biblical worldview.

Without a biblical worldview, you're going to suffer spiritual depression and you're not going to be as productive in the kingdom as you should be.

So that's why it's so important that we develop a biblical... By the way, everybody has a worldview.

You come across somebody who says, I don't have a worldview. That's their worldview. All right.

Okay. But I digress. Knowing what chastisement is, the remedy is knowing what chastisement is, the nature of it, and why it has come upon you.

All right. This is the remedy for spiritual depression we're talking about, if it's of this sort. All right.

The writer to the Hebrews says that you are suffering because you are a Christian. In fact, he goes on to say that if you do not experience the chastisement of God at some point in your life, you're an illegitimate child.

If you're a child of God and you never experience the chastisement of God, that means one of two things.

One, you're either perfect, or two, you're not a child of God. So which is it?

How many are perfect? Did I see a hand out there? Michelle raised her hand.

I was going to have a chat with Anthony afterwards. So the first and underlying answer to the question, why we experience chastisement is that God loves you.

Now, again, you're going to hear that over and over again tonight because we have to keep coming back to that because that's the point where a lot of people fail right at the very beginning.

If God loved me, he wouldn't do this to me. And that's exactly the opposite.

That's why we're talking about having that biblical worldview. Hebrews 12, 6, For those whom the

Lord loves, he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. Notice, for those whom the

Lord loves, he disciplines. Remember that salvation is the work of God from beginning to end.

Some people have the idea that, OK, God saves me, but now the rest is up to me.

That's not true. Are we told to work? In fact, we'll have a couple of verses that will indicate that.

Are we to work out our sanctification? Absolutely. But is it totally our work? Absolutely not.

It is the work of God in salvation from beginning to end.

Verse 2, Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith.

The author and some translations say finisher. I like perfecter better.

If you understand how the word perfect is used in Scripture. In fact, we talked a little bit about this,

I think, wasn't it this Sunday? About Christ learning obedience, becoming perfect.

He had to become perfect. It was this Sunday. OK, sometimes my message is kind of shrunk together.

But yeah, and remember, Christ being made perfect didn't mean that he was imperfect.

All right. It's different. It's used differently of Christ. But he's the author and perfecter.

In other words, bringing it to maturity is one of the best ways to translate that.

So to understand chastisement, you first must understand sanctification. That sanctification is the work of God, and that is moving you towards the image of Jesus Christ.

One of the primary means of sanctification is through instruction in the word. Yes. Hebrews 12.

Yeah. In fact, if you ever want to know, if I'm using a text to begin with, like Hebrews 12,

I'll only put the verse. If I'm using a different text, I'll put the address of it. OK.

One of the primary means of sanctification is through instruction in the word. We know that.

That's why we have Bible studies. That's why we have discipleship programs. That's why we do so many things in the church to aid you in your sanctification.

By teaching you the word of God. Why? Because as we study the scriptures, we learn what we are supposed to do and what we're not supposed to do.

We also learn the benefits of obedience and the consequences for disobedience. This is all through the instruction of the word.

This is why we must be engrossed in the word of God, because otherwise we're not going to know.

All right. So how are we going to become sanctified if we don't even know what that means? However, a child of God often strays from the path and God chastises him to bring him back.

This is true even of our earthly parents. The two primary means of training of a child who can tell me what they are, hopefully.

Two primary methods. Biblical methods. Yes. Instruction and discipline.

The rod and reproof. What's that? All right.

Now, there's numerous examples of this in scripture. I'm only going to put up a couple. In Amos 3, 2, you only have

I chosen from among all the families of the earth. Obviously, who's that talking about?

That's his children. All right. Therefore, I will punish you for all your iniquities.

Notice. What's the reason that he's punishing them for their iniquities? Because they're the chosen ones.

All right. I will punish you for all your iniquities. The next important question is then, what exactly is chastisement?

All right. To chastise means to rebuke or to reprimand, and in a biblical sense, to train.

And this is what is missing in a lot of the modern using of chastisement.

Our modern language, whenever you say the word chastise, somebody thinks you're there with the whip.

You know, it's not necessarily. It's to train. All right. Yes, you may want to use the rod.

The rod is something that is helpful. But the purpose of it, it's more than to rebuke and reprimand.

It's to train. The good doctor says, we rather tend to confuse it with the word punishment.

Not that punishment is wrong. It just doesn't go far enough. All right. It includes correction, but it also includes instruction.

It includes rebuke. Indeed, it may include a good deal of punishment. But the essential thing is, and the essential object of chastisement is to train and to develop the child so as to produce a grown person.

And that's the same thing in a spiritual sense with the believer. There's a reason the scripture refers to us as being spiritual babes.

We are born again. We are born anew. We're born of the Spirit. And so we are babes.

And what do we need when we're young? The milk of the word. But then what is when you start to mature?

And then you need the meat of the word. And you also need training in righteousness, instruction, rebuking, and sometimes chastisement.

The next question then is, how does God chasten his children? And I'm going to give, there's many different ways.

I'm going to give you just a couple. The general answer is through circumstances or providence.

Circumstances are constantly affecting us and the purpose is to produce our sanctification.

Pleasant circumstances and unpleasant circumstances. We should therefore be observant and always watching for lessons, seeking and asking questions.

A little inside story. My wife is, by the way, she's an excellent driver.

She's also a very impatient driver. All right. That's why I don't ride with her.

I always do the driving if I'm in the car. Okay. When she's in the car, she has a pet peeve.

Slow drivers in front of her and they drive her crazy. Okay. And this one day

I'm in the passenger seat, unusual, but I was in the passenger seat and she's, why in the world are there always slow drivers in front of me?

And I just turned to her and I said, because you haven't learned the lesson yet. Okay.

And then when I took, no. The other reason is

I said, because you're going so fast, everybody's slower than you. But that's a different thing.

No, but you get the idea. Have you ever wondered, why does the same thing keep happening to me?

It's because you haven't learned the lesson God is teaching you yet. Learn the lesson, whether it be patience, endurance, you know, et cetera, whatever it is.

So there's a number of ways in particular though, it's through circumstances. One of the big ways is financial loss or gain.

All right. And I'm not talking about, it doesn't have to be big financial loss or gain, but remember the instruction to the

Israelites when they entered the land. If you obey, blessed, you'll be prosperous. If you disobey, you're not going to be prosperous.

Okay. Health. God can inflict you with certain maladies.

All right. In one way or another, or give you good health, if you're prospering. Persecution.

This is a big one. How often do we see that with the Israelites? What would happen when they would fall into sin? God would say, okay,

I'm lifting my hand. The Assyrians would come in, the Babylonians would come in, you know, all kinds of things, all kinds of, same thing happens to us today.

We can be subject to persecution. In fact, think of our situation here in America today.

All right. How faithful has, I'm talking broad -based, broad -based evangelicalism.

How faithful has broad -based evangelicalism in the United States been faithful to the word of God? What is happening to the church in America now?

Think that's an accident? Think it's coincidence? No. Because if it had been faithful, you'd have governmental leaders that were godly.

Exactly. And even death. Okay. We read this almost every

Sunday. For this reason, many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep. What was, what's the context for this?

Celebrating the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner. All right. But if we judge ourselves rightly, we would not be judged.

But when we are judged, we are disciplined, disciplined by the

Lord, so that we will not be condemned along with the world. Notice, a number sleep, that's died.

Imagine that the church was so depraved at that point and what the things they were doing, that God actually took the life of some of the brethren of the church because of how they were celebrating the

Lord's Supper. And then it was disciplined by the Lord. Okay.

Then there is this. Another way in which God chastens us, and I must put it in a category on its own, is this.

God undoubtedly at times seems to withdraw his presence and to hide his face from us for this precise purpose.

Now let me just say something. God never leaves us. Never forsakes us.

But he can withdraw his favor from you for a time.

And it seems as though he's not there. All right. And we know this.

There's many examples of this throughout Scripture as well. All right. In fact, what does

Peter tell us? That husbands, treat your wives properly. What happens if you don't?

Your prayers will be hindered. So it may even seem like God's not answering your prayers, you know, because you're not in obedience to his word.

You will find that that is the great theme of the book of Job. All right. You will find it again in the book of Hosea in chapters 5 and 6.

God even tells the people there, I will go and return to my place till they acknowledge their offense and seek my face.

God withdrew himself and withdrew his presence, withdrew his face and his blessing in order to bring them to the place of repentance.

It is a part of sanctification. So if you're living in sin and you're unrepentant and you feel as though God isn't there, that's on purpose.

That's one of the ways, you know. In fact, this is one of the purposes of excommunication.

Just think about this for a minute. When the church excommunicates someone, all right, we're not declaring that they're not a believer.

Well, all we're saying is you're behaving like a non -believer.

Therefore, we're going to treat you like a non -believer. That's the whole purpose of it. And what's the major portion?

Is to have the person restored. Okay. And why does that happen?

Because once they're excommunicated, remember, God has given the keys of the kingdom to the church.

And when the church says, you're out of fellowship, and now you're excommunicated from the fellowship of the church,

God withdraws his countenance from him. And Paul tells us that the hope is, we're actually saying, delivering the person over to Satan, have your way with him.

The protection is not there. And what's the purpose for that? That if the person is a true believer, they'll say,

I've got to get right with God. I can't take this. In fact, we had a man who had been excommunicated, was from another church, and we helped him to be reinstated.

This is a number of years ago. And the first time he was permitted back to the

Lord's Supper, he said it was like I was coming in from the desert and having a meal for the first time in days.

That's the effect that an excommunication is supposed to have. It's restorative. It's to bring the wayward believer back into the fold and back into the presence of God's blessing.

Okay. Sometimes you may feel like this, and you don't know why.

Okay. This may be due, one, to your emotional status because our emotions are fickle.

There can be times that God is right there and you don't necessarily feel it. Okay. But it may be part of God chastening you to cause you to reflect on your relationship with him.

If you ever get to a place where you feel like something's not right, you know, it's time to sit down and to really reflect on your life.

What are you doing? I just can't help but think of the idea of order to chaos and vice versa.

That whole idea of being with God, you're in order.

Outside of God is chaos. Absolutely. Absolutely. It is simply a method that God uses to sanctify you.

All right. He keeps you also from being complacent in your daily walk with him. All right.

That's another purpose for chastisement is that he keeps you from being complacent.

Once you've been a believer for a while and regularly attending church,

I'm not talking about somebody who is straying from the church, somebody who is in church doing the right things, so to speak, but just getting complacent and not striving.

In other words, the energy is not there. I can remember when my brother -in -law first came to faith.

This is many, many years ago now. He's been walking with the Lord for probably 60 years or more now.

And he came to faith, and he would come every Sunday with his brand -new Bible, and he was marking and taking notes and everything else.

And I remember an elderly gentleman from the church group. He says, what are you doing? And he's telling him what he was doing.

He says, I'm just so excited about reading the Bible. He says, yeah, that'll wear off. It shouldn't.

It should increase. The more you get to know God and you see his mercy, because when you're a brand -new believer, you've only scratched the surface.

You have no clue, really, of all the great mercies of God. And, by the way, it never wore off with my brother -in -law up until he was just in assisted living right now because he can't do it anymore.

But he was a biblical counselor for 50 -some -odd years. And every time I'd get together with him,

I was just as excited about what the Lord was doing in his life as the day he was saved, in fact, even more so.

So it doesn't have to wear off. So it can keep you from being complacent.

And that brings us to the next logical question. Why does God chase it in these ways? Well, again,

I told you you'd see it more than once. The general answer is found in Hebrews 12, 5 to 15.

That's that portion we read. We saw earlier in verse 6, he simply stated, because he loves you.

I want to keep, I put this in several times because I wanted to keep referring back to this so that you understand.

The chastisement of God is because he loves you. To understand this, you must remember that chasing is part of your sanctification.

And the purpose of your chastisement is your growth, your training, and your development as a believer in Jesus Christ.

So look again at verse 10, which speaks about our earthly parents. They disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good so that we may share his holiness.

That's the purpose of chastisement, that we would become holy. Now there it is stated in the most explicit form, quite definitely the teaching is that God chastens us in order that we might become partakers of his holiness, in order that we might be sanctified.

It is all done, he says, for our profit, and the profit is sanctification. God sanctifies us through the truth by doing these things to us and then by means of his word expounding to us what he is doing.

There you see the two sides again, the reproof, the instruction, and the rod.

So with that general reason for chastisement, because of his love that we would become partakers in his holiness, let's look at some of the particular reasons.

First, there are particular faults that need to be corrected. That's a given.

If I hold a mirror up to your face and it fogs, you've got faults.

It's simply that that's just the truth of the thing. Salvation does not grant instant perfection in character.

That's not the way God's plan works. He saves you and then you have a lifelong occupation of your sanctification.

Elements of the old man remain in you. Paul speaks about his personal struggle in Romans 7.

I find in the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

Oh, by the way, I know there's people who say that Romans 7 is talking about Paul prior to his salvation and whatnot.

I disagree with that. I think it's Paul. The main reason that I do, he says,

I find the principle of evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. Who wants to do good? Only the believer in Jesus Christ.

Outside of that, we go back to Romans 3. How many do you seek him? None. Not even one.

So Paul is talking about he's an apostle and he's writing his struggle with sin. And he admonishes his brothers in Philippi to be diligent in their sanctification.

And this is so important. So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more in my absence, work out your salvation.

And this is more sanctification. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

All right. So there is this positive aspect to sanctification. Work it out with fear and trembling.

Another danger is spiritual pride. Having been saved by God's grace, some become prideful and boastful about their new standing before God.

Of course, that person needs to be instructed concerning God's grace. You're in the kingdom of God.

What did you do to get here? Absolutely nothing. But God can afflict that person to remove the pride and keep them humble.

The apostle Paul was just such a person. Yes. I've heard some evangelical churches teach that you're no longer a sinner once you're saved.

And I don't know where they get that from. Well, certainly not from First John, because the

First John says, if you say you have no sin, you're a liar. Yeah.

There are certain churches that teach in perfectionism that it is possible to be perfected in this life.

That's not biblical teaching. All right. So the apostle Paul was just such a person.

And he details his experience in Second Corinthians, chapter 12. And I know how he's talking about.

All right. Let me just go on. And I know such a man, whether in body or apart from the body.

I do not know. God knows. Was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak.

All right. Look at what he experienced. Now, of course, we know as you go through it, he

Paul's talking about himself. All right. He says, I know of a man. But then later he goes into the personal pronouns.

Heard inexpressible words, which a man is not permitted to speak. When I see

Paul, that's one of the days of Paul. What did you hear? Just I mean, just just imagine here he is.

He's writing a scripture. He says, I'm not allowed to tell you. All right.

Little couple of verses later, because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, he just makes it he just makes it all the more enticing and tantalizing, doesn't he?

All right. For this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh.

A messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself.

If the apostle Paul needed that and what had happened when Paul prayed to have the thorn removed.

That's no, my grace is sufficient for you. And Paul continues to say. It was good.

He says it was good that I was afflicted. All right. To keep him to keep me from exalting myself.

So now related to the danger of pride is the attitude of self -confidence, self -confidence not going as far as pride, but it's the same thing.

Having been given certain gifts and talents by God, you begin to rely upon those and not relying upon God.

This is a particular danger for preachers. When you've preached for a long, long period of time, you develop a style, you get comfortable, you know how to you know how to put sermons together and all.

The day comes that you start relying on your own expertise and not on the power of the spirit of God.

That's a danger. That's why. Every Sunday morning, you see a group of men in that study praying for the service that's coming up.

We don't ever want to think, OK, well, we've been doing this a while now. In fact, we'll be celebrating 25 years as a church in June.

OK, so OK, now, once we get to 25, we can kind of sit back there. Well, we got this.

All the more we need to rely on the spirit of God, not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, says the

Lord God of hosts. God may bring chastisement into your life to bring you back to the reality that apart from me, you can do nothing.

OK. And another related danger that may bring chastisement is that of being complacent.

That means just kind of sitting back. If we compare ourselves with what we were 10 years ago, there's really no difference.

We do not know God any more intimately. We do not have advanced one. We have not advanced one step.

We have not grown in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord. We are resting in a state of self -satisfaction.

Then that's where that friend of mine comes up where he says, well, there goes my my new book. I was going to write

Coasting for Christ. No such thing as coasting, you know, in the kingdom of God.

If you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards. So far, we have focused on the negative side of chastisement.

All right. You've gone astray in some way and God chastises you. He disciplines you to bring you back.

But let's not forget that sanctification is not just defined by what you don't do.

Sanctification is a positive activity. All right. It is not merely putting off sin, but it is putting on the righteousness of Christ.

It is to be the kind of person who is exemplifying the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount in his life.

It is to be a person who is showing the fruits of spirit, love, joy, peace, etc.

Now, that is what sanctification means. God and sanctifying us is bringing us more and more into conformity with that condition.

And it is very clear that in order to bring us there, it is not enough that we be given the positive teaching of the word.

The element of chastisement is also necessary. Boy, he's got a way with words, doesn't he?

To sum things up then, a person may suffer spiritual depression because they do not understand that as a child of God, because he loves you, you may have to endure chastisement.

The purpose of the chastisement is to prevent you from engaging in sinful behavior, but also sinful or ungodly thoughts, attitudes and motivations.

It is to conform you to the image of Jesus Christ. It is to be meek and humble.

And we're concluding with the last paragraph, meekness, how difficult it is to be meek in our attitude towards others and in our relationships with men.

Let me just stop there. Meekness is not weakness. Let me give you maybe a definition for meekness that you've never heard before.

I hope you have, but just in case you haven't. Meekness is controlled strength.

Jesus Christ was meek and that means he was anything but weak. He was the strongest personality that there could possibly be.

Even when he was casting out the money changers from the temple or whatever he was doing, he was always meek.

It's one of the words he used to describe himself, I am meek and lowly. My burden is not heavy, it's light.

So meekness, we are to be as Christians, that's one of the Beatitudes, blessed are the meek.

That means you have that controlled strength. So meekness, how difficult it is to be meek in our attitude towards others and in our relationships with them.

Love to others, sympathy towards others. There is a sense, I suppose, in which it is almost impossible for us to be sympathetic unless we know something of the same experience.

I know very well in my work as a pastor that I would not have been able to sympathize with people. Indeed, I would not have been able to understand certain people and their problems unless I had passed through the same experience myself.

God has sometimes to deal with us in order to remind us of our need of patience. He says in effect, you know

I am patient with you, go and be patient with that other person. These then are some of the things that show us clearly the need and necessity for chastisement.

God, because he loves us, because we are his children, does chastise us in order that it may eventually lead us to this marvelous and wonderful peaceable fruit of righteousness.

Questions? Yes. It's more of a comment than something.

Yes. No, it's very interesting. You can even correct if I've done something wrong. It's actually also very interesting just to see how much

God uses relationships in order to teach us about how we view him and then also how he views us.

Or like, you know, the different kinds of love that's tied into that experience.

I see it in a very small way, and I can't imagine what it's like for parents.

But when I see my students, them being lazy or deciding to be apathetic about an assignment, and I'm like, alright, well, you guys just need to do it again now, because I know that you can.

And I don't know, it just resonates with you. Like, oh, that's exactly what God does with us.

And just like when parents are disciplining their kids and, you know, incurring all of their tantrums, it's because they love them, and they're not just letting them get their way or whatever they want.

And that's why it's important that, you know, taking it to the step of disciplining those we have charge of, whether it be our children or students or whatever, that they understand the purpose of the discipline or the chastisement.

Just as God has given us in his word, I'm doing this because I love you.

And we need to communicate that. I'll give you an example. When I was the headmaster over at GCA, it came up,

I had to suspend one of the junior high school students.

Now, this was way back, long before you were there. And so I explained,

I had him in my office, I explained everything to him, and I said, so the bottom line is, you're going to be suspended for three days.

He says, okay. And he got up and he started to walk. I said, by the way, do you know why

I'm doing this? And he turned around, he says, because you love me. That's what you're looking for.

Other questions? Yes. When you brought up how people need to have a biblical worldview, otherwise you won't do chastisement correctly, and therefore you will have spiritual depression, how would you change your worldview so that it's biblical?

Because when I think of a biblical worldview, I think of how when we're basically a follower of Christ, then wouldn't our worldview kind of automatically change, or is it talked about?

Oh, if that were only true. It's not, there are blessed

Christians who have a secular humanistic view of the world.

This is one of the things that we strive to do in this church, is not only for people who come here, but those that we interface, interact with in other churches.

Because the way you'll see it is, if you don't understand the sovereignty of God, every true

Christian says they believe in the sovereignty of God. But when you talk to them, they don't.

The Arminian says he believes in the sovereignty of God, but not over salvation. Okay, well, duh.

So unfortunately, the answer to your question is no, it's not an automatic thing. You have to study the scriptures, and then apply them to how you think, because you can even articulate a doctrine like the sovereignty of God, but then the way you live, you're living as though he's not sovereign.

In the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, they don't believe that God would ever bring adversity to you, or ever bring sickness to you.

They think that's the devil. So now they're fighting against what they think is the devil, and it's God. They haven't repented of their sin.

They're rebuking the devil and not changing their ways. So the biblical worldview includes, obviously, the sovereignty of God, the lordship of Jesus, and recognizing that God wants us wholly not happy.

The health, wealth, and prosperity gospel is all about happiness, and how I'm going to exalt myself. You read 1 and 2

Timothy, and it says, they think that godliness is a means of gain. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and some longing for it have wandered away from the faith, and pierced themselves with many griefs.

It's not about money. It's about submitting to him and his holy becoming holy. Yes, Mike.

I have a question. Is there a difference between God's chastisement to the believer and the consequences for their sin?

No, they're definitely related, because the consequences for sin are something that he has already explained to you.

We know that the scripture is clear that if you obey, then you will be blessed.

If you disobey, then there will be consequences. But those consequences are part of his chastisement, meant to bring you back.

For example, take the book of Judges. The book of Judges is one of the most famous things that the book of Judges teaches, is the sin cycle.

You take the Israelites. God blesses them. What happens when they bless them? They got complacent, and they turned their backs on God.

So what does God do then? He brings judgment. What happens when he brings judgment? They repent.

What happens when they repent? He restores them. What happens when he restores them? They're blessed. They turn their back on God.

And it's over and over and over. He always brings the chastisement on his people whenever you violate his commandments.

So, no, it's part and parcel of it. Because, again,

God uses providence. Again, everything that happens, something happens in our country.

Does it affect the church? Yeah. I mean, if we have a market crash, is the church going to be affected by that?

Yes. All right. But the effect that it has on us will produce different results than it does on a nonbeliever.

Because, ultimately, that crash is going to be for our good. A nonbeliever can't say that.

So God can even use a work of providence to accomplish two different things, one for the nonbeliever and one for the believer.

Okay? Yes. Sorry, I just want to clarify. So the answer to the question

I asked earlier, it would be just, like, read the Bible more and apply the word to your life, and that's how you would kind of change your worldview to be more biblical?

Yeah. And this is where you need to be very careful in studying solid scholars from the past as well.

All right? God has given gifts to the church.

All right? Some of those gifts are the teachers, some pastors, and other teachers, men like John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards.

And when we read them, we start to understand a biblical worldview.

Same thing in the church today. I mean, we've been blessed in this country because we've got some great theologians, guys like R .C.

Sproul, unfortunately, who just passed away, and other men. So you have to make sure that you're sitting under the tutelage of men who are handling the word accurately.

But you always compare what they have to say to the Scriptures. That's how you know if they're doing it accurately or not.

The problem is that a lot of people today, they just got, oh, I like the way that guy sounds, and whatever he says, they accept.

Paul tells us, no, we need to be like the Bereans. And you've heard me say this from the pulpit.

If I say anything from that pulpit, if it doesn't match up with Scripture, you're obligated to come and talk to me about it afterwards.

I just have a quote I want to share from Calvin. I think it's relevant in the sense that why we as Christians go through much of this.

It says this, Then are we utterly perverse when we convert to our destruction what

God has appointed for our salvation. Now we must consider the ingratitude of Jerusalem.

I was studying Ezekiel. So Jerusalem as flagrant because they rejected the commandments of God.

When therefore God deposits among us the treasures of celestial doctrine, we must diligently take care that we do not turn aside to impiety, because there is no excuse for error when once we have been taught what is right, and that from the mouth of God himself.

We have somebody in this church now, a present member who was in another church prior, which was

Pentecostal charismatic. And he wound up studying under R .C.

Sproul. And he started to talk to R .C. Sproul about some of the things that his church was doing.

He says, so I'm becoming reformed. He says, so what do you think I should do with the church? And R .C.

Sproul says, run from that church as fast as you can. Any other questions?