Sermon - The Loving Discipline of Our Father

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If you would open your Bibles, the Word of God, to Proverbs chapter 3.

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Proverbs chapter 3, verses 11 and 12.

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Hear now the word of the living and the true God. My son, do not despise the

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Lord's discipline, or be weary of his reproof, for the

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Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father, the son in whom he delights.

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Thus far is the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray together. Lord, thank you for the gift of your word.

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Thank you that you love us. Thank you that we can call you Father. Lord, you know the record of our lives.

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You've known it for all eternity. You've known us, and you've chosen to save us, to adopt us into your family, to call us sons.

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And you did it despite us, despite our good deeds, our righteousnesses, and our unrighteousness.

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You love us. You set your love upon us before the world began. You chose us in Christ, and you did it knowing all about us.

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So Lord, we come to you now, and we thank you for the gift of your word. We thank you that we have the righteousness of your son.

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We thank you that we have what you've promised, eternal life. And Lord, I pray that today as we hear from your word, that you'd bless the word coming by your spirit.

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Bless your church. Lord, open our eyes to your truth, our hearts and minds to you. Change us.

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Bless us. Renew us. And I pray that you would do it despite the unworthiness of the man bringing it in myself.

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None of us are worthy to hold this revelation, but we thank you that you love us and that you're our

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Father. So we pray you bless, get the teacher out of the way, and teach by your spirit,

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God, in Jesus' name, amen. Significant passage.

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My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof. For the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father, the son in whom he delights.

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The emphasis here in this passage is the love of God, the love of God for his children, the love of God as father.

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That's what this passage is about. It's not so much about punishment and discipline and correction.

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That comes really after the substantial and foundational truth. He's a father.

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We're his children. And he disciplines, he corrects the ones that he loves. This is glorious because it shows the love of God for his children and it gives the people of God hope that there is hope for transformation.

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There is hope for renewal. There's hope for newness. No matter which stage of your sanctification you are in, whether you're a new believer or you're a believer and you've been believing in Christ for 20, 30, 40 years, this is the hope that we have as children of God.

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Is it God the father is our father and he loves his children and he will correct you because he's a good father.

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This is such a gift. We could do a 12 -week series on this one little section here.

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We ought to because it's glorious. It's hope. It's hope for the child of God that transformation can take place, that God's never going to abandon you.

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He's never going to betray you. He is going to be passionately committed to you and to your good and your transformation and your renewal, establishing you in righteousness and justice and truth.

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God's not going to be the absentee father that so many of us are used to.

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You see, here's the thing. As we start opening this today, we have to grapple with this. We're all going to have to confess to the consequence of being in a fallen world.

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And you hear the word father and child and the love of the father.

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You hear that in the context of a world with so many awful, terrible fathers.

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Fathers who have been abusive. Fathers who have wounded and not healed. Fathers who have betrayed.

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Fathers that you're afraid of because they're unbalanced. They can't be trusted.

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Fathers who have been verbally abusive. And so we have to confess to something as creatures in a fallen world.

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We've been impacted by the sin of the world and the sin of terrible fathers.

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And so confess to it. You come to a passage like this where God is telling you His love for His children and He will not leave you.

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He will correct you because He loves His children. You can hear the goodness of having a heavenly father and it can sort of, kind of fall, admit it, on deaf ears.

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You don't feel the weight of it. Because if you, like many of us, have had an earthly father who treated you treacherously or in an abusive way, sometimes you're fearful of that title father.

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But let's start with this as we open this about a father who loves his children and He corrects them, He disciplines them.

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The only reason you and I can look at a terrible earthly father, a failing earthly father, and say, you betrayed me, you're a bad father, that ought not to be so.

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The only way you can say that is if you have an absolute standard of what a father is.

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He is that absolute standard. He is that father who is perfect in every way.

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He is the father who doesn't wound and pursue wounding His children, but He pursues healing them.

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He pursues their good. He gives everything of Himself for each and every single one of His children.

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He is focused on you with a divine focus and intention. He'll never abandon you.

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We have a culture today that is thrown off God's law, God's ways, the

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Christian worldview. We pretend like fathers aren't necessary. We pretend like fathers are really no big deal.

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And so we have this epidemic in our society of fatherlessness. And we see the consequences of it all around us.

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Fathers who abandon. Fathers who take no interest in their children. Fathers who don't love their children.

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Fathers who do not correct their children. That's the world we live in. And so you come to a glorious passage like this, two verses, and it's the hope of the child of God, love and transformation.

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It's promised to you. It's how it works. You come to a passage like this, and you have to see the divine, eternal power and weight of it.

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You have to let it transform you. Brothers and sisters, let our minds be changed by the love of God and God as Father, because He is the standard of what a father is and is supposed to be.

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There is joy in this passage. Listen, we're going to unpack this here in just a moment in terms of not despising, not being weary,

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God loving His children so He corrects them, He disciplines them. But it's, I think, important for us, especially in the context of today, where you have so many that have essentially counterfeited the

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Christian message. They've taken capital from the biblical worldview, and they've spread it out into the world, and they've lied to the world.

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They tell everybody, you're all God's children. You're all loved by God in the same way.

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And the truth of the matter is, you won't truly, and I won't truly understand the weight of this message until you understand our status as image bearers of God outside of Jesus Christ, and then also inside of Jesus Christ.

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You have to understand the transformation that has taken place, the price that has been paid to be able to say to you and me, you're a child of God, He's your

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Father. Jesus says to people, get this, He says to people, He says, you are of your

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Father, what? The devil. He makes a distinction between our

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Father who art in heaven, the prayer that He tells His people to pray, you pray like this, children of God, our

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Father who art in heaven. That's a prayer to God, our Father, the children of God, He's our

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Father. And Jesus says to people, you are of your Father, the devil. Your Father's not

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God. Your Father's not God. And we live in a day, people have borrowed the

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Christian message and they say, you're all children of God. And the answer coming from scripture is no, no.

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You are only a child of God through faith in Jesus Christ. You are brought from being a child of wrath, somebody who is rebellious and hostile towards the

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Holy God, you are brought from that place to a place where God calls you a son,

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He calls you a daughter, He calls you His own, He adopts the stranger. He takes somebody that is not a part of His family and He brings them into His family and He says,

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I'm your father now, you're my child. Scripture's very clear about our status and until you understand the status of humanity outside of Jesus, you'll never understand the joy in this passage.

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So let's get to some of that joy as context underneath this passage. The biblical framework, the biblical context, our status,

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Ephesians chapter 2, go there. Ephesians, New Testament, written by Paul, Ephesians chapter 2, it is a weighty, weighty passage so much here.

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It says in Ephesians 2, chapter 2, verse 1, he says this to the church, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of the world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all, we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature, here it is, children of wrath, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind, like the rest of mankind.

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Here's where we were. This was us, all of us. We were like the rest of mankind, children of wrath, not children of God, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

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By grace you have been saved. You see, that's the transformation. That's the renewal.

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That's the power of being removed from the status of a child of wrath like the rest of mankind, brought into a place where we've been raised up with Christ, seated with him.

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Why? Because but God, rich in mercy, the great love that he loved us with.

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He calls us children, and now we're sons and daughters of God. This is clear throughout

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Scripture, and if you want to hear it in a potent way, you know the section John chapter 1.

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Go there. John chapter 1. John's my favorite gospel.

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So intimate and so filled with promises of eternal life and the love of God. I encourage you never to get too far from the gospel of John.

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After describing Jesus as the Word who eternally existed face to face with the

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Father, an intimate relationship with the Father, the Word who is God, the Word who created all things,

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Jesus, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, but it also says in verse 9 of chapter 1, the true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

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He was in the world, and the world was made through him. That's Jesus. Yet the world did not know him.

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He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. Here it is.

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But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

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Children of God. Not a child of wrath, not a son of disobedience, but a child of God, loved by God.

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And you were chased down by Jesus for that to take place. Never forget that. That's what that says.

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Jesus is God who existed for all eternity, an intimate relationship with the Father. The Trinity is expressed there in this beautiful detail.

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Jesus created everything in existence. Jesus took on flesh and walked among us, but he came to pursue the rebel.

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There were people, his own people, that didn't receive him, but to as many that did receive him, to them he gave the right to become children of God.

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You're a child of God, loved by God, corrected by God, disciplined by God, but it took place because of God's love for sinners, people who didn't deserve him.

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Scripture also teaches about the love of God for his children. In Hebrews chapter 12, go there, this consistent theme in Scripture.

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If you are a child of God, here it is, if you are a child of God, you will be loved by God and corrected by him.

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Why is it so important to say that? Here it is, as you get to Hebrews 12, because we have been inundated in this generation with false gospels galore, but in particular a false gospel that's crept into the evangelical church, the gospelers church, the people who bring the gospel to the world, we've been inundated with false gospels, in particular one that says, if you pray this magic prayer, you've said the words, your ticket is punched, and then it doesn't matter, you're just going to heaven one day because you're, quote, saved.

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Now do we believe that you're saved through faith in Christ and through faith alone? Yes. Apart from any work, now or ever, it is faith alone that joins you to Christ, it is faith that brings us to a place where we have eternal life, but the lie that has been sold to this generation, and you see the impact of it all over our nation, is that you can pray this magic prayer and God will leave you just like he found you.

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He will leave you in that state, he will not challenge you, he will not correct you, and nothing happens.

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You just have your ticket punched and one day you're going to waltz into the presence of a holy

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God. That's a lie. It's a lie. It's a lie that can be dispelled and refuted with scripture after scripture after scripture.

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God loves me too much as a son to leave me the way he found me.

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And scripture is very clear on that. Hebrews chapter 12, starting at verse 3, look at what the writer of Hebrews says.

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It says, consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint hearted.

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In your struggle against sin, you have not resisted to the point of shedding your blood, and have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

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Here's the writer of Hebrews telling you Proverbs. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the

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Lord. Do not be weary when reproved by him, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.

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It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

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If you're 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, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.

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For the moment of all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

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Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may be put out of joint, but rather healed.

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May not be put out of joint, but rather healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the

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Lord. There it is. That's what the Bible teaches. God saves you, God calls you his own, and then he chastens you.

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Then he disciplines you. Then he corrects you. He will not leave you as he found you. And what's the point?

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If you're without discipline, if you're without correction, if God isn't doing that in you, then you're a bastard.

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You're a fatherless child. You're illegitimate. Just consider what that means.

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We've talked about this before. We've said we all instinctively understand this. If I'm in my neighborhood and I see the neighbor's kids running amok, foul mouths, being nasty, being evil, being unloving,

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I don't go out to the neighbor's kids to correct them, to give them a spanking, to discipline them.

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None of that happens. Why? Isn't it obvious? It's not my kid.

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However, if I found my child in my house, sitting against mother, sitting against sister, sitting against brother, sitting against dad, violating the law of God, what do

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I do as a father? I take care of the duty that's within where? My house.

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That's my son. And I have to show that I love my son and I don't hate him, and God's the same way with the world.

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People often get frustrated, don't we? We see people in the world living reckless lives, living in a way where they hate their neighbor and they hate

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God. And you look at them at times and you think, how can they not feel the weight of what they're doing and they're not grieving over their sin?

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I can't live in that way. I couldn't possibly live that life out like they are. It's like they just have no ability to see themselves and God's standards and righteousness.

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And you think to yourself, how could someone be like that? And the answer is you should rejoice because if you hate your sin and you despise those things and you love

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God, that is a loving father who is correcting you, who's disciplining you, who indwells you by his spirit.

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Amen? So this is actually a section of hope about the love of God and the promise of transformation, renewal, correction.

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We've been adopted by God. We're all children of God through faith and not all are sons.

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You see, what's interesting about this passage, go back to Proverbs 3, is that it comes really in just a few, a space of a few chapters, we have just an abundance of blessing, blessing, blessing, blessing.

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And we all have been talking about the fact that, look, these are promises. These are the principles of God in scripture.

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This is wisdom. If you live this way, God says what? If you live this way, he says there's abundance.

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There's going to be blessing and security and light that's not for the treacherous man, those who walk in dark paths.

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There's been so much leading up to Proverbs 3 where God says he loves you, he'll correct you, that tells us about all the abundant blessings of God by walking in wisdom and the light that we have in God's word.

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And I think it's easy for us to say, I'll take that, right? Security, amen, hallelujah.

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Blessing? Yes. Light? Yes. No dark paths? Yes. No death?

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Yes. I love that. And we're ready to just grab those things and draw them into our chest and then we get to Proverbs 3 and God says, and here's another one, discipline and correction.

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God's reproving you. That is the gift that we say I'd appreciate it if you didn't keep on giving.

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But it's in the line of blessings and gifts because what is the foundational truth? He's the father and you are the child.

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He's never going to leave you like he found you. He just won't. He's too good of a father to do so.

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And so it's a blessing. He says, because you are sons, he will correct you.

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He will discipline you. The text says, my son, do not despise the

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Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof. The word despise here means reject.

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It's used elsewhere in the Old Testament in reference to rejecting, throwing off, reject.

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So the text is, my son, do not reject the Lord's discipline. Don't be the kind of person that refuses the disciplining hand of God.

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You refuse to be corrected. Being corrected is a gift from God because he's your loving father.

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And so the text says, do not, child of God, do not reject the disciplining hand of God.

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Don't do it. And then it says, do not be weary of his reproof. The word weary means to shrink away, to shrink away from the reproof of God.

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You're not to reject it. You're not to shrink away from it. You keep your heart and your mind as a child of God open to the disciplining hand of God, the correction of God.

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It's interesting because children, all the kids in the room right now, let me just say, because of sin,

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I believe this, because of sin, in a fallen world that we live in, oftentimes as children, we look at our parents as the enemy.

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We look at our parents as, at times, the oppressor. They're in the way of my pleasure.

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They're in the way of my joy. They're in the way of my goals. And because of sin, there,

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I think, is this hostility at times that can be present between children and parents. You refuse to see the fact that this is dad loving me.

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This is mom loving me. We don't see as children that my parents know something.

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They have wisdom from God, and they're trying to guard my life, the path of my life.

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We think that it's a parent trying to rob you of happiness. You're trying to rob me of joy.

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Why can't I stay up from 9 p .m. till 7 a .m. playing video games every night?

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Don't you understand how glorious this is? Like how come

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I can't hang out with that crowd? How come I can't go to that place that is kind of dangerous?

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And your parents are saying, no, not that way. Guard your life. Protect this. Keep yourself away from these evil doers.

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And at times, our children, because of sin, will resist the wisdom and the love of the parents because they think they're being robbed of something.

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But the text here talks to the child of God as a son, and God as the father, and it says do not reject, do not reject

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God's discipline, and don't shrink away from his reproof because he loves you.

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That's why you're to accept discipline as a child to a father and as children of God to a heavenly father.

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He loves you. He's correcting you because he loves you. He is the wise God. Have you thought about this?

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We've talked about this before. It's good to keep reminding yourselves of this about God because as creatures, it's not something you can comprehend.

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Have you ever thought about the fact that God doesn't think? And what

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I mean by that is that God isn't like you and I. If I were to ask you right now, I was to say to you, what'd you have for lunch yesterday?

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What do you have to do right now? You have to start going, huh. If you're over 40, you're like,

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I can never answer that question. I don't know, and I won't know. You know what you're doing?

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You're thinking back to where was I yesterday, what did I buy, what did we have for lunch yesterday?

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It was a Saturday. What was going on? You have to go through the file cabinet and you have to ask the question, what did

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I have for lunch yesterday? You have to think about it. Have you ever thought about the fact that God doesn't have to do that? He never has. That God knows everything about everything and he knows it at all times and he always has.

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Have you ever thought about the fact that from eternity past, that means forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever ago, with no stopping point, forever ago,

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God has known from all eternity all of his works. So do you know there was never a time forever ago where God didn't know your name and what he was going to do with you?

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Forever ago, God always knew you. You existed in the mind of God, in the plan of God, for all eternity, he's always known your name.

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And he set his love upon you. There's never a time where God has to think and work through the file cabinets.

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And so there are things that God, believe it or not, knows about your life and my life.

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He knows the path. He knows the dangers ahead. He knows what's good for us and what is righteous and beautiful and true and lovely.

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And so when God corrects you and he disciplines you, he's doing it because he loves you and he guards the path of your life.

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He knows everything. And it's important for us to recognize that when God is correcting us, it's as a father who knows everything.

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He's the standard of righteousness. You see, it's interesting when we think about this, don't reject the

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Lord's discipline and don't be shrinking away from his reproof. We look at that and there's a sinful resistance at times in humanity against being corrected by God.

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I don't want God to tell me what to do. I don't want God to tell me his ways. You've heard atheists say,

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I don't care if God came down from heaven and stood right in front of me. I don't care if he stood right in front of me.

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I refuse to worship him. I don't want to be told what to do. I was just watching, Carmen showed me on some of our downtime, he showed me a video of an atheist making like a reel on YouTube and he's this atheist and he's railing against God.

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I'm sure you can find this video somewhere. And he's in his car driving and he says, if there was a God, he's driving, he goes, then there'd be a lightning strike and ready, three, two, one, now, and all of a sudden lightning lights up outside, boosh.

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He goes, uh, do you think that converted him?

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There's always some answer, right? There's always something, but we want to resist God's ways.

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We don't want to know God. Paul says that in Romans chapter one, we don't want to be corrected. But here's the crazy thing.

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Can we all just admit this? We instinctively know this too. In every single endeavor in life, we understand that we need correction in everything.

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If you're opening a business, if you're a businessman or a business woman, if you have a business with your husband, your family, you recognize that you need to get some tips.

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You need to get some correction. You need to get some understanding. Or if you go to do your taxes, what do you do at times?

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I got to seek a professional. Why? Because I want to make sure that I have this correctly done for the 87 ,000 newly armed

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IRS agents, criminal, you, you know, instinctively,

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I know instinctively, whatever you put your hand to, I need to be trained. I can't walk into something and go,

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I got that. Right? Imagine like the most, the most competitive division of gymnastics.

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You see these people doing crazy things with their bodies. Looks almost miraculous. I mean, think about how things change with each generation.

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It gets better and better and better and more and more difficult. Did you see gymnastics competitions when in the

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Olympics, when it was in black and white? You look at that and it looks like, like, like a little princess gymnastics class for you.

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It's like the four year old class. People are doing stuff today that just seems like it's not even human. Would any of us watch a division like that and go, huh,

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I got this watch. You realize, uh, no, I need to be trained.

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I need, I'm sure it's some correction, or if you were trained by the, the person who was the best in the field, what kind of arrogance would be present where the person who is best in their field trying to instruct you saying, no, that you're doing this wrong.

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You need to do this. If you said, uh, no, thanks, I got this. I've watched it.

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What kind of arrogance would that be? We all recognize instinctively in whatever endeavor we have to be corrected.

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We have to be told you're doing that wrong. And you know what's amazing is that when we love something and we're passionately committed to learning it and getting it down, we thrive on that correction, don't we?

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Don't you thrive on the correction when you love something and you want to be the best at it. And someone tells you, no, this is the way you're supposed to do it.

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Don't you love the correction? Why? Why do you love it? Because you know the goal, you know where you're going.

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You want that transformation. You know, I think back to my own life growing up, kids love the martial arts stories.

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So I figured I'd throw one in, in martial arts. I love to fight.

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I love to do competitions, all that stuff. I could fight. I could do martial arts.

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I think I was pretty skilled. And then I actually one day stole the performance of the national champion of the day.

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His name was Carmichael Simon. I didn't know you weren't allowed to copy the performance or form of somebody else.

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I was 13 years old and just really zealous and apparently extremely ignorant.

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And so I copied his entire form. I watched it in a video. I was like, that's the most amazing thing ever.

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Only I did not look like him when I did it. And so I went to this massive competition in Baltimore.

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The division is like 50 people deep or 40 people deep. And I still have the video.

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I still have the video. My master instructor, Master Francis Pineda is one of the most world renowned coaches.

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He was the head judge that day and he got placed there by accident, essentially. So he's the head judge and I have this whole video where I go up into the ring.

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I introduce myself to the judges and I go to do the performance. And as I'm doing the performance on the video, you can see

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Master Pineda watching and going, throwing his hands up like this. Judges are not supposed to act like that, by the way.

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He's throwing his hands up and he's like putting his hand on his head and he's saying stuff to the judges.

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And so the division now is over. They've called first through third place and then finalists through eighth and I'm not even in the top eight places.

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And as soon as they call him up, you can see him, he's like just like waiting for this thing to be over. And as soon as they bow us out, he cuts through the line, comes right up to me and he screams at me in front of everybody.

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He says, you can't do that. You can't take Carmichael's form. He's the national champion.

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You took his form. That's against all rules. He said, I'm his coach. I teach him all week and that's his form and you can't do that.

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This was so disrespectful. And all I heard was that this was the national champion's private coach.

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Everything else was that Charlie Brown, what, what, what, what, what, what, what? And so all

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I just looked at him and I said, you teach Carmichael Simon? He said, yes. And I said, can you teach me?

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And he's like, no. And so I followed him around this tournament. The whole rest of the tournament,

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I seriously harassed him, begging him to give me one chance to teach him once.

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And he said, no, no, no. I think he even said, leave me alone. And so I ended up finding a way to harass him by getting his phone number for two weeks.

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Called and called and please. And he'll tell you to this day that he decided one day

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I'm going to annihilate this kid. And so he tells people the story today that I, he was going to destroy me so that I never wanted to see his face again.

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And I remember the day that I went to his school, it was just him and just me and my dad.

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It was a school with really no air conditioning. It was concrete floors, essentially with the nastiest, nastiest carpet and some glass on the wall.

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And he had no smile on his face. He wasn't happy to see me. And when he brought me in, he annihilated me for like three hours.

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I walked in with a blue karate uniform. And when I was finished, it was black. There wasn't an inch of it that wasn't covered in sweat.

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He tried to destroy me. And he'll tell you the story to this day. He says this, he said,

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I wanted to destroy him so he never wanted to see me again. He said, but I saw something there that apparently

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God forgot to put the quit in this kid. And I thought he had something. So what he did is he said, okay,

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I'll teach you. And he wanted me to obey everything he said. And so I did.

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So what he started to do is he put a 30 to 50 pound weight vest on me. The first hour of training was a 30 to 50 pound weight vest.

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He created a contraption that went from my waist to my hands, my wrists and my ankles that had these elastic bands.

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So I to stand up, I had to fight to even stand up and get my arms out. He put ankle weights on me.

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And so for the first hour of training, he would just destroy me with this whole contraption on. It looked terrible.

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It hurt so bad. And he was merciless. If I tried to stop, he would scream to the top of his lungs at me.

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There were times where I was on the ground, literally crying. He would pick me up by my karate belt and pull me up and shake me and wouldn't let me quit.

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Sometimes when I'm training to this very day, I still hear a Master Pranita's voice screaming at me, you will not quit.

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You will do it right. And he used to hurt me. I would be sore for days because he would be getting me on the wall to do something with absolute precision.

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And if I had even one thing off, even one thing off, he would, he would make me feel so much pain.

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I would literally cry as I was training and he didn't let me give up. He would correct every single detail.

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And so, I had never won a tournament in what I wanted to win.

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Master Pranita started teaching me and he abused me up and down. The very next week after I started training with him,

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I won first place at a tournament. The very next week after that, I won the National Karate Championships in Florida first place.

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Six months later, I won one of the biggest tournaments in the entire nation and not only that tournament, but I won the

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Grand Championship, which is where all the first place winners of that day compete at the nighttime finals to see who is the absolute best of everybody at the tournaments.

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It's funny, I'll just say this as an aside. He was very expensive because he's a world renowned coach.

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He told me when we started training, he said, I'll tell you what, I'll make a deal with you. He said, when you win your first National Grand Championship, which is basically out of reach and almost impossible, he says,

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I'll teach you for free for the rest of your life. Six months after he made that promise, I won the

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California Compete Nationals and I won the Grand Championships and I went running to the payphone, payphone's kids were things you put money in.

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I called him, I said, Master Pranita, guess what? He said, no. I said, I won the

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Grand Championships and he said, well, a promise is a promise and he began teaching me for free for the rest of my life.

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But here's why I brought that story up. I was desperate for his correction. I needed it and man, sometimes it hurts so bad.

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There were times where it seemed honestly abusive, but it was never abusive.

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It was love. It was concern for me. He wanted me to be the very best and he put his whole life into it and he wouldn't let me make the mistakes that I was ready to make.

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He corrected me and because of that, I got a tremendous gift. See what

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I'm saying? We all recognize it. In every endeavor, the people who are above us that try to correct us are doing it because they love us and it's for our good and we receive that correction.

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We need to recognize that with the love of God in his disciplining hand and correction. Remember this,

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God is correcting you. He is correcting me.

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As a father, he's not condemning you as a judge. When God disciplines us, the text says, he does so, listen, did you catch it?

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As a father, the son in whom he delights.

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He takes pleasure in you.

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He's pleased in you and so he corrects you. He is not challenging you, changing you, disciplining you, reproving you, ready?

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As judge. He is doing it as father because you and I are in his house.

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We belong to him. Bonson makes a good point when he's speaking on this.

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He says oftentimes for Christians, when there are trials, tribulations, attacks, difficulties, when there is poverty and pain, we often say things like, things are going awful.

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God must hate me. We think this is so painful.

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Why does everybody else who hates God seem to have it so well? How come they're not going through this trial?

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How come they're not going through these difficulties and all this pain? How come it's me? Scripture says he loves you.

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He's going to change you. He's invested in you. He's going to shape you. He's going to fight the war with you by challenging you on your fearfulness, on your worry, on your lack of self -control because he loves you.

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There'll be trials that God allows you to go through as a child of God because he's purifying you.

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How many of you brothers and sisters can tell stories in your life about your loving father where you said, this awful thing happened to me and God brought me through it and I praise

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God for it. I wouldn't change it for anything. And we're talking about very bad and difficult things.

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I wouldn't change that for anything. I needed that. God was teaching me. God was training me because he loves me.

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And so Bonson makes the point. We should say as God's children, things are going bad.

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He loves me. It's difficult. There are trials, but he'll never forsake me.

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He'll never lose me. He keeps me. Things are going bad. He loves me. In Job, go to Job.

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Again, excuse my allergies. Who knew the desert would be treacherous for allergies?

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Job chapter five, verse 17, more witness from the scriptures.

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517, the text says, Behold, blessed is the one whom

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God reproves. Therefore, despise not the discipline of the

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Almighty. That's said in Job. Have you read Job? That's a big statement in Job.

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That's a big statement in Job. Blessed is the one whom God reproves.

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You're blessed. If God is reproving you, you are blessed. So don't despise the discipline of the

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Almighty. This is also testified throughout scripture. Look at Revelation. Not revelations.

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Revelation chapter 3, 15.

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Revelation 3, 15. The text says, I know your works. This is the angel of the church in Laodicea to the angel.

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I know your works. You are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold,

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I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.

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Not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked, I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments, so that you may clothe yourself, and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.

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Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.

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Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous, be zealous and repent.

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We need to understand the difference between love and hate in relationship to children.

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In Proverbs chapter 13, in Proverbs chapter 13 verses 15 through 20, the text says, sorry,

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Proverbs 13 verse 24, it says this. Here's a famous one. Parents are saying this, there are kids in Christian homes all the time.

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It's the memory verse of Awanus, right, all the time. Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

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That's what the text says. There's a difference between love and hate, and the scriptures here in the book of Proverbs give you the distinction by saying, a loving father will discipline and correct.

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The father who does not discipline and correct the child hates his son, hates them.

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There's no neutrality there. It's either love or hate. And the father who refuses to discipline a child is a father who hates the son.

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And so God does not hate us as his children, and so he corrects us. He chastens us, he reproves us.

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So here's a question to ask as believers. Here it is, ready? So here's some so what. Here's some so what.

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When you reflect on your walk with Jesus, we're not asking the question of whether you sin.

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John says, the apostle John, if you say you have no sin, the truth isn't in you.

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You're a liar. So this isn't a question about sin, do

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Christians sin? This is a question about what's happening to you in your sin.

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So here's the question. In your life and your walk with the Lord, are you not convicted by the

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Holy Spirit? Like when I say that to you, do you feel convicted by that?

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Do you know what that feels like? Do you know what it means? Can you recognize the difference for those of you guys that came to Christ later in life between where you were and what you could do and what you could pursue and where you're at now?

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One of the first things that in my own experience, and again, I'm trying to focus here, but in my own experience, one of the first things that God began to grieve me over was my mouth.

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I had a foul mouth, foul.

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And we're not talking about what I said at the Fight, Laugh, Feast conference. I mean a really foul mouth.

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I used to embarrass my friends in public because of my foul mouth. I wasn't raised in a

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Christian home, didn't bother me. And when I turned to Christ, one of the very first things that began to become very difficult for me was for those words to start coming out of my mouth.

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I would start to say it and I would immediately feel like I was getting crushed. Why couldn't

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I talk like that anymore? Why couldn't I do those things and see those things and live that way?

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There was a conviction, a grieving that took place in my heart and my mind that wasn't present before.

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So I think it's important for us, we talk about God correcting us. The Bible says that he will correct you because he loves you as a father and the spirit of God indwells

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God's people. So the question to ask is this, are you not convicted by the

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Holy Spirit? Are you able to live comfortably in your sin?

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Comfortably. You've got the profession of faith. You can check all the theological boxes, but the truth is, left to yourself, you could and would completely live freely in these things.

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There's no grief, there's no conviction, there's no discipline, there's no correction.

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Again, it's not a question of whether you sin. We're all in a process of being sanctified, but how do you live in light of that sin?

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Are you grieved by it or can you live comfortably? If you can live comfortably in your sin, if you're not grieved over your sin, if there isn't a pattern of genuine hatred and repentance over sin, if you're without correction,

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Scripture says this, you're illegitimate. You're not a child. Stop fooling yourself.

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If you don't know what I'm talking about, if what I'm saying sounds foreign to you, you probably don't know

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Jesus. It's probably a false profession of faith. And why am

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I saying that? Because the Lord disciplines the child that He loves.

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Those are the words from God. So the hope is, when we say, why can

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I not get away with this sin? How come I'm so grieved over this? How come I can't just live this way?

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The answer is very beautiful, it's because you're loved by God. It's because God loves you. These people can live without correction.

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That's because they're illegitimate. Final words here about the loving discipline of God.

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This needs to be said. The loving discipline of God clearly is from a father to a child, and it's to correct.

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It's to heal. It's to save. It's to correct. It's to heal.

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It's to save. So when we think about our duty as earthly fathers to our children, we should ask ourselves when we're doing discipline of our children, is this to correct?

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Is this to heal? Is this to save? How many of us had fathers who were abusive?

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You had a father who wasn't trying to heal you. He wasn't trying to save you.

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He was trying to hurt you. He said the most horrendous things to you.

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His disciplining hand wasn't a loving, measured, balanced hand.

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It wasn't just. It was wounds. It was pain.

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Some of us have memories of a father who was untrustworthy, imbalanced, who would go into a rage.

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Some of us maybe were raised in homes with parents who were drunk, where you were afraid to be around the parents at night.

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Maybe there were holes in the wall. Maybe there was furniture flipped over. Some of you guys have been struck by a father in the face with a closed fist.

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Some of you guys have been brutally assaulted by parents, by a father.

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When we talk about the disciplining, loving hand of God, we're not in that realm of evil.

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We're talking about a father who disciplines his children because he is correcting, he is healing, he is saving.

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God's, listen, God's response to sin in his children is balanced.

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It is measured. When he responds to our sin, it is calculated.

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It is never out of anger, and it is never out of a lost temper.

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Even, listen to this, even in Scripture, God's wrath against sin and sinful people, even his wrath against sin is his measured opposition against evil.

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It is not a fit of rage. So when we talk about fathers that have to discipline their children to love them, we're not talking about abuse.

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Christian men don't abuse their children, amen? It's patient. It's intentional.

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It's measured. It is like God to correct, to heal, to save.

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That is Christian discipline in a Christian home. It's never to harm.

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It's never to wound. So brothers and sisters, when we see this passage about the love of God, and God correcting the ones that he loves, disciplining his children, can

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I challenge you with this? One, if you know what that feels like, and you know what that's like in your life, don't, don't resist it, reject it, or shrink away from it.

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Rejoice in it because you're loved by God, because he's your father. My challenge to you also, generally as a congregation, is

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I don't know all your lives. I don't know your heart, I don't know your minds. But the text is very clear here.

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If you are a child of God, God will correct you, discipline you, change you.

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And so brothers and sisters, if you are without correction, the writer of Hebrews says, you're illegitimate and not sons.

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That's the reality of this message. It's a divine message from God. This isn't theory.

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This isn't a religion where you're just walking out rituals. This is a real relationship with a heavenly father who loves his children.

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So the text says, if you're without correction, you're not a child. So let that be a word that challenges us as believers consistently all the time.

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If I can live in hot pursuit of sin and rebellion without correction from God at any point in my life, am

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I a child of God? And if it's true that I can do that, then brothers and sisters, my challenge to you is to repent and believe the

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Gospel. Turn to Christ and live. Confess Him as Lord. Yield to Him as Savior and Lord.

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Trust Him. And brothers and sisters, whatever trial you're going through, if you trust in Christ and you are known by God, you're

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His child. He'll keep you, never lose you, never forsake you. And He will keep

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His promise to correct you and transform you. And let me just say that to my elders, my own elders in this room, saints who have been in Christ and are wiser than me sitting in this room right now.

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Never allow yourselves, brothers and sisters, to think this is about all that's gonna happen to me in my walk with Christ.

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I'm still gonna struggle with joylessness. I'm still gonna have anxieties and never get over it. Yeah, I'm grieved over those sins, all the rest.

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I'm just gonna be this way. This is about all God's gonna do in me. He disciplines and corrects the child that He loves.

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So don't shrink away from it. Don't reject it. Submit to the loving Father who promises to love you and transform you.

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Let's pray. Father, we thank

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You that You love us. We thank You that You made promises to us as children that You'll never leave us, forsake us, that You will give us that great hope of transformation.

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I pray that You would grant to us the spirit of the strength within our body to live in a way where we rejoice in Your disciplining and correcting hand.