In 'The Chastening of a Loving Father,' Mike Davenport discusses the importance of discipline in the Christian life, drawing from Hebrews 12:5-11. He emphasizes that God's chastening is an expression of His love, akin to a father's discipline of his children. The sermon explores two main points: relationship and righteousness both demand chastening. Davenport uses the metaphor of a weed-filled garden to illustrate that intervention and discipline are necessary for growth and holiness. He argues that God's discipline is a proof of our sonship and is meant to conform us to His image, producing the 'peaceable fruit of righteousness.' The sermon warns against viewing discipline as negative and emphasizes that it is essential for spiritual growth. It also connects the concept of chastening to the Fifth Commandment, suggesting that the parent-child relationship should mirror God's relationship with us. Ultimately, the sermon calls for embracing God's discipline and applying similar principles in parenting.

Well, if you would take your copies of the Word of God or your digital copy if you have that in front of you and turn to Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12. Chapter 12. I'm going to read verses 5 through 11, Hebrews 12, 5 through 11. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons.

My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.

Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of Spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but he for our profit that we may be partakers of his holiness." Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present but painful. Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." Well the great English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was once talking with a man who thought it very unfair to influence a child's mind with any opinions before the child should come to the age to choose for itself." Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Coleridge then showed him his garden and told him it was his botanical garden.

His friend exclaimed, how so? It's covered with weeds. Coleridge replied, oh that is only because it has yet come to the age of discretion and choice. The weeds you see have taken the liberty to grow and and I thought it unfair in me to prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries. Well, sometimes as Solomon stated, one has to answer a fool according to his own folly.

To think one can have a botanical garden without intervention, without weeding, tilling, pruning, would be utter folly. But I am afraid we are far too often too much like Mr. Coleridge's friend unable to see the reality of this very truth in other spheres of life. Well in the time before us I would like for us to consider this text in Hebrews 12 under the following two headings. First, relationship demands chastening.

Relationship demands chastening. And Second, righteousness demands chastening. Righteousness demands chastening. First, relationship demands chastening. We read in our text, And have you forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons?

My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him. For whom the Lord loves, He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons." The writer to the Hebrews reaches back to Proverbs 3, 11, and 12 for an admonition given by the wisest of men.

He states that the exhortation is still applicable, that it still speaks, it has a voice that needs to be heard. And how is that exhortation to be received? It is to be received exactly as it's given as a father to his son. Exhortation finds its root, it finds its catalyst in the very reality of relationship. It speaks to you as to sons.

My son! This address presupposes the voice of a father. Note as well that the expectation is that because of the relationship there will be discipline. There will be chastening. The exhortation is to not despise the chastening of the Lord.

There are no conditions stated. There are no ifs introduced. Well, don't despise it if it... It's just simply don't despise the chastening. Don't be discouraged by the rebuke.

Dear ones, the text teaches us that relationship demands discipline. It demands chastening. It demands rebuke. Listen to the response of the writer. Take note of his argumentation.

What son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, to which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. My friend, God would never receive a spiritual son or daughter and refuse to discipline them. Okay? You get that.

God would never receive a son or a daughter and not discipline them, not chasing them. The very act of correction is in and of itself a proof of sonship. The Father's commitment and the actions that flow out of that commitment gives solid evidence of a relationship. In his comments on this passage, the commentator Linsky states, chastisement in its severest form is the strong evidence of one's sonship. This casts the clearest light on all persecution that God lets us bear in this life for Christ's sake.

It does correct us, drive out the sin that is still in us, but only in order that we may be more truly the sons that God would have us to be." Dear one's rebuke and chastening are carried out by the God, we heard about it this morning, the God of holiness and the God of justice, the God of truth upon all his children. That's the God who brings it. In fact, His holiness and justice demand the chastening. And note that though the writer to the Hebrews here quotes an Old Testament text, he himself is a New Testament writer writing to a New Testament Church about the God whom they are serving in the New Testament era. My friend, God has not changed.

Our Bibles do not hold before us any difference, any change in our God. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It's not, oh that's that's an Old Testament, the Old Testament God. The God of the New Testament is a God of love. We'll see in a minute because he is the God of love and he was a God of love in the Old Covenant too, because he is a God of love he disciplines.

Relationship demands discipline. Love directs it. Note two realities. First, to discipline his children is the most loving thing God can do for himself. Disciplining his children is the most loving thing God can do for himself.

What do I mean by that? He is deserving of all worship and praise and holiness of life. To conform us to the glory of his own image, to be intent on that and committed to that as his purpose of our salvation. Romans 8 28 and 30. It's the most loving thing he can do for himself and for the glory he is due.

He's conforming us to his image, and is it an image that should be conformed to? Absolutely. Our God is holy. So it's the most loving thing he can do for himself. But second, to discipline his children is also the most loving thing God can do for us.

To take us out of the mold of the world and to share his glory with us. To make us like himself, to make his bride glorious without spot and without wrinkle. It's love that shapes all his dealings with us, his people. It's loving to us for him to deal with us. Our society today makes discipline, rebuke, chastening to be an evil thing, a barbaric thing, an uncivilized thing to do.

Our society teaches that disciplining your child is the most unloving thing you can do. Yet the scriptures teach us that our perfect, holy, and just God rebukes and he chastens. The world hates God. It hates all of God's ways. They charge God with wrongdoing and harshness by doing this.

But we see from our Bibles that holiness and justice are tied to discipline. We see that the Lord chastens out of love, out of a heart bent on receiving that Son. And this text in unity with all of scripture teaches us that the most loving thing you can do is to discipline your children, that means the opposite is true as well. The most unloving thing that you can do is fail to discipline your children, to withhold it. And listen to me moms and dads, an unwillingness to chastise and to rebuke your children is not just unloving to your child, It is unloving to God who placed that child in your care.

Such an unwillingness actually charges God with injustice even if it is not intended. It is to say that you know better than God how a father is to deal with his children. And if you are a Christian, any such unwillingness on your part to discipline your children is a silent accusation of child abuse directed at the God of heaven. It reflects an unwillingness to be an accurate image bearer of the God who created you and through Christ has become your father. Dr.

Robert Martin, in his commentary on Hebrews, brings the following admonition. One should be careful in wishing for an effortless Christian life, devoid of fatherly chastisement. This is not a sign of good standing before God or of a familial relation to Him. If you are not the object of God's discipline, it's because you are not his child." End quote. So relationship demands discipline.

But second, we see from this text that righteousness demands chastening. Righteousness demands chastening, verses 9 through 11. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of Spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us, as seemed best to them, but he, for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.

Now, no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. Nevertheless, afterward, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." Now, the writer to these Hebrews brethren seems to be putting his finger on a source of contention. The recipients of this letter were struggling with the difficulties that they were experiencing. They were real-life difficulties that they were undergoing. The context goes all the way back to chapter 10 and verse 32.

You can look back at it with me if you'd like. This is what the saints had been through. But recall the former days in which after you were illuminated, you endured a great struggle with suffering, partly while you were made a spectacle both by reproaches and tribulations and partly while you became companions of those who were so treated. For you had compassion on me and my chains and joyfully accepted the plundering of your goods, knowing that you have a better and an enduring possession for yourselves in heaven. Therefore, do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward, for you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise for yet a little while, and he who is coming will come and will not tarry.

Now the just shall live by faith, but if anyone draws back, my soul, says God, has no pleasure in him. But says the writer, we are not of those who draw back to perdition But of those who believe to the saving of the soul Then in chapter 11 the writer goes on to remind them of the great cloud of witnesses that preceded them, the saints that had gone before who lived by faith. They set their mind on Christ. They endured tribulations, hardships, and even the hostility of the world. He then encourages them to persevere, persevere with endurance and patience to run that race that God had set before them and all the time with their eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of their faith, of our faith, just as He was the author and finisher of the faith of all those in chapter 11.

He was the author of them and all the way till the end some of them were martyred and he was the finisher of their faith. And then we come to the verses that precede our text. For consider Him, consider Christ, who endured such hostility from sinners Against himself lest you be weary and discouraged in your souls You have not yet resisted to bloodshed striving against sin and you have forgotten the exhortation There be some here that are struggling, focused on your circumstances. They, and maybe you like them, seem on the very precipice of weariness and discouragement even in your souls. The writer said you've simply forgotten.

You've forgotten! It's not like all these circumstances, yeah I can understand. No, you've forgotten. Forgotten what? They had forgotten their relationship to Christ and to God the Father.

When they were young, their relationship with their earthly father sustained them in the midst of the chastening. Oh, they disliked the chastening. They disliked it, for no chastening seems to be joyful in the present. But they respected their earthly father regardless of the circumstances. But that chastening scene but a few days in comparison to what they now are enduring.

And his admonition to them is simply, shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits? Not the Father of mere bodies, the Father of spirits. Shall we not be more in subjection to Him and live? You see, there is wisdom in subjecting ourselves to our Heavenly Father. Earthly parents chasing as best as they know how.

We as parents, we don't do it perfectly. Our parents didn't do it perfectly. And you young children that think you will do a better job than your parents, You won't do it perfectly if God makes you parents either. Do you understand that? We don't have the mind and the knowledge of God.

Parents discipline as best they know how. But the text also assumes that we are chastening, that we are discipling. Disciplining. It says our fathers chastened us as best as they could. They did chasten.

They did discipline. But God certainly chastens every son of His. But here's the difference. God does do it perfectly. He does do it perfectly.

He does it with our prophet in mind. Every look, every rebuke, every stroke from his hand is profitable. Nothing is done in anger. Nothing is done self-servingly. It's for our profit.

And so the writer of the epistle desires to not only remind them of that relationship in the midst of that chastisement, but also to remind them of the goal of the chastisement. Righteousness. Righteousness. He tells them to forget the circumstances and reflect on the fruit. Listen to the colorful contrast between the present and the future.

Correction, chastening, pain, profit, holiness, peaceable fruit, prophet, holiness, peaceable fruit, righteousness. This reality should help us to judge clearly the long-term vision of chastening. Dr. Paul Martin helpfully, Dr. Robert Paul Martin helpfully points out that the value of discipline is not to be engaged by our present experience of it, but by its long-term results.

Long-term results. Moms and dads, we should let these words sink deeply into our hearts for our profit that we may be partakers of His holiness afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. That is at the heart of God's chastening in His dealings with us. Is that at the heart of your parenting, when you chasten your children, their profit, their profit, to be partakers in the holiness of God, to afterward experience the peaceable fruit of righteousness for all who will be trained by it. We must not forget the admonition of James in James 1.20, for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

If it's the righteousness that he's talking about, that God brings and has in mind for us, if it's righteousness that we have in mind in our discipline of our children, the wrath of man will never produce it. Never. Albert Barnes makes the following observation, it frequently requires a long time before all the results of affliction appear. And here he's tying affliction to the discipline that God has of his children. It takes a long time before the results of affliction appear, as it requires months to form and ripen fruit.

Like fruit, it may appear at first sour, crabbed, and unpalatable. But it will be at last like the ruddy peach or the golden orange. When those fruits are ripened, they are fruits of righteousness. They make us more holy, more dead to sin in the world, and more alive into God. They are peaceable.

They produce peace, calmness, submission in the soul. They make the heart more tranquil in its confidence in God and more disposed to promote the religion of peace." Why? Why, you may wonder, in the midst of a study on the Fifth Commandment, have I chosen to speak on the discipline of God as brought out in this particular text. What does it have to do with the fifth commandment? Well, for one, God desires the earthly relationship between parents and children to reflect the realities of his relationship with his sons and daughters.

Our homes should reflect that relationship found in the spiritual realm. Second, I think we must not only understand these realities, but we also must willingly subject ourselves to the chastening of God. And we must make every effort to be trained by it, that it might yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness in our lives as sons and daughters. These saints that had this epistle delivered to them, they had become short-sighted. They failed to keep in mind that both their relationship with God and his purpose and goal of righteousness in their lives demands chastisement.

That this is the mind and purpose of God. Dear Saint, whether you are a parent or not, maybe your kids are gone, maybe you're not even a parent yet, maybe you're married and don't have children yet, as a Christian you are a son or a daughter of your Heavenly Father. And if you are a true son or daughter of God, you will know His hand of chastening from time to time. Have you become shortsighted as well, just like these believers? Have you become shortsighted in the midst of your afflictions?

Are you chafing under his rod? Are you charging the all-wise and knowing God of spiritual child abuse? Are you like Job questioning any of his ways with you? Or is the chastening you have received, are receiving, or maybe in the near future will be receiving is that chastening will that chastening bring about the righteousness that God intends will you be trained by that righteousness or towards that righteousness, by that affliction, by that discipline? I quote Barnes again, there is no Christian who is not ultimately benefited by trials.

Did you catch that? There is no Christian who is not ultimately benefited by trials, and who is not able at some period subsequently to say, it was good for me that I was afflicted. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now have I kept Thy word." He goes on to say, when a Christian comes to die, he does not feel that he has had one trial too many, or one which he did not receive or did not deserve. He can then look back and see the effect of some early trial, so severe that he once thought he could hardly endure it, spreading a hallowed influence over his future years and scattering its golden fruit all along the pathway of life. He said, I have never known a Christian, never known a Christian who was not benefited by afflictions.

I have seen no one who was not able to say that his trials produced some happy effects on his religious character and on his real happiness in life. If this be so, then no matter how severe our trials, we should submit to them without a murmur. The more severe they are, the more we shall yet be blessed on earth or in heaven." End quote. Could it be, could it be that that our parenting seems to be getting nowhere because we have failed to rightly understand the dealings of our faithful father with us and to implement similar dealings in our relationship with our children? Have we learned well?

Maybe we're not parenting well because we haven't learned well from our father. Could it be that our parenting in regards to whether we discipline or chase on our kids, whether we do it in the right way and for the right motives, and whether it's bringing about good effects on our children, could it be that we are failing to see what we hope and pray for because we ourselves have become weary and discouraged in our own hearts about the Lord's dealings with us. If we're not being trained by God's discipline in our lives, why should we expect that our children would be trained by the discipline that we give? Well, may God teach us much about the chastening of our loving Father, and in turn, what chastening should look like in our homes as we seek to carry out the fifth commandment honor your father and your mother that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you. Let's look to him in prayer.

To Him in prayer. Oh Father, we acknowledge that your ways are so often not our ways And your thoughts are so much higher than our thoughts. Lord, you are perfect in all of your ways. You are right in all of your dealings. Lord, help us not to question what you do, but to know that when you do chastening, it's a sign of our relationship with you, that you have received us as sons, that you will not allow us to go on in unprofitable paths that take us farther away from the image of our dear Savior.

So Lord help us to be trained by these afflictions that there might be peaceable fruit of righteousness in our lives, and that in turn we as parents might be faithful in our relationship to our children, that we would treat them as our true sons and our daughters, that we would not love ourselves more than love for them that demands our discipline, our rebuke, and our chastening. And Oh Lord, we pray that not only will we be trained by your discipline of us, but may our children be trained by our discipline of them. Lord, help us when we don't do it as we should. Make us more like you, operating with their prophet in mind, that they may be partakers of your holiness, that they may know your love as a father who loves them and by receiving them will discipline them because you love them. Help us.

Help us to understand these things and help us to love you more. In Christ's holy name we pray. Amen. Thanks for watching. Have a good one.