Sermon Tone Analysis

HEBREWS 12 CONTINUES WITH AN EXPLANATION OF DIVINE DISCIPLINE IN TERMS OF PARENTS AND CHILDREN.

/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 with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children (Unbelievers) 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./

(2Pe 1:4) /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.

(Spiritual Maturity) Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, (Rebound) and make straight paths for your feet, (Stay in Fellowship) so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, (Sin unto death) but rather be healed.

Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification (Spiritual Maturity) without which no one will see the Lord./

(Isa 54:12-13; Matt 5:8; (1Jn 3:3) (Heb 12:5-14)/ /

CATEGORIES OF DIVINE DISCIPLINE

     God is never arbitrary in administering discipline: His punishment is always appropriate to the individual in question.

From His perfect Divine jus­tice, all discipline not only fits the violation but also matches the believer’s receptivity.

Hence, there are three categories of Divine discipline:

 1.

WARNING DISCIPLINE, 

2.

INTENSIVE DISCIPLINE, 

3.

DYING DISCIPLINE.

When the believer does not use rebound, these three categories of discipline are progressive.

Mild discipline gives way to more and more severe discipline if the believer fails to respond.

The believer who refuses to live in fellowship receives warning discipline, added to the misery he has already created for himself under the law of volitional responsibility.

He has isolated himself from fellowship with God; he has shut Christ out of his thoughts.

/Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me./ (Rev 3:20)

 

     That knock at the door is warning discipline.

As a general rule, warning discipline is in itself less severe than the believer’s self-induced misery.

However, the combination of warning discipline and self-induced misery adds up to a significant shock.

Because he has not yet declined into the later stages of negative volition, this believer is still sensitive to the Truth.

He can still profit from this degree of discipline so that God does not have to proceed to the next stage of punitive suffering.

He can still hear the knocking on the door.

God can catch his attention with relatively mild suffering.

If the believer ignores or rejects Divine warnings, he eventually requires intensive discipline.

By habitual abstinence he has dulled his sensitivity to Truth; warning discipline is no longer sufficient.

God still has a marvelous plan for blessing this cosmic believer, but God’s plan can be executed only in the power of the Spiritual life.

God continues to support him with logistical grace, keeping him alive so that he might return to his palace.

/Where there is life there is hope,/ and God fans the feeble flame of hope by continuing to discipline the believer (Isa 42:3) even after he has insulted and blas­phemed God by choosing to remain in Satan’s cosmic system.

Stiffer Divine discipline is required to jolt the habitually rebellious believer into objectivity.

Intensive discipline alone is worse than self-induced misery: When these two categories of suffering are combined, the total pain from God and from self is extremely severe.

This adds up to unbearable suffering for the believer who persists in the cosmic system.

God is exceedingly patient with His children.

He extends to the believer every possible opportunity to fulfill His protocol plan.

But with each rejection of God’s gracious appeal to return, the Christian ren­ders himself less capable of making a positive decision.

/“Hardness of heart,”/ or scar tissue of the soul eventually locks his volition in negative.

(Heb 4:7; Heb 6:6) Unless he rebounds, he will arrive at the third and final stage of Divine discipline, the sin unto death.

(1Jn 5:16) Dying discipline, or the sin unto death, is a horrible departure from time into eternity.

The Christian involved has no inner resources for meeting death.

In ignorance of Truth, death becomes a terrifying plunge into the unknown.

(Jer 17:13) God’s work of Salvation can never be canceled; even the most hardened, self-righteous Christian is immediately /“absent from the body and. . .

At home face to face with the Lord”/ when removed from life on earth, (2Co 5:8) until the judgment seat.

(2Co 5:10)

     /And the Lord said, Who then is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge of his servants, to give them their rations at the proper time?/ (1Pe 5:2-4) /Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.

Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions./

(Rev 3:21) /But if that slave says in his heart, My master will be a long time in coming, and begins to beat the slaves, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk;/ (Php 3:18-19) /the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces, and assign him a place with the unbelievers./

(Matt 8:10-12; Luk 13:28-30; Luk 14:16-27 ; (2Pe 2:13-22; Jud 1:11-13) /And that slave who knew his master's will and did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will receive many lashes, but the one who did not know it, and committed deeds/ worthy of a flogging, will receive but few.

(1Co 3:11-15; Mark 9:49-50) /From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.

/(Php 3:10) (Luk 12:42-48)

     Such recalcitrant believers who enter heaven, and not outer darkness will enjoy complete happiness in heaven, (Rev 21:4) but they receive no eternal rewards with which to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ forever.

(1Co 3:15) These cosmic believers are losers in life; their tailor-­made blessings for time and eternity are never delivered to them, but remain permanently on deposit in heaven as a memorial to lost opportunity and to God’s magnificent, irrevocable grace.

(Eph 1:3; 1Pe 1:4) Believers who complete their Spiritual life (Matt 25:23) will have entrance into the New Jerusalem (Isa 54:12-13; Rev 3:12; Rev 22:14)  

BELIEVERS WHO SERVE SATAN

      Not every Christian who fails to rebound and continues in locked-in negative volition is removed immediately from this life.

God may keep a believer alive for a long time in the intensive stage of Divine discipline.

With great finesse God may employ these eternally saved /“enemies of the Cross”/ (Php 3:18) as agents of momentum testing in the lives of growing believers.

Specifically, Christians suffering intensive Divine discipline may administer the people test, the thought test, the system test, or the disaster test to Spiritu­ally adult believers.

(Lam 3:53) Representing many different personalities, attitudes, and styles of living and taking many different human approaches to life, cosmic Christians who periodically receive intensive discipline serve Satan as cosmic evangelists.

(Job 2:9; (1Co 3:3) Satan uses these negative believers to distract positive believers from the protocol plan of God.

/Cosmic Christians draw other believers into the pseudo-strength and superficial attractions of the cosmic system./

(Gal 5:7-10; Rev 2:2) Besides /“enemies of the Cross of Christ”/ (Php 3:18) other Biblical terms for cosmic /believers /include /“anti-Christs”/ (1Jn 2:18-19; (2Jn 1:7-9)/“agents of the devil”/ (1Jn 3:8) /“children of the devil”/ (1Jn 3:10) /“haters of God”/ (1Jn 4:20) /“hostile toward God”/ (Rom 8:7) /“men of the flesh”/ (1Co 3:1-3)/“enemies of God”/ (Jas 4:4)/ “double-minded.”

/(Jas 4:8) *All these phrases refer to believers, not to unbelievers!*

Cosmic believers are like aggressors in army field exercises.

Often troops who have only a few weeks remaining in the service will be issued weapons and blank ammunition in order to play the role of the enemy against soldiers who are being trained.

The aggressors and the men in training are members of the same army, but the only troops benefiting from the simulated combat are those being tested, not the aggressors.

Likewise, the only reason God sustains the lives of some negative believers is to use them to train others.

These /“enemies of God”/ (Jas 4:4) are still members of the royal family.

But the only role they can play in the glorification of Christ is to be a test for positive believers.

Because of their own failures to execute the protocol plan of God, they become merely a means of building strength in someone else.

Obviously, this is not a Christian’s highest calling.

These cosmic Christians on the verge of maximum discipline may be sin­cere, sweet, and highly legalistic individuals who have distorted Christianity into a religion of old sin nature good works.

They may be /moral /degenerates (Col 2:20-23) rather than /immoral /degenerates.

(Rom 1:29-32) The growing believer who can see through their facade, (Matt 23:28) discerning the evil of self-righteousness, yet avoiding condemning them himself, (Luk 6:37) accelerates his growth in the Spiritual life!

God’s genius is wonderfully displayed as He permits a negative Christian in Satan’s system to ambush a positive Christian.

God uses Satan and the believer who is going in the wrong direction as a stimulus to contribute to the Spiritual maturity of the believer advancing in the right direction.

(Psa 76:10; (2Co 12:7) 

 

LEARNING THE HARD WAY 

     Divine discipline may help others besides the one being punished, but primarily discipline is a teacher, a private tutor of the one in pain.

Through suffering, God confronts the believer with his ignorance of Truth.

Believers who fail to learn Truth will suffer all their lives until they are removed by the sin unto death.

(1Jn 5:16) They may be negative at different points in the learning process, which involves rebound, reception, retention, recall of Truth, the resisting of sin and our own will.

(Jas 1:13-15) Those who refuse to listen to Bible teaching (No reception) will live out their days in ignorance and arrogance, self-induced misery and Divine discipline.

They will be unhappy and will never understand why.

Other believers who do listen to Truth, even those who listen consis­tently, may reject true information they do not like to hear.

(Reception, but not believing and Thinking with Truth) The points of Doctrine they resist must be learned another way, the hard way, through Divine discipline.

Divine discipline is suffering, but not for its own sake; Divine discipline is teaching.

Where the believer has reception and retention but no recall of Truth for application, Divine discipline solves the problem by forcing the believer to concentrate on Truth in a humanly hopeless situation.

God must teach — and all of us must learn — a certain number of lessons through suffering.

We have a choice: Learn the easy way through Bible Teaching, or learn the hard way through suffering.

These are the two systems of learning in the Church Age.

Instruction from one’s pastor is God’s unlimited means of Communication.

(Hos 8:12) In contrast, discipline from God is a limited means of Communication.

The pastor who teaches the Word of God in fellowship, line by line, verse by verse can cover the whole realm of Divine Truth, resulting in Spiritual momen­tum and maturity in his listeners.

Discipline, however, can only motivate the believer to return to the plan of God and resume learning Truth under his pastor.

Divine discipline has a limited objective, to alert the believer that he is out of bounds and to motivate his recovery through rebound.