6/8/08 Moral Excellence And Divine Discipline

We are returning to our study of moral excellence this morning,

and with it we’ll also need to spend a little time

with a topic that is frequently misunderstood,

that of Divine Discipline.

It’s taken us several months in this study to get to this place,

and if you haven’t been with us through most of this study

what I’ve just said isn’t going to make much sense to you.

So let me begin by putting this whole thing back into it’s correct context.

We are actually in an extended study of Spiritual Growth -

what it is and how it takes place in our lives.

And our guide for this study is nearly everyone’s favorite Apostle,

the Apostle Peter.

He is our favorite, I think,

because he’s just so very much like us.

He rarely got it right the first time,

and had to learn nearly everything of value the hard way.

He understood the techniques of the flesh perfectly,

and didn’t have a clue as to how to hear and follow the true life in the Spirit.

He was bold when he should have been quiet,

fearful when he should have been courageous,

spoke when he should have been silent,

and remained silent when he should have spoken.

It’s no wonder we like him so much,

and he is certainly the perfect guide for us

into a correct understanding of what Spiritual Growth really is

because he needed so much of it so desperately in his own life.

We are using the first chapter of his second letter as our guide,

and in the first few verses of that letter

we have seen him clear away 2000 years of religious confusion and stupidity

and reveal to us that spiritual growth is simply our growing in our own personal friendship with Jesus Christ,

what he calls the “epignosis” of God.

Then he tells us that, to help us grow in this friendship,

our Lord shares a project with us,

a project that allows us to get to know Him as we could never get to know Him any other way.

It is the project of becoming “a partaker of the divine nature”,

in other words, our becoming more and more like God Himself.

And then, once again, just so that we don’t plunge back into some hideous religious sewer,

cranking out religious rules,

or seeking some sort of intense emotional religious highs,

he brings us right back to real life

with a fascinating seven step process of growth.

2PE 1:5-7 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge; and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness; and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love.

And as we share these growth steps with our King

we discover things about Him

and deepen our friendship with Him as we could not do any other way.

OK, that’s where we’ve been.

And now we are chewing on that first step in the process,

the step of moral excellence.

The definition for moral excellence we’ve been using

is that Moral Excellence is choosing to live within God’s moral framework because we are convinced it is the only way our needs can be met.

It is most of all

a life ordered after the pattern given to us by our God

because we trust HIM,

because we have come to believe both that He knows what works

and because it is His love for us that has caused Him to say what He has said.

But developing moral excellence in our lives

is not always as easy or as straightforward as we might think.

You see, the problem we run into

is that with all of us

there are some areas of our lives

in which we have developed deep emotional and/or physical addictions

to certain things that are highly destructive to us,

things that have no power to truly meet our needs,

and yet that have tremendous power over us.

I don’t want to get side-tracked into an extended study of why this happens right now,

but I’ll just say that Paul tells us

it is because we have trained our physical bodies to respond to lies,

and once those responses are recorded in us

they are there forever.

The best brief description of this situation I could offer you

is the one given to us by Paul himself when he says,

ROM 7:19-23 For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. But if I am doing the very thing I do not wish, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.

And when this happens

there are times when God alone can break the power of that evil within us.

And He does it through a process we’ll call divine discipline.

But for this to make sense

I need to back up just a little bit

and start by saying a few words about the different causes of pain in our lives.

Certainly there are times when God

will bring pain into a Christian’s life

for the purpose of reshaping our moral character .

But that does not mean

that all or even most pain in our lives

is the result of that divine disciplining process.

Some of you here this morning are hurting

and that pain is not present in your life because God is disciplining you.

I am aware of at least 4 distinctly different causes

for the presence of pain

in the life of the Christian.

Some of you are hurting because you are

the victim of the sins of others.

Their actions have wounded you.

You had no part in their actions,

and no way of avoiding their consequences in your life.

If you allow your Lord to lead you through the healing process He has for you

the time will come when your voice

will be added to God’s great choir

that proclaims to a pain-filled world,

‟My God has made me whole again,

and His love has made me free.

He truly does heal all our wounds

and wipe away every tear.”

David said it better...

PSA 40:1-5 I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock making my footsteps firm. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear And will trust in the Lord. How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust, ... Many, O Lord my God, are the wonders which You have done...

When our Lord returns to this earth

He will bring with Him individuals

who have been touched by every form of evil that this world has ever known,

individuals who will proclaim,

‟My Lord Jesus Christ was adequate for my need

and for my healing. To Him be the glory.”

Some of you are hurting

because you have made right choices in a messed-up world

and those choices have brought pain into your life.

Peter talks about that kind of pain in his first letter .

In that short letter

he tells us that it is at those times when we suffer for doing what’s right

that we most closely mirror our Lord Jesus Christ

who also suffered wrong for doing right,

and he tells us that at such times

we can confidently entrust ourselves

into the care of God

knowing that He will bring good into our lives

and into our world

because of the choices we have made.

Some of you who hurt here this morning

are doing so because you have made wrong choices.

You have willfully stepped outside of God’s protective moral framework,

and it has brought painful consequences into your life -

not the discipline of God,

but rather the natural, unavoidable cause and effect consequences

that are woven into the very fabric of this world.

Paul refers to this type of pain in his comments to the Colossians when he says,

COL 3:25 For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality.

Amazingly

that type of pain is a prime candidate

for God’s healing work as well.

He assures us that He has the ability to work all things together for our good,

including our sins.

If we actively place them into His hands

He has the power to even take evil

and transform it into good in our lives,

just as He took the ultimate evil

of the brutal, bloody murder of His own Son

and turned it to the greatest good of all time.

But some of you who are hurting right now

are hurting because you are experiencing the disciplinary hand of God in your life.

It is to you that the Bible’s comments about God’s discipline are addressed.

You are living in bondage right now.

You may be investing great amounts of energy

into justifying

and rationalizing your actions,

but inside you know

you are anything but free,

and you feel driven by forces

that you honestly do not know how to stop.

It is at those points where we find ourselves

helpless to make the changes within us,

changes that we know must be made,

that God in His perfect wisdom

will at times introduce His discipline into our lives.

And before I say anything else

let me emphasize that God’s discipline

is not a punishment for the sin,

or in any way a payment for it.

There is nothing we can ever offer

in the form of penance,

or pain,

or suffering,

or promised faithfulness,

or good deeds offered,

or anything else of any kind

that can ever atone for our moral offenses

against our Creator.

The only thing that can ever atone for our sins

is the blood of God Himself

through Jesus Christ.

And once that payment has been made

the debt is paid in full forever.

Therefore, having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Rom. 5:1

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Rom. 8:1

I Cor 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

And on and on and on.

That = the good news of God to the human race.

Some of you are so conditioned to anticipating the slap across the face

whenever you do something wrong

that it is very hard for you to break free

from that anticipation in your walk with your God.

Please hear me -

it is not there.

He does not get ticked at you

and knock you around because you stepped out of line.

He does not exact payment from His Son,

and then turn around and squeeze a little more out of you.

If you have trusted the death of Christ

as payment for your sins,

YOUR DEBT IS PAID IN FULL FOREVER.

This discipline thing has nothing to do

with any type of payment,

or penance,

or collection of a debt owed.

Now, with that background,

let me take us to the key passage on God’s discipline in Scripture.

It’s found in Hebrews.

The passage actually begins

with Hebrews 12:1

and runs through verse 11,

but we don’t have the time

to go through the whole passage

so we’ll pick it up in verse 6.

OK, the first 3 verses of the passage

make a single statement:

Heb. 12:6 For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives. "

Heb. 12:7 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?

Heb. 12:8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

In those verses

the author of Hebrews tells us

that the discipline of the Lord

is proof of our sonship

and proof of God’s love for us.

God does not discipline non-Christians.

Certainly there is a natural law of cause and effect,

reaping and sowing

within the moral framework of God.

All human beings participate in that process.

All sin is ultimately destructive

and brings destructive consequences

into the lives of everyone affected by it.

But that is not what we’re talking about here.

The discipline of God

is not simply the process of cause-and-effect,

it is God Himself directly intervening

into the life of the Christian

in a way that makes it easier

for us to choose righteousness in the future.

And He does this

because He loves us,

He loves us far too much to allow us to remain chained in bondage to our sin.

Then the author goes on

to make a comparison

and a sharp distinction

between a human father’s discipline

and the discipline of our Lord.

Heb. 12:9 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?

Heb. 12:10 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.

In some respects these two verses

are the most crucial verses in this whole section on discipline.

You see,

once he brings up our human fathers

he runs the risk of losing us completely

depending upon what happened between us and our father as a child.

Some of you had fathers who genuinely longed to know

how best to prepare you for life.

They didn’t do it perfectly,

but they longed to,

and they poured themselves into you

and your development

the best way they knew how.

But some of you had dads who, quite honestly,

blew the whole thing.

To judge by their actions

they couldn’t have cared less about you.

If they disciplined at all

it was discipline driven by their own anger or selfishness,

with no real understanding of who you were

or what you needed

or what you had done or not done.

And, of course, there are dads in the whole spectrum in between.

But for some of you

what happened between you and your dad

has been a major hindrance in your own pursuit of God

because, unless we go through the painful process of rethinking and relearning,

we just naturally begin our perspective on God

by believing that God is pretty much like dad

only a whole lot bigger.

Now I want you to listen carefully

to what the author is saying here,

so that the power of it doesn’t get lost

in all of the memories of your own childhood.

What he’s saying is this:

‟Hold it! I am not saying that God’s discipline is like your dad’s discipline was.

At best your dad disciplined you out of flawed knowledge and selfish motives.

He did what seemed best to him at the time.

He might have been right,

he might have been very, very wrong.

But that isn’t the way God disciplines you.

He doesn’t discipline you for His good,

He discipline you for your good.

He knows you perfectly

because He created you.

He knows how to go about making the changes in you

that will really free you to be

the person you were designed to be.

He longs for you to share His holiness,

because He knows that only through that holiness

can you ever be truly free.

Don’t be afraid of Him.

He is on your side as no one ever has been before,

and what He does He does because

He truly does love you.”

He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.

Simply stated,

God disciplines us at those points in our lives

where we find ourselves powerless to choose righteousness

apart from His direct disciplinary intervention in our lives.

Do you know what God’s discipline does?

It rebuilds our protection

against immorality

in those areas where we have

destroyed that protection

through wrong choices in the past.

Each of us enter this world

with a natural protective resistance against sin

that has been built into us by God.

Scripture calls that protection our conscience.

We might be able to understand

the conscience best

by picturing it as a three foot high

brick wall built around out spirits.

We can easily see over it,

and climb over it,

but it does provide us with some measure of protection.

But there is one other crucial element

we need to understand about this wall -

there is no mortar

between the bricks.

They’re just stacked up

with nothing holding them together.

Now,

prior to our submission to Christ

our natural distrust of God,

and our desire to run our own lives,

and our assumption that

He really hasn’t provided us

with what we truly need in order to be happy

all go together to motivate us

to crawl over that brick wall at times,

to lunge out after something

our conscience tells us is wrong,

but we believe we just have to have.

But every time we do that

in the process we knock a brick or two off,

so that the wall is a little lower than it was before,

and a little easier to climb over at that spot.

It isn’t long before,

where once there was a wall,

now there is a doorway.

And then, when we add genetics to this whole thing,

it gets even worse.

You see, with each family line,

there are certain areas of moral weakness

that are passed on from generation to generation.

In the context of my brick illustration

we all enter this world

with a few inherited areas in which our brick wall is already missing a few bricks.

In other words,

we all start out a few bricks short of a load.

OK, we all come to Christ

with a lot of scattered bricks

and dips in our walls,

places where we have destroyed

our inner protective guard

against certain types of immorality.

Satan’s strategy in these areas of the Christian’s life is simple:

he finds those areas

where we have kicked holes in our wall,

and he then takes some human need

(love, security, etc.)

and parades it in front of that hole,

telling us that the need can only be met

by jumping through that hole.

Result: the weakened wall, combined with the dangled need

brings a strong emotional response within us,

making us FEEL like we really must disobey our Lord at this point.

So how does God’s discipline help?

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful;

It hurts.

What I see God doing is this:

He knows that left to ourselves

we have lost our ability to resist

that kind of a satanic set-up.

So,

He carefully arranges things so that

when we step through that wall

rather than feeling good,

rather than it being what we expect,

it hurts,

and hurts in a way that records onto our emotional memory

a whole different attitude toward that gap in the wall

than we had prior to the discipline.

Simply put,

He sets us up for emotional pain

that will retrain our responses

to those temptations we are in bondage to.

Am I saying, then,

that all emotional pain

is the discipline of God? NO! NO! NO! NO!

The truth is,

most of it is not.

That’s why we began this morning by looking

at the many reasons why we sometimes hurt.

Then how can we tell

when the pain

is the discipline of God?

I’m glad you asked,

and this is where we’ll bring this to rest for the morning.

There are three characteristics of the true Discipline of God.

1. If, when the situation occurs,

someone were to ask you,

‟What issue in your life is God dealing with?”,

you would know exactly what that issue was.

You would know what weakness He’s dealing with,

and what hole in the wall He’s addressing.

2. What God has done

truly does make it easier

to choose righteousness in the future.

It causes you to respond differently to certain specific temptations

because you remember the pain it caused you,

or often times the pain it caused someone you love

the last time you went over the wall.

Heb. 12:11 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.

3. We come away from the experience

knowing our God loves us

and thankful that we matter enough

for Him to help us choose righteousness

where we were powerless to choose righteousness on our own.