Enduring With Discipline
Hebrews 12:3-13 ·August 3, 2025· Joel Passmore
Part of: Hebrews, Toward an Enduring Faith
Pastor Joel Passmore continues a sermon series called "Toward an Enduring Faith". In this installment he teaches that, as God's beloved children, even our sufferings are a means of His love.
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I grew up with more than two parents. A lot of people just have two, but I grew up with four. My mom and dad divorced when I was a kid, and they both remarried. And all four of my parents, my mom and my dad and my step-parents, they all played an important role in my life. They were good parents. They really were. They weren't perfect. They made mistakes, but they were good parents. But boy, there were many times that I was convinced that they were ruining my life.
I thought their rules were dumb. Their restrictions were unfair. Their expectations were unreasonable. I thought they didn't understand me, that they were against me. How wrong I was.
Nothing has changed my perspective about my own parents as being a parent and raising our own daughters. With each passing year, I've got more grace to extend to my parents. Can I get an amen from some fellow parents in here, right?
Because now I know what it's like to make a decision or establish a rule or say no to something, fully convinced that it is best for our daughters and fully expected them to be really upset about it. Being a parent means doing things that we do. You parents know this. You say the same things. I've heard you say them. Being a parent means that we do things out of love for our kids and out of understanding for who they are. But those are the very things that make them say, you don't love me and you don't understand me.
Being a good parent means doing those things anyway. In the face of, you don't love me, you don't understand me. Being a good parent means doing them anyway. Now, all of this is really a living metaphor for our relationship with God.
Today we're talking about discipline. But not self-discipline. That would be hard enough to talk about. And that would be enough of a challenge to talk about self-discipline. No, today's passage is about God's discipline. As our loving Father. We're in a sermon series in Hebrews called Toward an Enduring Faith. And we see today that God develops enduring faith in us through discipline. So learning how to relate to that discipline. That's what the passage is all about today.
Helping us endure by receiving and accepting and embracing and even joining with God's discipline for us. So, whether you are a parent like me or whether you are just a child and had parents, if you want to understand more about this, if you want to understand more about God's discipline of us and what that means for you and how to work it into your life, work with it, not resist it, then come with me to God's Word. Come with me to Hebrews chapter 12.
Let's come before God, our Father. Let's come to Him as children eager to listen to Him. Would that we be those kind of children that want to listen. For God Himself is speaking to us in His Word.
His Word is without error. It's completely reliable. And we should attend to it with every bit of attention and care as we would listen to our good Father standing in the room with us. So let's come to it now with humble hearts. Hebrews chapter 12, starting in verse 3. Verse 3. And chastises every son whom he receives. 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?
If you were left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. 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 His holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Pray with me.
Lord, thank You for coming to us. Primarily, Lord, You sent Your Son to live and die for us so that we could be reconciled to You. And God, by the Word going forth, we who are united to Him by faith, we are Your children and we want to learn and grow from You. We want to attend to Your Word carefully. We want You to change us, to sanctify us. Lord, this peaceful fruit of righteousness that this passage talks about, we want that. And we need You. We need Your work in our lives for that to happen.
So, Lord, please bear that fruit in us as we listen and as we apply Your Word and as we see Christ manifest to us as the Word goes forth. In His name we pray.
Okay. Enduring with discipline. As God's beloved children, even our sufferings are a means of His love. So, we're in the homestretch of Hebrews. Some of you have been here the whole time for that. Some of you haven't. But that's fine. You can go back and read it for yourself. The sermons are online if you want to listen to them. The first section of Hebrews... This is my quick recap. The first section of Hebrews told us about the superiority of God's Son.
The second section pointed out the need that we have for enduring faith. The third and the middle section unpacked the work of Jesus as our great High Priest. The fourth section showed us example after example after example of enduring faith. Now he concludes this sermon about the practice of enduring faith. This is the application of the section of the sermon. This passage calls them and calls us to understand God's discipline, to embrace His discipline, and to join His discipline.
Those are the three sections we have for today. And as we conclude Hebrews, it's going to get very practical. We're going to start to apply everything that we've talked about in different areas of our life. So let's look at this topic of God's discipline today. First of all, we are called to understand God's discipline. How do we look at it? Now the original audience of this letter, let me remind you, they were in really hard circumstances. Based on the context, most scholars agree that this was written to Jewish converts to Christianity in the early 60s A.D.
living in and around Rome. These Jewish converts had left behind everything to follow Jesus. Their culture, their heritage. But it had cost them. They were now estranged from their community. They were in a totally different context. They were accused of abandoning their heritage.
Family ties were probably severed for many of them. And this new group that they were in, this group of Christ followers, Christians as they would come to be called. This group had no privileges. Judaism was a recognized religion. Christianity was not. Christianity was a cult. Being a Christian in the Roman Empire was hard. They were mistreated. They were unwelcome. They were scorned. They were mocked. Some had lost their property. Some had lost their freedom.
And soon they might lose their lives. Greater persecution was just on the horizon for them. So they were wondering, they were looking about their whole lives since they had left their former faith and had attached themselves to Jesus and were following this new way. Their life had gotten hard. Way, way harder than it used to be. And they're wondering probably why is this happening? Maybe we made a mistake. If all this Jesus stuff is true, shouldn't life be easier?
Maybe we made a mistake. Maybe He's left us. Maybe He doesn't love us. Maybe you've thought the same things before. If so, you're in good company. I'll say that first of all. The sufferings of your life have led you to say maybe this is all a mistake. Or maybe God's real but He just doesn't love me. Maybe He's turned His back on me. God's Word comes and taps us on the shoulder right at that moment. Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
The author says. He's quoting from Proverbs. Suffering makes us forgetful. And we need reminders. Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you? My son, my child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. In other words, don't dismiss it. Don't treat it as negligible.
I've got this weird habit of when I get all the mail, I do what you do. Probably I sort it into things I care about and then junk mail. The junk mail, I ritualistically tear it in half as a form of like shaking the dust off my feet or something. I rip it in half and then I throw it in the garbage can. Every piece of junk mail I get, which is a lot. Years ago, Brie was watching me do this and she'd seen me do it before and she goes, Dad, I don't think it's very nice of you to rip up that mail.
These people, they took the time to send you something and you should read it. You shouldn't just tear it up and throw it away. And I'm like, oh, I get it. And I explained to her this is just advertisements. These aren't letters from people. They're not cards. They're just advertisements. But I agreed with her. I said, if they were letters and cards, it would be mean. It would be disregarding this to just rip it in half and throw it away and not open it and read it.
This is junk mail. Don't worry about that. I'm not doing that. But she was thinking about the people sending the letter. Pay attention to that, Dad, if it means something.
Friends, we serve a personal God. A personal God who is involved in our lives. But we don't always act like it. We dismiss the events of our life so quickly, not even thinking about them, especially the hard things. I don't want to think about that. That was hard. I just want to move on. It's like we're throwing away what God is sending us to communicate with us and talk to us. Treating it as junk mail when it's a personal letter to us.
God is in control, including the pain, including the hardships, including the trials in your life. This is the first thing we need to understand about God's discipline. It's better to grapple with the truth of a sovereign God than it is to soothe yourself with the lie that He has nothing to do with your suffering.
Now, I know your heart because it's just like mine. We would prefer that lie to soothe ourselves with, oh, He has nothing to do with this. He does. Whatever you're going through, He does.
And it's not a light thing for the God of the universe to do something in your life. It is major. Even if it is difficult, pay attention to it. Look at it. Don't treat it lightly. He is at work.
Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. Don't dismiss His discipline, nor be weary when reproved by Him. Weary means to give up or to give out, to become exhausted or defeated, to crumple, to say life is over. Let me ask you this. How do you feel when someone says to you, hey, can we talk?
You got a little panic there when I said that to you? Can we talk? I've learned, especially, it took me a few years to learn this, but as a pastor, like, if I text someone and I'm like, hey, can I call you later? I usually just say, hey, I want to talk to you about this event that's coming up I've learned that people they assume bad things, you know? When someone says to you, can we talk? Do you immediately assume the worst?
You don't have to act that way towards your Father. When He's like, can we talk? When God allows hardship in your life, when He wants to get your attention, you don't have to panic, you don't have to despair. You shouldn't.
Don't be weary when reproved by Him. Why not? For the Lord disciplines the one He loves. The one He loves. And chastises every son whom He receives. These experiences only come to those that God loves. And He loves His children.
Among all children, parents give their kids special treatment. That's a given. That's normal. That's appropriate. There are many kids that come into Nicky and I's house all the time. Some for church events, others because they're neighbors. We're glad that they're there. We extend them hospitality and kindness, but the kids with the most privileges in the household are Cadence and Brie. And it will always be that way. They get a room. They get food.
But they also get our attention, our time, and they get our wisdom, and they get our rules, and they get our expectations. All of that is special treatment that children get. It's a package deal. Parents, can I get an amen? It's a package deal. Our household is not Golden Corral where you just pick the things you want and you leave the things you don't. It's a package deal. Special treatment is all of those things.
So it is with us as being a child of God. It's the whole thing. If you're in Christ by faith, then you're an adopted child. If you are in Christ by faith, then you are an adopted child. That's where it begins for you to be a child of God. For you to become a child of God. That's why we read the passage from 1 John earlier.
God's discipline is reserved for His children as an expression of His love. It might not feel that way, but it's true. Verse 7, God is treating you as sons. He's treating you as a child. Sons and daughters that He loves. In fact, verse 8 says that without discipline, we don't belong to Him.
Sometimes, what is this discipline that He's talking about? He doesn't really define it here. Sometimes God allows us to experience the consequences of our sin. Sin has consequences, right? You can be forgiven and the consequences still come. I can rob a bank and say, Lord, forgive me. I repent and get that forgiveness. But I can't bring that forgiveness and say, hey, I've been forgiven. Let me out of jail. There are consequences for sin in this life.
He allows us to experience those consequences. Other times, He allows the sin of the fallen world to impact us from other people, disease, disasters. and sometimes people mistreat us specifically because we belong to Christ.
That's God's discipline. Whatever form it takes, whatever form God's discipline takes, hear this, it's not an expression of His wrath. It's an expression of His love. We have to understand that about God's discipline. If you belong to Christ by faith, your sin has already been judged. If you don't belong to Christ by faith, there is judgment awaiting.
And anything you experience now is just a foretaste of that judgment. But if you are in Christ by faith, the judgment has been taken away, wiped away. There is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Jesus took that judgment on the cross. Your relationship to God has been completely changed. He rejoices over you. His banner over you is love. Psalm 103 tells us, as a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him.
Christians, when you go through hardship, God is not judging you. There is no condemnation left. Only the Father's love. So God is sovereign over everything. Our hardships are a form of His discipline and it is done in love. Now we understand God's discipline, at least at a basic level, but can we accept it? Can we not just tolerate it, but can we actually embrace it? Well, let's keep going. This passage gives us three reasons why we cannot just tolerate, why we shouldn't just tolerate God's discipline, but actually embrace it.
What does it mean to embrace God's discipline? Well, here's three reasons from the passage here. Embracing God's discipline, it comes, we should embrace it because God's discipline comes from the highest authority. The author says, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. I don't want you to take that as some kind of simplistic overstatement. He's not making a blanket statement that all human fathers have been good. That they've all disciplined or they've done it rightly.
He's simply pointing out that we all know intuitively how authority should work. Take any group, okay? Any group that you're a part of. It could be a sports team, it could be a company, a military unit, a church, a family. Any group that you're a part of, everyone has the same basic measures of health for that group. If a leader of that group gave you a tour, walked you around, showed you the people that were part of it and what they did, no one would walk away from the tour saying, this is really impressive.
Everyone does whatever they want. No one knows what their responsibilities are. Wrongdoing isn't punished. Good work isn't rewarded. Boy, this place is just top notch. And you're a great leader. Just sign me up for this group. No one would do that. If that's what you saw, kids, I know a lot of you were on sports teams. If you saw that in another sports team, you'd be like, what is up with this team? Right? If you went to tour a company that you were interviewing for and you saw that at the company, you'd be like, I want nothing to do with this place.
We all know how authority is supposed to work. Leaders, the leaders we respect are those who actually lead. And that includes discipline. It always does. Defining expectations and guiding people towards that. And that includes parents. We expect that of our parents, even our own, even when we chafe underneath it, we expect it. If this is what we expect of human parents, how much more should we expect it from the God of the universe who has all the authority?
The second thing we should think about to learn to embrace God's discipline is that His discipline comes with perfect insight. Perfect insight. Our human parents, the author reminds us, they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them. The author is exposing us here, us parents, is exposing something that kids don't oftentimes realize until they're older. we parents really don't know what we're doing.
They don't give us an instruction manual when we leave the hospital with our kids. And even if they did, we'd be too tired to read it. It would sit on the shelf.
The truth is that the best case scenario, parents are doing their best moment to moment to moment. Parents, can I get an amen? You can ask for advice from older Christians and you should. You can read articles and books, especially the Bible, and you should. You can ask for prayer and you should. But you're still making educated guesses, especially about discipline. Educated guess after educated guess. That's parenting, right? one long series of educated guess after another.
Well, here's the good news, parents. If you look to God and you use those resources, your educated guesses will probably turn out okay. If you rely on God and you look to those resources and you pray a lot, those educated guesses will turn out okay. And they'll get better over time. They'll get more educated as you learn your kids. But unfortunately, you will never know your child completely. And sometimes you'll be way down the road and you realize that you've been misunderstanding them.
That's what Nikki and I have found from time to time. Oh, shoot. We totally didn't get this. But here's the good news. Your Heavenly Father is not guessing. Not a single time. He's not guessing.
He knows the job. We parents have to learn on the job. He knows. He knows the job. And even better, He knows you completely. Inside and out. He knows your past. He knows your present. He knows your future. He knows your fears. He knows your wounds. He knows your hopes. He knows your design because He's the one who designed it. He didn't have to read the manual. He wrote the manual. He knows you. And His discipline comes with that perfect, infinite insight and knowledge about what parenting is, what discipline is, and who you are, and exactly what you need.
That is the discipline that He brings to us. The perfect, insightful discipline for exactly you, exactly right now, on August 3rd, 2025. Now finally, we should embrace God's discipline because it comes in power to accomplish good.
Human parents have all kinds of reasons for disciplining their kids, and some of them are not good. Some of them are selfish. They want their kids to experience the same hard childhood that they did. I experienced it and you're going to also. Or they just want their kids to look good, to make them look good. God disciplines us for our good, the passage says. We don't always know the specific reasons why His discipline is happening in our lives. But we can rest assured that His intent is not to tear down, but to build up.
Always. He wants to change us for the better, to bring us into closer resemblance of Him. He disciplines us that we may share in His holiness. His love is a sanctifying love, a purifying love, purifying us from sin, reordering our loves and our heart, deepening our reliance on Him. And the other thing about it is a human parent's discipline is not always successful. It does not always reach the goal. Even when it's a good goal, oh, how infrequently it gets there.
God's discipline is always successful. It always reaches the conclusion that He has for our good that we may share His holiness. It always gets there. It never, ever fails. This promise should lead us to accept it and embrace it even though for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant.
There are so many pleasant things that we'll never experience if we aren't willing to endure some pain. As a kid, I used to love riding my bike, taking it out to the woods around neighborhoods, going to my friend's house, going to 7-Eleven. It was sweet freedom on that bike. But I had to endure a lot of scraped knees, falls, and one really bad crash. That's a story for another time.
If I wasn't willing to go through that, I would never have tasted the fun that it was to get out of my bike. People come to me sometimes and they're like, can you help my kid learn guitar? What tips do you have for me to learn guitar? And I always tell them, playing guitar is a lot of fun, but there's a steep learning curve. Because at first, it hurts.
All instruments are difficult, but there's so many instruments you play and your fingers don't literally hurt after you play them. You're pressing down on these steel strings and your fingers are raw and it doesn't sound good. It's buzzing. You've got to build up these calluses that I'm feeling on my fingers right now. It's a lot of hard work. Oh, I have loved playing guitar. I've loved it so much, but if I was never willing to push through that pain, it would have never come to me.
That joy would have never come. God's discipline is painful in the moment. It takes time. But it produces beautiful results. It yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. He has the power and the purpose to bring to conclusion anything that He brings into your life. He never starts something that He doesn't finish. Everything has a purpose. Everything has a design. Any experience, any loss, any suffering. Friends, even the things that other people do to harm you He's got the power to redirect them and turn them so that they only work out for your blessing.
They only work out for your building up. He turns them so that they accomplish nothing but good in us. He thwarts the enemy all the time. He thwarts the wicked intentions of other people all the time. That's what the Scriptures mean when they say no harm will come to me. Other people might look at our lives and be like, you look pretty harm to me, but we say no. No, this is not true. Nothing will harm me. Everything will be used by my good Father to discipline me and shape me and form me and making me more holy until I am yielding over and over the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
That's not true. My Father does not harm me. My Father is more powerful than He who is in the world. Is that your testimony? Do you know that? If you came in here today doubting that, I hope you leave here sure of it. If you're in Christ by faith. Because that is who your Father is.
So we understand God's discipline. We have some reasons to embrace it, but we're called even further. We're called to actually join it. Joining God's discipline. This passage is bookended with exhortations to join up with what God is doing. The last two verses of this passage, they make me think of physical therapy. Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
Raise your hand if you've been through physical therapy of some form or fashion. Yeah, a whole lot of you. So you know this to be true. To recover from an injury, a physical therapist can become your greatest friend because she knows exactly, more than the doctors do, honestly, exactly what muscles need to be stretched, what ligaments need to be worked on, how to regain strength, range of motion, everything that you need to be healed and move like you used to.
But you know that although she can be your greatest friend, she can also become your greatest nemesis because she is the one that tells you to do all those painful exercises. Unfortunately, you can't just listen to her talk about all the muscles and everything. Very interesting. Thank you for sharing that with me. And then go home. Healing doesn't come that way, right? Healing doesn't come that way. She can't do the exercises for you. You have to cooperate with her, both at the appointment and then when you get home, right?
When you are saved, when you are called out of darkness and into His marvelous light, when you go from being an orphan into His household as an adopted child, you come with a lot of things out of whack.
Me too. Our old pattern of living, our old sinful nature, it's done a number on us. Our behavior, our character, our heart, our minds. Sanctification in one way is like physical therapy. And we are called to cooperate with God, our physical therapist.
Lift up those drooping hands. Strengthen those weak knees. But it hurts. I don't know if I can do it. You can do it. You can do it, God is saying. Do this. Strengthen those weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet. So that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather healed. I've got healing in store for you, God says. Do these exercises. Take up that physical therapy. He is at work getting us strong and healed for the race. What do I mean by this?
Well, think about this. Sometimes discipline exposes your sin. You see your idolatry. Or perhaps your selfishness. Some other thing that the discipline in your life has exposed. Once the difficulty passes, don't say, whew, I'm glad that's over and get back to life as before. That's like leaving the physical therapist and being like, that was real hard. And you get home on the couch and you're just like, I'm not doing any exercises anymore. If God has taken the time to send you a letter, not junk mail, but a personal letter in the form of discipline to expose something in your life and tell you about it, embrace it not just when you're with Him, when the moment is happening and you're feeling it, but now that you've learned that lesson, now that your sin has been exposed and you see it, make your own choice to turn away from that sin.
To seek the fruit of the Spirit. Make a note in your prayers as Lord, you have shown me that I'm selfish. And even though the moment has passed, the discipline moment has passed, I'm still left with the thought of you've shown me the selfishness that's in my heart. Please, keep working on that. Show me places where I can choose to walk away from selfishness and towards self-sacrifice today.
Strengthen those weak knees. Lift up those drooping hands. And consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted. As we learn endurance through discipline, it helps to reflect on Christ. We consider His commands to bear fruit and obey. We consider that He understands the path that we're walking. Hardship and hostility in this world. We consider what He told us that He was the first one.
He was the first one to announce to us that we could be adopted children because He told us to call our Father our Father when we pray. The disciples' minds were blown when they said that. And we consider His promises to be with us. We are not alone when we endure suffering and discipline. In your struggle against sin, the author says, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And that's true. But we know someone who has. We know someone who resisted sin to the point of shedding His blood.
Jesus, our Savior. He resisted the easy path. He chose to obey even though it led Him to the cross. He struggled under the weight of our sin, friends. And He shed His blood. We haven't, but He has. He did it so that we could receive adoption through faith. So now we can live differently. Humbly embracing and joining our good Father's loving discipline.