WE must now proceed to give further consideration to the Biblical teaching that God produces and promotes our sanctification partly by various things that He does to us. Over and above the positive instruction He gives us in the Scriptures, God deals with us in other ways also. If we do not respond to the teaching, if we are His people, and because we are, God will deal with us in chastisement. In this connection we have already seen that there are many places in Scripture where this particular doctrine is outlined and taught very plainly. But I think it will be generally agreed that there is no better statement of it than the one which we find here in the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews and especially from verse five to verse fifteen. Indeed, it can be said that the whole of the Epistle to the Hebrews is but an extended exposition of this great doctrine of the purposes of God with respect to His people, as revealed in chastisement. We have already seen, in our general consideration of the subject that God does undoubtedly use this particular method. Indeed the main argument of these verses is that if we do experience this treatment it is a proof that we are God’s children; but that if we do not, then it raises very serious doubt, to say the least, as to whether we are truly the children of God at all. We have also considered the reason why God does chastise, and we came to the conclusion that He does it in order to safeguard us from certain temptations that are always threatening us. There are certain dangers round and about us in this earthly life and we need to be kept from them—the danger of pride, self-satisfaction, and smugness, the danger of drifting away and becoming worldly without realizing it, these horrible dangers that are constantly threatening the Christian in this life and this world. On the positive side we saw that He does it in order that He may stimulate within us the growth of the fruit of the Spirit. There is nothing so good for the promotion of humility as chastisement, and we need it if we are to be humble and meek and lowly. The teaching is that God as our Father, and in His infinite grace and kindness, does discipline us so, for ‘He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth’, and ‘Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth’. That is the doctrine, that is the teaching.
Now, having laid down that principle we must continue our consideration of this passage, because that is not all, that is not enough. Indeed, as I understand the argument of this man in the twelfth chapter of Hebrews we can put it like this: That chastisement, even chastisement by God, does not work in us automatically. The mere fact that we are chastised does not mean that, of necessity, we are going to benefit by it. The writer’s argument is that it is only as we understand this teaching concerning chastisement, and apply it to ourselves properly and truly, that we shall derive any benefit from it. Now that is obviously, a most important point because if we think that this sanctification of ours is something that takes place almost automatically while we remain in an entirely passive condition, then we are just denying the very essence of this man’s case and the whole point of his argument. Chastisement does not work automatically, it is not something mechanical, even this benefits us ultimately ‘by the Word’. The whole of sanctification is as our Lord says in John 17, ‘by thy truth’, it is by the application of the Word in every step, in every aspect. And that is particularly true with regard to this whole question of chastisement.
Let me then put the argument to you as it is unfolded here, in this way. There is a wrong way of regarding chastisement, and there is a wrong way of reacting to chastisement. You remember that we have seen that chastisement may come in many forms. It may come through circumstances, it may take the form of some financial loss or problem in our business or profession; it may come as something that casts us down and that causes us to be troubled and perplexed; it may come through some personal disappointment—the treachery of a friend or the crashing to the ground of some great hope we may have had in life. It may come through illness. Here I must repeat and emphasize that I am not saying that all these things are of necessity always produced by God. I am not saying that. The Bible does not teach that everything everyone suffers is sent from God; the teaching is that illness may be sent by God and that God does chastise us sometimes by means of illness as well as by those various other circumstances. Let us be quite clear about that. God may use any one of these things, but obviously these things happen to all and therefore we must never say that every unwelcome happening is, of necessity, a chastisement from God.
There are, then, wrong ways of reacting to trials and tribulations and chastisement. What are they? This man notes three. The first is this, the danger of despising. You find that in the fifth verse: ‘My son despise not thou the chastening of the Lord’. That is the first wrong way of regarding chastisement, to regard it loosely, to pay no attention to it, to shake it off as something light, and not to take it very seriously—putting on a bold front, as it were, and not allowing it to affect us at all. There we are, going along somewhat thoughtlessly, and one of these things happens to us, but instead of weighing and considering it and allowing it to do its work, we do our utmost to shake it off and to get rid of it, to laugh it away as it were. That is something that surely needs no emphasis because it is perhaps the commonest reaction to trials and tribulations at this present time. We are living in an age when people are afraid of true feeling. It is a very sentimental age, but there is a vital difference between sentiment and emotion. A hardness has entered into life. We are always trying to ‘steel’ our nerves and feelings and we regard it as being old fashioned to feel things. The world has become hard and the whole course of life today shows that very clearly. Many of the things that are disgracing life today could not happen if only people were sensitive—if they had even a little sensitivity. But we steel ourselves and put on this bold front and the result is that when things do go wrong and when God is chastising us, we do not pay any attention to it. We regard it lightly and instead of paying attention we deliberately ignore it, and do not allow it to disturb us. Now the Scripture warns us very definitely and very solemnly against this. There is nothing so dangerous to the soul as to cultivate this impersonal attitude towards life, which is so common today. It is because of this that people become loosely attached to husband or wife, loosely attached to their own family. It is because of this that they can walk out on their responsibilities and trample upon the sanctities. This impersonal attitude towards life is deliberately taught and encouraged, it is regarded as the hallmark of the true gentleman and the real gentlewoman—the kind of person who is surrounded by some case of steel, who never betrays any emotion and who seems to be entirely lacking in any true sensibility. Now that attitude can come into the Christian life and cause people to despise even the chastening of the Lord. They throw it off and dismiss it, they refuse to pay attention to it.
The second false reaction to chastisement is this—‘Nor faint when thou are rebuked of Him’, in the same fifth verse. This, of course, is a quotation from the Old Testament, from the Book of Proverbs, and it refers to the danger of being discouraged by chastisement, the danger of fainting under it, the danger of giving up and giving in, the danger of feeling hopeless. We are all familiar with this. Something happens to us and we say: ‘I really can’t bear it’. The heart gives in, the thing is on top of us. We give up and give in, we faint under it all, we become utterly discouraged. That in turn leads to the tendency to wonder why it has happened and as to whether it is fair of God. We grumble and complain and have a sense of grudge. That was the condition of these Hebrew Christians. They said: ‘We thought when we became Christian that we were going to enter into some marvellous life, but see what is happening to us. Why do these things happen to us? Is it right? Is this Christian faith true?’ And they were beginning to turn back to their old religion. That is the reason why this man wrote this Epistle—it was because they were discouraged by their trials. They were fainting because the Lord had tried them. ‘Faint not’—‘nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him’. That sense of despair tends to come in and we say: ‘Really things are too much for me, I cannot go on. “Oh, that I had wings like a dove for then I would fly away and be at rest!” ’ We all know it; we react like that far too frequently to the chastening of the Lord, instead of facing it as this man teaches us to do. We are all too ready to hold up our hands and say: ‘No, I cannot, this is too much. Why, why am I being dealt with thus?’ We are not the first to feel like that. Read the Psalms and you will find that the Psalmist often passes through that phase. But it is utterly wrong and a very false reaction to God’s rebuke and chastisement and to God’s fatherly dealings with us.
The third of the wrong reactions is the one he mentions in verse fifteen—‘Lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled’. Again we know, alas, what it means. Some people react to the trials and troubles and chastisements of life by becoming bitter. I know nothing that is so sad in life, certainly there is nothing sadder in my life and work and experience as a minister of God, than to watch the effect of trials and troubles upon the lives of some people. I have known people who, before the misfortunes befel them, seemed to be very nice and friendly, but I have observed that when these things happen they become bitter, self-centred, difficult—difficult even with those who try to help them and who are anxious to help them. They turn in upon themselves and they feel that the whole world is against them. You cannot help them, the bitterness enters into their souls, it appears in their faces and their very appearance. A complete change seems to take place. We often unconsciously proclaim what we are by the way in which we react to the things that happen to us. These things that happen to us in life test us, they test us to the very depths and they show whether we are truly children of God or not. Those who are not children of God are generally made bitter by misfortunes. Sometimes, temporarily, even the children of God may be, and they need to be warned against this particular reaction to chastisement and trouble—against a root of bitterness springing up.
If we are guilty of any one of these three reactions, the things which happen to us will not help us at all. Even the chastisements of God will do us no good if that is the way we react. If we shake it off lightly, if we faint under it, if we become bitter because of it, it will not benefit us. The very chastisement that may be sent to us by God, and be meted out by God Himself, will not profit us at all.
That is why this man exhorts the people to whom he writes, to face these things in the right way. What is the right way? Let us look at it positively. The first thing he tells us is that we must learn to behave as sons and not as infants. Now this is important at this point because the Authorized Version has unfortunately used a wrong word here: ‘Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children’. It should be—‘Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto sons’. You may say that a son is a child and that therefore the word ‘children’ is perfectly correct but the man who wrote this chapter actually used a word that should be translated as ‘son’ and is translated as ‘son’ later on. It is an important distinction. What he is really saying is—‘You have forgotten the exhortation that speaketh unto you as grown men—as sons. You are no longer children, you are no longer babes, you are no longer infants’. There was never a babe or an infant that did not misunderstand chastisement. When we are children we always think we are being dealt with harshly, that it is most unfair of our parent and that we do not deserve it. That is the child’s reaction, and, spiritually, some of us remain children. But this man says: ‘Now remember that you are not children. You are men, you are sons, you are adults’. And his exhortation is: ‘Pull yourself together, do not behave as a child’. You notice the great sanity of the Scriptures, and the way in which they approach us. You are men, they say; very well, then, stop fainting, stop whimpering and crying, stop acting like a child and sulking. You say you are men but you show that you are still only babes by behaving in such a manner.
What are we to do, then, because we are men? In verse five we are given a number of exhortations. He begins with a negative in the form of rebuke. He says: ‘You have forgotten the exhortation’. So, obviously, the right thing to do is to remember the word of exhortation. This author says in effect: ‘Here you are, you Hebrew Christians, and all others like you, you are falling into these traps but you are entirely without excuse. If the Gentile Christians did that, there would be some excuse; but there is no excuse for you. You have the Old Testament. If you only read the Book of Proverbs alone and really considered it and applied it, you would never react in the way you do—“remember the word of exhortation’’.’ Now, applying that to ourselves, we can take it that every time anything of a trying nature happens to us in this life and world we are never just to look at the thing in and of itself. As Christians we are to take everything and put it immediately into the context of the Bible. ‘Remember the word of exhortation’. In a sense that is the one great difference between the non-Christian and the Christian. When anything goes wrong in the life of the non-Christian what has he to fall back upon? He has nothing but worldly wisdom and the way in which the world reacts, and that does not help. The Christian, however, is in an entirely different position. He has the Bible, and he should at once take any circumstance and put it right into this context. The Christian does not react to events as the world does. He asks: ‘What do the Scriptures say about this?’ ‘The word of exhortation.’ The Christian brings that in, and applies it. He puts everything into that context. What foolish creatures we are. How often are we guilty of acting as the world does and not as Christians at all. Let us remember that we are men, that we are sons of God, that we have God’s Word. Put the thing whatever it may be, into the context of God’s Word.
What next? The next part of his argument, still in the fifth verse is that we must listen to and follow the arguments of the Word of God. ‘Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children.’ Now that word ‘speaketh’ is not wrong but it is not quite strong enough. A better translation would be: ‘Ye have forgotten the exhortation which reasoneth with you’, ‘reasoneth with you as sons’. That again is something that fascinates and thrills me. You see, the Word of God does not merely give us general comfort, what it gives us always is an argument. There is nothing that I so dislike and abominate as a sentimental way of reading the Scriptures. There are many people who read the Scriptures in a purely sentimental manner. They are in trouble and they do not know what to do. They say, ‘I will read a Psalm. It is so soothing—“The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want”.’ They make of it a kind of incantation and take the Psalms as another person takes a drug. That is not the way to read the Scriptures. ‘The word of exhortation reasoneth with you’, argues with you. And we must follow the logic of it, and bring intelligence to the Scriptures, We can never bring too much intelligence to our reading of them, they are not merely meant to give general comfort and soothing—follow the argument; let them reason it out with you.
The next step obviously is: What is the argument? Well, I need not stay with this because in a sense I have already dealt with it. Let me summarize briefly. The great argument is that it is God Who is doing this, and God is doing it to you because you are His child. This is put here in several forms, but nowhere is it put more clearly than in verses nine and ten: ‘Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and life?’ God is our spiritual Father, the Father of the new life that is in us, not the earthly, not the fleshly life any longer but the spiritual. So it is God doing this to you, and He is doing it because you are His child, He is doing it for your good because you are His child. Now that is the argument, that is the truth we have to grasp. So we do not merely react in general, we do not faint, we do not try to shake it off at once. Our whole attitude is changed. We say: ‘God is in this and God is doing this to me because I am His child, because I do not belong to the world, because He sent His Son to die for me and has destined me for heaven. God is in this, and it is all being done for my good’.
It is imperative, however, that we follow the argument and the reasoning with respect to the way in which God thus deals with us. It is all here in the eleventh verse. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness. . . .’ But he has not finished. He adds: ‘Unto them which are exercised thereby’. The secret is all in this phrase ‘exercised thereby’. The only people who are going to derive benefit from the treatment, says this man, are those who carry out the exercise—those who are exercised thereby, those who submit to God’s treatment. If you shake it off, the treatment will do you no good; if you faint under it, it will do you no good; if you become bitter, it will do you no good. It only does you good if you submit to the process.
What is the process? to take this man’s actual words it is this. He tells us that God is going to do these things to us by putting us into a gymnasium. That is the original meaning of the word which is translated as ‘exercised’ and this is a very wonderful picture. We are told that the very root of this word gymnasium is a word which signifies ‘being stripped naked’. So the picture we have here is of ourselves being taken into a gymnasium and there we are told to strip.
Why are we told to strip? This is for two main reasons. Obviously, the first is that we may go through the exercises unhindered by our clothing. ‘Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us.’ But there is another reason why we should be stripped. We do not go into that gymnasium on our own to take our exercises. The Instructor takes us in and the Instructor looks at us and examines us. He is looking at us to see if there is balance and symmetry in our physical form. The Greeks were very interested in this. They went in for the culture of the body, and the symmetry of the physical proportions. So the Instructor strips us in order to see where a little extra exercise is needed to bring up a particular group of muscles or to correct a defective stance or posture. That is title picture that is presented here. We are in a gymnasium with the Instructor looking on, telling us what to do and putting us through the exercises.
I feel that there is here a kind of double picture, at least we can use this one picture in two different ways. We can think of it simply in terms of a man who needs to be exercised. He has been rather neglecting his body, he has been indolent and slack in a physical sense, so the Instructor takes him and puts him through his exercises in order that he may become a fine specimen of manhood. But I cannot help feeling, in view of the context, that there is also another suggestion. Listen to verses twelve and thirteen: ‘Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed’. I cannot myself avoid the conclusion that there is also a picture here of a person suffering from some kind of joint disease. You notice that the knees are feeble and that there is a lameness. This person has become somewhat diseased, troubled in the joints; and when such is the case you will generally find that not only is the knee itself weak but the muscles around it become flabby also. I see, therefore, here a wonderful picture of what we call physiotherapy. You need not only to treat the disease in the joint, you need to put the patient through various exercises and movements also. Massage alone is not enough, you must also get the patient to do his part in making active movements.
Let us hold these two ideas in our mind as we work out the teaching in detail. God, says this man, by doing the things that He is doing to you, is as it were putting you into that spiritual gymnasium. He has you stripped, He is examining you, He knows exactly what you need. Now all you have to do is to submit to Him and do exactly what He tells you. Listen to the Instructor, go through the exercises, and if you do so it will give you ‘the peaceable fruit of righteousness. What does all this mean? Being interpreted it means this. The first thing we have to do is to examine ourselves or submit ourselves to the examination of God’s Word. The moment any untoward event happens to us we must say: ‘I am in the gymnasium. Something must be the matter. What has been going wrong? Where is my trouble?’ That is the way the Christian should always react to any one of these things that happen. Is it illness, is it accident, is it a failure, is it a disappointment, is it someone’s death? I do not care what it is, but on the basis of this teaching, the first thing I should say to myself is: ‘Why has this happened to me, have I been going astray somewhere?’ Read Psalm 119 and you will find the Psalmist says: ‘It was good for me that I have been afflicted. . . .’ ‘Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Thy word.’ He had not realized that he had been slipping away but his affliction makes him think, and he says: ‘I thank God for this, it is a good thing for me, I am a better man for it: I was going astray’. Therefore you and I should always in the first instance examine ourselves, and ask: ‘Have I been negligent in my spiritual life, have I been forgetting God, have I become somewhat elated and self-satisfied, have I sinned, have I done any wrong?’ We examine ourselves, we try to discover the cause, we do it thoroughly. None of this as this man tells us is ‘joyous’, but we must search our life and examine ourselves to the very depths, however painful it may be, to see if there is some respect in which we have been going astray without our knowing it. We must face it honestly.
Secondly, we must acknowledge it and confess it to God. If we find the sin, if we have found the fault, if we have found slackness or anything that is wrong or unworthy we must go at once and confess it honestly and completely to God. That is a vital part of the exercises, and we shall never get well until we carry it out. God commands us to do this, so let us do it. Let us go straight to Him. It may also involve going to somebody else, it may mean apologizing, it may mean confessing something. It does not always mean this, but if God tells us to do it we must do it. Listen to the voice within us (the voice of the Instructor in the gymnasium) the voice of God speaking to us; and as we examine ourselves, we must pay attention to it and say: ‘I will do it, I will do it whatever it may cost’. We must carry out the exercise in detail. We must confess and acknowledge the fault, the failure, the sin to God.
What next? Well, having done that which is, if you like, a kind of loosening process, we now begin to take positive exercises. We come to verse twelve—‘Wherefore’—you notice the logic of the argument—‘lift up the hands which hang down and the feeble knees’. This is His way of telling us to pull ourselves together, to brace ourselves, to stand erect, to tone ourselves up. My illustration of the joints comes in in a most useful manner at this point. Anyone who has ever had rheumatism in any shape or form knows that instinctively we all tend to nurse and protect painful parts. If I have a pain in my knee I try not to bend it. We protect, we shield the painful parts. And we do exactly the same spiritually. What this man exhorts us to do therefore, in verse twelve, is to stop nursing our painful joints! Movement is the best thing for them at a certain stage. ‘Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees.’ ‘But,’ you say, ‘I haven’t the strength or the power to do it.’ Says the Instructor: ‘Lift them up, stand erect, be ready for the movement, the more you move it the better it will be’.
This is something which is literally true on the physical level and you will find that you will always be given that instruction by one who knows his business. Keep moving, don’t let yourself get stiff, keep the joints moving, keep them as supple as you can. And this is equally true in the spiritual realm. Have you not seen people who when trials come adopt a kind of pose? They are very sorry for themselves and they want everybody else to be sorry for them. ‘Get out of that pose,’ says this man, ‘shake it off, lift up the hands which hang down, straighten the feeble knees, hold yourself up. Realize you are a man, pull yourself together.’ This is the time to do this, not at the beginning. We do it after we have received instruction and after we have gone through the loosening up phase.
What else? The answer is in verse thirteen: ‘And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed’. ‘Make straight paths for yourself.’ Why? The argument is altogether reasonable. If the path is not smooth and straight the diseased joint may be dislocated, but if you make a straight and flat road for the lame to walk along it will help him to be healed. You see the importance of the straight road. What does it mean spiritually? It means that, having done all we have considered, we just say to ourselves: ‘Yes, I have gone astray, I must come back to the straight and narrow road’. So we map out again the way of holiness, we come back to the highway of God, we realize once more, the need of discipline, we decide to stop doing certain things, we make a straight path for our feet. And then as we walk again along this road of holiness we will find that our feeble knees are being strengthened and the whole of our system braced up as by a tonic.
The last instruction is in verse fourteen—‘Follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord’. This word ‘follow’ again is not strong enough. What the writer actually said was ‘pursue’, ‘pursue peace’, ‘pursue holiness’, or, even more strongly, he says ‘hunt’ for peace, ‘hunt’ after holiness, ‘strive’ after it. I cannot understand how any one who has read the Scriptures can accept and adopt any idea of passivity with respect to the way of holiness. Here is a man who tells us to yearn after holiness with all our might until we have it, to follow after it, pursue it, to hunt after it—peace and holiness, peace with other people, yes, and all and everything that we can do to be holy and to be like God. Those are the exercises through which God puts us in the gymnasium; that is God’s way of making us to be really His children.
Let me end with a word of encouragement. ‘No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.’ This process is very painful at the time, but listen to the promise; ‘afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness’. Do not worry about the pain, keep on moving those stiff muscles and you will find that they will soon become supple. Keep on with the exercises for ‘afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.’ The more we are put through this training in the gymnasium the better, because God is preparing us, not for time only, but for eternity. Physical exercises are only for a while and a time and our earthly parents discipline us for a few days only while we are in this world; but this life of ours in this world is a preparation for eternity. It is not this world that matters, it is the next; it is not the here and now that are important, it is the eternal. God in this life is preparing us for everlasting bliss and glory.
Remember also in that connection the One to whom we are going—‘without holiness no man shall see the Lord’. If we want to see God we had better do the exercises in the gymnasium very thoroughly. ‘Without holiness, no man shall see the Lord’—verse fourteen—and God is putting us through these exercises in order to make us holy. If you and I, therefore, do not pay attention to this treatment that God is giving us, it just means that we do not realize who we are, or it means that we are not children of God at all. If we really want to go on to God and heaven we must submit and do exactly what He tells us, because He is putting us through all this treatment in order to promote our holiness. It is all for our profit and that we may become sharers and partakers of His own holiness.
Finally, and beyond all else for our encouragement, look at the One who subjected Himself to it all, though He need not have done so—‘Looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our Faith who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame’. He knew what it meant. He said: ‘Father if it be possible let this cup pass from Me, nevertheless not My will but Thine be done’. He endured it all for the joy that was laid up for Him and for your salvation and mine. So, when you may feel that the discipline is too much and that it is very painful, in addition to all that I have said, look unto Him, keep looking at Him and follow Him. And as certainly as we do so we shall find that this which for the moment is so painful and grievous will afterward yield, even in this life and world, and still more in glory, this wonderful fruit of health and righteousness, of peace and of the enjoyment of God. I do not know what you feel, but as I have meditated this last fortnight upon this great word, I say honestly and in the presence of God, that there is nothing that gives me greater comfort and greater solace than this, to know that I am in God’s hands, and that He so loves me and is so determined upon my holiness and upon bringing me to heaven, that if I do not listen to His Word and follow it, He will deal with me in another way. He is going to bring me there. It is alarming, but it is also glorious. ‘Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Take the exercises, my friend, hurry to the gymnasium, do what He tells you, examine yourself, practise it all whatever the cost, however great the pain, and enter into the joy of the Lord.