Text: Hebrews 12:3–11
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé
Hard Knocks, True Sons, Keen Edges
As you are turning to Hebrews 12, let’s quickly remember the shape and goal of this book.
Now, Hebrews is in some ways a complex book, especially for a 21st-century reader who is not immersed in Jewish culture in general, the Old Testament in particular. And we don’t want to gloss over that; it’s important to approach this book with humility, to admit that we will have to work and slow down and think carefully and dig into our Old Testaments to take care to understand what the author is saying.
But on another level, it’s one of the more simple books in the Bible. From a flyover perspective, it’s not hard to understand. It’s kind of like a field of wheat. The farmer who owns the field knows wheat—and I mean, knows it.
He could probably listen to a breeze blow through his field with his eyes closed and tell you where it’s at in its growth cycle just from the sound.
But that doesn’t mean that a passenger in a 747 flying over can’t look at the little square of green from his window seat and say, “Hey, that’s a wheat field. I know what that’s for.”
From the window seat of the 747, Hebrews is a simple book. The first 10 chapters have essentially one point, and it’s a point you can see from space: Jesus is better. Choose him over every rival and every forerunner.
And then Hebrews 11 steps in and says in equally clear terms: Here are some people who have gone before you and listened to that message faithfully.
And then, as we began to see together last week, Hebrews 12 moves from example to exhortation, saying, “Therefore, since we’re surrounded by all of these witnesses who have gone before in obedience to this book, let us—the present readers of the book—obey it with that same faith.”
The section we’re in today, Hebrews 12:3–11, puts some steel in the spine of that exhortation. Look there with me, if you would. This is the Word of the Living God:
“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
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 are 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.”
-Hebrews 12:3–11
There are three things in our text that I’d like to focus our attention on together. Very simply, number one, we learn something magnificent here, namely, who we are—that if we share in the faith of our forefathers, we are sons of God by that faith.
Second, we learn how we will know that we are sons—and along the way, what a son is for. And the answer turns out to be something the text calls unpleasant in some senses, but that turns out to be a great gift of God: His chastening. His discipline.
And so finally, number three, we will take a moment and talk about what his discipline is and what the text tells us it’s for.
Who Are You?
So first, the text answers a question that humans have been wrestling with since the Fall of our father Adam and our mother Eve: Who am I?
The story of human history after Genesis 3 is essentially the story of a people trying to discover their own identity and purpose by sifting through a big pile of created things—and finding nothing but frustration after frustration.
We try to answer the question by mining deeper into our own navels in morbid introspection and self-absorption and self-worship. We try to emote our way to an identity—what makes me feel good? What makes me happy? What satisfies me?
But when start answering that question, and start to feel around horizontally for things or other people or relationships or careers or accomplishments to chain our identity to, we find ourselves frustrated and unsatisfied and bored.
We find out that every created thing is subject to the law of diminishing returns: Sex on your wedding night was awesome, and it’s not bad 10 years into the marriage, sure. But does it quench your soul? Nah.
And kids are great, marriage is great, career and work is great, home-improvement-projects are great, books and learning are great, reaching financial goals—all of it is great and has kernels of lowercase satisfaction in it.
But permanent, durable satisfaction? Nah. It just doesn’t have that kind of power, because all of it, as the philosopher of Ecclesiastes discovered, is dust in the long run. All your pleasures will return to dust with your dead body. Your kids, your wife, your friends, and your favorite celebrities will all die. Your money will go to someone else.
And so when I lock off my identity to self-definition, morbid introspection, finding the true and emotionally satisfying me, I find myself still reaching for more.
And when I lock off my identity onto work or sex or marriage or family or things, I find that I’m only doing as good as that thing is doing. When my identity-anchor is abounding—my kids are healthy and obedient—I’m good. But when my identity-anchor is lacking—my kids are disobedient or sick or they die or they rebel or the relationship drifts as they get older—I’m not ok.
And even in the best of times, all of it is clouded in a haze of impermanence.
But listen: The way to figure out your identity, what you are and who you are and what you’re for, is to ask the guy who made you. Don’t ask a hammer what it’s for; ask the blacksmith who made it. Don’t ask the mirror what you’re for; ask the God who made you.
And the glory of what we’ve seen in Hebrews is that through the gospel—through the salvation of Christ, his coming and dying and rising and ascending and ruling and priestly interceding—we are clad in an indestructible new identity: Son of God.
Through the gospel, God makes rebellious sons of Adam into righteous sons of God.
The logic of the gospel is like this: We were made for God—that’s our identity—but through our sinful rebellion, we became twisted and lived like were were made for ourselves. This brought a Curse on us, a curse that demanded eternal death for the rebels.
But God in his great mercy, moved by his glorious love, purposed to save us from our sin—which is to say, to save us from ourselves, our stubborn insistence on living as self-defining, autonomous rebels rather than submissive sons. And so he pursued us in the only way that could possibly save us.
The Curse had to be broken. An offering had to be paid. Justice had to be done. And so he became a Man—and not just a man, but a cursed Man, a man hung on a tree and labeled a rebel. And he bore the Curse in his very flesh, and paid its terrible price of death.
But he was no mere mortal; no, he is the God-Man. And so the Curse couldn’t hold him. Death couldn’t hold him. So death choked on him in its craw—death spit him back out and died of its own self-inflicted wounds.
And the God-Man rose, not just from the grave, but to a throne. And here’s the deep magic: Through his identification with us—with a sin Cursed and God-damned humanity—we are identified with him. Look at verses 3 and 4:
“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”
-Hebrews 12:3–4
It’s right there: He endured from sinners a blood-spilling hostility, and he endured it so that we we could follow after him, identified with him.
Here’s the point: Who is he, this One we are identified with? The very Son of God. Listen to Paul’s exultation in Ephesians 1,
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”
-Ephesians 1:3–14
We become sons. Rebels who refused the Father’s ring—the ring with the family crest stamped on it—who insisted rather on being their own fathers, who insisted on being bastard sons of fallen Adam, become sons of God.
How Will We Know?
That is the glory of this passage. It tells us who we are when we, by faith, follow in the footsteps of our spiritual forefathers. And it answers another question, a very natural one given the magnitude of that promise: How will we know?
How will we know that we are sons? It might help to ask the question: How do my sons know that they are my true sons?
There are many ways they could answer that question, but the way that this passage points them to by way of answer is plain: My sons know they are my true sons and not bastard children, not fatherless, by the stinging sensation on their bottoms when they stray from the path of wisdom and righteousness. They know that they are their father’s sons by their father’s discipline. Verse 5,
“And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
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 are 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.”
-Hebrews 12:5–10
The Father shows us that we are his true sons by his chastening. When you feel the sharp conviction of the Spirit when a course jest pops out of your mouth at work, that’s his stamp of sonship.
When you feel the agony and shame of depression when you watch pornography when your wife isn’t home, that’s his stamp of sonship.
When you feel the sting of reproof and he refuses to prosper you in your greedy clinging to every dollar as if it were a little god, that is the ring of the family name on your finger.
His chastening is part of his love for you, part of his grace to you, and it is why you feel the weight of sin in a way that your non believing friends do not. It’s why you cannot find lasting joy in sin or rebellion. He loves you.
And listen: This is discipline, not final judgment. Because of Christ, the Father is infinitely, unchangingly delighted in you. He looks at you and sees you as righteous, as perfect as his Son. This discipline language isn’t a change of status in your justification—no, it is rather proof of your justification.
Now think through the cosmic, life-altering, life-shaping implications of what this passage is telling us, Christians.
You are sons. That means that you are for something. What is a a son for? What do you do with sons? How would the Bible answer that question? Let’s let the Scriptures speak:
“Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one's youth.Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.”-Psalm 127:3–5
Here’s the answer: What is a son? What do you do with sons? You train them. You sharpen them. You give them keen, hard edges, and then you send them out against your enemies.
Sons are weapons of war, not trophies for your mantle. Sons are swords. Sons are arrows. Sons are legacy-builders, field workers, house-builders. Sons send your line downstream in history. Sons are enemies of your enemies. Sons are strength.
What is the cosmic Fatherhood of God aimed at? It is aimed at winning our hearts to love our Father and his law—as the Proverbs say, “My son, give me your heart”—and then it is aimed at sending out sons into the heart of enemy territory and possessing the gates of God’s enemies. I think this quote from one of my favorite writers, N.D. Wilson, captures well the heart of God’s cosmic Fatherhood:
“The world is rated R, and no one is checking IDs. Do not try to make it G by imagining the shadows away. Do not try to hide your children from the world forever, but do not try to pretend there is no danger. Train them. Give them sharp eyes and bellies full of laughter. Make them dangerous. Make them yeast, and when they’ve grown, they will pollute the shadows.”
-N.D. Wilson, Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl
God is a Father like that. We are not ornaments for his mantle, but weapons for his war. And that is why the world looks as it does, and why we will see rough use and feel the whetstone of his discipline on our rough edges: He is making our edges keen for the fight.
And listen: You don’t get keen edges without a whetstone. You don’t get keen edges without friction, without hard surfaces and sparks. The sword that is sharpened is sharpened by having part of it ground off in a shower of sparks.
Growing up, we’d often visit my grandparent’s place out in rural Montana. Maybe 20 acres of fields and dirt roads, and in the middle of it, my grandpa’s shop. And in the middle of his shop, and old workbench with his grinder bolted onto it. My grandpa was the kind of gruff old man who had piles old cars, old parts, old tools—all the stuff that collects on the average 20-acre property in rural Montana.
I remember a summer where we had an obsession with finding old knives or bits of steel, and putting them on the grinder to get irresponsibly sharp.
We were tremendously bad at it. If I were to sharpen an old pocketknife blade, you might be lucky for the blade to be half its original width by the time I was done.
But God is not like that. He doesn’t waste material. He’s a pro. Many of you probably have a dad like that, or an Uncle, grandpa—some gruff old man in your family line somewhere who had a set of 15 sharpening implements and never let anything from the chainsaw to the kitchen knives go dull. The guy with the knife in his pocket that could shave the arm hair off of Esau.
God doesn’t waste an atom when he sharpens us. His discipline is always perfect and circumspect and proportional. He’s never unfair. He’s a good Father, stern and gentle.
Hard Knocks & Keen Edges
Finally, the text also tells us the goal of his discipline, which is threefold: Our good, our holiness, and our fruitfulness. Verse 10,
“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.”
-Hebrews 12:10–11
1. Our Good.
He disciplines us, for our good. This is the part that no child believes in the moment of discipline, right? In the moment, discipline feels like loss, like hatred, like opposition.
But it is actually for our good. You may not know this, but your children want to be disciplined. One of the reason that neglected children are often extraordinarily rebellious is because they just want someone to actually see them, and to say, “I love you enough to put a wall of discipline between you and folly.”
It’s as if our children are trying to find their way around a dark room: They need to feel for the walls and the door jamb in order to know where to go. God’s fatherly discipline is like that—a solid thing for sons to run into and find the way into the light.
2. Our Holiness.
The author tells us that the Father “…disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.”
What is our good? To share his holiness. Listen: Don’t believe the utterly ridiculous caricature that the world has somehow put together that holiness is a stuffy, boring, dull, constraining, tightfisted, straitjacketing sort of thing.
No! Holiness is utter and complete freedom. It is the freedom of being what you were made to be and no longer pretending to be something else. Holiness is the freedom from slavery to sin. Do you understand that?
Sin hates you, wants nothing more than to shrivel up your soul into a dry husk and see you blow away. Sin wants you dead. The Father loves you, he doesn’t hate you, and so he would free you from those chains.
He disciplines us to make us to share in his holiness, which is to say—his pure, uncut, un-watered-down joy.
3. Our Fruitfulness.
And finally, he disciplines us for our fruitfulness. In verse 11,
“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.”
-Hebrews 12:11
This discipling is sweat-producing. It is training. But it is training that yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Our God would not have us remain withered, fruitless branches. He is too good for that. He loves us, and so he will make us to abound.
In all of this, don’t for a second forget that this is all by faith. By faith in the One who makes this promise, from Jude 24–25,
“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”
-Jude 24–25