The Adventure Link
Vintage Faith: Teachings from the vineyard
More Benefits!
John 15:1-8
Yesterday we discovered that God’s discipline carries wonderful benefits.
We looked at and explained the following benefit...
Benefit No. 1 – If you receive God’s discipline, you know you’re in God’s family.
Now lets see a few more benefits before we move on in our study. Read? OK, here we go...
Benefit No. 2 – God’s discipline is always for our own good, and given in love
Hebrews 12:7-10 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. (HCSB)
God will never punish you just for his entertainment. God has a purpose for his discipline, and he brings out his actions of discipline in love. You can rest in that.
Imagine an earthly father exercising discipline over his daughter by saying, “Sharon, that’s enough. You can’t follow the rules at the table, so you can miss the rest of this meal and go straight to your room. Now.” Sharon leaves. She’s hungry. She hears the dinner talk start again. Gradually, there is laughter. The tension over her dismissal disappears, and the rest of the family seems to be having a good time. Then ... she hears Mom announce dessert! From a distance, she can tell her mother is bringing out the pie, which happens to be Sharon’s favorite. The way people are talking, it must be great. Sharon is starting to feel great remorse ... GREAT remorse.
Later on that evening, her dad comes into her room. Sharon cries, apologizes, and admits that what she did was wrong. “Please forgive me, Dad.”
Now what’s that dad going to do? He may very well continue with that evening’s punishment, just to make sure Sharon’s not pulling a quick one. But will he, the next morning, say to his hungry daughter, “Wait a minute young lady ... no breakfast for you today! ... Here’s half your lunch for school, and we’ll let you sit at the table with us tonight, but no food for you then, either ...”
No, of course not! Sharon needs food. Sharon paid the price for her wrong. So now, she’s back at the table, with all rights to breakfast, lunch, and dinner ... and dessert, too.
Benefit No. 3 – God’s discipline turns us away from harmful sin, and toward a great harvest.
Hebrews 12:11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. (HCSB)
In the vineyard, Jesus said the main purpose of a believer is to produce fruit. In Hebrews, the Bible teaches that God’s discipline does the same thing. God may bring discipline to your life, but the moment you make a heart-felt effort to turn away from the sin, you’re back at the table.
What a loving Father we have. Sin is forgiven, and forgotten. Punishment is handed out for a reason, and that reason is to get us out of what is harmful, and into what is good.
The word we use for making that decision to turn away from sin is repentance. We’ve heard it, talked about it, and sung about it. But at its most practical center, it is recognizing what is wrong in our lives, and literally turning away from it.
Think about this. The longer you try to excuse your sin (“Everybody does it”), justify your sin (“This is not really a sin, it’s just my lifestyle choice”), or redefine your sin (“It’s not that bad”), you are (in some ways) asking God to turn up the heat and increase the discipline!
Is that what you want?
Could you really be making a choice to endure God’s discipline all the more? No one thinking clearly would ever make that choice...yet many do just that....
Our study will pick back up next time
The adventure continues....