Sermon at Centenary UMC on August 29, 2010
Jisun Kwak

God can use your pain
Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13

In our Hebrew lesson this morning, the writer begins by quoting Proverbs 3:11 12,

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”

When Lydia, my daughter was 6 years old, she told me that she wanted to take a piano lesson. She said that she wanted to play the piano like a concert pianist, and she pretended to play like a concert pianist before me. So I arranged the piano lessons for her. Exactly after two lessons, this cute little Lydia, in a very disappointed and upset voice, told me that she would like to quit the lesson. I asked her why.
She said,
“Mom! I took “two” lessons already. Two!!
How come I cannot play as well as those concert pianists??”

There is a young man who is worse than Lydia. This young man decided he wanted to be a boxer. After the first lesson of being sore and swollen, scratching his head, the battered youth asked to his coach. “Well, sir, I was wondering if I could take the other twenty-five lessons by correspondence?”

One of the lessons of life you and I have probably learned is that you can’t take the course of hard knocks by correspondence.
You’ve got to hang in there and learn your lessons the hard way.

Today’s text from Hebrews is about discipline.
It’s an important lesson for many reasons.

FOR ONE THING, DISCIPLINE IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF A SUCCESSFUL LIFE.

Some of us rebel against the idea of discipline.

In the children’s book Frog and Toad Together, Frog bakes a batch of cookies.
“We ought to stop eating,” he and Toad say, as they keep eating.
“We must stop,” they resolve, as they eat some more.
“We need willpower,” Frog finally says, grabbing another cookie.
“What is willpower?” asks Toad, swallowing another mouthful.
“Willpower is trying very hard not to do something you want to do very much,” Frog says.

Frog discusses a variety of ways to help with willpower–for example, putting the cookies in a box, tying the box shut, putting it high up in a tree–but Toad points out (in between bites) that this won’t work. They could still climb the tree and untie the box. In desperation, Frog finally dumps the remaining cookies outside on the ground: “Hey, birds!” he calls. “Here’s cookies!”
“Now we have no more cookies,” says Toad sadly.
“Yes,” says Frog, “but we have lots and lots of willpower.”
“You may keep it all,” Toad replies. “I’m going home to bake a cake.” (1)

Most of us can relate. Willpower is tough.
We know we ought to be more disciplined, but our hearts are not in it.
Personal discipline is one of the keys to success in life.

But that’s not the kind of discipline the writer of Hebrews is talking about. He is using the word discipline much as we might when we say “we discipline our children.”

How were you disciplined as a child?

Some of us had harsh discipline; some of us had less.
And, of course, each generation thinks the other was a little misguided in their discipline. Older members of our congregation will relate to one person’s observation of the modern family, “A modern home is one where everything but the kids can be controlled by a switch.”

Some of you perhaps grew up in homes where a switch did control you and your siblings. I wonder if some of us were more lenient in the way we raised our kids than we were raised ourselves. I know those of you who have grandkids are probably more lenient with them than you were with your children.
Some people, when they think of discipline, immediately think of punishment. Maybe this is why we resist discipline so much–we associate it with another proverb, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”

If you focus on discipline as punishment, you will miss what the writer is saying. What is the aim of discipline?

The aim of discipline is to help us grow into mature responsible adults. Our goal is to help our child develop the strength and discipline needed to be a successful adult.
Keep this goal in mind as we read this passage from Hebrews.

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”

That’s a mouthful right there.
“The Lord disciplines those he loves.”

Here is where the difference between punishment and discipline is important. You may punish a child you do not love, but you will not discipline a child you do not love. Do you see the difference?
It’s too much work, too much stress, to seek to discipline a child you do not love. You may spank them, out of anger. But that’s not discipline. That’s a way of venting your frustration; it has no real goal of helping the child learn and grow. It’s a lot easier to ignore a child than it is to lovingly help that child grow into a responsible human being.

Discipline is a means of helping a child be all he or she can be.

The writer continues:
“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 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.”

THE WRITER IS FOCUSING ON ENDURING HARDSHIP.
He is dealing with the question why bad things sometimes happen to good people. He is helping us see that not all hardship is bad. The writer is not saying that hard times come directly from God. So many people have been damaged by the notion that God plays havoc with our lives, rewarding us when we are good and punishing us when we are naughty. That’s not what the writer is saying.
This is a hard world. But that does not mean that God has picked us out specifically to endure pain and suffering. Some of our problems we bring on ourselves through undisciplined living.
But there are many tragedies in life that just happen.

We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Perhaps we inherited a defective gene, and all the clean living in the world would not have kept it from causing us problems.
Perhaps someone else acted irresponsibly and we suffered because of it. But God has not picked us out to punish us. Jesus ended that controversy for all time when he said,
“God sends his rain on the just and the unjust.”

WHAT THE WRITER IS SAYING IS THAT, WITH GOD’S HELP WE CAN LEARN FROM OUR HARDSHIP.
The writer is helping us re-frame our painful experiences.
Look at hardship not as something sent to destroy you.
Rather look at it as a means of becoming a stronger person.

Could God remove hardship from us?
Yes, in the same way He could have taken the cup of suffering from Jesus on the night he was betrayed.
The truth of the matter is that all of us learn things best the hard way./

Nancy Guthrie begins her book HOLDING ON TO HOPE with these words:

“Two weeks after the neighbor’s house burned down, I gave birth to a daughter we named Hope . . .”
Hope was born with a fatal genetic disorder.
She lived slightly more than six months.

The experience was devastating for Nancy and her husband. Guthrie writes,

“Early on in my journey, I said to God, ‘Okay, if I have to go through this, then give me everything. Teach me everything you want to teach me through this. Don’t let this incredible pain be wasted in my life!’”
She continues, “God allows good and bad into our lives and we can trust him with both. Trusting God when the miracle does not come, when the urgent prayer gets no answer, when there is only darkness–this is the kind of faith God values most of all.” (2)

She’s right.
This is the kind of experience that produces spiritual giants.
Be careful when you thank God for never giving you a burden to bear.
Sometimes those burdens produce blessings.

If you’re battling with a terrible hardship right now, whatever it might be, here’s what I want you to pray.
“Lord I know you’re with me, and that you won’t leave me. If possible, I would like this cup taken from me, but, if not, then help me learn from it. Make me a stronger person because of it.
Help it ultimately to make me more like Jesus,
in whose name I pray. Amen.”
Remember, God didn’t cause your pain,
but God can use your pain.

If you let Him, God will help you be all God has called you to be.

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time,” says our scripture for the day, “but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

That is the goal.
Then our hardship will not have been in vain.

——————————————————————
1. Ortberg, John, The Life You’ve Always Wanted ( Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002).
2. Holding On to Hope, Tyndale, 2002.

DISCIPLINE
Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13

Object: a strainer or a sieve

Good morning, boys and girls. I raided the kitchen again this week and brought something that’s pretty handy. Do you know what it is? It’s a strainer. A strainer is used to separate the good food from the stuff you don’t want to eat. For instance, how many of you like spaghetti? To cook spaghetti noodles, you boil them in water. But you don’t keep the water, do you? You pour it out. You put the spaghetti noodles in the strainer and let the water flow down the drain. You can also use a strainer when you wash fruits and vegetables. You put the fruits and vegetables in the strainer and pour water over them. The water and the dirt wash right down the drain, while the fruits and vegetables stay in the strainer. See, the strainer helps us to separate the good food from the stuff we don’t want to eat, like noodle water or dirt.
Did you know that tough times, sad times, are like God’s strainer? When we put fruits and vegetables in the strainer to wash them, what gets washed away? The dirt, right? When we go through tough times and sad times, it washes away the “dirt” from our character—our selfishness, our fear, our meanness. God made us to learn and grow from our tough times. We can grow to become the people God wants us to be. Remember the next time you go through a tough time that this is a chance for God to wash the “dirt” out of your life. God will give you the strength and the hope to make it through.