GOD'S DISCIPLINE IN HIS HOUSE
GOD’S DISCIPLINE IN HIS HOUSE
I desire to say a little on the subject of discipline. God disciplines His household, and in thinking of the House of God we must not leave Out the chastening that is exercised there. It is one immense gain of being in the House of God that we come under His discipline.
The exhortation, “My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord” (Hebrews 12: 5), is quoted from Proverbs 3: 11. The word “chastening” in that verse is one which often occurs in Proverbs, where it is generally translated “instruction”, but a few times “correction”. It is noticeable that it often occurs in connection with “wisdom”. “To know wisdom and instruction” (chapter 1: 2); “To receive the instruction of wisdom” (chapter 1: 3); “Fools despise wisdom and instruction” (chapter 1: 7), etc.
Christ is the wisdom of God, and in blessed grace has been made wisdom to us. Man in the flesh was an offence to God, but Christ the wisdom of God removed that man by death. Then, on the other hand, every thought of God has been established in Christ at His right hand, so that He may be known in the glory of grace by man — known in the beloved Son, who alone could reveal Him. Christ is the wisdom or resource of God to bring all this about. He has removed what was offensive to God, and in Him is established everything that is pleasurable to God, and He is the revelation of all the fulness of the Godhead.
But this entails the practical setting aside in God’s children of that which is contrary to His nature and pleasure. If everything unsuitable to God was condemned and removed sacrificially at the cross, it is necessary that everything in [p. 111] us of that character should be set aside morally. That is why instruction — chastening — come in. God is bent upon having His children in moral correspondence with Himself. It is not enough that we should see that He has effected certain things by the cross, and established certain things in Christ. We are to be in moral correspondence with God and with what He has effected. He wants us to know the power and reality of these things in our souls, so that we may be “partakers of his holiness”. So chastening comes in. God deals with us so that the flesh may be practically set aside, and Christ formed in us under His eye. “Wisdom” is the mind of God set forth in Christ, but then “instruction” comes in on our side that we may be in moral correspondence with “wisdom”.
There is a verse which brings three very important things together. “Buy the truth, and sell it not; wisdom, and instruction, and understanding” (Proverbs 23: 23). Wisdom is presented to us in the ministry of Christ; instruction is that moral process by which God brings us into accord with what is ministered to us; and the result is understanding“the knowledge of the holy is understanding” (Proverbs 9: 10) — we are brought into the knowledge of God, and of those holy things in which He finds pleasure.
Discipline affects us in three distinct ways; it is either preventive, or corrective, or instructive. The same discipline may affect us in all three ways, or one element may be more prominent than the others. Generally the three things go together, more or less.
I will give an example of preventive chastening in the case of people who were walking wrongly, and another in the case of one who was walking well.
“Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths” (Hosea 2: 6). When God’s people get into a wrong path He often comes in and puts a hedge across the way. He builds a wall [p. 112] that we may not be able to proceed farther in the road where the folly of our own hearts is leading us. Many of us have deep cause for thanksgiving that God has blocked up our way. We do not always see where our way is leading us, but God regards our way. He has regard to the moral consequences of things, and in mercy He blocks up many a road that seems all right to us. He takes notice of things which are likely to turn us aside. There is that element in God’s chastening; it tends to preserve us from evils or dangers that, perhaps, we do not anticipate. In that way it is preservative.
We see another instance of preventive chastening in the case of Paul. “And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure” (2 Corinthians 12: 7). We might have supposed that Paul would not need discipline of this kind! But after he had been in the most wonderful divine privilege God anticipated a danger, and discipline came in to prevent the working of the flesh. If Paul needed preventive discipline it is pretty certain that we do. God graciously preserves us by His chastening from things which we do not ourselves anticipate. The thought of this is very encouraging to a true heart; we are under the blessed supervision and care of God. It delights my heart to know that God guards me by His gracious discipline from unknown dangers, and checks my proneness to turn aside and give place to the flesh. I do not know where I might have got to but for the discipline of God.
Another distinct action of discipline is that it is corrective. There is an element of correction — that is, of setting right — in all discipline. There is always, to some degree, the thought of rectification in it. We see this in Psalm 119: 67. “Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept thy word”. The Psalmist was corrected by the discipline of God;
[p. 113] he was recovered from going astray. Very often there is something in us, or in our ways, that is not pleasing to God, and He discovers it to us by some form of discipline. He alone knows the true state of our hearts, and how to touch us in a corrective way. We note many of the faults and failings of our brethren, and we think we can weigh them up, but, after all, we know very little about them! It is wonderful to think that God takes account of us, and knows how to touch us for correction. I do not mean punishment by correction, but setting right. God’s object is always to put us right.
Then again we read, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes” (Psalm 119: 71). There we get the thought of instruction. God wants to bring us into the knowledge of Himself, and of His mind with regard to things. If our ears are open to discipline (Job 36: 10) we get instruction in the mind of God. It is not only that our evil ways are corrected, but we gain in our knowledge of God and of what suits Him; we acquire knowledge of His perfect ways. David, disciplined by the death of Uzza, learned God’s statutes (1 Chronicles 13: 7 - 14; 1 Chronicles 15: 2). There is sometimes a good deal of levity about us in regard to divine things, and we have to be sobered by affliction or sorrow, so that we may learn what is according to God’s mind. We are apt to be influenced by others, and to shape our course on the model of what we see round about us; but this will not do in divine things. God calls us apart by discipline that we may learn His mind, and be prepared to act more entirely with regard to His will.
The discipline of God is preventive, and corrective, and instructive — it tends to make us more intelligent in the mind of God. These three things go together.
It has been observed that there are three distinct kinds of chastening. We may suffer from things which are common to men, or we may suffer trials which are peculiar to the path [p. 114] of faith, or we may have to suffer in different ways the consequences of our own wrong-doing.
There are many trials that are not confined to saints. Trying circumstances, suffering and weakness in body, and the sorrow of bereavement are common to men generally. The unconverted have these trials as well as believers. But the blessed thing is that God takes up all these things, which are connected with the wreck and ruin of things in this world of sin and death, and makes them work divine profit and benefit to His beloved children.
I do not suppose there is one here without some kind of sorrow or trial. God’s discipline is a matter in which we are all personally interested; it has a practical bearing upon every one of us. How blessed to know that these sorrows and exercises are instruments in our Father’s hand to bring about the profit of our souls! Men of the world in presence of sorrow often harden themselves to bear it in a stoical way, but if we get hard and callous we miss the good of God’s discipline. God would not have us to accustom ourselves to trials and get hard under them. There is nothing stoical in Christianity; every proper natural feeling and sensibility has its place, but these feelings become the occasion for the development of tender and precious spiritual affections — the sensibilities and feelings of Christ.
We may see an example of beautiful divine tenderness and care in Philippians 2: 25 - 28. “Yet I supposed it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, and companion in labour, and fellow-soldier, but your messenger, and he that ministered to my wants. For he longed after you all, and was full of heaviness, because that ye had heard that he had been sick. For indeed he was sick nigh unto death: but God had mercy on him; and not on him only, but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I sent him therefore the more carefully, that, when ye see him again,
[p. 115] ye may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful”. All this exercise and care, called forth in Paul and in the Philippians by the sickness of Epaphroditus, and the grief of Epaphroditus himself, not because he was sick, but because the Philippians had heard of his sickness, is perfectly beautiful. Spiritual affections came into exercise all round. This is a very blessed result of God’s discipline, of which we do well to take account. Times of sorrow and suffering give opportunity for the love and care of the saints to come into activity. It is a common thing to hear one say, in reference to some season of great pressure or sorrow, “I never knew before how much love there was in the saints”. We find the compassion and care and love of God in His children, and in this way we are spiritually enlarged in the very moment of pressure. We get this in Psalm 4: 1, “Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress”.
God cares for us in every detail. He cared that an old man should have his overcoat before winter (2 Timothy 4: 13). He keeps His eye on us in all the discipline that we suffer under His hand. There is always the care of His love behind it all. May the comfort of this be ever in our hearts!
Then, again, it is in trial and sorrow that we learn in an experimental way the sympathy and succour of Christ — His love as Priest. He enters into every feeling of weakness and suffering. When He was here, healing thousands of people of various diseases, He felt and bore in His spirit all that He removed by His power. And even if it were death itself, we see Him in that matchless scene at Bethany — how can one speak of it? — in company with a bereaved heart; the blessed Son of God entering into it all and weeping with those who wept! And now He has gone up to the right hand of God to intercede for His tried and disciplined saints down here. The intercession of Christ ever goes along with the discipline of God, to the end that it may effect a divine result in our souls. It is all in deep, divine love.
[p. 116] The pressure of sorrow turns one away from the world and rebukes the natural self-importance of the flesh, and this leaves room for the blessed Lord to come to the heart in all the tenderness of divine sympathy and love to establish a personal link between Himself and the Borrower that could not be formed in any other way. The Psalmist could say, “Thou hast considered my trouble; thou hast known my soul in adversities” (Psalm 31: 7). A friend who comes near to you in time of pressure or trial makes himself very dear to you. A poor mortal like yourself cannot do much for you, but you feel the preciousness and comfort of a friend who in some way feels for you in your sorrow. But think of the blessed Lord, with perfect knowledge of your sorrow, and of all the detail, of which you would be ashamed to speak to a human being, because it would so expose your weakness that you could hardly expect to be understood, coming near to you in perfect divine love and sympathy to endear Himself to you in your need and pressure! Of what deep and precious value is that holy discipline which thus becomes the occasion for our hearts to make personal acquaintance with Christ!
It might, no doubt, be said that in the enjoyment of proper Christian privilege we should be found in a divine and heavenly sphere of blessing far above all pressure and trial and sorrow! Blessed be God, there is a sphere where no trial or sorrow can come, but how do we reach it? There is but one way, and that is in company with Christ. But how and where do we first learn His company? Let us take the two going to Emmaus as an illustration. They were filled with grief, and were going back to their own things, far away in heart from the resurrection sphere in which Christ was. His love was set upon leading them to Himself in that new place upon which He had entered as the risen One. But His way of doing this was first to come near to them in their sadness, that He might establish a link between Himself and their [p. 117] sorrowing hearts. He knew their grief far better than they could tell Him about it, and He came near to them to lead them from the place of their sorrow to the circle of His own joy and peace in resurrection. That is how He brings us to His own side. He comes to us in priestly grace in our circumstances of need and sorrow, and makes Himself known to us there that He may draw us to Himself in a sphere where need and sorrow can never come.
We get the thought of this in Revelation 3: 20, “I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me”. Divine love in Christ touches me where I am in all the reality of my weakness and need, compassed with infirmity, and feeling every sorrow and trial. I need Him to sup with me — to succour me by His grace, and thus to make Himself precious and indispensable to me. There is this wonderful thing about God’s discipline, that it furnishes opportunity for the love of Christ as Priest to touch us where we are, and to so knit us to Himself in affection that we may travel in company with Him to a spot where sorrow and sin can never come. It is good to contemplate this. We sometimes look at the discipline of God too much in a judicial way, as if one did wrong and got a thrashing for it, as he deserved. We need to consider the blessed results which God intends to bring to pass by His discipline.
In this connection I may say that we are dependent upon Christ as Priest to give us divine understanding of the discipline of God. “There was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David inquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites” (2 Samuel 21: 1). I suppose that, according to the due order, David inquired of the Lord by means of the priest (see Numbers 27: 21; 1 Samuel 23: 9; 1 Samuel 30: 7, etc.). It is only as we are in nearness to Christ that we have divine intelligence as to God’s discipline. He can give us understanding in all things, and enable us to [p. 118] discern why we are under discipline, and what is the instruction or correction which it is intended to effect.
I have referred to things which are common to men — trial in circumstances, sickness, and bereavement — but in Hebrews 12 it is another order of discipline that is more especially in view. The Spirit of God has before Him a kind of discipline which is peculiar to saints. We may see a sample of it in Hebrews 10: 32 - 34. “But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; partly, whilst ye were made a gazing-stock, both by reproaches and afflictions; and partly, whilst ye became companions of them that were so used. For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance”.
These beloved saints had to pay a great price for being Christians. The fact that they took their stand as confessors of the Lord Jesus cost them a good deal in their circumstances here. It must be remembered that they had been accustomed to look for the manifestation of God’s favour in their circumstances here. It must have been a peculiar trial to them to find that, after becoming Christians, they had so many hardships to suffer. But the things that befell them were on account of being in the path of faith. Many sorrows and difficulties are escaped by those who do not tread that path. Paul would not have had such a long catalogue of hardships to recount (see 2 Corinthians 11: 23 - 27) if he had not been in the path of faith.
There are many exercises and sorrows which are only felt by those who seek to walk in the will of God and to be agreeable to the Lord. The enemy would seek to use such things to dishearten and discourage us, and if possible to divert us from a course which is pleasing to God. But the great thing for us is to remember that all these things are really helpful discipline for us. The hand of God is in them, and the love of [p. 119] God, and our exercise and prayer should be that we might have grace to profit by them. We are sometimes so anxious to escape from pressure or trial that we have not patience to learn the lessons God intends to teach us by these things. We should always count upon it that there is great gain in being disciplined by God, and we should seek to secure it. “Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest him out of thy law” (Psalm 94:12). The particular exercise of the present moment may never return again, so that if we do not get the good of it now we may miss it for ever. If we looked at things more from that point of view, we should desire with diligence of heart to learn the divine lesson in things that happen to us along the road.
Another kind of discipline is when we suffer the governmental consequences of our own sin and folly. There are also moral consequences which we suffer in the experience of our souls, as when joy and peace are lost in consequence of getting away from the Lord. “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (Galatians 6: 7, 8; see also Romans 8: 6, 13).
If we give place to that which is of the flesh we have to suffer for it. We may often learn the moral nature of things by their effect upon us. If we discover that certain things take us away from our joy in the Lord it is a solemn warning to us. To suffer in that way is a very serious discipline — more to be deprecated than any other kind of affliction. We ought to be wise, and observant of the moral effect of things, so as to take warning as soon as we find that they bring a shade upon our spiritual joy and communion. If we find that something brings what is, morally, death and corruption into our souls we ought to turn from it at once — we have learned its character by its experimental results. If we continue to trifle with it we play the part of fools.
[p. 120] Many things can be judged by their results. If we find that a certain line of things tends to biting and devouring one another, we may be quite sure that it is the line of the flesh. If we find that another line of things tends to develop love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance, we may be equally sure that is the Spirit’s line. We prove things by their moral effects.
If God deals with us governmentally on account of our wrong-doing it is our wisdom to humble ourselves under His mighty hand. The same remark applies to discipline exercised in the assembly, whether it be admonition, rebuke, or withdrawing from a wicked person. If I am admonished or rebuked by my brethren I ought not to resent it, but to be thankful for the occasion it gives me to be exercised about my ways. When under all discipline, of whatever kind it may be, it is important to keep in mind that God has said, “To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word” (Isaiah 66: 2).
All discipline is to the end that we may be partakers of God’s holiness. Wonderful activities are going on in connection with the saints. CHRIST is being ministered to us through gifts and in the power of the Spirit; then there is the work of God in us, and His ways with us, working together to bring about self-judgment and separation from the world, so that CHRIST may be increasingly magnified in us. The holiness of God absolutely rejects the world and the flesh, and finds its complacency in Christ, and the object of all God’s discipline is that we may be partakers of His holiness. The great end of discipline is to make room in our hearts for Christ. As He is formed in us, and as we grow up into Him, we become partakers of God’s holiness, and thus more and more suited to His house, of which it is written, “Holiness becometh thine house, O LORD, for ever”.