Discover how God’s discipline reveals His love and protection. Rick Hughes explains the stages of divine discipline from Hebrews 12, showing how God corrects His children to build humility and prevent self-destruction. Learn the difference between discipline and judgment, and why daily growth in God’s Word keeps you on course and spares you from unnecessary suffering.
Welcome to the Flatline with your host, Rick Hughes. For the next 30 minutes, you’ll be inspired, motivated, educated, but never manipulated. Now, your host, Rick Hughes.
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Good morning and welcome to the Flatline. I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and for the next few minutes, please stay with me. It won’t be long. Only 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some education. And no, absolutely none, not one bit of manipulation. Because we’re not going to try to con you into giving money. We’re not going to con you into buying a product. We’re not trying to ask you to join up, fess it up, give it up. We’re just asking you to listen up. Listen as I try to verify and identify the plan of God for your life. And if I can do that, then you know you’re capable of orienting and adjusting to that plan. That’s really up to you. It’s your choice, your decision. So I pray you’ll listen and listen very carefully today. I mentioned last Sunday morning that we have a book called Life’s Toughest Years. If you have any young people in your family that’s headed back to school this year, this is a great book for them to read. It’s a compilation of five messages that I taught at a private school in Mississippi a few years ago, and we put it all down into a book. We made transcripts and put it into a book, and I think you’ll enjoy it, called Life’s Toughest Years. You can order it free of charge. We never charge for anything on our website. They’re all free. compliments of the grace of God, because we believe if God’s in it, he’ll pay for it. If he doesn’t, then we’ll do something else. Also, if you go to our website, rickhughesministries.org, you’ll find several books that we’ve written that are all free of charge. You’ll also find older radio shows you can listen to via the website. and you’ll find several of our books that are read out loud that you can listen to from the website as our announcer Jack Steele reads them to you. So thank you for listening, thank you for being with me. This is show 1048, 1048 Sundays we’ve been on the air with the Flatline Across America. Today we’re going to take a look at the concept of God’s discipline, and this is not a fun subject to study at all. but we’re gonna look at God’s discipline in the life of a Christian, in the life of a believer like you and I. Pay close attention to it because it may be what you are currently experiencing this very moment in your own life. First, let’s remember that God does not discipline his children because he’s mad at them. If we are under divine discipline, it’s because he loves us. He’s trying to save our lives so we don’t completely self-destruct. You know, we are, after all, our own worst enemies, and most of the suffering we endure is because we mismanage our personal relationships with individuals, we mismanage our decisions that are critical in our life, and we mismanage our own health. So divine discipline is designed to bring about enforced humility. Listen to that word, enforced humility. What we should have is genuine humility. But if we had genuine humility, we could avoid many circumstances that are detrimental to our spiritual lives. The word humility is teachability. It’s what it means, it’s teachable. A arrogant person is not teachable. The arrogant person possesses no humility. He or she justifies why their behavior is okay based on arrogant irrationality. An irrational, arrogant person can not only destroy their own life, but their actions and their decisions can also permanently injure others in their periphery. This explains why a lot of crime, a lot of criminals, a lot of things that happen because people are irrationally arrogant and believe that they are doing the right thing when in actuality they’re not. So let’s look at what God has to say about this discipline issue in Hebrews 12, five through nine. Here it says, you have forgotten and ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children. my son despise not thou the chastening of the lord nor faint when thou art rebuked of him for whom the lord loveth he chastens and he scourges every son whom he receiveth if you endure chastening god deals with you as with a son For what son is he whom the Father does not chasten? But if you be without chastisement whereof all are partakers, then obviously you are a bastard and not a son. 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 live? Okay, let’s look at this word chastening. Again, for whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges. The word chasten is a Greek word pronounced paideia, P-A-I-D-E-I-A, paideia. This noun is from the verb paduo, and it means to teach or to educate. The writer uses it for instructive punishment with God’s fatherly love for his children, according to the Mount’s M-O-U-N-C-E Bible Dictionary. So paideia, I always think about paddling, to paddle. But anyhow, I’m not sure that’s exactly what it means, but it is a way that God uses instructive punishment with his fatherly love to correct us. If we apply Ephesians 6, 1 through 3 to this situation and look at it as an analogy, it says there are children, and that’s for God’s children and parents, for God, our Heavenly Father, God is our Father, and when we use this passage, Father, we find that obedience is respect. Children, obey your parents. Children, obey your parents and honor your father and your mother. obedience is respect, and our Heavenly Father is the key to living a long life on this earth. Again, listen to Ephesians 6, 1 and 3. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first mandate with a promise, that it may be well with you, and you may live a long time on this earth. Here’s the secret to having a long life, having enough humility to obey those in authority over you. The next word in the Hebrew passage we need to look at in this word is scourges. In Hebrews where it says he scourges every son whom he receives. What exactly is the word scourges and what does it mean? It’s pronounced mastigeo, mastigeo. And it means to administer painful, painful punishment. like the Jewish method of scourging, which was a three-thong leather whip by which the person who was offended, the one who was an offender, the guilty person, would be beaten 13 times with the whip on the bare chest and 13 times on each shoulder. That’s 40 stripes save one. This happened to the Apostle Paul five different times in his ministry, and he mentions it in 2 Corinthians 11, 24. where he said of the Jews, five times received I forty stripes, save one. This was the most harsh form of punishment the Jews used other than death by stoning. So in our passage, the word scourging is used metaphorically for extremely harsh discipline. This is the believer’s chance, your chance and my chance, to correct our course before the Heavenly Father removes us from this earth and takes us home prematurely. He will do that, and I’ve seen it happen, and you may have seen it happen too. So finally, the passage in Hebrew said it would be much better to be in subjection, that’s to obey, the Father of spirits and live, So here we have a three-step plan that God uses to bring about our obedience to his plan for our lives. So again, verse eight, Hebrews chapter 12. If you be without chastisement, we’re of all our partakers, and you’re not a child of God, you’re a bastard. But furthermore, we’ve had fathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we gave them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits and lives? That’s exactly what we want you to do, to live a long, wonderful, prosperous, happy life. So divine discipline, when we’re talking about divine discipline, it’s the sum total of punitive action taken by the justice of God in grace to correct, to punish, to encourage, to train, to motivate, to motivate our free will towards the protocol plan of God so that we’ll be obedient, we’ll obey, so we don’t destroy ourselves and destroy other people along with us. Therefore, divine discipline must be distinguished from divine judgment. They’re two different things. Discipline is for Christians only, but judgment is directed towards all categories of the human race, and including angels under certain circumstances. Divine discipline for the believer must also be distinguished from the law of volitional responsibility, where you have self-imposed, self-induced, and self-indulging forms of misery. Bad decisions not only destroy future options in your life, but they result in tremendous misery that you are able to manufacture by yourself. And you have to take responsibility for that. Whatever man sows, he’s gonna reap, the Bible says. So the resultant discomfort, misery, and unhappiness in your life may last for a short period or a long period of time. Just depends. But punishment from God often follows the failure to rebound from our sins. We’re told if we sin to confess our sin that he would be faithful and just to forgive us and to purify us from all unrighteousness. If we fail to rebound from our sin, then we get ourselves in big trouble. Our every sin originates from our free will. You choose it, I chose it, we did it on our own. Temptation may come from our old sin nature. We may be baited by Satan or another source, but we have to make the decision on our own. And all wrong decisions come from some form of arrogance or lust in our lives. So God in his grace provided divine discipline. That’s what he does. His divine discipline is to motivate us to correct our course, and it is motivated by his love for our life. He does not punish us because he likes to see us squirm. It’s not what’s happening. He is perfect. He is just. He is fair. We are his children as members of the royal family of God. So listen to Proverbs 3.12. for whom the Lord loves he judges by punitive action, therefore like a father to a son in whom he delights. So divine discipline to the believer is parental training in the royal family of God by our Heavenly Father. Like parental training, divine discipline is designed to inculcate humility and from that humility to bring us to true objectivity for our lives so that we don’t let arrogance control us. That’s why Revelation 3.19 says, as many as I love, I rebuke and I chasten. Be zealous, therefore, and repent, which means to change your mind. That’s what a lot of people get mixed up on that word repent. Repent means to change your mind, not necessarily to feel sorry for what you’ve done. That’s an emotional thing, and that doesn’t last. So we as believers have the opportunity to learn the easy way, which is the consistent intake of God’s word on a daily basis, and not only to take it in, but to apply it into our life. Because like a subject in school, once you learn it, you’re going to be tested on what you learned to see if you actually learned it. I want you to do something for me right now. I don’t ask you to do this very often, but I want you to imagine a blackboard in a school classroom. Did you ever see that when you were growing up in school? We used to fight over who got to clean the blackboard and get out of class and go get the sponge and clean the blackboard. Imagine a blackboard in a school classroom and you’re sitting in your desk and a teacher asks you to go up there and draw a great big Z on that blackboard so that all can see the Z. The easy way to learn is going to be illustrated by this big Z. If you start in the upper left-hand corner where you’re drawing the Z, if you will write the word communicate on your blackboard. Communicate, that’s the first thing you want to write by that Z. And then if you come across the blackboard to the right-hand corner of the upper Z, this is where learning starts, where a pastor communicates to you accurate Bible principles. The best way to do this is line upon line, precept upon precept. Once that pastor does this, it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to capture the content that he gives you and to convert it into spiritual fuel. If you’re not filled with the Holy Spirit when you’re taking it in, you’re not gonna ever make the conversion. So the upper letter of the word Z is what? Communicate and then capture on the other side. The pastor communicates, the Holy Spirit captures what he communicates to you. Now we’re coming down to the bottom part of the Z, drawing the line down. Now that we’ve been accurately fed, now we go to the bottom of the Z from left to right, completing the diagram with the word comply. This is where God wants you to comply with what the Holy Spirit captured, what the pastor communicated. And this is where we actually obey the mandates taught in Scripture. The Greeks had a word for knowledge, and that word was gnosis, G-N-O-S-I-S. But there was another word which was much more important, and it’s pronounced epi-gnosis, E-P-I-G-N-O-S-I-S. The difference in these two words is the actual doing, not just the hearing. Truth heard but not applied is useless. It’s just knowledge. But truth heard and applied is the accumulation of wisdom. This process must take place while under the filling of the Holy Spirit, or it’s just an exercise and ritual that has no reality to it. So if we go back to the blackboard at the top, you got what? Communicate, the pastor. Capture, coming across the top of the Z, the Holy Spirit does that. and brings it down to the bottom of the Z, where you comprehend it, you understand it, and if you go across to the other side of the Z, you comply, or you keep what the Bible tells you to do. Communicate, capture, comprehend, and comply is critical in your life. You have to understand the Word of God. You have to understand that just going to church and sitting there and listening to the message doesn’t mean anything unless you apply what you hear. You and I have been given some mandates. Those mandates are to study and to grow spiritually. Study and grow. You can read about them in 2 Timothy 2.15, which says, study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, but rightly dividing the word of truth. And then you can see 2 Peter 3.18, where it says, grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. These are two mandates. These are not requests. They are mandates. And when you ignore these instructions from God, you continue to put your wishes and your desires in front of God’s mandates as you eventually come under warning discipline. Chastening. He will chasten you. He will spank you. He will warn you. This is easy discipline. This doesn’t hurt. This is God trying to teach you the easy way. You may see something on a billboard that reminds you. Go to church. Read your Bible. And then in your mind, the Holy Spirit will say, uh-huh, you’re not doing that, are you? It’s God’s way of getting your attention. It’s not necessarily painful, but it’s definitely uncomfortable. The reason is this is designed to bring genuine humility into your life and you to quit being arrogant and making arrogant excuses why you don’t have to do that. Arrogant excuses come from self-justification and self-deception. So what God does through discipline one, chastisement, is to create humility in your life and bring about obedience. And when that doesn’t work, if it doesn’t work with you, if you’re too dumb-headed, hard-headed, not-headed, then the scourging comes. That’s the learning with pain associated. The learning with pain associated. And again, it’s not because he’s mad at you, but it’s because God is trying to stop you from destroying yourself through multiple bad decisions. That scourging is called intense discipline. So you have warning discipline. That’s the chastisement. And scourging, that’s the intense discipline. That’s intense discipline. So you have warning discipline and intense discipline. Now listen very carefully to the next part of Hebrews 12. Furthermore, we’ve had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the father of spirits and live? And live? The final stage of divine discipline is called dying discipline. In Proverbs 15, 10, the Bible says, correction is grievous unto him that forsaketh the way and he that hateth the reproof of God shall die. This is God taking you home way too soon. In 1 John 5, 16, if a man sees his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. But there is a sin unto death, and I do not say that he should pray for that. It’s a sad thing to see when believers get out of fellowship and stay out of fellowship, when they don’t recover from their sin, when they don’t rebound their sin, I don’t know what your sin might be or what you might be involved in, but I’m warning you, I’m telling you straight up, you may be under God’s discipline in this very moment, and this is why your life is so miserable. This is why you’re suffering, because you’re under divine discipline. You’re a child of God, but you’re not studying to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needed not to be ashamed. You’re not growing in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. You’re pursuing your own objectives and your own desires and your own will, And you’re only making yourself more miserable by your continually bad decisions, which limit future options. So the discipline you’re under right now is to rescue you from yourself, not from somebody else, from your own self, because you are the one destroying your life, because you want to be obedient to God’s plan for your life. You got your will and your way and that’s what you want to do. And I have seen it happen in people’s lives and I won’t mention any names but it’s been a very sad thing to watch. Believers that I know that are Christians who at one time sought after God’s will in their life but they kind of eventually went down the my way highway and the end was not nice. Sometimes God has to take them on home to keep from destroying other people along the way. So remember that In summary, most of our suffering comes from ourselves under the law of what we call volitional responsibility. But when we ignore the suffering incurred from the law of volitional responsibility and we continue to live in the dungeon of the cosmic world, the cosmic system, the cosmic vortex, then God can bring us back to reality with chastisement, scourging, getting your attention. Here’s a very critical point I want to make to you. Divine discipline does not imply loss of salvation. No matter how intense the suffering you may go through, you’re not losing your salvation. Once you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s not one thing that you’re going to do that God will cancel that and kick you out of his family. God’s plan is established once and forever. Once you become a member of the royal family of God, he doesn’t kick you out because you started sinning and you got into some sin. You can look at the illustration of the prodigal son and see that in Luke, the whole story about the prodigal son, the parable that Jesus gave. The son who went down the my way highway and eventually almost destroyed himself and came home and his father still loved him. So what about you? Are you on the my way highway? Are you under divine discipline? Are the decisions that you’re making causing you to have misery and suffering in your life? then rebound, confess those sins, 1 John 1, 9, the sin of not studying, the sin of not growing, the sin of not staying filled with the Holy Spirit. Confess those sins, let God cleanse you, and make a decision like any other decision. I want to be the person God wants me to be. I want to grow in the grace and knowledge of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It’s not going to be easy. It will be testing. Satan will do everything he can to stop you from honoring that decision. He will distract you and discourage you and try to defeat you because he knows that a mature believer has a maximum impact for God in this world. Now let’s talk about one other thing before we wrap it up this morning. Let’s talk about national discipline. National discipline, not personal, national. In Hosea 4, 1 through 6, listen to this. Hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel. For the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land because there’s no truth, no mercy, and no knowledge of God in the land. That’s Hosea 4.1. Now let me skip to verse 6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you’ve rejected knowledge, I will reject you. You hear that? Because you reject knowledge, I will reject you. and you will be no more a priest for me. Since you have forgotten the laws of your God, I will also forget your children. What is it that destroys a nation? It’s the no knowledge of God’s plan. There’s one thing Satan’s tried to do in this country, shut down the word of God so that people have no knowledge of God and his plan. Do away with the 10 commandments in the schools. Stop prayer from happening in the schools. Anybody that tries to preach in the public can condemn him and criticize him. No knowledge of God in the land. What about you? How much about God do you even know? God said in Jeremiah, I want people who know me and understand me. And I’ve told you before, it’s a bad thing to not understand the God that you know. You may know him, yes. You may be saved, yes. But you might not understand the God that you know. Last week, I told you that passage about go outside and see God. Would you want to do it? And then I read the verse that said, no man can see me and live. Nations can become arrogant and under divine discipline. In Leviticus 26, 19, I will break down the arrogance of your power and I will make your sky like iron and your land like bronze. In Ezekiel 7.10, he said, behold, the day is coming. Your doom has gone forth. The rod of discipline has budded because arrogance has blossomed. In a nation such as ours, national arrogance will destroy us. National discipline comes when the pivot of mature believers shrinks up and begins to disappear. When divine judgment falls, it always comes in the form of historical disaster. Idiotic government policies that tell you the end is very near. If the pivot is large enough, the nation will be delivered. But if the pivot is too small, and that’s you, you’ve got to be in that pivot, the nation will be destroyed. Every nation has its relationship with the justice of God through those laws of divine establishment, freedom, marriage, family, and nationalism. So religion is the greatest enemy of a nation because in the name of good, it produces more evil than any sin ever could produce. Historical disaster as the cleansing of a nation is taught under the concept of the five cycles of discipline in Leviticus 26, 14 through 38. Write that verse down and read it. Leviticus 26, 14 through 38. You will see how the divine discipline of God comes in five distinct cycles. And I could tell you this, the United States of America is under divine discipline. We’re in big trouble. Unless we pull out of it, get things right, we’re going to lose what God has blessed us, and that’s the freedom that we have to worship and enjoy him. All right? I hope you understood this message. I hope it applies to your life. I hope it serves as a warning to you to recover and get back where you belong. Start growing in the grace and knowledge of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Until next week, I’m your host, Rick Hughes, and I thank you for listening to The Flatline.
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Thank you for listening to The Floodline with your host, Rick Hughes. If you’d like to contact Rick, please write to him at P.O. Box 100, Cropwell, Alabama, 35054, or online at www.rickhughesministries.org.
