In the name of T
Jesus.
You
and I have a Father who desperately wants to keep you, and all His children,
for all eternity. You and I are the
Father’s sons and daughters. By Holy
Baptism we became coheirs, with His only-begotten Son, of all the Father’s
blessings. Your sin was crucified with
Christ. With Jesus, your eternal life has
burst forth from His empty tomb.
Salvation belongs to the Lord, and he gives it freely to His sons and
daughters. The Father loves you, his
children. His desire is to keep you for
all eternity. This is why He must
discipline you.
Of
course, like all children, we would rather not be disciplined, at least at
first. But this morning, God the Holy
Spirit will bring us to maturity, and will teach us to welcome the Father’s
discipline with thanksgiving. By God’s
Word we will see, that when the Father gives His Law, it is Good and Wise. We will learn that the Father’s discipline
brings with it the fruit of repentance and faith. This is how he turns His children from their
sin, so that they would flee to Jesus, who from the curse has set us free. The Father’s discipline brings us to
righteousness.
Consider
first today’s Gospel reading. It would
be difficult to find a clearer passage in all of scripture to remind us of the
importance of our Father’s discipline.
When asked if those who are saved will be few, Jesus’ answer should
catch the attention of even the most faithful churchgoers. Many,
I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen
and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door,
saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you
come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and
you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where
you come from. Depart from me, all you
workers of evil!’ (Luke 12:24-27)
Talk about a narrow door. So
narrow, in fact, is the way of salvation, that many who live their lives thinking
that they will inherit the kingdom, will be sent away from the Lord, and into
that place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
People
who ate and drank with Jesus; folks who gathered to hear him teach in their
streets; thrown out of His presence and into eternal death. Haven’t we eaten with Jesus? Haven’t we drank from the cup of His
blood? Haven’t we gathered together for confirmation
classes, Bible classes, and haven’t we had devotional time to learn the Lord’s
teaching? How are we any different than
those who Jesus calls workers of evil?
How are we to know if we will avoid our own weeping and gnashing of
teeth? How are we to know whether or not
the door is too narrow for us? Hear
again verses 5 and 6 of the Epistle, from Hebrews, chapter 12:
My son(s) (and daughters), 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 (and daughter) whom he receives.
So how do you receive the discipline
of the Father?
For
many, the discipline of the Father is good, as long as it is applied to someone
else. When they hear the Law clearly
preached, they respond by saying to their pastor: “You really got ‘em today.” “They really needed to hear that.” Or maybe this sort of person just sits in the
pew thinking, “I know someone like that.”
The problem is, if the Father’s discipline is always intended for
someone else, than the Father is not treating you as a son or daughter, for the
one who He disciplines is the
one He loves.
Other
folks are simply convinced that the Father’s discipline no longer applies. It goes something like this: “the Old
Testament was full of rules and regulations, but now we have the New Testament,
which is all about love and peace. Do
you really think I could go to hell for dishonoring my parents, or for ripping
off my employees, or for having premarital sex, or for hating that guy at
church, or for harming my classmates reputation, or for scheming to get my
brothers inheritance, or for encouraging my neighbor’s wife or workers to leave
him, or turn away from him. God loves me
just the way I am.”
Well,
God the Father does love you, but He has no intention of leaving you in your
sin, walking down the path that leads away from heaven. He hates the sin that flows from your heart: evil thoughts,
murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander (Matthew
15:19). And yes, this does apply to all of
us, you and me. There’s no denying it.
In
your own struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of
shedding your blood. In other words,
when temptation has come upon you, you have fallen. You have not been able to stand up against
the devil’s attacks and come out unscathed like Jesus Christ. You have not been able to humble yourself to
the point of death, rather than seek your own glory. Unlike Jesus, you have fallen short of the
glory of God, which is why the Father doesn’t simply leave you as you are. No, the Father disciplines you because he
loves you. His desire is to keep you.
And
so, my friends, there is another response to the Father’s discipline—a faithful
response. This response is only taught
by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God.
And it enables the Father’s sons and daughters, sinners like you and me,
to confess the absurd:
·
Oh how I love your law! I meditate
on it all day long. (Psalm 119:97)
·
My flesh trembles in fear of you; I stand in awe of your
laws. (Psalm 119:20)
·
I love your commands more than gold, more than
pure gold, and because I consider all your precepts right, I hate every wrong
path. (Psalm 119:127-128)
·
I hate and abhor falsehood but I love your law. (Psalm 119:163)
The faithful response, made possible
only as the Holy Spirit gives faith in the Word, is to receive the Father’s
discipline with thanksgiving. With eyes
of faith, the Holy Spirit teaches us to know that the Father’s discipline is
always for our good, for by it he chases away the sin that so easily entangles,
and produces in us the repentance that leads us to the cross, where our
righteousness is found.
We
have all had earthly parents who disciplined us and we respected them. Listen
to how Dr. Luther describes the respect we have for our earthly parents:
Every head of a household must punish and should not
tolerate evil…A father does not punish his son in order to make him spiteful
and ruin him in body and soul, but rather to ward off his vice; he wants to
purify him and wipe away his faults. He
hates, not the person, but the vice.
This is a wrathful love which is kind and good toward the person; hence
it cannot tolerate the nastiness in him.
So, too a woman cannot bear it when there is dirt on her child’s nose,
but must wipe it away; she does not do this in order to hurt the child. Magistrates, teachers, and parents must
chastise, but this chastisement is fatherly and kind.
So,
if we can readily admit that our earthly parents’ discipline is good and wise,
shall we not much more be subject to our perfect heavenly Father? Our earthly parents disciplined us for a
short time as it seemed best to them, praying for help, and experimenting along
the way, but God the Father’s discipline is always Good and Wise.
The Father disciplines us, his children, so that he might keep us as His
children. His discipline serves to keep
us on that narrow way spoken of by Jesus, and for this reason, we receive the
Father’s discipline with joy and thanksgiving, even though it isn’t fun or
pleasant. And according to the
Scriptures, it won’t be fun or pleasant.
When
the Law is preached or taught to us in such a way that it pierces through to
our heart and causes us to see our sin in the mirror, it isn’t fun or
pleasant. It forces us to change our
sinful ways, to flee from temptation, to put to an end certain behaviors, and
to ultimately admit that our ways are often times not the ways of the
Lord. The Father’s discipline in the law
humbles us, and while it isn’t pleasant at the time, in repentance and faith, we
learn to receive it with joy and thanksgiving.
As sons and daughters who have been instructed and sanctified by the
Holy Spirit, we know that the Law’s greater purpose is to drive us to repentance,
where we are stripped of our self-righteousness, and by faith, find our refuge
in the cross, and the blood of Jesus which flows from it.
Even
the Father’s only begotten Son, did not find the Father’s discipline to be
pleasant at the time: "My Father,
if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me." But the Father would not refrain from
disciplining His own Son—and so, Jesus became the mediator of a new covenant,
and His blood was sprinkled out so that it would speak a better word than the
Law.
You see,
the Father’s wrath and final judgment has been carried out on His Son, so that you,
His children, would not suffer the same fate, and be separated for all
eternity. You and I have a Father who desperately wants to keep you,
and all His children, for all eternity.
You and I are the Father’s sons and daughters. And so, He disciplines You, by His Word, he
trains you through the crosses you bear, and he instructs you in the midst of
your greatest burdens, to cling to Him.
So that you too would confess how you delight in His law, how you
welcome His discipline, how you give thanks for His instruction—even when it
isn’t fun or pleasant.
But how much joy there will be on that Day when the Son of
God will appear and say: “Behold, I am your Savior and Deliverer…I have
chastised you that your sin might be purged away and that you might acknowledge
Me as your God and Savior”! [2]
You
and I have a heavenly Father who disciplines us, His children, because He desperately
wants to keep us for all of eternity. Salvation
belongs to the Lord, and he gives it by grace to His sons and daughters who in
repentance and faith, flee for refuge to Jesus, who from the curse has set us
free. Disciplined by the Father, and repenting
of our sin, we humbly worship at His throne, Saved by His grace through faith
alone. In the name of T
Jesus. Amen.
[2]Luther,
Martin: Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan (Hrsg.) ; Oswald, Hilton C. (Hrsg.) ; Lehmann,
Helmut T. (Hrsg.):
Luther's Works, Vol. 8 : Lectures on Genesis: Chapters
45-50. Saint Louis : Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1966 (Luther's
Works 8), S. 8:12
