Image: Zinnia, North Garden, Virginia, July 2016
Note: The devotion below is taken
from the sermon notes from last Sunday morning’s sermon on Hebrews 12:4-11.
Hebrews 12:5 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: 6 For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,
and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
In
Hebrews 12:5-6 we have an example of Scripture within Scripture. The inspired author cites Proverbs 3:11-12.
The
citation begins, “My son….” (v. 5). The
setting in Proverbs is a father’s instruction of his son, the king’s
instruction of the prince. Here the
words have greater spiritual weight. The
Father is God the Father. The son is the
blood-bought child of God.
“despise
not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint….”
This
the first of eight times that a variation on the word “chasten” appears in our
passage (vv. 4-11). Sometimes it appears as the verb “to chasten” (once translated as “to correct” in v. 9). In others it is the noun “chastisement” or
“chastening.”
What
does chastening mean? First, it is not
merely punishment. We might call it the
intentional infliction of suffering with the goal or end of spiritual
improvement. Though taken from a Hebrew
original in the Proverbs, the Greek term used in v. 5 is paidea. In Greek this
usually refers to the training or instruction or education or guidance of a
child. The term also came to refer to
the education of the ideal citizen.
Chastening
is a school of affliction in which we are enrolled in order to be made more
Christ-like.
When we come under the shadow of afflictions which God might
allow for our chastening we are not to question the Lord, to fight against the
Lord, to slander the Lord, to despise the Lord, but to see it as his perfect
will which he has sovereingly orchestrated for our good.
Grace and peace, Pastor
Jeff Riddle
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