Anchored in the Unchanging Love of a Disciplining Father with Mark Ordus

We're so glad you're here. My name is Mark. I'm the one of the youth directors here at Ward Church. And you guys came on a good day because today we're talking about discipline. I know my Farmington people just cheered when I said that.

I know they did. Okay. So in my life growing up, I kind of I've learned that there's two kinds of discipline. The first kind of discipline is like scary discipline, which I don't mom, are you here today? No, mom isn't.

Okay. So we can tell this story. Okay. So when I was younger, I rode the bus to school. And I was in like first grade.

And while we were riding the bus, would sit with my best friend, Zach. He was my boy, you know, my ride or die and everything. And then but one day, all of the sixth graders on the bus started picking on Zach for no reason, really. They just started making fun of him, picking on him. And so all of a sudden, he was my boy and everything, but it was the sixth graders.

Come on. So I started making fun of Zach too. Ain't that terrible? And, so I I I forgot about it throughout the day, went home, everything was fine. And then I walk in, and my mom was home.

And she said, got a call from Zach's mother today. And I was like, oh shoot, this ain't good. You know, and she said, I want you to go wait upstairs. And I was like, oh man, this is gonna be real bad. I I you know, my parents or my mom, she was the one who spanked me.

She's only spanked me a couple times in my life, but that was enough to like she plays this head game. Right? So I know, like, that's all it took for me. You know, it might take, you know, some extra whooping for some people, but that was it for me. Oh, man.

I was terrified. And it was almost like the waiting was worse than when it actually happened because I was like, oh, she's gonna kill me. I'm gonna die. My mom was lovely. Mom, she gets mad when I tell stories about her.

She's a lovely woman. But it was terrifying. So that made me for the next, like, ten years of my life think, man, I I don't wanna I don't wanna get a spanking, I'm gonna try to do what's right. So there's that kind of discipline, which can be kind of negative. There was another kind of negative or scary discipline.

I went to a private school, Intercity Baptist, go Chargers. You know? And we would get these little pink slips whenever we did anything wrong. They were called demerits. And they would get them like if you forget your pen when you go to class, if you didn't have the right type of pen or the right colored pen, demerits, demerits, demerits.

And there was this one time where, you know, I've never cheated on anything in my life except this one time, you know. And it was because I hadn't finished my English homework, and I was sitting there with my buddy Jim, and I was like, hey, dude. Let me copy your, like, note card. Just note card. Not a big deal.

Just a note card. And I I started copying it, and of course, that was the moment my teacher came right over to me, she's like, hey, Mark. And I was like, hello, missus Snavely. And, she was like, what are you doing? And I'm like, nothing.

Don't worry. It's not no. So I got man, got a lot of demerits that time. You know? So there's like there's this kind of scary kind of discipline.

This is the kind of discipline we avoid at all cost. You know? The kind we run from, the kind we don't really want to experience in our lives. But then there's also good discipline. Right?

I played hockey for about ten or twelve years, and, as a part of that, we would practice. And during those practices, man, we would get disciplined. We would skate and skate and skate. Sometimes the worst was when our coach would tell us, just leave your sticks on the bench. You won't need them today.

Because then we knew, oh, man. We're just gonna be skating and skating and skating. And I never realized how important that discipline was until a couple years ago when my buddy asked me to come sub in his ice hockey league, and I hadn't been disciplined for the last twenty years. And I almost died, you know. Not literally, but it felt like it.

I got home, and I walked in the door, and I just sat on our little steps. Because we live in a quad level, lots of steps. And I sat on the steps, and Lisa was like, are you Okay? And I was like, I don't think so. I think I'm dying.

So, I learned that discipline was probably pretty good, probably pretty important. So, this morning as we dive into this text a little bit, I wanna ask you, what comes to mind when you think of discipline? I'm sure there are some people here this morning who probably when you hear the word discipline, you kinda get nervous. It's something you wanna avoid at all cost. And I'm sure there's also some people gathered here today who probably think like, no, I need more discipline in my life.

I want to live a disciplined life. But no matter where you fall on that spectrum, the reality is the Bible actually talks an awful lot about discipline. It talks about it a lot. And here at Ward, we're making our way through, the book of Hebrews. And as we're making our way through it, our theme has kind of been being anchored.

Being anchored in our faith because the book of Hebrews was written to Hebrew Christians who were experiencing a lot of persecution at the time. And one of the concerns that the author had, which by the way, we don't really know who authored Hebrews. There's a couple ideas out there. But whoever it was, we know who they were writing to. They were writing to the Hebrew Christians because their fear was under this intense persecution that they would just walk away from their faith and leave it behind.

So they write this this letter to them, and and I kind of believe that it's written to us as well about how we can anchor our faith in something unchanging. So as we've been going through in week one, pastor Terence started at chapter one, And he talked about the supremacy, the unchanging supremacy of Jesus Christ. In other words, anchoring our faith to Jesus Christ. And then in week two, Nicole Eunice came and talked about the unchanging nature of Jesus Christ. She talked about leadership may change, people may change, but God never does.

And then last week, Terence talked about Jesus Christ as our unchanging great high priest. So you're probably catching the theme here. The theme of the book of Hebrews is about anchoring ourselves to something more, something better. So today we're gonna start in Hebrews chapter 12 verse three, and here's what the author writes. He says, consider him he's referring to Jesus.

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. If you look at the life of Jesus so so you see right away the author is anchoring our faith in Jesus. He's saying, this is the example. This is the target. This is the one who you should want to live and love like, just like our mission statement here at Ward states.

But you think about Jesus. Consider him who endured. Jesus' whole life here on earth was almost defined by opposition. I mean, yourself in his shoes. His own hometown rejected him when he started his ministry.

His people rejected him and tried to shut him down. The church of the day wanted to shut him down to the point that they threatened to kill him, which they eventually did. And I put myself I try to put myself in Jesus' shoes. And man, if I had that kind of opposition, I would have been like, you know what? Nuts to you people.

Just go on living without hope, without love. Nuts to you. But that's why, you know, Jesus is God and I'm just Mark. You know what I'm saying? So, but so Jesus persisted, but he faced so much opposition.

So the author, to start the conversation says, so here is the source. The source is our savior, the one we try to live and love like. He's the goal. He's who we're aiming to be more like tomorrow than we are today. And then he continues in verse four.

He says, in your struggles against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. So as I was researching for this message today, I I started to look into this verse a little bit in different commentaries and things to try and figure out what he's talking about here. And a lot of scholars say he's referring to Hebrews chapter 11, which comes right before, which basically is a list of all the heroes of our faith that have gone before us. Guys that have done great things in the name of Jesus Christ, some who had literally bled and died for their faith. Another commentary I read said it could be a callback to just in the verses prior, he's comparing, discipline to that of being like a runner, running a race, and how they discipline themselves to the point of breaking their own bodies sometimes to prepare to win the race.

And then another one said it could be an allusion to Grecian boxing, which the audience would have been very familiar with. So was the author saying, yeah, you suffered and you'll most likely suffer more? Well, let's see. In verses five and six, he says this, and have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father, addresses his son? It says, my son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline.

There's that word. And do not lose heart when he rebukes you because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son. So so the author takes their present suffering, and he doesn't ignore it, but he calls it back. He almost takes their present and calls back to a past that they all knew the stories of. He's referencing here, he's actually quoting the book of Proverbs, which was written about a thousand years before the book of Hebrews.

And it was written during the reign of King Solomon, and King Solomon wrote these same words. And and he's calling back because that would have been passages these Christians were familiar with. And he's saying the same God who back then called us to to embrace the discipline of God like a son to his father is calling us now to do the same thing. And this makes sense to us. Right?

Because I think all of us, especially those who have moved out of our parents' houses and are kind of like grown ups now, all of us usually have that moment where we think, oh, that's what they were doing. Right? When referring to our parents. Because teenagers, we know at that time when we are teenagers, sometimes our parents will give us, like, rules or expectations, and we're like, man, you're so old. You don't know.

You know? And, but then at some point, we get to a point where we're like, oh, that's why they did the things we did. You know? Like, I I know I tell a lot of stories about my mom at youth group. Don't worry.

She's always there and hears all of them, and she'll, like, you know, yell at me after and stuff. It's fine. But, but I've gotten to a place now when I talk to the kids in my youth group where I say, you know what? I'm so thankful for my mom. I'm so thankful for all the things that she and my dad did that I thought was crazy at the time, but now I'm so thankful for.

So he's saying, you guys can look back to your history and know that God has shown this before he was faithful then, and he's going to be faithful now. So the writer is basically taking them back to a time when, in their history when one of the wisest kings who ever lived is saying, you all know this. You've seen it with God how he disciplined the people of Israel, your ancestors. You've seen this in your own life. God disciplines those he loves.

Then he continues in verse seven. He says this, so endure hardship as discipline. Let me read that one more time. Endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as his children.

For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline, then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. And the passage continues. Or is that it? Does it not continue?

That doesn't continue. Well, it does. We'll get there in a minute. But no. It does continue.

Okay. Great. This is going really well. Okay. So he continues, Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them for it.

How much more should we submit to the father of spirits and live? So in this passage, the author expounds a little bit. Being disciplined validates the fact that we are God's children. I remember talking about my mom. When I was in youth group, when I was in high school, my parents were our youth leaders.

And my mom would have like she was pretty tough on the girls in the youth group. She'd be very confrontational with them about choices they were making, decisions they were making. She was pretty tough. But you know the craziest part about it? Man, the girls in my youth group loved my mom.

They loved her and talked to her about everything. They would come up to me and say, man, I wish we could trade places and I could have your mom, and I'd be like, bro, you can have her. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's fine. I'll I'll do that.

But all these girls loved my mom, and I think the reason for it was in my youth group, in that particular place at that particular time, we had a lot of girls who weren't really getting a lot of attention from their parents, either because they were working so much or not present at all. And all of a sudden, have this woman in their life who cares about them and loves them enough to point them towards something better. And when she did that, every hard conversation she had with the girls in my youth group, they knew she cared about them. They knew she loved them, loved them enough to point them to something better. The fact that she was willing to call them out on things meant that meant to them that she loved them enough to point them to something better.

And how much more does God love us? How much more does God desire as the one who created us on purpose and for a purpose to discipline us enough to point us towards something better because God's way is always better. See, sometimes we're tempted to kind of equate a comfortable life with a God honoring life. We tend to think if everything's going well in our life, we must be doing okay. But then verse eight comes along again.

Right? And it says, if you are not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline, then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. So it's almost saying like, man, if everyone is disciplined and if they're not, which we all are, then we're not legitimate, then either God isn't disciplining us at all or he is disciplining us and we're just not paying attention. So the question is, first of all, have we embraced our sonship or daughtership of God our heavenly father? And if we have, have we been ignoring the discipline or the things God is doing in our lives?

And by doing so, embrace the life running from the transformation God desperately desires to do in our lives. The passage continues. It says, they disciplined us for a little while, they being our earthly parents. They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best, but God disciplines us for good in order that we may share in his holiness. 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. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make level the paths for your feet, another callback to the book of Proverbs. Right? So that the lame may not be disabled but rather healed.

But rather healed. See parents, we do our best to discipline our kids. Right? And sometimes we do it well. Know?

I remember a couple years ago, my daughter shared something on social media and it didn't turn out great for her. So I sat her down and I said, this is why you have to be so careful in this world we're living in now. We had a really great conversation, I was like, yes, I nailed this one. But then there was a time when my son Micah, who's here hey, son. Was about five years old, and he had on a Spider Man hoodie, you know, with a Spider Man hood and everything.

He ran out and was so happy to show me his Spider Man hoodie. He goes, daddy, I'm Spider Man. And then he just hit me with a right hook right in my eyeball. I thought he punched my eyeball out of my head. And I was so angry that I, in turn, punched our fireplace with a metal frame and everything.

And I dented it, and I hurt my hand. And then he was so terrified, he ran away. Couldn't even scream. He was so scared of what had just happened. So sometimes we get it right, but other times we definitely don't.

Right? When we want to discipline our kids. We have all screwed up. We've all done that. But the thing about God in our verse says this in verse 10 is that God disciplines us for our good in order that we may share in his holiness.

God's discipline, just like his love for us, never fails. God never gets it wrong. His discipline for us is building us into the people he created us to be. And his timing is always perfect. So are you getting the point?

Right? You're starting to understand in any and all situations, God can and will use things we go through to make us stronger. So the question is, how do we do that? How do we embrace God's discipline in our own lives so we can continue to become the people God wants us to be? Well, a few key takeaways from our scripture today.

The first one is this, look out for God's discipline. Pay attention. When you're going through hard times, remember what the verse said. It said embrace hardship as discipline. Because let's be honest, we all experience hardship.

Especially those of us here at Ward Church, we know what it's like to go through hard times. Right? We've had a rough year, but let's be honest. What would happen in those moments when we experience hardship or suffering? If instead of focusing on the hardship we were going through, we fixed our eyes on Jesus, the anchor of our faith and salvation.

That's not normal. Right? What's normal when we go through hardship or when we're going through suffering and things like that is to run from God. What's normal is to think this isn't supposed to happen to me. What's normal is to think I thought God had a plan to prosper me and not harm me.

But what's abnormal in the midst of our suffering is for our first response to look to him. Look to him for help and hope. And then once our eyes are on him, and this is our second takeaway today, is to trust him through the discipline. To trust him through the discipline. To believe that he is with us in and through it, he will use this hardship to grow us.

The difference between hardship not following Jesus and hardship while following Jesus is what Paul writes about in Romans chapter five when he says this, not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings. And again, Paul was writing this letter to people in Rome, Christians in Rome who were suffering, who were being persecuted for their faith. And he says, but we can glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope. And character, hope. What makes the difference for us as Christians when we suffer, when we experience hardship, is in and through and during our hardship, we can have hope.

And discipline doesn't mean God wants us to suffer. Discipline is trusting God in the midst of it. And then one last thing we can learn from this passage is to anchor our faith in Jesus, the one who gives us that hope. Let me ask you a question. What would it look like in your life to reframe suffering from rejection to formation?

What would it look like in your life to every time you experience hardship, which again the scripture says we all will. Right? What would it look like in those moments for our first response to be to look to Jesus? Because when you look at stories in the Bible, there are a whole lot of people who suffered. Like a lot.

Right? You think about Paul, the guy who penned this verse in the letter of Romans. He was being beaten every day for his faith, thrown into prison. He was shipwrecked. All these kind of things going against him.

And he's the one that sits down, but we can glory through it. We can rejoice through it. Think about the story of David. We think about how he was a great king, wrote the Psalms and everything like that. But if you remember the beginning of his story, he was being hunted down by the king of Israel and the entire Israelite army.

He was running. He was scared. Think about guys like Moses or Noah. You know, actually, don't think there's anyone in the Bible who didn't go through hardship or experience hardship. And maybe that's why this chapter is preceded by one who talks about all these people, these heroes of our faith.

But friends, listen. When we suffer, we don't suffer as those who have no hope. We endure hardship. We strengthen our knees. And we trust that God is not only with us in the hardship, but he desires for us to have the discipline to trust him through it so we can rise up stronger on the other side.

Would you all pray with me this morning? God, as we come to you and gather in your name this morning full well knowing that there are people even in the room with us at this time who are suffering some extreme hardships. So God, as we read this scripture that encourages us to endure hardship, view it as discipline. I know this is a lot easier message for some to receive than others, but God, would you help us this morning to trust you, to anchor our faith in you, to anchor our lives in you, especially if there's people maybe they've never made the first decision to anchor their hope in you. God, would today be the day that they decide that their life is in your hands?

God, we thank you for your forgiveness. We thank you for the hope and love and joy we learn in and through relationship with you. God, help us. Help us to be disciplined, knowing that even though things in this life may fail, our hope in you never will. We pray these things in Jesus name.

Amen.