My son, despise not [the]
chastening of [the] Lord, nor faint [when] reproved by him; for whom
[the] Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives”
(Heb. 12: 5, 6). Divine chastening is a very distinct mark of
wisdom’s children, for the passage goes on to say that “if ye are
without chastening, of which all have been made partakers, then are
ye bastards, and not sons” (v8). Everything that tries us, that is a
check upon us, causes exercise of heart, and makes us aware of
weakness in ourselves, is of the nature of chastisement. It may come
in the way of difficulties in the path of faith, or in the shape of
those trials and sorrows which are common to all men—loss of
property, loss of health, or loss of family. Sometimes it may be as
the governmental consequences of sin, but in one way or another all
God’s people receive chastisement. Why? Because it is “for profit,
in order to the partaking of his holiness” (v10) and serves to break
down that which is not of God in us.
I cannot now go into the subject at any length,
but I should like to call your attention to the twofold admonition
in connection with it. The two things which we are warned against
are
despising and
fainting. To
despise the
chastening of the Lord is to treat it as if the Lord had nothing to
do with it, and that it had happened purely by chance. Suppose I
take a bad cold and am laid aside, and I take it just as a matter of
course—perhaps blaming myself for not being more careful—that is
despising the chastening. It may be true that I was careless in
exposing myself unnecessarily to a draught, and that as a natural
consequence I became ill. But behind all that the Lord permitted it
for my profit, and if I recognize the Lord’s hand in it, and bow to
His dealing with me, I shall get blessing out of it. It is wonderful
what rest and peace you get under chastisement when you recognise
the Lord’s hand in it! The moment you turn to the Lord, and your
heart says, ‘I wonder what the Lord intends to teach me by this’,
then the character of the chastening is altogether changed for you.
Not that it is removed or altered, but it wears quite a different
aspect to you. You own the Lord’s hand in it, and then you are
divinely exercised by it.
It is very common for believers to say, ‘But my
chastening is the result of my sin and foolishness. I am just
reaping what I have sowed. How can there be any blessing in that?’
Well, my brother or sister in Christ, if you have judged the sin and
folly, and got right with the Lord about it all, then you will be
very ready to own His hand in the chastening. You will bow under it
in a contrite spirit, and humble yourself under the mighty hand of
God, and such is His infinite grace that He will now make the
consequences of your sin a great spiritual help to you. If the
Lord’s hand is in it, it is surely for your blessing. Never allow
yourself to cherish the cold despairing thought that you are
suffering under the action of an inflexible and mechanical law of
nature. Your suffering is “[the] chastening
of [the] Lord” (Heb.
12: 5, my emphasis).
It seems to me that the Corinthian saints
present to us an example of those who despise chastening. Many were
weak and infirm among them, and many had fallen asleep (see 1 Cor.
11: 30), and yet there does not appear to have been any recognition
that this was the hand of the Lord. Paul’s epistle gave them light,
and recovered them from the terrible condition into which they had
fallen. This shows that the ministry of others may be used to
enlighten us as to the object of chastening.
The second danger is that we may
faint when we are
rebuked of the Lord: “neither be
weary of his
chastisement” (Prov. 3: 11, my emphasis). The recognition of the
Lord’s love would preserve us from this. If we see the Lord in the
chastisement, we shall not despise it; if we perceive His love in
it, we shall not faint under it: “for whom [the] Lord loves he
chastens” (Heb. 12: 6). The consciousness that the chastening is all
the outcome of divine love will preserve us from fainting. You may
have heard of the singer who went to a great master to be trained,
and who, to his great surprise and disappointment, was kept singing
one sheet of exercises for six years. He became very weary of his
exercises—and yet at the
end of six years the master dismissed
him as a perfect singer. The draining exercises had done their work
in training and developing his voice, and all unknown to himself he
had profited immensely by them. Many bitter hours of vexation would
have been spared him if he had had unwavering confidence in the
master’s care. We, like him, have to go through our exercises, and
often there is a sameness and monotony about them which makes the
tendency to fainting very great. We are often inclined to think that
the chastening is doing us no good, and that it is more of a
hindrance than a help. Beloved brethren, let us remember that a
master hand has ordered those exercises for us, and deep eternal
love is behind them all. How blessed to be able to look upon every
trial and difficulty, and upon every pressure and cause of exercise,
as an express token of the Lord’s love!
The Thessalonians give us an example of the
tendency to faint. The enemy seems to have used their tribulations
and persecutions to discourage them, and to make them think that
they were suffering in wrath from the Lord. The apostle writes to
them to beseech them not to be “soon shaken in mind, nor troubled”
and he speaks to them as “brethren beloved of [the] Lord” and
desires that their hearts might be comforted by “our Lord Jesus
Christ himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us, and given
[us] eternal consolation and good hope by grace” (2 Thess. 2: 2, 13,
16, 17). He thus seeks to confirm their hearts in the assurance of
divine love, as the great preservative against the tendency to
faint.
Let us then neither
despise what the Lord
allows to disturb our lives, or faint under His hand! Of course “no
chastening at the time seems to be a [matter] of joy, but of
grief”—it is a very real trial to us (it would not profit us if it
were not)—but “afterwards yields [the] peaceful fruit of
righteousness to those exercised by it” (Heb. 12: 11).
