Has Jesus Rebuked You?

“Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent.  Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”  (Revelation 3:19-20, NIV)

Jesus spoke this to the church of Laodicea—the “lukewarm church”.

So, if God loves us, He will rebuke and discipline us. Even though we are His own sons and daughters…even though we are sealed, born again, and part of the elect?  Yes….He will “take us to task”, so to speak, just as a good father takes his own sons and daughters “to the woodshed”,  ever so often. Salvation is one thing, but becoming His adopted sons and daughters brings with it His high expectations for our lives—He demands behavior within the Christian community that is proper to becoming a member of His family.   And just as children need to be taught and disciplined, so do we.  The Hand of God is going to get our attention from time to time!

But the last thing we want to do is to push God to bring about more of it than we need! Since Christmas, I have yelled more than I should have, threats to my boys in the basement, “Don’t make me come down there!” We do not want to make God come down here to take care of our attitude!

He does rebuke us, and He does cause us some pain, at times! That’s the Biblical model and frank truth about His character—— and everyone of us in this room who call Him Father has felt His hand from time to time!  He gets our attention!  He’s not always the meek, nice, gentle old man with a white beard depicted in paintings or cartoons.  And neither was Jesus always some soft-spoken patsy or effeminate sage or wiseman.  He was a carpenter at a time when there were no power tools or Lowe’s Hardware.  He could be tough and physical, if needed. 

Consider these passages:  “While he was still approaching, the demon slammed him to the ground and threw him into a convulsion. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the boy and gave him back to his father.”( Luke 9:42, NIV). Demons also were coming out of many, shouting, “You are the Son of God!” But rebuking them, He would not allow them to speak, because they knew Him to be the Christ.” (Luke 4:41, NIV).  Later, when it came to those who were closest to Him, this happened: “But turning around and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” (Mark 8:33, NIV)

Jesus rebuked the demons, the narcissistic religious leaders of His time, His family, and His closest disciples. God will rebuke and discipline us at times.

So what’s our attitude to this reality?  No one likes to be chastened, but I have to be glad that He loves me enough to do it!  The father who withholds punishment and discipline from their child isn’t the ideal parent, but a perversion of what a real father should be able and willing to do. God’s rebuke means something because He has taken the time and focus and power to express, in clear terms, His unfavorable opinion of the worth or quality of our actions. He doesn’t have to do this—He could just wipe us off the face of creation and start all over—but He loves us and intends for us to make Him proud one day.  So, “Behold, how happy is the man whom God reproves.  So do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.” Job 5:17 “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him; for those whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? . . . All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” (Hebrews 12:3–11). Are we training our sons and daughters to receive discipline and rebuke?

I want to bring your attention to a very scary word in that last passage: “Scourge”.  That’s a dreadful word, to me; it does not merely suggest a verbal rebuke or some sort of spiritual “time-out” by God.  And the word scourge was not mistakenly put there; it’s not a mistranslation, and you can’t ignore it by using the “what the original Greek really means in this verse” kind of candy-coating.  Scourge refers to punishment of the most severe sort. That kind of parenting goes totally counter to what we are taught in college or graduate school to think of as a good father. So either we need to call DSS about our abusive, heavenly Father, or maybe some educators and all the pros have it all wrong about what a good father is. Perhaps, just maybe, God, our Father, is a very good—— perhaps the greatest Father in the universe. And maybe this ultimate Father is at times both the epitome of love and tender mercy, and a Father that is prepared to “wear us out” and “beat the tar” out of us! Because that’s what scourging means!  He’s a tender father who loves us, but He has no fear of doing whatever it takes to make us pure and holy.

God “scourging” every son He receives references the painful lessons we will receive at times. To be clear,  I don’t like this passage or the suggestion that God is the source of pain sometimes—-but this simultaneously convinces me, all the more, that this is the authentic translation and that the Holy Spirit intended for this truth to be expressed!  God’s Word does not always bring a smile to my face or cause me to get happy!  There are those with psychological disorders who enjoy pain and the thought of being scourged, but no sane or emotionally healthy person enjoys punishment, pain, or “scourging”.  But a true son or daughter of God recognizes the ultimate benefit and dividends of undergoing God’s “hand” when we need it.  It appears we need it as a nation right now!  His hand is upon many nations right now, it appears.

Each of us has done some gardening, I am guessing, and you know that pruning is painful to the branches, but it’s essential if the vine is to be more productive and to remove the dead weight for the vine!  So if Jesus said that “He is the vine and we are the branches,” it means one of two things:  We are productive vines of which He is proud, or dead weight needing to be pruned.  Prune away God in our lives, in our fat, lazy churches, and in our lukewarm fellowships—have your way!

We had many sheep at the first camp I leased before coming to North Carolina. It was very relaxing to watch them graze and wander all over the camp. But we had to remove their wool every year, and I recall how they hated to get shorn. The bigger rams and ewes seemed embarrassed to have their wool removed and would scamper away from the one shearing them.

It apparently humiliated them. But if we did not shear them routinely, the heat of the heavy wool would kill them, or the weight of the wool, when it became wet from the rain,  could literally cause them to be unable to stand up.  Regardless of whether they wanted it or not, they got shorn when their wool got too thick.  Our heavenly Father is the very definition of love, and yet His love does not stop Him from allowing us to suffer at times…. He rebukes us and allows us to be shorn because He is disciplining us as His own children.

Contrary to what some may say or promote, discipline is something parents must provide to children, regardless of how much the child resists and complains about it. We’re setting up a spiritual standard when we treat our children as God treats us. We are, in effect, preparing them for the life of a spiritual warrior—not that of a religious brat.

And suffering can be one of God’s greatest instruments to lead us to humility.  C.S. Lewis remarked that pain is God’s “megaphone to rouse a deaf world”. According to Lewis, one way God gets our attention through pain is that we become humbled and less self-sufficient. No longer is everything going right because of our own efforts; suffering and pain lead us to a place where we can find our contentment in God.  And why is humility important?  Lewis said, “If you really get into any kind of touch with God, you will, in fact, be humble — delightfully humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life.”

“We ‘have all we want’ is a terrible saying when ‘all’ does not include God. We find God an interruption. As St. Augustine says somewhere, ‘God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full —there’s nowhere for Him to put it.’” But the other side of being a son or daughter is being a part of the family. Are you a part of the family of God? Jesus said that if anyone hears His voice….  Anyone! Have you heard His voice? I have…and I am part of that family now. He knocks…But he does not bang the door or break it down-you have to open it up.  In point, you have to open up your heart and receive Him. And what follows, as mentioned earlier, is being treated like a part of His clan—God will demand and expect more from you. 

Tommy asked me a few years ago to be the volunteer coach for his football team, if there is a team, this year. And when I asked him why, he explained that for the past two years, the coaches of his teams have chosen their sons, win or lose, to be the quarterback.  The same comment was made about Little League Baseball---be the coach and your son gets to pitch, etc.   I have since heard that it’s quite common in this county for the coach to promote his son or daughter to the best positions and most play time, but that’s not how it was when my dad helped coach the one year I played, or when I worked for him one year out of high school. I played the least and worked at the lowest salary and position. No one would ever say that I was privileged to have my dad as a coach or as a boss. Quite the opposite.  

But there’s something he was teaching me that God also teaches and requires of His sons and daughters, and it’s this: He expects more from us than those who are not family.  He disciplines us more severely and requires no less but rather more. Why? Precisely because we are family and He has chosen us, redeemed us, and is preparing us to one day judge the angels! We’re supposed to stand out as true sons and daughters of the King of Kings.

But the other part of being a part of the family is taking part in family life—which includes the indescribably warm feeling of knowing that you belong—you belong in His family and at His table. Eating with someone else is an intimate and very personal rite-Jesus wants to dine with you!  He has invited us to His Father’s table not as guests, but as members of His family.

We sit down and eat at least once a day, and on weekends, in my home for a a meal and a bible study. We don’t do it in front of a TV or separately; we eat at a table, and it’s a ritual in our home. That’s what families used to do together—-and in my estimation what we should be doing every day.  In heaven, evidently, we will eat together as a family.  His point in the above passage is that He desires an intimate relationship with us just as if we were family.  Jesus offers us this incredible promise: “I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”  But you’ve got to invite Him into your home.  To invite Him in is to be reborn—— to become a new creature.  He therefore precedes the idea of Him knocking at your door with the command that we “be earnest and repent.”  Brothers and sisters, it can’t be half-hearted—— you have to mean it. Are you serious about inviting Him in?  Have you heard His voice? Salvation is offered to anyone who “hears my voice and opens the door.”

But please do not think that every time you are suffering, God is scourging you!  All the pain we receive is not necessarily because we are being disciplined by God—— sometimes it’s the result of doing the right thing or suffering for the errors of others, or suffering because we live in a fallen world where the prince of darkness is still in power.  Jesus and all the saints suffered, but were not being rebuked or scourged by God.

But today I believe that we are a lukewarm nation and that we worship, by-and-large, in lukewarm, self-serving churches, often more concerned about budgets, pensions, and not preaching God’s word!  If we preach the word—-the “logos”, the word becoming flesh, conviction and salvation will follow.