We may be seated.
Good morning.
Good to see you.
Welcome to Christ the Redeemer.
My name is Russ Masterson, Pastor here, whether you're here in the sanctuary or online in your living room, happy Valentine's Day.
We just want to let you know you are loved.
One of the sayings that are is around our church and different papers and documents, and we love to say is that his love for you has no brim nor bottom.
And we hope that you really know that today.
And especially as we go into Hebrews chapter 12.
So if you've been with us, we've been studying our way through the book of Hebrews.
We are getting toward the end of it.
We are in chapter 12.
So we're going to jump right in.
If you have your Bibles, you can open it up, or you can look at the screens.
We're going to start in verse 3.
We do have a good bit of scripture to go through today.
So I'll read a little, talk a little, read a little, talk a little to make our way through it.
Hebrews 12, verses 3 and 4.
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself.
So, of course, this is speaking about Christ.
So that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted.
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.
So point number one to guide us here in our thinking is that pondering Christ's redeeming work on the cross fuels our hearts through weariness.
And isn't that good news?
Because we all know weariness.
And this isn't a shaming motivation.
So this isn't like, look what Jesus did, can't you get your act together?
So that's not the reasoning here.
The reasoning here is it's like, yeah, you're weary.
You're weary, of course.
So ponder his loving character toward you.
Ponder his work for you.
That will actually be the way through that weariness and that weakness.
The cross will still stand for you, even while your strength and the world walks away.
Verse 3 gives us that.
It starts out with that.
Consider him.
That word consider is the word, ooh, and I'm gonna butcher this one.
Anna lagazami, or something close.
That's the transliteration.
Probably one of you knows better than me.
The meaning of it's the point.
And the meaning is to think over, to consider, to ponder.
It's almost like to be caught up in, right?
Like if you're watching a really good movie or listening to a really good song and you're caught up in it.
You're pondering it.
You may not be aware that this week a baby eagle was born up at Barrie College.
There's Barry College Eagles.
Is anybody aware of the Berry College Eagles besides me?
A few of you, great, okay.
Maybe you saw the pip.
So a pip is a baby eagle.
Learned that this week.
My daughter had been learning about birds in class.
And so she had learned about eagles, all this information about eagles, and so then eventually they started to watch the online feed of the Berry College Eagles who came to campus in 2012.
The couple, they mate for life, by the way.
Learned that this week.
Here they are, the great couple.
They nest in a tall pine tree by the main entrance of Barrie College.
And there's an online camera.
You can go and you can watch this couple and you could watch their eggs as they laid there still.
But then Monday, my daughter told me, she said, Dad, on the way to school, Dad, there's a crack in one of the eggs.
I mean, she was so excited.
There's a crack and what something's gonna happen.
Like a baby's coming, like it's gonna happen.
And you could tell, like it had moved past knowledge, right?
Like the uh the wingspan's gonna be six to seven and a half feet.
They can fly up to 99 miles per hour, right?
Like it had moved past that.
And it had moved in, like she was pondering these eagles.
Like she was walking around in regular life, thinking about she's riding in the car on the way to school, and she's considering these eagles.
So Thursday morning I go online because I was beginning to ponder these eagles.
So I go online at 9 a.m.
And here's what I see.
I just took a screenshot of my screen because the baby had been born, and the mama eagle was like ripping apart with her talons, you know, ripping apart, like it looked like a maybe a mouse or something, and feeding her little baby.
And I'll be honest, like, and there's a community, okay?
Just to let you know, there's a feed.
You can see like Debbie's weighing in there, and Margaret, like you can do it, mama.
Like, like there's a whole there's a whole bald eagle community out there, and I knew about the fat bear community, we've talked about that, which I'm in.
I didn't know about the bald eagle community, but I'm in it now because I was pondering, like it had moved past information.
So I understood it, understood what my daughter was going through because it was like the information just about eagles, like it had gone past that, and I had moved into a different thing.
And the different thing is what this verse is talking about, this verse three, to consider.
So it's more than just information, it's a pondering to be caught up in that your heart and your mind would be caught up in.
So, what the verse is saying for us, slow down.
Like, slow down and remember again and again the goodness of the love of Jesus to you.
That actually has a supernatural power when you're weary.
The Holy Spirit will use that inside of you within your weakness and vulnerability to help you keep moving forward.
Verse 5.
And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
And when we see sons, remember this was written in a patriarchal ancient society.
So, sons means for us, if when you're hearing it, sons or daughters, my son, 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 whom he receives.
It is for discipline that you have to endure.
God is treating you as sons.
For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
So the writer here is actually quoting Proverbs 3, 11 and 12 to teach us something.
And that says, point number two, this is my words for what I think he's teaching.
Our Heavenly Father cares enough to move us toward maturity, cares enough about us, not just to leave us in our present state.
When I was in the first grade, my friend and I, Matthew, we decided we're gonna cheat on the spelling test.
Remember, you get your 10 spelling words on Monday, and then like the spelling test would be like Thursday or Friday.
I think the spelling test was on Friday, probably.
And uh we decided my method was gonna be, I was gonna write the 10 words on a little sheet of paper, put them in between my legs and my chair.
And word number one, good to go.
Word number two, good to go.
And I think I am solid.
I'm gonna cruise through this, and then sure enough, like word number four, Miss Minor's hand just from behind on my shoulder, and my stomach drops out, little first grader.
Now, what's worse, what's worse is my mom substitute teaching two doors down.
So Miss Minor pulls me up out of that chair out in the hallway, two doors down, gets my mom out of that class with three of us, little Russ, Miss Minor, and my mom are in the hallway outside Miss Frisca's class.
And Miss Minor fills my mom in.
Mom just says, Hey, we'll deal with this when we get home.
So I live in terror the rest of the day.
So when I get home, 10 spelling words, I have to write each word a hundred times.
Little first grade, seven-year-old hand crippled for the rest of my life.
A thousand words.
And then she conducts the spelling test again for me.
Of course, I ace it, right?
I just wrote a thousand words.
And then Monday take all that work back in with my mom to Miss Minor, turn it in, and then have to accept that I will still be receiving zero because I cheated.
Right?
Discipline, just discipline.
Mine was a thousand words and a crippled hand.
My parents cared enough to discipline me.
Right?
And proper discipline is what's important here.
And that's what the Lord does.
He does proper discipline.
Now, this idea of discipline and chastise is not punishment, right?
That should not be what any type of discipline should be.
Right?
And we can so transfer that onto God, right?
Like you endorse some sort of wrongful discipline in this world, and you transfer, well, that must be what God does to me.
I do wrong, I'm punished, he zaps me, he's angry at me.
But that's not what this is.
That's not what this is at all.
This is a caring, guiding parent and proper loving discipline.
Not to harm, not out of anger, out of love and care and guidance.
Discipline is the word paidea, which means to provide instruction with intent to form proper living and moving toward maturity.
To provide instruction with intent to form proper living and moving us toward maturity.
A great 19th-century British preacher who I love, Charles Spurgeon, he wrote this about these verses.
God's people can never by any possibility be punished for their sins.
So just receive that.
That's such good news.
God has punished them already in the person of Christ.
Christ, their substitute, has endured the full penalty for all their guilt, and neither the justice nor the love of God can ever exact again that which Christ has paid.
But yet, while the sin cannot be punished, while the Christian cannot be condemned, he can be chastised.
While he shall never be arranged before God's bar as a criminal and punished for his guilt, yet he now stands in a new relationship, that of a child to his parent.
As a son, he may be chastised on account of sin.
Folly is bound up in the heart of all God's children.
And the rod of the father must bring that folly out of them.
So Spurgeon goes on to say just that God cares enough for you to not leave you in your selfishness or destructive ways.
So he will actually allow that pain to occur as to discipline, as to move us toward maturity, and he'll allow the pain of the world.
He'll use that.
We get that out of this word exhortation.
So the word we get about discipline is that it is exhortation.
And exhortation is the word paraclesis, which means giving comfort, to give aid and encouragement.
So put these ideas together.
What it means is it means this idea to be disciplined, which seems like, oh, don't want that, but that's connected to the idea that God would be comforting us and giving us aid.
So he comforts us and gives us aid even through discipline.
So it's not a distant dad who gets angry and punishes and removes himself.
No, no, no, that's not it at all.
It's a loving father that's with us, who desires one to use any pain to move us toward maturity.
That means nothing's for waste.
Verse 8.
If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them.
Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live?
For they disciplined us for a short time, as it seemed best to them.
But he disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness.
For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
So point number three is this.
And I didn't come up with this.
I read this this week in a commentary somewhere.
The temptation is to think too much of discipline or to think too little of discipline.
So what that means is this, and maybe you've seen either of these extremes.
Thinking too much means that you just always think about God as a disciplinarian God.
Rather than just being part of who he is or part of how he interacts and relates with us.
It's sort of like who he is as his identity, as a disciplinary.
So every stub toe is about God disciplining you.
That's exhausting, right?
Like that's just exhausting of like every single stub toe is God disciplining.
But thinking too little means that God is inactive in any of your pain.
Man, that's despair.
That like any of your discomfort or pain or suffering, that God would be completely inactive in any of it for your good, that would be so despairing.
And so the middle path, somewhere between these two, is that joyful, transformative path where we don't hope for pain.
And we don't need an answer for every discomfort, but when pain arrives, we face it and we feel it and we learn from it.
Maybe you remember from two weeks ago I read this quote by counselor and author Dan Allender, wrote this in his book, The Healing Path.
I think it comes back into this context well for us.
Suffering need not destroy the heart, it has the potential to lead to life.
But few people I know suffer deeply and profit.
Instead, pain is seldom expected nor embraced when it comes.
It is often denied or swept under the spiritual rug of God's sovereignty.
So Alender is saying that the healing path is not in just like stamping God is sovereign, oh well, can't do anything about it.
No, no, the healing path is to face and feel the pain, to learn from it.
So here's what I think this could mean.
Just four suggestions.
Four suggestions.
It means when pain comes, suffering, discomfort, stress, moodiness, all these things, when you're feeling that, do not escape and do not use a religious band-aid.
All right?
We tend to use those two things, escape, you know, three drinks rather than one, or we use a religious band-aid.
God is sovereign, I will never, never really pay attention to that wound.
Right?
Like we tend to go to one way or the other.
Don't do that.
Either way, either way, you're numbing yourself to the reality of life.
What we said a few weeks ago is we said, the more we cry, the more we'll laugh.
That's such good news.
We have to face and feel the pain that we have, and the Lord will use it.
Number two, slow down enough to face the reality and feel the impact of the pain.
That's part of considering Him.
Number three, ask God to reveal to you through His Holy Spirit three things.
I think this would be a good journal entry.
What you need to repent of, what you need to heal from, and what you need to learn.
Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal that.
I'm feeling such pain in this thing.
I'm feeling such discomfort, such stress.
Slow down enough.
Consider his love for you.
You're already safe, you're already secure, you're already beloved in your weakness and your weariness.
So say, God, what do you have for me here?
And number four is maybe you just need to talk to a counselor or a therapist.
You can talk to me and call me, I'll listen, I'll pray for you, I'll refer you on if we're getting into something I can't process with you.
But maybe that's a step you need to take.
Verse 12.
Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.
That no one is sexually immoral or unholy, like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.
For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent through he though he sought it with tears.
Now we could spend three sermons just in that passage, but here's the overarching principle.
Point number four, growing in maturity means pondering Christ while weary, we have that in verse 3, and moving toward godliness, even while we're imperfect.
Saint John of the Cross, he wrote this, thinking about this idea.
God perceives the imperfection within us, and because of his love for us, urges us to grow up.
His love is not content to leave us in our weakness.
And for this reason, he takes us into a dark night.
He weans us from all the pleasures by giving us dry times and an inward darkness.
In doing so, he's able to take away all these vices and create virtues within us.
So here are the promises we have in this passage about our growth in grace.
What we see here, I'll go through them just really fast.
Verse 12, God is faithful to grant strength in your spirit.
Verse 13, God is faithful to healing your inner being.
Spiritually with Him in a right relationship, eternally and emotionally, He is committed to that with you.
Verse 14, God desires us to live in peace with each other.
Verse 14, God desires us to live in holiness in this world.
That means to be set apart.
We're different.
We have a different king, and we live for a different kingdom in this world.
Verse 15, God desires us to care for the souls of others and refuse bitterness between us.
And you take a time out here because that's two times out of all these different things, the writer has mentioned the idea of importance of living in peace with each other.
He says it in verse 14: live with peace with each other, and then he repeats it and says, Don't let any bitterness pop up.
Like if there's conflict, go and resolve it with that person.
So it's not me versus him and me versus her, us versus them.
Like we don't allow festering division.
It's not mask versus unvack mask.
Or this week, impeach versus non-impeach.
Right?
Like it's not like, oh, I only do the baptism by dunking, but anybody's baptism by sprinkling, you know, like I'm not, you know, no, like it's it's not the division.
We're not doing division.
Chick-fil-a sandwich, no Popeye sandwich, that's the big division in our family.
See, we're called to be people of unity.
And when we have division, to go to the person and have a conversation and work toward unity.
And then verse 16: God desires us to live sexually moral.
I love how holistic this list is.
If we back up from it and just look at this list, so God cares about your inner life, God cares about your relationships.
God cares about your actions in the world, and God cares about the most intimate parts of your life.
And he cares about all that because he loves you.
He cares for you.
And it's not to keep you under his thumb and to limit you.
No, no, no, it's to free you into a life with a heart that's free from guilt and shame, to becoming more alive to his love for you.
We moved to Marietta eight years ago to start our church, to start this church.
And we love the people we're meeting.
Even this past week, I saw the picture of us, and a handful of you were there in the dentist office lobby.
Eight years ago.
So some of us had more hair, some of us were thinner, is what I noticed.
This little spot in the back that I talk about, y'all can't see because I'm so tall, it had more hair because I took a kind of enlarged end to see what was going on there.
I mean, we love the people where we were meeting as we were starting.
I mean, it's God was so exciting to move up here.
But at the same time, like I missed my home.
Like, I mean, it was only 20 minutes north, but at the same time, like I missed my YMCA.
Like the Buckhead YMCA.
I mean, that is an amazing YMCA.
They are pulling together the charitable donations.
That place is amazing.
I miss my publics, I miss my drive to work, I missed that from my office I could walk down the hill and get the spinach artichoke dipped for lunch from Houston's.
Like, I loved all that.
I missed it.
I did, I missed it.
Like, it took about a year for me in Marietta just to feel at home.
It had nothing to do with Marietta, it has to do with me.
I don't like change.
But slowly I found my home.
Like slowly I felt at home in the house we bought, right?
Have you ever had that experience you buy a house, you're in the house for like a long time before you actually feel at home in it?
Because, see, the home is actually where you settle in and you feel refuge.
Like you can move your stuff and you can like go and live somewhere else, but your home and your heart may be somewhere else.
Home's our resting place.
It's a refuge, it's the place we find our greatest sense of identity and nurturing.
And this is the last point.
This is my takeaway, at least for me.
Pondering Christ means making his gracious and merciful heart your home.
Like to consider him and ponder him and be caught up in that.
That we'd be finding our home there and his limitless love for us.
The practice of pondering, whether it's in set times, in that quiet moment in the morning or in the evening, maybe a lunch break, or maybe it's spontaneous during the day, it's just allowing your heart to settle into the only place of true refuge for you.
My brothers and sisters, you're weary.
I'm weary.
We're moody, we can be stressed, we can be weak, we can be sinful, we can be broken, but we are cherished by the Heavenly Father.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you for this good news that you love us without hesitation, without reservation, and in that love you care enough for us not to leave us in our selfish ways and destructive ways in this world and in our hearts.
Help us to know our security even more as we consider you and ponder you caught up in the gospel story.
That your grace to us is astonishing and it is sufficient, it is enough, and we never have to live in any doubt of our position with you on a day-to-day basis.
And would that only send us all the more to say, what do you have for me in this?
What do you have for me in this pain or this discomfort?
Holy Spirit, would you, even now, and each of us, as we have, as we have parts of our lives that are filled with pain, some in minor ways and some in major ways, would we be able to say to you, God, even in this discomfort, what do you have for me?
How would you like to grow me?
And would we be open to it?
Help us to live more and more as your children.
Acknowledging you that that you are our Heavenly Father.
And you love us, you care for us, and you are committed to our growth and your grace.
In Jesus' name, amen.