My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, etc. Our subject is Divine discipline. Let us notice -

I. ITS CHARACTER. Three words are used to express it - "rebuke," "chastening," "scourging." The last two seem to be used synonymously here. Archbishop Trench points out that "'to rebuke" and "to chasten" are often found together, but they are very capable of being distinguished. "To rebuke" is so to rebuke that the person is brought to the acknowledgment of his fault - is convinced, as David was when rebuked by Nathan (2 Samuel 12:13)." The word translated to "chasten," "being in classical Greek to instruct, to educate, is in sacred Greek to instruct or educate by means of correction, through the severe discipline of love." The object of the discipline is to deliver the subjects of it from sin, to establish them in the faith, and to perfect them in holiness. The means of the discipline are afflictions, persecutions, and trials. And it may be administered by the enemies of the Church of Christ. The persecutions of man may be the discipline of God. "Persecution for religion is sometimes a correction and rebuke for the sins of professors of religion. Men persecute them because they are religious; God chastises them because they are not more so: men persecute them because they wilt not give up their profession; God chastises them because they have not lived up to their profession."

II. ITS AUTHOR. "The chastening of the Lord .... Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." Some of our trials are from his hand. He is the great Husbandman, and he prunes the vines that they may bring forth more fruit. The trials which are not sent by him are permitted by him (cf. Job 1:12; Job 2:6; 2 Corinthians 12:7). And he gives to all our trials their disciplinary character. He makes the bitter potion medicinal. By his blessing our sufferings become salutary, and our sorest afflictions our sagest instructors. The fact that the Lord is the Author of our discipline, that our trials either proceed from him or are permitted and regulated by him, supplies a guarantee that we shall not be tried beyond our strength. He is infinite in wisdom and in love. "He knoweth our frame;" and he will either restrict our trials so that they exceed not our strength, or increase our strength until it surpasses the severity of our trials. "He stayeth his rough wind in the day of the east wind." "I will correct thee in measure." "Though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies." "My grace is sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness."

III. ITS SUBJECTS. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth."

1. They are filially related to him. "Every son" of his he subjects to reproof and chastisement. "God has one Son without sin, but none without suffering." If we are his sons, we may rest assured that he will not fail to secure to us the discipline that we need. Thus our sufferings may be an evidence of our sonship.

2. They are beloved by him. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." Because he loves us he corrects us. It has been well said, that "lawns which we would keep in the best condition are very frequently mown; the grass has scarcely any respite from the scythe. Out in the meadows there is no such repeated cutting; they are mown but once or twice in the year. Even thus the nearer we are to God, and the more regard he has for us, the more frequent will be our adversities. To be very dear to God involves no small degree of chastisement."

IV. ITS RECEPTION. "My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord," etc.

1. It should not be deemed unimportant. "Regard not lightly the chastening of the Lord." "We may be said to despise the chastening of the Lord," says Dr. Wardlaw, "in the following eases:

(1) When it is not felt; when there is a want of natural sensibility to the particular stroke of the rod. This is but rare. Men in general are quite sufficiently alive to the value of temporal things. But the value is comparative. There are cherished and favorite possessions, and others less highly thought of, less fondly held. The Lord, it may be, deals gently. He spares the 'gourd.' He does not take what is most highly set by. And instead of humbly owning the kindness - being lowly and submissive, and seeking a blessing on the gentle stroke, that the heavier one may be withheld - the preservation and safety of the greater produces insensibility to the privation of the less; and the correction is thus disregarded, and proves inefficient.

(2) When it is not duly felt as from God.

(3) When, although God is seen in it and his hand is felt, it is not felt humbly and submissively; not bowed to, but resisted.

(4) When the design or end of correction is not laid to heart."

2. It should not be deemed intolerable. "Nor faint when thou art rebuked of him." We are not to sink under the reproofs and strokes of the Divine discipline, though they be severe. The fact that our trials are regulated by our Father's hand, that they are educational, that they are intended and adapted to promote our spiritual and eternal well-being, should keep us from sinking beneath their pressure.

"The tears we shed are not in vain;
Nor worthless is the heavy strife;
If, like the buried seed of grain,
They rise to renovated life.
It is through tears our spirits grow

Tis in the tempest souls expand,
If it but teaches us to go
To him who holds it in his hand.
Oh, welcome, then, the stormy blast!

Oh, welcome, then, the ocean's roar!
Ye only drive more sure and fast
Our trembling bark to heaven's bright shore."

(T. C. Upham.) W. J.

"It is for chastening that ye endure" — such is the reading and translation in the R.V. That is the purpose sought and prized; an end that sufficiently justifies God in such dealing with His sons, and that sustains His sons in experience of His dealing.

1. But what is "chastening"? Supposing we had a word that meant child-training, son.training, and this under the direction of a father who would spare no pains necessary for its perfect realisation, we should have exactly the corresponding term. But unfortunately we have not, and so we are driven to put up with the poor substitute "chastening." The father knows his child, his capacities, and, therefore, all the possibilities that are locked up in his being; his opportunities as they lie in the pathway of life, and therefore his obligations; his propensities and habits, and therefore his perils; his hindrances and helps, and therefore his chances. The father yearns over his boy; labours to secure the highest outcome of his life; guards and directs him; will do anything and bear anything for his advancement. He wants him to be an ideal son; his pride and joy in every faculty and feature of excellence. He wants to "make a man " of him; so that the terms "father" and "son," "son" and "father," may never jar, as they dwell on each other's lips, but may be as choice music to the ear, as beauty to the eye. For that end, with that hope, all is planned, all is done. It is at once the father's care, he "trains"; and the son's ambition, he "endures for the training." The application is obvious. "It is for chastening that ye endure"; to be sons, not in name only, but in deed and in truth; to come up, to be urged up to the standard. Such an issue may well reconcile us to all the pains and humiliations of the " chastening." To have the mind enlarged, the heart purified, the life exalted, refined, transfigured! To lose all that is dross; to cast out all that is low and selfish!

2. Now for the word "endure." This is no tame word. It Jeans something widely different from insensibility, or proud defiance. These Hebrews had joyfully taken the spoiling of their goods, not that they did not value them, not that their loss was no privation, but that they knew in themselves they had a better and an enduring substance in heaven. They had a boldness, a confidence, an exultation even. "Endurance" in them was the triumph of active faith in the recompense of reward. They were "exercised," much " exercised" in their afflictions, and the "exercise," like a Divine alchemy, was turning every constituent of distress into gold.

I. WHO DOUBTS THE NEED OF CHASTENING? Sin in one or other of its myriad forms has aggravated all the imperfections of inexperience, so that we require far surer correction and direction than a childhood and youth of innocence had ever called for.

II. WHO DOUBTS SHE SPIRIT IN WHICH THIS CHASTENING IS INFLICTED? Dictated by love, directed by wisdom, aimed at the highest ends, it has every quality to keep us alike from despising it or fainting under it.

III. WHO IS NOT DRIVEN TO RIGOROUS SELF-EXAMINATION? There is no talismanic power in afflictions, in pains and penalties, that of itself can correct and transform. Would we realise the" profit" our Father seeks, we must be " exercised" by our chastening. It calls for thought, for reflection, for faithful survey of our life, with its temper, aims, and spirit.

IV. WHO DOES NOT REJOICE IN THE ADVANCE OF CORRECTION AND GROWTH? The mastery of our evil tendencies, the due regulation of our desires, the elevation of our motives and aims, the higher and completer discharge of the claims of life, the stricter integrity, purity, and spirituality of our characters, the closer our likeness to Christ and our fellowship with God, these and kindred issues may well reconcile us to the pain, and sacrifice, and cost of the chastening, and make us "kiss the rod" with all praise.

(G. B. Johnson.)

If a man be visited with a providential reverse of circumstances, if he be under oppression, if he be attacked by disease, if the delight of his eyes be taken away, methinks I hear God saying, "Take this medicine; it is exactly suited to your case; weighed out by My own hand; take this medicine from Me."

(R. Cecil.)

I. GOD EDUCATES US BY MEANS OF OUR PHYSICAL NEEDS. Man is born naked and defenceless; if he would live he must obtain shelter from torrid suns and piercing cold; he must provide himself with food and raiment; he must, by means of his wits, be able to defend himself against enemies infinitely more powerful than himself. How is it that man alone, of all God's creatures, is sent into the world unprovided with any of those things which are necessary to the support of physical life? It is because God dealeth with us as with sons. It is because life is meant to be to us, and to us alone, an education; and from the first we are pricked on by these goads of necessity. God has taken security that our work shall not be easy, that it shall not be mechanical; but that it shall tax our ingenuity and educe our mental powers to the uttermost. For man is born not only without instinct and without clothing, but without tools. Nature provides the lion with the claws and fangs which make it easy to seize its prey; the bee has in itself all the apparatus necessary for extracting honey, and carrying it, and building its cells, and acting out all its life-history; the spider has its wonderful film ready wound about its body, and the machinery for spinning many threads into one, and affixing it, and weaving its web; but man must first provide himself with external aid if he would hold his own, be it but a sharpened flint or a fishbone! Moreover, God has made man relatively one of the weakest of living things. His bodily powers are poor indeed compared with those of other creatures. What does it all mean? It means this, that God would educate us not chiefly in body, but in mind; it is by the brain that man has subdued the earth and become lord over all creation; it is the necessity of surmounting difficulties and guarding against dangers that has called forth all his resources and educated his faculties and perfected his powers. See, then, how large a part of man's education is due to his bare bodily necessities! In the endeavour to meet these he has invented all the industrial arts and sciences. And it is not only mental gifts which labour educes. Patience, endurance, forethought, courage — these and many other moral qualities are the outcome of that necessity for work which God lays upon us all.

II. GOD EDUCATES MEN BY MEANS OF THEIR MENTAL NEEDS. He has implanted in nature that which awakens curiosity in man, and He has implanted in man a hunger and thirst after knowledge and truth, and the result is education. Man's intellectual needs are not less imperative than his physical requirements; they must be satisfied at any cost. He must know all about the flowers at his feet; the science of botany is the result. He raises his eyes to the stars above; their mystery perplexes him; generation after generation he struggles with this mystery till little by little the secrets of the sky are discovered, and the great science of astronomy is pieced together. Curiosity awakened by shells and fossils has led to geology; curiosity about the antecedents of our race has led to history, and so forth. It is thus with all those departments of knowledge which are not purely utilitarian; they are all the result of the desire for knowledge implanted in us by God, acted upon by external nature. And there is in man another intellectual appetite nobler than any of these, which is most powerful in evolving his higher nature — I mean the love of the beautiful. God has clothed hill and vale, mountain and lake, sea and sky, with splendour of colour and form of which the eye never wearies. And further He has put something in the human heart to which these things appeal; there is a strange correspondence between the human soul and the beauties of nature; they were made for one another; there was meant to be action and re-action between them. When gazing on a sunset sky or a lovely scene we realise our immortality as at no other time; we feel that they have a message from God for us.

III. GOD EDUCATES US BY THE SORROWS AND TRIALS OF LIFE. In this matter also man's position is unique. The lower animals are almost exempt from suffering. It is true that they are liable to physical pain, but there is abundant evidence to prove that this pain is much less acute than in human beings, and in their case there is neither anticipation nor retrospection. But man, to whom was given the dominion over the brutes, man, who was made but a little lower than the angels, how different is his lot! He is " born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward." He alone has to endure those mental and spiritual griefs compared with which bodily sufferings are as nothing. All his life is leavened with pain, with forebodings, with vain regrets, with unsatisfied longings. Why is this? Because life is an education; because God dealeth with us as with sons. Men ask why sorrows are permitted. As well might the flower ask why clouds and stormy days are permitted. As well might one expect blossoms and fruit without rain as expect that men can bring forth the fruits of righteousness without the discipline of sorrow. The saintliest of men have been always those who have suffered most; and it behoved even the great Captain of our salvation to be made perfect through suffering in order to teach us that only be who drinks the bitter cup and bears the cross of shame can hope to wear the crown of glory.

IV. GOD EDUCATES US BY OUR SPIRITUAL NEEDS. The most imperative want of our nature is to know God. Everywhere there is a belief in a God or gods, the instinct of worship, conscience more or less developed. Everywhere is felt the necessity of propitiating and being reconciled to the Invisible Power whom transgression has offended. And the more a man advances in holiness and moral greatness, the more is he impelled to make the thought of the Psalmist his own: "Like as the hart desireth the water brooks, so longeth my soul after Thee, O God"; "My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." And while he is ever hungering after God with a hunger which nothing on earth can appease, conscience is ever urging him to a closer and closer walk with God, and yet he never feels that he has fully attained or is already perfect. What is the reason why these strange desires and instincts have been implanted in man? What but the truth our text teaches that God dealeth with us as with sons? Just as God has given in the book of Nature that which educes and partly satisfies man's intellectual needs, so He has given us in Holy Scripture that which educes and ministers to our spiritual needs. The correspondence between our craving for knowledge, and the revelation by which that craving is met, affords the clearest proof that both are from God, and that in sacred things as in secular the main purpose of our life is education.

1. It throws light upon the mystery of the present. This earth is but the lowest room in God's school; in other spheres and at other times the education which circumstances thwarted and hindered here will be carried on under happier circumstances.

2. And it throws light upon the mystery of the future. It affords one of the strongest arguments for a future life. For, of course, the education which is commenced here can be at best but in its initial stage when death removes us.

(A. M. Mackay, B. A.)

Like as if two children should fight, and a man passing by should part them, and afterwards beat the one and let the other go free, every one that seeth this will say that the child which he beat is his own son: even so when God chastiseth us, if we submit.

(Cawdray.)

God often uses adversity as a purifier. The wintry snows that lie before my window here (at Saratoga) this morning will kill the vermin; so God sends wintry seasons upon His children to kill certain species of besetting sins.

(T. L. Cuyler.)

A child was taken ill with that dangerous disorder the croup. It was a child most ardently beloved, and, ordinarily, very obedient; but, in this state of uneasiness and pain, he refused to take the medicine which it was needful, without delay, to administer. The father, finding him resolute, immediately punished his sick and suffering son. Under these circumstances, and fearing that his son might soon die, it must have been a most severe trial to the father: but the consequence was, that the child was taught that sickness was no excuse for disobedience; and, while his sickness continued, he promptly took whatever medicine was prescribed, and was patient and submissive. Soon the child was well. Does any one say that this was cruel? It was one of the noblest acts of kindness which could have been performed. If the father had shrunk from duty here, it is by no means improbable that the life of the child would have been the forfeit.

(W. Abbott.)

Fear not: these stripes are the tokens of His love. He is no son that is not beaten; yea, till he smart, and cry; if not, till he bleed. No parent corrects another's child; and he is no good parent that corrects not his own. O rod, worthy to be kissed, that assures us of His love, of our adoption.

(Bp. Hall.)

Abel, Esau, HebrewsJerusalem, Mount ZionActing, Beareth, Chasten, Chasteneth, Chastening, Chastens, Conducts, Dealeth, Dealing, Deals, Discipline, Disciplined, Doesn't, Endure, Enduring, Hardship, Punishment, Sons, Sufferings, Towards, Training, Treating, Undergo1. An exhortation to constant faith, patience, and godliness by Christ's example
22. A commendation of the new covenant.

Hebrews 12:7

     5565   suffering, of believers
     5569   suffering, hardship
     6251   temptation, resisting
     8232   discipline, family

Hebrews 12:1-8

     8707   apostasy, personal

Hebrews 12:5-7

     1175   God, will of
     5484   punishment, by God
     6604   acceptance, human
     8713   discouragement

Hebrews 12:5-10

     7115   children of God

Hebrews 12:5-11

     4019   life, believers' experience
     5738   sons
     6710   privileges
     8231   discipline, divine

Hebrews 12:5-12

     8351   teachableness

Hebrews 12:7-9

     8418   endurance

Hebrews 12:7-11

     5568   suffering, causes
     5666   children, needs
     5685   fathers, responsibilities
     8162   spiritual vitality
     8232   discipline, family

Shaking of Heaven and Earth. December 22.
"Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but heaven" (Hebrews xii. 26- 29). This is one of the royal texts of Scripture. It declares one of those great laws of the kingdom of God which may fulfil itself once and again at many eras and by many methods; which fulfilled itself most gloriously in the first century after Christ; again in the fifth century; again at the time of the Crusades; and again at the great Reformation in the sixteenth century,--and is fulfilling itself again at this very day. …
Charles Kingsley—Daily Thoughts,

March 3. "Now no Chastening for the Present Seemeth to be Joyous but Grievous; Nevertheless Afterward" (Heb. xii. 11).
"Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous; nevertheless afterward" (Heb. xii. 11). God seems to love to work by paradoxes and contraries. In the transformations of grace, the bitter is the base of the sweet, night is the mother of day, and death is the gate of life. Many people are wanting power. Now, how is power produced? The other day we passed the great works where the trolley engines are supplied with electricity. We heard the hum and roar of countless wheels, and …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

December 2. "Looking Diligently Lest any Man Fail" (Heb. xii. 15).
"Looking diligently lest any man fail" (Heb. xii. 15). It is not losing all, but coming short we are to fear. We may not lose our souls, but we may lose something more precious than life--His full approval, His highest choice, and our incorruptible and star-gemmed crown. It is the one degree more that counts, and makes all the difference between hot water--powerless in the boiler--and steam--all alive with power, and bearing its precious freight across the continent. I want, in this short life of …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

March 26. "Jesus, the Author and Finisher of Our Faith" (Heb. xii. 2).
"Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb. xii. 2). Add to your faith--do not add to yourself. This is where we make the mistake. We must not only enter by faith, but we must advance by faith each step of the way. At every new stage we shall find ourselves as incompetent and unequal for the pressure as before, and we must take the grace and the victory simply by faith. Is it courage? We shall find ourselves lacking in the needed courage; we must claim it by faith. Is it love? Our own love …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

June 4. "Looking unto Jesus" (Heb. xii. 2).
"Looking unto Jesus" (Heb. xii. 2). There must be a constant looking unto Jesus, or, as the German Bible gives it, an off-looking upon Jesus; that is, looking off from the evil, refusing to see it, not letting the mind dwell upon it for a second. We should have mental eyelashes as well as physical ones, which can be used like shields, and let no evil thing in; or, like a stockade camp in the woods, which repels the first assault of the enemy. This is the use of the fringes to our eyes, and so it …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

Note F. Note from Bengel on Rom. I. 4.
According to the Spirit of Holiness. The word hagios, holy, when God is spoken of, not only denotes the blameless rectitude in action, but the very Godhead, or to speak more properly, the divinity, or excellence of the Divine nature. Hence hagiosune (the word here used) has a kind of middle sense between hagiotes, holiness, and hagiasmos, sanctification. Comp. Heb. xii. 10 (hagiotes or holiness), v. 14 (hagiasmos or sanctification). So that there are, as it were, three degrees: sanctification, …
Andrew Murray—Holy in Christ

Twenty-Ninth Day. Holiness and Chastisement.
He chasteneth us for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Follow after sanctification, without which no man shall see the Lord.'--Heb. xii. 10, 14. There is perhaps no part of God's word which sheds such Divine light upon suffering as the Epistle to the Hebrews. It does this because it teaches us what suffering was to the Son of God. It perfected His humanity. It so fitted Him for His work as the Compassionate High Priest. It proved that He, who had fulfilled God's will in …
Andrew Murray—Holy in Christ

Thanksgiving after Chastisement.
(Preached on the Cessation of Cholera, Feb. 1832). TEXT: HEB. xii. 11, 12. MY devout friends, the terrific form of the devastating -L-l- disease which has so long been raging in this great city has now left us, though we cannot feel entire confidence that it will not return; for it would not be the first instance if it appeared a second time, in a place so densely populated, to repeat its devastations. But are we right in availing ourselves of the apparent cessation which has been granted to us through …
Friedrich Schleiermacher—Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher

Chastisement
Peradventure this morning I may have some within these walls who are passing under the chastising hand of God. It is to them that I shall have to speak. You are not all of you in trial, I know no father chastises his whole family at once. It is so seldom that God afflicts people, after all, compared with their faults, that we must not expect to find in this congregation, perhaps, one-half of the children of God passing under the rod of the covenant; but if you are not under it now, you will have …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 1: 1855

The Blood of Sprinkling
Our apostle next tells us what we are come to. I suppose he speaks of all the saints after the death and resurrection of our Lord and the descent of the Holy Ghost. He refers to the whole church, in the midst of which the Holy Spirit now dwells. We are come to a more joyous sight than Sinai, and the mountain burning with fire. The Hebrew worshipper, apart from his sacrifices, lived continually beneath the shadow of the darkness of a broken law; he was startled often by the tremendous note of the …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 32: 1886

The Blood of Sprinkling (Second Sermon. )
The doctrinal portion of our meditation was greatly blest to our hearts, for God the Holy Ghost refreshed us thereby: may he now fulfill his sacred office with equal power, by revealing the things of Christ to us in a way which shall cause self-examination, and arouse us to give more earnest heed than ever to the voice of him that speaketh from heaven. No theme can excel in value and excellence that of the precious blood of Jesus. Unless the Holy Spirit shall prepare our hearts, even with such a …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 32: 1886

The Voice of the Blood of Christ
Now, we have in our text "blood" mentioned--two-fold blood. We have the blood of murdered Abel, and the blood of murdered Jesus. We have also two things in the text:--a comparison between the blood of sprinkling, and the blood of Abel; and then a certain condition mentioned. Rather, if we read the whole verse in order to get its meaning, we find that the righteous are spoken of as coming to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel; so that the condition which will …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 4: 1858

The Shameful Sufferer
"O love, thou fathomless abyss!" for this love of Christ is indeed measureless and fathomless. None of us can attain unto it. In speaking thereof we feel our own weakness, we cast ourselves upon the strength of the Spirit, but, even then, we feel that we can never attain unto the majesty of this subject. Before we can ever get a right idea of the love of Jesus, we must understand his previous glory in its height of majesty, and his incarnation upon the earth in all its depths of shame. Now, who can …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 5: 1859

Holiness Demanded
"Holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord."--Hebrews 12:14. ONE feels most happy when blowing the trumpet of jubilee, proclaiming peace to broken hearts, freedom to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. But God's watchman has another trumpet, which he must sometimes blow; for thus saith the Lord unto him, "Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain." Times there are when we must ring the tocsin; men must be startled from their sleep, they …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 50: 1904

God's Word not to be Refused
"See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven."--Hebrews 12:25. WE ARE NOT a cowering multitude gathered in trembling fear around the smoking mount of Horeb; we have come where the great central figure is the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. We have gathered virtually in the outer circle of which the saints above and holy angels make the inner ring. And now tonight …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 61: 1915

Fourteenth Day. Endurance in Contradiction.
"Who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself."-- Heb. xii. 3. What endurance was this! Perfect truth in the midst of error; perfect love in the midst of ingratitude and coldness; perfect rectitude in the midst of perjury, violence, fraud; perfect constancy in the midst of contumely and desertion; perfect innocence, confronting every debased form of depravity and guilt; perfect patience, encountering every species of gross provocation--"oppressed and afflicted, He opened not His mouth!" …
John R. Macduff—The Mind of Jesus

"But it is Good for Me to Draw Near to God: I have Put My Trust in the Lord God, that I May Declare all Thy
Psal. lxxiii. 28.--"But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all thy works." After man's first transgression, he was shut out from the tree of life, and cast out of the garden, by which was signified his seclusion and sequestration from the presence of God, and communion with him: and this was in a manner the extermination of all mankind in one, when Adam was driven out of paradise. Now, this had been an eternal separation for any thing that …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

The Consuming Fire.
Our God is a consuming fire.--HEBREWS xii. 29 Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy. For if at the voice of entreaty love conquers displeasure, it is love asserting itself, not love yielding its claims. It is not love that grants a boon unwillingly; still less is it love that answers a prayer to the wrong and hurt of him who prays. Love is one, and love is changeless. For love loves unto purity. …
George MacDonald—Unspoken Sermons

Of Bearing Injuries, and who Shall be Approved as Truly Patient
"What sayest thou, My Son? Cease to complain; consider My suffering and that of My saints. Thou hast not yet resisted unto blood.(1) It is little which thou sufferest in comparison with those who have suffered so many things, have been so strongly tempted, so grievously troubled, so manywise proved and tried. Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more grievous sufferings of others that thou mightest bear thy lesser ones more easily, and if they seem not to thee little, see that it is not …
Thomas A Kempis—Imitation of Christ

Meditations on the Hindrances which Keep Back a Sinner from the Practice of Piety.
Those hindrances are chiefly seven:-- I. An ignorant mistaking of the true meaning of certain places of the holy Scriptures, and some other chief grounds of Christian religion. The Scriptures mistaken are these: 1. Ezek. xxxiii. 14, 16, "At what time soever a sinner repenteth him of his sin, I will blot out all," &c. Hence the carnal Christian gathers, that he may repent when he will. It is true, whensoever a sinner does repent, God will forgive; but the text saith not, that a sinner may repent whensoever …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

The Pietist and the Perfectionist.
"He chastens us for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness."--Heb. xii. 10. Sanctification is a gracious work of God, whereby in a supernatural way He gradually divests from sin the inclinations and dispositions of the regenerate and clothes them with holiness. Here we meet a serious objection which deserves our careful attention. To the superficial observer, the spiritual experience of God's children seems diametrically opposed to this professed gift of sanctification. One says: …
Abraham Kuyper—The Work of the Holy Spirit

Christ the Mediator of the Covenant
'Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant,' &c. Heb 12:24. Jesus Christ is the sum and quintessence of the gospel; the wonder of angels; the joy and triumph of saints. The name of Christ is sweet, it is as music in the ear, honey in the mouth, and a cordial at the heart. I shall waive the context, and only speak of that which concerns our present purpose. Having discoursed of the covenant of grace, I shall speak now of the Mediator of the covenant, and the restorer of lapsed sinners, Jesus the Mediator …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Arrived
"Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem."--Heb. xii. 22. T. S. M. tr., Emma Frances Bevan, 1899 We are come unto Mount Zion, On Thy holy hill we stand, The crusaders whose march is ended, The risen and the ascended, All hail! Immanuel's land! We are come unto the City, Where our living God art Thou; Thou Who barest our sin and sorrow, Who comest in joy to-morrow, Thou communest with us now-- To Jerusalem the golden, To the Gates of Praise we come, …
Frances Bevan—Hymns of Ter Steegen and Others (Second Series)

Esau Gen 25:34; Heb 12:16
ESAU Gen 25:34; Heb 12:16 Poor Esau repented too late That once he his birth-right despised; And sold, for a morsel of meat, What could not too highly be prized: How great was his anguish when told, The blessing he sought to obtain, Was gone with the birth-right he sold, And none could recall it again! He stands as a warning to all, Wherever the gospel shall come; O Hasten and yield to the call, While yet for repentance there's room! Your season will quickly be past, Then hear and obey it today; …
John Newton—Olney Hymns

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