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Chastisement for Holiness

You may be out of Egypt, but how much Egypt is out of you? How much of the world still influences your thought process? The issue is not that you don't smoke, drink, take drugs or cuss anymore. Do you trust God for the daily bread? Can you rejoice in this walk in the unknown, following He who is invisible, looking for that city? If you're not comfortable in that walk, you'll keep looking over your shoulder for Egypt. You're going to turn back to Sodom.

We have a great cloud of witnesses compassed round about (Heb. 12:1). We've understood through their journey that we are being formed into the same image of Jesus Christ by the same crucible of trials and tribulations. "...Let us lay aside every weight, and the [sins that] do so easily beset us, and let us run with patience [consistency, with some endurance] the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith [the captain of our salvation]..." (12:1-2). Jesus learned obedience by the things that He suffered. "Looking unto Jesus." Let Him become the example to every one of us. He endured all of these trials and afflictions, enduring them even to the point of the cross, despising all of the shame because of the joy that had been set before Him. He was looking into the eternal realm for that city whose builder and maker is God. He was governed by the eternal, not the temporal.

Many of us think that we're involved in some great trial or tribulation. You have not resisted unto blood yet (12:4). The Scripture speaks of these light afflictions that are but for a moment (2 Cor. 4:17). Everything we experience is in that category of light afflictions compared to the Captain of our salvation, the Author and the Finisher of our faith, who finished the work for us, proclaimed the victory, and said, "It's finished." We are living now in assured victory. There's no reason for any one of us to ever be defeated in this journey.

"For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth [whips] every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all [true sons] are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness" (Heb. 12:6-10). We begin to see what chastening is all about. Chastisement--the afflictions that are coming upon us, the temptations, the tests, the trials, the actual discipline of God at His hand--is for one reason: that we might be partakers of His holiness. And without holiness, no man will see the Lord (12:14). Let's say it another way: without chastisement you'll never see God. Without affliction, trials, hard times, you're not going to see God. You're not going to walk up easy street into the presence of God. Everyone before us--all of this great cloud of witnesses--was a partaker, and we are going to walk in the same steps that have been set before us by the Lord, for our profit, for our eternal good.

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