The Cost of discipleship - "Coming To Grips" - (Part 4)

“Coming To Grips With God’s Discipline Of The Believer” (Erwin Lutzer) - Part 4 Consider a man who leaves his wife and children to continue his life with another woman. You may think that he is getting by with it all. But if he is a believer, be assured that he is not escaping the discipline of God. It is just that God often does not discipline His children the way we think He should. In fact, many believers simply do not recognize the discipline of God , but attribute His work to natural causes. When we understand the high price paid for our salvation, it is almost inconceivable that any child of God could continue in disobedience. Yet many do, and God will not allow it to go on indefinitely. Believe it or not, God sometimes uses emotional trauma to get His people’s attention. When Moses warned the people that they would be scattered among the nations if they disobeyed the Lord, he added, “…and there shall be no resting place for the sole of your foot; but there the Lord will give you a trembling heart, failing of eyes, and despair of soul” (Deuteronomy 28:67). This “despair of soul” is further defined: “In the morning you shall say, ‘Would that it were evening!’ And at evening you shall say, ‘Would that it were morning!’ because of the dread of your heart which you dread, and for the sight of your eyes which you shall see.” (v.67). Emotional trauma is often God’s way of correction; it is His most persistent discipline for His children. We err if we think that His discipline is always external circumstances. Sometimes, perhaps most often, it is an internal despair that makes even the most significant events of life seem futile. Is there any New Testament evidence that God uses emotional trauma for His discipline even today? Recall that in Hebrews 10 the author teaches that those who trample underfoot the blood of Christ are worthy of more severe punishment than those who died in the Old Testament. He describes it as “a certain terrifying expectation of judgment, and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries” (v.27). The reference is to God’s method of direct judgment frequently used in the Old Testament. The fire should not be thought of as hell, but the temporal fire that took the lives of the disobedient. This judgment which is as severe as that of the Old Testament (and logically even greater) is the terrifying expectation of judgment and emotional torment that might make physical death seem more tolerable by comparison. For example, I have counseled believers involved in adultery who prayed at night that they would not wake up in the morning. Death was more welcome than the emotional trauma they experienced. And, as we shall see in the closing section of this study, such discipline may indeed include physical death itself. Not all emotional trauma is because of disobedience. Some people experience it because they were abused as children; others may be going through a time of physical illness or face some tragedy even as Job did. A point that will be emphasized later is that it is not necessary for us to know the precise reason for a trial in order to profit from it. But there are many believers who can pinpoint their distress to specific acts of disobedience. They can recall when they came to a fork in the road, made a sinful decision and chose to live with it. The emotional turbulence they experience constantly reminds them that disobedience is not worth the cost. God is speaking, or rather shouting, that they might hear His voice once more. God may even use the devil to discipline His people. The evil one is used to inflict the despair of soul, the emotional terror of judgment that is designed to bring God’s people back to thorough repentance. This is seen both in the Old Testament as well as the New. Saul, as you will recall, was disobedient to the clear command of God. Jealousy was eating the king alive. Since God had said that the kingdom would be taken away from him, he should have bowed to the will of the Almighty. There was little use fighting the inevitable. But he chose to struggle with God, refusing to acknowledge God’s right to give the kingdom to whomever He wished. God viewed Saul’s jealousy as one more act of rebellion. To intensify Saul’s irrational moods, the Lord sent an evil spirit to add to his woes. We read in First Samuel, “Now it came about on the next day that an evil spirit from God came mightily upon Saul, and he raved in the midst of the house, while David was playing the harp with his hand, as usual; and a spear was in Saul’s hand. And Saul hurled the spear for he thought, ‘I will pin David to the wall.’ But David escaped from his presence twice” (I Samuel 18:10, 11). Saul’s paranoia was intensified by an evil spirit from the Lord. Why? So that jealousy might become Saul’s master. He had, so to speak, made a league with an enemy called envy, and such alliances always lead to spiritual and moral bondage. But Saul did not respond favorably to the discipline. His heart became harder, not softer. Because he spurned God’s discipline, his life came to a tragic end. He tried to commit suicide but was only partially successful. He apparently was killed by an enemy. The sin we refuse to put away becomes the sin that eventually destroys us! God supervises, indeed directs the harassment of Satan as just discipline for persistent sin. (How sad that Saul would never repent and humble himself before God.) In my counseling, I have met Christians who have dabbled in the occult only to discover that they received a demonic affliction, the harassment of the devil. Try as they might, they could not easily be freed, even with specific counsel. I believe the reason was because God was teaching them the “exceeding sinfulness of sin.” Easy deliverance might give the impression that entering Satan’s domain is not too serious. God thinks otherwise, and uses the struggle for freedom as His means of discipline. One the freedom comes, the offender is ready to stay clear of such careless (and rebellious) actions. To tolerate sin in our lives is like defecting to the enemy in a war. This act of treason is welcomed by our adversary the devil and exploited. If you have read the previous sections of this study, you know that we have come a long way in our study of how God disciplines a believer. In this section we have learned that He will use emotional trauma and even the activity of Satan to bring His people back to repentance. God used an evil spirit to harass Saul, and in the New Testament we discover that one disobedient believer was delivered over to Satan that he might be brought to repentance. The Church in Corinth was guilty of looking the other way when one of the believers was found to be involved in immoral behavior. Paul admonished them to excommunicate the offender from the fellowship; indeed Paul himself was prepared to do so though he was not physically present in the fellowship. Here is his exhortation: “In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (I Corinthians 5:4-5). What does it mean to be “delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh?” Cut off from the spiritual protection of the church, this man would be an open target for Satanic activity, a pathetic victim of his own sinful choices. This could eventually lead to the destruction of his flesh, that is, physical death. Yet, because he was a believer, his spirit would be saved in the day of Christ. 2. The man faced a choice as to how he would react. He could harden his heart, continue in immorality, regardless of how seared his conscience became. He could “despise the chastening of the Lord” even to the point of physical destruction. Or he could do otherwise, namely, to seek forgiveness and restoration. He could accept the discipline of the Lord as proper and just, considering the seriousness of the offense. He could choose to put himself under the leadership of the church and follow any procedure they might suggest to heal his wounds. Submission to God’s authority would take him out of the realm of Satan’s authority. “That part of us that we rescue from the cross” wrote Tozer, “becomes the seat of our troubles.” The sin that we refuse to yield to God is the one that is exploited by Satan so that we might be bound by our own sinful choices. God knows that some backsliders have to be desperate before they cease their rebellion and return to fellowship with him. If you have been disobedient, wholeheartedly turn to God today and receive His forgiveness. Do whatever is necessary to be fully right with Him. If you need counsel, seek it out; if you need to be reconciled to another brother or sister, do it. God receives backsliders who come to Him in their desperation. 3.