Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Chastening
(From Forerunner Commentary)
Exodus 14:5-10
The Israelites accuse Moses of not dealing with them fairly, murmuring that he should not have led them out of Egypt. This occurs just days after they went out with a high hand in the sight of all the Egyptians, joyful that they were free. How quickly their faith evaporated when fear began closing in on them! The Egyptians, their horses, their chariots, all the shining army and might of Egypt were represented there. The Israelites' backs were up against the sea, and they could see the death sentence approaching them as fast as a horse could pull a chariot. They thought their lives were hanging in a balance when they saw the army. The end of their lives was quickly coming within view. Had not God given them enough evidence through all His plagues against Egypt? Had He not given them enough evidence to impact their thinking, clearly dividing the Israelites from the Egyptians, beginning with the fourth plague? All of the plagues fell on Egypt, but none of them after that fell on the Israelites. Had He not impressed their minds enough on Passover when the blood of the Lamb enabled their firstborn to live while the Egyptians' died? We can learn and grow from this lesson. In principle, we all come to our own personal Red Sea. Every one of us fails repeatedly, just as Israel did when they lost their faith for a while. What we go through when we come up against our personal Red Sea is very similar to what Israel went through. God rescued and chastened them, but He did not dump them. He shows that He will continue to work patiently with us just as a teacher continues to work with students, even though some fail and rarely do anything well. A teacher is faced with the same principle that we are involved in with God. The teacher does not want to fail students, so he uses all of his time, energy, and efforts to encourage and instruct so that those who are failing will turn around, catch the vision, and begin to apply the right teaching. God thinks of time in the same way a teacher does: “There is still time to catch this person's interest and turn them around.” Therefore, God gave the Israelites forty years in the wilderness. Hebrews 11:29 shows that these people did recover their faith in time to go through the Red Sea. The major reason that they turned themselves around may have largely been because of faithful leadership, primarily by Moses and possibly by others as well. They exhibited some measure of faith, and God faithfully and duly records it. This ought to encourage those of us who fail from time to time. Many times our faith has failed, but God patiently continues to work with us. We cannot become discouraged, but must keep going on, because God will not stop. He will keep working with us.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Faith (Part One)
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Matthew 8:3
Knowing the gruesome details of leprosy, one can easily imagine the crowd hastily parting as this man worked his way toward Jesus. Yet, He, in contrast, reaches out to touch the leper, signaling His willingness and power to heal. In Exodus 15:25-26, God reveals Himself as Yahweh Ropheka, or "the Eternal-Who-Heals," at the incident at Marah. Nathan Stone writes in his book, Names of God,that this name means "to restore, to heal, to cure . . . not only in the physical sense but in the moral and spiritual sense also" (p. 72). Dying to sin and living for righteousness are a kind of healing through Jesus Christ. Ordinarily, uncleanness is transferred among men, but holiness is not (Haggai 2:10-14). This scene of the leper coming to Christ pictures divine reconciliation, since what is holy and what is profane usually do not mix. This is overcome through the work of our Savior. Jesus stretches out His hand and commands the leper to be cleansed, showing God in action as the Eternal-Who-Heals. This is why the leper's uncleanness does not transfer to Jesus - at first. Later, however, the death penalty for sin was transferred to Jesus. A price had to be paid for the leper's cleansing. "Clean" has a sense of purity and holiness, so to be cleansed was to be made pure. Proverbs 20:9 says, "Who can say, 'I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin'?" The leper could no more pronounce himself clean than we can pronounce ourselves sinless (I John 1:10). Proverbs 20:30 adds, "Blows that hurt cleanse away evil, as do stripes the inner depths of the heart." Comparing these two verses from Proverbs suggests that a certain chastening is required for cleansing. Isaiah 53:4-5 adds another piece to the picture: Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. These verses place the emphasis of our cleansing from spiritual impurity on Christ: He paid the price to heal us and restore us to fellowship with God. Thus, when Jesus Christ became sin for us, on Him was transferred all uncleanness. For those who have repented and accepted His sacrifice, there is increasingly more responsibility to continue this cleansing process in cooperation with and submission to Him. Peter summarizes this idea in I Peter 2:24, "[He] Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we having died to sins, might live for righteousness - by whose stripes you were healed."
Staff
The Gift of a Leper
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John 15:1-8
Christ came to this earth as THE BRANCH and fulfilled all righteousness, qualifying to replace Satan and rule as King over all the earth. He proved His worthiness by remaining in full accord with His heavenly Father, and bearing the spiritual fruit that makes redemption and salvation possible. Likewise, we - whether natural or grafted in (Romans 11:17-24) - are also branches attached to the solid trunk of the tree, Christ. It is only by our abiding in Him - our attachment to Him - our close relationship with Him - that we produce any growth or godly works. As Paul writes in Romans 11:16, "If the root is holy, so are the branches." Our righteousness, works, and holiness come to us only because of our connection to Him. Jesus says that God, in love, prunes us, chastens us, tries us, so that we become more profitable (see also Hebrews 12:3-11). He will do what He must to make us yield. But if we resist and eventually sever our connection with Him, we are fit only to be burned. God has no use for dead wood. God wants us to use this connection to His Son to "bear much fruit," just as Jesus Christ did. Doing so proves to Him, to ourselves, and to everyone else that we are true Christians, disciples of His Son, the Branch. By this, we will glorify God and secure our place in His Kingdom.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
The Branch
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John 15:1-5
Jesus speaks about four kinds of branches: 1) those that bear no fruit, 2) those that bear fruit, 3) those that bear more fruit, 4) and those that bear much fruit. We will focus on the branches that bear no fruit. To get a clearer understanding, we need to understand a few points. - Jesus is the vine: In the vineyard, the vine is the whole grape plant. Vineyard keepers traditionally keep the vine at waist height—36 to 42 inches. The vine ends in a large gnarl from which branches grow in either direction along the trellis.
- God the Father is the vinedresser: The vinedresser is the vineyard's keeper. His task is cultivating each branch to bear as much fruit as possible. God will do this with love (I John 4:16), for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28).
- We, the members of God's church, are the branches: In the vineyard, the branches are the vinedresser's main focus because they produce the fruit. They must be carefully tended to produce the highest quality grapes and the biggest yield.
But, what is the fruit analogous to in this metaphor? What fruit are we to bear? Tracing the words "fruit" and "good works" through the Bible results in the conclusion that they are used nearly interchangeably. We can see this in Titus 3:14: "And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful." Colossians 1:10 is similar: ". . . that you may have a walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God." In practical terms, fruit represents good works or godly living. If we are not doing such things, we are like the branches that are not producing fruit. Fruit, or good deeds, are evidence of what is inside a person. In Matthew 3:8, John the Baptist tells the Pharisees and Sadducees to "bear fruits worthy of repentance." In other words, they were to produce evidence in their actions that they had repented. Is it possible to be in Christ yet produce no fruit? John 15:2 may seem to say that the Vinedresser cuts off every barren branch, but we need to look more closely at the words "takes away." This Greek verb, airo, actually means "to lift from the ground," "to lift so as to carry," and "to carry off." The translation "takes away" suggests cutting off, but in Greek literature, airo never means "cut off." "Lifts up" or "raises" is more correct in terms of vinedressing. In his book, Secrets of the Vine, Dr. Bruce Wilkinson converses with a vineyard owner from Northern California, who says, "New branches have a natural tendency to trail down and grow along the ground, but they don't bear fruit down there. When branches grow along the ground, the leaves get coated in dust. When it rains, they get muddy and mildewed. The branch becomes sick and useless." Dr. Wilkinson, thinking about John 15:2, asks, "What do you do, cut it off and throw it away?" "Oh, no," the vineyard owner replies, "the branch is much too valuable for that. We go through the vineyard with a bucket of water, looking for those branches. We lift them up and wash them off. Then we wrap them around the trellis or tie them up. Pretty soon, they're thriving." Are we not more valuable to our Vinedresser than branches in a vineyard? Certainly! So how does our Vinedresser lift us up? We can find an answer in Hebrews 12:5-6: "My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives." The intervention of the Vinedresser in John 15:2 is similar to the discipline a parent gives his or her child. God is our heavenly Father, and we are His children. The two metaphors are parallel. There are three degrees of discipline or lifting up in Hebrews 12:5-6: - The First Degree, Rebuke: A rebuke is a strong verbal warning. When our children begin to misbehave, we rebuke them. Some parents can do this with just a look. God rebukes us by pricking our consciences through Bible study, sermons, and our interactions with each other.
- The Second Degree, Chastening: If the child does not listen to rebuke, a parent might intensify the punishment by sending him to his room, restricting his activities, or taking away his privileges. When God chastens us, we may feel anxiety, frustration, or distress. Pressures may increase at work or home, in our health, or in our finances.
- The Third Degree, Scourging: "To scourge" is to afflict with blows, to inflict physical punishment. The scourging Jesus received before His crucifixion caused Him excruciating pain. With rebellious children, a good paddling often does the trick, causing pain without injury. When God scourges us, the pressures of our chastening intensify: Instead of problems on the job, we may find ourselves without one. Instead of being merely sick, we may be deathly ill. The spouse may file for separation. Bankruptcy may loom over us.
These are our Vinedresser's ways of lifting us up and washing us off. They are godly discipline designed to put us in the right position to begin producing fruit again. What about the rest of John 15:2? Pruning is indeed cutting, and cutting hurts. It might seem like punishment, like "lifting up," so we must distinguish between the two. The Vinedresser lifts up, disciplines, because we are not producing fruit. We have become spiritually sick and useless, so He needs to spur us to repent and return to fruitfulness. The Vinedresser prunes, however, because we are fruitful! That is when we need to count it all joy (James 1:2) and yield to His pruning shears, so that He may produce more fruit through us. Why is fruit-bearing so essential and valuable? Jesus gives us the answer in John 15:8: "By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples." He continues in verse 16, "I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain." Paul echoes this in Ephesians 2:10: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." We would do well to inspect our "branch" of God's work to see what fruit God can expect from our corner of His vineyard.
Clyde Finklea
The Vinedresser
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Ephesians 6:4
The English word "nurture" (KJV) or "training" (NKJV) indicates caring for and providing supportive instruction. The underlying Greek word more specifically involves educational feeding or instruction, as if in school or for the purpose of learning a discipline. The word thus covers verbal instruction, chastening, and the use of drills needed to produce Christian character. It does not at all indicate that any of these approaches is even harsh, let alone cruel. However, it suggests that parents follow an organized and consistent plan. The term "admonition" or "instruction" (NIV) means a warning, drawing specific attention to verbal instruction. In summary, Paul touches on three areas vital to child-training so that children keep the fifth commandment properly. "Of the Lord" touches on the standard or quality one is to strive for. "Nurture" indicates what is physically done to and with the child in terms of consistent, regimented training, including discipline. "Admonition" draws attention to what is said and how it is said to the child. Taken together, then, Paul clearly teaches that child-training is something that can neither be left to chance nor sloughed off with a careless, resigned attitude, as if it were merely a necessary evil. The parents' vision must be long-range. From parents applying right principles consistently will come the gradual development of understanding and wisdom in the children. These are precursors that help produce the promised long life and prosperity in the Fifth Commandment (Exodus 20:12; Ephesians 6:1-3). In I Thessalonians 2:7-8, Paul uses himself and his relationship with the Thessalonian congregation as an example: But we were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us. He says he treated them with the tender affection of a nursing mother, striving hard so that no one could honestly charge him with taking anything from them. They personally witnessed how gently and consistently he dealt with them as a father does his children by appealing and encouraging them to live their lives to glorify God in their conduct.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fifth Commandment
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Revelation 3:17-19
God is willing to go to great lengths to get our attention and get us to turn so that we will buy gold refined in the fire, get proper white garments, and anoint our eyes with eye salve. He is trying to get us to repent, which is what chastening is all about. The Laodicean has the same problem. He is blind to God at work in his life and in the lives of others. Why? Because he is busy doing something else. The Laodicean is not lazy; he is instead distracted with busyness, with this world, with getting ahead in life, with everything else rather than what he should be involved in—the things of God. God wants him to be zealous, but not at making money, not at building his house, not at flitting off to various vacations, not at filling his social calendar. No, God wants him to be zealous for Him! However, a Laodicean pretends to be righteous. Like Balaam, he has built a façade. Externally, he looks like a good guy, and righteous too, but all the while, inside he is something else: He is totally hypocritical. This is one of the Laodicean's problems. He is so focused on other things—usually his own well-being—that he cannot see God. Since he has everything all figured out, and all his needs and many of his desires are met, he in his heart of hearts believes that he really does not need God! Christ's advice to the Laodicean is to get eye salve so he can see. It is not so that he can see other people or other things, but so he can specifically see God! He also wants him to produce righteousness, so he can put on that white clothing representing pure character—so he can "purchase" the spiritual riches that actually mean something, the heavenly treasure Jesus speaks about in Matthew 6:20.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Balaam and the End-Time Church (Part 2)
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