Disciplined Sons – The Stamp of Legitimacy – Part 3

(Read Isaiah 28:23-29)

I. Our Heavenly Father Disciplines Us According to His Infinite Wisdom

II. Our Heavenly Father Adjusts His Disciplines According to Our Individual Ways

A. He Plows the Soil According to its Nature – Isaiah 28:27, “Does he who plows for sowing plow continually? Does he continually open and harrow his ground?

The end of Isaiah 28 is a poem relating the work of God to the work of a farmer. A farmer does not just plow; he knows when to stop plowing and when to level the ground, when to plant, and what to plant where. He uses different tools at different times, and works them all together to produce crops. In the same way, God knows what instruments to use in our life, and what time to use them. We don’t have to doubt or despair at what God is doing in our lives, because He is an expert farmer, working on us with all His wisdom.
He used the proper instrument and procedure at the proper time to accomplish His purposes among His stubborn people.

Child-training, discipline or chastening is inevitable and is individual because no two children are alike. Each has a different nature, so Father must use different child-training approaches.

B. He Plants the Seed in the Situation Best Suited for its Growth – Isaiah 28:25, “When a field is ready, they scatter the seeds of dill and cumin; they plant the seeds of wheat and barley in the proper places.” Our heavenly Father plants us in the place of His choosing and He expects us to bloom and bear fruit where we are planted.

C. He Provides all that the Seed Needs for Maturity – He provides prosperity as well as adversity. He provides sunshine and rain. He covers the seed –(us) with fertilizer, i.e. manure, and turns up the heat. He does all this, not as punishment, but with the design of bringing the seed to the fulfillment of its ultimate purpose. Remember in life as well as in nature, sunshine all the time makes a desert.

D. He Beats Out the Seed in Order to Bring it forth in Bread and Future Blessings for Others – Isaiah 28:28, “Wheat and barley are pounded, but not beaten to pulp; they are run over with a wagon, but not ground to dust.” 

The farmer will not always continue to thresh or run over the grain with a wagon. It is only a part of his method by which he gets grain for his bread. It would be needless and injurious to be always engaged in rolling the stone or the sledge over the grain. So God takes various methods with his people. He does not always pursue the same course. He sometimes uses the rod and applies powerfully strokes just as the farmer beats his grain. But He is not engaged in this method alone; nor does he pursue this constantly. It would crush and destroy them. He, therefore, applies the rod just enough to secure, in the best manner, and to the fullest extent, their obedience; just as the farmer bruises his sheaves enough to separate all the grain from the chaff. When this is done, he pursues other methods.

Hence the various severe and heavy trials with which the people of God are afflicted. If the rod and the staff will answer the end, he will not make use of his cart-wheel and his horsemen. And where these are necessary, as for the bruising of the bread-corn (which will not otherwise be got separated from the straw), yet he will not be ever threshing it, will not always chide, but his anger shall endure but for a moment; nor will he crush under his feet the prisoners of the earth. And herein we must acknowledge him wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.

For the child of God chastening is unavoidably painful, but invaluable when properly submitted to because God will have His people to be Seed for sowing and Bread for the hungry of the harvest fields.

A classic illustration of fruitful discipline comes from one of the many stories of legendary football coach, Vince Lombardi: During a pretty sorry practice session for the Green Bay Packers, famous head coach Vince Lombardi vented his spleen on one big guard. He called him a lousy football player who wasn’t blocking or tackling or putting out. He got so worked up he sent the guard to the showers. Forty-five minutes later. When practice was over, Lombardi walked into the shower room and saw the big guard still sitting in uniform in front of his locker, quietly sobbing. The coach did an about face. He put his arm around the guard’s shoulder. “Son,” he told him, “I told you the truth. You are a lousy football player. You’re not blocking. You’re not tackling, and you’re not putting out.

However, in all fairness to you, I should have finished the story. Inside of you, son, there is a great football player and I’m going to stick by your side until the great football player inside of you has a chance to come out and assert himself.”‘

Lombardi stuck to his word. Jerry Kramer, the guard, later gained fame as one of football’s greatest. He was acknowledged as the all-time guard in professional football’s first fifty years. He learned from his mistakes.

Father God sees Jesus in us and sets out to remove everything else in our life that does not look like His Son!

(Read Part 1 ·  Part 2 · Part 4)