God Disciplines His Kids

Morning, we're going to be talking about a topic, or a topic that isn't really talked about a lot in churches nowadays. It's a topic that kind of gets people uncomfortable, a topic that you can't really grow a church on, and that is the topic of God disciplining His kids. God's discipline of His kids. Can you remember, if you think back, how many sermons you've listened to where you've heard God talking about, or from His word, talking about how He will train you and refine you and develop your character in tough times or through tough times? Can you remember the last time you sung a worship song to God, a worship song to God, talking and thanking God for the tough times that He sent your way?

Thanking God for, you know, losing a loved one. Thanking God for, you know, making you lose a lot of money. Any of those things. I can't remember any worship songs that I've got on my little iPod, you know, listening to the car, singing those sort of songs. I don't think Hillsong would ever publish an album that has those sort of songs on it.

But the Bible actually talks about the topic of God's discipline quite openly. The book of Hebrews spends a significant part of developing its theme on that. The book of Hebrews in chapter 12 gives a very thorough explanation of how as Christians we deal with God's disciplining of His kids. Hebrews 12:7, for example, states this encouragement to endure hardship as discipline because God is treating you as sons, the writer of Hebrews says. For what son is not disciplined by his father?

Verse 10 in Hebrews 12 says, God disciplines us for our own good. It is understandable, however, that we don't listen to this or we don't hear this topic very often because it's not a nice topic necessarily to be dwelling on. It seems terrifying, the idea that a heavenly Father can cause hardship in a Christian's life. And at times it feels like it might be at odds with how we've come to know God as a gracious and merciful God, a God who sent His son for His kids to die on the cross as an atoning sacrifice, but the book of Hebrews again points out that it's perfectly consistent with a loving God. Hebrews 12:1-11 says this: no discipline seems pleasant at the time.

It seems painful, but later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. And in fact, it fits perfectly with a verse that Donnie actually quoted in his prayer, one of our favourite verses, Romans 8:28, that talks about knowing that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and who have been called according to His purposes. Why? Because we know that even in hardship, God is working to produce something good in us, for us. Have you ever experienced the disciplining of God?

Can you think back and think of moments in your life where you've seen the hand of God take things from you or put you in a situation where you've wondered, what is God doing here? What is happening here? And then by God's grace, maybe sometime later you've discovered, you've understood that what has happened was to develop something in you or to bring you to a place where you saw God in a different life, where you understood your life in relation to God differently? Are you able to identify those moments in your life? Well, this morning we're going to be looking at a prayer of a person who was in the furnace of God's refinement and disciplining.

And we'll look, as we go through this song, which is a psalm, Psalm 80, will look at how he addresses this and how he works through this in a godly way. So if you do have your Bibles with you, let's open to Psalm 80, and we're going to read the entire psalm, the entire 19 verses of Psalm 80. And feel free to keep your bible open because we will be referring to it a lot. Psalm 80:1: Hear us, O Shepherd of Israel, You who lead Joseph like a flock, You who sit enthroned between the cherubim, shine forth before Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh. Awaken Your might, come and save us.

Restore us, O God, make Your face shine upon us that we may be saved. O Lord God Almighty, how long will Your anger smoulder against the prayers of Your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears. You have made them drink tears by the bowlful. You have made us a source of contention to our neighbours, and our enemies mock us.

Restore us, O God Almighty. Make Your face shine upon us that we may be saved. You brought a vine out of Egypt. You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it, and it took root and filled the land.

The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. It sent our bows to the sea, shoots its shoots as far as the river. Why have You broken down its walls so that all who pass by pick its grapes? Boars from the forest ravage it, and the creatures of the field feed on it. Return to us, O God Almighty.

Look down from heaven and see. Watch over this vine, the root Your right hand has planted, the sun You have raised up for Yourself. Your vine is cut down. It is burnt with fire. At Your rebuke, Your people perish.

Let Your hand rest on the man at Your right hand, the son of man You have raised up for Yourself. Then we will not turn away from You. Revive us, and we will call on Your name. Restore us, O Lord God Almighty. Make Your face shine upon us that we may be saved.

So far our reading. We have a writer here that writes a poem, writes a song to God. Our subtext here is that it is a writer by the name of Asaph, who according to the Bible was a temple musician in the time of King David and Solomon. He was a musician employed for writing and making music in the temple. But this psalm is dated a lot later than the time of Asaph.

This is dated to around the exile of the Northern kingdoms. So this is about three hundred years after the time of David and Solomon, and so scholars have suggested that the title of Asaph that we have written here in their bible is a reference to the line of musicians, part of the school of Asaph. So that gives a bit of an explanation and a context for the scenario of what was happening here. What we have is an Israelite praying to God, witnessing the turmoil, witnessing the ravages of war as the people of the northern tribes of Israel are being attacked by the Assyrian Empire. It would have been an absolutely terrifying thing to imagine.

And the reason we know that this is the northern tribes he's talking about is because he mentions by word, by name, the tribes of Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh in verse 2. These were the tribes associated with Joseph. Ephraim and Manasseh were the two half tribes that represented the tribe of Joseph, and so he's talking about tribes that were north of Judah, and he addresses them also, addresses God as the God and the shepherd of Joseph who leads them like a flock. Verse 4, however, is sort of the real heart wrencher here. Verse 4 sort of gives you the indication of why he is writing this psalm.

He says, O Lord God Almighty, how long will Your anger smoulder against the prayers of Your people? This is the reason why he is writing this. He is sensing that this is God's displeasure. He is sensing that this is the work of God's hand and therefore he addresses this prayer to God. We know from the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah that this occurred, the Assyrian Empire and the exile of the northern tribes occurred because of the idolatry that was happening in Israel at the time, a time where Israel, God's people, had turned away from God, where they were worshipping other gods.

They rejected the God of their ancestors, and it is such a terrible situation, however, that God has allowed them in that this psalm writer speaks of grief upon grief, almost on a daily basis, where he says, You feed us on the bread of tears. We drink tears by the bowlful. This is a man who is desperately unhappy, who is desperately grieved by this situation, but he associates it with the anger or the displeasure of God, the disciplining of God. He remembers how God called this Israel His tender vine. He gave it a nickname, His vine, the vine that He had brought up out of Egypt, verse 8 says, and that He planted in the promised land, driving out all the enemies of God out of that country before them.

That little vine nation became great, he says, and it stretched all the way from the West, the Mediterranean Sea in the West, all the way north to the great river of Euphrates. Yet God had now allowed Israel's enemies to come and ravage this vine, to trample it, to destroy it like a wild pig, a boar. He sees that he says that the creatures of the field feast on it. And the call again in verse 14 and 15 is, Lord, watch over this vine. Watch over this vine, the root that Your right hand has planted.

See, Lord, what is happening to us. Do You not remember who we are, Lord? Do You not remember that we belong to You, he says, that You rescued us, that You established us in this place by Your grace? We belong to You, Lord. Please don't abandon us.

Please, he says, don't keep Your face from shining on us. And this, if this is the reason that he writes, that sensing the displeasure of God, this is the motivation for addressing God. We find three times mentioned this refrain: verses 3, 7 and verse 19, the writer begs God, restore us. Restore us, O God.

Make Your face shine upon us that we may be saved, verse 3 says. Verse 7: Restore us, O God Almighty. Make Your face shine upon us that we may be saved. Verse 19: Face shine upon us that we may be saved. And so this refrain repeated over and over again gives the heartbeat of this psalm.

That when God's disciplining or correction causes us to sense the absence of peace and the peace of His smile, we sense the dreadful situation that is. We are never more lost, friends, than when we are apart from God's smiling face. We are never more lost when we sense the frown of God. If there is a single verse, a single theme to this psalm, it would be this: that the favour of God, His face shining upon us, is the light of life. God's face shining upon us is the light of life and it is truly dreadful.

It is truly terrifying to be away from that. No matter how desperate the situation is, however, despite the continuing presence of terrifying enemies, he says, or the disciplining anger of God, nor even the apparent undoing of God's grace through our bad choices, no matter how desperate our situation is, he also identifies the remedy. And that single remedy for our souls is that God should smile upon us. That God should smile upon us. So powerful is the favour of God that it becomes our heart's most precious and sought after goal.

Restore us, O God. Make Your face shine upon us that we may be saved. What we're going to do is identify how this man, how this psalmist writes or digests this moment, this season of disciplining and how he works with God, how he relates with God in this time. And there are several things that the psalmist identifies in this psalm that helps us in understanding our position before God when we face these sort of situations. There are four ways, really, in which God is addressed and approached in this psalm.

Firstly, God is approached by the psalm writer in verses 1 and 2 as his shepherd and his king. He begins the psalm by saying, Hear us, O Shepherd of Israel, You who lead Joseph like a flock. Now from the earliest days of Israel's history, this image of God as shepherd existed. In fact, Israel, or Jacob, the father of the nation of Israel, addresses God in a prayer in Genesis 48 with these words. He says, May the God before whom my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, walk, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, may He bless these boys of mine.

May He bless these tribes that will come from me. From the earliest moment, God reveals Himself to His people in this nurturing pastoral sort of way. God is the pastor of Israel. God is the pastor of Israel. He will be their nurturer.

He will be their guide. He will be their protector as a shepherd was to his sheep. And God continues, we know, this image right through the Bible to the New Testament where Jesus is said to be the good shepherd, the one who would lay down His life for His sheep like a good shepherd would do. And so the psalm writer remembers that God is a nurturer. The psalm writer remembers that God is a protector, that He is a guide and will guide them through even this difficult stage.

But the psalmist goes on and calls Him king too. In verse 1, he says, or addresses God as the one enthroned between the cherubim. Now again, if you know your Old Testament history, you know that the Old Testament was the place where God and His glory resided. In this temple was the holiest of holies where God had His presence centred, and it was considered the most holy place in all the earth. And God rested on what was called the Ark of the Covenant, which was a big box that contained objects or symbols of God's grace to the people of Israel.

And on this box was a lid made out of pure gold, and on this lid of pure gold were crafted these two angelic beings. And God rested His presence between these angels, these cherubim. And so the psalmist is remembering that God is also king who is seated on this throne in His presence in Israel. He remembers that God is not only a nurturer and a guide, a shepherd, but also that He is ruler and judge as king. Here on the mercy seat, here on His throne, God resides, and He reigns with righteousness and justice.

He destroys injustice and He crushes rebellion against His kingdom. God is called upon as the enthroned one between the cherubim of the mercy seat because He is remembered as righteous and as just and as a ruler. This is what the psalmist brings up when addressing God in this time of disciplining. But secondly, not only is He the shepherd king, this God of ours, but He is the redeemer and the provider of His people. In verses 4 to 6, in these heartbreaking verses where the psalm cries out, the psalmist cries out, how long will Your anger burn against us, the believer here is sensing the displeasure of God against his sin, against the sin of his family, his church, and his nation, he knows how desperate this situation is.

But in recognising this situation, he addresses God with this title, O Lord God Almighty. O Lord God Almighty. Now again, if we were to look at these verses literally in the Hebrew, it literally says this: Oh Yahweh, Oh God, Oh omnipotence. Oh Yahweh, Oh God, Oh omnipotence. The God who this believer approaches is God Almighty, the all powerful, the all capable God who is the only one able to do anything about this situation.

He is the only one able to rescue him. God here is a redeemer. God here is called upon to rescue and to restore and to save. And in addressing God in this way in verse 7, he simply says, O Almighty or powerful God, redeem us. Restore us.

Notice that there is no call for a great outreaching of God's power. He doesn't outline how God should do this and how many armies He should raise up or whatever. He simply says, Lord, restore us. Again, literally, Lord, us. Turn us to You.

However You see fit, redeem us. He asks only this thing, that God may shine His face upon them. God has called upon here to restore His broken flailing people, His crushed church back to God for no other reason than to taste the nearness and the joy and the peace of God. So he comes to God not only as the shepherd king but also as the Almighty, powerful, all capable redeemer. And thirdly, God is acknowledged as the God of the promise.

He is regarded as the faithful God and in verses 8 to 12, God is described as this gardener of a vine. Isaiah 5 talks about God in this way as well, that God brought out Egypt, out of a bad land, out of this place in Egypt where there was plenty of water from the Nile and yet His poor people perished as a vine. God brought them out and He planted them in good soil. He planted them in the promised land and vine grew and flourished and God looked after it. And the amazing thing of this is this metaphor that God uses of the vine because it again shows just part of His character.

In the time of Israel, a grapevine was a highly prised plant because of the fact that it could make wine and juice. It was highly prised but it was also highly fickle. It was the most labour intensive thing to look after in the time. It was spindly and weak. It was prone to disease and drought.

And God is shown to be this gardener who spent all His time looking after this little thing, trying to keep it alive, trying to nurture it and look after it. The vinedresser God is shown to be the God of nurture, of great affection and care. But He is also more than that, the God who brought this little vine out from the bad land of Egypt into this good land and He made that promise true. He said that He would and He did. And so God is remembered here as the vinedresser, as the faithful one, the one that remembered His promise to look after this little nation, this little struggling branch that couldn't survive on its own, that needed constant affection, constant care.

And so in this moment of immense darkness, experiencing the disciplining of God, the refining of God, the psalm writer remembers God not only as a nurturing shepherd, a protector shepherd, not only a righteous, just king, not only an all powerful redeemer, but as the promise keeping vine gardener, the faithful one. Friends, can you see that when we are out of step with God's will and we experience the fatherly discipline of this God to bring us into a better relationship with Him, there is a great example here in Psalm 80 of how to approach our God in this time. When something is difficult in your life, don't assume that it's a waste. It is something that must be endured and just white knuckled through there.

It is a time of refinement. It is planned. It is purposeful. There is a need for it in your life. Look out for that chance that God wants to teach you something in that moment.

And when you sense God's hand in the turmoil, in the anxiety, remember to reflect on the wisdom and the power and the faithfulness of your God. That is how you will endure. That is how you will thrive in this. Remember the wisdom, the faithfulness, the power of your God. Now I don't know if you noticed this, but we didn't touch on the last verses, verses 16 to 18 and 19.

And we didn't really reflect on the progression that happens in this psalm either. Because I mentioned that the psalm writer mentions three times this chorus and this refrain: O God, restore us. Make Your face shine upon us that we may be saved. But did you notice that there is a progression happening here?

Each chorus is slightly different. First one in verse 3 simply says, Restore us, O God. The second in verse 7 says, Restore us, O God Almighty. But the last one, the capstone, the bookend for this psalm right at the end: Restore us, O Lord God Almighty. It's as if despite this time of painful disciplining, the Christian here moves closer and closer to God, finishing with addressing God with His personal name, Yahweh.

The God, the name that God gave His people, the name that brought them into an intimate relationship with Him, not simply as God the creator, but as God the father. It may not, and I don't believe, be a coincidence that in this final progression, it happens right after this section we haven't dealt with in verses 16 and 18 where the psalm writer looks forward to a son of man who will sit at the right hand of God, the one who God would raise up for Himself. And when this one comes, the psalm writer says in verse 18, then we will not turn away from You. Revive us and we will call on Your name. Isn't that amazing?

Friends, the hope of Psalm 80 is that a saviour would come for His people. A poor believer in the grip of God's discipline aches for a time when people would come to know God fully and call on His name. And we read it this morning. The prophet Jeremiah spoke of a time like that. He called it a new covenant where no longer would a man have to teach his neighbour or a man his brother saying, Know the Lord because they will all know Me.

Know the Lord, know Yahweh, know the Father because they will all know Me from the least to the greatest because I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. The apostle Paul picks up this in the book of Romans in this theme of knowing the name of the Lord, the power of that, that again the psalmist writes in Psalm 80:18. But he refers it this time specifically to someone and that is to a man called Jesus Christ. In Romans 10, Paul says that everyone who confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord and believes in their heart that God raised Him from the dead, that they will be saved. Paul continues, for everyone who calls upon the name of this Lord will be saved.

Psalm 80 at the end: After addressing this God, knowing this God's character despite the turbulence and the difficulty and the pain of experiencing God's discipline, this psalm writer looks to the son of man at God's right hand that would once and for all unite God's people to Himself. And it was Jesus Himself who took this title Son of Man onto His own lips. It was Jesus Himself who had said that He would ascend to the right hand of God the Father in heaven. It was Jesus who Himself accepted the title of Messiah.

In Christ's coming, we have received this hope that the writer of Psalm 80 looked for. And this is the hope that though God may discipline us, that God may work with us very hard, that He may mould us and break us and reshape us, though God may discipline us, He will never abandon us. In seasons of discipline, may we remember that the God who disciplines us is a God who comes with many promises. In this poem of a heartbroken child in the midst of God's training and discipline, he remembers the nurture and the guidance of a shepherd, the justice and the righteousness of a king, the all capable, all powerful power of a redeemer, the God who is faithful to His promise as a vinedresser looking after a spindly little branch. But in the expected Messiah of Psalm 80, the psalmist looks forward to the beauty and the majesty of a God who deals with even His most rebellious of children.

And He deals with it once and for all, showing Himself to be the Father of mercy and grace. This is the God who will never abandon us despite His discipline of us. Let's pray. Father, we may be experiencing times of hardship and discipline. Father, our life might be good and we might be experiencing the shine of Your face, the light of Your smile upon us.

Whatever our situation may be this morning, Lord, whatever may come before us, let us remember, Lord, that You are the God who has promised Yourself to us in Jesus Christ once and for all. That You will never leave us nor forsake us because of what Jesus has done, that He has bought us and that we are Yours, that we are owned by You, wholly and solely. Father, I pray that as we have eyes to see, as You enlighten seasons of growth, transformation and discipline in our lives, Lord, that we may kiss that wave that smashes us onto the rock of ages. That we may welcome the chance to grow and to be developed into Your image more and more. Father, refine the aspects of our life that is not glorifying to You at all.

Cut away the dead branches in us, prune away the aspects of our life that needs to be done away with. But Father, give us patience to endure even in hardship, knowing, Lord, that You are a God who loves us and does this for our good. And Father, when times may be unbearable seemingly, give us the grace also to remember who You are, that You are powerful and capable of changing our situations, that we may come to You as Yahweh our Lord, our Father, that You are a nurturer and a shepherd, that You are a faithful vinedresser. And Father, we thank You that You have given us this word again this morning. May we be encouraged by it in Jesus' name. Amen.