Sunday, August 24th 2025
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Series C (Proper 16)
Text: Hebrews 12:4–29
Sermon Audio
As we gather… The word disciple and the word discipline have the same root. You cannot have disciples without discipline because at their root both words mean learning. Learning isn’t always easy, and in fact it can be hard and painful. Likewise, following Jesus is not always easy, but as we look at the Epistle Lesson from the book of Hebrews, we see that the Lord disciplines those He loves. Discipline can look like being challenged to grow by a pastor or Christian friend. It can look like getting in our own habits of regular church attendance, prayer, and Scripture reading. Whatever it may look like for you, it is to the end of one day reaching heaven and eternal life. We read in Herbews 12: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering,” We are discipled under the disciple of Jesus so that we one day can join Him in heaven.
We want the simple Gospel, don’t we? Indeed, the good news of Jesus doesn’t require one to get a college degree, even a child could tell you it. God became human in the person of Jesus Christ. He lived a perfect life. He died on the cross to forgive our sins, and He rose again on the third day to show us that He works to make all things right.
But if God is all-powerful, why bother with the whole dying on the cross thing? 1. (oops!) Wouldn’t it be nice if the Father could forgive sins by waving a wand?
We read an encouraging passage in Hebrews 12, “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,”
We want that for everyone. Why make salvation so specific? Why does Jesus warn about the narrow door? He said, ““Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” That’s not very nice, it is, Jesus? Why be so exclusive? Make the gate wider! Let more people into heaven! Couldn’t you have just said that all people get to go to heaven, and then avoided the cross altogether?
Why not challenge Satan to a feat of strength instead? Why not take on the demons in a game of soccer? Why not enter hell and blast the devil to smithereens? I was touring a megachurch in the Midwest, and the auditorium style sanctuary didn’t have a cross in it. When someone in our tour group asked why not, he said, “There’s a lot of people considering Christianity who come to our church. We don’t want to offend them.”
Many so-called churches like that megachurch have shied away from the message of the cross. Why offend people like that? One pastor said to me, “I know the cross is important, but does it need to be in every sermon?” 2. (ugh!) Did Jesus really need to be nailed to the tree? God, forgive our sins with the wave of a wand, and by the way, what are you doing about all this evil? Are you asleep at the wheel?
Society doesn’t want to hear about the Father sending His Son to die—that’s not fair! That’s divine child abuse! But we are outraged when the news tells us about the latest shooting, a burglary downtown, a child abuse scandal in a non-profit organization, or a C.E.O. of a tech company having an affair.
Are we blind to see that these are two sides of the same coin? Heaven is a real place, but could He let sinners that show up as the villains of the ten o’clock news into His Heaven? That would be like letting a mud-covered pig in a fine art gallery. For that matter, could He let someone like you into His Heaven? I know we all think that evil is out there, but we forget the evil that is in here. You want to burn the liars? You’ll set us both on fire.
In elementary school, I had no concept of money. A car? It could cost a million dollars. It could cost one hundred dollars, I wouldn’t know. Any adult is just made of money, and you can just buy something new when something breaks.
But just because your dad is paying for the new toy doesn’t mean it was free. Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross tells us that salvation had a price. It is free to us, but it cost something. What kind of price is there for the infinite God who has created everything and could destroy the universe in the snap of His fingers? The cost comes in that the infinite God became finite man in the person of Jesus Christ. God can’t suffer. God can’t face discipline. But in Jesus Christ, God suffered. In Jesus Christ, God faced discipline for your sins. In Jesus Christ, God faced hell for your sins. In Jesus Christ, God died for your sins. 3. (aha!) The cross shows us the Father is serious about sin.
NAILS, NOT WANDS SHOW US THE PRICE OF HOLINESS AND HEAVEN. The author of the book of Hebrews writes, “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” The path to heaven is holiness, but holiness burns away our impurities.
In our self-righteousness, we have an idea of how we think the world should be, but due to the corruption to sin, we have our right and wrong completely upside down. If God took you just the way you are to heaven, heaven would cease to be heaven because your sin would stink the place up! A heaven with gossip would be no heaven at all. A heaven with lust would be no heaven at all. A heaven with greed, theft, and coveting would be no heaven at all. A heaven with anger and violence would be no heaven at all.
To wave a magic wand and make it all disappear would be either to say that that kind of behavior is okay, or it would be to crumble up God’s creation and throw it into a trash bin. God sent Jesus to suffer because nails, not wands are what we need. The Father wants to save us, not kill us. 4. (whee!) The Father disciplined the Son because of our sin.
Our salvation is free and we receive it by simply believing in Jesus, but it cost God everything. It cost Him the life of His Son. But because of this, we become His sons and daughters, but being sons and daughters, He works to purify us. We read, “It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” In this life, we face discipline from God Himself.
Yes, the mass shootings, the child abuse, the corporate greed, and the horrors that make the evening news fill us with outrage, but the Lord sees fit to destroy those evils one sinner at a time as His Holy Spirit convicts hearts and turns them to Jesus and then works in each heart to kill sin and raise up new, holy living.
In the book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis borrows a parable from his mentor George MacDonald. “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What is earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself” (pg. 205, chapter: Counting the Cost, 2001 edition HarperColins).
In other words, maybe we set out to have Christianity make us into a generally moral person, or it’s enough to say Jesus is God so He can help me cut out my drinking problem, but there’s so much more He wants to do with you. A tool He uses is discipline. The same sort of discipline that Jesus endured.
In this life, God is chiseling away at your sins and imperfections, and that can really hurt! The money we give to church is money that isn’t invested in a retirement fund, spent on toys and vacations, or bequeathed to kids. Nonetheless, the work of the Church has an eternal impact.
If you quit going to the bar as often as you do, you might lose friends, but you find that in the Church there is a family even better than your drinking buddies. Esau thought the stew was pretty tasty but lost everything due to Jacob’s treachery. Inheritances larger than that have been lost to an old flame who promised, “It’s just one night, nobody needs to know.”
It’s easy to live and let live, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Yes you are! You might be judged or rejected by a family or friend who is caught in a pattern of sin and you approach them with genuine love and concern and your concerns fall on deaf ears.
God uses nails not wands to enact His justice, and it’s nails through the hands of His own Son which hurt like hell. Heaven is a real place, and the gate is narrow precisely because our made of ideas of what heaven is like are about as possible as having your groceries in fewer bags and having them be lighter.
Discipline hurts, but it’s the path God uses to bring us to heaven to be conformed to the image of His Son. With this in mind, we can gladly endure the discipline and crosses that make us more Christlike and destroy evil starting in our own hearts. 5. (yeah!) We gladly conform our lives to this cross.