Hebrews 12:7-8 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chastens not?… I. GOD EDUCATES US BY MEANS OF OUR PHYSICAL NEEDS. Man is born naked and defenceless; if he would live he must obtain shelter from torrid suns and piercing cold; he must provide himself with food and raiment; he must, by means of his wits, be able to defend himself against enemies infinitely more powerful than himself. How is it that man alone, of all God's creatures, is sent into the world unprovided with any of those things which are necessary to the support of physical life? It is because God dealeth with us as with sons. It is because life is meant to be to us, and to us alone, an education; and from the first we are pricked on by these goads of necessity. God has taken security that our work shall not be easy, that it shall not be mechanical; but that it shall tax our ingenuity and educe our mental powers to the uttermost. For man is born not only without instinct and without clothing, but without tools. Nature provides the lion with the claws and fangs which make it easy to seize its prey; the bee has in itself all the apparatus necessary for extracting honey, and carrying it, and building its cells, and acting out all its life-history; the spider has its wonderful film ready wound about its body, and the machinery for spinning many threads into one, and affixing it, and weaving its web; but man must first provide himself with external aid if he would hold his own, be it but a sharpened flint or a fishbone! Moreover, God has made man relatively one of the weakest of living things. His bodily powers are poor indeed compared with those of other creatures. What does it all mean? It means this, that God would educate us not chiefly in body, but in mind; it is by the brain that man has subdued the earth and become lord over all creation; it is the necessity of surmounting difficulties and guarding against dangers that has called forth all his resources and educated his faculties and perfected his powers. See, then, how large a part of man's education is due to his bare bodily necessities! In the endeavour to meet these he has invented all the industrial arts and sciences. And it is not only mental gifts which labour educes. Patience, endurance, forethought, courage — these and many other moral qualities are the outcome of that necessity for work which God lays upon us all. II. GOD EDUCATES MEN BY MEANS OF THEIR MENTAL NEEDS. He has implanted in nature that which awakens curiosity in man, and He has implanted in man a hunger and thirst after knowledge and truth, and the result is education. Man's intellectual needs are not less imperative than his physical requirements; they must be satisfied at any cost. He must know all about the flowers at his feet; the science of botany is the result. He raises his eyes to the stars above; their mystery perplexes him; generation after generation he struggles with this mystery till little by little the secrets of the sky are discovered, and the great science of astronomy is pieced together. Curiosity awakened by shells and fossils has led to geology; curiosity about the antecedents of our race has led to history, and so forth. It is thus with all those departments of knowledge which are not purely utilitarian; they are all the result of the desire for knowledge implanted in us by God, acted upon by external nature. And there is in man another intellectual appetite nobler than any of these, which is most powerful in evolving his higher nature — I mean the love of the beautiful. God has clothed hill and vale, mountain and lake, sea and sky, with splendour of colour and form of which the eye never wearies. And further He has put something in the human heart to which these things appeal; there is a strange correspondence between the human soul and the beauties of nature; they were made for one another; there was meant to be action and re-action between them. When gazing on a sunset sky or a lovely scene we realise our immortality as at no other time; we feel that they have a message from God for us. III. GOD EDUCATES US BY THE SORROWS AND TRIALS OF LIFE. In this matter also man's position is unique. The lower animals are almost exempt from suffering. It is true that they are liable to physical pain, but there is abundant evidence to prove that this pain is much less acute than in human beings, and in their case there is neither anticipation nor retrospection. But man, to whom was given the dominion over the brutes, man, who was made but a little lower than the angels, how different is his lot! He is " born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward." He alone has to endure those mental and spiritual griefs compared with which bodily sufferings are as nothing. All his life is leavened with pain, with forebodings, with vain regrets, with unsatisfied longings. Why is this? Because life is an education; because God dealeth with us as with sons. Men ask why sorrows are permitted. As well might the flower ask why clouds and stormy days are permitted. As well might one expect blossoms and fruit without rain as expect that men can bring forth the fruits of righteousness without the discipline of sorrow. The saintliest of men have been always those who have suffered most; and it behoved even the great Captain of our salvation to be made perfect through suffering in order to teach us that only be who drinks the bitter cup and bears the cross of shame can hope to wear the crown of glory. IV. GOD EDUCATES US BY OUR SPIRITUAL NEEDS. The most imperative want of our nature is to know God. Everywhere there is a belief in a God or gods, the instinct of worship, conscience more or less developed. Everywhere is felt the necessity of propitiating and being reconciled to the Invisible Power whom transgression has offended. And the more a man advances in holiness and moral greatness, the more is he impelled to make the thought of the Psalmist his own: "Like as the hart desireth the water brooks, so longeth my soul after Thee, O God"; "My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God." And while he is ever hungering after God with a hunger which nothing on earth can appease, conscience is ever urging him to a closer and closer walk with God, and yet he never feels that he has fully attained or is already perfect. What is the reason why these strange desires and instincts have been implanted in man? What but the truth our text teaches that God dealeth with us as with sons? Just as God has given in the book of Nature that which educes and partly satisfies man's intellectual needs, so He has given us in Holy Scripture that which educes and ministers to our spiritual needs. The correspondence between our craving for knowledge, and the revelation by which that craving is met, affords the clearest proof that both are from God, and that in sacred things as in secular the main purpose of our life is education. 1. It throws light upon the mystery of the present. This earth is but the lowest room in God's school; in other spheres and at other times the education which circumstances thwarted and hindered here will be carried on under happier circumstances. 2. And it throws light upon the mystery of the future. It affords one of the strongest arguments for a future life. For, of course, the education which is commenced here can be at best but in its initial stage when death removes us. (A. M. Mackay, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? |
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