Please turn in your Bibles to Joshua chapter 8, beginning to read at verse 1. Now the Lord said to Joshua, do not be afraid nor be dismayed. Take all the people of war with you and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land, and you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoils and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves. Lay an ambush for the city behind it. So Joshua rose and all the people of war to go up against Ai. And Joshua chose 30,000 mighty men of valor and sent them away by night. And he commanded them saying, behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you be ready. Then I and all the people who are with me will approach the city and it will come about when they come out against us as at the first that we shall flee before them. for they will come out after us till we have drawn them from the city for they will say they are fleeing before us as at the first therefore we will flee before them then you shall arise from the ambush and seize the city for the lord your god will deliver it into your hand And it will be when you have taken the city that you shall set the city on fire according to the commandment of the Lord you shall do. See, I have commanded you." Father, I thank you for this, your word, and I pray that as we dig into it, that each of us would grow in you and benefit from it, and that we would be better soldiers of the cross of Jesus Christ. We ask this in his name. Amen. Well, most of us have made some major failures in our lives, sometimes very embarrassing failures. And we saw last week that when that happens, it's very easy for us to give up. Joshua certainly was ready to give up. He complained to the Lord that he wanted to go on the other side of the Jordan where it was safer. And he was very downhearted with the loss, but also with the loss of 36 soldiers. It was a big blow to him. But God corrects him and shows him that when we approach our failures in God's way, that very failure can be a jumping off platform for victory. And this is the remarkable thing about God's grace. Our very failures can be many times used by God to be the platform for victory. But it depends upon how we handle that. James Lowell once said that our failures are like sharp kitchen knives that can be used for good purposes or can be devastating depending on whether you grab it by the handle or whether you grab it by the blade. And Joshua definitely grabbed his knife by the handle and turned his failure into a remarkable victory. We want to learn from that process. Now today we're only going to go through verses 3 through 8. I'm not going to hurry through chapter 8. There's just way too much good material in this chapter. And these six verses deal with planning a comeback after failure. Next week, we're gonna be looking at how wonderful it is to see a plan beginning to come together. But today, just the process of planning itself is what we're gonna focus on. And let me take just a minute or two to review what we looked at last week in verses one through two. Point one says, base your battles solidly on the promises of God. That's what we saw last week. I'll just read that again. Now the Lord said to Joshua, do not be afraid nor be dismayed. Take all the people of war with you and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, his people, his city, and his land, and you shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king. Only its spoil and its cattle you shall take as booty for yourselves. Lay an ambush for the city behind it. Now, last week we saw that these verses are just rich with the promises of our God of grace despite a wretched defeat the moment Not later, but the moment Israel repented and turned around in its attitudes, God welcomed them back to confidence, to being useful servants, to faith in his promises, to stewardship, fulfillment, instruction, joy, and victory. He showed himself to be a generous God that every one of them could depend upon. And God encourages them now to match their plans to His promises. And this is very, very important. We do not want man-centered plans with man-centered goals, grounded in man's wisdom, leading to man's glory. No way. We want it the exact opposite. Hudson Taylor said that he has witnessed Christians doing, trying to serve God in three different ways. And he said, only one of them really has God's blessing. He said, the first way is people come up with their own plans and they carry them out in their own strength. They think this is a great way to serve the Lord. The second way is to come up with their own plans, but ask God, would you give us strength? Would you bless our plans? And he said, but the right way is to come to God and say, Lord, what do you want our plans to be? And we're here as your servants to carry out your purposes. That's what this passage, is all about. It's making sure that our plans are anchored in God's promises, in tune with his word, sensitive to his leading, completely under his lordship. So I'm assuming you guys, not all of you heard last week's sermon, but I'm not gonna repeat it. Now that's point number one. Point two, after hearing from God, what's the first thing that we need to do? We've had a major failure, what's the first thing we need to do? It's to get your head back into the game and to leave the past as the past. And we have a hard time doing it, especially if the past was super embarrassing. Verse three begins, so Joshua arose and all the people of war. He stopped mourning and moping around like he had been doing in chapter 7. And by faith, he got his head back in the game. Now, he knows he is not going to be able to remedy all of the damage that was done. I mean, there is 36 widows, probably, and some children who are mourning. And so when God wants Joshua to get his head back into the game, he's not in any way being insensitive to the harm that's been done to these widows and these children and the pain that is there. There is pain and Joshua owns it. So he's not being insensitive, but if he's going to succeed, he has to focus upon what God has called him to do and to pursue it with his whole heart. When we constantly stew about the past with all of its regrets, our head is not in the game. Romans 8, 28 promises that even our major blunders can be turned into blessings because God causes all things to work together for good, all things. And we have a hard time believing that sometimes, but it was definitely the case here. So this idea of focus, faith in God moving forward is very important if we're to succeed. Our minds and our emotions cannot be chained to past failures. But the next point is also important. Getting your head back into the game means returning to the scene of previous defeat and dealing with it. And that, too, can be uncomfortable. Verse 3 goes on to say, They once again face the very place of their humiliation. Though they had suffered defeat at the hands of AI, they commit themselves to tackling AI once again, but doing it, this time, in right relationship with God. Now, what was the turning point that we saw last week? It was not only dealing with the sin that was in their midst, but it was recognizing their own prideful self-sufficiency. They had to put that off. They had to recognize that without God, they could do nothing. When they learned that lesson, then God says, good, I'm delighted to use you. They finally understood they needed to have God's power for even taking on a smaller city like AI. And in the same way, we are utterly dependent upon God for any success. This is why Pastor Gary and I keep harping on prayer, how important this is. Too many preachers, let's pick on me and preachers, too many preachers rely on their eloquence, their learning, their charisma But I'll tell you something, without God's blessing resting upon that preacher's preaching, their words will fall to the ground and will not accomplish anything of eternal significance. In contrast, Paul felt utterly inadequate with his preaching. He thought he was a lousy preacher, he didn't have good words, he stumbled on his words, and yet because he totally depended upon God, God used him powerfully for the advancement of his kingdom. Now let's apply this to you. Many of you are amazingly skilled at hospitality, or arithmetic, or athletics, or other things, but have you thought about consecrating your very strengths to God and asking God to anoint your strengths and to transform them by His grace. He can use your athletic skills, your skills at sales or gardening or administration. He can use those and make them more than just being effective. Now, it's a good thing to be effective. Don't get me wrong, we wanna be effective, but take seriously the thought that we want our skills to be more than effective. We want them to be anointed by God so that they're transformational for His kingdom. Take seriously the thought that even what seems easy to you, your strongest points can become your AI if God is not in it. They can. Daily we must give all that we are to the Lord and ask Him to use it. And accomplished people have a hard time doing that, and the reason they have a hard time doing that is it's so easy to depend upon what they're strong at, they're good at. This is why God many times bypasses skilled people and He uses people who sense their weakness. They are more useful to Him than the people who don't sense their weakness. Let me read 1 Corinthians 1, 27 through 31. Paul says, for you see your calling, brethren, "'that not many wise according to the flesh, "'not many mighty, not many noble are called, "'but God has chosen the foolish things of the world "'to put to shame the wise, "'and God has chosen the weak things of the world "'to put to shame the things which are mighty, "'and the base things of the world, "'and the things which are despised God has chosen, "'and the things which are not, "'to bring to nothing the things that are.'" And here's the purpose. that no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, that as it is written, he who glories, let him glory in the Lord. I mean, it's a simple lesson, but many of us are slow learners on this very lesson. It's easier to depend upon ourselves, and sometimes our strength becomes our problem because we depend upon it rather than depending upon the Lord. So anyway, they resolved that. Now that they're depending upon the Lord, God says, good, I can use you. We're going to take you now, and you're no longer going to be intimidated by AI. Okay, why? Because their confidence is not in themselves, it's in God. Well, the next point says, don't make the same mistakes twice. What was their previous mistake? It was thinking, this is easy. We can do it. Don't send everybody up. Just send up 2,000 to 3,000 people. So it was self-confidence. Now, when the Lord says, take everyone, they take everyone, even if it seems silly. Like, this is an easy thing. It's a tiny little city. They take everyone. And even their ambush, even though it says it's a small group, it's not 3,000 small. It's 30,000 small. So it says here, and Joshua chose 30,000 mighty men of valor, sent them away by night. And then verse 5 says, then I and all the people who were with me will approach the city. And many people say that previously Joshua had underestimated the power of AI. I really don't think that was the case. AI wasn't that big of a city. What had gone wrong was they had not sought God's guidance, they had not gone into this prayerfully, and they had overestimated their own saying. So that was the mistake. But back to the main point here, the best people down through history are not the people who have never made mistakes, right? It's the people who, like Thomas Edison, have learned from their mistakes. In Frederick Robertson's book on writing, He said, life, like war, is a series of mistakes. And he's not exaggerating there. I think every one of us can admit to that. Life is a series of mistakes. And he is not the best Christian or the best general who makes the fewest false steps. Poor mediocrity may secure that. But he is the best who wins the most splendid victories by the retrieval of mistakes. Forget mistakes. Organize victories out of mistakes, or to use the language of John Maxwell, I've probably handed this out to almost everybody here, when you fail, make sure you are failing forwards. And he gives several ways that we can fail forwards, and some of them we dealt with last week. Today, let me remind you of five more that are hinted at in chapters seven through eight. First of all, don't point fingers and blame others for your failure. The victim mentality robs one of a mental framework that we need to be able to move forward. These Israelites owned their sin, as well as their prideful mistake, and they moved on. So don't point the victor, don't see yourself as a victim, own your mistake, move forward. Second, people think that failure is an event. It is almost never an event. It is almost always a process. Let me just illustrate it. When you fail on a high school exam or you fail on a college exam, a lot of people say, oh man, that was a failure. But actually, what was the failure was likely the failure to prepare adequately for that exam. And so the failure really preceded that event, right? Now the same is true of most failures and mistakes. Third, don't see yourself as the failure. If you see yourself as the failure, you're going to get discouraged and want to give up. God didn't see these Israelites as failures. Yeah, they failed, but he saw them as victors because now they have faith in Christ, right? Our discouragement over failure is often because we see ourselves as the failure rather than seeing our actions as a failure, our Failure to plan is a failure, or our sins as the failure. Now we can't change who we are, but we can sure change our actions, right? And so see the actions as the failure, not you as a person. Now that may seem like a very subtle distinction, but I tell you psychologically, it makes a huge difference in your confidence. Fourth, don't see failure as the enemy to be avoided. I may seem counterintuitive, but a lot of people just don't want to try anymore because they're afraid of failure. NBA coach Rick Pitino once said, failure is good. It's fertilizer. Everything I've learned about coaching, I've learned from making mistakes. Now, obviously, we don't want to minimize sin. We don't want to trivialize it in any way. We want to avoid sin with all of our power. But if you fear doing challenging things that God has called you to do because, wow, I might fail, I might sin in doing that, well, let me suggest you may have already sinned in failing to take on those challenges. And so the point is, weak as we are, obedience to God has risks. It has risks. Embrace them. Fifth, don't focus on the past, focus on the future. These Israelites learned from their mistake and they didn't repeat it. Now the other thing I see in these same verses is that Joshua used all the resources that God commanded him to use. Now certainly God uses miracles in our lives when we don't have resources. We're up against a wall, he expects us to be responsible, but many times there's not much we can do, we can pray for a miracle. And God sometimes will give us miracles even when we have resources, like he did in Jericho. But, God expects us to do what we can with the resources that we do have, so planning requires recognition of resources, analysis of them, and use of them. What are some of the resources that Joshua had at his disposal? Now, obviously, people were a resource, and he distinguishes between different kinds of people. There were the kind of people mentioned in verse three here, what he calls them mighty men of valor, And not everybody there was a mighty man of valor. All of them were resources, but he used them in different ways. And so there were a variety of people resources. Their weapons and armor were resources. And in verse four, he tells them, all of you be ready. That means that each one had resources and they needed to be ready to use them. I mean, you don't wanna go into battle if you don't have good weapons and you don't have training to be able to use those weapons. And so you're gonna be in disobedience to that phrase in verse four. Verse three shows that night darkness was a resource that they took advantage of to hide as they're marching at night to go down into that valley so that they won't be seen going to that valley. And you might not have thought of darkness as a resource, but it can be. John Lovell of the Warrior Poet Society talked about objects and gear and furniture and other things in your environment being resources when you're clearing a room. You know, a mounted light can be a resource, even though he speaks of it as lights as being, what is it, bullet magnets, I think is what he calls them. And I can sort of see his logic on that. But there's a place for even something like that. But Lovell has you analyze what natural resources are in your environment that you can take advantage of in a crisis situation. Well, in the same way, verse four speaks of the walls of the city themselves being a resource that they were able to hide behind. And we'll see that a little bit more next time. In a bit, we'll see that the expectations of the enemy can be a resource that can be used against them. And as Joshua looked at the topography all around them, he noticed there were deep ravines where people could completely be hidden from sight of that city. And he took advantage of that. They would not be able to be seen, even from the high ramparts of the walls. And I've given an elevation diagram in your bulletins that shows where Joshua was. And this is going to be mainly for next week, but I decided to put it in here. When Joshua raises his javelin, there is a clear line of sight to where the scout of the ambush team would be able to see them. But then you see the big dip. Nobody in the city would be able to see the 30,000 people that are in that ambush. And then he sends another group of people to the west to cut off any escape to Bethel or to keep Bethel people from being able to come and to fight on behalf of AI. But the point is, topography of the area was a resource. And so this chapter shows Joshua thinking outside of the box at all of the potential resources that were at his disposal. He studied his situation carefully. And it's good for us to think outside of the box at what resources are at our disposal. Sometimes there are resources staring us in the face, And we just don't recognize them, just like, you know, the darkness in those ravines. Now, obviously, you can see the importance of this for an actual battle, but most of you aren't going to be going into battle. So let's apply it to our everyday lives. This is true for all of life. For example, God calls us to anticipate disasters that can happen and to make plans for them by allocating resources that could potentially help out. For example, Are you aware that there's the potential for the federal government to start assimilating banks this year and to establish this summer, is what they're planning on, a new digital currency? Even the mainstream media is talking about this. The governor of Florida and of Texas, both governors have spoken out against this very sharply and said that they will not honor that within their states. This is a thing. And the reason that they are speaking against us so sharply is this digital currency, they can monitor what every dollar you spend, where you spend it, and they can even control it, cut it off. This is happening right now in China. This is why stuff like this needs to be opposed. So it's just one of several potential future evils that we need to think about. What kind of resources could be at our disposal if that happens? Could there be war? If so, what are your plans? What if they draft our daughters? The Bible talks about anticipating potential disasters. Now, they may never happen, but God calls us to plan, to be prudent. In your home, are you using all the resources at your disposal to train your children? Well-planned chores for the children can be tremendous character training opportunities. Don't just think of them as getting the chores done. Think of them as training opportunities of character and attitude in your children. Do you take advantage of the mice and the ants that are coming into your kitchen? Or do you just take care of that yourself? There's all kinds of resources that are in your environment that you could use to train your your children. Many people think they don't have adequate resources. Well, I think sometimes it's underutilized resources. Do you use all the resources you could use for the success of your business or the success of your devotions and your family worship? Wow, there's a ton of resources out there you could use for your worship. Do you try to equip your wives with the resources that would enable them to better manage the home? I mean, sometimes buying your wives tools can help them to be much more efficient and save them time and energy. So the point is, it's planning. Most of our failures are the direct result of poor planning or poor use of resources. Next, in verse four, he took his leadership seriously. says, and he commanded them saying, and we'll see that what he commands, and this is a side point, but I think it's an important one, what he commands is exactly what God commanded him to command. And verse eight repeats that thought later on. Unlike individuals and families who have basically liberty to do anything they wanna do that is not forbidden by God, Church and state have great limitation on their liberties. We call this the regulative principle of government. God very strictly regulates what the church and what the state may do and what they may not do, and He does this because church and state constantly encroach upon the liberties of individuals and families, right? And so here we see illustrated, he sticks strictly to what God commands him to do. It makes for a very small church, very small state, but I think it's the biblical way of moving forward. But anyway, leadership in both church and state must still lead. God isn't going to do the leading for them. They must make decisions, they must plan, they must conscript and guide and counsel and charge people with everything that God has charged them to counsel them with. And Joshua took his military leadership seriously under God. Now again, most of you aren't military people, so I gotta pick on you anyway. We men need to lead. Men in this congregation, we cannot be passive. We need to lead. And you know what? The wives need to lead the children, and we need to teach the children how to lead over time by giving the children responsibilities and having them lead other children that are in the home, giving them an opportunity. Leading doesn't just happen, it is and must be a part of our planning. So brothers and sisters, this section is a call to improve your planning rather than continuing to dart from one crisis to another because you're so busy you can't plan. right? This week we're looking at the importance of planning, next week at the process of a plan coming together. In any case, having failed before, Joshua knows he needs to come up with a new strategy. Some of our failures are because we keep using the same failed strategies. And as we go now through, fairly quickly, through verses four through eight, you might be asking yourself, okay, Do I need to come up with new strategies, that is, if I've been having failures in certain areas of life? If everything's going swimmingly well, fine, continue with what you're doing. But let me illustrate this with a simple story of the need to take care of your tools. Some people are very poor stewards of their tools. They don't include maintaining their tools in their planning. Now, I worked in the logging industry up in Canada for two years. It was very, very hard work, not nearly as hard as my grandpa Kaiser's work in the lumber industry. He didn't have power tools. He chopped down trees with ax and with these pole saws. But the story goes that one young man applied for a job there, and the foreman told him, okay, I'll give you a chance to prove yourself. I want you to cut down this tree. And he was just testing him, and the young man was superb with the ax. He cut it down, and the foreman was impressed, hired him on the spot. He said, start on Monday. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday went by. And on Thursday afternoon, the foreman came and he said, okay, you can pick up your check on the way out. And the guy was a little bit surprised and puzzled. He said, I thought you paid on Friday. And the foreman said, well, normally we do, but we're letting you go today because you've fallen behind. Our daily felling charts show that you've dropped from first place on Monday to last place on Wednesday. And the young man remonstrated. He said, but I'm a hard worker. I arrive first, leave last. I even have to work through my coffee breaks. And the four men, sensing the boy's integrity, thought for a minute. And then he asked, have you been sharpening your axe? And the young man replied, I've been working too hard to take the time. Now that was obviously a big mistake, right? But this is a syndrome that any of us can fall into. We get too busy to plan and prepare and to hone our skills or to evaluate what tools we need within our home. Joshua regroups, he comes up with a new plan, and let's take a look at it. First part of the plan is to make an ambush on one side and then to station a group on the other side who could prevent Bethel from either helping out or being a city that the men of Ai could escape to. Verse four shows the ambush. Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you be ready. Now the group that cut off escape is in verse nine, and we'll look at that next time. Verse 9 says, Joshua therefore sent them out. They went to lie in ambush, stayed between Bethel and Ai, on the west side of Ai. But Joshua lodged that night among the people. And so this speaks of strategy, creative wisdom, thinking through options. This is the stuff that leadership is made of. And every one of us, men, women, and children, need to be raised up to be leaders, right? Next, he plans to draw the enemy out of the city so that the city will be unprotected. Verses 5 through 6. Then I and all the people who are with me will approach the city, and it will come about when they come out against us as at the first, that we shall flee before them, for they will come out after us till we have drawn them out from the city. Now, most of you aren't going to be involved in battle, so I'm just going to apply it to things that you are involved in. In apologetics, this involves getting the opponent to state the parts of his worldview that are most obviously without foundation and are the hardest to defend. You want the onlookers to notice that what seems like a secure worldview is actually very vulnerable. And presuppositional apologetics can teach you how to draw the enemy out in arguments. And if you haven't studied presuppositional apologetics, oh my, you... you really need to study presuppositional apologetics. I watched a video, I forget who told me about it. I think it was Gary told me about it last week. It was Isaac Botkin had a video, why everyone needs to own an AR-15, including grandma. Let me turn that around and say, why everyone needs to study apologetics, including grandma. You all need to be involved in this, okay? A nice introduction to apologetics is Greg Bonson's book, Always Ready, Directions for Defending the Faith. And by the way, we have put all of Bonson's stuff up onto bonsoninstitute.com. You can download it for free, okay? He's got all the seminary lectures, his classes at church, he's got everything up there. It's just a phenomenal free resource. And he was brilliant at drawing the enemy out. But right now, you have a perfect resource in the worldview class that Josh Fugate is leading in his home. It's using Dr. Robert Fugate's book, Foundation and Pillars of the Biblical Worldview, which is a must-read. It is a fantastic book. And brothers and sisters, you really need to appreciate and thank the Lord for the resource we have in Dr. Fugate in this church. In any case, take advantage of that class. Anyway, if you look at verse 6, you'll see that Joshua was, in a sense, taking advantage of the enemy's presuppositions. Everyone has presuppositions that make them act. And in this case, verse 6 goes on to say, for they will say, they are fleeing before us as at the first, therefore we will flee before them. So presuppositionalism helps you to get into the thinking of the enemy and teaches you how to take advantage of that thinking, especially the bankruptcy of their false presuppositions, and use it to lead those people to Christ. But certainly in a real war, there are all kinds of war room strategies like this that are trying to second guess what the enemy will do. The same is true in apologetics. The more we study worldview and apologetics, the more prepared we'll be to be good soldiers of the cross of Christ. So Josh, have I covered about everything as an advertisement for your class? Okay, the next point is, by faith plan for victory and believe you will achieve the victory. If you plan for defeat and believe that the church will be defeated, you will be defeated. It's just the way life works, right? God says that without faith it's impossible to please him, so he's not gonna bless lack of faith like that. And that's the problem with at least some of the more pessimistic, not all amillennialism, some of the more pessimistic forms of amillennialism and all of dispensationalism, They're both eschatologies that guarantee the defeat of the church. And I blame them for the mess we're in in America. Those eschatologies have robbed people of hope in the future by saying that God's promises do not apply to our age. They don't apply to our age. Let me tell you something. There is a brand new eschatology out there. Well, it's not totally brand new, the last hundred years, but it's called hyperpreterism or full preterism. It says that 100% of all prophecies have been fulfilled. There are no promises left for our age. They rob the kingdom of hope and faith just as much as dispensationalism does. So I just looked up the anniversary of Schofield's death. He died just one or two years more. I think it was 101 years ago. So if you've got a Schofield reference Bible or study Bible, don't take seriously any of the notes. Preferably just throw them away. Anyway, he died in 1921. But verse 7 says, Notice the confidence. Seize the city, for the Lord your God will deliver it into your hands. It is critical that the church, once again, begin believing the Great Commission is not an empty slogan. It's God's marching orders He intends us to accomplish. It's not an unfulfillable commission. He calls for every nation to be taken for Christ, teaching those nations to obey everything in the whole word applied to the whole of life. When will missions once again take seriously the significance and the comprehensiveness of their mission? It's not just converting people, it's discipling nations. It's discipling nations. This is what they did in the 1800s. They had phenomenal worldview in missions. So if the church will once again plan for victory by faith, this great commission will be accomplished. And this is why I believe eschatology is such an important topic. And by the way, if you don't know what hyperpreterism is or full preterism, talk to me afterwards. It really impacts almost every doctrine, including the doctrine of salvation, and I could show you why. But it's important that we regain the post-millennial hope that drove the missions of the 1800s to accomplish what I consider to be absolutely astounding things. And it's imperative that we not just become armchair theologians, but that we actually start impacting the world. Okay, the next point is antithesis. Don't make a peace treaty with the world. God's not going to be content until there are no enemies left in this world, with death being the one exception, and He's going to finish that death at the end of history, contrary to full preterism. He will conquer that enemy death at the end of history. They will either be destroyed in judgment or destroyed through conversion to Christianity. 1 Corinthians guarantees it. Hebrews says that the book of Joshua is a symbol or type of Christ's gospel conquest of the entire world. And notice that there is total antithesis, no compromise, no taking of the best of AI's wisdom into our education. No. Verse eight says, and it will be when you have taken the city, then you shall set the city on fire. What? Even the libraries of AI? Even the schools of higher learning? Even the art galleries, even the drama and the dance theaters, yes, everything. God wants pagan civilization eventually to be erased from memory, and he wants a biblical civilization to replace it in its entirety. He is okay with plundering money and animals and land. He's not in favor of plundering the learning of the wicked. He called for book burning and civilization destruction. Christian civilization must not be a mixture of Plato and Christ or Marx and Christ. Christian civilization must be 100% biblical. And even if it takes another 20,000 years, I don't care. That needs to be our goal. And if it is our goal, it will affect everything that we are doing right now, including our homeschooling. You can tell I'm passionate about this. I keep harping on it. Well, God ends this section with one more admonition, which in one sense is a repeat of an earlier one. It says, according to the commandment of the Lord, you shall do. See, I have commanded you. It's following God's marching orders. It's living out the Bible. Now, obviously, we won't get a Christian civilization overnight, but at every step along the way of conquering our Canaan, metaphorically, we must press for true Christian civilization, which means biblical civilization. Drives me crazy when people use the term Christian, but they mean a mixture. It's a syncretism, you know, Christian civics, Christian worldview, Christian thinking. But they've got man's laws, right, side by side with biblical laws. No, that's not Christian. That's not Christian. But again, this means planning. This will never happen if the church does not begin planning for the long term. Sir Jacob Epstein was a famous British sculptor who died in 1959. He was visited at his studio by George Bernard Shaw. And Shawn noticed a huge block of stone standing in one corner, and he asked what it was for. Epstein said, I don't know, I'm still making plans. Shaw joked, you mean you plan your work? Well, I change my mind several times a day. Epstein laughed and said, that's all very well with a four ounce manuscript, but not with a four ton block. Creating a Christian civilization is far more than a four-ton block of stone. It's a massive undertaking that will require hundreds of thousands of Christians making their plans from Scripture, spreading the news, conscripting other Christians to join in the building, and passing the mandate from generation to generation. We can't do it all, but we can at least do our tiny little part. Brothers and sisters, let's make plans However small your plans are, make plans consistent with God's Word, consistent with faith, consistent with God's almighty power, and consistent with a hope that is generated by God's promises for our age. And one of those promises is, If God is for us, who can be against us? Amen? Let's pray. Father, we want to be good soldiers of the cross of Christ, and I pray that you would forgive us for the times where we neglect to plan. We neglect to polish our tools. We neglect to do the things that you have called us to do. We don't even recognize the incredible ways that you have resourced us. Help us when we train our children. to take advantage of the resources you strew into our lives. And I pray that you would bless this, your people, with faith and hope and encouragement, that they would not be stuck in the past, mulling over and grieving over their past failures, but they would get their head back into the game and be powerfully used by you. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.