Amen. Well, praise God. He has given us a war manual and a manual that teaches us all of the principles of the kingdom that we need to understand—the book of Deuteronomy. We're going to be finishing up chapter 1 today, beginning at verse 41. Then you answered and said to me, We have sinned against the Lord. We will go up and fight, just as the Lord our God commanded us. And when every one of you had girded on his weapons of war, you were ready to go up into the mountain. And the Lord said to me, Tell them, Do not go up nor fight, for I am not among you, lest you be defeated before your enemies. So I spoke to you, yet you would not listen, but rebelled against the command of the Lord and presumptuously went up into the mountain. And the Amorites who dwelt in that mountain came out against you and chased you as bees do and drove you back from Seir to Hormah. Then you returned and wept before the Lord, but the Lord would not listen to your voice nor give ear to you. So you remained in Kadesh many days according to the days that you spent there. Thank you, Father, for this, your word, and I pray that as we dig into it, that your Holy Spirit would quicken to our hearts. Even additional applications that I have not presented, I just pray that this would be your Holy Spirit working the hearts of each one of these people and framing them so that each one can be good soldiers of the cross of Christ. And it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Well, in verses 34 through 40, we looked at the reality of God's disciplines in our lives and some of the purposes God has for those disciplines. And we also saw that just because you've got a difficulty in your life does not mean God is disciplining you. There could be other purposes as well, and so it's really important to understand what's a discipline, what is not a discipline. But in today's passage, we're going to be looking at some related issues that can undermine the goal of discipline. These are lessons related to fake repentance, fake faith, fake obedience, manipulative tears, and how God handled those things. And I think this is a paragraph that all of us can learn from. It's not just for children or for parents, it's for each one of us. But perhaps the most confusing thing in this passage, at least to some Christians, is why God would treat their confession of sin—and they did confess that they had sinned, right?—why would God treat their confession of sin as fake repentance? And why would He treat their desire to go up and say, Lord, we're going to obey you now, go up into the mountain, as fake obedience? After all, they did say, we have sinned against the Lord. Why does he not take that seriously? Well, on first blush, verse 41 might seem like repentance, faith, and obedience, but there is a reason why God rejected it. Let's read that again. Then you answered and said to me, we have sinned against the Lord. We will go up and fight, just as the Lord our God commanded us. And when every one of you had girded on his weapons of war, you were ready to go up into the mountain. We'll look first of all at why this was regret and not repentance, and you parents need to take note of this because many parents are fooled by exactly the same counterfeit repentance in their children. It doesn't matter how many times you tell your child to do something, They won't do it until you bring out the tool of discipline, and suddenly they want to be very compliant. Oh, Daddy, please, I'm sorry. Yes, I want to obey you. What I did was wrong. Please don't discipline me. Is that not repentance? Well, some parents think so, but it is not repentance when the change in attitude only happened when the tool of discipline finally comes out. And actually, this was the last of a series of disciplines that the Lord had brought in for various kinds of disobedience in the book of Exodus. The people were stubborn and willful until God brought out his tool of discipline, and only then were there tears and statements of loyalty. As soon as the tool of discipline was put away, these leaders always resorted to the same rebellious attitudes. Their hearts had not been changed at all. As Dr. Crobendom, one of our favorite teachers at seminary, used to always say, the heart of the matter is the matter of the heart. This passage is one of many illustrations in the Bible of the difference between regret and true repentance. So let's compare the two. First, regret is manifested in fear-based, outward compliance rather than a genuine change of the heart. And the whole purpose of discipline is to disciple the child into righteous responses that come from the heart. If a child is only remorseful or obedient when threatened with punishment, it suggests that he's more motivated by fear of pain than a true understanding of right and wrong, sincere repentance over their actions. So let's examine this. God told them that they were about to receive his rod of reproof in verses 34–40, and in verse 40 he specifically told them, but as for you, turn and take your journey into the wilderness by way of the Red Sea. Suddenly they insist that now they are quite willing to obey God's earlier command to go in. They said, We will go up and fight, just as the Lord our God commanded us. Notice their pretense at sincerity—just as the Lord our God commanded us. But hadn't God just commanded them to do something different? Yes, he had. He had. He had told them metaphorically to go into the bedroom so he could have a heart-to-heart talk with them, and they were going to begin to feel the negative repercussions of their disobedience. through discipline. It's very similar to a parent taking his child to the bedroom for discipline and suddenly the child is claiming to want to be totally compliant and there is no need to go to the bedroom. Why? Their compliance is not really to please God, it is only to avoid the discipline. In contrast, true repentance submits to God's disciplines and recognizes that discipline is a very necessary part of our training that we need, and they embrace the discipline and seek to learn from the discipline. Second, regret feels bad about the consequences of their actions, whereas repentance feels bad about offending God. That's a big difference. And when we deal with our children, we need to distinguish between feeling badly about the imminent discipline and feeling badly about sin against God. And by the way, Rebellion needs to always have consequences, even when there is genuine repentance. That's another area where parents can easily mess up. In any case, God is not fooled by that. Third, regret acknowledges sin and focuses on the sin, whereas repentance turns from the sin and to God, to pleasing God. Okay, repentance is the flip side of the coin of faith. So it's turning from something, and it's turning to something. It's obvious that they weren't turning to God, because God had just told them something that they needed to do, and they're disregarding that in verse 40. They were on timeout, and they didn't like the idea of timeout. They were just focused on what had gotten them into trouble, not on what God wanted them to do right now. Right now, God wants them to go into the wilderness so he can disciple them in some lessons. And if they had learned from that, I believe that their time in the wilderness could have been much, much, much shorter just like the disciplines of David and other kings became much shorter when they had genuine repentance. They still received discipline, but it wasn't as extended as these who were not learning. So if we were to imitate God in this, it would probably be worthwhile to instruct our children in what they are doing wrong. You can tell the child who was begging to avoid the discipline, you know, previously you ignored my command, which was a loving command for your good, Now you're not holding still. When I told you to hold still, you're dancing around, you're trying to avoid the discipline. That does not show obedience. I want you to learn that these disciplines are for your good, and they are designed to train you in godliness, and it's godliness you should desire more than comfort. Avoiding discipline. Can we pray right now and ask God to help you to welcome the discipline because you want to be holy. Discussion, good discussion, is a big part of successful discipline. Fourth, regret is self-focused, in other words, how our actions have hurt us, whereas repentance is God-focused. It's recognizing a broken relationship with God and desire to be restored in that relationship, to sincerely serve and obey Him. Now, it's obvious that they're still in disobedience to God in verse 40. Their whole goal is to do anything to avoid the discipline, I should say, the discipleship of discipline. And one of the key tools of discipleship is the rod of discipline. Too many parents get talked out of discipline, and in the process, the children learn very successful techniques of manipulation. It's not true discipleship into God-centered holiness. Fifth, regret attempts to fix things without a real change of heart, whereas repentance comes from the heart and seeks God's forgiveness, God's grace, and a renewed walk with God. Repentance is an embracing of whatever discipleship God has for us because we desire holiness more than we desire comfort. And actually, there is a book Kathy and I just recently ran across by Elizabeth Kruger, and she uses, I think, a wonderful metaphor of this. growing godly tomatoes, and she has this metaphor of the child being like a tomato plant staked close to you. And ironically, when we do this consistently with the goal of godliness, the times of discipline become fewer and fewer. And that's why the subtitle to her book is, Loving Parenting with Only Occasional Trips to the Woodshed, with the woodshed being the old-fashioned code name for where the tool of discipline was stored, right? In any case, this point illustrates that regret attempts to fix things without a real change of heart, whereas repentance seeks God's forgiveness, God's grace, and a renewed walk with God, and it leads to peace. It really does. Now, this may seem so theoretical that I want to give a couple of concrete biblical examples of what we're talking about. Judas Iscariot is a prime example of regret, okay? Not repentance, but of regret. He regretted his betrayal, and he even returned the bribe money that had been given to him because he no longer wanted it. It was burning a hole in his pocket. It really bothered him. So yes, he wept over the consequences of his sin, but he did not turn to God, and he for sure did not receive God's forgiveness, appropriate grace to lead a new life. Instead he despaired, Matthew 27, three through five. So he was not responding in a way that would lead him to the goal of discipline. The apostle Peter illustrates the exact opposite. While Peter had some similarities to Judas, he also has some very vivid contrasts. The similarities are that he also betrayed Jesus, and he also wept, But unlike Judas, he turned to God for restoration, and he was changed. Luke 22, 62, and John 21, 15 through 19. Another example is King David. He was disciplined for his sin by the Lord in 2 Samuel chapter 24. It was a discipline that was meted out on the whole kingdom, and we looked at that last week. And in verse 17, he shows what genuine repentance looks like. He said, surely I have sinned, I have done wickedly, but these sheep, what have they done? Let your hand, I pray, be against me and against my father's house. So he was saying, Lord, I'm the one who you need to continue to discipline. He welcomed discipline because he wanted to be holy. So hopefully, All of that has clarified in your mind the difference between regret and repentance. And I think this is so important for us to understand. Well, this passage also shows the differences between presumption, which is often the flip side of regret, and faith, which is always the flip side of true repentance. Verse 41 again. We will go up and fight, just as the Lord our God commanded us. And when every one of you had girded on his weapons of war, you were ready, and the literal Hebrew says, you thought it easy to go up into the mountain. Now, this illustrates five differences between presumption and faith. First, presumption acts without basing the actions on God's directions, whereas faith always, always, always is based on God's revealed commands and on his revealed promises. If you attempt to walk on the water, because Peter did, and I want to be a man of faith, guaranteed you're going to sink in the water. Why? Because God has not commanded you to walk on the water, first of all, and he's not promised that you're going to be able to do so like he did with Peter. So if faith, presumption is always going contrary to or in addition to God's word, and it is something that God has neither commanded you to do nor promised you can do. Well, in the same way, this attempt to go into battle actually contradicted God's word in verse 40. So again, it can't be faith, it's presumption. Second, presumption has confidence in one's own ideas and amounts to self-reliance. Faith is reliance on God's grace, on God's will, and on God's timing. Moses was already told, don't go up into the mountain. So when they willfully went up into the mountain, they knew God was not going to go with them. So they're going to automatically be doing it in their own strength. It's the opposite of faith. It's presumption. Third, presumption is motivated by our desired outcome. sometimes trying to force God's hand to come along with us, right, go through on our desires. Faith is submitting to God's will and God's desires, even if the outcome of that is going to be difficult, maybe uncertain. Many times our supposed prayers of faith are simply asking God to line up with our plans, our desires, our agendas. They're not asking for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Fourth, presumption acts independently of God, whereas faith obeys God, even when obedience is difficult. And fifth, presumption is rooted in wishful thinking, whereas faith is rooted in God's infallible, inerrant word. Now, are we any different when we go through the formalities of obedience without truly trying to please God? It may be putting in time with our accountability partner, you know, and covenant eyes are accountable to you without ever dealing with the root heart issues that God sees of concupiscence. I mean, we can pull the wool over the eyes of our accountability partners, but we're never going to be able to fool God. Or it may be submitting to a parent and pretending to be a good boy when our heart of rebellion has still not been dealt with. While God does prescribe methods for discipleship, and those methods are very, very important, methods without God's grace will not work. They will not work. Now in the case of these leaders, the fear of man had previously made them not want to face the Canaanites. Now the fear of man was directed toward the fallout that they would no doubt receive from their followers when they were going to be forced to go back into the wilderness. That was not an inviting prospect. So suddenly fighting the Amalekites seemed a little bit easier than facing the wrath of their followers. They had changed their actions, but not their heart or their fear of man. The New American Commentary also points out that the phrase, you were ready to go up, is literally in the Hebrew, quote, you thought it would be easy to go up. Now, how could it be easy to go up if God was not with them fighting for them? Faith never thinks that we can do it on our own. That commentary goes on to say, no amount of rationalizing about the ease with which they could accomplish their objective, verse 41, could outweigh the simple fact that the Lord was not with them, verse 42. Maxwell and Ogilvy say, repentance is more than words. Their cry, we have sinned against the Lord, rings hollow when their actions are exhibited. Repentance means to turn away from our ungodly ways. No longer do we walk the wicked path. The fruit of repentance is a change of behavior. They still were filled with unbelief. They disbelieved God's threats, and they still were filled with self-will. They did not ask, will God permit us? But arrogantly exclaimed, we will go up and fight. Delayed obedience is disobedience. The test of obedience is a willingness to do what God requires at the time he requires it and not when it is convenient for us. Those are such good words. So hopefully you've got a good picture in your minds on the difference between counterfeit repentance and counterfeit faith. Faith trusts God's presence and his promises. I'm going to show three ways in which God was a model parent in all of this. First, God was always consistent with his no and with his yes. If our kids can get us to be inconsistent with our no, they're going to gradually realize they have room to manipulate us, and it's almost guaranteed they will eventually manipulate the parents. Matthew 5.37 is a passage I think parents need to take seriously. It says, but let your yes be yes and your no, no, for whatever is more than these is from the evil one. Notice he says, he doesn't say that the failure to be consistent in this way with your yeses and nos is not a preferable way to go. No, he says, this is dangerous. This is of the evil one. Satan will use such inconsistencies to really train children out of true godliness and into formalism, which is just outward conformity. That is not sufficient, but it's what many parents are satisfied with. And so here's the point, when we argue with our children, nag our children, wheedle, threaten our children, we're only letting our children know that our no is, we're not serious about it. And it reflects poorly on God. We're in effect teaching our children we don't mean what we say, and by implication, they're beginning to assume God does not mean what he says. We're teaching our children that there is room for negotiation. Now, if our children have been sufficiently discipled, it should only take one command and they will do it. Just realize that the way you train your children in obedience is putting muscle memory into their character that will last a lifetime. So be consistent. Second, God always follows through on his threats of discipline. When parents fail to do so, what it does is it breeds slow obedience and manipulative obedience. It does not train the heart. And by the way, when you have consistency to always follow through on what you say you're going to do, you don't need to get frustrated and upset. Frustration signals to your kids that you're not in control. They are. You need to just follow through on the discipline without the need for frustration. Just imitate God. God always followed through on his threats of discipline. Third, verses 19 through 31 show that God had already given a clearly defined window of opportunity for the obedience to occur in. When that clearly defined window of time closed, God treated the delayed obedience as disobedience, because that's exactly what it was. Delayed obedience is just a mask for disobedience, and it's critical that parents understand this point. Too many parents settle for delayed obedience, but at best, such laxity in parenting results in developing super bad habits in children, such as habits of habitual tardiness, lack of follow-through, failure to follow a schedule, lack of self-discipline, other problems. One author said, their window for obedience had passed. God had given them ample chances to gain their reward. Now the opportunity was gone. This is a principle throughout the Bible. God provides ample opportunity for obedience, and God greatly rewards obedience. But at some point, the opportunity to obey passes, and the consequence of disobedience prevails. Well, let's move a little bit more quickly through the rest of the verses. In verses 42 through 43, we have another counterfeit highlighted. It is counterfeit obedience, and we'll look at the, well, two differences between obedience of the flesh and true obedience. First, counterfeit obedience does not rely on God's strength, verse 42. And the Lord said to me, tell them, do not go up nor fight, for I am not going among you, lest you be defeated before your enemies. So God guaranteed if they went up, he was not going to be in their midst. It was only going to lead to disaster. And this means that they went up knowing full well that they were going without God's presence, without his approval. Maybe they thought they could force God's hand to go with them if they went up. I doubt it, though. I think it was just they thought they could easily do it in their own strength. But again, our efforts without grace are legalism. Even trying to follow God's law without grace is legalism. Trying to do the spiritual disciplines without grace is legalism. How do I know that? Well, John 15.5, Jesus said this, I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. for without me you can do nothing." Eugene Merrill says, All warning notwithstanding, the armies of Israel rebelled against the Lord and presumptuously went up to the hill country. The narrative of Numbers is helpful in clarifying the character of their presumption, for it says that neither Moses nor the ark of the Lord's covenant moved from the camp, Numbers 14.44. Of all the signs or prerequisites of holy war, none was more important than the presence of the ark in battle, for it and it alone symbolized the presence of the Lord among his people when its function was fully understood. For Israel to assay successful conquest of Canaan on behalf of the Lord, but without his powerful accompaniment, was indeed the epitome of arrogance. And we must not teach our children that they can overcome their evil hearts and obey the Lord in their own strength, you know, just by trying harder. Part of discipleship is constantly pointing our children to Christ and His grace, and that He is the only answer to the difficulties of obedience that they've been experiencing. And those of you who are mentoring young men and women, I think, need to keep this in mind as well. Verse 43 shows that their supposed obedience was in reality disobedience, because it failed to follow God's leading and His desires. So I spoke to you, yet you would not listen, but rebelled against the command of the Lord and presumptuously went up into the mountain." Now, there are three words that show the counterfeit nature of this obedience, and these three points are not in your outline, sorry about that. But these three sub-points, I think, do illustrate the main point that is in your notes. First, it was an obedience without listening to God's word, or at least being selective on which words that they would listen to. It says, yet you would not listen. And a big part of our discipleship of children is to teach them to follow through on everything that we have told them, not just the parts and pieces they want to follow through on. We must disciple them out of selective listening. And their response might be, oh, no, no, we were listening. We're going to do what you told us to do before. And the response needs to be, no, I've just now instructed you on something else, and you're not listening. It's selective listening. Second, God is quite clear that the supposed obedience was in reality rebellion against the most recent command of the Lord. How could they think that they could please God on the previous command while rejecting his most recent command? And so selective obedience in our children should not be treated as obedience. So there's selective listening, selective obedience. Third, the Hebrew word translated as presumptuously is zadon, and it means willful, arrogant, prideful, stubborn, and defiant. Okay, their response shows that they were still being stubborn and willful in doing things their own way. Now I've seen Parents trying to help a child with a spoon or with a pen or some other implement, and the child pushing the parent away and wanting to do it their own way, right? And again, it's important that children not be allowed to give a pretense of obedience while being defiant in the process. Discipleship involves teaching them not only the right standard, but the right motive, the right goals done in the right circumstances. You know, this is just the four dimensions of ethics that we're discipling them into. Deontology, those are the right things. Teleology is the right goals. The situationalism is doing it in the right situations that God has called us to. And then the existential part is the right heart and the right motives. Now, let me make another application while I'm at it. I would say that we need to be ever so careful to not treat every child in exactly the same way. God treated the rebels quite differently than followers who had other character issues but were more compliant. Some of our children were quickly brought to true repentance, and others had to learn the hard way. Don't try to guess which ones were which. They all eventually learned, right? Often it was through a half of a day of boot camp. And boot camp for us, because we weren't as consistent as the foxes were probably in our discipline, but boot camp was where we'd spend a half a day just doing nothing but giving all kinds of commands, and they had to do it cheerfully, they had to do it promptly. It was training them over and over again, and then things got a little bit easier. Actually, the book that I mentioned, Kathy mentioned to me this morning that that, yeah, what's her name? The author of Raising Godly Tomatoes. She has really upped the game on this and showed how you could do this 24-7 all the time. You don't need to have all of these boot camps that we had because all of life can be that way. But anyway, Joel Beakey's book, Parenting by God's Promises, has a lot of practical wisdom for how to imitate God in our parenting of our children. In one place he said this, The aim of corrective discipline is to lead children to repentance. It is educational and reformative. Administering punishment to encourage repentance makes us sensitive to how children are responding. When disciplined, children must show signs of recognizing that what they did was wrong. A broken and contrite heart draws forth our mercy and affection. Stubbornness and hardness of heart may call for further punishment. Beware of false responses, for many children try to say the right things to get out of trouble. Look for sincere hearts of penitence over sinning against God, Psalm 32 and Psalm 51. The more serious the offense, the greater care we should take in punishing it. Discipline that is inappropriate to the situation, either too severe to be warranted or too lax to be effective, will undercut all we are hoping to accomplish with our children. We must administer discipline with firmness if it is to accomplish its goal. A few love taps will not work. It must hurt. Psalm 89, 31 to 33 says, if they break my statutes and keep not my commandments, then will I visit their transgression with a rod and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, my loving kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. God disciplines us as much as is appropriate and effective. As parents, we are to apply the same principle to our children. Okay, moving on in verse 44, we see that without God, They were utterly powerless against the enemy. And the Amorites who dwelt in that mountain came out against you and chased you as bees do and drove you back from Seir to Hormon. Now, it wasn't as if the Amorites were so powerful. It was that Israel was inadequate to the task without God's enabling grace. And sometimes God lets us do things our way and by ourselves to teach us we can't do it by ourselves. We can't do it on our own. And since I've been applying this whole section to parenting, I would say that we need to teach our children to depend upon God's grace in all that they do. Now, how can we sincerely do that when we parents are not modeling that ourselves? You know, when we're trusting our own abilities more than God's grace, or we're trusting our intuitions more than God's leading, or we're trusting medicine more than God's healing power. Listen to this rebuke of King Asa in 2 Chronicles 16.12. It says, Asa became diseased in his feet, and his malady was severe. Yet in his disease, he did not seek the Lord, but only the physicians. Now, it's not like the Bible disapproves of physicians. Not at all. Jesus said that when you're sick, you sometimes do need a physician. That's Mark 2.17. And Paul notes that Luke was a beloved physician. Colossians 4.14. So there's nothing wrong with using medical means, right? But God's rebuke of Asa was that he didn't trust the Lord when he went to those physicians. Here's the point. There is a requirement in the Bible for human responsibility, but we must trust the Lord to bless our efforts. When our children see us adults doing that, it'll become more and more natural for them to do so as well. You parents can only pass on what you yourselves have embraced and internalized. Now let's move on. In verse 45, we see that God did not accept their remorse as true repentance. They once again have remorse. Then you returned and wept before the Lord, but the Lord would not listen to your voice nor give ear to you. Why? You would think God would relent when they're weeping before him. You see, where God is very gentle and compassionate to tears that flow from true repentance, he is not manipulated by false tears. And too many parents allow the tears of their children to melt their hearts when no true repentance is evident. Maxwell and Ogilvy say, rebellion wears many masks. Rebellion wears the mask of inconsistency. Yesterday, the Israelites would not go up to possess the land. Today, they will. I found that very insightful. He says, rebellion wears the mask of inconsistency. What other masks does rebellion wear? He goes on to say, it wears the mask of stubbornness. They refused to listen to Moses or his message from God. It wears the mask of arrogance. They presumptuously went up into the mountain, verse 43. They displayed an attitude of insolence toward God. The mask of rebellion comes off in verse 45, when the defeated children of Israel returned and wept before the Lord, but the Lord would not listen. And God would not listen because he did not want to reward rebellion just because it masqueraded as non-rebellion by wearing various fake masks. And then finally, we learn that God gave them time to learn before he had them face new challenges in the wilderness. And this is where the boot camp concept comes up. that provides a time of concentrated training. Concentrated training. Verse 46 says, so you remained in Kadesh many days according to the days that you spent there. Now when you compare the chronological data of Numbers with the chronological data of Deuteronomy, you find that they stayed in Kadesh exactly eight months. And this can be proved from a series of chronological events that I may share next week or in the future, Lord willing. But simple logic proves this as well, because from the time that they left Canaan until Joshua, chapter 5, verses 10 through 11, was 40 years to the day. Okay, they left on a Passover, they crossed over, you know, on the Passover, 40 years to the day. But Deuteronomy 2, verse 14 says that from the time they left Kadesh, till that same date in Joshua was 38 years. Well, if you subtract all of the chronological events that I've pulled together in the previous chapters that occurred before Deuteronomy chapters 1 and 2, you subtract that, you come up with eight months in Kadesh. And I'm not going to get into that further today. But why did God have them stay in Kadesh for eight months? I believe it was to train them to be ready for some of the next tests. that he would deliberately introduce them to in the wilderness. Every one of those tests was designed perfectly to wean them from the flesh into the spirit. And I believe the same was true of their sojourn in Kadesh. God gave them time to learn. And actually, Jeremiah 2, verses 2 through 3, Hosea 2, verses 14 through 15, and Hosea 11, 1, all speak about that time as being God's betrothal of Israel. where in love he was wooing Israel away from idolatry and to his heart with the cords of love, it says, right? And so those were not wasted years at all. Some people think they're just wasted years. No, no, God never wastes anything that he does. Over the next 38 years, God trained them to be disciplined soldiers of the cross, and every trial, every reward was preparing them for that. And this point, by the way, has been recognized from the earliest times. I was reading in the church fathers, you know, what they said on this passage. And Clement of Alexandria, a very, very early church father, said this, this was another kind of arrangement by which the Hebrews were trained for a protracted time to belief in the existence of one God alone, being inured by the wise discipline of endurance to which they were subjected. Or as Tremper Longman tersely words it, this was their boot camp, right? Israel's boot camp, and the Apostle Paul wants us to learn lessons from all of their boot camp experiences. Part of our training of children, as I mentioned, was to have a boot camp with numerous commands, followed by appropriate disciplines, so that in a short space of time, they could learn to be consistent, quick, and have good attitudes. We did not accept obedience with lousy attitudes. It had to be with good attitudes as well. The book I mentioned, again, Raising Godly Tomatoes, takes that to the next level. But we apparently needed quite a few of these boot camp times, and it's a wonderful, wonderful tool. And the Fox family, I think, did a great job. Some of you young parents need some advice on how to do things. Just ask Brian and Kit, and they'll be able to share with you some good tips. But parents must learn these principles themselves or they're not going to have anything to transfer to their children. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul applies lesson after lesson from the next 38 years of these Israelites. And he applies it to our lives and he says this, now all these things happened to them as examples and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore, let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. Just one more quote, and this one from Raymond Brown. He says, the Father's best gifts are not distributed to people who simply have the right phraseology. They are reserved for responsive and dependent children. God is far more oppressed by how we listen than by what we say. And so may all of us become like this second generation became and learn to have joyful, prompt, sincere, and wholehearted obedience. And may parents not settle for anything less than their children. Amen. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for how practical your word is for every area of our lives. Whether we think of civics and some of the upcoming chapters, we think of our family life. And I pray that your Holy Spirit would help us to grow week by week and become more and more conformed to your will. We thank and bless you, in Jesus' name, amen.