Ephesians chapter 6, a few verses. Children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with promise that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. And you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. Turning to Deuteronomy chapter 6, we read verses 1-9, the preaching of the word this morning focusing particularly on verses 4-9. hear the word of the Lord. Now this is the commandment and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments which I command you you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. Therefore, hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. This is the word of the living God. We turn in the Word of God to Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy chapter 6, particularly looking this morning at verses 4 through 9. Deuteronomy 6, verses 4 through 9, we hear the word preached. Just a few moments ago, you heard our brother and sister in the Lord, Clay and Brooke, answer some questions. Questions that can become familiar to us, but questions of great importance, rightly tied and connected to the matter of baptism, particularly the baptism of our children. The questions and answers that we heard them give were questions and answers in which they promised to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and to use every means possible that their children might hear of Jesus Christ, His grace, His kingdom, and His glory. And if you've seen any other baptism here of an infant in this church, you've heard the same questions. And if you are a parent with a child who's been baptized, you've answered the same or very similar questions. You made a promise before God and witnesses that you would raise your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and that you would do everything within your power to make that happen. These are serious promises to make. What do they mean, and how do they work themselves out in the life of a Christian family? Every so often when we have baptism or the Lord's Supper, I move from our regular series, and right now in the morning we're in Philippians, and move to a text and to a topic that is Intimately tied to the sacrament itself, and this morning it is that matter of the instruction of the next generation using the word of God. Instruction of the next generation in the truths of our holy religion. Let me ask you a question before we get there. What holds the highest value in your life? What is the thing that you would think is most important to you? And we can ask this question in different ways because we know there's different ways to measure value. You might think I'm asking of something if we measured in dollars and cents. What's the most valuable object you own? You know, the financial measure. Maybe it's your car, maybe it's your house, maybe it's your investments. It's one way to measure value. Another way people measure value is by relationships. We count relationships valuable to us. Children, you love your parents and your parents are valuable to you. And parents, you love your spouse, and you love the children that the Lord has given you, if the Lord indeed has blessed you with children. And that love says something about valuing one another. If you're married, your husband or your wife, if you have friends, there are certain friendships that are of great value to you, and you count them as precious. Now, some people value things that are that are not very valuable, particularly in light of what the scriptures tell us. They say forget relationships, forget money. Some people simply value pleasure. And anything they seek, someone in this category seeks is for themselves. It's not really the relationship, it's not really the money, it's what pleasure can be derived from these things for ourselves. And that would be a self-focused, self-centered, self-absorbed person. But you can tell what people value. It becomes evident very quickly. If you're married, your husband or wife knows what you value. If you have children, they know what you value. If you have close friends, they can see from the pattern of your life what you value. And even if you're more successful at hiding what you truly value, if it's not a good thing, God knows what you value. But if something's valuable, what does it do? It changes your life, doesn't it? You pursue it. You make sacrifices for it, you guard it. It's your husband or your wife, a gift from God. You shower each other with affection and respect as the scriptures teach us to do, but also because there's something of great worth and beauty and value that God has given you. Children with parents, family, and friends. There's so many good blessings that the Lord gives us and we show them to be good things, that they have intrinsic value by how we treat them. It's very simple. Things that are valuable to you, important to you, will shape the course of your life. If it's a dream that is of your highest value, I want to be a pro baseball player. If that's a little boy, if that's the most valuable thing to you, what is he going to be doing in the backyard every afternoon? He's going to be trying to make the ball and the bat connect, make the ball go as far as possible. It's going to change the course of his life. If it's a possession and you're a young man and you set your eye on a certain car, and you're gonna pursue it. If it's a person and you're not married and you're hoping to be married and you're making plans, then there's going to be a pursuit of something. The things that you value that are important to you are gonna change the course of your life. Now let me ask you a simple question. What if, and I trust that it is, but what if your most valuable possession was God himself? What would that look like in the life you live? What ought it to look like? And particularly, pointedly this morning, what would it look like in family life, in a relationship between parents and children? If God is the most valuable thing, the most important, central in your life, How would that look in the way that you parents particularly relate to your children? We're gonna see from Deuteronomy chapter four that if that is indeed so, it's gonna shape, it's gonna change everything about your life. Everything about your own life, there are going to be lessons for all of us here, and everything about your family life, how you deal with your children. It will permeate every moment of every day. If God is first, it's going to change everything. Let's see how that is from the text here. We're going to see a number of things. We're going to see what we possess. Particularly as the people of God, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, we possess the knowledge of the truth of God. the revelation of God, the word of God that he speaks to us and he tells us who he is and what he's done and who he is to us in the covenant. That's what we possess. And even more so than just simply the truth about God, if we're believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, our inheritance, our possession, the glory of this is God himself. We're gonna look at that first. Then we're gonna ask the question, why has God given us that treasure of the revelation of himself? Why has God made himself known to you? For what reason? And then we're gonna see some concluding observations and applications, some challenges. So what we possess, and again, we're looking at verses four through nine. What we possess as the people of God is the truth of God himself, about God himself. And that's captured in that one phrase, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And very quickly we can see four things from this phrase. The first thing is to notice is to whom it is addressed. It's addressed to Israel. Hear, O Israel. Now, would you consider yourself an Israelite? Paul would, not just because he was born the tribe of Benjamin, but in Galatians chapter six, he teaches us that the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is the New Testament Israel of God. In other words, who's being addressed here? The people with whom God has a covenant relationship, a covenant relationship which we call the covenant of grace. The people of God in the Old Testament here, Israel, but it carries over into the New Testament. Again, Paul calls the church the Israel of God, And the connection between us and Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 4 is that God is speaking directly to his people, his gathered people, to Israel. And he's saying, hear, O Israel. The second thing that we see from this phrase is that it's urgent. He's saying, listen, pay attention. Hear, O Israel. This is important. Look up and listen. It's twice in this section verse 3 therefore here o Israel verse 4 therefore here o Israel God is is Commanding you to listen Well, that tells you something about listening, doesn't it? It tells you that if your mind is wandering now, even though there's sound waves striking your eardrums, you're not yet listening. Listening requires the active engagement of the heart and the mind, and God is about to say something to Israel that he wants them not to miss. It's a little phrase, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, but he wants you to hear it. He's addressed it to you, And then he's added the phrase here. You know, sometimes we're around the dinner table and we're reading the word of God and I see one of my children looking out the window and I have to say, listen, God is saying to us gently, listen, focus your attention. Now moving to the meatier things, what is it that God wants us, the church, to hear? He wants us to hear, again, two more things from the phrase. We've got four in total, but two in particular here. This is the meat of what He has to say to us. The first thing He wants to say to Israel is, Israel, I am your Redeemer. I'm your Savior. Israel, listen. I'm your Redeemer, I am your Savior. And that comes very simply from this simple phrase. It's interesting because Moses could have said that this was God's message, the Lord is one. That's not what he says. He says first, the Lord, our God. He says the Lord, our God. And this is staggering because you think about it, we're used to this kind of language, we're used to this kind of language very often, but we ought not to be used to it. What a thing it is to say that God belongs to me or to us. It's one thing that we would belong to God. But the second Moses says, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, he's speaking of a position of staggering privilege. That this is our God. Now, why is he our God? You know, we get used to this. We can pray the Lord's Prayer. Our Father in Heaven. Wow. Our Father. He belongs to us. And this is the language of grace, of the covenant, of a relationship between God and His people. And how would Israel know that the Lord is their God? From his name, he's the Lord, the Lord God, Yahweh of the covenant. He made promises with Abraham. From his works, he's the one who just brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, through the Red Sea, on dry ground, through the wilderness. He's the one who spoke to them with his own voice at Sinai, as it thundered from the mountain. Moses just reminds him of that in chapter 5 of Deuteronomy. They've heard his voice, they've seen his works, they've tasted his grace, they've experienced his goodness, they've eaten the manna from heaven, the bread of angels, they drank the water from the rock. They know that the God who made the heavens and the earth, the Lord God, is their God. And they know that He belongs to them because He's a Redeemer and a Savior and a Deliverer and a Rescuer. And because while He was redeeming them, He was also revealing Himself, His grandeur, His awesomeness, His wonder, His power, His grace. In every moment of the whole of the story of the Exodus, God is opening, as it were, Himself and revealing. It's all pulsing with the revelation of the grace and mercy and goodness and power of God from the burning bush, which was not consumed. all the way through the 10 plagues, and the Red Sea, and the wilderness wanderings, and the holy judgments of God, and the voice of God from Sinai. In all of these things, Israel was learning who their God was, that he was faithful, and true, and powerful, and gracious. They had an undeniable experience of the goodness of God, and so Moses says, we can call this God our God. He belongs to us. because He's chosen us for Himself. Now, in the New Testament, what gives you grounds to say the same thing? To claim that God is mine, my God. We have clearer brighter grounds to say our Father than Israel had to say the Lord our God. Not different in principle, but we have the full brightness of the glory of the warrant to say God is our God. We have Jesus, Jesus Christ, the Savior of sinners, who died on Calvary's cross, who rose again, who declared the love and mercy and goodness of God, and who in that declaration of love and mercy and goodness and grace For all those who believe in Him by faith gives the warrant to say, God is my God. That's what we have. And that's our grounds to claim the same claim to say the Lord our God. They cried in Egypt for deliverance. We cried in slavery to sin. God sent them Moses. The Father sent us the one who's greater than Moses, the Lord Jesus Christ. They went through the exodus. We have witness to the dying and rising of Jesus Christ. And so we have warrant to say, God is our God. We have the privilege of the Holy Spirit's application of the work of Christ to our hearts. So we can say, God is our God. We have the great confessions. You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. So God is our God. We have the confession. We've been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of the son of his love. So God is our God. We have Jesus Christ in whom all the promises of God are yes and amen. We have an experience. of the saving mercy of God because God has shown it to us in his son. And here, O Israel, the Lord is our God. He has given us himself so we can say, I am his and he is mine through Jesus Christ our Lord. One more thought of this confession. Not only can they say the Lord our God, But Moses said, the Lord is one. That there's no other Redeemer. Now this phrase tells us two things about God. It reminds us that he's indivisible, and it rightly does, that there's only one God. The mystery of the Trinity is wrapped up in this phrase, that there is one God existing eternally in three persons. That the Lord our God is one, but he's not only indivisible. Flowing from that, really the sense here, the Lord is one, is that he is the only God. In chapter four, skipping back a little ways, chapter four, verse 35, to you it was shown that you might know that the Lord himself is God. In other words, what God did in the Exodus. To you it was shown that you might know that the Lord himself is God. There is none other besides him. Not only do we know God as our God, not only know God as our Redeemer, but our confession is that there is no other God, there is no other Redeemer, there is no other deity, there is no other way of salvation, There is no other creature, there is no other supernatural potentate, there is no other king of the universe, there wasn't in Egypt, in Canaan, and there isn't anywhere now. And that means, we don't only know the way of salvation, which is Jesus Christ, but if we understand this text in the light of the New Testament, we know that he's the only way of salvation, as he himself said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me, that this God is the only Savior, He's the only one who can, he's the only one who would save, he's the only one who does save. The gods of the nations, the whole Old Testament, the gods of the nations are idols and useless. Our God made the heavens and our God is a redeemer. And there's no one else like him. Hear, O Israel, listen, church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord, our God, is a redeemer and he's the only redeemer. And that's what God wants us to know about himself and that's the truth that he gives us. That there's one way of salvation, one redeemer. That Jesus prayed in the high priestly prayer in John 17. Why did I come? That they might know me and the one who sent me. The only true God. No one comes to the Father but by Jesus. To summarize the phrase, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, it's this. Staggering privilege of the people of God is that the Lord God who made the heavens and the earth, who seeks and saves sinners and makes them his own, who is the only one who is able to do this, has revealed himself to us. Embrace mercy and peace. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. But why has he revealed himself to us? For what purpose does God come with the declaration of being the all-sufficient Redeemer of his people? Why did he tell us this? Why is he telling you now? Why is he reminding you? Why is he saying, listen, Church of the Lord Jesus Christ? Two basic reasons. Listen carefully. Two basic reasons. For a moment, we know one reason it's not. We'll get to the two reasons in a moment. We know it's not because we deserve it. We know it's not because we deserve it. We know we're children of our parents, Adam and Eve, who received the same truth about the goodness of God and rebelled against it. Israel certainly didn't deserve it. And they rebelled against it again and again. We don't have time to go through all the rebellions, but they didn't deserve to be reminded again. Deuteronomy 6 comes after the rebellion against Moses, and after the golden calf, and after the grumblings, and after the complainings. Deuteronomy chapter 6 is the end of Moses' life. It's his last sermon, and God sends his prophet to say, hear, O Israel, I am still your God, and there is no other. It doesn't come because they deserve it. It certainly doesn't. And it hasn't come to you this morning because you're better or we deserve it. But still God says to his church this morning, I am your God and there is no other. Why? Why? He says it so that we would love him. He says it so that we would cling to him. He declares his goodness, because at the heart of this is the same goodness that's in the heart of the gospel. He declares his goodness to his people, and then he commands us to love him for that goodness. If you keep reading here, there's a connection between verse four and verse five. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And chapter five gives the only right and immediate response to God, and it is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength. In other words, God gives us the revelation of himself in order that we might cling to him in love because he's worthy of our love, devotion, adoration now and forever. Why does he show us his beauty, glory, and salvation? Ezekiel wrestled with that question in Ezekiel 33, prophesying to a wicked people who again and again were under the judgment of God. And this was God's message to these people. Say to them, as I live, says the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked would turn from his way and live. Turn from your evil ways, for why should you die, O house of Israel? God sends his word to call us again and again to repentance and faith. John 3, why did Jesus come into the world? John 3, 17. God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Why does he declare his glory and his goodness so that sinners might find salvation in Jesus Christ? And that's the command that follows the revelation. Look at the command in detail. You shall love the Lord your God. In one sense, it's difficult. What is love? It involves your affection, your delight, and a whole commitment leading to concrete action. The response, the only right response to the revelation of the mercy of God, the only Redeemer, is love, which is really calling for all that you have and all that you are. If you look at the whole text, you shall love the Lord your God, and then this is an explanation really of what love is, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. It calls for an all-encompassing response of your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, all that you have and all that you are devoted in holy affection and total commitment to Jesus Christ. That's why God declares His mercy and grace. That we might love Him. Exalt in Him, rejoice in Him, be passionate about Him and His kingdom and His glory. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, there is none other. An unrestrained, total, all-encompassing passion for God. David has it in Psalm 103. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Not one fiber of my being held back. Bless His holy name. That's why he reveals his goodness. Your heart, your innermost being, your mind, your thoughts, your affections, your will, body and soul, all that you are created in the image of God. God says, I would have it all devoted to my glory in a passionate, totally committed love for me and for my glory. and not simply an emotional love, but all your energies, abilities, like the hymn, take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee, not simply emotional, but obedient, a way of life that matches what God has commanded. As a matter of fact, this whole section working backwards from verse six, it speaks of commandments and these words, which I command you, verse five is a commandment. It's an imperative. And in verse three, he speaks of being careful to observe what God has commanded. In verse two, he speaks of keeping all God's statutes and commands. In verse one, he says, now this is the commandment. Part of your response is not only love and affection, trust, which at the heart of it is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but obedience to him and a pattern of life that matches a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. This command here is asking for everything. Your heart, your life, your moments, your days, your thoughts. All that you are and all that you have wholly committed to God now and forever. God wants your heart and your life. Look at verse six. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. But God has a second design. And if you don't get the first part right, which is faith in Jesus Christ and an unwavering commitment to obey everything he said, you'll never get the second part right. But the second part of the design is that God wants the hearts of our children, too. Not just ours, but also our children. Because look what he says next. Many people can't see it, but it's very plain in the scriptures. God here wasn't asking for some sort of external, legal obedience that belonged to a national Israel. He was saying, I want your heart, Israel. I want your heart to beat with love for me, and I want your children's hearts. I want spiritual renewal in you and the coming generation. And again and again in this section, he speaks of that kind of spiritual blessing in verse 29 of chapter five, just above this section. Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear me and always keep my commandments that it might be well with them and with their children forever. spiritual blessing through the generations. In chapter six, verse two, that you may fear the Lord your God to keep his statute and his commandments, which I command you, you and your son and your grandson. God's design for the declaration of who he is is not only that he would capture our hearts with love, but that generation after generation would love Jesus, his kingdom and his glory. Our children and our children's children. God's design here is generational blessing. When you read the whole Bible, we don't have time to look at it, but Malachi 3, he seeks a godly seed. You read the epistles again and again as Paul has interest in children. We read Ephesians 6, for fathers to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. How has he designed that the hearts of our children would also be captured? Two ways. He captures our hearts as we see His grace and mercy in Jesus Christ. And then He wants us and commands us to take what we've learned about God and His love and our love for Him and tell our children. Look at the text. He commands a word-saturated life. Verse seven, you shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. In other words, he's saying, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Our God is a redeemer. There's no other God of salvation and mercy, no other God. He says, now believe this in your heart and love him now and forever with all that you are and all that you have. And here will be, in one sense, the sign if it's reached your heart. Wherever you go, it will come back out of you. Particularly, the command is to teach it to your children. What you know and have learned about the goodness of God and Jesus Christ, you are commanded to teach it diligently to your children. What to teach? These words. Your children should all know, hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your strength. Your children should know the summary of the law from Deuteronomy chapter 6 and Matthew chapter 22 and Mark chapter 12 as Jesus repeats it again and again. Your children should know this. And where should they learn it? Fathers and mothers? They should learn it from you. Diligently. What does this look like? When you go to bed, you'll be on your knees beside the bed with your children, and you'll be praying word-saturated prayer. When you get up in the morning, and you're gathered around the breakfast table, you're going to open the Word of God, and you're going to read the Word with your children. And when you go on vacation, and you come to the Lord's Day, you're going to find a church, and you're going to say, we're not going to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, because the Word of God and God Himself is the most valuable thing in our lives. And when you're at home in the middle of the day, and you see something outside the window that speaks of the glory of God, you're gonna point them to the glory of God and his creation. And when they struggle with sin, you're gonna take them into a room, and you're gonna open the word, and you're gonna remind them of the promises of the gospel, and you're gonna point them to Jesus Christ, and you're gonna pray with them. And the word of God, which has entered your heart, which is spoken of a God of goodness and mercy and love and grace, is gonna pour out of you every moment of every day as long as you have the children God has given you in your home. And you will teach diligently to your children what God first taught you. Teach your children, parents, teach them. There should be no child in this congregation who does not grow up with a word-saturated life. Not just here, but every moment of every day. Should not grow up with the memory that my mom and my dad loved God and they loved him so much that there was one thing more valuable to them than anything else, they would teach me about Jesus. That they had an unwavering commitment to the public worship of God and to the Lord's day and the preaching of the word and that what flowed from their hearts is that they had found a God who was so good and so gracious and so faithful that they delighted to do nothing more than teach me about him. What could be of greater value to you or to them? Perhaps you've never started. Start today. Perhaps you've grown cold. Repent and begin again. Maybe you think I'm being legalistic. Read verse seven again. Teach them diligently to your children and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. an intensive permeation of the word of God in your home and family. And perhaps you're weary. Remember the great promises. We don't have time to look into them here, but in this whole section, God promises a land flowing with milk and honey. He promises long life. He promises heaven and eternity. What could be more valuable for the next generation? But let me change gears for a moment and go back and ask you a simple question. Does He have your heart? If He doesn't have your heart, then you won't teach your children. The things you value will change the course of your life. The things you value will change the course of your life. If you value the Lord our God, the only Redeemer, this is gonna be one of the changes that will happen in your life. When a man values a woman, he's willing to say, till death do us part and change his whole life. When a sinner loves pleasure, sadly he's willing to chase it down and spend his life on seeking more. But if a man or a woman, and let me make it even more pointed with this text, if a father or mother says, my delight is God, and it will change the course of your life. One simple measure to really ask yourself, what am I valuing? What lives in my heart? What flows out of it? Fathers, let me address you very pointedly one more time. If you never speak of Christ, his kingdom and glory to your children, it doesn't matter if they're 35 years old, long out of the home. It says here your son and your grandson. What really lives within your heart? If you've grabbed hold of this truth, the God of the universe is for me. He's for me because he's given me his son. And he's for me forever and I can never lose it. You will sit down and you will look your children in the eye and you will say, I have something to tell you. It will come out of you. And it will be a delight. Because you'll be telling them of the greatest things, of greatest value you could ever, ever give. Now one more thing, these principles will make us deeply countercultural. In our defense of the biblical family, today as the family's falling apart, why is it falling apart? Why is there so much full frontal offense by the kingdom of darkness against the family? Because God wants the gospel to perpetuate in the family. He wants fathers and mothers to teach their children. He has it perpetuate in the world through evangelism. He has it perpetuate in the church through generational instruction of the gospel. Satan wants to rip the family apart because he wants to rip that apart. Because he doesn't want followers and disciples of Jesus. There's something much bigger going on than just traditional values. There's a full frontal attack on the kingdom of heaven in tearing the Christian home apart. And when you read what's happening in the news and all the redefinition of what family is, at the heart of it, it's a spiritual attack on God's appointed means of the propagation of the gospel through the generations for his glory. Stand against it. And purpose in your family. to teach your children that there's nothing else that matches. I know what I'm about to say here will make me deeply unpopular, perhaps, in the present world, but that's okay. I can give you one pointed application from the day, this particular day. We're losing our youth in the church at a greater rate than ever. Here in America, each generation successively, the number of children that will continue on in the faith is less. Why? Let me just take one timely example. Again, I was debating whether or not to do this, don't just remember this, but once I say the word, you know what I'm saying, I'm going to say the Super Bowl. Or every other major sporting event, which now seems to happen on the Lord's Day. Why would we trade that? Why would we trade that for the generational instruction of our children in the gospel? It's just one example of thousands. where the high and holy and valuable things of the living God. What are we saying to our children? What are we saying to the next generation? That God and these things are the same. We want them to value Jesus, his kingdom and glory, and value him yourself first above all other things. And they will then see by the grace of God alone, that in Jesus Christ there's something more valuable than anything this world has to offer. And what more do we want for our children? I think of Joshua, when he was standing with Israel at the end of his life, remember he said, choose this day whom you will serve. And sometimes we think Joshua was saying choose between God and between the idols, but he wasn't saying that. There's a note of exasperation in that text. He's saying, if you won't listen to God, go ahead and find yourself an idol. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Why did Joshua say that? Because he had gone up on the mountain, he had spoken face to face, he had known of a Redeemer, a Savior, the only God of Israel, and he would teach his children. Let us pray. Lord our God, we praise you that you give us these commands. You reveal your goodness, and then you call us to love you, and then you say, teach the generation after you. We thank you that you give them also with promises, the promises of abundant life, of a land flowing with milk and honey, of long life, of eternal life, of heaven, of glory, and supremely above all these things, as you said to Abraham long ago, that we can say that you are our God. We belong to you, and you belong to us, that you are our shield, and that you yourself, through your son, are our exceedingly great reward. Deliver us, we pray, from our love of the world. Help us be diligent to teach our children and to love you, for you are the Lord our God, the one and only Redeemer, the one and only Savior. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.