Learning From Failure

Israel finds itself at exactly that point in their history in Joshua chapter 8. So please find your place in Joshua chapter 8 with me this morning and let me catch you up. The last time we saw Israel, we were in Joshua chapter 4 and Israel had just crossed the Jordan River and had erected a memorial on the other side of the river so that they would remember God's great miracle that he performed there in his work of bringing them into the land that he had promised to give them. They would go on then in chapter 5 and 6 to fight the first battle in the land, an amazing battle against the city of Jericho, a heavily walled and fortified city, and God gave them a very unusual battle plan. And that was for six days, the priests were to carry the ark of the covenant representing the presence of God in a circle around the city. Watch around the city with a few soldiers in front of them, a few soldiers in behind representative group of the people of Israel with them. They were to just march around the city one time each day for six days. Go back to their camp. On the seventh day, they marched around that way for seven times, blowing trumpets, and then at the end of the seventh circle around the city, they shouted and those city walls fell outward on all four sides and the army rushed in and took the city of Jericho. A miraculous battle plan given by the Lord, they would move on to a second battle at a little outpost called I, insignificant little town. They only sent three thousand soldiers to take it, but shockingly they were routed by the army at I. Thirty-six Israelite soldiers were killed and the whole rest of the army flees back to their camp and they were left devastated and wondering what happened. Joshua was left crying out to God. What happened? What happened? You gave us this land. What happened? Why this tremendous failure? God revealed to him that somebody in the Israelite community had failed, had disobeyed God. You see God had stipulated that everything in Jericho would be offered to the Lord. All of the possessions of that first battle would be given as an offering to the Lord, kind of the first fruits of the land being given to him before they went to any other battles, but there was a man in a family actually in Israel that saw some things that they took in direct disobedience to God, gold, silver, precious garments and hid them thinking they would not be caught. As we heard sung this morning, they were not being honest, not being transparent. They were hiding what they had done. God revealed that. That was the reason for Israel's failure and that sin was dealt with in chapter 7 and now we come to chapter 8 and we hear these words from the Lord to Joshua. Chapter 8, verse 1, then the Lord said to Joshua, do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, which clues us in immediately to that's what Joshua and the whole Israel nation was dealing with. They were discouraged. They were fearful. Their hearts had melted. They were demoralized. There was no courage left in them. They were filled with doubt and fear because of failure. What do we do now? And God encourages him and says, take the whole army with you. Go up and attack eye for I have delivered into your hands the king of eye, his people, his city and his land. Yes, Israel had failed terribly. Yes, the whole nation had fled before a minor foe, but there's no need to remain fearful. There's no need to remain discouraged. The sin that caused that defeat had been exposed and dealt with appropriately. And so now it's time to learn from that failure and move on. Go back to eye. I've given you that city. Move on. Learn from the failure and move on. So what I think we have here is a story that teaches us great lessons about learning from failure and moving on. We can learn from failure and move on to greater things for God. We really can. We can learn from whatever we've failed at in the past and move on to greater things for God. We'll see that in Israel's story here. I think we'll also see it in our own lives as we learn lessons from this story. Before we look at the lessons, however, I want us to examine the battle to understand exactly what happened because some of the lessons we learn flow out of what happened in this battle. So let's look at chapter 8 and see what God has to teach us here. The second battle of eye. Most of all in verses 1 through 9, the battle is planned. Let's read. We read verse 1, God encouraging Joshua not to be fearful and discouraged. Go up to eye a second time. Verse 2, you shall do to eye and its king as you did to Jericho and its king except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city. So Joshua and the whole army moved out to attack eye. He chose 30,000 of his best fighting men and sent them out at night with these orders. Listen carefully. You are to set an ambush behind the city. Don't go very far from it. All of you beyond the alert. I and those with me will advance on the city and when the men come out against us as they did before, we will flee from them. They will pursue us until we have lured them away from the city for they will say, they're running away from us as they did before. So when we flee from them, you are to rise up from ambush and take the city. The Lord your God will give it into your hand. When you have taken the city, set it on fire. Do what the Lord has commanded. See to it. You have my orders. In Joshua sent them off and they went to the place of ambush and lay in wait between Bethel and I to the west of I but Joshua spent the night with the people. God gives them a battle plan. He gives them exactly what to do. This is a very different battle plan from the one he gave them for Jericho, which should be a lesson for us in itself. God doesn't always operate the same way. Every time he asks us to do something or in every case or in every individual's life, Jericho was a unique situation. God wanted them to see, I've given you this land and so the battle plan there was not one that any military strategist would use anywhere else. It was obviously a miracle of God as to what happened there. But this is a very normal combat operation and God gives them a battle plan which has been used by armies throughout the centuries in history many, many times. But God doesn't always work the same way. It's an interesting battle plan. They are to set an ambush behind the city with some concealed troops. Then the main part of the army approaches the city as before and full view draws out the army of I and instead of fighting them, the men of Israel will act fearful and turn and run. Thus causing the army of I to think, man, this was easy the first time. It's going to be easy again. Which again leads me to remind us, isn't it interesting that God can even use our past failures in his plan for our lives in the future? That we can learn from those, that we can actually have them incorporated into the design of what God wants to do in our lives. Even their past failure becomes a part of the battle strategy here. They will see that it's going to be easy again or think it's going to be easy just like it was last time. And so we'll lure them out of the city. Of course, when the army is lured out, those in ambush come from behind and the troops in I are put in a pincere movement where they cannot escape. So that's the battle plan. In verses 10 through 17, the battle is started and we're not going to read those verses because it basically describes that they did exactly what God told them to do in verses 1 through 9. Then we come to verse 18, verses 18 through 29, the battle is finished. And there are a few things there I want us to see. So let's pick up our reading in verse 18. Then the Lord said to Joshua, hold out toward I, the javelin that is in your hand. For into your hand I will deliver the city. So Joshua held out toward the city, the javelin that was in his hand. As soon as he did this, the men in the ambush rose quickly from their position and rushed forward. They entered the city and captured it and quickly set it on fire. The men of I looked back and saw the smoke of the city rising up into the sky, but they had no chance to escape in any direction. The Israelites who had been fleeing toward the wilderness had turned back against their pursuers. For when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city and that smoke was going up from it, they turned around and attacked the men of I. The ambush also came out of the city against them so that they were caught in the middle with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives. But they took the king of I alive and brought him to Joshua. When Israel had finished killing all the men of I in the fields and in the wilderness where they had chased them, and when every one of them had been put to the sword, all the Israelites returned to I and killed those who were in it. Twelve thousand men and women fell that day, all the people of I. For Joshua did not draw back the hand that had held out his jabberent until he had destroyed all who lived in I. But Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city as the Lord had instructed Joshua. So Joshua burned I and made it a permanent heap of ruins of desolate place to this day. He impaled the body of the king of I on a pole and left it there until evening. At sunset Joshua ordered them to take the body from the pole and throw it down to the entrance of the city gate and they raised a large pile of rocks over it which remains to this day. An amazing and gruesome battle plan is carried out. What are the lessons from this story that we can learn about failure? Well the first lesson actually is not one tied to the failure of the people of Israel, but I think it's an important lesson for us to learn from this chapter. And that is a lesson about the justice of God. This story and others like it which describe the wholesale killing of whole populations of Canaanite cities in the land have raised some serious questions. For instance in the 19th century when liberalism, religious liberalism was beginning to take root in Germany. There were men like Frederick Sliremacher and Adolf Harnack who used these kinds of stories to discredit the Old Testament. And they said if that's the kind of God you have that would kill whole civilizations then he's not a God worthy of worship. The God of the Old Testament they said was different from the God of the New Testament. They threw out the Old Testament as being unworthy of any Christian even giving any credence to and let's just focus on the God of the New Testament. Who's a different God? A God of love and peace and grace and kindness. And that particular view took hold in liberal circles and led to pretty much a wholesale discrediting of the Old Testament and of the God portrayed in the Old Testament. He is too bloody, too primitive. He is something that comes along with ancient primitive peoples and is not worthy of those of us in advanced civilization. By the way, that view is still taught in many educational institutions today. You go to almost any major university and take a religion class or a philosophy or an anthropology class that describes the origin of various human cultures and you will find that view, the predominant view. That God is, if that's the kind of God you have I want nothing to do with him. So this has become one of the major objections to the integrity of the Bible on the part of young people and young adults. And one reason why many have turned their back on the Christian faith. The error in thinking that way about the Old Testament and about God who is represented in the Old Testament, the error of that kind of thinking is this. We or those who believe this view about the Old Testament are choosing what they want God to be based on their own thoughts of who they think he should be. In other words, God should be like us so we create him after our own liking. Not understanding at all that our minds are warped because of our sin nature, our thinking cannot even begin to approach an understanding of the absolute holiness and justice of God. We would rather civilize and tame him to be more like us and we forget that he is a holy God. So absolutely pure and holy that he cannot tolerate sin, that he cannot put up with sin. And yet as we will see he gives abundant opportunity before he acts in judgment for people to turn from their sin. So what happens here and throughout the Old Testament is not some kind of vindictive, violent rage that has not even given people some warning about their sin. That's not true at all. That's not the view of God presented in this passage or in the Old Testament as a whole. God is entirely just in judging the Canaanite civilization for at least four reasons. Let's take a moment to explore them since this is such a question on the part of many young people today. First of all, the Canaanites were terribly depraved. This is not some culture that is really seeking to do the right thing and is overall good culture and just has made a few mistakes. This is a culture that is depraved to the very core. Full of sexual perversion, full of the kind of religion that includes religious prostitute. This kind of religion in Canaan would worship the fertility gods which they prayed to to give them fertility for their land. But as a part of their religion if you came to the temple you would be involved with religious prostitutes and prostitution was a part of the religious system. Believe it or not. There was another part of their religious system which involved child sacrifice. They would actually sacrifice in fires their own children to appease their gods. This was a totally depraved culture immersed in every unimaginable, horrible form of sin that even infiltrated their religion. Secondly, why God was just in judging this culture when they were not dealt with seriously, when they were not exterminated militarily, they infected God's people so that the Israelites began to adopt the same things in their culture, even in their religion. And God would ultimately judge his own people by taking them out of their land and putting them into captivity for the very same types of sin. Thirdly, God is just in judging because He had already been amazingly patient with these people. Again, please do not see this as some kind of rash, lashing out at wicked people with no warning ahead of time. God had warned them for 400 years. According to Genesis 15, God tells Abraham, Your people, the Israelites, will be in Egypt for 400 years. Then I'll bring them out. And He says in verse 16, in the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here to the land of Canaan for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. Amorites referring to the Canaanite people who live in the land. I'm going to give them 400 years. And during those 400 years, God would speak to them through people like Abraham and others. And they would not listen. They turned their back on God for 400 years. He patiently dealt with them, seeking to reach them. And they turned their back on God over and over again and went deeper and deeper and deeper into their degrading sinful lifestyle. God was amazingly patient with them before He ever judged them. So don't misread this act of God's justice as some kind of flare up all of a sudden of anger like you and I might have and do something foolish. It's not that at all. And then the fourth reason why God is just is that after God is so patient, when the cup of sin is absolutely full, then God's righteousness, holiness and justice demand judgment for that sin. It was true in Noah's day when the sins like this took over the whole world and God sent the flood. It was true in this day when Israel was God's instrument of judgment to judge a depraved culture and it will be true again in the future. When Christ comes back at His second coming and judges all the nations of the world who have pulled their armies in defiance of God and seek to overthrow His people. So God is a God of justice, holiness, righteousness. We dare not forget that. And CS Lewis is wonderful children's books, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, the Chronicles of Narnia series, and the first book. It's not as well represented in the movie, so I read from the book. In the Lion Witch and The Wardrobe, Lucy meets Mr. and Mrs. Beaver early on as she's in the land of Narnia. And they're introducing her to Aslan. And Lucy asks this question, is he a man? Asked Lucy? Aslan a man? Said Mr. Beaver sternly, certainly not. I tell you, he is the king of the wood and the son of the great emperor beyond the sea. You know who is the king of beasts? Aslan is a lion. The lion, the great lion. Oh, said Susan, I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion. That you will, dearie, and no mistake, said Mrs. Beaver. If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly. Then he isn't safe. Said Lucy? Safe? Said Mr. Beaver. Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe. Later in the story, as they're watching at the end, Aslan walked the beach away from his kingdom, Thomas says to Lucy, he isn't safe, and she replies, yes, but he is good. We must not try to make God safe by our own standards of what we think is fair. We cannot even begin to grasp how holy, how just and righteous our pure and spotless God is. It is a wonder that after great patience, he does not destroy all of us. It is only by his grace and mercy that any of us are plucked from a life of sin and degradation and made a part of his family. Let us learn from stories like this, not to denigrate God, and to cast him aside is not worthy of our worship, but to recognize how holy and just he is and fall before his feet in true and lasting worship. The justice of God. There are other lessons from this passage in this story, however, which do deal with how to respond to failure. So lesson number two is this, the importance of obedience. God's commands in this story are very clear. They had not obeyed his commands in the first battle at eye, particularly Aiken, who brought God's judgment on the whole nation by his disobedience to God's command that everything from Jericho be given as an offering to God. So now God gives more commands about this second battle. They are very clear versus one and two. Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged, take the whole army with you, which may be an indication they had acted in pride the first time when they only sent 3,000 troops. This is just a little outpost. We've got this, we can do this, maybe a little bit of dependence on themselves. So God says, take the whole army with you and go up an attack eye for I have delivered into your hands the king of I, his people, his city and his land. You shall do to I and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Then he says, set an ambush behind the city. He actually gives them the battle plan. So they are very clear instructions and it is quite clear in this story that Joshua was very careful to follow those instructions. Verse 8, he tells his military commanders, when you have taken the city, set it on fire, do what the Lord has commanded. See to it. You have my orders, 10.26. For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his jabberlin until he had destroyed all who lived in I, but Israel did carry off for themselves the livestock and plunder of this city. Notice, as the Lord had instructed Joshua. And then down in verse 29, this whole idea of taking the king off of the pole that he had been impaled on, the pole that he had been hung on, why was that done? In direct obedience to a command of God, God had foreseen this very situation in Deuteronomy chapter 21. In Deuteronomy 21, he says this on the screen. Deuteronomy chapter 21, he says, if someone guilty of a capital offense is put to death and their body is exposed on a pole, you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God's curse. Does that sound familiar? Paul would quote from that verse in Galatians 3, 13, about Christ hanging on the cross. But this is instruction about how to deal with battle situations. Anyone who is hung on a pole is under God's curse. You must not desecrate the land. The Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance. So Joshua was following a command of the Lord in taking down the body of the king of I before sunset. You see, throughout this whole story, there is a direct focus on we need to do exactly what God says. That's a good lesson for us to learn. Because we are so tempted to do things our own way or to fudge a little bit on God's commands and say, well, I know what he said. And for the most part, I'm doing it, but not maybe exactly. It's so easy to do that with the commands of God's word for us, particularly the church and the New Testament. But a number of years ago, I believe it was 1994, John Huffman led a group of guys to our first promise keepers conference. There were seven of us who went and we were going to Indianapolis. And I think some of others of you were in that group. I was going to be driving the van that day. And so we left here from the church and we pulled down Halls Ridge Road. One of the people in the van was a driver's ed teacher in our area. And so we pulled down to the stop sign down at the end of Halls Ridge Road. And come on now. What do you do when you come to that stop sign down there? Huh? You kind of drift through it, right? I mean, hardly anybody actually stops at that stop sign. So I did pretty good. I slowed down a lot and almost came to a stop and kind of drifted on through it when I saw nobody was coming around and immediately. I mean, we were eight tenths of a mile into a 500 mile journey. And immediately the driver's ed instructor says, you didn't stop. And I said, you know, I almost did. I mean, it was close. And he said, what I teach my students is this. I teach him the rock and roll method. He said, you hit your brakes until they actually catch the wheel and you feel that little rock, that little jerk and you know you're absolutely dead stop. Then you roll. I learned some important lessons that day. For one, if you have a driver's ed in the vehicle, driver's ed teacher of vehicle, let him drive. But I learned some important things about stop signs. You know what they mean? Stop. Stop. I heard about one guy that pulled through a stop sign kind of like that kind of rolled through and a policeman pulled him over and got him out of the car and starts hitting him on the back with these night stick with these Billy Club, you know. And the guy says, stop. And the officer said, well, do you really want me to stop or just slow down? There is a difference. The signs just stop. I'm going to make sure there's any of you behind me when I leave today down there. I stop at that stop sign. But you know, we do the same thing with God's commands sometimes, don't we? God says stop and we say, well, I'll slow down a little bit and I'll see if you know, now go on. My own way. We stop when God says stop. We go when he says go. We do what he says do. We don't when he says don't when he gives us clear commands in his word. He means it. He means it. It's not a suggestion. It's not an approximation. He means for us to be obedient to him. God's way is always best. And so we must take him seriously. Joshua did. They didn't the first time. It's why they failed and messed up. And we will find in our Christian lives if we don't take God seriously, if we don't take his word seriously, we're going to make a mess of things. Failure comes when we don't obey God. God asks God's favor and blessing come when we do obey him. So the importance of obedience, third lesson we can learn from this story about failure is the reality of restoration. I love verse one because Israel is so fearful, discouraged, demoralized, wondering, you know, God gave us this land and we go up for our second battle and this little puny army defeats us. So what does that mean for the rest of this land? And I love what God says to Joshua, do not be afraid, do not be discouraged. And he says, okay, go up again. And this time you're going to win the battle. That teach is such an important lesson. God's encouragement to Joshua was to reassure him. The reason for your previous failure has been dealt with. This sin has been confessed, exposed, confessed, forsaken. It has been dealt with. So now move on. Don't wallow in the past. Don't let your failed, your bind you and keep you from moving forward for the Lord. It's one of Satan's favorite tricks against us when we fail the Lord in whatever way it may be. Satan will always throw that in our face. You're a failure. You can't amount to anything for God. Who are you to thank God can use you. And what God's telling us here is that if you confess your sin, I am faithful and just to forgive you. And forgiveness means restoration to my favor and blessing and to victory in your life. I love it that God is not only holy and just which we established a few moments ago, but he is also gracious and merciful and he holds out a loving, gracious, restoring hand to us when we come back to him, truly repentant, confessing our failure, admitting that we have done what was wrong, thought, said what was wrong and trusting him to strengthen us to do the task again in a way that's pleasing to him, to live life in a way that's different in the way we've been living it. There is no need to wallow in your past to hold your past, failed your over yourself so that you do not move forward for God. I am thankful that God forgives us, restores us, wants to use us again. Jonah is such a beautiful example of that, isn't he? God tells Jonah I've got some people I want you to preach to. There in Nineveh the Assyrian nation, Jonah says, you've got to be kidding, God, there are enemies. I hate those people. I'm not going to go take the word of God to them and so he buys a ticket to go the opposite side of the world in his day. And God does chasing him. God does judge him. And when that fish finally gets sick of that disobedient prophet and throws him up on the land because Jonah has prayed and sought forgiveness from the Lord. You read about it in Jonah chapter 2 and commits himself to go back to his prophetic vow and do whatever God told him to do, he will be obedient. God gives him a second chance. He does go to Nineveh and he preaches and the whole city comes to know the Lord. He's still got a few attitude problems to deal with in chapter 4 of that book. He's still kind of angry at God for what happens and God deals with them about that too, brings him up short about his priorities. But he gave him a second chance and he will give you a second chance too. He'll give me a second chance and a third and a fourth chance if we fail him but come back to him in true repentance and asking his forgiveness and confessing admitting to that we're wrong. Then he will restore us. The reality of restoration. What a beautiful lesson. There's one other lesson from this story though and that is the value of patience. The value of patience. Did you see what God said in verse 2? He said, due to eye and its king, as you did to Jericho and its king, accept. That you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. That was the whole issue. That was the reason for failure back at Jericho. You're not to take any of those good, all of those possessions in that city are to be devoted as an offering to the Lord. But now that restriction is lifted and you can take what is in the city as plunder which would then provide for the nation of Israel to be able to move on and take the rest of the land. You know the whole irony of this and tragedy is if Aiken had only waited one more battle. If he had only waited one more battle, he could have had whatever plunder he came across in the city of I. But he wasn't patient. His eye saw something he wanted right then, right now. And he was not patient. In disobedience to God, he was not patient to wait for God's timing. We've got to learn not to push ahead of God. We've got to learn not to push our own way to satisfy our own desires and to have what we want right now. We've got to learn as believers that when God gives us the green light, that's the only time to move forward. You know there are sea turtles that lay their eggs on shore and in some beaches in our own country. There are protected areas where these sea turtles come ashore and lay their eggs and where those eggs hatch. The little baby turtles make a mad dash for the water of the ocean. And I've been on a beach or two like that. You've seen it too, the warning signs and stay away from this area because this is a place where turtles lay their eggs. Well, one of those places that a lot of tourists go is the Galapagos Islands where sea turtles lay their eggs. And there was a group of tourists on the beach. And what will happen when those eggs hatch and those little baby turtles start toward the water, it's a feasting time for seagulls. So what happens is usually one little turtle will poke its head out to see if the coast is clear, if there are any seagulls around and if he does not see any, he'll start toward the water and all the other little turtles will follow. Well that happened in the Galapagos Islands on this particular incident I'm referring to when some tourists were on the beach watching supposed to be there at the time when they would watch this happen. They noticed one little turtle stick his head out from the hole in the ground and look around and started out in a seagull immediately, poundstime start pecking on him. And one of the tourists was so horrified by this that they ran over and sheud the seagull off and picked up the little baby turtle and set it back down and got it started on its way. Well you know what happened next, don't you? All the other little baby turtles jumped out and as a result hundreds of seagulls came and took most of those little baby turtles and killed them. You see if we're not willing to wait for God's timing, it leads to disaster. And so often we rack our lives or we fail by rushing ahead of what God intends to become sexually involved before marriage can rack and ruin relationships and lives. Just not waiting until what God ordained as the beautiful expression of oneness between a husband and a wife can rack your whole view of relationships. Counseled with a couple this week, not a couple in our church, a couple from another town. The woman had had her first sexual experience at age 12 and was promiscuous throughout her 14 years then came to know the Lord, got married and her warped view of sexuality has almost destroyed their marriage. And to this day after having been married 10 years or so they cannot, they cannot get along as husband and wife. Listen, wait, wait until God says it's right. The same thing is true of money. Some people see some get rich quick scheme and they jump at it rather than diligently pursuing the work God's giving them and allowing him to provide as he wants to provide or take care of needs in his own way, open doors as he wants to open. Jump at the first chance to do something, maybe even a little shady or illegal. It will rack your life. Be patient. Wait for God. Same thing is true in anything in our lives, even in ministry to push ourselves forward, promote ourselves rather than waiting on God, allowing him to do his work and his time. Oh, but I want results. I want people to come forward. I know how to manipulate people. I can do this. No, no, no, no. Let God do his work and his way and his time. We make a mess of things when we're not patient, when we don't wait on God. What a lesson to be learned from failure and the second battle of I. There's a man by the name of Roy Regles that was forever identified by a colossal failure in his life. This failure occurred in the 1929 Rose Bowl. He was playing for the University of California and was a great football player. They were playing Georgia Tech in the Rose Bowl. His name is Roy Regles. If you've ever become familiar with his name or you know anything about the story, you know that he's the guy that picked up a fumble and got disoriented because somebody hit him toward a sideline and he turned around and started running the opposite way, the wrong way with the football. One of his own players capturing with the one yard line and kept him from going into the end zone, but it led to a touchdown and led to them being defeated in the game. There is actually a recording of that from 1929 and we're going to watch it because it shows it much better than I can tell it. The celebration of the 100 Rose Bowl game of memory. The most famous play by a center in Rose Bowl history led to defeat for his team. In the 1929 game, Cal's Roy Regles recovered a fumble and ran 65 yards the wrong way before a teammate wrestled into the ground at the one. A blocked punt led to a safety and 8-7 Georgia Tech win and a dubious place in history for Roy Regles. The 100 Rose Bowl game on ESPN. He actually is so well known for that moment that he was nicknamed Wrong Way Roy Regles. He went on to say later that doing something like that in front of 60,000 people, it changes your life. It changes your life. But most people, if they know anything about Roy Regles, know that and they don't know what happened to him. He was actually one of the best football players in the University of California team and actually made All-American the next year. He played what we would call nose guard on defense today and center on offense to a player made All-American next year. Went on to own his own corporation and become highly successful. But he also became a motivational speaker and he would make fun of his, you know, what had happened to him running the wrong way. 40 years after it happened, he was actually elected into the Georgia Tech Hall of Fame, the team that beat him because of what he did. And he said at the acceptance ceremony, I think I have earned this. You know, I just turned out to be a great guy with a great sense of humor was very successful. But you know what else he did? Every time he heard of a player making that same mistake, whether it was a high school game, a college game or in a couple of instances, an NFL game in the 50s, he would write a letter to the player and try to encourage them. This is not the end. Don't give up. You'll be okay. You can still be successful in your life. What a guy. Because he learned from his failure. He did not let his failure define him. Even though others tried to, he did not let his failure define him. And neither should you. So have you failed? Have you failed God? Maybe in your personal life, maybe some sin in your life, maybe something you said or the way you handled something you wish, you could take back and do it differently. Or maybe you tried to serve in some ministry and it just blew up in your face and you said, I can't do this anymore. I'm not going to do this anymore. And you back off. So have you failed? Don't quit or hide in fear and discouragement. Please don't. All of us have failed in some way. Please don't let that failure define you. God wants you to learn from it, yes, but now to move on and do greater things for him. I'm so glad that Roy Regals didn't quit. Michael Jordan didn't quit. Abraham Lincoln didn't quit. And neither should you. Don't quit. Don't be defined by your failure. Get it right with God. Move forward for him. Let's pray together.