HEBREWS 12:4-17 - The Father's Discipline

Introduction

So this year happens to mark the 40th anniversary of one of the most iconic movies of the 1980’s—Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita in The Karate Kid. And I’ll bet that for those of you who remember it, there is one phrase that jumped into your mind when you heard me mention that movie: [“Wax on, wax off...”]

That’s the famous sequence in the second act when Mr. Miyagi promises to teach Daniel karate, and then puts him to work around his house—waxing his antique car collection, painting his picket fence, and sanding his redwood deck. Daniel gripes and complains with each new chore, (especially when Miyagi disappears out the door carrying his fishing pole!) Finally Daniel confronts him, accusing him of tricking him into being his slave instead of teaching him karate like he promised. Miyagi then shows him how each one of the motions he was making, “Paint the fence”, “sand the floor”, “wax on, wax off” was actually a key component of defensive moves—culminating with a flurry of blows from Miyagi that Daniel wards off with uncanny precision and speed. Daniel thought Miyagi was being unreasonable and capricious and manipulative, when all along he was training him for the fight that was coming.

Now, why are we starting off this morning discussing a mid-1980’s karate movie? Good question—glad you asked. Look at the last verse that I read a moment ago from our text—Hebrews 12:11:

Hebrews 12:11 (LSB)

And all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful, but to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Daniel Russo thought that Miyagi was being a jerk who was manipulating him into painting his house, But he didn’t know what he didn’t know—he couldn’t see how the discipline he was chafing under was working together to yield the fruit of peace in his life (no more bullies chasing him down.)

And I hope you can begin to see the connection with our text this morning—how many times do we slip into thinking the same thing about our Heavenly Father? The difficulties that you experience, the hardships and disappointments and frustrations can pile up in your heart, and you begin wondering if God is ever going to just let something go your way for a change.

It would be one thing if you were actively trying to live a double life—making a great outward show of faithful Christian living while secretly indulging lust or drunkenness or violence or unbelief. It’s not surprising when God rewards blatant hypocrisy with hardship or loss or difficulty. The shiny Christian veneer is shattered when your wife leaves you because she found out about your mistress—that we get. We understand why God brings that kind of calamity into a Christian’s life.

But what about when the faithful Christian suffers calamity? The kind and generous and genuine believer is suddenly bowled over by sickness or loss or tragedy? The hard-working brother suffers a stroke, the wise and godly sister is plunged into dementia, the generous and selfless church member loses their livelihood? How do you process that? Sure—we get it when God chastens those who need it, but we can’t escape the notion that He can really be harsh and unfeeling at times like that.

One of the reasons why it seems that God is overly harsh or unloving in disciplining us—it feels like He’s overdoing it—is because we serve a God Who understands what holiness is far better than we do. Like Daniel Russo in the Karate Kid, we think we know karate, but we quickly learn that there is far more to a life of holiness than we think.

Martin Lloyd-Jones once wrote on this passage:

God is preparing you for holiness. He is not an indulgent father who hands out sweets indiscriminately and does not care what happens to us. God is holy, and He is preparing us for Himself and for glory; and because we are what we are, and because sin is in us, and because the world is what it is, we must needs be disciplined. So He sends us trials and tribulations in order to pull us up, and to conform us to ‘the image of his Son’.

Faith on Trial, 82–83 D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Keep in mind once again that the letter to the Hebrews was written to a group of Jewish Christians who were beginning to waver in their commitment to Christ; they were beginning to entertain doubts and unbelief as to the sufficiency of Christ’s work for their salvation; they were thinking of going back to their Old Covenant traditions and abandoning the Gospel. And so the writer of Hebrews is exhorting them to hold on to Christ.

In the same way, we need to be exhorted to hold on to Christ and not walk away when the going gets rough; the hardships and trials and tears and losses that we experience are meant to grow us up into the holiness of Christ. And so this is what I want to help you see from our passage this morning—

Those who SUBMIT to the Father's DISCIPLINE will SHARE in the Son's HOLINESS

I want you to be able to look here in these verses and see from God’s Word the encouragement that is here when you are tempted to doubt God’s goodness in the trials He brings into your life; I want you to be assured of His faithfulness when it seems that He has forgotten you or when you are bewildered by the hardships you face as a faithful Christian. I want you to be able to combat the temptation to believe that God is angry with you, or that He is somehow getting back at you or making you miserable because He is annoyed or exasperated with you. And the way I want to do that this morning is first of all to show you from this passage

I. The HEART BEHIND God’s discipline (Heb 12:4-10)

Look at the first two verses of our text:

Hebrews 12:4–5 (LSB)

You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by Him;

Now, remember that the besetting sin of the original recipients of this letter was the temptation to turn away from Christ—I believe that is the “sin” that he is warning about here when he writes that they “have not resisted to the point of shedding blood in [their] striving against sin”. Remember the context of Hebrews 10:32-35, that some of these believers were thrown into prison and had their homes plundered because they would not deny Christ. So in that context, the message here in verse 4 is that they have not yet died for their faithfulness to Christ; they have not yet chosen to bleed rather than sin by denying Him.

And so in that light, we can understand that everything the author is writing here about the discipline God is subjecting us to is meant to train us to cling to Christ no matter what. That no matter what comes your way—no matter the heartache or trial or disappointment or loss or chastisement—the heart behind God’s discipline is to make you more like Jesus.

And this is not the heart of a cruel drill sergeant or heartless athletic coach—this is the heart of a Father who disciplines you—never forget that

You are the OBJECT of His LOVE (vv. 4-5; cp. Prov. 3:12; Ps. 119:75)

‌The writer reminds his readers that they are God’s beloved sons and daughters—He is not flogging them just to flog them; He has a good and perfect purpose in their discipline.

This is hard to remember when we are in the midst of these things, but this is why this thought is expressed in so many different ways in this passage. There are times when we are chastised by God for our sin—play stupid games, win stupid prizes, right? God will often allow us to reap the harvest of the sin we have sown in our lives, but none of it is coming from His condemning wrath. Do you get that? It cannot come from His wrath because Christ absorbed all of God’s wrath on the Cross. What we receive from His hand in response to our sin is not punishment, it is correction. As the Psalmist writes:

Psalm 119:75 (LSB)

I know, O Yahweh, that Your judgments are righteous, And that in faithfulness You have afflicted me.

Yes, you may have grown up under a father who punished you out of his ungodly wrath, but your Heavenly Father is only interested in giving you the (sometimes painful, always unpleasant) correction so that you will be guided more and more into the image of Christ. He does this because of His love for you; because He is aiming to create in you a perfect holiness that will fit you for perfect friendship with Him forever. He is working holiness into you by His discipline because you are the object of His love.

Now, if your Bible indicates Old Testament quotations in verse 5, you’ll see that this is a quote from Proverbs 3:11-12—here in Hebrews, the author is quoting from the Greek translation of Proverbs, which uses the Greek word for “discipline”, paideia, (in, “do not regard lightly the paideia, the discipline of the LORD)—it refers to the training that fathers give their children to improve their character and reinforce positive personality traits (we get our English words “pediatric”—relating to children—from this word.

The use of this word for discipline along with the references in verses 5-7 show us the second truth of God’s heart behind His discipline—you are His beloved child, and‌

Y‌ou are a MEMBER of His FAMILY (vv. 6-8; cp. Deut. 8:5)

Hebrews 12:6–8 (LSB)

For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He flogs every son whom He receives.” It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

So to the kids in the room right now—if you are with your siblings out on a playground or in a park somewhere playing and you get into a squabble with each other, are you worried if another kid’s dad walks past you? Is he going to correct you or discipline you? Why not? Because you’re not his kid! He’s not going to try to settle whatever fight you’re having with your siblings, because he’s somebody else’s dad! But your dad is a different story, right? He wants you to grow up right, so he isn’t going to let your misbehavior go, is He?

In the same way, Christian—your Heavenly Father is not going to let you go undisciplined because He wants you to grow up into perfect holiness to Him! As Moses writes in Deuteronomy 8:5:

Deuteronomy 8:5 (LSB)

“Thus you shall know in your heart that Yahweh your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son.

He loves you too much to let you keep on with those bad habits of unbelief or pride or jealousy or complaining or bitterness—but if you are misbehaving and sinning and acting wickedly and He just sits there on the park bench ignoring you (metaphorically speaking), it means you aren’t one of His children!

I hope you can see, can’t you, how this puts the discipline you receive from His hand in such a happy light?!? He does not bring correction out of condemning wrath; He does it because He loves you too much to leave you alone! His paideia of correction and training and discipline is meant to fit you for eternal fellowship with Him! He brings all of these tests and hardships and times of endurance into your life because that’s what you need in order to Him to have the joy of perfect communion with Him!

This is the third facet of the heart behind God’s discipline, Christian—He is refining you because‌

You are a PARTAKER of His HOLINESS (vv. 9-10; cp. 2 Peter 1:4)

See here in verses 9-10:

Hebrews 12:9–10 (LSB)

Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our benefit, so that we may share His holiness.

You all know the Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue”, right? (And if you don’t know Johnny Cash’s music we’ll have an altar call after church so you can come get right with God…) The dad in the song gave his boy a girl’s name so that he’d grow up getting into fights over it. When the narrator finally meets his father, he tells him,

Son, this world is rough and if a man’s gonna make it he’s gotta be tough I knew I wouldn’t be there to help you along So I gave you that name and I said goodbye And I knew you’d have to get tough or die It’s that name that helped to make you strong...” (Sheldon Silverstein, A Boy Named Sue lyrics Copyright Evil Eye Music, Inc.)

It may not have been the best way to raise a son to be tough, but that father disciplined his son as seemed best to him... he got him ready for the world he was going to inhabit.

Your dad may have disciplined and trained you to work a particular trade or develop a particular skill set or look at the world a particular way, according to what he thought would be best for you.

But your Heavenly Father is preparing you not for this world, but for the next! Not to be able to pursue a particular career or raise a family—but to inhabit eternity in fellowship with Him! To share His holiness! As Peter puts it in his second letter:

2 Peter 1:4 (LSB)

For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

Christian, understand the heart of your Heavenly Father as He brings chastening and discipline and correction into your life—not to torture you, not because He is cruel or vindictive or indifferent to you, but because He loves you as His own dear son or daughter, and He will never rest until you are fit to partake of His own holiness in Christ!

Now, everyone who undergoes rigorous training of any kind will inevitably get to the point where they believe they have arrived at the peak of their training, when in reality all they have done is plateaued—they’ve hit a comfort level that they are content to stay at and call it good. But a wise coach or trainer or teacher won’t let them stay there when they know they can go much further.

In the same way, Christian, we can get to the place where we feel that we have arrived spiritually—we have seen some real victory over indwelling sin, the ordinary means of grace in our lives (Bible reading, prayer, worship) are bearing real fruit in our lives, and so on. And so we get bewildered when God keeps bringing chastening into our lives, when we are still finding ourselves pushed beyond our limits by His providential hand. “Why am I still having so many financial problems? I’ve been joyfully tithing and practicing glad generosity for years now—surely I’ve ‘learned my lesson’, and God can lay off the financial hardships...” )

But you belong to a Heavenly Father who understands the heights of His holiness and the depth of your indwelling corruptions far better than you do! He knows how far the infection goes down, even if you can’t feel it anymore, and so He keeps giving you the bitter pill of discipline to swallow even when the fever is gone and your blood work looks normal—because He knows when you are cured better than you do! And so rest, weary Christian, in knowing the heart of love and delight for you that beats behind God’s Fatherly discipline.

“All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful”, Verse 11 says—it is going to hurt; it is going to come with blood, sweat and tears—but the author goes on to strengthen his readers (including us) by reminding them that when God’s discipline has its effect on us, “to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness”. So look with me now in the next six verses as God’s Word describes for us

II. The PEACEFUL FRUIT of God’s discipline (Hebrews 12:11-17)

It’s commonplace for athletes who are training for a championship will put a reminder of that goal on the wall of their training facility—a picture of an Olympic gold medal or Superbowl ring or something like that—a way of always reminding themselves that this is the goal—this is what I am sweating and bleeding for.

In the same way, beloved, look with me at the descriptions of what you are called to be; what your life will begin to look like as God’s training program of fatherly discipline begins bearing its peaceful fruit of righteousness in your life—the wholeness and happiness and well-being of a life that is right before God. There are several commands given here in these verses; consider them the calling of God for you to put into practice the training that He has been working into your life:

The first is in verses 12-13:

Hebrews 12:12–13 (LSB)

Therefore, Strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.

The first peaceful fruit of righteousness on display here in our text—as God begins to strengthen and fortify your life in the discipline He brings you,

You will quit your WAVERING WALK (vv. 12-13; cp. Isa 35:3)

This verse is a quotation from Isaiah 35:3.

Isaiah 35:3 (LSB)

Strengthen limp hands, and give courage to the knees of the stumbling.

In the Greek translation of Isaiah that the author is quoting from, the word for “strengthen” literally means straighten—(it’s the Greek word where we get the word “orthodontics”—straightening teeth—from.) The same word appears there in verse 13, “make straight the paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be “out of joint”—crooked, twisted.

Remember the besetting sin of the recipients of Hebrews was that they were beginning to waver, to diverge from and turn away from their commitment to Christ. And so the author writes these verses as an exhortation not to “despise” God’s discipline as He is training them by adversity to “get back in line.”

This is what your Father is aiming, at, beloved—that you will quit wavering, that you will have an undivided heart of confidence in Christ. As His fatherly discipline works in you, by His grace you will see your walk become straighter, your hope become more steadfast, your convictions sunk deep into the bedrock of God’s unshakeable promises to you sealed by the blood of your Savior!

As God’s fatherly discipline makes its mark in your life, you will quit your wavering walk, and as verses 14-15 tell us,

You will guard your CONFESSIONAL UNITY (vv. 14-15; cp. Deut. 29:18)

Hebrews 12:14–15 (LSB)

Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord, seeing to it that no one falls short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;

Keep in mind the context of this letter, that there were believers from their midst that were beginning to doubt and turn away from Christ. And think for a moment how hard that would be for a church to deal with. Imagine that some of your brothers and sisters here at Bethel began to openly question Christ’s work on the Cross—they begin arguing during Sunday School lessons, they make antagonistic posts on social media, they make a point to conspicuously get up and walk out during the Lord’s Supper… If you have ever gone through that kind of turmoil and animosity in a church, you know how devastating it can be.

That is the context for the author’s exhortation that “no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble”—that is a quotation from Deuteronomy 29:18, which reads

Deuteronomy 29:18 (LSB)

lest there be among you a man or woman, or family or tribe, whose heart turns away today from Yahweh our God, to go to serve the gods of those nations; lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous fruit and wormwood.

The author is specifically warning his readers against the “bitter fruit” of apostasy; of apostates and false teachers who can poison a congregation with heretical teachings about Christ.

And so see here another “peaceful fruit of righteousness” brought about by your Heavenly Father’s discipline—you will guard your common confession of Christ! In a few moments we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper together, and as part of that celebration we will do two things to specifically guard our unity—the first is that we will read from one of the historic creeds and confessions of the church, making an explicit statement of our common convictions on who Jesus Christ is and what His work accomplishes. And the second will be the warning that “fences” this table; that this meal is meant only for those who have declared and demonstrated their faith in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation.

It is far too easy to read the first phrase of verse 14 and stop there—that as Christians we are to “pursue peace with all men...” And so it is thought that we should never turn people away from this Table, or set boundaries for who can be included in this fellowship. We don’t want to be “judgmental”, we don’t want to be “hurtful” to someone by telling them that their behavior or personal beliefs about Christ and His work are unacceptable. But there are two parts to the command in verse 14, aren’t there? “Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord!”

We don’t fence this Table and practice intentional church membership just for the sake of being exclusionary or judgmental—we do this because this Gospel is the only way of salvation in this world! We must guard this Gospel, we must never let bitter recriminations and arguments about Who Jesus is or what He has done threaten to put our fellowship out of joint, and if that means drawing a firm line in the sand around this Table and this fellowship, we will—because we submit to the discipline of our Heavenly Father Who calls us to see to it that no one falls short of receiving the grace of God through the faithful proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!

The peaceful fruit of God’s discipline in your life, Christian, means that you will quit your wavering walk; you will guard your confessional unity, and

You will cherish your PROMISED REWARD (vv. 16-17; cp. 1 Timothy 1:9)

Look with me at verse 16 of Hebrews 12--

Hebrews 12:16 (LSB)

that also there be no sexually immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.

Now, this is the first time that Esau’s behavior is characterized as sexually immoral—it is most likely a reference to the fact that Esau scandalously married Canaanite women, as we read in Genesis 26:34-35:

Genesis 26:34–35 (LSB)

And Esau was forty years old, and he took as a wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and also Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite; and they brought bitterness to Isaac and Rebekah.

As the firstborn of the family, Esau was privileged to receive great blessings in the covenant that YHWH had promised to his father and his grandfather before him. But instead of believing those promises and faithfully holding fast to that covenant, Esau chose rather to be enslaved by his passions and his lusts—he would rather have those two cute Canaanite girls and a bowl of chili than the blessings of the covenant faithfulness of the God of his fathers. (And he broke his parents’ hearts in the process...)

This is what the Fatherly discipline of God produces in your life, Christian—the discipline that He works into your life is His means of forming the very image of Christ’s righteousness in you. And as the character of Christ is increasingly established in your life through the trials and trainings and corrections He ordains for you, you will increasingly find that your delight in Him far outweighs the false and fading promises of this world. Your inheritance of the righteousness of Christ in this world and eternal life with Christ in the next will become so increasingly sweet to you that you will be less and less inclined to trade those treasures away in order to satisfy your own passions and desires.

So what will you do with the discipline your loving Heavenly Father ordains for you, Christian? Are you wondering at the trials and difficulties you are facing? Are you growing weary under the training He has ordained for you? If it seems as though God has laid His hand heavy on your life, that there always seems to be another test, another trial, that you “never seem to catch a break”, then the first thing you need to do is evaluate your life in light of the Scriptures—is there a sinful habit or motion towards wickedness somewhere in your life that you are ignoring? Come before God with an open Bible and and open heart and pray with the Psalmist:

Psalm 139:23–24 (LSB)

Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.

Do not despise the fatherly discipline of God that corrects and exhorts you by His Word to root out and kill sin in your life. And do not despise His discipline that trains you in this world for godliness and Christlikeness. If you are here this morning, and you are looking back over the trials and hardships and disappointments of your life and it seems as though all you have is discipline from God, and you can’t see any good in it—then consider again verse 11 of our text:

Hebrews 12:11 (LSB)

And all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful, but to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Charles Spurgeon was a man who suffered agonizing bouts of physical pain as well as searing episodes of spiritual darkness and despair. In his commentary on this verse he writes:

Many believers are deeply grieved because they do not at once feel they have been profited by their afflictions. But one does not expect to see apples or plums on a tree that was planted a week ago. Only little children put their seeds into their flower garden and then expect to see them grow into plants in an hour. Sometimes the good of our troubles may not come to us for years afterwards, when, perhaps getting into a somewhat similar experience, we are helped to bear it by the remembrance of having endured the like ten or twenty years ago. (Spurgeon. (2017). The Spurgeon Study Bible: Notes (p. 1657). Holman Bible Publishers.)

Do not despair; do not despise the hardships and trials that seem to roll over you—because seventy or eighty years of discipline and trials and afflictions in this world cannot compare to eternity of holiness in the next! Christian, that is what your Heavenly Father aims at—not only growing you in holiness and Christlikeness in this life (which He is doing, and will continue to do), but to prepare you for perfect fellowship with Him forever in eternity!

Do not despise the chastening of the Lord; do not kick under His providential work in your life; do not rebel against the movement of His Spirit to perfect you through His discipline. Our passage ends with a sober warning drawn from the life of Esau:

Hebrews 12:17 (LSB)

For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.

Esau despised the birthright he had been graciously given—he did not care about the blessings of covenant faithfulness to God. All he wanted was a good time and a full belly. But the day came when he realized what he had lost, and by that time it was too late. His brother Jacob received the blessings of the covenant, and all of Esau’s tears of remorse could not bring that blessing back. Because the Scripture says Esau found no place for repentance—the idea there is that there was no real repentance in his heart; all he wanted was the good things that came with the covenant.

Friend, if you are here today and you have been playing it like Esau—glad for all the good things that come from living the Christian life but completely uninterested in cultivating the holiness that comes through discipline—then please hear the warning from God’s Word here in this text.

If you continue to squirm out from under the discipline that God brings into your life; if you want nothing to do with His correction to root out sin and work in Christlike character; if your attitude towards Him is defined by frustration and resentment that He has not given you what you want even though you deserve better; if you are ready to go out and get the things that make you happy even if “church people wouldn’t understand”; if you care only what God will do for you and have no interest in what He will do in you, then understand that there is a Day coming when you will look back and realize that all that mattered in the end was the holiness He promised you through Christ.

Because when you stand before Him on the Last Day, it won’t matter how much of a “good Christian life” you lived; it won’t matter how easy or comfortable or stress-free your life was; it won’t matter how many prayers for comfort peace and security He answered—all that will matter on that day is do you possess the sanctification without which no one will see the LORD?

If all you care about is the good things that “a good Christian life” can provide for you, then the idea of hardship and discipline and trials and afflictions will make no sense to you. If you take stock and realize that you really can’t point to anything in your life that you see as “discipline” from God—you go your way and He goes His and you show up for church when it’s convenient—then you need to reckon with the possibility that you don’t belong to Him at all. That you are not in fact one of His children, that you are in fact a “child of wrath” destined for eternity in Hell away from His presence.

It is only as you have experienced the New Birth of salvation that sharing the holiness of God in Christ becomes precious to you—don’t despise the work of God in your life to create in you the character of Christ; come and talk to me after the service, talk to one of the elders, talk to someone you met here today so that we can show you from the Scriptures what it means to repent of your sins before a holy God and put your faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ as your only hope for a right relationship with God. He has promised to hear you; He has promised to deliver you from the penalty and power of your sin; He has promised to make you holier than you ever thought possible. So come to Him for forgiveness, submit to His discipline, and receive from Him the very righteousness of His Son, your Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Jude 24–25 (LSB)

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION:

Write down something you learned from this morning’s message that is new to you, or an insight that you had for the first time about the text? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down a question that you have about the passage that you want to study further or ask for help with: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ Write down something that you need to do in your life this week in response to what God has shown you from His Word today: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________