Our carnal minds continually have a grip on us, leading us to war against God and His commandments perpetually. God has challenged us to govern ourselves, using the power of His Holy Spirit, resisting the selfish, carnal desire for entitlements. Like our forbears on the Sinai, God tests us and disciplines us as a loving Father. America was to have been an experiment in self-government, successful only if the inhabitants would remain moral, keeping God's Commandments. The law of liberty works only if we obey His Commandments. But Jacob's offspring sadly developed the entitlement/victim mentality, just as did the ancient Israelites, reaping the same kind of dreadful curses for rejecting God's covenant. We dare not emulate the citizenry of physical Israel, but must not be forgetful hearers but doers of the work of the perfect law of liberty, realizing that our permanent citizenship is heavenly.