Bulletin Articles
“Teach Your Children”
Categories: Iron sharpens ironWhen the Israelites were preparing to cross the Jordan and enter the promised land, they had finally learned through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness to rely on God. He’d given them their daily food, he’d provided water for them, he’d protected them from enemies all around, and he had led them night and day through foreign lands. After crossing the river, they would rely on God to fight their battles. It’s a good thing, too—40 years prior, God was all set to give them the land, but they still relied on their own strength; when they saw the sheer size of many of the people they’d be fighting, they concluded, “‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are’” (Nu 13.31). Their wandering was a punishment specifically for this lack of faith, and that generation all died off in the wilderness. But their children learned the lesson, and when their turn came to receive the blessings, their tune was a bit different: “Truly the Lord has given all the land into our hands” (Jos 2.24).
In this case, the older, faithless generation gave way to a new generation of the faithful, and the results were spectacular. But of course, God doesn’t lay his plans only with a view toward the present time; he’s always planning for the future—for the next generation and beyond. If the current, faithful generation then gave way to a generation that did not know God, would he continue to provide blessings for them? Would he feed them, protect them, and fight their battles? No; and God told them as much, on several occasions.
How could they avoid this problem? How could they prevent the promised land from being taken away just as easily as it was given to them? God had a plan for that:
You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth. (Deuteronomy 11.18-21)
The promise is clear: “that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to give them.” It also implies a warning—their lives will be short, and they won’t retain their homeland, if they refuse to devote themselves to God’s commandments. This reminds us that we’ve left out something pretty important from our list of the ways God provided for the Israelites, both in the wilderness and subsequently in their newly-won home. It was easy to think of the food, water, guidance, and protection. What more could anyone want, than those? Well, there’s more to this life than having our flesh satisfied and preserved. What about our hearts and souls? It’s far worse for those to be sick, lost, or hungry, than for our bodies to experience the same problems. Left to our own devices, we would all try to satisfy our thirst for water; but we’re not as likely to make a big deal of quenching the thirst for righteousness unless someone else brings it up. But God isn’t just worried about our bodies; in fact, he considers our souls to be far more valuable.
How did he provide for the souls of the Israelites? He gave them a Law, of course. A portion of it was spoken from heaven directly to the people. It also appeared on tablets of stone. The rest came through his prophet, Moses, who wrote the law for the people so they could read it for themselves, even after he was dead and gone. But that introduces another problem: just as Moses eventually died, so would each of the Israelites. What would become of those who replaced them? Would they remember the lessons God taught their parents? Only if someone taught them in turn—hence his instruction: “you shall teach them to your children.”
In the same way, we should never take for granted that the next generation will simply fall in line and make consistently good decisions. Just as we work to prepare them for the need to find jobs and work for a living, we must teach them the spiritual lessons God has taught us—our own failures along the way included. Pleasing God and cultivating their souls’ health is far more important than equipping them for a successful career, and yet how much time do we devote to each goal? Kids go to school for many hours, five days a week; we encourage most of them not just to go to college, but to shop for the best college possible, to pick a marketable field of study, and pay (or borrow) a year’s salary or more, in hopes they will recoup all of that investment and build atop it. How much time, effort, worry, stress, and money do we put toward their spiritual education?
It may seem like there’s no way to correct this imbalance; but there is. We can teach God’s love and commandments to our kids in the same way he instructed the Israelites: speak of them when we sit at home, when we drive in our cars, when we put them to bed, and when we wake them each morning. Read them often. Write them in prominent locations to remind them what God expects. The next generation may face financial struggle, civil strife, famine, disease, and natural disaster. There’s nothing we can do to ensure they live through it all. But we will have done our job, if they learn from us to know God and be known by him; to love God and to be loved by him, forever.
Jeremy Nettles
