Teach them thy ways
Deuteronomy 6:5-7 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, and 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.
Last night I was headed for bed early when my oldest son crawled up into bed wanting me to read the Bible to him. How could I say no? He is reading it on his own now, but he wanted me to read it to him. We read the story of Noah and the Great Flood. I went to bed thinking of the study I had just completed on the life of Joshua and the generations after him in Israel.
Joshua understood the importance of passing down our faith. When he knew his days were becoming short, he gathered all of Israel including the children to remind them of how God had delivered them to the Promised Land. Joshua 23:2 And Joshua called for all Israel, for their elders, for their heads, for their judges, and for their officers, and said to them: But sadly their history was lost in the generation after that when Joshua died, and they rebelled against God. Judges 2:10 When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel. 11 Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals; 12 and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger. Their parents had forsook their responsibility of leading their children to the Lord.
It is truly sad to read of how our inheritance is lost by simply not passing down our history and faith to our children. Of how our responsibility as parents, and our first ministry is our family, or more directly our children. How will they know if we do not tell them? But they will suffer for our mistakes. Joshua gathered more than his children, he gathered the tribe and made sure that He passed on what the Lord had done for them. Israel was falling away from God and He wanted to right them in his last days. He was making sure he passed on Israel’s history for the generations he was leaving behind, for he understood the importance of it.
Sadly the generation after Joshua did not pass their history onto their children. Judges describes the falling away of that generation and the Lords wrath against them. Every where they went the Lord was against them. All likely because they did not know of how the Lord had delivered their people and had blessed the generations before them. Can you truly afford not to teach them?
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