Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 21 – June 1986

 

Teach Your Children

 

Sermon by Rev. A. J. De Bruyn on Deut. 6:7

Reading: John 17.

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Bible tells us very clearly here that parents have a responsibility and there is a particular relationship which God has given to mankind to be lived out in the home fellowship.  God has given specific instructions as to how that relationship is to be developed — to be encouraged.

Here in Deut.6 we have the Lord telling his people: “Hear O Israel.”  It is very interesting to note that the orthodox Jew today still commences his readings by quoting Deut.6:4 which they call the ‘Shemah’, meaning to hear.  They quote.  “Hear O Israel, the Lord God is One.”

Every meeting of the Synagogue opens with that verse.  But here in verse 7 we have God’s instructions about the family.  What does God ask of his people there?

1.  The Command

We can be very involved in evangelism, we can get involved in Missions but it is very important for us to understand that God’s primary form of evangelism and mission is in the home.  Before we have any outreach we must make sure we have inreach in our own homes.  God gave this instruction to his people that God’s grace is to be communicated from parent to child.  Sometimes Christians have set out models which work in reverse.  Sometimes churches have been started out of a Sunday School by getting children from the neighbourhood in.  The theory is that if you have the children then maybe you can get the parents too.  In God’s word it’s the other way around the parents are to teach the children and God instructs his people here very clearly, “Impress them on your children.”

How are the parents to do this?  How are they to impress this upon the children?  The Parents are to talk about this when they sit at home, when they walk along the road, when they lie down and when they get up.  In other words, what the Bible tells us very clearly here is that here is a whole-of-life situation.  It is when you get up in the morning, when you go to bed at night, when you are busy and when you are relaxing.  In other words, what God is saying here is that every aspect, every sphere of your life, let that be directed to telling your children about God’s faithfulness and God’s love.

In verse 20, it says, “In the future when your son asks you what is the meaning of the stipulations and the laws then you are to tell your child these things.  ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt but the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.'”  If your son or daughter asks you, “Do we have to go to church again today?  The Minister just goes on and on.”  You can say: “That’s true; the minister does sometimes go on and on.  And things sometimes are not always quite as exciting as others but we do have to come along to church because church is an exciting place to be because you see, we were slaves of the Devil but the Lord Jesus Christ has set us free.”

Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have so much more than the people of Israel had in those days.  You go through the book of Moses and look at all these laws.  How on earth could anybody ever learn that?  How were people supposed to remember these things?  But the Jews thought they were very important.  If you were an orthodox Jewish boy about to do his Bar Mitzvah, you would have learned off by heart the five books of Moses.  Not all at one go but section by section.  And yet our young people at Catechism complain about having to learn a memory verse.  Perhaps they should have sympathy for young Jewish boys.  But don’t forget the heart of what they had to learn: “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord brought us out of there.”  They confessed the saving grace of God.

How much more have we than they.  They had only a picture of what was yet to happen, what the Lord Jesus came to accomplish for us on the Cross.

So we see that the first point of the sermon here is: What does God ask of His people?  That we teach our children, teach them in a whole of life situation.  When we sit down in our houses, what do we teach our children when we sit down and relax?

It is sad that so often our children are not taught the things of God but rather the things of the world.  When we sit in our homes, is everything that we do when we relax at home leading to the Lord Jesus Christ?  Are our lives a testimony to Jesus?  Do the things that we do at home speak of the great love that God has for His people?

2.  Our Response

How can we fulfil these demands when we fail so often ourselves?  The Bible says “You shall talk of these things, you shall instruct your children.”  But then we look back over our lives and see where we have failed so often.  How can we get any kind of help?  How can we find any kind of assistance?  Look at our past, and you see Satan accusing us before God all the time.  We page back through our diaries, and we realise that God records every word we speak.  It’s like a giant tape recorder up in Heaven and everything that we have ever said or done is on it.  Imagine that you were able to play back the tape of our life, like the “This is Your Life” show in TV.  We would sit on the stage and hear voices from our past.  Now most time on the TV show is given flattering things, to boost up your ego.  But if the tape recorder in Heaven was played back to us, then, apart from the grace of Christ Jesus, we would be like those people of whom the Lord Jesus said, “Let the hills fall upon us!”  We would want to escape from all the things that we had ever done.  The tape recorder would play back how we had instructed our children.  Then what of the failures, the frustrations, the times when we look back and say, “If only we had done that differently”?  If only we could have that time again, how would we do it?

But there is also comfort here in the Gospel.  For the demands that God makes here of his people, those demands God also laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ.  And I refer back to John 17: “Father I have told the things that you told me to tell.  I have communicated your Word to them.”  The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled the Father’s demands and He did that by communicating the Father’s Word to His Church.

You see in Deut.6 there is a command for parents to teach their children.  But even those of us who have been ‘successful’ can give thanks to God for having brought our children to Himself.  We thank God that they are living a life of faith, that our children do know the Lord.  Most of us parents, when we closely scrutinize our lives, will say, “Our children believe by the grace of God, for by ourselves we couldn’t have done it.”  There have been so many times that we have failed.

What if we have honestly tried, but our children have turned aside from the Lord.  What then?  It is so easy to make quick judgements.  Sometimes it has happened in the church that people have gone up to parents whose children have turned aside from the Lord and very lovingly have said, “If only you had really taught your children right, this wouldn’t have happened.”  They break the hearts of parents by doing this.  But that’s not the purpose of Scripture.  The purpose of Scripture is to guide us to Jesus.  Also in our failings we may look to the One prepared to fulfil the Father’s Word.  The law’s demands that are made here in Deut.6 have also been fulfilled by Christ and by Him alone.  Let no one be so foolish as to say, “We have done it.  We have taught our children all the time.  When we sat in our houses, by the way we have lived.”  There is only one person who has ever accomplished that.  He was not under the curse of sin but He took the curse of sin upon Himself.  Only the Lord Jesus Christ has fulfilled Deut.6:7 and fulfilled it by teaching His church – by teaching them what terrible bondage they were under.  Great deliverance we have in Jesus Christ.

What kind of strength can be drawn from this knowledge?  We can turn to the Word of God for practical directions.  We can turn to the Word of God.  Not in order that the Word of God becomes like the whip that can be cracked over our backs not that we are going to look at our children and say, “Well, I’m going to work at it and work at it and work at it.”  We can look at Scripture and know what glorious victory is there because of Jesus.  Isn’t it wonderful that the Lord Jesus did accomplish it?  Jesus did tell his church that the Lord Jesus has triumphed over the terribleness of sin.  In Christ we have deliverance otherwise what hope would there be for you parents in the bringing up of your children.  If it only depended on you or me in the bringing up of our children – what hope would we have?  Thanks be to God, as the Apostle Paul said, that in Christ there is no condemnation, but victory.  Then we can take Deut.6 to heart and say, “Lord Jesus, you did it.  You’ve accomplished it.  It is by your grace, power and Holy Spirit.”  We may look at our children and say, “My children, that’s where we were, back there just like the people in Egypt, slaves.  We were in a land of darkness and gloom, condemnation, misery and awfulness.  But then a light shone, as Isaiah prophesied.  Now we are living a life worthy of God.  We have that victory.  We have the comforting assurance that no longer is Satan’s claim upheld.  We can’t pay for it, Christ came and delivered us.  He shed His blood for us.  Boys and girls, it is the greatest news that has ever been told.  That’s what is important to teach them – remind them of what the Lord Jesus has done for us all.

In the Gospel of Jesus Christ we learn that it has been done and can be done.

Christ has fulfilled the demands of God’s law for us.

And by His Spirit He is renewing us so that we can say: ‘Lord Jesus by your grace and strength we will do these things you want us to do.’

Therefore, we may come before the Lord and we may present ourselves around our children.  Lord Jesus take us in, here we are.  Keep us Lord in your service.

Amen