It's Our Job

“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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6.6-9

I realise that the Law cannot literally be applied to the age of grace. We are in a different dispensation. We are under grace and not the Law. But there are still principles and lessons that we can glean.

Here we find some practical teaching methods to do the teaching that we read about yesterday. It is a great teacher’s guide.

This section specifies the first objects of our teaching – our children. Parents have the ultimate responsibility to teach their children. This right and responsivity is so important that the Irish Constitution spells it out:

‘The State acknowledges that the primary and natural educator of the child is the Family and guarantees to respect the inalienable right and duty of parents to provide, according to their means, for the religious and moral, intellectual, physical and social education of their children.’

If this principle is true in general it is even more important when teaching Bible truths so here we read how to do it:

Teach your children diligently

Teach them when you are sitting at home

Teach them when you are out walking

Teach them when you are at rest

Teach them in the morning

Teach them with visible reminders

When you look at that you see that the parents are the only ones who can do all of that. Who else is sitting around the house with our kids? Who else is there about at bedtime? Who else is there first thing in the morning? Who else sees what’s on our doorposts?

It is our job to teach our families spiritual truth. We can’t depend on or blame anyone else. It is up to us and the grace of God.