Tuesday, June 17, 2025
These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates. Deuteronomy 6:6-9
Repeat Them To Your Children...
The Children of Israel were finally getting ready to enter the promised land. The generation before theirs had been delivered out of slavery in Egypt only to lose the promised land due to disobedience to God. Now their children were about to cross the Jordan. Moses was preparing them with important truths to strengthen their faith and help them establish families and homes in the Promised Land.
These same words can be used by for establishing our families and homes. Sunday Pastor Jim gave us some guidelines on how we can use God’s word in establishing our families and homes.
Read the Bible with your family. – Repeat them to your children… As parents and grandparents, we are the first and most important representation of Jesus in the lives of our children. Talking with our children about what the Word of God says and living it out before them reinforces the message.
We will talk about what we love and what we think is important. Let your words reveal to your family how important Jesus is to you and how much you love him. Our love for him will be evident to our children when our relationship with him is the foundation for all our words and actions.
Establish a pattern of Bible reading in your family. - It is good for your family to see you having your own quiet time with God, but it is also important to read the Bible with your family. Establish this important habit with your family.
Help your family grasp the big picture of Scripture. – Read the stories of the bible to not only remember what God has done but also that he is a promise keeping and faithful God from the beginning of time.
Train your family to listen to the Bible as it is taught. Help your children understand the importance of respecting and honoring God’s word by listening as it is taught. Help them to understand that God’s word is truth and contains the answers to any problem they could ever face.
Moses started with the words Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. v5 The instructions he gave them were to show them how they could love God with all their heart, soul, and strength – and how they could teach it to the next generation so they could enjoy the blessing of the Promised Land.
Listen, Israel, and be careful to follow them, so that you may prosper and multiply greatly, because the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey. V3
Moses stressed to the Children of Israel that learning and teaching these commands were not enough without doing them. The most important part of knowing them is obedience – applying them to our lives. That is what we must teach our children and model for them in our own lives.
It is this doing of them that is the hard part of the work. It is not easy always to teach them; a man needs the Spirit of God if he is to teach them aright, but practice is harder than preaching. May God grant us grace, whenever we hear his Word, to do it!” (Spurgeon)
