Teaching the Bible to our children

There are a lot of reasons why we need to teach the Bible to our children. I am speaking to and for Bible-believing Christians of course. Presumably, those who aren’t, wont. And for the Jews, they’d be instructing their children only what we call the “Old Testament” part. But if we believe in the God of the Bible, this is necessary, as this is a command. Not to mention it’s the obvious thing to do --if we love God, we’ll obey his commandments (John 14:15). And if we love our children, we should teach them to read the Bible, too.

We would think this is a “religious” task, or if we’re Christians, part of parents’ duties. But if we read the entire chapter, we’d see this was during a war, and Joshua was about to lead the Israelites to invade that land which we now call Israel, crossing the river from Jordan. Thousands of years after, there’s still war there today, albeit it’s the modern-day Israelis defending their land, instead of Joshua entering it and defeating the Canaanites. But at that time, Joshua was leading the Jews from Egypt. Instead of telling Joshua military tactics and how to win the war, God said, “Read the Bible.”

Always. “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it …” (Joshua 1:8). Why or what for? “… for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.” But God did not stop there. He continued, “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:7). At home, always. Teaching the Bible to children is not the teachers’ job. God asked us parents to do it.

We live in a day and age where we often entrust our children’s education to our schools. That’s well and good for most of their education but there are things that must be properly taught at home. No amount of GMRC (Good Manners and Right Conduct --I don’t know if this is still taught in school as a subject nowadays) can mold our children to love God the same way as parents can. Deuteronomy 11:19 repeated this: “Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

But when we follow God’s instructions in teaching the Bible to our children, we must do it right, too, and not limit ourselves to “verbal” instructions. The Scriptures say we teach our children “sitting at home, walking along the road, lying down, getting up...” I did not understand this at first, until I realized what Joshua actually meant was “all the time.” But we can’t always be “teaching” the Bible to our children ALL the time. We can also do that by “living it”. We teach our children through the lifestyle we live!