"You Shall TeachThem To Your Children"

Luke 17:2

It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.

One of the main prayers in Judaism tells us, You shall teach them (the commandments) diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise (Deuteronomy 6:7). .As the Bible tells us of the Exodus events, several times the text refers to our children asking questions about it in the future. It says, And when your children say to you, 'What do you mean by this service' (Exodus 12:26)’? God wants us to teach our children. He wants to teach our children in a way that each generation feels as if they are the Children of Israel coming out of Egypt and meeting God at Mt Horeb. It seems in fact that the Father desires greatly that our children be included in all aspects of our religious life and that they be taught early on to have a healthy fear of the authority of God.

If we content ourselves to sit down and study the word but do not make it a requirement in our own lives to teach at least the elementary principles of Torah to our children, we commit spiritual and cultural genocide. The movement stops with us and we become responsible for it before the Father. The whole idea is for the message to be passed on so that the generation that arrives at the end of days can recognize good from evil, the Anti-Messiah against the real One. When we stop teaching our children the Word of Torah, we kill the last generation.

This commandment to teach our children presents us with inferred obligations. Children are great critics; in their simplicity they ‘smell’ hypocrisy. Children are also great mimics; they learn more by watching us than by listening to us. If therefore the life we lead is in contradiction with the sermons we preach, they will see it and will learn that the Words of the Bible are a cultural fairy tale that just like you do, they can chose to keep or dismiss. This commandment to teach our children is made to keep us on our spiritual toes. If by our sloppy sample we negate the importance of the Word in our children’s lives, we will be found guilty of relaxing its authority and as the master says, Whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:19).

Our modern anti-God materialistic society presents many problems when it comes to teaching the principles of the Word to children. But if our teenagers go away from God, is it because of society, or because our sample as parents does not convey a message consistent with our words? These are serious things to think about as whereas in our rationalizing mind we may excuse ourselves, God may not excuse us.

May we take these things to heart and clean up our sample so that we may not be guilty of neglecting the greatest gift and responsibility the Father gave us: our children.