“…..so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God” Deuteronomy 6:2

God expected the fathers who came out of Egypt to pass on to their children and grandchildren what God had done for them as well as to teach them His Law.

“These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons 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 up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
- Deuteronomy 6:6-9

First – Put God’s word in your heart. You cannot teach to your little ones what you do not know and believe yourself. No one can see through hypocrisy like children.

Second – We are to teach God’s word diligently. That means we keep doing it, all the time, throughout the day and into the night. In the home but also as we are going other places, we talk to them about God and his will for us. We do it when we get up in the mornings and when we lay down at night.

Thirdly – We show them that it is personal to us. The binding of it on our hands and head means it is constantly with us in all we do and in all we say.

Lastly – That it is written on our gates and even the doorposts of the house tells us that we honor what God values in our home. There is no other code by which we live. As we will have no other God before him, so no other ideology, no other philosophy, no other way of thinking about the world and our place in it will have a foothold in our family.

So gather at the dinner table, play together in the backyard, sit quietly on the side of their beds with them and continually introduce your children to their creator and his ways. Regardless of how they respond when they are young, when they mature, these will be among their fondest memories.

As Joshua (who accompanied Moses on the mountain, Exodus 24:12-15) would say to all of Israel, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”, - Joshua 24:15.