Teach Your Children

03.27.14

Judges 2.10 10 After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. (NIV)

Sometimes, it just doesn’t take long for stuff to go wrong. It was only one generation after the conquest of Canaan that the people of Israel forgot who they were, and Whose they were. There were two things wrong there: 1. the current generation forsook the Lord; and 2. the previous generation didn’t teach the current generation about the Lord.

In 1970, the music group, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young released a hit single called, “Teach Your Children”. It was a catchy tune with a country flavor, and some tasty steel-guitar licks. It was a very popular song. It was an anti-war tune and in those days, the Vietnam thing had reached fever-pitch.

The chorus had the following lines in it:

Teach your children well, their father’s hell

Did slowly go by.

And feed them on your dreams, the one they pick

The one they’ll know by. ©

Ancient Israel could’ve learned a lesson from this song. We moderns could as well. (It seems to be a standard in American foreign policy.) The problem is that as we teach our children, so do the other nations teach theirs. And what one society does, so does another. The difference is focus and results may vary.

Ancient Israel had been given a code that they were supposed to live by. (See the first verse of Teach Your Children.) They lived by the code under Moses, and then Joshua, but by the time Joshua died, they forgot the code. And then they allowed themselves to be influenced by the societies around them and Scripture says: They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. (Joshua 2.12) They did exactly what they weren’t supposed to do. Sometimes, it just doesn’t take long for stuff to go wrong. They forgot who they were and Whose they were.

Teach Your Children well is a catchy slogan but it isn’t a magic wand. But it isn’t to be ignored either. Teaching our kids well about God in a very hostile, anti-God culture is fraught with difficulty; but it isn’t to be ignored. And praying for our kids and grandkids isn’t to be ignored either.

Today, you and I live in a part of world that seems to have forgotten who we are, and why we are. Unfortunately in other places in the world, the same old stuff persists because they haven’t forgotten the importance of teaching who they are, and why they are. At some point, surely, somebody’s gonna lose.

Father, may I remember the lesson of Teaching My Children well, and helping them to live in a world that is against You, and ultimately against them. I pray for wisdom. And I pray for strength to live and teach who we are and Whose we are – through Jesus, Amen.

©"Teach Your Children" Graham Nash, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young,    1969, Atlantic Records