Teach Your Children to Love God

Deuteronomy 6: 4 – 9 (NIV): Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 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. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates.

This passage is called The Shema. It is the heart of the Jewish faith and contains the “greatest commandment” in the Christian faith (Matthew 22: 36 – 38). It begins by reminding us that there is one and only one God. We are not to worship any other gods or make any idols to worship. Then the passage tells us to love God with all that we are. To love him with every fiber of our being. All of our heart – our emotional strength; our soul – the essence of who we are; and our strength – with all of our power. This means we decide to love him and we are determined not to allow anything to compromise that love. It's not a half-hearted love or a weak commitment, it's an all-consuming determination.

Understand that love is not necessarily a fond feeling. Love is a deliberate act of the will to give ourselves to someone or something. God is not telling us to like him, he's commanding us to love him. God says his commandments are to be upon our hearts. This means we know God's laws and we never forget them. We say we know something “by heart”. That's what this means. So, we make every decision in light of God's Word. Every time we speak, every time we act.

Next, the responsibility of teaching children what God desires is placed squarely on parents. Parents are the number-one influence on our children. Parents shape our children's character. Children learn what is important in life from watching us. Their morals, their values, their character comes directly from watching their parents. It is not the church's responsibility to teach your children about God, it is yours.

God said to teach our children about him when we sit at home, when we walk along the road, when we lie down, and when we get up. That covers the whole day. We look for opportunities to talk to them and we do so. We let them see us praying and reading our bibles. Our home is full of love and of symbols of our faith. We stress to them the importance of a relationship with God, then we let them see us work on our own relationship with him. We're not perfect and they will see that soon enough, but by our actions we show what is most important to us.

Your children already know whether or not you love God. Teach them about him. Teach them to love him too.

Easter

Matthew 28: 1 – 10 (NIV): After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men. The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you." So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them. "Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

This is the greatest moment in the history of the world! Things were looking so grim, yet the creator of the universe had just conquered death, the enemy of mankind. But these women didn't understand that yet. They were simply trying to pay respects to a really good dead guy. The idea that he had come back to life was beyond their wildest dreams. That's the gospel: what God has in store for us is so wonderful, it is beyond our imaginations.

God didn't create us to suffer. Yet we suffer. God didn't create us to die. Yet we die. What gives? Losing paradise was the price we paid for having a free will. Love is not love if it is forced. God knows that. He had to allow the “fall” so that we would freely choose him. We are not God's puppets or pets, we are his beloved children. We suffer because of the fall from paradise, but God suffered along with us. And when he rose again, he proved that death is not the end for those who believe.

The women were afraid that first Easter morning as they encountered the supernatural. Yet, the angel and Jesus both told them not to be afraid. When we see things we don't understand, it is frightening, but God's message to us is to not fear. In fact, the Bible tells us 365 times – once for each day of the year – not to be afraid. When we walk by faith and realize that God is God and he knows what he is doing, our fears will subside.

When the women realized that Jesus had risen, they worshiped him. That should be our response as well. And Jesus had a task for them: go tell. God has given us that same marching order. We live in a world that needs hope; a world of people afraid of the future. We live in a world that needs to know that there is a God, that he is all powerful, that he does care, and that he knows what he is doing even if we don't understand. When we believe, we have the hope that we will return to paradise.

The Triumphal Entry

Luke 19: 28 – 40 (NIV): After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, 'Why are you untying it?' tell him, 'The Lord needs it.' " Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, "Why are you untying the colt?" They replied, "The Lord needs it." They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen: "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!" Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, rebuke your disciples!" "I tell you," he replied, "if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out."

This was Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. We call the Sunday before Easter Palm Sunday because people laid down cloaks and palm fronds on the road in front of Jesus as he arrived. Jesus was celebrated as a conquering king riding into town after a major victory. This was the one time he was celebrated by a city as the king he rightfully was. The scene is ripe with symbolism. Luke says the people were praising God “for all the miracles they had seen.” Why didn't Jesus arrive on a powerful horse? Because everything he did was for a purpose and his arriving on a donkey's colt was to fulfill a prophecy and show that he was the Messiah. Zechariah 9:9 says, “See your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation; gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

A king would ride into town on a donkey only in times of peace. Jesus was bringing peace – peace with God. He would provide that peace by laying down his life five days later. When Jesus returns, he will ride a white horse and he will not bring peace, but God's wrath (Revelation 19:11 – 16).

The Pharisees didn't believe Jesus was the Christ, so they didn't want the people worshiping him. Jesus said that if we don't worship him, “the stones will cry out.” Jesus was saying that he is God and because of that, he will be worshiped. It is our privilege to worship him, but if we do not, creation will.

I don't want some rock to have to cry out because I failed to worship Jesus. All of creation is here to worship and I want to do my part. Jesus said God is seeking true worshipers. A true worshiper acknowledges Jesus as the King and Messiah. A true worshiper worships Jesus as God incarnate. A true worshiper acknowledges that Jesus is the only way to the Father.

The Snake in the Desert

Numbers 21: 4 – 9 (NIV): They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea, to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the desert? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!" Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, "We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us." So Moses prayed for the people. The Lord said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live." So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.

What is this about? Really? The God who brought the Israelites out of Egypt has now sent poisonous snakes among them to bite them? And didn't God strictly tell them not to make an idol of an animal? (The Second Commandment). Now he instructs Moses to put an image of a snake on a pole, and if anyone is snake-bitten, he simply has to look at the image and he will live.

This story would make no sense at all except that fourteen-hundred years later Jesus said, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15). Now we are beginning to understand. Moses wasn't breaking the Second Commandment by creating this bronze snake – the people were putting their trust in God when they looked at it, not worshiping the fake snake.

This story is a Messianic prophecy. The Old Testament has 350 of them. This story is about people being punished because they did not trust God, and God providing a way for them to prove that they did, once again, trust him.

The Bible's message to us is that we are all snake-bitten, spiritually. We all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. None of us is righteous. We have all failed to trust God and are in need of someone to save us. Isn't it interesting that God instructed Moses to put an image of the very thing that was killing the people on the pole? Scholars say the pole undoubtedly had a crossbar and looked just like a cross. When Jesus was lifted up on the cross, he became sin for us, then nailed it to the cross. He became sin, then punished that sin. All we have to do is look to him – believe in him – and our sin is no longer held against us.