Sunday, February 24, 2008
Teach Your Children
Perhaps, like me, you're already humming along with the song made famous by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. But I'm actually referring to Deuteronomy 6:1-9
According to this passage, you are to teach your children the commandments, specifically the Ten Commandments which he just presented in 5:1-22. Bishop Ray Sutton, in his 1986 book Who Owns the Family: God or the State?, applies the Ten Commandments to the family:
Meditate on these principles and consider how you can teach them to your children when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. Bishop Sutton goes on to comment:
So teach your children well. And may your relationship with them be better than the one between Graham Nash and his father.
Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the LORD your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. Therefore hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the LORD God of your fathers has promised you--"a land flowing with milk and honey.'
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
"And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
According to this passage, you are to teach your children the commandments, specifically the Ten Commandments which he just presented in 5:1-22. Bishop Ray Sutton, in his 1986 book Who Owns the Family: God or the State?, applies the Ten Commandments to the family:
A. 1st Commandment: No other gods means God owns the family.
B. 2nd Commandment: No other worship means the family that worships together stays together.
C. 3rd Commandment: No manipulation of God’s name means man is to live by obedience to God's law and trust Him for the results.
D. 4th Commandment: The family is to allow God to sanction it by submitting to God’s structure of time: worship and rest one day and work the other six.
E. 5th Commandment: Inheritance comes through faithfulness.
F. 6th Commandment: An attack on man is destruction of the image of God. Since the "image" is "male and female" (family), murder is an assault on the family.
G. 7th Commandment: Adultery directly affects the marriage covenant.
H. 8th Commandment: Theft is an attempt to manipulate man. As we saw in the 3rd commandment (paralleling the 8th), man is to live by ethics not magic.
I. 9th Commandment: Children are to learn how to sanction properly. Bearing false witness is an unlawful sanction.
J. 10th Commandment: Coveting what belongs to another is an attempt to take someone else’s estate.
Meditate on these principles and consider how you can teach them to your children when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. Bishop Sutton goes on to comment:
Our forefathers fled to this country to be able to keep these commandments. Freedom to them was the liberty to obey God, not disobey Him. How things have changed! The State should not set another standard, but enforce this one. Parents ought not teach another, but train their children in this one. The standard is set by God.
So teach your children well. And may your relationship with them be better than the one between Graham Nash and his father.




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