Why Teach God's Word to Our Children

by Michael Dante Aprile

In Deuteronomy 6, in verse 17, God made it clear to Moses that of first importance was to keep his commandments, testimonies, and statutes. A close examination of this passage finds the word “keep” to mean, “attend, mark, look narrow at and observe” something. In other words, God wants us to keep His commandments before our eyes, relating them always to those things He does in ours lives and in the lives of others, and making them our goal and vision for how we shall live. Now, we know to take our eyes off of God’s Word is to take them off of Him (John 1:1). God is a jealous God (Exodus 20:5) and will not tolerate our attention on something other than Him for very long at all.

What God Desires Us to Know

In Numbers 21:8-9, we are told of an historical event about a snake on a pole in the desert, which hints to us of God’s nature concerning the need to continuously keep our eyes on His Word. It was God’s command that Moses set a brass serpent on a pole in the desert and, with this, He had poisonous snakes begin to bite the people, in the desert. He told Moses that, whoever would keep their eyes upon that brass serpent, that He had Moses fashion on the pole, would live and not succumb to the venom of the snakes. It is God’s desire that we keep His Word before our eyes all the time, not just part of the time. To take them off of Him is a kind of death. The beauty of life in the Garden of Eden was that God had a perfect and peaceful life that offered eternity (the tree of life) to those who would not look at or desire knowledge of anything else, no matter how interesting. We are not to desire knowledge of anything that God does not want us to know.

What God’s Purpose is for Our Knowledge

God wanted two things of David in teaching him the way he should go. One was how to be a king and two was the knowledge of Him and His Word. So God planned his life for these things. He made him the son of a sheepherder, so that he would be a shepherd. This made David a good leader of faithful people, one who cared for those he led, and one who learned to defend them to the death, if that was needed. He then gave him a father who taught him about God and His Word and gave David much time to study and meditate on scripture, day and night, while in the fields with the sheep. Together, this study of scripture and his skill at protecting, made him the ideal person to defend God (against the Philistines) and, by doing so, won the heart of a King who admired him (Saul). David was provided an apprenticeship period through Saul, by learning what a good king should and should not do. His time as a shepherd gave him a place with the king because he had also learned to play the harp. So David had a song in his mouth, as did Moses.

By going the way that God designed for him, David was blessed. He put the teaching that God orchestrated in his life, through scripture reading and meditation, which began in his father’s house, into his heart. With this teaching, he instinctively knew what to do that was right in the sight of God (Deuteronomy 6:18). We should ask ourselves if we have chosen a method for teaching our children that is good and right in the sight of God or one that is good and right in the sight of the world and in our own eyes? This brings us to a point about the subject matter we are concentrating upon in our schools.

What God Desires Us to Teach

We already see that David, who had a heart after God’s own heart, knew all that he needed to accomplish. This was an accomplishment that was greater than any accomplishment we could hope our children would ever accomplish in this life. With some small amount of apprenticeship and a vast and personal familiarity with the Word of God, measuring by today’s economy, we could say that David went from being a sheepherder to being equivalent to the President of a nation. Though it is not perfectly detectable, it is not evident either that David had any formal education outside of his father’s home, scripture study, and life’s lessons as a shepherd boy. Another person who gives evidence of the same teaching method was David’s own son Solomon. Though he might have learned some lessons as a boy, in his father’s palace (he probably had a tutor), when he was to become the King himself, Solomon told God he did not have knowledge to be a king. This is evidence that he probably had very little formal training and, since he lived within the palace, he probably did not have any worldly experience, as did his father. However, you can bet that, having David as his father, he had access to, and was knowledgeable about, Scripture.

What was revealing was that Solomon asked God for wisdom (of God and His ways), which was pleasing to God and He responded favorably (2 Chronicles 1:9-12). Now the significant thing about this is that the Bible tells us that Solomon did not then go off to college (not even Bible college). He did, however, get God’s knowledge that led him to be thought of as the wisest person that ever lived, outside of Jesus. People found his knowledge of common things so interesting that they traveled from around the known world to hear him speak on these things. At that time, he curiously knew everything about math and science and history and social studies and nature – all the subjects that we seem to wish to teach our children. There was one big wonderful difference. He knew these things through what God taught him, and most assuredly through study and meditation of the Scriptures. Oddly enough, that same God is still accessible to those children who are “born again,” through His Holy Spirit, and the available scriptures are more fulfilled now than they were in Solomon’s time, because of Jesus Christ.

Now, you might be saying that David and Solomon were special people. But, I ask you, “Were they more special than any saved child today?” If you say, “Yes,” Then I must ask you, “How?” If you say, “They were blessed by God,” I must reply, “So is someone born again.” If you say, “They were ordained of God,” I must reply, “So is everyone that is here for God’s special purpose (Isaiah 43:21; Jeremiah 1:5).” The fact is, David and Solomon were just as ordinary as any of our children. They simply were brought to see the importance of God and His Word, they meditated on it, day and night (Psalm 1:2; Psalm 119:15,23,48,78,148), they prayed to God and had an active, walking relationship with Him since childhood. David had some life experience and Solomon had little, but both of them had God’s Spirit to teach them and scripture from which to learn. I must point out here that I did not throw in that they had faith, however, that was just as important for David and Solomon as it was for Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Noah and all the great and small of Bible history. Faith is also a must for salvation and for a blessed learning relationship with God and His Word. If you have not given your children the Gospel message, you have not begun yet to teach school.