Tiny toddlers with runny noses, rambunctious primary students, awkward adolescents, and apprehensive teens—our churches and our lives are full of young people. They are a joyful and important part of daily work for many of us. Some of us have the chance to avoid them, but we should instead be reaching out to them in whichever ways we can find. This outreach should include teaching them and patterning God’s truth.
God wants us to teach His truth to others, and this work includes more than just the youngest generation. In Titus 2, the older women in the church are encouraged to teach the younger women to follow God’s path in their homes. (We are all an older woman to someone.) Passing down God’s truth is for the entire church, not just for parents. And being active in this kind of work benefits us as well as those whom we teach.
Bible teaching has immense benefits, both for the teacher and the students.
When we teach the Bible, we are obedient to God’s commands.
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, 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.
Deuteronomy 6:4-7
This Old Testament command, focused on the family, is beautifully expanded in the New Testament to focus on every person in the world!
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[b] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:19-20
When we teach the Bible, we remember it better ourselves.
The process of studying something personally is very profitable, but studying it to the level that you can then teach it to someone else is a powerful way to remember and understand something as you never have before. When we sit down and teach through the Bible with someone younger in our lives, we are not only helping them to know something, but we are also challenging ourselves to understand on a new level. We are forced to meditate longer, think of examples, and explain things that we might not have verbalized before.
When we teach the Bible, we pass the truth on to future generations.
We cannot force the children (or anyone) in our lives to follow God’s path, but we can teach them diligently what that path is and how it brings life. God describes the normal process of passing down this teaching in Psalm 78:
5 He established a testimony in Jacob
Psalm 78:5-7
and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers
to teach to their children,
6 that the next generation might know them,
the children yet unborn,
and arise and tell them to their children,
7 so that they should set their hope in God
and not forget the works of God,
but keep his commandments
Passing down these truths to the next generation involves teaching as well as delighting in God together.
4 One generation shall commend your works to another,
Psalm 145:4-7
and shall declare your mighty acts.
5 On the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
6 They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds,
and I will declare your greatness.
7 They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness
and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.
In a sermon on Psalm 145, John Piper points out the importance of teaching as well as praising God to the next generation:
“Teachers and parents who do not exult over God in their teaching will not bring about exultation in God. Dry, unemotional, indifferent teaching about God – whether at home or at church – is a half-truth, at best. It says one thing about God and portrays another thing. It is inconsistent. It says that God is great, but teaches as if God is not great. … Let praises carry the truth to the next generation, because the aim of truth is praise. The aim of education is exultation. So let education model exultation in the way it is done.”
Today, let’s consider the people—children and adults—in our lives and how we can teach them God’s word and how we can praise His name to the next generation.
If you are looking for a free resource to use to study the book of Proverbs with a child in your life, please check out the one that I am creating here, month by month.
