Educating God's Children: Teach THE story

As a former primary school teacher, forgive me, but I like a bit of participation. So for those of you who have a mobile phone, would you please get onto your screen a picture, a photo, of a child that you know and love. If you have one and can find one, would you have it up on your screen please, and we will use that in a moment.

I understand that you are in the middle of a teaching series on Exodus, and that you are studying this pivotal moment in the story of God’s people. Their rescue out from Egypt, their wanderings, and their preparation for entering the Promised Land. Have any of you seen the film The Prince of Egypt? An excellent animated and musical version of the story. I’ve used it in many schools, to teach children about Moses and to help them to know and understand this key Old Testament story. You’re playing with the big boys now! Songs like that they really bring home the story. I love the way that children, and children’s singing is a part of that film. You see children love stories. People love stories. We are created by God to love stories. And children are created to learn and be educated through stories. What stories are educating our precious children today? Teach THE Story.

So have any of you got a photo? Funny, serious, it doesn’t matter. I want you to look at their face. Now stay looking at their face, don’t look away until I tell you to. Listen. He is God’s child. She is a beautiful creation of Christ. They are sinful, yes, but there is so much life and potential in them, as they follow Christ. If they know THE story, that they are part of. If they come to understand the story they are part of. You can teach them the story. You can look up now. You may want to keep that photo there, as a visual aid for prayer later.

I don’t know if you realised this, but our two Bible readings were related to teaching, education, that was given to God’s people at two key moments in their history. Their history. And His-story. The first reading was from Deuteronomy. Picture the scene; having been rescued from Egypt, having wandered and been refined, the people are gathered before Moses. Thousands are gathered to be taught; men, women, children, virtually none of the previous generation. They gather to be taught. Taught who they are. Taught how they should live. Taught the laws of how to run their country. The kingdom of God’s people. Deuteronomy is the record of Moses speech’ to them, a manifesto really; laws and teaching given from God through Moses, before he would go up the mountain and be seen no more. Arguably, the most significant verse for God’s people, and still today for theistic Jews is Deuteronomy 6.4. Here we have the definitive statement of Jewish identity:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

The Shema Yisrael. And what is also very familiar to us as Christians today is what comes next. Known as the Great Commandment to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might. What is commonly missed however, is the way in which the laws are given. Through narrative story. And also the repeated references throughout to who? To children. Deuteronomy 6.1-2:

Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son's son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.

Spot that? He is speaking about their grandchildren! Deuteronomy 6.4-7:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 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.

Pass this on. Educate them. Don’t get busy and forget this! Says God. Impress…the word means like with a sharp stylus on soft clay. The clay is only soft for so long you know. Moses continues (Deuteronomy 6.10-25):

And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—…[be] careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us.

Deuteronmy 6.20-22:

When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the Lord our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh's slaves in Egypt. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes.

Pass this on. Educate them. The story. Don’t get busy and forget. Don’t give them just the laws, but tell them their identity. Teach them the laws and their identity in the context of THE story! Children today in secular society are taught a story! Explicitly, but mostly implicitly through schools and the media, they are taught there’s no creator. Actually you create yourself. No ‘fall’ or sin that you need rescue from. No story that requires a saviour. And no glorious future promised land from God. No wonder there are the mental health issues. No wonder, even the children of Christians, take on disturbing identities. They don’t know who they are. They don’t know the Exodus story of rescue they are a part of. I mean why follow the laws and rules? From a young age, teach them THE story of a loving and rescuing God who created them.

How did the people of God do, when they went into the Promised Land? Guess what? They fought their battles, they got busy with their work. They enjoyed the land. They forgot their children. They didn’t invest time, energy, money in prioritising the education of their children and (Judges 2.10):

And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

Knew nothing of the story. And the land was filled with chaos. No clear teaching, they followed the practices of the people of the land. Wars, sexual immorality, their kingdom and their children were a mess. Don’t just blame the parents. Moses message was not ‘Hear O Parents’ alone. It was ‘Hear O Israel’. The whole community was to take education seriously. In ONE generation, because they hadn’t diligently, day by day, at home, on the road, and in all the places of learning, taught them, impressed (write with a stylus) on them, THE story.

Anyone, seeing any parallels with today? Help us Lord. Maybe take a look at that picture again. The second reading was from Matthew 28.16-20. The Great Commission. Having journeyed with Christ, the disciples had seen the incredible power of God in the resurrection of their rabbi; their teacher. And now their teacher, was going to tell them what to do, in order to bring about His Kingdom. Picture the scene. Gathered before this incredible figure, to hear his final instructions before his is to move on up. Sound familiar? But how old do you picture those disciples to be? Old men with long grey beards? Renaissance art hasn’t helped us. How did Jesus spend his focussed three years of time, as God incarnate? As a secondary class teacher. The disciples were teenagers. Some theologians think John could have been as young as twelve when called to follow Christ. Peter the oldest at about 18.

So when he gives them the Great Commission, what does he expect them to do? To run some evangelistic discipleship courses for adults? Is that how His people were to focus ALL their discipleship energies? No, no. The Jesus who said Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them (Matthew 19.14) was the same Jesus who spoke through Moses (Deuteronomy 6.7):

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them… when you walk by the way

He would expect them to teach the young. That’s what he’d modelled to them for three years. In this moment, this Jesus risen from death, in his glorious resurrection body, this Jesus says to them. Matthew 28.18-20:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Teaching, is right at the heart of the Great Commission. Let’s do the baptising, and the teaching part. That’s why the Church of England started most of the schools in this country. Teach them to read, so they can read the…..Bible. You couldn’t build just a church, you had to have a school. A school dedicated to Teaching THE Story. Why is it that the schools have been given to the state? Well, true, it is cheaper and less hassle. Can’t someone else deal with the children and young people, please? The state can be neutral on this can’t they? Do we really think a so-called neutral state education, where Jesus and the Bible get a glancing mention, perhaps in an RE lesson or assembly, do we really think this will effectively teach them THE story. And through that teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

You know, if you train up a child, in the way they should go, when they are old they will not turn from it. Impress, inscribe while the clay is soft, and who they are, who they ought to be, how they should live, will be engraved on the tablets of their hearts by Christ’s Spirit. The average age a person makes their first firm commitment to Christ is 13. In this country only somewhere between 5-10% of Christians came to faith after the age of 18.
And if any church or group of God’s people, engage fully in the Great Commission, as Jesus Christ gave it, the discipleship ‘teaching them to obey’ that part as well, then the risen Lord Jesus Christ says, surely I am with you, always in this task to the very end of the age. Until the lasting promised land of the New Heaven’s and the New Earth.

Out of the ruins, of the crumbling concrete and crumbling thinking of our education system, I’m seeing wonderful signs of hope. Often shocked by the darkness of the secularising and sexualising practices in our schools, Christ’s followers are waking up. Many are playing their part as Salt and Light in the education of our children. I was a teacher in state schools for 17 years doing this, salt sprinkled into the system to fertilise and preserve. If you are a teacher here, I salute you, may you know his strength and never lose your saltiness. I know some of the best Christian state schools are in this region. I argue that there is also a need for Light. Bright shiny, intense places of Christ’s presence, where teaching THE story, is what all the education is centred around. A Christ-centred education, with only Christian teachers. In my work for Christian Concern, I’m working with 25 groups up and down the country starting new independent affordable Christian schools. I’m working with parents developing home education, and home-school hubs, where they have the joy of investing together in daily discipleship, through all the subject areas. Bright lights! There is a move of God in Education.

Every one of us here has a part to play in our great rabbi’s Great Commission. Remember ‘Hear O Israel’. And I pray whenever you hear about or think about the Great Commission, you understand that, if our service of him is not to last just one generation, that we must Teach THE Story. As we close, I encourage us to either look at that child again prayerfully, or close your eyes and hold your questions, concerns, prayers before the risen Christ now, as we pray:

Father, our great teacher, may we understand that you are truly, and surely with us. May we understand how we are to play our part in the education of your children. And may we hear Christ’s voice that we might be salt and light in this generation, that there might be another generation of those who have been taught THE story. Amen