Notes from Podcast
Jack Hayford
Living Way Ministries Radio Broadcast
Tell the Children
Living Way Podcast
OnePlace.com
Friday, August 8, 2008 at 12:00 AM
Psalms 78:4-8
4 We will not hide them from their children,
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.
5 He established a testimony in Jacob
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;
8 and that they should not be like their fathers,
a stubborn and rebellious generation,
a generation whose heart was not steadfast,
whose spirit was not faithful to God.
We all have influence over some child in our life, even if we do not have children. The people here are not being told to tell the children Bible stories, but that we should tell them stories about how God has worked in our lives. Tell them family stories. This is not to add to what God has put in the Bible, we are not to add or subtract from that, but as a was that they can understand it. You can tell the children John 3:16 and what it means, but tell them how it has affected your life, how you received Jesus and it will be more real to them because they know clearly who it happened to.
Things we are to tell our children:
1. Have regular times when you excite the childrens curiosity so that they ask what does this mean?
Exodus 12:21-27
21 Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb.
22 Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning.
23 For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.
24 You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever.
25 And when you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service.
26 And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’
27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the LORD's Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’” And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.
2. How the Lord has provided for you
Exodus 16:31-36
31 Now the house of Israel called its name manna. It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.
32 Moses said, “This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, so that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’”
33 And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the LORD to be kept throughout your generations.”
34 As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony to be kept.
35 The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, till they came to a habitable land. They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan.
36 (An omer is the tenth part of an ephah.)
Does your God provide all your needs? Do you teach the children the stories about what has been done for the people in Bible stories? How about what has happened in your life.
3. Tell them rebellion against God destroyed.
Numbers 16:36-40
36 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
37 “Tell Eleazar the son of Aaron the priest to take up the censers out of the blaze. Then scatter the fire far and wide, for they have become holy.
38 As for the censers of these men who have sinned at the cost of their lives, let them be made into hammered plates as a covering for the altar, for they offered them before the LORD, and they became holy. Thus they shall be a sign to the people of Israel.”
39 So Eleazar the priest took the bronze censers, which those who were burned had offered, and they were hammered out as a covering for the altar,
40 to be a reminder to the people of Israel, so that no outsider, who is not of the descendants of Aaron, should draw near to burn incense before the LORD, lest he become like Korah and his company—as the LORD said to him through Moses.
You need to tell the children the own stories in your own life of the failures that you have had in your life. How you have sinned and come short of what you were to be and how God has taken care of that sin with the covering of Jesus blood.
4. Make memorials of the things the paths that you have taken.
Joshua 4:3-7
3 and command them, saying, ‘Take twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan, from the very place where the priests' feet stood firmly, and bring them over with you and lay them down in the place where you lodge tonight.’”
4 Then Joshua called the twelve men from the people of Israel, whom he had appointed, a man from each tribe.
5 And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel,
6 that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’
7 then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.”
Let them see that you have gone through the struggles that you have been through and how you have succeeded.
5. Set up celebrations
Esther 9:26
26 Therefore they called these days Purim, after the term Pur. Therefore, because of all that was written in this letter, and of what they had faced in this matter, and of what had happened to them,
Show them how God has delivered you. Not be a 4th of July celebration that people we do not know declared, but something that can be seen in your life, a healing or deliverance.
6. Teach the children that what is destroying the world is a result of human sin.
Joel 1:2-4
2 Hear this, you elders;
give ear, all inhabitants of the land!
Has such a thing happened in your days,
or in the days of your fathers?
3 Tell your children of it,
and let your children tell their children,
and their children to another generation.
4 What the cutting locust left,
the swarming locust has eaten.
What the swarming locust left,
the hopping locust has eaten,
and what the hopping locust left,
the destroying locust has eaten.
