1 Valley View Chapel September 13, 2015 Teach Your Children Preparing for the Story Nehemiah 13:23-24 Introduction Back in the late 1960 s Graham Nash, then a member of a popular British musical group called The Hollies wrote a song called Teach Your Children. It was his response to a famous photograph by Diane Arbus entitled Child with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park. The Hollies never recorded the song but Nash s new group Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young did record it in 1970 on their second album, Déjà Vu. The opening lines go like this: You, who are on the road must have a code that you can live by.teach your children well...and feed them on your dreams. Like many others of my generation I sang along to the catchy tune, never thinking about the words or what the song meant. But when I listened to it recently, three questions came to mind that the song leaves unanswered. What is the code that we re supposed to live by? What are the dreams that we told to feed to our children? And the most important question of all: If somehow we can figure out the code and interpret the dreams then HOW are we supposed to communicate these effectively so that our children will embrace them and order their lives around them? These are questions that parents have struggled with since Adam and Eve welcomed their eldest son Cain into the world. This morning I d like to do two things: 1) Describe the challenge confronting parents who have the God-given responsibility to teach their children; and 2) share practical help on how you can teach your children in a way that is consistent with your spiritual values. I m going to start by calling your attention to Nehemiah 13:23-24: Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. (NIV) Mixed Marriages To understand Nehemiah 13:23-24 we have to be familiar with the historical context of the book of Nehemiah. The Israelites had been taken captive by the Babylonians between 606 and 586 B.C. In 586 B.C. the Babylonians destroyed the temple built by Solomon; devastated Jerusalem; and took thousands of Jews into captivity. After the Babylonians were conquered by the Medo- Persians in 539 B.C., Cyrus, the Medo-Persian king gave the Jews permission to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. Approximately 42,000 of them took the king up on his offer.
2 While the second temple had been rebuilt by 516 B.C., the walls and gates of the city so essential for Jerusalem s defense remained in a state of rubble for over 50 years. In the year 445 B.C., Nehemiah was the right-hand-man to the Artaxerxes, the reigning Medo-Persian king. Nehemiah was a Jew, his forefathers having been taken captive 150 years earlier. Nehemiah received a visit from his brother Hanani who had moved back to Jerusalem. Hanani brought disturbing news. It s recorded in Nehemiah 1:3, "Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire." (NIV) Nehemiah sought permission from King Artaxerxes to go to Jerusalem and supervise the rebuilding of the walls and gates. The king approved his request. Nehemiah went to Jerusalem and the project was successfully completed. After 10 years, Nehemiah returned to Susa the Medo-Persian capital. No one knows how long Nehemiah was absent from Jerusalem. What we do know is that by the time he returned, Judah and Jerusalem were in a mess. Verse 23 tells why: Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. (NIV) The heart of the problem was inter-marriage between Israelite men and women from pagan cultures, women who neither shared Israel s faith in God nor subscribed to Israel s moral code. God had expressly forbidden marriage with those of other nations in Deuteronomy 7:1-4, When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you.do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord's anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. (NIV) It s important to understand that God did not forbid inter-racial marriage. In fact Moses himself was married to an Ethiopian woman according to Numbers 12:1. What was forbidden was inter-faith or inter-no faith marriage. The reason was plainly set forth in Deuteronomy 7:4, They will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods. And that is exactly what happened. By the time Nehemiah had gotten back to Jerusalem, Jewish men had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. Ashdod was one of the five key Philistine cities. The Philistines hated the Jews and were their perpetual enemies. Ashdod was the home of the Philistine god Dagon and a temple had been constructed there in his honor. The nation of Ammon was a longstanding enemy of Israel and worshiped the god Molech. Molech-worship included child sacrifice by fire. Moab was also a traditional enemy of Israel. The Moabites worshiped the pagan deity Chemosh and child sacrifice was also an important part of their religious rituals. You may recall that Balak the king of the Moabites tried unsuccessfully to bribe the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites.
3 In defiance of God s warnings, the Jews went ahead and married Ashdodites, Ammonites, and Moabites. Moses prediction that They will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods. had come true. As a result of these forbidden marriages, we read the sad words of Nehemiah 13:24, Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. In other words, the children of that generation were more comfortable, more informed, and more articulate about the language of the secular culture than the language of God. Let s: Fast forward 2400 years and half a world away In 2005 a massive study was done to determine the extent of American teenagers religious awareness and knowledge. The project involved teens of every religious persuasion including many from what we would call evangelical backgrounds. The study was the subject of a book by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton titled Soul Searching. Here are six observations that came out of their research: In our in-depth interviews with U.S. teenagers, we found the vast majority of them to be incredibly inarticulate about their faith, their religious beliefs and practices, and its meaning or place in their lives. We found very few teens from any religious background who are able to articulate well their religious beliefs and explain how those beliefs connect to the rest of their lives. For many teens, very little in their lives had prepared them to be able to explain, even in basic terms, what they believe and how that fits into their lives. Most religious teenagers opinions and views one can hardly call them worldviews are vague, limited, and often quite at variance with the actual teachings of their own religion. Many belief professions by Protestant teens, including numerous conservative Protestant teens, in effect discard the essential Protestant gospel. Very few of the descriptions of personal beliefs offered by the teenagers we interviewed, especially the Christian teenagers, come close to representing marginally coherent accounts of the basic, important religious beliefs of their own faith traditions. Most teenagers held religious beliefs that, judged by their own religion s standards, were often trivial, misguided, distorted, and sometimes outright doctrinally erroneous. Let s look again at Nehemiah 13:24, Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. (NIV) The more things change, the more they stay the same. Many children and teens even in our church family speak more fluently, more knowledgably, and more passionately about popular music, video games, movies and sports than about
4 the Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Why? Because it s so difficult to raise children today without the culture crowding out biblical values and principles. So instead of blaming anybody which doesn t do any good, we want to help everyone young, old, and in-between - who calls Valley View Chapel their church home to know the major themes of the Bible and equip our entire church family to communicate spiritual truth intelligently in the church, the home and the world. And that s where The Story comes in. Fighting Back You ve seen the promotional trailers. Next week the banners will be up. Books are now available. We who know the Lord need to fight back aggressively against a culture that is trying desperately and relentlessly to get us to marry it. The best defense is a good offense. We who call Valley View Chapel our church home need to make a renewed commitment to learn God s Word, teach God s Word to the next generation, and live out God s Word in the home, the neighborhood, the marketplace, the school, the workplace, and of course the church. Next Sunday I will be preaching the first of 31 messages starting with the book of Genesis 1-8 The Beginning of Life As We Know it. On May 29 th of 2016 (Lord willing) I will preach a message entitled The End of Time from the book of Revelation. On that day we ll celebrate together the thrilling climax of the greatest story ever told. Every Sunday school class from the youngest to the adult classes will be learning the same story from the Word of God each week. Parents will have age appropriate books to read to their children. Take-home activities and discussion points will be provided so that the story can be reinforced in a variety of ways. Everybody parents, children, emptynesters, and single adults will be studying the same dynamic truth, discussing it in a family, Sunday school or small group context and learning together how to apply biblical truth to life. I m inviting you no, I m urging you - to devote 31 weeks between next Sunday and May 29 th of next year to learning the story of God s incredible plan for the world as revealed in the Bible. I m praying that you ll invite your friends to share the adventure and that you ll bring your kids to Sunday school every week and attend a class yourself. Read the story to yourself. If you have kids, read it to them or have them read it to you. Discuss it at the table; at bedtime; anytime and anywhere. If you re single or don t have kids, get into a group and share your thoughts and hear the thoughts of others who are on the same spiritual journey. At the beginning of the message I asked three questions suggested by the song Teach Your Children. The answers are relevant for everyone whether you have kids in your home or not. What is the code that we will live by? The code is the infallible, inerrant, Spirit-breathed Word of God. What are the dreams that we will feed the children the Lord entrusts to our spiritual care? We dream that they will love God, the truth of God and the will of God. And how do we communicate the code and the dreams to the next generation? We read God s Word. We learn God s Word. We live God s Word. We teach God s Word.
Let the story begin! 5