Feast: For the Children
#FT22-03A
David C. Grabbe
Given 12-Oct-22; 38 minutes
description: (hide)
transcript:
When I was growing up, I attended Imperial Schools in Pasadena. For those of you who don’t know about Imperial Schools, it was the school run by the WCG, and the school facilities were just across the interstate from the church’s headquarters campus.
Because Imperial was under the administration of the church, the environment was more amenable to learning and living God’s way of life than a typical school. There were Bible classes, and in the lower grades, we would memorize Bible verses. We were not taught evolution, or revisionist history, or cultural Marxism. The only students who were woke were the ones we nudged or gently kicked because they had fallen asleep in class.
At Imperial, all the sports and other activities were scheduled around the Sabbath and holy days, and we even got 2-3 weeks off for the Feast of Tabernacles without having to worry about homework. All the food served in the cafeteria was clean. There was daily prayer, including before lunch. We had uniforms and no problem with sagging pants. Lying and swearing were serious infractions. The teachers were allowed to administer corporal punishment, provided another teacher was present—and this was in California, no less, which today would collapse in aftershocks at the thought of such unenlightened barbarism.
Now, Imperial was not perfect, because it involved people, and people are notoriously imperfect. The spirit of the age was still present. There was still peer pressure to resemble the world. As the students aged, there were always some who would try to be more worldly than even those in the world because they felt they had been denied something. Even so, Imperial provided a structured environment based on God’s standards in which children of baptized church members could be educated with high academic standards.
While Imperial seemed to a lot going for it, the spiritual results were mixed at best. The attrition rate among the students was quite high, and very few ended up sticking with the basic doctrines of the church of God. I once counted the number of my classmates who survived the apostasy, and found it to be only around 20%. And as low as that sounds, that percentage is actually high compared to other classes, where there might be only one or two former students who are still attending with the greater church of God. In other words, even the best attempts by the church to create an environment conducive to living God’s way were insufficient. While a good environment is extremely helpful, it is also not a guarantee of a spiritual outcome. Something more is needed for the children, something the church couldn’t provide.
Please turn with me to Deuteronomy 31:
Deuteronomy 31:9-13 So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying: “At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the LORD your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess.”
This is what we are doing this Feast—we are reading and expounding on Deuteronomy. God wanted the nation to be refreshed by what was in the law every seven years, so it would be imprinted on each generation. He wanted them to be reminded of their history, as well as what they were responsible for.
In this passage, we find not only the instructions to read the law at the Feast every seven years, but also the basic reasons for doing so. This command is not arbitrary at all. Like everything God inspires, there are excellent reasons for it. Notice in verse 12 that the command is for the whole congregation, including the little ones. This is for them as well, or we might even say, especially for them. And the reason is “that they may learn to fear the LORD your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the LORD your God.” God’s intent here goes well beyond the heads of families, but includes their children, and beyond that even to the children’s children, as it says. These instructions have the future in mind.
This is talking about generational instruction, which is found throughout Deuteronomy. There are many references to teaching children, or to doing the right things so that it will be well for the children and even the grandchildren. This aspect of teaching children goes back to Abraham, the father of the faithful. God says He knew Abraham "in order that he may command his children and his household after him” (Genesis 18:19). It doesn’t say that God chose Abraham because He knew Abraham would teach his children. That would give Abraham something to boast of. Instead, God called Abraham, and intervened in his life, for the express purpose of Abraham then commanding his children. That’s why God initiated the relationship—so that Abraham would then be able to thoroughly instruct those who came after him.
God wanted a family line, and that meant each generation had to teach the next one how to live His way, and particularly to fear Him, and we will talk more about that fear later. So, these instructions to read the law in the presence of even the little ones for the sake of learning to fear God is an echo of what God started with Abraham. He wants a family, a nation, that fears Him. This mention of the future children of the little ones shows that God’s will is for His way to be passed on to each generation.
It is also evident from Scripture that God puts the responsibility to teach on the parents, not on the national leadership or on the church. The instruction in His way of life is not something that can be farmed out. We will look at just one place He says this, in chapter 11:
Deuteronomy 11:18-21 “Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth.
The first part of these instructions is that the parents must lay up (or impress, or fix) God’s words into their own hearts and lives, so God’s words are always with them. God wanted it to be as though His words were physically attached. The second part, then, is to teach God’s words to the children in every circumstance of life.
God says here to write His words on our doorposts and gates. While there can be a token physical application of this, the greater application is spiritual. It indicates a consistent manner of living that testifies of the place of God’s word in every aspect of our lives. It is as though God’s words are becoming etched on the family and its property, so that everything under the family’s administration speaks of God’s way of life.
It was not God’s intent that the instruction of the children be left to others. He gives the responsibility to the parents. This is not to say that the church cannot ever teach children, only that the primary instruction and admonition and training is not the church’s responsibility. That is the order and pattern God establishes. In addition, there is a natural law that we learn best when we teach others. Teaching helps parents to make the connections, too. So, parents teaching they children isn’t just about the children learning. It is also a tremendous help in imprinting God’s way in the parents.
Now, think back to Imperial Schools, and how few students held onto the truth. The basic doctrines were practiced, at least nominally. There was compliance with the Sabbath and holy days, and the pagan holidays were rejected. But for many among my generation, the truth was not real. There were outward habits—and habits can be very good—but for so many, God’s truth never became ingrained. It really just meant hoops to jump through.
Many in my generation—even those who attended the church’s school—were not truly rooted or grounded in the faith that separates the holy and the profane. When the storms came, they were yanked around like an umbrella in a hurricane, catching each wind of doctrine. They were unable to differentiate between the truth of God’s word and changeable churchianity. Without deep roots, even the mightiest oak will be toppled by a major gust.
Ironically, the church youth of the '70s, '80s, and '90s received a great deal of attention from the church. There were programs and summer camps. There were sports weekends, dances, and teen Bible Studies, all with the goal of grounding the next generation in the truth. Again, I am not suggesting that these were wrong by themselves, only that they were insufficient, and ultimately ineffective.
This shows that more is required than social programs or even Bible programs for the younger set. And while it is not possible to make an all-encompassing statement, there are a couple of factors that appear to have contributed to the attrition. These are my own observations, for whatever they may be worth. One is that it became easy for parents to relinquish their God-given responsibility under the belief that the church was training their children. After all, if our kids are around other church kids, and there is a minister organizing the event, then our kids should be converted by the time the basketball tournament is over. Well, it doesn’t work that way. That’s not God’s pattern.
A second possible factor in the attrition rate is that the truth was not real to the children because it may not have been real enough to the parents. There can be different motivations for being part of a church organization. With the WCG, understanding prophecy and the hope of escaping the tribulation was a great hook, but it wasn’t enough to sustain people spiritually. Thus, in some cases—maybe many cases—God's way of life was not lived and taught because the parents were not fully convicted themselves. It was interesting enough that they would conform to what the church said, but it never went deeper into a growing relationship with God. If God’s truth was merely a preference for the parents, it could hardly be a conviction for the children. For many children, the truth did not seem to be much more than just a bunch of practices that made them different from the world. And when they grew up and could make their own choices, and the world hadn’t ended, the world seemed better because the parents had been unable to pass on what God’s way was, and why it was so much better than what the world has to offer.
Let’s turn to another passage in Deuteronomy that contains the same themes as the first two:
Deuteronomy 4:9-10 Only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren, especially concerning the day you stood before the LORD your God in Horeb, when the LORD said to me, ‘Gather the people to Me, and I will let them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days they live on the earth, and that they may teach their children.’
These verses also speak of teaching children, as well as grandchildren. They likewise bring in the critical factor of fearing God at all times. And they, too, begin with the responsibility of the adults to take heed to themselves and diligently keep themselves. In other words, we parents will be unable to effectively teach our children, particularly regarding the fear of God, if we are not pouring everything into doing this ourselves first.
I want to interject something here. There is only one perfect Parent, and it isn’t any of us. We all stumble and bumble around. We don’t get everything right in our own lives, let alone in teaching our children. We do our best, hopefully, but we make mistakes. Even so, there comes a time when adult children make their own decisions regarding what they do with what they have been taught. We can do our very best in teaching them the right things, but what they do with that teaching is ultimately up to them.
Significantly, even our failures as parents can serve a purpose in our sanctification process. I’m not saying failure is good, only that it can be an effective teacher. God’s laws are written on our hearts in more than one way. Perhaps we will not be fully convicted of some aspect of God’s truth until we see the principle play out with our children. We may think that God doesn’t really mean what He says about this or that, but it may show up in an uncomfortable or even painful form later on. When we reap what we have sown, we come to fully believe that God’s way is the best way. This is not meant to be discouraging, but a sobering illustration of the seriousness of what God is saying and why.
Now, children can spot hypocrisy. Our word hypocrisy comes from the Greek word for an actor on a stage. The original hypocrites were stage actors—those who dressed the part and put on a show, but the part they played wasn’t who they really were inside. Children will recognize if their parents have a public face and a private face, or if their parents act a certain way because there are brethren around, but a different way at other times. They will pick up on things that are said or done for show rather than because they reflect reality. These things may not register when the children are young, but in time, there will be a growing distrust, not just of the parents, but also of what the parents say is the truth.
In other words, if there is duplicity involving God’s way of life, that belief system will be part of what the children will come to distrust. That way of life will appear to them to be part of the façade, part of the act. And if they cannot trust their parents, it will be very difficult to accept what their parents proclaim is God’s way of life, and they will distrust God as well.
The solution here isn’t to take acting lessons to be more convincing. The solution is both simpler and far more difficult: To live God’s way consistently so the children only have that constant, positive witness. Saying one thing and doing another is a sure-fire way to sow confusion and doubt in the mind of a child, and the fruit that is produced—perhaps years later—will be distrust of what the parents say, such that they can no longer effectively guide the child. When credibility is lost, it can be an uphill battle—or worse—to regain it.
God requires sincerity and truth, not pretense; not doing or saying things for effect. The short-term gain we may achieve through acting could cost us our children’s convictions when they mature. We will reap what we sow. The only question is when.
Now, notice in verse 10 here the mention of Horeb. Remember that Deuteronomy was written in the last month or so before Israel entered the land, and Horeb was where Israel had camped 40 years before when the covenant was made. Deuteronomy, then, was largely given to the next generation, the one that grew up in the wilderness after the rebellion. The entire older generation, except for Joshua and Caleb, had died in the wilderness.
A number of us have pondered whether there might be a parallel with church of God history. It has been 36 years since the death of Herbert Armstrong—still shy of 40 years. However, Herbert Armstrong said he first observed Laodiceanism in the church in 1969, which was well over 40 years ago. I don’t know exactly how he defined Laodiceanism, but it probably had to do with a loss of zeal for the things of God and a loss of living by faith. John has defined Laodiceanism as basically worldliness, which is along the same lines.
So, one way or another, we are in that 40-year range. We are witnessing the deaths of the “old guard,” those in the older generation who were active and serving up to and through the apostasy and scattering. And while it is true that the generation that entered the land under Joshua has fewer bad things written about it than the generation that left Egypt, we cannot assume that parallel holds true today. While knowledge and understanding in the church have increased in some areas, there has also been a decline in living by faith. Zeal for God has been lost as the pace of the culture has increased and priorities have changed. And over the decades, the world has invaded the church so effectively that many cannot even see that they have been snared.
I am reminded of a fish story. There are two young fish swimming along, and then an older fish swims by and says, "How's the water, boys?" and then swims on. After a while, the two younger fish look at each other, and one of them says, "What in the world is water?"
When we are young, we don’t think about our environment. We don’t have a good grasp on what we are swimming in. What we see around us is normal. The danger is that we may assume that what is normal to us is acceptable to God, but it may not be.
It is therefore needful to think about Horeb. That is, we need to remember what was happening 40 years before, and what has happened in our time of scattering, and what we view as normal. We must contemplate what God was pleased with, and what He was so displeased with that He brought in a regime to dismantle the whole organization. There is wisdom in this exercise, not only so we can learn the lessons of history, but also so we can teach our children, so they don’t have to learn things the hard way, either.
Now, we will change directions and consider the fear of God. And we can add in what Deuteronomy 14:23 says about the festival tithe. It says that the purpose of eating before God is to learn to fear the LORD our God always. Many verses describe what the fear of God produces, such as knowledge, and wisdom, and confidence, and safety, and long life, but we will turn to a definition scripture of what the fear of God is:
Proverbs 8:12-13 I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge and discretion. The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.
Here, wisdom is personified. It says that wisdom, along with prudence, hates pride, arrogance, the evil way, and the perverse mouth. Wisdom is adamantly opposed to those things. And in this context, then, the fear of the LORD is defined as hating evil.
Because of our degraded culture, words like “evil,” along with words like "sin” and “wickedness,” have lost their repulsiveness. It used to be that wickedness was understood as something to be avoided at all costs. Today, words like “wicked” and “sick,” have taken on the meaning of “great” or “impressive.” A “wicked” car is impressive in its performance and looks, and thus desired. The word “evil” is also becoming attractive within the spirit of the age, with TV series even named “Evil” or “Resident Evil.” The culture has become desensitized, and it now revels in things it would rightly hate if it feared God.
In biblical usage, evil is much broader than things like mass-murder or a demonic spirit, an evil spirit. Certainly, those things are evil, and fearing God will cause one to be repulsed by those things. But in the Bible, evil is used to describe many lesser actions or conditions. Evil is used for despicable behavior, particularly in harming someone. Evil is used to describe a corrupt lifestyle that results from no relationship with God. Some atheists may seem like they have enviable lives in material terms, yet God says their lives are evil. In the long run, their lives won’t produce anything truly good.
Evil can also indicate immorality or vice. Even as wisdom is personified here in Proverbs 8, so also in chapter 6, God epitomizes “the evil woman.” “The evil woman” is a harlot or seductress. Of course, this is not politically-correct terminology, but God says a harlot is evil—she does tremendous harm.
Even more generally, in biblical usage, evil is simply the opposite of goodness and holiness. This usage makes evil extremely commonplace, because it is present anywhere there isn’t goodness or holiness, as God defines them. Any sort of rebellion is evil, and the word is also used for the violation of the divine covenant. But when we fear God, we hate all those things because we believe they are in opposition to Him and to real life.
There is a repeated phrase in the Old Testament that should give us something to think on. In dozens of places, God says that a person (or even the whole nation) “did evil in the sight of the LORD.” This seems redundant, since God defines what is good and what is evil. Evil is always evil in His sight. But this phrase indicates that the people were so far from God that they had no conscious thought that what they were doing was evil. They couldn’t recognize what they were swimming in. It wasn’t evil to them, but it was to God.
Carrying idols and even child sacrifice seemed good to them because of how their consciences had been trained. They had been desensitized through not listening to God, and instead adapting to what was going on around them. When people are far from God, their definition of good and evil can be completely opposite from God’s definition.
Because God is eternal, His word takes a very long-range view. And because we usually don’t immediately reap what we sow, we can ignore God to a degree and still appear to prosper, when in reality the harmful fruits simply have not ripened yet. What appears to be harmless in the present may in fact be quite harmful, but those involved are not in tune with God enough to recognize the disaster ahead. In Jeremiah, the people had deluded themselves that their lives could be great without fearing God, but He knew where they were headed and what they were about to reap. God asks them, “What will you do in the end?” Ecclesiastes tells young men, yes, enjoy your youth, but do not forget God’s standards and God’s judgment. And at the end of Proverbs 31, it says, “Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing, but a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised.” The fear of God teaches us to take a long-range view of our choices, even the ones that seem minor.
This is why Deuteronomy and the rest of God’s words are so valuable. They teach us how God thinks. They reveal what is important to Him, what pleases Him, and what He says will produce a good life, for us and for our children, if we will but trust Him and believe Him.
Instagram influencers and TikTok teens can and will teach our children many things, but they cannot teach them how to have a good life. They don’t have the words of life. They simply broadcast the spirit of the age. But God has given us understanding of His word, of His mysteries and secret things, so that we can think as He thinks, and thus truly live.
As we have heard, everything matters. Even though not everything matters to the same degree, God gives us seemingly countless points to consider, both for our sanctification as well as for the sake of our children. These things are written for our admonition. He gives us examples in His word of doing business and other Sabbath activities that have nothing to do with His holy time. He says quite a bit about modesty and clothing because of what they signify to Him. He even teaches us about hair length. (Craig, I’m not picking on you; I’m just saying maybe there is an opportunity for growth here.) God gives us examples of birthday celebrations. He gives us examples of the use of cosmetics. He has a lot to say about our speech. He gives us many opportunities to evaluate whether what is normal to us is in alignment with His word. But we must be in His word, and trembling at it, for His word to change us so that we can then teach our children.
Now, following God’s words assuredly does not mean we will live on easy street, or that our lives will be free of hardship and adversity. On the contrary, our lives will have many challenges. But obedience at least means that much less of the hardship will be self-inflicted. We will not bring adversity through disobedience. It means a life with fewer regrets, which is a blessing indeed. And it begins with the fear of God, which causes us to hate what God identifies as evil, even if we don’t understand all the reasons why.
For various reasons, some recoil at the terminology of “fearing God” A synonym for godly fear is reverence, which is helpful, but the word “fear” adds a certain quality that we don’t want to get too far from. Even so, we can put it in different terms that may make it easier to grasp while not diminishing the seriousness. Put simply, fearing God is taking God into account. I don’t mean taking God into account as one factor among many, but as the factor—the only factor. If you received a warning about a coming tidal wave, and you only had a few minutes to get as far inland as possible, you would take that one factor into account such that it would override every other consideration. That is the sort of weight and urgency we are talking about, except that the fear of God is even more serious than that. At the same time, it may seem to be less dire because our lives don’t appear to be on the line in the same way, so it is easier to push God out of our minds than it is a tidal wave.
Taking God into account means that what He says and thinks is all that matters, and His desire overrides every other consideration. That is what will cause us to hate the elements of the world that He hates, and what will lead us in making the best decisions possible because we will prioritize according to what He reveals in His word. It may not seem as urgent as a tidal wave, but this is deceptive because our lives and our children’s lives truly are at stake. It just takes much longer to play out than a handful of terrifying minutes.
Taking God into account as the only factor will put us at odds with the world, and this is where many of our battles are fought. Human nature wants to have it both ways. We admire and desire some of the things the world has to offer, and yet we also want what God offers, both for ourselves and so our children’s lives are blessed by God, because we value that, too. But we can’t have it both ways. We must make a choice. If our heads are turned by the world, our children’s will be as well, and to a greater degree. Our children need us to help them see what they are swimming in. They need us to make a distinction between the holy and the profane in our own lives, for their sakes.
And thus, we have the well-known verses in Deuteronomy 30 that God sets before us life and good, death and … evil, and He urges us to choose life. That choice means taking God into account as the overriding factor in everything. And God says this so that we and our descendants may live. If we want what is best for our children, we must choose life, because that is how they will learn to do the same. They will learn to value this way of life because they will see us fearing God. They will see us making decisions according to the word of God instead of what is in the culture, and they will recognize the culture, the water, for what it is. And the chances are much greater this way of life will become how they choose to live, too.
DCG/aws/dcg