Children - Think, Teach, Talk

Good afternoon. Thank you for that beautiful piece of special music. So enriching and so inspiring and so much work to put together. So thank you. And hello to all of those on the webcast, including my wife. She's not feeling well today. I think the smoke got her. People affected by the smoke, right? Definitely difficult. And it's great to see our brethren from Petaluma and Santa Rosa. We were praying for you. We got the message out. And also, if you might have seen our post on our Facebook site as well. And we are not out of the woods yet.

We need the rains to come. So it's going to be, you know, a little while longer that we just need to pray that we're able to get through this fire season without any harm. And being evacuated, being without power. How many people were without power?

I'm just curious. Yeah, right? That's no fun. Being without power. In certain cases, without gas as well. So thank you for being with us. Well, today we enjoyed the ceremony of the blessing of the little children. And I want to build on this theme of children today by talking about our role as parents and mentors towards our young people. Before the Feast of Tabernacles, we talked about the greatest commandment. The greatest commandment as defined by Jesus Christ in an exchange with an expert in God's law in the Gospel of Mark, Mark 12.

And as we discussed in that sermon, Jesus defined the greatest commandment by quoting from the book of Deuteronomy. And I'd like you to turn to Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, to begin today.

And we're going to really spend some time here in Deuteronomy 6. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, according to the Gospel of Mark, He began in verse 4 by making it clear that we are to, as it says here in Deuteronomy 6, verse 4, Hear O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love, it says, verse 5, the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

The Geneva Bible of 1599 renders the verse in verse 4, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord only. The greatest commandment then begins with this famous phrase, which the Jews refer to as the Shema, or the Shema Israel.

The quotation which has only one verb, which is Hear, Listen, pay attention. That is the focus of this command. Listen to what? Listen to what? Listen to his commandments, which were given in the previous chapter, in chapter 5. Listen to what? Listen to his statutes and his judgments, which are defined in verse 1, when it says in verse 1, now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded you to teach you.

That's what we're supposed to listen to. And we are to listen to the only lawgiver that exists, God alone. There is no other God. There is no other lawgiver but God and God alone. And that is the greatest commandment, according to Jesus Christ. And after this greatest commandment, we go into one of the most famous teachings on how we are to teach our children in verse 6, Deuteronomy 6.6, and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart, and you shall teach them to your children, teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.

And we took these little ones here as a congregation, little ones like Vivian and Sydney, my grandson Elliot, who is not able to be with us today, he's up in Washington with his mom, and they were blessed. They were blessed. And we want them to avoid mistakes, don't we? We want them to have better lives than we had. We want them to be protected from accidents and harm.

And so we ask this blessing, following the example of Jesus Christ that we read in Matthew 19, because we want them to be guided and protected and set apart. We want them to have a productive life. But sometimes life gets in the way, doesn't it? Sometimes things happen. And a lot of times they happen and they come from us as parents. They come from us as mentors, where our own weaknesses, the pressures of life, unforeseen circumstances, these things get in the way and the world takes over.

And sometimes those little children don't turn out quite the way we thought. And things don't always happen the way we'd like them to happen. But God's promises still stand. If you look over in verse 17 and 18, just one page over in my Bible, it says, you shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, his testimonies, his statutes, which he has commanded you, and you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with you.

That's a promise. As we submit ourselves to God as little children, as we humble ourselves and we rely completely on God, just as little children rely completely, as we saw these children today relying upon their parents, God will make things go well for us. We do have hope. We do have hope.

And today I want to drill down on the instruction that is given to us in Deuteronomy 6, 6 and 7. Because we do have hope. Even when things get out of hand, we have hope. And we certainly have hope for little Vivian and little Sidney today. If you are a parent of a child of any age, of any age, if you're a parent, then listen. Because people out there need you. Your children need you.

And if you don't have children, other people's children need you as parents. Please listen. These principles apply, whether you're a parent or you're not a parent. These principles in Deuteronomy 6, 6 and 7 apply. And it's time if you're not a parent to expand your understanding of what your role is in the church to mentor and to help and to apply these principles and to bring your experiences to bear to help others. And if you're a parent, then these things are written for you. These things were written specifically for you, for your children. Today I want to talk about these things. And there's three specific instructions, if you go back to 6 and 7.

Three specific instructions contained here that I want to talk about. Teach, excuse me, think, teach, and talk. That's what it says. Think, teach, and talk. And hopefully we'll all walk away with something that we can apply and we can use as we help and mentor and lead the next generation.

The title of today's message is, Children Think, Teach, and Talk. Children, Think, Teach, and Talk. So let's start with the first principle in this verse, which is think. Now why does it say think here? So my inspiration for this word think, if we read verse 6, and I'm going to read verse 6 from the Living Bible. The Living Bible says, you must think constantly about these commandments I'm giving you today. Now the New King James Version before me says that these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.

And it's so easy to skip over verse 6 and go right to verse 7. I have a role as a parent. I have to teach my children. I have to talk to my children. I have to instruct my children. But we cannot skip verse 6. Verse 6 is the first step. It is the natural flow from verse 5. The first thing we do is we put these things into our hearts.

We put these commandments into our hearts, these statutes, these judgments into our hearts. And as the Living Bible says as they translate and paraphrase this verse, we think constantly on these commandments. And that's why I use the word think, taking it from that paraphrase.

Thinking about God's commandments is like having them written in our hearts. And that's what it says here, to have them in our hearts. And that is going to be the focus of God the Father and Jesus Christ in the kingdom of God, in the millennium, in the time after the millennium. This is what is going to happen. Let's look over in Jeremiah 31 verse 31. We often make reference to this, but let's read it. Let's read it for ourselves. Jeremiah 31 verse 31. This is the new covenant.

We have a beautiful song on this in our hymnal. The new covenant, what he is looking for and what we are under today. This is what should apply to us today. Jeremiah 31 verse 31. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers and the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt.

My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. And now verse 33. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, says the Lord, I will put my law in their minds, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. This is the covenant that He has made with us.

We are God's people today, and we need to be writing God's law in our hearts. We are His people, and He is our God. That's what we live today. We are under the new covenant. We are new covenant Christians. In the kingdom of God, all peoples will have this opportunity. But today, the firstfruits, we as firstfruits, have this opportunity. Now, when we think about what it means to meditate or to think on God's commandments, that means we have to ask ourselves some questions. We're meditating. We've talked about meditation. Meditation is about thinking and pondering and asking questions.

Are we faithful in the commandments? That's what meditating would mean. That's what thinking means. That's what putting it in. Am I faithful in observing God's commandments? Let's take lying. Do I lie? Well, we've talked about the Ten Commandments. We've had a series on that here.

But the question I would ask myself, and I had to ask myself as I prepared this message, is, am I lying to myself? Am I deceiving myself? Can I see myself for the way I really am? Because that's a form of lying. And a lot of times, we deceive ourselves. We lie to ourselves. And often, we don't realize that we're lying to ourselves about ourselves.

And so we go through life thinking of ourselves in a certain way, not realizing critical things we need to change. And if we skip this thinking step with our families and guiding our children, guess what? Our kids are not deceived by who we are. They can see ourselves pretty clearly. They're not deceived. Teenagers especially have this hypocrisy meter I've talked about. They can really sense the hypocrisy real quick. Oh, yeah, you're telling me? Well, I'm sorry, but look at your own life.

They may not say that to us, but that's what they're thinking. So the credibility that we have as parents and leading our families has to begin with thinking on these commandments ourselves and asking some difficult questions like, who am I? And am I really deceiving myself about who I am? Jesus defined murder as including being angry with our brother. Do we have an anger problem? Are we seeking to obtain things that we really can't have or shouldn't have? And is that becoming our sole focus? That's called covetousness. That's one of the commandments. Being blind to this, we might take our focus off our kids because we're focused on something else that's important to us, but not really important to our families.

This happens a lot, by the way, with men. I'm providing for my family. Okay, that's great. You know, you're providing for your family. Well, that word means, I mean, I didn't even tell you what that means, but if I say I'm providing for my family, you think I'm working, right? I'm going to work, I'm making money, I'm getting the money for rent, I'm doing these things.

But providing for your family men is also providing emotionally, spiritually, being there for them. That's what providing for your family means. And if we are focused on other things, then we're not providing for our families. Hard-working men and women get into this situation sometimes, because they want things that maybe they shouldn't have. Any teaching that we have not really thought about ourselves and how it applies to ourselves is just going to be undercut and undermined if we attempt to talk to our kids without talking to ourselves first.

That's why it says, put these things in our heart. Think on these things. Turn with me to Psalm 119 verse 98. Psalm 119 verse 98 to 100. Psalm 119 is a beautiful Psalm to read if you want to think about God's law and is a great way of meditating on God's law. Just read Psalm 119. Take the time over a period of days and even a period of weeks and just digest it piece by piece because there's so much in Psalm 119. Psalm 119 verse 98. You through your commandments, this is David speaking to God, make me wiser than my enemies and may be wise enough to say something to your kids.

For they are ever with me. We've put them in our hearts. We're thinking about them. I have more understanding than all my teachers. For your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients because I keep your precepts. This is what it means. We're writing it in our hearts.

We're thinking about it constantly. We're imagining what it means for us. Now, we could go through each of the commandments. We could go through the first five books of the law. We could spend a lot of time on that. And if we were to do that, we would understand just all of the shortcomings and all the weaknesses.

And that's when we begin to learn where we're not walking the walk. When we skip this step, when we don't confront what we see when we look into the perfect law of liberty, which is how James describes God's law, we set ourselves up for failure as parents. We set ourselves up for failure as mentors. Because our kids will say, okay, yeah, he means well, she means well, but they've got some things to work on. And it just undercuts our ability to truly lead and guide.

Thinking and meditating means taking action. It should include fasting. It should include prayer. It should include seeking counsel, which a lot of people skip. It should mean making difficult decisions in terms of how we set our priorities. It should mean measuring our behavior, measuring our behavior, and to see whether we're making changes. It should mean calling on the power of God's spirit and not trying to do it on our own. And it should mean letting ourselves be an instrument in God's hands for His purposes. And that's why, if you're not a parent, this is just as important for you.

Because you can be an instrument in God's hands if you have truly examined, if you've really thought about these things, if you've really put these things into your heart. And if you're a parent, this is so critical. This is where it begins. We have this responsibility. It is natural as parents to want to give our children a better life than our own. But we can't do that unless we start in verse 6. It's natural and it's biblical. And that's why God says, listen, listen to me alone. Love me. Keep my commandments.

Think about these things. And we cannot be a people if we don't do this. And the generation that's coming needs help. It needs our support. And that's where we get into now, verse 7, because it's great.

Some people do this, by the way. Some people do do this, but then they don't reach out and actually share because they're afraid. They don't know how or maybe they don't think about it or they're used to talking to friends their own age and they don't think about people that maybe are younger. You know, a lot of research shows that the best way of mentoring is when you're mentoring people who are 10 to 15 years younger than you are.

Okay? So if you're in your 20s, you are a great mentor for teens. Frankly, a lot better than I would be because they can connect to you and you can connect to them, right? If you're in your 30s, you can mentor people in their 20s. If you're in your 40s and so forth, 10 to 15 years, everyone has a role.

Everyone has a role. And so we get to the second principle. Let's go back to Deuteronomy 6 and now look in verse 7. Deuteronomy 6 and verse 7. We read it before and we'll read it here again. It says, You shall teach them diligently to your children.

You shall teach them diligently to your children. The new international version, if you have that version, says, Impress them on your children. The new Living Translation says, Repeat them again and again to your children. Interestingly, the phrase, Teach them diligently, that entire phrase, Teach them diligently, is one Hebrew word. It's one Hebrew word. The Hebrew word is Shaanen. It means to sharpen or to wet, like you're sharpening a blade.

And it comes from the root to point. This is where the translators get the sense of repetition. Because when you're sharpening a blade, it's repetitive, isn't it? You're just working that blade. You work that side, you turn it around, you work the other side. And you get that stone wet, you just work it.

You work it until it's just sharp. That's the sense of Teach them diligently. That's what comes out. There's this sense of working and working and working. When the word is used in Psalm 73 verse 21, you don't have to turn there, but you can note it, Psalm 73, 21, it has a sense of piercing. It has a sense of piercing. This is not casual. This is not opportunistic. This is not, I'll get to it when I have time.

This is intentional, repeated, creative, really thinking about learning styles, age-appropriate, best approach teaching. That's what this is. And it means regular Friday night Bible studies if you have a family. It means stepping back from a difficult family situation and owning the frustrations that you might have and looking for the opportunity to teach. Just stepping back from it. It means paying close attention to what's happening in the heart and mind of your children, of our children. It means learning personal responsibility, learning to tell the truth when it hurts about ourselves and about them.

It means using every opportunity life brings our way to help them see God in the situation and help them to figure out how God works and how He works in our lives. If we as human instruments aren't properly prepared through our own thinking in advance and meditation, we're not going to be able to do this. And teaching goes far beyond words. We've talked about this before. Teaching goes way beyond words.

If we're thinking teaching equals words, we're missing the point. Teaching is when you come home from work exhausted and you take the time to talk to your spouse. That's teaching. Because the kids learn that that's what's important. They see that example, and they learn from that example. They learn how husbands and wives love one another by seeing that. No words required. Teaching is when a friend or family member has hurt you and how you respond to that friend or family member. That's what kids learn. They learn that.

You know what they learn? They learn resilience. They learn grit. They learn the ability to cope. They learn strategies. They learn, and there's no words required. They learn how to forgive. They learn how to retreat from defensiveness. They learn how to deal with issues, and it's not all fight and flight because that's what our instinct wants to do. It wants to fight or it wants to run. But they learn how to go beyond those types of things. Teaching is calling your mom or dad to say hello because that's how your kids learn what it means to love their parents.

Teaching is when an exhausted single mom reaches out to friends for encouragement to keep going because the kids learn they're not alone. The kids learn that when the times get tough, you reach out. You reach out for help. That's what kids learn. There's no words there. In fact, this teaching that we do without words is so powerful that there's a term for it. The term is called parent tapes. I don't know if people have heard that term before. You see, all of us have what are called parent tapes in our head.

This is a well-known and well-researched thing. How do we parent? We parent the way our parents parented us. That's because it's all been recorded in here. It's all been recorded. And you know what? Sometimes that's not good. Sometimes that's not good. Sometimes maybe we should read a book on parenting.

Maybe we should go to a seminar on parenting. Maybe we should take a class on parenting. Because maybe what we learned from our parents, maybe not even knowing we learned it, is not the way that we should parent. Maybe we need to examine those parenting tapes critically. Because I gave you some good examples of how kids learn good behaviors, but kids learn lots of bad behaviors, too, from us.

Because we make lots of mistakes as parents. And sometimes we need to apologize for those mistakes. And sometimes we need to realize that we're teaching our kids things that they shouldn't do. Now that's a whole other subject, obviously. But the point here is that teaching involves opening God's Word and teaching from it, like a Friday night Bible study.

It involves reading to our kids from the Scriptures. It involves what Jesus said that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, clearly. But it also involves our example on how we apply God's Word. And that's how we teach. An aspect that I want to talk about with teaching is that teaching does not involve forcing the Bible on our kids.

Now, when you have young kids, you know, they're going to go along with it, and yes, sometimes it's getting boring and so forth. Well, you know, as a parent, do a better job, age appropriate, learning styles, figure out how to make it interesting. But as kids get older, and especially as they get to be teenagers, sometimes it's harder. And you know, many parents come to me and they say, I just want my kid to come to church. I so want my kid to come to church.

And I tell them about the Bible, and I tell them about church. But you know, you can't force the Bible down your kid's throat. You can't do that. It has to come with time. And what I tell parents when they ask me and they bring this up, is I share with them how important it is to allow God's Spirit to show them as parents wisdom and insight and peace and transformation. Because you know, kids are people.

They're people and they know where the love is. They know where the safety is. They know where the peace is. And if you're exemplifying those things, they're going to want to come. Now maybe they won't come on the timetable you'd want them to come, but they'll see it. They'll see it. And eventually, they'll make their decision. You can't force it. You can't force it. I want to read a poem called On Children.

It was written by a Lebanese-American poet named Cahil Gibran. It was published in 1923, almost 100 years ago. My mother-in-law gave this poem to my wife and I in French around the time our kids were born, and we have it framed in our house. And I think it captures well the reality of the transition that all children go through as they grow into adulthood, and they have to make their own decisions. And it's a process that we as parents have to allow our kids to go through.

It says, your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you. And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies, but not their souls.

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children, as living arrows, are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and he bends you with his might, that his arrows might go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness, for even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable.

And when I mention he, or when he mentions he, he capitalizes he, and as a reference to God. God loves us as parents, and he wants a stable bow, just as much as he wants an arrow that is on the right trajectory. Let's conclude this point by looking at 2 Timothy 3 verse 15.

2 Timothy 3 verse 15. Timothy was the product of teaching at the hand of his mother and his grandmother, teaching just like Deuteronomy 6 verses 6 and 7. 2 Timothy 3 verse 14. Paul, speaking to Timothy, says, But as for you, continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing with whom you have learned them. The Expositor's Bible Commentary points out that Paul is making a reference to his mom and his grandma. That's who he learned these things from.

He learned them from his mom and his grandma. And you can imagine that the mom and the grandma sitting beside Timothy at his bed, reading him the Scriptures, waking him up in the morning, giving him the example that he needed. That's what Paul goes back to. Paul goes back to, pay attention to the things that you learned from your mom and from your grandma.

Verse 15, and that from childhood you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. The takeaway here is that Timothy was the product of solid biblical education. And I'm sure that those bedtime readings and those difficult times when Timothy was discouraged, his mom and grandma knew power of what they were imparting. And you, as parents, have that same power to impart this. And you, as non-parents, have the same power to impart this in mentoring. And it comes from first understanding the greatest commandment, thinking about God's commandments, putting them into our heart, and then repeatedly teaching them.

And now this brings us to the third point. We must talk about God's commandments. We've got to talk about God's commandments. Let's go back to Deuteronomy 6, verse 7. Deuteronomy 6. So after we've thought and after we've taught, next comes the talk. It says here, And you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. Now many times, we can conflate teaching and talking. Now, of course, you know, you talk when you teach, okay? So that's clear.

But we should not confuse the two. Talking, even more than teaching, involves a dialogue. It involves a conversation. You see, you know, when it says, you know, and when it says, talk of them when you sit in your house. Well, are you going to just talk at your kids? No, God's not interested in you talking at your kids. He wants you to talk to your kids, which means your kids are going to want to understand what you're saying, which means they're going to ask questions, which means they're going to maybe contradict you, which means they're going to give you their thoughts on things.

And so you're going to have a dialogue. You're going to have a conversation. And that's the distinction that's being made here. There's a conversation. There's a dialogue. There's a sharing. Many of us know how to talk, but how many of us know how to have a conversation? Scriptures are very clear that conversation encompasses all waking moments of the day. And if we walked around quoting scriptures to our kids all day, you know what?

They get pretty tiring. That gets pretty tiring. So it's got to be in a real form, a living, dynamic form. And that's why it kind of comes up all the time. You know, God's commandments in use, in practice. And sometimes we do it well, and sometimes we don't.

Sometimes we do it well, and sometimes we don't. Look over in Deuteronomy 11. It's just a couple pages away here. There's an interesting parallel to some of this in Deuteronomy 11. Deuteronomy 11 verse 1 says, "'Therefore you shall love the Lord your God, and keep his charge, his statutes, his judgments, and his commandments always.'" Okay? This is familiar, right? This is, again, this is the command that Moses is giving to us and to God's people.

Verse 2, "'Know today that I do not speak with your children, who have not known and who have not seen the chastening of the Lord your God, his greatness, and his mighty hand, and his outstretched arm.'" Isn't that strange? Why is that? You know, there's an interesting principle here, which is that children don't have the same life experiences that you have as an adult.

One commentator put it, "'Time has not made you equal.'" You as parents, you as mentors, you have life experience that your kids don't know about because they weren't alive. They weren't there. They didn't experience it. And that's what God is talking about. The children here that he's describing, they didn't necessarily go through those same experiences. They didn't go through those experiences. And now in verse 3, he says, "'His signs and his acts," which he did in the midst of Egypt. And in verse 4, he talks about, you know, how what he did to the army of Egypt and to their horses and their chariots.

And verse 5, and what he did for you in the wilderness. And then in verse 6, and about this rebellion that took place. Verse 7, "'But your eyes have seen every great act of the Lord which he did.'" You as parents, you as mentors, you have life experiences to share with your children, good and bad.

And God is telling Moses, or Moses is transmitting this information here to the children of Israel, that those children need to be told about these things. They need to be told about these things. You can keep reading down here, Moses continues to share God's commands here. And he goes down to verse 18 in Deuteronomy 11. He says, "'Therefore, all these things that you've experienced, 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.'" This is what we're going to read in a moment in Deuteronomy 6.

It's the same command. And we're going to talk about why that doesn't mean putting leather around our arms, okay? That's not what he's talking about. And verse 19 says, "'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.

All these stories of what I have done, you need to share with your children.'" We have stories of what God has done in our lives, and we have to share these stories with our kids. Good and bad. Good and bad. You know, more than a decade ago now, I had many lengthy conversations with a member of God's Church in the San Jose area.

Really a man I respected. And, you know, he's passed away now. And he shared with me, through many different conversations, he shared the struggles that he had growing up as a young man. He was the son of an itinerant sharecropper, and he would go from state to state with his brothers. And he had many brothers and sisters, and his dad was a very angry man. He would talk about how his dad was a was an Irish Indian. He said it was just the worst. He said he was angry like an Irishman, and he drank like an Indian. You know, I mean, these are his words, okay? No stereotypes here. I'm just telling you what he told me. Okay? I'm just telling you what he told me. And he talked about just what it was like growing up in this kind of situation where he was in Arizona, and then he was in New Mexico, and then he was in Utah, and then he was in California. And, you know, getting up early and working in the fields all day and never knowing where he was going to sleep that night.

And I told him, I said, these are such powerful stories. Have you shared these with your son? And he said, oh, no. I don't want to share all that pain with him. He doesn't need all that.

I said, no. He said he needs to hear these stories. This is who you are. This is who your family is. This is God worked with you through all that time, and you've told me how God, you know, helped you in so many different ways, even before you even knew who God was. He said, oh, no. I wouldn't want to burden my son with that. Well, you know, he died suddenly of a heart attack, and I remember so well going over to his home. We were all shocked. He was in his early 60s when he died. We all went over to his home in Salinas, and we all, you know, spent time with his wife and his family, and we all grieved together. We all talked about him, and we encouraged one another. And it was at that time that his son came to me. I didn't know his son that well. His son was in his late 20s at the time. He had grown up in the church and then left, and his son came up to me, and he said, you know, I found something in my dad's room. He says, I found this book, and my dad wrote down all these things he went through. He was writing a book, and he was going to give it to me. And it was so bittersweet, you know. It was so bittersweet because here it was. He now had a window into his father's heart, into his father's being, into his father's history, and he was so overwhelmed to find it after his dad died. And yet, how much he would have loved to have shared those memories with his dad in person. Don't wait till it's too late. Don't be afraid to be vulnerable. Don't be afraid to share these stories of how God worked in your life, and how sometimes you were really stupid, and sometimes you, despite your own shortcomings, God was gracious, and he allowed you to make it through things in life. Don't wait. God will work in the lives of our young people directly, but they need to hear the stories. They need to understand our history. They need to know how God's love, God's law, God's grace, God's mercy has guided our lives. You know, we often see very rich people. People like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, who's the head of Amazon, Bill Gates, right, if you're getting a little older there. And sometimes people wonder, what must it be like to be a son or daughter of such a rich person? You know, like all that money, you know, growing up with all that money, and inheriting all that money, and maybe a life would be so much easier.

And yet research shows, research shows, and I'm going to quote one study that was cited in a 2018 article in the Globe and Mail entitled, Why Wealthy Families Lose Their Fortunes in Three Generations. Studies show that wealthy families lose their fortunes in three generations 90% of the time. 90% of the time. In fact, there's an expression for it. The expression is, shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. Imagine that. Three generations later, there's no money left. Meaning the wealth gained in one generation will be lost by the third.

According to this same article, and I'm going to quote the article now, the key to overcoming this issue, okay, they're trying to help rich people.

Rich people keep their money. It says the key to overcoming is communication, which means family discussions, family meetings, trying to be very proactive, engaging the next generation rather than reactive. Okay? What we have as God's truth is more precious than gold.

It's more precious than any money. Let's not lose it in three generations. Let's have the family discussions. Let's have the family talks. That's what the commandment says. It says talk. We have a precious, precious truth. Open conversation about perhaps difficult things. Free exchange of ideas.

Everyone being able to share. It's about quality time, of course. It's about quantity time.

It's about listening, because that's where a good conversation begins. It means literally taking walks together. It says when you walk by the way, right? Let's go back to Deuteronomy 6.

Deuteronomy 6.

It says, you shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way. You've got to literally take walks. You have to literally sit down in your house. It means family meals. You know, regular family meals are one of the most powerful ways that a family builds its identity and stays together. That's sitting in your house. When do you sit in your house with your kids?

When do you sit in your house with your kids? You sit in your house and your kids when you eat.

That's what you do. So you sit together and eat together. Regular family meal time. You go for walks together, because it says when you walk by the way. When you lie down. That means that you're there when your kids go to bed. You're there when your kids wake up. I mean, the Bible is very clear. You need to be there. That's quality time. That's quantity time.

This is what God is talking about. Sharing stories, listening, sharing how God's way works. Think.

That's what it says. Teach and talk. Two simple verses.

Look here at Deuteronomy 6 and verse 8.

You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and you shall be as frontlet between your eye. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

And the Jews literally do this. They take pieces of paper, they put them in leather straps, and they wrap these leather straps around their arms, and they wrap them around their head, and they put this big black box in front of their eyes. And you can look at Exodus 13. I don't have the time to go through that, but look at Exodus 13 verse 3. Just for those of you who don't think maybe you should do this literally. Exodus 13 verse 3 uses the same language with respect to eating unleavened bread.

It doesn't say anything about the commands. It just says, eat unleavened bread, and this shall be frontlets between your eyes. So this is not what it's talking about. What it's talking about is how this is our focus. This is our priority. And when it talks about here, about buying them on your hand, your hands represent what you do. They represent what you do. And when it talks about frontlets between your eyes, it's where your focus is. It's where your attention is. And when it talks about on the doorposts of your house, on your gates, it means that when people walk by your house, they know what this family represents. They know what kind of people you are because you live by God's law. You live by His ways. You meditate and think on these things. Now it's our turn, as parents and as mentors, to make this happen. It's our turn in our families, in our communities, whether we're parents or not. Let's engage in supporting this next generation.