“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (verse 5). Jesus said this was the first and greatest commandment. But instead of surrounding this verse with what we might expect, directions for worship or encouragements for devotional practices, God tells His people to teach His commandments to their children (verses 2 and 7). But what does education have to do with loving God?

Well, think about it. One of the most urgent public policy debates in America today has to do with what we tell our children about our history. And it’s pretty obvious that those who believe America to be irredeemably racist, rotten to the core, are arguing that all its heroes need to be rejected, and all its tainted institutions need to be uprooted, or “canceled.” On the other hand, others are willing to admit America’s mistakes and even her sins. But they point to the tremendous progress Americans have made over the last 400 years, as our notions of freedom and equality have expanded to include more and more kinds of people. It is a reverence for American ideals that leads many to believe that all of America’s history needs to be told.

In sum, it is love for America that leads to a desire for remembrance, while hate for America encourages people to “cancel” out her history. So, why shouldn’t the same sort of thing be true concerning God, and His history? For what would it have said about the people who had experienced the Exodus from Egypt if they had refused to tell their children about the miraculous way God had delivered them from slavery (verse 21)? And what does it say about us if we refuse to tell our children about how Jesus has saved us from bondage to sin and death? If we remain silent about God’s plan of salvation, how can we say we love God?

So, let’s learn all we can about what God has done for His people throughout the years. And let’s share the truth of His mighty acts with the next generation – not just in classrooms, but in our everyday conversation (verse 7). What better way could we have to help young people come to have reverence for the God Who has saved us? What better way could we love both God and our children?

Deuteronomy 6:1-9, 20-25 (NASB)

“Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the LORD your God has commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land where you are going over to possess it,
2 so that you and your son and your grandson might fear the LORD your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.
3 “O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
4 “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!
5 “And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
6 “And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart;
7 and you shall teach them diligently to your sons 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 up.
8 “And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.
9 “And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

20 “When your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments mean which the LORD our God commanded you?’
21 then you shall say to your son, ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt; and the LORD brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand.
22 ‘Moreover, the LORD showed great and distressing signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh and all his household;
23 and He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land which He had sworn to our fathers.’
24 “So the LORD commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God for our good always and for our survival, as it is today.
25 “And it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the LORD our God, just as He commanded us.