3.142 Teach All of It

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends. It's a new day with new opportunities. Choose ye this day whom you will serve.

A message today to parents out there, grandparents out there, and the kids as well. This one goes out to everybody. We are continuing our reading inside of Joshua chapters 1 through 8 and 23 through 24 in terms of Come Follow Me, but really the book of Joshua this week.

I hope that you're seeing, and we've seen inside of even just chapters one through eight here this retelling of Moses' story. We've certainly seen, we've seen the children of Israel cross a river on dry ground. We've seen a moment inside these early chapters where Joshua is commanded by a holy being that he is on sacred ground, just like the burning bush moment with Moses.

We see these recurring themes over and over. And now in Joshua chapter 8, we see again Joshua write these commandments and do the burnt offerings on the altar, and we see this retelling again of the story of these early books of Moses. The end of Joshua chapter 8.

And this piece here has really stuck out to me in terms of a reminder as a parent for my duty and responsibility when it comes to teaching my children. So I thought I'd share it with you guys and see what you thought. Joshua chapter 8 verse 35, the very last verse here.

They've defeated, right? They won. They built an altar of stones.

They're doing burnt offerings to the Lord. Joshua is rewriting all of the commandments, and then verse 35 says this: There was not a word of all that Moses commanded, which Joshua read not before all the congregation of Israel, with the women and the little ones and the strangers that were conversant among them. How much of the gospel here, how much of the teachings, the writings, the commandments of Moses did Joshua teach?

And inside of that verse, it's very clear that he read all of them. He taught it all. My friends, I think sometimes especially inside of kind of the cultural gospel versus the doctrinal gospel, I think sometimes as parents we just figure that our kids are going to go to church, go to primary.

They're going to learn kind of the core gospel teachings and principles and doctrines. And then that's going to be good enough for our kids to grow up and to know the church, so to speak, or to know our Savior and the atonement, so to speak. A little bit of a break, but it's just not enough.

My friends, something that just has recently come up with one of my daughters. We were talking about the shift that occurred before the COVID years, right around 2018, 2019, as the term home-centered, church-supported began to be kind of buzzed around. October of 2018 or so, as things rolled out there, we get this home-centered, church-supported concept.

And I think for many of us, we've tried our best to adopt that direction. We've tried to make sure that home is the place that the gospel of Jesus Christ is taught most explicitly. I see here in verse 35 that Joshua is going to make sure that all the congregation, the men, the women, the children, the little ones, that they get all of the commandments that Moses had written.

All of the words, all of the teachings. And I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be savory salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.