The Public Curriculum
Introduction: The Sin of Generational Amnesia
We are living in the ruins of a civilization that is suffering from a terminal case of amnesia. We have forgotten who we are because we have forgotten whose we are. We have forgotten our story because we have willfully discarded the book that contains it. The modern secular project is an attempt to build a society on the foundation of a collective forgetting. It seeks to raise children who have not known. They have not known the law, they have not known the covenant, and consequently, they do not know the Lord. And a people whose children do not know the Lord will not be a people for very long.
Into this deliberate cultural fog, the Word of God speaks with startling clarity. God's plan for His people is not a plan for slow, managed decline into irrelevance. It is a plan for generational faithfulness, for covenant succession, and for long-term cultural dominion under His good law. God is not interested in a faith that is kept private, personal, and partitioned off from public life. He commands a faith that is public, corporate, and constitutional.
The instructions Moses gives here, on the cusp of his death and on the border of the Promised Land, are not quaint suggestions for a bygone era. They are the very technology of cultural endurance. This is God's prescribed antidote to the poison of apostasy. It is a command for a regular, public, national reboot. It is a seven-year reset, designed to ensure that the foundational document of the nation's life, the law of God, is never forgotten. What we have here is the institution of a public curriculum, a national syllabus, with the explicit goal that the covenant might be understood, feared, and obeyed from one generation to the next.
Our society believes that education can be neutral, that the public square can be naked, and that a nation can survive without a sacred text. God says otherwise. Here He lays out the non-negotiable terms for possessing the land: you must know the Book, and you must ensure your children know it too.
The Text
So Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi who carried the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, and to all the elders of Israel. Then Moses commanded them, saying, "At the end of every seven years, at the time of the year of the remission of debts, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before Yahweh your God at the place which He will choose, you shall read this law in front of all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, the men and the women and little ones and the sojourner who is within your gates, so that they may hear and so that they may learn and fear Yahweh your God and be careful to do all the words of this law. And their children, who have not known, will hear and learn to fear Yahweh your God, all the days you live on the land which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess."
(Deuteronomy 31:9-13 LSB)
The Written Word, Publicly Entrusted (v. 9)
We begin with the foundation of it all.
"So Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi who carried the ark of the covenant of Yahweh, and to all the elders of Israel." (Deuteronomy 31:9 LSB)
Notice first that the covenant is textual. Moses wrote this law. The faith of Israel was not based on ecstatic experiences, inner feelings, or a vague spiritual haze. It was anchored to an objective, written document. God's revelation is propositional truth. It is fixed, stable, and public. This is God's great mercy to us. He does not leave us to guess. He speaks, and He commands that His speech be written down so that it cannot be easily altered by the whims of men or the fashions of the age. This written law is the constitution of the nation, the source of its life and justice.
Second, this written law is not a private possession. Moses gives it to the priests and the elders. These are the two ruling offices in Israel: the ecclesiastical and the civil. The Word of God is entrusted to the church and the state, to the ministry of grace and the ministry of justice. It is their shared responsibility to guard it, preserve it, and, as we will see, to publish it. This completely demolishes the modern heresy of a secular state. The state is not autonomous. The civil magistrate, just like the priest, is a steward of the Word of God and is accountable to it. The law is not given to the elders for them to hide it in a drawer in the courthouse; it is given to them to be the standard by which they rule.
A Sacred, National Convocation (v. 10-11)
The command that follows is specific and liturgical.
"Then Moses commanded them, saying, 'At the end of every seven years, at the time of the year of the remission of debts, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before Yahweh your God at the place which He will choose, you shall read this law in front of all Israel in their hearing.'" (Deuteronomy 31:10-11 LSB)
This is not a casual book club. This is a mandated national ceremony. The timing is deeply significant. It happens every seven years, in the Sabbatical year, the year of release. This is a year when debts were canceled and slaves were set free. It was a national picture of grace and redemption. At the height of this celebration of God's grace, at the Feast of Booths, a festival remembering God's provision in the wilderness, the people are called to remember the foundation of that grace: the law of God. Grace and law are not enemies; they are partners. The grace of the Sabbatical year flows from the law that commands it.
And where does this happen? "At the place which He will choose," before the presence of Yahweh Himself. This is an act of national worship. And what is the central act of this worship? The public reading of the law. The entire law. This would have taken days. This was a deliberate, immersive, and comprehensive saturation in the Word of God. The entire nation was to stop everything and listen to its constitution being read aloud. This is what a healthy nation does. It rehearses its foundational story. It renews its covenant vows. For Israel, that story and that vow was the law of God.
The Total Audience and the Four-Fold Goal (v. 12)
The scope of this command is absolute. No one gets a pass.
"Assemble the people, the men and the women and little ones and the sojourner who is within your gates, so that they may hear and so that they may learn and fear Yahweh your God and be careful to do all the words of this law." (Deuteronomy 31:12 LSB)
Everyone is included. The men, who were the heads of households and the leaders of the nation. The women, who were the heart of the home and the first teachers of the children. The sojourner, the immigrant who had cast his lot with Israel, was also to be brought under the authority of Israel's God. And most pointedly for our own compromised generation, the "little ones." The toddlers, the children, the infants. They are to be there.
This obliterates the modern evangelical notion of the "children's church" ghetto, where we shuttle the kids off to be entertained with flannel graphs and goldfish crackers while the adults handle the "deep" stuff. God says the little ones are to be in the solemn assembly. They are members of the covenant. They need to hear the law of their King, even before they can fully comprehend it. The rhythm and cadence of God's Word must be in their ears from their earliest days.
And the purpose is a four-step ladder of discipleship. First, they must hear. Faith comes by hearing. Second, they must learn. The hearing must lead to understanding. Third, they must fear Yahweh. This is not mere intellectual assent; it is a heartfelt awe and reverence for the God who speaks. This is the beginning of wisdom. And fourth, they must be careful to do. The hearing, learning, and fearing must result in obedience. This is the goal of all Christian education: not just smart kids, but obedient kids.
The Generational Target (v. 13)
Finally, Moses states the ultimate purpose of this entire institution. It is for the sake of the rising generation.
"And their children, who have not known, will hear and learn to fear Yahweh your God, all the days you live on the land which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess." (Deuteronomy 31:13 LSB)
This is the engine of covenant succession. Every seven years, a new cohort of children, those who were infants at the last reading, those "who have not known," are brought into the assembly. They hear the law for the first time as children who are beginning to understand. They hear the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience. They learn that the land they live on is not theirs by right, but is a conditional gift from Yahweh. The rent on this land is obedience.
The connection is explicit: they are to do this "all the days you live on the land." Continued possession of the inheritance is directly tied to this process of generational discipleship. If you stop reading the book, if you stop teaching your children to fear Yahweh, you will lose the land. It is not a suggestion; it is a certainty. This is the law of history. A people that forgets its God will be dispossessed by its enemies. We are witnessing this in real time in the West.
From Sinai to Calvary, From Israel to the Church
How, then, does this apply to us, the people of the New Covenant? The principle is not abolished; it is fulfilled and intensified in Christ. The church is the Israel of God. The public reading of Scripture is still the central, commanded element of our worship (1 Tim. 4:13). The "law" we are to read is the whole counsel of God, the entire Bible, which is the story of how Jesus fulfilled the law and the prophets.
The Sabbatical year of release pointed to the ultimate release from the debt of sin that Christ purchased on the cross. The Feast of Booths pointed to the reality that we are pilgrims here, looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. We gather now, not at a physical temple in Jerusalem, but in the presence of the risen Christ, who is our "place." And we gather with the same mandate: to hear, to learn, to fear, and to obey.
And the target is still the same: "their children, who have not known." Christian parents, the primary responsibility for the discipleship of your children is yours. But it is also the corporate responsibility of the church. We must be a people who assemble together, with our little ones, to hear the Word of God read and preached in its fullness. We must not truncate the message or dumb it down. We must give our children the whole counsel of God, the difficult parts included, so that they will learn to fear the Lord and walk in His ways.
Our inheritance is not a parcel of land in Canaan, but the entire earth (Matt. 5:5). And the condition for possessing that inheritance remains the same. We must be a people of the Book. We must establish a public curriculum for our families, our churches, and our nations, and that curriculum is the Word of God. If we do this, our children will learn to fear the Lord, and they will be equipped to take dominion in His name for all the days that we live.