“You shall tell your son on that day, it is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.”
– Exodus 13:8
This Verse Tells Us to Pass the Word of God on to Our Children
What a great verse. As God has delivered his people out of slavery in Egypt. He has done what he promised to do, and God comes to his people and says, “You need to make it a priority to pass on the news, the story of what God did for you to your children. Tell your children whenever you remember the Passover, that God did this for us.” I hear that and I just think about my responsibility as a parent. I have an obligation before God, stewardship entrusted to me by God with my four kids, to pass on the word of what he has done for me. What he has done for his people all throughout history. I have a responsibility to pass that on to them.
Exodus 13:8 Applies to the Whole Church
I want to encourage today, especially parents, but not only just parents, I think about all of us in the church. We have a responsibility to pass down the gospel and the word of God and the stories of God. His faithfulness in history and his faithfulness to us. We have a responsibility to pass that on to the next generation. Parents, think about your kids. Are you faithfully passing this word on to your kids? Are you telling them just all the time about God’s faithfulness to you? About how he’s provided for you? How good he has been to you? Don’t go light there in your parenting. Go heavy there. Be talking all the time about God’s grace and faithfulness to you, and not just to you.
Tell the Next Generation of God’s Faithfulness
Tell them the stories of God’s faithfulness to his people all throughout history. In the old testament, in the new testament, and then in Christian history since then. Pass on the news, the stories of God’s goodness and faithfulness to your sons and daughters. For us to do this in the church, for us to be intentional about passing on the faith to the next generation. If we fail here, we miss part of the heart of what we see all over God’s word and particularly here in Exodus 13:8.
Asking for God’s Help With Passing the Faith Down to the Next Generation
God help us, we pray. Help us to be faithful to pass down the faith to the next generation. God, I pray for my kids, I pray for other parents and their kids. Help us as parents to be faithful stewards of this responsibility and obligation you’ve given to us. God we’re so tempted to talk about so many different things with our kids that don’t matter ultimately. They’re temporary, they’re fleeting, and they’re passing. Your word is not temporary, it’s not passing. Your faithfulness endures forever. God help us to talk about that which lasts forever with our kids. God we pray you’d help us to be faithful parents telling the stories of what you’ve done for us. What you have done for your people throughout history. May there be no mistake in their minds when it comes to your faithfulness.
God we pray for that as parents. We pray for that in the church. God please help us to be faithful to pass the gospel in the next generation. We see disturbing statistics and talk about how increasingly, particularly in my country, the gospel is not being passed down to the next generation. God help us. God help us we pray, to be intentional in the church about passing the gospel down to kids, to teenagers, to students, that they might know you. That they might love you. That they might worship you. God we pray that you would use our lives to cause your faithfulness to be passed down for generations, literally O God, generations until Jesus returns. We pray for this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
