Mensa Otabil - God Testimony for the Generations
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Exodus 12:26 — 27: «And it shall be when your children say to you, 'What do you mean by this service? ' that you shall say, 'It is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He struck the Egyptians and delivered our households.' So the people bowed their heads and worshiped.»
Celebrating the Passover is supposed to be something that must be communicated by the Israelites to their children perpetually in all generations. The Exodus was a generational testimony; it wasn’t just something personal to be kept by those who had experienced it. It had to be something passed on from generation to generation. God is very careful about these things because when you read the Bible, you hear Him constantly telling Israel, «Remember, remember, remember.» Human beings very easily forget; we forget who we are, we forget our own history, we forget the stories of our lives. Even nations forget their own stories, and a whole new generation comes who have no clue about what has happened to their nation or to their family or to their community.
So God says, «Don’t forget,» and He places that responsibility on the parents. The parents must teach their children about their faith. For the parents who experienced it, when the children ask them, «What is this festival about?» you don’t just give them a vague answer. You take your time and run through the story with them. Many times, parents have an experience, but they don’t take the time to pass it on to their children. They go to church, but they don’t take the time to teach the children why they go to church. They give an offering in the church, but they don’t take time to teach why it’s important to honor God with their resources or why it’s important to go to God and praise and worship or lift up hands to worship.
All of these things we take for granted, which we have experienced, must not just be personal experiences; they have to be passed on. Every parent has a responsibility to pass on their faith to their generation, and not just a vague faith; it has to be a living faith. Even for Israel, after the first generation had passed, the story had to be narrated. If you study the story of Israel, many times they will forget this responsibility, and the nation will go into crisis because they have forgotten their history; they have forgotten their story.
May we never be a people in crisis because we forget our own story, and generations do not come to appreciate what has happened to us in the past. For us as Christians, it also tells us that the message of the Gospel must be propagated. We must tell the story to our children, to our friends, to our communities, and we must constantly let people be aware of what God has done for us. The message of Christ is a transgenerational message; it’s experienced by one generation and passed on to the next generation.
I pray that God will help each one of us spiritually to pass on our spiritual heritage and also socially to pass on the story of our families — how God has dealt with us, how God has answered our prayers, how we managed to even live in the house we live in, how we managed to acquire the things we’ve acquired. Parents, don’t take this for granted; tell your children about the faithfulness of the Lord, who has blessed you and brought you to where you are. That is how we build faith from one generation to the other, and that is the charge that God gave to Israel.
Let’s pray. Say with me, «Heavenly Father, help me to pass on my faith to my children and the generations after me. In Jesus' name, amen and amen.»