“On that day explain to your son, ‘This is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ Let it serve as a sign for you on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead, so that the Lord’s instruction may be in your mouth; for the Lord brought you out of Egypt with a strong hand. Keep this statute at its appointed time from year to year.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Ronald Reagan is famous for making the observation that freedom is never more than a generation away from dying out. His point was that unless we actively inculcate the next generation with a love of American freedom (which is unique in the world), it will not last. It is not a state of affairs that arises naturally, and it will not be maintained without constant and abiding attention. Given recent surveys on the opinions of young people today about various foundational American ideals, I’d say his warning was prescient. Here in Exodus 13, God was in the process of giving the people of Israel their freedom. They were going on a journey to a new homeland where they would be able to live out their freedom to its fullest if they so chose. But He knew that freedom was a tenuous thing and not a natural one. So, one of the things He made clear they needed to do was to pass it on. Let’s talk about this third and most important emphasis of the first part of Exodus 13.

We tend to take our freedom for granted here in America. This is because we have so much of it relative to the rest of the world. Now, yes, there are conservative commentators who make a very comfortable living by spending their days telling people that freedom is under attack, and that they need to listen to them in order to both learn about how these attacks are happening, and also how to put a stop to them. And, yes, they can make some compelling arguments that are actually evidence-based. And, yes, as our government has grown larger and less beholden to the basic operational framework of the Christian worldview, our ability to pursue our hearts’ desires from a business and charitable and even religious standpoint without swimming through an ocean of red tape has declined. But it nonetheless remains true that in comparison with the rest of human history and the rest of the world today, we have an incredible, almost incomprehensible freedom in the United States of America.

Freedom is so common here that our familiarity with it regularly breeds contempt. I remember when Bernie Sanders made a comment during one of his two recent Presidential runs complaining about how many different deodorant choices we have, and how could we possibly need all of those. We don’t need them. Such a thing is a luxury. But it is a luxury afforded to us by the freedom our nation extends to entrepreneurs who want to make a deodorant to compete with the major brands (which already put out dozens of options themselves), to do it. Major cultural commentators (mostly on the left, but not entirely so) have in the last ten years or so openly longed for the efficiency of China’s authoritarianism when the Congress, not to mention the country as a whole, was not able to accomplish some legislative action they desired. When free people start wishing for authoritarianism to make the government run more efficiently, you know they have too much freedom on their hands (not to mention a profound ignorance of authoritarianism and political history more generally, but that’s a topic for another time).

And yet, freedom like this takes vigilance in order to maintain it. As I mentioned before, recent surveys have found that young people think something like free speech isn’t all that big of a deal. They are increasingly comfortable with speech they don’t like being actively limited or even prevented by the government. People who hold to certain moral beliefs, especially about matters of sexuality, should be censored and otherwise made to conform with what they believe to be the majority position. In some surveys, the threat of climate change is of a sufficient degree that the loss of certain privileges and habits is an acceptable exchange. Things like serving in the military are no longer seen as beneficial or even particularly praiseworthy. Standing for the national anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance are not seen as patriotic duties. Overt expressions of patriotism generally are considered in bad taste. After more than a generation of teaching history as a parade of victims being victimized by the victimizer which is usually our own nation in some form or fashion, national pride is lower than it has ever been.

As our national worldview continues to shift in a different direction from its founding, maintaining all of the ideals and, yes, the freedoms we have enjoyed for nearly 250 years will indeed become more difficult.

Speaking of that worldview shift, this generational challenge is not something that only affects our nation. Every nation deals with this kind of thing. Maintaining any kind of a system over time – including a religious system – requires passing that system along from one generation to another. As much as we would like to believe otherwise, there are not any ideas that will exist and persist on their own indefinitely. The friction of the passing of time will inevitably slow them down and pull them off track. The inertial pull will always be toward history’s dustbin.

God’s instructions to Moses here in Exodus 13 reveal just how thoroughly He understands this. After all, He made us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. In light of this, no sooner does God finish telling Moses the people are to eat nothing but unleavened bread during the Passover celebration than He tells him to command parents to pass on the tradition to their children. When you do this, He said, explain to your kids why you are doing it. Later on in this section, He does the exact same thing with His instructions about the redemptive sacrifices for the firstborn males. After introducing that theme out of the gate as we talked about yesterday, He comes back around to flesh it out in a fair bit more detail. Right on the heels of that, then, He commands them to pass it on.

From v. 14: “In the future, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘By the strength of his hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of humans and the firstborn of livestock. That is why I sacrifice to the Lord all the firstborn of the womb that are males, but I redeem all the firstborn of my sons.’ So let it be a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead, for the Lord brought us out of Egypt by the strength of his hand.”

What is this? This is God helping them to put in place a system by which their identity as His people could be effectively passed on from one generation to the next. Later in Moses’ farewell speech before his death which we know of as the book of Deuteronomy, he comes back to this same idea again. In Deuteronomy 6, after giving them what is still today recognized by Jews as the most important command in the law, he spends the rest of the chapter telling them how and why to disciple their children in their faith.

Friends, if our freedom as Americans is never more than a generation away from dying out, our faith in God is an even more tenuous thing. With our faith we are not facing merely an inertial pull toward authoritarianism (which, from the standpoint of history, is the most natural form of human governance even as it is also the least supportive of human flourishing), we are facing a determined and clever enemy who is completely committed to seeing faith in God scrubbed from the earth. He will actively use whatever happens to be going on in the culture around us to try to pull us in any direction other than a relationship with God in Christ. He really doesn’t care what the direction is. It may be toward something obviously sinister and destructive, but he is equally content with it to be in the direction of something apparently noble and beneficial. As long as it does not involve a relationship with God in Christ, the outcome as far as he is concerned is the same.

If you are a parent who believes that a relationship with Jesus is something worthwhile to pursue, it is absolutely incumbent upon you to train your kids up in that worldview. They will not come to it naturally or on their own. You have to be active in leading them to it. Now, you can’t force them to adopt it for themselves. In fact, if you take that approach, you are more likely than not to fail. You’ll either fail on the grounds that they wholeheartedly reject it because of their animosity toward you for trying to force them to believe something. Or, they’ll adopt the form of it to keep you happy without ever actually owning it for themselves. Either way, you lose.

The better approach is to follow God’s leading in wooing and loving them there. Put in place rhythms and rituals in your family that give you the natural opportunity to explain to them how and why following Jesus makes the most sense out of life. Find ways to engage thoughtfully with the news of the day with them in such a way that you have the opportunity to help them interpret it through the lens of the Christian worldview. Take them to church regularly and make certain you go with them. Don’t ever drop them off while you go and do something else. That tends to do more harm than good to their faith growth and development. Encourage them to engage regularly with the Scriptures and make sure you are modeling that for them. But don’t force them to it. Woo them and encourage them gently. Perhaps most importantly, don’t let them come out thinking of Christianity as something that is just a cultural artifact and not a whole life commitment driven by a loving relationship.

None of this is particularly easy. It takes effort. There will be times when you genuinely don’t know how to interpret something through the lens of the Christian worldview for them. Be honest with them about it. Go to the Scriptures with them together to figure it out. Meet with a pastor together with them for help if you need it. Just as it is not natural for them to adopt a faith in Christ, so it is unnatural for you to be intentional in passing it on to them. But it is right and good to do this. What’s more, it’s a pattern that God clearly sets out in the Scriptures. More than even that, it is a command. And before you try to wriggle out from under this by correctly pointing out that I don’t consider the Old Testament commands to be authoritative for followers of Jesus in the same way they were for the people of Israel, this is an idea that is commanded in the New Testament as well. The apostle Paul told specifically fathers to not “stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

The passing of the faith from one generation to the next in the context of a family is the primary way by which our God designed it to be continued and extended. If you follow Jesus and you have kids, this is a pattern you are bound to continue. Success in terms of kids who faithfully follow Jesus of their own volition is not guaranteed, but your faithfulness to the pattern is nonetheless essential. Make sure you are doing it.