“Pass It On!” – FBC Morning Light (5/17/2024)

Well, a good Friday morning to you, I hope you're looking forward to a good weekend, and trust your plans include faithfully attending God's house with His people, come to Sunday school, learn of God in His Word in Bible study time, and worship together with God's people in the morning worship service, and be faithful, even in those Sunday evening services where you gather back together with the people of God, you hear from His Word and you can testify to how good God has been to you and what He has done and taught you even in this past week.

Making the Lord’s Day a Priority

Make a big deal out of the Lord's Day, make it a priority in your life. Well, today in our Bible reading, we're continuing reading in the Psalms, and today just two, Psalm 78 and 80. And Psalm 78 is, it's a great psalm, and song, it is a song, to challenge moms and dads with our responsibility to our children.

So Asaph, the writer of this psalm, he says, I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter dark sayings, or obscure sayings, of old, which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. All right, so Asaph is saying, I'm gonna pass on the truth of God's Word that can't be discovered any other way, I'm gonna pass this on to others, because as my father and his father before him passed it on to me.

It says, we have heard these things and known them our fathers have told them, and we will not hide them from their children. So there is this challenging responsibility on the part of parents to pass on to our children the truth of God's Word.

And in verse 5, he says, the Lord established a testimony in Jacob, he appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children. So this is God's directive to us as parents, to make the truths of God's Word known to our children.

Why? So that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children. So, in other words, parents, moms and dads who have little kids in your home, how are your grandchildren gonna learn the truths of God if you don't teach your children?

Who can then teach them? And what about your grandchildren's grandchildren? See, this is a critical role that we play as parents in passing on the truth of God to our children, that they can pass it on to their children.

And why? Just to pass on tradition? To pass on religious stories? No, pass on the truth of God's Word so that, verse 7 says, they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.

This is the goal. We want to communicate God's truth to our children so that our children will set their hope in God. Can we guarantee that? No, we pray to that end, we trust. But here's the thing, if they don't ever hear the truth of God and his Word, they're never gonna have any hope in him.

They'll be like so many in this generation, boys and girls, young people who've grown up in homes where they never went to church, they never had a Bible open, they never heard even the most basic fundamental stories of the Bible, and they have no hope in God whatsoever.

The Parental Duty to Pass On God’s Word

So this is the responsibility we have as parents. But I want to point out something here, this isn't just a parent-to-children responsibility, this is a corporate responsibility. What I mean by that is this, Asaph says, I will open my mouth in a parable, I will utter the dark sayings, back in verse 2, and he says in verse 4, we will not hide them from their children.

So Asaph is a priest, or a Levite, and he's writing this song so that the truth of God's Word can be communicated to other people's children, not just to his own, and not just that parents will communicate that to their own, but it's almost like, if you will, an Old Testament parallel to the New Testament Church's responsibility to equip parents to be effective in rearing their children and teaching their children, but also to teach children as a church, with Sunday school classes or whatever.

But it's a corporate responsibility that we have as the church to pass on the truth of God to the next generation. So this is a parental, a parental, as well as an ecclesiastical, a challenge to pass on the truth of God to the next generation.

Faithfulness in Teaching the Next Generation

Oh, that we would be faithful to do so. Father, help us in that. Help us to be faithful in teaching our children and teaching their children. We pray in Jesus' name, for his sake, amen. Well, one way you can help do that is just by being faithful in God's house on the Lord's Day.

Take your children to Sunday school, that they might learn the truth of God's Word. Take them in the morning service, in the preaching service, in the teaching of God's Word. They need it. You need it.

The next generation needs it. Well, listen, have a great weekend. May the Lord bless you in it. Good day.