“In order to preserve the memory of His wonderful works, God was pleased to command His people to teach their children to remember what He had done for them.
In addition to the inspired records, He told them to make their children’s memories into books of remembrance.
Jewish fathers were commanded to call their children together, and tell them how the Lord brought them out of Egypt, how He led them through the wilderness, and how He gave them the land of Canaan to be their own possession.
They were to teach their children, and their children’s children, the wonderful story of the Lord’s dealings with them.
And we ought to be concerned to hand down, from father to son, the memory of God’s great goodness to us.
Tell your own children, if you cannot tell anyone else, what God has done for their father.
Sitting around the fire in the evening, your children might often be, not merely interested, but instructed and impressed by the narrative of God’s providential dealings with you.
Possibly, the story might not read well in print. but never mind that, for there will be an interest about it to your own household; so, be sure that you tell it.
My memory recalls, at this very moment, many a pleasing incident from what my grandfather told me concerning his early struggles in the ministry, and the providential interpositions of God on his behalf.
Perhaps he might as well have written them down, but he did not.
I think that, possibly, he knew that he had a living book within his grandchild’s brain, and that the boy might, in after days, tell out to others what his grandfather had told to him.
At any rate, I do earnestly exhort all Christians to make God’s wonderful works to be remembered wherever they can, and do it specially by telling to your children what you have experienced of His goodness.
Do not die, O ye greyheads,— ye who have passed your threescore years and ten,— do not pass away from this earth with all those pleasant memories of God’s lovingkindness to be buried with you in your coffin.
But let your children, and your children’s children, know what the everlasting God did for you.”
–Charles H. Spurgeon, “Remembering God’s Works,” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 49 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1903), 49: 448.
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