Exodus 10:1-2

And the Lord said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him: And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the Lord.

The Lord makes His purpose plain here. What He was doing in Egypt was not only for Pharaoh, and it was not only for that generation. He was working in such a way that His people would know Him, truly know Him, and then pass that knowledge on to their children and their grandchildren. The signs and wonders were not mere displays of power. They were revelations of His person. God was making Himself known.

That matters because the Lord was not only exposing the weakness of Egypt. He was also building the testimony of Israel. He wanted His people to be able to say, “We saw His hand. We watched Him move. We know that He is the Lord.” And then that testimony was to be handed down, not as cold history, but as living witness.

Part of that lesson came as Israel watched what God did to Egypt. They saw the hail. They saw the flies. They saw the judgments fall where God appointed them. But part of the lesson they learned much more personally, because they themselves had lived through the blood, the frogs, and the lice. They knew what it was to feel the pressure and then to see the Lord make a difference. They were not merely spectators. In many of these things, they were participants.

And that is often how the deepest knowledge of God comes. There are truths we can learn by hearing. There are things we can understand by reading. There is much help in being taught sound doctrine. But some things are only learned as we walk with God through them ourselves. A real testimony is not built on borrowed language. It is born in real life, in prayer, in pressure, in tears, in waiting, in deliverance, in watching God prove Himself faithful.

There is no testimony without testing. A vibrant and living walk with the Lord is not formed by secondhand theology alone. It comes as a man or woman personally discovers that God is faithful in the dark, sufficient in the trial, and present in the pressure. It is one thing to say God delivers because you have heard that He does. It is another thing entirely to say it because He delivered you.

That is what makes spiritual truth worth passing on. Children and grandchildren do not only need inherited facts. They need to hear what God has actually done. They need to know there is a reality in this, that the Lord is not merely the God of old stories, but the God who still works, still speaks, still keeps, still delivers, still proves Himself in the lives of His people.

So the Lord says, in effect, “I am doing this so you will know Me, and so you will have something real to tell the next generation.” That is beautiful. The trial was not wasted. The pressure was not pointless. It was becoming part of a testimony that would outlive the moment itself.

And that remains true. Some of the hardest things we walk through become the very things that give weight to what we later say to our children, our grandchildren, and those coming behind us. Not because suffering is good in itself, but because God reveals Himself in it. And once a man has seen that firsthand, he has something real to pass on.