Saturday, April 18, 2015

Making the Best Use of Your Youth

Texts: 2 Chron. 21; 34-35

We live in a day when people ask, “Is the Bible relevant to modern life? To my life?” When you pick up the Bible, the life it describes seems, at first glance, so different from life today. No electrical power or even steam power can be found in scripture. These things weren’t known to men from Adam to the 1800’s, over 5800 years! Until then, men relied on horses, wagons, and sailboats for transport, so life was little different in, say, 1850 as it was in 2000 B.C. My point is that the Bible was written for all men in all ages, and despite the technology that we have today, we have the same moral problems that the ancients have, just with different technology at our disposal. Don’t let the devil trick you into thinking that the Bible is outdated. It is certainly the most relevant, up-to-date book that you own. 

Now you may be thinking, “But the Bible is for old people. I’m young and just getting started in life. It may be relevant for today, but I can always read it later.” Another mistake: if the Bible is the most relevant, up-to-date book you own, wouldn’t it make sense to get familiar with it as early in life as possible? Two of the wisest men who ever lived, next to Jesus Christ, said these things:

  • Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not… (Eccl. 12:1) 
  • So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom (Ps. 90:12).
Furthermore, how do you know that you will live long? Many people die before they even reach adulthood. One of my four sisters, who was born 11 years before me, died of leukemia before she was a year old. So youth is definitely NOT the time to put off seeking the Lord, but rather to seek him with your whole heart and lay a good foundation for the rest of your life, however much God may give you.

There’s a principle in the Bible and life that what you sow, you will reap (Job 4:8; Gal. 6:7). You reap the consequences of your decisions, because you are accountable to God for your actions.  Now seeds, for the most part, take a good while to sprout and produce fruit. The seeds that you sow in youth will bear fruit later in life, so it only makes sense to be sowing good seed now while you can. 

I’d like to look at the lives of two young men in the old testament with you this morning. The OT was written for our learning today, according to the apostle Paul (Rom. 15:4). Both of these men were kings of the same country, Judah, and both were direct descendants of King David. Both of them died at 40 or less, one in honour, the other in disgrace. Let’s compare how they spent their youth and the fruits of that later in life. For one it’s more obvious how he spent his youth, and the fruit is more predictable; for the other, there’s less detail about his youth, but the fruit in his later years speaks loudly of what was in his heart while he was young. The two men’s names: Jehoram, the son of Jehoshaphat; and Josiah, his descendant ten generations later.

1.      Jehoram (Joram), son of Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. 21)
In my opinion, this chapter, which covers Jehoram’s entire life, could be called, “The Diary of a Wasted Life.” It’s tragic from start to finish. Jehoram has a lot going for him at first, but he makes some bad decisions once he becomes king at age 32, and even though God graciously intervenes and tries to correct him, he refuses to be corrected and meets a tragic end at age 40. Victor Hugo, the French author who wrote Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, said that “Forty is the old age of youth, and fifty is the youth of old age,” so Jehoram was still young when he died. But let’s look at his youth and see what advantages he had, critical choices that he made, how God dealt with him, and the outcome of his life. We’ll do the same for his distant descendant, Josiah, in a little while.

Advantages
  • He was born into the God-fearing tribes of Israel (Judah and Benjamin). When the kingdom was divided after Solomon’s death, ten tribes followed his servant Jeroboam, but two stuck with Solomon’s foolish son, Rehoboam: Judah and Benjamin. Jeroboam was born into the tribe of Judah, the largest and most powerful of all the twelve tribes.
  • Both his father, Jehoshaphat, and grandfather, Asa, were righteous kings, some of the best that even Judah produced. Every one of Jehoshaphat’s seven sons had God’s name in their name; that’s the sort of heritage Jehoram had.
  • His father provided well for his sons, including wealth and military strength, but wisely split them up and gave them each his own land to avoid contention. Since Jehoram was his heir, this was a favour to his him, so there wouldn’t be fighting over who would become king.
  • Finally, one of the greatest of Israel’s prophets was alive during Jehoram’s reign and could have been his counselor, even after his righteous father was gone.
  • So Jehoram has a lot going for him as a young man, but when you examine his actions as king, you see that very bad seed was sown in his youth that bore rotten fruit in the eight years he was king and brought an end to his life while still young.

Critical Choices
  • He did not follow his father. It’s one thing to choose not to follow a sinful, wicked father, but another to choose not to follow a saintly one like Jehoshaphat. When Judah was attacked by a huge army of her enemies in 2 Chron. 20, Jehoshaphat humbles himself and cries out to God, and the Lord miraculously delivers Judah. So his father was a humble, prayerful man who feared God and regarded his word. Jehoram was none of these things, but goes directly opposite to his father’s ways, as we’ll see.
  • He was ungrateful. Instead of being grateful for this father’s wise preparations and provisions for him, he wickedly murders his brothers and eliminates them as “competitors,” claiming everything for himself.
  • He married outside the faith. Paul tells us in 2 Cor. 6:14 that we should not be “unequally yoked together with unbelievers,” and one application of that is that a believer should only marry another believer. Jehoram marries someone outside the faith who’s an evil influence on him. And that’s what you can expect from an unsaved partner, young people. They don’t know God and will pull you away from God: it’s their nature to do so. They don’t have the Spirit of God in them drawing to the Lord like you do, so that’s what you can expect from them: bad influence.

How God Dealt with Him
  • God allows neighboring kingdoms to revolt against him. I believe that this was God’s first attempt to get his attention. It didn’t work. He fights with the Edomites and apparently beats them, but not into submission, and the Libnites also revolt.  God’s hand in this is confirmed at the end of v. 10, “…because he had forsaken the LORD God of his fathers.” 
  • Instead of repenting over these revolts, he practices idolatry and forces his subjects to do the same (v. 11). So he’s on a really bad track, but God continues to be gracious to him, for his forefather David’s sake, I believe (v. 7).
  • Next God sends him a warning from Elijah the prophet, basically pronouncing his doom (vv. 12-15). But there’s not a word about him being bothered by that at all. He stubbornly keeps doing things “his way,” and the Lord tries to get his attention one more time.
  • This time, instead of a revolt, the Lord allows his enemies to invade Judah and carry off everything dear to him except for his youngest son, whom God preserves to be king after him. Does he turn to God now? No; sadly no.

Outcomes
  • God is a merciful God, but eventually his mercy runs out for a sinner if that sinner will not repent. Paul tells us in Rom. 2:4-5 that if we will not respond to God’s “goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering” by repenting and receiving Jesus Christ as our Saviour, we’ll end up getting God’s wrath forever. Jehoram refuses to respond to God’s best, most merciful efforts to correct him, and he ends of dying a horrible death. 
  • His reign as king was so dishonourable that his own people will not bury him with the kings, though they graciously bury him in the royal part of Jerusalem, since he was a descendant of David. Sort of like saying he wasn’t fit to be a king nor acted like one, even a second-class one.
  • Perhaps the saddest thing about this young man’s life, besides his horrible conduct and dishonourable death, was that he “departed without being desired.” In other words, nobody was sad that he was gone and desired him to still be alive. That’s why we cry at funerals: we don’t want to see that friend or loved one go. But when Jehoram died, at the young age of 40, no one was sorry about it. That to me is just horrible.  His life didn’t make a positive impression on anyone. So you see why I call it, “The Diary of a Wasted Life”: he helped no one but himself, and so helped no one, including himself. 

2.      Josiah, son of Amon (2 Chron. 34-35)

Advantages
  • Compared with Jehoram, Josiah had very few advantages. That’s one of those ironies of life that magnifies the grace of God, that often those with the most advantages turn out worse than those without them. It all comes down to what’s in your heart, no matter what your background is.
  • Josiah was born into the tribe of Judah, but that tribe was at its lowest point, spiritually, ever. Both Josiah’s father and grandfather were evil men, his grandfather so wicked (until the end of his life) that God decided to banish Judah unconditionally. Instead of providing for his son, Amon leaves him an apostate, dying nation on the brink of collapse.
  • As in the days of Jehoram, there is a prophet in the land, the great Jeremiah, and the prophetess Huldah, both of which give Josiah good counsel; unlike Jehoram, who never consults with Elijah, as far as we know.

Critical Choices
  • He sought God while he was young. He took the throne when he was eight, and when he was sixteen, he began “to seek after the God of David his father” (2 Chron. 34:3). Someone must have told him about how God blessed David for his obedience, and I think that Josiah compared that with the outcome of his father and grandfather’s disobedience, and took it to heart. So, in a way, he did follow his father (David), unlike Jeroboam.
  • He separated himself and his people from evil. Just the opposite of Jehoram, who attached himself to an unbeliever. Josiah not only destroys all of the idols, but he goes to the root of the problem and kills all of the pagan priests. He knew it wouldn’t be enough just to get rid of the idols; he had to get rid of the priests too.
  • He humbles himself at God’s word. In the process of repairing the temple, the scriptures are found and read to him, warning of judgment to come. Instead of despairing or rebelling, like Jehoram did, he humbles himself, tears his clothes, and weeps in sorrow. The Bible says that “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5b), and God graciously postpones his wrath on Judah until after Josiah’s death.
  • He leads his people into fellowship with God. He gathers the people to make a covenant with God to be his people and he restores proper worship in the temple to keep the people in communion with God. Probably the two greatest things you can do for someone in this life are leading them to become a child of God by receiving Christ, then showing them how to have daily, personal fellowship with God. It’s good to separate from evil, like Josiah did earlier, but we separate from evil so that he can separate ourselves to God, not so that we can look righteous. That was the Pharisees’ problem: they thought that by not doing certain things, they were righteous. Christ told them, however, that God was looking for more than that: he wanted a relationship with them, not just for them to avoid certain sins.

Outcomes
  • God is very merciful to this young man. He puts off his wrath for 31 years and allows Josiah to turn his people back to God. In some ways, the Jews were more obedient to God during Josiah’s reign than ever before.
  • He’s honoured in death and mourned by everyone (35:24b-25). He is buried with the kings, unlike Jehoram, “[a]nd all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.” Even Jeremiah mourns for him deeply (“lamented”). 
  • He leaves a positive legacy for all generations.  The mourning for him continues long after his death (the Chronicles are written decades after he’s gone), his memory is so precious.  All of his reformations may have seemed hopeless, but our labours for God are never in vain (1 Cor. 15:58).  His people love him long after he’s gone, and most importantly, God honours him forever.  Let’s close with 2 Kings 23:25, one of my favourite verses in the Bible.  This is what God has to say about him to all generations, “And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the LORD with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.” Wow, what a legacy! No one before him (David, Solomon, Jehoshaphat) or after him (Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah) obeyed God as thoroughly as he did.  And you better believe God noticed that, if no one else did.  Let it be a comfort to you that if no one notices the good that you’re doing, God does, and he will reward you, in this life and, more importantly, in the next. 

Conclusion

  • How will you use your youth? All of us have some advantages; will be thankful for them and honour God with them? And all of us have and will make critical choices. There’s no way to avoid that. You will choose, and some choices in life are critical because they affect the rest of your life. Like how you treat your parents, your attitude toward God’s word, and how you deal with the world. 
  • But the most critical choice you make in life is one that you can and should make while you’re still young, and that is receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Saviour. Paul said that Christ “loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). If you were the only person who ever lived and sinned, he would’ve come and died for you. It’s not enough to believe that Jesus is the Saviour. It’s time to receive him as your Saviour, and I hope that, if you’ve never done that before, you’ll do it today, and spend your youth and the rest of your life fellowshipping with him, serving him, and leaving a legacy of good works that you’ll be rewarded for for ever. 

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