Let No One Despise Your Youth

Introduction

I believe that God is actually doing something in the young people today. I believe that we need to harness the good impulse of Grace and be part of this awakening that God is sturring up in this young generation.

Judges 2:10 NIV

After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.

1 Timothy 4:12 NIV

Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.

Describe the possible situation going on with Timothy.

1) Youth can be despised

Youth are often looked down on because of attitudes and behaviors that are annoying or immature. Some of the things people often associate with youth are disrespect, rebellion, self-absorption, cliquishness, conformity to peer pressure, indifference to serious issues, and a fixation on fun as the only thing that satisfies. If these are pronounced, people can even despise youth. Paul implies that in saying, “Let no one despise your youth.”

Frankly it is difficult being a young person in 2018. Today pornography and other hamful activity is so easily accessible on our phones with just the click of a few buttons. Social media floods our thoughts and our time. It blows up our phone. Fun becomes a central focus for many of us. I feel as a whole young the older generation despising the youth is just as real today as it was in the time of Paul writing the letter to Timothy if not more so today.

I want you to evaluate your life for just one moment. If you were on the outside looking in at you what would you think. Now I want you to evaluate the situation around you. Have you felt despised? Have you felt as if your words have not mattered? That although you are active in the church or prayer or other activities that you are somehow wrong regardless?

2) Youth should not be indifferent to what adults think.

Paul is telling Timothy to do what he can as a young man to keep that despising from happening. Don’t be indifferent to what older people think. Care about it. Take steps to win their approval. “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.”

Sometime as much as we despise being despised or looked down on, God is calling us to love regardless. To care what the adults think. To respect them. Look Timothy was a pastor to these people in his church and Paul still told him to treat these older men as fathers.

Could you imagine Timothy. Paul you don’t know the way they treat me. You don’t know the way they belittle me and you still want me to respect them that way? I would rather just tell them off.

Sometimes our biggest enemy in this situation is our mind telling us that we are right. Here is the thing you may be right, but hurting and disrespecting those who came before us already makes us wrong.

3) Youth should not see adult opinions as supreme.

The way he tells Timothy to overcome being despised is not to adjust to their attitudes. He does not say, “Let no one despise you for your youth, but find out what they want and act that way.” Peaceful relationships between older and younger is not of supreme value. Adaptation to older people is not the point. He does not absolutize adult expectations. He does something very different.

4) Young people should look to the standards of God

Paul says, The way I want youth to pursue not being despised is look to God’s standards of love and faith and purity. In that way, even young people can become examples to those who are older.

The point is not: find out what older pople want and ive it to them so they don’t despise you. The point is: find out what kind of words and conduct God wants and do that. He gives love and faith and purity as examples of what we should do in our words and conduct

Paul says, The way I want youth to pursue not being despised is look to God’s standards of love and faith and purity. In that way, even young people can become examples to those who are older.

be thou an example—Greek, “become a pattern” (); the true way of making men not to despise (slight, or disregard) thy youth.

be thou an example—Greek, “become a pattern” (); the true way of making men not to despise (slight, or disregard) thy youth.

be thou an example—Greek, “become a pattern” (); the true way of making men not to despise (slight, or disregard) thy youth.

be thou an example—Greek, “become a pattern” (); the true way of making men not to despise (slight, or disregard) thy youth.

be thou an example—Greek, “become a pattern” (); the true way of making men not to despise (slight, or disregard) thy youth.

Don’t just show yourself to people as they would want to see you, but literally become a pattern that can be replicated and is contagious.

Paul’s main point is that Timothy should not have low expectations of the impact of his life toward those who are older. He should look to God, believe in the gospel, do what God calls him to do, and in that way become an example to the rest.

You should not have low expectations that your life is impactful to the people around you. You say David you don’t know me. You are right I don’t know you, but God does and I have seen and heard stories of him being pretty impactful in the lives of people who are willing to be vessels for Him.

How many of our young people think that way: I am called to set an example for the adults. Of course, adults are supposed to set an example for young people. But here it’s the other way around. That calls for a dramatic shift in mindset for most adults and youth today: Don’t adapt to the low cultural expectations for youth. Set high ones. Youth can become examples for adults. Think that way. Dream that way. Or as the Harris brothers would say, “Rebel against low expectations.”

5) Don’t waste your youth

Jeremiah 1:6–7 NIV

“Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.

Be careful young people that you don’t postpone the blessing of fruitfulness in your life because you use the excuse, “I am only a youth.” God said to Jeremiah, “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’; for to all to whom I send you, you shall go.” There are some younger than you that you can lead, and there are some older than you that you can serve. But do not say, “I am only a youth,” as though the only thing you are good for is watching videos and playing games, as though there is no ministry for you to do.