If you have your Bibles with
you, you can open up to 1 John 2. And you'll need to pull out
your outline if you're taking notes tonight. It'll be most
helpful for you to follow along as we look tonight at the important
topic of the myth of adolescence. So again, I was preparing some
notes to get ready for this youth conference in Russia. Thought
I would share this message with you tonight as it's an important
thing for us to grab a biblical concept on. And I think it kind
of also fits in to kind of how we're viewing our church particularly
our young people getting baptized and taking part in the Lord's
Supper, becoming members, has to do a little bit with this
topic of them being young adults. And so I think it kind of fits
in nicely to what we've been studying a little bit. And so
I've entitled tonight's message as The Myth of Adolescence. We'll
be looking at some selected scriptures, but we'll start here in a little
bit in 1 John chapter 2. Why don't you pray with me and
we'll get started. Father, we bow before you this
evening, and we thank you for the privilege of coming together
as those who've been bought with a price, as those who've been
changed from the inside out, as those who've been called to
represent you on earth. And I pray, God, as we look into
this important topic tonight about understanding children
and young people and young adults, I pray, God, that you would give
us a biblical mindset and a biblical framework of how to think through
this most important of topics when it comes to the family,
when it comes to youth groups, when it comes to teenagers, when
it comes to our expectations of what we should look for in
young people today. And so would you give us grace
and would you show us your truth that we might walk in it? And
it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Well, you don't have to
look far or talk to many people before you realize the consensus
is evident. Young people in our churches
today are in great trouble. Often, over the last few decades,
various studies have accumulated, revealing devastating statistics
demonstrating an unprecedented decline in the church attendance
among young people. Mark DeVries believes that more
than half of adolescents who attend church as children leave
church before they reach the age of 17. He goes on to discuss
another disappointing study that shows that 48% of adults confirmed
in the Presbyterian church left the church once they reached
adulthood. It gets worse. LifeWay research,
the Southern Baptist denomination, reveals that there is a sharp
decline in the evangelical church attendance for young people ages
18 to 22. According to the latest study,
70% of this age group stopped attending
church regularly. Believe it or not, some give
even a higher stat, as high as 88% of kids raised in Christian
homes do not continue to follow the Lord after they graduate
from high school. This is about 20% higher than
it was at the turn of the last century. So without a doubt,
American young people between the ages of 18 and 29 are considerably
less religious than older Americans. The president of Barna Group,
David Kenneman, agrees. He writes this, quote, the ages
18 to 29 are the black hole of church attendance. This age segment
is missing in action from most congregations. Well, the decline
of church attendance is not just true of young people, but it's
true of all people in general. Tom Gillespie, former president
of Princeton Seminary, has pointed at the problem. He writes this,
quote, the truth of the matter is that the chief cause of our
membership decline is our inability over the past quarter of a century
to translate our faith to our children. Put simply, we are
unable to keep our children in the church when they become adults. As a result, we are not only
a dwindling church, but an aging one as well, close quote. So Gillespie here makes it clear
that the church is not doing a good job discipling its youth. Even the secular media is picking
up on this great decline of church attendance. There are some conversations,
or some conservative estimates rather, of those who are dropping
out of church all the way down to 40%. And if it is only 40%,
is that any less a state of emergency? In other words, whether it's
the lowest percentage, 40% of young people leaving the church,
or the highest percentage, 88%, Are any of us as Christians happy
about that ratio of young people living the church today? Young
people are fleeing from the church like fair-weathered fans of a
baseball team having a losing season. And so we must ask, why
are so many people dropping out of church? According to Scott
McConnell, Associate Director of Lifeway Research, he writes,
97% of dropouts list one or more specific life change issues as
a reason for why they left church. He goes on to give that the most
frequent reason for leaving church, according to all those that he
polled who are leaving church, was the simple fact that young
people want a break from church, 27%. Going to college also affords
a good excuse, 25%. Work responsibilities is listed
as another major reason for dropping out of church, 23%. In addition to going away to
college, simply moving anywhere away from home made it difficult
to attend church because of the lack of desire to find a closer
church, 22%. It seems like relationships and
community are big factors. in keeping young people in church,
and if they lose either one of those two, then they are far
more likely to drop out. Brad Wagner, Vice President of
Research and Development at Lifeway, stated, quote, relationships
are often the glue that keep people in church or serves as
the attraction to begin attending again following a period of absenteeism. Many people are deeply influenced
by friends, and loved ones, close quote. Well, I have a different
theory of why young people are leaving church today. I don't
think it has to do with moving away from school. I don't think
it has to do with going to college or trying to find a church within
your neighborhood. I don't think it has to do with
relationships. I think the reason that so many young people are
leaving churches today is the fact that they were never born
again. That's right, they never knew
Jesus at all. You see, Jesus says that you
will know them by their fruit. And if they're truly born again
and walking in the light of Jesus Christ, they will stay true to
the institution of which Jesus died for. Am I saying that because
young people drop out of church and so they're all, you know,
lost their salvation? No, that's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying that they never had salvation. They never really
knew Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. They really never
knew what it was to be a Christian. And so true believers do not
forsake the assembling of themselves, but desire to be together, to
encourage one another, and to stimulate others toward love
and good deeds. Maybe nowhere in the Bible is
it more clear that those who abandoned church and walk away
never knew Christ than 1 John 2 19. You know what the verse
says. You're there in 1 John 2. Look at verse 19. It simply
says this. They went out from us, but they
were never they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they
would have continued with us. But they went out that they might
that it might become plain that they all are not of us. You understand
what John is saying there? Look, when people walk away from
church, when they walk away from the Lord, when they walk away
from their faith, they never had faith at all. True believers
stay tapped into the vine. I don't know of a young person
today with a vibrant love for Christ and an exemplary service
to the Lord who does not attend church regularly and place themselves
under the spiritual teaching, counseling, and accountability
of the local church. Do you? Do you know of a young
person who loves Christ with all their heart, who has nothing
to do with the local church? And so what I'm getting at is
the reason for these statistics of people again walking away
is they were never saved to begin with. And so tonight I want to
give you three headings on this topic of adolescence and kind
of the crisis, the problem, what's going on. And we can examine
tonight whether or not this idea of adolescence is a myth. Okay,
so kind of what I'm getting at here is our first major heading
is the explanation of why adolescence has created chaos. If we kind
of look at the idea of these young people, teenagers as being
adolescents, I'm saying that that concept, that common way
of thinking of these young people has created chaos in our society. In fact, we could say this, the
invention of the concept of adolescence. Let's talk about it for a minute.
The invention of this concept of adolescence. David Alan Black
addresses this in his book, The Myth of Adolescence, Raising
Responsible Children in an Irresponsible Society. Rick Holland also addresses
this topic in his journal article entitled, The Myth of called
adolescence. And both of these articles, as
well, one's a book, one's an article, as well as a bunch of
other work has been done on this subject, basically saying that
adolescents are usually thought of as being those teenagers between
the ages of 12 and 18. And so the question has been
raised, how are we to think of these young people? Are we to
think of them as children, or are we to think of them as adolescents?
Or are we to think of them as young adults? And the most common
answer by far today would be, oh, that's obvious, they're adolescents.
If they're 12 to 18, they're not really children, but they're
certainly not adults. And so we have this new third
category called adolescence. After all, it was the American
psychologist, G. Stanley Hall, who invented this
term in his well-known work, Adolescence. Its relations to
physiology, anthropology, sociology. sex, crime, religion, and education. This work was published in 1904. And the word adolescence is taken
from the Latin word, adolesere, meaning to grow up. And so growing
up is often seen as a period of exploration, when kids are
experimenting and trying out different roles as they seek
to find their own identity in the world. Hall, this psychologist,
believed that adolescence was explained by a link between genetic
psychology and education. In other words, he believed that
just as there are different stages in the development physically
of a person, there are different stages of the development of
young children before they become adults psychologically. Unfortunately,
Hall did not follow biblical principles when it came to training
children in the teaching and admonition of the Lord. You have
to understand, G. Stanley Hall was a secular psychologist
who just wanted to explain the behaviorism of teenagers as to
why they did what they did. So he had this theory that there's
this physical connection to their genetical makeup and development. The theory for which Hall is
known actually adapted from what's called the theory of recapitulation,
and he adapted this idea to the idea of adolescent development. This theory poses that each person
goes through changes in both the psychic and somatic senses
that follow the evolution scale of the mind and the body. Hall
believed that the pre-adolescent child develops to his best ability
when he is not forced to follow constraints. You understand what
he's saying? That before a child becomes a
teenager, take the constraints off and let the child be a child.
In fact, he talks about how it's better for this child in this
pre-adolescent state to go through the stages of evolution Freely,
before a child turns six or seven, the child should be able to experience
how one lived in the simian stage in which the child could express
his animal spirits. The child grows rapidly at this
stage and its energy levels are high, no doubt. The child is
unable to use reasoning or to show either sensitivity toward
religion or social discernment. So obviously, this secular psychologist
Hall is linking human development and thinking with the philosophy
of evolution more so than with the biblical philosophy of the
understanding and the importance of teaching and training children
according to the Bible. In other words, the whole idea
of Proverbs 22, 6 of train up a child in the way he should
go, or Ephesians 6, 4, fathers raise your children under the
teaching and admonition of the Lord, go out the window, and
he's basically saying at this pre-adolescent stage, let your
children be animals. Because if you constrain them,
then they won't really be able to develop properly. But the
Bible clearly teaches that parents are to discipline their children,
Hebrews 12, 5 through 11, and not allow them to avoid constraints
and develop freely, as Hall suggests, but rather to constrain them.
and to discipline them as a loving father should. And so I don't
believe that children are expressing animal spirits, but rather the
depravity of their own souls. All have sinned and fallen short
of the glory of God. And this already should make
you very suspect about what else Hall would say as it has to do
with adolescence. Hall believed that it was not
until the age of eight that formal learning could begin. So just
kind of let your kids be animals till age eight. At that point,
you can start trying to teach them a little something. He argued
that this was when their brain was finally full size and weight. But since the reasoning skills
were not developed properly, the child should not have to
deal with moralizing conflicts or ideas. Understand what he's
saying? There's no morality at that age
because they can't really figure it out. Again, Hall seems to
be going directly against scripture in his neglect of training children
to submit to the authority placed over them by a loving God who
wants them to obey so that he can bless children and give them
a long life. Hall has been labeled, though,
as the father of adolescent psychology. If you talk to anybody about
adolescents in our culture, you can't have an educated conversation
without discussing this man, G. Stanley Hall. Americans no
longer think of adolescents as little adults, but as older children
in a prolonged stage of childhood. Whomever ultimately receives
the credit for naming this newly emerging phase of life by the
turn of the 20th century, adolescence has come to be accepted as a
sociological reality. And by the 1920s, it was clear
that the emerging youth subculture was here to stay. Although it
was not until 1960 that there was a common agreement amongst
the developmental psychologists that adolescence was a legitimate
phase of a lifespan. Now, unfortunately, the church
at large has accepted this secular way of thinking. Theologians
have only recently acknowledged the impact of giving this category
of adolescence over to the psychologist. There's not been a whole lot
of good theological writing on this subject. And so their idea
is that the church is really just giving into some of this. And some would even say the church
has a lot of catching up to do. To catch up with these psychologists
who are on the cutting edge of relating to us the development
of teenagers. To which I would say, really?
The church has catching up to do? Maybe the culture has some
catching up to do to the teaching of this book. It's called the
Bible. Maybe what the church needs to
simply do is come back to the Bible and say, well, what does
the Bible teach on this subject? I mean, the church doesn't have
any catching up to do. The church just needs to return
to the clear teaching of Scripture. for example, to some of these
Proverbs that tell you exactly how to handle children in this
stage. Proverbs 13, 24, he who withholds
his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him
diligently. How about Proverbs 23, 13, and
14? Do not hold back discipline from
the child. Although you strike him with
the rod, he will not die. You shall strike him with the
rod and rescue his soul from Sheol. Or how about Proverbs
29, 15? The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets
his own way brings shame to his mother. Proverbs 29, 17. Correct
your son and he will give you comfort. He will also delight
your soul. And so really, this whole idea
of adolescence does not come from God's word, at least not
in the secular mindset that children don't need to be constrained,
and then when they become teenagers, you just now get into teaching
what morality is all about. In fact, what this whole concept
of adolescence has led to is your next sub-point there on
your outline, the idea that adulthood can be delayed. That's really
what it gives way to, logically speaking. They're not an adult
yet. They're somehow between this childhood stage and this
adult stage. And so there's a huge problem among young people in
America today. And this problem is they're slow
in maturing from childhood to adulthood. Even the New York
Times recently asked the question, why are so many people in their
20s taking so long to grow up? Listen to what Robin Hennig has
to say, quote, we're in the thick of what one sociologist calls
the changing timetable for adulthood, close quote. Sociologists traditionally
define the transition to adulthood as marked by five milestones. So here's what's traditionally
been understood as the five milestones of going from a child to an adult. They would be marked by these
five things. completing school, leaving home,
becoming financially independent, getting married, and having a
child. So there's your five markers
according to our society, which I think are reasonable, right?
Completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent,
getting married, and having a child. But what's happening is that
with more and more people in their 20s are staying at home,
taking longer to finish school, delaying marriage, and so it's
created a whole new segment of culture in our society. Guys
seem to struggle with growing up more than girls. Somebody
say amen. You're like, oh, I'm not saying
amen to that, right? But consider these quotes from
Michael Kimmel. He says this, the US census shows
a steady and dramatic decline in the percentage of young adults
under 30 who have completed these demographic markers. In year
2000, 46% of women and 31% of men had reached those markers
by age 30. In 1960, just 40 years earlier,
77% of women and 65% of men had reached them. And so what we're
seeing here is over the last generation, a great decline in
children becoming young adults. The passage between adolescence
and adulthood has morphed from a transitional moment to a separate
life stage altogether. Adolescence starts earlier and
earlier In some ways, because young kids are exposed to more
than they should. But at the other end, adulthood starts later
and later. Everyone knows that 30 is the
new 20. But it's equally true these days
that 12 is the new 20. You understand what I'm saying?
A 12-year-old is exposed to far more than they should be, so
they're almost treated like a 20-year-old. But at the same time, you have
a 30-year-old who's acting like a 20-year-old because of their
failure to really mature into young adulthood. And so, according
to this assessment, the inability of young men to mature with these
natural markers of adulthood is staggering. It seems like
sociologists may be recommending a fourth life stage. It's widely
recognized that there are children, adolescents, and adults in our
society. But what I'm saying is that even
in secular society, it's almost like they want to go from children
to adolescents to now this new category, somewhere between 18
and 30, and then adulthood. So there may be the need for
a fourth category between adolescents and adults. Maybe we could call
it something like moochers. Or we could call it non-launchers. Or we could call that group the
stagnants. I mean, who knows, right? But the idea is I suggest
to you that that's going to develop in our culture at some point.
Researchers point out to the maturing of adulthood is definitely
a bigger problem for young men than women. Many men today have
not given up the teenage addiction, for example, to video games.
They neglect their own duties to immerse themselves in a fantasy
world. Listen to this statistic. About
half of American males age 18 to 34 play video games and do
so for over two hours a day. These kind of statistics point
towards males having a lack of initiative in general to really
apply themselves and being responsible with their time. This drives
some ladies crazy and others mad. And speaking of the obvious
problem of immature males in our society, Jessica Gross writes,
quote, they're unemployed, they're romantically challenged, and
they're everywhere, close quote. So we have a real problem on
our hands. We have the idea of everybody buying into adolescence. Even if you buy into adolescence,
it doesn't solve the problem because young people still aren't
maturing into godly young adults. And I think that bothers me most
of all is your next sub point there, the inexcusable fact that
much of the church has bought in. Much of the church doesn't
look to the Bible to lead the way in culture and in training
kids, but rather we look to the culture and we treat people like
G. Stanley Hall and developmental
psychology books in universities as if they have the final say
on what it is we should be doing. So I'm not shocked that our culture
believes in adolescence, but I am shocked that so many in
the church completely buy into this concept without even thinking
about it biblically. I mean, I've spoken with one
children's ministry worker within the past year who told me that
children cannot comprehend the idea of eternity, so it shouldn't
even be taught to them until they're at least 13 years old.
So, you know, the idea here is that the church is buying into
a lot of psychological thinking and we should be leading the
way in raising children to be young adults that fear and honor
God. And so what is the church doing
to intervene during this time of crisis? Does the Bible give
us answers or should we be more focused on what experts say? Well, I don't claim to be an
expert in this area, but I did actually have the privilege of
reading at least 25 books on this topic as I was preparing
my own dissertation, which was on expository youth ministry. And I did that because I was
working as a youth pastor, had the opportunity to get a doctorate,
and I wanted to write a work that would address part of this
problem as it pertains to a youth pastor and working in youth ministry. And what I did as I was trying
to read all the stuff that's out there on adolescents or teenagers
or youth ministry, even books on parenting, obviously, that
address this whole age group, is I kind of boiled down all
the research I did that most churches present their youth
ministry or their idea of reaching out to adolescents, and I think
you could categorize them in at least three different major
ways. The first one would be the program-driven youth ministry,
And the idea is that in order to keep these adolescents' attention,
you need to have great programs. And you need to do all kind of
stuff with youth, because if you don't, they'll get bored
and they won't come back to youth group. And so those kind of youth
ministries will be focused on what's the latest, greatest video
we could show, or thing we could give away, or gross thing we
could do. Whatever it takes, we gotta pack
the house with kids, and so we're gonna do whatever it takes. That
would be more of a program-driven youth ministry. A second kind
of youth ministry would be more of a relational youth ministry. And so the relational youth ministry
would be more about kids really like authenticity. They appreciate
you being open and honest. And so really the way to keep
them, as we've already heard a little bit earlier in the message
tonight, the way to keep them is to build relationships. And
if you have good relational bonding with students, then they'll stay.
The third category of emphasis on this would simply be families. It's all due to the family. And
within the category of family, you have anything from, you know,
a reasonable family involvement, which is obviously needed and
helpful and the way God designed it. But then it goes all the
way to the spectrum of what's called family integrated churches
that don't acknowledge any youth ministry whatsoever. And so they
would say, in some family integrated churches, they would say that
any age-graded teaching time at church is just simply unbiblical. And so they would say no nursery,
that there shouldn't be any Sunday school for children, there certainly
shouldn't be a youth group because if anybody but the parent is
interacting with your child other than a family context, that they
may tweak your kid for evil. And so the idea is to keep young
people away from each other only if it's in the family context.
Well, I'd like to suggest to you a fourth option, and it was
just simply what I called and expository youth ministry, which
doesn't really bank on programs or relationships or family, but
banks its whole emphasis on the word of God. The idea that you
teach the Bible to young people, you encourage certain programs,
you wanna have programs in youth group, that's a great thing to
do. You wanna have games and things to do. I think programs
can be very helpful. You wanna have relationships
and discipleships and be open and honest. Of course we want
family involved in different youth type settings that the
family would come and participate. Maybe not every family does,
but certainly those families who choose to come, we love that.
But the most important thing would be teaching the Word of
God what the Bible has to say about growing and loving Christ
that young people can fully grasp and understand. I mean, is the
Bible sufficient to change people and cultures and countries, or
should we just give up? There are no easy solutions to
solving all the problems that we see in teenagers today. But
one thing is for sure, God still sits on His throne, and His sovereignty
rules over the universe. He is in control of all things,
and He will work in and through His church to accomplish his
will for his glory. The gates of hell will not prevail. And God has made an everlasting
covenant with his adopted children and his kingdom will know no
end. And so really in the work I did,
I just tried to say, hey, look, what we should be doing is teaching
the Bible and living it out. And so that may be one way to
tackle this idea. And maybe that transitions us
into our next major heading here, number two, examples of teenagers
who acted like young adults. And before we dive into this,
you're already there in 1 John chapter 2, let me just say the
Bible doesn't really address this problem. The Bible nowhere
clearly addresses the idea of adolescence, but rather when
you search through Scripture, you see young men acting like
men. And young women acting like women,
giving us the idea that there's really two stages of human life,
childhood and adulthood. And to try to make my point,
I'll use 1 John 2, 12 through 14. Notice here, this is what
is being taught. John writes this, because your
sins are forgiven for his namesake. I am writing to you fathers because
you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you
young men because you have overcome the evil one. And so notice here
are three categories that are given, little children, verse
12, Fathers, verse 13, and then young men, also in verse 13. Now he's talking here about spiritual
maturity and not the physical growth of a human being. But
the idea is, I think, a good one. The idea in the scripture,
there are little children, there are young men, and then there
are fathers. Look again at the middle of 13,
towards the end of that verse. It says, I write to you children
because you know the father. I write to you fathers because
you know him who was from the beginning. I write to you young
men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you
and you have overcome the evil one. So again, he refers to three
different categories here of spiritual maturity, children,
young men, and fathers. And I would suggest to you that
that's really more of the biblical model of how to understand that
there are children, there are young men or young women, and
then there's full-blown adults. And so the Bible doesn't spend
a lot of time addressing that transition, it's just assumed
that you were a child and then you were a young man. And young
men and young women acted like adults. And so here's some examples
of young people that we could say were certainly walking in
the light of God. There's David who was fearless
against a giant. You guys are familiar with these,
but we can look at just a couple of these. First Samuel and chapter
17 addresses kind of this fearless take of David as he goes to fight
Goliath. And notice how he acts here while
we understand him to be a young man there. He had great courage
and incredible instincts to just follow God and to be fearless
in his attack. And so in 1 Samuel chapter 17
starting in verse 19, we read this. Now Saul and all of the men of
Israel were there in the valley of Elah fighting with the Philistines. And David rose early in the morning
and left the sheep with a keeper and took the provisions and went
as Jesse had commanded him. And he came to the encampments
as the host was going out to the battle line shouting the
war cry. and Israel and the Philistines
drew up for battle, army against army. And David left the things
in charge of the keeper of the baggage and ran to the ranks
and went and greeted his brothers. And as he talked with them, the
champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came out of
the ranks of the Philistines and spoke the same words as before,
and David heard him. All the men of Israel, when they
saw the man, fled from him and were much afraid. And the men
of Israel said, Have you seen this man who has come up? Surely
he has come up to defy Israel. And the king will enrich the
man who kills him with great riches and will give him his
daughter and make his father's house free in Israel. And David
said to the men who stood by them, What shall be done for
the man who kills the Philistine and takes away their reproach
from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine that
he should defy the armies of the living God? And the people
answered him in the same way, so it shall be done for the man
who kills him. Now Eliab, his oldest brother,
heard when he spoke to them, and Eliab's anger was kindled
against David. And he said, Why have you come
down? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the
evil of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle.
And David said, What have I done now? Was it not but a word? And
he turned away from him toward another and spoke in the same
way. And the people answered him, as it was before. And skip
down to verse 40. They had heard about David. They
had taken him to Saul. Saul tried to dress him in his
armor. But then in verse 40, we read this. He took off his
staff, so he decided not to wear the armor that Saul had given
him as he prepares to go to battle. So he took off his staff in his
hand and chose five smooth stones from the brook and put them in
his shepherd's pouch. His sling was in hand, and he
approached the Philistine. And the Philistine moved forward
and came near to David with his shield bearer in front of him.
And when the Philistine took and looked and saw David, he
disdained him for he was but a youth, ruddy and handsome in
appearance. And the Philistine said to David,
am I a dog that you come at me with sticks? And the Philistine
cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David,
come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air
and the beast of the field. Then David said to the Philistines,
you come against me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a
javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts,
the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day
the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you
down, and cut off your head, and I will give the dead bodies
of the host of Philistines this day to the birds of the air,
and to the wild beast of the earth, that all the earth may
know that there is a God in Israel. and that all this assembly may
know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear, for the
battle is the Lord's and he will give it into your hand. When
the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David,
David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine.
And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and
slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank
into his forehead and he fell on his face to the ground. Now,
let me ask you something. Does that sound like an adolescent?
Does that sound like a little teenage boy who's playing a lot
of video games? Or does that sound like a man?
I mean, the idea is that David, we think, was a young teenager
at this stage. God had already given him the
ability to overcome the lion and the bear. There was a supernatural
courage in David and an ability to go to the fighting line and
to do what grown men wouldn't do. I mean, there should have
been grown men who at least gave their life trying, but they wouldn't. David, this young man, this young
teenager, was fearless against this giant. So how about turning
to Daniel chapter 1? Let's look at Daniel, who was
courageous against a whole empire. I mean, if 1 Samuel talks about
David being courageous against a giant, Daniel was courageous
against the whole Babylonian empire. And so in Daniel chapter
1, We read in verses 8 and following that after they had been taken
in, that they were told that they would give the best of the
youth of the land certain foods to eat and drink. And Daniel
was supposed to abide by this. But in verse 8 we read, but Daniel
resolved that he would not defile himself. with the king's food
or with the wine that he drank, therefore he asked the chief
of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. And so God
gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of
the eunuchs, and the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, I
fear my lord the king who assigned your food for you to drink, for
why should he see that you are in worse condition than the youths
who are of your own age? So it would endanger my head
with the king. Then Daniel said to the steward
whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned him over Daniel,
Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, test your servants for ten days.
Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then
let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's
food be observed by you and deal with your servants according
to what you see. So he listened to them in this matter, tested
them for ten days, and at the end of ten days it was seen that
they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all
the youths who ate the king's food. So the steward took away
their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables."
And so here again we see the whole idea of Daniel stepping
up to the emperor. through some of these servants
asking politely but asking nevertheless for the ability to eat of the
kind of food that would honor God instead of defiling himself
and eating things that weren't kosher. We see here Daniel was
courageous and as you look through the whole book of Daniel we see
that God blessed him for his courage and he was a much respected
and revered counselor to the king. Then later in Daniel 3
we read obviously about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who were
gonna stand before the fiery furnace and so as they played
all of the instruments they were supposed to bow down and worship
the king but they would not and so there in verse 16 Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego answered the king and said, O Nebuchadnezzar,
we have no need to answer you in this matter. If it be so,
our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning
fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king.
But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve
your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. What
happened to them? They were thrown into the fiery
furnace. Here these young three teenagers
stood up again to King Nebuchadnezzar, the world's superpower, and defied
the fact that they would for a moment bow down in worship.
They were going to leave their livelihood up to God and God
spared their lives. Well how about the New Testament?
Mary certainly showed great maturity at a young age. We believe Mary
to have also been a young teenager who in the Gospel of Luke we
read the account of Gabriel coming to her to announce to her the
role that she was supposed to play in the redemption of humankind
and in Luke chapter 1 Starting in verse 26, we read, But she was greatly troubled
at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might
be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you
have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive
in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be
called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord will give to him
the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house
of Jacob forever and ever. And of his kingdom there will
be no end. And Mary said to the angel, how will this be since
I am a virgin? And the angel answered her, the
Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High
will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born
will be called Holy, the Son of God. And behold, your relative
Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son. And this
is the sixth month with her who is called barren, for nothing
will be impossible with God. And Mary said, behold, I am the
servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to
your word. And the angel departed from her. And so here we have
obviously this young woman, Mary, acting as not a child or a teenager,
but rather as a young woman. And then we could say Jesus taught
at the temple at age 12. We won't turn to that text, but
you understand the idea of Jesus at age 12, which is in the Hebrew
mindset, the moving of the bar mitzvah from childhood to adulthood,
where he's teaching grown men and rabbis the things of God's
word. And so when we look to the Bible,
what I'm just simply trying to get you to see in just a little
overview there, are we see young teenagers acting as godly men
and women who are living outrageously for Christ, who are living outrageously
in their life, not giving in to immaturity, but rather serving
as an example for us all. And so that moves us to number
three. What are some expectations we should have of our young people?
Well, let me just say this. We should expect them to do everything
we should expect any Christian to do. So all of these five things
that I've just listed for you here is that number one, we should
expect them to have a love for Christ out of a pure devotion
that would impact all of their behavior. And so the idea is
that we would expect them, that text there lists the greatest
commandment. We expect young people to love God with all their
heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love their neighbor as
their self. There are no qualifications. of the imperatives of the New
Testament of which imperatives are to be followed by adults
and which one are to be followed by people who are younger. And
so our expectation to simply be whatever the Bible says in
the New Testament under the law of Christ in the New Covenant
is to be understood that teenagers, yea, and even young children
would follow. So we understand that there's
a process of growth and maturing, and it can be very challenging
sometimes to tell if children are saved, but I think it becomes
a lot more clear in the teenage years whether someone's walking
in the light of Christ or not. And so we expect those who are
saved, teenagers, young people, young men and young women who
are saved, to have a love for Christ. It ought to be evident
in all of their life and in all of their devotion by how they
love God and love others. What else should we expect from
them? Well, we should expect them be to obey their parents
both externally in their actions and internally in their attitude.
So for those young men and young women who are still children
in the sense of they're still at home under their mom and dad's
supervision and under their authority, Ephesians 6.1, children obey
your parents and the Lord for this is right. There's an emphasis
there on the external action and in verse two emphasizes more
of the internal attitude, honor your father and mother. This
is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well
with you and that you may live long in the land. And so the
expectation we should have from teenagers, even from young children,
but certainly teenagers, is that if they claim Christ, then they
would obey Christ by obeying their parents both externally
and with their attitude. What else should we expect of
our teenagers? We should expect them to submit
to the elders of the church by becoming members who were baptized
and share in the Lord's Supper. 1 Peter 5 talks again about how
the church should submit to the elders and that young men should
submit to the older men. Verse 5 of that says, 1 Peter
5, 5, likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders, clothe
yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another,
for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. And
so the idea is that what we should be seeing in the hearts of young
people is a deep respect and desire to follow God, to follow
their parents, and then to follow the leaders of their church.
That they wouldn't show disregard and disrespect for leaders in
the church, certainly not showing that kind of attitude amongst
pastors and elders, but rather having a heart, along with all
the adults in the church, to submit to that spiritual office
of leadership. What else should we expect from
young people? Well, D says to realize that they will also be
held accountable by church discipline and restoration. So we spent
some time, a whole message on Sunday morning, about a month
ago, talking about church discipline. And what I'm saying is that we
should consider the idea of church discipline even for teenagers. Now, let me disqualify that.
In the message I preached on it, I'm not saying that every
13-year-old or 15-year-old who sneaks out of the house one time
immediately needs to be disciplined in front of the church. But I
am saying for that teenager that kicks his heels in, digs his
heels in, and defends his ongoing unrepentant rebellion as a young
man or a young woman ought to consider going through the process
of church discipline to some degree. When we were at Lakeside
Bible Church, we ended up disciplining a 17-year-old because of this
young man's desire to pursue his sin head-on. He was known
in the church. He walked away from the church.
We felt like we needed to address it in the church. He denied Christ
by his actions and his his lifestyle, and so we pursued a time of church
discipline in this young man's life. And so the idea is that
we need to make sure that we are holding these young people
accountable to a full-fledged adult in the way that we relate
to them. Or here's E, to plug in and serve
in church ministry, outreach, and missions. And there's the
passage on the Great Commission. So who's the Great Commission
for? Older, mature adults, right? That's who it's for. Yeah, you
gotta be a certain age before you can do the Great Commission,
right? I mean, the idea is that, hey, if you love Christ, we ought
to be teaching the world about Christ by going and making disciples
and teaching them to be baptized, right, in the name of the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We ought to be holding young
teenagers up to being great witnesses for Christ in their school and
in their ball teams and in their music, you know, teams. What do you call it? A choir,
right? And whatever they do, right? The whole idea is that
they ought to be doing things that would be able to share the
glory of God and evangelizing the lost. I mean, we ought to
have high expectations for our young people the same way that
we have for any professing believer. So here's a couple of take-home
principles to think about. Number one, treat your teenagers
as young adults, okay? So in one sense, we have the
idea of like, I'm all for children being children. But I'm just
telling you, the culture we're trying to develop at our church
is the idea of age 12 to 13, especially 13, when you're in
the seventh grade, we want them to start seeing themselves as
young men, young women who help out and who are really being
treated as young adults. We're not going to excuse them
into being like, well, there's just the children, there's the
adolescents, there are the teenagers, so they don't really know how
to act or behave. We're just going to give them a pass because
they're a teenager. Now, we want them to grow up,
right? So we want to start treating
them. Sure, that doesn't mean you can't have fun. It doesn't
mean you can't go to Disneyland. It doesn't mean you can't go
to a ballgame. It certainly doesn't mean you can ever play a video
game. I'm just talking about, is that what's dominating you?
Or is that just part of the fun that you have as a family? Or
young people certainly could have a little bit of fun in that
way, but there's a difference between being engrossed in entertainment
and thinking of themselves as a young man and a young woman.
And I think it is time as a church that we start treating them as
such. Which means for you, some of you dads need to leave this
message tonight and maybe sit your son down and say, hey, you
know what? I've been reminded of some principles in the scripture
tonight. And I just want to remind you, you're a young man, you're
a young woman. Here's what your mom and I expect
of you. We love you. We care for you. I was just talking
to a dad earlier today who hit it right on the head. He said
with his kids, he asked them, do you want to be treated like
a boy or like a young man? And when they were in this teenage
years, what do you think? How do you think they responded?
They want to be treated as a young man, right? So to which he replied,
then I have expectations of you to be responsible as any godly
young man should be. And so I think that we as a church
need to treat our teenagers as young adults. Secondly, you need
to tell your teenagers about the law of God and the love of
God. And so they need to understand
there's an accountability to them. There's great love that
God has for sinners. And there's great love that a
teenager should feel from God, just like all of us as Christians
should feel and sense from God. But the idea is that we need
to balance that message of the love of God with the law of God.
Here's what God's word says you can and can't do. And oh, by
the way, the motivation to obey the law should be God. The law
doesn't justify you. It's faith in Christ. But the
law is still good and it needs to be followed. And if you love
me, then you'll follow me, Jesus said, right? The whole idea is
that you'll obey my commandments. And so there's New Testament
law that needs to be followed. So tell your teenagers about
it. Tell them this is what God expects of you. Tell them this
is what God expects of me to do to you if you don't respond. So if you're not responding,
if you're not growing, God calls me to discipline you. Because
I'm supposed to train you in the teaching and in the admonition
of the Lord. Last, we see here, take as much
time as you need to get this through to them. My biggest fear
is that sometimes as parents, we have this idea like, well,
I'll have a good talk with little Johnny or little Sally. You know,
we had a good talk, good talk, and it's all done. Now, this
is a lifestyle. We're talking about a lifestyle
of living with them every day, teaching them how to be in God's
Word, to love God, to live for God. It's modeled by you, and
I say take as much time as you need. Can you think of anything
more important to do than to spend time discipling your own
children as you watch them develop, Lord willing, by His grace from
being a young child to being a young man, from being a young
girl, to a young woman who would walk uprightly before the Lord.
Now, we understand it's all God's grace. Not even the perfect parent
can save their kid, all right? So don't hear me say tonight,
it's your responsibility to see them come to Christ. It's not.
It's your responsibility to teach them about Christ. and to point
them to Christ. God will save those that he wills
for his own glory, but we have a responsibility to still take
as much time as is needed to get through to them. And so I
really believe tonight, as you've seen, that the whole idea of
adolescence is a myth. Basically, you have children,
you have young adults, and the idea is that we want to to train
our young people, age 12, 13, to start thinking of themselves
as young adults who follow Christ. Let's pray together. Father,
thank you for the opportunity to look into some important text
tonight that just kind of remind us of so many truths that the
Bible is for all of us, for all age brackets, from young children
to young adults to full grown adults. We all have a responsibility
to look at the word of God and to follow what we read in it. And God, I pray that it would
always be out of a motive of great love for God. that as you
love us and as you send your son, as you sent your son to
die for us, that we would respond to that with a great love for
you. And I pray that you would help us as a church to have a
good balance of playing and hanging out and spending fun time with
our family, and at the same time teaching them about what it means
to be a young man and a young woman and raising the bar a little
bit, certainly higher than our culture, on how to live for Christ. And so I pray, God, that you
would help us as a church, help us as moms and dads, help us
as grandparents, help us as aunts and uncles, help even our college
students to consider these truths so that we might think about
family development, a child's development, and the way you
think of them. And so God, I pray that you would
help us to gain much in thinking this through and living it out
for your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.