Young people struggle with the same dangerous pitfalls in every generation. They’re typically full of zeal but lack wisdom and consistency. They view the advice of their elders as backwards and prefer the opinions of their peers. Though technology and cultures change, these same errors ensnare the young, over and over again. 

In this podcast, Scott Brown and Jason Dohm call out the key traps so common to youth and urge them to follow the path of true wisdom. Their counsel is to the point: Understand the devastation of sin and don’t dally with it. Kill envy between brothers and sisters. Be careful who your friends are. Don’t hand influence to worldly peers or pop stars. Listen to the counsel of wiser older people, instead. Drawing insights from such authors as Matthew Henry and Charles Spurgeon (as collected in the book, The Theology of the Family), Scott and Jason seek to fortify the young by pointing them to the sure path found in God’s Word. 

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. And Jason Dome and I are here to talk about thoughts for young people. Here's the deal. God gives old people to young people so that they're thinking rightly. And we're gonna go back hundreds of years and mine advice for young people from those wonderful writers of old.

Jason, we're here to talk about thoughts for young people. A lot of these have to do with kind of like almost early warning or maybe late warning. Our comments are directed to both young men and young women. We're going to derive a lot of our talking points out of this book, Theology of the Family. This book, this thick book with short articles in it, has an entire chapter on thoughts for young people.

We try to cover the whole range of subjects for family life, but addressing young people specifically during their time in life is really critical. And one of the things that's really clear in Scripture is that God gives a very comprehensive plan or program to fortify young people. For one thing, He gives them a conscience. He gives them his word. He gives them parents.

He gives them pastors. He gives them church members. So there are so many things that God gives young people to steady them, to help them to succeed in the things that are really good. So we want to walk through some of this stuff here. One of the things that strikes me is that, you know, technology has changed, culture has changed, but guess what hasn't changed?

Young people haven't changed. Right. And the things they struggle with, the pitfalls to be avoided, haven't changed. Just an observation about the source. We're going to use the theology of the family.

I don't think there's a living author in there. If there is, there are not very many. These are the counselors to young people over hundreds of years. And any of this stuff could have been written yesterday. It's all completely applicable because the more things change, the more they stay the same in some ways.

Yeah. There's not a single 20th or 21st century writer in this section on thoughts for young people. It's all the old guys. So, and that's probably where you should go. Go to the old guys.

So we just want to pound through some of the headings and categories and talk through. Archibald Alexander, in his deposit in this whole chapter, he talks about a problem. And it's a common problem, and Every generation struggles with it. And it's the problem of not a wanting to listen to the advice of old people and thinking it's backward. Yeah, I think we all have a strong impulse that human history started on the day of our birth and that's never been right and never will be right.

Hey, the people who were born long before the day of your birth have experienced many of the same things that you have and are on the far side of it and can kind of look back on it in ways that you can't when you're in the middle of it. In conversations with other dads in our church, we tend to call it young man's disease, you know, just this sense that, oh, I know everything. You don't really have anything to add. Well, not so fast. I know I used to be a young man, and I know I used to think just like that, but now I can see that is just not so.

Yeah, it's funny. And, you know, young people, hey, I always liked this. You want to correct all the problems in the church that, you know, from the previous generation and stuff like that. It comes in a lot of different forms. He talks about zeal a little bit, and he talks about excessive zeal and he says zeal blazes out.

And, but he's saying young people should focus on consistency. You know, you can appeal to young people by helping them to get fired up and passionate, you know, and it's a huge mistake because young people don't need that. But they can relate. They want that. They want something more than what they have.

And they can tend to diminish the importance of just slow, plodding consistency in the things that are good and the value of that. Yeah. Paul applaud Zeal, just not Zeal without knowledge. And so a lot of times Zeal isn't married with an actual understanding. And part of that is an understanding that nobody's sprinting until the end, meaning you're not going to start at 15, 17, 18, 22 years old and sprint until the end of your life.

You're not going to be able to hold that pace. So sprinting's good, sprinting's necessary sometimes, but if you have a mindset where you're gonna be able to have a full-on intensity till the end of your life in any category, then you're sort of setting yourself up to be disillusioned. And that's certainly true in the spiritual sphere. It might sound like I'm commending half measure in spiritual matters, but you have to understand that there are going to be ebbs and flows in these things. And what that does is it prepares you to not fall off a cliff when there's an ebb when you were hoping for a flow.

Yeah. And you can actually gather crowds of young people by promising that you can jack up their passion. But it's usually not their passion that they need. They need a walk with the Lord. It's a walk.

So he, he also talks about the governing your tongue in that section and various temptations. You know, and it made me reminded, and he talks about, you know, I'll just quote it all profaneness, obscenity, and falsehood, beware of equal speaking. But we have in every generation a coolness culture that wants to use profanity. Yes. I don't know what to add or anything.

Yeah. I mean, so some of the most popular podcasters, you know, they're just so cool in using profanity. And, hey, I guess, you know, my view is when somebody starts using profanity, it's a trajectory in a really wrong direction. And, you know, using curse words and things like that. But he's warning about this a long time ago.

Mm-hmm. That starts your ball to Alexander. Then J.C. Ryle... We're using J.C.

Ryle, Jason, to lure you in because we know you love J.C. Ryle. Yeah. Do you worship J.C. Ryle?

I do not. You don't worship him? I am, but I would say I am a disciple of his theology, that's for sure. Okay, That's good. That's a good thing.

He talks about understanding the devastation that sin is. And he says, you do not see its true colors. So he's telling young people, you know, you don't understand how harmful sin is. And so he takes time to talk about how harmful sin is. He says it defiles thoughts, words, actions.

He says, look at how awful sin is. You know, one of the advantages of age, if you can call it an advantage, and in a sense it is, is that you have had more opportunity to see the destruction that sin will bring into life. Youth who haven't seen that can think lightly of sin and can think that it's okay to play with sin. But The more you've seen sin bring destruction into other people's lives, the less likely you are to think that it's something that can be managed and played with without tremendous consequences in your own life. Yeah, and He really wants to make a big point.

He wants to say God's ways are wonderful and the devil is stinkin' lousy. And he says that in a lot of different ways. And talking about pain and disease and death and strife and divisions and murder and jealousies and all these things. I mean, you can add depression and anxiety. These are all matters of sin.

By the way, relatedly, if you're listening to the podcast or watching the podcast, a free resource that you can get your hands on is a work by J.C. Ryle. It's not a long work, but it's Thoughts for Young Men. So it's obviously pointed directly, not at all youth, but at young men. And it just gives a very practical advice like a lot of what he's written.

It's timeless when you read it. When a young man reads it he thinks this was written last week. You know I appreciated what he said about sin because I think in my early years it really occurred to me I didn't want to live that way. I didn't want to live like, you know, a lot of my peers in high school who were tearing their lives apart. But I recognized that sin was bad, actually.

And I wanted to turn away from it. So he also talks about your soul in this chapter. He talks about feeding your soul. He says, nothing is more important than your soul. Your soul.

If you're familiar with his books, if you read any of his books, it really doesn't matter which one, at the end of every chapter is an appeal to consider your soul that it's immortal and that time is passing and that you should settle matters between yourself and God. Every book, every chapter in every book ends with that appeal. That invisible part of you that's fed either by the world or by God. He says this, I love this statement, your soul is the one thing worth living for. You know, we want to live for the outside world.

He's saying, no, live for the inside world of your soul. And then he says, say this, I live for my soul. He's gonna make you say it. Yeah, he made me say it. And of course, the Bible is the guide to the soul.

And of course, he talks about that. But I love that language, I live for my soul. Not for my reputation, not for anything else, I live for my soul. I thought that was very profound. He talks about friends, And he says, be careful, what kind of friends you have.

He says, we are creatures of imitation, and friends influence our tastes and our opinions. I'm just quoting what he says. They influence our tastes and our opinions. When we see something, we're exposed to something, we tend to gravitate toward it. That's the way we're built.

Scott, the two churches that we serve did our father-son and father-daughter retreats together this year, some years we do them separately, some years we do them together this year, we did it together. We were urging our sons and our daughters to be careful about who they're handing influence to. So we're definitely have been instructed by J.C. Ryle and other people who warned to be careful about who your friends are because really the friends that you choose and the hours that you give to them is equivalent to handling them, handing them influence. I love that language.

Who are you handing influence? And you talked about that at that retreat quite a bit. And what you said is you don't wanna hand influence to unbelievers. In music, you don't want unbelieving artists, filmmakers to influence you. That's what you said.

Yeah, The reason I think that's such a helpful phrase is it's one thing to say there are all these influences out there. That's true. It's another thing to say you're handing them the influence. It's really easy to get cross-eyed at the influences that are out there, but just recognize you handed them the influence. Yeah.

When you click on something, you just handed influence. When you open your computer, when you look at your phone, you're handing an external presence, influence. Yeah. And that cuts both ways. There are people that you ought to hand influence to, give them influence in your life because they're actually going to help you walk with the Lord.

There are some really great guys in that phone. I've seen them. I listen to them all the time. Yeah, and actual real humans also. Yeah.

Wow. So yeah, that was J.C. Ryle. Let's turn to John Angel James. He had a section in there.

By the way, these are short sections, you know, all throughout theology of the family. It's just short articles. That's one thing I love about the book. It's not a big, long read. You can go in and hit a category, you know, in short order.

So John Angel James, I thought that was funny, but he started out with education. He's throwing shade on education. Yeah, he says that our modern, and of course, he's writing, you know, over 100 years ago, and he says that our modern education system, okay, creates independent thinkers that undermine Christ and his authority. So he's actually warning against an education system that undermines Christ's authority. And then he talks about that a lot, but I just thought it was so interesting.

He started out with education, but then he turned to things like your reading, the things that you read. He says this, light trifling and polluting novels, inflammatory novels, stimulating romances, lewd poetry, immoral songs, satires, fiction. He says the authors pander to your every corruption. And he calls what you read a school. He calls it a bottomless pit.

He refers to the theater as polluted precincts, like he's totally waging war against an ungodly education and entertainment system. And then we're back to talking about handing influence. And the principle is garbage in, garbage out. You can't have a steady stream of garbage going in and think that that is not going to work its way out. And the way you think, the way you talk, the things that you choose to do with your time, garbage in is going to lead to garbage out.

Yeah. Hey, Matthew Henry in the next section, he nails that. He used some really interesting language. I really liked this because he's talking about living soberly. His whole article is about living soberly, but he made this statement that really, really knocked me.

He said, it's not what does come into your mind, but what should come into your mind. Don't follow what does come in, follow what should come in to your mind. So he's talking about the command of the mind. Yeah. Classic Matthew Henry.

Yeah. Classic man. And then he, and then he quotes Proverbs 27, 11, you know, wisdom is the principle thing. Get wisdom with all you're getting, get understanding, you know, and, it's, here's the deal. You know, go, you have to go get it.

If you want wisdom, You have to go get it. If you want wisdom, you have to go get it. Like, gold doesn't strike you. You strike gold. You have to go after it and put the things in your mind that should come into your mind, not just what could come into your mind.

You know another area he talks about is brothers and sisters. You know he's talking to young people that have brothers and sisters. He says, you know, promote each other's happiness. Kill envy in brothers and sisters. You know, don't tease and torment one another.

You know, how do you become a wonderful brother or sister? He says your family life should be uninterrupted harmony. Mm-hmm. I think parents with multiple children, you got four, five, six, seven, eight children, then you have a bunch of different ages among the siblings, and you've probably seen both sides of this. One, where you have sibling rivalry, and it's leading to conflict all the time, it's really bad influence on each other.

But then you've probably seen the other side of the coin too, where they can be such a source of encouragement to each other too. So what Matthew Henry is saying is, go be a source of blessing and encouragement to each other. If you have children who are mistreating one another, you have an obligation to stand in the way of that, and you cannot let that go on. You can help them love one another, but you have to step in. And I see parents letting that go on.

They say, well, that's just normal. It'll work itself out. I don't believe that. You don't... It is normal and that's not the point.

That's exactly right. Parents exist to stand in the way of things that aren't right. Yeah, you don't want one of your children, when they're 30 years old, to look back and say, yeah, I hate my brother. He was always so mean to me. You don't want that legacy in your family.

But you have to go after it early. And sometimes, like when they're three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years old. But if you don't deal with it then, it's going to escalate. You want somehow to bring your children up so that the siblings are their best friends in adulthood. That's a blessing.

Okay, so we're going to end up with Charles Spurgeon. You can imagine what Spurgeon's going to say. And then the apostle Paul. I'm ending up with the apostle Paul. You are.

Okay. Yeah. You give him Spurgeon, I'll give him Paul. Spurgeon, in his article, says that young people have great ingenuity for making excuses for rejecting the love of God and the call of the gospel. And he says, you know, young people think they have a lot of time, you know, just, I just like to enjoy the, you know, everything.

He says, he says, they don't know, they don't know, but God knows the frivolity of your plea for delay. And so he's really calling to believe in the gospel and follow Jesus Christ. And don't wait, don't think you're going to get to a place where now you've experienced all the joys of sin. That's ridiculous. Go for God now.

Don't delay. That's his whole article. Couldn't have weaved this together any better. I'm gonna end by quoting 1 Corinthians 7, 32-35. Paul writes, But I want you to be without care.

He who is unmarried cares for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But he who is married cares about the things of the world, how he may please his wife. There is a difference between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares about the things of the Lord that she may be holy both in body and in spirit, but she who is married cares about the things of this world, how she may please her husband. And this I say to your own prophet, not that I may put a leash on you, but for what is proper, and that you may serve the Lord without distraction." Now, it might sound like Paul is running down marriage, that's not what he's doing here at all.

He's acknowledging that your pre-married years are unusual and present you with the opportunity and the privilege to serve the Lord without distraction in a way that you may never have again in your whole lifetime. So Paul is saying exactly what Spurgeon said in what you quoted, young people, go for it. Thoughts for young people can often sound like, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. What we're really saying is, go for it. Don't go down all these tracks that really lead to nowhere.

The track of pursuing God and walking with Jesus Christ goes somewhere wonderful. Go for it. Spurgeon drives that home and he says, whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That's the appeal. That's the most important thing, isn't it, for young people.

Wow. Okay, so hey, thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast and we hope you can join us next time. I hope this resource was a blessing to you. It's our desire to equip a generation to walk in the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life. All this is made possible by those who support us.

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