OVERCOMING THE HANDICAP OF YOUTH

N. T. Meek

1 Timothy 4: 6–16; 1 Chronicles 11: 1–3; Job 32: 6; 33: 6

I would like to venture a word, dear brethren, as to overcoming, the handicap of youth. I am sure the older ones will bear with me, and in their spirits and prayers help me in speaking.

One specially has in mind the young men, but maybe the Lord will, in His own way, cause that some handfuls of purpose are dropped for us all. Perhaps we are not too aware when we are young that youth can be a handicap. When young you do not feel that way normally, unless it be when you come into the meeting. You may feel there that you are under a certain handicap because you do not know too much. I do not know that that in itself is a serious handicap, although, of course, you do want to find out as much as you can of what is yours.

We have often said that if someone named you in their will, and if the will ran to as many pages as the Bible does, it is unlikely that you would be content with what you found was yours on the first page; you would want to see what legacy was on the other pages of the will, not only for the possession of the legacy but also to understand something of the benefactor’s heart toward you.

The knowledge of the truth, and especially the knowledge of divine Persons, is valuable, but it will take time to acquire. The mere knowledge of things is not everything, although it is useful, but, rightly held, and held devotedly, it can become very useful. But the older brethren, as they look at the young, rightly, and according to

Scripture, do not quickly put their hands upon them, and that is understandable, because they have learned through experience that an apparent interest and a fair exterior may not denote too much. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that in their thoughts and mind and attitude they are sympathetic, and feeling for you and praying for you.

These epistles to Timothy are epistles which bring out, along also with Titus, in a peculiar way the service of the elders, and the importance of them too. Mr. Taylor said that there is a great dearth of elders; the platform is much more sought (see Vol. 76, p.240). Not many aspire to be an elder, to know and carry the histories of their local brethren, and to seek to guard them and preserve them. A very needed service is the service of an elder. As they look around upon us and consider us in their prayers, their daily prayers, especially in our localities, I have no doubt they get our measure. They realize that youth is a certain handicap.

One thing about youth is that you tend to be impatient, and that can be a handicap in the things of God. You tend to want to get a move on and get things settled, and if anything is blatantly wrong you get very cross that something is not done about it straight away, and you may speak out of turn; most of us have done that. There is a time to keep silence (Ecclesiastes 3: 7). I note that is put before a time to speak; “A time to keep silence, and a time to speak”. I expect the time to keep silence largely applies to our youth; it is not that you should not carry concern and exercise, but the fact that you are full of energy and vigour, and you want things put right, because you are very idealistic, can lead you to speak out of turn. We speak about being starry-eyed; we have all been like that, very idealistic, and if something goes on, maybe amongst your fellow-believers, which is not right, and which you judge is not right, you tend to be pretty forthright about it. Now it is right you should have a judgment, but you have to remember, we all have to remember, that, certainly in God’s assembly, we have to be under His control, and that is not an easy lesson to learn.

So Paul writing here to Timothy says, “Let no one despise thy youth”. Now what he really means by that is, you give occasion to no one to despise it. He means that if someone despises your youth and says to you, ‘You are only a young brother, you know’, that you do not take it in your own hands to defend yourself. What it means is that you do not give any occasion to him to despise your youth. You might say, Well, how can I be so that I give no occasion? I think this reference to piety, which stands at the threshold of these remarks of Paul, probably has something to do with it. Paul is speaking to Timothy to exercise himself unto piety; he is really saying, in our own words, You learn to bring God into everything you do. In a simple way that is what piety is; to bring God in. You decide you are going to do such and such a thing on such and such a day. Well, just speak to the Lord about it; learn to do it in simple things; learn not to move on your own; learn to arrange yourself and orientate your life under the Lord; learn to do that—“exercise thyself unto piety”. Paul says it is profitable for everything. It will help you in your work, for example. It is profitable for everything; that is a very wide order— everything. God will help you if you are looking for a partner; speak to God about it.

Then he goes on to say, “Enjoin and teach these things. Let no one despise thy youth, but be a model of the believers, in word, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity”. You say, A young man a model; I thought the old men were to be models?

It is a young man according to this scripture, and I will tell you a most remarkable thing that comes up, especially in the letter to Titus, and that is this, that it was given to a young man to establish elders (Titus 1: 5). That seems extraordinary that it was laid on Titus, a young man, to establish elders. He must have been a very trustworthy young man if Paul gave him that charge; it seems almost incongruous when you think of it, because here in 1 Timothy 4: 14

the elders are putting their hands on the young men, but in Titus the young man is actually establishing elders. I would like us to think about that, because it shows the possibility of a deep maturity being reached by a young man that could be entrusted with such a responsible service. Elder brethren should recognize this possibility.

Here in this chapter in Timothy we have, “Give thyself to reading”. When you read, stop sometimes to worship. You read a passage of Scripture and it affects you in your soul; just stop to worship. Do not of necessity fill your head with knowledge, even the knowledge of the Scriptures, valuable as they are, but distil into your reading that element of thanksgiving to God for giving you such a privilege, and that you are the beneficiary of such a magnificent will as we have disclosed to us in the Scriptures, as one had said, ‘our Father’s will’. How magnificent it is, and yet many of us, alas, are careless of it. A single promise of God is worth more than thousands of pounds, and you will find them in multitudes in the Scriptures.

Then Paul says a striking thing to Timothy, “Be not negligent of the gift that is in thee, which has been given to thee through prophecy”. Among the large number of young men here I think it is likely that there is potential gift. It may be that you have not thought about that. It says here that it has “been given to thee through prophecy”. The prophetic word evidently, in some way, pointed Timothy out; maybe at the meeting where he was someone got up and gave a word one night; I doubt if it was explicitly stated, but there was a pointing out to Timothy—“which has been given to thee through prophecy”. Some of the elders evidently caught that; they went home and they weighed it, and then they committed themselves to him. Notice that; it says, “with imposition of the hands of the elderhood”; they would not have done that quickly. What it really means is this, that in this young man they could see no handicap to his being used distinctively of God to help His people, and they put their hands on him. Now older brethren should keep their eye open and their ear open; we all should keep our senses exercised as to whether the Lord is pointing somebody out in our locality; unjealous and impartial these men would be. We do not get epistles to any of these elders that we know of, but we do get two epistles to this young man, and somewhere, sometime, along the line this young man by his behaviour and his deportment was overcoming the handicap of youth.

Mr. Taylor has a piece on ‘Youthful Maturity’ (Vol. 33, p.55), involving how a person can become mature even when comparatively young. I would say to you young men here, it is possible for you to overcome the handicap you are under. If maybe you think you have not got one, well, I am sorry for you about that because you have; we all have; we are all made of the same stuff. We know each other; if we know ourselves we know each other; we are all made of the same stuff, and we all learn from each other, and we are all indebted to each other. Paul said he was even indebted to barbarians; it may be he saw plainly in them the features that were latent in himself but which were covered over with a rather pleasant veneer. He saw the unpleasant features in the raw in barbarians, and he says he was a debtor to them. He saw it clearly; it may be a quick temper, or something or other; he saw it clearly; a cruel, unfeeling character; you find it in your own heart, dear brethren, cruelness; it is in our own hearts; you read of it in the newspaper; you read of dreadful things that happen; it is in our own hearts; we might as well acknowledge it. ‘Man, know thyself’, someone said. How true it is! But this young man, I think from what we know of him, overcame this handicap, and he became useful and serviceable—“Give heed to thyself and to the teaching”.

I pass on to David where we get another example of a young man, another one who too had secret history with God. He faced things when no one was watching him, when he was out in the wilderness with the sheep, when a lion came and a bear came. We know what this is; it has often been said. With most of us the main trouble is the bear, when we get an embrace, when the world, so to speak, takes us apparently into its favour; that is the bear, an embrace that ends in a hug of death. David met that; he had secret history, and I suppose it would be a good axiom for us all to understand that we should never seek to appear to be further on than we actually are in our souls. Well, here at last Israel and the elders come to recognize what was in this young man; but it had been very costly; he had been to the meeting once and an older brother had been pretty rough with him, had spoken harshly to him; it was his own brother too. He said, “Why art thou come down? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride and the naughtiness of thy heart; for thou art come down that thou mightest see the battle”, 1 Samuel 17: 28. I wonder what I would have said in reply, perhaps, ‘You speak for yourself, Eliab’, or some such retort.

It does not say that David answered like that; he overcame the handicap; I suppose he had found really that the bear and the lion were in himself before he met them in the wilderness; that is why he became serviceable. A lot of history passed; a lot of sorrow occurred; he was rejected, even Saul forgot his name. Saul was very casual, pretended he did not know him, but the people say here, Yes, we can see it now; even aforetime it was you, David, really who helped us. These brethren, the people, and the elders had come to recognize what was there, and it is inevitable, beloved, that sooner or later the brethren will get our true value. I would just like to encourage us. David is a lovely study, but think of all his sufferings; think of how he was rejected; think of how he had to live in a cave; how the court went on without him; the very people who owed their lives to him ignored him, but he just went on. It is a lovely feature, is it not?—and a lesson for us.

Well, now I just speak about this other young man, Elihu. He is a very interesting young man, in fact the whole book of Job is most interesting. There was a brother named Job who was a subject of God’s discipline and perhaps he never thought such trouble would happen to him, but a lot of trouble did happen to him, and three of his friends came to help him. We are reading this book locally and it is not too easy going, but some of it is very good; some of it is very choice; I have no doubt all of it is, only it is our measure that limits us.

One of these men who came to see Job was named Eliphaz the Temanite, and he thought the answer to everything was experience; he thought that he could say what the trouble was. He says, “Even as I have seen”, Job 4: 8. He makes a lot of remarks. It is very difficult to handle some situations; we are very tested, especially in these close-quarter

situations where it involves visiting and talking. He says, quite a lot; some of it is quite good and some of it is not, and that is a problem, and we do not have to look too far away to recognize that. Then a man called Bildad the Shuhite spoke, and he said that if you went by tradition you would find the answers; “the researches”, he says, “of their fathers” (Job 8: 8); he says you will find the answer somewhere in tradition. That is largely what Christendom has said; things are carried on just by tradition. Then there is another man named Zophar the Naamathite, and he is rather scientific. He Spoke of “the secret of wisdom” (Job 11: 6). He had a very logical mind; I would think he probably would have been good at computers had he lived in our day! He did not have the answer either; neither does a computer. A computer does not have the answer to an assembly sorrow or problem; you can program it however you like but you cannot allow for all the nuances of human character; you cannot do it.

They all spoke, and most of them spoke three times, and Job spoke as well. They were pretty straight; it is very interesting reading. Job said at one point, “Truly ye are the people and wisdom shall die with you”. It was pretty sarcastic was it not? Sometimes when we are in these situations we get into more and more trouble. It is a very real and difficult thing to handle.

I would like, beloved, to digress and make an observation. Look at some of our brethren, say those in Russia. They are suffering. They are enduring a form of suffering, physical suffering and deprivation, that is very real, and yet the result of that is going to find its way into the church; we understand that it is going to be displayed too, and it will be an element that will come out in a most remarkable way. So with the martyrs too. But it seems to me that the way we live together, beloved brethren, the way that the working of the body requires we are so close together, the way we seek to work out local exercises and relations, and the way we try to face problems together, also brings out a peculiar character of suffering and experience which, maybe, you will not find everywhere in Christendom. I do not think you will.

You see, you can go to a church and you can sit in your pew and you can come out without speaking to anybody, and as for what the troubles are and what they are going on with, you make it no concern of yours; you do not have assembly exercises; you do not know church sorrows, not in a personal way. But when you are in a local gathering, that is when you know them. You feel them; you are intended to feel them, and to go through them; but it is an element, I think, which is almost a unique possession. It is going to go into the fabric of the church. We are not faced with physical suffering so much, but we are faced with another kind of suffering. May the Lord preserve us in it, so that what goes through, what is produced in it, will really be to accredit the outshining of the glory. The wonderful church, the holy city, is going to come down and it is going to diffuse its matchless light throughout the whole universe. Do not let us shrink from the sufferings; they are real.

And something like this happened in the book of Job. He had visits and visits, and they talked and they talked, and how tiring it must have been! Evidently, although we are not told about it at the beginning, there was a young man there named Elihu, and how he contained himself I do not know; in fact he said he did not know himself, for he was almost fit to burst. But in due time he speaks, he overcame. Through that long book he overcame the handicap of youth. You understand me? I hope I am making myself clear—he overcame. I have no doubt the Lord helps us as to it too, helps us to go through these things, helps us to wait. Elihu said, “I said, Let days speak, and multitude of years teach wisdom” (Job 32: 7).

Generally they do. It is right to respect the elder brethren. This young man had a right outlook; but the others had not spoken rightly. It was an exceptional situation, I would think, that the others had not spoken rightly, but it is possible. But when Elihu opened his mouth it was pure gold. And if you read Elihu’s word you will see that God takes over from him; it is almost as if God found His own foothold, so to speak, in Elihu’s word, and, of course, that is absolutely matchless. Notice Elihu’s spirit; he says, “I am as thou”—“Behold, before God I am as thou; I also am formed out of the clay”. You see his sense of humility, his sense of nothingness, his sense that he was no better.

Well, may the Lord help us in these things, especially the young ones, that youth should not be a handicap to you; in your urgency to press on, your impatience at times, learn to speak to the Lord about it, I would say; learn to become pious as to it; learn to develop your own secret history with Him. It may be, you know, if the testimony is left here a little longer, it may be there is a word of prophecy as to you; may you be blessed. May we all be blessed, for His name’s sake.

Address at Bedford
30 March 1985