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What place does school aid's young people have in God's plans and purposes? Why is communication so difficult between youth and adults? This Sunday we look for answers, both from the wise words of King Solomon and from Jesus and the twelve disciples. Join me, Pastor Richard, as we explore the word this morning. Church, it's good to be together this morning. And we're going to begin by looking at these uh words from King Solomon to young people. After that, we're going to look a bit at Jesus and his disciples. And then finally, we look a little bit at the differences in generations with a goal that we can understand each other a bit more. Maybe we'll just uh begin with a very brief word of prayer. Can we do that? Precious Lord, would you ready our hearts, our ears, our minds for your word to us today? Lord, would you continue to grow us together into the family you intend us to be? Lord, speak to us now. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So King Solomon, he wrote Ecclesiastes in his old age. Could have been uh maybe in his last five or ten years of life. It was towards the end of his reign. And although we can't tell by looking at in English, this is poetic literature. All right, this is poetic literature. And Solomon, of course, he had a lot to reflect upon. He was King David's beloved son from Bathsheba, and he started off loving the Lord. We know from 1 Kings chapter 3, verse 3, it says, Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father, only he sacrificed and made offerings at the high places. So we start he started off loving the Lord, right? And we know that when the Lord appeared to him, Solomon asked for wisdom. And God was so pleased with this request. And so uh he was going to bless him as well with a promise of riches and honor, and we know that that blessing came to pass in his life. Solomon constructed the temple, and so uh he made alliances with all the nations around him as well, uh, through marriages to the different nations. And during that time, Israel was strong. Israel was very strong, Israel was united. Solomon, many will say, even till today, was the richest man in history. All right. And so now he's he's towards the end of his reign, and he's writing Ecclesiastes in this poetic form as a great king, and he's reflecting upon his life and sharing his wisdom through his writing in his final years. And so we're just uh we only have a few verses in Ecclesiastes, so we're just gonna go through those. So, chapter 11, verse 9 of Ecclesiastes, it says, Let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. In the plain English of today, right, Solomon was telling youth, hey, it's awesome to be young. Have a blast, enjoy, explore, uh, revel in everything. You know what? Go for it. Youth is wonderful. But then he goes on and he says, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Wait, Solomon, I didn't you just tell us to go at it wherever our heart leads? What are you saying now? Here's what Solomon is communicating. Enjoy your youth. Don't deny yourself the chance to experience life. But keep in mind that one day you're gonna give an account to God for everything you do. There are consequences to actions. And he goes on, we get to verse 10. Remove vexation from your heart and put away pain from your body. Uh I have a small gift here. Who can tell me what vexation means? Anyone? In your own words. Oh my. Oh my, all right. Was that a hand or was that just a movement there? Vexation, anyone? Anger, okay, thank you. Thank you. It can be anger, right? Uh anger out of something. It can be anxiety sometimes. Thank you so much. It can be uh even grief over something that happened, it can be many different things. Sorry, yes. Frustration, yes, yes, over something that's been done. All right, so here we are. Remove vexation from your heart. Solomon is telling you, youth, hey, don't worry so much. In this time, as a youth, don't worry so much. And please keep yourself healthy. All right. Remove vexation from your heart and put away pain from your body. This is not a time for worrying about all the many challenges in life. Just remove those worries. He goes on for youth and the dawn of life are vanity. Very contrasting back and forth, these few verses, right? And so he's telling you the earlier years, um, they're very fleeting. They're vanity. In the midst of it, you know, it may feel like you'll never be able to leave these years, even down to primary school. Uh I know even from my own children, they want the privileges, they want, they want to be able to do uh what the older ones do. They feel like, wow, this time in school is never going to end. And you get into secondary school and you're still, I have so many years ahead of me. In the moment it seems like that, but Solomon says, actually, when you look back, these years are very fleeting. They're very intense. A lot happens in the short span of time, but then you move on in life. It's like a brief thundershower. It just comes and it goes. And in chapter 12, verse 1, it says, Remember also your creator in the days of your youth. And so, young people, I want to urge you, don't put off knowing God and following God and being serious about your faith until later in life. Uh, those of you who I know uh a couple, my daughter and and Ruben and perhaps there's others, went for the national orienteering uh competition yesterday. And if any of you know, you've ever tried to follow a compass bearing, if you're just a little bit off, if you're close to the thing, it's not a big deal. No big deal at all. But the further away that is, you can end up very off course. Wonderful youth, don't don't put off knowing your creator until later in life. Please, please pursue him now. Don't let yourself go too far off course. So, just to summarize these first few verses that we've read today, King Solomon reflecting poetically on his life and everything he's learned. He's telling us this youth, enjoy life, explore, reach, but remember two things. Your choices have consequences, and remember your creator. Don't put him off till later. A few verses later, the entire book of Ecclesiastes ends with these words The end of the matter, all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment with every secret thing, whether good or evil. From the man who had it all, who experienced it all, from King Solomon, his conclusion is that life is meaningless if it's separated from fearing God and keeping his commandments. And there are many who have gone before us who at the end of their life, whether it's on a hospital bed or wherever, when you really uh are counting what what was important in life, they could tell you the same thing. I want to move on now to the second stage of today's message. And I especially want to speak to adults, to parents, to the uh elders in our congregation here this morning. We must see God, uh excuse me, we must see our youth as God sees our youth. You remember nothing else today? Please remember this. We must see our youth as God sees our youth. You know, in Romans chapter 12, verse 2, it says, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. We we need to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Why does it need renewing? It's been seared by sin, it's been lied to, and we don't have God's truth without that renewal. And church, we need to be rejecting the lies of the enemy. We need to reject lies that can be often found in media or society. We need our consciences restored by the power of the Holy Spirit, uh, that we can hate what God hates and love what he loves. And society often tells us, and you've probably heard this, that youth today that they're lazy, that they're fragile snowflakes. You've heard that term? Say, oh, the youth today, they're snowflakes. They can't stand up to anything. Little hardship, little adversity, they fall apart. Society sometimes says that, you know, that the youth, they're naive, they're unintelligent, they're selfish, they don't care for others, they lack self-control. Uh, church, let's not characterize our youth this way, because these are not true things. These are not true things. These are lies from the enemy, these are lies that are often repeated through media, uh, through society. Let's not believe these things. We must see the youth as God sees the youth. God cares for them, he loves them, he created them in his own image. He doesn't just see them as having potential to be great one day, to do amazing things one day. He sees them valuable today. Not just in the future, they're valuable today. They have something to contribute today, they have a part to play today. Uh, we consider for a moment Jesus and his disciples. Because I think this will perhaps help us in how we see our youth. So turn to your neighbor right now, and I want you to tell each other how old you think the twelve disciples were. Find a person next to you and just share how old, roughly, do you think the twelve disciples were. How old were they really, huh? We know that Jesus himself was about 30 years old. In Luke chapter 3, verse 23, it says, Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about 30 years of age. Now, here on the screen, yeah, we've got it. I have a traditional picture of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. Look closely, see what you notice about the artist's work. On the right hand side, you see Jesus washing feet. On the left hand side, there's a disciple who's tying up his sandals again. I think the ties went all the way up to the knee or something like that. You see, the artist put someone uh more in the back, leaning against a pillar, and I think probably this is the artist's imagining of Judas Iscariot. And you see, there's a dog right in the center of the scene, not something I'd expect to find there. And it's kind of calm, but also has a sad look on its face as it's looking to the master. Uh, most of the disciples have more hair here on their chin than they do here on their head, right? And most of that hair is gray. But you know, when God the Son came to earth, he didn't gather around him the elders to be his disciples. Do you know that? That wasn't what he did. We'll just look at the culture of the time. See, according to Jewish tradition, boys will have their bar mitzvah at age 13, and the girls will have the bat mitzvah at age 12. And it's at this age that they're understood to become obligated to fulfill the whole law. All right, this is when they're considered adults and accountable at this age. And so at that time, the religious training would probably begin at about age five and would continue until that bar or bat mitzvah. And if the boy was intelligent and he really showed that he was uh had an interest in continuing his religious studies, he'd then seek a rabbi to disciple him. The boy would learn to imitate his rabbi until he was almost 30 years of age. It's a long period of time. So he'd be learning, he'd be learning to imitate, and then at about 30 years of age, he'd be allowed to go off on his own to take his own disciples and to teach them what he had learned. And so, without any compelling reason to believe the disciples of Jesus didn't follow the pattern, without having any reason to believe things were otherwise, it's quite possible that the disciples were between roughly the ages of 13 to 15. I don't know if that shocks you. The first time I heard this, I was quite shocked because that has never been my this has probably been more the image I had in my mind all the time growing up. Peter was probably a bit older. Uh, he had a mother-in-law when he was following Jesus. Uh, but even at that time, 18 years of age was kind of considered acceptable for getting married. Earlier also was not so uncommon. The disciples, they were probably pretty young. Scripture doesn't tell us the age, but history and culture would tell us they they were quite young, quite possibly as young as our our youth here. These are the ones that Jesus entrusted the most important message, his teaching, his time. These are the ones that he invested into. God the Son didn't see youth as young people who had potential for the future only. Of course, he saw their potential, but he felt they were ones he could entrust to right then. Church, we need to see our youth as God sees our youth. All right, these are not uh something less than full believers or full brothers and sisters in Christ. God sees them as valuable. We need to see them the way that God sees them. And so I think it's important, uh, you know that we've heard several times in different ways about uh becoming an intergenerational church. And so I think we need to understand each other a bit better, right? Those of us who are older, uh, we need to make effort to understand our youth better. Youth, you need to make effort to understand uh some of the uncles and aunties in this church and the older ones. We need to do that. So, adults, I I just want to speak to you first, perhaps. You know, youth today, they both grow up too fast and too slow compared to previous generations. Uh, they grow up too fast, their life really doesn't have a lot of play in it. They move on very quickly from that. They're pushed quite hard academically, always stretching to go further and further. There's not much time to play when they're young, to meet up with friends, to go to the beach, to just go out for a ride bicycle, to get an ice cream. There's not a lot of time for most of them. Their school holidays mean you have school at home because you're prescribed enough homework to make sure that you don't have any idle days during that holiday. And so, in a sense, they they need to grow up a bit fast. They're expected to put away childish things very early. In other ways, they grow up slower uh than previous generations. You know, you can hear people easily into their 20s talking about adulting, right? Adulting is doing things that adults do, whether it be uh, I don't know, learning how to do your laundry or cooking or whatever. I know in my time to to be considered still a youth well into the 20s and up to 30 years old, it just couldn't even imagine it. So things are different. I'm not saying the previous generations are better or worse than our youth, this generation, but things things were really different, I would say. Uh raise your hand if you know what decision fatigue means. Decision fatigue. Few hands. Okay. Decision fatigue, uh, once I describe it, I think uh we'll all be on the same page, is something that begins to set in when a person reaches their mental limit for how many decisions they can make. All right. Um, you begin to get overwhelmed, you begin to feel anxiety. And in this state, when you're reaching decision fatigue, uh you start to make poor choices, you're unable to really think things through as well as you normally can, or sometimes you even you just kind of freeze up. I just I can't make a decision. Uh, you know, this is something I experience at times too. And when I feel overloaded by the amount of decisions I've been making, well, even a simple question, uh, maybe my wife texts me, hey, uh, you know, I'm gonna be packing back dinner tonight. What do you want? Well, I don't know. I I can't even think about uh a single decision more. And we've learned uh to in communicating with one another. Sometimes I just come home and I'll tell my wife, you know, I'm just overloaded. I'm gonna go hide in the bedroom for a while and read. Sorry, can you please just uh extend me grace for today? It's just been too much. But this is not just something that happens to us as adults. Our youth make far more decisions at a far Younger age than it was in our time. And some of them can be quite important decisions that are really going to have consequences or impact as things go on. It's not just it can be discussing the primary school or the secondary school that they want to go to together with their parents. Wow. How can you make an informed decision at that age and really weigh things? And yet often they're expected to. As you're going into school, then you have to choose your CCA. Have you ever tried badminton? Are you going to like to do it for three or four or six or eight more years? How can you know? And yet they have to make these decisions. So I just want to say adults know that the days of our youth are filled with many, many decisions, and it's not easy for them to make them all. It's asking a lot of them. Sometimes it's asking too much of them, the amount of decisions that they have to make. Our youth are different from us in that uh they enjoy collaboration quite a bit. Generally, our youth really appreciate doing things together. When I grew up, the value was being more stoic. Whatever comes, I'll do with it. I don't have to ask for help. Pull up your boots a bit tighter, get marching, face this thing, and make your way through it. That was what we valued. Uh more independence. All right. You're considered weak if you have to ask others for help. Uh, you know what? You just have to face this. Man up and face it. This is not the case for our youth. They have different values, all right? They value coming to a consensus on things, doing things together, collaborating. And so uh, you know, to desire a social life during the days of youth isn't different from this generation, but the values that are within that are a lot stronger. So please, let's let's try to understand our youth. Sometimes we want them to be in the same mold that we're in, but you know, they have different values. They're not bad values, they're just different. And so let's try to continue to understand them. This week I asked some of the youth that they'd share what challenges they face in their own words. Um, first I asked them maybe uh just send me a voice recording. Uh I learned very quickly, okay, maybe that's a bit too personal. They don't want to share all these things in front of everyone. Uh, so I learn. So instead, uh just share with you, summarize a few of the things that they did mention. School demands, dealing with change, and belonging. Uh, the workload for school is very demanding for them. There is a lot of schoolwork for them, and there's school activities as well, and a lot of time management is needed to try and satisfy everyone, and sometimes there just isn't enough time, and it's very stressful for them. All right, this is this is coming from our youth. Adults, let's understand that maybe they don't face the same challenges that we did, but they they do have challenges. Let's be understanding towards them. When you see that they're struggling, extend grace. All right, their mental health is very important. Let's just extend grace to them. Uh, they also talk about dealing with change, and new teachers every year can be quite difficult at times. Maybe you've spent the whole school year getting used to one teacher and it wasn't easy, and finally you feel like you're on the same page, and then the next school year uh teachers may change, and it's very stressful to try and start all over again. Also, even friendship with peers, with other youth, sometimes after time they seem to change, and there's no fit anymore. And you know, after putting in all the effort to get to know someone, to start to become real with them, to uh to be a little bit vulnerable with them, and then to drift apart, it's difficult. And then to try and work up the courage to do it all over again is also difficult. And so belonging as well, um, one of the things that we're fed back is it's difficult to find a friend group interested in the same things as you, and especially if you come in, whether it's a church or a school, and friendships are already established, it can be quite difficult to be able to connect because the personalities, the interests don't always align. Parents, um uncles and aunties to our youth. Let's continue to extend grace to them. Let's be understanding of where they're coming from. Uh, to summarize, you know, the lives of our youth are filled with a lot more stress and anxiety than we might be aware of. So we just be understanding, we extend grace. Their challenges are different, certainly different to what we grew up with, but they're still very real challenges. We be patient with them and we see them as God sees them. And that's the thing I want to keep coming back to here. Let's see our youth as God sees our youth. Valuable, lovable, able to contribute today and not just waiting for tomorrow. And and youth, uh, you know, I want to speak to you a bit as well. God has given your parents a great responsibility in parenting you. And uh when children are born, we may get a little gift pack, a few diapers, samples of uh milk formula or something. You know what we don't get? We don't get an instruction booklet. I looked, there was none in the basket, and so we we do the best we can, but of course we don't have all the answers ahead of time. Sometimes we try to learn from our own parents, but you know our own parents were in the same situation, so we learn from the experiences of others, but we don't always know exactly the right thing to do. Please know that we're trying our best with you because we care about you. We really, really do. And if we push you hard on certain things, it's because we believe it's best for you. We want you to be happy, we want you to enjoy life. We're not punishing you when we push you hard, but we're just trying to help you do well in the things that are important. Please understand that the lives of the adults around you, your parents, the uncles, the aunties, were quite different. Uh for many of us, we grew up with real financial hardship. And so the battles we faced were maybe we'd say ex existential. We we we just needed to see that we have enough food to eat, that we had the the right clothes so that we can show up at school. Things were different for many of us here. They're very different challenges. Uh, we had to take on heavy responsibilities early on in trying to see the whole family provided for, and we didn't have the safety net to fall back upon if things went badly. And so for us, we we may find it a bit difficult to understand those who aren't in the same situation. Please try to understand us where we're coming from. We care for you, and we want the best for you. In our time, also, we weren't really allowed to question or challenge our parents. Uh, and regardless of how we felt on the inside, we're expected to just just to obey. You can be as angry as you want on the inside, maybe, but you're going to obey. And so it's difficult for us to sometimes navigate communicating uh with youth today uh because now you're confident enough to speak your own mind. Things are different, it's not the same as during our time. Please try to understand us, have patience with us as we try to have patience with you. And youth, I want you to know if you come to us for advice, we want to help you. Your parents, I would think the uncles and aunties here as well, we want to help you. We're on your side. We want each one of you to live a better life than we've lived, more stable, more full, more meaningful than we've had. We're on your side. And please extend to us grace when we're grouchy or irritable. You're you'll learn this eventually for yourselves, but um, for some in the workplace, there are very bad days, and we can't bring that back out, we can't speak back to the person who made it a bad day at work. We don't mean to. Sometimes we bring that home and we're irritable or uh uh easily upset. Please be understanding with us. We love you, we do care for you. We also don't want to uh relate in this way. We want to see you as God sees you, as valuable, as important today. So, church, we've looked at the words of King Solomon to youth, urging them to enjoy their youth, but not to forget their creator. We look at the 12 disciples, and we have good reason to believe they were quite young. They were very young, in fact. And I hope we're reminded to try to extend grace and to be understanding between different generations. Be patient with one another, be loving, because this is God's will for us. That we all learn to trust one another across generations and not just in pure relationships. So, church, let's see our youth as God sees our youth. And youth, uh, please see the adults here as God sees them as well. So, I just want to close by praying for our youth. I want to pray for blessing, for perseverance, and for hope. So, church, do we join our hearts and just uh pray for our youth once more? We pray that you've administered to the Word of God today. If you'd like to know more about the Eastern Christian Church, please visit our website at ycccanglican.com. Have a blessed day.