It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is still young.It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
5 sermons cite this verse
II. I shall now use this general principle to endeavor to STOP YOUR FOREBODINGS. It may be that many of you are in darkness—darkness which may be felt. You find it very difficult to accept the truth that God is a God of Love and One who cares for you. You are, however, only at the beginning—the beginning of the ways of Providence. Your poor faith is ready to be staggered by the sufferings you endure and unbelief prophesies ten thousand things to fill your soul with doubts and alarms—but the end of all this shall be better than the beginning! Many Christians have more trials in the earlier part of their spiritual life than they will ever have afterwards. "It, is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth." You must not consider, because the sun is just now behind a cloud, that it will always be there. It was a little child who said when there was an eclipse, "Father, the sun is put out." It was only a child who said that—no man thought so. Let your riper experience correct the childishness of your unbelief. God only hides His face to show it more clearly, by-and-by. The end shall be better than the beginning. Have you not often seen a day which, early in the morning, was heavy with fog and rain? As it came on, we waited patiently and anxiously, for we wished for fine weather—but those incessant drops of rain still fell. We looked to the wind quarter and to the rain quarter, we looked with hope and then with fear, but the drops fell unceasingly and there seemed to be no chance of intermission. And yet, before noon had come we had seen the sun shining brightly and we have heard the birds singing more sweetly—and it has been fair weather after rain. Take that morning as a prophecy to your poor, doubting, troubled soul of what your path in life will yet be. You shall yet see that the end is better than the beginning. …
appeared to melt away in my hands. Though but a child I turned over His Word, seeking for something to suit my case, but nothing would come until God's appointed day had struck—and then the darkness vanished and light came and I rejoiced in Jesus and the light which only He can give! Many who are ordained unto eternal life, are yet held back, as John Bunyan was, for many a day and even years in doubt and perplexity and trouble! "He answered her not a word." In the second place we see that— II. THOUGH THE SAVIOR WAS SILENT, HE WAS NOT UNKIND. He had good reasons for refusing to give her a word. Here is one. It is His delight to put faith to the test. Great kings have always had exploits performed before them for their pleasure. And in order to prove faith's mighty power, the Lord God even sends it upon strange errands. He delights to see the daring it can display when relying on His power. He said to it when but a stripling, "Go and cut off the giant's head!" And faith did it. He said, "Go and conquer the city and destroy it, and rush rejoicing over the ruined walls." And faith did it. Again He said, "Go, and for My sake enter the burning fiery furnace"—and faith did it and came out unscathed. "Go to the lions' den," said the king—and faith went and shut the lions' mouths! And our Lord, finding faith incarnate in this poor woman, puts it to the test. Her faith now has to struggle with the King, Himself! Be not alarmed! Jesus said, "It is not right to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs." And she answered, "Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their Master's table." And so the King tests faith and puts the crown upon its head as He answers, "Oh, woman, great is your faith!" So with some of you—seeking Jesus, but not yet finding Him. He knows your faith but He delays comfort to let men see what that faith will do! And when that is done, He will disperse the clouds and fill your soul with rejoicing! I have no doubt the Savior did this, not for His pleasure, but for her profit. It is good for a man to bear the yoke in the youth of his faith. The Spartans would never have been a nation of conquerors if they had not been trained in the school of hardness in their childhood. They had to smart, struggle and sometimes feel the pangs of hunger, that in the day of battle they should never retreat from the strongest foe. So we may have sore temptations to meet before reaching Heaven and He is hardening us. As the florist takes the plants from the hothouse into the open air to harden them, so the Lord removes us from the light and warmth of His loving Countenance and hardens us so that frosts shall not wither us if they come, by-and-by. …
Remember that Manasseh lost his father at twelve years of age. I do not know a greater trial for a family than for the head of the house to be taken away while the children are young. Just when the guiding, encouraging and restraining power of the father is needed, it is mournful to see it removed. How mysterious it seems to us when a large family loses the wise guide of the household at the very time when his influence is most needed by the growing boys and girls. Too often in such a case the young people have broken away from all restraint and the loss of their father has been the loss of everything. Manasseh, the prince who seemed born under such favorable circumstances for the production of a gracious character, was much to be pitied when the good king, his father, was called away and his tender son was left alone amid flatterers and idolaters! Remember, too, that Manasseh was placed in a giddy position as a child, for he mounted the throne at 12 years of age. A child upon a throne is a child out of its natural place. Such high and hard places are not for boys! Now and then such a child turns out to be a Josiah, the very delight of mankind, but the probabilities are very much against its being so. "Woe unto you, O land, when your king is a child." It is ill for a child to sway a scepter, but "it is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth." A fierce fire of temptation blazes around a youthful throne. Sycophants and flatterers are sure to surround a boy prince, pandering to his worst desires and arousing that part of his nature which most needs to be repressed. No doubt there were good people whom Hezekiah had gathered in his courts, but then they could not flatter as well as the evil party which had been repressed for awhile, but still remained strong in the land. Though Heze-kiah had set up the worship of God and had done his best to root out idolatry, yet the idolatrous party was far from being extinct and the common people were sadly careless and irreligious! Isaiah, in his opening Chapter, describes the condition of the land by saying, "Israel does not know, my people do not consider. Except the Lord of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah." The nation was not steadfast like king Hezekiah—it worshipped Jehovah when compelled by royal authority—but it was ready enough to turn aside to its idols. The idolatrous party—which I might liken to the papists and the people who worshipped on the high places—who were the ritualistic party of the day, came around the young king, fawning, flattering and cajoling. By pleasing the taste of the boy-king, and indulging his vices, they undermined in his esteem the orthodox worshippers of God, whom I may call the evangelical school. He yielded himself up readily to their influence and when he was old enough, became the head of the idolatrous party, throwing his whole soul into it and, with all the might of his nature and the force of his authority, labored to stamp out the pure worship of the Most High God and to set up those debasing …
Down in those great depths, who knows what there may be? Pearls lie deep there—masses of precious things that would make the miser's eyes gleam like a star. There are the wrecks of old Spanish galleons lost these centuries ago and there they lie, huge mines of wealth, but far down deep! And so with the deep judgments of God. What wisdom is concealed there, and what treasures of love and faithfulness and what David calls, "very tenderness," "for in very tenderness," he says, "have You afflicted me." There is as much wisdom to be seen in some of the deep afflictions of God—if we could but understand them, we would see as much wisdom in them as in the creation of the world! God smites His people artistically. There is never a random blow. There is a marvelous degree of skill in the chastening of the Lord. Hence we are told not to despise it, which, in the strongest meaning of it, means that we are to honor it! We honor the chastisements of our parents, but infinitely more the chastisements of God. "For they verily chastened us for a few days after their own pleasure, but He for our profit," and there is a way of chastening us for profit. Now, Brothers and Sisters, I said there were treasures concealed in the great deeps which we cannot yet reach, and so in the great deeps in which God makes us to do business there are great treasures that we cannot come upon at present. We do not, perhaps, as yet, receive, or even perceive, the present and immediate benefit of some of our afflictions. There may be no immediate benefit—the benefit may be for hence and to come. The chastening of our youth may be intended for the ripening of our age. "It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth." The affliction of today may have no reference to the circumstances of today, but to the circumstances of 50 years ahead! I do not know that that blade required the rain on such a day, but God was looking not to February as such, but to February in its relation to July, when the harvest should be reaped. He considered the blade not merely as a blade and in its present necessity, but as it would be in the full corn in the ear. There are certain marks that an artist makes upon the block that you cannot see the reason of as yet—and they spoil the apparent likeness of the block and marble to the image which you know he wishes to produce—but then those lines are to be worked out, by-and-by! They are scratches now, but they will be lines of beauty soon, when he comes to finish them. So, a present trial may even lame us for present service, damage us—I will even go the length of saying—for years to come and make us go groaning and brokenhearted, so as to be of comparatively little service to the Church and of very little joy to ourselves. But then afterwards—afterwards as Paul puts it—it bears the peaceable fruits of righteousness in those that are exercised thereby. Why will you not let the Lord have time? Why will you be in a hurry? Why will you stand at His elbow and perpetually say, "Explain this today and show me the motive and reason of this in this present hour"? A thousand years in His sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night! The mighty God takes mighty time in which to work out His grand results! Therefore, be content to let the treasures lie at the bottom of the deep for awhile. But then faith may see them. Faith can make the deep translucent till it sees the treasure lying there—and it is yours and though you may not at this hour be able to be at it—yet you shall have it, "for all things are yours." Everything that is stored up in the great deep of the Eternal Purpose, or in the deep of the manifest judgment, everything there belongs to you, O, Believer! Therefore rejoice in it and let it lie there till such a time as God may choose to raise it for your spiritual enrichment. God's judgments are a great deep— …
"Come, then, oh, you sweet affliction, Thus to bring our Savior near." Right sure I am that many of our tossing and buffeting have produced a permanent benefit which has given tone to our character and shed a hallowed light over our whole career! Find me a Christian whose conversation is full of rich savor, whose judgment is tempered with charity, one whose fervent zeal is blended with the meekness of wisdom, and I will guarantee you, as a rule, he has seen much affliction! "They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep." Physicians often recommend a sea voyage to their patients. Do you think it is merely for the fresh air they breathe? No, I can tell you there is more than that in the prescription. It breaks the links that bind one to everyday life. There is a solitude on that broad expanse of waters which does not admit of the newspaper or the post office breaking in upon the stillness of your reflections! Your country, your office, your friends, your home are all at a distance. The communications you are known to hold with them are broken. And is it not so with Christ's disciples, when He compels them to get into a ship and leaves them a while to be tossed with waves in the midst of the sea? Do not they then feel a profound solitude which changes the hue of all their thoughts? Mind you not what he said who was the saddest of all the old Hebrew Prophets—Jeremiah in his lamentations bears this witness—"It is good for a man that he bears the yoke in his youth. He sits alone and keeps silence because He has borne it upon him." There is no room to doubt it, Friends—sorrow is favorable! God's brightest gems have had the most polishing on the lapidary's wheels. The purest, cleanest wheat is that which has had the most winnowing. We grow in Grace, doubtless, in our times of joy, but I think it is slow work. There are precious fruits put forth by the moon as well as precious fruits brought forth by the sun. Bright days would wither us if there were no shady nights to temper our gaiety. We are like the sycamore tree—unless we had trials, we would never come to spiritual perfection. Well, we have cause to be thankful if, speaking experimentally, we can say, "All the storms we have encountered up to now have been blessed to us—all our tossing and tempests have furthered our good speed, and all the convulsions that have shaken our house have thus far contributed to its being built up with stones laid in fair colors upon a foundation of sapphire. And now, lastly— …