Proverbs 20:29 - Homiletics

Young men and old

I. EVERY TIME OF LIFE HAS ITS OWN PECULIAR EXCELLENCE .

1. Every age of man has some excellence. Youth appears vain in the grave vision of age, and age looks gloomy to the bright eyes of youth. Yet both youth and age have their mead of praise. It is possible for a man to miss all excellence in life and to live in dishonour from youth to age. But that depends upon his own conduct, and he only will be to blame for spoiling every age of his life if he does thus live in dishonour. There are honourable and desirable conditions for life throughout its whole length.

2 . The excellences of the various ages of man are different. The glory of a young man is not identical with the beauty of an old man. The common mistake is that in the narrowness of our personal experience we judge of other periods of life by the standards that only apply to those in which we are severally living. Hence either undue admiration or unreasonable disgust. It is cheering to know that a very different condition from that which floats before us as our ideal may be equally happy and honourable.

II. THE PECULIAR EXCELLENCE OF YOUTH IS FOUND IN ITS ENERGY AND THE USE IT MAKES OF IT .

1 . Energy is a characteristic of youth. Then the fresh unfaded powers are just opening out to their full activity. This is the time for service. The young men go to the wars. "It is well for a man to bear the yoke in his youth." All kinds of fresh activities spring out of the fertile soil of youth. An indolence in youth is simply disgraceful.

2 . Youthful energy is admirable.

3 . Youthful energy should be used in the service of Christ. Then its glory is radiant. A lower use of it dims its lustre. Degradation to purposes of sin turns its splendour into shame.

III. THE SPECIAL EXCELLENCE OF AGE IS TO BE SEES IN ITS RIPENED EXPERIENCE .

1 . Experience ripens with years. The suggestion of that fact may be seen in the picture of the grey head, the beauty of which chiefly resides in the thought of the harvest of years that it represents. Strength may be lost, but experience is gained. There is an exchange, and it is not for any to say on which side the real advantage lies.

2 . The experience of years has a beauty of its own. We usually associate youth and beauty, and we think of beauty declining with advancing years. Painful signs of life's stern battle break the fair charms of youth. But old age brings a new beauty. This is often seen even in the countenance, finely chiselled with delicate lines of thought and feeling into a rare grace and dignity. But the higher beauty is that of soul, the beauty of Simeon when he held the infant Saviour in his arms. The crowning beauty of age is in a perfected saintliness. To attain to this is to go beyond the glory el youth. Yet there must accompany it a certain melancholy at the thought of the lost energy of earlier years, until the old man can look forward to the renewed youth, the eternal energy of the life beyond,