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Man, the title of my sermon this morning is Act Your Age, Act Your Age, and this goes both ways. Today we have children who want to act like they're adults, or we have people who are older and they still want to act like a teenager and they don't seem to grow up, they're having a midlife crisis, but what I want to preach to you this morning is about the idea that whatever stage of life we're in, we need to embrace that stage of life and not wish for or covet some other stage of life that we're not in. You know, you start out as a baby, you're a child, you're a teenager, you're an adult, you get into middle age, old age, and each stage is there for a reason. God has designed it that way. If you would flip back to chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes, God has designed our lives to go through a certain progression, and we need to just embrace the stage of life where we are right now and say, this is the day which the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it and not wish for some other stage of life that we're not in, not wish to be old or wish to be young, just be where you are in life. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes chapter 3 verse 1, to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted. You don't have to turn there, but in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 11, the Bible reads, when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things. So when you are a child, it makes sense to indulge in childish things, to be childish, but when you become a man, you are supposed to put away childish things, okay? Flip over if you would to Genesis chapter number 2, Genesis chapter number 2, Genesis chapter number 2, and I'm going to specifically go over some things that I feel like are problems in our society or things that we need to watch out for when it comes to this thing of acting our age, okay? Now first of all, let's just start at the bottom and work our way up, all right? Let's start with babies. Babies are going to act like babies. Now I don't think most people struggle with this part of the sermon. This part is a little bit obvious that a baby is a baby, but there are always going to be those crazies, and we've had them in our church, who get these bizarre ideas about child rearing where they basically expect their baby not to be a baby. In fact, I heard of one person who later turned out to be a complete weirdo, who basically said that in order for his baby to drink its bottle, he would put it across the room and make it crawl across the room to get to its baby bottle because if a man doesn't work, neither should he eat. Now that's just stupidity because notice the operative word there. If a man will not work, neither should he eat. But to try to apply that to a baby and say, oh, the baby has to work for its food. No, babies don't have to work for their food. They get their food for free because they're a baby. Other people just have crazy unrealistic expectations about how a baby should act, that it basically has to be perfect, and they're disciplining a literal baby for just being a baby, and it makes no sense. You know, I know that the song Away in a Manger says the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes. That's just a song, okay? I'm sure that Jesus did cry when he was a baby because babies are supposed to cry. That's the only way that they know how to communicate. I mean, if they're hungry, if they have a dirty diaper, that's how they tell you is by crying, Jesus wept, amen? So you know, crying is normal. There's nothing sinful or wrong about that. People get some bizarre and crazy weird ideas, don't they? So we need to understand that babies are babies. They're going to cry. They're not going to understand how to live in a civilized society. They're just a baby, right? That's why we have to train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old, he'll not depart from it. Then we get into the toddler and the child years, and obviously as the child gets older, you're going to expect more out of it. The Bible says foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him. So we shouldn't be shocked if little children do or say foolish things because that is in their nature to do or say foolish things, but of course as they get older and they can understand, then it's time for them to be disciplined, corrected, trained, and instructed in righteousness. But today there are too many children who are growing up too fast, and there's an agenda out there to corrupt our young people, and in public school today they'll talk to even elementary kids about things that are adult subjects and even perverted things. The Bible says have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them for it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. And yet today in the public school system, they have sex education for kids sometimes even in elementary school, and not only do they teach them about a normal relationship between a man and a woman, which obviously they're too young to even be exposed to that at that age, but then they'll go further and teach them about every kind of deviant, sinful, sick, perverted behavior. We need to allow children to be children, they need to remain innocent and ignorant about these things until they're old enough to understand these things and process these things. And there's also in our culture an overemphasis on the dating relationship and on loving relationships, romantic relationships, where it's all that the music's about, it's all that the movies are about, it's all that the TV shows are about, it's all that the reading material's about. It's all about a culture that is obsessed with romance and dating, it's all they think about. Every song on the radio is just about dating and meeting someone and all these different things, when in reality that's just one little phase of your life. I mean think about it, when you're a child that song doesn't apply to you. Once you're married that song doesn't apply to you, because you're not out meeting people and having all these, you know, first date and all this stuff. This is like this little window of your life, and then you've got children that are already thinking about that when they're way too young to be thinking about that, and then you've got older people who should be done thinking about that, and then they're still thinking about that, and then what do they do? They leave their spouse and go marry someone else, because they want to experience that love song all over again, instead of rejoicing in the wife of their youth and staying with cleaving to their lawful spouse. So we need to make sure that our children don't fall into this, okay? And that means that, and again, look, I don't want to impose my exact opinions or preferences on you. It's your job to take the Bible's principles and apply them to your own life, but I'm going to stand up here right now and say that I do not allow my children to be dating until they're at least like 16 years old, okay? And the reason for that is because there's no reason for a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old to be dating, in my opinion, when they're way too young to get married. They're not even close to that, so it's not going to help them to just get seriously engaged in these kind of relationships when they're that young. Now, I do believe that getting married young can be a good thing, okay? I got married young. I got married when I was 19, and my good friend, Pastor Roger Jimenez, he got married when he was 18. And we both turned out well, but anyway, the point is, you know, I'm for getting married young. I think it's great, and it can keep you out of a lot of trouble. The Bible says in Proverbs 5, 18, let thy fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. So the Bible talks about the wife of your youth. Look at Genesis chapter 2, verse 23, and Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh, and they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. A couple things I want to point out in this passage of Genesis 2 is that it doesn't say a boy leaves his father and mother and cleaves his wife, it says a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves unto his wife. So getting married is something that you do as an adult, not as a child, Mohammed, okay? You get married as an adult. A man leaves his father and mother. But notice, a man leaves his father and mother. In a perfect world, God's will is that you go straight from living with your parents to living with your wife. Okay? And in our world, there's a totally different culture that says you move out when you're 18, you go to college and have the beer pong and the partying and the kegs and the toga party and everything else, and you go out and sow all your wild oats, and then later you get married. Wrong. Skip that phase, skip that partying phase, skip that fornicating phase, and you go straight from mom and dad to your wife. Now, I'm not saying that you need to get married right when you turn 18, but guess what? You may just need to stay with your parents a little bit longer then and stay with your parents when you're 19, 20, 21, 22. There's nothing wrong with that. I want my children to remain living with me until they get married. There's no reason for them to go bunk up with some roommate and go out and live by themselves. First of all, it doesn't even make sense financially. Why would they want to buy their own stuff and pay their own electric bill and their water bill and the heat? All the things we pay for, why would they want to pay for that? I'll tell you why. Because they want to get out from under their parents' rules and it's not because they want to do any good, it's probably because they want to do things that aren't right. That's why they need to stay with their parents and have that accountability. You know what? There's a certain accountability about being in a family. When you're with your parents, there's accountability. They know where you are, they know what you're doing, they know what kind of a life that you're living. Then guess what? When you get married, even though as a man you're the head of the home, there's still an accountability there of your wife knows you, she sees you, she sees your habits. But when you're living by yourself, there's no accountability. When you're living with your other teenage buddy who's 18, 19, there's no accountability there. So it's important that we take God's word seriously here, his original plan, his original intent that a man leaves his father and mother and cleaves unto his wife. I realize there are exceptions to this. The exception proves the rule, but in general, this is the life that we should strive to lead God's way and there's no reason for 18-year-olds to move out from their godly parents' home just to go out and do their own thing. Hey, wait until you're ready to get married, amen? And you know what? I know what it's like to be a teenager because I remember being a teenager and literally counting down until I turned 18 so that I could move out. I counted down to that for years and I had every intention of moving out right when I turned 18. But you know what? I got into an independent fundamental Baptist church and I got right with God and I listened to the preaching of God's word and I decided to stay with my parents until I got married and I'm glad I made that decision. And I stayed with them for another year until I ended up getting married at age 19. So in light of all this, I don't think it's wise, and obviously I don't have an exact scripture to point to on this, to allow your young teenagers to be dating when they're far from the age of getting married. Now you might have a different opinion than me. You might say, hey, I don't want my kids to date until they're 17 or 18 or I'll let them date when they're 15 or something. But come on, you really think that your prepubescent 11, 12-year-old daughter needs to be out dating and thinking about boys and boy crazy and no way. And look, they're going to have a tendency to do that. All of our kids are going to have that tendency because of the way our society is, because of the way our culture is, and that pressure is there and we need to put a stop to it as parents. It's our job to rule our houses, moms and dads, and say no, you're too young for that. You're too young to be dating, you're too young to have a boyfriend, you're too young to have a girlfriend. And again, I'm not saying you have to agree with my exact age, but when we're talking about the very young ones, I think it's pretty obvious. I think it's a no-brainer. I think 16 is a good age, but you might differ on that, no problem. But come on, use some common sense and don't allow your 12-year-old to be getting in all these serious adult-type relationships. And of course, the world is going to push that because the world wants your children fornicating and corrupted and ruining their lives before they're even smart enough to figure out what they're even doing. And so we need to watch out for that. And this is another reason why I don't believe that you should allow your young children to be best buddies with kids that are much older. Okay, why? Because kids that are older have different interests, different things going on. They're at that stage where they're thinking about girls or thinking about boys, respectively. And you know, that's a different world than the young kids. Let's let the young kids be young kids, amen? Let the baby be a baby. Let the toddler be a toddler. Let the child be a child. And you children out there that are hearing this and you think I'm just trying to throw a wet blanket on you and rain on your parade and I'm a big stick in the mud, let me just tell you something. You're at a time in your life that you're only passing through one time. Enjoy it. Embrace it, okay? And this is how you live as a Christian. You learn in whatsoever state you're in to be content. And if you're already starting out as a 10, 11, 12-year-old wishing that you're a teenager, wishing to be an adult, wishing to be an elderly person, no, you're not a wish that, but you know, hey, you're already just in a pattern of covetousness where you're not happy with what you have and enjoying what you have and embracing what you have. Being a child is a fun time. It's a special time. You know, we as adults, we look back with fondness, hopefully. I had a great childhood. You know, I look back with fondness and enjoy memories from my childhood, but I don't want to go back. But I'm glad I did it when I was there. It's a good time, right? Embrace every stage of life, okay? So when you're a teenager, okay, you're kind of transitioning from childhood into adulthood, okay? Now, this transitional period is important because you can't just flip a switch and have somebody just totally reliant on their parents, completely childish, no responsibility, and then all of a sudden it's just like, okay, go out there in the world and live your life. That's why God has created this transitional time where we have a teenager, okay? Now, you're like, why did God create teenagers? Well, think about all the other things God created, I mean, mosquitoes, you know, why did he create? There are a lot of things in this world that we scratch our heads, right? I'm trying to bring some answers this morning if I can. Why did God create this teenage phase? It's to allow young people to transition to adulthood. And here's what, let me just define the teenage condition for you. Here is the teenage condition, okay? Basically, you're supposed to be starting to have the maturity of an adult, but you still have the safeguard of being under your parents' rule, okay? So if you just go through your whole teenage years acting childish and being like a child and acting like a kid and not taking any adult responsibility, you're not using that phase properly because you're not going to be ready when you turn 18, 19, 20 to go out and live on your own because you've been childish yesterday, you were childish last week, right? The point is you're supposed to start showing some responsibility, some maturity. So as a teenager, you should strive to get more toward the adult side of the equation and less toward the childish side of the equation, right? So you start being responsible, being mature, listening to your parents, obeying your parents, working or whatever the case may be, getting out there and preparing for life. But you need to still remain under your parents' authority. Don't get this attitude of, well, I'm 15 now, so I'm practically an adult because I'm taller than mom now, and so why can't I just do whatever I want? Why can't I just have total freedom? Because you're not ready for that freedom yet. Have you noticed that there aren't any 14-year-olds who live by themselves in this world? Wouldn't you think out of 320-some million people, there'd be some 14-year-olds just kind of like a Doogie Howser or something, right? Just out there, just living their own life, living in their own apartment, just having a job, owning a business. It doesn't exist. You know why? Because 14-, 15-year-olds aren't able to run their own life. That's why they don't do it anywhere, okay? Because they're not ready for it. But they think that they're ready for that often. But they need to understand that the teenage years are a time when they need to prepare for adulthood, grow in maturity, grow in responsibility. And I'll tell you how I treat my teenagers is based on how they act. If my teenagers show themselves to be responsible, if my teenagers are showing that they are adult in their mentality and that they are doing the right things and they're not abusing privileges or abusing freedom, you know, I'm going to give them more freedom. And the Bible says that if you're faithful in a little, then we'll commit to you more. And if you're unfaithful in the little things, you're going to be unfaithful in that, which is great. And so if I have a teenager that's constantly showing how mature they are, how responsible they are, how reliable they are, and they have a track record of making the right decisions, they're going to get more freedom. And the child who continually shows that they're irresponsible, making bad decisions, pushing the envelope, abusing freedom, abusing privileges, guess what? I'm going to tighten that up and take away freedom. And by the way, this is the way the world works too. If you have a godly, righteous people, God gives them freedom. Ungodly people go into bondage, they go into slavery, they lose liberty, they lose their freedoms, which I fear is what's happening in the United States of America because of the fact that we're wicked, we're going to lose freedom as we go forward. That's the way the world works, okay? So don't complain about your parents not giving you freedom. Give them a reason to trust you. Give them a reason to give you freedom. And let me also say this at this point, I have a double standard between my boys and my girls. I hate to break it to 2019 America, but boys and girls are not the same. There's a difference. Now my sons are going to go out one day and be heads of household, run their own life, they're going to work and have a career, that's what they're preparing for. My daughters are not preparing for that because that's not God's will for women to go out and do their own thing and run their own life and be a businesswoman. That's not God's plan. So I'm not preparing them for that. I'm preparing them to be a godly wife, mother, homemaker because that's God's perfect will for their lives, okay? And so what I mean by that is that when my sons are 14, 15, 16, I want them to go out and work and get jobs and they're already out working. My three oldest boys, they go to work and they get things done, make money and I think that's great. The sooner they can start working, the better and start, as long as they get their school work done and everything like that, then getting out and working and getting that experience is valuable. But when my daughters turn 16, they're not going to go get a job at Taco Bell or McDonald's or something so that they can make minimum wage and be flirted with and hit on by every unsaved, worldly, ungodly man outside of my supervision. Women, the Bible says, are the weaker vessel. Women are just as valuable as men. In Christ, there's neither male nor female and obviously, women and men have the same value and worth but they are the weaker vessel. I don't think that my son is going to get raped out there by some woman. It's just not going to happen, friend. But you know what? Women, they go out in the world, they could be easier to seduce or to overpower or abduct or just influence and so they need to be protected by their dad. And if you actually study the old, and I know some of this is controversial but so what? Who cares? This world is a messed up place. We don't care what they think. We care what the Bible teaches and as I study the Bible, I see a father back in the law of Moses being able to guarantee his daughter's virginity. So how did he guarantee that? He guaranteed that because he knew where she'd been and he knew that there wasn't any opportunity for her to have lost her virginity because she wasn't out doing whatever unsupervised. And so my daughters are never going to go out and do whatever unsupervised. They're going to be supervised all the time until they get married and I'm going to pass them off to their husband and then at that point, it's on him, okay? And obviously, you know, once they're an adult and they're married, they're going to have a lot more freedom. But my teenage girls, you say, well, how are they going to have money to buy things? I'm going to pay for it. I'd rather go get a second job than to just send them down to be, you know, pawed at by every Taco Bell McDonald's employee. It's not worth it for that little three-hour shift, minimum wage paycheck to go down there and have all these bad influences. I'm not going to send them to the public school system. I'm not going to send them to Bible college. I'm not going to send them to the fast food industry. No, they're going to stay home with me and, you know, they can get out and see the world with me. They can get out and see the world with my wife. They can get out and see things on some occasions with a big brother standing by ready to kick anybody's butt that, you know, gets the wrong idea. Folks, we need to protect our daughters. Have you ever noticed that in a fundamental Baptist church like ours, there's a demographic that's conspicuously missing? You single guys are like, yes, amen, you know. Why? Because you have way more young men in a fundamental Baptist church that are 18 to 25 than young ladies that are 18 to 25. Why are the young single 18 to 25-year-old ladies typically missing? I'll tell you why. Because they're out living like the devil, that's why. Because their parents let them do whatever. They're not under any strong leadership and so they turn 18 and they go out and do whatever and it's sad. You know, we need to make sure that we raise our daughters right and, yes, allow them to have a good time. Yes, allow them to have friends and a life but, you know what, they need to be supervised and not just given just total freedom to go do whatever. It's not going to end well and you can like it or lump it but that's what I believe. And that's what I'm, as for me and my house, that's what we're going to do. Okay. Now, the sons are different. Obviously, your sons still need to be supervised, you know, and whatever you do, don't give them unfettered access to the internet, okay, because that's a jungle out there. But obviously, they're transitioning into adulthood and so they need to learn to start being a little more independent and so forth because they're going to be a leader and they do need to start working and getting ready for a career and things like that. And so I think that's great. So that's the next stage. You know, you have childhood, then you have those teenage years, then you get into your young adult life and I already mentioned earlier that I do think that getting married young can be great. Obviously, you have to find the right person. Don't marry the first person who comes along. But getting married young can be a blessing because it helps you to grow up and be mature and so forth. Flip over to Psalm 127. Psalm 127, the title of the sermon is Act Your Age. You know, a baby should act like a baby, a toddler should act like a toddler, a child should act like a child, she shouldn't be having all this romantic drama, soap opera going on when she's 11, 12, 13, 14, right? That's not appropriate for a child of that age. When you're a teenager, you act like a teenager, you know, which is of course a transitional period. So there's a big difference between a young teenager and an old teenager, right, as that transition is happening. And then you get into young adulthood and God willing, you know, you get married, you leave home, have children, amen? It says in Psalm 127, except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It's vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows for so he giveth his beloved sleep. Lo, children are in heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth, right? So it's good to have children. When you're young, the Bible's saying it's a blessing to have children as a youth. So are children of the youth, happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. Go to Ecclesiastes chapter 11, just a few pages to the right in the Bible, Ecclesiastes chapter number 11. Now we want to make the best of each stage of life. When you're a child, one of the main functions that you have as a child and a teenager is learning, right? So children do a lot of studying because they're learning how to read, they're learning how to write, they're learning math, history, science, whatever the disciplines, music, and it's a learning time, okay? As a child, you need to take that seriously because if you get through your whole childhood without learning much and then you get through your 20s without learning much, by the time you hit 30 years old, if you're dumb, you're going to be dumb for the rest of your life. If you're dumb at 30, you're going to continue to be dumb. If you're uneducated at 30, in many ways, you will continue to be a simple person for the rest of your life. There are many neural pathways in your brain and things that you have to learn before you turn 30, okay? Certain things have to be learned before you turn 7 years old, okay? There are certain things that if you don't learn this by the time you're 7 or 8 years old, you can't learn it anymore, right? That's why you hear these horror stories about kids growing up in a Romanian orphanage or something and they didn't get enough attention and now they're just completely disabled for the rest of their life. They can't have normal interaction with people. They don't have normal thoughts and speech because they were just neglected during early formative years. So there are certain neural pathways that close when you turn 7, when you turn 15, when you turn 20, when you turn 30, right? If you don't speak a foreign language by the time you're 30, I'm sorry, but you're not going to learn a foreign language. If you don't study any foreign languages until you're 30 and then at 31, hey, I'm going to learn how to speak Spanish, you're going to be like, muchas, grazias, and you can't do it. Have you ever heard the saying, you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Now if you start out as a child learning and then you learn as a teenager, you learn as a young adult, then hey, you can learn way more even after you're 30. I've learned new foreign languages after 30. I'm going to continue to learn new foreign languages, God willing, into my 40s and 50s. But that's because I already set that in motion. I already studied and learned up to a certain point. Now I can continue to build on that foundation. But I'm telling you, don't have this attitude of, oh, I'm as a kid. I'm just going to fool around. I'm not going to get serious about learning and studying. I can do that later. No, because you're setting a habit for the rest of your life and the way that you act as a teenager and the way that you act in your 20s, that's going to set the tone for the rest of your life. And if you don't develop the habits now of reading and studying and learning, you say, preach the Bible. Okay, the Bible says that wisdom is the principle thing, therefore get wisdom. The Bible says that a wise man is going to increase learning, right? The Bible says fools despise wisdom and instruction. Knowledge, understanding, and wisdom are what the book of Proverbs tells the young man to pursue over and over again. So your youth is supposed to be a time of learning. And especially learning the Bible, learning the things of God, learning how to read, learning how to write, these things are important. Take your study seriously because if you're smart as a kid, you'll probably be smart for the rest of your life and vice versa. So start learning now as a kid. Get smarter. Those of you that are older, I'm sorry, it's too late. Just kidding. But anyway, and I'm not saying, hey, don't try to learn if you're old. Look, like I said, we should be a lifelong learner. There are people in their 80s and 90s learning new things, but you know why? It's because they've been learning the whole time. The later you start that process, the harder it's going to be for you to learn new things. So you better, whatever stage of life you're at right now, you better start doing the studying and study to show yourself approved and read and learn and seek knowledge as you would seek for buried treasure because wisdom is worth more than rubies, the Bible says. So it's a time of study, but it's not just a time of study, and this is where our society sometimes gets it wrong. They think that you're only studying as a kid, but the Bible says even a child is known by his doings whether his work be pure and whether it be right. Childhood is also a time to learn how to work. So it's a time of study, yes, but it's also a time of work. Even a child is known by his doings whether his work be pure and whether it be right. So whether this is working around the house, doing yard work, doing chores, you're learning how to work as a kid. And there's nothing wrong with putting your children to work. In fact, if you don't put your kids to work, you're going to raise a spoiled brat. And today we live in a society where it's, you know, frowned upon to make your kids work around the house. But in my house, my kids do dishes, mop the floor, scrub the toilet, do laundry, pull weeds. They're expected to work, okay. They say, oh, well, that's not their – yes, it is their job. If they eat and they live in my house, then they should pitch in. And by the way, did you know that children love working? The younger they are, the more they love to work. If you don't believe me, give your five-year-old a job to do. Oh, yeah, yeah, let's do it, right? If you give a five-year-old a job to do, they want to do it. Hey, can you help me with something? It's just like, what, me, really, you want me to help you with something? Wow, I get to do the laundry, great, dishes, great, you know. They love working. It's by habit that they learn to become lazy by not being given work to do, by indulging in laziness, video games, TV, and just fooling around instead of actually learning how to work. So make sure that you teach your kids how to work. Kids typically like working. You say, my kids don't like working. So what? When they're adults, if they don't like working, are they just going to stay home? They're going to have to work. Life is work. The rest is just details, amen? You got to work. God put us on this earth to do work. We're saved on two good works that God had before ordained that we should walk in them. So we're here to work. We'll work till Jesus comes. We'll work, right? We're here to work. Teach your kids to work. So children, learn how to study and learn how to work. I thank God for every time I got to go to work with my dad as a kid and do electrical work, crawl under houses and crawl through attics, which pretty much what my job consisted of exclusively. But I learned a lot. You're always learning more than you think. I learned things by doing that. And so you say, well, what am I going to learn doing the dishes? Well, guess what? Your first job, you might be washing dishes. Guess what? When you start working, you typically start with a grunt job. My first job, besides working with my dad, was at a pizza place, round table pizza. And I was working the first day in the scullery. Who knows what the scullery is? Very few people. All right. The scullery is where you wash dishes. So I was just banished to this dungeon of a scullery. You think I was making the pizza and bringing it out to the table? You think I was operating the cash register? No, no, no. The first day, you're cleaning dishes. You're working in the scullery. So all that experience at home doing dishes has prepared you for this moment, so you can really shine on your first day in the scullery, right? And my children are often digging literal ditches at their job. They've been doing some plumbing and stuff like that, and so they end up digging holes outside. Well, all the gardening and weeding has prepared them for that. So any work that you do is going to help prepare you to be a good worker and to just learn how to just shut up and do your job, for example. That's a great lesson, amen, that a lot of people haven't learned. So it's important that you take advantage of your childhood, your teenage years to learn, to prepare, to work. Then you become a young adult. I would admonish you as a young adult to take life seriously in your 20s. Don't wait till you're 30 to get serious. Get serious about life in your 20s, okay? Look down at your Bible. Are you in Ecclesiastes 11? Look at verse 9, rejoice, O young man in thy youth. So this is that young man of 20, 23, 25, 27, whatever. He says, rejoice, O young man in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine eyes, but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. So he's saying, you know what? Go ahead. Do what you want to do. Follow your heart. Follow your eyes. Go out and party and have fun, but just remember, you're going to get punished for that. God's going to hold you accountable for that. You can't sow your wild oats and then pray for a crop failure, okay? You're going to reap what you sow. So then he says in the next verse, therefore, remove sorrow from thy heart and put away evil from thy flesh, for childhood and youth are vanity. Childhood and youth are vanity. What he's saying is, don't just go out and say, oh, I have to have fun and party and everything like that. Use that time for something that's not vain. Use that time for something valuable, preparing you to serve God with the rest of your life. And look, I'm all for having fun, but having fun is like the icing on the cake of life, okay? I'm all for icing on my cake. But you know what? If you gave me a plate with just nothing but icing on it, if it looked like cake and then I put my fork in and it was just frosting all the way down to the bottom, I would say, you know, what is this? You know, you wouldn't want to eat that. Now we all love frosting, but when there's too much frosting, it's not good anymore. Like I'll give you an example. My wife makes schnitzel, which is a breaded veal cutlet, but we don't do veal. We use the only meat there is, pork, okay? Sorry, Hebrew roots, Judaizers out there. But we eat pretty much 90% pork in our house, amen? We're just, every day we're celebrating the new covenant. But we eat these breaded pork chops, schnitzel, and the breading is the best part, okay? So it's got, you know, it's got the breading and it's all fried up and everything. The breading, you kind of want the piece that has the most breading on it. But then when my wife's done making all the meat, then she'll just take the extra breading and just kind of make a decoy schnitzel. She'll just kind of fold it and shape it into a decoy. And even though you love that greasy breading, when you bite into the decoy, it's like, you know, it's a betrayal because there's no meat on the inside, okay? So the point is, you know, that's how life is. Fun is that breaded coating, but it's not the meat of our lives. The frosting is great, a little bit of frosting. And have you noticed that the older you get, the less frosting you want on your cake? I mean, kids want more frosting. Sometimes adults will even just eat like a marble cake with no frosting and even enjoy that a little bit more, am I right? But what if you gave that to a kid though? What if you gave it to a toddler? They're going to, you know, they're not going to like it. You get older, you get more mature in your taste buds, and that's why kids and adults don't eat the same things all the time, right? So you get a little bit more mature, and it's the same thing in life. As you get older, you need less fun in life. When you're a kid and a teenager, you need more fun in your life, don't you? But as you get older, you get more mature, and there's less frosting, more cake, less breading, and more meat on the bone, amen? So this is what the Bible's saying. Look at chapter 12, verse 1, he rolls into the next thought. Remember now, thy creator in the days of thy youth, right? When you're a youth, think about the things of God. I tried to win an extended relative of mine to the Lord, and I tried to plead with him to get saved, and here's what he said, I'm too young for religion. You know, this guy's 18 years old, and he said, I'm too young for this. He said, I'm not against it, I love Christ, I love the Bible, but I don't know what I believe yet, I don't even want to think about what I believe yet, because he said, I'm too young for religion, when I get older, I will seek God. That's literally what he said to me. And it turns out that in the country that he's from, that's the prevailing mentality amongst the youth, is seek God when you get older, religion's for old people, wrong, remember the creator in the days of your youth, the Bible says, while the evil days come not. Say what evil days? Well, those that are old, they are not asking that question. When the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them, you say, man, I wish I could just achieve immortality, I wish I could live forever. There was this guy who came and visited our church one time, he was into transhumanism, and he was really into eternal life and living forever, not in the way that the Bible talks about it, but actually just physically somehow extending his life through technology, where he could just live forever. And there are a lot of people in this world that are seeking literal physical immortality through machines or drugs or DNA tampering or something like that. But what you have to understand is that when people get to the end of their life, sometimes they actually want to die, they're ready to die, they've lived their life, and they get to a point where they don't have any pleasure in even being here anymore, it's just time to go. That's just the way of the world. You're born, you live, you die. This is the way life works. So there's a time when you don't have any pleasure in the days of your life. While the sun or the light or the moon or the stars be not darkened nor the clouds return after the rain, in which the keepers of the house shall tremble and the strong men shall bow themselves. What is this referring to? Well, the keepers of the house and the strong men, these are metaphors. So the strong men would be like, picture big, strong shoulders and arms, right? Because that's the muscle on a man that's big and strong as compared to women, except Michelle Obama. But then it says the strong men shall bow themselves. This is basically referring to people getting older and they sort of are hunched over a little bit, right? The strong men bow themselves. And it talks about the keepers of the house tremble. Have you ever noticed how old people sometimes will begin to tremble? They'll have a little bit of a shake or a tremor and they're kind of hunched over a little bit, right? And then he says the grinders shall cease because they're few. The grinders are your teeth, right? Your molars are your grinders and they begin to cease because they're few, right? Your teeth start to fall out. Your teeth don't work properly. Those that look out of the windows be darkened. This is talking about your eyes and your eyesight begin to fade. And the doors shall be shut in the streets when the sound of the grinding is low and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird. Have you ever noticed how old people, they do not sleep very deeply? So a little bird, cheep, cheep, cheep, you know, that's like the alarm to them. Whereas a teenager, it's hard to wake them. You know, you're kind of like shaking them and trying to wake them up. It's hard to wake them up. But an old person, you just kind of go, and they're just like, whoa, you know. And he says they rise up at the voice of a bird. Have you noticed that old people get up really early in the morning? They'll get up at three, four in the morning, right? They get up super early. They don't sleep as much. They sleep lightly and they get up extremely early in the morning. And then he says that all the daughters of music shall be brought low. It's talking about the volume being turned down because they're starting to get hard of hearing, so everything gets quieter. Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high. So you don't see a lot of old people necessarily bungee jumping, skydiving, going on roller coasters because of the fact that they start to have more fear of heights. And old people are usually more cautious in general. And they're not as reckless as young people. So they'll be afraid of that which is high, fear shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail, okay? So, you know, again, a grasshopper is this tiny creature. But an old person can become so weak that even, you know, picking up a grasshopper would be a burden. It would be something heavy to them. And then it says desire shall fail. You know, they're not just thinking about all the beautiful babes at that age because they get to a point where they don't have a desire for women anymore. They just get old and that's just not on their mind. And they don't really care about it. You know, and so desire shall fail or be lacking. Because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets, or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Flip over to 2 Samuel chapter 19, 2 Samuel chapter 19. So again, the sermon is called Act Your Age, right? Embrace every stage of life. A baby is supposed to be a baby. A toddler is supposed to be a toddler. A child is supposed to be a child. A teenager should be a teenager. An adult is an adult. And so today, we have the opposite going on. And there's so much to talk about in this sermon. I'm kind of trying to cram it all into one sermon. It's a little bit much to take on. But think about today the opposite problem of what we talked about earlier, kids who want to grow up too fast. What about the adults who don't want to grow up at all? Have you noticed all of the comic book movies of superheroes that the world is coming out with, they're coming out with so many superhero movies, it's all the rage right now, all the Spiderman and Captain America and Marvel comics, this, and Superman, Batman. And you would think to yourself, wow, they sure are making a lot of kids' movies. And then it's like rated PG-13, rated R, what? Oh, man, look at all these kids' movies until you get on an airplane and look around and see everybody who's 30, 40 years old glued to a comic book movie, glued to a superhero movie, just glued, just, uh, you know. That's immature. When I became a man, I put away childish things. So the fact that there's this market amongst 30, 40 year olds to watch superhero movies shows how immature people are. And today we have video games that are literally geared to 30, 40 year olds. And we have wives today that are upset because their husband won't spend any time with them because he's glued to a video game. He won't work any overtime at work because he's glued to a video game. And no girl wants to marry a video game addict. I mean, that's not cool. But today the video games are so addictive. Now look, I'll confess to you, when I was growing up, I was addicted to video games. I played a lot of video games. I mean, there have been days in my life when I woke up and all I did was eat, use the bathroom and play video games for an entire day for 14, 15 hours, okay. And that's bad. But at least when I was a kid, at least when I was a kid, the video games weren't as addictive as they are now. I still got addicted to them, but they weren't that addictive because they weren't that cool. There's only so many times you can play Super Mario Brothers, Contra and stuff like that. But the games now, they're designed to suck you in. These storylines go on and on and it just goes on. It's almost like a movie video game almost mixed from what I can see. I've never played any of the new ones. They're so complicated. If I ever find myself in an arcade with my teenagers or something, it's like, where's Millipede? But the thing is, these games suck you in. They're addictive and then you pay money to get weapons upgrades and everything and you're paying money to do and people get sucked into these and obsessed with these things. Look, if you're an adult and you're still playing video games, you need to grow up. Now I will confess that I have a rule for myself that I allow myself to play video games only if I'm on an international flight that's like at least nine hours, then I'll play a little video game just to get through it, you know, sometimes. But that's it, you know, because I'm telling you, it's addictive and when you have adults playing a video game, they need to grow up and actually live a real life, do things. And look, if you fool around with your kids or something, fine. But if you're like, sorry, I don't have time for you kids, I'm into this video game, you know. Oh, sorry, honey, wait, I'm about to beat the last man, you know, I'm about to break my all-time high score, you know. But it's epidemic today, the video game addiction, watching comic book movies, when are you going to grow up and get serious about life? You're an adult. Paul put away childish things when he became a man. So when you're a young man, get serious about life, get to work, study, serve God, and you know, I'm thankful that, you know, for every bit of study I did, I did waste a lot of time on video games as a teenager, I admit it. You know, I could have been a lot smarter and I could have been a lot more effective and better at my job if I hadn't have wasted most of my teenage years playing video games and just doing stupid things. But I'm thankful for every moment that I spent as a teenager reading my Bible, I'm thankful for every moment I spent as a teenager seeking God, praying, serving the Lord in any capacity, and I'm thankful for every moment I spent studying and learning anything, learning any foreign language, math, whatever. I'm thankful for all that because that's the stuff you're going to use for the rest of your life. But I don't just sit around and just daydream about how cool it was to beat Contra without losing a life. And I invested many hours into that because that's almost impossible, okay, but it can be done. So you know, without, and I'm not, I didn't use up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start, okay. But the point is, though, you need to use that time to get serious about the Lord, seek the Creator in the days of your youth before the time comes when you're too old to do anything for God. Now, what do you do when you get elderly? Because now we're getting into the final stage in acting your age is when you get elderly. Before I mention elderly, let me say this, don't get elderly before your time. I believe that when you're 30, 40, 50 years old, you should be in the prime of life. Because that's where brains and experience meet your body still functions, okay. Because of the fact that, yeah, young people, they have all this energy, but they don't know, you know, they're not smart enough to really use it to its full potential. As the saying goes, wisdom, or youth is wasted on the young. Have you ever heard that before? Youth is wasted on the young. You know, they have the physical energy and everything, but they don't necessarily have the wisdom and experience to be effective. But when you're 30, 40, 50 years old, and by the way, that was the prime time for serving God in the tabernacle in the Old Testament was 30, 40, 50 years old. When you're 30, 40, 50, you have all the experience of age, you have the wisdom that hopefully you've been acquiring, and you're still young enough to be effective, work hard, to put in a 12-hour, 16-hour day and get things done and be effective. But eventually, you're going to get to a point where you just get old, right. You get to the point where your brain isn't as sharp as it used to be, your body is not as healthy as it used to be, the grinders are few, and you start to stoop forward and tremble and all these different things. What do you do at that point? Here's a beautiful story about a man who understood what it means to be old. Look down at your Bible in 2 Samuel 19, this is Barzillai and his interaction with King David. The Bible says in 2 Samuel 19, 33, and the king said unto Barzillai, Come thou over with me and I will feed thee with me in Jerusalem. And Barzillai said unto the king, How long have I to live that I should go up with the king unto Jerusalem? I am this day four score years old. So he's 80, so he's very old, right. He says, I'm four score years old and can I discern between good and evil? Can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink? Can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women? Wherefore then should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king? Thy servant will go a little way over Jordan with the king, and why should the king recompense it me with such a reward? Let thy servant, I pray thee, turn back again, that I may die in my own city, and be buried by the grave of my father and of my mother. But behold thy servant, Kimham, let him go over with my lord the king, and do what shall seem good unto thee. And the king answered, Kimham shall go over with me, and I will do to him that which shall seem good unto thee. And whatsoever thou shalt require of me, that will I do for thee. So here's an old man, Barzillai, he's 80 years old, and he says, look, I'm almost dead. My life's almost over. I can't even taste the food anymore. I can't even hear the music anymore. What good is it going to do me to go to the palace and live the luxury? I don't eat my cake with frosting anymore, is basically what he's saying. And so there's no point, but what's he thinking about the next generation? He's got a young guy here that he can be a blessing to, and he says, hey, why don't you take Kimham? Let's bless Kimham. And you know what? That ought to be the attitude of elderly people, is not just thinking about themselves, but thinking about what they can impart to the next generation. So if you're to that age where you're 70, 80, and don't get there before your time, you're like in your 40s, and you're like, all right, I need to pass this on. It's like, no, buddy, keep living your life, all right? But I'm saying, when you actually do get extremely old, you know what? You should be thinking about other people and passing on the wisdom and the knowledge to the next generation, not just about yourself and how you can just have the best retirement ever or something. You should also be thinking about what you can do to bless the next generation. And this is the opposite of Hezekiah, who said, well, as long as there's peace and truth in my days, I don't care what happens to the next generation, right? And then, of course, the final stage that you're going to come to is death, right? I mean, eventually, you're going to get old, and you're going to die. God willing, obviously, Christ will return, even so, come Lord Jesus, and that He would come in our lifetime, but we don't know when He's going to return. No one knows the day or the hour. And so it might be in our lives that we're going to die, but we don't know when He's going to return. And so we're going to die, and we're going to die, and we're going to die, and we're And so it might be in our lifetime. It might not be in our lifetime, especially if you're very old. I wouldn't hold your breath that it's going to happen in your lifetime. So what about death? And this is a controversial subject as well when it comes to death. And let me say this. When people get old, they die of natural causes. Everybody doesn't die from something. Not everybody's going to die because they got hurt or injured or a particular disease. Sometimes people just get old, and the clock runs out, and they die. It's called dying of natural causes. Now there's a subject that I want to just touch on of euthanasia, or what is commonly called assisted suicide or euthanasia. And this is a little bit of a complicated issue. And I feel like some people kind of overreact to the people who are wrong about this, and maybe they go too far in the other direction. But I'll say this. If somebody gets to a point where they're super old, they can't function anymore as a human being, their life is over, so their body just naturally kind of just starts shutting down, which is the way of the world. I don't think that there's any reason to just hook that person up to machines and just keep them alive for years when they can't do anything. They're done. Their life's over. I remember when my grandpa was 72 years old, perfectly healthy, in his right mind, living a productive life, serving the Lord, loving the Lord, living a good life. He ended up falling down a flight of stairs and puncturing his lungs and ending up in the hospital. And he was on breathing machines and stuff like that because he'd punctured his lungs. He was old and everything like that. And people were talking about, oh, pull the plug. He's had his three score and 10. That was ridiculous because the guy, he was riding a motorcycle the day before he fell down the stairs. So it's not like it was just, oh, he's done, his life's over. I'm all for saving people's lives with medicine. We've got the, what's that thing called, the AED. If anybody falls over in the service, man, we're ready to bring them back, amen? So if you're elderly, let that be a comfort to you. Who's trained on how to use the AED? See what I'm saying? We're ready to bring you back, okay? So we've got the AED and we know how to use it. I'm all for using medicine and technology to save a life. You know, when somebody's injured or sick or they're in a coma, yeah, let's keep them alive. Let's bring them back. And hey, let's pull the plug on somebody who's 20 years old or whatever. And I'm not saying an elderly person who basically comes to their family and says, hey, I don't want to be a burden on you guys, so I'm just going to go ahead and do an assisted suicide. Okay, great. Where do we sign? That's wicked. Elderly people are not a burden. Elderly people are a blessing. And you know what? If our parents and grandparents raised us and took care of us, then we should take care of them in their old age. That's what the Bible says. If a man provide not for them of his own house, he's denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. And the Bible specifically talks about those that are older and how we should take care of the widows and the elderly that are in our own family, okay? So obviously, I'm for, you know, keeping the old people around, taking care of them. I'm not talking about some death panel or something, but I will say this. You know, when someone is super old and their life's over and they just start naturally dying, you just need to let that person go at that point. You know, and that's why there are some people who have what's called a DNR, a Do Not Resuscitate order on their will or whatever where they basically tell the doctors or tell their family, hey, look, I'm 80-some years old, I'm knocking on death's door here. If I collapse or go unconscious or my heart stops beating, don't resuscitate me. Just let me go, okay? That's normal. I recently had a situation where I was called to the bedside of someone's loved one who was in her 80s. She was saved, so she already knew Christ as Savior, and this woman had not been able to walk or talk for over a year. I mean, she's just laying in a bed. She can't walk. She can't talk. She's just laying there, can't do anything for herself, and I was called in to pray for her, you know, pray for this woman. And so I went over there and, you know, I went to the bedside, and this woman, I mean, all she does is just when she gets hungry, she'd just go like, and then they'd feed her, you know. That's it. So I knelt down by the bedside, and they said, pray for this woman. I prayed for her to die, but I prayed it in a kind and a loving way, not in a bad way or a rude way. I just prayed and said, Lord, thank you so much. You know, as I was with the family, I said, Lord, thank you so much that this woman has been saved. She knows you as her Savior, Lord, and I just pray that you would just give her a peaceful transition over to the other side and just bring her home, Lord, and let it be painless and, you know, comfort the family. You know, those are the type of things I prayed. Less than 12 hours later, she was gone, and she'd been like that for like a year or two, but less than 12 hours later, she was gone. It was either one of two things. Either, number one, God answered my prayer, because, you know, that's what I prayed, and God saw fit to answer that prayer, which I believe is what happened. But another possible explanation is that maybe she just heard that prayer and also just thought to herself, you know what, it's time to go, or maybe a combination of both. But the point is, you know, this woman had lived her life. She's at the end of life. She's done, and she knows Christ. It's time to go to part and to be with Christ, which is far better. You know, Paul said to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. You know, he wanted to be on this earth because he had work to do. He had something to accomplish. Okay. So I do think that it's okay for people to have a do not resuscitate when they're super old and ready to go, and if your loved one is super old, they're done, there's no way they can recover, life's over, let them go. There's no reason to just keep them here needlessly. Okay. But that's a far cry from assisted suicide. Obviously, I'm totally against euthanasia, assisted suicide. So the point is, there are different stages of life, and we need to embrace them all, including death. When death comes, embrace it. Why? Because there's no sting to the Christian. Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy victory? For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. So if we have a Christian mentality when we're a young person, we embrace youth, but we remember the Creator in the days of our youth, right? We work hard in our prime when we're 30, 40, 50, we want to raise a family, do our job, work hard, get a lot of things done, and then as we get elderly, we need to start thinking about the next generation, right? Passing on the wisdom and the blessings to the next generation, handing the torch to them, thinking less about ourselves and more about other people, which obviously we should do our whole life, but especially when you're old, you need to get the Barzillai mentality that says, hey, I've already lived my life, let's start thinking about someone else now, okay, because I'm almost gone. And then when death comes, we need to embrace it and say, you know what, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. So death is a departure to go be with Christ, what could be better, amen? So act your age, I don't care how old you are, be happy to be the age you are, this is the day which the Lord has made, we'll rejoice and be glad in it, don't wish you were some other age or younger, older, just be, and you know, if you're old, don't go out and get a bunch of tattoos and dye your hair and get a piercing and everything, you're not fooling anybody, you're old. So act like it, amen? All right, let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord, I just pray that you would give us wisdom as we raise our children, Lord, that we would keep them at their proper age, Lord, and not let them become adults too fast when they're not at the maturity to handle being an adult, Lord, help them to be protected and sheltered from some of this garbage out in the world that wants to corrupt them at a young age, Lord, and help all of us, whether we're 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, those of us adults, Lord, help us to act our age, put away the childish things, put away the comic books, and live a sober life according to our age, and when death comes, Lord, let it be a peaceful transition for all of us, and help us embrace it and be ready for it. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.