I. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of subjection to authority. If he does not learn this lesson early, he will suffer for it by-and-by.
II. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of self-restraint. It is not enough to be under the rule of others. Let such authority be ever so great, there is still a sphere to which it cannot extend, and in which there is scope for a man's own conscience to assert its command. There are, with all of us, desires and tendencies which we have sternly to resist, and the denying of which is part of the training by which we are fitted for a noble and useful life.
III. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of difficulty and toil. It is good for us all to have to work for our bread. Our Creator intended us for labour, not for indolence. Even before the fall, man had his physical work assigned to him. God placed him not in a "sleeping hollow" to fatten in idleness; but in a large garden, to dress it and to keep it.
IV. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of living godliness. It is to this that our blessed Saviour invites us when He says, "Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me." It is good for a man to become a decided Christian in early life.
V. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of a public Christian profession. The first thing is to be a Christian; the next thing is to avow it.
VI. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of Christian service. It will help your own faith wonderfully to be engaged in some real labour for the Lord.
VII. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of personal affliction. There is a marked want about those Christians who have never suffered. You will rarely see piety of a rich and mellow tone in a man who has known nothing of sorrow.
J. Thain Davidson, Forewarned Forearmed,p. 19.
I. There is, first, the yoke of home. Woe to that home which lays no yoke upon its inmates. That is the very office of the family toward its young and inexperienced members. To turn the current of the young life into a right channel to make good habitual by use, and (to that end) to insist upon conformity to a good rule to require, as the condition of maintenance, as the condition of protection, as the condition of life, that this and not that shall be the conduct and the speech and the temper, and (down to very minute particulars) the mode of living, this is the duty of a home, in order that it may bring after it God's assigned and certain blessing. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth the yoke of home.
II. But the home must at last send out its sons and its daughters into a rougher school of experience, and the half-way house on this journey is first the school with its discipline, and then the more special training for a particular profession or trade. Here too there is a yoke, and a yoke-bearing, or else a refusal of the yoke, with many sad consequences of sorrow and shame.
III. Many persons suffer seriously throughout their life by not having borne in their youth the yoke of a church.
IV. There is One who uses this very figure concerning His own Divine office. "Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me."
C. J. Vaughan, Pulpit Analyst,vol. iv., p. 432.
References: Lamentations 3:27. Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 205; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxii., No. 1291.Lamentations 3:31-33. J. Burton, Christian Life and Truth,p. 368.