We turn in our Bibles, please, to Exodus
chapter 2, the second chapter of the book
of Exodus.
Exodus chapter 2, verse 1, And there went
a man of the house of Levi, and
took to wife a daughter of Levi, and
the woman conceived and bare a son.
And when she saw him, that he was
a goodly child, she hid him three months.
And when she could not longer hide him,
she took for him an ark of bulrushes,
and daubed it with slime and with pitch,
and put the child therein.
And she laid it in the flags by
the river's brink.
And his sister stood afar off to wit
what would be done to him.
The daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash
herself at the river, and her maidens walked
along by the river's side.
And when she saw the ark among the
flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.
When she had opened it, she saw the
child.
Behold, the babe wept.
And she had compassion on him, and said,
This is one of the Hebrews' children.
Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall
I go and call to thee a nurse
of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse
the child for thee?
And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go.
The maid went and called the child's mother.
And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this
child away, and nurse it for me.
Thy will give thee thy wages.
And the woman took the child and nursed
it.
The child grew, and she brought him unto
Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son.
And she called his name Moses.
She said, Because I drew him out of
the water.
Mr. Pell has been exalting the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ here this afternoon, the
one who is worthy of all that we
have and are.
And I would like to stand before you
as his representative this afternoon, and say these
words to you, especially to Christian parents here
today.
Take this child away, and nurse it for
me, that I will give thee thy wages.
I believe there's a very real sense in
which the Savior of the world is saying
that, has been saying it down through the
centuries to Christian people, whose children are a
stewardship from God.
Take this child away, and nurse it for
me, that I will give thee thy wages.
Suppose you should ask the average Christian parent
today, for what are you training your children?
I wonder if we were to be brutally
frank and absolutely honest before the Lord what
we would say.
Really now, what is your ambition for your
children?
And I think that as we examine our
own hearts, and as we examine the question,
that many of us would have to confess
that, well, let's see, a certain measure of
financial independence.
I'd like to feel my children were going
to live comfortably.
And perhaps a certain measure of status in
the community, prestige, isn't necessary, but it helps.
I'd like to think of my children going
to, well, preferably to a big name college,
and then when they get out to step
into a good job, I'd like to think
that they would have a nice home, be
able to raise a family in suburbia, and
be able to live comfortably, and oh yes,
give their evenings and weekends to the assembly
or to the Lord.
I don't think that's a very inaccurate picture
of the way things are today.
Makes me think of Lenin when he started
off.
He said, give me men who are willing
not to give their spare evenings but their
lives to the cause.
He started with 17 and his doctrine is
covering the face of the earth today.
And you say to these parents, well, what
about the work of the Lord?
What about the Great Commission?
Didn't Jesus say, go ye into all the
world and preach the gospel to every creature?
Well, somehow or other it seems kind of
remote.
I can see it for other people's children,
but I can't see it for my own.
In fact, I must confess a measure of
distress to think of my children out on
the mission field with all the hardships that
there are there.
And dear friends, what it boils down to
is today, by and large, I'm afraid we're
willing to raise a generation of children to
give their lives to a business corporation rather
than to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I'm afraid that's what it boils down to.
And the pathetic, the tragic aftermath of that
is that we have young people in the
world today that are spending their lives on
trivia.
We do.
We have people today, young people in the
world today whose lives are spent studying sediment
in Chesapeake Bay, or the summer habits of
Wyoming antelope, or the browning reaction of potato
chips, or mineral deficiencies in the tomato and
the cocklebur.
Now you think I'm joking, but I'm not.
I'm stating actual fact to you this afternoon.
Now don't misunderstand me.
Those young people have good jobs today.
They're right up there in the higher echelon.
Oh yeah.
But you wonder what it'll all mean a
hundred years from now, the browning reaction of
potato chips.
Whatever that means, I don't know.
You think this isn't real, don't you?
Well, dear friends, it's very, very real.
The pressure usually starts when our young people
are in high school.
It really starts in earnest then.
And there is an obsession today among Christian
people that the young people must go on,
must go on and make a name for
themselves in the world.
And various subtle sorts of pressure are put
on.
It isn't that you sit them down and
you give them an hour's lecture on this
subject, but it's just in the common everyday
round of life that they're faced with these
remarks.
And pretty soon it builds up an image
in their minds.
Let me give you just an example of
this type of thing.
There was a young man in the Chicago
area.
His father's an executor.
He's a big man and a Christian.
And this young fellow is a Christian fellow
too.
And his father, the family was determined that
he was going to go to a certain
college in the south, a college with a
good name, a college where they had family
connections, and a college with rather a Christian
label, which is more of a label than
anything else.
And this young fellow went down there and
he found out that all the Christianity in
that college could be put on the head
of your little finger.
And he found instead of being a Christian
college, it was very much the reverse, that
it was a godless place with immorality on
every hand.
You know, he came home during one of
the vacation periods.
And one night they had a big powwow
there in the home.
The parents, he was ready to step out.
And so the parents took out all their
big artillery that night and they started to
present their strong reasons why it was absolutely
imperative that he go on down the long
road.
And the poor young fellow, he was at
a disadvantage.
His age was against him, you know.
And so he started presenting the best arguments
that he knew how to his parents.
Why he didn't feel it was in his
spiritual interest to go on in this pathway
that they had carved out for him.
And so the louder he talked, the more
they would talk.
Finally, the evening was growing on.
That dear young fellow said to his father,
he said, well, dad, do you want me
to go on for God or don't you?
That's what I'm speaking about.
I'm speaking about this pressure, this pressure that's
on young people today to conform to the
standards of the world.
It's very, very real.
And it can result in some terrible shipwrecks.
And so there it is.
Most parents don't think that their young people
could do so well in a trade.
In fact, you don't hear very much about
a trade today.
But I'd like to just suggest this to
some Christian parents that many young people today
can do better in a trade, can have
more money to give to the work of
the Lord and have more time to serve
the Lord than by going through college and
getting degree after degree and settling down after
that.
But the thing that bothers me, dear friends,
this afternoon is that many Christian parents today,
many Christian parents today would have an apoplectic
fit if their children came home and talked
about the work of the Lord as a
respectable way in which they'd like to spend
their time.
Now, this is true.
It's absolutely true.
I've told some of you before the story
of Isabel Kuhn and how her mother was
the missionary chairwoman of their local church in
Western Canada for many, many years, sending things
out to the missionaries and encouraging young people
to go.
And one day Isabel came home and told
her mother that God had called her to
the mission field and the mother said, over
my dead body.
That's the way Isabel had to go.
Over her mother's dead body.
She had to wait until her mother died
and then she went out to serve the
Lord.
There it is, a blind, unthinking passion that
Christian parents today are pushing their young people.
And it's really not to give the best
of their lives to the Lord.
Not so much, really, to get ahead in
the world.
I love to read the story of Henry
Martin.
I think, I
And he strolled for the highest academic honors
that the school could offer him and he
won them.
And when he won them he said, I
was surprised to find that I had grasped
a shadow.
And it was a blessed shadow of disillusionment
for him because it turned his eyes to
a wider, richer field.
Well anyway, let's say the young person goes
off to college and now mother and dad
are really happy.
And this young fellow that we're talking about,
let's say he not only goes on to
college but he really becomes active in athletics
while he's there at college.
And that really is the pinnacle, isn't it?
I don't know, there's something nice, isn't there,
about seeing a fellow, a well built fellow
that goes out there on the football field
and perhaps the big game of the season
and his parents are there, Christian parents, they're
there in the grandstands and as the battle
rages they're yelling, kill him, murder him, mow
him down and other non-Christian phrases.
And pretty soon they rush out onto the
field, some men with a stretcher, and they
carry the young fellow off the field bruised
and battered and maimed.
I don't know, there's some sort of a
glory connected with it, it's wonderful.
And after a week or so he's around
the campus again and his leg is in
a cast, well that's good, cast are things
to autograph and just think, you know, purple
heart, yellow fever, all the rest.
Christian parents love it.
You know, I wonder how they'd feel if
that young fellow were out in Bombay being
stoned by a crowd.
Somehow or other, a dear young friend of
mine went out to the mission field and
his mother, a professing Christian in this country,
went to the United States embassy to get
him out of the country and went through
a nervous breakdown in the process.
What do you think of that?
She never did it when he was that,
when he was at a technical school in
Atlanta, I just forget the name of it.
Georgia Tech, she never did it when he
was going through Georgia Tech.
She never telephoned the dean to get him
out of things there, but she got in
touch with the United States embassy to get
her boy out of Turkey.
What do you think about that?
It's alright for that fellow to go off
to college and break his neck in football.
I say there's something grand about it, you
know, bringing glory to the college, but to
go out on the mission field and bring
glory to the blessed name of the Savior
of the world, well, that's just something different,
isn't it?
Don't ask me why.
And then, perhaps after this young fellow gets
out of college, he, well, maybe goes into
the armed services.
And the armed services, well, it's remarkable what
you can do when you have to.
You can crawl through, crawl over barbed wire
entanglements.
You can crawl under live machine gun fire.
A lot of people get bruised and hurt,
and then the war comes along.
The war comes along, and this young fellow
might go off into the war, and he
might even lay down his life for the
Lord in the service of his country.
And people will come around and speak well
to the parents, and it's nice, and it's
respectable.
It really is.
You know, there was an island in the
Pacific.
During World War II, I think it measured
about seven miles long and three miles wide.
The United States had to take it for
some strategic reason.
It was just a little piece of land.
Don't 20,000 casualty, and 5,000 red
-blooded Americans never came back.
5,000 red-blooded Americans.
Dear friends, half the world this afternoon has
never heard of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Five young fellows went down to Ecuador to
tell that saving name to savages in Ecuador.
They gave their lives in the attempt, and
Christians back home said they shouldn't have been
so reckless.
And when I think of countries in the
world like Turkey, with 30 million people without
the knowledge of the Savior, and I think
of an island in the Pacific, seven miles
long, three miles wide, 20,000 casualties, 5
,000 people who never returned.
What are we doing to reach the world
of the gospel?
It makes you wonder, doesn't it?
And so this fellow goes off to the
war, and if he dies for Christ, it's
fine.
You know, I wonder what would happen in
Christian circles today if 5,000 missionaries laid
down their lives for the Lord.
It would be absolutely shocking.
Yet it can take place in accidents in
the United States, and people don't think a
thing of it.
Honestly, I believe the day is coming when
young people are going to have to choose
between being a casualty for Christ and an
accident statistic at home.
That's about what it boils down to, isn't
it?
Or a disease statistic at home.
And I do see this, that the day
is coming when, the day is quite close
at hand, I believe, when young people are
going to have to be decided one way.
They're going to have to be decided for
Christ, or they're just going to drift off
to the world.
I think the great middle class is gone.
The great lukewarm area is gone.
It's going to be either black or white
from now on.
It's going to be one way or the
other.
But supposing that our young friend survives the
service and even actual warfare, and then comes
back, what's the goal?
Well, the job's the thing.
In a million and one ways, we tell
by our attitudes and by all of our
thinking that the job is the thing in
life.
You say to a parent, how is your
son getting along?
Oh, they say he's getting along very well,
thank you.
Or you say, tell me about it.
Why do they say he's worked his way
up until he's the vice president in charge
of paperclips at Amalgamated Futility Company?
That's what they say.
And you look impressed.
Vice president in charge of, you say, what
did he do?
Oh, I think it's something to do with
paperclips.
Well, no doubt it is.
No doubt it is.
Something to do with paperclips.
Now, dear friends, it's nothing to do with
having a job, and I'm not saying anything
about that today, but I do cry out
against this attitude that the job is the
thing in life.
The job isn't the thing in life.
The thing in life is the service of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Take this child away and nurse it for
me, he says, but I will give thee
thy wages.
And this is the type of thinking that
has corrupted us, one generation after the other.
I want to tell you that Christians are
born into the world for bigger business than
paperclips.
And we need to untangle a lot of
our gnarled, snarled thinking on this whole subject
that the job is not the thing at
all.
You know how it happens.
This young fellow is an up-and-coming
young fellow.
He starts off in his job.
The bosses, they nod knowingly to one another.
They say, there's a fellow to watch.
There's a fellow that's going to be useful
to us.
And so they start pushing him ahead.
And the promotions come, and the money comes.
And the money comes fast and thick.
And the promotions come too.
And as he goes up the ladder, he
finds he has less and less time for
his family, and he has less and less
time for the work of God.
And yet he's caught in a web.
He can't seem to get out of it
some way or other.
And he seems to be a victim of
certain circumstances.
And many times he wishes that the best
of his life weren't being given to this
sort of thing, but how can he ever
get out of it?
This is the thing that bothers him.
But I want to tell you, dear friends,
today that the modern corporations have a perverse
genius for draining the precious life out of
a person.
And when they get it, they're through with
you.
Is that true or isn't it?
It's true.
Well, you just study the automotive industry in
Detroit today, and you'll find it's absolutely true.
Wages?
Wages mean nothing to them.
If they can get a good man, a
man who's willing to give them everything, wages
and promotions mean nothing to them.
But I want to tell you, when he's
sixty and sixty-two, he's like that, a
nervous wreck.
They don't want him anymore.
The thing he's been working for, security, it
eludes him when he needs it most.
Dear friends, I want to stand here tonight
and cry out against, this afternoon, cry out
against parents grooming their young people for the
unworthy world.
It's not God's way.
The job is not the thing.
I remember reading in Joyce Gleaning's calendar a
little account of Jenny Lind and how she
forsook the concert stage at the very height
of her career.
And somebody asked her, why did you do
it?
And she said, it made me think too
much of this and too little of that.
Well, that wasn't bad.
It wasn't.
She left the stage at the zenith of
her power.
And yet, even as I talk along these
lines, I know that excuses come to our
minds by the bushel.
Here's an excuse.
Somebody has to stand by the stuff.
Have you ever heard that before?
Somebody has to stand by the stuff.
Well, you know, that's one of the best
known verses in the Bible.
It really is.
That interests me.
People really know that verse with a vengeance.
That was what David decreed with regard to
those that went down to the battle.
Those that carried by the stuff would share
equally.
But I'm not sure that stuff in that
verse means what stuff means today in our
luxurious society.
I think it's a different kind of stuff.
I really do.
What does it mean?
Somebody must stand by the stuff.
Does it mean that some must go out
into the battle and live sacrificially for the
spread of the gospel and others stay at
home and live in comfort, luxury and ease
and stand by the stuff?
I hardly think that's what the verse means.
Somebody says, yes, but other people have to
be in the upper brackets to reach those
in the upper brackets.
I'll never forget the first time I heard
that one out in California.
A very matronly lady who probably wished she
were in high society as she sucked in
her breath and said, I love to see
Christians in the upper bracket.
And with all this type of thinking, we
justify our ambitions for our young people today.
And then another word that is often brought
before these young people is, don't go unless
you're called.
Don't go unless you're called.
You know, it's a one-way street.
It's a funny thing.
They don't say before he goes to the
Amalgamated Futility Company, don't go before you're called.
Isn't that a funny thing?
It's only when it has to do with
the interests of Christ and the spread of
the gospel that you mustn't go before you're
called.
Well, in a sense, we're all called.
We're all called.
Not to perhaps go to the foreign field,
but the great aim and object of our
lives is to serve Christ here and represent
his interests.
I remember that when Jim Elliott was exercised
about going to Peru, you remember what they
said to him?
They said, why don't you stay here, Jim?
They said, there's such tremendous need among the
young people in this country.
You should stay here.
And Jim's answer was, the condemnation of this
people is written in their bank books and
in the dust of their Bibles.
And then another excuse that's said to young
people today is, stay at home and make
a lot of money and support the work
of the Lord.
Well, you know, that can be a snare
and a delusion.
Because this materialism can grip a young person
today and he might stay at home and
make a lot of money, but does he
give it to the work of the Lord?
Is it really going out for the spread
of the gospel?
I like to tell the story of dear
Ed McCulley.
In fact, I used to spend considerable time
with him Tuesday nights.
We were going through the Old Testament in
a class and Ed was there.
We used to talk together.
And one day his father was in his
study and a knock came at his father's
door and he said, come in.
And it was Ed.
And Ed came in.
And he said, what is it, Ed?
And Ed said, Dad, he said, I'm dropping
out of law school.
And the father said, why are you doing
that, Ed?
He said, because God has called me to
the mission field.
You know what the father said?
He said, let's get down and pray, Ed.
And as he tells the story today, he
always adds these words, I'm so glad I
didn't say a thing to discourage him.
Mind you, Ed went and gave his life
on the mission field.
I think that's what normal Christianity should be,
don't you?
Take this child and nurse it for me,
but I will give thee thy wages.
You know, when we gather together for a
conference like this, I notice that there's been
a burden of prayer for the salvation of
young people.
Praise the Lord.
A burden of prayer for the salvation of
our young fellows and young girls.
And I don't say this with any criticism,
but I haven't detected a similar burden of
putting our young people on the altar to
be used for Christ wherever and whenever he
wants them.
And I want to tell you this afternoon,
I'm jealous for our young people.
Jealous for every one of them.
I covet them for the Lord Jesus Christ.
And whether they're in a trade here at
home, in a job here at home, or
whether they're out in a foreign mission field,
that isn't the point.
Just that the main object, that the main
thrust of their lives should be to exalt
and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ.
Take this child and nurse it for me,
but I will give thee thy wages.