By the grace of God, I've been in about forty one countries, and in Africa, and in India in recent years. And one thing that really amazed us, as we went right down through the central part of Africa, from Kenya, Zaire, right down to the Cape, to Botswana and Zambia, was the alarming absence of young men. Young women are there. Beautiful young women who could have stayed home and made quite a bit of themselves. But where are the young men? That was a question that really came to us with tremendous force. Visiting an assembly in the south, which shall be nameless. I looked down upon the heads of maybe sixty or seventy retired elder brethren. Well enough to play a few rounds of golf and to consider where next they should eat their meal. And I wondered at all this concentration of gift and wisdom and experience resident in a sunny waiting room for heaven. Any one of those men, I suppose, with gift could take three months out of the year and go to Lusaka and preach in English. Or to Ndola up in the northeast, the Copperbelt up in Zambia. Preach in English, never need to preach in another language. Or down into Cape Town among the colored assemblies, where there's a tremendous work going on and tremendous needs. Or to Hong Kong. So many places, it seems to me there's a tremendous message in that hymn that really touched my heart. Thanksgiving, someone has said, is thanks living. When John sent two disciples in Luke chapter seven, I think it was, to make sure, we're not going to preach from this chapter, but I noticed it last evening. With the question, art thou the Christ? Art thou really the one that has been sent, or should we be looking for another? John the Baptist. And when they came with that question, the Lord Jesus did not give them an answer to the question, but he performed miracles before their eyes, healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, casting out demons. And then he said to the disciples, go and tell John what you have seen. In other words, what I have done proves what I am. I could take you to a little mission spot in the heart of Africa, where there is a hospital, and there are two Irish girls on that station who maintain a twenty four hour vigil, week after week, seven days a week, month after month, two nurses. And in one of them, I think at the very moment is on furlough, and there's only one girl there. Or to other places. The house, the table is well populated. The laborers are few. Thanksgiving demands a response from my heart, not just to say thanks, but that we might truly yield ourselves in service to the Lord. Turn with me, please, to the book of Exodus. Chapter twenty one. Verse one. now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them. Now, if thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself. If he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her masters, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free, then his master shall bring him unto the judges. He shall also bring him to the door or unto the doorpost, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall serve him. Many things are often associated with the Christian testimony in the day in which we live, but we have to sit down very soberly and honestly and ask, are they necessary? Are these really essential? They're comfortable, they're pleasant, but are they essential? We don't really need better organizers. The cults have the best of organizations. We don't really need more eloquent preachers or more wonderful music, for there's nothing so easily divorced as the voice and the heart. Nice, but aren't these essential? We don't really need better methods. The world, they know all about methodology, as they talk about. What does the world need now, at this moment, before the coming of the Lord to sweep it away forever from these opportunities to serve him in the place of his rejection? What is really needed? It seems, as we look into the scriptures, that what is needed at this time is a company of believers personally committed, totally committed, without reserves, without retreat, without regard for the consequences. Campbell Morgan said the Christian life was never intended to be an initial spasm followed by a chronic inertia. That believers were to be committed is clear from the scriptures. We read in second Corinthians five fifteen, he died for all that. They should be kept out of hell, no. He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him that died for them and rose again. That's commitment. And we're living in a world of such confused values and priorities that it's hard to know the meaning of words anymore. Dedication and consecration have been souped up and sung about with jingling choruses, but the soul searching, abasing, shattering wa- meaning of those words have lost their import. In the scriptures that we have read, we have God's illustration of the meaning of the truly committed servant. Of course, our Lord Jesus Christ is the antitype of every committed servant. He is the servant, my servant whom I uphold, the perfect servant. But this is also a picture of the committed servant as we ought to be, a lesson for us. For a few minutes, I want you to look at this scripture in the light of three couplets. The servant and his service. The crisis that would come to him at the end of six years, the crisis and the choice, and then the master and his movements. Just these three couplets. First of all, the servant and his service. In the Old Testament, for a Hebrew to be a servant or a bond slave to another Hebrew, something must have happened. He either was a thief who had taken what was not his, or he was a bankrupt and couldn't pay his debts. And in that case, he was committed to work, to work off his indebtedness, and he had to work for six years. The servant. The Lord Jesus sets out the principles of service in Matthew six twenty four. No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. We must make a choice. Which world we're going to live for, which master we are going to serve, because we must serve someone. That is absolutely clear. To whomsoever we give that service, the scripture says, his servant we are. We must serve someone. Of course, there may be a profession of service. The Lord said to the disciples in John thirteen, he says, you call me Master and Lord, and so I am. If I, if I then your Lord and Master, and he reversed the order of the names. If I then your Lord and Master have served, then you also ought to. As the perfect example, he has given us the example that we ought to serve, but then he says, as I have done it, that's how I want you to do it. He has also given us the way of serving. Of course, there's a price, isn't there? Anything that's got any worth at all has a price to pay. And so the Lord Jesus has set out the price of the servant. If any man will serve me, let him take up his cross and follow me. A. W. Tozer, in his little pamphlet, The New Cross, said, there are many in the church today don't mind singing about a cross, so long as it's on a green hill far away. And it's time we preach the cross to the Christians now. The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved, it, the cross, is the power of God. Is the power of God. What is the cross? Well, the cross is not some personal sorrow. A dear widow has lost her husband, say, what a cross, or has a drunken husband, what a cross to bear, or a prodigal son, what a cross she has. That's not the cross. Those may be very real sorrows, but the cross is a voluntary thing. Let him take it up. And the cross is essential for true spiritual service. If we are going to truly enter into heavenly places in Christ, we cannot bypass the cross. The Lord didn't, and we certainly shall not. The resurrection life is the life out of the grave. We rise to walk in newness of life. So we can't avoid the cross, our cross, not his cross, our personal cross. What is the cross? It is that daily identifying ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ as he died unto sin. Now, in his death for sin, no man can enter into it, but in his death unto sin, we are taught in Romans six that we are to identify ourselves that like as Christ himself died unto sin, so we also are to reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin. That's the cross. The cross is is not some mystical thing that we sing about in a moving meeting. The cross is the yielding of our members to the Holy Spirit to make the cross a reality in those members. And that's a very solemn thing, isn't it? When we yield our members and our body to God, the Spirit of God will make the cross a reality in that body and in those members. There is a price to pay. There were two kinds of service this man could engage in. There was an obligatory service, six years he shall serve. He had no choice in that. He had to serve six years. That was his obligation, his duty. But then there was a voluntary service that was available to him, that if in love for his master he chose, he could give up his rights to freedom and serve his master forever. So here were two kinds of service. There was a service, the quality of which was limited to time, six years he shall serve. There was a service that had eternal consequences, he shall serve him forever. The one was a service of duty, and the other was a service of devotion. Now I ask my heart, and you may listen in, which of these two words characterizes my service? Duty or devotion? There is a shattering text from the lips of the Lord Jesus in Luke seventeen. When ye shall have done all those things which were commanded you. Say, we are unprofitable servants. We have done that which was our duty to do. I ask my heart, have I even done my duty? Have I even done all that I have been commanded to do? Until I reach that point of having done all that I have been commanded to, I have not yet made a profit for my Lord. Unprofitable. Those words shatter me, I confess. But, beyond the call of duty, there is that realm of loving service, the service of devotion, wherein the Lord takes special delight, service of love. We go to the meeting. Do we do it because that's our duty to do? We read the chapter because we want to check it off for the day. Well, I read my chapter today. Say our prayers. We have done that which was our duty to do. What kind of service? There would come a time in this man's life at the six years, the end of it drew near, and he knew he had to make a choice. He had worked out his obligation, and he's come now to the day, the morning dawns, which is his last day, and now he has the decision to make. The crisis is upon him. How will he choose? The voices call upon him to step out free, serve long enough. And I suppose we might hear the voice of self-gratification calling to him, look, you've worked long enough as a servant, a slave, have a little fun, a little recreation. Surely there's nothing wrong in a little recreation. Be free to enjoy these things. Have some fun. Don't be old before your time. The voice of personal gratification says, go out free and have fun. The voice of social advantage calls, look, you've been a servant long enough, and look what it has cost you. Go out now and make some profit. Get ahead in the world. Be something. The voice, I suppose, of social acceptance calls out, what's a servant? You don't want to be identified as a servant. Get a name, get a title, oh, get a title. That's a good thing. Get a title. I was at a meeting in New Jersey one time, meeting for, uh, women. It was quite a large company, and I was speaking to them, and after the meeting, a well-dressed lady came to me, and she said, a doctor, which seminary did you graduate from? Oh, I said, I'm sorry to disappoint you. I'm not a doctor. I didn't graduate from a seminary. In fact, I'm not even an educated man. Oh, she said, as though I was carrying a bag of old cabbages in my hand. Oh, she said, indeed. And she turned and walked away. For some strange reason, that made a difference to her. That's the voice of social acceptance. Be somebody. Get a title. Be free of a servant's place. I suppose the most appealing voice would be the voice of freedom itself. Just be free. Be free to do your own thing. Freedom is one of the most oversold words in the world today. As many young people have found out. And the freedom they so earnestly sought in getting away from home, they discovered only to be an exchange of masters. And it's good to remember the principle. We are free agents, all of us. As to our will, we are free to take any course of action we wish, but we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. We are not free for that. Now he comes to the choice. That has to do with the term of his servants and the type of his service. What... what will he do? Well, what he'll do will be the test of his service. Is it going to be the end of simply the duty that he has fulfilled, or is it going to be a service of unstinting devotion. If ever there was a scourge afflicted the people of God today, I believe it's the scourge of half-heartedness. Half-heartedness. We speak about football fans, and the word, of course, as you know, is a, an abbreviation for fanatic. But if you say he's a religious fanatic, well, we mean the fellow's a little short on the load. We see things entirely different. Why, Paul says, as you have yielded your members in the past. To unrighteousness, so he says, now yield your members unto God, unto righteousness. Just imagine. If the saints would invest their energy and their time and their devotion to the things of God with the same degree of enthusiasm with which they went in for the things of the world before they were saved, I wonder what would happen in our assemblies. I was having meetings in the assembly so far away from here, it doesn't really matter. Meetings went on until Thursday, and there was an elder I had not seen in the meetings all week. I assumed he was out of town on business. He arrived on the Thursday night, attended the meeting. Oh, I said, brother, I've missed you. Been away? And he kind of mumbled something under his breath, and, uh, there was a look in his eye that made me hold on to his hand a little longer. I said, uh, have you been away? No, no. Oh, I said, uh, been kind of looking for you at the meetings. Oh. Well, I said, uh, where were you? And I fastened my eye upon him like the ancient mariner. Well, he says, I'll tell you the truth. He says, I belong to a bowling team, and it was the playoffs this week. I said, brother, we've had a special series of meetings arranged by the elders in this assembly this week. But I suppose it's a matter of priority. Oh yes, he says, it is. They really needed me on the team. Half-heartedness. What the Lord is looking for is that whole-hearted devotion. Enthusiasm is an interesting word. It means filled with God. My, isn't that a wonderful word? Filled with God. But he's got to make his decision now. Will it be minimal service, narrow duty, just doing what he has to do and nothing more? Or will it be total, joyful, self-denying abandon in the service of God, whatever and wherever. Just a little word of warning. When we yield ourselves, it is not to a field of service or to a kind of service. Yielding is to a person. It is to the Lord himself. A young lady said to me after a conference one time, she says, I'm prepared to go to Africa as a missionary. Well, we've known that family for a long time, and that girl, since she was a toddler, knew the family intimately. I said, I don't think you're going to make it to Africa. She was shocked that I could respond so quickly, so negatively. She says, how can you say that? Well, I said, I happen to know that you never make your own bed and you never wash a dish for your mother. She says, what's that got to do with Africa? I said, that has everything to do with Africa. If you do not know how to serve those you love at home sweet home, God will never call you to serve people you don't even know ten thousand miles away. The Christian life is the most practical thing on the face of the earth. Christianity begins in the kitchen. And that's, by the way, dear parents, where our children learn the Christian life. They don't learn the Christian life from the sermons they hear, but they learn the Christian life from the lives they see at home, sweet home. So there stands the man about to make his choice, and no doubt the master is standing, watching, wondering, hoping, for he loves his servant, and he knows the servant loves him. And at last, he turns and throws himself into the arms of his master, perhaps with tears and confession. Oh, I love my master. I will not go out free. Immediately. What does the master do? First, he accepts him. He doesn't say, well, just hold it a minute. It certainly took you a long time to make up your mind. Oh no, nothing like that. He accepts him, and he brings him to the place of commitment. A young lady came to me after a conference, another young people's conference, and in tears, and I'd been speaking on Romans twelve, and she said, oh, I wish that I could present my body as an acceptable sacrifice unto the Lord. I wish I could do that, but I really don't think the Lord would have me now. A young Christian. Without saying anything, I opened my Bible to that verse, Romans twelve and one, and I held it over to her and put my finger on one word, and I just held it out for her to see. The word acceptable. Acceptable. I said, you know why we are acceptable? It speaks of the meat offering, not the burnt offering, as some suggest. Because the meat offering, there was no blood in the meat offering. In Romans twelve, there's no blood there. It's not death, it's life lived. It's an acceptance offering, so it can't be a sin offering. So it's a sweet savor offering. There's only one that matches in the Old Testament, it's the meat offering, and we always read the burnt offering and his meat offering. The burnt offering and his meat offering. What makes my little offering frail and feeble, such as it is? What makes it acceptable to God? The great burnt offering of Christ, accepted in the beloved. And whatever we have, how little it may be, he says, just you give it to me, and I will accept it for Christ's sake. And so he accepted him. He directed him not to the bedpost and not to the table, for it was neither sleeping nor eating that was the issue. The issue was the door. The door. Going in, staying in, or going out. So he took him to the door, and he did a strange thing. He bored his ear through with an awl to the door. He marked him. And somehow, we cannot tell how, when a believer really gets to that place, young or old, of total commitment to Christ without reserve, without retreat, without regard for the consequence, God puts his mark on him. It will soon become evident to others that God knows, and these are the men and these are the women that God will use. Let me just picture another scenario. He's had a very hard day. He's committed himself. Months have gone by, and he's had a very hard day serving his master, and everything has gone wrong. The implements broke. His wife didn't understand him. His master seemed to be so demanding that day. Everything seemed to be against him, and he gets into bed at night frustrated, and he thinks within himself, why am I doing this? Why do I have to continue with this? I, nobody's forcing me to do this. I'm through. I could have gone out free three months ago. I'm going out free tonight when nobody's looking, and sure enough, when all is quiet, he slips out of bed, rolls up a few things in his bag or his cloth, and he makes his way silently to the door and gets his hand on the door handle, when suddenly he sees a mark on the door. He reaches up and feels the duplicate mark upon his ear. Paul put it this way, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Someone has said, oft I am tempted to flee my task, but that strange man with pierced hands bars my way and holds me back. You ever feel like quitting? If you haven't, stick around. A day will come for you, as perhaps for some of us, and we have searched the situation's vacant column. Employment opportunities, if only somehow we can go out free. And then the master comes and keeps us from going out. But there's another man in the story, and this is the man who does decide to go out free. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself. The end of verse two, he shall go out free for nothing. Aren't those significant words? He shall go out free for nothing. For nothing. It seems to me that in every company such like this, there are those who are the committed, and they have determined before God, I will not go unfree. There are those, however, who do not feel the compulsion of love to be totally committed to the Master. Saved, sure, heaven, absolutely. But just a little of the world, a little of my own ways. And if there could be any of these in the meeting today, let me say lovingly to you. If you have decided to go out free, without the compulsion of this commitment, let me say you shall be free. You will be free of the royal privilege of serving the best of masters. You'll be free to take it easy and sit back and let others serve you. You'll be free to sport your time away in useless frivolities that have no value in the kingdom. You'll be free from the conflict, free from the care of the churches, free from the burdens of saints. These need never trouble you. Free from untold hours of Bible study, of agonizing prayer that draws the sweat from your body and the tears from your eyes. You'll be free of all of that. Free from a daily sensitivity to the will of God. Free to decide how you will spend your money and your time and your energies. Free to discuss theological niceties, the aorist indicative of the Greek, the hiffle and hoffle of the Hebrew, and it won't cost you a nickel. You'll be free of all of that. But at the end of it all, there is a going out you are not free to arrange. There is a judgment seat and a record you are not free to manipulate. Free, yes. Saved, of course, in heaven, but free of the crown, free of the prize, free of the gold and silver and the precious stones. You shall be free. If there could be some like this in the meeting, and I hope a decision like that is not a final one, let me say, in the words of the Lord Jesus, for whatsoever, for what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul, his own life. But to you, the few, it seems it's always the few, who are not satisfied with half-heartedness, with playing footsie with the world, to remain insulated from the cries of the sorrowing and the perishing. To those of you who feel this is a time of decision, a critical point, and you have come to it or are coming to it, and you will not go out free, but have committed yourself to a life of loving service beyond the call of duty, let me say to you, you will not be free. You will not be free from the spiritual conflict with the enemy, the diabolical devices of demons. You will not be free from fierce temptations. You will not be free from the disciplining hand of your master. He will chasten you. From the pruning knife of the father, he will cut away the deadwood in your life. You will not be free from the yoke of the Lord Jesus as he lays it upon you to learn meekness and lowliness. You will not be free. You will not be free from the persecution of the ungodly. You will not be free from the criticism of carnal believers who do not understand the depth of your commitment, and you will not be free from the wounds of faithful friends. It may cost you money. It may cost you promotion. It may cost you friends. It may cost your health. And it may even cost you to prove your faith and scarlet courage on some foreign shore and be buried in an unmarked grave. But you will not be free. The Lord may call you to some humdrum task of daily toil in some local factory to live Christ before the world and to show his beauty by the quality of your workmanship, but you'll not be free. But know this, you will walk the path of the just that shineth more and more unto the perfect day, and you will walk it in the company of the royal family of committed servants of whom this world is not worthy. Many a soul will thank God in heaven that ever you cross their path. Your life will become like a water garden and a spring of water whose waters fail not, and out of your innermost parts will flow rivers of living water. And most of all, you will fill- fulfill the purpose for your existence in obeying the will of your Lord and Master. And then, when at last, at that great going out, you stand before him, whom you have loved and lived for, it will be to hear him say, well done, thou good and faithful servant. And it will have been worth it all. By and by, when I look on his face, wonderful face, beautiful face, once thorn-scarred face, by and by, when I look on his face, I'll wish I had given him more, more, more, so much more, more of my life than I ever gave before. By and by, when I look on his face, I'll wish I had given him more. His house is full, but his field is empty. Number five hundred and forty eight.