Is The Young Man Safe?

"And the king said unto Cushi, Is the young man Absalom safe? And Cushi answered, The enemies of my Lord the king, and all that rise against thee to do thee hurt, be as that young man is. And the king was much moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!

I want you to notice particularly those words in verse 32: "Is the young man safe?

The hour is not far off when the world’s attention will be drawn from Wall Street, turned from the political arena, and from many of the things that ocuupy our attention now, and will be focused on the youth of our land. If Jesus tarries for just a few more years, one of the most dangerous, explosive, uncontrollable forces that is in the U.S. will be it’s youth.

There was a king named David and he was a man of power. He had advanced the kingdom to its greatest glory and he was concerned about many things but there came a time in his life when the duties of the state came to the halt. He was no longer concerned about the throne, or the riches and prestige that went with his office, and suddenly his wives and companions were of no interest to him. There was only one concern that crowded out everything else and he asked, "Is the young man safe".

I pray that the hour will soon reach us as a church, when we will take a fresh look at our children and young people. I want to tell you that we stand in the door of opportunity today, but we also stand at the door of disaster. The enemy is on the prowl. He hasn’t come for our building, or for our logo. He hasn’t come for our moms and dads. The enemy the devil, the evil one, the one who knocks at every door, seeking whom he may devour has come and he has come for our children. He has come for our boys, he has come for our girls who are not yet established in the faith. He’s come for those who do not yet have the equipment that they need to deal with the pressures in this life.

And the enemy has come, and he doesn’t just want to take your children, he want’s to make bond servants out of them. He want’s to make slaves out of them. He wants them to be the slaves of sin, the slaves of sexual disease, the slaves of drug addiction, the slaves of alcohol, the slaves of homosexuality, the slave of every putrid thing that he can come up with. He wants to capture our kids. So I ask you in this message, “Is the young man safe?”

There are 3 areas that I want us to consider.

1. IS THE YOUNG MAN SAFE MORALLY?

Is the young man safe in the new morality. We have a new ethical code, a new standard of what’s right and wrong set by the crowd right on the spot. Is the young man safe? The idea is that there is no permanent moral standard, but all behaviors are relative.

There are persons who can leave a service where God is, and can have God in their lives. But when they get in an atmosphere where the crowd takes charge, where the individual is absorbed by the mob which rules, where right and wrong is not dictated by a code of standards, but by whatever the majority decides to do, are they safe?

They tell that 70 - 80 % who leave home and go to a secular college campus their first semester. Backslide and stop going to church. In 90 days of secular campus attendance they lose everything they ever learned about God.

I’ve been approached by dozens of young people who say to me, "I don’t have any trouble living for God in the church.” “I don’t have any trouble contacting God in the altar.” “I don’t have any trouble testifying when I’m in a service where the Spirit is moving, but my trouble begins when I get on the outside.” “When I begin to rub shoulders with the corruption, the unbelief, the cynicism, and the ungodliness.”

These things have reached an all time high in the days and many precious young people have been swamped by it. The have gone under as the waves of sin have washed around them. We hear a new term now, "situational ethics," Where there is no right or wrong but you simply act according to the situation. In other words, what you would do today might not necessarily be suitable tomorrow. The situation might have changed, and so would the ethics. No fixed standard of right or wrong. Ideas that are based upon the Bible are considered outdated. Honesty and integrity have been scrapped and character is no longer considered to be an asset.