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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/fred-krauss/encouragement-for-sunday-school-teachers/
Ecclesiastes 11, please, and verse 1. Cast thy bread, cast thy seat, that's a word, broadcast thy seat upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days. I've listened to ministry for many years.
There's one aspect of the ministry that has been lacking for many of these years, and that is the encouragement of Sunday school teachers, the encouragement of those who seek to win souls. Totally lacking.
And yet, brethren, it's an important work. Sunday school teacher, carry on. Now, if you look at Ecclesiastes 11 and 1, in the light of agriculture in Israel, it doesn't make sense at all. Solomon most likely went back 300, 400 years to the Israelites in the land of Egypt.
When the Nile waters overflowed their banks, flooding time, the farmers stood knee-deep in the overflow, casting their seed right in the waters. Well, it looked like a waste, didn't it? A waste. But it wasn't.
Tell me, Sunday school teacher, do you feel like that sometimes? Little or no results? Sometimes very discouraging? I'll point out some incidents that will encourage you. When I first was in the local assembly in Toronto, that's how the brethren put me in Sunday school work.
At that time, we had between 70 and 90 children. Sunday school work, you'll notice, in quite a number of areas has diminished, has gone down. So I did my best to take Abraham and Isaac to Mount Moriah.
There was one Sunday school, and he really drove me up the palm trees. No palm trees in Toronto. While I tried to lay out these Sunday school lessons, he sat on this chair backwards, put his elbows on the back of the chair and made noise.
Brrrrr. What you doing, boy? I'm shooting all the Germans. He must have watched these war movies in those days, you know? Not an ounce of interest. I don't know whether the lad ever got saved, but Sunday school work is not always very encouraging.
Brother, you just keep it up. Some years ago, in Sunday school work, I had two meetings in the morning, two meetings in the afternoon, and one meeting at night. Five meetings a day, to the east of here.
And the brethren came along and they said, Fred, if you find some time, will you please paint the hall? I was busy two weeks. The years went by. I met a young lady, now in her early 40s, and she said, Fred, do you remember the meetings you had in this little town?
I think it was Hazleton. Yes, I do remember that. She said, I got saved when I was 12 years of age. I said, thank you very much, after telling me for 25 years. You see, children are not necessarily programmed to tell you immediately.
But sooner or later, it'll come out. So just carry on Sunday school work, will you? Now, although it looks like a waste, it's not a waste, brethren, sisters. You lay the groundwork, and sometimes preachers come along and they do the reaping.
But behind these confessions of faith, sometimes months and months and years of faithful labor, and sometimes very little result. Carry on. When we were in the West Indies helping the local missionaries, I met a dear old brother.
He was one of the elders. And we exchanged our salvation experience. Very interesting. He said, Mr. Kraus, I was six years of age on the island of Antigua. A boat had come from North America, dropped the anchor in the harbor for a night or two.
And on the gangplank, there's a man, he said, with a gray suit and a black book. He said, I was six years old. And what I know now, he said, this man preached the gospel. He said, I was six years of age.
And I believe what the man said, without really knowing what had happened, I got saved being six years of age. And the missionary never knew it. The dear brother's gone to be the Lord now. Missionary never knew it.
Six years of age. And by this time, he was a responsible elder on the island of Antigua. Then in the late 60s, we picked up a young man to our gathering. He didn't have a vehicle, worked on the horse farm.
And he gave me his testimony. He said, when I was a boy, I was up in Sault Ste. Marie, that's in northern Ontario. I went to Sunday school. And someone by the name of Kember, it happened to be Phil Kember, who is now with the Lord, he taught me in Sunday school.
Then I left. I got into bad company, as often teenagers do. Leave the local gathering. He hired himself out to a horse farmer down in the southern part of Ontario. And then one evening, he went to what we call a sales barn, where they sold all kinds of livestock.
But the brother had a little cubicle where they gave out texts, gospel literature, and Bibles. So I got into the possession of a text, a small Bible. And I turned the Bible around. And I turned the text to the back, and I saw Kember, Kember, Kember.
One of the Kember texts you likely have in your home. This was when the connection was made. As a result of his contact in the sales barn and receiving both the Bible and the text, the young man professed to be saved.
After many years. Well, that's interesting. In children work, I think it was in the Niagara region, a lady came, originally she came from Newfoundland. I still see her with a camel hair coat in the back, brought her children.
I never talked to her because there were quite a number of children there. The children's meetings stopped, and I got a phone call a week later from a sister, and she said, Fred, do you remember this lady that came from Newfoundland?
Oh, yeah, sitting in the back. She just called me a day ago. She got saved in children's meetings. So, my dear brothers and sisters, if you have a Sunday school class, you just carry on. It's a foundation.
It's a seed plot of the assembly. Now, you'll find in gospel work, some folks professed during the meeting. We like to see that happening. Some professed after the meeting, when the preachers are gone.
We had a case when the brethren called me, and they said, Fred, we are exercised about a number of young people, and would you like to come along to have gospel meetings? I said, I'm exercised. I'll be coming along.
A week later, the phone rang again, and the brother said, do you remember my call from last week? Yes. He said, all these young people that we're exercised about got saved last week on their own. Ever experienced something like this?
Well, I said, would you like me to still, yeah, he said, you just come along. The gospel will do them good. Interesting, isn't it? We had once a series on the Canadian prairies, and had I known the background, I wouldn't have gone.
The two previous gospel series, now no brother, no series, even though no one professed, are fruitless. God will look after his word. But the two previous series that were held before we got on the scene, the young people, 15 of them, all children of elders, sat in the front, mocking the preachers.
Too serious. When we were there, well, there's a little fruit in about three weeks of meetings, but nothing what we would like to have seen. Halloween, I don't know what you call it in America, Halloween, you know, when the Halloween came along.
And I got out after the meeting. I don't know how some of these young people snuck out the back door. Children of Christians, elders. And my little green car was red, tomatoes from bumper to bumper. On the windshield, with soap, preacher go home.
Well, isn't that a good public relation? Made me feel good. Somebody took four quarts of raw potatoes and shoved them in my muffler. When I took off, it sounded like a tank producing french fries on the prairie grids.
That's what we faced. The elders came to us and they said, brethren, we don't know what to do. We are totally helpless. We said, you keep on praying. The devil is busy. And so God is busy too. We never did what they suggested.
Just keep on preaching. One night, what a sight. Six girls sitting in the front. After the meeting, they took their handkerchiefs out and they wept as though the last judgment seat had come. What a sight to behold.
Well, my brother took four of them in the basement, assembly well over 100. And I took two of them when the hall cleared out, sitting in the basement, and tried to point them to Christ. That night, before midnight, six professed.
Sometimes you don't see the next day of your meetings. I said to my co-worker, just about midnight, I said, seven is a perfect number. Where's number seven? I scarcely said it when the door opened and a man who worked on the oil rigs, about 250 pounds, stood there trembling.
He had already gone to bed. The prayers had just about as flat as this table as you see, and they could see the hall light still on. His half-sister went past his bedroom and heard him cry. Calling him by name, she says, what's the matter?
I'd like to be saved. Well, get your clothes on and get to the hall. The lights are still on, the preachers are still there. So he stood there at 12 .30 in the morning, and he was soul number seven. I tell you, my dear brother, the Christians didn't want to go home.
We sang, we prayed, we sang some more. What a night, seven souls in one night. I tell you, we had a good rest that night. And there are others who ultimately came to the faith. It was just a movement of God, seven in one night.
Wonderful to see this. So sometimes folks get saved during the meetings. Sometimes they get saved after the meeting. Now I'll keep to my word, and I'm going to close. Says the Apostle Paul, and he must have had something like that on mind.
And he says, let us not be weary, brethren, for in due season, or in God's own appointed time, we shall reap as long as we do not faint.