Now, I want to tell you about
this past week's trip to Yucatan, Mexico. We were there with missionaries
Walter Groover and his wife Betty, and with Cody Groover and his
wife Winna. This was my second time to be
there, and I think it was a very beneficial trip both for the
saints there and for me. God has blessed His people, blessed
His people with all spiritual blessings. And he's calling out
his sheep, and he's edifying his people and providing for
his people in this world. And we have nothing to worry
about, absolutely nothing to worry about, but serving Christ
and his gospel, furthering his gospel. Well, the first thing
I thought about when I got there was the depravity of mankind. That was the first thing that
came to my mind. In Romans 121, we read here, When they knew God, they glorified
him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in
their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory
of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible
man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.
Wherefore, God also gave them up to uncleanness through the
lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between
themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped
and served the creature more than the Creator, who's blessed
forever. Amen. For this cause, God gave them
up to vile affections. For even their women did change
the natural use into that which is against nature, and likewise
also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, and burned
in their lust one toward another. Men with men, working that which
is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of
their error which was meet. And even as they did not like
to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate
mind to do those things which are not convenient. On our way
from Cancun to Merida, we came across Chechen Itza, which is
where some of the Mayan ruins are. So we stopped there and
went on a tour and saw the pyramids. We saw the well there where they
sacrificed virgins. There was a ball field where
they played a game they had devised and the losing team it's not
really known whether they got their heads cut off or whether
it was the winning team that got their heads cut off because
to die was supposed to be a you know a good thing so I don't
know if it was the losing or the winning team but whoever
one of the teams got their heads cut off. All of this was in the
name of religion and the same symbols that you see used in
religion in this country today are you saw on those pyramids
and on those walls like a dove and fire, serpents, soldiers,
things like that. false religion is just a perversion
of the truth. And so blood is important, even
in idolatry, blood meant a lot, lot there. And then we left there
and we saw the idolatry of the present. We saw the Virgin Mary
runners who are there, they all make a vow that they're gonna
run from one place to another. And it can be a short distance
or it can be thousands of miles and to celebrate the birthday
of Mary. And so they run and everybody
follows along behind them on a truck. And then they stop one,
they switch out another takes off running and they just keep
doing this carrying a torch. And when I get to the city, they
all get off and all run in together, crying out. Yes, we could. Yes, we could. And and then we
went into a cathedral, Catholic cathedral, saw the largest crucifixion,
I think, in North America. I believe it was something like
that. No different today than it was what the Mayans were doing,
just worshiping man-made works, man's works. Extreme living conditions,
they're just rich and poor, that's all there is, just no middle
class. In the past five to ten years,
some of the Pueblos just got water, and the water's just in
one one outlet in the middle of the village and you come there
in the morning and get your water. But even after they got the water,
they have a common saying there that you don't clean too much
or you'll kill the baby. Because you want your child to
develop immunity to the germs. You want them to eat nastiness
so they won't die. If everything's clean, they'll
die. You see these police driving around in the nicest vehicles.
That's the nicest vehicles you'll see. You see them with machine
guns. And you don't really know if
they're working for the drug cartel, or if they're working
for the people. You don't really know. But Cody
said it's common at any time to see just a gun battle break
out. And they've had over 40,000 people
killed by the drug cartels. And did he say in a year? In
the last year, I believe, 40,000 people. But the depravity there is no
different than here. There's no difference. There's
none righteous, no not one. They're all together. None understandeth
and none seeketh after God. It's just that depravity stands
out to you when you see it in another form than what you're
used to seeing it in. So that was the first thing that
came to my mind. Then over in 1 Corinthians 1.1,
this was the second thing. We got up Tuesday morning and
Well, this has to do more with Walter and Cody. But in 1 Corinthians
1-1, I was thinking about this. Walter and Cody have no missionary
training. I mean, they didn't go to a school.
Walter had been there 40 years, and he raised his family in a
tiny little home there, very rough conditions, and he simply
had a desire to preach the gospel for sinners to hear of Christ
and what Christ has accomplished. And so he forsook what he could
have had here in the States and went down there, raised his family
down there, and the Lord's blessed the work greatly. Now Cody, who's
Walter's son, he's taken most of the work, much of it, if not
most of it, and those responsibilities. But here's the point. The Lord
works in ways that forces us to acknowledge that God did it
and not man. And this is what he tells us
in 1 Corinthians 1. Look at verse 25. The foolishness
of God is wiser than men. The weakness of God is stronger
than men. This is why God chose to use
the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. It's
because the foolishness of God is wiser than men. and the weakness
of God stronger than men. You see your calling. We look
around us. There's not many wise men after
the flesh. Not many mighty, not many noble
are called. That was the case when Paul wrote
this. That's the case today. There's just not many. But God
has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise. He's chosen things, God has chosen
the weak things of the world to confound the things which
are mighty. and base things of the world, and things which are
despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to
bring to nothing things that are, that no flesh should glory
in his presence." He chooses, he didn't come and choose men
who were, had gone to school under Gamaliel and who were well
respected, highly known men He came and chose fishermen. He
came and chose nobodies to go forth and preach the gospel.
And he doesn't, he just called them and sent them forth. Like
when he called David, David didn't know a thing about being a king.
He called him and let Saul chase him around in the wilderness
for a little while, and that was king school for David. And then he
sent him forth to be a king. And that's, he calls his people
and raises them up and sends them forth to preach the gospel
and does something with nobodies to show that it's God that does
it, so that no flesh can glory in His presence. Verse 30 says,
of Him are you in Christ Jesus. That's how we got in Christ,
of God. Who of God is made unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Now that's God
putting us in Christ, that's God making us to know Christ,
and that's God making us to know Christ is all our salvation.
So there you have no ability in us to glory in anything. God
elected us, God makes Christ known unto us, and Christ is
all to us. You got God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Spirit right there. So that as according
as it's written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. Now,
after all this time, there's congregations established all
over down there, and all around Merida, all the way down to Cancun. And the meeting places are just
simple. They're cinder block buildings. The one we went to out where
Pastor Jose, he'd been pastoring for, I think he was the first
one that the Lord called that began to pastor. And his building
is, their building is just a cinder block building, the doors will
be open, there'll be a little doorway open to the left to the
right by the pulpit just to let air flow through. The inside
of it's painted. blaring yellow. And keep you
keep you awake. And, but it's just simple, you
know, nothing there's congregations are small. The church in Cancun
is a just a rented building, just a small little rented apartment.
The Medida, where Brother Walter pastures, is probably the nicest
of the buildings. That's where they had the live
streaming video, where some of you watched the video Wednesday
night. And they have a kitchen. They
have a few extras, like some extra rooms, where they have
the preacher school. And they have a nice courtyard
out back with flowers and things. But there's no gimmicks. There's
nothing to impress people. There's no large congregations.
There's not a bunch of programs going on and all that. It's just
a clear preaching of the gospel. That's what it is. Just the same
as our church is here, is there. You can go to FreeGraceRadio.com
and click on Cody Groover and you can listen to the messages
in Spanish. And I hope you do that if you speak Spanish, you
can understand them. But here's the third thing. I
was reminded of God's faithfulness to provide pastors for his people. Jeremiah 3.15 says, I will give
you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with
knowledge and understanding. We got up Tuesday morning and
we went to the preacher school at the church in Merida. And
because it pleased God to save through preaching, God promises
his people he will give pastors. He says, I will give. Those men
who are pastors there are recognized for the gifts that God's given
them. They're recognized as having the gift to be able to preach
and to teach, but God raised them up. Cody didn't raise them
up, and Walter didn't raise them up. They didn't raise themselves
up. And for an example, Cancun, the church at Cancun has been,
they've been assembling together, they've rented a place, and they've
been meeting together for six years, but they don't have a
pastor. Cody goes down there and preaches to them on Thursday
night. So it's not like they're just raising up men and throwing
them out there to preach. They're waiting on God to raise
up men to fill these pulpits. And But God does that. He said, and I'll give you pastors
according to mine own heart. These are men born of the Holy
Spirit of God. They're men who God has taught
the gospel in their heart through Walter and Cody preaching the
gospel. They know the things that are freely given to us of
God. So they can preach from the scriptures, comparing scripture
to scripture. They feed you, God said, with
knowledge and understanding. If a man gets up and preaches
that man's will has something to do with God, his salvation,
that he can bring himself to God by his will, that's not the
truth. The scripture says there's none
willing, there's none that understands. They're not seeking God. Truth
is, God makes his people willing by his power, by creating them
anew. If a preacher's teaching someone
that it's your choice that makes the ultimate decision in your
salvation, that's not knowledge and understanding. Because the
scripture says, he says those that he loves, he draws in loving
kindness. Christ said, no man can come
to me except the Father which is heaven, and heaven draw him.
He has to be made alive and be drawn by God to Him so that the
choice is not man's choice, the choice was God's choice before
the world was made. And it wasn't based on anything
in man. If a man stands up and says, well, God looked down through
time and His foreknowledge means He foreknew who would believe,
that's why He chose them. Do you realize what that's doing?
That's putting man over God. That's saying God looked down
to see what man would do, and when he saw what man would do,
God said, OK, I'll do this because man's going to do that. That's
a lie. It's unconditional election.
God chose whom he would not based on anything in us. If a man starts
telling folks God died for everybody without exception, that's not
according to the Scriptures. Christ said, I laid down my life
for the sheep. He said there in the same, right
shortly after that, told some, and you're not my sheep. You
see? He didn't die for everybody.
He died for his sheep. And he made a, he accomplished
redemption by what he did. He accomplished atonement by
what he did. He put away sin by what he did. And then God
draws His people to Himself. He brings them irresistibly by
His grace, and He keeps them. They will be preserved and kept
by the power of God unto the day of salvation. That's understanding,
knowledge and understanding. Those men that attended the school,
They're pastors of churches scattered throughout the countryside, and
they have been for a long time. Jose has been there since the
beginning, but he still comes to the preacher school. They
come each week to hear the lectures there, and Cody and Walter pay
for them to come to the preacher school because otherwise they
wouldn't be able to pay the bus fare or the gasoline or whatever
it takes to get there. They come from a long ways. Brother
Don lectured that Tuesday morning on the will of God and my responsibility. And then he lectured on the will
of God and the problem of evil. Both of those messages, you can
hear them in English on Free Grace Radio. And then the one
that he preached at the preacher school, you can hear on our website
at freegracemedia.com. Well, here's the third thing,
Ephesians 4. These are just things I was thinking
about when I was there. And I thought of how Christ's
people are one in Christ. Tuesday night and Wednesday night
and Thursday night, we had services. And as Cody translated the message,
you have to say a few words and then Cody translates it into
Spanish. You say a few words, he translates it into Spanish.
And as he did that, I thought about how, you know, We all spoke
one language all over the world before the Tower of Babel. We started trying to build a
tower to God, to come up to God, and God confounded our languages
so that now we have the languages we have in the earth. But then
on the day of Pentecost, The Lord poured out the Holy Spirit,
and it gave men the ability to preach in languages that they
had never learned before. That's what speaking in tongues
is. They were preaching in languages they'd never heard. If you read
the first couple of chapters of Acts, it'll tell you there
that every man heard them speak in his own language. That's what
speaking in tongues is. It's not this gobbledygook mess
that men claim is speaking in tongues, they just they never
learned the language, but they could preach in that language.
Well, as Cody was translating for me, he had to learn the language
he did. He wasn't able just to one day speak in Spanish. He
learned it. And as he was doing it, though,
And I could see the faces, see the people delighting in the
messages. It made me realize that God's given us one language
again. He's given His people one language
to where we rejoice in the message of His grace and the love that
He's shown us by His grace. Look at verse 4, Ephesians 4,
4. This was the scripture that came to mind. There's one body. There is one body. It's God's
house made up of His chosen people. Christ's body, of which He's
the head and He's the minister. It's God's elect, the church,
redeemed by Christ's blood. There's one body. And there's
one Spirit, even as you're called in one hope of your calling.
We're born the first time dead in sins. We're born again of
the same Spirit. Every believer is born of the
same Spirit, taught of the same Spirit, called of the same Spirit.
We have one hope of our calling. Christ in you is the hope of
glory. Christ is all our hope. of coming
into God's presence. He's all our salvation. So believers
are truly one in spirit. In Christ, there's neither Greek
nor Jew. There's neither circumcision
nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free.
Christ is all and in all. While we were sitting there preaching,
I could tell you, as we're sitting there preaching, It didn't matter
where I was from and it didn't matter where they were from.
We were all looking at Christ and rejoicing in Christ. And
none of those man-made distinctions that men make even matter. None
of it. We were rejoicing in Him. Verse
5 tells us there's one Lord. We have one Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ has fulfilled the law for His elect there, as well
as for here. Christ took the place of His
elect under the wrath of God there, just like He did for those
here. And He put away the sin, our
sin, and accomplished redemption for us, just like He did for
those there, just the same as He did for those here. There's
one faith and one baptism. If we're born of one Spirit,
we've got one Lord, we say we're given the same faith, we trust
Christ to have done all, we trust Him to be all, that we're complete
in Him, we're baptized with the same baptism, it's showing the
same thing, that when He died, we died, when He rose, we rose,
we're complete in Him. We may be divided by language,
but we're one in faith, one in baptism. We may be divided by
nation, but we're one holy nation. We may be a divided people and
have a lot of differences about us, but we're one royal priesthood
serving Christ our high priest. Verse six, he says, one God and
father of all, who's above all and through all and in you all.
elected of one God and Father, redeemed by one everlasting Father.
He's above all. He's working through all. He's
in you all. And this oneness is obvious one
way. It's obvious one. We rejoice
in the same gospel. This world is going around talking
about, you know, not judging anybody and talking about, you
know, how you want to embrace everybody and be open-minded
to everybody. And this world does not do that. This world does not do that.
They preach a good game and talk a good game, but they don't do
that. God's people do. This gospel, I'm telling you,
is the only thing that will affect that in a person's heart. The
only thing. Then I was reminded of this. I was reminded of the
gift of brethren. Each day, Betty and Winna fed
us. I mean, we ate like kings the whole time we were there.
And then at night, we would sit out. Cody and Winna's house is
on this end of the block, and Walter and Betty's house on this
end of the block. And so right in the middle, there's
a courtyard. And so we'd meet at that courtyard and sit out
there till late, just laughing and talking and telling stories.
And it reminded me of Psalm 133.1. It says, Behold how good and
how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. God's
given us the gift of brethren. That is a gift, one of the gifts
he's given us in this life. Winna's father was a pastor,
or is a pastor, David Pledger, pastors Lincolnwood Baptist Church
in Houston. And he went down at one time
and thought maybe he was supposed to be a missionary down in Mexico,
and he went down there and carried his family when Winna was five. So Cody was somewhere around
there, seven or eight maybe. And they stayed with the Groovers. And so they all played together,
you know, all the kids play together. And then later, years later,
you know, when Cody became girlfriend and boyfriend and got married,
now they got kids, you know, that are grown. And by just thinking
about how the Lord works everything like that and moves your paths
together to bring his people together and bring us together
with brethren. If you can speak Spanish, I'd encourage you to
go listen to messages by Cody. And hopefully, he comes into
the country and travels around a lot to the churches, you know,
so hopefully we can have him up here next time he's in the
country. And then I saw this, 2 Corinthians
8. 2 Corinthians 8. I saw an opportunity to help. There's an obvious need there.
Don preached on this text in the preacher school. Second Corinthians
8.1. Moreover, brethren, we do you
to wit of the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia.
The grace of God made the churches at Macedonia willing to help
their fellow brethren. The grace of God did it. The
church is our family. And a man that is born of God
provides for his family. The love of God abides in us,
and because it does, when we see our brethren in need, we
don't shut up our vows of compassion, we open our hearts in compassion.
Otherwise, we can't say the love of God abides in us. But verse
2 says, how that in a great trial of affliction, the abundance
of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their
liberality. The churches at Macedonia were
in a great trial of affliction themselves. They were. They were in deep poverty themselves. They had many, many needs themselves,
but they saw an opportunity to help others that were worse off
than they were. And so they did so abundantly.
In verse three, for to their power I bear record, yea, and
beyond their power, they were willing of themselves. Nobody
constrained them to. Their first must be a willing
mind. our willing heart. Nothing is
accepted of God that's not given to us of God. God gives the willing
heart, and nothing's accepted but what God's given, and then
done willingly by us for His glory, trusting Him, believing
Him. If we believe God's given us
His Son, His only Son, that unspeakable gift, and that by His Son has
sent Him to suffer the severity of divine justice for us, then
faith is able to go beyond our power, because we see what He's
done for us. It has to be by faith in God's
power, because apart from God's grace, we can't do anything.
We can do nothing. We have no power to do anything.
Verse 4, praying us with much entreaty that we would receive
the gift and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering
to the saints. They begged Paul to take these
gifts, this gift they had. Now you get this, they had not
visited the saints who they were providing this gift for. They didn't have the option of
clicking on the internet and just listening to them and saying,
do they preach the gospel? What they had was the person
who preached the gospel to them. to let them know about this need,
and they, if they trusted the man who preached, Paul who preached
the gospel to them, and trust him to preach the gospel to them,
they trusted, yeah, there's a need there. And so they begged Paul,
take this gift and take it to them and give it to them. And
verse five, and this they did, not as we hoped, but first gave
their own selves to the Lord and unto us by the will of God.
Now that's so important. They first gave their own self
to the Lord. It means first they trusted all
their eternal well-being into Christ's hands. That's what they
did first. If we truly trusted our souls
to Christ to provide us justification, righteousness, sanctification,
redemption, all our acceptance with God, with holy God, if we
trusted all these things which are preeminently most important
into His hands, then trusting Christ to provide for us so that
we can support our needy brethren in the furtherance of the gospel,
that ought not to even come into question, whether or not he'll
provide for us. Now, five years ago, in the men's
meeting, I recommended we support the work in Mexico. I won't go
about it differently this time. This time, I'm going to just
tell you, I'm going to support it. And I'm going to, at the
first Sunday of each quarter, I'm going to offer something
to the church there. And I will remind you the first
Sunday of each quarter, and if you'd like to, feel free to. But I'll just put a reminder
in there so you'll know when it is if you want to do it. And
if you do, just mark it on the envelope that you want, that's
for them. But then here's the sixth thing
I was reminded of. I was reminded that there's no
place like home, with the saints that you love. Paul, in Philippians
4.1, he called them, my brethren, dearly beloved, and longed for,
my joy and crown. That's what he called the Philippian
brethren. The whole time I was there, I'd see something, and
when I would see it, I would think, man, I wish the brethren
back home could see this. I wish they saw that. And Scott
took lots of pictures. And so Friday, the 28th, the
fourth Friday this month, when we have the meeting at our house,
after the messages, then we'll look at those together on TV
and try to see it all together. So pray for Walter and Cody and
Betty and Winnie as you can. Pray for their families, for
those pastors and those brethren there. The church at Cancun asked
us to pray for them. They're looking for a pastor,
waiting on the Lord to provide one. And I pray the Lord will
be pleased to continue to call out his sheep there and here,
continue to bless us together. And so I just wanted you to know
about that. It was a good trip, good trip.
Amen.