You may be seated. And turn back to Acts chapter
14. Needless to say, it's good to
be back with you after a two-week journey to Mexico. I thought
about you, prayed for you, your services here, and have received
good reports about the preaching that went on here. And what I
want to do tonight with our time is to rehearse to you a little
bit about what God has done and is doing down in Mexico. I will
probably show another video on Sunday night and narrate the video and talk a
little bit more about it then. But this is very, very relevant,
I believe. Our minds are fresh in dealing with Paul and Barnabas'
journeys, these missionary journeys. In God's good providence, all
of this came about about the same time we've been looking
at this. And this will be very relevant to you. Our text is
found here in chapter 14, verse 27. Look at that verse there,
Acts 14, verse 27, and I entitled this, Rehearsing What God Has
Done in Mexico. It says there in verse 27, when
they were come, when Paul and Barnabas returned to the church
at Antioch and gathered the church together, they rehearsed all
that God had done with them and how he had opened the door of
faith unto the Gentiles, and there they abode a long time,
stayed a long time. And I intend to stay a long time
here, I'm not going anywhere for a while. I have a fourfold
purpose for this message tonight, a fourfold purpose for this report,
giving you a report, rehearsing to you. Number one, I want to
glorify God in reporting to you what great things he has done
and is doing through his gospel down in Mexico. That's my first
purpose in this report. Secondly, I wish to render honor
to whom honor is due, namely our missionary brother and his
wife and others. Thirdly, I want to encourage
you and encourage your continued and generous support of these
missionaries and their efforts, which are so worthy of everything
we can do for them. Lastly, I want to encourage
all of us to try to emulate these men and women. in the place that
we are. Number one, I said, I wish to
glorify God in reporting to you what great things God has done
through the gospel in Mexico. Did you notice there in verse
27, he said, Luke is the narrator here in writing, Luke traveled
along with him, and Luke narrates and says that Paul and Barnabas
rehearsed all that God had done. with them what God had done with
them, and how God had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. This is God's work, and it's
God's glory. He gets the glory. Now, if Walter
Gruber were your typical missionary, and I was your typical pastor,
preacher, I would and given your typical missionary report, there
is no doubt that the emphasis that I would be placing right
now would be on what great things are being done for the Lord. If Walter were your typical missionary
and I were your typical visiting pastor to a missionary, I would
be giving your typical missionary report. on what great things
is being done for the Lord, and how many souls are being won
to Jesus, and so forth. And most of the glory, if not
all of it, will be going to the missionary and what man is doing
for God. Wouldn't that be true? But Walter
Gover is not your typical missionary, and this is not your typical
missionary report. because we give all the glory
where it rightfully belongs. We give it all to God, and the
emphasis is placed where it should be, rightfully placed where it
should be, upon what God is doing. This is what the apostles did.
They gave God all the glory. To God be the glory, great things
he hath done, the psalm said. Now, God does use means. Look
at verse 27 again. They rehearsed all that God had
done with them. God does use means. God does
use men. He doesn't have to. Sometimes he uses other means,
and has in the past. But to be sure, God does use
means. He does use men, much like a
man would use a tool to garden or to work in his shop or whatever,
the tool is not despised, the tool is not rejected or belittled
or discarded as unuseful. It is appreciated and acknowledged
for what it is, just a tool. It's only as good as the master
sees fit to use it. But the glory belongs to the
one in whose hand the tool is, doesn't it? The glory belongs
to God who uses the means, not the means. The scripture says,
Of him, of God, and through him, and to him are all things, to
whom be glory forever, and in all things, and all ways. God
gets all the glory for all things, and this is what I want to do
in this report tonight. Tell you a little bit about what
God has done down in Mexico. God has marvelously opened the
door of faith, much like he did to the Gentile world when the
apostles were pioneering throughout the world. God has marvelously
opened the door of faith to the Mexican Gentile, and they have
received the gospel. Now, I said God uses means. That chief means which God uses
is the gospel, the preaching of the gospel. God's power, God's
chief means of accomplishing his work, of saving a people,
is the gospel, the preaching of the gospel. This is his power.
This is what Romans 1.16 says, the gospel is the power of God
unto salvation. And this is the great commission
that our Lord gave in Mark 16, verse 15. I recall Brother Walter
Gruber preaching on that one time. Do you remember that? On
a Wednesday night, he stood right here, and he preached on the
great gospel commission. Mark 16, verse 15, which our
Lord said, "'Go ye into all the world and feed the poor, house the homeless, encourage
democracies, establish social reforms. Did he say any of those
things? All of those things may be well
and good, and they are, but the great commission which our Lord
gave to his apostles and to all preachers of the gospel and to
us individually, his disciples, is to go into all the world and
preach the gospel. preach the gospel, which is God's
power unto salvation. The gospel is what men and women
need first and foremost. The gospel is what God uses at
first and last and all in between. The gospel. The gospel is that
which God uses to save a man or woman's The gospel is that
which God uses to regenerate or change a man or woman's life,
a young person's life. The gospel has, in times past,
transformed whole nations, whole nations. And that's Christ's
great commission. What is the gospel? You heard
it, I believe, Sunday night, from what I understand. One verse
would suffice to give us the gospel, 2 Corinthians 5. Look
over there, and I would be greatly remiss if I did not define that
gospel for you. Don't take it for granted that
everybody knows the gospel. But this is the message that
God uses, his power to save souls, to call his sheep, to change
lives, to regenerate, to transform people, and preaching of the
gospel. And in 2 Corinthians 5, verse
21, I said this before, that if you told me to sum up the
gospel with one verse of Scripture, I would immediately quote 2 Corinthians
5, 21. And this is it. This is the gospel
in a verse. For he, who's he? God. God. It starts with God. The gospel
starts with God. He thought it. God purposed it. God planned it. God predestinated
to save a people, God elected a people, it all started with
God. In the beginning, God chose a people before the foundation
of the world. And in the course of time, he
sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law to redeem
them that were under the law. And it says here that he, God,
sent his Son down here, made him to be sin, made him in the
likeness of sinful flesh. made him to be a man for men,
for men and women, because in order for God to accept us, we
are men and women, we must be holy and perfect as God is. We can't do it. So Christ became
a man for us, to do that for us, to represent us to God. And God made him a man, and he
lived a perfect life. Then God made him to be sin for
us. The scripture says that he laid
on him the iniquity of all of his people. God put on Christ
all of the sins of his people, made him to be sin, because God
said the soul that sinneth must surely die. That's you and me.
So God put our sins upon Christ who knew no sin, the holy, sinless
sacrifice, and gave us his righteousness and gave to him our sin, and
punished Christ in our stead, and accepts us in Christ's stead."
That's the gospel in a word, in a verse, in the stead up,
Christ in our stead. He was made sin for us, he who
knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God
in him. Salvation is in those two words
there, in Christ, to be found in him, chosen of God placed
in Christ, given to Christ to do for us what we could not do
for ourselves, to live that holy life, to satisfy his justice
against the broken law, and then to die in our stead and then
go back to heaven and represent and mediate for his people. Salvation is in Christ, and he
saved all of those people that God gave to him, all the people,
all the Father gave to him. Christ did that work for us.
So that's the gospel that we preach in just a few words, just
a summary. That's the gospel we preach,
that's what Christ commissioned us to preach, that's what he
tells us to go into all the world and preach, not social reform,
but the gospel, the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And this is what God uses to call his sheep out and to to
regenerate and, like I said, to even transform the whole nation.
That's Christ's commission, and that's what he promised to bless,
and he has blessed it. He has blessed it greatly. He's blessed it in our midst,
and now tonight I'm going to tell you a little bit about how
he's blessed it in this pagan land called Mexico. I don't know
if any of you have ever been to Mexico. But if you have, if
you just set foot on the soil in Mexico, you know it's pagan,
backward, primitive, idolatrous, superstitious land. It still is today. The ancient
rites of sacrifice and so forth, at least some form of those,
still take place today. While we were visiting the ruins,
one of the old Mayan Indian ruins there, they were holding some
old Mayan Indian rite there. And there were modern men and
women standing before this great wall that was covered with idols,
faces, wicked snakes and dragons and faces and gods and this and
that and the other, standing before it, chanting and so forth,
going through these pagan rites. Very serious, big crowd, bigger
than this one. And so it still goes on today. And Mexico has
been and is now one of the most idolatrous and pagan and superstitious
lands anywhere. Thirty years ago, thirty years,
it's been thirty years since Walter first went down there,
thirty years ago, God sent an old steel mill worker. That's
what Walter Gruber did when God called him to go to Mexico. He was working in a steel mill,
Armco Steel. God sent a steel mill worker down to Mexico, a
man who had a burden for God's Word and a burden for that land,
for those people. He went there with little or
no support, very little knowledge of the language. I was talking
to one of the pastors down there, one of the native pastors, and
I said to him, in Spanish, I said, I want to someday preach the
gospel here to you in Spanish. I intend to study hard so that
I might do that someday. And he said, Well, you know,
Brother Walter didn't preach very well when he first came
down here. That was Ebasio. He went down there with very
little knowledge of the language, hadn't been studying it long,
but he couldn't wait to get down there, that burden for God's
Word and for the people there, and had made some previous trips
there and went down there on a permanent basis shortly thereafter.
But he did have the one knowledge that was needful. He knew Christ
and he knew the gospel. He had a Bible in his hand, that's
good enough, he had a Spanish Bible. He went out into the remote
and unknown villages, very, very primitive villages, thatched-roofed
huts, they haven't changed a bit, dirt floors. I'll tell you a
little bit more about it and show you some films of places
we ate in where they cook over a fire still. Places that are
steeped in idolatry is where he went. Places where they still,
to this day, dig up the bones of their relatives and burn candles
to the dead. Brother Walter went down there
with no U.S. money or relief efforts, as would
happen in modern religion today, behind the big missionary board.
They would send down vast sums of money to like the Peace Corps,
to build houses and churches and this and that and the other.
No U.S. money or relief efforts sent
down there. Only one thing, the gospel, preaching
of the gospel. He went down there to these primitive
Indian people, the Mayan Indians, which the Yucatan Peninsula,
where he is located, contained mostly of these Mayan Indian
people, an ancient people, an ancient civilization. And God
directed this man's path. He directed this man's path,
opened doors and opened hearts to the gospel, just the gospel.
That's all he had, just like the apostles. They didn't take
great sums of money into places and build big churches. They
just took the gospel in there. And now, after all these years,
you can visit village after village and see established churches
filled with people just like you and me. People who once bowed
to statues now bowing to the Lord Jesus Christ. People who
once burned candles now have the word of God burning in their
hearts. And the gospel has done all this.
The gospel, not cunningly devised fables and contrived gimmicks
and tricks and money and this and that and the other. The gospel. The gospel is the power of God.
This is what he uses. The word of God, the scripture
says, is quick. It's life-giving. It brings a
man back from the dead. from dead and trespasses and
sin. It's quick, it's powerful. It's able to take a pagan idol-worshipper
and transform him into a worshipper of the true and living God. The
word, the scripture says, will not return to God void, but will
accomplish something every time it's proclaimed. Paul said that,
didn't he? He said, Thanks be unto God,
which always causes us triumph in Christ, makes manifest the
server of his knowledge by us everywhere we go, everywhere.
And I have seen firsthand, I've been a firsthand witness to the
power of God's gospel in Mexico. Twenty-four years ago, the first
time I visited Mexico, and I was a firsthand witness to some pioneer
efforts that were going on there, actual pioneer missionary efforts
where Brother Walter and David Pledger and Milton would go into
places that had never been visited before. There were even some
remote places where they were so primitive that they had seen
very few white men and their machines that they came into
town in. But I was first-hand witness twenty-four years ago
to these missionary efforts, these pioneer efforts where they
would go into a village and preach in the open air over a loudspeaker
hooked to the top of their truck, and it would draw vast crowds
of curious onlookers. I mean vast, as far as I could
see in these little villages. They'd come out of the nooks
and the crannies and the huts and the houses and the bars and
wherever. And they'd just fill up these
villages, the town square, and these men would, in spoken Spanish,
would preach the gospel over those loudspeakers. And twenty-four
years later now, I just got back from there, and I find twenty-four
years later, as I said, in some of those same villages, people
just like you and me seated in church buildings not quite this
fine, but nice enough that they built with their own hands, not
with the big gifts of huge unknown organizations, but they built
with their own hands and their own few pesos that they earned,
and worshiping the God of the Bible and rejoicing in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And it's a marvelous thing, the
work of God. It's God's That's what I'm trying
to say, what God has done. Walter will be the first to tell
you that this is what God has done, that he has stood back
and just watched and marveled and been amazed over the years
at what God has done through the preaching of the gospel.
And he can tell you so many amazing stories, and has, and will, the
Lord will and continue to do so. The second purpose I told
you I had in this message is not only to give God the glory
in relating to you some of the things that are going on in Mexico,
but to render honor to whom honor is due, as the Scripture says. Romans 13 says that, where to
render honor to whom honor is due. Turn with me over to Romans
chapter 16. I want to show you a portion
of Scripture where the Lord does this. God honors those who honor
his Son. God honors those who honor his
Son. God honors his word, his promises. He delights to honor his promises,
his word. He delights. He magnified his
word, his promises, above all his name, as Scripture says.
And to those who believe his word and act upon it, God will
show himself true and faithful and powerful on their behalf. And all through the scripture,
the Lord acknowledges the works and the labors of his people. And he holds these people up
for our example and for us to esteem. Remember now, I'm not
giving man the glory here. I just told you where all the
glory belongs. It belongs to God Almighty. It's his work.
Without him, Christ said, without me you can do nothing. It's his
work from start to finish. He does use means, though. And
in the mercy and the grace and the goodness of God, this is
the manner of which our God is. He honors those who honor his
Son. He gives, he esteems and honors his people who he works
through, who he does the work through. I've always been amazed
at that scripture where the Lord will say unto us, Well done,
thou good and faithful servant. When every one of us will have
to admit, Lord, we haven't been good and we haven't been faithful.
Even if we've done all that's required of us, we still have
to say one thing. We're unprofitable servants,
and we didn't do anything of our own selves, but you did it
through us. Right? We don't have no ability,
we have no grace. It's all your grace, Lord. I
always marvel at that scripture, but that's the manner of our
God in it. Just like a kind parent encourages a child to do in doing
what they cannot do, in which the parent does most or does
all of it for them. That's typical of our God, isn't
it? But all through the scriptures, God acknowledges the labors and
the works of his people and holds these people up for our esteem.
Look at Romans 16, verse 1. He says, I commend unto you Phoebe,
our sister. He starts here with a woman, and that's like our Lord, too,
isn't it? A woman, he commends this woman. He says she's a servant
of the Church, which is at Sincreia. He says, I commend unto you her
that you receive her in the Lord as becometh saints, and that
you assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you.
For she hath been a succorer of many, and of myself also. And I could give you no finer
example. and commend to you no higher
and greater woman on the face of this earth than a woman named
Betty Groover. I commend unto you our sister
Betty Groover. She hath truly succored, helped,
ministered to many, many, literally thousands. of people, have been
fed, clothed, housed, helped, taught, and served by this woman. And like Paul said about Phoebe,
of myself also, I was one. I was one. I have been one many
times. Time would not allow me to tell
you some of the many stories of her sacrificial service. You
wouldn't allow me to tell you. And I'll give you this one note
that you may not be aware of, and I witnessed this. Betty,
for many years now, has been holding a Bible study for women
in her home. It's a study that is made up
mostly of American women who have married Mexican men. And
this place is a refuge for them, isn't it? My mother's been there. Mindy recently sat in on it.
And she came away, she said, I wish you could, the men aren't
allowed, you know, they go someplace else, sit out on the porch. But
upwards of 10, 15, now she's had as many as 25 ladies in her
home at one time. Needless to say, she fed every
one of them. And has done this countless times.
Sometimes, Walter says, she's done it as many as three days
in a row. And she's done this for years now, and the Lord has
seen fit to reveal himself to many of these women that he told
us, and we met them. I met them, and as I said, Mindy
sat in on it and she told me, you just needed to sit there
and hear this woman teach the gospel. And you taught that class
one time, last year when you were down there, didn't you?
The Lord is doing a great work through this lady, and for years
she has opened her home and catered and fed with both spiritual and
physical food and drink. Many, she has succored many,
myself also. Read on. He says, verse 3 and
4, talking about, I believe, a husband and wife here. This
is appropriate. Greek Priscilla and Aquila, my
helpers in Christ, who have for my life laid down their own necks,
unto whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of
the Gentiles." Verse 6. Greek Mary, who bestowed much
labor on us. Verse 7. Salute Andronicus and
Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners, who are of note among
the apostles They are greatly in high esteem among the Apostles,
who also were in Christ before, they knew Christ before I did,
Paul said. I learned some things from them. Verse 9, Salute Urbain,
our helper in Christ, and Stechicus, my beloved. Verse 12, Salute
Triphina and Triphosa, who labor in the Lord. salute the beloved
persons which labored much in the Lord." You see that? Salute,
salute, salute, salute, esteem, commend. The Lord does this. He records this for us. Turn
over to Philippians 2. As I said, I want to do the same. I want to render honor to whom
honor is due, and much honor is due unto our beloved brother
and his wife. And here a great honor and esteem
is given to a man who hazarded his life to preach the gospel, just like our Brother Walter.
Look here, it's very, very appropriate. Philippians 2, verse 25, it says,
I suppose it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother
and companion in labor and fellow soldier. Indeed, he was sick, nigh unto
death. But God had mercy on him, not on him only, but on me also,
that lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. And I send him,
therefore, the more carefully, that when you see him again you
may rejoice, and that I may be the less sorrowful. Receive him,
therefore, in the Lord with all gladness, and hold such in reputation."
He has a marginal reference. He says, "...and my margin hold
such in honor." Does yours say that? Because, verse 30, for
the work of Christ he was nigh unto death, not regarding his
life, to supply your lack of service toward men. For the work
of Christ, Paul said, this man of Paproditus, was nigh unto
death and not regarding his life. On several occasions, and many
more untold, I'm sure that I haven't heard Brother Walter Gruber has
literally, literally hazarded his life and closely escaped
bodily harm preaching the gospel down in Mexico. He has been literally
forced out of these little, these are not things that Brother Walter
would tell you, but I am. He has literally been forced
to flee villages, and upon fleeing had his truck stoned. which stones
were meant for his personage. Do you remember when we studied
that Paul had been threatened in one place and then finally
was stoned in another place? Do you remember that? And then
he went on and rose from there, and we read that in Acts 14.
And how he went on, the Lord raised him from the dead and
he went on to preach the gospel in another place and dwelled
there a little while, and then he said to Barnabas, he said, to Iconium and so forth, the
very place that he had been stoned and threatened, his life had
been threatened, because he did not count his life dear unto
him. He wanted to see the brethren
there, see how they did. He said, like our Lord said,
don't fear them that kill the body, and after that they can't
do any more. Paul said, if they kill my body, what more can they
do to me? He said, fear which after he killeth the body, casteth
both body and soul into heaven." Paul did. Paul feared the Lord
more than he did man, and he went right back to the place
where he was stoned. But the Lord preserved him. The Lord
had a people in that place, and the Lord prevented him any further
harm at that time. I didn't know this story at the
time when we were looking at that portion of Scripture. I
wish I had remembered this. Betty related this story to me.
She said that there was a village that Brother Walter went in,
went out into a pioneer village that he had never been to before,
and preached the gospel there over the loudspeaker. And there were some interested
people there, but there was some opposition, too. I think he left
and came back again, and the opposition began to grow. One
man in particular Took it upon himself to put Walter out of
business. He hated and despised, he was
some leader in the community, and maybe he was being paid or whatever. At any
rate, he threatened Brother Walter. He got the people against Walter,
most of the people, and he threatened Brother Walter. He said, you
come back into this town again. and we'll kill you." He threatened
him with bodily harm and death, even, if he returned to that
city again. Well, Brother Walter left. It
wasn't a week or two later after that happened that that man was
climbing up in a tree to get some limbs or something for his
horse to eat, fell out, broke his neck and died. And the people
of that, they're such superstitious Anyway, they knew that this man
was very fresh on their minds, what he had done. They trembled, and Walter came
back through town. Walter said, I've got to go back
there. I believe there are some of God's people there. He came
back, and all the opposition was gone, dead and buried. To this day there is a group
of people meeting there, and there are many like stories.
And not to mention, and many like stories like that, not to
mention the actual bodily afflictions and sicknesses that our dear
brother has gone through and is suffering for living and eating
in unsanitary and disease-causing conditions. And I, right now, have a little
bit of that. Americans like to call it Montezuma's
revenge. You know, the story of Montezuma
was that ancient Indian Mayan leader, Cortes the Conqueror,
came over from Spain and conquered the land of Mexico. Montezuma
gave him something to take back with him, and it will wipe you
out, literally. Brother Walter, we were talking
about Montezuma's revenge, and he said, Me and Montezuma have
been friends for a long time. We laughed, but he suffers
with that. He suffers permanently with it.
He has a permanent amoeba that flares up occasionally, like
Brother Bill Clark. contacted malaria many times,
which can reoccur at any time. Betty nearly died the first year
or so she was down there. They actually feared for her
life, and Walter nursed her back to health through Walter's intravenous
injections and so forth. Turn over to Mark chapter 10. Scripture says in Hebrews 6,
God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love which
you have shown to his name in ministering to him and his brethren. Hebrews 6. God is not unrighteous.
that will reward, and he does reward his people. Look at this
promise here that our Lord gives to Peter and the Apostles, Mark
chapter 10, verse 28 through 30. Peter began to say unto him,
Lord, we have left all and have followed thee. Christ answered
and said, Verily I say unto you, there is no man that hath left
house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife,
or children, or lands, for my sake and the But he shall receive
an hundredfold now in this time, houses, brethren, sisters, mothers,
children, and lands, with persecution, and a world to come," here it
is, best for last, save the best for last, eternal life. The Lord has truly honored this
promise to the Grievers. this promise right here. He's
truly honored them and their home and their family. They left
a good home and a good job and a comfortable existence. They
took five children. Now, this is inconceivable. Five children. Their ages were
nine, seven, five, three, one-year-old down to a pagan land with little
or no support, sleeping in hammocks on the side of the road. My daughter is nine, and she
is a baby still, as far as I am concerned, a one-year-old, to
a severe and hostile existence. Their families, and they suffered
acute persecution because of it, their families literally
berated and chided them, charging them with not loving their children
or taking them into a land like that. But God, God has honored this
man and this woman and their whole family unlike any other
family I know. The Grover family. There are five children, like
I said, five children, all of which now believe and love the
gospel and attend gospel church. Nearly all of which married other
believers, married into the Howard family, into the Pledger family. Brother David, they intermarried,
the Pledgers and the Howards and the They have eleven grandchildren
now, Walter and Betty, and they have one huge family, a beautiful,
loving family, and they enjoy sweet fellowship. And the beauty
of it all is that they all can enjoy fellowship around the gospel,
every one of them. If God hadn't honored his word
to them, huh? And God has even raised up a
preacher out of this man and this woman's loins, Brother who
I was down there with, and I'll tell you more about him on Sunday
night. I'll show you some films of him
down there, him preaching. A finer man I do not know of
anywhere. Thirty-five years old, fine preacher
of the gospel. And I don't know what the Lord
is going to do with him, but he may be great things. But God
is faithful. God is faithful. God has and
will honor his word, this word. He has honored that to the Groovers,
and he has honored that to us, and will honor that to us. Let's
take him at his word. Thirdly, I said I want to encourage
us to continue with our support for these missionaries. Turn
over to 2 Corinthians 1. I'll hurry this along. And that support I want us to
continue in is support by our prayers and our finances. And
somebody in here, and I'm sure there are more than one in here
that would say this, and I wish I could do more. I just don't feel like I do enough.
I wish I could do more for the cause of Christ for his people,
but I don't have any talents. I can't preach. I can't teach.
I can't sing. I don't have to give to pray. I don't have much money to give.
I can't do much. Anybody in here feel that way? Well, the Lord has given all
of us one talent. Not talent in the sense that
it's something that's ours. It's the parable of the talents. It's a gift. It's something he
gives for us to use. That's what I'm talking about.
One talent we've all been given that we may use abundantly, as
much as we will. 2 Corinthians 1 verse 11 says
this, "...you also helping together by prayer." Paul said in another
place, he said, "...I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus
Christ's sake, for the love of the Spirit, that you strive together
with me." and your prayers to God for me." And I believe if Brother Walter
were here, he would tell you the one thing he needs more than
anything and covets more than anything is your prayers for
him. You know, Paul mentioned a man named Epaphras one time,
and all he said about this man was this. He said, He's one of
you, he's a servant of Christ, and this is what he said about
Epaphras. He said, He always labors fervently for you in prayers.
You know, he's always praying for you. He says he's zealous
for you. He has a fervent desire for your
faith and so forth. And like I said, Brother Walter
had one wish from us. I believe it would be that we
would continue steadfast in prayer for him, particularly now at
this time. I'm going to tell you more about
it Sunday night. The church down there is going
through persecution, a great deal of persecution and a very
critical time for the Church there in Mexico. I'll tell you
more about it later. It's something Brother Walter
has been greatly concerned about for some time. And our finances. We need to support them with
our finances. I commend this Church. Everyone probably does
not know it, but I took with me to Mexico a gift from you
in the amount of $500. which I commend you for your
generosity to them. I wish it had been 5,000, and
that wouldn't be enough. They're worthy of everything
we give to them. But I do commend your generosity, and I appreciate
it, and your faithful support of them, clockwork checks that
reach them. But I want to encourage you to
increase that financial support. It's needed. Brother Walter,
and I'll tell you more about this on Sunday night, the amount
of time he spends on the road and the actual travel and as
many services that he holds. But he told me his gas bill alone
runs about $125 to $150 a week. That's $600 a month. We give
$100 a month. That doesn't even pay for a week's
worth of gas. So the cost of living is just
as high down there too, just as high. if not higher in some
areas, certainly more difficult. I was telling Brother Rick, and
I don't want to quit here, but I was telling him that the power
is liable to go off at any minute, the water is liable to dry up
at any minute, and it's just a primitive existence, a tough
existence. And lastly, turn to Hebrews 6
with me, and I'll read this in closing. I told you the last
thing I want to do, the purpose in this message, this report,
is to encourage you to emulate these people. Walter and Betty
Gruber are just men and women. Betty Gruber is just a woman
just like you, Deborah, no different. Walter Gruber is a man just like
you, Henry Short, no different, no different. And I want to encourage
all of us, I hope this has been an encouragement. And I want
to encourage us to emulate these people. There are several people
here who do great works of love and service to the saints, and
I commend all who do and what they do in the way of service.
Look at what Paul says here in verse 10 and 11. He says, God
is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love which
you have shewed toward his name, and that you have ministered
to the saints and do minister. But he says that we desire that
every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance
of hope unto the end. That you be not slothful, but,
verse 12, followers of them that through faith and patience inherited
promise. Followers of who? Walter Gruber
is as fine an example as I could think of. Betty Gruber, to hold
up before you. like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
and Rahab and so forth in that hall of faith in Hebrews 11,
wherefore seeing we are encompassed about with so great a cloud of
witnesses, and we've got one in our midst today. And we need
to be followers. We do well to be followers of
their faith and emulate them. See that you increase in your
works and labors for others. God will be honored, and he says,
herein is the Father glorified at what? You bear much fruit
for his glory. And God will be honored and God
will be glorified, and you'll be the gainer in the end. God honors his word. God will
prove himself to you, and God will honor you and your house
when you have his word on it. So I hope that's been a a blessing to you and encouragement
to you. Let's stand together. Our Heavenly Father, we thank
you, Lord, for the words that you have recorded
in this book, the word which speaks of Christ, our Savior,
our Redeemer, and all that he is and all that he has done.
all he is to us, we are complete in him. Thank you for the gospel
of our salvation, so great a salvation. What great things you have done
for us, Lord, we thank you. Lord, considering the mercies
of our God, the grace of our God in and through Christ toward
us, we in turn want to present our bodies' living sacrifices
unto thee as we have been exhorted there in Romans 12. And of course,
of this message we've seen throughout reading your Word, we've seen
that many examples through the Scriptures of people you have
used for the sake of your glory, for your honor, to preach the
gospel, to minister to the saints. Lord, we want to be counted in
that number. We want to do something out of love and and appreciation
and thankfulness for what you've done for us, so many great things
you've done for us. Lord, use us in whatever way
you see fit. May we be faithful in a few things.
Lord, I thank you for these men and women like Walter and Betty.
Lord, don't let us sin against you in ceasing to pray for these,
our brethren and our sisters. We can hold up before them, even
at this time. We pray that you'd meet their
every need, both spiritual and physical. That you'd watch over
them and continue to use them many days to come, many years.
We pray for Brother Ken and Mary. We pray for them in Africa, Brother
Bill and Evelyn Clark. We pray for Brother Doug again,
that you would heal him, raise him up. Lord, use this church,
make us missionaries here, and bring in sheep to hear the gospel
for the first time. We pray all these things for
Christ's honor and glory. In his name's sake we are met
together. Amen. I think that's it.