The church of the Lord Jesus
Christ is an assembly where the Lord of glory is worshiped. This is the primary function
and primary business of a church, is to worship the Lord. In our
text this morning, Matthew 28, verse 17, it says, And when they
saw him, they worshiped him. The first business of the Church
is not to evangelize, though they will. The first business
of the Church is not to fellowship, though they will. The first business
of the Church is to worship the Lord. Brethren, we have met again. Let us join to pray and sing. Jesus, our Sovereign, reigns. Praise Him in the highest strains. Many hours and days have passed
since we met together last, and yet our lives do still remain
here on earth to meet again. Jesus is our glorious King. May our hearts be tuned to sing,
to praise Him, to love Him forevermore, for He is our God whom we adore. The meeting of the church ought
to be a solemn but a happy time. The meeting of the church ought
to be a time of praise and a time of worship to the Lord of glory.
We come together to bring unto Him sacrifices of praise and
love and adoration. Back in Matthew 21, verse 12,
the Lord Jesus Christ came in the temple where they were buying
and selling And the Lord Jesus Christ said, as He drove out
the money changers, in verse thirteen, it is written, My house
shall be called the house of prayer. But ye have made it a
den of thieves. And the blind and the lame came
to Him in the temple, and He healed them. My house shall be
called a house of prayer. That's the first business of
the church, is to worship the Lord, to commune with Him, to
bring to Him sacrifices of praise and adoration and love and faith. And then secondly, the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ is an assembly where the ordinances
are observed, that is, the Lord's table and baptism. It is an assembly
where the ordinances are observed and ministers teach and preach
the Word of God. Turn to Acts chapter 20. In the
twentieth chapter of Acts, verse seven, it says, upon the first
day of the week, that's Sunday, that's the Lord's day, on the
first day of the week, this was the day of worship, When the
disciples came together to break bread, they met together to observe
the Lord's table. They met together to remember
His death, to show forth His death. Paul preached unto them. They met to observe the ordinances,
and when they met together to observe the ordinances, Paul
preached unto them. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter
four. When our Lord Jesus Christ ascended
back to the Father, the Scripture says that He left in the Church
certain responsible people, calling them, in verse 11 of Ephesians
4, apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers,
for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry
for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in
the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ, that we henceforth be no more children tossed to
and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the
slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive,
but speaking the truth in love. may grow up into him in all things
which is the head, even Christ." This is not a theater. This is
not a place of entertainment. This is not a social club. This
is not a place where we go to meet our friends. This is the
house of God. This is an assembly where people
meet to worship God. This is a place where people
meet to observe the ordinances of Christ. and to hear his word
preached, and to hear his word taught. And then thirdly, the
church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an assembly where the gospel
is to be preached to sinners. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter
1. This was Paul's mission. This
was Paul's task, to preach the gospel. It says in 1 Corinthians
chapter 1, verse 23, but we preach Christ crucified. Under the Jews,
a stumbling block. Under the Greeks, sheer nonsense. But under them, what you call
both Jews and Greeks, we preach Christ crucified, the power of
God, and the wisdom of God. Then across the page in verse
2 of chapter 2, Paul said, I determined. It was a resolution. It was a
determination. I determine not to know anything
among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." Christ Jesus
is our message. Christ in the glory of His divine
person, Christ in the perfection of His glorious life, Christ
in the power of His atoning blood, Christ in the certainty of His
magnificent resurrection, Christ in the prevalency of His intercession,
and Christ in the glory of His return. We preach Christ, the
sinner's only hope. We preach Christ, the believer's
only righteousness. Christ is not only our message,
but Christ is our motivating force, down at the cross where
my Savior died. down where for cleansing from
sin I cried. There to my heart was the blood
applied, glory to His name. At the cross, at the cross where
I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away."
It was there, at the cross. By faith I received my sight,
and the burden of my heart rolled away. If the Holy Spirit ever
takes me to Calvary and lets me see what took place on that
hill called Golgotha, I can never be the same. If the Holy Spirit
ever takes me to Calvary and lets me look into the face of
Him who died for my sins, I can never come away unchanged, for
there at Calvary I learned the wrath of God against my sin."
Turn to Romans, chapter 1. That's what it says here in the
first chapter of Romans. It says in Romans, chapter 1,
verse 16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the
Greek, for therein In the death of Christ, in the sacrifice of
Christ, in the gospel of Christ is the righteousness of God revealed. Verse 18, For therein is the
wrath of God revealed. At the cross I see the righteousness
of God revealed in Christ. At the cross I see the wrath
of God revealed against sin. There at the cross I learn to
forgive. I hear Christ crying out in His
suffering and in His agony, Father, forgive them. They know not what
to do. And the Apostle Paul says, Be
ye kind one to another, forgiving one another, even as God for
Christ's sake hath forgiven you. There I learned to give. Or the
Scripture says, Christ who was rich for your sakes became poor,
that you through His poverty might be rich. There I learned
humility. Let this mind be in you, which
was also in Christ Jesus, who thought it not robbery to be
equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, and took upon
himself the form of a servant, and was submissive unto death,
even the death of the cross." The church of the Lord Jesus
Christ is an assembly where the Lord is to be worshiped, where
the Lord is to be adored. where the Lord is to be held
in awe and fear and reverence. The church of the Lord Jesus
Christ is a place where the gospel is to be preached, where the
gospel of Christ crucified is to be proclaimed. And then in
the next place, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an assembly
of fellowship and prayer. Turn to Acts chapter 2. In the second chapter of Acts,
verse 42, it tells about the conversion of these people. They
received the Word of God, they were baptized, 3,000 of them
added to the church, and then in verse 42, "...and they continued
steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and in fellowship."
They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship. Then look at verse 46, and they
continued daily with one accord, in unity. In the temple, breaking
bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness
and singleness of heart, praising God and having favor with all
the people. Turn with me to James chapter
in the fifth chapter of James, verse fourteen. The Scripture
says, Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of
the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with
oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall
save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up. And if he have
committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. Confess your faults
one to another, and pray one for another. The church of the
Lord Jesus Christ is an assembly of unity and fellowship and brotherly
love. It's a place where hearts are
knit together, pursuing the same goal, worshipping the Lord, encouraging
one another, exhorting one another, praying for one another, lifting
up those that are burdened and caring for those whose hearts
are broken, weeping with those that weep and rejoicing with
those that rejoice. Then in the next place, the Church
of the Lord Jesus Christ is an assembly where the Lord God is
worshiped. Worshiped. The Church of the
Lord Jesus Christ is an assembly where the ordinances are observed,
the Lord's table and baptism, and where the gospel of Jesus
Christ is preached. The Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ is an assembly of fellowship where hearts are knit together,
where men love one another and pray for one another and have
the same purpose and the same goal and the same aim. And then
in the last place, the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an
assembly of people who make it their business to carry out the
Great Commission. My text, Matthew chapter 28,
verse 19. And the Lord Jesus said to His
disciple, Go ye therefore into all the world, or teaching all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you. Every member is a witness. Every
member is a missionary. The Church sends ministers over
the world to preach the gospel. The Church prays for and supports
these ministers. I want to divide this last point
into three parts, three natural parts from this text. Let's look
at it. Go ye and teach all nations. baptizing them in the name of
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Thirdly, teaching them to observe
all things whatsoever I have commanded you. Last week this
church sent me and Dr. David Estrada to Mexico on a
missionary trip. We were met there by my cousin,
a dentist from Alabama, and on Friday night when we got into
Mexico, we flew in by plane from New Orleans. When we got there
on Friday afternoon, we had a bite to eat, and then Friday night
we loaded up two trucks. Both trucks purchased the greater
part of them by this church. We went along with two missionaries
who are supported by this church. and we drove for many miles outside
the city of Metida to a little village where the missionaries
had not been. The Yucatan is a state in Mexico
that has about a million people. Two hundred and fifty thousand
of them live in Metida, and the rest of them live in little villages,
little pueblos, all over the state of the Yucatan. It is a
very poor place. It is a dry, dusty, rocky, barren
state. The people are very poor people.
Many of the villages do not have electricity. Practically none
of them have running water. They do not have the things that
we take for granted. They do not have anything that
their ancestors didn't have a thousand years ago. They still grind their
corn on rocks, they still sleep in hammocks, they all still have
dirt floors, they have grass roofs, they have nothing. The
average salary of men who do have employment is about three
or four dollars a week. We drove out to this little Pueblo
in the Yucatan, about thirty or forty miles from It was evening. The missionaries had never been
there. Some of the people were on the streets. Most of them
were in their homes because it had rained that day, and it was
a little cloudy, and it was lightning, and it was dark, and it was a
little cool for the Yucatan, about 75 or 80 degrees. But anyway,
the people were in their homes, in these little grass huts. And
Brother Gruber set up the loudspeaker, and he announced that In about
15 or 20 minutes we were going to have a colored film on the
life of Christ. We set the projector up, parked
the truck so that we could shine the picture up on the whitewashed
wall of a building down in the village in the Pueblo Square,
and then we announced that in a few minutes we would have a
film. Well, people began to come out of their homes, they began
to come from down the road and up the road, and after a while
we had about two hundred people around that truck. And then we
started to film. And it showed how that the Lord
Jesus Christ was betrayed by the disciples and sold for thirty
pieces of silver and crucified on the cross and was buried and
rose again. About a twenty-five or thirty
minute film. showing the resurrection of Christ
and then his ascension to glory. A very good film. And after it
was over, we turned the lights on, the lights up over the truck,
and then Dr. David Estrada, a missionary to
Spain, whom you sent down there with us, stood up and preached
to these people. And all of them stayed, and they
listened. And he told them how that men were sinners and had
fallen and how they needed a Savior, and how that Jesus Christ came
to die on that cross, not as an example, not as a martyr,
but He died as a substitute, He died for sinners. And how
they rose again and ascended to the right hand of the Father,
and there He is our great High Priest, and there He intercedes
for us. And there he pleads and prays
for sinners who believe on him and how he's coming back again.
And he preached for about 45 minutes to these people who had
never in their lives, one time, ever heard the gospel of Jesus
Christ. Oh, they had religion, but they
didn't ever hear the gospel of Christ. They had a paganism,
they had an idolatry, they worshiped their their statues and their
idols, but they'd never heard the good news that salvation
was not in rituals and religion and in churches, but salvation
was in Christ. And we took out of some boxes
about 100 Bibles that you had bought, and we handed every adult
in that crowd who wanted one a copy of God's and then they
slipped away into the night. Go ye therefore and preach to
all nations. That's what God sent His church
to do. His church is a place of worship. His church is a place where the
ordinance is observed and where the gospel is preached and where
we meet for fellowship and prayer. But His church also is a vibrant,
throbbing, pulsating, caring burdened people who believe in
taking the gospel to sinners. On Saturday morning we got up
and we went over to a village. You can't believe the road getting
there. It's just a deserted, isolated
village, Pueblo, where the missionaries have been going for about a year,
called Thad-she-ba-chin. And there we set up a dental
clinic and we invited anybody in the community that had a dental
problem to come and the dentist would pull his teeth and take
care of him. And while we were seeing 37 patients
and pulling over 70 teeth, Dr. Estrada, Walter Groover, and
others talked to those people about their souls and about Christ
and about eternal life. And then the children sang some
songs, and we just had a delightful time out there on the ground,
surrounded by jungles, surrounded by pigs and chickens and dogs
and poor natives, but going to all nations, telling them the
good news. We went to many others, but on
Thursday night, the last night that we were there, we got in
the trucks, loaded up both trucks with the dental supplies and
other equipment, And we went to a place where the missionaries
had never been, had never preached, a place where they're hoping
to set up a witness for Christ. They're hoping to go there and
preach one of these days. It's a little village, a little
Pueblo, called Celestun. It's over on the extreme west
coast of the Yucatan. We drove 46 miles on a paved
road, took one hour, and then we drove 10 miles into the jungles
on a road that was so rocky and so bumpy and so bad, it took
one hour and five minutes to go ten miles. Finally we reached
this little village and we went to see the Commandante and told
him who we were, Americans, missionaries, and we had an American dentist
with us. And we would like to make friends
with them, and we would like to set up a dental clinic, and
we would like to take care of their dental needs totally free
of charge. Not one dime would they be charged.
So he was very friendly and very warm, and the chief of police
was very warm, wanted to serve us a meal, but we declined. And then he told us we could
set up our dental clinic right in City Hall. Now, City Hall
is not very pretty, but it was City Hall anyway. So we set up
the dental chair right smack dab in the middle of City Hall,
and we got ready for our first patient, but nobody came. You
see, we were strangers there, and how would you feel if some
Mexican came and put a chair out in your yard and invited
you to sit down and let him pull your teeth, you know? It wouldn't
be very inviting. But anyway, we stood there a
little while and waited. And after a while, a little old
lady came up who was suffering. Her tooth must have been hurting
bad for her to get in that chair surrounded by all those gringos. But she sat down, and our dentist
gave her a shot of Novocaine and pulled her tooth. And she
smiled as she got out of the chair, and then they began to
come in. They were all watching her, you
know, and then they began to come, one right after the other.
And we stood there, took time out to eat a bite, but we stood
there and worked on about 20 patients, boys and girls, men
and women, 18, 19-year-old boys, fishermen, and we pulled a host
of teeth and took care of people. And we told them, we told the
people, the commandante and the deputy commandante and the chief
of police and other people that our missionaries would be coming
back there to show them films about Christ and preach to them
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they said that you're
welcome. Brethren, this is what Christ
told his church to do. Go to all nations. Go to all nations. Mexico, France,
Spain, Ireland, to all nations and preach the gospel. Now what's
the second thing here? It says, go ye therefore. Now
I can't go. I don't know the language. And
you can't go. Perhaps God has not called you
to leave this nation and cross the ocean and go to some other
country, but we can provide for those whom he has called. Those
trucks that the missionaries drive to go into these places,
they have to have them. There's no way for them to get
into these isolated villages except they have transportation.
You provide that transportation. Gasoline there costs the same
thing it cost here, sixty cents a gallon. I went to the store
with the missionary wife one day just to see what things cost. Cooking oil, two dollars a bottle. Campbell's vegetable soup, fifty-six
cents for a little can, one can. We bought enough hamburger to
have hamburger at supper one night, made into meatballs. It
cost five dollars for just enough ground beef to make some hamburger.
It's just as expensive to live in Mexico as it is here. It costs
just as much. We hand out testaments to over
a hundred people in Apuebo, when down in Celestun, when those
people had their teeth pulled and got out of the chair, one
of the boys hand them a New Testament. It costs money. Those films cost
money. Those projectors cost money.
Tires cost money. The missionary's children in
school, that costs money. All of these things are expensive. And for the missionary to stay
there and preach to these people, we have to support them. We have
to help them. And we're carrying out this great
commission when we do that. If we cannot go ourselves, we
can provide for those who are going. And that's exactly what
you're doing. And I thought on that Friday
evening when we were out there in this little Pueblo showing
that film and David Estrada standing up there preaching. I looked
and there was that truck that you had bought. I looked and
there was the preacher that you paid his fare down there preaching
the gospel to 200 people who had never heard it. And I said,
thank God for the 13th Street Baptist Church. And then in all
these little villages in Zitzandun and Yobain and Tikal and Celestun
and all these places where we went and pulled almost 200 teeth
and took care of well over 150 dental patients, I said, thank
God for the 13th Street Baptist Church, people with a burden
and broken heart for the needs of other people. And we're seeing
people converted and brought to Christ. We're making friends.
This little village where we have that dental clinic, when
Walter goes back now to preach, they're going to know him. They're
going to say, welcome, we're glad to see you. The second thing
it says here, we're to go and teach all nations, we're to baptize
them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Now, brethren, we're not going to Mexico and France and Spain
and Ireland and other places to make Baptists. That's not
our goal. Sincerely and earnestly I say
unto you, that is not our goal. The name Baptist outside of this
church means very little to me, and I know it means very little
to you. I am a Baptist by belief. I believe that the Baptists have
contended for the Word of God through the years. Some of them
have, some of them haven't. But we're not going to Mexico
to make Baptists. We do not baptize these people
to make Baptists. We go there to tell them about
Christ. We go there to preach to them
about the Savior. We go there praying that the
Holy Spirit will take the gospel, as He did in our case, and bring
those people to a knowledge of their sins, and bring them to
a knowledge of Christ as the only Redeemer. We go there to
preach to these people the good news that Christ died for sinners. And when they believe that good
news, and when they receive that good news, they are baptized,
not in order to be a Baptist, not in order to be a church member,
not in order to be one of us, but they're baptized to reveal
or to show forth or to confess their faith in Christ. as all
believers in the New Testament were baptized to confess their
faith in Christ, were baptized to be identified with Him in
death, in burial, and resurrection. And I'll tell you this, baptism
may not mean a great deal to people here in the United States,
but baptism in Mexico is the most difficult Baptism is the
final break with idolatry. Now, these natives can come and
see your film, and they can come and hear you preach, and they
can come and receive your testament, and they can come to your dental
clinic, and they can even come to your little church services
where you have little churches and where you have little assemblies
and witnesses, and they can come and join you there and sing you
hymns. But when they go down into that water with the minister
of Christ, and when they submit to this ordinance of baptism,
they are declaring that their hope and their faith is no longer
in their idolatrous religion handed down from their fathers,
that their faith is no longer in the idols and in the saints,
but in Christ alone. and they are identifying themselves
with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. And they're
breaking with all tradition and all custom and all idolatry,
and they're saying that Christ alone is their sufficient prophet,
priest, and king. And they're cut off from their
friends and cut off from their family and have problems on their
jobs. But Walter and David and Milton
have seen hundreds of them take this step. baptism, confessing
Christ. No pressure is put on the people.
No pressure to make decisions, no pressure to make professions
of faith. The gospel is preached and we
leave it in the hands of the Holy Spirit to reveal Christ
to their hearts and bring them to a knowledge of the Son of
God. Go ye therefore and teach all
nations and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit. Not in the name of the Baptist
Church. Not in the name of a certain denomination, but in the name
of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And then the third thing
that I see here is this. Christ said, You go. You go to
all nations, not just to Ashland, Kentucky. We love Ashland. But
we're to go to all nations. Our Lord has a people in every
nation, every tribe, every tongue, every kindred. And I believe
my heart can rejoice just as much in seeing one of those humble,
poor, Mayan Indians people come to the knowledge of Christ as
to see somebody right here in this town. I believe that You
and I care as much for them as we do our own neighbors. They
are our neighbors. And then it says here, watch
this very carefully, this is important. You go, teach all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you. Now there are two important things
here, listen to me. Teaching them to observe all
things. all things whatsoever I've commanded
you. We want to teach them that the
Bible is the Word of God, the sole foundation of faith and
practice, the Scriptures alone, the Scriptures alone. That the
Scriptures, it's not the Word of God plus the traditions of
the fathers, it's the Word of God alone. It's not the Word
of God plus the Word of the minister, plus the Word of the priest,
plus the Word of the Pope. It's the Word of God alone. The
Bible is the only rule of faith and practice. We want to teach
them to observe all things whatsoever Christ had commanded us. We want
to teach them that men are sinners, that they are fallen in Adam,
that they have no righteousness and no merit, and no hope, and
no dignity, and no godliness, that they're dead in trespasses
and sin. We want to teach them that Christ
came down here and obeyed the law, and fulfilled it, and died
on the cross, and was buried and rose again, ascended to the
Father, where He alone is our great High Priest. Christ alone,
that He's coming back again. We want to teach them that men
who know Christ are to walk in holiness and righteousness and
honesty and have a good report of those without. We want to
teach them that they are to worship God on the Lord's Day. Every
day is the Lord's Day, but they're to worship God, and they're to
pray and to read their Bible, and they're to live an exemplary
life. We want to teach them to observe
all these things. But now wait a minute. Watch
this. It says, teaching them to observe them. Not observing
them for them, it's teaching them to observe them. Those are
the two important things. It says, teaching them, go and
make disciples of all nations, teaching them to observe all
things. Teach them the truth. Teach them
the right way. It's the Scriptures alone, grace
alone, faith alone, Christ alone. But what's this? them to observe
them. Don't do it for them. Brethren,
this has been the failure of most American missionary work
right here. I know this is true. This has
been the failure. Don't you wonder why, when the
missionaries left China, the missionary work, most of it just
collapsed? Why, when the missionary was
brought out of the Sudan and brought out of Africa and brought
out of other places, nothing left. And I'll tell you why it
is. Most American missionaries have
gone into an area, and they have preached, and they have persuaded,
and they have gotten professions out of the people. And with American
money, they have built a church for the people. They have bought
them hymn books. They have brought in food and
fed them. They have talked some natives
into being preachers themselves and put them on salary from American
churches. They've paid the native preachers.
And they've gotten all of this mushroom growth. The missionary does all the preaching. He meets with the church and
makes all the decisions. And then when he leaves there,
it can't stand. The work collapses. And that's
not how it should be done. It says here, you go and teach
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. You teach them to observe all things I've told
you. Now, when we go into an area,
let me tell you this. Down in these mission fields,
the men whom you're supporting, they introduce themselves with
these film services and preach. And they leave their names and
addresses with these people stamped on the back of these Bibles or
on tracts. And these people read it, and
they've heard the message preached. And if some of them are interested,
and oftentimes some of them are, they get in touch with the missionary.
Next time he comes through, or they send a letter to his house,
or they send word to him to come back. And he goes back into a
home. And there's a family, and maybe
a sister or brother has been invited in, and he sits down
with the Word of God and preaches the gospel to them again. And
they say, will you come back next Friday, or next Tuesday? He says, I sure will. So he goes
back and preaches again. They've brought in another man,
or another woman, or two or three more children. After a while,
that little hut is full of people. And he's sitting there preaching
to these people. And then they have to move out
in the yard. They've got more people. Then the Lord saves somebody.
and they baptize them, and after a while you've got seven or eight
people there, and they're organized into a church. Now, they need
a building. They need a lot. For example,
out in Thadshiba Chin, way out yonder, those people bought a
lot on which to build a building. They've got about nine or ten
converts. They want to build them a little
building. That lot sold for about forty dollars. They owe $8 on
it. Wouldn't that be easier for me
this morning to say they bought a lot, they need $40, and let's
just take up an offer and send it down? That's the very thing
that American missionaries have done for years and is the wrong
thing to do. They're buying that lot themselves.
They've been buying on it about six months. They owe $8. That's
all they owe. One of you will come up to me
this morning and say, let me send that $8. No, you can't do it. You see, that's their lot. They're
going to buy that lot. And they're going to build them
a building. They're going to build it stone by stone. They're
going to build it piece of wood by piece of wood. They're going
to put them a little tin roof on top of it. And when they get
through, it's going to be their building. It's going to be a
building that God used them to build. They've got a native,
a man that's been called to preach. He's going to school now. They
say, well, let's put him on salary so he won't have to work. We've
got to leave him alone. You see, when these churches
are established and these people are brought to a knowledge of
Christ, they're not following Christ for the dollar they get
from America. They're not following Christ
for the easy way of living that they've come into now. They're
following Christ because they love Him and because they need
Him. No one built this building for
you. You built it. No one pays the expenses. You
pay them. No one comes here and preaches
for you, one of your own preaches to you. Teach them to observe
all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And all over the
Yucatan we have There are now churches, these men have a church
in Yobain, Zandun, Consacab, Tecal, Tella, Tadjibachin, all
of these places, San Domingo, San Francisco. They have churches,
rude little buildings, but they're built by the natives, and they
have church every single night during the week. The missionary
doesn't have to be there. They have their own pastor. They
have an assistant pastor. They have their own deacon. And
they have their own song leader. And the missionary gets around
to visit them about once every ten days. But if something happens
to the missionary, that church goes right on. That preacher
goes right on. And those deacons go right on.
See, the missionaries, these missionaries have taught them
to observe all things whatsoever they bid command. Not observing
it for them, We're not going down there to Americanize them
or make Americans out of them. We're going down there to preach
Christ to them, and they come to a knowledge of Christ, and
then they observe these things themselves. They're units of
the body of Christ right down there, independent and sovereign
themselves, just like this church is. And they bring their little
offerings. It may be a chicken. They bring
a chicken and put it on the altar. They bring an egg or two eggs,
or they bring a sack of oranges. But they give. They give. And they give their pastor a
little bit of money to help him buy some gasoline for his motorcycle
once in a while. It's not much. It may be fifty
cents. It may be twenty-five cents. But they give. And they
build those churches themselves. And thus, go ye unto all nations,
and preach the gospel, and teach them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you.