Many of you know how far brother Lester Hudson and I go back, about at least on the edge of 35 years. Well, the fellow that I'm going to introduce to you today, uh, we actually go back much further than that. Uh, yeah, yeah, this, we, we were led to Christ by the same pastor back in, uh, back in Merriam, Kansas. And, uh, Larry is just a little bit younger than dirt and he got saved, I believe at age 17. Was that about right? No, actually 14, 14. I was saving Lubbock and, but that's where we met. And I came along about three or so years later. Yeah. I was a little older, a lot older, a little, a little older at the time. But, uh, our lives have drifted in a lot of different directions, but here we are. Pastor in churches that are about, oh, what? Eight or 10 miles from each other, if that. And Brother Larry is a man that's pastored about 40 years now, I guess. Something of that nature. More or less. Loves the Lord. Preaches the word. Knows what a King James Bible is, Brother Keith. Where are you back there? Somewhere. And he has come to preach to us today and to present the the work that we've already decided to support, but we want to learn a little bit more about it. And that's the orphanage in Mexico City. Well, there you come. And give us what God has prepared for us today. Well, I've learned already I'm not as old as dirt. That's good. Younger than dirt. That's what you said. Younger than dirt. Actually when we met I was in just first year of Bible college or something. I graduated from high school early and went to Bible college and that's going way back, long way back. He said I'm a pastor and I travel a lot and doing this, what I'm going to be doing this morning, and it's weird for people to By the way, what time are we? I know the early service, we've got kind of a time limit. We try to finish at 9.30 if possible. Okay. I'm not going to finish, I'm just going to cut it off. Yeah, that's what I'll do. I'll just cut it off. Yeah, I won't. I do it in our early service every time, just about. Okay, I would like to hear that one. I would. Anyway, by the way, my grandson said, when he saw that slide, he said, Pawpaw, that baby's naked. My grandson Colin, my oldest one. Yeah, I'll talk about that in a second. Yeah, that's what a baby is without parents, right? Or with parents. I mean, they've got to have parents, don't they? Anyway, I was at a church in Louisiana just a few weeks ago, and one of the boys came up to me, a young teenage guy, evidently been raised in church all his life, came up, and he said, well, it's good to meet another missionary. I said, well, I'm a pastor, and he kind of, a dog I used to have would kind of look like that at you, and that's what this kid did. What? You're a pastor and you're here. It just doesn't fit some people's culture. But actually a children's home, rescuing children, doesn't fit a lot of people's culture either. And kind of the way we do things as independent Baptists, which is biblically correct. When it comes to rescuing kids, it creates some difficulties, and that's one of the reasons that I wear multiple hats. We have four missionaries out of our church. Anyway, it's just quite a ministry, plus a children's home. But the reason for this is that I travel and do this. is because of the nature of this ministry and the nature of the way we do things as independent Baptists. That is, when you're seeking support for various ministries, you go from church to church. So that's what I do. We have, like this church, we have all of our services on Sunday morning, and then I'm generally gone. I'm usually gone a few Sunday mornings even at that. But what happened was, this is a God thing. God doesn't often fit the way we think He ought to do things. He does things the way He wants to do things. That's the right way always, isn't it? A guy, a trained medical doctor, completing his education, going into the final stages of education, owned a pharmacy and had some partners. They were building a clinic in a village just above Mexico City, which is where the children's home is now. Mexico City is like Denver. It's very high, it's mountainous. People wonder when we go there in July. They say, why do you go to the hot Mexican desert in July? Actually, we go there to cool off because it's high altitude, just beautiful weather in the summertime. But anyway, he was building a clinic. up in, above Mexico City and living his life for what he says, wealth and fame. Had a wife and three kids, just about to lose them. He would do all that he did during the day and then he'd go out drinking with his buddies at night. Yes, doctors do that, some of them, unfortunately. And he, his mother kept preaching Christ to him and telling him there's more to this life than the way you're living it. And some things happened in his life and he spoke to his mother's God and said, at least from his heart, if you keep me safe in this situation that he was in, I'll seek you. And lo and behold, he was safe. So he kept his word and he started seeking God. And God found him. His mother and others told him about the death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ for sinners. And he trusted Christ as his Savior, as did his wife and his children. And he says that God changed his heart and his eyes. He does that when he saves us, doesn't he? But for him, in this culture, Like many of the cultures in the rest of the world, that meant more than just a life change where you quit doing certain things, but your life kind of stays the same. He was donating his time to a clinic. It would be kind of a hovel for us. We wouldn't call it a clinic, but it's basically walls where alcoholics went. or go, and drug addicts to dry out and kind of get their lives together. So as a doctor, he was donating his time. And he went in there and he saw four little girls that morning. The youngest one was two, Vicky, the oldest one, four sisters. The oldest one, Blanca, was nine. And he asked the proprietor, he said, what are these girls doing here? And he said, oh, they're just street kids. We let them sleep here at night. Imagine that. Four little girls sleeping in a place like that at night. But it's better than the streets, isn't it? We let them sleep here at night, and then we put them out on the streets, and they begged during the day. And God said, this stops here. He said, you bring them to my house. His wife was a nurse. He went home and told her, we're having four girls come to our house to live with us. And she was all for it. God had already done the work. And so they have these four little girls come to their house. He said, when they got out of the vehicle, he expected instead of just the clothes they had on their back, dirty, filthy, and a few blankets, maybe there's a manual or something on how to deal with street kids. He had no idea. But he brought those four girls in. They became like daughters to he and his wife. They gained legal possession of these kids according to the way they do things in Mexico. And that was just the beginning. You'll have missionaries come through a church and they're going to a field that they've never been to before, and that's great. I was a missionary at one point, I understand it, but when we're dealing with a guy like Leonardo Rivas and his wife is Esperanza, You're dealing with people that just walked in up to here. They just waded into the water and started collecting children. Right now, I checked the number, just this week they have 45 children. And they started caring for these kids to the point that they had more kids than what they could stay in their house with. So he took care of all of his partners, stopped being a doctor. He said these kids need a dad, not a doctor. Bought the clinic out. It had one floor just walled in. Moved the kids into the clinic. His church, that he was a kind of a middle class, upper middle class Mexican church, they told him after he started pulling these kids in that you and your biological kids can come, but not these kids. They actually told him his kids couldn't come to church. You say, well, that's outrageous, isn't it? It's outrageous. And so, but he was without a church for two years. It's not like these kids were wild and crazy. If you saw them, in fact, people that see them that come there to maybe try to adopt a child or something, they'll say, this isn't, these aren't street kids. And he says, yes, they are. They're street kids. But there's a prejudice against children like this here in the United States, too. It's here, believe me. But it is rampant in the rest of the world, and I'll talk about that a little bit in our Sunday school time. But I met Brother Rebus about that time. I was at a Bible conference in Mexico, and this girl stood up, and she was very shy. Her dad used to take her and stand her on tables in a bar before she was out on the streets, stand her on tables in a bar and have her sing so he could get his booze money and drink it up. These four girls, this Blanca, the oldest, they lived in kind of a tarp beside an old nasty garage. A tarp leaned to is what their house was. And then they had no house and no parents, no dad out on the streets. Blanca looked up, she was in a park one Saturday with parents everywhere with their kids. And she looked up and said, if there's a God, I want a mom and dad like this. So anyway, this girl, I didn't know all of this and I was at a Bible conference and this is my heart. I was born to an unwed mother, given up at six months. My children are adopted. This is the way we live. In fact, in our family, My wife's the only non-adopted person. She's the odd one. By the way, this is Carol back here, the odd one. She was biologically born into her family. This is her heart. These kids are her heart and life. Life, for sure. But anyway, Blanca got up and I heard the voice of an angel just sing. We've got her CDs back there, by the way. The money goes right to the children's home, but she writes music as well. She just graduated with a degree in sacred music in 2011 or 12. She's married now to a Baptist preacher and has their first child. But anyway, Blanca, this teenage girl, stood up and started singing. I said, who is this? Some of the brethren there told me about Brother Rivas. We met and our church, I mean, he had nothing. They were basically selling those CDs to feed the kids and living by faith, still is living by faith, but our church got involved and we just started pouring our lives into this. Because when you have 45 kids, Can he come up here and do deputation? Can he come up here and go around to churches and raise support? You want to feed 45 kids? You want to pay for the bills for them to travel from church to church? You say, well, then somebody has to watch the kids down there while he comes up here. Who's going to watch 45 kids for free other than somebody who's got who has given their lives to this, which is the Revisits. They make nothing. They eat the food the kids eat. They take care of kids. It's an amazing ministry. So our church took this on, and I personally, Carol and I personally, took this as God's will for us to seek support. And we've been doing that for a number of years now, and God has blessed, you'll see in the Sunday school time, how he has blessed. But one of the things that I learned, I knew this, I knew that we as Baptists, independent Baptists in particular, we're Bible-based, for sure. I am, and I know this church is. I know Charles, this is a Bible-based church. So even with a touching story and, you know, the touching picture there, we still have to have a Bible reason to do what we do. What I faced and still face, is the notion among Christian people, and Independent Baptists in particular, that this is more a charity thing and not a church thing. not really a Bible thing. I am amazed, just amazed, and one of the reasons I guess because this is so much a part of my life that I hadn't realized that it's not a part of a lot of other people's lives, that people don't know that this is actually in the Bible. That what Brother Revis does and what we do is a biblical mandate. It's not just in the Bible, it is a biblical mandate. So this is a very optimistic message because it says five Bible reasons. I guarantee you in the next 20 minutes or so we will not cover all five. I'll just sort of skim through them perhaps. But I don't really need to because a few of these first points are really so profound and important biblically that you don't need a whole lot more information. Can we agree if the Bible says it, if there's a mandate in the Bible, it's something we ought to be doing? And y'all have already made this commitment to be involved and thank the Lord for that. And I mean, I'm serious. When I pray, I pray God bless the children. This isn't about me. It's not about, it's about the kids. That's what the Revis is. That's what Dr. Revis would say if he was here. It's not about him. It's about these kids. There are literally millions of them. And again, I'll deal with that in Sunday school, in our world right now that are on the streets with nothing and no one. It's a shame. So, point number one, involvement with the Christian rescue ministry, children's rescue ministry, partially fulfills the Great Commission given by our Lord in Matthew 28, 18 through 20. To save time, and I'm going to have the passage of Scripture up here, feel welcome to turn in your Bible, it helps me a little bit with time to have them up here, but can we agree That it just makes good sense that rescuing kids who are on the street by Christian people who communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ to them is a partial fulfillment of the Great Commission? I mean, it says, And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. So he said, Go ye therefore and teach all nations. That's everybody in those nations. That's why I say partial fulfillment. It is impossible for any group of churches to ever say they are fulfilling the Great Commission because we have yet to preach to every nation. We have yet to carry the gospel to every creature. But in those nations, and among those human beings that are in those nations in much of this world, there are children who have fallen through the cracks of their society and culture and they are on the streets. So I think everyone would agree going to those kids is partial fulfillment of the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ. But that's kind of broad, isn't it? So there is more. The Great Commission is not the only commission. That's why we call it the Great Commission. Is that the only thing that Jesus Christ has commissioned us to do? Preach the gospel to every creature. There's much more, like this one. There is a commission of our Lord concerning children in Luke 18, 16. And I gotta tell you, this is one of the oddest verses, or it's actually not the verse that's odd, but it's the context of the verse that is odd. Here's the verse. But Jesus called them unto him and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God." Now, here's what's odd. And I got to tell you, for me, I was basically raised a Gentile. Far from church, far from Christianity. You've heard of Buddy Holly, the rock and roll? Sir, I went to church because I wanted to date his niece. And Buddy's older brother, Travis, told me that if you're gonna date her, you're gonna go to church or you're not gonna date her. So I thought, girl, church, girl, church, okay, I'll go to church. So I went to church in Lubbock, Texas and heard the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time in my life. But I gotta tell you, the learning curve for me in Christianity was a long way. I knew what a pew was, sort of, and I knew what a hymnal was, kind of, but that's about it. And what I've seen by Christians since then is a lot of odd stuff. Christians argue over some of the weirdest stuff and do some of the strangest things. But I've learned to keep my mouth pretty much shut and just go on about my business, you know? Because there's a lot that I don't know. So I do. But even after all these years, I see strange things. But this is one of the strangest things. I mean, look at this. This is Jesus. He's got the crowds of people around him and it's one of those personal times where Jesus, and this is kind of how I see it and how the gospel writers talk about it, he's sitting there like this and he's receiving people. If Jesus were here in Dickinson today, would you go see him? I mean, would you be in that line, that crowd there to see Jesus? You better bet you, you would. I gotta tell you, whether my pregnant daughter with her four kids could go or not, a lot of the time she can't, so that means Carol and I, we get our four grandkids and we go. I would rather my grandkids sit on the knee of Jesus Christ than me. wouldn't you? You say, I don't have any grandkids. OK, kids, whatever. I mean, so Jesus is sitting there and he's receiving people. And here's the weird thing. Check me out on this. He looks at his disciples and his disciples are saying, no, no, you kids can't go. Nope. Adults only. You can go see Jesus. No, no, you can't. No kids. Just adults only. Is that not weird to you? It's just, what was in their minds? I've had some friends say, well, it was just kind of a cultural thing. Well, cultural or not, it's crazy, isn't it? It's just wrong. What we are supposed to do is build a highway for children to come to Jesus Christ, not to prevent them. But a lot of these situations in the scripture are there for a reason. They're there for our reason. to teach us something. So Christ took advantage of this. And in the language here, it's almost, I mean, he got angry a few times. And this is one of those times where in the language here, in the gospel writers, there's some intense communication here. It's kind of like this, it's Jesus sees this going on, he says, hey, you, yeah, you disciples, come here. I want to talk to you. We've got to get this straight. And so this is what he says. He called them unto him, and he said this, Suffer little children to come unto me. Suffer little children to come unto me. I love this old English. He talked about the King James Version. I love this old English word here, suffer. Because it gives us a glimpse into the reason why perhaps that These kids were being prevented from coming. Kids. Sorry, kids. We got one here. Maybe a few others. Like I say, I love kids. I'm a grandpa. I got six grandkids. Thanksgiving Day, they were climbing all over me. I mean, that's what we do. The kids, you remember that character, I don't know if his name was Linus in Peanuts, do y'all even watch, I mean do you see Peanuts comedy? The character that, was it Linus that the dirt would just sort of come, follow him everywhere he went and it just sort of radiated? Pigpen, pigpen! Well, a lot of kids are more like pigpen than not. You know, I mean, kids break things, they do. Listen, I go to churches where there are no kids. And in fact, more than what you would imagine, where the churches are graying. And those people would love to have kids. And there may have been a time where, oh, kids are supposed to be seen and not heard, sit down, don't run, don't do this. They would love for kids to be running and tearing things up. But now they're not there. What a horrible situation for a church to be in. I understand. Anyway. I, an example of this is, I was in the children's home, we take a group down every July, and one of the things that these groups have gotten into is they want projects. So, and they kind of want real-time projects. So I'm in Brother Revis's office in the office of the children's home, got some other folks there, and I'm saying, okay, what are your projects? What do you want to give these folks to get accomplished whenever they leave here? So he starts telling us the projects, and in the midst of this, right up front, he says, doorknobs. That's one I had never heard, doorknobs. He said, let me illustrate it. And he walked over to his door, he said, this is my doorknob, I take care of my doorknob, those kids don't. And it hit me that I'd just seen, you know, I'd been so busy, I'd just seen holes in doors. So kids actually break doorknobs off. They break plates. They spill milk. They do all sorts of things because they're kids. And there may have been some weirdness going on in the minds of these disciples that was keeping them from letting the kids come to Jesus. So Jesus says, suffer the little children, no matter how dirty they are, no matter how filthy they are, no matter what their background is, no matter what's going on in their lives, you suffer the little children to come unto me. So we have a commission for the rest of Christianity, for the whole time that we as Christians are here on this earth, what must we do and always remember about children is we do everything we can to make a highway for them to come to Jesus Christ. I mean, that's Bible from our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Another point, number three, God is a father to the fatherless. And partnering with a children's rescue ministry is participation in God's paternal work among children. I, when I was in Bible college, we, in theology, we went through the names of God. And that's where, in the names of God, what the theologians tell us, and it's accurate, is that God gives us His names that He assigns to Himself to reveal to us who He is. He wants us to know who He is. And you know, going through this course, they forgot this name. They did. And in my travels, I've preached this in multiple places. I've asked college professors. I've asked a couple of presidents of Bible colleges if they remember or if their school teaches that this is the name of God. And in every case, it's been zero. But this is what God says, and this isn't the only place that says it, but look at that. A father of the fatherless and a judge of widows is God in his holy habitation. God setteth the solitary in families. What this means is, and it's clear, A father of the fatherless is God in His holy habitation. Some place in this huge set of universes, this existence that we are in, there is some place where God manifests His glory like He does nowhere else in all of His creation. Some place, and in that place, what God wants us to know about Him is He is the father of the fatherless. Is that not what it says? This means that there is not a fatherless child in all of this world that God doesn't know his name. Of course, there's no child that God doesn't know his name, but what we have here is special attention from the living God upon the fatherless. In fact, that word father, I had a friend tell me, that's gone to the children's home with us a number of times, and he's heard my personal testimony, and he knows where I come from. And he said, you know, the only reason you see things the way you do is because of your own personal background. I mean, not only was I born to an Edwin mother, when I went into that family, when my mother, they told her that there was a baby in Lubbock, Texas, almost starved to death. They didn't know if I would live. You can tell I have. And that I'm no longer starving. But she said my eyes were sunk back in my head. And her husband, the one I get the name Jones from, He had checked me out and he said I had bad blood and he didn't want one of those bastard children in his home. But my little 4'11 and 3 quarter mother, she had a way of getting what she wanted and she got me. And they divorced over me within the next two years as their marriage caved in. I went into a life with a single mom until the man I called Dad came into my life in my early teens. Changed my life, along with my Savior. But when I was in Bible college, when I would pray, it was always simply, Father, Father, Father. And I was telling you, this preacher, He said, you see these things because of your background. That's true. And I said to him, you don't because of your background. And he paused for a second. He said, that's right. I said, Christianity needs people like me or you'll forget about this. They told me, one of the guys in college, he said, no, you can't just say father. You need to say a bunch of other words and, you know, about who God is and all this. And I told him, you don't know me. Father is the most precious word to me in the English language. When I heard the gospel of Jesus Christ in that church, I got a father then who has never left me. He's never forsaken me. And he is everything to me. He is my father. And what this tells me is, he's not just my dad, he's not just my father. That the people like me, these kids that are still on the street, he knows them. this is he said it's a solitary in families there is a force in this world and and when dot when brother riva said you know god changed my heart in my eyes this is what god does when he saves us he takes a he takes a bit of his own heart and uh... it it's called the gifts of the spirit he changes are seen molds us into a tool that he uses to accomplish his will and part of his will is rescuing these kids There's a force here. There's a force in every church. There's a force all over this world. It comes directly from the living God to rescue these kids. And the thing is, this is out of our comfort zone. It just is. And it's not like any other ministry. You know, one of the problems I have, and especially in 2015, I'm going to start dealing with this more and more, is I go into churches and they say, well, this is a mission work. Well, it is and it isn't. When you're dealing with a missionary, you're sending the missionary over to a foreign field, he and his family, to preach the gospel and plant churches. That's a whole lot different than rescuing 45 kids at a time. 45 kids. Let's just say 50, make the math here. How many meals a day is that? 50 kids. 150 if you feed them three times a day. That's a lot of frijoles and tortillas, right? Hundred and fifty a day! How many sets of clothes would that be? You say, if they have one set, how many clothes are you going to be washing that day? Fifty! Fifty! Imagine the laundry and we talk about this in our video in the in the Sunday school time I mean that is that is this this is this this is not just your your normal kind of ministry in every way It's not. And it seems that secular organizations and other organizations that are Christian-based know this, but as far as Independent Baptist, we can't kind of get our minds around this. And it's not just the children in Mexico City, which you'll hear about Mexico City a little bit in Sunday school. It's kids all over the world. When you're talking about a missionary going to a mission field and he sees a kid as one of my friends did in Southeast Asia. And by the way, in Southeast Asia, these kids are everywhere. Sees this little girl. She's about this tall and she lives on the street. If he takes her by the arm, he and his wife and they take her and they pick her up and they say, you're coming home with us, what happens then? They become responsible for that child in every way. Let's say they pick up 10. Deputation for them is over. Isn't it? How are they going to put 10 kids on a plane from Southeast Asia, come back here to the United States, get a 15-passenger van, travel all over the country and go back? That is, as far as finances are concerned, that's foolishness. And yet we're not able to deal with this and do what we have presented to us right here, that we have a God, the God that is the head of this church and every church, the founder of the church through our Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, he declares himself to be the father of the fatherless. Participation in a children's rescue ministry partially fulfills the call for pure and undefiled religion. This will be the last point. I'm not going to get through all five, at least in this service. I got to tell you that one startling thing to me, and again, I don't think like most people think, okay? because of who I am, what my background is, how God brought me into Christianity, and the ministries that we're involved in. I have a constant burden on me. People look at me and they think I'm discouraged, I'm sad, or something. I got a constant burden on my shoulders. You know what it is? I was walking through our children's home when we were finishing our new facility with one of my dearest pastor friends, and I said, this is the biggest burden I've ever had on my shoulders in all my life. It's 45 kids you say it's God's burden. Yeah, it's God's burden and he has involved me in his burden So this is I live with this Every day Carol and I live with this our lives get complicated and so so much going on and all we want to do is get rid of all this stuff so we can rescue these kids and The resistance of the devil is absolutely amazing But I go places, and Christians don't even know this verse is in the Bible. I preach, and I know by the look on people's faces in places and conversations that I have, they don't even know this verse is in the Bible. It's James 1.27. It's the other commission. It is a commission. In fact, it is fundamentally to be woven into our lives in the language here. Look at this verse. Pure religion. I realize people sort of, in this day, are repulsed by the word religion. And I understand. They say, hey, listen, I have Jesus Christ. I have Jesus in my life, not religion. And what there's what they say is this Christianity is a relationship not a religion and I agree with that. Don't you? Problem is the word religions in the Bible and it says here pure religion. That is Something it's pure when God when God looks at us and and we are impure creatures and he sees this religion This is pure religion The word religion here, what it means is, it is devotion. It is acts that flow from devotion. That you do because you love. It is not an antithesis to a relationship. It is because of that relationship that you do these things. A lot of people do stuff out of religion. Not this religion, but they do it. Their church has the rules and they do certain things because they're supposed to do it. And they think they're Christian because they don't do these things and do these things. That's not Christianity. That's not this religion. Pure religion. And look at that other word, undefiled. Before God, that's before God, in His sight, as He looks at us, as He's involved in our lives, and He sees what? That we keep the rules that our church says we should keep, or we've come to believe we should keep? What is pure religion? Before God and the what? God and the what? Father. See, we just kind of read over those words. I don't read over this one. So here's pure religion undefiled before God and the Father is this. I think one of the reasons to pause here a second that that people get uneasy about this verse or if they read it, they just kind of put it out of their mind is because it's tested very easily. I mean, you either do it or you don't. You've either done it or you haven't. It says to visit. The term here, visit, means with the purpose of relieving affliction. You'll see the word affliction in here too. To visit the populous and widows in their affliction. And to keep himself unspotted from the world. So, this is pure devotion to God. I'll start the Sunday School series off with what this is all about. to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction. One other thing, and quickly, and I'll let this go. I was reading a commentator and he pretty much laid it out in this verse, an incorrect, in my opinion, interpretation of this verse. What he did was he separated to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction from and to keep himself unspotted from the world. Separated those two, two completely different things. He doesn't know what he's talking about. I could tell that he's never done the first one, or he would know what the second one is. They're tied together. Tied together. You say, how so? It's pretty simple. To see, you know, we've all watched this, us older folks, enough to have kids, watch them grow through to their adult years. And for many of us, we've watched them when they reach 15, 16 years old, some boy that's reached that, the hormones get flowing, and he loses his mind. Just loses it. In this day and time, one of the sad things about losing your mind, I know you'll agree with this one is, you can paint it on you. You've lost your mind, well, I'm going to go get it tattooed on some part of my body so I'll know for the rest of my life that I lost my mind when I was 16 or 18 or whatever. Oh man, I'm glad we weren't doing that in our generation. I see some of these tattoos, some of them are beautiful, and some of them you go, man, you're going to wish you hadn't done that when you get a little older. But anyway, they'll lose their mind. But come about, you never know these days, but some of these young men, 20, 21, they get that little baby placed in their hands. All of a sudden, they're like the madman of Gadara. They're clothed in their right minds. They say, I should have gotten more education. I should have gotten more training for my job because I'm responsible now. for this boy or this girl. This is my daughter. You remember it? I remember it. When Nathan, we were there with our oldest in the hospital, and we were given Nathan. They actually gave us a hospital room. We gave him his first meal, you know. Nathan, my son. They placed him in my hand. I stood before a judge a few months later, hold him up, has a little ball cap on. Judge said, you're the only man in my court that I'll let wear a hat, pointed at Nathan. He asked me, will I commit to be the father of this child for the rest of his days? And I said, you better believe it. All right, son. Son. It's called responsibility. When Doc Revis took those four girls in, took these other kids in, you think he knows what unspotted from the world, keep himself unspotted from the world is all about? Yeah. The two come together. When you see what's going on in this world and you see what's out there and you touch this, you walk into it, you can't be the same anymore. You can't just walk away. If you do, there's something going on inside you. Your life is imbalanced, but when you seek for that balance, it comes from responsibility, it comes from seeing the need. And then you discipline yourself. That is real Christian discipline. A lot of talk about separation. This talks about separating from the world, but the motive is right. If the motive of separation is that you're going to please God, you'll never make it because you cannot. You're a sinner. Jesus is our only mediator that pleases God on our behalf, not us. So if your discipline comes from some motive other than the very motive that took Jesus to the cross, and that is his love for us, then the motive sort of stains everything else. It's a powerful verse. We're out of time, but for sure, rescuing kids is biblical. Are you convinced? Not that you weren't convinced already, okay? I'm sure you are, but I mean, it's profoundly biblical. And I gotta tell you, I am honored to be here with you today. I didn't say that up front, but you have no idea how honored I am to speak to you in these services today. Thank you, brother. Are you convinced? We have already, as you know, taken on monthly support of the orphanage in Mexico. Every year it's become a tradition around here that we do something that we call Christmas of love. We have. taking presents to the kids in the Section 8 housing for several years. We have taken care of folks in old folks' homes on Christmases. Last year, we took care of the veterans, several homeless veterans that were really in need. This year, we're going to take care of this orphanage. That's our plan. I could organize a giant climax of a push and take a big offering on a special Sunday and preach about it, building up to it and all those things. But I'm not going to do that. If what you've heard this morning is not enough, then it's not going to, nothing else is going to matter. Your heart is not going to be touched if this doesn't do it. So here's what I'm going to ask you to do. This is what Lisa and I are going to do. I'm going to ask you to talk to the Lord and follow the spirit of God as he leads you and to give a special offering between now and I'd like to do this by mid-December for sure. And some of you have money coming at certain times and different paychecks and that sort of thing. But ask God what he would have you to do for this mission work. And it is a mission of rescue. We can't save the world of kids. There's billions of them probably, but if only the Lord knows the numbers. And we can't even touch the small, tiniest percentage on the streets of Mexico City. But we can save a kid, or two, or three, or 40, or help. We can do something. And we can start with this. So we're going to do something, amen?