Bear One Another's Burdens
Tom Shrader examines Galatians 6:1-10, teaching that Christians must bear one another's burdens through gentle restoration of those caught in sin. He emphasizes that spiritual people should approach fallen believers with humility and love, not superiority or judgment, understanding that we are all vulnerable to temptation. The teaching explores the balance between carrying burdens that require community support and taking responsibility for our own spiritual loads.
“If a Christian brother or sister is weighed down or menaced by some burden or threat, be alert to that and quickly do something to help.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Galatians
Recorded: 2012
Duration: 54 min
Themes: restoration, humility, gentleness, community, accountability, temptation, responsibility, compassion, struggling with sin, mentor, pastor, church leader, caught in sin, mature believer, accountability partner, restoration process
Scripture: Galatians 6:1-10, Galatians 5:16-26, James 3:2, 1 John 1:8, Ephesians 6, 1 Corinthians 12, Matthew 18, John 15:12, 1 Corinthians 13:7, Psalm 55:22, 1 Peter 5:7, Proverbs 16:18, 2 Corinthians 5:14, Jeremiah 17:9, James 1:22, James 3:14-17
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual maturity, ecclesiology, church discipline, pastoral care, christian ethics, spiritual warfare, discipleship
Full Transcript
Let me invite you to open your Bibles to the book of Galatians, and we're in week 11. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand really high, and the guys will be around with Bibles. If you get a Bible from us, it's page 633. We're going to look today at Galatians chapter 6, verses 1 through 10. Next week, we'll look at verses 11 through 18 to finish the book, and then we'll be into the new series for Easter.
Let me tell you where we're going. After Easter, I think we'll do four weeks on the life of Joseph, six weeks on the life of Daniel, and that'll get us into July. I go on vacation, so it doesn't matter to me what you do after that. I don't care. Couldn't care less. Good luck. Let me know. Turn out the lights when you leave. In the fall, the next book we study will be 1 Peter, starting in September. We've got it planned and I'm looking forward to it.
Fighting for Grace: A Series Overview
This is week 11 in our study in the book of Galatians, and we've titled the series Fighting for Grace. To this point in the study, we have seen Paul defend his apostleship and defend the gospel. That was very biographical in chapters one and two. Chapters three and four become very doctrinal, asking the essential question: what is the gospel? Paul says the gospel is grace plus nothing.
The Judaizers had come in behind him and said grace is important, but then there's something you have to do too. Specifically, they were saying that to be a Christian, you have to become a Jew also. So circumcision became the issue, and we studied that pretty intensely for chapters three and four. We get to chapters five and six, and it becomes very much application.
The Battle Between Flesh and Spirit
Especially the last two weeks, and really last week, we looked at verses 16 through 26. The idea is that I'm either walking in the flesh or walking in the spirit. Verse 17 says the flesh sets its desire against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. So that's the battle we're in. I'm either going to be led by the flesh, the world system, my own sinful desires, or by the Spirit of God.
How will I know if I'm being led by the flesh or led by the spirit? He gives us a very easy way to measure it. He says in verse 19, "The deeds of the flesh are evident," they're obvious, and then he lists them. Immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, outbursts of anger, jealousy, strife, and things like this. He also says at the end of verse 21, "I have told you before about these things." This is not new territory. So if I'm being led by the flesh, that's what I'm going to see in my life.
Verse 22 says if I'm being led by the spirit, I'm going to see love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Our call, verse 24, is to crucify the flesh and its passion. So there's the battle. If we live by the Spirit, we walk by the Spirit.
Transition to Community Living
Then verse 26, which is a wonderful transition to chapter 6, verse 1, could even be put in the sixth chapter. You understand that these letters weren't written with chapters and verses, and we've added those afterwards. We could move verse 26 actually into the sixth chapter. It says, "Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, provoking one another, envying one another."
He says I don't want you to be known as somebody who's bragging and provoking, where there's envy, but rather there should be a spirit of love and graciousness and gentleness and helpfulness and support. Even in the midst of sin, which we're going to look at when we get to chapter 6, verse 1, the response should not be punishing or punitive, but restoring.
He says you need to not think in a selfish, self-centered, self-absorbed way, but you need to think about people other than yourself. You need to fall in love with the creator God of the universe. His Spirit invades your heart, opens your eyes, gives you a desire to be with Him and to serve Him, and that then overflows into our relationship with each other.
Reading Galatians 6:1-10
When we get to chapter 6, verse 1, we're right away struck by this. Let's read these 10 verses. I'll make a couple of comments along the way and then come back to them. I will tell you up front, somebody said it's almost like a series of Christian fortune cookies in that there's a saying and then another and then another. There are a couple that seem a little disjointed, but overall, I think we can see how this comes together.
Here's what he said: "Brethren, if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness." There's really clear direction here: here's what needs to be done, here's who does it, here's how it's done. "Each one looking to yourself so that you too will not be tempted." He's continually coming back to us and telling us we need to examine our own life.
He's suggesting this is part of the Christian life—to deal with each other's sin. He says in this process, as you're doing that, be very self-aware of yourself. "Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But each one must examine his own work, and then he will have reason for boasting in regard to himself alone, and not in regard to another."
I want you to look at your own life as you do this. I want you to evaluate it, but not as it compares to each other, but as it compares to
God's standard. And now, rather than think you're really something, you're going to realize that apart from Christ, you're absolutely nothing.
Verse six just seems to be totally out of context with the rest of this: "The one who is taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches." Then verse seven gives us a principle of sowing and reaping: "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life."
"Let us not lose heart in doing good." I find that kind of an alarming statement. I remember the first time I ever read it, thinking, "Really, why do I get tired of doing good?" But now that I've done it for a while, I get it. "For in due time, you will reap if you don't grow weary. So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who are in the household of the faith."
The Reality of Sin in the Believer's Life
Sin is something that's present in the world, and it's present in the life of the believer as well. James 3:2 says, "We all stumble in many ways." First John 1:8 tells us, "If we say we have not sinned, we make God a liar, and His word is not in us." When we get to Ephesians chapter six, the next book, Paul talks about the armor of God: "Put on the full armor of God, because we're in a battle against the devil and his schemes." He's crafty. We put on once and for all, and leave on for all time, 24-7, the rest of our life, the full armor of God.
So we know it's not that as a follower of Christ all of a sudden we cease to sin. In fact, there's almost a sense in which you become more aware of your sin, because you see things that before you just dismissed, and now you realize that all of a sudden, those are sins. You hadn't even thought about them before.
When Sin Affects the Body
In our life, as a follower of Christ, comes sin, and it needs to be dealt with. When all of a sudden we sin, we don't break our union with God, but we jeopardize our communion with Him. We also jeopardize our own usefulness. We jeopardize the body, because when we sin, we affect one another. First Corinthians 12 tells us we are one body joined together. When one sins, it affects all of us.
Paul's saying this is really serious business, that we understand in the midst of sin that we're going to come in contact with those who are, look at the phrase in verse 1, "caught in any trespass." There's two possible ideas here. One is actually caught in the act, like the woman who was caught in adultery, right smack in the middle, as it's going on. They're eyewitness to this. Or the idea of being caught up in, or overtaken by, the one who's in the middle of some sort of trespass, meaning missed the mark, or stumbling.
The Spiritual Response to Sin
So he's saying there's going to be these people who are involved in sin, and you who are spiritual need to come along and deal with this. Now I'll just acknowledge up front, this is not something we do often, we do well, we tend to ignore, and yet Paul says it's absolutely important for the individual and for the body as well.
Now he's saying you just can't do this in some cavalier way. He's not appointing you as the sin police, where you're going around, and you're inspecting everybody, looking for who is in the midst of some sort of transgression, so that you can come along, and you can identify them, you can show a spotlight on them, you can punish them, be punitive, maybe cut them out of the body, or worse yet, begin to expose that sin to all sorts of people.
He said, no, there will be those that are caught in sin, and you need to come along, let's go back to verse 26, not with a spirit of boasting or provoking or envy, but those who are spiritual.
What Does It Mean to Be Spiritual?
There's all sorts of concern. What does it mean to be spiritual? I was reading a story of a man who built this tower in the center of town, a pole with a platform on it, and went to live up there for six years to remove himself from the earth and the people and the sin, and somehow that was super spiritual. So you'll read about somebody, monks, or nuns who go into a nunnery, and the idea is withdraw from the culture, and that's seen as spiritual. We have all sorts of ideas of what is spiritual, but here's what God says: if I'm led by the Spirit, again, back to chapter 5, if I'm walking in the Spirit, if I'm led by the Spirit, if my life is manifesting love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
We made the point last week, Paul could come in there and say, here's the fruit of the Spirit, he could give us any activity, he doesn't give us any. He said, here's how I know if I'm really being led by the Spirit, and then those nine characteristics. He identifies them in the singular, love is, though there's nine of them, he said there's these things, and they all come together.
The other thing that struck me as I was putting this together is at least eight of them, I guess you could move self-control out, maybe, but at least eight of them require interaction with other people or other circumstances. So I don't know if I'm loving until I'm in contact with those that are unlovable. I don't know if I have joy until I'm in difficult circumstances. I don't know if I have peace until I experience the hardship of life. I don't know if I have patience until I'm put in either trying circumstances or I'm with people who push and push, push and push, and push some more right to the end. You know them, right?
The Purpose is to Restore
So here are these people who are caught in these trespasses. You who are led by the Spirit, you need to deal with this, and the purpose is to restore. It means literally to mend or to repair. It's like setting a broken bone or putting back in place a dislocated shoulder. One of the authors writes this: a Christian who is critical and judgmental as he attempts to...
help a fallen brother does not show the grace of Christ or help his brother and instead stumbles himself. You begin to get this sense. If you're going to be about this, Paul says, then you need to understand, you need to take a look at your own life. You need to understand that you're not moving out of either superiority or inferiority. Either one of those will distort the way you deal with this person.
It's not that you're coming along because you're spiritual and they aren't, feeling superior, and therefore you want to flex somehow your spiritual muscle on this. Or you're feeling inferior and now you feel like you have an upper hand because now you know something about them. He said no, here's the whole thing. What should be done is you should restore a person, return them to a former condition.
The Problem with Spiritual Diagnosis Without Treatment
One author writes: sometimes Christians notice the broken bone of sin but never get past making a diagnosis. They simply stand around talking about what bad shape the sinner's in. People say, "Would you look at that broken bone. I mean, just look at the way it's sticking out. Boy, am I glad I don't have a fracture like that." Meanwhile, the brother or sister continues in the pain of sin. This kind of treatment is better known as gossip.
Sadly, there are even times when Christians condemn sinners, blaming them or even punishing them for needing to go to spiritual emergency rooms in the first place. Isn't that part of it? You're afraid to even talk about your sin because you know the very act of talking about it, you're going to be put down for doing it, rather than encouraged and supported and helped.
When people come along and say, "I really admire that," they're treated like outcasts, harshly scolded for being spiritually out of joint. Christians apparently forget that they themselves are sinners in need of grace.
The Spirit of Gentleness in Restoration
In the midst of sin, what should be done is to restore people. Who should do it are the ones who are spiritual, and it should be done in a spirit of gentleness. F.F. Bruce writes, "One test of true spirituality is the readiness to set those who stumble by the wayside on the right road again in a sympathetic spirit."
The author adds: if we can't do this gently, we better not do it at all. Let someone else do it, someone spiritual enough to perform the task delicately. If we go to the idea of restoration, it's like setting a bone. When we're dealing with sin, this is going to be a painful process. Sometimes it is a long process.
This requires humility on both people's parts. It's not just the humility to come and to say, "I'm in the midst of this sin." If I'm going to deal with this, it has to be done in a spirit of humility. It's not a spirit of spiritual superiority or arrogance or looking down on somebody. It's to understand really, but by the grace of God, there go I.
Modern Translations of Gentle Restoration
Let me give you verse one in two paraphrases. Eugene Peterson says, "Live creatively, friends. If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day is over."
J.B. Phillips: "Even if a man should be detected in some sin, my brothers, the spiritual ones among you should quietly set him back on the right path, not with a feeling of superiority, but being ourselves on guard against temptation."
He said listen, in this whole sin, we shouldn't ignore that. Most often it's not done in some formal way. It's done in the one-on-ones. That's Matthew 18. If a brother sins against you, you don't talk to each other. You don't put it on Facebook. You don't ask friends to pray about your weak brother, weak sister. You go to them in private and say, "Here's what happened. Let's talk this through."
Church Discipline in Action
When we talk about discipline or church discipline, we see church discipline all the time. I had somebody three or four weeks ago say to me, "You know, in this situation you did this and you hurt me. You sinned against me." I said, "I'm really sorry. I'm wrong. I see what you say." Well, in a sense, that's church discipline. That's a person who sinned. The burden's not on the one who sinned. It's on the one who was sinned against and says go to him, and that's rectified. So we dealt with that.
Two Types of Burdens
Now, He's talking about life when He gets to verse 2 and He says, "Bear one another's burdens and thereby fulfill the law of Christ," which seems to be in contradiction to verse 5, which says, "For each one will bear his own load." He's talking about two different things there.
That one in verse 2 is—and I was trying to think of something reasonable—let's say to carry the drum set. If I didn't want to disassemble these, I couldn't possibly carry the drums by myself. So I'd say to Aaron, "You need to help me with this." That's the word or the idea in verse 2. It's a burden that's beyond any one person's ability.
The idea of load in verse 5 could be the load of carrying something that is a burden. It's a load, but it's one that I'm capable of carrying. He says, "Here's the deal." In both cases, it presumes in our life there are burdens. In our life there's a load.
When We Need Help and When We Don't
There are times when you aren't going to be able to carry it on your own. There are times, by the way, when you are, so don't be bringing it in here and screwing up everybody else's life with it. Some of this stuff you can handle. You don't need anybody to help you.
It's not just sin. Sorrow, worry, doubt, fear, failure. There are times when you're just hurting and you're needy or you're lonely or there's illness or there's abandonment. Or you're discouraged. Or you're depressed. The idea is not just that we have these burdens, but we're incapable. That's the idea of verse 2. We're incapable of carrying
this load. It's too difficult for us to lift on our own. Now, this is not very hard for us to see because we can go right to our biggest burden, which is sin and guilt that's associated with that. And we know we can't solve that.
That's what this whole book has been about. This whole book has been about the fact that you can't pay the price for your sin. That's the law. That's the flesh. Don't even try. If you break a law, you break the law. You're under condemnation.
If you've been with us for 10 weeks, that's almost been the theme every week. For 10 weeks, we've been saying roughly the same thing. That our problem is we're separated from God by our sin, and there are essentially two ways of responding to it. One is to self-realign, self-cleanse. It's to somehow please God by doing good, and Paul calls that being under the law, and he said that was never the design from the very beginning.
The Law Was Our Tutor
From the very beginning, God never gave us the law. It was chapter three, verse 24. That verse should be all marked up and circled and underlined. That the law became our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we might be justified by faith.
You can't get yourself—listen, if you feel defeated in trying to be good and you understand that the standard is perfection, if you feel defeated, that's because you are. That's the whole point. You can't do that. But I can get in right relationship by coming to Christ in repentance and faith.
So there I am in the midst of this carrying a burden of guilt and sin, and there's nothing I can do about it. I can't fix it. He can. He carries that burden.
Cast Your Burdens on the Lord
"Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you. He will never permit the righteous to be moved" (Psalm 55:22). First Peter, chapter five, verse seven: "Casting all your cares on Him because He cares for you."
There's two aspects to that. Number one—we'll go to the second part first—is that God cares. I think about it when we pray. The reason we pray is because God cares and we believe He can do something about it. Doesn't mean He's got to do what we want Him to do, but He cares. God cares for His people the same way you care for your kids.
And so we're to cast. The idea is deposit. And I remember the last time I taught that verse, I took it to a new level and added direct deposit.
A Personal Story About Direct Deposit
So for years, as you know if you've been around, I didn't do anything. Well, I didn't do anything at the house, but I didn't do anything as it related to banking and paying bills or something. So early last year, Susan handled it all, and that's when she got very, very sick. I came home one day and our water was turned off by the town of Gilbert.
And I don't know what the bill was—50 bucks, 80 bucks, I don't remember—and there were thousands of dollars in checking, so it wasn't that. It was that Susan, in the midst of all of this—this is my fault, not hers—but that was like our big struggle. Our last two big struggles was when I said, "You can't drive anymore," and then "I want to take this." And she said, "No." And I said, "Okay, I'll let you do it." And this is when I said, "Okay, honey, I need to do this." So it's my fault, this is not a reflection on hers, it's a reflection on me.
So I went over to the bank, came in, there was a cute little blonde girl, and she said, "Can I help you?" And I said, "Well, I don't know this. Somebody can. So who's the most patient person you have at the bank?" And they said, "That's Hannah." And I said, "Well, where's Hannah?" "Right there." And I said, "I see, as a customer." I said, "That's okay, I'll wait."
And I had a plastic bag from Fry's filled with stuff, and I took it into Hannah, and I said, "Hannah, I want to tell you a story." And she said, "Okay." And I said, "Well, I was married 32 years ago." She said, "Oh, this is a long story." I said, "I'm giving you the short version, Hannah. Thirty-two years ago, she's very sick, she did everything, I did nothing, now I got to figure this out."
And I spent two and a half hours with Hannah, and she took me all through this stuff. And one of the things we did, because she said, "You don't look like you're capable of maintaining this on a monthly basis." And then I said, "I'm probably capable, I just don't have a desire for it." So she said, "Well, let's just go to auto pay on everything. And then let's just take your checks from work, and we'll direct deposit those."
And so that's what we did. And then things we couldn't pay, I just gave the guys their credit card, and they just bill it directly to the credit card, which is on auto pay. So I don't write any check, homeowners, and two or three other things.
Direct Deposit Your Cares
That's the idea, the direct deposit part of the check—that's the same thing as "cast your cares on Him." Literally, as these cares of the world come in, you just direct deposit them on Him, because they're too big for you. They don't even hit your account. It's not something that you can carry.
There's some things you can, but there's nothing wrong with admitting, "This is bigger than me, I can't handle this. God, You need to do it. You need to carry this load, You need to give me the grace."
The Law of Christ
So we need to bear one another's burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. Well, what's the law of Christ? John 15:12: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I've loved you."
In the study guide—and I'm looking around, and people are writing in study guides, so you have them. If you don't have a study guide, you can go online, you can download it for free. But in the study guide, under the section for deeper reflection, there's a wonderful little two-paragraph article by John Piper called "The Law of Christ."
Piper writes this: "If a Christian brother or sister is weighed down or menaced by some burden or threat, be alert to that and quickly do something to help. Don't let them be crushed. Don't let them be destroyed. Don't be like the scribes and the Pharisees." Jesus said, "They bind heavy burdens and hard to bear and lay them on
men's shoulders. Don't increase the burden, make the load lighter. This is great, and we highlighted this sentence. Here's a vocation that will bring you more satisfaction than if you became a millionaire 10 times over. Develop the extraordinary skill for detecting the burdens of others and devote yourself daily to making them lighter.
That's the main point of the passage. Bear one another's burdens, especially taking the trouble to help people realize their sin and repair it. And then he talks all about the things we worry about: sickness, unemployment, loved ones, all of these things that we want to come alongside and bear burdens with, which he said is great, but the ultimate problem is the sin.
Seeing Yourself as You Really Are
To do this, verse three, you're going to have to see yourself as you really are. If you think you're really something, you're going to do this with an air of superiority. You're not going to help. That self-righteousness is going to produce in you a punitive, judgmental attitude. Really, what he's striking at there is pride.
Mark Driscoll writes this about pride: "The sin of pride has been repackaged by clever marketers and academics in our age into much-needed virtue and then sold to undiscerning culture." You know, repackaging—like self-esteem is pride, self-realization, pride, self-image, pride. C.S. Lewis called pride the chief sin. It's one of my favorite all-time quotes, that pride is ultimately a complete anti-God state of mind. It was through pride that Lucifer became the devil.
Here's another great Lewis line: "Pride gets you cuts in the line to hell." Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall." He said in verse four, we should examine our work and compare it, not to one another. So along comes this person who's trapped or caught in sin, and you come along and you see yourself as superior to them, and your judgment then is you're here, but you compare yourself to God's standard, and now you get an accurate view of who you really are.
The Centrality of Love
Now, I don't know, in my life as a follower of Christ, and in teaching, I'll get on something and I'll stay on it. I just tend to get there and grind it out, and it becomes like something really important to me, and therefore, something I come back to again and again and again. Years ago, when I taught through 1 Corinthians, I spent a bunch of time on chapter 13, which is the love chapter, and I found myself not intrigued by the first part, though it's great. So Paul defines love—love is—and he gives 15 characteristics, eight of them are negative, seven are positive, so you know the list: love is patient, love is kind.
We said the essence of it is, it doesn't seek its own, but the last verse is 1 Corinthians 13:7, and it says about love, "It bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, and it endures all things." So if you've been around for the last three or four years, you've heard me go back to 1 Corinthians 13:7 over and over and over again. For me, if I'm going to really love somebody, then I have to have that attitude. I just pulled that verse out, and we looked at it, I think, three or four weeks ago, as we were talking about dealing with one another.
But it seems to me, and I think that this idea of love, though it's certainly not a topic that's been ignored—everybody's written about it, and sung about it, and talked about it—I think it's going to be something I'm going to spend the next year, year and a half on: the idea of love. First of all, God's love for me, my love for Him, and then our love for each other. Love seems to be at the center of a lot of this. "For God so loved the world," 2 Corinthians 5:14, "Let the love of Christ compel us."
Love Bears All Things
Well, I couldn't help, as I was looking at this situation that Paul lays out in Galatians 6, I think of 1 Corinthians 7. Love bears all things, love believes all things, love hopes all things, and love endures all things. I'm going to read you five or six paragraphs—you ought to be sick of them by now—five or six paragraphs that I've probably already read you two or three times this year. They're right out of the MacArthur Commentaries. You don't need to go, "That's really good, can I get a copy of it?" No, go at Grace to You online, everything John has you can get for free. Go to Bible, click Galatians, or I'm sorry, click 1 Corinthians, click chapter 13, go to verse seven, and here's John.
He's got a longer comment, but I want you to see a paragraph at each one of these, and I want you to think of them in the context of ministering or bearing another person's burden, dealing with another person's sin, dealing with any source of interaction—husband and wife, parent and child, friend to friend, boss to employer, boss to, or employee to employer, whatever it is—that if we really love them, love's at the key of all this. To love your neighbor, what does that mean? Patient, kind, all this. If you don't have 1 Corinthians 13:7, then this is never going to happen.
Love bears all things. That word that's translated "bears" means to cover or support or therefore protect. Love bears all things by protecting others from exposure, ridicule, or harm. Genuine love does not gossip or listen to gossip. If I'm really going to protect this other person in the midst of sin or relationship, I'm going to protect them, I'm not going to gossip.
I was talking to somebody the other day and this person was explaining to me that he has been spending some time defending me against some rumor or whatever—just so you know, it had nothing to do with sin or anything diabolical. And so this person had come to him and said, "I've heard this trail and it's this rumor trail and all this," and the more he talked, the more angry I got in a righteous indignation. And the more angry I got and the more I said...
I don't understand, you're not helping, why would you even entertain this? First of all, the person that came to you, who happened to be a pastor, by the way, that person should be shut down right there because it's none of his business. If he wants to talk about it, I'm not hard to find. My number's listed in the phone book. You can email me here at the church. I'll give you my cell phone, I publish it all the time.
And by going and tracking this down, what is the point of this? You didn't protect. And again, just so you know, because you're going to want to run out, this makes it worse, I got this. Talking about this makes it worse because what I said, what's going on, got nothing to do with any sins, got stuff doing, going, just life, personal stuff, what I'm doing or not doing. And as I'm paying, why, what is the point of this? How are you edified, am I built up in this process? And I'm not acting in a way, I hope you get this. These are hard illustrations to use because you sound defensive. I'm just trying to illustrate the point.
Love Protects and Believes the Best
Let me read it again. Love, and one of the things is, I'm doing all this because I really love you, really, let me help you out. Love protects people from exposure and ridicule and harm. I don't feel protected. Well, boy, we love it, we love the traffic in that stuff. I hate it because I see how destructive it is.
And love believes all things. Love is not suspicious or cynical, and when it throws its mantle over a wrong, it believes the best. Love believes all things in another way. If there's a doubt about a person's guilt or motivation, love always opts for the most favorable.
And love hopes. Even when belief in a loved one's goodness or repentance is shattered, love still hopes. When it runs out of faith, it holds onto hope. As long as God's grace is operative, human failure is never final. God did not give up Israel. Peter was not given up on by Jesus. Paul didn't give up on the Corinthians. God doesn't give up on you.
And it endures. That word is a military term. It's used of an army holding a vital position, a position at all costs. Every hardship and suffering, it endures. Love holds fast to those it loves.
Love in Community Life
Now really think about this in that passage before you. If you're going to be engaged in what God says we should be engaged in, which is being in others' lives, especially to bear burdens, especially spiritual burdens, then you're going to have to do it in a spirit of love. A spirit of love is not to expose. A spirit of love is not punitive. It's not to get, boy, you can't wait.
I mean, it just killed me. I can't tell you. I don't get it as much as probably some of you do because people don't understand. I'm pretty vocal about this. When somebody starts a sentence with "I probably shouldn't tell you," I have a tendency to say then shut up. If you shouldn't tell me, why are you telling me this stuff? And it's so destructive and it's usually pried by the part of the person who's telling because they want to say that they've got some. It just makes me puke to be in this.
And if I saw it out in the world, I expect it with the president and Santorum and I expect all that. But in the church, really, honestly? No, and the only reason I'm telling you this is so we can pray about it. No, you pray about it. I don't even need to know it.
But there's no way you're going to live a Christian life in community because we're talking, this is down and dirty here. We're talking about caught in trespasses, bearing one another's burdens, examining ourselves, bearing our own load. We're talking about community. You're not going to have community and a spirit of love if you have this spirit of sniping and exposing and not protecting. Nor are people going to feel safe with you.
The Need for Safety in Community
Talking to somebody just a couple weeks ago and they're telling me, you have this mutual friend and so and so did such and such and as He's talking, I'm thinking, I wouldn't tell you anything in a million years. Are you kidding me? See, that's what love is all about. Ultimately, He said, I want to restore that person, protect that person, care for that person within the context here of the body of Christ. So I'm going to come back to love over and over and over again.
Balancing Personal Loads and Shared Burdens
Let's look at verse seven, eight, nine, and 10. Paul gives us this advice. And again, let me come back to verse five. In verse five, He's saying there are these burdens that you don't want to become a burden by sharing something that you can handle yourself. So there are all those things that you don't need outside input. You may have whatever it is, but it's something that you can handle. So handle it. But certainly be open and willing to share, to help. And this may be the toughest thing, and to be helped.
I tend to be, I'll just be really honest about all this stuff. I tend to be fairly private. So when I'm in the hospital, I don't want you up there. There's not much to see, there's not much to talk about. What's your blood pressure? Why? But the struggle with it is it might deny you an opportunity to serve.
I will just be honest. Even within Sarah and Haley, they're going, I'm your dad, I want to help you. And I'm going, I don't need any help. Well, bring your food. Do I look like I need food? I mean, does food look like something that's evaded me? And that's what the doctor said. He said, we're going to deal with this, have some surgery and some other things on this heart, but primarily we're going to deal with it through diet and exercise. And I said, wow, what's plan B? Do I, I mean, food?
But you see what I'm saying there? I get that, that's a delicate dance. There's humility on both parts, but there's burdens that you can carry. It would be unfair to say, I need this from you when you don't need it. You get all that.
The Principle of Sowing and Reaping
In verse seven, Paul introduces a concept of sowing and reaping. Don't be deceived. God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, He will reap. So there's the basic principle. One author writes this. The universe is under the control of
Inviolate laws, as scientists and others learned throughout history have recognized. The physical sciences are, in essence, the study of those physical laws. Apart from the consistent operation of absolute laws, science as we know it couldn't exist. So you have the law of thermodynamics, or you have gravity, or whatever those laws are. Well, you have in agriculture, and now in spiritual things, the law of sowing and reaping.
The Law of Sowing and Reaping
The law of sowing and reaping says this: You must sow to reap, and what you sow, you will reap. No one that we know of plants corn and expects to get wheat, or plants wheat and expects to get beans, or plants beans and expects to get potatoes. Though when the boys were little, Haley was teaching them about planting and growing and waiting and patience, so they planted sunflower seeds. And just as you would expect, they're out there the next day going, "Mom, where are the sunflowers?" So they were learning about the patience in reaping.
It never occurred to them to go, "Mom, where are the roses?" Well, you don't get roses. If you want to plant roses, you plant rose seeds. I'm not a farmer, but you get it. We question the size of the yield, but I never question what I'm going to harvest.
Don't Be Deceived - God Is Not Mocked
He says, don't be deceived, and God is not mocked. Let me read you a couple of the paraphrases. Don't be misled. No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. A person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others, is ignoring God.
The Phillips translation says: Don't be under an illusion. You cannot make a fool of God. God is not mocked. It means literally to turn your nose up at, and don't be deceived. In other words, it's a waste of time.
I have this arrangement with my girls that if the University of Iowa ever wins a national football title, I will have the Tigerhawk, the logo, tattooed on a specific part of my body, a part that is highly unlikely you'll ever see. Now, as I've shared this with people, they go, "Aren't you worried about this?" No, I'm not worried about this at all. I don't go to bed at night thinking, "Man, do you think I'll ever have that tattoo?" It's a waste of time to think about it.
The Impossibility of Deceiving God
Here's what's a real waste of time: thinking you can deceive God. You can't fool Him. He knows everything. We talk about it all the time. He knows what you say. He knows what you do. He knows what you think. He knows what you're going to say, what you're going to do, what you're going to think. He knows what you're doing right now. So don't try to deceive Him.
He's not going to be mocked by this. You can't expect to plant seeds from the flesh and somehow reap the spirit, but don't you be deceived yourself. Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 9: "The heart is more deceitful than all else, and it's desperately sick." If we say we have no sin, 1 John says, we're deceiving ourselves. Prove yourselves, James 1:22, prove yourselves doers of the word, not merely hearers who delude themselves.
Fruit Is Inevitable
Here's the basic principle: Fruit's inevitable in our life. We're producing fruit. We're either producing fruit, go back to chapter 5, we're producing fruit of the flesh, verse 19, 20, 21, or fruit of the spirit, verse 22, 23. If I'm being led by the spirit, I'm going to see in my life, among other things, I'm going to see these things. If I'm being led by the spirit, I'm going to see dominant now, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
Two Kinds of Wisdom
Keep your finger in Galatians, go back to the book of James. It's James chapter 3, verse 14, page 655 in the Bible we gave you. This is a wonderful section where James is talking about the tongue, he's talking about faith and works, and then he talks about wisdom, a worldview or thinking. He says, basically, there's two kinds of thinking. One's the flesh, and it's earthly, natural, demonic. The other's the spirit, and it's heavenly, supernatural, and godly.
So in your life, you tell me, what do you see? Verse 14: Do you see jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart? Because if you do, verse 16, you're going to see jealousy and selfish ambition, and therefore, disorder and every evil thing. So if you're constantly in tension at work, constantly in tension with your neighbors, constantly in tension with all the relationships, I'm guessing, one of you, probably you, because that's the consistent thing in it, is acting in a jealous, selfish way.
On the other hand, if my thinking is supernatural and godly, verse 17, I'm going to see in my life purity and peacefulness and gentleness, reasonableness, there's going to be harmony. It's impossible if Susan and I are married...
My desire is to serve her, her desire is to serve me, it's impossible for this thing to not work. Now we can't stay there all the time. I get that. But I know when I'm in trouble in that relationship, I guarantee you, I'll go and I'll look at my heart, and I'm going to see selfishness and jealousy. That's the problem. I want it my way.
We'll see that all the time. When someone, a relationship, let's say a marriage that's in trouble, I had one a while ago - it's a guy that for seven years he's been unfaithful, all been exposed, they're going to stay together. He's now been clean, faithful for three months. He's very frustrated that she isn't trusting him yet. I said, pal, you got a long hill to climb, little man. Already all you're doing now is show me what started all this before, because you're waiting for - it's not the burden, it's not on her to accept you, the burden is on you to be faithful.
The Fruit of the Spirit Versus the Flesh
When I grow impatient, just think of the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. When I'm in the flesh, I'm not loving, I'm not patient, I'm not kind, I'm not gentle, I'm not peaceful. That's what he's saying to James. James 3 is a beautiful illustration of the fruit, and he says that, "so the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace."
There's a whole bunch of ways of measuring this in a very practical way. What's the fruit? Is it the fruit of the flesh, the fruit of the spirit?
The Principle of Consequences
Now we'll go back to Galatians 6. I did a series in priority living - Priority Living is a study that I do during the week. If you're interested in it, every resource we have is free, and go online, prioritylivingaz.org. I did a series called Recovering Our Lost Legacy, and the idea was, what do we pass on to the next generation beyond inheritance and just money and stuff like that?
I talked about duty and stewardship. One of them is the principle of consequences that requires a long-term view, that what I sow today, I'll reap tomorrow or the next day, and that tomorrow may be a long way away. The whole principle of that was, my decisions today affect tomorrow. So I have to sit down, and I have to understand.
If you talk to somebody, and their desire is to be a medical doctor, they've got to make all sorts of difficult decisions, investments. Some people call them sacrifice. I like investments. Investments along the way that I've got to think long-term, because I'm not going to have a normal life. I'm not going to get to do what a lot of people do. I'm going to have less free time. I'm going to be more disciplined. But that's part of what I have to do.
You're in the Final Four, and you're a kid there, and most likely, especially at that level, for you to play at that level, there's had to be a lot of discipline and a lot of sacrifice, a lot of investment, a lot of hard work. If you decide not going to eat well, not going to exercise, not going to play hard, I just want to play game day - if you're good enough, that's going to get you somewhere, but that isn't going to get you to the top of the field.
Life is Like a Film, Not a Snapshot
You have to think about something big and long-term, and you have to see life, and this is what I used to try to tell the girls, because life is more like a video or a film or a movie than it is just a snapshot. I've been cleaning the house, and I've found like three or four rolls of film, and I'm really intrigued. I'm curious, I wonder what's in there.
I may see a picture at the beach, and one in the mountains, and one at Christmas, one at Easter, one with all of us together, one of us on vacation - those are photographs, they stand alone. A film, this frame determines this frame determines this frame. That's the way it is with life.
The Coming Consequences
We did a Q&A in PL this week, and one of the questions was, I'd be interested in hearing your view on the future of the country, and I thought, you've got to be the only one in the world that wants to hear that. But I can tell you this, when the dropout rate among high school seniors is 47%, there's a bill coming due on that. They're not dropping out to go to work at Intel.
When people are in line saying I want what I deserve here. I won the lottery, but I still want my food stamps. When you think you can ignore your kid, ignore your kid, ignore your kid, but then give them a trip to Disneyland - that'll make everything okay. There's a bill coming due on that.
This is like the elephant in the room. When your national debt is 15.2 trillion dollars, not to get off on that stuff, I'm just saying we're watching and we are fiddling while the US burns. There's no way that bill isn't due. You can't do this. You know it in your own life. You can't, for every dollar you spend, you can't spend 40 cents on a credit card and not know there's a day coming due. It just involves consequences.
Don't Lose Heart in Doing Good
Paul says I got all that. Don't get that upset about those things. Forget your national debt. What about you? What are you sowing and reaping? Then he says don't lose heart in doing good. I'll tell you why. Because it's hard work.
You start dealing with people who are engaged in sin and you come in, even if you're invited into their life, you'd be stunned at the number of people. I think the guys that are elders would tell you probably the most discouraging thing we have is people that we help and help and help and then throw us under the bus at the end of the day. Generally leaving, generally in the process saying things that are probably not true, half true, and saying you didn't do enough.
We'll have people that'll come in and they'll go, we're in financial difficulty. We'll say we're here to...
help. We want to help. Bring in your bills and let us go through your bills. They resent that. So you want us to help, but you don't want any accountability on the other end. Well, I can handle it. Well, if you could handle it, my friend, you wouldn't be in here. See?
After a while you go, you know what? I'm just losing patience with this. But He said you hang in there. Why? Because your motive is not short term, it's long term. And you'll have an opportunity to do good. You'll have an opportunity to be used by God in a significant way. Don't grow faint.
Don't Lose Heart
Sometimes you just need to hear this. And sometimes it doesn't even matter what the endeavor is. I'm listening to Haley. Haley sent me a text this morning. And they have a new baby. We'll talk about it more another day. They have a new baby. And Yale said to her, Mom, was this baby made in Japan? I'm not sure what the thought process was.
But you just have people all around you. And you're a stay at home mom. So you got four kids and the oldest is six. Two of them are less than 14 months. Here's what you need to hear sometimes. It's worth it. Hard, but it's worth it.
And the same thing is true in the spiritual realm. Things are hard, but they're worth it. God is good. Don't be deceived. God's not mocked. He's faithful. He knows.
The Greatest Burden Bearer
We said we bear one another's burdens. And we said the biggest burden we have is sin and guilt. And the one who deals with that is Jesus. And that is the cross.
Every Sunday here at Redemption Church, we stop and we go to the communion table. Neil's going to come lead us in communion. If you're over in the conference center, Brian's going to close your time over there as soon as we're done.
So let's pray as the guys come here. Father, thank you for the amazing truth that you give us. Thank you for the fruit that you produce in our life. And we pray that we would sow fruit that would bring honor and glory to you. God, we worship you, praise you, and we do that in Christ's name, amen. Amen.