Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 1, 2024 | Galatians - Four Ways We Reveal Our Spirituality

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December 1, 2024 | Galatians - Four Ways We Reveal Our Spirituality · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't it fun to sing Christmas songs?
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Advent Season.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna get closer.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: I want to spit on Larry Kazir this morning.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: So my title this morning, uh we're going we're in if you're visiting, we're in a series going through Galatians, and this is the penultimate, the next last uh message.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: We're in chapter six.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: There are six chapters in Galatians.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: So Connor's gonna come back next week and preach the final three chapters here, whatever's left.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: So he'll be great.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: Um and last week I I was talking to you about this key passage in Galatians chapter five, which tells us basically how to be spiritual.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: It's one of the great spiritual life passages in the New Testament.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: And um and it uses this phrase that Paul uses in Romans as well.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: It says that the way to be spiritual, if you want to be a spiritual person, spiritual Christian, is to walk by the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit, live by the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: By the way, it was 20 years ago almost exactly that a um that a young woman in in our church who uh puts on these events that nurses and doctors and teachers and everybody have to go to every year.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, you have to do these uh, I don't know, I don't know, these annual you have to earn points for education.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: And she said, uh, you know, when I've given a survey uh in Kansas City, which taught speaking so forth, of what topic uh they'd like to hear, uh, by far the number one topic, spirituality.
1:48
SPEAKER_00: Is there any chance that you would be willing to speak in those places to hundreds of people who are just trying to get, you know, qualified for, I forget what the points are, my wife has to earn them every year, too.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: So would you do something on spirituality?
2:03
SPEAKER_00: And I said yes.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's when I learned how to do a PowerPoint, because they they wanted that done.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: But the more important thing is it's really tough when you know that most of the people you're talking to are not believers.
2:16
SPEAKER_00: But you know that true spirituality is this stuff right here.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: Walk by the Holy Spirit.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: But you know you're gonna be talking to atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, uh, people that don't really believe in the Holy Spirit.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: So uh I just I'm thinking it's really nice to be able just to talk to you about what true spirituality really means instead of having to massage it for a couple of hours and then answer questions and then finally say, well, let me tell you what I, you know.
2:45
SPEAKER_00: So uh walk by the Holy Spirit was one of the options I gave you.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: That's the right option.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, this is uh true spirituality was he is Galatians chapter 5.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: And uh remember, uh a number of you have mentioned to me this week how much you appreciated this one slide that the book of Galatians is about, first of all, it's about avoiding the legalism trench, which is that I'm uh I can get to heaven by pleasing God, I get to heaven by pleasing God, and and pleasing God I do by living by the law, the Mosaic law, or any rules, you know.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: And uh and then in the last half of the book, last few chapters, now he's moved to the Christian life.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: He says the problem is that Christians and churches still like to live by in the legalism trench and to think that they please God by doing things.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, that if I have my quiet time today, therefore I'm closer to God, and you know, I'm okay.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: But he said, uh, but it says there's there's this other problem where we where to escape legalism, you know, we jump clear clear over and we don't get in the middle, we get clear over into libertinism, and that is I can do whatever I want anytime I want, I live for myself and so forth.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: And this is, of course, the young people hate legalism, but they love libertinism.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: And then you get older and then you become a legalist and you try to impose your rules on the young people, right?
4:03
SPEAKER_00: So Galatians is about is about walking the spirit highway, keeping in step with the spirit on the spirit highway, right?
4:09
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's all, that was last week.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: And now we get uh and and by the way, one more slide here is that is that it had that famous verse that you display the fruit of the spirit, which which, you know, if you're walking with him, then he makes this happen in you.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: You have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: Famously called the fruit of the spirit, not by human effort, it's God's thing inside you, it's for others' benefit, however, and it's visible.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: And uh so he concludes in the last verse just before this one by saying, if we live by the Spirit, in other words, if you're saved by the Holy Spirit, which you were, then let's keep in step with them in our Christian life.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Now we get into Galatians 6, 1 through 6, and he begins to apply this and tell us what spiritual people do in a really practical way.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: And to be honest, you know, I'm a little surprised.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: You know, you'd think that he would say, what spiritual people do is, and then you make a list of, again, of rules.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: And you know, you'd have quiet time every day, you'd pray every day, you'd witness, you'd do, you know, you'd do a variety of things.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: But he gets into personal relationships, and it's and it's humbling, it's convicting, it's motivating.
5:20
SPEAKER_00: Um my wife's dad was a counselor, and I oftentimes thought as I was reading this and studying this passage this week, Jim Smith should be preaching this.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: So I'll try to uh I'll I'll try to be a Jim Smith this morning.
5:33
SPEAKER_00: But the the passage goes like this.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, so who's he talking to?
5:40
SPEAKER_00: He's talking to Christians.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: If someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual, restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so that you won't be also won't be tempted.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is the Christian Standard Bible, which is why it sounds uh little different than what you're used to, maybe.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Carry one another's burdens, in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
6:03
SPEAKER_00: For if anyone considers himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: Let each person examine his own work, and then he can take pride in himself alone and not compare himself with someone else.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: For each person has to carry, will have to carry his own load, or has to carry his own load.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh it is future.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: But let the one who is taught the word share all his good things with the teacher.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: Now we'll tell you at the beginning, there's actually four different topics in here, it sounds like, and so uh the critics would say uh what happened is that uh there were some uh scattered notes on the floor that Paul found, and he just swept them up in the last chapter, and he just dumped them in here, and they have nothing to do with each other, and they have nothing to do with anything.
6:48
SPEAKER_00: And but then they'll still call it brilliant.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, the brilliant Paul.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: Look how brilliant it is.
6:54
SPEAKER_00: So uh, but you can put these things together, and in other words, what what he's saying, I'm gonna suggest to you, is that Paul is saying that you can identify a spiritual person is visible by what they do in their relationships with four different groups of people, four different people.
7:09
SPEAKER_00: First of all, sinners.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: How they respond to sinners tells you whether a person is spiritual or not.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, the burdened, the people who are burdened.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: Third, themselves when they look in the mirror.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: And fourth, their teacher.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: So let's uh go through that.
7:24
SPEAKER_00: It's really practical stuff.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: He says, uh, first verse is the spiritual person.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: How do you respond to the sinner?
7:30
SPEAKER_00: We know there are spirit, a lot of sinners in the Bible, right?
7:32
SPEAKER_00: So Noah got drunk, and Abraham and Isaac lied, and Jacob deceived, and David committed adultery, and and uh you know, on and on and on.
7:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh but how you respond to those people is pretty significant.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: So the question is here what does a spiritual person do with a sinner who's a brother or sister, with a sinner in the church?
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, one option that we see in the Bible is to rejoice.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: This was the option taken by the older brother of the prodigal son.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty clear he was happy.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: When the prodigal took his dad's money, was a jerk, and went away.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure the older brother now, who compared himself with his younger brother, he looked good.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: People came up to him every week, I am sure, and said, Boy, I'm sure glad you're not like your younger brother.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: You make your dad happy, you know.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure glad you stayed around.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: You know, good, good on you.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: You're you're doing great.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: So the older brother felt great.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: And he was he was happy as long as his prodigal brother, you know, kept being a jerk.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: And and sometimes I'm, I'm sorry to say, you see that even today.
8:37
SPEAKER_00: You see that you see how a wife lights up.
8:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, in church, if her husband is the center that everybody's praying for.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Her husband lights up if it's if it's the child that everybody's praying for.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: So what happens with the when the prodigal comes home and he repents and everything, was the older brother happy?
8:56
SPEAKER_00: He lost his joy.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: He didn't even attend the feast because all of a sudden he wasn't the cool guy anymore.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't the righteous man.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: So unfortunately, legalists rejoice when others sin.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: That's not a good option.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: Option number two is reveal.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: This is the option that uh young Ham took, one of Noah's three sons, when his dad got drunk after he got out of the ark.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Ham went outside and he broadcasted.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: Hey, dad's naked in the tent.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: He drank way too much.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: So his other two brothers, remember Shem and Japheth, walked in backwards so they wouldn't see it and they covered him up.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: There are unfortunately people, Christian people today, who, without going into detail, been some of the worst, worst moments of my career where they have just determined that they were going to expose or that I should expose a homosexual in our in our congregation or someone else who'd done something.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: And just because, you know, if only, here came the argument, if only everything was visible and exposed to light, that would scare off the young people from doing it.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: The humiliation and the shame.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: So, but uh, but you know, for what did Peter say?
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Peter said, love what?
10:21
SPEAKER_00: Covers a multitude of sins.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: Love goes backward into the tent and puts pulls the cover over.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Love doesn't shine lights on sins, love covers them.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, here's a third option: reject the person.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, do young people still read um, did you how many of you read The Scarlet Letter when you were like in high school or something?
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Nathaniel Hawthorne, yeah, I certainly did because it's still regarded as one of the top American novels.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: I was just thinking this week, the Scarlet Letter, and by the way, if if if you don't know it, um story of a uh Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote it in the mid-1800s, about Civil War time, and he wrote it about colonial Boston, and a woman named Hester Prynne, who came over from England, and her husband was going to come over afterwards, but when he came over, he was captured by Indians, and she didn't know she thought he was dead or whatever.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: And so she's living in this little colonial town.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, the minister is comforting her, and so she's going over there more often.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: Then something happened, and she got pregnant, and uh has a little girl named that she names Pearl.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, nobody knew who the father was, and of course, shh, it was horrendous, and so they rejected it, they made her stand up, they revealed it, they made her stand up in front, and they gave her a letter that she said they had said she had to wear the rest of her life.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: The scarlet letter, the letter A for adultery.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: And they completely rejected it, never spent any time with Pearl.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: Pearl as a child, grew up alone, she turned out great, but Hester, you know, wouldn't reveal that it was the pastor, she didn't want to ruin the town, you know, and then her husband gets free from the end.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it is just a total mess.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: And in the end, there is a very visible death of the minister who has carved the letter A into his own chest, and the whole town falls apart, and the church falls apart.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: And it is, I thought, this is a perfect example of the opposite of Galatians 6.1.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: This is terrible.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: So there was a rejoicing revealing and a rejecting.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: So here's here's another R, since we're going on R's, restores.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: The spiritual person actually, and this text says, restores the sinner.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: Restores the sinner, brother.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: Now, now uh let me just mention there are one, two, three, four.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: How do you know who the sinner is we're talking about?
12:45
SPEAKER_00: And this verse gives five clues.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: Number one, this person's a believer just like us.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: Because it says, if someone, anyone, your textually say, is overtaken in any wrongdoing, it doesn't have to be a huge wrongdoing or a huge fault.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: It's anyone.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Jay uh yeah, James says we all stumble in many ways, talking to Christians.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: He's a believer just like us, she's a believer just like me.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Number two, she was caught by sin and fell.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Notice the word was overtaken in sin.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: This is not a person who's running after sin, not a person who's trying to overtake sin.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: This is Mahomes running for his life, you know, away from sin, right?
13:24
SPEAKER_00: And uh and is overtaken by it.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: This is Peter, who just an hour or two before swore he was gonna follow Christ to death, and then all of a sudden, uh, all of a sudden he finds himself caught in a place and he lacks the moral courage to stand up for Jesus and he denies him three times.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: That's what this is.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: It's not a premeditated sin like David and Bathsheba.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: It's like most of the sins that you read about in scripture.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a sudden overtaking of sin.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: It's being caught.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: The word caught, and this word is often used of a bird being caught in a trap.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: This is used of, it's like um, and I was thinking, if if our church decided to go on a hike in the Rockies or something like that, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of us, we're hiking.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: This is a bad illustration, just go with me.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: And you're walking, and then you look back down, you look back down the path, and there is that jerk.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, he's he's your friend, you know, but he's always, he he never, he's in got that independent spirit, and he wandered off the path, and you can see that he got caught in a trap.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: His legs caught in a trap, and he's waving way back down there, you know.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Do you go back, or you know, and you you're gonna you're gonna miss the whole thing.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: But you decide you're gonna go back, and on the and then, sorry, it's not a perfect illustration.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: On the trap, the word is written lust.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: How's that for that?
14:42
SPEAKER_00: How's that for an illustration?
14:44
SPEAKER_00: So, so but you have to spend half the day freeing him from the trap, you know, and so forth, and and and it takes you so long to get back to everyone else, but that's what this is about.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: This is about the church seeing someone who is caught in a trap, who's overtaken.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were stupid, they were wandering around, they were doing what they shouldn't have been doing, but they didn't premeditate it, they weren't running after it, they weren't trying to get trapped in this, they weren't, you know, doing drugs regularly, you know, but they got trapped in this thing and and they committed that sin and they fell.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: They were overtaken, overtaken in a wrongdoing.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: Third, uh uh this person we're talking about needs a spiritual person to come help them up.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's the problem with this is that if you're truly spiritual, those of you who are who are spiritual out here, those of you who are actually walking in step with the spirit, because that's all it takes.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: Right now, you're walking in step with the spirit.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
15:37
SPEAKER_00: You've confessed all your known sin and so forth.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: But if you're walking, the problem is, as C.S.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Lewis said about humble people, he said they would they would never take that title for themselves.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: And so if you go up to someone and say, Are you a spiritual person?
15:52
SPEAKER_00: If they're not spiritual, they'll say, You bet.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: But but if they're spiritual, they'll probably go, no, are you kidding?
15:59
SPEAKER_00: So we have to think clearly about this.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: Remember that we just learned that spiritual people are those who are keeping in step with the spirit.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
16:07
SPEAKER_00: And that's what this captured, trapped person needs.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: That's what Mahomes need.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: He's someone needs someone to come along and come help them up.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Right?
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Fourth, it says, notice it says, restore such a person in gentleness using, I think it's, yeah, it's the middle term in the fruit of the spirit.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: The middle one out of the nine.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: This is a person you need to restore them, not jerk them up, not grab them roughly, not treat them roughly, not, okay, I'm going to restore you, but I am going to let you have it first.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: I am just sick and tired of your behavior.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, you should stop wandering off paths, okay?
16:49
SPEAKER_00: This person needs to be restored gently.
16:52
SPEAKER_00: And since I mentioned Mahomes, there was, sorry, there was one play, how lucky are they to win that game?
16:59
SPEAKER_00: But where he's running for his life as usual.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: He's not, he's not running toward these guys, he's running away from them, okay?
17:05
SPEAKER_00: And he gets sacked.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: And he's lying there in the ground.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: And one of his own people, a fellow Christian, a big guy weighing 300,000 pounds, falls on him and steps on his hand.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, someone else on the team came and helped him up, and Mahomes is walking to the sidelines, you know, massaging his hand.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: But they're being, now they're being gentle with him.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I'm sorry.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: Sports illustration.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: This person needs to be restored gently.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Don't step on them first.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: But finally, isn't this interesting?
17:40
SPEAKER_00: This person needs to be restored cautiously, watching out for yourselves so that you also won't be tempted.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, you have brothers Grimm stories about how one animal trying to rescue another animal gets trapped, him or herself, right?
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this why doctors?
18:03
SPEAKER_00: That's my guess, why doctors, you know, are always washing their hands.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh a brother's a doctor.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm astounded at how long he washes his hands, even before a meal.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: So the thing is, I realize, especially during COVID, they do that not only, correct me if I'm wrong, they do that not only so they don't infect you, pass on germs from the previous patient, but so that you won't affect them.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: Right?
18:31
SPEAKER_00: And it's important that when you're restoring someone, you do it cautiously, because certainly some sins have a way like germs or viruses to rub off.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: And I wish you didn't know the story, but it is a true story, and that is that um my best friend and I were asked my at seminary, he was the son of Cliff Barrows, who was Billy Graham's song leader, and um so we were called into the office by a famous uh teacher that everybody loved named Howard Hendricks, and he said, I would really like you guys to make a video for high school teens about this moral, certain moral set.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to use it as a teaching tool.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: And it'll be your final project, your main project, your grade will consist on this.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you're gonna do great and so forth.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: By the way, this is a long time ago when video was just invented, you know.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: So it was a really cool deal.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: You could be boring and it didn't matter.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: Teens would just stare at it because it was like TV, and again, there were only three channels on the TV.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: So um it wasn't that bad.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: But so we spend a couple months, we do research, we do all this other stuff on this on this sin.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: And then we confessed afterwards.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: I'd never committed this sin before, but in the process of doing this, we'd got both gotten into this sin.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: And um I even went back to Hendrik later, I go, hmm.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's just really important with some sins that and and you see this in a church when uh when a person of the opposite sex decides to counsel, advise, or comfort a husband or wife who is uh who's being mistreated.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you ever see if you ever are tempted, if you ever feel sorry for a person of the opposite sex who's married, whose spouse has cheated on them or something, find someone of their sex to go counsel them, right?
20:46
SPEAKER_00: Because too often we find that um no matter how cautious you think you are, that's a bad situation.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: So that's verse one.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: How about how does a spiritual person how handle the burden?
21:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a slightly different situation, though the burdens could be moral, but carry one another's burdens.
21:11
SPEAKER_00: In this way you'll fulfill the law of Christ.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: For if anyone considers himself to be something when he's nothing, he deceives himself.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: This is a famous verse, isn't it?
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Bear one another's burdens, carry one another's burdens.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: Here we have a picture in the third world of helping someone carry their burdens physically, but of course, um, of course, they don't have to, you know, be physical burdens always.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: But all Christians carry burdens.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: And at times, heavy burdens, that's what the word for burden is here.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's a burden that you really can't effectively carry by yourself.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: It's a very heavy burden.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: And we all carry burdens, and it sometimes sometimes they're not small.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they're heavy, sometimes they're heavy physical burdens.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, you know, Melody will tell you how helpful she's already told you how helpful it is that during the last year the heavy burden of breast cancer, and how many of you encouraged her and helped her carry that.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: Very emotional burden.
22:13
SPEAKER_00: There's a man in our assembly who lost his wife pretty much all of a sudden this month.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's uh that's a heavy emotional burden.
22:25
SPEAKER_00: And there are, of course, spiritual and moral burdens.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: So there are all kinds of burdens that we bear, and uh every single person in here has a burden of some kind they're bearing right now, and some of you are carrying heavy burdens, and you shouldn't be carrying them alone, and I hope you're not.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: Because, number two, God has not made us sufficient to carry our heavy burdens alone.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: That's what this verse implies.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: Third, God fashioned the body of Christ to carry each other's burdens.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: And fourth, when we carry each other's burdens, we fulfill the law of Christ.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: What's the law of Christ?
23:04
SPEAKER_00: That phrase is not used.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's used one at a time in Corinthians.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, the only thing we can think is that it's summarized, that one that summarized the last night of his life by Jesus when he said, I give you a new commandment.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: I give you a new commandment that you love one another.
23:22
SPEAKER_00: It's repeated in John 15, that was John 13, it's repeated again in 1 John 3, and just a half a dozen verses ago in Galatians.
23:31
SPEAKER_00: Paul has said the law of love fulfills the law.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: The problem with just saying that is that it's too mushy.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, we think that we just think it's more of a romantic love or it's more of a you appeal to me love, and we forget that what it really is is an act of love.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: It's doing, it's it's it's responding to people in such a way that is for their best good.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: It's moving them to Christ, it's helping them become more mature in Christ, it's bringing them to fullness uh and uh and maturity.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: And by carrying others' heavy burdens, that's an act of love that enables them to move down the path that God wants them to go so that they can become the mature Christian that he wants them to be.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Here's a recent illustration, you know, secular world.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: This is and you and you hear this.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: I love hearing this happen on football teams where, you know, uh uh I was I read over this is this is where a girl in California has got chemo, and 70 of her classmates shave their heads, you know.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: That's joining.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: It is interesting though that those are all guys down there.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice that?
24:47
SPEAKER_00: Couldn't find any other girls who wanted to shave their heads, but anyway, it's easier for guys to shave their heads.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Like the football team, and and they call themselves the Bald Eagles Club, and one of them got cancer, was on chemo, lost his hair, and they all shave their heads.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: So but but that's that's what we're talking about, carrying other people's emotional burdens, carrying their physical burdens.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: Carry one another's burdens.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Now, but we have a little zinger in here that doesn't seem to make sense.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: For he says, if anyone considers himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: You go, why?
25:23
SPEAKER_00: This is why you know critics go, oh, he was sweeping stuff up off the floor and he just threw in stuff that didn't really make sense.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: What in the world does that last line have to do with carrying burdens?
25:38
SPEAKER_00: Well, Paul, we're gonna get seminary for just a second here.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Paul seems to be, four times in these ten verses, he seems to be quoting well-known sayings or maxims or proverbs for support, and he introduces each one, if you look at these four verses, with the word four, and then he's quoting a proverb.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: And this proverb goes like this if anyone considers himself to be something when he's nothing, he deceives himself.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: Or in our terminology, people who think they're important when they're not are only fooling themselves.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: But that still leads us to ask so how does thinking I'm hot stuff have anything to do with bearing other people's burdens?
26:25
SPEAKER_00: The New Living Translation tells us, it's just really, it's nice how, you know, you know, if you think you're too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: You're not that important.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: And of course, we have a parable to illustrate this.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: We have a parable of a man who's beaten up by robbers and wounded severely, and he's on the side of the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Now you have two self-important, conceited people who really believe their lives are so important that it's not worth them stopping and helping.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: One is a priest, one's a Levite.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: Notice they're both very religious people, they're both legalists, and so they keep walking.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: And then a scum, you know, from the east side of the tracks, the Samaritan, comes by and he stops because he knows he's not too important to help somebody else.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, humility has a whole lot to do with whether or not you help the burden.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: And Philippians says it this way: don't do anything from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility, consider others as more important than yourself.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: So if you see someone with a problem, with a heavy burden, and you really believe they're more important than you, if you really believe that compared to you, they're like a Hollywood star or like a football star or something, where you would immediately stop and help them, right?
28:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's then exactly what you do.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: You stop and you help the burdened people because you're not too conceited to do that.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: I need to balance this a little bit.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Um sort of messed up my cartoon there.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: Are you sure this is what it means when it says bear one another's burdens?
28:20
SPEAKER_00: So I just need to balance this because we have a great church as far as helping people.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm looking right now out at people who blow my mind with how they are so quick to bear others' burdens.
28:34
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, you know, I need to balance this off because well-meaning Christians who want to bear others' burdens, who are humble and spiritual, can sometimes make mistakes, either with what burdens they carry, they go to carry, or how they help people.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: You know.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: So I just thought there are some things not to do on the right hand side.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: Don't be critical, don't, but don't enable.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: Or don't remove that burden, or don't try to fix it, or don't obsess over it so that then your days are ruined now because you've become anxious with the anxiety of the person you're trying to help, and you've lost your love, joy, peace, and patience, right?
29:16
SPEAKER_00: Do, of course, be present and empathize, yes, and assist and advise and encourage, and make sure that your advice isn't like the advice that Job's friends gave to him.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: Joe Bailey, someone who was big in Youth for Christ, and so he was well known in my wife's family, wrote a book called The View from Rehearse.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: He lost three of his seven children when they were young.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: They were born, they were young, and they died.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: His grief was just incredible.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: And he was a phenomenal writer and a probably speaker.
29:51
SPEAKER_00: And he he wrote in this book, I was sitting torn by grief, and somebody came along and talked to me about God's dealings, of why it happened, of hope beyond the grave.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: He talked constantly.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: He said things I knew were true, but I was unmoved, except to wish that he would go away.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: And he finally did.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: Then another one came and sat beside me, and he didn't talk at all.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: He didn't ask me any leading questions.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: He just sat beside me for an hour or more, listened when I said something, answered briefly, prayed simply, and left.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: I was moved.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: I was comforted.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: I hated to see him go.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: So this is this is just a balancing word.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: A lot of you are amazing at carrying others' burdens.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Be wise about it.
30:39
SPEAKER_00: Don't let it ruin you.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: Don't enable them.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you're not taking away what God plans that they do need to carry to become mature.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: And here's an interesting one.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: This is number three, the spiritual person.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: You can tell a spiritual person by how they respond to the mirror.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: Let each person examine his own work, and then he can take pride in himself alone.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the word pride or boasting in the New Testament, uh, pride is the worst of all sins, according to the book of Proverbs, Old Testament and at times in the New.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: But this word is also used for just a legitimate, you know, uh being proud of your child for their accomplishment.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's an okay thing.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, finishing a job uh uh uh like, for instance, if we end up raising$150 or$200,000 in the Christmas project, there's a legitimate cheer that will go up, that we will be so happy that we pulled that off, right?
31:34
SPEAKER_00: So that's what we're talking about now.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Then he can take pride in himself alone and not compare himself with someone else.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: For here's the second one of these quotes each person has to carry his own load.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: The spiritual person I put down here reviews his actions.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: He looks, he examines himself, right?
31:53
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't compare himself with others, because that's the essence of pride.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: As C.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: S.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Lewis said in mere Christianity, it's the comparison with others that makes you proud, the pleasure of being above the rest.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: Don't compare yourself with others, like the prodigal's older son, because that leads to self-justification when you do something.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: But examine yourself, look in the mirror, review yourself, because that leads to repentance and self-improvement.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: Hold it.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: Didn't you just say we have to carry each other's burdens?
32:30
SPEAKER_00: That last line goes, each person has to carry his own load.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: Good question.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: Here's the answer.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: Yep, but it's a different word.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: Burdens, barray in 6.2 refers to a heavy load that's too much for someone to carry alone.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: But this word load, Fortyon, here in 6.5, is more like a student's backpack or a book bag used for a soldier's knapsack.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: Two soldiers can't carry a pack.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Some burdens are yours alone, and each one should carry his own load, maybe pointing to the future judgment.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm surprised how many commentaries go this direction, but maybe pointing to the future judgment of believers at the end of this life, when we will carry our own bag of works to the judgment seat, where they will be dumped out for Christ to examine and reward, according to the verse, 1 Corinthians 3.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: If anyone builds using gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or stubble, their work will be shown for what it is, because the day will bring it to light.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: It'll be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person's work.
33:33
SPEAKER_00: If what's been built survives, the builder receives a reward.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: In other words, let me just write this out.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to forget it, so I wrote it out.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: The Lord's going to put the works of his children to the test when we appear before him at the judgment seat of Christ.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: In anticipation of that test, we ought to be examining our own actions, our own works, looking in the mirror to see whether they're wood, hay, and stubble or gold, silver, and precious stones.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul is recommending that we prepare ourselves for the final exam by giving ourselves frequent pop quiz examinations along the way.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
34:12
SPEAKER_00: So, and finally he ends with the spiritual person and the teacher.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Let the one who's taught the word share all his good things with the teacher, the spiritual person remembers his teacher.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: If you're uh if if you uh kids, this is just a reminder.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: Uh I had a picture of a kid taking an apple to the teacher at Christmas.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: Your teacher doesn't want another apple.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: They'd really like something nice.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm kidding.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: But of course, he's speaking here about spiritual teachers, isn't he?
34:39
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking about, he's speaking about the teachers that have given you um spiritual instruction.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Um I grew up on a farm, and you know, we know I tell you that way too often.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: But you know, I have a lot of good illustrations that come out of that.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: And this one has to do with um bees, honey bees.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: Um you know how in Proverbs it says uh it gives you the wisdom of little of little animals at the end of that book, the ant and the grasshopper and so forth.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, if I'd only been around when Solomon was writing that, I would have I would have added the bees.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: Because so we had uh we we we not only had all these animals, but we also were raising bees.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: So we had hives stacked on top of each other.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: You've seen how it is when you drive by in the fields, so forth, and we watched these bees and we stayed away from them.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: But we watched them and it was heaven for our honeybees because you know, we had berry bushes over here, and we had fruit orchard over there, and we had just mmm, you know, clover everywhere.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: And so we had happy bees.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, they sang Christmas songs, they were just full of delight.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: But you know, it's really interesting is we watched them, they spend way too long, it would seem like, in a piece of clover.
35:52
SPEAKER_00: They would just hover over it, they'd go down, and they would, we knew they were getting the nectar out of that flower.
36:00
SPEAKER_00: The wisdom of the honeybee that God has put in them, the instinct they have, is to know that they need to stay longer than just getting the nectar.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: They need to drop the pollen.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: They have pollen with them.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: And they drop the pollen, and their wisdom is to know that if they don't drop the pollen on the flower, if that hive going out to our field of clover stops dropping pollen on that clover, they will one day fly out of the hive, and those flowers will all be dead.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: And then the bees will be dead.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: And then I won't get honey to put on my morning cereal or slather on my on my toast.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: So that's the principle, that's the wisdom of this last point here, that the spiritual person remembers his teacher.
36:49
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, this has to do with our uh as mission chairman, this is a really important issue for missions for us, because the single most important need around the world, agreed upon by all mission statesmen and mission leaders, is the lack of good teaching in churches overseas.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: They have these little churches they planted, but the leader of that church, the pastor, the teacher of that church knows so little, knows so little.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: They desperately need good teaching.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: So, what we do on our missions budget deliberately, I'll show you, I can show you people on our missions budget, and this is what they do.
37:21
SPEAKER_00: They are church planners, but especially they are leader teachers over in third world countries, and we give, we prioritize those people because this is what's really essential, because those churches in third world countries don't have the money to pay them.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: And there are so many awful stories of the fact that churches fall apart because the teacher couldn't get any money, so he had to go work uh work in the fields all day long and he couldn't teach anymore.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: We try to take care of that by giving money to those places so the teachers can stay teaching their people and the church can grow.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: So maybe I'm I'm getting far afield.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: But this this is an important principle around the world.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: Not so important in America anymore because churches do a great job, you know, of uh remembering those of us who teach you.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: It's just great.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for uh just speaking for all the staff.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your support of us.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: But uh, you know, for missions, it's just really important that we keep this going.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, I'm done with that.
38:24
SPEAKER_00: So here's the spiritual person.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: Spiritual person restores the sinner, relieves the burden, reviews his actions, and remembers his teacher.
38:31
SPEAKER_00: Amen.