Galatians 6:1-5 - Ron Wallace

Alright, we are in Galatians chapter 6.

Galatians 6 · chapter mention

And Rick is not here, so Jimmy and I will not be accepting any complaints today.

We're short staffed.

We're not accepting short jokes about being short staffed either.

We're just, we don't have you need to keep your expectations low.

We're trying to fly under the radar and not mess things up until Rick gets back.

Then we have a little bit more freedom to mess some stuff up.

Galatians chapter 6, we're in verses 1 through 5, and I'm going to read those five verses and then we will dive in.

Galatians 6 · chapter mention

It says this, brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

Keep watch on yourself, lest you two be tempted.

Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

For if any one thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone, and not in his neighbor, for each will have to bear his own load.

So here we are in Galatians, chapter six.

We've we've nearly made our way through the book of Galatians, and Paul has told the Galatians for five chapters to stop feeling the need to follow the Jewish Mosaic law that demands that they follow certain commands in order to be right with God.

And now, in chapter six, he leads off the chapter by saying, telling them to do certain things, and they will be fulfilling the law of Christ.

So for five chapters, he says, Don't follow the law.

And now he leads off chapter six and says, Follow the law of Christ.

It's like he says in 1 Corinthians 9 21, to those outside the law, I became as one outside the law, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law.

So Paul says that he, being born a Jew and under the law and its obligations, became as one born outside of the law and its lack of obligations, so that he could win those outside of the law.

But he was never outside of the law of Christ.

He didn't ever live in a way that was not under the law of Christ.

So what does he mean by the law of Christ?

Are we following a law?

Like are we getting away from the law?

Is there a law?

What is he talking about?

It can seem hard at times for us to find answers that are black and white in the New Testament.

That's what made the law so appealing.

It gives you a set of rules, follow it.

If you follow it, you're doing good.

If you don't, you're not doing very good.

That's the appeal to it.

And it's hard to find black and white answers in the New Testament.

We often like to discuss the gray areas.

We love to get into talking about the gray areas of the Christian life.

Can I drink a beer as a Christian?

Can I smoke as a Christian?

How much can I drink and smoke before it's a sin?

How do I do that?

Am I allowed to cuss?

Is a cuss word a sin?

Do I do the Easter bunny thing?

Can we do that?

Are we allowed to do that?

Can I get paid under the table?

Is that should I be doing that?

Can I get a tattoo?

We have all these gray areas that we love to discuss about the Christian life.

We also love to discuss gray areas in Scripture.

Um, at work this past week, we were talking about uh where Jesus went after he died on the cross.

And where do we go right after we die?

Like, do we go right to heaven?

Uh I mean, of course we're with God, but what are we doing?

Are we sleeping up there?

Uh what's happening?

Did Jesus descend into hell or was he in the realm of the dead?

Like, what is my grandma doing right now?

Is she asleep?

Is she like dancing around?

What's she doing?

We like to discuss these gray areas, and these are good and right conversations.

They really can help us grow in our affection for God and his word.

But we cannot act as if all of Scripture is a gray area.

All of the Christian life is a gray area.

That we sometimes we get caught in that.

Sometimes we will start thinking that there isn't really anything that Jesus is telling us to do or not do.

Like Jesus isn't looking for any stuff to do, ways to live.

That's the Old Testament.

That's for the Jews.

We're free in Christ to do whatever we want.

And while that is true in a sense, uh we are not free from the law of Christ.

We have been freed from the demands of the law and its rituals to help us achieve righteousness.

Yes and amen.

We're done with that.

We no longer must eat certain things or observe certain days or wash certain ways or kill a certain animal in a certain way to atone for a certain part of our sin.

Jesus became the perfect sacrifice on the cross.

We don't have to do that.

Praise God.

I'm not in, I mean, I'll kill an animal, I'm all for it.

I'm not like promoting PETA or like kill the animals and eat them.

But I don't really want to do that every day to because I've got a mess of stuff going on in here.

Right, and here I don't want to have to keep doing that.

So I'm very thankful that we don't have to do that.

And we know that that the issues with the things that we mentioned above, drinking and cussing and the Easter bunny, that's a weird thing to say back to back.

Drinking, cussing, and the Easter bunny.

Um, all of those things are a matter of the heart.

How is your heart postured in those things?

Is it self-exalting or is it God glorifying?

So, so what we end up saying about nearly everything is it's a matter of the heart.

And that is true.

Jesus is after our hearts.

It isn't enough, nor has it ever been enough, for us to simply follow commands of Scripture and have our hearts far from God.

He wants it all.

He wants every bit, along with our actions, he wants our desires, and he wants our motives as well.

But in all of this, we cannot use that phrase, it's a matter of the heart, as some excuse or license to not follow the simple commands of Jesus.

We still must follow the law of Christ.

We must pursue holiness.

We need to have our lives molded and shaped after Jesus.

So Paul tells us at the end of verse 5, or chapter 5 and into chapter 6, to walk in the spirit.

In chapter 5, verses 16 through 21, he says, This is what walking in the spirit does not look like.

Don't do these things.

You can read them there.

Don't do them.

Pretty black, that's pretty black and white.

Don't do those things.

Then he says, the results of walking in the spirit will be these things.

And he lists out in verse 22 and 23.

You will possess joy and love and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and self-control if you are walking in the spirit.

This isn't a list of to-dos.

Don't go out and try to do more gentleness and faithfulness.

But this is what will show up if we are walking in the spirit.

And then he closes out chapter five with a couple of more things for us to not do.

And then he opens up in chapter six with some things for us to actually do if we want to walk in the spirit, if we want to fulfill the law of Christ.

Because look, if you're a rule follower, Christianity can be really tough for you.

The whole, yeah, but it's just a matter of the heart.

That's tough for some people that just want to be like, just tell me what to do.

Tell me exactly what to do.

And that's what Paul does here.

He gives us practical, practical, tangible things for us to do if we want to follow the law of Christ and keep in step with the Spirit.

So for a second here, we're gonna set aside the gray areas.

We can talk about those when we're eating over here.

We can meet up about the gray areas.

I love the gray areas.

We're gonna set them aside for a second.

And we're gonna look at the black and white of what God tells us to do to follow the law of Christ.

Now, the rule followers in the room are super excited.

They're like, finally, I'm gonna get a neat little list of stuff that I have to do to walk in the Spirit.

And the rebels in the room are like, yeah, right.

I bet you I can pick this apart when he tells me these things, I'm gonna be like, in certain circumstances, I don't think that applies.

Let's just take a breath and allow God's word to chip away at us and not come in with preconceived notions of anything.

So, what is the law of Christ?

And I think in our passage today, chapter 6, verses 1 through 5, it lays out for us three things that if we do, if we do this, we will be following the law of Christ.

We will be walking in the Spirit if we can do these three things.

So the first thing that I think we can do to follow the law of Christ is right in verse 1, and that is to seek restoration.

If we are people that seek restoration, look at verse 1.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

The first part of that verse, first part of verse one there is so counter-cultural and so counterintuitive to us that being a person that does that, that seeks restoration, will force people to notice something peculiar about you.

Do you know how many books have been written?

I don't know how many, but do you know how many books have been written and articles that have been written in the last 10 or 20 years that tell us to eliminate people from our lives that have done us wrong?

Something that I hear dramatic people say a lot is I just don't have time for the drama in my life.

Every time I hear that, I think you you you you have plenty of room because you've molded your life around drama.

We say that as if like we must eliminate everyone from our life that has ever wronged us in any way.

We can't be taken advantage of, we can't be mistreated and then expected to try to make things right.

I'm important.

They they wronged me.

But to walk in the spirit means to seek to restore.

Not only restore, but to do it in a spirit of gentleness.

Are you maybe here today and looking for a spiritual role model?

You know, you're looking for someone to try to imitate.

Find a person that when they are wronged, has the humility to restore the relationship without biting back and trying to get the last jab in before they reconcile.

Find a person that is truly looking to restore relationships without having their feelings justified by getting the last word in.

That person is like Jesus.

It's not perceived to be cool or tough for us to seek restoration.

Uh and I know this because I'm a man and I live inside my own head.

And I would like to give you, especially the ladies here in the room, a little insight and what's going on in a man's mind.

Um, because a lot of times I think women are like, what are they what are they thinking about?

If I could just get in there and change it a little bit, I think I could make him into something.

Well, here you go.

Here's what we're thinking.

Half the day, and I'm not exaggerating, half the day or more inside of a man's head is made-up thoughts of hypothetical situations and how tough we would be if that hypothetical situation went down.

Like this is what we would do.

So, for instance, like we're thinking, we've sat here, and I've I've sat here and I've thought that.

Like, if someone walks in that door right now with a knife, this is what I would do.

I'm gonna barrel roll in complete silence to the corner, and I'm gonna kick off the sides of the wall, like parkour, up to the rafters, and I'm gonna crawl silently and jump when I have to, until I'm over top of the person that has the knife.

And then I'm going to launch my body onto the person with the knife, and I'm gonna sacrifice myself for the well-being of this congregation.

And then when I wheel into church next month after a long bout in the hospital, no longer able to walk, I will get a tear-filled standing ovation.

Like every man has thought of something like that.

Like if a guy breaks in, this is what I'm doing.

If we go, if something goes down, I'm gonna be really tough here.

Nearly every man in here has had the conversation or the thought of, man, if I caught my wife cheating on me, this is what I would do.

And then they proceed with the toughest sounding stuff that you have ever heard.

This this verse says to restore a person caught in a transgression with a spirit of gentleness.

Generally, we are not daydreaming about getting a chance to reconcile or swallow our hurt and pride and restore somebody in a spirit of gentleness.

But that's exactly how we've been treated by Jesus.

And if we want to reflect to him, if we want to reflect him to a lost world, nothing will stick out more than being someone that is seeking restoration, that's looking to restore relationships.

Find that brother that has sinned against you, reach out to that sister that has gossiped about you, bring them in close and love on them, and not just to shove it in their face and say, look at me, I'm I'm trying to do the big the better thing here, but so that we can actually reflect Jesus.

Jesus sought you, He pursued you when you were in sin.

And we have that same spirit in us, and we can fulfill the law of Christ by seeking restoration.

So the first thing we can do, seek restoration.

The next thing that we can do to walk in the spirit and to fulfill the law of Christ is to guard yourself.

We can guard ourselves.

Again, verse one brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

Keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted.

We Christians that lean heavy into freedom in Christ can be way too casual about guarding ourselves against temptation.

We'll watch anything, we'll hang out with anyone, we'll listen to anything we want to listen to, we'll go anywhere we want to go because we're free to do so.

We're free in Christ, we can do anything.

And we can then become experts on keeping watch on everyone else except ourselves.

We're very well acquainted with everyone else's sin.

We we knew that was a bad idea because we saw it coming from a mile away.

All the meantime, we have set ourselves up for a nice little disaster.

We we got an eyes on everybody else except ourselves.

Uh Romans 8, 12 through 13 says, So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.

For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

We can, by the spirit, do some practical things to put sin to death in our lives.

We often think that the spirit isn't practical.

As if the only way to fight against sin is to just pray about it.

We just, all we can do is pray.

Yes, we should pray about it, but we should also put death, put sin to death in us, any way possible.

For instance, it's not good spiritually to watch movies that would objectify a woman's body or that would make light of sin.

But yet we surround ourselves with it.

And if you think, well, I don't really struggle with that, Paul says to keep watch on yourself, lest you two be tempted.

It's not spiritually healthy for us to spend a lot of time with people that make light of sin and are just going about doing whatever they want with no acknowledgement to God.

That is not healthy for us spiritually.

The Spirit can prod us along to set up safeguards in our life to keep us from sin.

That's how you fight sin.

You kill it.

You don't give it a place to grow.

So set the alarm.

Get up out of bed, get up earlier if that's going to help you kill your spiritual apathy.

Get in the word.

Stop hanging out with people that dull your affections for Christ.

Use the senses and the wit that God has given you to guard yourself against sin.

And also examine yourself.

Examine yourself to see where you need to be guarded.

That's a hard thing to do.

But you can ask your spouse, you can ask your friends where your blind spots to sin might be, but you better come in with some humility to hear what they may have to say.

Maybe they see something that you don't, but we should fight the flesh.

We should fight sin.

This is not a passive thing.

Saying slaying sin doesn't happen by accident.

Keeping watch on yourself isn't something that you do unintentionally.

If you want to grow and fulfill the law of Christ, guard yourself.

Guard yourself against sin.

Seek restoration.

And the last thing he tells us here is in verse 2, it says, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

If you want to walk in the Spirit and fulfill the law of Christ, bear burdens.

Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

When we hear that in Scripture, to bear one another's burdens, I think a lot of times we're thinking this is something that we can do if we have some extra time.

Or this is for people that don't have kids to do.

Or this is for the couple that has a lot of money.

They can help bear people's burdens.

But bearing one another's burdens is actually a command from Jesus to the church, to his saints.

Romans 15, 1 through 3.

We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.

Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up.

For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.

We are obligated to the bearing of one another's burdens.

There is nothing more Christ-like than to bear a brother or sister's burden with them.

That is what Christ did.

To sit and mourn with them, to enter into their tough situation with them.

It's not just for those that have the extra time or the extra money that are called to this.

It's specifically to those that are spiritually stronger.

Those who have a pretty good grasp on what Christ has done for them should be bearing the load of other people.

This does require something, though.

It requires us to know our brothers and sisters.

It's hard to bear one another's burdens if we don't know anyone and we're just looking to come in here to not engage with anyone and to get out of here as fast as possible.

You have to know what people's hardships are in order to help them bear the burden.

Because that's usually something that doesn't come up in the first few minutes of a conversation.

You know, it's not like, hey, how you doing?

I'm Bob.

And then Bob's like, and then the guy's like, hey Bob, I'm Frank, and I care for my sick mother, and it's difficult for me to get over there on Tuesdays because my daughter uses my car and that on that day, and our mower is broken, and so our grass is really high, and my mom's grass is really high, and then I have this weird pain in my stomach, and I haven't been able to deal with it because I don't have insurance, so I'm not getting it looked at, and then my hours at work they got cut, and I have a wayward sun.

So things are starting to get real interesting for me, Bob.

But I'm frank.

That's that's not how it usually happens.

You have to get in there, you have to know people.

You might have to sit through some boring conversations, but you have to enter into people's lives because that's what Jesus did.

Imagine Jesus.

He literally created everything and probably had to sit and listen to somebody talk about how they built a chair.

And he's, you know, I would be like, geesh, I kind of made the wood that made the chair, but okay, let me hear you.

We're gonna have to enter into people's lives.

When we realize the weight and the burden of sin that Jesus has lifted off of us, that frees us to engage with others to help lighten their load.

What a simple black and white command for us to do that will have us fulfilling the law of Christ.

So we can fulfill the law of Christ and walk in the Spirit.

When we seek restoration, when we guard ourselves against sin, and when we bear one another's burden.

That's walking in the spirit.

That's living a life that is imitating Jesus.

Then we come into like these three, these last three verses that are that sound a little confusing and a little weird and maybe a little contradictory.

So we're gonna break those things, keeping in mind that we need to seek restoration, guard ourselves, and whatever that one I just said was, um bear burdens.

Yep.

Keeping in mind that we're entering into these last three verses here.

It says this in chapter 6, verses 3 through 5 of Galatians.

For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor.

For each will have to bear his own load.

So the first part of that says, for if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

If you think you're something when you're nothing, means just that.

This isn't saying that some people are actually something.

So they they have the right to think highly of themselves.

But if you get this wrong and you think you're something when you're actually nothing, that's that's bad.

That's not what this is.

This is saying that if you're a person that thinks you're something, when 100% for certain you are not something because no one is, you have deceived yourself.

It doesn't matter what you've done or how much law you have followed, mosaic law or the law of Christ, you have nothing to offer to your salvation except the sin that it takes to be saved from.

If you jumped off the rafters and crushed a guy with a knife, that's awesome.

Come and talk to me.

I want to hear the story after the sermon and the meal.

Please tell me about that story.

But you're nothing.

You're really nothing.

There, and with this, with this news that we are nothing, there are generally two crowds here.

One crowd has a problem with that statement because they really feel like they're they're something.

They've done a lot, they are valuable, they made something of themselves.

Look at them go.

Give them a round of applause and post something about them on social media.

That crowd.

And then you have the other crowd over here that says, Yep, I'm nothing.

I am such a wretch.

I've messed up so much.

I'm the chiefest of sinners.

No one has messed up as much as me.

I have wrecked everything.

I am such a failure.

And I would say the same thing to both of these crowds, and that is get over yourself.

You are nothing.

We don't talk about nothing.

Yes, you are valuable, and God can use the giftings that He has given you for His glory.

And yes, you have made a mess of things.

And look, it's pretty bad, and you might be worse off than some other people, and your situation's ugly.

But get your eyes off of yourself.

Both crowds are deceiving themselves.

Both crowds are comparing themselves to other people.

One saying, I'm better, and one saying, I'm worse.

Both is self-centered.

That's what Paul is talking about when he moves into verse 4.

When he says, test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself and not his neighbor.

That verse doesn't translate super well into our language, but what he's saying is, tend to your own work and stop comparing what you are doing with what your neighbor is doing, saying, Well, I'm doing better than they're doing, or I'm doing far worse than she is doing.

And he goes on to say, for each will have to bear his own load.

This isn't meant to contradict what he just said when he said we should bear one another's burdens.

That's confusing because he says we're going to bear one another's burdens, and then he says, everybody should uh handle their own stuff.

To bear a burden is to help a brother or sister out when their load is too much for a person to be able to reasonably handle given their circumstances.

That's more for some people and that's less for some people.

But bear one another's burdens.

And then he says to bear your own load, which means to pull your own weight.

Don't look for help on things that you can do yourself.

If you're someone that's like, you know what, this person can do their own stuff.

I had to do all of that.

That's fantastic.

God gave you the capacity to be able to do more.

Why don't you bear someone else's burdens with that?

We uh we we have physical and spiritual responsibility for ourselves.

Do things, do some stuff.

Let's go, let's do some stuff.

So this this paints a really good picture of how we can be like Jesus.

Someone that bears others' burdens and at the same time pulls our own weight.

That is that is like Christ.

That requires us to get our eyes off of ourselves and off of other people in a judgmental way, but then onto other people in a compassionate way.

That is exactly what Jesus did.

And as we close, this is what walking in the Spirit and following the law of Christ looks like.

Jesus did all three of these things so well.

He came into a hostile environment where people were bent against him and he sought restoration.

He is seeking restoration right now.

He is working in the hearts of man to reconcile them to God through his work on the cross.

He's still doing that.

Jesus guarded himself against temptation with scripture and a close relationship with the Father.

We can do that.

He did that.

And Jesus is the ultimate burden bearer.

He took on the burdens and the failings, he took on the sin of the world, and he bore the punishment for all who would believe in him.

When we do these things, when we follow these simple black and white commands, we are following his law.

We are walking in the spirit.

Is it a matter of the heart?

Absolutely.

But it's hard to have a heart that is away from Jesus when you've shaped your life so much like his life.

So when we do these things, when we seek restoration and guard ourselves and we bear one another's burdens, we are following the law of Christ and walking in the spirit.

It really is that simple.

We have we're experts at complicating it, but it really is that simple.

Seek restoration.

Guard yourself and bear one another's burdens.

And so fulfill the law of Christ.

Let's pray.