A Good Church Carries Burdens (Galatians 5:26-6:5)
I had a hard time figuring out how to open the sermon this morning. But I quickly figured it out yesterday when I went to visit someone at the hospital. It was not someone from our church. This was part of my working with Baptist Health. Her Mom was on a breathing tube and unresponsive.
I sat down and talked with her. She talked and talked about how much she knows about Christianity and how she believed all religions were the same. Then she talked to me about how she was once very active in a church for ten years in California. She had gone to the Bible Studies. She had tithed. And when she lost her job, was homeless, and needed help they told her to apply at the Salvation Army. So she walked away from church completely.
I was appalled for her. And here’s the reason. As an active member of the body of believers, she should have been more than a number to them.
This is where I think a lot of local churches have missed the point. Our church body does not exist just to exist. And it does not exist just to grow numerically and put money in the bank. Our local body of believers does exist to grow numerically. We are commanded to go forth and make disciples. That means we are commanded to go forth and grow. But we are also commanded to love and care for one another.
You’re not just a number. You are a blood bought child of God that is part of this congregation at Victory Baptist Church. And that means something.
We saw last week that the Christian is at war. The Chistian has been transformed by the power of God to despise the sin that he once loved and empowered to war against it. But we saw that, we are still at war. And we also saw that our warfare is not always successful. There are times that we fall into sin.
We repent, trust in Christ, and seek to follow Him.
So, what do we do when we see it happen in our brothers and sisters? How do we respond?
Well, it’s not by looking the other direction. It’s not by washing our hands of the person.
We bear one another’s burdens with an aim toward restoration.
I am proud to be a Southern Baptist. I really am. The heritage we have is one of faithfulness the command to go. We are incredibly concerned with the gospel going forth. That was the reason we came together as a denomination, to fund missionaries going forth.
In the 1790’s the first of the modern Baptist missionary societies was born. William Carrey headed it up. It was called the Baptist Missionary Society. In 1814, the Triennial Convention met. This was the first of the American Baptist Missionary Societies. This was the American Baptist Churches. They met every three years to fund and provoke mission work overseas. Then, during the Civil War, when the Northern and Southern Baptist Churches stopped cooperating on missions the Southern Baptist Church was created. That is also when the Cooperative Program began.
Evangelism and Missions are the reasons we meet together. It has been the major focus of Baptists in England and now in America. And that’s a good thing.
But, at least it seems to me, we haven’t been so focused on holy living.
It has not always been this way.
In the 1800’s the membership of a typical Southern Baptist Church was less than half it’s attendance. And the reason was quite simple. If you became a member, you were held to a high standard of conduct. If a member fell into sin, they were immediately disciplined. Holiness was expected within the body of believers. They cared about what happened to your fellow church members.
If a man was found out to be spending his time with women that were not his wife, a deacon was assigned to him. That deacon went to him to discuss the matter with him. The same was true for other sins as well.
I looked at one of the catalogues from member’s meetings at Baptist Churches from the 1700’s. One of the first entries was about a man accused of drunkenness and how the church as going to handle the situation.
Because holiness mattered to those early Baptist churches. They understood that a person was saved by grace alone. But they also understood that it was our duty as believers, and as a church to live in a way that honored God. They understood that our behavior mattered.
Your behavior as an individual matters. But our behavior as a church body should matter as well.
The Christian life is one of war. But is a war against sin and self. And in this war there are ups and downs. The local church is to come together and bear one another’s burdens as we seek to restore them.
Seek to Restore the Fallen (Galatians 6:1)
A church is not to function like a business. We don’t just run as many people into the building as we can and run up the budget so that we can do a helicopter Egg Drop on Easter Sunday.
Church is to be a place where we, as Christians, come together. We hear God’s Word preached and taught. We partake in the Lord’s Supper together. We see people converted and baptized together. And we help one another in the faith.
Part of helping one another in the faith is restoring people after they sin. You may be thinking to yourself that we are discussing only small sins. But that just doesn’t accord with the passage here. The phrase Paul used, along with what was discussed in last week’s sermon, helps us to see that this includes major sins.
This is not a concept found one time in Scripture. It is something that we see repeatedly.
“Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” (Proverbs 24:11 ESV)
How many people do you think are stumbling to the slaughter? How many people are out there right now that have fallen into grievous sin that has almost completely wrecked their life?
Because so many people struggle with porn, I will pick on it. Study after study suggests that pornography is one of the major causes of divorce. It ruins lives, it ruins families.
We should have a longing to rescue people out of this trouble.
If you are here today and addicted to it. I want to help. We, as a church, want to help in any way possible.
Do you remember the list from last week? This is just the beginning of dealing with sins in our midst?
- Sexual Immorality– πορνεία (porneia)—it is a broad term for any sort of immoral sexual behavior—adultery, fornication, lust, would fall into this category, we get our word pornography from this word. And pornography itself would fall into this category.
- Impurity—lustful behaviors, pornography would also fall into this category.
- Sensuality—unbridled lust, not just sexually—lust for any sort of pleasure
- Idolatry
- Sorcery
- Enmity—hostility
- Strife—contentiousness and a desire to fight
- Jealousy
- Fits of anger
- Rivalries—putting oneself forward, like “electioneering” campaigning for yourself or your faction at the expense of others.
- Dissensions—dividing people, causing divisions
- Divisions—choosing and dividing people
- Envy
- Drunkenness
- Orgies
- Things like these—meaning, this list is not exhaustive.
We are to have a willingness to reach out and help people that have fallen into sin. We seek to help those who have taken a beating in the war against sin and found their selves succumbing temporarily to the flesh.
As we discussed last week, there is a war with the flesh that we must participate in. And, as a church, we must be willing to help those that have fallen.
I was reading a book about addiction by Ed Welch. And there he discusses the fact that the church often doesn’t think in this way.
“An effective church will have addicts in it. After all, the church is, in part, a hospital for sinners in different stages of their struggle with sin. The challenge of the church is to assist sinners at all these stages, which certainly is no small task! We must flush out the self-deceived, expose the dishonest, confront the rebel, offer forgiveness for the guilt-crushed, provide hope for the despairing, and support the surrendered. In addition, the church must invite in and hold the attention of those who formerly would not have dared (or desired) to look to the church for either hope or help.”
Edward T. Welch, Addictions: A Banquet in the Grave p. 120.
When I read that, it is a challenge to live according to the standards set forth in the Scriptures. It is a challenge to live, as a body of believers, as God has called us to do. It’s not just about addictions. It is about bearing the burdens of believers that are fallen. It is about supporting them and seeing God’s people grow in holiness, righteousness, and faithfulness in Him.
Notice what James says,
“My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.” (James 5:19-20 ESV)
And what is that Jesus said to do,
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” (Matthew 18:15-17 ESV)
I have said this many times before. Church is not about cloistering ourselves away from the world. We deliver that soul saving message of the gospel to a lost and dying world. And we uphold one another as we walk in this world.
And at it’s heart, we are not attempting to eliminate certain behaviors. That is certainly a by product. But that is not the end goal. We are trying to move people to see that they have rebelled against a holy God, who created all things. He gave us forgiveness of sins through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. And we are commanded to obey Him and live in dependence upon Him.
Seek to Restore, But Don’t Fall as Well (Galatians 6:1)
We are all called to feel compassion for the person that has fallen in sin. But we are not called upon to get into the sin with them.
We are to have compassion for the fallen, but it doesn’t stop with feelings and emotions. We are also supposed to bear their burden and help to drag the out of the pit.
If a person is drowning in the river, they may want me to get in the river with them so that we can go through this together. But that’s not what they need. They need someone with a foot on shore that is able to bring them back in.
But not everyone is capable of doing this. Therefore, not everyone should help with the restoration process. Paul gives this command to “You who are spiritual.” And the definition of spiritual is not left to our imagination. Last week Paul told us what it looks like to walk by the flesh and what it look like to walk by the Spirit. If you are struggling with the flesh, you need to sit this one out. But if you are walking by the Spirit, you need to step up and bear burdens as they come along.
The point here is really that we are to help those that have fallen into sin, but we are not to do so in a way that would cause us to fall into sin.
Let’s imagine that a wife has come to me and said that her husband is addicted to pornography and I am going to talk with him. A freshly recovered porn addict is probably not going to be the person I need to take with me to talk with him.
The same would be true of someone who is dealing with drug or alcohol addictions.
Remember, the person is drowning in the river. You can’t help if you go out there and drown with them. “You who are spiritual” would be believers who have come a considerable way in their fight against the flesh.
It is good and right to have a desire to help others. But it would be devastating if you, in your quest to help someone else, ended up harming yourself.
Another aspect of this is that you don’t need to help in a way that will make you a sinner. Your help needs to be righteous.
You shouldn’t go and help a person by lying for them, deceiving for them, or something else. Your help needs to be righteous.
Here is the point. In our help, we are to be like Christ. He came to us for our rescue. But He did so without sin. Sin is so bad that God the Son had to die to save us from it. Both parties need to understand that.
“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,” (Ephesians 4:1 ESV)
The goal is that God’s people live lives that are worthy of the gospel. We are to live lives that honor Jesus Christ.
If You Don’t Desire to See Restoration, then Assess Yourself (Galatians 5:26, 6:3-5)
Don’t become conceited (Galatians 5:26). If you don’t want to do this because of self-righteousness then there is a major problem with you. You might be deceived, thinking yourself to be holy than you really are. That is a form of self-deception (Galatians 6:3).
Paul gives us a remedy for this problem. If you test your own work, then you see where you fail yourself. You see your own sinfulness. As we test our own work and think through our own past, we look back and see our own sinfulness. Suddenly we realize that our good work is all of Christ (Galatians 6:4).
Now, Paul moves to a warning. The warning doesn’t strike us as a warning immediately.
“For each will have to bear his own load.” (Galatians 6:5 ESV)
Ultimately we answer to God for what we do and don’t do. The sinner living according to the works of the flesh will have to answer to God for what they have done. And you will have to answer to God for not helping a brother or sister in Christ that has fallen into the pit.
And that is terrifying.
Ultimately, Paul leaves your help or lack of desire to help to God. God will judge you. You will be judged by your motives and motivations for helping or not helping others.
But in the meantime, we should assess our own lives. A conceited person, and there are many of those, will just look down on the person who has fallen into sin. They will look at their life and say that they are just that way and there is nothing we can do to help them.
What is it that we believe about the gospel?
We rebelled against God and were without hope. God sent His Son to redeem us. He lived a perfect life, accomplishing righteousness for us. He died on the cross and paid the punishment for sin. And He rose from the grave and accomplished our justification. God made a way for us to be right with Him.
In another one of these sin lists, Paul says something about the grace of God that is very powerful and that we should always remember. We were rescued from sins’ clutches by the grace and mercy of God.
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1Corinthians 6:9-11 ESV)
What is it that we believe about the gospel?
We believe the grace and mercy of God found in Jesus Christ alone gives to us full forgiveness of sins and works powerfully in our lives.
Seek to Restore the Fallen, and Fulfill the Law of Christ (Galatians 6:2)
In verse 2 Paul said something powerful that I want to end with today. He said,
“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”
What is the Law of Christ?
It is to love one another.
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”” (John 13:34-35 ESV)
The law of Christ is to love one another.
Note carefully what Paul is saying here. It is by bearing one another’s burdens, lifting each other up out of the pit of sin and despair by the power of Christ that we fulfill the Law of Christ. That is how we love one another.
In a fallen world that is filled with so much sin and trouble, this is what it looks like to love one another.
This is what it looks like to love one another. It looks like helping one another out of sin and despair. It looks like helping people out of the sin and despair that seems to have swallowed them up.
It looks like repairing marriages.
It looks like helping people figure out how to manage their time and finances.
It looks like helping people out of addictions.
It looks like people that come together because Christ has forgiven them, bearing one another’s burdens, for the glory of God and love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Conclusion
As I wrote this sermon, I was reminded of a story from the Early Church. In 250 AD an actor was converted to Christ. His name was Marcus. This doesn’t seem to fit our conversation today, but trust me, it does.
All sorts of immorality was practiced on stage. So, part of Marcus’s conversion was giving up the only way he knew to provide for his needs. And so, his pastor did not know what to do.
Eucratis, Marcus’s pastor consulted by letter with Cyprian. Cyprian was a leader in the church at this time and would be martyred for his faith a few years later. And so, we get to read of this today.
Cyprian said,
“It is not in keeping with the reverence due to the majesty of God and with the observance of the gospel teachings for the honour and respect of the Church to be polluted by contamination at once so degraded and scandalous.” (Epistulae 2.1.2)
So, if he keeps acting it will bring dishonor to the Church and the majesty of God.
But how were they to help Marcus. He had been trained to act. All he’d done is act. The only line of work he was currently fit for was acting and the Church was calling upon him to give up acting to follow Christ.
Cyprian’s answer was that the Church should support Marcus.
“His needs can be alleviated along with those of others who are supported by the provision of the Church—on condition, of course, that he can be satisfied with more frugal, and harmless, fare and does not consider that he ought to be bought off by means of a pension, so as to break away from his sins, for he is the one to benefit from such a break, not us….Accordingly, you should do your utmost to call him away from this depraved and shameful profession to the way of innocence and to the hope of his true life; let him be satisfied with the nourishment provided by the Church, more sparing to be sure btu salutary.” (Epistulae 2.2.2-3)
This is a powerful example of what it means to be the Church and what it means to bear one another’s burdens.
What does it look like today? Well, it looks like sharing our struggles with one another. And it looks like being willing to reach out and help one another.
Sometimes it’s confronting sin.
Sometimes it’s just being there for someone.
It looks like the Law of Christ.
R. Dwain Minor