Galatians 6:1-5
Amen. You can be seated. Turn
in your copy of the scriptures to Galatians 6. Galatians 6 can
be found on page 975 in the pew edition of the scriptures. Galatians 6, 1 through 5. And
I suppose if you’re really technical about it, you would back up to
the end of chapter 5, where The apostle Paul in his list of the
fruit of the spirit says we should keep in step with the spirit,
walk by the spirit, but we shouldn’t become conceited and then doing
two things, envying and provoking one another. Now he’s going to
begin a section though, that’s connected to that, that says
we should bear one another’s burdens. We should help the brother
or sister who is caught in sin. And we should bear that burden
with them together. So here God’s word, Galatians
six, beginning at 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. Bear one another’s burdens and
so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something,
when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one test
his own work. Then his reason to boast will
be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. For each one will
have to bear his own load. Amen. The word of the living
God. add his blessing to the reading and preaching of his
holy scriptures. You are, I hope, familiar with
the three lost things that Jesus speaks of in the gospels. He
tells three parables right in a row. The lost sheep, the lost
coin, and the lost sons. The lost sheep, the lost coin,
and the lost sons. And the context or the surroundings
of that set of parables that Jesus gives is in the, the, the
teachers, the Pharisees, the scribes, the, the church officials
are saying about Jesus, he received centers and he even eats with
them. Oh boy. How dare Jesus? He received centers and he even
eats with them. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? He’s
received us, we’re sinners. And today in the Lord’s supper,
he’s going to eat with us. Aren’t we glad that he does?
Well, in those three parables, the first, the lost sheep, you
know, and are familiar with it. There’s a hundred sheep in the
man’s fold. One goes astray and he leaves
the 99 and he goes out into the hills and he seeks and finds
that lost sheep. Then there’s the parable of the
lost coin. A woman has 10 silver coins and she loses one. So she
lights a lamp and she sweeps her house clean until she finds
that lost coin. And then of course, there’s the
parable of the prodigal son. Really the parable of the father,
the loving father and the two sons. One lost temporarily, but
found. Well, we know that story. The
younger son comes to the father and says, give me my inheritance
now. And the father does so he goes away into a far country.
He spends all that money in partying and revelry. There’s a famine
in the land. The economy gets bad. And so
he begins to hire himself out for work. He finds himself feeding
pigs and can’t even eat the pig pods for his food. And so he
comes to his senses, Jesus says. And he says, in my father’s house,
there are servants and they don’t go without food and clothing.
So perhaps I will go to my father and say, father, I’ve sinned
against you. Let me at least be a hired hand in your household. Well, we know the wonderful end
of that story. The father is watching from the
front steps. He sees his son far off. He runs
to meet him. He embraces him. He kisses him. He calls for a robe and for shoes
and for the fattened calf. And he says to all around, we
must celebrate for this my son was lost and is now found. And it’s the same with the woman
who finds her lost coin. She goes and tells her neighbors,
I lost my silver coin and it’s now found. And the same with
the one who lost the one sheep of the hundred, he tells all
his hearers, I found my sheep. And Jesus says to the church
officials who are grumbling that he received sinners and eats
with them. He says, look, three lost things, three found things,
three celebrations. Even the angels in heaven rejoice
when a sinner comes to faith in Jesus. Well, one of the things
we must remember about our God is he is a lost thing seeker. When Adam and Eve fell from their
state of holiness and righteousness in the garden by eating the forbidden
fruit, they went and hid among the trees. They knew they were
naked and they were ashamed and they knew they had sinned against
the holy and righteous God. Yet he came looking in the garden
for them. The first question of the scripture
was to Adam, where are you? And when they were trembling
and hiding from their holy God, because of their sin against
him. He came looking and he came seeking and he found them trembling
among the trees and he removed their self-righteous fig leaves
and he covered them with the skins of an animal whose blood
was shed and whose blood pointed to a blood that would ultimately
cleanse that being the blood of the Lord Jesus. Or think of
Psalm 139 where King David says, where can I go? Where can I go in heaven and
earth? Even where can I go in my own thoughts and hide from
God? He’s everywhere. He’s all seeing.
He is a seeking God. He seeks and saves the lost. Or there’s that great English
poet that spoke of God as the hound of heaven. And he comes
chasing, he comes pursuing. And perhaps that’s your story. You weren’t, Seeking after God,
but he was seeking after you and the hound of heaven found
you. Our God is a lost thing, a seeker. Well, in Matthew chapter 18,
where one of these parables is told, the parable of the lost
sheep, all three of them are over in Luke. But at least the
parable of the lost sheep is found in Matthew chapter 18.
Jesus tells two parables with a teaching sandwiched. And the
first teaching that we find in Matthew 18 is the parable of
the lost sheep. The 99 leaves, goes and finds
the one and rejoices. And then the other story on the
other side of the thing that he teaches is the story of the
unforgiving servant. Remember him, owed the king a
bunch of money, like a hundred years worth of wages, couldn’t
pay it. King says, you’re going to jail. And he says, have mercy
on me. Okay. Debt forgiven. And then he goes
out, the debtor who’s just been forgiven and finds the guy that
owes him like two bucks. And what does he do? Pay up.
And he has him thrown in jail, wife and children until the debt
is paid. And Jesus says, you wicked servant
throws him into outer darkness. You were forgiven, but you couldn’t
forgive others. Well, right in the middle of
these two stories is what we call Matthew 18. You know what
I’m speaking of. If a brother sins against you,
go to him and tell him his fault. And if he repents, you’ve gained
a brother. If not, take two brothers or
another brother and tell him the thing. And if he repents,
great, you’ve gained a brother. If not, it says, take it to the
church. We take taking it to the church.
Perhaps if we’re congregational, we raise it up in the assembly
and the assembly decides the case. or in our sense were ruled
by elders. And so we might take it to the
board of elders, the session of elders, and they would adjudicate
the issue and seek restoration. Well, this idea of Matthew 18
that Jesus teaches, this idea, this theme of God being a lost
thing seeker comes to fruit here in Galatians chapter six. As Paul gives the process to
the Galatian church for restoration, no doubt he has Jesus parables
in mind. No doubt he has the principles
of Leviticus 19 and other places where we’re to love our neighbor.
No doubt Paul has in mind Matthew chapter 18, go and tell a brother,
if it doesn’t work, take another. And if that doesn’t work, take
it to the church. Now, how do we, deal with one
another in the realm of sinning against one another in the life
of the church? Do we need a church police department? Do we need
tattletales? How do we do this? Well, let me give you a practical
thing or two. First of all, the small things
we do against one another, we handle with Christian charity,
right? It is a loving thing to overlook
an offense. It is a loving thing to think,
you know, somebody’s just probably having a bad day. It’s a loving
thing to say, you know, we all put our foot in our mouth, our
feet in our mouths, whatever, foot feet. It’s a loving thing
to give the benefit of the doubt. It’s a loving thing to say, you
know, maybe that person’s just not been taught this thing or
doesn’t understand this manner or whatever. Or perhaps, and
I mean this in a charitable way, perhaps they’re ignorant that
something is, you know, against social graces or against maybe
some standard that we have. We give them the benefit of the
doubt. They’re not doing something mean. They’re not trying to sin
against us. They didn’t wake up that morning
and have some maniacal laugh in their bed and say, ha ha ha,
I’m going to get so-and-so today. And so in these small areas,
we overlook offenses. You know, we turn the other cheek,
we go the extra mile and those sorts of things. But what about
when sin and offenses are great and they’re harmful or they’re
public or they’re blatantly against the law of God? What are we to
do? And Paul has given some examples
in the life of the Galatian church we’ve seen in the earlier chapters.
We get horrible examples when we read the two letters to the
Corinthians that we have. Sometimes sin in the church is
so obvious, so blatant, so damaging to the fellowship and even to
the name and the cause of Jesus, it must be dealt with. We deal
with sin to protect the sinner from the wrath of God. We deal
with sin to protect the congregation. A little leaven spoils the whole
lump. We deal with sin in the congregation
to protect the name of Jesus. What do outsiders always say
about Christians? Oh, you’re a bunch of hypocrites. And so we want our witness to
be as faithful as possible before the watching world. But ultimately,
we restore sinners. to the fellowship. That is the
aim of church discipline. That is the aim of church government. That is the aim of the life of
believers. Some of you will remember during
the Protestant Reformation when Martin Luther and others began
to see the difficulties and the dangers of some of the trends
in the larger Roman Catholic Church. And so they had to say
to their hearers, well, these are the things that mark out
the true church. And they always said these three
things. There can be many more, but these are the basics. The
preaching of the word. You’ve got to preach the word
in season and out of season. You’ve got to proclaim the old
covenant, the new covenant. You’ve got to preach Jesus Christ.
You’ve got to preach every verse, every chapter, everything God
commands to his church ought to be taught to the church. So
the right preaching of the word was one of the marks. The second
would be the right administration of the sacraments. Now, of course,
you, Recovering Catholics probably know exactly what that means.
The Protestants didn’t think the Catholics had the right view
of the sacraments. And they actually added a few
to the number. So the Protestants would say,
okay, baptism and Lord’s supper. And then what do they mean? And
there were all those nuances we won’t go into today. So we
had the right preaching of the word, the right administration
of the sacraments. Well, guess what the third mark
is? It’s church order or church discipline. It’s keeping the
covenant community a holy people. And so you get the parables of
the lost things. You get the teaching of Jesus,
Matthew 18, how to restore fellowship with a brother. And now you have
Galatians chapter six. What do you do when someone in
the congregation is caught? in a transgression. And so here
we have the fruit of the spirit and the life of the church. It’s
the application of the law and it’s the application also of
the gospel, the good news. Yes, there’s lines that ought
not to be crossed. But yes, also there’s forgiveness
and grace and help and healing and restoration in the person
and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So Galatians chapter
six, verse one is a passage that really ought to stick out in
our minds. It says, if anyone, if a brother is caught in a transgression,
now this Christian you can imagine is bumping along in life and
they become entrapped. They’ve become ensnared or have
been overtaken by a sin. I have in my mind, and maybe
my mind’s a little wacky, but I have being caught in a sin
like stepping in a bear trap, right? You’re walking through
the woods and you don’t know that somebody set out bear traps and you stick
your foot in and the jaws clamp around your ankle. That’s actually
painful, I think. But a bear trap, you’re ensnared
in the jaws of sin. Or how about falling into a pit? Or how about being entangled
in the ropes of a net? Or how about drowning and up
to your eyeballs in water? What’s the ministry of the church,
one to another, when the spiritually minded, those keeping in step
with the spirit, those walking in the spirit, those doing well
in the Lord for the moment, what’s their duty to other believers? who’ve had the trap set by Satan,
who’ve been ensnared by the world, or who’ve even given in to their
own wicked desires. What’s the teaching? What’s the
duty? What’s required? What’s the opportunity
of love for believers one to another? Well, we rescue them. We rescue them and we gently
restore them. The idea here of the person who’s
caught in a transgression. I mentioned the trap images,
but it’s someone not really looking to be rebellious. It’s someone
that Satan has just preyed upon and they’ve fallen into this
gross sin, this gross error, but it’s not their normal course
of life. Now there’s other places in scripture
where Paul or others will say, okay, you’re being a meathead,
right? It’s okay to say that, isn’t
it? Think about Corinthians, where Paul says to the Corinthians,
there’s sexual immorality among the congregation. And it’s even
of a kind that pagans don’t approve of. OK, that’s bad, right? And
the example he gives is there’s a son who’s taken up with his
father’s wife. OK, that’s not good. And so what
does the church do? Well, they treat him as an outsider.
They put him outside the church until he repents. And then of
course, later Paul says, okay, he repented, let him back in
the church because they’re kind of being mean to him. So there’s an example
where, you know, people are just doing horrible, terrible things
in the church. The idea here in Galatians is,
Maybe a weaker brother has just fallen into sin and they don’t
know better and they’re stuck. They’re caught. They need someone
to pull the bear trap off their ankles. They need someone to
cut the net that is ensnared them or to lift them out of the
pit into which they have fallen. The world and the flesh and the
devil even desire an opportunity of taking the best of them. And
they need to be gently restored. The idea here of restoration
is patching them up. It’s mending their wounds. It’s
resetting their broken bones. It’s giving them aid. You know,
it’s often been said the church is a hospital for sinners. And that’s very true, isn’t it?
I think people look inside the church and think, oh, we say
we’re perfect. And they look in and see we’re not perfect.
No, we’re not. We’re all riddled with remaining
sin and corruption until God brings us home to glory. We’re
all tempted by the world and the devil and all that is offered.
And we daily have to fight the battle against the flesh and
the devil and the world. But it’s our duty, dear Christians.
It’s our duty, brothers and sisters, in the church, in the family
of God, to give each other our gifts and graces. We’re not able
to say, well, too bad. It’s their own fault. They shouldn’t
have been listening to the temptations of Satan. They shouldn’t have
been listening to the voices of this world. They should have
gotten their own flesh, their own remnant sin in check. It’s
their own fault they’re in this mess and just dust off the hands
and walk away. No, it’s our Christian duty,
Paul says, to bear burdens with one another. It’s our duty to
restore others. back to a place of wholeness. It’s our duty to mend and to
patch up the church when it gets broken up by sin. The call here
is simply this, it’s to be gentle like Jesus. The writer of Isaiah,
the prophet Isaiah says of Jesus, a bruised reed, he will not break. Jesus was gentle. Jesus was lowly. Yes, he was firm and he had a
razor sharp idea of what was holiness and what was not. But
he looked on people with compassion. He saw that they were harassed
and helpless. He saw that people were lost
sheep without a shepherd. And he tells of examples of others
who were Jesus-like to others. Remember the story of the Good
Samaritan with the Pharisees and all said, who’s my neighbor?
And he tells about the priest or the man who was on the road
from Jericho and he fell among robbers and the robbers beat
him up. They took his stuff, left him for dead. And the priest
went by and said, well, too busy. The Levite went by and said,
got things to do. And then the Samaritan, and you
remember they don’t like Samaritans. When Assyria invaded Israel and
carried off all the Northern tribes and repatriated with the
land, these people who repatriated their part of the promised land,
their tribal inheritance were called the Samaritans. So you
think they liked the Samaritans? No. And so when you hear the
story of the good Samaritan in their minds, it’s irony. It’s
an oxymoron. It can’t be. There’s no such
thing as a good Samaritan. Well, it says of the Samaritan,
he saw the man and he had compassion on him. This was a man that fell
among robbers and he took care of them. Or how about the prodigal
son’s father? He saw his son afar off. No doubt
he saw his rags and he saw his sores and he saw his son burn
and he saw the the badges of a sinful lifestyle, and he still
ran. He still embraced, he still kissed,
and he still received him back into his home. And Jesus says,
this is how we’re to treat one another in the church. We’re
to restore, we’re to gently restore the sinners. Now, I know that
you know how serious sin is. I know that you know that sin
is cosmic treason against the holy God, against the righteous
king of the universe. I know that you know that every
sin must be punished by God. And I know that you are good
thinkers. You think in a black and white way, this is right,
this is wrong. There’s no such thing as a gray area. Yes, there
are times for wisdom, but right is right and wrong is wrong.
I know that you know how dangerous sin is. You fooled with it in
your own life. You’ve not taken it as seriously
as you should at times. And I know that, you know, how
dangerous it is. And I also know that, you know,
how quickly and easily we can be duped and we can be lured
and we can be enticed and we can embrace and sin can be the
center of the life of our party. And we can look as a Christian,
as if we have no faith, no obedience, no duty toward God at all. And I know that, you know, when
you read the story of David, who sinned against God by taking
Bathsheba and having her husband Uriah killed in battle. And as he’s living some years
on and thinks he’s getting by with it, Nathan, the prophet
comes to him and tells him that story about the two men that
lived in the same town. And they, you know, one had a
lamb and the other took it. cooked it for supper or something
like that. And Nathan says, what do you think ought to be done?
And David says, that man ought to pay. And then Nathan turns
to him and says, you are the man. That’s you. That’s what
you did with Bathsheba to Uriah. It’s what you’ve done as king
over Israel. And I know that you know that we can be a lot
like David. You should pay for your sins and you should pay
for your sins. But I get a free pass, right?
That’s how we think. That’s our own little foolish
judicial system that we think of in our minds and hearts. And
I know that you, as well as I, we hold others to a standard
that we do not hold ourselves to. And so very quickly, we can
see the speck in another’s eye, but we fail to see the log in
our own eye. And that’s where Paul here in Galatians 6 says,
be careful. Be careful lest you yourself
fall into temptation. Have you ever thought about this?
It’s really ironic. We become like the people we
hate. We become like the people we despise. I’ve seen it in myself
and I’ve seen it in others around me that I’ve been close to. We
say all the time, this person’s wrong, this person’s terrible,
this person’s bad. This person’s sinful. They don’t
do it the right way. They do it the wrong way. And
then lo and behold, in God’s ironic way of things, what do
we end up being and doing? Everything we said we hated about
the other person. Can I get an amen? That’s life,
isn’t it? Yes. And so we know that we hold
others to a standard, but not ourselves. And all these things
need to be washed out of our way of thinking. And the one
thing God wants us to remember here is God is a lost thing seeker. And he puts us in the church
family where other Christians, other believers will also seek
the lost. You know, sometimes in the church,
I shouldn’t say sometimes, it’s pretty often, the most difficult
people can be the ones you just, man, maybe they’ll just go away.
That’s a terrible thing, isn’t it? But isn’t that how we think?
Maybe they’ll just go bother another church. You know, you
think about there’s three marks of the Christian church, the
right preaching of the word, the right administration of the
sacraments, the right discipline or church order. Very few times
do pastors and elders get a letter from another church saying, oh,
so and so who left your churches now at our church. And I’ll be
honest, sometimes when somebody leaves the church, you’re like,
hey, wherever they go, they can have them. They caused us so
much trouble. And so maybe you’ll get a phone call. Hey, we got
the Smiths here. Oh, they’re wonderful. They will
just serve your church so well. We’re supposed to say, you know,
yeah, the Smiths, they won’t listen to their church
leaders. They do what’s right in their own eyes. And when you
try to tell them otherwise, I don’t know. And brother, if you want
to receive them, we don’t bless it, but have at it and good luck. And then sometimes you’ll get
a church, they’ll call you and say, why didn’t you warn us? Well,
you didn’t ask. And that’s the beauty of church
order. That’s the beauty of living life in the congregation. We’re
to hold each other in check. It’s God’s way of letting his
covenant people, his church family, be held accountable for living
a life of holiness and not allowing sin to grow rampant in our lives. And so the church is a community
of broken people, sinful people. Yes, hypocrites. We’re pretty
good at that. but it’s a group of people who seek to restore
one another gently when it’s necessary. Now, I know what I’ve
experienced in my life. And if you stop and think about
what you have experienced in your life, and then you look
around the congregation and you see people making this decision
or not doing this thing well, or doing that thing poorly, and
I’m speaking about big things like marriage, Perhaps family,
perhaps, you know, taking on high levels of debt or making
poor ethical choices or poor moral choices. You know, in your
mind and heart, the things you’ve struggled with. And so when you
see another brother or sister doing those things, do you say,
well, there goes a fool? Or do you say, but for the grace
of God, there go I. And so with compassion, Like
Jesus, the high priest who can sympathize with us because he’s
been tempted and tried in every way yet without sin, we’re the
opposite. We’ve been tempted and tried
in every way and yet with sin. But do we look in compassion
and say, you know, I got the same scars on my ankle from that
bear trap. I’ve got the same lower back
pain from falling in that pit. I’ve got the same rope burns
from being ensnared by that fowler’s net. I’ve got the same lump on
the back of my head because somebody took a swing at me and landed
it right there in the back of the noggin. Do we think that
way? And do we think compassionate
about others and think about how hard it is to live in this
life with the temptations of the world and the offerings of
Satan and even our own remnant sin that that just makes us sometimes
plain stupid? lost and wandering sheep, following
a heart right off the edge of a cliff. Do we as a congregation
look at one another and say, that’s me. Been there, done it,
got the T-shirt, I’m gonna go help out. And isn’t it wonderful
when someone says, you know, I’ve been there. I’ve suffered
depression. I’ve been in debt. I’ve lost
my temper. And just go through the list
of things and isn’t it wonderful when we encourage one another
and say, been there, done it, got the T-shirt. Let me help
you. Let me rescue you. Let me redeem
you. Let me serve you as the Lord
has also served me. You know, very often in the church,
we write people off. Well, there goes a fool. Wouldn’t
do it. Couldn’t do it. We’re lying,
aren’t we? Been there, done it, got the
t-shirt. But we write people off and then we boast. Well,
I’m such a spiritual person. I would never fall into Satan’s
trap. Remember how well that went for Peter? Jesus, everybody
else, the other 11 may deny you, but not me. And then cockle doodle
doo, right? Three times. And Peter wept because
he did what he thought was never possible. Brothers and sisters,
we should bear one another’s burdens. We should seek to restore
one another to wholeness and to soundness. And when the church
needs patching up, God has given us the tools within to seek and
to rescue the brother or sister who’s fallen into sin. Now, let
me encourage you one last way. And this is a good encouragement
for children or young people. This is a good encouragement
for us who are old in the faith or middle-aged in the faith,
whatever. It’s a mercy when mom or dad or elder or fellow believer
comes to you and says, what are you doing? What are you thinking? You know, we live in a culture
that says, don’t get caught. We live in a culture that says,
mind your own business. We live in a culture that says,
don’t judge. And yet God is saying, save one
another from the cliff’s edge, save one another from spiritual
destruction, save one another from danger and hardship. And
so if you’re a child who has a parent, who’s been tough on
you, if you’re maybe a Christian and the church has been hard
on you, perhaps gently restoring you, but with tough love. Thank
God for that mercy. And let me give you one last
public service announcement from the elders. If we ever come to
you, and we rarely do, we’re really slow to do this, but when
we do, it means we’ve thought and prayed about it a lot. Don’t
be a meathead and just walk away from the church. That’s what
happens nine out of 10 times. People just run away. But it’s
a mercy from God to have someone come and say, don’t step in that
street. There’s a loaded down greyhound
coming and it’s going to flatten you. And it’s not just that you’ll
be dead physically, you’ll be dead spiritually. And God has
built in a mechanism in the church for those who are spiritual.
those who are godly, those who are walking in the spirit to
rescue the weak and to restore them. And you know what David
says at the end of Psalm 51, after he confesses his sin to
God for sinning against Uriah and Bathsheba and all Israel,
there’s a couple of stanzas, cleanse me, Lord, forgive me,
Lord, wash me, Lord. The very last stanza is this,
then I’ll teach transgressors the way. Basically, he says,
I’m gonna stand up in the church and say, don’t do it the wrong
way like I did. That’s King David. That’s humility. That’s grace. And isn’t that
a full circle in the life and the teaching and the ministry
of the church? We get to help each other out even when we’ve
blown it. And what a great God it is who
we serve. Let’s do pray together. Lord,
as we think on your goodness and kindness in Christ, may we
extend it one to another. As each of us have received your
grace, may we serve one another in that very way so that we restore
those who’ve fallen, those who are entrapped, those who are
caught, and we put them back on their feet, mending their
bones and their brokenness so they can serve in much the same
way. Now hear us, help us, and bless us as we make our prayer
in the name of Christ, amen.