Let us not be desirous of vain
glory, provoking one another, envying one another. Brethren,
if any man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore
such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou
also be tempted. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we just thank you today
for your glorious mercy and grace that we have through the Lord
Jesus Christ. We thank you, Father, for this
time of worship that we have to come together as your people.
We thank you for the Holy Spirit who has promised where two or
three are gathered that he will be in the midst with us. So we ask Lord today that as
you are promised in the midst of us, that you will be our teacher,
that you will be our guide, our director, that you will move
our hearts and our mouths and our minds in the directions that
you would have them to go, to know and to understand the things
that you would have us to understand, to preach the things you would
have us to preach, to sing the things you would have us to sing,
as we have already seen the Spirit move and work in the song service. and how He moved in the verses
of Scripture that even coincide with the things that we'll be
talking about here in these verses as you direct in God. We know
that the Spirit has wrote all these things in God's Word. He's
the author, and that by that Spirit, we now come to understand
and learn, for they are from Him. And Lord, we just ask that
You be with us now, pleasing in this worship that it might
be in spirit and in truth. Father, you are glorious in your
salvation. Christ Jesus, victorious and
successful in the work of redemption as our substitute Lord. We thank
you so much for the salvation that we have in and through Him
and the forgiveness that we have of our sins. The reconciliation
to a holy God Father, we just thank you so much that you have
granted unto us life, and life more abundantly, the Lord Jesus
Christ. So Lord, we just pray now that you would help us in
this time. Help me to preach these words, and I pray that
you'd help us to understand it. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Looking today at Galatians 5,
25 and 26, verse 1 of chapter 6, As I mentioned here before, brethren,
it's often, it's often, what's the word that I'm looking for?
Unfortunate, I guess, is the best word I can think, but maybe
not the correct word. It's unfortunate that we have
these chapter verse breaks in the scriptures. The translators
or whoever it was that originally started putting chapter and verse
breaks in and everything, I think they got it wrong here in these
passages because there really isn't a break between verse 26
and verse 1. And as I've mentioned to you
on many occasions, these are letters that are written to churches.
And these letters have subject matters. Paul's writing, remember,
to the Galatian church because the Galatian church has fallen
suddenly into some error because of some Judaizers, some legalists
that has come down from Jerusalem or from somewhere else, but originally
it started in Jerusalem. They've come and they have incited
this way of thinking, this train of
thought, this doctrinal misunderstanding to these Galatians who had been
taught the gospel by Paul and had come in and subverted and
undermined the teaching that Paul had brought to them, which
by the way came directly from Jesus Christ, has come in and
they have subverted the gospel by adding to it law keeping. Instead of salvation and perseverance
by grace alone, they have come in and they have said we need
to keep the law in order to be saved and to stay saved. If you do not keep the law, you
cannot be saved and you lose that salvation that you've already
had. You cannot keep a right fellowship. God cannot fellowship
with you. God cannot have relationship
with you. if you continue in breaking the
law. So you've got to pick up your
law keeping. You've got to get better at that. Now, I'm, of
course, paraphrasing what Paul said, but I think that if you
go back and read again chapters 1, 2, and 3 especially, you'll
see Paul is dealing with these matters. This is what is coming
in. Take that back to Acts chapter,
what was it, 13 or 15? where he went to Jerusalem, him
and Barnabas went and discussed this with the council of Jerusalem. The church of Jerusalem, I should
say. So, we have this letter that Paul is writing about this
trespass, this sin, that has come into this Galatian church,
or these Galatian churches. As we see in chapter one, it's
churches, plural, there was multiple churches within the region of
Galatia. Paul is writing this letter to
correct them, to remind them of the gospel, to correct them
of the error, to warn them of the error that they are holding
to. Now, he's doing this in love. He loves these Galatian people.
Remember, he talked about that in chapter 1, that he loved them
and they had a love for him. Remember, he said that, you know,
that he would have done anything for them, they would have done
anything for him. So they have this love together for each other. So in love, Paul is writing this
letter, and by the way, more importantly, I should say, inspired
by the Holy Spirit to write this letter to the Galatian church
in love, correcting them, bringing them back into right thinking,
bringing them back from law into grace. If you remember, Paul
said that anybody who desires to be under the law, anybody
who believes that their righteousness can come from the law, has fallen
from grace. And if you remember when we were
talking about that, we're not talking about lose your salvation.
To fall from grace, as Paul was talking to the Galatians about,
is to fall from believing that salvation is by grace, and looking
to salvation by your own self-righteous merits, by your own works, by
your law keeping. And so Paul says, if you think
that you can make a righteousness or an acceptance before God by
the law, then you have fallen from the faith that looks to
grace alone, and you're looking to another gospel. You're looking
at another Jesus, another way of salvation, which is no way
of salvation, which is no gospel, which is not Jesus of the Bible. And so Paul is writing this letter
for them, for this purpose. And so when we come to places
like this and we have these breaks, especially at this point, we
see Paul in chapter five, he's gone through here, and we just
talked about it last week, where he's talking about this struggle
that's within the child of grace, that the flesh lusts against
the spirit, the spirit against the flesh, where we cannot do
the things that we would. There is this battle here. So
what's He telling them? What do we rely on? What do we
look to? What is it that we are to do
that we should walk in the Spirit? As our verse says here in 25,
to live in the Spirit is also to walk in the Spirit. What is
walking in the Spirit that we've seen in all these chapters that
we've seen? We've seen this word. We've seen
this phrase used in different ways. What is walking in the
Spirit? It's walking by faith. It's looking
at Jesus as our Righteousness. It's looking to Christ as our
salvation. It's looking to the substitute's
obedience as our law keeper. He kept the law for me. My law
keeping doesn't do anything for me and God. You understand that? I hope everyone's beginning to
get that through all the courses that we've been looking at here,
passages of scripture, is that anything you do of law keeping
is not what makes you accepted before God, and it is not what
keeps you in relation and fellowship with God. Everything that does
that was Jesus Christ. He is the one who kept the law
in your place. Therefore, when God looks at
you, He doesn't look at your law-keeping activity. He looks
at Christ that did it for you. That's the activity that God
is looking at. Whenever God is looking in fellowship with His
people, He is not looking at how well we are reciprocating
that fellowship and relationship. He is looking at his everlasting
love for us that he set upon us before the foundation of the
world, before the boys had done anything good or bad, that the
purpose of election might stand. He said that the elder will serve
the younger, that he loved Jacob and that he hated Esau. God hates the work of the flesh.
God hates the man of the flesh. God has no fellowship with the
man of the flesh, and that is who we are in Adam. But the child
of grace, that which is born from above, that lives and resides
within this fleshly vessel, that is what God loves from everlasting. And that is who God looks at
from everlasting. And Jesus Christ, who is our
life, our eternal life. He is the one that we were united
to before the foundation of the world. He is eternal life. He has given unto us His life. And His life is perfect. His
life is spotless. His life is sinless. That's what
resides in us. That inner man cannot sin. That seed that remains in us
cannot sin. Paul said, In my inner man, I
serve the law of God. Why? Because that inner man that
is in me is nothing more than the life of Jesus Christ. And
Jesus Christ obeyed the law perfect. He has given to me that same
eternal life that is perfect and holy and righteous. Matter
of fact, the Bible says that that new creation that is in
us is created in holiness and true righteousness. So that's what's in us. And Paul
is saying, listen, You guys are thinking that this outward flesh
is producing things that is pleasing to God. I once thought that myself. I was the chief of doing it on
my own. I was the chief of religious
works. I was the chief of religious
zeal. I was the chief of law keeping.
There was none that even compared to me in keeping the law. But he said, what I thought was
game for me, I now count as dumb. Do you count your law keeping
as done? Or do you fancy it? Do you think it's something to
be boastful about? Now every one of us here knows
we've all been religious in our own rights, we've all had our
own religious zeals, and think we've been something before God
because of all of our religious work that we're doing. So I know everybody can relate
to that. But let me ask, how many churches have you ever attended
where it's all about the outward appearance? It's all about how
much you perform. And everybody is examining each
other, looking to see who's doing what and who's not doing what.
How everybody is always judging each other on spiritual fruits
and trying to tell them, you need to be doing more. Or look
at me, I'm doing way more than anybody else. Or you, you ought
to be doing more because you're not doing anything. Or not enough. As if we can control the fruit
of the Spirit. Now we read last week in verse
22 that the works of God are called fruit, right? It's fruit. It's not something that we manufacture. It's not fleshly works. It's
fruit of who? The Spirit. It's His fruit. It's produced by His life. We
talked about the tree and the fruit last week, right? It's
the Spirit's fruit. It comes from the Spirit's life.
Therefore, the flesh cannot manifest spiritual things because the
flesh is just flesh and cannot please God. Therefore, the fruits
of the Spirit are spiritually worked. They are things that
are brought up and brought to manifest by the Spirit Himself. So to tell somebody you need
to get after that, start doing that, you need to be more loving. You need to be more meekful,
meekness. You need to be more meek. That's
the word I'm looking for. You need to be more long-suffering,
more gentle. You need to have more faith. Okay, well let me just wind it
up here, okay? Let me just get it out of my pocket.
Brethren, it's the fruit of the Spirit. If the Spirit doesn't
produce it, we can't. And if the Spirit produces it,
guess what? That Spirit is going to overcome
the flesh and manifest it. Right? It's going to overcome
the flesh and manifest itself in our attitude, in our mind
and how we desire. Paul said, in my mind. Where
is it that he served the law of God? In his mind. In his heart. He served the law of God in his
mind and in his heart. Where did he serve the law of
sin? In his flesh. There's the split. There's the
two men. There's Adam 1, Adam 2. There's Mike Smith and the Spirit
of God. Right there. Mike Smith can produce
nothing. The Spirit of God is the only
thing that can produce anything. So Paul says, if we live in the
Spirit, that's what's in us. If we live in the Spirit, Paul
says, I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. That's two opposite things, right?
I've been crucified. What happens when you get crucified?
You die. I have been crucified with Christ,
nevertheless I live. Yet it's not I that lives, but
Christ. And Christ lives in me. And the
life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the, what? By the good
deeds that I do? By the works that I accomplish? By the law that I keep? By the
religious efforts that I make? No, what does he say? And the
life that I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God. I live by the faith of the Son
of God. How do we live? By the faith of the Son of God.
How do I live before God that is pleasing and righteous and
acceptable? We talked about Romans chapter 1 last week. How do I
present my body, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto Him?
How do we do it? We do it through His life. How
do I present myself to God, holy and acceptable? Through Jesus
Christ. He is my representative. He is
my intermediate. He is the one who is interceding
for me. He is that living sacrifice that
ever lives to intercede for us. How do I present myself to God
through Him? How do I live before God that's
acceptable through Jesus Christ? Does that mean Jesus Christ is
in me making my flesh do all these things? Well, He's going
to be in me and cause me to love, and I'm going to love you, and
it's going to show. He's going to be inside of me, and He's
going to cause me to be meek in some instances. And so whenever
I'm meek, it's going to be good for you. I'm not going to jump
all over you and harm you. Long-suffering, I'm going to
be patient. But brethren, those are the works of the Spirit and
those things cannot be worked upon, it cannot be built up,
it cannot be fueled, it cannot be manufactured at any point
that we want to just bring it out. It only comes as He gives
it to us. And so many people teach that
these are conditions that we must keep, therefore they must
be things that by our will we can pull out of our hat anytime
we want. And that's not the case. The
Bible says that Jesus is the one who gives the measure of
faith. Do you think that you can give
yourself more faith than what Jesus is measuring out? What
if He, in His providence, in His sovereign purpose, determines
today, someday, that you guys, everyone in here that has faith
in Christ Jesus, only has 10% faith today? Do you think you're
going to be able to build it up by reading your Bible more?
By praying more? Now, I'm not saying quit reading
your Bible and praying. Those are things that the Bible
admonishes us and tells us that we ought to do. Matter of fact,
serving the law of God in our mind and having those new desires
that's in our heart, walking in His statutes, that God has
put that new heart in and He's causing us to walk in those statutes,
is going to want to read God's Word. He's going to want to pray
to the Lord. He's going to want to fellowship
with God's people, he's going to want to be around those things,
you know, serve God's people. But brethren, those are not things
that we can build on. I often hear, especially among
the Reformed people, that we can appropriate the means of
grace. If we just appropriate the means
of grace, then we are going to grow in faith. And so, brethren,
we cannot grow in something that we do not have control over.
We cannot grow in the fruit of the Spirit whenever it is the
Spirit's fruit. It comes from His life. And so
it says here, if we live in the Spirit, that's a statement of
fact. It isn't saying if you by your efforts are living in
the Spirit, then walk in the Spirit. He's
not saying that. He says if we live in the Spirit,
that's a statement of fact. If we are of those who have been
born from above, living in the Spirit, which living in the Spirit
is not living by the outward works, but by living in the internal
works of Christ Jesus in us. If we live in the Spirit, how
do we live? To me, I'm crucified, but Christ
never lets me live. Yet not I, but Christ lives within
me. And while I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God.
who gave himself for me. I live by his faith. How do I
live? By inwardly looking unto Jesus
as my righteousness, as my obedience, as my acceptance, as my perseverance. He is the one preserving me until
the end. He is my Abba Father. He is my
substitute. He is my surety. He is my go-between. There's only one A mediator between
God and man, and that is the man Jesus Christ. If there is
a fellowship, if there is a relationship with God, it is only through
Jesus Christ. And that doesn't mean I'm getting
to God, and so I have to ask Jesus if I can come to Him, and
then I get to come to Him. No, no, no, no, that's not how
it works. I go to Christ, and Christ goes to God on my behalf. God comes to me as the elect
child of grace. God comes to me through the man
Jesus Christ. If there is any relationship,
any fellowship, anything, it is through the Lord Jesus Christ. Brethren, this was typified in
the Old Testament in the tabernacle. And whenever God's glory came
down inside of that tabernacle and dwelt, who could go inside
that thing? Nobody. When God's glory came
down, whenever those offerings were made, nobody could go in
there except one person, and that was the Great High Priest. And that was even after he had
been cleansed, which that cleansing didn't actually cleanse him of
sin, but it was typified. Christ, who is perfect and holy
and righteous, our Great High Priest, was the only one who
could enter in to the court of heaven. before the throne of
God in the offering place of sacrifice and he offered himself
on our behalf. He's the only one that can get
in there, brethren. That was typified in the Old
Testament. And now that veil has went down through his flesh. Through Christ's flesh, the veil
has been torn in two, and we can enter in into direct relationship
with God, but it is through the Lord Jesus Christ. We have relationship
with God. So if we live in the Spirit,
it is through the Lord Jesus Christ. So he says, if we live
in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Now this is why
it's unfortunate that this chapter break is here. is because Paul
is gearing us up because what has been talked about this whole
entire time, what's he doing again? He's writing a letter
of correction to people who have come under a sudden attack of
doctrine and even though they at first began to believe the
truth, they are being swayed away from that truth by someone
who's coming in and subverting the gospel. And so what's the
trespass? We're fixing to talk about If
a man be overtaken in a fault, what's being talked about here?
What's the fault that this whole letter has been about? It's looking
at self-righteousness, looking to yourself, looking at your
own ability, looking at outward works for acceptance and keeping
with God. That's what the fault is that
is the context of this letter. And so Paul isn't just going
from talking to them about this, and then all of a sudden you
say, okay, now I'm just gonna talk about church in general
and how we ought to treat one another. No, the treating one
another that we're fixing to read in verse one has all implications
that goes back to chapters one through five. Paul is dealing
with the fault of being overtaken by legalism when the gospel is
grace. So he says here, if we live in
the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. If we live in
the Spirit, looking unto Jesus, if we live by that life that's
in us, by the fruit of the Spirit, if we live that way, by the faith
of Jesus Christ, then let us walk the same way. Let us walk
in faith, trusting what Christ is doing. Trusting what Christ
has done. Did Christ save me? I trust that
He did. Was Christ's righteousness good
enough? I trust that it is. God raised me from the dead.
Was my justification secure? God's Word says it was, and He
raised Christ from the dead for my justification. is my obedience,
full and fulfilled, perfect. He said it was for me. He lived
that perfect life and He is the end of law to those who believe. Christ is the end of the law
to us who believe. What does that mean? To all those
whom God has given faith to, they were ones that Christ obeyed
for. Therefore, they are not under law. They're under grace.
The law has been fulfilled for them. They did everything the
law required. All the just requirements of
the law they met in Christ Jesus. Therefore, there's nothing else
to keep. They kept it all because Christ did. So he says in verse 26, let us
not be desirous of vainglory. If we live by the Spirit, walking
in the Spirit, that means we're walking in faith looking to Christ
for our righteousness before God. Then that's just the opposite
of what he says in verse 6, walking in vainglory. If we walk in faith,
we're not going to walk in self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is the same
as vainglory. What is the glory of God? Is
it not His righteousness? What is the glory of God? Is
it not Christ Himself? And if Christ is the glory of
God, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, then who
are we to think that we could perform any glory before God?
It's going to be vain glory. Everybody know what the word
vain means? something in vain, it means you're
doing it for no reason. If we try to live a law-keeping,
perfect life for acceptance and keeping before God, we're doing
it for no reason because God is not going to even look at
that. For the child of grace, He looks for Christ alone. He's
not going to look at that. So He says here, let us not be
desirous of vain glory. Let's not look to our own selves.
Let's not look to our law-keeping. And listen, let's not provoke
each other to do that. That's what I was saying a while
ago. In religious gatherings that
we've all been attending before, the Lord brought us out of those
churches and brought us into truth. What has happened in those
churches? Everyone's looking at each other.
You need to be doing that. Oh, you need to be doing that.
Well, they ain't doing this. They're provoking one another
of law keeping. We ought to be provoking one
another unto love. The Bible says we ought to provoke
one another unto love among the brethren, by the way, which is
a spiritual fruit. We ought to be provoking one
another to faith in Christ Jesus, which, by the way, is also a
product of the Spirit of God, a fruit of the Spirit, right? Those are the things that come
out of the child of grace, not legalism. Not pointing to the
flesh and what it needs to get after and do, but pointing to
the inward man and exhorting the inward man to continue in
faith in Christ Jesus. And it says, do not be desirous
of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another. How often have we done that?
What does that mean, envying one another? Well, I tell you
what, I've been to a lot of Bible conferences. I've been to a lot
of churches where there is a preacher that has stood up there and preached.
And I thought to myself, well, I tell you what, I wish I could
preach like that. Or I've seen some some brother
or some sister who, man, they are just very on fire for the
Lord, and they're just out there serving away and doing all this
stuff. And I think to myself, man, I
wish I was like that. I'm envious of what the Spirit
is doing in them and not content in what the Spirit is doing in
me. That's kind of a hard thing for me to take, right? It's a hard thing. Are we content
in what the Spirit is doing in us? Are we content in the road
that God is taking us down in His eternal purpose, that He
has set out that path? The Bible says that He has set
our habitation. He has confined us to our habitation. He is controlling every event
that we are going to encounter. He is working everything after
the counsel of His own will. He is working all things for
my good and for His glory. And in doing so, as He takes
us down this road in the ups and the downs and the curves
and the twists and the turns, the hardships, the joys, the
sorrows, all the things that God takes us through, Until the
end, are we content with the path that He's chosen for us?
Or are we envious of others? Are we envious that others, God
is taking down a different road. God is taking them down a different
way. Well, brethren, I think if you look at somebody and you
think, man, they're always joyous, they're always on the upside,
everything's always good for them. Just wait a little while.
Just wait a little while. You're going to see, they're
going to experience the same thing as you do. There's going to be
some low points. There's going to be some times of failings.
There's going to be times of afflictions. There's going to
be times that they're going to experience, because listen, Solomon
said it best, there's nothing new under the sun. We're all experiencing the same
things, just at different times, different ways, as the Lord takes
us through. So let's not, let's not in vain
glory, look to ourselves. Let's not envy one another. Let's
not provoke each other to try to keep their keep the law and
to do the things that would make a righteousness for ourselves.
But look what he says now in verse 6. And I want us to pay
close attention because verse 25 and verse 26 sets up this
first verse. And that's why I believe this
should have just not even been a page break, chapter break.
Where the spiritual life shows itself in spiritual actions that
God performs in us. Like I said, love and meekness,
compassion, those things. There are two points, I think,
that the Holy Spirit makes in our text today that will kill
the vain glory that Paul is talking about in verse 26. Two things
that I think we will find here. Look what it says, it says, Brethren,
if any man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, Restore
such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou
also be tempted." Now, the first thing that I would like to point
out here is that Paul appeals to them as brethren. In light of all this that's been
going on in Galatia, and I would say that what they were believing
is not the gospel. They weren't believing the gospel.
They had believed the gospel, but their minds were being, or
their thoughts were being subverted by something else. Paul did not
cease to call them brethren. He has held that through the
whole entire letter. He calls them brethren. This is only found, this word
is only used in reference to God's people. The outside is
not called brethren. The goats are not called brethren.
The reprobate is not brethren. The Bible is not written to anyone
except the brethren. from cover to cover. I know we've
been told that the Bible is for everybody and the Gideons, they
go around spreading out the Bible all over the place and hope that
somebody would pick it up and find it and change their mind
and follow after Jesus. I'm not against handing out Bibles
by any stretch of the means. But what I'm saying is this,
is that this book is not written for the reprobate. The reprobate
is never going to get what this Bible says. As a matter of fact,
the child of grace, until he is converted of God and given
understanding, is not going to even understand this. Until he
is made spiritual and he is brought forth and given knowledge by
God, he is not going to be able to understand the things of the
Spirit of God. We have to be born from above
and made spiritual to know spiritual things. And then even at that,
as spiritual things, we have to have a teacher. And the Holy
Spirit is that teacher. And that teacher teaches us in
his purpose and in his time. And whenever he reveals it, then
it will be revealed. Unless he's revealed it, it will
not be revealed. We might have a carnal knowledge
of it, but we don't have a spiritual understanding and wisdom in it.
Okay? So Paul says, Brethren. What about these brethren? What
about these people that aren't believing the gospel? Well, that
ain't the gospel. Well, they can't be brothers. Well, I think that whenever they're
confronted, and corrected, and reproved, and by Scripture, and
in loving kindness and meekness, if they continue in that unbelief,
then yeah, there comes a time where we might have to quit calling
them brothers. There may come a time whenever the division
is coming in the church where we might have to put them out
of the church because of their difference of doctrine. But brethren,
it shouldn't be like we find so often on Facebook, you believe
different than me, unliked. Oh, you don't agree with me or
my theologians? Blackball that guy, tell everybody
not to listen to him. Wait a minute, you're saying
something I've never heard that. I don't quite understand it,
but it's not what I find in the creeds and the confessions. That
guy's a heretic, better not listen to him. We're so quick to cut people
off. We're so quick to call people
heretics. We're so quick to say you're
not a brother in Christ. But here, these people have completely
subverted the gospel by believing in law and not in grace. that Paul had to write a letter
to them, and he even called them, O foolish Galatians! Who have
bewitched? They had been, not only were
they foolish, but they had been bewitched. He had to send correction to
them. And I'm sure that whenever he
sent this letter, they didn't just read this letter and say,
oops, messed up, I better change my course and start again. And
some of them may, the Lord may have given them repentance of
that, and they turned from that. But brethren, I'm sure that there
was, and I know that, and I think I can back that up by scripture,
because we are in chapter six, verse one and two. The reason
why Paul give this admonition in one and two is because he
is writing this letter and this letter will be read to the church
and then there's going to be time after that. There's going
to be discussion after that, right? Remember, these are letters
that was written to a church to be read in the churches. The
pastors got up and read this letter. This was from the Apostle
Paul. He has sent us a letter, brethren. Let us read this thing
and see what he has to say to us. And then he starts reading
this and it isn't long into the letter that they find that Paul
is coming with a scorching, scorching condemnation of their veerance
from the Gospel. But also, whenever the pastor
got done reading this, at the very end, Brethren, the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. That's the
end of the letter, Brethren. What should we do about this?
Let's talk about this. What is Paul saying? How do we
need to handle this? Remember, there was discussion,
there was time after this. And listen, brethren, moving
forward into other churches who will always reciprocate the faith. There's nothing new under the
sun that are going to experience the same conditions as time goes
on. We experience them in our church.
We've experienced them in our church. We've had this exact
conversation within our church with members before. And just
like with the Galatians, we've had members who've come in whose
minds were subverted by another gospel to believe in legalism,
but praise the Lord that God granted them repentance, and
they came back and seen that that was in error, and repented
of those things, and apologized for those things, and presented
themselves to the church as, hey, I don't believe that anymore. We've experienced that here within
our own church. I've seen other churches that
have gone through the same thing. It's going to happen. So why
does Paul write this? Brethren. Because we're all in
the same boat. We're all the people of God.
And we're going to experience these things. And we're all going
to be susceptible to these things. And so he's playing upon our
love for each other. Listen, we are brethren. We are
children of God. We are brothers and sisters in
Christ Jesus. We have a connection of life
that nobody else has. We have eternal life. We have
the life of Christ in us, and it binds us together. We are
one body in Christ Jesus. Whenever we gather here today,
we are one body. We're not little parts just kind
of thrown in here. You know, we like to watch war
movies. If you've ever seen war movies,
and especially some of the newer modern war movies and everything,
You know, you see them out there on the battlefield. They're out
there shooting and doing all the stuff that we do in war and
everything. And then a lot of times the camera
will pan back and show you the aftermath of the battle. And you just see bodies and parts
and everything all over. People gathering them all up
in piles and all that kind of stuff. Listen, this is not what
this is. Whenever we talk about a body,
we're talking about a living body. We are talking about a
connected body. We are talking about a body that
is whole, that is one, that is together. Each member giving
part to the whole. We are brethren. We are a family. Paul says brethren. Whenever
we come to those who are erring in the faith, who are beginning
to look away from Jesus as their only righteousness and begin
to believe something in error in the gospel. Brethren, we are
brethren. We should be loving them and
concerned for them. But most of the time, we either
want to cut them off or we want to be indifferent to say, well,
they're on their own. We need to just let them be.
Hopefully they'll come back. No. We love each other. Listen, if my body part is having
a problem, am I going to just ignore it? No, I'm going to give
care to it. I'm going to look at it. I'm
going to try to do anything I can to make sure that it's fixed. But more importantly, and this
is where some of us have a downfall, we go to the doctor. We go to
the physician to get it fixed. But if we are a body, we need
to go to our physician, Christ Jesus. If we are a body, we need
to look to the head who makes the decisions. We need to go
to the head that feels and understands the hurt of all the rest of the
body. Remember Christ said, you know, he was just like us and
that he was tempted in all points and that he himself has felt
what it means to be tempted in every way. Not that he could
have been sinful in any way. Not that that temptation could
have overcome him. It couldn't because he was perfect.
He was impeccable. But he did experience that temptation.
So he knows what comes at us. He knows the things that we have
and he can sympathize with that as our great high priest. And since the head has knowledge
of the hurts, since the head has knowledge of the failures
that can happen, the temptations that may come, The head has knowledge
of that. The head feels that. The head
knows that. And then the head makes decisions
on what should be done, right? We as a body of Christ should
be looking to Christ, who is our head, for whenever there
is error, whenever there is something in the body that is not right,
look for the answer to the head. But what often do we do? Oh, my finger hurts. Cut it off. The head says, well, you idiot,
we probably could have done something to save that. Brethren. We're brethren. Paul is appealing to our brotherly
love, to the claims that an erring fellow Christian should have
our sympathy. We should sympathize with them
because they are our brothers and sisters in Christ. He is
appealing to our meekness and our forbearance which the Spirit
of grace gives us. He is appealing to our connection
to Christ in compassion and admonition that the Lord has given us to
love our brethren and as we see here, bear one another's burdens. So, I think the first point that
the Spirit gives us in this passage To kill vain glory in verse 26
is to remember, to contemplate, to think, to consider that we're
all brethren. We're joint heirs with Christ
Jesus. I'm your brother. You're my sister. You're my brother. If we think of those terms, we're
not going to be thinking of ourselves. The Bible tells us that we ought
to think of others more highly than ourselves, right? Well,
if we're a child of grace and we're looking and one of the
fruit of the Spirit is long-suffering, one of the fruit of the Spirit
is gentleness and goodness, temperance, that's self-control. We're not
going to be rash and jump to some conclusion right away and
cut that brother off. Well, we see that in Facebook
all the time. Now again, we can't produce this
fruit on our own. The Spirit produces that fruit
in us. So we must pray and ask, Lord, give us this fruit. Give
us this stuff that we need to be what you want us to be to
each other. If I'm going to be long-suffering
to Brother Kevin here, It's going to take the grace of God to give
me meekness and temperance and things. Because we're going to,
at some point eventually, we're probably going to have odds with
each other. And the flesh is always going to want to say,
I'm right, you're wrong. And if I'm right and you're wrong
and you don't turn your mind and change and come my way, then
I'm just not going to have nothing to do with you. That's what our
flesh wants to do. Matter of fact, the Bible even
told us there that the works of the flesh are what? One of the things that the works
of the flesh is hatred, variance, wrath, strife, heresies, that's
divisions, end beings, hey, murders, revelings, Those are the things
that can happen in the flesh. So it says, Brethren, now, let's
go on. If any man be overtaken in a
fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit
of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Now I want to talk about that. here in just a minute, but I
want to go to my second point. One of the things that I believe
the Spirit gives us here that combats the vain glory in verse
26 is that we are susceptible to the same thing as the brethren
who is overtaken in a fall. We are susceptible to the same
thing. We have the same qualities of
outward nature as they do. We have the sinful nature of
Adam and the propensity to fall in the same thing that they have
fallen in. And I know that's true because
it said, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Tempted to do what? To fall away. To do what? To be overtaken in
a fall. Now this word overtaken in a
fault, this isn't something that somebody contemplated on and
designed to, I'm going to do this. We have sins that we know
are sins. We know it's a sin against God,
but we say, I'm going to do it anyway. And in the back of our
mind, we think, I'm going to do it anyway. The Lord's forgiven
me of that sin. I'll just confess that sin, but
I'm going to do that. We do it. Now, I'm admitting
I do that. And I think if you're honest
with yourself, you've done that too. But this right here is something
that is a sin that is an overwhelming sin, something that is rushed
in. This is a sin that has come in like a flood, and out of just
the sheer surprise of it all, the person has indulged into
this sin, and has been overtaken by it. The Galatians were people
who believed the gospel, but all of a sudden these religious
men from Jerusalem, who they thought, hey, this is the center
of everything for us. This is where Christianity came
out of here. This is where the church started,
is right here. This is where the apostles, the
majority of the apostles still reside. This is the church that
has sent out the apostles and the people, and they've seen
other churches constituted together. This is the place, man. If anybody
knows the answers, it's these guys. And there was men who came
out from there, came down, and started preaching something contrary
to the gospel, and it overwhelmed this church, these churches.
That's exactly why Paul, whenever it happened in Antioch, him and
Barnabas straight away went and said, hey, we've got to get to
Jerusalem and nip this in the bud. We've got to get this fixed. They cannot keep letting men
come down. Suburbanists, they need to deal
with these men. They need to deal with this message.
And they need to quit letting this take place. We need to have
a, everybody needs to be on the same page here. Jews and Gentiles. Quit acting like we're separate
people. We're one in Christ Jesus. There is no Jew and Gentile anymore.
Quit acting like Jews among Jews and Gentiles among Gentiles. Oh, by the way, Peter, you hypocrite,
that's exactly what you did. And Paul had to call you out
on it. See, we all fall back into those
things, right? Paul did it. I mean, Peter did
it. He fell back into that legalism just a little bit. And these
Judaizers were doing that. If any man be overtaken in a
fall, this is somebody who has been overwhelmed by something
that's come in. They've been confused by it,
indulged in it, not completely maybe realizing it was sin, but
it's been sin. Those, that's why it says, ye
which are spiritual. They've been overtaken in a sin
because they have been looking at and understanding in the carnal. Because those who are spiritual
are, what does verse 25 say, living in the Spirit, walking
in the Spirit. Those who are the spiritual ones are the ones
who are looking to Christ in faith for righteousness. But
the ones who are looking to their works, the law, that these men
came down and subverted them with, does the Spirit lead you in that
thinking? No, it's the carnal man that
does. It's the carnal Spirit It's the carnal thoughts, the
carnal mind, the carnal flesh. That's the one who sees it. And
what do they do? They came down in a religious way. They came
down in a way that was mixing grace and law together. That
sounded good to these brethren. And these brethren who loved
the Lord, who loved the brethren of God, who loved the Word of
God, was confused about what they were hearing. And therefore,
when they heard this, it sounded religious. It sounded good. It sounded like it was some,
they're coming and saying, we need to be serving the Lord.
You need to be keeping this law so that you might show your love
for Christ Jesus. Is that not what we hear in modern
churches today? How do you show your love for
Christ Jesus? By serving and obeying his commands. What commands? We talked about it a few weeks
ago. We did a whole sermon on what it meant to serve Christ
and what obeying His commands means. It doesn't mean obeying
the law because we already know the Bible says that is impossible. What are the commands that He
is telling us to obey? Love God, love our brethren,
and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the law that we
are living under. That's the law. And by the way,
I don't want people to confuse us and think that we are neonomians
who believe that this is a new law. There was an old law that
we had to live by. Now there's a new law. Brethren,
while this may be a new testament in our experience, a new covenant
in our experience, a new law in our experience, brethren,
it's an old law. This law was in effect with Adam. This law and this covenant, this
testament, was all the way back to Adam. It's new in our experience
of it, but brethren, I know some people are probably hearing this
and looking and thinking, you're confusing me. You got the Old
Testament, you got the New Testament, right? We have cut that up in
our Bible. This was what happened before
Christ. This is what happened after Christ. This is before
the full revelation of the Gospel. This is after the full revelation
of the Gospel. But brethren, is the efficacy,
is the effectiveness, is the work of the Gospel any different
in the Old Testament than it is in the New? Was Abraham saved
any different than we are? No, what saved Abraham? The work
of Jesus Christ on his behalf. It wasn't Abraham's faith that
saved him. It was Christ on the cross and
his bloodshed that saved Abraham. That was Abraham's salvation.
Isn't that our salvation? Did everyone in the Old Testament
who was the elect child of grace, were they loved by Christ Jesus? Absolutely they was. The Bible
said that we have been loved with an everlasting love. Well,
where did that love come from? It came from an everlasting covenant. We also know it as the New Covenant.
The New Covenant was preached in the Old Testament. So yes,
the New Covenant was in the Old Testament. It has always been. It's new in our experience. It's
new in the fact that the old covenant was given first to show
forth not only our inability, but to also point us to Christ. But now the New Testament is
the way that now the people of God see in clarity, full clarity,
Jesus Christ and what he done. In the Old Testament they knew
Messiah was going to come and Messiah was going to be our righteousness.
We are going to believe in Messiah that is to come. He is our Savior. That's what Abraham believed.
That Messiah is our righteousness. But they didn't know all the
details of what was going to happen. They didn't know everything fully.
But brethren, they did know that righteousness came by the man
Jesus Christ. They knew that righteousness
was not of themselves. And so brethren, they who are
spiritual were the ones who was looking unto Jesus. The ones
who were looking away and being subverted by these Judaizers
were thinking in the carnal mind. So he said, ye which are spiritual. That isn't those of us who are
more holy than anybody else. None of us are holy. If that
was the case, Paul would have said, Consider yourselves, you
better consider yourselves, lest ye also be tempted. No, brethren, those who are spiritual
were no different than anybody else, so that ought to cut us
of any vain glory that we are anything before God in our flesh.
Because we, just like these carnal believers who were believing
and starting to be drawn away by another gospel, we too can
also be in their same shoes. As a matter of fact, the Bible
says, I can't remember now off the top of my head where it's
at, I think it's in Corinthians somewhere, the Bible says that
we ought to give heed how we stand lest we fall. We need to pay attention to how
we're standing. Are we standing by our own, you
know, hey, I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps. I've gotten
myself to where I'm here. I'm spiritual because I put in
the work. I often hear guys, and I've said
it myself before, I'm just as guilty as anybody else in this.
I've heard guys say, man, I've spent hours and hours studying
this. I've studied this. I've studied this. I've studied
this. I've studied this. Listen, it doesn't matter if
you study this Bible for three weeks without stop and without
sleep. Listen, you're not going to learn
anything unless the Spirit gives you understanding of that thing
and your ability to read and to study and to comprehend in
the carnal mind and to even maybe memorize these. I've met men
who can memorize, who have memorized the whole New Testament. I know
of a story of one guy who has memorized the whole entire Bible.
But just because you can put something to memory like that
doesn't mean that God has given you the wisdom to understand
it. And so being spiritual isn't
anything that we do by putting in the effort, by putting in
the hours. by putting in the long time of
appropriating the means. To be spiritual is for God to
have given us faith and to give us to look in that measure of
faith, to look to Christ and to look to Him alone. So these
are the ones who have not been subverted by the false teaching
of the Judaizers. These are the men who weren't
swayed. So he's saying, listen, in any congregation, whenever
something comes in and you see a brother who is overtaken in
a fault, and listen, with internet today, people are out reading
all kinds of stuff. Listen, there are websites out
there you go to that are called Christian websites, and you start
reading them, there are commentaries, There's more commentaries than
this whole house can contain. People commentating on the Bible.
Listen, we even have now people that we got Bibles that they
got commentary down here and I've had people say, well, I
gotta have a study Bible. I can't have a Bible without
notes down to be able to tell me what it means. We're putting
our trust in men to tell us what it means. Why do you want to
go to someone second-hand when you've got it first-hand right
here and the only teacher that can teach you in you? Pray to
Him and ask Him to teach you. Don't pray and ask John MacArthur
to teach you or Matthew Henry to teach you or John Gill to
teach you. Now there's nothing wrong with
going and reading those guys and seeing what they have to
say and their outlook on it. I often do that myself. This
morning, I even went and I took a look at what a couple of guys
said on some stuff that I was looking at, what my thoughts
were about it. I thought, I'm kind of curious to see what this
guy thinks about it. Hey, this guy actually agreed with what
I thought about it, this guy didn't. So I thought, well, I
wonder if that guy's right. Well, the more I read about it
now, there's too much Bible that disagrees with that. So I got
to forget this guy, but do I believe it because this guy did and agreed
with me? No, no. How do I believe it? Because the Word of God says
it. And the Holy Spirit has taught me and said, hey, that's what
this means. That's why we believe it. That's
who's spiritual. The ones who the Lord is still
teaching, still giving faith to. The ones who have not been
subverted, bewitched. What does it say? Ye who are
spiritual, restore. Not kick out. not unfriend, not
cut off, not banish, not black ball, not put a scarlet letter
on their chest. It says restore. There first,
before there's any cutting off, before there's ever any discipline
to be done within a local assembly, there must first be love, meekness,
long-suffering, patience, temperance, in restoring the brethren. See,
Paul could have, if he would have been in the flesh, say,
round up all those ones who are not believing what I told you
guys and ship them out. But he didn't say that. You remember what he said to
the Corinthians whenever he was correcting them? He said, do
you want me to come with a rod, or do you want me to come with
loving kindness and meekness? I mean, that was a rhetorical
question. Of course, he was coming in loving
kindness and meekness. He wasn't coming with a rod.
He was coming in loving kindness. He was coming and saying, hey,
brethren, we're brethren. You're moving away from God's
Word. You're moving away from what Christ is. You're moving
away from the Gospel. Hey, let's look at this. What
does God's Word say? Now, you say, well, that's good,
but I don't think he's talking to the church. That's individuals.
So if that guy hasn't offended me, then I shouldn't even be
a part of that. No, no, no, no, no, brethren. Who's this written
to? This is written to the church. It's written to the gathered
assembly. It's not written to a mystical body, an invisible
church. That doesn't exist. A church
is a gathered assembly. You can't have a church, an ecclesia,
which is a gathered assembly, without it being gathered It's
talking about the local, visible church. He's written to that,
and he's saying ye, that word ye, I've taught you that here
before, or I've attempted to teach you that before, I pray
the Holy Spirit has taught you this. But the word ye, if you
remember, is not singular, it's plural. Now the new translations
of the Bible, whenever they translate it, they translate it you. But
it's not you, ye does not mean you. This is one of the reasons why
the King James Bible is, I think, very good, is because it maintains
the plural and the singular in the Greek. We can understand
those things because a lot of other English doesn't talk like
that. Matter of fact, whenever this
was written in King James in 1611, this was even not common
among their language, by the way. So, don't think it's just
Old English, It was old to them. It was a language that even they
weren't speaking. The ye's and thee's and thou's,
they weren't using that as common. But brethren, this was how the
translators preserved because in English you could not convey
the plural and the singular in some of the verbs and some of
the nouns and the things in Greek. You couldn't convey those things,
and so they used words that preserved that, and ye is one of those
words. Ye does not mean you specifically. Ye means ye. Remember I said
it was a single collective. It's speaking of a group of people. It's a singularity, but it's
a plural within that singularity. It's talking to a group. Who's
he talking to? Ye, ye who are spiritual. He's talking to the Galatian
church and especially those who are spiritual within the Galatian
church. Ye who are spiritual. He's talking about all of you
together as that group who are spiritual. Restore such a one. What do we do today though? Preacher,
that guy's out of line. You better go talk to him. Is that what we do? Isn't that
what we, ain't that what we pay the preacher for? It's his job
to go talk to all those sinners. Ain't that what we think a lot
of times? I don't get paid here so it's
not my job. Hey, he said ye who are spiritual. The admonition, exhortation is
to all of us together As a family, what happens whenever something
happens in a family and somebody goes bad? The whole family gets
involved. We call them now, what do they
call it now, whenever you pull a family member in and talk to
them, what do they call it? As a group. Not an intercession,
but a... An intervention. Yeah, today
we call them an intervention. We're gonna have an intervention,
okay? Well, that's what we have as
a family, right? We call that loved one in and say, hey man,
we've got to talk to you about this. Ye who are spiritual. He says, restore such a one,
but how are we to restore? Look what he says, in the spirit
of meekness. In the spirit of meekness. Ye
that are spiritual need to do that in a spirit of meekness. If we are led by the Spirit,
let us also walk in the Spirit. One of the fruit of the Spirit
is meekness. So we should be praying to God, Lord, give me
the meekness to come before this brethren and not in a haughty
spirit, not in a self-righteous spirit, not in a condemning spirit. Let us love this brother and
let us show him your word. And may you give him repentance
to come away. The Bible says that we who are
teachers, that whenever we come across somebody who doesn't agree
with us, what does the Bible say? That we with meekness and
long-suffering, that we should instruct them in hopes that God
would, peradventure, give them repentance and to the acknowledging
of the truth, right? Now this word, in the spirit
of meekness, this phrase in the spirit of meekness, is not saying
in a meek spirit. Again, we cannot perform a meek
spirit. We are not a meek spirit in the
flesh. We have to do it in the spirit
of meekness. The Holy Spirit of God is meek. You remember one of the attributes
of God as Spirit is that the Bible says that He will speak
nothing of His own. But what will He do? He will
speak of Christ. Right? That's meekness. There is a meekness
in the Spirit of God in that He doesn't have vain glory. He looks to Christ. He speaks of Christ, which ought to be no surprise
to any of us because the Holy Spirit of God, the Bible says,
is the Spirit of Christ. It's His Spirit. He has sent
His Spirit into us, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. He has sent His Spirit into us
so that we might look unto Him and that we might know that it
might testify with our spirits that we are His. But it also
is given to us that He might teach us and give us the faith,
which is the Spirit, fruit of the Spirit, in Christ Jesus. So what does it say here? We
come in the spirit of meekness. When we come, we pray that the
Spirit be our guide, our leader, our director. But it says, but when you do,
Consider thyself. Now do you notice what happened
there? Paul went from the plural ye to the singular thyself. You've got ye, you and yours
in this, which are plural, and you've got thee, thou and thine,
which are singular. Whenever you come across that
in the King James Bible, always know if it's ye, you or your,
it's talking in plural. If it's thee, thou, and thine,
it's plural. I mean, excuse me, singular. He said, considering thyself. So he said, whenever you go as
a group, ye who are spiritual, when you go as a group, restoring
such a one in the spirit of meekness, when the spirit of meekness that
we have to before we even go to that brethren, before we even
attempt to restore this brethren, we need to be on our face praying
to God that he would give us the spirit of meekness to guide
us. Help us now, Father, as we go
to our brother in Christ who is erring in the faith, and may
you direct our path, control our spirit so that we are meek
and humble and that we are long-suffering and patient, but help us be bold
in Your Word, bold in the faith, but meek in spirit before them."
Listen, the old saying goes, you're never going to catch anything...
Well, I've done lost the phrase now. It's easier to catch bees
and honey. A kind word turns away wrath,
the Bible says. If you come all haughty and proud
and arrogant and judgmental, what's going to happen? That
person is immediately going to put up the front. So we ought to
pray that the Lord would do this in meekness. But He said, whenever
you go as a group together and you go to restore this brethren,
consider yourself as you go. Because if you're considering
yourself you know you're susceptible to the same thing. This could
be you. They could be coming to you sometime. At some point, you might be the
one under the correction of the church. So consider that when
you go to them so that you might not come in a haughty spirit,
but that you might be coming in a loving and meek and gentle
spirit. See, if I know, hey, You can
always tell us, can't you? If somebody has done something,
say I've done something, say I've been guilty of something,
let's see. Well, here, I'll just be honest
with you. Everybody in the church knows this. Some of the new folks
probably don't know this. Whenever I was a teenager, I got caught
in a mall in Tulsa. I was shoplifting. I had my jacket
on, and I went through this store that had records and tape. Back
there, we didn't have At that point, we didn't really have
CDs. They were just kind of starting out and everything. And we definitely
didn't have, you know, digital music like we have today. But
we had, they had cassette tapes was the thing that we all had.
And I was in this store, I had my coat on and we were in there
and these cassettes, they weren't any big long plastic thing. They
just was loose in a cellophane wrapper in this rack. And then
you just like sitting in this rack. I was taking these things
and looking at them and then I was holding them in my hand
and I was going around and some of the other things. But as I was looking
at all these other ones I was slowly pushing it up into my
sleeve of my jacket. Well eventually I had about five
or six in this coat jacket and about five or six in this coat
jacket and even a few that I stuck around in the back of my pants. So I had stolen, I had shoplifted. Well, I thought I was going to
get away from it. I started out to soar. And as I was fixing
to go outside, beep, security got me right there. They caught
me on cameras doing it. Now, after all that was said and done,
if I was sitting in a room and someone was accusing somebody
of shoplifting, you think that I'm going to get up and start
pointing a finger? You, sorry dog, I can't believe you shoplifted.
No, there's going to be a little spirit of of meekness there,
because I just went through that. I know what it feels like. Matter
of fact, you can ask my wife, there was a long time, this happened
way before we got married, but even after that, because I was
banned, one of the things, they didn't arrest me, I was still
a minor, so they didn't arrest me, but they banned me from the
store, and I couldn't go back in that store. Well, several
years later, after I got married and everything, we were in the
mall and we went in that store. As soon as I walked in that store,
I knew, they told me, you're not allowed in our store anymore.
I knew, I probably shouldn't even go in here, but that was
a long time ago, they're not gonna remember who I am. I walked
in that store and as soon as I stepped over the threshold
into that store, I immediately started feeling humbled. Like,
man, I am going to make sure that there's nothing on me showing. If I grab something, I want to
make sure when I get up to the cashier, I'm going to make sure
there's nothing in my pockets. Make sure I haven't held something
or walking out. I will make sure that I'm not,
listen, it humbled me. Listen, whenever we come in love,
in loving kindness and meekness and gentleness, when we come
in correction, that is going to have an effect on people.
that I know that whenever I do wrong, my brethren love me, they
care for me, and listen, that might open up their communication
with us so that we might be able to go to God's Word and that
we might be able to talk and see what the Lord will do and
all of that. So in the spirit of meekness,
considering thyself lest thou be tempted, Bury ye one another's
burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Now, we'll get to
number two next week. I've already went over, but we
want to pick that up next week. So, anybody got any questions
or comments about the message today, or anything that you'd
like to add? Any corrections that you would
like to do in loving kindness and meekness? Well, I think it's very important
to say when somebody says something wrong about the fundamentals,
but sometimes it's not a big deal, you know, and that reminds
me of 1 Corinthians, is that correct? Yeah. Chapter 3, and we're from 11 to... You want me to read that? Yes. Okay. 11 through 15 you
said? Yes. It says, For other foundations can no man lay than
that is laid which is Christ Jesus, or Jesus Christ. Now if
any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stone,
wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest.
For the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed
by fire. And the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort
it is. If any man's work abide, which
he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's
work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss, but he himself shall
be saved, yet so as by fire." So yeah, it's going to be revealed
in that day whether or not that was the work of the spirit or
whether it was the work of the flesh. It will be revealed. All right,
anybody else got anything to add? All right. Remember, we won't be here next
week. For those that's on the live stream and listen to this
after, we will not be here this next week. Now we'll go ahead
and maybe try to live stream from Delaware, Oklahoma. We'll be preaching over there
next week. So we'll try to live stream from there if we're able
to get that worked out. And they may also be live streaming.
I know their church does live stream as well. But we'll try
to live stream ours as well from there. And so there'll be two
messages next week live streamed from us because they have a morning
service. Then after that, they eat lunch
and then they have an afternoon service right after that. So
we'll try to have a live stream on the second service as well.
But anyway, so no meeting here, but we will be. Actually, I hope
Brother Ed didn't think that it was this week after I told
him that last week. He might have gotten mistaken
and thought it was this week, but it's next week. If he don't
show up next week, I'll need to call him. But anyway, be prepared
for that. Be prepared for travels. My family
is going to be, oh, I should probably stop the live stream.