So we're going to Galatians chapter
six, and I just want to read the first five verses. Galatians chapter six, verses
one to five. Brethren, if a man be overtaken
in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit
of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. bear ye one another's burdens,
and so fulfil the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to
be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let
every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing
in himself alone, and not in another. For every man shall
bear his own burden. Amen. May the Lord bless this
reading to us. The Apostle is nearing the end
of his epistle to the churches in Galatia, but before he finishes,
he Once he wishes to convey a few practical lessons to his friends
for the benefit of their fellowships and their congregations and individually
for themselves. And this is one of the things
that we are privileged to possess in the scriptures, it's It's
not just theology and doctrine that we have in scripture. There
are some beautiful passages of application in the epistles especially
where clearly the writers have had a sense of the individual
needs of those to whom they have been writing and sought to give
a little bit of direction and spiritual wisdom. for the management
of our lives and it really is lovely that down through the
centuries we still have these little portions of scripture
to read together and share together and see that basically people
haven't changed and the world hasn't changed and life hasn't
changed and the very same issues and problems and difficulties
that beset the Lord's people 2,000 years ago. are the same
challenges that we face today and the wisdom to direct us is
the same also. And Paul has carefully and he
has very clearly in the past five chapters emphasised how
the Lord himself is the sole source of righteousness for a
believer. Acceptable righteousness is God's
imputed and applied gift to guilty, empty, bankrupt sinners. God laid our sin upon Christ
and laid Christ's righteousness upon us. Our righteousness is
freely and unconditionally bestowed according to God's own elective
will and it's enjoyed by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Imputed
righteousness is perfect in itself. It makes us holy and acceptable
before God. It can't be improved upon. It
can't be enlarged or increased. And anything that we try to do
to God's righteousness in Christ, anything that we try to add to
it merely detracts from our sovereign's perfect will. All attempted human
contribution defaces and spoils the glory of God's handiwork,
his workmanship in and for his elect. And the Galatians knew
this. Paul had taught them well, but
these troublemakers had infiltrated their church companies and spread
false teaching. They modified the apostle's ministry. They impugned his testimony. And I'm sure that the devil thought
that he was being very clever in damaging the peace of the
Galatian churches. But all he did was to prompt
Paul to write this wonderful little letter, setting out for
all time the gospel of God's free sovereign grace and the
sufficiency of Christ alone to cleanse our hearts from sin and
justify our souls. So that we can see, even in the
activities of these Judaizers, these troublemakers amongst the
Galatian churches, that even sin serves God's glory in the
end. All things working together for
our good. Now of course, although we are
mentioning that these things are sort of practical and more... applicable to the way in which
we live our lives. We are not to imagine that they
carry any less weight of divine inspiration than the doctrinal
and theological passages that the apostle has been speaking
and writing. We ought not to think that these
verses have less value than those that point expressly, for example,
to Christ's saving work. Indeed, today's verses remind
us that as Christ carried our burden of sin to the cross and
paid for it there, in his own body, with his own blood. So
we are privileged to serve one another. As Christ served us
and ministered for us, so we are able and motivated to serve
and to minister to one another. We're privileged to do so. We're privileged to help and
support and pray for and mediate for our brothers and
sisters in their faults, in their troubles, in their trials, in
their hardships. And this doesn't mean that we
are in some way bearing any element of their guilt. Christ has done
that already. He has carried all their burdens
in the sense of dealing with the sin problem. But the sin
problem and our flesh and the aspects of our humanity that
we live with in this body have repercussions because we are
fallen creatures. And there's something lovely
I think about passages like these because they remind us that the
Lord's people have always, always from the very beginning had troubles
in their lives. It's not something that's new
to us. It's not something that's different from them. And here
the apostle is saying, you guys have got burdens. I know you
people have got burdens. And it may well be that some
of the references that he's making here, we'll look back at this
in a moment, but some of the references are to the very things
that he has been speaking about at the end of the last chapter.
But they had troubles and Here we are encouraged, as the Apostle
directed the Galatians, to show compassion one for another, for
the hurt that we feel, to comfort one another in our trials and
encourage one another for restoration and recovery when such needs
arise. And being overtaken in a fault,
it describes falling into sin. And perhaps, as I've said, especially
those sins that were spoken of in verse 19 and 20 and 21. It was really quite a catalogue,
if you recall. I won't read them over again
because there's no value in doing so at this point, I don't think.
But these were the sorts of things that The Galatians were prone
to, we all are prone to, because of our nature, because of our
flesh, because of so many things that go on in our emotions, in
our psychology, and the devil can just take advantage of these
things and he can exploit them. And when that happens, then the
Lord deals with the guilt and the sin and the price and the
payment for those sins. But they have consequences as
well. They can bring on depression,
they can bring on fear, they can bring on doubt, they can
bring on heartache, they can bring on conviction. And the
Lord's people have a privilege in being able to support one
another in such experiences. Paul's advice here is to direct
each of us to be aware of our own weaknesses and failings with
the troubles that they bring and also to maintain a sensitivity
for those same trials in the lives of our fellow believers.
Now, of course, as I've said, we know that it's Christ who
bears all the burdens in the sense of atoning for sin. But
here the apostle is instructing the church, the body of Christ,
the body of believers in a local situation to be aware of each
other's needs and their trials in order to comfort and help
in time of trouble. And let me make this point also
about these burdens. There is a difference between
falling into sin by weakness and mistake and a sudden temptation
or because we're negligent. There is a difference between
falling into sin in that situation, which is the common practice
of us all, and also that willful, intentional maintaining of a
sinful lifestyle that both hurts the body, the body of believers,
and the body of the individual, and also brings the testimony
of the Lord into disrepute. And those who are willfully rebellious,
they cannot claim the privileges by right that the apostle is
talking about here because there is a place for separation from
those who have no repentance for sin. But the bearing of one
another's burdens is about those who have fallen and who are endeavouring
to be recovered. And in that sense, bearing one
another's burdens are limited to brothers and sisters in the
Lord, members of the fellowship who worship together. And the
apostle says that those who are spiritual have to bear the burdens
of another. That's not saying that we are
into different categories of some who are a little bit spiritual
and some who are averagely spiritual and some who are super spiritual. He's saying those of you who
are believers, those of you who have yourselves experienced forgiveness,
yourself known what it is to be cold and then recovered, who
walk in the spirit of grace and who understand what's involved
in a gospel pardon and restoration. That's what it is to be spiritual
and that's what it is. These are they who have the necessary
criteria to be of support and help and comfort to their brothers
and sisters. so that bearing one another's
burdens is a service that we can all perform for our brothers
and sisters. And that's the beauty of the
community of the Lord's people because we're all different and
you will be able to speak to someone in a way that I couldn't
possibly broach with them. And likewise, I probably have
access to some people that you don't speak to in the same way. Some, it's to do with age. For
others, it's experience. For others, it's circumstances
or maturity. But we will be better able to
speak to individual situations of needs. because of the individuals
that we are and because we've gone through some of the experiences.
Sometimes people ask, why is the Lord taking me through this?
Why is it that I've had to endure this experience? Why is it that
I've known this sadness, this loneliness, this hardship, this
trial, this sin, this guilt, this... period of doubting my
own standing before the Lord. Why is it that I've got to go
through that? Well, it's because of our sin. It's because of our flesh. But
the Lord uses even these things to allow us to help others, perhaps
in the future. And we should always be ready
to see positive elements in every experience that we have because
these things from the Lord are all purposeful. It's not just
a pastor's role. to deal with these pastoral aspects. It's not just the elders of the
church that carry this responsibility. It's a friend's support. It's a friend's comfort. It's caring for the sorrows that
flow from our trials and our losses and our failures and our
weaknesses. And we all experience times of
doubt and coldness and conviction and remorse and unbelief. Every true believer knows such
times. And each brother and sister in
the Lord will have occasion to draw on their own experiences
to assist another in a similar situation. However, the apostle knows that
there's a danger in engaging, even at this level. And he warns
us to be mindful of our own weaknesses when we endeavour to help one
another. We have the same temptations
and the temptation that overtook our fallen brother and sister
can just as readily ensnare us and we should always be circumspect
and we should tread wisely and cautiously knowing our own deceptive
hearts. Though we are spiritual as believers,
we are also fleshy in this world and prone to sin and temptation
and doubt as well. I think it's lovely that the
apostle here mentions the law of Christ. It's a nice little
phrase, the law of Christ. And perhaps we can just say that
that is thought of as being when the Lord spoke to his disciples
in John 13, and he says, a new commandment I give unto you,
that ye love one another as I have loved you, that ye also love
one another. And I think as well that shows
us, the fact that Paul didn't even specify it here in his letter,
shows that Christian love and affection was recognised and
acknowledged amongst those early believers as the principal motivator
of our actions and our attitudes towards one another. Christ is
always to be our example. These Judaizers, they wanted
to impose Moses law and people will say, well, it's a moral
law. It's full of, you know, good
statements of it. This is how we ought to individually
live our lives. This is how the society ought
to be arranged. These are the laws of the nation
that ought to be upheld and enforced. as if these laws in themselves
are going to change anyone. The point is that the Judaizers
wanted to reimpose Moses' law on these believers, but the Apostle
tells them that their rule of life and conduct towards God
is to be faith. And their rule of life and conduct
towards one another That which is to regulate our dealings with
one another is Christ's example of love, brotherly love and sacrificial
giving. The law of Moses encouraged pride. It encouraged self-righteousness
and it encouraged self-deception and hypocrisy. The law of Christ
tends to sympathy and humility. And the Lord described it thus
in the Sermon of the Mount when he says, therefore all things
whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even
so to them. We say that slightly differently
in our modern parlance. We say do to others as you would
have them do to you. But it's the same point. And
note this, it's not what they do to us, but what you'd like
them to do to you. And you might find that people
will reciprocate in kind, but if they don't, it is still on
us to take the initiative. And Paul cautions here against
any notion that we might have of prominence and pride. If we think we are something
when we are nothing, we're deceived. And it's a lesson that we all
ought to return to in our Christian and in our spiritual reflections. That we're nothing of ourselves,
we're nothing. All we bring to the table is
our sin and our unworthiness. And it's delightfully summed
up, perhaps, in Paul's question to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians
4, verse 7, where he says, for who maketh thee to differ from
another? And what hast thou that thou
didst not receive? Whatever it is we have, whether
it's our wisdom, whether it's our experience, whether it's
our resources, whether it's our time, whether it's our money,
whatever it might be, who maketh thee to differ from another?
and what have you got that you didn't receive? Now if thou didst
receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received
it? Let every man prove his own work
is what the Apostle here says at the end of these few verses
and that means let us look to how we live, let us look to how
we act and think and deal with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Let's not compare ourselves with
others so as to glory in their failures or be jealous of their
successes. We each have been given gifts
by the Lord. Each of us individually have
got gifts that are unique to us, and we're called to employ
those gifts for the good of the body. We each have our own personal
exercise, our own pathway in this life, which can only be
fulfilled By ourselves. You can't live my life and I
can't live yours. We stand or fall before our own
master. How easy it is to criticise others. How difficult it is to stoop
and help bear one another's burdens. Two religious hypocrites passed
by the man who fell amongst thieves in the Lord's parable of the
Good Samaritan. It was the least likely helper,
a despised Samaritan, who proved to be the real help in need,
and the help indeed. The Lord came and helped us when
we were undeserving, defiled, and otherwise unlovable, and
we are to practise what he has taught us. There's a joy in service,
and there's a sorrow in missed opportunities. There's a regret
for failing to serve one another, and this is the burden that we
carry on our own. May the Lord give us loving hearts,
a caring sensitivity for the needs and weaknesses of those
around us, and may we discover something of the privilege and
joy of being able and willing friends in need to our brothers
and sisters in Christ. Amen.