SPEAKER_00 0:06

Thank you for joining us for a sermon from Sojourn North. Well, if you've noticed as you're coming, we have some building renovations underway and we're super excited about it. I'm going to save all thank yous for a future date. A lot of people to thank. Tons of people doing volunteer work like crazy and uh notice the technology. And I wanted to show you a few things that are coming along the way. The first picture is what this back wall will be. We had these gray uh configurations, I don't know what to call them, as sound uh proofing for the back wall. But now the whole back wall will be this texture all the way across. It'll match the paint, but that whole wall is treated for sound. If you're not a musician, these put out sound, and sometimes with this interesting thing, it bounces around. So we're super excited about that. The next thing is kind of an already not yet thing. Uh I'm actually standing on the carpet that will be in here. So that it's it's already at least this one piece is here. That's gonna be in. We're just getting one piece at a time. It's a slow, slow install, but I think when you come in in two weeks from now and the whole thing is that it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be crazy, and Troy will have finished painting the walls and all sorts of things. This laminate will go in the fellowship hall. I've said funnily, like you can spill with confidence. Um probably don't want you to spill, but if you need to, just keep it in the fellowship hall and we'll be happy. But we're very excited. Now I got one other I think it's funny thing to say because I said with new technology, my diagrams that looked bad are gonna look amazing. So, what I did is I took a picture of an old diagram of how water evaporates and other stuff, and this picture is from the old technology, so let's put it up. That's the water cycle. Now, before we look at the next picture, on the new technology, it's gonna look different, but it's the exact same picture, okay? Here we go. Can you see the difference? It is amazing what technology can do. And truth be known, we don't even have to have it, but it's really cool to have. And our desire is that we would form a space to continue to grow together and also to welcome new people in because we just sang about it. Uh, come and see. That's what we want people to do. Come and see what the Lord has done for us. And as we have started this new venture this year, as I've come back and we kind of hit reset on some things, what our desire is is to kind of shift to like just simple church things, where it's us doing relationships together, us loving on the community like we've been doing, but just continue to do it intentionally. And we're just very excited to continue to form this space. And I want people to get to know you, and I really do know God's doing a good work in our midst. We've got two weeks left in Galatians, this week and next week. And a story came to mind as I was thinking about this week with burying one another's burdens. About 10 years ago, there was a pastor in town who was making it okay. He didn't have a lot of money, but he had his family, he was being faithful as he could be. And you know, it's just like sometimes month-to-month living. And so his wife was driving home from a Bible study and she was in a wreck, and it totaled out the family van. And so he knew instantly, like he drove up, took her home, they towed the van away. He was just thinking, like, okay, we're gonna be a one-car family now because we can't afford another car. So he was trying to think how they could fit, how he could fit his family in this pickup truck because it wasn't one of those four-door ones. It had seats behind, but it was like, I can't imagine the family. All right, this story's about me. I I thought I could tell it anonymously, but I just said, I. All right. So Ginger was in a wreck. So, all right, I'm just gonna tell you the story. So I was at Sojourn East, and so I was there and I was like, how are we gonna fit my family into this pickup truck? How are we gonna take family trips? And so I went into my friend Kevin Jameson, the lead pastor, and I said, Kevin, I just want you to pray, man. This is what happened. And he said, Man, I'll be praying. And so I went into my office and I was like, I guess I need to clean out my truck because we're all gonna have to fit in there. So I went out, cleaned out stuff, came back to my office, was praying, and then Kevin came in and said, Hey Chad, uh, and it reminds you, it's only been two hours since this whole thing happened. And he said, Hey Chad, just want you to know I talked to some families and we've raised $12,000 for you to have a family vehicle. And I was just gobsmacked, is that a good word? I was just, I was blown away. And also, one of our elders worked at a car auction thing sometimes, and so he said, We'd like to take that $12,000, and if you can find a vehicle at the car auction, because you'll get it for a lot less. And from that, we got a family vehicle. Now, I tell you that story because that burden was so heavy on my shoulders. It was only on my shoulders for a couple of hours, but I was like, How are we gonna do this? Lord, we've sought to be faithful. And if um if you don't show up, I don't know what to do. And man, he showed up beyond my greatest expectation. That has been a mile marker for me in my life, redemptive remembering to go back and say, this is a time in life where God provided for us, and it was amazing. The church bore our burden, and we did it, and it was amazing. Now that's what Galatians 6 is about. Paul has talked about freedom in the gospel. I love the song. There's freedom, taste and see, coming to Jesus. And so he's talked about how you cannot add anything to the gospel. Do not add anything to the gospel. It's pure. It is God's work of salvation for us. We don't add anything to it, it's a free gift. And he says, you're free. Now, what are you gonna do with your freedom? Are you gonna use it for yourself and selfishness? He's like, no, don't do that. Use it for love. And so what he says in Galatians 6 today, he tells us what a community formed by love looks like. What is a community formed by a spirit-formed community look like? And that's what we're gonna be talking about today. We're gonna be reading Galatians 6, 1 through 10. If you wish, you may stand for the reading of God's word. This is what it looks like when freedom shown through love becomes a people. Paul writes this Brothers and sisters, if someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual, restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourself so that you won't also be tempted, carrying one another's burdens. In this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if any one considers himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Let each person examine his own work, and then he can take pride in himself alone and not compare himself with someone else. For each person will have to carry his own load. Let the one who has taught the word share all his good things with the teacher. Don't be deceived, God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows, he will also reap, because the one who sows to the flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit. Let us not grow tired or get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don't give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith. This is the word of the Lord. Maybe seated. So this has a lot in it, and we're just gonna hit a few things from this passage, but I want to talk about what a community does with the freedom that it's given? Well, Paul implores us to look like this. We become what Jesus desires for us to do. We we embody his heart, and so we become a community that restores gently. We are a community that honors personal responsibility, and we're a community that trusts the slow harvest. So, first off, a community that restores gently. So Paul starts with a very tender word here, and there has some fragility to it because he says all of these things he says because these are realities that people face. So people will be overtaken by sin, people will have burdens, people will have responsibility, it's part of life. It has always been part of life. But a community that restores gently, he says, if someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, if someone is overtaken in any wrongdoing, that word overtaken is very important. Drift, you can drift because you're adding to the gospel, but you can also drift because of freedom. God has given you freedom, and you may drift into using that freedom, and truth be known, we all will at times in our lives. We will drift to use our freedom for things that are according to our flesh and not according to the spirit. And so what does he say do? He says a spirit-form community moves toward that person, not away. He says, You who are spiritual, restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so that you won't also be tempted. In the community I grew up in, there wasn't really a gentle spirit of restoration. It was very legalistic. Um I've watched a documentary on uh one of the leaders who influenced the movement that I grew up in. Uh his name was Bill Gothard. This is boo. Boo. You can look that up if you want to. But anyway, very legalistic. Very much spiritual abuse, a lot of stuff going on. So when people drifted or were overtaken in sin, there was so much shame associated even with just doing something a little bit wrong, even though we all did something wrong all the time. It's but it everyone had this appearance of like, well, I can't let people know. One of my best friends' mom uh had her husband leave her, and it wasn't her fault, you know. It it just he just went, went, he just went off the deep end. And she literally said to me, and I'm a 16-year-old trying to process what she's saying to me, she said, Chad, I gotta find a new church. She'd been there her whole life. And I said, Why? And she said, Well, I I I'm getting divorced. I said, It's not your fault. And she said, Yeah, but you just you can't stay in the same community after you get a divorce. And I was like, it it just I didn't understand it. And to this day, my heart is the same. It's like, no, you stay. These are the people who know you, who can support you and love you. But the system was broken. And truth be known, even in sojourn's history, in every church's history, there are things that leaders do that make people feel shame and maybe they coerce. But listen to the words Paul uses. He says, the key words here, it's restoration, it's not punishment, it's restoration. That's our desire. It's gentleness, not just coming and lording it over them. It's it's gentleness. Do you remember the heart of Jesus in Matthew 11, 28 to 30? He says, I am gentle. I'm meek of heart. It's this power under control. And there's also an awareness of our own vulnerability. The natural flesh response when someone falls or they just kind of slip into sin or they fall into sin, they get stuck. Our natural response, it's easy, our flesh response. We we all might do it, you may not say it, but sometimes it just rattles around our head. It's like, well, I would never do that. And you might not do that, but you do this because this is what you struggle with and not that. I thought that was pretty cool. This and that. You like that? Or do you like this? I don't know. We all struggle with something, right? We all do. And the way that we can go towards someone in gentleness is by remembering who we are, apart from the grace of God. We apart from the grace of God. If you reflect on that, when I look at my family line, man, I would not be here but for the grace of God. He has forgiven me, he sustained me. I can go towards anyone in gentleness because I know my own human heart, the flesh aspect. We move towards those who have stumbled and fallen. And then right after this, in verse 2, he says, carry one another's burdens. The reason he says carry one another's burdens is because we will have burdens. And the picture here is getting low enough to help carry what is crushing someone. And a burden here is it's not just a weight, it's something that's that's just bogging you down. It's just too much to carry. And I have some things listed. We cannot carry some things alone. We can't carry our sin alone or our grief alone or our shame or addiction, sometimes our fear. And that's why it's so important to have Christian relationships. I thank God for the Christian therapists in our midst that you can process these things with because it does crazy things to our bodies. I continue to learn more and more about what my life has done to this shell that I walk around in. It's part of who I am. But praise God that healing comes over the long haul. So he says, carry one another's burdens. In this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ. And I love this because what has he been doing through this whole book? He says, Legalists, you want a law to obey? You want to do this? This is the law. Fulfill the law of Christ. What is his law? It's to love. Even in the upper room discourse, Jesus says, before he's betrayed and marches to the cross, he says, A new command I give to you. And you might say, if you're reading it just at a surface level, it's like, you say this is a new command. You say, he says, love one another as I have loved you. How does Jesus love us? Oh man. It's the same thing Paul says in his prayer in Ephesians, I believe it's three. There's a prayer in one and three, they're both awesome, but pray that you might know the unknowable, comprehend the incomprehensible. I pray that you may know the height, the depth, the width, the breadth of God's love for you. Jesus says in John 17, in his high priestly prayer, you have loved them as you have loved me. This is mind-blowing. The love of the Father, the love of the Son, the love of the Holy Spirit, our triune God, his love for you is beyond imagination. This is the law of Christ. What does this look like? Well, it's another me story. At this time last year, my body was crashed. What did the church do? The elders led amazingly. They sent me on a three-month sabbatical, and I was healed. Praise God. Y'all bore my burdens, and I came back. I'm here right now. I am not a hologram. But I praise God for that. You bore my burdens, and here I am. Fulfill the law of Christ. Praise God. Even as we help carry one another's burdens, Paul nuances this in a beautiful way because he says in verse 5, and it leads us to our second point, for each person will have to carry his own load. So we are a spirit-formed community that bears one another's burdens, but we're also a community that honors personal responsibility. So let's clarify the difference. This is key. A burden is something too heavy to carry alone. This word for load is a picture of a backpack that someone carries or knapsack, something that you're called to carry on your own. And we all have those things. There are things we carry with other people, and there are things that we carry on our own. And here are some examples. These are some things that you have to do on your own. I cannot repent for you. You have to do that on your own. I cannot trust Christ for you. That's something only you can do. I cannot obey in your place. I can't live your life for you. You can't live my life for me. But I can do this. I can walk with you while you do repent. If you need someone to visit with and pray with, I love to do that. I can support you while you carry what is yours to carry. And I can remind you who you are when you forget. That's how we do life together. Love doesn't remove agency, it protects it. Your agency is a gift from God. Your ability to choose is a gift from God. A lot of religious systems coerce and try to control. But our desire is to do what Jesus did. Jesus invited all the time. He let the rich young ruler walk away after he gave him this really hard invitation. But he didn't go chasing after him, coercing him. And it's possible through Christian history that that rich young ruler came to know Jesus after the resurrection. We don't know. But we have choices to make in life. There's a book we read at Midtown because we had so many people coming in with so many needs, and there was a book called When Helping Hurts. It's true that you can be trying to help someone and it can actually hurt them. And it's really this difference between bearing someone's burdens and allowing them to carry what is their own. And I was like, Well, good question for me to ask is like, tell me about that. And he had a terrible habit of spending, so he had credit cards maxed out. Bad, bad choices. And so I came to him and I said, Well, even if I had the money or we had the money in the bank account, we're not just gonna come in and pay off your debt. That is something, you know, it's you're talking to a young man, so sometimes it sounds a little harsher, but it's like you dug that hole, I'll be at the top and lower down the ladder, but you gotta you gotta climb out. And so I gave him some counsel. I said, There's debt consolidation, we're gonna help you put together a budget, just stop spending, and to get this under control over a long-term plan. But that's me helping him carry his burden, that he doesn't have to do it alone. But that was something he needed to carry. Are there the time are there times the church steps in financially? Yeah, I just told you that sojourn easy. Some members got together and got us a family vehicle. It's wisdom within this. It's like, what do you do? Paul gives a warning in the text. He says, don't let these distortions come because pride and comparison can come in. The pride of, once again, I don't need anyone, I can do this on my own. And I wouldn't do this, so I'm going to let them do it on their own. But what does it look like to move toward, even in the mess of it? And the comparison is I'm doing better than them, so they should have dealt with that on their own. But we can do this in honesty, and we can do this together. So the spirit-formed community, it restores gently, it bears one another's burdens, but it also honors personal responsibility, and we need wisdom for that. But Paul closes out this passage by saying a spirit-formed community is a community that trusts the slow harvest. So I'd like to close our time with this last point. Don't be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a person sows, he will also reap. Very famous verse. So the movement is important. We're seeking to restore the fallen. And think about the logic here. If someone is stuck in sin, they're going to continue to sow to that sin unless something brings them back. And so they're going to be stuck and continue to sow in that sin and get farther and farther away from the Lord. And so we restore gently and we help carry the burden of like, hey, let me help. And they have personal responsibility to actually turn and come a new way. But he says, in all of this, and why would he say don't lose heart? It's because it's hard. The Christian life is hard. I said it for many years. I it's the uh witty statements I like to make. I say the Christian life isn't hard. It's not hard, it's impossible because you can't do it apart from the Spirit empowering you to do it. How do you love your enemies? You can't do that in your flesh. You need the work of God. And he says, seek my face, and I will slowly do this work in your life. But the Christian life is so hard. Doing relationships is so hard. It's messy. But he says, don't lose heart. This way of life matters more than you can imagine. It's slow, but it's real. And the truth is, good seeds and bad seeds produce something. He says, you can sow to the spirit or you can sow to the flesh. Another diagram, we have the life of an apple tree. It starts with a seed, germination all the way around to where it's ripening fruit. And what's crazy is this is that you know this. Every apple will have seeds. And the multiplication of that is crazy. If you sow good things, if you sow to the Spirit, it will benefit so much in your life and others' lives. But the same thing is true for weeds. This is a dandelion. I used to get yelled at because I'd pull them out of the ground as a kid and blow them because I want to see the things. And they're like, don't spread the weeds. And I'm like, I just why would God make it so cool to blow off if. And then someone say, it's part of the fall, it's not part of the original creative design. I say, okay, okay. And then I wait till no one's looking and do another one. But one of those tiny little seedlings that has that part that captures, it's captured by the wind and it just sails off. I mean, they're everywhere. Everywhere. Germinates. Dandelion. So do bad things. So to the flesh. It's going to keep going. This is the reality of life. And when Paul gives a huge encouragement, he says, don't grow weary, don't lose heart. The word that he's using here, it's an interesting word because it refers to childbirth. It refers to a woman who's been trying to give birth to her child and been in labor and is exhausted. But the child has not been born yet, and they just want to give up. And the encouragement is like, you're almost there. Don't lose heart. The joy of the child is about to be with you. Don't grow weary, church, and doing good. Every small act of love matters, every embrace matters. I think in my many years of ministry, what I'm amazed by the most is what God uses tiny acts to be huge for people's lives. Whether it's a note of encouragement, I've told you before, I have a file in my office that I have notes of encouragement. And uh the notes of encouragement sometimes seem a lot less than sometimes criticisms from the past. People here don't criticize me, so I don't know why, but y'all are so loving. You you can if you want to. I got some pretty thick skin these days. But don't do it. But if you need to, go ahead. Um note of encouragement got me through a whole year that was really rough. Isn't that interesting? Because I was able to say, God's at work and He used me in this person's life, and this happened in their life. I won't grow weary in doing good. Brothers and sisters, don't grow weary in doing good. And what I want to do is for you quickly to pull out the insert. It might be green or yellow in your bulletin. I ran out of green paper. So the green represents grass, the yellow represents the sun. They really don't represent that, but they could. But our desire is the same as it's always been when we planted this new work, Sojourn North, and we came to join with the people of Christ Church at Goshen. And we desire to be doing life together. And so there are many ways to do that. But if I was to preach a sermon on one another, and you can't love one another, encourage one another, you can't do the one another's without relationships. And so some people form relationships naturally, and you have these wonderful Christian relationships. That's great. Some people get it in Bible study time or Sunday morning Bible study, women's Bible study, other things. But the desire is that everyone here would be in some sort of relationship pool so that you can give encouragement and receive encouragement. One of the ways we do that historically is through community groups. And as we've had new people come in, they've been asking, can we get into a community group? And I'll ask the community groups that exist. And we have some amazing community groups, but they are just packed to the gills. So as we've prayed and as we've talked about it, it's like we need some new new groups. This would be really good. I'm not going to read this whole sheet to you, but this is one opportunity for many of you to be able to get into community that maybe you haven't been able to get into. So we don't want anyone to carry life alone. This is a simple vision. Following Jesus was never meant to be done in isolation. It happens slowly, over time, it happens relationally. So we want to put into practice what we've talked about today and what we talked about in being the church series and just all that God has for us. So community group is not a class, it's not a perfect Bible study, it's a place where everyone comes as they are. It's not a place where everyone has it together. It's a small group of people learning to follow Jesus in real life. And so our typical mode of community group is that a home hosts and a couple leads. And I write out uh questions for communion group and for reflection each week. Sometimes people use those questions, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they do a book study, sometimes they just talk about life together, but we want to be centered in the word, so in some facet, but we want to be centered on each other's stories as well. And so we are called in this just back to simple church to be together, to slow down, to open the scripture, reflect on God's word, to share honestly, to be who you are, where you are, and then to pray for one another. And so there's some information on the back. And this is just me planting seeds today, like the apple tree. And I'll come back in the next weeks and give you some more thoughts and information. But what I'd like for you to do is think about this and talk about it if you're not in a community group. And possibly even if you are in a community group, God may be laying on your heart, well, I think I'm being called to lead a new group, to reach out to people that are in our midst. The typical meeting time is most groups meet every two weeks in a home on one evening in the week. And then on the off weeks, a lot of times uh guys will get together with guys to do coffee, sometimes one-on-one others and ladies with ladies, but it's an intentional way for us to do life together. So be thinking and praying about that, and there will be more to come on that as well. So, the summary for this come close when the burden is too heavy. Call one another to carry what is yours to carry, and trust that God is growing something over time. Persevere. Don't lose heart. Here's your sentence to carry. Carry what is yours, share what is heavy, and trust the slow work of God. Carry what is yours, share what is heavy, and trust the slow work of God. And as we come to the table today, and we're gonna come to those tables in just a little bit, but as we come to this table, I want us to remember this. Before we were ever able to bear anyone's burdens, Christ bore our burdens. The weight of our sin, the weight of our shame, the weight of our striving, he bore all that on the cross. So we don't have to carry it anymore. We're free. We're free not to carry life alone. And so when we come to the table today, I'd invite you to do this. Remember that you're free. And ask yourself am I using this freedom, Lord, to sow to the spirit or to sow to the flesh? And listen to the invitations Christ has for you. If you're a Christian here today, I invite you to come after I pray, reflect on the words of the song, but you can take some juice and some bread back to your seat and just hold it there, and I'll come back up at the end to lead us all to take communion together. But as we come, let's reflect. Let me pray. Father, we thank you for your grace, for the power of this passage, that you call us to do life together. Lord, that you equip us to know each other and to love each other and to bear each other's burdens, Lord, but also to take responsibility for our own souls. Through it all, Lord, I thank you first that we are a community like that. And Lord, I pray that we would continue to grow in that as well. I pray that you'd lay on people's hearts to potentially start a community group, Lord, and we'll walk with them through that. Lord, that people could come into this place and get connected in relationship and grow in the knowledge of you and in relationship with you. Father, I pray that you speak to our heart in this time, in mighty ways, and we ask this in Christ's name. Amen.