Hello, today's scripture is from Galatians.
Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who lived by the Spirit should restore that person gently.
But watch yourselves, or you may be tempted.
Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
If anyone thinks there are some sins when they are not, they deceive themselves.
Each one should test their own actions, then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load.
This is the word of God.
Praise be to God.
Alright, thank you Charlie for reading the word for us here this morning.
Just make sure this doesn't fall.
Church, may the peace of the Lord be with you.
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So now, this morning we are, over the last couple of weeks actually, we have been on a sermon series on community that we started almost a month ago now.
This morning we're looking at a letter that the apostle Paul wrote to a network of churches in this Galatian region.
The Galatian region is, if you wanted to know where the country is, is modern day Turkey, and Paul wrote to a group of churches in that place.
The letter of Galatians is one of Paul's most urgent and combative letters.
The reason for this urgency and combativeness in his tone is that there was a crisis at the church that needed to be addressed quickly.
So what was their context?
What was the crisis?
And what was the issue that these Galatian Christians had to deal with?
Well they had to deal with a group of false teachers in the church that were misleading the community by insisting that new Christ followers had to be circumcised and keep the law to be fully justified by God.
In other words, these false teachers were teaching that you had to add to your faith in Jesus.
That being made right with God was not just by faith alone, in Christ alone, or by grace alone, but that you had to do extra work in that process.
For these Christ followers at this time, at this context, it meant that they had to keep the law.
But these false teachers, however, missed the point of the law.
The law in the Old Testament was there to provide God's people with the reality and the truth that they could not keep it, and in exposing that reality and truth, the law was meant to reveal that their heart was sinful and rebellious.
If to our heart's own devices, our hearts would never choose to follow God on its own, apart from the grace of God.
Now the evidence in our world is this.
It's in our own experiences and it's in our own lives.
We struggle often to obey what God has set out for us in our lives, and we see evidence of this in Scripture from the very beginning with the characters of Adam and Eve, and all the way to the disciples of Jesus.
You see, church, the story of Scripture is both the story of God, His love for fallen, broken, and sinful humanity, of mankind's rebellion and sin, and what God is going to do, or what He has done to redeem people, reconcile and restore them and their relationship to Him.
Now these false teachers in these Galatian churches were not flat out denying Christ.
They were adding to Him, right?
So this is where it gets a little confusing.
If you saw somebody who preached, you know, kind of an anti-gospel, don't follow Jesus, don't believe in His resurrection, these would be clear-cut examples of like, whoa, okay, that's totally false, it's totally wrong.
But when you have a teaching that doesn't flat out deny or reject Christ, but adds some other kind of teachings from other religions, other ideas, then it becomes a syncretistic kind of faith, and those are the most difficult to root out and expose.
But these Galatian false teachers were saying it's not just in faith or by faith, by grace alone in Jesus.
See, the good news of the gospel is that we do not have to earn our way to God.
That is the good news.
That in Christ, God has provided a way for us to be with Him.
In Christ, our sins, the very thing that separates us from God, is restored, and we have now been made new through His Son.
In our posture, in our perspective, and in our outlook in life, as well as our hearts and lives, everything about us has been made new through Jesus.
Now, the gospel of these false teachers was a faith by grace and work your way to God kind of gospel.
Paul was shocked at how quickly these Christians in Galatia believed their message, right?
In Galatians 1-6, he's like, I'm surprised just how quickly you've fallen away from the gospel, which is actually no gospel at all.
Because if you've ever tried to work your way to God, if you've ever tried to earn God's favor, you'll know just how exhausting and how tiring it is because it feels like it never ends.
And this was the situation and the context of what was happening in Galatians.
So in our passage here that was read by Charlie here in Galatians 6, Paul focuses on the practical aspects of our faith in Christ.
Allow me to ask this question for us here this morning.
When was the last time someone in our community, in our church here, knew what you were carrying in your lives?
Who in our community knows the weight and the burden of your heart?
Now, I think there are several reasons for why we tend to carry our burdens by ourselves.
One of the reasons is shame or the idea that we should be able to handle and carry these things in our lives on our own.
Maybe we are afraid of burdening others, not wanting to disturb them with our problems, the thinking that other people have their own issues to deal with, so why should I bother them with mine?
But church, there is a cost to carrying the weight of life and the burdens of our hearts alone.
What often begins as manageable over time becomes too much to bear on our own.
Trying to carry a weight that we were never designed to carry alone comes at a cost.
And the reality is that in most church communities, people often say what?
When they ask you, "Hey, how are you doing?" How do they respond?
"Hey, I'm good.
I'm fine." Right?
Trying to display, portray that life and everything in their lives is okay, when in reality things are not okay.
And that posture and that pretense is killing us, church.
It is eating every one of us up internally.
You see, we live in a time when carrying things on our own, being able to handle everything by ourselves is seen as something to be proud of.
Like it's a good thing that we don't need anyone else.
It's a good thing that we don't have to ask for help.
I can handle everything on my own.
I should handle everything on my own.
And I think we like this because we don't want to be seen as weak.
We don't like the idea that we are unable and that maybe just maybe we need to help and support of others as we walk and journey through life.
How many here know how to drive?
Yeah, I know how to drive.
Anybody enjoy asking for directions?
Yeah, no.
I'm like this too sometimes.
We're going on a road trip or we're going to a different city, we travel there and I have no idea, right?
Even if Google Maps is helping us, sometimes it gets stuck.
The data doesn't actually connect.
And we're going in circles and we're lost.
And Ruby would often say, "Just go and ask for directions.
Go to the gas station or ask somebody for help." Like, "No, no, no.
I got this.
I know where we're going," which obviously we are totally completely lost.
Why am I like that?
Why are we like that?
Is because we don't want to be seen as weak.
We don't want to be seen as, "Hey, I don't know what I'm doing when actually we have no idea what we're doing." We don't like the idea that we're struggling and that other people see us struggle, so we hide.
And we portray this image that is totally false as strong and we pretend like everything is okay.
And the church is not immune to people living in this way.
Many church communities, including ours, despite using the language of community and love, maybe have inadvertently set up a culture that does not allow people to share each other's struggles, to not allow people to not be okay.
When they walk through these doors, when they come through the elevator and walk through the elevator doors, they all of a sudden have to pretend like everything is okay.
I do want to say that here at Crucible, nobody here has to pretend like they have got it all together in life.
It's okay, friends, to not be okay.
And we as a community will do our very best to walk alongside each other, but we do not want to create a culture here where everyone feels pressured to perform and hold it all together.
It's okay to break down.
It's okay not to be okay because each one of you here, brothers and sisters, is beloved by God and by the community here.
So let's pursue and be that kind of community where Christ has called us to love one another.
And we want to look at this morning what exactly that looks like.
What if God's design and purpose for community is built around the truth that some things were never meant to be carried alone?
And that sharing them is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of faith and strength.
So with this question in mind, just loosely here this morning, three things that we want to look at here in Galatians 6.
First, the command to restore gently.
That restoration is a form of burden bearing.
Look at the kind of person Paul is referring to here in verse 1.
A person who is caught in a sin.
This is not a person who is deliberately and habitually choosing to sin.
Paul is not referring to a premeditated decision to sin.
The word in English caught is used to describe where a person is taken by surprise.
They have been overtaken, maybe even tripped or fallen by sin.
And this person is likely ashamed of their sin, distressed, stressed about what's happened and what they have done.
And Paul says the community's response is to not exasperate the shame, but the community's response to this person is to draw close and to move towards that individual.
Paul invites the community to come close, but not just to come close, to restore this individual.
The person who has been caught in sin very likely is carrying multiple burdens in their hearts.
The burden of shame, the burden of guilt, the burden of broken relationships, the burden of people looking down on them, the burden of fear, the burden of rejection.
Paul is not saying that, "Hey, accept your sin.
Don't worry about it.
Gloss over it." No, and pretend like nothing's happened.
No, that would be disingenuous.
As a community, we're to restore that individual.
You see the situation in Galatians, a little bit different in that the restoration here is based on the assumption that the individual caught in sin is willing to turn back to God, willing to bring their sin into the light.
In other words, this person is willing to confess, but it comes with a cost for the person who is to restore this brother or sister.
The person who restores bears the emotional cost of being present in someone's worst moment.
The public weight of association and relationship with a person who has fallen and sinned.
The spiritual weight of being humble in the process of restoring this brother or sister.
You see, restoration, gentle restoration is the first thing that Paul mentions here because it's the most demanding when it comes to carrying another person's burdens.
If the church fails here in verse 1, then it fails in verse 2 when Paul actually calls the church to carry each other's burdens.
So what does it mean to restore?
The word restore in Greek means to mend, to bring something back to the original condition or after damage or failure.
So the goal of restoration is never to punish.
The goal is always to bring the person back into wholeness.
So if you can imagine it, it's like Humpty Dumpty.
You know the rhyme of Humpty Dumpty?
I don't know it by memory.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, blah blah blah, then he fell off the wall.
And then he shattered into a billion pieces.
And so this would be like going to Humpty Dumpty and shattering him to billions of pieces.
But what do they do?
They begin to piece him back together again.
So the goal of restoration is like Humpty Dumpty.
We are broken, we are fractured, and the goal is to restore, to bring to wholeness.
Kind of like a doctor.
No doctor makes a diagnosis from across the room.
In order for them to make any sort of accurate and precise diagnosis, they need to be close to their patient to see what the problem might be.
And then they begin the work of restoring, of mending what was misaligned or broken.
And not only are we to restore brothers and sisters who have sinned, but we are to do about it gently.
Should we forget church?
Gentleness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
And so what does it mean to be gentle?
What gentleness is, is approaching the person who has sinned with the same posture that both the restorer and the person who needs to be restored are both sinners.
It is not seeing the other person who needs to be restored as less than.
And the word that Paul uses here for gentleness means strength under control.
It's referring to a lowly, humble, non-arrogant attitude and posture in restoring a fellow brother or sister.
Gentleness is listening before speaking.
It is taking the posture of hearing the brother or sister, being curious about their situation, asking questions before offering any words of correction.
This is hard for us, not just extroverts, but all of us, because many of us, if not all, tend to jump right in wanting to offer a word.
I'm often reminded of what James, the half brother of Jesus, said in his letter to the Jerusalem church.
He says, "Be slow to speak and quick to listen." Gentleness is trying to understand what happened from the person's perspective before offering, before speaking into their lives.
Gentleness is speaking the truth in love.
This is not a passive act.
Speaking the truth not from a condescending, not from a higher posture, but from a place where you want the best for the other person.
You have either the best in mind as you speak truthfully and then graciously and also kindly.
It's possible to speak the hard truth while also communicating to the person that their value and worth in the church, in the community, in the family of God is not in question.
Gentleness is trying to stay present in the process of restoration.
So it's not rushing the person who has fallen back to wholeness, because restoration is a journey.
It is a process.
And it can often be a very, very painfully, very slow process.
Now Paul warns the one person who is restoring to watch yourselves, or they too might be tempted.
What is he talking about here?
What is the temptation?
I think there are two things that Paul is referring to.
First it's to guard against the temptation of pride.
So the person who gets to help restore the individual who has sinned and fallen is in a position to often compare themselves to that person.
Oh, I'm not like this person.
I didn't do this.
I'm not like that.
We often think it, never say it.
But this kind of heart posture and thinking can create a sense of pride.
And if it's left unchecked, a sense of arrogance.
Secondly, I think Paul is talking about here is to guard against the temptation of a harsh response.
When restoration is often slow, if the person struggles in their processing and in their journey towards wholeness, the person helping with the restoration process can often be tempted to feel frustrated and often judgmental.
Rather than continue with patience, gentleness, and kindness.
But at this point of the process, it often reveals and exposes the heart of the person who is restoring.
Is it more about the person that they're trying to restore or is it more about them and what's going on in their hearts?
If the person who is helping forgets their own tendency to sin, then they will often not restore gently.
How could you fall in again?
How could you do this again?
They will often do more harm than good.
If we forget that we are sinners who have been saved by the grace of God, we will look at the person who has fallen.
We will look down on that person, but we will also respond harshly towards them.
Paul is warning not to discourage restoration, but to remind the person who is restoring to continually be humble.
And not just humble, but aware of their own hearts and their own tendency to walk away from God.
Second, we are to carry each other's burdens.
So this is verse 2.
Now the word burden in the Greek has the meaning of a sort of like heaviness that is overwhelming for any one person to carry by themselves.
Paul is not saying that the church community should carry everything for everyone and that nobody has any sort of personal responsibility.
That's not what he's saying here.
What he is saying is that the genuinely heavy things in our lives, in the lives of the people are designed to be shared and carried together.
So what kind of things?
Things like grief, trauma, death, things like serious illness and sickness, depression, mental health, overwhelming life circumstances, loss of job, spiritual burdens.
These are the kinds of things that no person in the community should have to carry by themselves.
These are the kinds of moments where we have as a church the opportunity to carry each other's heaviness.
Now our context today is obviously different from the context of the Galatian church, but their crisis of false teaching is not necessarily our issue today.
The Roman social structure is not our social structure here in North America.
So our situations are vastly different.
And yet many of the burdens that we share as people remain similar across time.
So there are a couple things that the Galatian churches share with us this morning that we have in common.
There are theological and spiritual burdens that people carry.
Back in the Galatian church, but also today.
False teaching in the Galatian community created a heaviness that the people carried.
And if you have been on the receiving end of false teaching, believed in it, embraced it, lived it out, and then realized that it was false, it can be very heavy on the heart and the spirit.
It can move a person into a season, into a space of confusion, uncertainty, perpetual doubt about God, about themselves, anxiety.
They can carry an extremely unhealthy level of guilt and shame in their lives and live from that place.
And that bleeds into how they see the world.
It bleeds into how they connect with other people, whether they can be trusted.
They can be spiritual burnout, distortion in their understanding and view and relationship with God, and then the burden of religiously having to perform.
You see, false teaching is not like, "Oh, whatever." No! False teaching impacts us.
And when we realize that it's actually false, it can be very damaging to the person.
It can be very shameful.
It can be very burdensome.
And people who often experience false teaching, toxic church communities, they come out of that space really, really struggling to reintegrate into healthier church communities, questioning whether every pastor and every teacher, whether it's legit what they're saying.
And they often journey through alone without the community ever knowing that that person has gone through that process.
There are economic burdens.
In the context of Galatians, they had just, the people in this community just had enough to survive each day.
They had no economic safety net.
There was no insurance of any kind.
There was no support for unemployment.
A serious sickness in a family whose primary breadwinner, who is the main person to provide for the family, would quickly push a family into a desperate state, very quickly.
And today that could mean debt, job loss, housing instability, the hidden poverty from people at the church who look like they're stable, but they're not.
And then there are health and medical burdens.
Among the Galatians at this time, there's no such thing as medical technology.
If you got really sick, you hope for the best, brace for the worst.
But they did not have doctors like we have today.
They did not have the technological advancements in medicine that we often benefit from.
And even then, there are people in church communities who struggle with chronic illnesses, serious diagnosis, physical, emotional, mental exhaustion, and from being the primary giver of a family member who is in decline.
So much has changed over time, and yet so much has remained the same.
But we'll create the culture where our church can have a community that can carry each other's burdens.
I think there are three things.
First, people need to feel safe.
Before burdens can be carried by the wider church community, they must be known.
And before people can disclose, they must feel like the community is safe.
Community in the sense that the community's response is presence as opposed to judgment or gossip.
This kind of culture is not built in one day, but over time through consistency and through intentionality.
Second, we need to develop awareness.
We are so preoccupied with ourselves, our problems, our needs, that we often don't ever develop awareness of the needs of the people around us.
We cannot carry each other's burdens if we never get close enough to be aware of the need.
And if we're going to learn, church, to be a community that carries one another's burdens, then we need to come close.
And the kind of closeness where a person in the community is carrying something heavy but does not need to say anything explicitly, you just know.
Now this is where the beauty of small groups comes into play.
Sunday gatherings are great.
I'm thankful that so many people come and worship together with us, but they do not provide the closeness that is required to develop a sense of awareness.
People can attend Sunday services for decades without anyone in the community knowing the crushing weight and burden they carry alone.
Small groups, as they meet regularly, break bread together, pray together, create the environment and the conditions where you can begin to notice and be aware of what people are carrying in their lives.
It's a natural place.
When you eat together, you begin to share things that you would never otherwise share on a Sunday morning.
And third, there has to be willingness to remain, to stay.
Carrying one another's burdens is not a one-time act.
The person who shows up for one conversation but then disappears is not carrying or sharing the burden.
You see, carrying each other's burden requires the willingness that we stay through the process of someone's difficulty.
This could mean weeks, could mean months, could mean years.
The sustained presence when a person is suffering and going through a difficult time is precious because it costs the most sacred resource, our time.
But this is what it means to bear, to carry one another's burdens.
There has to be a willingness to remain, to stay present in the hard spaces with the person who is struggling, who has sinned, who has fallen.
We are called to be this kind of church.
And the last thing that we want to look at here is guarding against pride.
Listen to what Paul says here.
If anyone thinks they are something, when they are not, they deceive themselves.
A person who thinks they are something will not restore gently.
They will restore from a place where they're judging this person.
A person who thinks they are something will not carry the burdens of another because that would require that you get close to that person.
A proud person keeps their distance from anyone that might tarnish their reputation.
But Paul offers a corrective here.
Listen to his words.
Each one should test their own actions, verse 4.
Paul does not say test your actions against other people's actions.
He says test them against your own.
You see the standard here is not, am I doing better than the person who has sinned?
Oh, this is like falling apart.
Sorry guys.
It's not testing.
I'm just going to use this.
It's not testing and saying, hey, am I doing better than this other person who has fallen or who has sinned?
The benchmark and the standard, if you will, is am I living faithfully before God with the gifts, with the opportunities, with the responsibilities, with the space, the time that God has given to me?
And after testing your own work, you can then take pride in it without comparing yourself to anyone else.
What is Paul saying here?
This pride that Paul is talking about is not the same kind of pride that he's referring to earlier.
It's not an arrogance kind of proud.
It is the pride of satisfaction.
You know when it's a job well done, you're like, oh, you bask in your work.
It's that kind of satisfaction of genuine faithfulness.
It is the satisfaction of the servant in Matthew 25 where he hears, the servant hears the words, well done, good and faithful servant.
So how do we overcome pride?
Two ways, I think.
I mean, here in the text, how we can overcome pride in our lives.
First it's through honest evaluation.
One of the ways to fighting pride in our lives and our hearts is the rigorous and consistent practice of self-examination.
This is not a, oh, I wonder how I'm doing here today or this past week kind of assessment.
It is more of bringing our actions, our motives, our thoughts, our attitudes, our posture before God and asking Him to examine us.
The psalmist in Psalm 139 says this when he writes, "God, see what is in my heart.
Know what is there.
Test me.
Know what I'm thinking and see if there's anything in my life that you don't like." If we regularly examine our own hearts before God's character and standard, we will find more and more often that there is no place for pride in our lives because the comparison now is not with someone else, but it is with God's holiness and perfection.
And when we compare ourselves with God, we fall short every single time.
And it creates a sense of humility in our hearts rather than puffing up our minds or our hearts in pride.
We can ask questions like, why am I doing what I'm doing?
Is my actions here a place for love or is it a place to be needed and recognized?
When I see someone who has sinned, is my first response to judge them or is it compassion?
These kinds of questions when asked honestly over time are the means by which God uses to humble us.
Second, so first it's through honest evaluation, second it's through communal watchfulness.
The command in verse 1, "to watch ourselves," is not an individual exercise.
Like if you read that verse in Galatians 6.1, you might actually come to the conclusion, the rival, that, "Hey, it's me.
It's actually not just you.
It's actually the community." It's a communal exercise, not an individual one necessarily.
The church community that is honest about their struggle, their temptation, their failures is a church that creates an environment where pride is difficult to maintain.
The person who is genuinely known in community cannot maintain the performance of, "Hey, I'm better than you." Because the people in their lives that they're doing life with know them too well.
That person is protected by the community that keeps them accountable but also humble.
So I have two invitations for us here this morning.
If you have been carrying something in your life alone, a burden for a long time, I want you to know two things here.
First, the fact that you're carrying a burden does not mean that you have failed.
Being overwhelmed in life is not some sort of spiritual failure.
It is a sign that you were not designed to carry your burdens alone.
Secondly, the community that you belong to here is designed for such a time as this.
There is someone in this room here this morning who is able and willing to carry this particular burden that you carry with you.
But they may not ever know this morning that you are carrying it.
You friend have to take a step in sharing it with them.
Secondly, if you have a sense that someone in our church community is carrying something that you could help carry, I want you to ask that you don't leave this morning rushing out through the doors back here.
I don't want you to leave without doing something about that.
Not, "Oh, I'll do it later," because we all know that when you say that, it never gets done.
But be specific.
A phone call, a message that says, "Hey," filling the name, "I've been thinking about you lately.
Do you want to meet up?
Grab tea or coffee.
Can I come over and be present with you?" See, carrying someone's weight doesn't have to be anything big or extraordinary.
It requires ordinary actions like your presence.
And presence costs both time and availability, both of which everyone in this room has.
So church, what if carrying each other's burden was not the exception?
It only happens when something dramatic happens.
What is the norm?
What if people here at Crucible knew as a default that when life gets hard and heavy, that they don't have to go through it alone?
Not because the community is made up of special and exceptional people here, but ordinary people who have made a decision as a community to carry one another's burdens.
Paul makes it clear, as we carry each other's burdens, we will fulfill the law of Christ.
And the law of Christ is love.
And love in its most concrete and costly form is this, that we carry each other's burdens.
This is the kind of community that we are called to be here.
And quite honestly, it is the most tangible, visible, and most convincing kind of evidence for Christ.
When people watch the church, they see this church carrying each other's burdens, caring for each other in such a deep way that the rest of the world really honestly doesn't do, shows that Jesus Christ is real.
So will we do that together as a church?
Will we try and attempt to exercise and practice this in our lives?
Don't leave this morning without doing something about this.
Let's pray.
God, I thank you for Galatians 6 and I thank you for this passage, this journey that we are on, on community.
And what kind of community you are calling the church, your people to be.
And this morning we focus on Galatians 6 on this one attribute of carrying each other, each other's burdens, this burden bearing act and exercise.
And it's a hard one.
It's a hard call, it's a hard invitation because many of us quite honestly have so many things that take us away from this.
But Lord God, I pray that if we are going to be a church that loves, well, a church that loves the way that you love, that this is one part of it, the most costly form of it, is bearing each other's burdens.
So church, I just want to give you a moment to respond to God.
Maybe there is a person or persons that God has placed in your heart to reach out to after service and the invitation to be present with them in whatever form that takes.
Would you take a moment now just to respond to God?
Father, I thank you for not only the great commission, but I thank you for the great commandments.
Love God with all your heart, soul, strength, mind.
And the second is equally as great as the first.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Teach us how to do this.
And so doing, bearing one another's burdens.
For we ask this in Jesus' name, Amen.
Amen.