The Gospel Pt. 4

Pastor Jesse Carr clearly explains the Gospel throughout the Easter Season.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

My name is Jesse. I'm blessed to be the lead pastor here at Mud Creek. If I have not had a chance to meet you, if I haven't had a chance to introduce myself, please come by after our service is over. I would love to meet you, and I will be at this exit on your right when the service is finished. And so please come by and shake my hand and give me just a minute to get to know you. I like to talk to people, which works out really well for me professionally, because that's kind of my thing. I like to talk to most people. So come by and we'll talk and we will hang out. But today I thought I would start by talking to you a little bit about some of my heroes. And so I think we've got some pictures of some of my heroes on the screen. 3, 2, 1. There we go. Saint Athanasius, great, great hero and saint from a very, very long time ago. He was a contemporary of St. Nicholas. Yes, that's Saint Nicholas. And it was said about Athanasius who helped defend the church against the heresy of Arianism, that if the world was against Athanasius, Athanasius was against the world. I love that spirit of saying I'm going to stand for the truth even if I stand against everybody. Who's my next line? I can't remember what order these are in. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther. For those of you that know me and hear me preach, that will probably not come as a surprise. So we'll keep moving. Who's next? I mean, I just I just could not put the greatest college football coach in the history of the sport. Um roll tide. And we will continue because I don't want to just destroy the sermon before we go any further. So who's next? How could you not have the Cape Crusader? The Dark Knight. Right? And who's next? Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill, who it said about Winston Churchill that during World War II, during the rise of fascism in Germany, that he marshaled the English language and sent it into battle. And there's not a better picture of Winston Churchill. But the last picture I want to show you is a dear sister in our church who has become one of my newest heroes. That is a picture of Karen Sawyer. Many of you know Miss Karen. And she knew that I was going to do this today, so I hope she's not too embarrassed. I hope she keeps coming back after this sermon. But Miss Karen is 80 years old. And in this picture, as you can see, Miss Karen is down in the floor serving our littlest mud creakers in the nursery, working a puzzle with some of our smaller church members. And the reason I love that picture is because here is a dear sister in our church who heard that we had a need for volunteers with our kids and said, even though it may not be easy for me to get down there, and even though it may be even harder for me to get up, I am going to do my part. I am going to serve those who cannot serve me, and I am going to help these people who are part of my church that may not be able to help me in return. And I love that spirit. I love that servant's heart. I love that willingness to bear one another's burdens. And I know many of you well enough to know that many of you came to church today with that same attitude. Now, you may not get down in the floor in the nursery, and if you don't, I don't blame you. But you came to church this morning, and in your heart you said, I want to help somebody. I want to carry somebody's burden. If I can go to church today and make the load a little bit lighter for somebody around me, that's what I want to do. Those people are my family, and I want to serve them and love them and help them like family. Some of you have that attitude this morning, and God bless you. Some of you came to church this morning the way that I go to a barbecue restaurant. Here's what I mean. I love barbecue. I do. I even think that bad barbecue is fantastic. But I want to eat great barbecue if I go to eat barbecue. And so from the moment I get out of my car, I'm evaluating everything to see if the barbecue restaurant is going to satisfy my appetite. The first good sign is as soon as I step out of the car, I should be able to smell hickory smoke, right? If I can't smell hickory smoke, strike one. But then you go inside. And you sit down at the table. And then you've got to wonder, well, was the staff friendly? Were they in a hurry to seat me? Were they treating me kindly? And then you sit down at the table and you really hope, you really hope that the table is not too sticky. Nothing worse than a sticky table. Then you order your drink, you order sweet tea. You know, sometimes it can be a little bit too sweet. Sometimes it's not sweet enough. And they forgot my lemons. And then I order the barbecue. I think I'm gonna have a combination of pulled pork and ribs. And before they bring the barbecue, they bring me hush puppies. But the hush puppies were just a little bit dry. Or maybe maybe they were too sweet. Or maybe they had little pieces of corn in them. I don't really love that. Then they bring the barbecue and the barbecue was like sawdust. They made it sometime last month, and the the sauce. Ribs were dry. Potato salad. I'm just, I'm just not, don't think I'll be back. Think I'll go find somewhere that suits my appetites a little bit better. Where the sweet tea is more to my liking, and the barbecue is exactly what I was looking for. Maybe the wait staff is a little bit more friendly, and certainly where the table is not as sticky. And some of you came to church exactly like that this morning. And you come to church every week like that. As soon as you get out of the car, you're sniffing for a problem. And I assure you, if you're sniffing for it, eventually you'll smell it. And you're thinking, well, you know, this place maybe just doesn't satisfy my appetites. Maybe I've been coming to Mud Creek for a while, and maybe it's the same old preacher and the same old music and the same old appetite, and I need some variety. And we are plagued by a consumeristic mindset where we come to church believing that we are the customer, that is here to be pleased, that is here to be served, that is here to be satisfied, and everything from the preaching to the music to the welcome to the Sunday school class, if we go to the bulletin, everything has to cater to me. Otherwise, we'll hop somewhere else and we'll shop for something a little bit better. Well, today I want to show you in the book of Galatians that when we properly understand the gospel of how Jesus saves us, we begin to understand that the gospel makes us contributors, like Miss Kerry, and not consumers who are eating bad barbecue. I want to show you that this morning from the book of Galatians, chapter 6. So if you have your Bible this morning, I'm going to invite you to turn there with me. If you don't have a Bible with you today, that's all right. I believe we'll have the text on the screen. You can follow along with us. Galatians chapter 6, and if you will excuse me, my shoe's untied, and I don't want to fall and get hurt. So I'm going to tie my shoe, then we will read the word together. Galatians chapter 6 and verse number 1. Of course, I do work here, so if I get hurt, it's workers' comp. It's all good. But we do not want that. Galatians chapter 6, verse number 1. The gospel makes us contributors, not consumers. Galatians 6, 1 says this, brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if any one thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another, for each one shall bear his own load. Let him who is taught the word share in all good things with him who teaches. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever man sows that we he will also reap. For he who sows to the flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the spirit will of the spirit reap everlasting life. And let us not grow weary while doing good. For in due season we shall reap, if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord abideth forever.

unknown 9:48

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 9:50

In the book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul is writing out of a heart of concern for the Christians in the region of Galatia. He's planted churches there, he's taught them the gospel, but then he continues his missionary work elsewhere. And in his absence, the Galatians are becoming confused. The way I like to think about this is they are experiencing some Jesus static. Some of you are old enough to remember when you actually listen to the radio in a car. You remember that? And you had to dial in the station. Now my radio, it's all right here. Never listen to the radio anymore. But some of you remember dialing in a station, whatever your favorite station was: 106.9, 103.3, 93.3, for those of us that had a little bit of an edge in the late 90s, 99.7, whatever it was. But you dial that in, and if you get too far from the radio station, what happens? You get static. And if you're in just the right area, tune to your favorite radio station, all of a sudden you're trying to be listened to the Eagles or something, and you get some mariachi band. You get two sounds coming at you at the same time with a lot of static, and things are not very clear. That's what's happening in the book of Galatians. Paul has come and he has preached to them and told them that the only way that they can be righteous before God is when they look away from themselves, look away from their sin, even look away from their good works, and trust in Jesus alone. And the moment that they put their faith in Jesus, they will be declared righteous for good and forever. But then there's another voice or other voices that are confusing them, saying, Well, you do need Jesus, but you need good works. Specifically, they would say you need to observe Jewish traditions and obey Jewish laws. And if you do that, in addition to trusting Jesus, then once you become righteous, Jesus will declare you righteous. There are people in the church of Galatia that had turned the message of the gospel into good advice instead of good news. And the Apostle Paul spends chapter after chapter in this book saying, no, the message of the gospel is that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Period. Full stop. But one of the sub-themes in the book of Galatians is that when we have a confused understanding of the gospel itself, when we're confused about how Jesus saves us, it corrupts our ability to have healthy relationships with other Christians. For instance, Paul will say in Galatians chapter 5 and verse number 15, he says to the Galatians, if you bite and devour one another, he says, Be careful, beware lest you are consumed by one another. This church had become so consumer-minded that they've actually become cannibalistic. They're chewing people up and spitting them out, saying, This person is not like me. They're not good enough. In self-righteousness, they were pushing people away. While others in self-pity were on the outside looking in, saying, I'm never going to break through to the inner circle. I'm never going to matter. I'm never going to be good enough. There was a rigid caste system of Christians in the church of Galatia. Some were good, some were all right, some are not good enough, some were not even welcome at all. He will say much the same thing in Galatians chapter 5 and verse number 26. Let us not become conceited. I think this is the most important verse in the book. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. What Paul wants the church to understand is that when we are confused about the message of how Jesus saves us, then what will happen in our relationships with other Christians? What will happen in our relationships in the church is that we will use relationships either to prove ourselves or to improve ourselves. And so that ultimately we will use each other, but we'll never actually get around to loving one another. Paul wants these Christians, and he wants you, and he wants me. He wants us to actually love one another. And so what Paul is doing here in Galatians chapter 6 is he's putting forward before this confused, consumeristic, cannibalistic church where everybody only cares about themselves. He's putting before them a vision of the life of the church where the broken are restored, where sinners are forgiven, where everybody does their part, where people are not standing on the outside saying, I'm just not going to get involved, or I'm not good enough to do anything. I don't matter. Paul says, no, everybody has a place. And our place is in the lives of one another. And so what I want to do this morning is work through these verses with you and show you how the gospel makes us contributors and not consumers. I want to do everything I can to push back against the consumer mindset that has so infected churches, even right here in Hendersonville, to say to you, we are not here as shoppers. We are not here to satisfy our self-pity, to nurse our feelings of insecurity. We are not here to scratch the itch of self-righteousness. We are here to love and serve one another in the name of Jesus who has loved and served us. So how does this work in Galatians 6? Well, notice first, Paul gives this piece of advice. He says that we need to consider who we're with. We need to consider who you're with, brethren. He says in verse 1, brethren, notice in verse 1 and verse number 10 that this passage is bookended by family language. He's talking about brothers and sisters. Then in verse number 10, he's talking about the household of faith. At Mud Creek Baptist Church, we want to be a family of believers who glorify an ever-changing God. Paul says, yes, you are a family. And he envisions a situation in that family where somebody is, to use his phrase, overtaken in a fault. Now, this phrase that he uses here in verse number one requires, I believe, careful explanation, lest we misunderstand it. The Bible teaches us that all of us are sinners. Amen, preacher, you're right. The Bible tells us that all of us are sinners. That we are all guilty of sin. But the Bible also teaches us that in a world of sin, in a world where we sin, where our nature's confused and corrupt, and we disappoint God and disappoint others, that not only are we all guilty of sin, we are also all victims of sin. And what Paul is emphasizing here, I really believe, is this attitude or this emphasis on the fact that we are victims of sin. You see, what he's saying here is if somebody is overtaken in a trespass, he's not talking about open, ongoing, unrepentant sin. He's talking about a believer who has sinned, who has failed, who knows it, and who wants to make it right. Okay? He's talking about somebody who's been overcome by temptation in a moment of foolishness and a moment of weakness falls into something sinful. In fact, he's talking about it in terms of a trespass or a transgression. And what he means by this is crossing a boundary. I'll explain it to you this way. Years ago, one of my cousins in Alabama, his name is Dustin Hornbuckle, that is his realized name. I don't know why my cousins have the last names of leprechauns, but they are hornbuckles. And uh Dustin is a couple years older than me, but uh 10, 15 maybe years ago, when he's a teenager, he created a small amount of controversy in that small town because he got in trouble with the law. He got in trouble with the law because he killed a deer. It's a right of passage in Alabama. Before you can have a job and take a life, you have to kill a deer. That's just, you know, part of your vision quest in Alabama. The problem with killing the deer was that he was on somebody else's property when he killed it. He had no right to kill that deer. But in Dustin's defense, this is kind of how he got out of the worst part of the trouble, he did not know that he had crossed onto somebody else's property while he was hunting that deer. He had accidentally transgressed a boundary and committed a crime. It's a similar idea that Paul has in this passage of scripture. That in the life of the church, people are guilty of sin, absolutely, but also people are victims of sin. They're tempted and they fail. They have moments of weakness, moments of sinful failure that they carry, that they want to recover from and they want to be restored. What Paul is saying is this one of the blessings, one of the benefits of church life is that in the life of the church, we get to interact with sinful people. See, we think that is a bug. Paul says no, it's a feature. That one of the features of the life of the church is that we are forced to rub shoulders with people that disappoint us, with people that let us down, with people that often say one thing and do something else. Isn't that a joy in the life of the church? Paul says it is a joy, and here's why. Because those who are spiritual, mature, godly, faithful people, they have the privilege of showing the gospel of the Lord Jesus to others when they fail. One of the things that's supposed to happen in the life of the church is you are supposed to be hurt at times. You are supposed to have your feelings violated, you are supposed to have people transgress boundaries, you are supposed to have people treat you in less ungodly ways, so that you learn to be patient, so that you learn to forgive, so that you learn to show to others the very gospel that you have believed. And this is Paul's point in this passage that in the church we are bearing one another's burdens. So he says, those of you that are spiritual, to restore one in a spirit of gentleness. The word restore there is a word that means to set a broken bone. How many of you have ever broken a bone, an arm or a leg or anything else in your life? You've broken a bone somehow, bike wreck, car wreck, just your own ignorance, whatever you broke a bone. I've lived nearly 41 years and I'm still intact. I've never broken a bone. It may change today, but I do know that when those bones are fractured, that part of the healing process is that the doctor says, All right, take a deep breath. You're gonna feel a slight pinch. And they're gonna set those bones together so that they can heal the way they are supposed to be. And that's the word that the apostle Paul uses for the word restore. That when we come together as a body of believers, as the family of God, there are people here that are fractured, that are broken. And what God wants to do through his people, the church, is he wants to set those people right. So he says, this happens with a spirit of gentleness. If you break your arm and you have to go to the emergency room and the doctor says, okay, we're gonna set your bone so that you can begin to heal. You don't want a doctor who's in a bad mood. You don't want a doctor who's in too big of a hurry. You don't want this to happen at quitting time when he's ready to go home. You wanna make sure that your doctor is gentle as possible with you. And Paul says that's the way it should be in the church that when people sin, we show them the gentleness and the mercy of the Lord as we help them find restoration. So, what do we do in the church with believers who sin? What do we do with believers that let us down? What do we do when somebody falls into some sort of temptation and disappoints us and hurts us and violates our sense of propriety? What do we do? Well, we write them off, obviously. We push them away. We make them know they're not good enough, right? We make them know they're lesser than. We put them down. We talk about them when they're not around. We make passive-aggressive Facebook posts. No, Paul says we restore them. We set things right. We get underneath their burden with them. This is what he says in this passage of scripture in verse 2 bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Now, I do not believe necessarily that his expression about burden bearing is always referring to people's sins. I take it for granted that there are a lot of burdens that have been carried into our church this morning. There are some of you that have carried financial burdens that as hard as you work and as disciplined as you are, it just seems like there's always more month than there is money. Can I get a witness? There are some of you that have come into this place today. You're bearing the burden of being a caregiver for a parent. A lot of sleepless nights, a lot of anxious decisions. There's some of you that are coming to this place and you were up last night worried about a prodigal child. That's a burden that you're bearing during this season of life. The burdens of parenthood, the burdens of dealing with special needs family members, any number of burdens that we may be carrying. What the Apostle Paul says is that as the people of God, we recognize that our privilege and our responsibility is to help get under those burdens with people so that we say to them, brother, sister, I know that right now it's hard, but I want to do what I can to lighten the load for you. I want to do what I can to help make it a little bit easier for you to keep following Jesus. I know that you're hurting, I know that you're suffering, and I know that you're in a difficult season, but I want to bear that burden with you. That's what Paul says should happen in the church. In other words, I should not have come into church this morning, knowing that there are people here that have children enslaved to addiction, and knowing that there are people here that are grieving the loss of a loved one, and knowing that there are people here that are confused and anxious about their health, and I should not leave today thinking, well, you know, the sermon was a little flat. And the music was just, I never had heard that second song they say. That's just not, didn't scratch my edge. You know, Sunday school just didn't do it for me today. God forbid that I come to church like a consumer, recognizing that the people of God around me are weighed down and they're heavy laden and they're hurting, and God has put me here to get under that burden with them. Paul says that we should carry one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. What is he talking about there? What does he mean? Because Paul has spent chapter after chapter in the book of Galatians saying you're not going to be saved by keeping the law. He says, if you think you can be made righteous by keeping the law, then you misunderstand the righteousness of God. You've underestimated God's righteousness, you've overestimated your own righteousness. If you think you can be saved by your good works, you do not understand how good God is and how bad you are. That's what he's saying in the book of Galatians. And now Paul says, Well, here's the law you need to follow. You need to follow in the church the law of Christ. What is the law of Christ? The law of Christ is that when I was burdened by my sin, when I was carrying my guilt, when I was carrying my shame, the Lord Jesus in love looked at me and said, That sin is not my fault, and it should not be my problem, but I will make it my responsibility and I will carry it to the cross for them. That's the law of Christ. So that means my relationships with other believers are animated, not by how they've treated me, not by how they've made me feel about myself, but I am animated by what Jesus has done for me. That means in the church, in the church, I'm not really responding to you. I'm responding to him in you and for you. So Paul says here that we need to consider who's around us, but he also says, in verses 4 and 5, and we'll move a lot more quickly now, with that foundation laid. He says we need to carry what we must. Now he goes out of his way to say that when we restore another brother that's fallen into sin, we need to consider ourselves lest we also be tempted. He's still pushing back against self-righteousness. We don't look at other people trapped in sin and saying, Well, I would never. I would never lie like that. I was raised better. I would never say those words when I got angry. It's just not in me. No, Paul says you are capable of the worst kinds of evil, and you better pay attention to yourself if you're gonna help anybody else. And he continues that theme of saying, we need to pay attention to ourselves if we're gonna help anybody else. So go back to your emergency room visit with your broken femur. For a doctor to set a broken bone. A doctor can't set a broken bone if he's got two broken arms. Just there's nothing he can do. You don't want to go have eye surgery by a blind ophthalmologist. You don't. You want to make sure they are capable of doing what they need to do for themselves before they're able to help you. Paul takes that same idea and he lays it over all of our lives. And he says, before we can actually responsibly serve and help anybody else, we need to make sure that we're doing what we need to be doing. Which is why he says in verse 3, if somebody thinks himself to be something, when he's nothing, he deceives himself. But he says, let each one examine his own work, and then we'll have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another. Now, verse 4, that's a tough verse to unravel. And I don't want to cause any confusion. That's not my intention, and I pray that if this is confusing, maybe the Lord will just give you some amnesia. I've seen people sleep in my sermons before. I know that's surprising, but maybe you'll just take a quick nap. I try my best to explain this. What Paul seems to be saying is that as believers, we should have a proper view of ourselves. We're not self-righteous, we're not self-condemning, we're not self-obsessed, we're not self-preserving, we're not all these kind of things. But as believers, we do know who we are in Christ. We know that we're sinners, we know that we're capable of sin, but we also know God has been gracious, that everything good in us is a gift of God. And so there is a right kind of, forgive me for saying it this way, but there's a right kind of pride in a believer's life. A right kind of pride. You know, pride is toxic and unhealthy. St. Augustine said that pride was the mother of all sins, that pride is pregnant with all other sins. That's true. But you're proud of you, grandbabies, ain't you? That's not sinful, that's right. It's appropriate. You should be. Well, Paul seems to be tapping in on the same thing that we have a healthy sense of self because of what God has done for us. So that in verse 5, each one of us shall bear our own load. Now, Paul just said that we should bear one another's burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. But now he says that all of us have to bear our own load. See being contradictory here. Well, not really, because the word for burden and the word for load are two totally different concepts. In fact, the word load is a word for backpack. In other words, there's some things that I have to be able to help you carry. But there's some things that I have to carry. Because God has given them to me to carry. That if I'm not carrying them, then I'm adding to someone else's burden. The best way I know how to explain this is to talk to young parents. If you are a young parent, if you've got kids that are two and under or whatever, you know what it's like to be overburdened, don't you? Because when you came into church this morning, you had to fight with the car seat, you may have brought the stroller in. You had to grab the diaper bag, and in the diaper bag, you've got a change of clothes, you've got diapers, you've got wipes, maybe bottles, formula, goldfish crackers, those freeze-dried strawberry puffs that we all secretly eat, whatever. We've got all this stuff. And you're carrying this. And you're also carrying the baby, right? And you're trying to push the stroller. And you're trying to carry your Bible, and you're trying to look like you really love Jesus doing all of it, even though you slept for two hours last night. And you're sticky and you don't know why. And that's parenthood for a while, right? You're overburdened, you're carrying those burdens for the sake of your child. But if you're still carrying that baby when it's 20, you got a problem. If you're still hauling diapers and wipes and bottles around, you got a real problem. Because as you carry that child's burdens, eventually that child, even as a young child, will start to get to the point where they can carry some things on their own. So it's like this. When I go to a restaurant and I eat, we eat, and then I leave dirty dishes on the table and walk away. You know why? Because it's somebody else's job to take care of. But when I eat at my family table, I clean up after myself. And we're in the season of life where I tell Scylla and Asa, guys, get your plate and take it to the dishwasher, take it to the kitchen, put it in the sink, or whatever. Put your trash in the trash can. Why? Because I'm teaching them to carry their own burden. What's easy in the life of the church is for some of us to treat all of this like it's a restaurant where we come and we feast and then we walk away. Somebody will clean up after us. We might even throw a little tip in the offering plate to make sure it's taken care of. When we're not realizing, friends, this is a family table. And all of us have a part to play that matters. All of us have a load to carry. And if you're not carrying your load, if you're not doing your part when you're able, then somebody else has to carry your burden. Now, if you really want me to start meddling, I could tell you that the reason we have to have octogenarians in the floor serving in the nursery is because some of the people in their 30s and 40s won't do it. Somebody's going to carry the burden. So Paul says, carry your load. God has given you a life and gifts and personalities and opportunities that only you can carry. And if you don't carry it, then you're going to over-encumber someone else. So carry what you must. Third, Paul says this, we're finished. Contribute where you're able. Now, if you're not careful in verse number six, the apostle Paul is going to take, man, this just quick right turn off into nowhere. He's like, you got to do your part, but you got to carry other people's burdens, you've got to restore them. And then verse number six, make sure you pay the preacher. Now, personally, I love Galatians 6.6. Everybody's getting Bible verse tattoos these days. I've thought about getting this. That those who teach should be served and blessed by those who receive the teaching. But hear me, hear me. Seriously, in all seriousness. Mud Creek Baptist Church, you do a fantastic job of fulfilling the admonition of Galatians 6.6. You do a fantastic job of sharing with me and our other pastors and our staff. If anything, I am overpaid. Please do not tell the finance committee team I said it, please. Forget that. Can we strike that from the record? But you do a fantastic job with this. But why does Paul go here? It's like, bear your burdens, do your part, pay the preacher. What? Well, think about the need for it in Galatians. They've been deceived and seduced by false teachers. And so if you've got brothers that are preaching the gospel, then do everything you can to empower them to preach the gospel. It makes a lot of sense. But it's also the case that pastors have burdens. They need people to support them, they need people to help them. He's talking about all of those things. As he goes from verse 6 to verse number 7, he gets into these classic verses of scripture, most all of us know, where he says, Do not be deceived, God is not mocked, for whatever man sows, that will he also reap. He says, sow into the ministry, invest in the work of God, contribute where you're able, do what you can, knowing that however you sow your life, you will reap what you have sown. Now, if you grew up in churches like I grew up in, they love these verses in Galatians chapter 6. Because they love to come at you and say, Whatever you sow, be not deceived, I can still hear my dad preaching it. Be not deceived, God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. If you sow a life of drunkenness, you will reap disease and a broken family. If you sow a life of sin, you will reap destruction. Hell, I can still hear that echoing in my mind. And it's true. It's true. Paul says it in this verse. If you sow to your flesh, you will from the flesh reap corruption. And some of you are experiencing that now. You're sowing your wild oats and you're praying for crop failure. You're living for yourself, you're living for your own pleasure, you're living without no regard for God at all, and you're wondering why you continually feel like you're butting your head into the wall and everything is falling apart because you are reaping the crops you have planted. Amen. But there is a positive side to this. They never seem to get around to the positive side when I was a kid. The positive side is that if you sow to the Spirit, you'll reap. If you invest in the work of God, there will be a harvest. It may not be instantaneous, but you will always reap what you sow. How many of y'all have your gardens in the ground? Some of you do. All right. Some of you think it may be a little bit early because you never know about that frost that's going to come, but we're inching up to May next week, so we should be getting there. Nobody in the history of the world has ever planted squash and grown corn. It's never happened. And it never will happen. Because if you plant squash and everything goes right, what grows from that squash seed? You reap what you sow. If you plant tomatoes, you do not get cucumbers. You gotta plant cucumbers to get cucumbers. If you plant beans, you don't get okra. You gotta plant okra to get okra and beans to get beans. That's Paul's point, that we reap what we sow. And so if we sow faithfulness, if we sow the kind of life in the church Paul talks about, where we carry one another's burdens and we serve and we're willing to get down in the floor with the babies. Paul says when we sow that way, we will reap good things from God. Now, pop quiz for our gardeners. If you plant squash tomorrow, are you gonna fry squash on Tuesday? It's gonna take a while, right? It's not instant. Paul says much the same thing in these verses. That's his emphasis in verse number nine. Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. It takes time for those squash seeds to germinate and then to produce and then to mature and then to produce squash. Paul says it's much the same way in our lives as believers. We sow seeds and we do not necessarily see the results immediately. It takes time for God to do his work. He does it in his own way, and he does it in his own time. And some of us pray and preach and teach and sing, and we wonder what in the world is taking so long. Paul simply reminds us, be assured that in God's time you will reap the harvest that you deserve. And so let me just encourage some of you today that maybe are tired. Maybe you've given a lot of time, maybe you've given a lot of money, maybe you've been in your Sunday school class teaching every week for decade after decade. Maybe you've been with the fifth-grade boys, God bless you, and you think, why in the world am I continuing to stand up and tell them about Jesus? I want to encourage you to always remember that our God hears the prayers that nobody else hears. Our God sees the faithfulness that nobody else sees. Our God sees the late nights pouring over a Sunday school quarterly so that you can rightly divide the word of truth. Our God sees you walk into the choir loft decade after decade, even as your hips get bad and your knees get bad, and it's not as easy to raise your hand and worship as it used to be. Our God sees that faithfulness, and our God will in time give us the right harvest for the seeds that we plant.

unknown 39:35

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Now, as a pastor, one of the blessings that I have is that I do not have to plant a garden. Do you know why? Because y'all do. And I know that in a few months, on church on Sunday morning, somebody says, Preacher, I left a bag of squash on your desk. And I think that's what he means in Galatians chapter 6 and verse number 6. He says, He says, that those who benefit from teaching should share with those who teach in all good things. That means squash. It also means deer jerky. Just as we move towards the fall, they share in all good things. Now, a lot of us benefit at Mud Creek from the hard work of other people. We really do. We don't see the hours that go into the Sunday school lesson. We don't recognize the work that goes into quality music. We don't think about how other people serve our children, how they encourage us. We just want to make sure that the bag of squash is hanging on the door every Sunday when we show up. We don't see the time, the sweat, the money, the effort, and the labor that's gone into us. What I want to say to some of you today is go plant something. For the glory of God. Get under the burden God intends for you to carry. Don't be a consumer. Be a contributor. Go pull some weeds. Go fertilize. Go water something. Serve in a meaningful way. To others of you, I'd want to say, keep doing what you're doing. You will reap a harvest. Even if in your 80s you get down in the floor and do a puzzle with some kids that may never remember it, one day in glory, you will reap a harvest for your faithfulness. What I want to say to all of us is that, God forbid, we become consumers who just come and sniff around to make sure that everything is exactly the way we want it. Because as Pastor Ray told the kids, it's not about you. It's not about me. It's about him first. And if it's about him, it will be about the people that he cares about. And so today, it's easy in the life of the church to make it all about me. My desires, my perceived and felt needs, my feelings, whatever, whatever. And so as we prepare for our invitation, I want to say a number of things to you. Some of you are here at Mud Creek Baptist Church today, checking us out because of busted relationships in other churches in our area. We are glad that you are here. But we want you to make those things right. Scripture tells us that if we are going to present our gift at the altar and we remember that we have brokenness in a relationship somewhere else, we leave our gift at the altar and go to that person and make it right before we continue to worship. And you'll never really be able to worship God fully or serve Him freely until those broken relationships are right. So I'm encouraging some of you today not to respond by coming to the altar, but by responding and making a phone call. Go to the person's home and make it right. Whether you need to show forgiveness or ask for forgiveness, go and make it right. Others of you here, listen, have broken relationships in this place. You smile and you treat one another nicely. But in the end, there are people here in your church family that you'd be fine if they just disappeared forever. You might even think the church would be better without them. You don't need to come to this altar this morning and pray about it. You need to go to that person and make it right. Others of you have benefited from the hard work of other people at Mud Creek for a long time. And it's time for you to plant some seeds. It's time for you to get out of the stands and get on the field and get in the game. Others of you are continuing to do every single thing that you can. You've Planted seeds when it wasn't easy. You've been strapped in the plow when it's been hard work. I just want to encourage you to keep on for as long as God gives you strength. Don't quit. Be not weary in well doing, for in due season you will reap if you do not lose heart. Don't lose heart, God knows.