Potholes of Life

Intro

So we’ve talked about what being Spirit Led is, and you know what if you’ve grown up in the church, you’ve probably heard these ideas thrown around in youth group, Bible Studies, even Sunday Sermons

Yet here’s the thing

When you’ve been around church long enough, you realize that there are ebb and flows in our lives are their not?

If you’ve been to Snow Camp, it’s a great experience, you get away from all of your normal life and all the things that are calling for your attention, all the homework, all the friends that are bad influences, all the modern society that wants very different things from God are not really here

You are here with a rather rare breed of people who generally want to follow Jesus in some way shape, shape or form

And if you are going to be going to Challenge with us this summer it’s even more so because then you are surrounded by several thousand people that love God 24/7 for a week instead of a short weekend!

So what is my point here: Life is going to come at you like a Spider Monkey!

So to help us not simply be talking about what it looks to be Spirit Led, I want to consider things that are deceptions that we can fall into

In 1805, as Napoleon was having trouble conquering Austria, his unit needed to pass the Danube river, but the lone bridge was heavily guarded by enemy troops, and it was rigged to explode should French troops try to utilize it. So Napoleon and his officers concocted a plan to casually walk up to the bridge laughing and cheering, and upon greeting the enemy soldiers on the bridge at gunpoint, Napoleon's team lied and claimed that an armistice had finally been signed (it hadn't) and that war was over (it wasn't). The enemy guards on the bridge not only fell for Napoleon's bluff and allowed his unit to walk across the strategic bridge unheeded, they actually helped prevent nearby artillery forces from firing on Napoleon's unit as they progressed forward.

Our enemy is tricky, and Satan has been a great deceiver since the garden of eden, so we need to be careful we don’t fall for his ploys in our lives!

Don’t Be Deceived: Your Actions have Consequences (v.7-8)

So the first area that we can be deceived is that we cannot be deceived into thinking we will not answer for the things we do

Galatians 6:7–8 “7 Don’t be deceived: God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows he will also reap, 8 because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit.”

What is the deception?

We think that this world is all there is, we get caught up in the rat race of life, and we end up sowing the wrong things in life

What is sowing?

It’s basically planting a field, it’s where you go out and spread seeds among the dirt after it is ready for the seeds to be put in the ground

So since none of us are actually farmers that I am aware of, what does Paul mean by sowing?

Galatians Bridge

How we live our lives today matters. Every decision we make about how to spend our time, energy, and resources reflects who and/or what we truly value. Jesus made this point clear when he said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”

So How we live our lives matters, now this is pretty easy for us to see

If you cheat on a test, and you get caught, you will reap failing that test and maybe a class!

story of cheating in Honors English and getting caught

If you drive and speed, you are breaking the law and so what you have sown will be reaped in a ticket from the police and probably getting in trouble with your folks!

Yet, when we look at the passages in Galatians 5, we see a lot of bad things listed, and Mat will go into more detail in his message, but this is not only about those bad things like sex, drunkeness, envying, etc

It also impacts how we might live as Christians

The mocking of God is not limited to non-Christians, but is in fact a real danger for us as Christians!

When we live our lives the way we want to, yet claim to be Christians we mock God and we are saying, “Thanks for the get out of hell card God, but I know better than you now!”

We even see this in the Old Testament in 2 Chronicles 36, we comes across the people and priest of God are ridiculing the prophets of God, and it says it gets so bad that God’s wrath was against the people that there was no remedy except to be destroyed by Babylon captivity

So the point here is not that people cannot mock God, but that when we do it, we can’t get away with it!

Yet, here is the trouble, we can all think of people that don’t get what they deserve

The innocent that don’t get the justice they deserve, the wicked person in power who doesn’t answer for their crimes, but God will deal with them

In fact, this to me is one of the best reasons to consider Christianity, if you don’t believe in a higher power, you have no answer for how injustice will be dealt with

Christianity says there are eternal things at stake, our lives and even judgement!

So this brings us to a troublesome issue, we all mock God in our lives, we all don’t fully sow the good things, we often sow a field full of good things of God, and evil

So when we are going in our lives we have to make sure we are actively sowing the things that honor God

For instance, do you ever wonder why God feels so far away in periods of your life, well you should ask yourself, 3 months ago, what was I sowing in my life?

I bet that was not a lot of prayer and devotional, so is it any wonder why we struggle?

If you are not sowing the things of God, we will start to sow the things of the flesh, which are the things listed at the end of chapter 5.

The spiritual principal you have to remember and the pothole to be wary of is this:

How you invest your time, energy, resources, gifts, will produce an eternal harvest, either to destruction or eternal life.

We need to always bee vigilent in checking ourselves, lest we forget about that giant pothole in the road!

To sow the flesh means you pander to it, cuddle and lavish on it, instead of killing it

Each time we allow our mind to harbour a grudge, nurse a grievance, entertain an impure fantasy or wallow in self-pity we are sowing the flesh

But there is another things we can get caught up in, particularly if you have grown up in the church, and that is doing good things, that are not God things

If you were here a few Snow Camps ago, we did a camp based on Gentle & Lowly, and I’d like to read an except from that which points to our ability to not only mock God, but also deceive ourselves in the process

Gentle & Lowly

Gentle & Lowly- Eph. 2:1-3

Consider the overall impact of these three verses. Paul is not speaking of sin the way we often do: “I messed up,” “I made a mistake,” “I’m struggling with…”; Paul identifies sin as the comprehensive, enveloping, inexorable flow of our lives. Our sins are less like an otherwise healthy man tripping up and more like a man who is disease-ridden from head to foot: dead.

We were following Satan even if we didn’t know it. The power of hell was not only something we yielded to, it was something inside of us. Divine wrath was something so deserving, so attendant, that we were its very children. What water is to fish, inordinate ugliness of desire was to us.

Beneath our smiles at the grocery store and cheerful greetings to the mailman we were quietly enthroning self and eviscerating our souls of the beauty and dignity and worship for which they were made. Sin was not something we lapsed into it, it was something we enjoyed living in. It was our coddled treasure, our Gollum’s ring, our settled delight. That’s what his mercy healed.

Well you say, I grew up in a law-abiding home. We went to church. I kept my nose clean. I’ve never been arrested. I’ve been decent to my neighbors. Look what Paul says: “Among whom we all once lived according to the passions of our flesh.”

Surely not, this is Paul the former Pharisee, the law keeper to end all law keepers, ‘a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless (Phil. 3:5-6). How could he include himself among those who were devoted to the passions of the flesh? Neither of these is a one-time self-description, moreover. Multiple times in Acts Paul describes his earlier life in similar terms

The only way to make sense of these two kind of passages is to understand that we can vent our fleshly passions by breaking all the rules, or we can vent our fleshly passions by keeping all the rules, but both ways of venting the flesh still need resurrection. We can be immoral dead people, or we can be moral dead people. Either way, we’re dead

The mercy of God reaches down and rinses clean not only obviously bad people but fraudulently good people, both of whom equally stand in need of resurrection.

So let us not deceive ourselves into thinking we are above the flesh, because we will simply sow a fleshly harvest that is a bit shinier, but still fleshly in nature

Don’t Be Deceived Into Quitting (v.9-10)

The second area of deception we have to avoid is to be deceived into quitting doing good works

If you want to have a positive harvest, you can’t stop halfway through!

As Justin talked about: sowing the Spirit is the same as setting your mind in the spirit and walking in the Spirit!

So if we quit doing good, we are going to end up in a place where sin is running the show in our lives!

Notice what it says in verse 9:

Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time

Of course this in tied into the last point we had, but there something else going on here

First it is plural: Let us

Why do you think Paul refers to a plural body of believers?

It’s because we are rarely doing anything alone, there is always a mass of people trying to get us to buy into something

When we drive down a highway we see entire marketing firms trying to get you to choose their company, to adopt a lifestyle, to believe that having certain things will make you desirable to certain people

We have social media that works on driving you to click and engage and to fortify your beliefs in certain areas or to change your beliefs in certain areas

All in all, if you think that this world is neutral or even has your best interests in mind, you would be foolish or naive to think that

So the condition to help replace that: don’t quit, don’t tire of doing good with other Christians

Then the secondary clause of this statement:

Continue to do good when?

While you have the opportunity

Continue to do good for who?

For all, but particularly those in the household of faith, aka believers

Why do you think Paul tells us this?

Or rather why is there a command to continue to do good?

The answer is that it is exhausting to do good many a time!

In fact, as I was thinking about this passage, I thought of how this plays out in my own life

I want to do good and to honor God and do my best, but that’s the problem, it’s out of my ability and my reserves and my power

So then when the Devil comes and tempts me to a certain sin, you know what it looks like: a vacation

A vacation from doing good, and because it’s not pouring out myself for others, it comes in the form of selfishness, and it’s funny that in many ways sin is simply a version of selfishness, you want what you want regardless of what God says

We want to not give up, not quit because there is a harvest that is coming, there is a judgment that is on the horizon, and we will reap what we sow

Look, when we want to do good, it is a resisting of evil

When we sow the things of God, it means that we say no to the things of the flesh

And it is totally normal to think, is this good, is this right? Is it worth it?

Particularly when we see people doing things the wrong way, or taking advantage of others and being rewarded for it, it’s tempting to compromise

Yet we must not cease doing good!

Giving up has this idea of having one’s strength exhausted

I don’t know about any of you, but I’ve been loving going to the gym the last few years

And if you’ve worked out, you know that doing that bench or squat or machine to exhaustion is exhausting!

Yet, if you go to the gym and you never go to the point of exhaustion, you will never get stronger in a meaningful way, we have to push past our limits to gain more ability!

Just as we train our bodies, God wants us to train our character and our ability to love others

This same word is used in speaking of how we can’t give up when God disciplines us to grow our character!

So how can we endure when life is hard, when people are jerks, when our goodness is met with mockery or scorn or even hatred?

Well, it matters the standard we use

If you are doing good based on how people respond, it’s a fools errand, but if you do it because of a love for God, it’s different

Galatians (5) Don’t Quit! (6:9–10)

Why did Paul feel it necessary to persist in reminding the Galatian believers to practice the plain duties of the Christian faith? Calvin offers several answers to this question:

This precept is especially necessary because we are naturally lazy in the duties of love, and many little stumbling-blocks hinder and put off even the well-disposed. We meet with many unworthy, many ungrateful people. The vast number of the needy overwhelms us; we are drained by paying out on every side. Our warmth is damped by the coldness of others. Finally, the whole world is full of hindrances which turn us aside from the right path. Therefore Paul does well to confirm our efforts, so that we do not faint through weariness.

When we meet those people that it is hard to do goodness to, it moves us to the final deception we can overlook

Don’t Be Deceived and Underestimate Mercy (v.12-16)

There are two deceptions that we underestimate mercy in

First we underestimate our own need for God’s mercy

Paul speaks of his enemies and how they basically want to boast in the number of Gentiles that they get fully ‘converted’ to Judaism via circumcision

We might think that we are not those people, but we are, we always want to put on a show of our spiritual maturity, it’s a subtle way the devil tricks us

When we err on this we are likely to become the very type of people Christians ought not to be

We become more concerned about outward appearances and actions than your heart

For instance we judge how mature of a believer you by how often you come to church, if you come late to church, what you wear to church, how you interact during the worship set, etc.

Are any of those things bad things in themselves? No! But it shows our own need for mercy when we start judging the maturity of people by outward signs

Then here becomes the issue, the standard that we use on others, we almost never put it on ourselves

We make excuses why we are running late to church, or why we need to make sure to get our morning coffee, or why we don’t do xyz, but others should

So how does Paul deal with this struggle that we have?

It all comes back to Jesus, like it always does!

Paul says I will boast in the cross of Christ, it is the thing that changed Paul’s life upside down!

I know it’s so difficult for us to fathom, but crucifixion was such a horrendous thing that most people would never even speak the word in public!

Yet here is Paul openly boasting about it! Openly saying this is the basis for me and my identity!

So this does a very important thing for us, it points us back to God’s mercy

We are people that tend to overestimate our goodness and greatly underestimate our wickedness

We think we have the corner on truth and so it allows us to oft look down upon others thinking they are wrong

Yet Christianity does something different, we start with we are all bad, and that’s why we need Jesus

I don’t need Jesus because I’m a great husband or pastor, or friend, I need Jesus because I’m not! I need the Spirit to make me new to help my heart be transformed!

The only way for us to be solved and detoxed from the poison of pride is to daily crucify the selfishness of our hearts and desires

The other thing is that we underestimate the power of mercy for others

We must realize that Christianity and following Jesus is not about doing things, that is moralism masquerading as a connection with God

That is what Jesus takes issue with the Pharisees and it’s something that we struggle with as well

Isaiah 29:13 “13 The Lord said: These people approach me with their speeches to honor me with lip-service, yet their hearts are far from me, and human rules direct their worship of me.”

Do you have an issue with the church, it might be this

It’s a Church that is easy and simple and demands nothing of you

You don’t have to change your lifestyle, we can make excuses why we don’t need to outreach, or live frugally, or give less money to the church

Then a Good Christian does xyz, and it’s back to the old testament standard with a little Jesus sprinkled in!

It is far more basic and far more difficult to track with: it is a relationship with Jesus and the God of the universe!

There is no one that is too far gone, too evil, to be renewed by this mercy of God

Romans 2:4 “4 Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”

The matter is never what we do for God, but what God has done for us!

Galatians Structure

All of us who are in Christ—regardless of ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status—are at peace with God because of the mercy he has shown. Such peace and mercy are not limited to our initial conversion, but are an ongoing experience as the Spirit produces such fruit in our lives. If we fail to experience such peace and mercy in our daily lives it is because we fail to keep in step with the Spirit

So when we walk out of here and go back home, and you head back to school, and you get back and get into an argument with your parents over homework you didn’t finish this weekend, what should you remember?

Don’t be deceived

Don’t think that what you are doing right now is unimportant, you are planting seeds in your life that will have eternal consequences, both good and bad!

Don’t be deceived to quit doing good!

Continue to radically love those around you! Your enemies, those that hold views you find reprehensible, those that are alone and abandoned at school, those that are popular but surrounded by vain friends

But, when you fail, when you are deceived by Satan, when you put yourself in a mess of your own making?

Don’t forget or underestimate the power of the mercy of God

It is a mercy that helps you overcome your own sin, and a mercy that breaks the heart of the most overt sinner!

It is a mercy that welcomes you home, day after day, and it is a mercy that allows you to not strive for God’s relationship rightness, but dwell in the rightness of the Lord

I’d like to close with a quote from Pope Francis, which surprises me as much as it does you!

"It is not easy to entrust oneself to God's mercy, because it is an abyss beyond our comprehension. But we must! ... "Oh, I am a great sinner!" "All the better! Go to Jesus: He likes you to tell him these things!" He forgets, He has a very special capacity for forgetting. He forgets, He kisses you, He embraces you and He simply says to you: "Neither do I condemn you; go, and sin no more" (Jn 8:11)."

That is the heart behind this entire weekend, we are not seeking to strive to do this on our own power and ability, but solely upon the work Jesus has done in us and the work he will continue to do in each of us until we are called home, or he returns

That is why this is good news, no one is to far gone, to far deceived, to broken, to good, to young, famous, poor, or etc to be able to experience the power of the Spirit given to us:

It is not easy to entrust oneself to God’s mercy, because it is an abyss beyond our comprehension, but we must!