Divorcing the Church

Introduction:

In preparing for this message, I started with a premise that is found in this text: that believer’s need have the type of relationships with one another that they can safety deal with problems and forgive petty grievances. This is the goal of the message, but in thinking about the solution; I had to ask myself what problem is this a solution to? American churches are constantly changing because people are constantly moving from one church to another and some are dropping out of church all together. Statistically, as of last year, 66% of young adults ages 18-22 from protestant churches drop out of church altogether. Most people though are just going to find another church. And the honest truth is they will generally continue hoping from church to church because they will never find a perfect church. So I asked myself why do people leave church? Reading articles on the topic, I came across one by Ron Edmondson a Baptist pastor who basically summarized what I was reading everywhere else:

Burn out- sometimes people get so busy and so excited about the church at the beginning and then they realize the church has flaws or they get worn out; so they quit.

Injury- All churches are composed of people. You will get hurt at some point by someone. This is one of the points I want to deal with in this message.

Distractions- One of the most common distractions that I have seen in churches is sports. Our kids have baseball on Sunday; I can’t do that this week because I have a game going on with my work team. What usually happens is they just get used to not being at church or being involved until they just don’t feel connected any more.

Life changes- They get married or divorced. Maybe they move to a new community. Some of these reasons are not wrong in and of themselves, but they can become an excuse for other deeper hidden issues.

Mistakes- Maybe they made a mistake and the church is failing to restore them. They may have shame from what happened. One of the biggest situations I can think of here is divorce. Sometimes people get divorced. Are we going to write them off because a mistake was made? I’m not going to go into my thoughts on divorce, but there are circumstance where people have no other choices.

Power struggle- Sometimes people come into the church with an agenda and if they cannot accomplish their agenda they leave. Usually they take people with them.

Lack of connection- a lack of connection usually is the result of both the church not proactively reaching out to people and people not seeking to invest themselves in the church. These are people who want to be ministered to but they are not seeking to minister to anyone else. Maybe they feel like they are not getting anything out of the messages. Either way, I believe the problem is always two sides when this is the reason for people leaving.

The passage we are going to look at today deals with at-least two of these problems: injury from church members and the shame of having made a mistake.

I believe this text deals with this problem because often times as Christians we split from each other because we either do not deal with serious problems or we lack the ability to just put up with the everyday problems that arise from being around other people. People will disappoint you but if you do not know how to deal with these disappointments you will constantly find yourself distancing yourself from other people.

Before we dive right in lets consider the context of this chapter. A few months ago we had our bible study on the book of Galatians and we saw that the book had as its theme that we are not saved by keeping the law nor can we live our Christian life by keeping the law. Judaisers had come in and told people in the church that they had to have faith and keep the law.

Galatians 5:16 KJV 1900

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

Galatians 5:22–23 KJV 1900

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

These are the verses directly prior to our discussion in Gal 6. These believer’s because they were walking in the law instead of the Spirit had come to a place where they were powerless against sin. You cannot overcome sin and temptation by just struggling through and self effort. The only solution is walking in the Spirit.

I. The overtaken believer

overtaken- taken by surprise- this is a Christian who wholeheartedly wants to do what is right but finds himself powerless to resist. Roman 7

Sometimes we lack sympathy for people who sin because we think we would never do such a thing. We do not understand the struggles that people go through in their fight against sin. This overtaking carries the idea of being in a trap. Some sins are what we call strongholds in our lives and are not easily defeated.

The Christian who is overtaken in a fault is the one who has been living by a legalistic righteousness instead of walking in the Spirit. The solution to this person’s problem is not legalistic regimine of activities to help them avoid temptation. It is walking in the Spirit.

fault- a false step

Fault is contrasted with trespass from 3:19 and is contrasted with the word walk of the previous vs 5:25 walk speaks of walking in a straight line.

II. The restoration

Ye which are spiritual- again the author is putting the emphasis on walking in the Spirit. Spiritual people are not necessarily the Sunday school teachers, the choir, the people who go on visitation or even give to the poor. Spiritual people are those who are walking in the Spirit.

restore- repair or restore to a former good condition

The primary thing that they needed to be set right about was not the act of sin which they committed, but that they had wandered off the right road of grace and were stumbling in the quagmire of self-dependence and legalism.

Wuest, Kenneth S. Wuest’s Word Studies from the Greek New Testament: For the English Reader. Vol. 3. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997. Print.

We cannot walk in the spirit while we have sin in our lives.

The purpose of of all church discipline or confrontation should always be restoration. Our goal is not to judge, not to drive people away, but to help and bring them back. Lashing out at someone who irritates you is not biblical confrontation.

III. The attitude of those doing the restoration

This confrontation is not done in hypocrisy:

spirit of meekness- gentleness

considering thyself

bear ye one another’s burdens- contextually this burden is our responsibility for the well-fare of our fellow believers. bear carries the connotation of enduring.

Vs 3- If we are proud, we will not help bear our brothers burdens. If we think we re better than everyone else we are just going to stand in judgment of them and not help out.

Vs 4- the proud man is told to put himself to the test- basically, he is to examine his own work to see if it matches God’s standard and if it does then he can be satisfied that he is right with the Lord and rejoice in that. Such an examination removes from us any sense of superiority because we see ourselves for who we truly are.

Vs 5 the word for burden in these two verses is a different word, but Wuest challenges us not to stress too much over the difference because they are used synonymously. Paul is most likely purposefully using a paradox to convey an idea. It is the man who bears his own weight of sin, that is the most likely to help someone else with their weight of sin. I think of Christian and Hopeful from the book “Pilgrim’s Progress” by John Bunyan who helps Christian as he is going through the sea to the Celestial city. These two were there to help lift each other up as they struggled through their Christian life until the end. We need friends like this in our Christian faith. Christian also had other’s to assist him through his journey namely Evangelist, Discretion, Mr. Interpreter and Faithful.

Conclusion:

In churches we have interpersonal conflicts all the time. People have different dispositions and ways of thinking about things. We don’t all go about things the same way. But we have been called together into a body, a family. We shouldn’t take it lightly when we leave a church. Leaving a church should be as hard as divorcing your wife used to be. It can be done, but it will cause damage to both people involved. A good marriage means that the couple work through their problems, they forgive and restore when sin has been committed. If every married couple gave up on each other every-time someone said something they didn’t like or did something wrong. Every marriage would end in divorce and I mean every. As a church, we must work through our problems together. Don’t run when someone says something you don’t like or does something wrong. If it is sin, lets deal with it and work through it. If it is a personality issue, lets love and pass over; Let’s bear the burden of living life with other people. Maybe we need marital counseling with disgruntled church members where we can sit down and work through problems. But I challenge you this morning, that the community of believers is a family that you have been called to be a part of, let’s not run away from that when ever we are disappointed by something; but let’s work to fix it.