The Law of Christ

INTRODUCTION:

In the United States, businesses use millions of wood pallets each year to haul products. After a while a pallet withstands crushing weights and has taken abuse from truck travel and forklifts, eventually it can no longer be used.

Now cracked and smashed, or loose and floppy, pallets are something businesses must pay other companies up to five dollars per pallet to dispose of. Disposal companies burn the pallets, chew them into wood chips, or dump them in landfills.

The raw material of pallets is valuable hardwoods like rosewood, cherry, oak, mahogany, and maple. Recently there has been a trend of of restoring pallets and using them as decor in the home. People have used them as shelves, walls, tables and benches.

Now If that is what can be done with lifeless wood, how much more can people be restored to lives of value. God is in the business of restoration. He takes people that seem worthless, people broken by the weight of sin, and transforms them into works of beauty and usefulness.

Now Paul talks about restoring those who have falling away but he also gives warnings to those who are doing the restoring.

SCRIPTURE READING

Let’s read Galatians 6:1-10..

I. PAUL AND THE SAINTS (6:1–10): Paul writes his final instructions to the Galatian believers, reminding them of three laws.

A. The law of sharing and caring (6:1–5)

1. The name of this law (6:1–2): Paul calls it the law of Christ.

a. Brethen, even if anyone is caught in any trespass...

i. At first glance we can think this as one Christian catching another Christian in the act of sin. But the idea here isnt that someone has been caught in sin but that sin has captured someone.

ii. I am reminded of the story of Cain and Abel. The Lord had regard for Abel’s offering, but he did not regard Cain’s offering, which made Cain angry.

iii. When God saw that Cain was angry and his face fell, he told him, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” (Genesis 4:7)

iiii. Sin was crouching at the door and looking to catch Cain in his anger. Sin did win, and Cain murdered Abel.

v. It is good for us to remember that sin is looking for an opportunity to “catch” us. Cain failed to rule over sin. In Christ, we have been given the power, by the Spirit, and by faith, to rule over sin in our lives.

b. You who are spiritual..

i. Paul gives a qualification for someone who confronts a brother or sister in sin. That is, that they are to be spiritual.

ii. I find this to mean someone who is filled with the Spirit. Someone that displays the fruit of the Spirit in there lives as Paul listed in the previous chapter.

iii. I think this is important because Paul says in 1 Corinthians that the natural person does not accept the supernatural and it’s foolishness to them because they don’t have the mind of Christ

c. Restoring someone in a Spirit of gentleness

The Christian army is the only one that shoots its wounded. This is often said, but is it really true? Are Christians really guilty of shooting their wounded?

Sadly, Christians do often put other believers down when they fail or fall. For too often, believers become judgmental and critical when others slip and are wounded by the effects of sin.

the issue is not to be why was a believer wounded by sin but how can a believer be restored? We have been given an opportunity that has been birthed in the heart of God. God is a God of restoration.

He does not hold a grudge. Just ask the Prodigal Son … just look into the mirror and you will see who He restores. The Christian has been charged with the responsibility to restore fallen saints. Will we be found faithful in this crucial ministry?

i. The backslidden brother or sister should be “restored gently.” The word for “restore” is katartizō, literally “to put in order,” “to restore to its former condition.”

ii. Elsewhere in the New Testament this same word is used for the mending or overhauling of fishnets.

iii. It was also a part of the medical vocabulary of ancient Greece, where it meant “to set a fractured or dislocated bone.

iiii. We need to be firm in confronting sin but our conversation should be seasoned in grace

d. Matthew 18 gives a formula of restoring a fellow believer

i. First we are to confront them directly

ii. If they won’t listen to us then we take someone with us and confront again

iii. If they still won’t change then we take it in front of the church leadership

iiii. If still nothing changes then we are told to basically wash our hands of them.

e. Guard yourself so you will not also be tempted

i. Some of the most inaccurate words that glide across the lips of Christians are these: “I’ll never fall. It could never happen to me.”

ii. One of the first jokes of the age of automation describes a planeload of people soon after takeoff. A voice comes on the plane’s intercom, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome aboard. We are climbing to our planned cruising altitude of 39,000 feet. All of the plane’s systems are working perfectly, and we expect to land at our destination on time. This is a fully automated plane. There is no pilot or copilot. Everything is guided and monitored by a computer. We want you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. Nothing can go wrong … can go wrong … can go wrong.…”

f. Bear one another’s burdens

i. The word for “burden” (baros) means literally “a heavy weight or stone” someone is required to carry for a long distance.

ii. The reality is that all Christians have burdens

iii. The myth of self sufficiency.-

1. We all have burdens, and God does not intend for us to carry them ourselves in isolation from Him and one another

2. As a church we are to make each other’s burdens lighter and not heavier

We do this by encouraging one another, praying for one another, forgiving one another and loving one another.

3. I think restoring someone to Christ is not reminding someone of their sin but reminding them of their savior.

2. The nurture of this law (Galatians 6:3-5)

a. Paul’s warning of self-deceive-ment(Thinking we are better than we are)

b. Pauls challenge to self evaluation of work(test to see why we do what we do)

c. Pauls reasoning of self evaluation (We will face judgment one day)

i. The point of this verse is to warn the believer: he is personally responsible to the Lord for his own behavior and shall be judged for what he has done.

ii. Every believer has his own burdens, his own weight of faults and sins to bear

iii. “But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (Mt. 12:36).

iiii. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2 Co. 5:10).

B. The law of receiving and giving (6:6):

1. Those who are taught the Word of God should help their teachers

a. There are many ways to do that to help teachers who share the word.

i. Pay attention and participate in what is being taught. That means not being on your cell phone or day dreaming but really listening

ii. Another way is to put it into practice and share that with your teachers.

iii. Another way is to send a card every now and then that has a HANDWRITTEN message in it.

iiii. Also, pray for your teachers!

v. Hebrews 13:17 says...Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.

2. Paul’s point is that God’s people should not share in all good things with him who teaches because it is good for the teacher..

a. They should do it because it is good for the one who is taught and shares, and the principle of reaping and sowing demonstrates this.

C. The law of sowing and reaping (6:7–10)

1. Those who sow only sinful desires will reap everlasting death (6:7–8a).

If we want to reap to the Spirit, we should not hesitate to sow to the Spirit with whatever resources God has given us.

i. A farmer reaps the same as he has sown. If he plants wheat, wheat comes up. In the same way, if we sow to the flesh, the flesh will increase in size and strength.

ii. The farmer reaps the same as he has sown, but not exactly. The apple seed doesn’t just grow more apple seeds, but more apples with seeds.

iii. Even so, when we sow to the Spirit—even with material things—what we reap is not necessarily material things, but something better: of the Spirit we reap everlasting life.

iii. The farmer also reaps more if he has sown more, and the relationship between what he sows and what he reaps is exponential. A farmer can plant one apple seed and receive hundreds of apples over time.

2. Those who sow what is good will reap everlasting life (6–8).

i. It has a general application in life; what we get out of life is often what we put in.

ii. Yet, Paul is not promoting some law of spiritual karma that ensures we will get good when we do good, or always get bad when we do bad.

iii. Instead, Paul simply relates the principle of sowing and reaping to the way we manage our resources before the Lord

3. Those who dont give up doing good will reap a harvest

i. There was a conversation between two mega-church Pastors. One said early on that he wanted to quit. People would lie to him. Slander and gossip about him behind His back.

ii. Even a local tv station wrote an article on him demeaning his character. He said that he didn’t ask for this and he didn’t need this. Many times he’d preach places on fire but inside he just wanted to quit. It came to the point where it wasn’t worth what it was costing him anymore

iii. He then remembers after church service and the fellowship, after many people left and the music died down, that there was a woman there who stayed there for hours after the service wanting to talk to him. He was hoping she would give up and leave. He finally approached her.

iiii. She was this tiny woman and she said Pastor, i’ve been in the hospital. She said I was pregnant in my fallopian tubes and the baby died in my tubes and I was carrying around a dead baby and the toxicity from the baby almost killed me.

v. She said the only thing that kept me alive was the words that would say, the hope that you would share, and the love that you have shown. If you haven’t been doing that for me and helping me to “keep on keeping on” I would of died. Then she looked at him and said “It’s for us”. It’s not for them. It’s for us!

vi. We all face times of discouragement.

1. Times when we just want to quit and give up.

2. Where enough is enough!

3. We get tired and worn down and don’t feel like we can go on anymore.

4. We’ve been lied to one too many times. We’ve been betrayed, beaten down, and broken for far too long.

5. We suffer with a sickness or physical ailment that seems uncurable and never-ending.

“Former President Theodore Roosevelt said “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly”

vii. There are keys that enable to keep on keeping on

We are to keep dedicated to God.

We are to keep dependant on God

We are to keep delighting in God

We are to stay desperate for God

4. The call is to do good to all people as we have opportunity, especially in the household of the faith.

Do good when opportunities show themselves

Do good because our end is near and time is fleeting. It’s something that we cant get back.

APPLICATION

author of the hymn “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” lost the joy with the Savior he had once enjoyed, and in his declining years he backslid.

As a result, he became deeply troubled in spirit. Hoping to relieve his mind, he decided to travel.In the course of his journeys, he met with a young woman who was a Christian, and so she asked him what he thought of a hymn she had just heard.

To his astonishment he found it to be none other than his own song. He tried to evade her question, but she continued to press him for a response. Suddenly he began to weep.

With tears streaming down his cheeks, he said, “I am the man who wrote that hymn many years ago. I’d give anything to experience again the joy I knew then.” Although surprised, she reassured him that the “streams of mercy” mentioned in his song still flowed.

Mr. Robinson was deeply touched. Turning his “wandering heart” to the Lord, he was restored to him the joy of his salvation.

Today I believe God wants to restore to you what the enemy has stolen

Maybe God wants to use you to restore something that the enemy has stolen from a family member, friend or co-worker