00:00
00:00
00:01
Transcript
1/0
We take the Bibles in terms of
the book of Galatians, again, we're in chapter six. Galatians,
chapter six. So we continue on. Talking about the crux of the
Christian's commission, which is the restoration of the sinner,
we're going to begin to talk a little bit about the believers
self-watch as well. Let's begin by reading the text
together again this morning, Galatians, chapter six. Verses
1-6. Scripture says, Brethren, if
any 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 anyone thinks himself
to be something, when he in actuality nothing. He is fantasizing about
himself. He is deceiving 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. Would you join me in a word of
prayer? Father, we come before your Word
this morning. We are thankful for it. We are thankful that
in your Word you have revealed to us all that we need for life
and godliness. Father, I thank you for the song
that we just sang, that it is on the merits of Christ and on
Christ alone that we stake our eternal salvation. As the psalmist said in Psalm
16, my goodness is nothing apart from you. Father, there's nothing
good in any one of us to commend us to you. It is Christ and Him
alone. Father, today, as we once again
look into these verses, I pray that your Spirit would open our
understanding, that we could not only understand ourselves
and our own faults, but that, Father, we would understand how
that we can be involved and more effective in helping to do the
work of restoration when you give us that opportunity. I pray
these things in Jesus' name. Amen. That restoration to fellowship
is summarized well in the words of David's prayer in Psalm 51,
when David is praying unto God after his repentance from his
sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. And he says, Restore
unto me the joy of thy salvation. And David exclaims in that prayer,
he says, A broken and a contrite heart, These, O God, you will
not despise. And so we examine the concept
of restoration, seeing it as the central teaching of God's
Word, the restoration of the sinner, all for the glory of
God. Because the greatest thing in
it all is to bring glory to God through the restoration of the
sinner. I was, in my scripture reading this week, I was thinking,
you know, there was really no more beautiful story in all of
the Scripture of God's sovereign hand in the restoration of sinners
than in the story of Joseph and his brethren in the book of Genesis. Those brothers were filled with
hatred and jealousy and it rose up in the ten to scheme and to
come up with a diabolical plot to try to destroy the lad Joseph. Eventually he is sold into slavery
in Egypt. And God preserves him through
many bleak episodes in Pharaoh's prison to eventually rise to
where he is a prince in Pharaoh's court. And God used a famine
to providentially drive the brethren to Joseph's side and in the end
to restore them to peace and fellowship with one another.
After the death of their father Jacob, grieving and in fear. They come to Joseph one more
time seeking his forgiveness. And I want us to listen again
to the words of comfort that Joseph speaks to them after having
been reconciled to them. He says, Do not be afraid, for
am I in the place of God? As for you, you intended evil
against me, but God intended it for good in order to bring
it about as it is this day to save many people alive. Now,
therefore, do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your
little ones. And he comforted them. And he spoke kindly to
them. What a beautiful story of restoration. And so in the scriptures we've
been studying, we see the crux of the Christian's commission
is this work of restoration. You know, I was thinking and
studying again this week, and I was thinking how in reality,
one entire chapter of Jesus's gospel teaching in the book of
Matthew is devoted to this theme. And I want us to turn there for
a few minutes this morning. I want us to go over to Matthew
chapter 18. Turn over to Matthew chapter 18 as we think of these
concepts of restoration. We're not going to take all of
our time with this, but we need to look quickly at this chapter
this morning. This entire chapter is focused
on the subject of forgiveness. Just like 1 Corinthians chapter
13 is what we call the love chapter, 1 Corinthians chapter 15 is the
resurrection chapter, Matthew chapter 18 is really the forgiveness
chapter. Beginning in the first verses,
the Lord begins to talk about forgiveness. And He establishes
in the beginning of the chapter the need for forgiveness. In
fact, if you look in verse 7, He says in Matthew 18, verse
7, Woe to the world because of offenses. The word offenses there
could easily be translated with the concept of sin. Something
that makes someone to stumble. He says, Woe to the world because
of offenses. For offenses must come. But woe
to that man by whom the offense comes. If your hand or your foot
causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better
for you to enter into life lame or maimed rather than having
two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And so
he establishes in these first 14 verses the need for forgiveness. Secondly, we see in these verses,
that really beginning in verse 15 and going to verse 20, he
really delineates the means of securing forgiveness. And in
this passage of scripture, we have that well-known, kind of
famous, three-step process that Jesus teaches, where he says
to us here in Matthew chapter 18, if your brother sins against
you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If
he hears you, you have gained your brother. Secondly, he says,
if he will not hear you, take with you one or two others that
by the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be
established. If he refuses to hear them, then
tell it to the church. If he refuses to hear even the
church, let him be to you like a heathen or a tax collector.
And then he goes on, he talks about binding and loosing. He
goes on and talks about prayer in the church, and how if two
or three agree on earth at touching anything, and they agree in prayer
before the Father, they have that request that they have sought
from the Father. And then he makes this famous
statement in verse 20, for wherever two or three are gathered together
in my name, I am there in the midst of them. That is almost
what we would think of as the church body in its nugget form. Down to two or three. And then
he goes on, and later in this chapter, he illustrates the importance of forgiving others. And he begins
this in a parable in verse 21, going on to the end of the chapter,
where he just tells a parable about two debtors, one who owes
an astronomical debt and the other a mid-sized debt. And the man who owes the astronomical
debt goes to the creditor, who is his master. He says to him,
would you please forgive me? I do not have the wherewithal
to pay this debt. And the master freely forgives
him. And then that debtor, who is now forgiven, goes and finds
one of his fellow servants who owes him a little bit of money.
And he says, pay me now or I'll cast you into prison. And the
Lord is showing us the unjustness of if we are forgiven all of
our debt by the Father, if we hold a debt against our brother,
that is totally contradictory with a life transformed by grace.
And so Jesus even taught on that in Matthew chapter six, didn't
he? When he says, if you do not forgive men their trespasses,
neither will your father in heaven forgive you. Now, before we go
back to Galatians chapter six, I want to take a brief hiatus
and run through church history for a moment. And I want us to
think about some concepts having to do with forgiveness and how
the church is to restore a repentant sinner. You know, it's very important
we understand church history. Next to the Scriptures and your
study of Scripture, you should work to learn church history.
It is important we understand the battles and the issues that
have come along in the history of the church. There was a guy
named Augustine. We know him as Saint Augustine.
He is many times called Augustine of Hippo. He lived in the 300s
A.D. So we're going back to kind of
the time of the patristic fathers. We're thinking of a time when
the church is just moving out of persecution and into a time
of tolerance under Constantine. And so they're in a transition.
And this is the time in which Augustine lives. He is involved
in dealing with a multitude of heresies that have crept up in
the early church. We're going to deal with one of them this
morning. There's three of them that he dealt with and he wrote
on extensively. You know, you can still read
the writings of St. Augustine and I would commend
them to you. The confessions that he wrote,
the city of God, in many ways, St. Augustine is really one of
the fathers of the Reformation because many of his teachings
really led Martin Luther into the book of Romans and eventually
to the recapturing of the gospel of grace through faith alone.
There was a guy named Manicus, and we call it Manicheanism,
which was one of the big issues in the church that day, which
was really the predecessor of what we think of as rationalism. And this guy taught that you
could come to know God through your intellect. And Augustine
confronted that and he said, no, if you want to understand
the scriptures, you must believe first. And if you believe first,
then your understanding will be open. There was a guy named
Pelagius, we call it Pelagianism, which is still rampant in the
church today. Pelagius was teaching a denial of inherited sin from
Adam, and he really was the one who began to employ a teaching
that man, through his own ability, could save himself. And there's
still Pelagian teaching in the church today. There was another
group, and this is where we're going to look for a few minutes
this morning, called Donatism, or the Donatist movement. And
I want to explain it to you because it's very pertinent to what we're
talking about with restoration this morning. The time of the
Donatist movement was right at the close of the greatest persecution
that the church faced. There were 10 great persecutions
in the first 300 years of church history, basically beginning
with Nero. Diocletian was the last one. And then shortly after that,
Constantine ushers in a period of tolerance towards Christianity,
which brought a whole different set of problems into the church.
But anyway, this was the time of great persecution. During
that time, there were bishops in the church and priests who,
in order to save their own neck, recanted their faith and turned
the scriptures over to the civil authorities to be burned. That's
a big problem, isn't it? We would call that probably apostasy.
This brought up a whole set of problems in the church. What
do we do with this? Because as soon as persecution
ended, what do you think those bishops did? We'd like to have our church
membership back, thank you. We would like to be reinstated to
our pulpits. The Donatists saw this as a huge
sacrilege against Christ. And they were working devotedly
for a pure church. In fact, the emphasis of the
Donatist movement was the purity of the church. That was the emphasis.
And so what the Donatists were saying If you were baptized by
a bishop who apostatized, your baptism is now invalid. And other things like that. And they began to say that if
the sacraments were administered by someone who apostatized, then
those sacraments were invalid. And so this brought up a whole
set of issues in the church that Augustine begins to deal with.
And here's the interesting issue, because this is where it goes.
Let's go together to about 335 A.D. to a church in Carthage,
for instance. And let's sit in the pews. And
you come in this morning and you're a woman and you maybe
have four or five kids with you. And about 15 years ago, your
husband was fed to the lions. And you come as a broken family.
And now all of a sudden in comes, through the same back doors,
a family that is whole. And there's mom and dad and there's
kids and they're all together worshiping the Lord in the same
church. And the only reason dad is there is because he chose
to recant his faith. This led to a... Can you imagine
being in that scenario? Seriously? This led to an interesting
scenario in the church. Can someone who apostatizes to
the degree of recanting their faith be restored to fellowship
in Christ? And if they are to be restored
to fellowship in Christ, how is the church to do it? Do we
just say, the guy comes in, he says, I'm sorry, I recanted Christ,
I repent of my sins, would you forgive me? He even does it publicly. Does the church just say, well,
that's good enough, come on back. You're open to communion and
you are a part of the fellowship. What does the church do? And
so this raised a very interesting question in the church. And that's
why this is important for us today. How does the church bring
repentant sinners back into its fellowship? Now, this is what
this led to. If you go through the Dark Ages,
really up until the time of Martin Luther, When the Reformation
happens, this is what happens because of that. There are some
heretical outgrows that come about because of how the church
dealt with that scenario. The first thing is this. It led
to classifications of sin. If you know anything about Roman
Catholicism, you've maybe read things written by Roman Catholicism,
you will know that in Roman Catholicism, as an outgrowth of this period
of time, there is teaching concerning venial sin and mortal sin. What is a venial sin? A venial
sin is a minor sin. A mortal sin is a sin that will
take you to hell. Now let me ask you, my friend,
are there any minor sins with God? You break the law in one
point, you broke it in what? All. But this led to that idea. And I want to read you some,
if you ever want to know some things about Catholicism, kind
of from the writings of a Catholic scholar, I would commend you
this book. This is a book called, Why Do Catholics Do That? Why
do Catholics do that? It is written as kind of a primer
on the Roman Catholic Church for new Catholics. So if you
were going to go and take a Sunday school class perhaps, and you
were new to the Catholic faith, they may use this book. I had
a Roman Catholic once tell me to read this book. It would really
help me to understand Catholicism. I want to read to you what they
teach about venial and mortal sin. It's not very long, but
I think it's pertinent when we think about how we are to restore
brethren. This is on page 52. It has to
do with the cycles of redemption. Listen to what it says. Anyway,
hell is for mortal sin. But there are degrees of offenses.
And then he quotes from Saint Jerome. He says, Saint Jerome
summed it up like this. There are venial sins and there
are mortal sins. It is one thing to owe 10,000
talents. It is another thing to owe but
a farthing. We shall have to give an accounting
for every idle word, no less than for adultery. But to be
made to blush and to be tortured are not the same thing. If we
entreat. Now, this is an amazing statement.
If we entreat or we pray in the confessional, if we entreat for
lesser sins, we are granted full pardon. But if for greater sins,
it is difficult to obtain our request. Is it difficult to obtain
that request for a great sin from the blood of Christ? No,
it is not. There is a great difference between
one sin and another. If you die with some of these
minor sins on your soul, or with your sins forgiven but unatoned
for, that is what purgatory is for. Okay, so that's the teaching
on classifications of sin. Now here's another thing that
grew out of this. This also led to a belief that we would think
of as kind of a penance-based forgiveness. Now, this comes
out of this idea of classifications of sin. So we have a confessional
and we go and we make a confession to a priest who is the vicar
of Christ, standing in the place of Christ. And when we do that,
we are then given specific acts of penance. to atone for that
sin. And they may include the purchasing
of indulgences and things like that. And so it is a sacramental
system where there are things that we can do that will atone
for our sin. Now, I want you to listen to
some more things that the fellow writes on page 49 when he talks
about penance. He says, you can make up for
your sins and take your licks for them, either in this life
or in the next. In this life, there are sacramental
penancies, nowadays usually just token acts like the familiar
five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys, that may be prescribed
after reconciliation for remission from punishment. And then he
says this, in the old days, the really grave sins, the ones that
get you on talk shows today, used to get public penance involving
things like sackcloth and ashes, standing in front of the church
for a few weeks with a sign around your neck detailing your sins,
or walking to the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and
back. Even today, now this is where
it gets interesting, even today the church offers guidelines
for optional sacrifices and penances too. Almsgiving is as important
now as it ever was, and so is fasting. You can turn your need
for penance to good account with things like giving up a meal
during Lent and sending money that you have to foreign missions
that use it to feed the truly hungry. In fact, seasons like
Lent and Advent were set up to remind us of the need for acts
of penance to serve as punishment for sins and acts of charity
to make up for them. So what are they teaching? You
do something as a penance for your sin or you do something
good to kind of buy God's favor. And then he makes this remarkable
statement. Basically, the idea is to do good things to balance
out all the bad as well as avoiding more bad. That's the system. Now, let's ask ourselves a question
for a few minutes this morning. When we think of restoration
of the sinner, especially in the fellowship of Christ, is
this what the Bible teaches? Does the Bible teach a sacramental
system of doing things in order to win God's favor or to be restored
to fellowship in the church? How does the church bring a repentant
sinner back into its fellowship? I want to just show you some
verses in 2 Corinthians chapter 2. Perhaps you want to go there
so you can see the larger context. 2 Corinthians chapter 2. We don't know exactly what the
situation was. You can go to 2 Corinthians chapter 2. And
let's just look there together, 2 Corinthians chapter 2. But
the church has had a man in its midst that has committed some
sin. Many people tie this to the same
man in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 that it had in a moral relationship
with his father's wife. We don't know for sure. But I
want you just to notice what Paul tells the church to do for
this man. He says in verse 5, if anyone
has caused grief, he has not grieved me, but all of you to
some extent, not to be too severe. In other words, he says, this
very public sin has impacted the entire body. And then he
says, the punishment which was inflicted by the majority is
sufficient for such a man. The discipline that was placed
upon him to bring him to restoration when they turned him over to
Satan, that he would learn not to blaspheme after they had walked
through the steps in Matthew chapter 18. And so they have
walked through the steps of Matthew chapter 18. And this man is now
repentant of his sin. And notice what it says. This
punishment, this discipline which was inflicted by the majority
is sufficient. so that, on the contrary, you
ought rather to forgive and to comfort him, lest, perhaps, such
a one would be swallowed up with too much sorrow. Therefore, I
urge you, reaffirm your love to him. For to this end I also
wrote that I might put you to the test whether you will be
obedient in everything. Now, whom you forgive anything,
I also forgive For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have
forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ, lest
Satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of
his devices." Now, when Martin Luther finds the great Reformation
teaching in the Scripture, those men really restored the concept
that it is through grace alone, through our faith alone, upon
the merit of Christ, That the righteousness of Christ is imputed
to the sinner. And thus our sins are cancelled
and they are removed from us. And so as David says in Psalm
103, as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed
our transgressions from us. And so it is upon that repentance
that the man is restored. Not by acts of merit that he
can do. It is by grace through faith
alone. And I would just draw your attention to one story that
Jesus told in Luke chapter 15. The story of the prodigal. He
leaves the father's house. He goes and he lives a prodigal
lifestyle. He spends all the father's inheritance on riotous
living. And he gets himself into so much
carnage from sin that eventually he is eating the husks which
the pigs are eating in the pig pen. And while he is sitting
in the pigpen, he comes to himself, the Scripture says, and he says
to himself, I will return and I will say to my father, I have
sinned. And so he gets up out of the
pigpen and he runs for home. And the father sees him a long
way off and the father runs to him. He throws his arms around
him. He kisses him on the neck. He brings him into the house.
He puts the best robe on him. He says to everyone in the house,
Slay the fatted calf. Let's have a feast for the one
that was lost is now found. And the elder brother has the
response of perhaps what some had in the church in the 300s. Let's turn the screw a little
bit more. And he goes out and pouts, doesn't he? But is that
the biblical response? It's not. Forgiveness is on the
merits of Christ. And so when we think about forgiveness,
let's go back to Galatians chapter 6, but let's just briefly talk
about forgiveness and some concepts concerning forgiveness. Because
all of us are called upon to forgive. And I would even go
one step further and say all of us in our life will have the
necessity of being forgiven, won't we? We will need to be
forgiven, for we will wrong others. So when we think of forgiveness,
there are two words in the New Testament which really bring
out the concept of forgiveness. The first one simply means to
cancel a debt. It's the Greek word leuo, which
simply means to release. It is illustrated well in the
Old Testament with the concept of the year of Jubilee, how on
the 50th year, all the debts were to be canceled. in the land
of Israel. And it was a teaching concerning
forgiveness. And so when we think of forgiveness, when God forgives
our sin, he is really loosing us of a debt that we owe to him. We owe to him our life for we
have sinned and the wages of sin is death. And yet he looses
us from that debt on the merits of Christ. Secondly, The second
concept in the New Testament concerning forgiveness is the
word to send away or sometimes we could think of it as the word
to banish. And it really is illustrated well in the Old Testament on
the Day of Atonement with the scapegoat. How that on the Day
of Atonement, there were two goats that were taken from the
herds and on one of them was laid all the sin of the nation.
On the other, the one was sacrificed and his blood was anointed on
the altar in the Holy of Holies. But the other one, the nation's
sins were placed upon it. And that goat was taken outside
the camp and it was banished and it could no longer return.
And if anybody found it in the wilderness, they had to stay
away from it because it had a mark on it. And it was then the scapegoat. It was sent away. These picture
forgiveness. It is the cancelling of a debt
that we owe to God or to others. And it is when God chooses to
send that sin far from His presence and remember it against us no
more. When we think of forgiveness,
I think it is important for us to realize That forgiveness is
not a passive forgetting. We've all heard that saying sometimes,
right? Forgive and forget. That is only true if we are talking
in an active sense. That we choose to forget. We
choose to hold it no longer against us. But we don't just forget
things, do we? We only forget things that we
want to remember. But we don't forget things when someone's
done a wrong against us. Those things we can remember
easily, can't we? And so it is not a passive forgetting,
but it is an active verb of sending something away. And essentially
forgiveness is when we surrender our right to get back at someone
else when they've hurt us. That's really what forgiveness
is. We're saying it's over, it's done, it's released, it's cancelled. So whenever there's a restoration,
there are two active parties. The one who is being forgiven,
and then there is the one who is being forgiven, and the one
who does the forgiving. And we are to do this work, it
says in Galatians 6 verse 1, we are to do this work of forgiveness
gently, aren't we? He says, brethren, if a man is
overtaken in a trespass, you who are spiritual, that is the
believer, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. As you consider yourself, lest
you also would be tempted. We are to do it with gentleness.
We've already talked to that concept, and humility as we look
to ourself, and we begin to talk, and these really coalesce with
verses 3 through 6, where he talks about the believer's self-watch. We are to look to self. Now, I want us to consider two
truths as to why we are to consider ourselves. When we think of this
reality that when we have to confront someone else, whether
it's your children because of sin in your home, and you're
dealing with disobedience amongst your kids, or it's another believer
that you know and you've seen them going astray and you need
to talk to them, and you want to help that person, we are to
approach it in gentleness, considering ourselves. Let's consider two
truths as to why. The first reason is this, if
I am honest. If I am honest with myself, I
know I have fallen in the past. Right? If I am honest with myself,
I know I have fallen in the past. I'm reminded of two verses. One
is in Psalm 25, verse 7, when David prays this prayer. He says
in the 25th Psalm, Lord, do not remember the sins of my youth,
nor my transgressions. Remember me according to Thy
mercy. You see, if we are honest with
ourselves, we know that we have fallen many times in the past.
And many times the Lord has dealt with us graciously. I'm also
reminded in Ecclesiastes 7, verse 21, it's an interesting scenario
that Solomon sets up. He says, also, do not take to
heart everything you hear. Everything you hear that people
may say about you. Lest when you're walking by the window,
you hear your servant curse you. For many times also, you yourself
know You have cursed others too." He says, don't lay it to heart.
Don't hold it against the person. Just forgive and let it go. The
second truth is, if I am realistic, if I am realistic with myself,
I know I will fall in the future. Right? That's what he's getting
out of those verses. If I am realistic, I know I will
fall in the future. It is amazing to me to think
that God knew our entire life, before it began, He knew everything
that we would do, both good and bad, prior to our salvation and
post-salvation. And when Christ died, He died
for it all. And tomorrow, when you sin, or I sin, it's not a
surprise, and He has to go back and look in the books and think,
did I pay for that one on the cross? He knew it all. And so if I am realistic with
myself and understand myself, I know I will fall in the future.
Therefore, I need to be gentle and considerate as I seek to
restore others. In James chapter 3, verse 2,
the scripture says this, For we all stumble in many ways.
If any man does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect
man and he is able to bridle the entire body. And so, Galatians
6 tells us we are to be actively engaged in works of restoration. As we talked about last week,
we talked about cleaning up the mess, didn't we? Remember that?
Cleaning up the mess. Helping people clean up the mess.
And it's so true, you know this. There are many creative ways
today where we can make a mess of our lives, isn't there? There's
a lot of creative ways to do that. And we are to go alongside
people and to help them in cleaning up that mess. There is so much
carnage of sin around us. And we are to be means of restoration. Now the means of helping to heal
the hurt is in verse 2. Let's look at it quickly and
then we'll close. In verse 2 he says this, bear one another's
burdens and by so doing fulfill the law of Christ. What is the
law of Christ? Jesus said in the upper room, a new commandment
I give you, that you love one another. This is my commandment,
that you love one another. And so he says when we bear one
another's burdens, we are fulfilling that command of Christ, that
we love one another. This is the work that each of
us is to do, to work for the restoration of each other. In
Romans 15, 14, I showed you this verse last week, Paul said, I
myself am confident concerning you, my brethren, that you, he's
talking to all of them, all of you are full of goodness. You
are filled with knowledge and you are able to admonish one
another. And so, like I said last week,
this work is not just the job of Pastor Matt or me or even
the deacons. This is a work for all of us.
It begins in our homes when we work to restore our children,
when they fall into sin. It works in amongst us when we
know each other in the body and we seek to restore and to gently
bring people along. There are three means of doing
this. I'll give them to you quickly. Lost the slide so I'll have to
give you all the points. The first way that we bear another's
burden is we are to do it with compassion. We are to do it with
compassion. And Jesus is our example here,
isn't He? When He saw the crowd, it says,
He saw them just as they were, broken and hurt. And He saw them
as sheep who had no shepherd. And He had compassion upon them.
And God would have us to have compassion on other people. If someone comes to you, maybe
it's one of your children, or maybe it's another one in the
pews, and they know you well, and maybe you're kind of a mentor
to them, and they come to you and they say to you, man, I'm
really struggling in this area of my life. I've got some temptation
that's just hitting me in the face. Don't go. You do? I can't believe you're
struggling with that. That's not compassion, is it?
That's mockery. Is that person going to talk
to you again? No. You say, brother, can I pray
with you? Maybe I haven't dealt with that exact temptation, but
I've sure dealt with this one. And you come alongside and you
support him with compassion. Secondly, I would say this. I
also think it is important as we work with people in our midst
that there is a level of confidentiality. Now, of course, we know that
that's not always the case. And of course, we know that there
are times that other people need to be brought into scenarios.
Maybe there's some criminal activity or some other thing and there
needs to be something dealt with. We're not talking about that.
But by and large, when someone comes and talks to you, you don't
then go to small group and say, I know Johnny's not here, but
Johnny really has a prayer request and he's struggling with this
sin. Do we do that to each other? We should not. There should be
a level of confidentiality. When someone comes to you and
shares with you a problem in their life, a struggle in their
life, that stays with you unless they say to you, you're free
to tell someone else. You know, if people think that
you're going to blab their deepest hurts to other people, you just
killed your effectiveness, didn't you? You killed it. There should be things. in our
lives that people tell us, that in essence go to our graves with
us. Because they don't belong to other people to know. The
third thing I would say is we must counsel them. So we want
to treat people with compassion. We want to deal in confidence
with people. We want to counsel them. And
when we counsel people, the first thing that we need to think of
is, is our counsel biblical? Right? 2 Timothy 3, verses 16
and 17. All Scripture is given by inspiration
of God, and it is profitable. My friend, Scripture is sufficient
to deal with any problem that any one of us may be struggling
with. And if you think of the counselor's tool bag, just like
if you're a mechanic and you have a toolbox, Or if you're
a carpenter and you have a tool bag, and you have tools in your
bag, the counselor's tool bag is the Word of God. And he goes
in there and he pulls out the book of Proverbs. And he shows
the person who's struggling with sin what the Proverbs say. Or
he goes to the book of Romans and he looks in Romans chapter
6 of how we can have victory over sin. And we take people
to the Scripture. We need to be practical. We need
to be incarnational. In other words, we need to show
people how to do it. We need to walk along them, we
need to talk along them and show them how to get it done. And
so we are to bear one another's burdens and thus by doing fulfill
the law of Christ. Let's close in a word of prayer.
Father, we thank you for this time when together we could come
before your throne and study Your Word. Father, we thank You
for Your Spirit who opens our understanding. And Father, we
just pray that something that was in the message today would
have struck a chord in each one of our lives. Father, that we
would be more effective in helping our children, that we'd be more
effective in helping our brethren and sisters here in the congregation,
that we would be effective in our community. When we see people
who are broken under the curse and bondage of sin, that we would
come alongside to them and offer them the Word of God as a balm
to their soul and point them to Jesus Christ. Father, may
we be like D.L. Moody who once said, there but
by the grace of God go I. Father, may we never think of
ourselves as better than someone else. May we never be like the
Pharisee who said, I thank thee God that I am not like so and
so. Father, may we be like that tax collector, that publican,
who would not so much as lift his eyes to heaven, and he beat
upon his breast, and he said, Father, be merciful to me, the
sinner. Thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.
I Will Arise and Go to My Father
Series Galatians
What are we to do with the prodigal?
| Sermon ID | 127132126391 |
| Duration | 41:28 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Galatians 6:1-6 |
| Language | English |
Documents
Add a Comment
Comments
No Comments
© Copyright
2026 SermonAudio.