This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to our last week of looking together at the book of Galatians. Galatians
6 this week, day one, we're going to look at verses 1 and 2 today. This is
really the, I call it the "walk this way" portion of Galatians.

If you watch movies at all, you know that one of the oldest and most well-worn
comedy routines is the guy who says "walk this way" like you're supposed to
follow me, but then he walks with a little bit of a limp and everybody walks
behind him with a little bit of a limp. Galatians 6 is the "walk this way" of
Paul's letter, but it's not about a funny walk. It is about a spiritual walk.

It's how to walk by the Spirit. It's how to let the Holy Spirit and His power,
His energy, His strength, let Him begin to be a part of the way that you walk,
the way that you live your everyday life. Paul is showing in Galatians chapter 6
the practical steps that the Holy Spirit would have you to take in the clear
direction in which He leads you in everyday life.

And it's following up on the last part of what we looked at last week. Galatians
5. 25 says "keep in step with the Spirit" and Galatians chapter 6 says "how?

" How do you do that? The Spirit shows the direction, the Spirit sets the pace.
How does He do that?

In these verses, Paul is going to share with us five practical things that you
and I can do to walk in, to keep in step with, to follow along with the Holy
Spirit. Beginning with the first one in verses 1 and 2, the first thing to do,
if you're going to keep in step with God's Spirit who is in your life as a
believer, the first thing to do is you carry each other's burdens. What burdens?

Listen to these verses, Galatians 6, 1, and 2, "Brothers, if someone is caught
in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently, but watch yourself,
or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will
fulfill the law of Christ. " The situation that Paul is talking about here is
you've caught someone stumbling in their Christian life, you've seen someone
stumbling into a sin, and the temptation in that moment is to reject them, to
say, "Oh, you're not acting like a Christian, you're not living the Christian
life like I think somebody should," so you push them as far away as you can.

The temptation is to reject them. The answer instead, Paul says, "You want to
walk in the Spirit? " The answer is to restore them, to restore them in God's
Spirit, because that's the way that the Spirit walks.

We are, no doubt about it, to help each other with physical needs and burdens as
believers in Christ. We're to help everybody in this world with the physical
needs and burdens that they face, but here he is focusing instead on spiritual
needs, on spiritual burdens, specifically on the burden of our sin. Psalm 38
verse 4 says, "My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear.

" So what do you do when someone gets caught up in the burden, the weight of
sin, especially a believer, as Paul is talking about here? You restore them, and
as he talks about restoring people, he talks about two specific ways that we do
that. You restore with a spirit of gentleness.

You notice how Jesus Christ dealt with sin. When the woman caught in adultery
was brought to him, he did not condemn her. He restored her.

He brought her to a place of confession of her sin and then said, "Now go and
sin no more. " But he did not condemn her. He restored her with a spirit of
gentleness, and this word here, "restore" in the Greek language, it has the idea
of repairing a machine that's not working or maybe even more important of
setting and mending a bone that has been broken.

You help somebody to put their life back in order. You help them to heal. That's
what the Spirit does, and that's what God's Spirit wants to do through you.

Not judge others, but restore others. It's interesting. In the book of
Galatians, Paul dealt very strongly with false teaching, but he dealt very
gently with personal sin because that's how Jesus teaches us.

You restore with a spirit of gentleness. You also restore with a spirit of
humility. He says that you also might be tempted.

You notice the fact that you are a human being. You're just one sinner trying to
help another sinner to bear the weight of their sin, so you watch yourself being
honest about your own temptation. Whenever you as a believer are around another
believer who is caught up in sin, it is easy for you to get caught up in that
sin as well.

If you tell yourself it's not, then you're really in trouble. So one of the
keys, I think, I've seen, is you don't restore alone. You go with someone else.

You do this together. And you certainly don't restore pridefully, looking at
someone else and thinking, "I would never get caught up in a sin like that. "
The minute you think, "I would never do that," the moment you think that, pride
has got you.

And the minute pride gets you, you're going to be trapped into that very sin.
You restore with a spirit of gentleness. You restore with a spirit of humility.

Why? Because that's the way that the Spirit walks. We carry each other's
burdens, especially these spiritual burdens.

How does the Spirit walk? There's a second way the Spirit walks, Paul talks
about in verses 3 to 5. He says, "First of all, you carry each other's burdens,
but then, interestingly enough," he says, "the second way you walk in the Spirit
is you carry your own load.

" Now what does that mean? How does that fit with what we just said? Well, let
me read the verses for you, verses 3 to 5.

"If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each
one should test his own actions, and then he can take pride in himself without
comparing himself to somebody else. For each one should carry his own load.

" Now is that a contradiction? He just said carry each other's burdens, and now
he says each one should carry his own load. No, it's not a contradiction.

First, two different words are used here. The word for burden means a heavy
weight. He's talking about our sin, something you cannot bear on your own.

We need each other. The word for load has the idea of a light pack, your
individual responsibility. And what Paul is saying here, the Spirit is
inspiring.

The Spirit is inspiring him to say that we are to help each other when the load
gets too great, but we're not to expect others to help us to carry all of the
load of our responsibility. God's given you a responsibility in life, and the
Spirit will inspire you, will direct you, will strengthen you to carry the
responsibility that God has given to you. Now how do you do that?

Well, there are two spiritual keys for carrying the load of ministry that God
has for you. Not someone else's, not giving up, but carrying what responsibility
God has given you. The two spiritual keys are one, you don't fool yourself, and
two, you don't compare yourself.

First, you don't fool yourself. You don't fool yourself into thinking you're
something when you're not doing anything. The situation here is somebody who is
swelling with pride over the work of another person.

You watch them work, and then you join them for the applause, the
congratulations. As I read this, I think as a baseball fan of when Hank Aaron
set the home run record in his day, the two fans that came out of the stadium
seats and ran alongside of him as he took the home run trot, like somehow they'd
done something. I bet they even look at that today and say, "Look, that's us on
the field.

" It's an embarrassment. They didn't do anything. They were trying to live off
of somebody else's applause.

Don't fool yourself into thinking you're something when you're nothing, he says.
And there is a solution to this. The solution is you test your own actions.

You test what God's doing in your life. The solution is evaluation. You take an
honest look at the part that you played and what God is doing, and you rejoice
in that.

And if you didn't play any part, you say, "God, how could I play a part? "
That's the step of evaluation. That's one way that you carry your own load.

You don't fool yourself. And second, he says, don't compare yourself. This is
the great temptation of comparison, building your own ego by criticizing
somebody else.

And Paul says, here's the answer to this, and it may surprise you what he says.
It may have surprised you as I read through it a moment ago. He says the answer
is you need to take pride in yourself.

That's what the scripture says. Then he can take pride in himself. Now, a lot of
you hear that and think, wow, I can't believe the Bible says that.

I thought we weren't supposed to have pride. There is in the Bible, as you read
through it, there is a positive kind of pride. This verse is the best example of
that, by the way.

It's not a selfish pride. It is a healthy pride. There is a negative pride, no
doubt about that.

We're going to talk about that later this week. But there's also a positive kind
of pride. And that pride is the desire to do what God has given you to do.

I would call it more rejoicing. You're rejoicing in what God has given you, and
you're rejoicing in the fact that he has used you. You're rejoicing instead of
comparing.

Comparison with others always leads to selfish pride. You want to be better than
they are. You want to show them up.

But evaluation of your gifts before God, that leads to a healthy pride. Wow, God
gave me gifts. Wow, God used them to make a difference in this world, and you
take joy in what God has done.

Now, as we take a moment to pray today, let's talk to God about the ministry
that he's given to us. As you talk to him, just say, Father, thank you for the
gifts you've given me. And instead of comparing myself to other people or
wishing I had different gifts, help me to rejoice in who you've made me to be.

And help me to take joy, to take a healthy pride in using those gifts for your
glory in this world. And Lord, one more thing, if I see someone today stumbling,
someone hurting, help me not to pass them by, help me not to reject them, ignore
them, help me to help them to carry this load. We're not meant to live life
alone.

So help me to minister to them as one sinner ministering to another because of
the forgiveness of Christ. I pray this, Jesus, in your name, amen. And join us
tomorrow.

We're going to talk about the awesome power of simple trust in God.