Nobody's Perfect - But All Can Live Blessed

We've all heard this question at one time or another, and that is, why do bad things happen to good people, right? I've asked myself that question a lot as a pastor because I've seen people that I love go through things that I really wish they never had to go through. But this morning, I'm not going to bring the answer to that question from Scripture because that's a really complicated a question with a lot of different sides to it, but I have learned as a pastor that there's another question that I really need to give my focus to, and I need to help our people give our focus to, and that is, what do I need to do if I want God to keep doing more and more good in the midst of my life? And this morning, we're going to learn why when Jesus taught us to pray, he didn't teach us to pray our judge who's up in heaven. Because nobody's a more righteous judge than God is, but He doesn't want us to relate to Him from the basis of a judge. Jesus didn't even teach us to pray our teacher or our counselor who's up in heaven. because nobody's wisdom can be compared to God's. But here's how Jesus taught us to pray. He said, When you pray, I want you to pray our Father who's up in heaven. Now notice He didn't even say He wants you to pray my Father who's up in heaven, but He said, I want you to pray our Father who's up in heaven. And this morning, If I do my job from the text that Paul wrote for us today, when we get to Galatians 6, verse 10, you're gonna be saying, man, I am so glad to be in God's house and to belong to a household of faith. Because here's a biblical reality, and that is the phrase one another appears exactly 100 times in the New Testament. And of these occurrences, there are 59 different specific commands for us to treat one another a certain way. And we're going to read one of those in verse 2 in just a second. But before we do that, I want to talk to you about something that happened to me this week as I was studying for the message. I went back to to some of the guys who were theological giants whenever I was getting my theological training. And if you're my age and you're into theology, like maybe Dr. Chris or people like that, you'll know the names John Stott and F.F. Bruce because they were kind of the NT rights of my day. And they pointed out something in this passage that was subtle, but it was so significant And I want to share it with you today. And here's what they said, that when we study Galatians chapter 6, we're not going to fully appreciate it unless we understand that it was written to help us deal with the problem that we have to get out of as people in Galatians chapter 5. Now Michael did a marvelous job last week of teaching us what that problem is. It's summed up in Galatians 5 verse 13 when it says, my brothers and sisters, you were called to be free. In other words, you weren't called to live this heavy, you know, downtrodden life where you feel like you have to serve God. You're called to have a heart that feels like it is an opportunity and a privilege, not an obligation to serve God. And Michael talked about how there's two ways that we miss it as believers that Paul addressed. One, we can get legalistic. And the legalist thinks, I have to obey God's standards or my life's going to fall apart or God's not going to be happy with me. And the problem with that is even if you obey God's standards and you live a life blessed because of how you obey God's standards, you're never going to have the joy of of experience in the presence of God and the power of the Holy Spirit at work in your life, forgiving you and restoring you and blessing you for no other reason than the fact that God is madly in love with you as a person. But then Michael talked about the other kind of person that isn't legalistic, but they're too loose with the grace of God. And that's who Paul's addressing in verse 13 when he says, Now don't use your freedom indulge the flesh. Rather, I want you to learn to serve each other humbly in love. People who are loose feel like this, that you know what God's job really is? God's job is to support my happiness. So I enjoy praying to Jesus and telling Him everything that I want, and I'm just so grateful that Jesus is so good to me. But something happens to those kind of Christians, and what happens is their flesh wins, and pretty soon they end up in a battle with sin because they haven't conquered the nature of sin that is in their flesh. And here's what Paul's going to teach us in Galatians chapter 6 today. He's going to teach us to stop living for what gratifies our fallen nature and to start living for the gratification that God calls us to as believers. And this is especially a word for the American church because here's what's happened in our day is that godliness has been redefined. And for a lot of people, being godly just means to be nice. if you're not nice, then that's the cardinal sin as a Christian, because you weren't nice. And the truth is we are called to be nice. And Christians, people should feel kindness about us whenever they're talking to us. But you know, if you're nice, but you allow people not to live godly, then it's really not that nice because their life is going to get destroyed by their fallen nature. And that's what Paul is gonna help us understand as believers, that as Christians, we're not just called to be nice. Let me ask you this morning, how many Mr. Rogers people do we have who when you were little, your mama would turn on Mr. Rogers and he would tell you how glad he was to be in your neighborhood. And you may not know this, but he was in Pittsburgh and I lived in a little town of just 1000 people, and he would come to the Saxonburg Hotel and he would eat at Hotel Saxonburg, and we all were starstruck whenever he would walk into our restaurant. Here's something you may not know about Mr. Rogers. He wasn't just nice, but he was a Presbyterian preacher. And every single show that he did, he would pray and he would say, God, I pray that my words will somehow convince people to love your words. And secularism was already settling into our culture by that time. He couldn't do everything that he'd want to do, but he used his platform to do the best he could to help people understand the value of godliness. Now, how many Blue's Clues people do we have in the house today, right? You know why your mama had you watched Blue's Clues because she was tired of you fighting with all your siblings. So she would turn on Blue Clues, whatever it is, and she would hope that just settled you and your siblings down and caused you to quit fighting with each other so much. But in Blue's Clues, there was no mention ever of God if you watch the shows. And if ChatGPT, who helped me do research for this message, is right, it's because secularism so, overcame our culture that as Christians, we can't show people that nice isn't, you know, giving you support as you do things that are going to be destructive to your life, but nice is teaching you the value of godliness so you win this battle that's going on in your flesh. And that's what Paul's talking about in this text. And I want to encourage you, what motivated this message was I went to my grandchildren's from kindergarten. And if you've never been to a kindergarten graduation, you don't know what you're missing, right? And one of my favorite parts is not just watching the teachers try to herd them on stage and get them to say all the right things, but I love that part, but I really love whenever they put on the screen what each one of them want to be. And our kids were good, man. They wanted to be teachers and policemen and all these good things. You know what I wanted to be when I was their age? I wanted to be a tamer when I was their age. But the truth is I was never going to be a lion tamer, right? Now I felt like a lion tamer when our four kids were seven and under. I thought this is my chance to be a lion tamer right now. But the truth is if I wanted to be a lion tamer, I better learn some skills or else the lion is going to win the battle, not me. And here's the truth. Everybody wants a great marriage. Everybody wants a great life. Everybody wants things to be wonderful for them. But if we don't win this battle against our flesh, we start living in ways that Sabotage and destroy the deepest desires of our hearts That's what Paul's getting at and as a parent I can tell you this is tough because in our busy society so many times I just want to give my kids what they're asking for because I want to be nice and I want them me, so I just give them what they're asking me for. When it comes to my grandchildren, I am so glad. There's not one scripture in the Bible that says I have to spank my grandchild, not even one. So I can be nice to them and I can let my children fulfill their biblical role as parents. Can somebody give me a good amen? But here's the truth. I would never do anything to sabotage godliness in the lives of my kids. And here's why. Because if you parent your kids in a way, or if I parent my own life in a way, if I steward my life in a way where I just want happy circumstances, but I don't want godliness in my life, I'm going to pay the price one day. Because you can say, I wanna be happy, so I'm gonna go to the mall, and I'm gonna buy myself all kinds of things so I can be happy. But how many of you know you're happy at the mall, but when you get to the mailbox and the bill shows up, you're not happy anymore. Or you can say, I wanna be happy, so I'm gonna get involved in this relationship, or I'm gonna go do this, or I'm gonna tell the boss that. And pretty soon, your flesh got involved, and you ended up fighting a battle with a lion that you don't know how to tame in your life. Paul's helping us do in this text, and he's teaching us how to turn burdensome circumstances in our lives into circumstances that God blesses. You say, how do we do this, pastor? How do we, as a family, as a couple, how do we stop living for the wrong gratifications, and how can we see God begin to fulfill the deepest desires of our heart? He gives us four things. Number one, he says, you have to learn to live with a gentleness that carries each other's burdens. He says in verse 1, brothers and sisters, if someone's caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently, but watch yourself or you may be tempted and I want you to carry each other's burdens and in this way I want you to fulfill the law of Christ. Now here's the truth. There's a lot of my friends who grew up, and I've told you this many times, but I did not grow up in a church like this. I grew up with with a father who was, he and his friends were great with Little League and he served on that board. I grew up with a father who served on the board of my Catholic church. I grew up with a father who was the president for a season and he and his friends would share being president of our volunteer fire company. And so as a kid, one of the ways that they would finance the volunteer fire company is they had a bar that was open all week. And as a kid, I spent two nights week at least at this bar hanging out with my dad. And one of the things that allowed me to answer God's call in my life when he called me to pastor was I saw how good my dad was with people in the bar. Some of them drank too much. Some of them had relational issues because of the poor choices they made. But here's why I love my dad so much. I never saw my dad condemn anybody because he knew that condemnation was never going to be beneficial to their life. But I also never saw him commend behavior that was gonna be destructive if they didn't overcome that behavior. And because of that, I was greatly trained to be a pastor because of how I saw my dad carry the burdens of other people. See, if I carry your burden, here's what that means, that maybe you're under something that you can't carry 100% of the weight of that thing. And so when you come to me, Maybe you're so broken, you can't even carry a little bit of that weight. So what do I do if I'm going to do what Paul said and I'm going to be like Jesus and I'm going to fulfill the royal law of love? I pick up the entire weight of that thing because I want to show you how much I love you. What do I do if you can pick up 50% of that weight? Well, because it's your burden and it's not my burden, I come and I pick up 50% of that weight until you get strong enough to come out of the burden that you're under. So the first step, Paul says, if you want to see environments that sin has destroyed begin to be turned around, is you carry burdens of people well. Here's the second thing he said, and that is, he said, we need you that acknowledges our imperfection needs to meet God's greatness. That's what humility understands. And next Paul writes this. He said, If anyone thinks there's something when they're not, they deceive themselves. Now let me ask you a question. How many of you ever met somebody who is a legend in their own mind? Would you lift your hand? Don't look at anybody, but listen, we've all been legends in our own mind. You know what it means to be conceited? Conceited people, and we've all been in it, and I'm going to show you that in a minute, but conceited people have an overestimation of their own view, their own importance, their own ability. They think they see everything right, and they don't see things right at all. As a matter of fact, earlier in the message I talked about F.F. Bruce and John Stott, and one of them said that whenever the Bible was put into chapters back in the 1200s, he said, I really wish they would have made Galatians 5.26 Galatians 6, 1. And here's why he said that, because it says this, let us not become conceited, provoking and envying one another. And that word for conceited, if you look at the King James version, it says this, let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking each other and envying each other. And here's what they're describing in the Greek language, they're describing the fact that when we live for the glory of ourselves, our flesh is going to win. When we live for our own happiness, our flesh is going to win. But when we live for the glory of God, we get the power to overcome the flesh and Jesus wins. And how many of you have learned that Jesus winning is way, way better than letting the enemy win in our lives, right? And they've brought out of this passage that it's our fallen nature that Galatians 6 is dealing with. And it's our fallen nature that causes us to provoke each other. So don't be conceited and provoke each other. You know how we provoke each other? I know I'm right, so you need to do what makes me happy. And if you don't do what makes me happy, I'm gonna keep manipulating you, I'm gonna keep messing with you, I'm gonna keep doing things until you make me happy. And then the other Another thing that people do who don't deal with this well in their heart is they don't just provoke people, they get envious people. Well, you're so happy and I'm not happy and if you were good, you would make me happy. And pretty soon your whole home is getting destroyed by the flesh whenever the answer is for us to be gentle with each other and to bring each other to a place where we have humility before Christ. My pastor gave me one of the greatest challenges of my life when he told me, Jim, if you'll humble yourself before God, humbling yourself before God will be the easiest thing that you do for the rest of your life. Hey, can I just tell you this morning I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life, but thank God Jesus didn't let this stupid kid have his way in his life. How many of you know God's plans are way better? Come on, somebody. That's a good place to clap in this message. And there are people that your problem is that you thought you knew what made you happy and you're trying to force everybody to give you your happy. And the reality is you haven't learned how Jesus loves somebody. Jesus doesn't give everybody their happy. As a matter of fact, Adam gave Eve her happy. He let her bite the apple in the garden. And how many of you know it didn't turn out happy after she bit that apple in the garden? And that's what sin is like. If you allow your fleshly desires to have their way, you are not gonna have happiness. And when Tamara and I were dating, you know, she said to me one day, she said, Jim, you just seem so heavy emotionally. Why, can't, what's wrong? Why are you so heavy today? I looked at her and I said, I'll tell you why. It's because I don't have any money and I gotta figure out how to get some. And I said, when you bounce a check, your daddy puts money in your account. That's why you're happy and I'm not happy. And I'm gonna make a point, and that is in parenting, if your kids are making poor decisions because of their flesh and you're bailing them out, listen, nobody's gonna bail them out down the road if they don't learn to quit living for the flesh. And that's why if you really love your kid, you're not gonna just give them happy, you're gonna give them holiness that makes them happy for the long haul. Can you say amen? So how do we overcome this burdensome living where we wish life was more like heaven and less like the enemy can make it on earth? Well, number one, gentleness carries each other's burdens. Number 2, Paul says you need a humility that acknowledges your imperfection in God's goodness. Don't think highly of yourself. In fact, just test your own actions. One thing I love that counselors do is when somebody's life isn't working, but they think they're right about everything, they'll ask them this question. They'll say, so how's it working for you? Just tell me how's it working for you. And a good counselor doesn't say it mean. They say, Well, just tell me how it's working for you. And they slowly help you see that, you know what, your thoughts aren't as good as God's. And that's why you need to love coming to church and love reading your Bible. Here's a third thing Paul said. He said, If you want God to bless you, it's gentleness, humility, and here's the third word, generosity, that crucifies the self-centeredness and it begins to activate God's love. 6 says, Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the Word should share all good things with their instructor. In other words, Paul's saying, don't come to church and sit out there and think, well, I'm hearing some good things. I'm gonna think about how that applies to my life. But you know what, I'm not really gonna worship God. I'm not gonna surrender my heart and like make sure I experience more of Him in worship. I'm not gonna give anything in the offering, I'm just gonna come to church and I'm gonna hear some truth. And Paul says there's a problem with that, and that is, if that's how you're living, your end goal is still your own desires instead of God's desires for your life. And so he says when you come, worship, given the offering. When you go out and you see the volunteers after church and everything wasn't perfect, don't speak bad to them, don't put them down. Instead, when you come to church, recognize that the most important thing that happens when I come to church is I'm worshiping Jesus. And if the music stunk, and if the pastor stunk, and if the volunteers forgot to give my kid the snack that I put in his little deal, you know what, it's okay, but the one thing I'm not gonna lose is God at work in my heart today, because God is establishing a legacy in my life, and He's establishing a legacy in the life of my family, right? See, people who who get in environments where I'm going to carry your burden. Man, I've had pastor friends who fell into sin. I have one I couldn't get out of sin who's not alive today. How I wish I could have carried his burden and helped him not fall under the crushing weight that his flesh was putting on his life. How I wish I could have gotten to see it differently and be humble and say, it doesn't matter how you feel. What matters is what God says. The lion's going to get you if you don't stand up to this in your life. Can you say amen? We have to be generous towards God so His love can start crucifying our flesh And then here's the final thing Paul said, is he said we have to surrender. And this surrender makes us experience the love of Christ and it makes us love each other the way that we should. He says first in verse eight, he says, Whoever sows to please their flesh is from the flesh gonna reap destruction. But whoever sows to please the Spirit from the Spirit is gonna reap eternal life. So let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time, We're gonna reap a harvest if we don't give up. In other words, Paul says, now when you live this lifestyle where you no longer let the gratification of the flesh and what you think makes you happy rule, and you let Jesus' word and the Holy Spirit and godly people, when you let them speak into your life, don't expect it to get better overnight because it's maturity that makes things better. And maturity doesn't happen overnight, maturity happens over time. Can you see, say, can you give me a good amen this morning? All right, now here's the next thing he says. And I said this when we started, I said, when I get to verse 10, if you're not grateful for God and a great church family and good brothers and sisters in your life, when I get to this verse, if you're not grateful, then I failed as a Bible teacher this morning. So let me read this verse right now in verse 10. It says, therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Paul's saying, I want to help you get rid of this life where nobody's happy because everybody thinks everybody has to make them happy. And I want to help you learn that the way to happiness is to live a life where everybody makes God happy. And as we make God happy, Jesus teaches us to love each other and that's how we truly become happy. I'll never forget the Tuesday I went home from the office and our church was growing like crazy and I had all these calls. I was trying to get back to people and some of the people got mad at me because I couldn't get back to them fast enough. And I was driving home and there was this precious little dog that just had a bunch of puppies that was in our neighborhood. And she had a problem. She had 12 puppies and she only had eight feeding stations. How many of you know that's a problem? Those puppies are coming after her and she's like, you know. And I looked at her and I thought, we're soulmates right now. I know exactly how you're feeling in the moment. And listen, if we don't solve this, that's how we feel. We feel like everybody wants everything from us, but this will solve the problem. And that is, if we honor God and we love each other, as we're going to learn to do in our next series, listen, it changes everything. And that's why Paul closes, and he says, what you want to do is you want to surrender. And I love how he closes the text. He says, those who want to impress people by means of the flesh, they're trying to compel you to be circumcised. Michael talked about this, how Paul would preach and these people would come after him and they'd say, no, you've got to be circumcised. You need this, you need that. And Paul's pointing out simply that circumcision in the Bible was just a sign that we're called to have a relationship with God the Father. And Paul said next, listen, the only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. Not even those who are circumcised keep the law, yet they want you to be circumcised, that they may boast about your circumcision in the flesh. Isn't it sad that even religion can be like what I'm telling you today? Isn't it sad even you can be like what I'm talking to about today, that we can try to look good, we can come up with excuses, but at the end of the day, we're asking somebody to serve our happy outside of the will of God. How many of you know nobody can serve our happy outside the will of God, but Jesus can fulfill the desires of our heart if we'll love him and if we'll let him do the work only he can do, amen? So Paul wrote this whole letter to say this, And Martin Luther said this about the book of Galatians. He said, The epistle to the Galatians is my epistle. He said, It's the one to which I've wed myself. And here's why he said this. A lot of the epistles are better at teaching mature theology than the book of Galatians. If you wanna learn mature theology, read Romans, read Ephesians, read the book of Hebrews, they all teach mature theology better than the book of Galatians does. But no book teaches the role of our faith in our life like the book of Galatians does. Galatians tells us that the role of Christianity, religion, whatever you want to call it, the role of it is for you to experience the love and leadership of the Father. and come to the point that you don't want anything else to satisfy you because you know the love and leadership of the Father is greater than any other source you'd ever look to for satisfaction. And can I just testify to you this morning, man, when I was a young pastor, I would do a lot of funerals and there are some cultural traditions where the funeral starts at 10 in the morning and it might go till dinner, five o'clock in the afternoon. you know why it's so so long because number one will get up and say I want to testify and then they'll get done number two will get up and they'll say I want to testify and then number three will get up and they'll say I want to testify then number four will get up and they say I want to testify and I'm thinking I'm going to preach a short sermon because your testimonies took the whole day right and you're going to be hungry by the time I get up and preach because Can I tell you something this morning? I wanna testify. You don't wanna be in a family that doesn't know the goodness of God. And if you're in one of those families that gets up at the funeral and we all testify, oh, not to how good we are because we're all imperfect, but how many of you are glad this morning we may be imperfect, but we can all be blessed because of who He is, amen? Come on, let's give Him a good hand clap of praise this morning. Yeah, I want to encourage you, and my message is over, but this is my pastoral plea with you. And that is, if you feel like, you know, Pastor Jim, I know what you're saying is true, but somehow, man, the flesh just keeps getting in the way of my life. And I get home, and listen, I know you can feel like a lion tamer. and you can feel like you're not skilled enough to tame the lion that's messing up your relationships and causing problems with the kids, can I just ask you not to give up? Can I ask you just to give God a chance? Can you maybe just say to yourself, maybe I can't tame my home or tame my life or tame my family? But I really do believe, Pastor, that the love of Jesus and the leadership of Jesus can tame everything that's in front of me. Can I just encourage you not to just hear a message today, but to let the truth of Galatians sink deeper than that on the inside of your heart? And for some of you, you can go back to our YouTube page. You can go back on our church app. And here are the questions I want to remind you of as we close that Paul answered in the book of Galatians. How do I rise above the circumstances sin has caused to characterize my life? it's a sad thing whenever sins broken this characterizes your life how can I let God interrupt my story how can I let God stage my comeback how can I walk in a faith that doesn't feel like a formula but I'm really experiencing fellowship with God on the inside of my heart how do I play my part and experience God playing his part so his promise comes to pass in my life how do I let God love me and build maturity in my heart that causes me to live blessed. How can I help my whole family see that God's way is so much better than the hard way that most people go through? How can I live in real freedom that isn't legalistic and it's not loose either, but I'm really being loved by Jesus and I'm really being led by Jesus? And then today I just wanna say this to you, relax, because nobody's perfect. How many of you know we can all be blessed because Jesus loves us so much, y'all? And that's the message of the gospel in a nutshell, right there. Amen.