Galatians 6:1-5
If you’ve been following along with me in reading the chronological Bible, this week we read a real hodgepodge of strange and interesting stuff!! But there is a common thread, community. God was building a community. He really wanted them to sense that they belong together and need each other.
That’s why I chose Galatians 6:1-5 as the passage that could bind all these various stories and rituals together under the heading of “things we must do together.” And what are those things we must do together? I see three.
1. Root out sin and separate ourselves from evil impurities.
2. Help each other along by bearing each other’s burdens.
3. Each of us must choose to live responsibly.
I want to give some examples of each of those from our readings this week. So, first, on rooting out sin and being separate from evil. The first instance in this weeks’ reading is Numbers 5:1-3. “The Lord said to Moses, “Command the Israelites to send away from the camp anyone who has a defiling skin disease or a discharge of any kind, or who is ceremonially unclean because of a dead body. Send away male and female alike; send them outside the camp so they will not defile their camp, where I dwell among them.”
That’s rooting out impurities, but it seems harsh because those people couldn’t help it if they had a disease or if they had to care for a decease relative. But, the separation is not a punishment. It is more like quarantine, to protect the rest of the healthy community from the possibility of contagious infections.
The next involves the strange ritual used to prove the guilt or innocence of a wife whose husband is suspicious of her. In order to determine whether or not she is guilty of sin, so that it can be rooted out, she is subjected to a drink of bitter water, dirtied by dust from the tabernacle floor. The point is not the water’s dirtiness, but its holiness. And this comes with a curse that will afflict a guilty woman, but an innocent woman will be unharmed. It seems all unfair. It’s all on her! And we find no law given so that a jealous woman could test her husband.
To a modern reader that seems all unfair. But consider this. It was a male dominated culture. Legal matters were normally administered by the males, and dependent females came under their legal protection and jurisdiction. Charges of sexual misconduct could lead to capital punishment! So, this test takes the matter out of human hands. Under this law, no angry, jealous husband could just automatically have his wife executed on mere suspicion.
This suspected adulteress ritual is the only instance in the Israeli Laws in which the Lord promises to render the verdict himself, directly, by supernatural means. The right to that level of divine intervention and judgement of a case belongs only to women! This test was given by God to protect innocent women from unreasonable men! That roots out the sin of a man getting rid of an undesirable wife by using the excuse that he’s just “rooting out sin.”
You might still wonder why God’s original laws given to Moses didn’t do a better job of setting up at that time a more egalitarian culture that gives more power and honor to women such as we enjoy today. Think of how different that kind of culture would have been from everything they had known up to that time. Now think of how hard it was for God to get them obey the laws that he did give, laws that didn’t make them change their culture as much as we would have liked.
But we must also remember that we are looking back through ages and ages of development of culture, and even at that, the modern freedom of women is relatively recent and mostly enjoyed only in Christian culture. What we have today is actually the result of the influence of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
The remaining examples of rooting out evil are all the more familiar and easily understood the stories of how God dealt with rebellion among the members of the community once they began moving away from Sinai and heading for the Promised Land. Their complaining and rebellion threatened to undue all that God was setting up. It also would not work to have factions and divisiveness among them. They would have to accept the order of leadership that God had ordained and learn to work together under it without any evil ambition to take over. All these rebellions arose from the people’s failure to trust in God’s provision, in spite of having seen his provision over and over again!
In Numbers 11, almost as soon as they were on the march, they began to complain about how hard it was! Sure, it was hard! Break camp and pack up. March as far as God leads, then unpack and set up camp. Then go out and find the manna to gather it up so you have something to eat. It was not as easy as going out to work and then coming home in the evening to a nice warm home with food in the fridge. And there were no fast food joints along the way! You wouldn’t like it either if God asked us to live that way. Ok, I wouldn’t like it either!
But this was training! Basic training. This was an army and support teams, getting ready to do battle with an, as yet, unknown enemy. God knew what he was doing was hard on them and good for them. It would teach them team work. And it would toughen them up to endure hardship like good soldiers do. This is how they would learn how to help each other along by bearing each other’s burdens.
That connects us with the second set of things we must do together. This is why the Lord assigned the Levites their specific tasks for putting up, taking down and carrying the tabernacle. Numbers 4:31-32 tells the Merarite clan of the Levites, “Their only duty at the Tabernacle will be to carry loads. They will carry the frames of the Tabernacle, the crossbars, the posts, and the bases; also the posts for the courtyard walls with their bases, pegs, and ropes; and all the accessories and everything else related to their use. Assign the various loads to each man by name.”
Each man by name. That is so significant to me. Aaron calls on a guy named Yacob and says, “Here you carry this." Each person got his own personal share of the whole load. So, … What if a guy just decided he didn’t want to carry his load?
This is the set of instructions that actually inspired me use the Galatians 6 passage as the overarching theme. Galatians 6:2-5 says, "Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load."
Whenever I read that passage it always strikes me funny that it begins with, “Carry each other’s burdens” and ends with what looks like a contradiction, “each one should carry their own load." But I have solved that problem using a couch. Here’s what I mean. If you were helping a friend move to a new house, there’s going to be a big couch. Carry each other’s burdens means, help him move the couch. He can’t do it by himself. Each one carry their own load, means make sure you’re actually bearing the wait of your part of the couch. That works for all kinds of problems we can help each other with.
Each and every Christian has an important role to play in the work of the Kingdom. Even if it seems as insignificant as carrying one bronze base or a tent peg, if that piece goes missing the whole work is incomplete! Do your part! And if you don’t have a role to play in the ministry or the support of the ministry, I’m sure session and I can help you find that!
But don’t get cocky about it or self-important, or overly ambitious. This is where we come to the third thing we have to do together, mutual accountability. Each of us must choose to live responsibly and peaceably. But we need to do that in community because by ourselves we’re either too hard on ourselves, or more likely, too self-confident that we’re doing fine.
That’s why even though this last one sounds more individualistic, “each individual must choose to live responsibly,” it still has to be done in community, in the context of relationships, because without other people telling you whether or not you’re really living up to God’s standards, you’ll just assume you are. But in community, if you’re not living responsibly, you’re gonna hear about if from the people you’re annoying! Or you should anyway. But that often gets redirected into unhealthy gossip doesn’t it?
My friend Ed Gilbert told this publicly, so I can use him as an example. I specifically got his permission, too. He said that for a time, their life circumstances required him and his wife to live in separate houses in different cities for days at a time each week. Then he jokes that whenever she wasn’t home, he could do or say anything he wanted and live as he pleased. There was no one to tell him whether he was right or wrong and he would never get in any trouble, just as long as the house was cleaned up when she was coming home!
Nobody really likes conflict. But it is unavoidable when sinners are trying to live and work together. A healthy church is not one in which nobody ever gets mad at anybody. A healthy church is a community that knows how to deal with conflict and how to heal relationships.
This by the way is why members in many congregations become members by promising to support the ministry. In the EPC you also make a promise to submit yourself to the government and discipline of the EPC and to the spiritual oversight of the church session. You’re promising that it’s ok if other people watch your life and tell you how you’re doing. In the modern American church though, that’s hard to enforce. Not many people really like to submit. There are so many different churches, if you have a conflict you don’t want to handle in your current congregation, it’s real easy to just change churches, no matter what kind of a promise you made. The only thing that puts a damper on that is the level of friendships you have in your current church. Good relationships are like glue!
But church hopping does happen. Why I even heard of a man on a desert island who was finally rescued after years of living alone. His rescuers noticed three structures, that he had built himself on his little island, and they asked him about them. He proudly gave them a tour of his little house, and then showed them around in what he called his church. He seemed to be ignoring the third structure though. But somebody asked him about it. He said with a snarl, “That’s the church I used to go to.
I remember meeting a new couple who were visiting one of my former churches for the first time. As I asked them some “getting to know you” questions, they willingly shared that they were leaving their other church because they just didn’t like the pastor. I asked them if they had ever talked with their pastor about what was bothering them. When I learned that they hadn’t, I strongly encouraged them that they should first seek reconciliation. I don’t know what they ended up doing because I never saw them again. I hope and pray that they went back to their home church and made things right. But they might have just moved on to try somewhere else, looking for pastor who wouldn’t ask such questions.
As long as we’re on this subject, I should also let you know that we had two visitors who sojourned with us for a couple of weeks. You might remember George and Barbara, Whitely, not Bush. They were coming here all the way from Houghton Lake. But Barbara has been in and out of the hospital in the last few weeks, and I kept in touch with them mostly by phone then, and prayed for Barbara, with George on the phone. They were looking for a new church because something bad happened in the one they left
But last week George called to say that during Barb’s last stay in the hospital, they were visited by the interim pastor of their old church. I’m sharing all this because it’s good news. They have reconciled and rejoined their home church. They thanked me for being a good pastor to them in the short term, and I happily rejoiced with them for their beautiful reconciliation and return to their home church. Praise God! That’s how it’s supposed to end up!
So, God is working, in both the Old and the New Testament, to establish a community of believers, a community of saints, who will all be one with each other and with God, in answer to Jesus’ prayer. He prayed, “not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.”
Brothers and sisters, we see now that there is an answer to the question that asks, “why can’t we all just get along?” If someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently.” We must root out sin and purify our hearts. “But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.” We must help each other along by bearing each other’s burdens.” “and in this way we will fulfill the law of Christ.” If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load.” Each of us must choose to live responsibly. And we all need each other to help each other.
Let us then celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the meal of the Community. The early church used to celebrate their existence as a new community by eating many meals together that they called agape feasts, agape being a word that signified the highest form of love. Those early churches always included the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in the midst of their table fellowship. Wouldn’t it be interesting if that’s what we did downstairs after prayers and worship in the sanctuary? Lunch together and the Lord’s Supper!
But perhaps even more significantly, as we know, the meal we call the Lord’s Supper was based on the Passover meal, and the all the necessary sacrifices have been offered by Christ, so that we may have fellowship with God in holiness and freedom. It is all that remains of the ancient sacrificial system given by God to Moses. That means that this meal is truly a holy one. It is all that is necessary. Let us keep the feast. It is designed to make us one in the Spirit, and one in the Lord. Amen.
If you’ve been following along with me in reading the chronological Bible, this week we read a real hodgepodge of strange and interesting stuff!! But there is a common thread, community. God was building a community. He really wanted them to sense that they belong together and need each other.
That’s why I chose Galatians 6:1-5 as the passage that could bind all these various stories and rituals together under the heading of “things we must do together.” And what are those things we must do together? I see three.
1. Root out sin and separate ourselves from evil impurities.
2. Help each other along by bearing each other’s burdens.
3. Each of us must choose to live responsibly.
I want to give some examples of each of those from our readings this week. So, first, on rooting out sin and being separate from evil. The first instance in this weeks’ reading is Numbers 5:1-3. “The Lord said to Moses, “Command the Israelites to send away from the camp anyone who has a defiling skin disease or a discharge of any kind, or who is ceremonially unclean because of a dead body. Send away male and female alike; send them outside the camp so they will not defile their camp, where I dwell among them.”
That’s rooting out impurities, but it seems harsh because those people couldn’t help it if they had a disease or if they had to care for a decease relative. But, the separation is not a punishment. It is more like quarantine, to protect the rest of the healthy community from the possibility of contagious infections.
The next involves the strange ritual used to prove the guilt or innocence of a wife whose husband is suspicious of her. In order to determine whether or not she is guilty of sin, so that it can be rooted out, she is subjected to a drink of bitter water, dirtied by dust from the tabernacle floor. The point is not the water’s dirtiness, but its holiness. And this comes with a curse that will afflict a guilty woman, but an innocent woman will be unharmed. It seems all unfair. It’s all on her! And we find no law given so that a jealous woman could test her husband.
To a modern reader that seems all unfair. But consider this. It was a male dominated culture. Legal matters were normally administered by the males, and dependent females came under their legal protection and jurisdiction. Charges of sexual misconduct could lead to capital punishment! So, this test takes the matter out of human hands. Under this law, no angry, jealous husband could just automatically have his wife executed on mere suspicion.
This suspected adulteress ritual is the only instance in the Israeli Laws in which the Lord promises to render the verdict himself, directly, by supernatural means. The right to that level of divine intervention and judgement of a case belongs only to women! This test was given by God to protect innocent women from unreasonable men! That roots out the sin of a man getting rid of an undesirable wife by using the excuse that he’s just “rooting out sin.”
You might still wonder why God’s original laws given to Moses didn’t do a better job of setting up at that time a more egalitarian culture that gives more power and honor to women such as we enjoy today. Think of how different that kind of culture would have been from everything they had known up to that time. Now think of how hard it was for God to get them obey the laws that he did give, laws that didn’t make them change their culture as much as we would have liked.
But we must also remember that we are looking back through ages and ages of development of culture, and even at that, the modern freedom of women is relatively recent and mostly enjoyed only in Christian culture. What we have today is actually the result of the influence of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
The remaining examples of rooting out evil are all the more familiar and easily understood the stories of how God dealt with rebellion among the members of the community once they began moving away from Sinai and heading for the Promised Land. Their complaining and rebellion threatened to undue all that God was setting up. It also would not work to have factions and divisiveness among them. They would have to accept the order of leadership that God had ordained and learn to work together under it without any evil ambition to take over. All these rebellions arose from the people’s failure to trust in God’s provision, in spite of having seen his provision over and over again!
In Numbers 11, almost as soon as they were on the march, they began to complain about how hard it was! Sure, it was hard! Break camp and pack up. March as far as God leads, then unpack and set up camp. Then go out and find the manna to gather it up so you have something to eat. It was not as easy as going out to work and then coming home in the evening to a nice warm home with food in the fridge. And there were no fast food joints along the way! You wouldn’t like it either if God asked us to live that way. Ok, I wouldn’t like it either!
But this was training! Basic training. This was an army and support teams, getting ready to do battle with an, as yet, unknown enemy. God knew what he was doing was hard on them and good for them. It would teach them team work. And it would toughen them up to endure hardship like good soldiers do. This is how they would learn how to help each other along by bearing each other’s burdens.
That connects us with the second set of things we must do together. This is why the Lord assigned the Levites their specific tasks for putting up, taking down and carrying the tabernacle. Numbers 4:31-32 tells the Merarite clan of the Levites, “Their only duty at the Tabernacle will be to carry loads. They will carry the frames of the Tabernacle, the crossbars, the posts, and the bases; also the posts for the courtyard walls with their bases, pegs, and ropes; and all the accessories and everything else related to their use. Assign the various loads to each man by name.”
Each man by name. That is so significant to me. Aaron calls on a guy named Yacob and says, “Here you carry this." Each person got his own personal share of the whole load. So, … What if a guy just decided he didn’t want to carry his load?
This is the set of instructions that actually inspired me use the Galatians 6 passage as the overarching theme. Galatians 6:2-5 says, "Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load."
Whenever I read that passage it always strikes me funny that it begins with, “Carry each other’s burdens” and ends with what looks like a contradiction, “each one should carry their own load." But I have solved that problem using a couch. Here’s what I mean. If you were helping a friend move to a new house, there’s going to be a big couch. Carry each other’s burdens means, help him move the couch. He can’t do it by himself. Each one carry their own load, means make sure you’re actually bearing the wait of your part of the couch. That works for all kinds of problems we can help each other with.
Each and every Christian has an important role to play in the work of the Kingdom. Even if it seems as insignificant as carrying one bronze base or a tent peg, if that piece goes missing the whole work is incomplete! Do your part! And if you don’t have a role to play in the ministry or the support of the ministry, I’m sure session and I can help you find that!
But don’t get cocky about it or self-important, or overly ambitious. This is where we come to the third thing we have to do together, mutual accountability. Each of us must choose to live responsibly and peaceably. But we need to do that in community because by ourselves we’re either too hard on ourselves, or more likely, too self-confident that we’re doing fine.
That’s why even though this last one sounds more individualistic, “each individual must choose to live responsibly,” it still has to be done in community, in the context of relationships, because without other people telling you whether or not you’re really living up to God’s standards, you’ll just assume you are. But in community, if you’re not living responsibly, you’re gonna hear about if from the people you’re annoying! Or you should anyway. But that often gets redirected into unhealthy gossip doesn’t it?
My friend Ed Gilbert told this publicly, so I can use him as an example. I specifically got his permission, too. He said that for a time, their life circumstances required him and his wife to live in separate houses in different cities for days at a time each week. Then he jokes that whenever she wasn’t home, he could do or say anything he wanted and live as he pleased. There was no one to tell him whether he was right or wrong and he would never get in any trouble, just as long as the house was cleaned up when she was coming home!
Nobody really likes conflict. But it is unavoidable when sinners are trying to live and work together. A healthy church is not one in which nobody ever gets mad at anybody. A healthy church is a community that knows how to deal with conflict and how to heal relationships.
This by the way is why members in many congregations become members by promising to support the ministry. In the EPC you also make a promise to submit yourself to the government and discipline of the EPC and to the spiritual oversight of the church session. You’re promising that it’s ok if other people watch your life and tell you how you’re doing. In the modern American church though, that’s hard to enforce. Not many people really like to submit. There are so many different churches, if you have a conflict you don’t want to handle in your current congregation, it’s real easy to just change churches, no matter what kind of a promise you made. The only thing that puts a damper on that is the level of friendships you have in your current church. Good relationships are like glue!
But church hopping does happen. Why I even heard of a man on a desert island who was finally rescued after years of living alone. His rescuers noticed three structures, that he had built himself on his little island, and they asked him about them. He proudly gave them a tour of his little house, and then showed them around in what he called his church. He seemed to be ignoring the third structure though. But somebody asked him about it. He said with a snarl, “That’s the church I used to go to.
I remember meeting a new couple who were visiting one of my former churches for the first time. As I asked them some “getting to know you” questions, they willingly shared that they were leaving their other church because they just didn’t like the pastor. I asked them if they had ever talked with their pastor about what was bothering them. When I learned that they hadn’t, I strongly encouraged them that they should first seek reconciliation. I don’t know what they ended up doing because I never saw them again. I hope and pray that they went back to their home church and made things right. But they might have just moved on to try somewhere else, looking for pastor who wouldn’t ask such questions.
As long as we’re on this subject, I should also let you know that we had two visitors who sojourned with us for a couple of weeks. You might remember George and Barbara, Whitely, not Bush. They were coming here all the way from Houghton Lake. But Barbara has been in and out of the hospital in the last few weeks, and I kept in touch with them mostly by phone then, and prayed for Barbara, with George on the phone. They were looking for a new church because something bad happened in the one they left
But last week George called to say that during Barb’s last stay in the hospital, they were visited by the interim pastor of their old church. I’m sharing all this because it’s good news. They have reconciled and rejoined their home church. They thanked me for being a good pastor to them in the short term, and I happily rejoiced with them for their beautiful reconciliation and return to their home church. Praise God! That’s how it’s supposed to end up!
So, God is working, in both the Old and the New Testament, to establish a community of believers, a community of saints, who will all be one with each other and with God, in answer to Jesus’ prayer. He prayed, “not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message. I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.”
Brothers and sisters, we see now that there is an answer to the question that asks, “why can’t we all just get along?” If someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently.” We must root out sin and purify our hearts. “But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted.” We must help each other along by bearing each other’s burdens.” “and in this way we will fulfill the law of Christ.” If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load.” Each of us must choose to live responsibly. And we all need each other to help each other.
Let us then celebrate the Lord’s Supper, the meal of the Community. The early church used to celebrate their existence as a new community by eating many meals together that they called agape feasts, agape being a word that signified the highest form of love. Those early churches always included the celebration of the Lord’s Supper in the midst of their table fellowship. Wouldn’t it be interesting if that’s what we did downstairs after prayers and worship in the sanctuary? Lunch together and the Lord’s Supper!
But perhaps even more significantly, as we know, the meal we call the Lord’s Supper was based on the Passover meal, and the all the necessary sacrifices have been offered by Christ, so that we may have fellowship with God in holiness and freedom. It is all that remains of the ancient sacrificial system given by God to Moses. That means that this meal is truly a holy one. It is all that is necessary. Let us keep the feast. It is designed to make us one in the Spirit, and one in the Lord. Amen.
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