-Transcript-
00:36 Amen. Glory to God. Good to be here today.
00:40 Welcome to the Cafe. Today we are discussing something so powerful and so important, bearing each other’s burdens. If you have a burden, don’t you want another Christian brother or sister to come alongside and bear it with you? If you have time and a listening ear and a heart for those that are suffering, Christian brothers and sisters, aren’t you more than willing to go alongside them and bear those burdens? It’s such an important principle and often we don’t hear too much preaching on this anymore.
01:13 I don’t know why. Heartache is rampant in America today. Around the world, heartache is rampant and I’m speaking to Christians today.
01:24 Yes, heartache among Christians, it’s a real thing. Oftentimes we see Christians feel like they have to live up to always smiling, always joyful and a demeanor that is over the top. Oftentimes secretly they’re suffering greatly.
01:42 The Bible tells us it rains on the just and the unjust. Amen. We understand that we are to suffer with Christ as we live this life.
01:51 We understand that we are to be set apart from sin and we’re living in a sin sick world. To be set apart from sin is going to make us oddballs. Amen.
02:01 Lot was in Sodom and he was very grieved by what was happening, yet he lived in Sodom. Amen. In a way, we live in a wicked world and we’re grieved by the wickedness that we see and we’re grieved by all the things that we encounter.
02:09 We can say honestly that there’s heartache among Christians in your town, in my town, in our local communities. There’s heartache among Christians. It can be from work issues, it can be from school, it can be from financial issues, it can be from health, it could be from a burden that’s going on in the church, an issue happening and how those sometimes can be the most hurtful ones when there’s something going on in the church.
02:35 Whether the church is suffering as a whole or whether someone in the church is suffering or whether someone’s causing trouble. Amen. There’s burdens and heartache in towns across America, in our country as a whole.
02:49 There’s burdens and heartaches and lockdowns and COVID procedures and wars and rumors of wars and inflation and gas prices. Amen. If the gas keeps going up, we may not be able to go out on the street anymore and drive.
03:04 You may see a lot of people picking up a bicycle, which I do like bicycling, but that doesn’t work too well if it’s snowy and icy and dark and so forth. I guess they got to make some bike lanes, but that’s another message. Either way, in America there is great heartache, and I don’t mean to make light of it.
03:21 There’s great serious heartache in America. They’re over the lost and over the way the country has soured on the ways and things of Christ and has become materialistic, beyond materialistic, and has often now forsaken the church altogether. There’s great heartache in America, and there’s heartache overseas.
03:42 You know, the inspiration for this message came from prayer, as it always does, and that prayer was over brothers in Christ in Africa, in Mozambique, that had been persecuted greatly for their beliefs, losing even their family members and having great loss in the community. And it was just heartbreaking. I was brought to tears when I read the article, and I guess the writer knew you’d be brought to tears because the writer said, don’t let the tears cloud what you’re seeing here, that Christ was being glorified amidst all the persecution.
04:15 We understand that often in the persecuted church, Christ’s revival breaks out more, and Christ is seen more clearly than in the Laodicean church age here in America, where people are lulled into just a fit of spiritual laziness, because they can, Amen, because not everybody, but often these churches are so well off, and things are going so well, that it doesn’t seem the same as when they tell you you can’t have your Bible, or I’ll kill you, or lock you up, if you mention the name of Christ. That’ll kind of boil you up a little bit, that’ll fire you up a little bit. And so we have in this country, in this world, great heartache among Christians.
04:58 Christians are suffering, and the question is, are their brothers and sisters in Christ willing to suffer alongside them? What does it even mean to bear each other’s burdens? Our text verse today is Galatians 6:2. “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Bear ye oneanother’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Now I love this verse so much, because it’s so simple, it’s so to the point, and yet it is so much depth to it.
05:28 It’s telling us something. It’s a command, Amen. We are commanded to bear each other’s burdens if we want to fulfill the law of Christ.
05:36 So what does it mean to bear another’s burdens? You know, the idea of owning the cause of another is not new. In fact, there’s a very big biblical precedent for this. The idea of owning the cause of another like it was your own.
05:51 The idea that if you have, let’s say you have a child, and that child slips and falls, and they break their arm, and your arm doesn’t physically hurt, but you are hurting so bad, in a way you’re hurting more than the child is, because you are owning that problem. You are living it, or you have a close friend that is suffering, and you’re suffering alongside that person. The idea is treating the other person’s problem as if it were your own.
06:18 That’s the idea. You are substituting yourself in for them, so they’re having an issue, they’re having a problem, and you’re saying, I’m gonna bear it with you. Well, that substitutionary event there is what Christ did for us on the cross, Amen.
06:31 So this is a beautiful picture of Christ. When we bear one another’s burdens, number one, we’re showing great sacrificial love, saying we’re willing to set aside our comforts and our pleasures to come alongside somebody, and shed some tears, Amen, and hug some people up, and love some people up, and spend some time and sacrifice for them, Amen, to give out of even our own need, Amen, our own need for sleep, or finances, or whatever it may be, to give to that person in need, that Christian brother or sister. Was Christ not absolutely glorified in this concept? Because He came when we were yet sinners, and died for us on the cross, Amen, saying that I’ll go.
07:09 Christ said, I’ll go, I’ll die for them. They have a sin debt they cannot repay. I am Jesus Christ.
07:14 I am perfect and sinless. I am God in the flesh. I will go be obedient to the Father.
07:18 I’ll be humiliated. I’ll die the worst death ever on the cross, amen, obediently dying, and being in the grave three days, and being miraculously resurrected from the grave to signify new life, and walking this earth 40 days and 40 nights, being seen by over 500, and then ascending up to be at the right hand of the Father today. That’s what Christ did for us.
07:39 And when He did that for us, he substituted Himself in for us, so that His perfect sinless nature, we then inherited when we believe on Him. That’s the idea of the old man passing away, and the new creature rising with Christ, amen, so we die with Christ on the cross, and we are risen again with Him as new creatures. You see that picture in baptism, Believer’s Baptism.
08:02 And so we see here that Christ was the one that set this substitutionary standard, this idea of stepping in and owning something for someone else as if it were their own problem, because Christ was sinless. He didn’t have to die on the cross, and He’s God in the flesh. He had all power.
08:19 He didn’t have to let these people come and take him. He could have wiped them out in a heartbeat. I always like this one of the Gospels mentions when they came to see Christ in the garden as they were going to take Him, and they asked him who He was, and he said His name, and they all fell down.
08:31 And that’s a picture of his power, Amen, with His word, with a look, with a blink. They all would die if He so chose, but He was long-suffering beyond long-suffering, loving beyond loving. Jesus Christ should be glorified in this message today, because He is the way that we understand how to bear one another’s burden.
08:49 If we’re bearing someone else’s burden, what does that do to our own? Well, if we’re bearing someone else’s burden, then we’re not thinking too much on our own burdens, are we? We are, in fact, able to be joyful in the midst of hardship when brothers and sisters in Christ come together. The Spirit is there, Amen. The Lord is there, Amen.
09:13 He’s with the burdened down. He’s with the contrite in heart. He’s the ones that are hurting.
09:17 He’s with the ones that are struggling. When has God showed up the most in your life? If you’re like me, it’s when you’re in the valley. It’s when you’re hopeless.
09:26 It’s when you’re tired beyond tired. It’s when you’re sick beyond sick, and then you see Jesus and you say, wow, our God is a mighty God. He works mighty miracles in my life, Amen.
09:34 And you give Him the glory, and you can have joy by bearing each other’s burdens. And again, there was a great poem, I believe, by Jack Hiles. He was doing a lot of Christian counseling, meeting people all day, and kept setting his burdens aside.
09:48 And in that poem, it basically ended with, even though it was difficult to bear their burdens, by the end of the day he’d forgot all about his own problems. And I think it’s very much true. So what it means to bear another’s burden is that we are like Christ.
09:58 We are imitating that substitutionary stance that Christ took for us. We are doing that by bearing one another’s burdens. If we’re bearing someone else’s burden, we don’t really think too much on our own, and we can have joy in the midst of struggle.
10:14 What does it mean to fulfill the law of Christ? Well, what it doesn’t mean is fulfilling the old law, right? So the old law, the Old Testament, the Orthodox Jews still follow this to some extent. It’s 630-some laws, and that was all fulfilled when Christ died on the cross. And the Bible says that Christ fulfilled the law, Amen? Christ is the law.
10:38 So the law of Christ is now not any kind of Old Testament law, but love, specifically to love thy God and thyneighbor as you love yourself. That is the law of Christ. We see that here inMark 12: 28-34, And of describes came and having heard them together preceding that he had answered them well, Ask Him what is the First Commandment of all and Jesus answered him. The first of all the commandments is Hear O Israel the Lord our God is one Lord and I shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, with all thy strength, This is the First Commandment And the second is like, namely, this, Thou shall love thy neighbor as thy self, there is none other commandment greater than this. And you could go on and read how this is truly the law of Christ now, to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and also to love your neighbor as yourself.
11:31 And so when you bear one another’s burden, you are fulfilling the law of Christ because you are loving your neighbor like yourself, and you are acting, you are showing, giving God glory by acting as God had acted. You’re imitating God in the right way. You’re being a mirror of Christ, and that brings glory to God.
11:51 That’s why, you know, a lot of preachers will say, hey, you know what? When we love each other, it pleases God. This is an example of that in action. Romans 13:10, Love worketh no ill to his neighbor therefore love is the fulfilling of the law and so what we have to do is think about this idea of self-discipline.
12:08 The Bible word would be temperance, restraint, or moderation. Sometimes we can look at someone’s situation and say, I don’t want to go near that because it’s so sad or depressing, or it’s going to mess up something you’ve got going on. And we have to have that discipline as a Christian to say, no, the Bible calls us to bear one another’s burden.
12:29 So I’m going to go over there and I’m going to bear this burden with this individual. And the deepest, richest connections I believe you’ll have with brothers and sisters in Christ will be in those hard times. Those bonds will be forged so deeply, I promise you.
12:44 It’ll be a testimony to the Lord as you go and you bear those burdens one with another. That’s what God calls us to do. And if you’re willing and obedient to do that, and you pray to God and ask Him for an opportunity to do this, I really believe in my heart of hearts, the Lord will line up many opportunities for you to do it.
13:02 And these will be the things that you look back on. And you can make a memorial to God, an altar in your heart, just memorializing how good God is and seeing this person go through with it. For lack of time, I can’t give you too many testimonies, but there’s a few young men that I’ve been able to walk alongside and I’ve seen them come out of great medical burdens and all kinds of different kinds of burdens and I’ve seen them grow and blossom in life.
13:30 And I thank God for allowing me to have a small part in that. And surely there’s opportunities that I missed. And so I ask you here today, as I’m preaching to myself as well, that we work on bearing one another’s burdens.
13:42 It is Christ-like to do. It shows God that we love Him when we love each other. Amen.
13:48 Let’s be about our Father’s business today and make it a point, a priority to bear one another’s burdens. It can be done. It should be done.
13:57 And Lord willing, it will be done if you just pray and ask God to give you that opportunity. I thank you so much for listening today. Take care.
14:06 God bless and Amen.