This 29-minute sermon from Galatians 6:1-10 encourages us not to give up when things get tough. Click the link Do Not Grow Weary to listen or read the manuscript below.

Emmet Smith, the great running back for the Dallas Cowboys, was just 5-foot-9 and weighed 210 pounds. That’s pipsqueak size in the National Football League. But he holds one of the most impressive records in pro sports: the career rushing record. In his 15 years in the NFL he rushed for 18,355 yards. That’s almost 10-and-a-half miles!

What’s even more impressive is that on his way to the 10^1/2 mile mark, some colossus on the other side kept knocking him down every 4.2 yards, on average. Can you imagine getting slammed to the ground every thirteen feet for ten miles? But Emmet Smith kept getting up. That’s what it takes to win. It takes endurance. And that’s what this short series is all about.

Today’s message is for those of you who’ve been knocked down and are thinking about just staying there. You’ve become weary. You’re not sure that you have the energy to get back up – or the desire. Well, that’s an experience that others in this room share and have shared.

            Today I’m going to encourage you to get back up. If you say, “I can’t,” I’ll answer: “You can.” If you say, “Why should I?” I’ll answer, “There is more riding on this than you can imagine.” If you say, “How can I?” I’ll answer, “Let’s look at our text: Galatians 6:1-10.” It’s a text that has something to teach us about perseverance.

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. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each one should carry his own load. Anyone who receives instruction in the word must share all good things with his instructor. Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (Galatians 6:1-10 NIV)

            Chapter six begins with reference to a problem: a person “caught” in a sin. Paul might be thinking of someone whose sinful behavior has been detected – the word can be used that way – but he might also have in mind the person who has been caught like a fly in a spider web. He got too close to something harmful and now he’s wrapped up in it and doesn’t know how to get out.

            The word the NIV translates as “sin” is not the usual Greek word, but one that means something like “a false step” or a “trespass.” In other words, this person who is “caught” fell into something wrong inadvertently, he didn’t rush into it on purpose. The wrongdoing may be, as the New Testament scholar Alan Cole argues, false (but fascinating) teaching that has caught hold of a person, or it may be a behavior or a habit that ensnared him or her.

            Paul says “You who are spiritual” – meaning people who live in and keep step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:25); whose lives are plainly under the influence of God’s Spirit – “should restore him.” Paul didn’t know anything about NFL rushing records, but he knew that people take missteps and get knocked down. If they’re going to get back up and persevere they are going to need brothers and sisters to help them.

            The word translated “restore” is used in the Gospels of the disciples repairing their fishing nets – cleaning them and sewing up the holes – so they would be ready for use the next time. If we are going to persevere in our service to Christ, we will need to undergo repairs from time to time – and we are going to have to help each other with that.

            But do it gently, Paul says (or literally, do it “with meekness”). Destroying people doesn’t require gentleness, but restoring people is delicate work and only those who are led by the Spirit should try. “But watch yourself,” Paul warns, “or you may also be tempted.” He doesn’t say exactly what that temptation may be. Perhaps to the sin that has caught your friend. Or perhaps to the sin – more destructive still – of pride and spiritual superiority.

            In verse 1 Paul is instructing the Galatians about what to do when a fellow Christian succumbs to temptation. In verse 2 he tells them what to do when a fellow-Christian is weighed down by a burden. In verse one, the Christian has wandered off the path and needs someone to help him get back on it. In verse 2, the Christian is still on the path, but the weight he’s carrying threatens to crush him.

The word translated “burdens” in verse 2 was sometimes used metaphorically of sorrows or griefs, but here it is probably more general. The burden could be an illness, a financial weight or a relational difficulty. It could be an addiction or a bereavement. The burden is the thing that weighs a person down, that threatens his or her perseverance in following Christ. It is important to note that we are called to carry one another’s burdens, not solve one another’s problem. Solving problems will often be beyond our ability. But carrying the burden, offering relief and encouragement, is something we can do.

            You may have heard of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. But have you heard of Tenzig Norgay, the Sherpa guide who accompanied him? On the way back down the mountain, when Sir Edmund fell, Tenzig Norgay rescued him. He would have died had Norgay not pulled him back up the cable.

            When asked why he never bragged about what he’d done, Norgay answered simply, “We mountain climbers help each other.”[1] That’s what we Christ-followers do, too. We help each other.

            What does this have to do with the subject of this sermon series, with perseverance? In the Christian life, people persevere best when they have others to help … and others to help them. Perseverance wanes when we are alone.

But while we must be quick to carry other’s burdens, we must not be quick to fault others for not carrying ours. Indeed, we have a load that other Christ-followers cannot carry. When we read this text, it may seem to us that Paul is contradicting himself, especially if we read it in the King James Version, which translates: “bear … one another’s burdens” in verse 2 but “each man shall bear his own burden” in verse 5. But the burdens of verse two and the burden of verse 5 are different types of burdens. Paul even uses different words to represent them in the original language.

I believe the word in verse 2 refers to a heavy burden that comes to a Christ-follower for a time – illness, a financial weight, a relational difficulty; an addiction or a bereavement – and can cause him or her to give out. We need to help each other carry those burdens. But the burden (or load) of verse 5 refers to the specific life work given to each of us by the Lord, and for which he will hold us accountable. It is the same word used when Jesus said, “For my burden is easy and my yoke is light.” I can share your temporary burden and you can share mine, but we cannot be responsible for the life-work God has entrusted to another. Only Jesus has the power to share that with us.

Sometimes people get this wrong. They try to shuffle the responsibility God gave them off on others. They start comparing themselves to others. They think of times they helped others but cannot remember times when anyone helped them. They pride themselves on what they’ve done for others but anger themselves over what others have not done for them. That kind of thinking is the death knoll for perseverance. If you are engaging in it, I plead with you to stop. If you say, “But it is not fair,” I can only say: “Fair or not, you’re poisoning your own spirit with those thoughts. Please stop.”

Now look at verse 7: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” Paul has switched metaphors on us. He’s gone from carrying loads to sowing seeds. But both kinds of work – burden-bearing and seed-sowing – require perseverance. And when it comes to seeds sowing, it can take a long time before one sees any results.

We were in California earlier this year, and we marveled at the miles and miles of vineyards we drove by. I understand that working a vineyard requires great perseverance. At the beginning of the first growing season, a vintner will plant vine shoots and at the end of that first season, he will cut them back. A second year passes. He cuts them back again. It takes three years before he has any usable grapes. But even then, he leaves the clusters on the vine. For most vintners, it will be year four before they bring in their first harvest.

If they are growing grapes for winemaking, it takes even longer. Those vintners won’t see the fruit of their labors for seven or eight years. In fact, most vineyards in Napa Valley don’t reach the breakeven point for their investment until fifteen years or more have passed.[2] There is always a lag time between planting and harvesting – both in the agricultural and the spiritual worlds. It is a principle in both realms: We live off last season’s fruit. Your life is what it is because of seeds you planted months ago and, in many cases, years ago.

Paul points out another principle here, an inviolable one: A man reaps what he sows. We know that’s true in agriculture. If I plant rutabagas I’m not going to harvest potatoes. It would be crazy to think otherwise. But somehow people think that they can plants seeds of self-promotion, greed and sexual immorality and still harvest love, joy and peace. That’s just as crazy.

In the little garden Karen and I plant we have a variety of vegetables: potatoes, beans, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, and sometimes peas, carrots and onions. I don’t always remember exactly where we’ve planted what, but when the plants begin to grow, I usually figure it out. Sometimes even then I can’t tell the grape tomato plant from the Rutgers, or the yellow squash from the zucchini, but it becomes clear when the fruit finally begins to form. When it comes to which kind of seed has been planted, I can’t be mocked.

And when it comes to the spiritual crop we’ve planted, God cannot be mocked. (The etymology of the word is to “turn up one’s one.”) What we’ve planted will grow, whether we planted in secret or in public; whether we were careful about the seed we were sowing or were careless; and whether or not we now wish the plants would come up. What we plant, grows.

When preachers talk about sowing seed, they’re usually thinking about evangelism; about spreading the gospel through the witness of word and deed. But Paul has a different aspect of sowing in mind. The harvest that Paul has in mind is reaped in your own life. You become the kind of person you’ve prepared yourself to be by the seed you’ve sown. As John Stott remarked, “It’s not the reapers who decide what the harvest is going to be like, but the sowers.” And we are the sowers.

You can, verse 8, sow to (that is, with a view to) the sinful nature (literally, the flesh) or with a view to the spirit. The translation “sinful nature” can be misleading. The flesh is not evil or sinful in itself. That is important to understand. God created us in such a way that our flesh (the powers resident in the physical body) were to be governed by the spirit. There is an order in creation and within human beings themselves that cannot be altered without serious consequences. When that order is messed up – for example, when the flesh operates without regard to the spirit (which is the disaster that happened when humans turned from God) – people find themselves stuck in all kinds of ruinous patterns of behavior. The flesh simply cannot rule itself

To sow to the flesh is to invest in life apart from God and without reference to your own spirit. That kind of life is defined by its natural appetites and sensations, and is subject to, as Paul puts it in verse 8, destruction (or better, corruption or dissolution). It is a life that falls apart.

The perfect biblical example of someone who sows to the flesh is the rich farmer in Jesus’s parable. He says, “I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry’” (Luke 12:19). Now it is important to understand that there is nothing wrong with eating and drinking and being merry. In fact it is a good thing. The problem was that the farmer lived without reference to God or even to his own spirit. He violated his own nature – violated the way he was made to run – by limiting his life to natural appetites and sensations.

Paul knows where that kind of life leads: to destruction. Not because it is so evil, but because it is so weak. The flesh cannot survive without spirit. Its powers fail. It falls apart.

The other way to live is in reference to the spiritual – to God himself and to our own human spirits. We can sow – that is, we can invest in – the spirit. The NIV capitalizes Spirit, as though it refers to the Divine Spirit, but I rather doubt that is what Paul had in mind. We can sow with a view to our spirit, so that it grows and flowers and produces fruit.

How do you sow to the spirit? What might that entail? I can mention a few things, but there are many more. First, we can invest in sound biblical teaching – that is the point of verse 6, where the idea is that we should financially support true teachers of the word. We can practice spiritual disciplines – actions that prepare the spirit – like prayer, Bible reading, worship, fasting, solitude and others. These are actions we take in the present to prepare us spiritually for the future. We practice these actions in order to form “habits on the basis of the grace of God,” as Oswald Chambers put it. “If we refuse to practice, it is not God’s grace that fails when a crisis comes, but our own nature. When the crisis comes, we ask God to help us, but He cannot if we have not made our nature our ally.”[3]

In verse 10 we see another way to sow to the spirit: we can use every opportunity to do good to everyone. Doing good here is intentional. In the language of spiritual formation, we are engaging in the discipline of service. When we do good for others – every time we do good for others – we are changed. Every good thought and deed toward another person is a seed planted, and it will bear fruit.

Let me tell you what happens when a person sows to the spirit consistently over a lifetime. He or she becomes increasingly full of love – what a beautiful thing that is! He or she becomes increasingly joyful; the problems of life, even the imminence of death, cannot rob his or her joy. That person increasingly lives a life of peace. The events of life may be rough on the surface, but below the surface there is peace that remains undisturbed. That person is experiencing the eternal kind of life even now. It is a beautiful thing.

I have seen it, usually in men and women who have been sowing to the spirit for many years. “Some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen” – these are the words of the philosopher Dallas Willard, “are elderly people whose souls shine so brightly their bodies are hardly visible.”[4] He lists some such people: Malcom Muggeridge, Dorothy Day, and Agnes Sanford. And I would add to that list Ken West, William Mack and Dallas Willard himself. The wise man knew how this works. He said, “The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day” (Proverbs 4:18).

But here is the thing. It takes time to reap the harvest when we sow to the spirit. I am reaping some of it now, and enjoying it immensely, but there is much more to come than I have yet tasted. People who sow to the flesh see their path grow ever darker as they go through life. Their returns diminish. They know that death will end all light. But not so the people who sow to the spirit. Their last day on earth merely opens the door to the glories of heaven.

But because it takes time, it is possible to grow weary. Seeds sown to the flesh grow faster, but die sooner. Seeds sown to the spirit grow slowly but last forever. But because we don’t see changes in a day or in a month or sometimes even in a year, we can become weary, verse 9, and give up. We can give up doing good for others and focus on ourselves – that is, on our flesh.

I say, we can become weary. Let me speak more plainly: I can become weary. I have at times been very weary and have become all self-focused – that is, I have sown to the flesh. I need you to encourage me to keep going. I need you to help carry my burdens. And you need me. We need each other. The only way we will fail is if we fail to persevere. “We will reap a harvest,” verse 9, “if we do not give up.” And what a harvest!

Some people have learned how to sow to the spirit and are competent at it (like a good farmer), and some don’t understand it very well and are incompetent at it (like a poor farmer). But whether he is good at it or not, everyone who sows to the spirit will reap a harvest, unless he gives up. Don’t give up.

And know this: the smallest seed you can sow is a thought, but you sow so many of them that they are phenomenally important to the harvest. So mind your thoughts. Don’t plant thoughts of discontent, of foolish comparisons, resentment or envy. Instead, turn your thoughts to “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things” (Philippians 4:8).

Let me close with a story from Pastor Dale Durie that illustrates the harvest that comes to those who persevere in sowing to the spirit. One autumn afternoon, Durie’s grandparents were at home when they heard a knock at the door. It was a neighbor, a widow, who said to his grandfather, “I was out feeding the horses, and I felt like God was prompting me to come and say thank you for the difference you’ve made in my life.”

She sat down and began relating one story after another of how grandfather had helped her; how he’d cared for the cows and horses and done all of kinds of practical things around the farm. She went through a litany of good deeds, including the help he gave her in making peace with some of her children. She thanked him for being so real. She finished with, “I just felt like God wanted me to tell you that.”

Durie’s grandfather looked at her and said, “It was the Lord Jesus Christ who did it.”

After a pause, Durie’s grandmother began chatting with the neighbor. A few seconds later they heard a cough and turned to see grandfather slumped over. He was with Jesus. His last words on earth were, “It was the Lord Jesus Christ who did it.”[5]

That was a man whose path was shining ever brighter until he reached the full light of day. He did not grow weary in doing good, and he reaped a harvest. That’s what I want for my life, but I need your help. When I grow weary, come and help me. And when you grow weary, I’ll come and help you. And when it is all over, we won’t say, “See what I did!” We will say, “It was the Lord Jesus Christ who did it.”

---

[1]Calvin Miller, “From Entertainment to Servanthood,” Preaching Today Tape #132

[2] Margaret Feinberg, “Napa Valley on Leadership,” Q Shorts, http://www.Qideas.org

[3] Oswald Chambers, “The Psychology of Redemption, 26-27. Quoted in Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines, p. 118.

[4] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p. 211

[5] Dale Durie, from the sermon Mission Possible (6-1-03)