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Good morning dear friends, it’s Sunday May 26th, of Memorial Day weekend. Oh I hope you are having a memorable weekend and that today will be an important part of that as you gather with God’s people for a personal and corporate encounter with Jesus.
Galatians 6 is our chapter for today, the final chapter of this first of Paul’s letters which he wrote to the churches God had enabled him to plant. This first letter, you remember, was written following his first missionary journey (Acts 13,14) and therefore sent to those churches in the province of Galatia.
You can take the first 10 verses of this 6th chapter and almost make a clear, bold, bullet statement of each verse. As I read it, I can see Paul, pacing back and forth, dictating to his scribe, with arm flailing in the air, stopping after each statement to ponder it’s power. Maybe even raising a fist occasionally for emphasis. I invite you to personalize them and restate them in your own words, like this…
1. Vs. 1… Help your Christian friends who are drifting back into the darkness, but be careful. Like a lifeguard, you may get sucked into the rip tide too.
2. Vs 2…Help one another carry the burdens of life…like grief at the loss of a friend or spouse; or anxiety at the loss of a job or a frightening health report; or the workload of widowhood or single parenthood. . .help each other with the loads of life!
3. Vs. 3… watch out for pride, it will deceive you and shame you every-time!
etc.
Ponder carefully the deep truth of vs. 7&8 “God cannot be mocked, A man reaps what he sows“. Most of us reading this are in the latter 1/3 of our lives, some in the latter few years of life. We tend to be more reflective now…and this statement is so true. You and I are living now with the results of seeds we sowed so many years ago. It’s our reputation, it’s our legacy. So what is God teaching you about this? From the lessons of life comes wisdom we can pass to our children and grandchildren,right? The wonderful thing is Jesus enables anyone, with any past, to finish well with Him! The final chapter of the story of your life hasn’t been written yet. . .make it a good one with Jesus.
And then there’s the profound encouragement to well doing in vs. 9 & 10. Dawn and I see many of you in these verses and we praise God for you!
Finally, Paul closes his letter in a most unusual way. It was normal for someone like Paul to dictate his letters and a scribe to write them very carefully so they could be copied if particularly important. It was also normal for the author like Paul to take the pen in his own hand and sign the letter, perhaps adding a few personal words.
Note that Paul says he writes with such large letters (vs. 11) and earlier in chapter 3:13-16 he mentions an illness which first brought he and the people of these churches together. He writes “if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me…” We don’t know exactly what Paul is describing but evidently he had an eye problem maybe something like modern day cataracts or macular degeneration or a torn retina. There is no record of Paul going blind, so God must have restored his sight enough to accomplish his mission, for as he writes this, he has yet many years of powerful teaching and several more missionary trips ahead.
My friends… look back at your life. How many times has God unleashed His mighty power directly to your need and strengthened you for what HE knew was ahead for you. And even today, what does God see for the rest of 2019 and beyond for each and all of us? Do we trust Him with our lives and our future? Isn’t that the powerful confidence of Paul’s closing words to the Galatian Christians?
Oh may we each have a significant Sunday with Jesus today… I wonder how today fits into what HE is trying to accomplish in and through each of us?
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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