Fulfill the law of Christ

Galatians 6:2 (NIV)

Carry one another’s burdens and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 

What burdens do you have in your life?  What burdens do others in your family, church, and community carry?  The word in the Greek is “baros” meaning heaviness, weight, trouble.  The imagery is a person with a heavy load on his/her back who can hardly keep walking with such a weight on their shoulders. Burdens in life come in the form of unexpected suffering that make your knees buckle and you can hardly keep going.  A loved one in an accident…….your house burns down…….being abandoned by someone you trusted……..sudden widowhood……a call from the doctor’s office with bad news from recent tests…….a rebellious child in jail……whatever prayer requests we read in the church’s weekly prayer list…….all these are examples of burdens people experience that causes healthy and strong people to become overwhelmed, crushed, practically paralyzed by such burdens.  In these situations you are to do whatever you can to help them---walk alongside them, pray with them, offer them hope and encouragement, give them a sense of direction and guidance, help them make wise decision, and so forth.  

There is another burden to which this passage is referring.  That burden is described in the preceding verse that speaks of someone being caught in any trespass.  Yes, we are to bear one another’s sins and trespasses.  Paul is talking about brethren---Christian brothers and sisters---helping one another in our failures as well as our trials.  We carry one another’s burdens by restoring a sinful brother or sister in the spirit of gentleness.  It takes a person that verse 1 calls “spiritual” to restore the sinful brother or sister.  To be spiritual is to be filled and led by the Holy Spirit.  You are not to correct them or judge them, but you are to bear their trespass, their weakness, and help them be restored.

In all these efforts to bear one another’s burdens, you are fulfilling the law of Christ.  What is the law of Christ?  Simply stated, although volumes have been written, the law of Christ is to believe and follow what He said are the two greatest commandments  — to love God and to love others as yourself. 

While we are to bear one another’s burdens, we also are to carry our own load (Galatians 6:5).  The Greek word for “load” in this verse does not mean the same as “burdens” in verse 2.  It refers to obligations that the Lord lays upon each of His children.  Each of us have a certain weight of responsibilities and challenges that we are suppose to carry on our own; we must not over-burden others with some circumstances that we ourselves must carry.

May you pray and be wise to know what burdens you can carry on your own and what burdens require others to help you carry.  And may you recognize when others need your help in enabling them to deal with their crushing burdens and weaknesses.

Prophecy inspired by the Holy Spirit

II Peter 1:20-21 (NLT)

Above all, you must realize that no prophecy in Scripture ever came from the prophet’s own understanding, or from human initiative. No, those prophets were moved by the Holy Spirit, and they spoke from God.

In II Peter 1:12-19 Peter wrote about the promise of Christ’s coming again.  This is the great hope of all believers like a bright light shining in the darkness.  Peter emphasized that the prophecies about Jesus’ return were made more certain by his witness of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountaintop (Matt 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-9 and Luke 9:28-36).  He then wrote these two verses that strongly assert (“you must realize….”) that all writers of the holy Scriptures were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write what they did.  They did not write at all from a human perspective. 

Have you ever been inspired to write (or say) something where you gave no thought to what you were going to write, it just poured out from your pen to paper?  Were I a full time preacher I’m sure that I would have lots of examples of divinely-inspired preaching.  I like to believe that an excellent sermon I hear from my own pastor or from another pastor visiting a new church or watching on TV or listening on the radio is the result of divine inspiration, that the person preaching just let the Holy Spirit in him blurt out what needed to be said.  When you read certain devotional books---like Charles Cowman’s Streams in the Desert (first published in 1925, revised 2008, Zondervan)---you have to believe that those writers wrote what the Holy Spirit told them to write, it was not from their own intellect. 

I can share some simple experiences where I felt divinely inspired to write or speak without having a clue of how and what would come off my pen or out of my mouth.  My daughter was part of a high school show choir that performed at a national contest at the DisneyWorld Epcot Center, but had no hopes of winning or even placing.  Well, they ended up as Grand Champions.  I was so emotionally inspired by what I and many others had witnessed that I went back to our hotel room and started writing.  Yes, I wrote what was stored in my mind, but how I wrote and what flowed out of my pen was as close as I have experienced to divine inspiration.  No, I wasn’t writing about God, but I felt that I experienced something of what the biblical writers felt when they wrote what the Holy Spirit told them to write.  I’m sure that many of you reading this have had a similar experience, e.g. writing a thank you note, a meaningful Christmas card, a letter to a loved one, etc.    

My other experiences involved instances that we all have nightmares about---speaking in front of a large audience but being totally unprepared.  At a high school alumni reunion, not just my class, but all classes, lots of alumni present, but a main speaker for some reason didn’t show up.  It’s a long story but I was literally pushed to go on stage and say a few words about whatever came to my mind.  Oh, indeed, some people might say that I was saying nothing but a lot of hot air, but I remember praying as I was walking onto the stage that the Lord would give me something to say.  Twenty minutes later I finished my speech!  You might disagree, but to me, I experienced divine inspiration!!  Other examples have included instances where I lost or forgot notes before leading a Bible class or other presentation or being asked to respond to questions where I simply had to rely on the Holy Spirit to give me the proper words to say. Again, you might know exactly what I’m talking about. 

I Peter 1:20-21 is not only teaching about biblical writers being divinely inspired, but also it is teaching that no prophecy of Scripture is to be skewed to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean.  All false teaching in church history is the result of self-absorbed people thinking that they have an inside track on what the Scriptures are saying and they twist Scripture to support whatever they want to believe.  Indeed, Peter wrote about false teaching in II Peter 2:1.  False teaching is not denying that prophecies come from God, but they twist their meaning to fit their own beliefs.  You see this a lot from people who claim to know when the Second Coming of Christ will occur.

I like the following statement, even though it goes against what I was long taught (and perhaps you too): “All Scripture has one interpretation, as designed by God, but has many applications”.  Scripture never changes although over time men and women try to twist it to mean what they want it to mean.   What God intended the Scriptures to say and mean when He first spoke to Biblical writers to write them down, they mean the same thing today.

“All Scripture is inspired by God……” II Timothy 3:16.  Always remember this as you spend time studying and learning from the Scriptures.  

Spiritual blindness

Isaiah 42:16 (NIV)

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth.  

Who are the blind in the Scriptures?  Well, they do include physically blind people, but they also include spiritually blind people and this verse is speaking about the spiritually blind.  Jesus called the spiritually blind those who “loved darkness rather than light” (John 3:19).  There are some other very interesting descriptions of spiritual blindness:

·  “…foolish people, without understand who have eyes and see not….” Jeremiah 5:21

·  “…I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see….nor do they understand.”  Matthew 13:13

·  “…the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it”  John 1:5

·  "..if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe.”  II Corinthians 4:3

Yet, there is always hope for the spiritually blind.  Isaiah says here that God will lead the blind by ways that heretofore they have not known.  God will guide them along the unfamiliar paths that heretofore they have not taken.  God will turn their darkness into light and such light will lead them.  God’s light will smooth out the rough places in their lives. 

Does this describe you?  Might it describe someone close to you?  Only by the Spirit of God can you see again.  That is, you can see the truth, you can see the ways in which God wishes you to go, that you can understand Him and His ways.  Meditate carefully on these verses:

·  "He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures” Luke 24:45

·  "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” I Corinthians 2:12

·  "Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Ephesians 5:17

Do you remember the words from “Amazing Grace”………”was blind, but now I see”?  John Newton was referring to spiritual blindness.  David Watson shares the following story from his book My God Is Real (Kingsway Publications, revision, 1978) --- “A man once stood on a soap-box at Hyde Park Corner, pouring scorn on Christianity. ‘People tell me that God exists; but I can't see Him. People tell me that there is a life after death; but I can't see it. People tell me that there is a judgment to come; but I can't see it. People tell me that there is a heaven and a hell; but I can't see them’.  He won cheap applause and climbed down from his ‘pulpit’.  Another struggled on to the soap-box. ‘People tell me that there is green grass all around, but I can't see it. People tell me that there is blue sky above, but I can't see it. People tell me that there are trees nearby, but I can't see them. You see, I'm blind.’” 

Do you “see” the point?  The truth is out there, it is real, but do you see it?  Or, are you spiritually blind?  If so, pray for the Lord to do for you what He promises to do from this verse (Isaiah 42:16) if you will let Him.

No one can snatch them away from Me

John 10:24-30 (NLT)

Jesus replied, “I have already told you, and you don’t believe me.  The proof is the work I do in my Father’s name.  But you don’t believe me because you are not My sheep.  My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow Me.  I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.  No one can snatch them away from Me, for My Father has given them to Me, and He is more powerful than anyone else.  No one can snatch them from the Father’s hand.  The Father and I are one.” 

The Jews asked Jesus if He was the Christ (the Messiah) and this was His answer.  He said that they did not believe Him, not only what He said, but also what He did.  He also said that their unbelief was because of their refusal to become like sheep (see below).  They had too much pride, too much tradition, too much hard-heartedness (and hard-headedness) to believe and follow Jesus.  That is the same problem for so many people today and throughout history. 

One of Jesus’ seven “I am” claims in John’s Gospel was that “I am the good shepherd who gives His life for the sheep” (John 10:11).  You’ve probably heard before that sheep in the Bible are representative of human beings.  If you have a strong ego and are easily insulted, you won’t like the comparison, but it’s true.

Sheep are described as dumb, not because of lack of intelligence, but because of a much stronger herd instinct.  If one sheep goes over a cliff, the rest will follow.  Humans are the same way.  We all have intelligence, but there’s a tendency to follow a leader and if this leader is not Christ, terrible things can happen.  How many intelligent people throughout history have blindly followed some evil leader?

Sheep are described as defenseless.  Unlike other animals with teeth, claws, fangs, etc, sheep have no natural defense mechanism to protect themselves.  People are the same way.  You are vulnerable to what someone called the “wolves of life”, e.g. disease, disasters, criminals, countless daily threats to your physical and spiritual lives, and the reality of death.  Without Christ in your life, you have no one to protect you against the schemes and the wiles of the evil one. 

Sheep are described as directionless.  Sheep tend to wander off and get lost.  So it is with those outside of the Lordship of Christ, there is no spiritual direction and so you are always searching for whatever is missing in your life.

Isaiah 59:2 states that “all of us like sheep have gone astray”.  The greatest need of human beings is to have a shepherd.  God provided that shepherd.  Note what Jesus claims in this passage---His sheep listen to Him, follow Him, they are given eternal life, and no one can take them away.  Now if you have any kind of pride and self-reliance, you will cringe at the thought of being like a sheep.  However, what peace of mind and heart it is to realize that once you have humbled yourself and given your life over the lordship—the shepherding—of Christ, you have present and eternal security that can never be taken away from you.  Why is Psalm 23 so beloved by people everywhere?  Because the Lord is proclaimed as “my  shepherd”.  He provides and protects and leads His people.

Jesus says that His sheep listen to His voice.  Do you hear His voice in your life?  If not, you are not studying your Bible.  You are not experiencing His presence through study and prayer and fellowship.  But, if you are practicing these things, your life is being touched by Christ every day and you know it.  This is the greatest blessing you can ever have in your life.