Restoration is more than just saying to a guy, be warm, be filled, you know?
I mean, we let you back in, now you're all right, and then the person is still struggling out of the same load because nobody's underneath there helping to carry that load until eventually it lightens in the process of spiritual obedience. Welcome to Grace To You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Today, John will continue his study called My Brother's Keeper with a look at how to confront fellow Christians in unrepentant sin and how to restore them to fellowship when they do repent.
So be sure to stick around for that. But John, before we get to the lesson, we have reached a major milestone that we're excited about and for which we're thanking the Lord. Today we are celebrating the 10,000th Grace To You broadcast. It's amazing to think that we've been going that long, but I wonder, do you remember the very first broadcast?
Because I do. I'm not sure that I do remember the first broadcast. Yeah, I'm not surprised you don't because I think the team who were doing it put it together without much involvement with you. And the beginning and closing of the broadcast were vastly different than they are today. There was a sort of like a drama, a skit that introduced the broadcast.
It didn't even seem to fit Grace To You really. I was a listener. I was a 25 year old youth pastor and I heard you were going to be on the radio and you were on in three cities and one of them was the Tampa Bay area. I lived in St. Petersburg and so I tuned in, listened on that first broadcast. I had heard you teach maybe just once or twice, but you were already my favorite teacher. So when I heard you're going to be a radio broadcast with John MacArthur, I started to listen. For the next three years while I lived in Florida, I built my days around Grace To You and the broadcast. And that doesn't seem so long ago to think that we've done 10,000 broadcasts in that time is mind boggling, isn't it? Yeah, it's hard to understand why there are people who keep wanting to hear me 10,000 times over.
Well, I'm one of them. You know, those early broadcasts, they were doing First John, which is very helpful to me because I was teaching that to the youth group and they did a lot from the book of Acts, I remember. We still use that material. We still broadcast some of those same teaching segments on Grace To You.
So in that sense, the teaching part of Grace To You has not changed. We got rid of the bad skit. We did. Maybe that's why I don't remember it. I have no that bad. I have no dramatic abilities anyway. So we're not doing skits.
No, I love the format we have now where we just talk together and introduce the lesson for the day. But 10,000 milestone, that's stunning. It's based on our in house numbering system that we put in place in 1986. We actually have produced more than 10,000 programs. Nevertheless, today is broadcast number 10,000. We're excited about that. Rejoicing at the Lord's goodness and faithfulness and rejoicing at the radio stations who have tolerated us for 10,000 broadcasts. Pretty amazing partnership. To help put 10,000 broadcasts in perspective, a few facts to consider.
Since that streak began, there have been eight United States presidents and 10 Summer Olympics. Wow. The process for producing our radio broadcast has gone from analog to digital.
Of course, digital describes much of the content we now provide. And many of our staff members have become grandparents. I'm one of those and some of them great grandparents.
That would be me. I just had the seventh great grandchild. Yeah, congratulations. To think about 10,000 broadcasts in another way, it would take you more than half a year to listen to all the broadcasts in order nonstop.
And that's if you didn't take time to sleep. Right. Well, all those scenarios are something to think about. But what really stands out and what we're most amazed and encouraged and humbled by is the opportunity we have had to teach the Word of God for so many years. I've long said that the goal of Grace To You is to focus on the depth of Bible teaching and let the Lord decide the breadth.
Let him take it where he will. And that's exactly what's happened. The Lord has been so abundantly faithful to our Bible teaching outreach and through it all he's used people like you who are listening to me to support us and make it possible. Think of it. Every one of those 10,000 broadcasts was supported by listeners just like you. We can't do it without you. We can't do it without radio stations like the one you're listening to right now. And thanks also to Ambassador Advertising Agency, faithful partners that have been critical to our efforts on radio for decades. By God's grace, we will continue to be here. I don't think it'll be another 10,000, but we'll be teaching the Bible for many more years, I believe until Jesus returns. So thank you for standing with us and especially for your prayers.
Yes, friend, thank you. Your faithful prayers are the most important way you can support Grace To You. And now on this 10,000th broadcast, here again is John to continue his study, My Brother's Keeper. And I want to draw you to Galatians chapter 5 and 6. We ask this question as we approach this. What do you do with the sinning Christian who has responded to discipline, who has repented of sin, who has been forgiven and brought back into the fellowship, what do you do to restore them to that place of spiritual strength they had before they fell in the first place? And the answer comes in this passage.
This is the ministry of restoration. Three things Paul mentions in this text. Three things.
First one, very simple points. Pick them up. Pick them up. Verse 1, "'Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye who are spiritual, restore such in one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.'" We find then that in picking the person up, a one who is spiritual, that is walking in obedience, energized by the Holy Spirit, knowing the mind of Christ and responding to it, is called to restore the one who was overtaken in the sin. The word restore is a very, very common word in the New Testament, katartidzo. It is used very frequently. It simply means to repair something only in the sense of bringing it back to its former condition, to restore it to its former condition. It is used of reconciling two arguing factions. It is used of setting bones that are broken. It is used of putting a dislocated limb back into its proper place. It is used of mending broken nets.
That word is a very common word for knitting something together, for restoring something to its original condition. And that's exactly what it's calling us to. Listen, we not only reprove and rebuke and discipline a person who falls into sin, we forgive them with our heart and relationally restore them when they repent, and then we begin the whole building process of restoration that puts them back on the walk with the Spirit where they were before they sinned. So there is a spiritual restoration process involved. And I'm really committed to the fact that the church has to be involved in doing this, that this is part of melting our lives together, that it is not enough to just come and go.
It is not enough to just watch what happens. There is a spiritual rebuilding process that we're all involved in, the strong helping the weak. And let me just give you another thought along that line, too.
This is not necessarily only an absolute issue. We're all weak some places, right? And so we're at some point on that long line of spiritual growth, we all need somebody who's stronger than we are in some other area to strengthen us.
So we all are to be involved in those interpersonal relationships which are for strength to those that are weak. So when you see a person who's in sin, the implication of verse 1 is that you've got to pick him up and that means there's discipline involved. You confront him about the sin, you go through the process. If he doesn't listen to you, you take one or two witnesses that it may be confirmed in their mouths. And if he doesn't listen then, you tell it to the whole church and the whole church goes pursuing with love. And if the person doesn't listen to the church, then the person is put out, treated like a tax collector, one who is an alien person until the time that they are repentant. And then when they repent, there's full relational forgiveness that restores them back, but it doesn't end there.
Then there's the full rebuilding process to restore them to where they were before. Now notice the attitude of this person who picks up. Verse 1, the spirit of meekness, the spirit of meekness, humility. And again, I believe with all my heart that Jesus Christ is the model in this regard. In 2 Corinthians 10, 1, Paul says, I, Paul, myself, beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ. Christ who came into this world and looked at ungodly, wretched, vile, disobedient, ignorant sinners and quietly and patiently waits for us to come back to the place that He would have us to be, who desires to restore us to that place that we knew before ever we fell.
And that is the model. And we do so in a spirit of meekness. Only our meekness changes from that of Christ in a sense because it says, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.
And in that we would add this, that we are to go about this understanding that we could be in the same position, right? While Christ could not because of His perfection, we could. And before you stand up and consider yourself to be spiritual and quite far along in terms of your pilgrimage toward perfection, you never want to get to the point where you look down on someone else, but rather where you bend down to help someone else in humility, which is what meekness means, realizing that you could be in the same situation because you're not exempt from that either. In fact, that's going to get you sooner or later because sin dwells in you. There's no place for spiritual pride and vainglory.
There's no place for people thinking themselves to be better than others. There must be meekness when we consider that we ourselves could also fall. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul has given it to marvelous illustration of the people of God, Israel, how they were taken out of Egypt. Verse 1 talks about them passing under the cloud and through the sea. And they wandered in the wilderness and they were guided by the Shekinah glory of God and of course they went into the Promised Land and talks about how God carried them through the wilderness prior to that. But it says, with all the blessing of God, some of them fell into fornication and three in 20,000, verse 8, were killed.
Now these are people with great privilege, but these people with great privilege committed sin. Now look at verse 11. Now all these things happen unto them for examples and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages are come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he...what?...fall. There hath no temptation taken you but such is his common man.
And he goes on to talk about the way of escape. But you never want to get to the point where you think you are invincible. There needs to be a very, very basic meekness about our personality and our heart attitude that says when seeing someone else sin, I'm not going to be arrogantly conceited and lorded over that person. I'm going to be thankful to God that my own life isn't so marked by sin. So pick them up and be willing to stoop to pick someone up knowing that you could just as well be the one who needed picking up. And sooner or later you will, though your sin may not be the same as that one.
There'll be sin from which you too need restoration. Second point. First one is pick them up. The second one is hold them up.
Hold them up. And that's verse 2 through 5. It's a beautiful passage. Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. The word bear means to carry, to hold up. Whatever is really burdensome, you hold it for them. Now what does he mean by this? Bear ye one another's burdens.
The idea again is the walk. This guy's going along the road and he falls. What made him fall? Well he had something that was too heavy and it did it to him. It crushed him and he fell. You can imagine that, a long trek and a burden and all of a sudden the burden becomes crushing and down goes the guy. And he's saying now that you've picked him up, you're going to have to get under the thing and you're going to have to help him carry that load. Now what is that burden? Well I believe it is whatever weakness is in that person spiritually that threatens to induce him to fall into sin. Whatever kind of opening there is in his life, whatever bridgehead Satan can find, whatever weakness of personality or character, whatever that thing may be that tends to be his Achilles heel, that's where you've got to get under and carry the load because he can't carry the load himself.
So many times a person will sin, repent, forgiven, brought back into the fellowship and then nobody bothers to get under the load and they're carrying the same load of temptation in the same difficult circumstance they were carrying before and they just fall again. I had a man come to see me, a young man. He said, I... and he was distraught, he was cheerful. He said, I've given my life to Christ, but I was a homosexual before I was saved. And he said, I have terrible problems. He said, I keep stumbling back into relationships. And he said, I repent and I turn from those and I ask God to forgive me. And he said, and then I go and I do it again.
And it was just a terrible destroying kind of thing. Well I didn't really know how to help him, so just on the spur of the moment I said, okay, I'll tell you what I want you to do. Every time you have a homosexual relationship over the next two weeks, and homosexuals can have them very frequently, and every time you cultivate ungodly thinking in that regard, I want you to write it out in a full paragraph and explain it to me. Every time you think about it and every time you do it, just write it all out.
And the next two weeks when we meet you can just go through the whole list with me. And he was kind of stunned that I had said that. And I just covenanted with him to do that. So two weeks later he came back and he had this huge grin on his face. And he walked in the door and no sooner did he say hello than he said, I don't have anything to write.
I didn't do anything. I said, really? He said, yeah and that's the first time, that's the first time two weeks. And I said, well what's the difference?
He said, I don't want to tell you about it. That's one way to carry his load, isn't it? You carry his load by forcing an accountability on it. There are a lot of ways to carry somebody's load. There are a lot of ways to bear someone's burden. I can't tell you how many people I've said to, now if you feel that you have a problem in that area and you're tempted in that regard, you know, here's what I suggest you do or here's pick up the telephone and make a phone call and get somebody to carry the load.
I don't know how you go about doing that. Basically it's by staying close to somebody and holding them accountable. That's the way I see it. I don't know any other way to carry people's loads than by hanging around them and making them accountable. But it's more, restoration is more than just saying to a guy, be warm, be filled, you know? I mean, we let you back in, now you're all right and then the person is still struggling out of the same load because nobody's underneath there helping to carry that load until eventually it lightens in the process of spiritual obedience. And by the way, don't just say to them, you know, like so many do, Psalm 55, 22 or something where it says, cast your burden on the Lord for He will sustain you, or 1 Peter 5, 7, casting all your care on Him. The Lord wants to do that through you and me.
We have to be mutual burden bearers. And you'll notice at the end of verse 2, will you, that this fulfills the law of Christ? Do you know about the law of Christ? You certainly know about the law of the Old Testament, right? What's the law of Christ? Very clear, John 13, 34 and 35, a new commandment I give unto you, said Christ, that you what?
Love one another. So what's the law of Christ? It's the law of love. It's the law of love. And love picks up and love holds up. James calls it the royal law.
It's called the perfect law of liberty and it is our responsibility. To be a burden bearer is our ministry to each other. And frankly, most Christians don't do this. I ask myself and I ask you, who are you currently helping to carry the burden of temptation and weakness? Anybody? Anybody you're nurturing? Anybody's burden you're carrying?
Anybody you've got in the process of restoration? It's so easy for us to be so uninvolved. You say, well, I don't like to get down there. You might get affected by that stuff. And I'm very spiritual.
I just don't want to stain the pure. Well, verse 3 is for you. For if a man think himself to be something when he is...what?...nothing, he deceives himself.
Basically, that verse is a wonderful verse on anthropology. Simply stated, man is...what?...nothing. That's what it says.
Take out all the modifying phrases. We're nothing. What are you protecting anyway? You're nothing. If the best of us is the chief of sinners, what are we? We're nothing.
That's what he's saying. And I'm not saying this in terms of denying the image of God in us. I'm just saying that in terms of having to promote ourselves to glory or having to think highly of ourselves, that's completely opposite. We're nothing. All we are, we are by the...what?...by the grace of God. And so who are we to be so self-deceived that we can't give ourselves to the bearing of the burden of the weak? And so we don't shun people. When they are honestly desiring to do what is right and when they want to repent and they want help, we won't just hopefully just take them back.
We'll take them back and get under the load and carry it with them. And if you think you're too good for that, you are so wrong. You are so deceived.
You know why you think that? Because your standard of comparison is wrong. Whenever I think I'm better than someone else, it's because I'm comparing myself with someone else. And I can always find people that are, you know, worse than me. I mean, if I just wanted to feel better than other people, all I have to do is see a drunk line in the gutter. I feel terrific.
I don't do that. You can always find somebody worse off than you. But to stand...that's what Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians when he said, we are not those who compare ourselves with ourselves. We compare ourselves...who is our standard? Christ, 1 John 2, 6, if we say we abide in Him, we ought to walk as He walked. So Christ is the standard. We compare ourselves to Christ. Guess where we come out?
We come out on the low end. So that's not self-deceiving. So you compare yourself with Christ. And so He says, pick them up.
Hold them up. And if you think you're too good for that, you're self-deceived. And then verse 4, he adds another...verse 4 and 5, another little thing here that really has some teeth in it. But let every man prove his own work.
Hey, you know something? You can claim you're working for the Lord and you can try to...try to claim that you're spiritual, but you're going to have to prove it. You're going to have to prove it. Then you'll be able to rejoice in Himself alone. He says, in other words, someday you're going to have to stand there all by yourself with verification of your claim to spirituality. And I think verses 4 and 5 take us to the Bema Sea Judgment, the time when believers are going to be rewarded. Revelation 22, 12, Behold, I come quickly. My reward is with me to give to every man according to his work shall be.
I think that's what we see here. We're all going to have to stand a test. 2 Corinthians 5, we shall all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive for the things done in the body, whether they be good or bad. 1 Corinthians 3, our works are wood, hay, stubble, gold, silver, precious stones. And the wood, hay, stubble is going to be what?
Burned up. And I think that's where we are in 4 and 5. Every man of us is going to have to prove his own work and have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another. In other words, there will be a day of testing. And then on that day, verse 5 says, every man shall bear his own burden. So you better get now under the burden of somebody else or you're going to bear your own burden someday for not having done that, and the loss of reward. By the way, the two words for burden here are different. The burden of verse 2 is the very, very strong word, baras. It means a heavy, heavy weight. And the word in verse 5, beautiful, fortion means a little backpack.
That's great. Sin is a heavy, heavy burden. Losing a reward is just a little backpack. So I don't want you to think that someday we're going to face Jesus Christ and we're going to have this crushing...it's a small burden, but it is nonetheless a burden. Someday you're going to have to bury your small backpack of failure to prove your spirituality if you're not willing to get under somebody else's heavy, heavy load and help them carry it, finally. Take them up, hold them up, build them up. Verse 6, let him that is taught in the Word share with him that teacheth in all good things.
Now you've become the teacher and the person you're restoring has become the student. And some people have used this verse to indicate that the preacher who preaches or teaches should be paid, and they take the term good things, agathois, to refer to money, and what it's saying is that whoever teaches you the Bible, you ought to pay him. No, I'm not here to argue that. As a fact?
That's a fact. I would prefer to go to 1 Corinthians 9 to support it, not this text because I don't think that's what it's talking about. Why slam a verse in here about paying somebody who's a teacher? The word good things, agathois, listen carefully, is never used in Scripture to refer to money.
Never. So using it that way in this verse is rather arbitrary. There are two words for good, good things, kalas, goodness in form, goodness in form. Agathos, goodness in essence, and this is agathos, and it means spiritual essence or spiritual excellence. For example, Romans 10, 15 talks about the preaching the good things, the proclamation of the good things, same term. It's used twice in Hebrews, once in chapter 9 verse 11, once in chapter 10 verse 1, and again it refers to the good things of God's kingdom, spiritual excellence. If you want to know the best way to translate it, it would be this, let him that is taught in the Word share with him that teaches in all the spiritual goodies. That's really what it's saying literally.
What is he saying? Oh, it's a beautiful thought. Now in the process of restoring this person, you who teach and you who are being restored mutually share in all the spiritual goodies. In other words, it's an ongoing reciprocal interacting kind of edification process, isn't it? You're building up, you're building up, you're building up. Make sure that the sinning brother submits to the teaching brother and they share together in all the spiritual goodies. And so this is the process of rebuilding a life. And rebuilding is key after sin.
So what are we learning then? Pick them up and then hold them up, strength to their weakness. And then build them up because you don't want to be under that load all your life and you don't want him under it either. So get in the process of sharing all the spiritual goodies that will bring about strength.
That's the process. And so Paul calls us to the ministry of restoration. Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, which is the law of what?
The law of love. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, celebrating our 10,000th radio broadcast. John's current series is titled My Brother's Keeper. Now friend, if any of these past 10,000 broadcasts have made an impact on your life, whether you're a brand new listener or a longtime friend of this ministry, we'd love to hear about it. Your letters are a major encouragement to John and the staff. And letting us know how you benefited from John's Bible teaching would be a great way to help us celebrate today's milestone.
So when you have a moment, please tell us your story. You can send your letter to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Or you can send your email to letters at gty.org. Once more, that's our email address, letters at gty.org. And remember, at our website, gty.org, you'll find thousands of free resources that can help you better grasp God's Word. If you have questions about how to confront someone who is in sin, or how the Holy Spirit works in your life, or how to help a loved one who is suffering, or any other issue, you are sure to find answers in the Grace to You sermon archive. It has over 3600 full-length sermons, all of them available for free download right now. You can even download the transcripts for free. Our website again, gty.org.
That's gty.org. And now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for celebrating our 10,000th broadcast with us. And be sure to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV channel 378. And then be back Monday to learn how not only to survive the trials that come your way, but how to benefit from them. It's another half-hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
