You're listening to a sermon podcast from Paramount Church in Columbus, Ohio. To learn more, visit paramountcolumbus.com. Well, let me invite you to turn with me in your copy of God's Word to our sermon text for this morning, which is in the book of Galatians, chapter six, verses six through ten. Galatians, chapter six, verses six through ten. And I also want to wish you a happy new year. There are a number of people who are normally here, not here today, mostly because of sickness. And so we want to keep them in our prayers as we look forward to this new year. You know, I remember being in college and thinking, you know, how in the world is it going to be the year 2000? And now 2024, I cannot believe how fast time is flying by. And I know that's all relative to us, you know, based upon where we are in life and, but we're all entering into a new year and we want to enter into this year with our eyes on Christ. As we think back upon the last year, for all of us, life is, as always, a mixture of what we feel is good and bad. 2024 will be the same. Until Christ returns, we will have challenges, we'll have opportunities, and we want to take those seriously. So I hope that you have begun already, and there's still time. And if you do it, you know, throughout January, it doesn't matter. As long as we are focusing our hearts on the Lord and what the next year may entail for us as a church and as individual believers, that's what's important. So if you haven't started thinking about this year, this is a good time to do it and to be thinking about the stewardship of the year. What kind of goals do you intend to set? We're all kind of in a different place in that, depending on kind of where we are in life. It could be that those of us who are younger are in some of those, what has been called learning years, that those are the years of opportunity to learn and grow and take in. Others of us are a little further down the road, and we are in the the kind of leveraging years where we're wanting to take what we've learned and put it into greater usefulness to the Lord. And there's a certain amount of ambition that comes along with that and energy. And then, of course, even further down the line, there's an opportunity for the older of our group to see those as legacy years, as years that we can be feeding into the next generation and using all that we have accomplished and learned to pass that along to others. So we all have something to offer and something to give in our church in the coming year, and we want to be thinking about that. So it is providential that we come to this text because it does fit with this part of the year, this opportunity that we have to think about 2024, and in particular, our stewardship. That's what we're going to consider this morning over this abbreviated time of preaching because, of course, this is the last Sunday of the month and we'll celebrate the Lord's Supper together. And for those who are new to our church, the last Sunday of the month has a portion of our service dedicated to praying aloud together. for some different prayer requests and focal points of prayer in our church. So we will be doing that this morning as well. But in this abbreviated time, we want to consider together what could be our spiritual stewardship in 2024. As we think about those goals, we think about the months ahead, and we have, no matter what phase of life we're in, ambitions and thoughts about how the Lord could use us and how we could glorify Him. This is a providential opportunity to use this text in Galatians 6 to consider carefully, what does it mean to be a steward in 2024? And so I want to give us just three from this text, just three truths that can help guide along our stewardship as we're thinking about the coming year and learning from 2023. We'll begin with this truth, which seems pretty simple, but it is quite important for us to keep in mind, and it is that God knows our stewardship. Because God is omniscient, He knows all things. He doesn't just know a few things. He knows everything that has ever happened, and because he's ordained it, he knows everything that will happen. He knows everything about you. He knows everything about me. There's not a single thought that passes your mind, that's a scary thought, that he does not know intimately. He knows every single thought. He knows every single desire of your heart. He knows every hope. He knows every dream. He knows every anxiety. He knows every fear. He knows every failure. He even knows every word before it crosses our lips. He knows everything. Now, for those who are apart from Christ, that's a frightening thought. It should be a frightening thought. that He knows us so intimately that He knows all of our failings, a God of righteousness, a God of judgment and wrath and law, which we've been considering from the book of Galatians as we've worked verse by verse through this letter. But for those of us who are in Christ, it means that He knows us intimately and has set His love upon us, so that with every failure and every anxiety and every worry and every sin and every word, He is meeting us with grace. That's a beautiful reality. That's something that we need as we head into a new year that is, like every year, unknown to us. So this is the first truth for us to really take to heart and think carefully about, though it seems very simple. God knows our stewardship. Listen to what Paul says here in verses six and seven. He says, the one who is taught the word is to share all his good things with the teacher. Don't be deceived, God is not mocked. Now, just kind of keeping the context, last Sunday we heard a sermon from a Christmas text because of Christmas Eve, and now we're back to Galatians, so keeping the context, Paul has been writing a bit recently about fighting against sin together. And obviously here, Paul shows his concern for some that he was writing to at this time who were receiving the Word of God, they were involved in and around the church, but yet they were not contributing to the work of the church. They were not helping to meet the needs that were there so that that teaching could continue. Now, thankfully, that's not a problem at Paramount. We have our problems, we have our weaknesses, and we're aware of many of them and working on them. But this is not one of them, and we can be grateful for that. That's evident by the way that our church gives faithfully throughout the year and the way that we give to missions every year, generously, above and beyond, higher and higher, reaching other goals. But nevertheless, that's kind of the context of what Paul's concern is here. He's concerned, yes, about this specific issue of those who are taught the Word maybe not sharing the good things or supporting the work of ministry of the teachers and the pastors of the church that they're a part of, but also it can extend to other areas of stewardship. This is about stewardship of our lives. That's what we'll see even more clearly in a moment. And he makes this clear point by showing what is the real heart of stewardship. And it really is a question. Notice what he says in verse seven. Don't be deceived. God is not mocked. When he's speaking to those who were receiving the truth and not sharing with the teacher or supporting the work of ministry in their church, he wanted them to not deceive themselves into thinking that they may be getting away with something because he says God is not mocked. So the question of stewardship is at least in part a question between mocking God and honoring God. Why do I say that? We kind of need to know what that word mocking means, because there are a couple different definitions that we have for it. Sometimes we use the word mocking as though we mock someone to repeat what they say, or to insult someone by making fun of what they're saying. That certainly is a version of mocking. But really here, the word that Paul uses is muktirizo is the original word, and it means to turn your nose up at something. That's what he means when he says God is not mocked. Don't be deceived. It's not as though he's going to tolerate this kind of lack of stewardship in which you turn your nose up at him. You know, to turn your nose up is you do that when you're around somebody who doesn't smell very good. You're trying to eliminate this odor and this is in a sense what he's warning against. Don't think that in your stewardship you should enjoy all of the gifts that God has given to you and then turn your nose up at him. as though he is a foul smell. He's something that you don't want to deal with or to ignore him. You see, that's kind of the context of what was going on here. And it opens up the bigger question for us as we think about stewardship in 2024. Because we all, in our own ways, myself included, we will do both of these things this year. Remember, every year is a mixture of some good and some bad, some righteousness and some sinfulness. Everyone is going to do this. You are going to mock God in 2024. you are going to turn your nose up at him. It might be in a moment of real deep suffering. It might be in a time of grief. It might be just on a normal day when you are distracted by something in the world or something that's taken over your heart. You're going to do this. But because God is faithful to you and he loves you and he's at work in you, you're also gonna honor him in 2024. 2024 will be a volley between these two things, at least in some way. And of course, as those who want to please God, we want to find our gladness and joy and happiness in Him because we know that glorifies Him. Our pursuit in 2024 needs to be to push ourselves into greater and greater honor of Him and less and less what Paul calls mocking of Him or snubbing Him. So you might think of it this way, that mocking is snubbing God, and honoring is walking in gratitude by the Spirit. We've already been hearing about that in Galatians most recently. But again, we need to continue thinking about what the difference is in our daily lives. You might take some time over the coming weeks to do a little evaluation. Maybe a week at a time, evaluate back across those days that have just preceded them, and take an inventory of what your days are like. This is why it's so important for us to be somewhat in tune with our hearts and be self-aware of what's going on in our hearts because we will find times when we're snubbing Him, turning our nose up at Him, rather than honoring Him with gratitude and walking with Him, you know, by His Spirit, walking, keeping in step with His Spirit day by day, aiming to honor and glorify Him. This, in a way, is to mock God or to turn our nose up at Him Another way that we could think about this is to rob him. That really is what is at the heart of snubbing God. It's a robbery of God, right? We've thought about this before. I know that we have, because I remember times of standing here and feeling the conviction of the Holy Spirit along with you, as we've seen in the Bible, the different ways that that can happen for us, or the nature of that kind of divine robbery. When we steal from God's glory, some glory that's purely for ourselves, Or when we, as Paul says here, turn our nose up at Him as if He's not as great as He is, or we're not as grateful for what He's done for us. Those are all examples of robbing God. And this is a big question. Are we going to, in this coming year, be stewards? who are investing our energy and time in the glory and gladness of God? Or will we invest our time in detracting from His glory? Maybe for our own personal individual gain, which would mean that we're not really focused on glorifying Him, but on ourselves. And this is a serious issue. It's a serious issue throughout the Bible. We could go back to one passage. We'll do this quickly. that brings this kind of language up in another context, and it's in Malachi in the Old Testament. In Malachi chapter three, verses seven through 12, just listen to these words as I read them, and listen for the robbery language. Since the days of your ancestors, you have turned from my statutes. You have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of armies. Yet you ask, how can we return? Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. You ask, how do we rob you? By not making the payments of the 10th and the contributions. You're suffering under a curse, yet you, the whole nation, are still robbing me. Bring the full tenth into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house. Test me in this way, says the Lord of armies. See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure. I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not ruin the produce of your land, and your vine and your field will not fail to produce fruit, says the Lord of armies. Then all the nations will be blessed, for you will be a delightful land. Now here in this context, there's that picture of stewardship in the physical sense, but it's communicating to us something that's throughout scripture, which is the stewardship in a spiritual sense. that what we want to be thinking about in 2024 is the disposition of our hearts toward God first and foremost, because we know that He knows our stewardship. So in 2024, we can take this to heart. Don't be deceived. God is not mocked. He knows everything about us. He knows all of our failings. He knows all of our mocking. He knows all of the moments that we turn our nose up at Him. And He knows all of the moments that our hearts are drawn in to honor Him in new and fresh ways. And we want 2024 to be characterized by that kind of living. So when we think this morning about stewardship, let's think of it this way. Stewardship is making progress for God's glory and our gladness. That's a very simple way to put it. Stewardship is making progress for God's glory and our gladness. Very different from the idea of robbing God, which is some kind of unjust gain simply for ourselves. Just to be those who are kind of mooching and mooching and mooching, but not honoring, not glorifying. It has everything to do with the disposition of our hearts. So you might ask yourself, maybe today or this week as we're moving into the new year, how can 2024 for you be characterized by stewardship, like this, rather than by stealing. Look for the ways that you find that you might be tempted to steal from God or detract from His glory or to underestimate the goodness of His love for you or the gospel, and to think of ways that we can be stewards in 2024. Here's the second truth that can help us in this and take our thoughts and our progress. Short circuit. It'd be amazing. He is a robot. Rewind. Second truth that can help us make this progress in stewardship in 2024 is this. It's a principle. Godward sowing leads to glad reaping. Write that down. Godward sowing leads to glad reaping. So here's this beautiful reality. This is a principle that God here we see has established as true. Listen to this in the next part of verse seven and eight and nine. For whatever a person sows, he will also reap. First notice the language. It doesn't say might, it says will. Whatever a person sows, he will also reap, because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh. So here, this is coming on the tail end of this warning about mocking God and being deceived, and therefore, the warning is that the principle can work to the negative, because God has ordained it to, that those who sow to their flesh will reap destruction from the flesh. Now, quick reminder, there are a few ways for us to think about flesh. We can certainly think about flesh as our actual flesh, skin on our bones. We don't mean that as our body. That's not the meaning here. Or we could also mean that it is our sinful nature. The flesh, the sin that remains in us, if we sow to the flesh our sinful desires, certainly that's true. There are consequences, there are disciplines to come, and we're grateful that Christ has taken the wrath of God for us because we know that we're people of flesh. It could also be in the context of Galatians. We've thought about flesh being contrasted with the spirit, that flesh is a way of working for your salvation or for your righteousness in God rather than resting in the gospel and rather than living by faith. Certainly true, but there's the first part of the principle. He goes on in verse eight, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. In a big picture, these are two paths. God is laying out two paths possible for someone to be on. In general, You are either on a path of sowing to flesh and reaping destruction, that's the path of unbelief, that's the path of the non-Christian. Every person who is not in Christ, every person who doesn't have faith in Christ is on this path of destruction, and that's where it will end. Because we need Christ. We need Christ to forgive us. We need Christ to represent us before the Father. We need Christ to give us His grace. We need Christ to take the wrath of God from us. That's one path, but then he describes the other path, at least in general. Those who sow to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. Those are people who are Christians. Those are the people who have faith in Christ, who trust in Him, who know Him, who are united to Him. And then he says in verse nine, let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don't give up. So this is the beautiful reality that Godward sowing leads to glad reaping. By coming to faith in Christ, repenting of our sin, and placing our trust in him, becoming Christians, We are on this road of grace and eternal life, and the principle that he's given to us is that as we are on that road and continually being stewards, there is a glad reaping that happens spiritually in our lives. This harkens back some to our time in the book of Philippians as we thought about what it means to be happy. We tried to learn more of what the Bible says to us about how we pursue happiness in Christ, and this is the way that we do it. It's kind of coming up again for us here. He's using this kind of classic agricultural analogy, and it's good for us to hear that, because that is one that does resonate with us, even though I don't think many of us own a farm or are planting crops. You probably have plants in your house, and you know how that works. that if you water that plant and feed that plant, you enjoy the gladness of its growth and its beauty. And if you don't, it tends to wither. It's the same principle. So we want to carry this into 2024. Again, how can we be How can we be watering our spiritual lives, our relationship with God, so that it will grow and flourish is the ultimate question. This is going to be a big challenge for us because we've heard recently, even from Galatians, that the spirit and the flesh are at odds. They keep colliding with each other. They're pulling against each other. You remember this from Galatians 5, let me read these couple of verses again, 16 and 17. Paul had said, I say then, walk by the spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. for the flesh desires what is against the spirit and the spirit desires what is against the flesh. These are opposed to each other so that you don't do what you want. It's just that reminder again that as we come into a new year we want to go into it wide-eyed. There's a tendency for all of us that When we come into a new year, sometimes we forget these basic truths, or maybe we have a ton of optimism about the new year, and we don't go into it recognizing, again, that there are challenges, there are conflicts within us. We have remaining sin. It's going to be some ups and downs for us spiritually. But as we have this in mind, we can continue thinking and looking forward to Godward sowing, which leads to glad reaping. Now, why is this principle good news? I want you to know that this principle of Godward sowing and glad reaping, that it's good news because God has ordained it. This is not a principle that's independent of God. Why is this true? Why is it true, even the general principle of sowing and reaping? Why is this principle true, of Godward sowing and glad reaping? Because God has ordained that it's true. God has guaranteed that it's true. It's not a maybe, it's not a theory. This is a law, and it is a law that God has put in place to our good. He controls the results. You can be assured that if you give your heart to Godward sowing, He will bless you with glad reaping in your relationship with Him. You will flourish, you will grow. What kind of growth is that? Your confidence in Him will grow. The comfort that you know from the gospel in hard times will grow. You will become more and more like Him, as the Bible says, conform to the image of Christ. There's nothing better than that. And this should be an encouragement to us as Christians because it is what God has brought to us inside the gospel. The good news of Jesus Christ, that he lived, died, and rose again for sinners like us, and that he is called specifically by name, he has called you, if you're in Christ, to himself. That is a guarantee that as you continue walking with Him, you will know more and more and more of His goodness and His grace and His gladness in your own life. It is guaranteed. It cannot be thwarted because God is in charge of it. We want to carry that in. That's the kind of upward focus that we need going into a new year, coming out of some hard years. is to know that our ultimate hope is not resting in, are we sowing enough? Are we doing enough? Are we focused enough? Our ultimate hope is in when we sow, the God who is faithful, he will reap. He will continue to comfort us and help us and grow us and use us in more and more ways. So what should you do? You should sow everything you can into the good news of the gospel. You should take everything in your life, all of your resources, all of your energy, all of your focus, and pour it into this pursuit of gladness in God to His glory every single day that you can. That you would wake up in the morning and try as best you can. I know it's not easy to carve out the distractions, to get on every morning on that path again anew. in the direction of Godward sowing. How today can I glorify you, God? How today can I know more gladness of you that's yours? How can I walk with you? How can I please you? How can I be useful to you? Please God, comfort me and make me happy in you. Those are the kinds of prayers that we should be praying as we head into this new year every single day. And what it will require from us is in verse nine, don't overlook this. It will require perseverance and it will require waiting. Notice what it says in verse nine, let us not get tired of doing good. Again, basic biblical principle reading your Bible. Why does he say, let's not get tired? Because you get tired. That's just the reality of the Christian life. It is tiring in this life because of the wrestling with sin and the opposition of the flesh and the spirit and everything else that's going on. It's hard. The Christian life is hard if you're doing it right. So let's not get tired. It's gonna take perseverance. But second, it's gonna take waiting for God. Notice what he says, for we will reap at the proper time. if we don't give up. God determines the time of the reaping. The ultimate time of reaping is at the return of Christ, when we will be with him forevermore, and he'll put all of his enemies under his feet, finally, once and for all, and he will exalt himself as the undeniable king of the universe. But even now, there are times in the rhythms of life when he has ordained the proper time of the reaping. What that means is that there will be times when we feel like things should be different. We feel like things should be better. I feel like I'm doing a lot of sowing and I'm not feeling a lot of reaping. What should I do? Probably give up. Quit. Right, because it's not working. That's why we do the Christian life. You only do things in the Christian life because they work. Of course not. What should we do then? Wait. Wait, because we know, we know the principle has been ordained by the God who is faithful. So that means that there will be a waiting on the proper time. This is difficult, but God has grace for us to do this. And then finally, the last truth this morning that can help us think about stewardship in 2024 is the starting point of our stewardship. Our stewardship starts with the people of God. Let's notice briefly this truth here from verse 10, and then make just three other general applications before we celebrate the Lord's Supper together. We'll carry these truths and these applications into this time together, and hopefully into this new year. Notice what is Paul's conclusion. He says in verse 10, therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith. This is Paul's conclusion in this little section of his letter about these two truths leading to the third. He's giving us an emphasis on where our focus should be and where we should begin. What is our priority as Christians when it comes to this ongoing walk of the Christian life, the ongoing pursuit of doing good to all people, of Godward sowing and glad reaping, what is the center, what is the central focus, the starting point, the home base, and he's very clear that it's especially the household of faith, that's us, that's our local church. It means that in our Christian lives, the local church must continue, as it does for us, to have a central role. I know so many people in our church who have been here, it takes a little time, but have been here long enough that you have begun, or maybe you've had it for a while, to feel the familial relationships with other people. Our church is not just a place that you come just because it's convenient. It's in your neighborhood. For most of you, it's not in your neighborhood. It's not just something that you do because you want to get something out of it, or you're going to get a nugget on Sunday morning, right? Those are all important things. Those are good things. But I know so many people in our church who have built family relationships. And if something, God forbid, happened to our church, it would really hurt you. You would feel an enormous loss. and kind of like a hole in your life until God filled it again. That's when you know things are going right. And that is what we can continue focusing on, just as Paul says here. He says, let us work for the good of all, but especially, there's a priority here, for those who belong to the household of faith. So we want to be sharing the gospel everywhere that we can, around the world, taking money, sending missionaries, making relationships in our community, our schools, our workplaces, and trying to talk about the gospel so that we can do good, working for good, that's what it means. There's nothing more good than sharing the gospel with people and helping them find ultimate joy and comfort in Christ forevermore. There's nothing better than that. It starts especially here. There are special relationships here. This is the place of home base that we're continuing to invest these truths together because then it makes all of us stronger and more useful even out in the world. So here are the three final kind of applications here as we look into the new year, the kind of people that we can be. These are in addition to those other two applications or life applications earlier in our time, and here they are. Write these down and think about them. It could be this week or next week in community group, whenever your group meets, could be a good opportunity to talk about these. Just taking this last verse, taking this, this is the last verse for us heading into a new year. First, be people of opportunity. Paul clearly says, therefore, as we have opportunity. Now again, the only way that you can know you have opportunity is because you're looking for it. These are people that Paul is fashioning who are looking for opportunities to do this thing called working for the good of all. which we've been unpacking in Galatians of everything that Paul says about the gospel and how we seek after ultimate joy in Christ and how we understand our relationship with him by grace. So we need to be people of opportunity. Every opportunity we have, opportunistic people. This is the one time in life that you get to be opportunistic and it's righteous. Be an opportunistic person in 2024. Look for every opportunity you can to make Christ glorious and to enjoy him and to help others do the same. Number two, be people of happy perseverance. We're going right back up to verse nine. Let's not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don't give up. That means we need to be cheerfully looking to do this redemptive good in every opportunity we have. Cheerfully looking. to do redemptive good in the lives of other people, giving our hearts, giving our truth, giving our good news away. And then finally, number three, of course, this brings it together, be people of God. Paul's stewardship starts with the people of God. Being a person of God doesn't just mean I'm a Christian, right? Yes, yeah, I guess that does mean I'm a person of God, but being the people of God means that we're together. It means that we're united together. It means that we are valuing each other. We're prioritizing each other. We are carving out other things when they intersect with this thing. And therefore, in 2024, we can carry on as we've been doing a lot and in really great ways, being the people of God and looking for our stewardship to work together. We're gonna celebrate the Lord's Supper this morning, and we have a number of visitors. If you're a believer in Christ here today, we welcome you to take the Lord's Supper. If you're not a Christian, then this would be a time for you to observe and pray, and others are praying for you. If they know that you're here, you've had conversations with them, And I want to encourage you to pray that God would give you everything that you need so that you can trust in Christ. There's no one else. There's no one else who could save you. There's no one else in the universe. There are no other gods. There's only one. and therefore, chase Him, and I hope that you'll begin chasing Him today. I wanna invite those who are gonna be helping to distribute the elements of the Lord's Supper to go ahead and come forward as I pray, and we'll prepare our hearts for this time together. Father, thank you for a new year, thank you for the old year. We see so many ways that you've worked in our hearts and our lives, and you've comforted us and cared for us. You continue to walk along with us by grace and we give you a lot of thanks for that. And we pray that as we head into a new year that the gospel would be paramount for us. It would be central and that we would be looking for opportunities to make your good news number one in the lives of other people and certainly in our own lives and in our own church. And so we pray that as we take the supper today that we would be encouraged and that we would be comforted and that we would be emboldened to faithfully live for you just as Jesus faithfully died for us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.