Well, today we're going to be looking at a topic that ought to grab most of us. The topic is freedom. That's the title for the message today. Certainly those of you who had the privilege, and I've had that privilege in times past, to go to Washington, D.C. on the history tour, have a large chunk of history suddenly laid out in front of you. And unfortunately, as Mr. Kanachi so movingly let us know, Much of that history, and particularly the aspect which reveals the deep Christian influence on the founding of this nation, much of that history simply is not taught anymore. And that is to our great loss. Well, today we're going to be looking at freedom and seeing what Jesus has to say about it. We're going to look at John chapter 8, verses 31 to 38. I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm just going to read the text as we begin reflecting upon Jesus and his words about freedom. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, You abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. And you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. They answered him, we are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free? Jesus answered them, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my father, and you do. what you have heard from your Father." The passage that we're looking at poses, particularly for us evangelical type Christians, a number of questions. Because of the way we will now hear Jesus begin to talk to people who say they believe in Him. The questions that rightly come to mind is, what does it mean to say somebody believes? There's a second question that really comes up out of this passage, and that is, what is freedom? And under what conditions is freedom experienced or realized? Another intimately related question is, what is the relationship between truth and freedom? And then a fourth question which I think is found here is, what is the relationship between sin and slavery, truth and freedom? Well, if you're reflective at all, you know that I'm not going to cover all of this because that's impossible. Those questions are some of the most profound questions with which human beings wrestle in trying to understand the nature of human experience and how it is we are going to structure our societies and our personal lives both in order to realize our freedoms. But we'll try and understand a little bit of what Jesus has said to those who said they believe in him. So the first thing I want us to do is to take a moment and just think about the word belief or believes. When a person says they believe, what do we understand them to mean? Well, when looking for the meaning of a word, a good place to begin is the dictionary. And so I went to our dictionary, and these are the definitions that I found for the word belief. It's to take as true or real. It is to have confidence in a statement or a promise. I believe what you have to say to me. Third meaning is to suppose or to expect. I believe that it will be a nice day tomorrow as it is today, that sort of thing. And then, another meaning is to have trust or confidence in someone. So, I believe when so and so says he'll do something, it's going to happen. So, we use the word believe that way. And then we also use the word in relationship to religious faith. I believe in God. I believe in Jesus. We're familiar with that. And then lastly, it's to hold opinions. Well, I believe shopping at Rayleigh's is better than shopping at... Well, it's just a matter of opinion. So if you reflect upon that a moment, if you look over the spectrum of meanings that just covers the common way that Americans use the word believe, you will very quickly realize that to say someone believes something is not clear at all. And sometimes it's not even clear when we say we believe something. Because we don't know at what level that word is reflecting our lives. Well, you'll notice, of course, that at one point, though obviously we're not surprised by this, that the word belief and the word faith touch each other. And so I thought it might be good if we just took a moment and said, well, how is the word faith commonly used amongst Americans? And so faith, as defined in the dictionary, is unquestioning belief. Or more specifically, as you and I would anticipate, unquestioning belief in God or in religion, something of that sort. It can be, of course, a system of beliefs that constitutes a faith. And so we know that there is the Christian faith, But we know that there was the Islamic faith, Hindu faith, and actually most of us understand today that secularism is a faith, a whole set of things that they believe to be true, a system woven together. Faith can refer to anything that's believed. And so, you know, there are some people who are so strongly committed to their kind of car that they have faith in Oldsmobiles. They wouldn't dream of buying a Buick. So we use the word, we put faith in a whole variety of things, which obviously reflects a wide variety of what I call dispositions of the soul. Some down the last is complete trust or confidence. And I think that oftentimes we think this way when we use the word faith as the way a child usually has faith in his or her parent. I think, as I say, that the last of those is probably most meaningful, particularly when we're in this kind of setting. It was after all Jesus who said that unless you have faith as a little child, You cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Now, if we turn our attention back, and I hope you have your scriptures open and looking at John chapter 8, verses 31 to 38, the first thing to put in place, if we are going to rightly understand this passage, is that the Jews who claim belief in Jesus are not little children. They do not have a child's faith. John has given us a fairly extensive introduction to our exposure to these Jews, as John generally means when using the term scribes and Pharisees. Some of them were utterly despicable people. You might recall the episode at the beginning of John 8 where a group of these men found a woman in adultery and hauled her in front of Jesus and said, what should we do? Heartless men. But not all of them. Some of them were probably not despicable at all. You might remember Nicodemus, the man who came to Jesus in the night. And we realize in that conversation he was an honest seeker trying to understand the truth about God. Understandably, we tend to oversimplify what we read in the Bible. We do so, we oversimplify in order to find certainty and understanding when we read a passage. When we read that someone believes, we want to be able to import to that word, to bring into the word they believe, all that we know about believing. And that way the belief becomes rich and strong and reinforces our own understanding. We tend to do the same thing in conversation. In a casual conversation, we'll say, is so-and-so a believer? Oh, yes, yes, yes, that person is a believer. They made a profession of faith when they were young, maybe at a weekend retreat, and they were active in youth group during the year, and they attended church services. Now, into this little conversation, someone may add a distinction. They will say, well, do you think that so-and-so has saving faith? That sort of thing normally makes us uncomfortable. Surely the Bible says, believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Well, surely the Bible does say that. But by now we know that to say the word believe in reference to anybody is not clear. Why introduce confusing distinctions and qualifications? After all, inevitably in that conversation, this is what's going to happen. After all, who are you to judge? Ever run into that? Yeah. So put down. And this is how it goes. Having started with relatively pleasant certainties, he believes, I believe, we all believe. What a happy believing place we are. Now we're teetering on the edge of an unpleasant confusion with conflicting opinions about so-and-so's life. And so what oftentimes happens, don't you agree, is that rather than debate the matter, we turn the conversation to the weather or to sports or to shopping. And so we duck the whole question of what does it mean to say so-and-so believes. Now, of course, it's the question that we're wrestling with relative to these Jews, right? You see, the 31st verse says to us, so Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, and, you know, we all say, oh, a bunch of Jews that are already just becoming Christians. And then he proceeds to call them the sons of the devil. Did you notice that? You see, we practice avoidance, but avoidance is not wise. The difficulties with following through on the question of so-and-so's belief are diverse. Why do we avoid them? My observation, both of my own heart and of others, is that we fear becoming entangled in the life of the other person. If we look too closely, we may discover things are amiss, that there are things lacking. And suddenly we may realize that as we have looked closely, maybe there's something that we need to do. And we would rather not look that closely. We fear that not only may we have to do something, but we realize it's going to put pressure on our time. Indeed, it might put pressure on our wallets. It might interrupt our plans. That's our fear of entanglement, but there is also a different kind of fear of pursuing these kinds of conversations. And that is the fear that we may, in fact, become convicted and realize that as we push in and examine the faith life, what goes behind the statement he or she believes, and we begin to examine the Word of God to see what it is they're supposed to believe, We may fall under personal conviction recognizing that our own lives fall terribly short. We would just as soon not go down that road. There are reasons why it is easier to live in a world of surfaces and appearances only. Unfortunately for such an attitude, the world is not simple. The world is sinful. And sin is nothing if not massively complicating. This is what we see with the Jews who believe in Jesus. If we're going to understand Jesus' words with them, we need to recognize that He is intending to catch them out. He intends to expose them. Because he knows that until that happens, they will remain stuck inside the illusions and self-deception by which they are living. After all, this is what it means to say that when we come to know the truth, the truth will set us free. Free, that is, from living in a world of pretense. Now, one way or another, a group of scribes and Pharisees have made known that they believe in Jesus. We're not told what it is they believe. That's been my point up to now to say to you all, right, join me in recognizing that that statement in verse 31 is utterly empty of any content other than some way, at some level, these people have a positive attitude toward Jesus. And may I simply say that I think there are many people today who when you hear them say, I believe in Jesus, that's all they mean. Well, what is it that they probably believe? We can surmise what they believed based upon other things that have been said to us. And I think it would be completely safe to say that they recognize that Jesus is, in fact, commissioned by God. And he has what you and I would call an anointing of the Holy Spirit. And I think that they would also agree that they believe that he is empowered by God. After all, this is what Nicodemus had said already, that the Pharisees knew this was true about Jesus. Commissioned by God, empowered by God to do these remarkable miracles, his wonderful works that he had done. And I suspect that they believed that he has a message from God. But that is not all that they would believe. There are some additional things that I think we can be pretty sure they believed. Being smart people who have learned to survive in the world, I think that they probably believed that God has more favor, excuse me, that Jesus has more favor with God than the leaders of the current religious establishment. Because, of course, they're not fools and they know that to say, I believe in Jesus, is to draw a line and to begin to separate themselves from the official establishment running the church in Israel. They probably also believe that it's Jesus who's becoming increasingly popular with the multitude and beginning perhaps to overshadow the popularity of the religious leadership. Now, see, these are scribes and Pharisees. Their lives were closely associated with the people at large. They were, in fact, the religious leaders of the popular culture. We can be pretty sure that they were anxious to ensure the continuance of their place in Israel. They probably believed that Jesus, in fact, was the wave of the future. And that is why, you see, they would be willing to take the risk of identifying with a controversial figure Under the supposition that by doing so, they were identifying with something good, possibly even God-sent, and they were therefore prepared to stand either with Jesus or have Jesus stand with them as long as this will continue the necessary continuance of their place in taking care of others. Now, what I have just sort of stretched out in front of you is not conversion, it's calculation. It's calculation. It is not a sudden conviction brought on by the power of the Holy Spirit penetrating the heart, bringing conviction of personal corruption, standing before a holy God and a desperate need for a Savior, and a recognition that this particular individual has been sent by God in order to lay down his sinless life, in order that my sins could be atoned for before this holy God who demands that kind of sacrifice for sin. That is not what these people believe. They believe that there are a set of potential advantages to identifying with Jesus. Now, to expose, right, I said that's what Jesus wants to do, to expose the true condition of their belief and their souls, Jesus could have said to them, listen, if you believe in me, this is what you must do. You must die. That, after all, is what he says in Matthew chapter 16, verses 24 to 26. Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life. Now Jesus doesn't say that here. He said that in Matthew. So we'll go back and look at, well, what did Jesus say? And so we're coming down to the 32nd verse of John chapter 8. He says, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. Now, you and I, once again, this is the case of saying discipleship. Whoa, I know what that's all about. Well, so do they. And indeed, they knew more about it than we do. Discipling was at the core of most of ancient cultures. What did it mean to be a disciple? Well, to be a disciple, You are the person who patterned your life in all of its aspects after the Master so that your life would reflect theirs. You were, in fact, to become so much like them, you were to be the same. To know the one would be to know the other. This is what Jesus meant when He said that the disciple is not greater than the master. And when he also said, you know, if they persecute me, they will persecute y'all. So you have to understand that close identification, that was assumed. So when Jesus said, okay, if you are going to be truly my disciples, they all would have said, So we go to the next phrase and see, is there something that Jesus says thereafter which might have sparked the following conversation? You will know the truth and the truth will set you free, is how that phrase continues. Well, even here, of the two clauses, the first would have caused no stir for it was part of the general truth in the ancient world, that truth was grounded in and learned through personal experience. Abstract or theoretical learning is really a product of modernity. In traditional cultures, predominantly, they understood that education was the fruit of an apprenticeship relationship, as you drew close to and followed after a master. Most often it was the father, by the way, who apprenticed and passed on the wisdom to his sons. And the mother did the same for the daughter. So the notion then of truth coming out of discipleship was absolutely, they would have said, but of course. And so we come down finally to the last concept and that is freedom. You see it's to the word freedom that they respond. Scribes and Pharisees got this at once, but their response may strike us as a bit off point. What they say is, hey, we are the sons of Abraham. We have never been slaves. You think to yourself, that's just not an American thing to do. So what are they doing? How can they possibly say they've never been enslaved? At this very moment, they are an occupied country under the power of the Romans. They have come from slavery in Egypt. That's the beginning of their nation. They have been enslaved by the Babylonians. They have been enslaved by the Assyrians. And when you read some of the other works like Ezra and Nehemiah, you realize that many of these slaves, many Israelites were captured by their neighbors and enslaved by their neighbors. Because Nehemiah was trying to buy them back. So, what are these men saying? According to the Mosaic Covenant, Jews could have slaves, but they could not be slaves. So what they're doing is they're saying, hey, we are members of the covenant people of God. And we, being in the covenant people of God, stand in a relationship of freedom with God and amongst each other as God's people. Now that is a good response. It's not true, but it's good. Jesus, of course, hears them, having had Himself something to do with the covenant they're talking about. He assures them He knows they are the children of Abraham. But look now at verse 34. Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. What does Jesus do in his answer? Let me put my finger on the moral condition of your heart. Let me shift this conversation from the externalities of covenant to the internalities, the insideness of your real condition and how you make choices and what your life reveals. It's not political, civil, or economic relations. It is the spiritual and moral condition of the heart and the mind. Truly, truly, he says in verse 34, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. Now, you and I can listen to that, and we simply say, oh, what Jesus is so right on. And do you know why we can do that? Because we do not believe it. We do not believe what Jesus has just said. We deny it. We say, oh, well, of course, you need to understand that Jesus is speaking hyperbolically. He's making a big statement in order to capture our attention. But of course, he doesn't actually mean what he said. I sin, in a technical sense, now and then, in small ways. I fall short, it's true, but I'm not a slave to sin! I mean, I'm the pastor of the church! Come on! See, we don't believe what Jesus says. You know, I'm okay. I'm in charge of my life. I've got things under control. I'm free to come and go. I do good and sometimes not quite so good. And that's how most of us reason. What we don't come to grips with is what it means to not sin. A sinner is not a righteous person who occasionally slips. A sinner is a person who sins because sinning is the natural orientation of their soul. So that to not sin is something extraordinary. See, we have it all the other way around, don't we? We look over our lives and we say, well, occasionally I do the wrong thing. And then we give ourselves a pat on the back for being fundamentally, basically good folk. But if we let the Word of God speak to us, and if we recognize that sin is something that arises out from the deepest part of what we are, we realize that when I do not sin, when I manage to act in true, uncluttered, unburdened, uncompromised faith in God, something extraordinary has happened. The course of Scripture tells us what that extraordinary thing is. It's when we have our hearts and minds focused upon Jesus Christ and we sense the power of the Holy Spirit within us, clearing away that which is unworthy and drawing us to that which is reflective of God. The Apostle Paul gives the same teaching in slightly expanded form, and I would encourage you to turn to Romans chapter 6, verses 15 to 19. I'm going to start reading right away because I'm late on the clock. Paul says this to those Romans. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey? Either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed. And having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness. I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so now present... Did you notice the tense? It's time to do this. You are members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. Paul's teaching here, you see, clarifies the matter as an ongoing reality of Christian living. He is speaking about what it means to abide in Christ. How? Most two ways. The first is to present yourself as a slave to Jesus Christ. Last week, we saw that it is essential for faith that we move from knowing about Jesus to knowing Him personally. Now, what we recognize is that to know Jesus personally, I need to be a slave. Because that's what Jesus says. Jesus wants to be and He needs to be both our Master and our Friend. You and I do not define the relationship that we will have with Him. He says, I will be your friend and your master, or you are a disobedient slave. By the way, you're not a non-slave. You're a bad slave. And the second thing, of course, as our master and our friend, he has given to us a standard of teaching or living to which our lives are to conform. Now, in the Christian walk, there are two equally disastrous errors. The first is to try and live by the standard without being a slave of Jesus. That's a disaster because it leads to legalism. We will necessarily reshape the standard to fit our abilities. Remember, what does it take to not sin? It takes the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit for one who, according to Hebrews 12, is keeping their eyes fixed on Jesus. The other error is to try and live with just Jesus alone. And the problem with this is that if I try to live with Jesus and ignore the standard, I am ignoring the standard that Jesus has given to me. And so what I must do in order to do that is I must suppress the knowledge of the truth in a lack of faith or in unrighteousness. It's inescapable. There's nothing you can do about this. The motto, just give me Jesus, does not work. We begin here to see the centrality of the truth of Jesus' resurrection. It is not just in reference to His death and resurrection for our sins. As it says in Hebrews, so that we understand and appreciate that He ever lives to make intercession for us at the Father's throne. Here's the fact. Every time any one of us chooses to sin, we are in grave peril of returning to the slavery to sin which held us before we were saved by grace. I am not saying you lose your salvation, but I am saying you fall out of favor with God. You come under His wrath and His anger because you are violating His standards and you are saying no to His Son. And you are giving yourself over to the service of that which is unworthy and corrupting and defiling. That is why the promise that we have in a place like 1 John 1 verse 9 is so critical. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Beloved, If you understand what Jesus is saying to these Jews and what the Word of God is saying to us about the realities of sin and slavery, truth and freedom, that verse should make your heart leap for joy. We have looked today at a little bit of what Jesus had to say Certainly not covered all that he has to say. But let me close by the close of verse 34. Jesus says, The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. He says, If the son sets you free, you're really free. Beloved, Our freedom from sin's power is entirely dependent upon the fact that our freedom is a gift from the eternal Son of God. I urge you, stop playing around. Recognize what sin really is about and what it takes to be a child of God and to glorify Him. Please pray with me. Gracious Heavenly Father, the world would have us live no more than skin deep. And oh, so often we are willing to do so. We are not used to the deeper things, not of Your Word so much as of our own lives. Forgive us. Teach us to trust more fully, both in Your grace and the presence of Your Spirit in the hearts and minds of fellow believers, so that we can encourage and nurture one another. And so we then can, as Your servants, bear witness to the world around us on the amazing, liberating truth of God. It is in His name that we pray, Father. Amen.