We are in John 8. Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees. He is in open debate with them, waging warfare and a conflict of ideas, a conflict of righteousness with wickedness. And he says that they would know who he is when they lift up the son of man, verse 28. You'll know me because I don't do anything of myself. I just do what my father has taught me. These are the things that I speak. And he that sent me is with me, the Lord says, verse 29. He's not left me alone, for I do always those things that please him. And as he spake these words, these words, it is about words. And those people that would preach or that would try to teach against the word of God, They tried to destroy these words. We see that at many levels. We see that in the larger community than which we live in the world. You see these, these people that are pushing an agenda by, by and large, a godless agenda, a humanistic agenda, what they do, they try to come in and they try to steal and to, and, and to redefine words. And yet it is about words. And we see that that which is reflected in the political debate is also that which we see in the church, you see. When we see, well, here's this man who died last Saturday, Antonin Scalia. He believed and they said concerning his philosophy that it was textualism. It's kind of interesting word, textualism. Know what that means? That means he believed the words as they were written. You know, the original intent. Well, again, I don't know if we can even know the original intent, because who can read the mind of someone else? You see, we can't read the mind of someone else. All we can read is the words. So you see that reflected You know, there's a great debate between conservatives and liberals concerning the Constitution. I mean, does it mean what it says? Are the words that we read, are they to be interpreted textually in a textualism, if we can use such terms? Or do we just get some kind of flavor of them? Do we see that though it meant that in 1789, but in 2016, it means something completely different. Well, that which is reflected out there in the political realm also finds in the religious realm also finds a correlation and an analogy. You see, because we have been fighting most of my life as a believer and as a preacher and as a student of the word, I've had to fight this concept of, Those who don't believe the Word, those that don't believe it is the Word of God, those that don't believe it is God-breathed, those that don't believe it's inerrant and infallible, they try to go in and redo or undo or change or corrupt these words. Now there's one thing that makes me want to preach. When I listen to good preaching, I want to preach. And maybe that's just the nature of what a preacher is. You see, he hears preaching and it excites him to preach, you see. And so good preaching excites me to preach. But I found out also this week that bad preaching makes me want to preach even more. I mean, I was arguing with the television. That's bad when you start arguing with the inanimate object. So I'm arguing with the television as if somebody could hear me and how pitiful, but what the preaching was, it was a destruction of these words. But listen, as he spake, as Christ spake these words, many believed on him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believe. Now he's changed his audience, you see. His audience now was the audience of the Pharisees, the ones who were debating him, the ones that were arguing with him, the ones that were trying to undo him, the ones that were trying to kill him. He's now changed his audience. And now he is speaking to those and you must understand this or you'll miss the point. You must understand that now he is speaking to the Jews which believed on him as he spake these words. And so he turns to them to give them more truth. And that's what the Lord does. He brings you to more truth, to deeper truth. especially those that reject truth. He doesn't back off and soften it. No, he gives them more of the truth. So here are these that believe. He knows the scripture says they believe. And so now he turns to them and he gives them additional information. If ye continue in my word, if ye continue, So now he's speaking to them concerning the nature of belief. The nature of belief is something that is continual, saving faith. How do you know that you have believed with saving faith? It's because it continues. There is a belief. that is not saving faith. There is a faith that's not saving faith. The demons have faith. It's not saving faith. In fact, the demons see it more clearly than we do. They cannot avoid seeing it. That's what Lewis points out in this great book, The Screwtape Letters, as the demon. He has a demon writing these letters. And so Lewis is giving us his understanding of the demonic mind. They said, well, how do you know so much about it? And he said, well, I've been in an open warfare with the devil for many years, every day. See, we are too, right? We are in warfare with the devil every day who comes in here and tries to undo us or transform us to his position and to rob us of the truth of God's word. Every day the devil attacks us. He is unrelenting and we can have no respite and we can give him no quarter. There he comes. And here, you know, in Lewis, as he's, you know, this idea that you believe in Christ, this idea that the, it's a continual thing, you see. You know, Lewis is, you know, as the devil continues to attack this man as he continues to attack the demonic instruction to the lesser demon, you see. The demonic instruction to him is that he should make or lead this man to think of God in some kind of puerile, some kind of idolatrous sense. And then Screwtape says, you see, because they don't see him in a way that unfortunately we can't avoid seeing him and the wonder and the glory of who he is. They see him with much more intensity than we see, but they don't believe, not savingly. You do well, James says, you believe in God, you do well, the demons believe, but not savingly. There's a difference you see between believing and believing savingly. And what is the difference? The difference is if you believe savingly, you will continue. And if there be times when we have difficulties, when we stumble, times when we are somewhat tempted and drawn to the world and to the ways of the world, times when we are sick, when we are depressed, when things haven't worked out well, when we are undone, you see, The devil being the coward he is, always rushes in at such times. When you're on the sickbed, when you've been given a diagnosis to the end of your life, you see, then the devil rushes in and begins to put doubts in your mind with your own voice, putting doubt in your mind that God is not loving, He is not kind, He is not generous. And why would you believe in Him? You're just an animal like all other animals in this world. There's no God. And if there is a God, why would he love you? And he's proven he doesn't, you see, because some bad thing has happened to you. Bad in the estimation of the demon, bad in the estimation of the weak human. But God says to those that love him and are called according to his purpose that all things are good. You're gonna look at it from the devil's vantage point, you're gonna look at it from your weak vantage point, or you're gonna look at it from God's word. Continue. So he says to them, if you continue in my word, it's back to the word, right? As he spake these words, many believe. Jesus says, if you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples. And the word here, indeed, then you are my disciples. Indeed, it's the word alethos. Aletheia is truth. This is alethos, this is the adverb, truly. Do you wanna know if you are a disciple of Christ truly? Not just a one who's attempting to be, one who is trying to be, one who's hoping that he or she is. Do you want to know if you are a child or a disciple of God, a disciple of Christ truly? And there is this truth that continues. There is this attitude of continuing in His Word. It's not a burden to you. It is life. It's not something you despise, but you love it. It's not something you try to avoid, but you try to run to it. You have an appetite for it and a thirst for it. And as you read these words, and though you've read them over and over and over again, sing them over again to me, these wonderful words of life. Never tire of them. He said, why do y'all go every day, every Sunday weekend and week out to hear the same man speak the same message from the same book? Y'all got no creativity? Now you see, this is what we love. And they have such a depth. That no matter how often we hear them, we find more truth in them. No matter how often we squeeze them, we find more sweetness coming forth from them. It is the infinite eternal word of God, inexhaustible, and we come to hear it. Day in and day out, week in and week out, for they that know it best seem to hunger and thirst to hear it like the rest. See, it is our preaching this gospel that brought us to Christ and it's our preaching of this gospel that brings us again to Christ, that keeps us in Christ. It is the preaching of this gospel that grows us in the grace and knowledge of the Lord. It is the preaching of this gospel that gives us the ability to withstand the devil and the ability to run to Christ and to live in this world to the glory of God. It is these words, you continue in my word. That's why language was invented. Language was invented by God to reveal himself to us. If we could speak every language of man, if we could speak every language of angels, If I could speak with the tongues of men and of angels, what a wonderful thing it would be to have all these myriad of religions, all these, I'm sorry, of languages, all these myriad of words. that we could ransack these lexicons to find the wonder of these words that we can express the glory of our God and we would never come near to exhausting the molecular first level of who He is. And ye shall know, if you continue in my words, you shall be my disciples truly. And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. They complained about that. They went back to their pride of who they are by nature. who are due to tell us that we need to be set free. We've never been in bondage. I remember speaking to a woman who It was just a miracle that she knew the Lord, a miracle that she would love the Lord, a miracle that she would even be near the things of God considering from where she had come. And so I was talking to her and I was trying to build up and to extol the grace of God in her life. And I said to her, like I've said to you and said to myself, where did grace find you? See, there was a day when you were not in grace, right? And then there was a day when you weren't in grace. Where did grace find you? I'll tell you where it found you, as a sinner and rebellion against God, a dirty, rotten sinner. That's where it found you. and find you all clean and all pristine and all religious in your understanding. That's not where grace found you. I'll tell you grace found you in the pit. There you were in the pit, filled with muck and mire and filth and rot. And a snake in there with you, ready at any moment. strike you with the poise of eternal damnation. That's where you were. And so I was saying to her, I said, but see, she saw me. See, here's the danger in seeing a preacher. See, when you see a preacher who's preaching these things and who's telling you how you should live and what you should do, you see, there's a presupposition, it's false, but there's a presupposition that this preacher's always been pristine himself, that this preacher never needed any grace because this preacher, you see, has always been a good person. The apostle Paul, the greatest preacher that ever lived said, I can tell you this, that of all men, I'm the chief of sinners. because he knew himself. But you see, they build up an attitude and say, so this woman had an attitude toward me because she'd never seen me any way and any condition. She's never seen me in any context except the context of preaching and teaching and praying and encouraging. She would see me only in that context. So when I said to her, Grace found you in an awful place. She bowed up at me. Well, I wasn't that bad. Who are you to tell me I was that bad? Well, I was trying to make a point of the grace of God. She thought I was making a point that I was standing superior to her and putting her in a derogatory way in her place. I'll be honest with you, I was very disappointed. I said, well, weren't you the one that told me these? How would I know these things about you? Weren't you the ones that, I mean, were not you the one that told me these things? You see the same attitude here, here in this text. This woman was talking about Christ and about what Christ has done for her. And then when I pointed her back to her sin, back to where she was, she bowed up as well as these people, just like them. I've never been in bondage. I am not that bad preacher. And so I was very, sympathetic to her, very sensitive. And I said, no, you were worse. I cannot describe how bad you were when God found you. She thought I was bragging on me. I was bragging on God, Christ. She got over it a little bit later. I mean, I remember telling someone something, they said, well, if God doesn't want me out of this condition, then he better make me happy in this condition. Well, who are you to tell God what to do? I can tell you this, who are you to tell God what to do in my presence? Who are you to say that to me like you're arguing with me about God? So again, I said, well, have you ever figured this? Maybe God wants you lonely. 10 years later, she brought it up. I'm telling you, long. You know what adults are? They're children with long memories. You can tell a child something, they get over it in about 10 seconds. You tell an adult something, they don't get over it in 10 years. That's why preaching is such a dangerous thing. Look, let me say this to you. If I ever say anything to you that hurt your feelings, if I ever say anything to you that puts you in your place, you can know this one thing for sure. I'm 10 million times worse. So like my friend, RF Gates, he got back in the car after he had eaten, he was gonna be a, he was one of the dignitaries, one of the personalities that was gonna be on the stage preaching. And so they had a meal for the uppity people, the people that are gonna be on the stage. So he didn't go eat with us, he went and ate this meal for the, for the stage personalities. And so he got back in the car and I said, Brother RF, how was your meal? He said, the beans were crunchy and the meat was cold and the coffee lukewarm. And then he called himself, he says, but it's more than I deserved, I should have starved. Anything above starving, my friend, is more than we deserve, isn't it? Jesus says, you shall know the truth, the truth shall set you free. They said, we've never been in bondage to any man. And Jesus said, I say unto you that whosoever committed sins is a servant of sin. Now let's look at this verse and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Let me say first of all, what this is not. This is not a philosophical principle. You've heard it, haven't you? People use this as a philosophical principle. Hey, you shall know the truth, the truth shall set you free. I'll tell you one thing. Sometime you might know the truth or speak the truth, you might wanna speak the truth and it'll put you in jail. Won't set you free. It's not a philosophical concept. This is a spiritual principle. He's not talking about truth in some general way. He said, well, okay, well, the guy spoken, what he spoke was true. You know, what's military spending, true. Or, you know, we shouldn't have been in such, you know, in a war, true. Or you might get together with someone talking about a third person and say, well, he's a jerk, that's true. He's a nice guy, that's true. That's not what he's talking about here. It is the truth. Here is a definite article, the truth, Aletheia. What is the truth? You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Free from what? So what is your bondage? You see all these things. For example, if we just said simply, sometimes there are people that say, well, you know, I don't understand what Brother Kerry's saying. I don't follow his sermons. It seemed like they're too deep or they're too this or they're too that. One guy told me that a person said, well, he uses those 50 cents words, those 50 cent words. Well, inflation, now they're a dollar and a half words. Well, let's just take the simplicity of the gospel. Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That simple? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. On who? The Lord Jesus Christ. Who is he? From where did he come? What is his nature? What about this union of the divine and the human? What is it to believe on him? What do you mean he came into the world? What do you mean he saves sinners? What is it to sin? Who is a sinner? Why is sin the problem anyway? Now you begin to see the simple message of the gospel becomes extremely complicated. When you start talking about the incarnation of Christ, when you start talking about the hapistatic union, when you start talking about infra or supralepsarianism, Now that's a $2 word. But you see all of these things, when did man fall? And why did he fall? And when he fell, what did it mean? Did God decree the salvation of man before the fall of man? Or did he decree the fall of man before the salvation of man? And all of a sudden you're involved in great depths of truth, you see. And here the Lord puts it in one capsule. He says to these people, let me tell you, if you abide in my word, you are my disciples truly and you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Well, we learn a little bit later what he's talking about here. He says, because if you sin, you are a servant of sin. You think you can play with sin? You think you can put sin in a cage? You think you can train it to come out and roll over and sit up and shake hands? You think you can pull your sin out and you can participate in it just a little bit and put it back in the cage? You think that? No, my friend, this sin will rule you. At the same time, thinking and telling you the lie that you have a free will and that free will can tame sin. I tell you, whatever free will is and whatever free will isn't, I'm sure that every one of us in here has a free will to choose vanilla over chocolate ice cream. Who would ever do that? I don't know. But you have the choice. I mean, you can eat broccoli or steak. I don't know why anybody would ever eat broccoli when they had steak, but, you know, choose a way. That's what you wanna do? Is that what you love? Is that what you must have? Is that what these preachers that say you must have? Because then that makes God fair, where choose a way, my friend, choose a way. But if you think you can with a choice, with the volition, with the power of your volition, if you think you can tame sin, if you think you can relieve yourself from the power of sin and from its consequences, you are a fool. It owns you. You're in bondage. Have you sinned today? They asked a prominent politician the other day, do you lie? I try not to. If they had asked me, brother Kerry, do you lie? I said, I went forth from my mother's womb speaking lies. And yes, I do occasionally speak a lie. I try not to lie to you. I sound like Hillary Clinton, didn't I? I don't routinely lie to you, but I do routinely lie to myself. You think you can tame it? Well, amen. Some preacher gets on the television and he knows more than Christ. Okay, fine. Christ says, if you sin, you're a servant of sin. If you sin today, what'd you do? Why'd you sin? Do you wanna sin? Do you routinely? No, we fight it, we don't want it. Why does it keep showing up? Because it controls us. But you shall know the truth. And the truth shall set you free. This truth. Humanists tell us there is no truth. They tell us there's no absolute truth. That the best we can do is an approximation. I remember sitting in a class in order for me to turn my PhD into a PhD, they put us through this class, this philosophy of education class. And so they were talking to us about various philosophy. And the professor said, there is a philosophy called existentialism. And the main idea of existentialism is there is no absolute truth. To which I raised my hand and said, well, that's an absolute truth, right? If there's no absolute truth, that's an absolute truth. Existentialism is inherently, internally incoherent. How about that? I was even talking to the professor in alliteration. And finally, we argued about 15 minutes over this. That's what college is about, arguing 15 minutes over nothing. And he said, well, obviously we're using the word of existential in two different ways. And I said, no, sir, we're using the same way. I did pass the class by the way. There is no truth. You think Jesus was an existentialist? I think not. You shall know the truth. So first of all, there is truth, the truth, not a truth. He doesn't say you shall know some truth. He doesn't say you shall know truths. No, he says you shall know the truth. And only this truth will set you free. Now, what is this truth? Would that be important? I mean, if you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free, and if you continue in my word, you shall be my disciple. Truly, do you think the truth is very important to know? You see, when I preached this one time, I had my music director come to me, not at this church. at another church and he came to me and he said, well, look, if we have to know the truth, then I want to know exactly how much of the truth we have to know in order to be saved. Cause it shook him up and he was speaking for the congregation. Never do that. Never do that. Unless they vote you to speak for them, because that says more about you than it says about them. You better come next Sunday and tell us exactly what we have to know in order to be a Christian. And I said, okay. So I preached a message, how much truth? You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. So how much of the truth do you need to know? And what is this, the truth? And what relationship does the truth have to your being free from the power of sin? Very important questions, don't you think? So the Lord is saying this. Well, then the truth. And what of this truth do you have to believe? What part of this truth can you not believe and still be a Christian? What had just happened? They believed. And then he says, if you continue in my word, you shall be my disciples in truth. And you shall know the truth that we're not upset with that. And the truth that we're not upset with that shall make you free. They got upset with that. They became angry. So we just saw that you have to know all this truth. There's not one bit of this truth that comes to you that you can reject. You say, well, I don't know all the truth. Yeah, that's right. The apostle Paul says that I was a blasphemer. I was injurious to the church. There was nobody that hurt the church of Jesus Christ more than I hurt it. And the apostle Paul walked around with a thorn in his flesh. Some people say that it was physical, it was eyesight. Maybe it was, he had bad eyes, it seems as if as we pick it up through the scripture that I wrote this with my own hand in large letters. So he might've had cataracts, I don't know. It might've been, he might've lost some of his eyesight because of that blinding light that came at noonday and knocked him down into the, to the hot sand of that Assyrian desert. And the last thing he saw clearly was this glory of Christ shining. And from that point on, he couldn't, maybe that's what it did. I don't know. He would say, he would complain. What did he complain about? The things I would do, I find no ability to do, and the things I don't wanna do, I find myself doing them. Maybe that was the thorn in the flesh. Maybe it's just continuous plaguing of sin that he hated in his own life. I don't know. I don't know, but I can imagine, I can just imagine that at night he may have awakened to the cries of those people he put to death because they believed in Christ. He says, I was injurious to the church. He's not saying this bragging about, he's saying this weeping over it. Do you remember your sins? You remember some of the things you did? I remember and cringe. Oh, why did I not come to Christ sooner? Why didn't I come to him more completely? But I found forgiveness, Paul said, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. You see, there are times, there have been times in your life, there's time, every one of us, right? There's some truths that we have not yet been confronted with, or with which we have not yet been confronted. There's some truths. But here's the difference between a believer and an unbeliever. A true disciple, a disciple in deed, a disciple in truth, and one who is not, it doesn't matter what truth comes to you, and how it comes to you, and it doesn't matter the depth of that truth coming to you. The difference between a believer and an unbeliever is when that truth comes to you, you receive it as it is in truth, the Word of God. Our gospel came not to you as Conrad preached, you see, out of 1 Thessalonians 1, when our gospel came to you, it didn't come to you in word only, but in power and in the demonstration of the Holy Spirit. when you knew what manner of men we were. You see, these truths, what is the truth? What truth's gonna run you from Christ, you see? No truth will run any disciple from Christ. All truth will bring him to Christ. You shall know the truth. It's not something you'll grope around in in the dark. That is the princes of this world. Had they known, but they were blinded. But had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. It doesn't say they would have known. If they had known these things, then they would have assessed them and then they would have rejected them and killed him. No, had they known then, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. And the reason we don't call for his crucifixion today, the reason we don't run back to sin, the reason that we honor God and praise him and sing the wonder of who he is is because we know the truth and have been sent. It came to us and we received it. And he goes on to say, and how do you turn from idols to the true and living God? You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. What is this? The truth. Well, it's about a person. And it is about the salvation that this person secured. Did Jesus Christ come into this world to provide salvation for sinners? Or did he come into this world to save sinners? One time I did that and that's when I was in a church where the choir sat behind me while I preached, which was good, so you had short range shooting at them. And so I said, did Jesus Christ come to the world to provide salvation? This woman, her daddy was a preacher and she knew everything. I've got one more book to read before I know everything, but she knew everything. And when I made that long pause, she said, yes. Quite a dilemma now, do I go on him? Yes, I did. So I said, or did he save? Is God trying to save sinners or is he saving them? That's the difference. That's the difference what we preach and what someone else may preach. How can God and the sinner be sovereign? One has to be sovereign. Thank God that He was sovereign over my sin and over my desire to be a sinner. Because if He had left it to me, I would still be in my sin now. You shall know the truth. It's about a person. It's about the person coming. It's about a person dying. It's about a person being raised from the dead. It is about a person sending the comforter. It is about a person that sends the gospel out. It's about a person that calls preachers to preach the gospel. It is about this gospel that has something to do with sin and has something to do with repentance and has something to do with believing this gospel as it comes to you. And it comes in great power. and it comes in earth-shattering power, and it comes to grip your mind, and to grip your heart, and to grip your soul, and to change your will. Have you known the truth? And did it set you free? Or are you still in your sins? Who cares about this Christ? Who is this Christ? Who cares about that cross? We keep talking about these things. Did them no good, Paul writes to the church in Hebrews, They heard the gospel. The gospel was preached to them, uangelizomai. The gospel was preached to them, even unto us. But the preaching did them no good. The word preaching there, I looked it up because I knew I was going to use this word. I looked at, that's not the word preach. It's not the word karuso. It's not the word uangelizomai. But the word there is hearing. The gospel is preached to them even as unto us. But the hearing, not the preaching, the hearing did them no good. And that's staggering. I mean, you can say the preachers, because some of you sleep through the preaching. Some of you are preoccupied with the preaching. I mean, the preacher does the best he can, but sometimes he can't keep your attention. Things from the outside draw, you see. And so if it was just the preaching, that would be different. But no, no, my friend, it was the hearing. They heard it. They rejected it. It wasn't mixed with faith. This truth has something to do with repentance and with faith and believing. Let's pray.