The Truth Will Set You Free - John - July 14th, 2024 (Sermon Transcript)

Welcome to the podcast of Penngrove Community Church.

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Enjoy the sermon.

Well, as we get back into the Gospel of John this morning, I wanna invite you to take out the sermon handout from your bulletin.

You can follow along there.

And if you have the Bible, you wanna follow along in your own Bible, I encourage that as well.

I want you to think for a moment first about why we believe in God.

A lot of people don't believe in God, of course.

They don't think there is any such thing as God.

So as believers in God, how do we know that he's real, that he really exists?

In my opinion, one of the best reasons we have for believing in God is the existence of moral values.

Everybody knows that some things are right and some things are wrong.

And if there's no such thing as God, how do you explain that?

How do you explain the existence of universal, unchanging moral values without God?

Where are they?

How did they get here?

Where did they come from?

How could you explain that?

In the modern world, people like to pretend that there are no universal moral values.

They'll say that morality is really up to the individual person or the individual culture or society, and so you might think of your non-Christian friends and family and colleagues.

What do they think about moral values?

I think most people, the average person on the street today would say, well, what you believe about what's right and what's wrong, that's really, that's up to you.

That's a personal decision, it's your truth, it's your opinion, or really it's just something that comes from the culture around us.

And so that's what a lot of people believe, and it sounds nice, or it's at least what a lot of people say they believe, and it sounds nice, and they like to believe things like that, but nobody actually believes that.

Nobody actually believes that.

When you dig deeper, you can always find something that they hold to be universally wrong.

Take slavery, for example.

It's something that people believe is universally wrong.

In the 1800s, the culture decided that slavery was right.

So, when we think back on our own history as Americans, we think back to a time when slavery was widely practiced and people believed that it was morally permissible.

But even though the whole culture at that time, generally speaking, believed that slavery was right, that didn't make it right.

Even though many individuals at that time believed that slavery was right, that did not make it right because slavery is always wrong.

So you see, when you dig a little deeper, whatever people might say about moral values, when you dig a little deeper, you can always find something that they believe is universally wrong.

Slavery is bad.

Freedom is good.

And you might be thinking, well, thank God, we no longer practice slavery.

Slavery has been basically eradicated in the Western world.

You had Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, and then there were the abolitionists like William Wilberforce and the Civil Rights Movement, and slavery has been eradicated in the Western world.

But what if I were to tell you that slavery is just as prevalent today as it was 200 years ago?

Would that concern you?

Would you be alarmed if I told you that billions of people are living in slavery?

Well, according to Jesus, that's the reality of the world that we live in, even today.

According to Jesus, right now, this very morning, the vast majority of the world's population is living in slavery to sin.

They think that they're free, but they're not.

Right now, this very morning, churches all across the world today, will be filled with people who think that they're free, but they're actually living in slavery to sin.

And I want to make the case that slavery to sin is actually far more dangerous and harmful than any other kind of slavery.

It's actually more dangerous, more serious, more harmful than other kinds of slavery.

And I know that's hard to believe.

We're such physical people who live in such a physical, tangible world, right?

And we think, okay, so slavery, that was a really terrible thing, and we should always oppose slavery, and it's very, very serious and very, very wrong.

But slavery to sin, some people don't even believe in that, and it doesn't sound like it would be quite as bad.

But I want to invite you this morning to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

I want to invite you to listen to Jesus and listen to what Jesus says about slavery.

And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Please stand for the reading of God's word.

I'll read the text for us.

We're in John chapter eight, verses 31 through 38.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, if 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 practices 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.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated and join me as I pray for us.

Father in heaven, as we come to your word this morning, I pray that we would experience the power of it, the goodness of it, God, that you would use your word to change us, to speak to us, to challenge us, to encourage us.

Lord, would you be at work among us, and would you speak through me?

Would you guide my words, and would you guide the reception of your word, Lord?

So much of what happens with your word has to do with our hearts, whether we're willing to receive it or not, or whether you have graciously opened our eyes and opened our ears and given us understanding or not.

So Lord, I pray that you would be actively, powerfully at work among all of us right now as we approach your holy, glorious word.

We pray this in the name of your son, Jesus, amen.

Amen.

When we talk about slavery to sin, the first thing that you need to understand is that nobody wants to believe that they are in slavery to sin.

It sounds so extreme.

A lot of people think, of course, people mess up.

Of course, everybody makes mistakes.

Nobody obeys God perfectly all the time, but that word sin is just so intense.

And to say that we're enslaved to sin sounds, to some people, way over the top.

So if that's how you feel, or if you're inclined to feel that way at all, please hear the words of Jesus this morning.

Jesus is dead serious, crystal clear, as emphatic as he can possibly be.

Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

Nobody wants to hear that, but it's the truth.

Reinhold Niebuhr, the famous 20th century theologian, pointed out that no amount of contradictory evidence seems to disturb humanity's good opinion of itself.

Isn't that true?

Isn't that true for me, for all of us?

No amount of contradictory evidence seems to disturb our good opinion of ourselves.

Or listen to this from Martin Lloyd Jones.

He said, you will never make yourself feel that you are a sinner, because there is a mechanism in you as a result of sin that will always be defending you against every accusation.

We are all on very good terms with ourselves, and we can always put up a good case for ourselves.

We see this exact thing playing out in our passage.

Notice how the Jews immediately object to what Jesus is saying.

Verse 33, 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?

And the funny thing about that statement is they say that they have never been enslaved to anyone, when the reality was like, who weren't they enslaved to as offspring of Abraham?

You know, being in slavery in Egypt, and being in slavery to the Romans at that point in time, they were effectively in slavery to just about every nation in the ancient Near Eastern world.

But they're blind to it, because they're deflecting, they're resistant to the truth.

They don't want to admit their own moral corruption.

They think that their Jewish ancestry guarantees their good moral status.

That's how they thought.

But of course, we think it's our giving to charity that guarantees our good moral status.

Or, well, I've never killed anybody, I'm a decent person, I try to do more right than wrong, therefore I have a good moral status.

Or I go to church regularly, or I let a Bible study, or I do the, we're all the same.

We always point to something that we do, or something inside of ourselves to try to justify our good opinion of ourselves.

That's what they're doing here.

They're saying, we're sons of Abraham, we're good.

We're God's chosen people, we obey the law.

How dare you say that we're enslaved?

What are you talking about?

But they are enslaved to sin.

And so is the vast majority of Penngrove and the vast majority of Sonoma County.

And so are millions of people who call themselves Christians.

Millions of people who call themselves Christians.

Remember, Jesus is talking to people who believed him.

Notice verse 31.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him.

We see this a lot in the Gospel of John.

You might call them believing unbelievers.

These are people who followed Jesus for a while.

People who had some kind of belief in him.

People who might appear to be genuine converts.

But it turns out that their faith in Jesus wasn't true saving faith.

Jesus told a parable about this.

That where the seed of the Gospel gets scattered on various types of ground, some on rocky ground, some on good soil, right?

And the seed that lands in the bad soil springs up for a time, but withers away.

Or it springs up for a time, but birds come along and they eat up the little saplings.

You see, the point is, sometimes people appear to be Christians for a while or followers of Jesus for a while, but it's not genuine.

It doesn't last.

It never takes root.

And that's where these people are at.

At this point, they think highly of Jesus.

That's why John says the Jews who had believed him, at this point, they believed him.

They thought highly of him.

But by the end of this chapter, they're gonna be ready to kill Jesus.

So not all faith is true saving faith.

You can believe in Jesus.

You can have some kind of faith in Jesus, but still be enslaved to sin, because sin is deceptive and addictive.

Jesus tells us in verse 34, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

When you give it an inch, it takes a mile.

When you practice sin, it will eventually control you.

What do you think is more addictive, sin or heroin?

I've seen the effects of heroin firsthand.

I once watched a woman go from a successful, thriving scientist to a homeless junkie.

She lost her husband, she lost her job, she lost her house, she lost her hair, she lost everything.

But here's the thing about heroin and other drugs like that.

Some people can take small amounts for a while and escape the enslavement of addiction, or they can take it in a slightly different form and somehow manage to not get addicted.

But nobody can make a practice of sin without becoming a slave to sin.

So which one is more addictive?

Which one is more dangerous?

Why would you ever mess around with sin?

Jesus is warning us.

He's telling us everybody who makes a practice of sin is a slave to sin.

Do you hear the warning from His lips?

A lot of Christians need to hear this warning, which is why I'm preaching on it right now.

Why do we mess around with sin?

Of course, it feels good or it seems right in the moment.

You think you can just sin a little bit and you'll be okay, but if you make a practice of it, it will enslave you.

It will destroy you.

That's what Jesus is telling us in this passage.

Heroin can take your house.

It can even take your life, but sin will destroy your soul.

Matthew 10, 28.

Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.

Rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

I just don't think that we as Christians take sin seriously enough.

The overarching theme of the Bible and the overarching message of the Gospel, the headline is not sin is really bad, so don't do sin.

That's not what I'm trying to say.

There are churches and there are times in Christian history and there are some Christians today who take sin not too seriously, but they view it in a distorted way.

So I'm not trying to say that being a Christian is all about not doing bad stuff.

But part of being a Christian, a big part and essential part of being a Christian is obeying Jesus.

That is not sinning.

So I do think there are a lot of Christians who don't take sin seriously enough.

And this is not just when we talk about sin and the enslaving power of sin, the soul destroying power of sin.

It's not just about alcohol and pornography and drugs and other kinds of more salacious sins.

I'm talking about gossip.

And greed and gluttony and pride and anger and bitterness.

All of them are addicting and enslaving.

Bitterness is a great example.

So many people find themselves at a point in life where others have harmed them and wronged them and they feel bitter.

Or they find themselves just at the end of a long series of disappointments.

My life has not gone the way that I thought it would go, and I'm really not happy about that.

And they find themselves bitter.

That's a sin because the Bible commands us to always rejoice.

The Bible commands us to be content with what we have.

So if you find yourself lost in bitterness and anger about your life, you are violating those explicit commands of God.

It's a sin and it's addictive.

And that is why you can't stop feeling that way and thinking that way even when you want to.

How many times have you found yourself bitter and unable to stop being bitter?

Or have you found yourself angry and unable to stop being angry?

Or have you found yourself unbelieving?

You can't trust God.

No matter how hard you try, you know that God promises to take care of you, but you've lost your job and you're terrified, and you cannot seem to trust God no matter what you do.

That's also a sin to not trust God, to not live in faith.

You see, that speaks to the slavery of sin because it has this power over us that we can't control.

The Apostle Paul talks about this in depth in Romans chapter 7.

Romans 7 verses 18 through 19.

He said, I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

And then he goes on to say, I see in my members, that is like in myself, my old nature, I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

If you've ever tried really hard to repent and follow all of God's commandments, you know how enslaving sin can be.

You can try with all of your might.

You can get really serious and make some promises to God and get an accountability partner and take preventative steps and get counseling, and you can be really, really, really motivated.

But here's the thing about slavery to sin.

Not one person has ever obtained freedom on their own.

Not one person has ever escaped this slavery by their own efforts.

It's impossible.

But if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.

That's the good news of the Gospel.

If the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.

That's the glorious promise of Jesus to us this morning.

If you abide in his word, you are truly his disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

That's the promise.

And I want all of us to take hold of that promise and to live in the freedom of the righteousness and in goodness and truth of Christ.

What does it mean to abide in the word of Jesus?

Think about that.

Really, what does that mean?

Because if you abide in his word, you will truly be his disciple.

And if you don't, you will not truly be his disciple.

You'll be a fake disciple.

So which one do you want to be?

A real disciple of Jesus or a fake disciple of Jesus?

Which one do you want to be?

A slave or do you want to be free?

Let's start then what it means to abide.

The primary meaning of the word abide is to remain.

To remain.

So first, if you're going to abide in the word of Jesus or remain in the word of Jesus, first you have to get into the word of Jesus.

And I'm just going to say this really clearly so we don't mix too many metaphors and get confused.

In order to get into the word of Jesus, you have to put your faith in Him.

You have to put your trust in Him.

You have to believe the Gospel.

The good news that through faith in Jesus, you can be saved from the penalty of sin.

You can also be saved not just from the penalty of sin, but also from the power of sin by trusting in Jesus.

That is, you can escape the slavery of it.

You can be set free to live joyfully and peacefully and righteously, but in order to be saved from the power of sin like that, you can't just trust in Jesus and then go on with your life as if nothing happened.

You can't just make a decision at Christian summer camp one time in sixth grade and then go do whatever you want.

If you do that, you will not be saved from the power of sin.

In order to be saved from the power of sin, you have to remain in the word of Jesus.

You have to abide in his word, which means you have to obey his commandments.

You have to obey his commandments.

You have to read and study and savor the words of Jesus, and you have to trust him so much that you'll do whatever he tells you to do.

That's harder than it sounds, as many of you know, to do whatever he tells you to do.

You'll mess up a thousand times, but you've got to keep coming back to Jesus and keep striving to obey him.

That's how you abide in his word and prove that you are truly his disciple.

And that's how you get free from the power of sin.

There's a really simple logic to this.

We're talking, of course, about our freedom from slavery to sin.

How do you get that freedom?

By obeying Jesus.

If you obey him, you won't be sinning anymore, right?

And it's the kind of thing, if I could just encourage you, it's the kind of thing that builds and grows exponentially.

The more you obey Jesus, the farther you get from slavery to sin.

The more you obey Jesus, the more you want to obey Jesus.

It's like quitting smoking or something.

The first day is the hardest.

The first week is brutal.

The first month is so challenging.

But as time goes on, you get freer and freer from that addiction.

In my experience, what I've seen in my own Christian life is the same applies to sin.

The farther you get from sin, the freer you become, the easier it becomes to resist it.

So when you start walking that path, you'll abide in Him.

As you keep walking that path, you keep experiencing the abiding in Jesus.

And as a result, you will know the truth.

And the truth will set you free.

Now, what truth is Jesus referring to?

The truth that the sun is 93 million miles from the earth?

The truth that red is a color?

The truth that water is wet?

What truth is He talking about?

Ultimately, I think He's talking about the truth of the Gospel.

The truth of the Gospel, the good news that He lived the life that we should have lived, and died the death that we deserve to die in order to atone for our sins.

But this word truth is really interesting in this context because there were two major cultures in the New Testament world.

When Jesus spoke these words, He spoke to a group of people who were living in this all-encompassing combination of two very different cultures.

So there was the Jewish culture, which they lived in, but they also lived in the Greek slash Roman culture.

And according to the Greek slash Roman culture, truth meant something different than it did to the Jewish culture.

So what kind of truth is he getting at?

According to the Greeks, truth meant, simply put, correspondence with reality.

Truth was correspondence with reality.

So if I say that it rained yesterday, that statement is true, if in fact it rained yesterday.

That's how they thought of truth.

And that's how most people, I think, in our culture, think of truth to some extent.

But in ancient Jewish culture, they viewed truth through a different lens.

And of course they also understood correspondence to reality.

So I'm not saying that Jewish people didn't think of truth as correspondence to reality.

I think they did.

But they also put a stronger emphasize on different aspects of truth, namely integrity and faithfulness.

Integrity and faithfulness, like being the same person in private as you are in public.

Like keeping your word, always doing what you said you were going to do.

That's truth.

And that kind of truth leads to freedom.

Integrity and faithfulness leads to freedom.

The liar is bound by his lies.

The man who lacks integrity is not free.

He is weighed down by guilt and shame, but the man of truth is free.

The woman of truth is free.

So what kind of man are you going to be?

What kind of woman are you going to be?

When you come to Jesus, you have the opportunity to become intimately acquainted with integrity and faithfulness through your obedience to Him, to become that kind of person, to become like Him.

You also have the opportunity to know God.

For ancient Jewish people, truth was not just correspondence to reality, and it was not just integrity, and it was not just faithfulness.

Truth was a person.

Truth was a person because God is truth.

Jesus is truth.

Jesus said it himself, John 14, verse 6, I am the way and the truth and the life.

So when Jesus says here that if you abide in his word, that you will know the truth, he means in part that you will know him, that you'll know his father in heaven, and that is freedom.

To live in integrity and faithfulness, to obey the commandments of Jesus, to know God, that is freedom.

Do not be deceived.

What the world tells you about freedom is a lie.

And I think this is one of the lies of the world that has found the most success in the church.

In other words, I think a lot of Christians struggle with believing that freedom is what the world says it is.

Now, what does the world say about freedom?

How do non-Christians in our culture think about freedom?

Well, in order to get to that, imagine telling these things.

Imagine sharing this sermon with your unsaved friends and family.

Imagine sharing what Jesus says with a group of students at Sonoma State University.

Imagine telling the average modern person that if you commit your life to obeying the Bible, you will be free.

They might laugh in your face.

Like you're saying that if I commit my life to obeying a 2,000-year-old book, that I'll be free?

Like you're saying that if I submit to my husband, then I'll be free?

You're saying that if I commit to not having sex outside of marriage, then I'll be free?

You're saying that if I commit to serving others instead of myself, then I'll be free?

That sounds insane to modern ears.

It sounds absolutely backwards, doesn't it?

If I commit to prioritizing the needs of others over my own needs, that's going to lead to more freedom for me.

If I commit to doing not what I want, but what Jesus wants, that's going to make me free?

It sounds insane.

For people in our world, freedom looks more like this.

People think generally that in order to be truly free, you have to be able to do whatever you want.

So you should be able to or allowed to pursue whatever makes you happy.

Like I think about the prevalence of divorce in our world today.

Why do so many people get divorced?

Because they think they have a right, no matter what, to pursue whatever makes them happy.

They have to be able to do what they want and have what they want.

And if their current partner is not giving them what they want, then they have a right to get it somewhere else.

People in our world think that freedom consists such that nobody has a right to put any kind of expectations on you.

You should be able to pursue whatever path you want in life.

You should be able to pursue the fulfillment of whatever desires you have.

Yesterday, I was with my family, and we were at the Kotadi Kids Festival, and they have all these booths selling all this stuff, and fair food, and pony rides, and so forth.

And they have this stage in the center of the park, and they do all these activities, dances, and contests for kids and stuff.

And it's led by all these young people who are part of the North Bay Theater Association, or something like that.

So you have all these 20-something guys and girls who are hyping the kids up, and playing music, and leading the games, and so forth.

And at one point, one of them says something like this.

We believe that you should be able to blaze any path that you want in life.

That is one of our highest values at the North Bay Theater Association.

That you should be able to be or do whatever you want to be or do.

That's what I'm talking about.

This freedom that is so radical and so insane that whatever desire you have, you have a right to fulfill that desire.

Whatever you want to be, you can be that.

For example, if you want to be a man, even though you're a woman, you should be free to be a man.

No constraints.

If you're a sixth grader and you want to be a lizard, you have a right to be a lizard.

Everybody else will just have to conform themselves to your reality.

Anybody notice that lately?

Kids walking around with tails, dressed like animals all the time?

What is going on?

I don't want to get into all this stuff too much, but I think ultimately it's the result of this belief that true freedom is the ability to do whatever you want and to be whatever you want.

But that's not freedom.

That's not freedom.

That's slavery to your own desires.

It's slavery to what you want.

It's I want this and I want that, and I need this and I need that, and give me, give me, give me.

That's not freedom.

That's selfishness.

That's egomania.

That's slavery to your own desires and your own sin.

If you practice that kind of freedom and then you try to obey God, you will find it impossible.

The whole idea of that kind of freedom is to do whatever you want, but if you want to do good and you want to do right, you won't be able to do it.

And that's how you know it's not freedom.

It's slavery.

Now I want to read again these words from the Apostle Paul in Romans 7.

They speak so powerfully to the truth of this passage, to the promise of Jesus that we are considering this morning.

This is what he wrote, and we'll finish with this.

I see in my old self another law waging a war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my old self.

Wretched man that I am, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Jesus will.

If the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Let's pray.

Jesus, we thank you for dying for our freedom.

The greatest gift ever given, the greatest act of love in the history of the universe, we thank you, Jesus.

I pray that we would live in freedom in you today.

We love you and thank you in your name.

Amen.