CRC The Truth Will Set You Free | John 8:31-47
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The Truth Will Set You Free
The Truth Will Set You Free
INTRODUCTION
Good morning, if we haven’t met I am Jackson, you may recognize me I have been around CRC periodically for the past few years. I actually lived and worked here for a summer between my Freshman and Sophomore years of college helping with creative arts stuff, since then I have been around, here and there and I currently work for CRC as y’alls creative director which I do remotely.
I got connected to CRC through my relationship with J Hines, I have known John since middle school, he mentored me throughout High school and I still talk with him most days, He has been the single greatest influence in my walk with Christ. I am so blessed to have known and been mentored by John Hines.
I live in Nashville where I am a few months from finishing up my undergraduate degree, and then I will head into seminary, PICTURE 1 I have been working at Brentwood Baptist Church for 2 and a half years now in student ministry, you know most guest preachers when they come show pictures of their wives and kids, but I am not quite in that stage yet, so I brought some photos of my students whom I love dearly. PICTURE 2 These are from a recent local weekend retreat we did for our students. I miss them dearly but I am so honored to be sharing the word of God with yall this morning. SERMON TITLE I love CRC, I have for years, there is something special about this church. Beyond the beautiful and authentic worship Frank and Amanda and the team bring each week and John’s dynamic preaching, is all of you. You make CRC so special and I have been so blessed by y’alls faith. So thank you for allowing me to share the word with you this morning.
As your Creative Director I want to let y’all know of a new thing we are starting here at CRC. PODCAST PROMO SLIDE I will talk about this for a bit.
SERMON
Can I tell y’all some good news?
You have God-given personhood and purpose. Did you know that?
You have God- given personhood that is to say that as a Christian God is the one who says who you are, he is the one who decides your identity. This is good news because the Bible says all sorts of amazing things about who we are. The bible tells us we are loved, and forgiven, not condemned, made righteous, that we are his workmanship, fearfully and wonderfully made, that he actually knit us together in our mother’s womb, we are chosen, and called, a child and friend of God, an heir of all that has been won in Jesus.
We also have God-given purpose, now there are two senses in which this is true, you have both a general purpose and a unique purpose. Your general purpose is that which all believers are called to by the word of God, like pursuing holiness, loving your neighbor, caring for the orphan and widow, loving your spouse, honoring your mother and father, making disciples, these are things all Christians are called to thats general purpose, yours and mine. Now you also, believe it or not have a unique purpose, we see this in among other places Ephesians 2:10
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
This means that when God created you he implanted in you a Holy calling to do good works in the world which he planned ahead of time and he has given you the gifts through the Holy Spirit to back that calling up. You have something unique to bring to the work of God in the world. That is such good news.
You having a God-given personhood and purpose is just about as good of news as it gets because in you living like what God says about your personhood is true and actually living out your purpose is the road to contentment and joy and in that is the breeding ground for the fruits of the spirit in your life. God wants that for you a life that is confident and content in your God given personhood and joyful and passionate in your God given purpose. And it is this beautiful picture that as you live into your God given personhood and purpose you get joy and contentment in a closer relationship with Jesus and the fruits of the spirit bearing in your life, and as such you will make much of the name of Jesus and God will be glorified. This is such good news!
*Soft Voice* The problem is, no matter how aware we are of our personhood and our purpose, the line between acknowledging the truth and knowing the truth is razor thin and what happens so easily is we can acknowledge the truth about our personhood and purpose while lies seep in and reek havoc. In most, if not all instances, at the root of our doubt, disillusionment with God, hurts, our sin, and our relational distress are lies that we believe.
Jesus has something to say about this, let’s pray together.
We are going to be in John chapter 8 and starting in verse 31
Jesus here has a crowd of some Jews and Jewish leaders and He’s in the middle of going at it with some Pharisees who are trying to catch him in a lie, as they do, and in this midst of this certainly heated discussion the bible tells us in verse 30
As he was saying these things, many believed in him.
So now Jesus is going to address these new believers.
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.”
2 Questions here, first what is “my Word” how do we abide in that? Well what is the word that Jesus has brought to the earth, the new testament wasn’t written yet, and the new testament is implied in what he is saying, but his Word is the good news that he’s brought to this earth that is the Gospel. So Jesus here says to these new believers if you abide, or remain in the Gospel you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. So what set’s us free? It’s the truth of the Gospel that sets us free. Now that sounds really good doesn’t it, something about knowing, not just acknowledging but Knowing and remaining in the truth of the Gospel actually has the power to set us free. Now… set us free from what?
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.
Set free from what? Slavery to sin. Other places in scripture, specifically Romans 6, we see this language used where we are either slaves to sin or slaves 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, have become slaves of righteousness.
So we were once slaves to sin, but in Christ we are now slaves to righteousness free from our slavery to sin… John 8 Verse 35
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.
So who sets us free from our slavery to sin, it is Jesus, the son of God.
Now Jesus is going to say something that’s really going to confuse these folks. Now one quick note, Jesus is talking to new believers, jews, and pharisees so now he is going to turn from speaking to the new believers to speaking to the unbelievers.
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.”
Jesus here is pointing to a contradiction, these folks are claiming Abraham to be their father, the father of their faith, father Abraham, yet trying to Kill jesus the ultimate fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham. If they were truly Abrahams children in the sense that they are the people of God they would not be trying to kill Jesus. So Jesus here makes a distinction between himself and the Jews saying they each have a different father, you’ll notice one with a capital F and one with a lowercase f. This confuses the Jews because they know Jesus is a Jew so they should have the same father situation going on.
See even here there is a lie being believed. These Jews thought they were children of God because they had been born in the right family. That is not what makes anyone a child of God. Maybe some of y’all need to receive that this morning. It does not matter to God what family you were born in, how perfect or how messed up and broken, it does not matter where you come from, what matters is faith in Jesus Christ. There is a seat at God’s table for all who would have faith in him.
in their confusion they take two guesses at who their father is, they guess Abraham and God and Jesus says neither is their father, and so now lets jump down to verse 44 jesus is going to tell them the answer, who their father is.
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”
Oof. That is not the answer they were expecting. So Jesus discusses two kinds of people here. At the beginning he says his disciples whose father is God in heaven, will abide in the good news of the Gospel and they will know the truth and be set free from slavery to sin.
The second is a person who does not know God, and therefore cannot bear to hear his word, and since they cannot hear is word they do not know the truth and they do the works of their father the devil... lie-ing.
Now in this crowd there were both those who have been set free, believers, and those who are still in slavery to lies and sin. These people are rubbing shoulders with each other in the crowd while Jesus is talking, they are all among each other. This is the problem, we live in a world that is full of people who do not know the truth, who cannot bear to hear the truth of God’s word and therefore are liars and lie lie lie, and even though we have been set free from our slavery to sin by the truth of the Gospel, we get ever so gently pulled away by these lies.
Think about it, we live in a world where we are surrounded by lies all the time, through social media, television, the news we watch, co-workers, politicians, self help gurus, and fads all of these folks are telling us lies about our personhood and purpose. And oftentimes these are lies we were told by these people, or in a lot of cases by the people closest to us when we were kids and those lies have taken root and grown within us.
Now let me be very clear this is not to demonize anyone who is not a Christian as a liar and a threat to us. Listen we are called to be lights in the world, not people who get dimmed by the world. The point is not to say look at these people they are telling us lies and we become the victim, no no no. of course their lying to you they don’t know any better, they do not know the truth they cannot bear to hear the truth, of course they are lying. They haven’t been called, you have been called to abide in the word of God and know the truth and be set free. That’s on you.
Now these lies we believe are different of each of us. I often fall into the lie that the cross of Christ wasn’t enough for me. Like I think about the way I used to live and can get consumed by shame and get to these places where I begin to believe the lie that God couldn’t possibly want to use me for anything. I couldn’t possibly have any value or worth in the kingdom of God. And listen I acknowledge the truth, I tell students the truth all the time that they aren’t too far for the grace of God, yet this past season I have been dealing with some wounds from my childhood and some mental health struggles and in the midst of all of this I daily find myself believing the lie that my story is too hard, I am too broken, I am too messed up and so I am needing to remind myself multiple times a day of the truth of the Gospel, I mean listen, the Bible say that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and the old has passed away the new has come I have new life. Also, look at the Bible God only seems to want to use broken people, I mean look at David, Paul, Abraham, Moses, all deeply broken people and yet they are the fathers of our faith, And even though I acknowledge that, the lies still creep in.
And for you, you may struggle with that lie or maybe for you it’s a different lie, maybe its the lie that when you feel loneliness and sadness in your life and relationships that sin is the answer and maybe its actually okay or better for you to sin, maybe its the lie that you can’t really trust God, like God is not really going to take care of me and my family, like if I don’t work harder and spend less time discipling my family my family is not going to be okay. As if God would have you choose between living into your personhood and purpose and taking care of your family.
Here is where it gets even trickier, whatever the lie you may be believing at one moment is, the devil doesn’t just want you to believe one lie, he is going to make you believe a lie that you are too broken or you cant really trust God, or you’ll never be enough and then he is going to make you believe another lie that the answer to the shame, loneliness, hurt you feel from that lie is to sin because that will surely make you feel better and then once you sin the devil is going to make you believe another lie that you need to live in shame because of that sin which leads to more shame and retreat and sin and so you buy lie after lie when the truth is that you can repent and jesus is waiting there with open arms with grace and forgiveness and its never too late for the light and grace of the gospel to shine on even the darkest parts of our lives.
Do you see this? It is a viscous cycle these lies creep in and we buy these lies and then buy another one to get out of that lie and then another one and another one! You believe a lie and then you buy a lie to try to fix that lie and then you buy a lie to try to fix that lie and then to fix that lie and before you know it you are in a cycle of lies that you don’t know how to get out of and before you know it in your mind the cycle of lies becomes the truth and you start living the lie and thats when you lose sight of your god given personhood and purpose. And you will be trapped in that cycle living in shame loneliness and discontentment never satisfied believing lie and after lie after lie living in retreat with damaged personal relationships and sin you will live in that over and over again until you wake up and realize that Jesus paid the price on the cross so we don’t have to believe the lies anymore!
Church, We have to be really good at finding the lie and speaking the truth of the gospel to that lie. we have to KNOW THE TRUTH. We must be full of the word of God and the spirit. Not just acknowledge it but we must abide in it and live in it we must speak it over our lives. We have a monopoly on the capital T truth of the Gospel and we need that and the world needs it. We must KNOW the truth of the Gospel.
Often times what needs repair in ourselves and others is not a behavioral issue, but a truth issue.
Look at that sin, the struggle, the hurt that you just can’t get past. The relational strife. Those things aren’t just happening. There’s a lie in there. Probably many. That lie is robbing you of life and light and your personhood and purpose.
Me and my friends have this thing, it started in Athens greece in a hotel room, where if we notice that one of us is believing a lie, like let’s say this podium is my friend and he’s having a hard time he is believeing a lie. I am going to start doing this… and I am going to bump into him… Pause… what is this? The lie nosourous. I am going to keep bumping into him and this is a physical representation of the lies we are told the lies that we are not enough, that we are unloveable, that we are too far gone, that we need more stuff to make us happy, that the answer to are hurts and shame is sin, that we can’t possibly contribute anything to the work of God in the world, the lie nosourous will keep bumping and bumping a representation of the way these lies reak havoc in our lives until what? Until you speak the truth of the gospel over the lie and lie-nosourous dies
Listen Church, You have personhood and purpose that has been given you by God, it is the pathway to a life well lived and lies are the greatest threat to you. The challenge here is to build a rhythm in your life of abiding and assessing, abiding in the truth of the gospel, remaining in the word of God PAUSE and assessing yourself daily, multiple times a day when the lienosorous shows up sin, doubt, hurt, shame, loneliness, relational issues show up. What lie are you believing and what truth of the gospel has God given, and jesus bought, for you to be set free from the grip of those lies.
If you abide in my word you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
INTERVIEW PORTION
We have folks from Adult and Teen Challenge here this morning… Raylee Fauna Leah
What is a lie you have believed and how did that lie affect your relationship with God/others?
What is the truth of the Gospel that has set you free from that lie?
Can we thank…
Pray to close