Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

If you were here with us last week, Pastor Ray did an incredible job of challenging us to live as disciples of Christ and I was so encouraged to see that so many of you stood up to accept the invitation to live completely for Jesus.

This morning I want to build on that teaching as we continue in our series on Core Christianity by looking at the fundamental commitments that every person has to make in order to become a true disciple.

John 8:30-

Abides in His Word

Believes in the Truth

Lives in Freedom from Sin

The beginning of this passage often confuses modern Christian because it starts with something that seems positive.

After a sermon in which Jesus declares that he is the light of the world, we are told that many believed in Him.

This is what the majority of churches in America labor so hard for.

We want people to believe what Jesus says about himself in the earlier portions of this chapter.

Given what we read, it seems like the people who were listening to Jesus at the time were more than willing to believe what He said.

In fact, there are thousands upon thousands of people in our churches who believe up to this very point, that Jesus came from heaven to die for our sins and if you believe this you will be saved.

There is usually a finality to this declaration of salvation and we make the assumption that our faith is complete, that we have believed enough to be a Christian.

Unfortunately that leaves the job half done, Jesus clearly tells this crowd as well as the crowds in our churches that belief in a teaching or a doctrine is not enough to be a true disciple.

A true disciple is not simply just someone who believes, it is someone who has faith.

We should remember that we are saved by faith and not by simply by belief.

Belief is a precursor to faith but it falls short of faith.

There is great illustration that I recently saw that presented the striking difference between belief and faith that comes from the life of Charles Blondin.

Blondin was a circus acrobat in the 1800’s and upon seeing Niagara Falls, he made it his life goal to cross over the ravine on a tightrope.

(I’m sure that some of you have seen the old images) Amazingly, Charles Blondin got so good at walking over the 1100 feet gorge that one time he took a stove and ingredients for an omelette and cooked them right in the middle of the walk.

Another time, he walked the tightrope blindfolded and yet another time, he carried his manager on his back and successfully crossed.

He became an international sensation.

In fact, there is still a street named after him in London.

Everyone knew what he was capable of doing.

Well one day, a large crowd gathered to watch his latest feat.

He would cross over with wheel barrow.

To get the crowd going, Blondin asked, “How many of you believe that I can walk across Niagara Falls with this wheel barrow?”

Everyone in the crowd roared in approval because they all believed that he could walk over those treacherous waters.

He had already done so many greater challenges, what is a wheel barrow compared to walking across blindfolded or with a man on his back.

Then he asked the all important question to the crowd, “Who is willing to get into this wheel barrow and come cross the Falls with me?” Dead quiet, no one moved a muscle, and then from the crowd, one lone man raised his hand to volunteer.

He was willing to entrust his entire life into the hands of another person.

That is the difference between belief and faith.

Countless people believe that God exists, that Jesus died for our sins, that He even rose from the dead.

We believe wholeheartedly that he successfully crossed over this chasm of death but yet we are not willing to entrust our lives into his hands and to actually live by faith.

And maybe without even knowing it, we are stuck on the wrong side of eternal life.

I realize that preachers usually end their sermons with an illustration like this and we’ll say something like, who wants to get into wheel barrow with Jesus?

And perhaps in the emotions of that moment, there will be some conviction to live for Christ but the decision is so abstract that in time, the commitment wears out.

In this passage Jesus is far more practical about the first steps of being His disciple and He lays out three key commitments of true discipleship.

As we go through this passage, we’ll look at three key characteristics of a true disciple of Jesus.

A genuine follower of Christ:

Abide in His Word

Know the Truth

Live in Freedom from Sin

The first and fundamental commitment of a genuine of follower of Christ is to abide in His word.

The primary definition of a disciple in the time of Jesus was to be a student under a master teacher, to be an apprentice and a learner.

In fact, if you deviated from the teaching of your rabbi, if you no longer followed the example of your teacher, you could not be considered to be his disciple.

It certainly makes a lot of sense why Jesus would make this statement, if you don’t have any intention of learning and living out what Jesus taught then by its very definition you are not a disciple.

(It’s not mean or insensitive, it’s the truth).

When you become a Christian and if you consider yourself to be a Christian, you have chosen to walk in this type of relationship.

I understand that maybe this was never spelled out for you or it was done so in a confusing way but if you never intended to learn from Christ and to abide in His words, then you are not his disciple.

The idea of abiding means to remain, rest, to persevere, and to persist in knowing and living out the teaching of Christ.

From the Greek, it literally means to make His words our dwelling place and to make our home in it.

The best explanation for what Jesus meant by abiding in his word can be found in the Old Testament.

Deuteronomy 11:18-

This goes so much further than just wearing a WWJD bracelet.

The teaching of Christ should impact everything that we put our hands to, the actions that we take.

It should also be the the way we filter all the information that comes into our minds.

It should shape the way we look at the world.

It should inform the way we raise and educate our children.

Even the way we structure our home and how we decorate our house should be influenced by the word of Christ.

This goes far beyond just putting up a placard with a Bible verse in the bathroom.

(I’m not thinking about life’s great mysteries when I’m going number 2).

What this passage is telling us is the simple fact that we need to interweave the teaching of God into the daily fabric of our lives.

When you rise and when you life down.

Generally, this is where people zone out because we think we have heard this message thousand times, read your bible more, read your bible more, and we are tired of feeling guilty for not reading more.

The internal conversation in our minds is I’ve tried reading the Bible but I get nothing out of it.

I still remember the first time I was forced to read large sections of the Bible, it was at the church where I got saved.

We would have Bible reading weekends where we would read the whole New Testament out loud.

It was a little cultic but effective.

I would leave that retreat feeling like I got enough Bible for the year.

As a new believer I would wonder if that did anything especially when my life would go back to the same old routine but over the years I’ve come to appreciate what was accomplished during those long weekends.

And though it didn’t happen over night, I learned the first steps on how to abide in the words of Christ and eventually I experienced the benefit of taking the time to abide in His word.

The priceless reward for abiding in the Scriptures is that you come to know the Truth.

Against the tides of this age, as Christians, we can be certain of the truth.

At this point, we can go down a long rabbit hole on the subject of truth and philosophically how we have changed in our views on truth.

We have gone from rationalism, man is a thinking being to empiricism, man is a skeptical being, and more recently existentialism, man is a feeling being.

If you want to talk about these things, we can take this offline or better yet, you can just go listen to Ravi Zaccharaeus or Tim Keller, they are much smarter than I am.

What I do know is that in our post-modern and post-Christian society, the argument for truth as a principle leads to a dead end.

But this is actually nothing new, we seem have such chronological bias that makes us think that we have actually invented the wheel.

Lest we forget that over 2000 years ago, when Jesus said, “I have come to bear witness to the truth and everyone on the side of truth listens to me, Pontius Pilate famously replied, “What is truth?”

Either Pontius Pilate is a genius born well before his time, which I strongly doubt, or our modern progressive ideas are not as modern or progressive as we think.

You’ll notice that Jesus did not come to debate about truth as a concept, he came to declare himself as the Truth.

When Jesus says, “If you abide in my words, you’ll come to know the Truth”, he is not saying, you’ll get to know more principles, you’ll get more life hacks, you’ll learn more facts about the Bible.

No, He is saying, “You’ll come to know me because I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

The purpose of abiding in the word of God is that you would come to know the person of Christ, personally, intimately, and concretely.

When that happens, he becomes the source of all truth in your life.

In a sea of uncertainty, Jesus has to become that anchor of truth or you will be thrown by every wind and wave.

I remember the first time that abiding in the word turned into an encounter with the Truth.

I was reading the story of Abraham and Isaac where God tells Abraham go and sacrifice your only begotten son, the son that I have promised you all these years.

And to the credit of Abraham and the reason why He is called the father of our faith, Abraham prepares to obey God and he takes Isaac up to Mount Horeb to sacrifice him.

Just as he is about to thrust the knife through his son’s heart, an angel of God comes right on time to stop Abraham.

And if you only read that on the surface level, it makes God seem so severe that He would test his servants like that or it makes God seem so insecure that he would have to put Abraham’s loyalty to the test.

That is so far from the truth and the key to truly understanding that story is what happens afterwards.

Does the ram caught in a thicket by its horns remind you of anyone?

How about Christ with a crown of thorns around his head, trapped on the cross?

God took on himself the severity that was owed to us and he displayed his undying loyalty by sending His son to die for us.

And on the mount of Calvary, everything we need for this life as well as the life after, was completely provided.

I was close to 10 years into my walk with God, had even gone through seminary, but I never saw the Scriptures in that way.

As my eyes were opened, I felt Jesus coming into that room and he started pointing all the places where He could be found.