31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 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’?”
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave1 to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. 38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
[1] 8:34
(ESV)
John 8:31-38
31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 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’?”
34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave1 to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. 38 I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
[1] 8:34
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
I invite you to open your bibles to John chapter 8. John chapter 8. We'll begin reading in verse 31. If you don't have a Bible, there's the text is in your worship guide. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.
Jeffrey Heine:And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. They answered him, you're 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 a sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever.
Jeffrey Heine: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.
Jeffrey Heine:Pray with me. Our father, we ask that at this time, in this moment, we would indeed abide in your word. Lord, that your word would find a deep root in our hearts and minds and transform us. We need to hear from you. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but lord, may your words remain and forever change us.
Jeffrey Heine:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. The words scared or worried are not really the right words for me to use in in this sentence. So when I say it, don't call me a heretic. Alright?
Jeffrey Heine:That's how you wanna hear a sermon start off, is with the pastor just going ahead and warning you not to call him a heretic. But I would say that Jesus was scared and worried about false discipleship. This was always at the forefront of his mind, that there might be people who thought they were following him. People who thought they were in the inside, but really, they are on the outside. Thoughts about this consumed Him.
Jeffrey Heine:And so you see this in many of his parables. Let me just walk through a few of them. Parables like the one found in Matthew 25 of the 10 bridesmaids, which go out to meet the bridegroom. And they they take their lamps with them. And so these bridesmaids that are all friends, they all look alike, and they all want to meet the bridegroom, yet only half of them get to.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus told the parable about the 2 houses. And 2 houses, they're identical except for one thing. 1 is built on the sand and the other is on the rock, And one of the houses crumbles down while the other house remains. Jesus taught the parable about the 4 different soils, each one of these soils being a different type of heart. And when the seed of the gospel hits those hearts, things happen.
Jeffrey Heine:And in 3 of those 4 hearts, vegetation actually arises. Yet only one is a believer. And only one of them does, do they bear fruit. In Luke chapter 9, there's an eager potential disciple who runs up to Jesus and he says, master, I will follow you wherever you go. And he seemingly pushes away this this young eager man.
Jeffrey Heine:And the reason he does so is because he wants to make sure that this person considers the cost. This person really wants to follow Jesus. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus describes how a day will come when there will be church leaders, Christian leaders, who will stand before God, and he will say depart from me, I never knew you. The leaders within the church, some coming that greatly worried Jesus, if I could use such a word. Something he was concerned about, something he was always talking about.
Jeffrey Heine:He didn't want there to be any kind of false followers or false disciples of Him. And we can see this at the forefront of his mind when we read this text. Jesus is talking to a people who may or may not be His disciples. We're not really sure at the start of this. They kind of believe in Jesus and they they kind of don't believe in Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:And so Jesus is going to tell them, hey, you wanna know what a disciple of me really looks like? It looks like this. Look how the story begins in verse 31. So so Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him. So Jesus is now addressing the Jews who had believed in Him, but it might be best to understand this as the people who had previously believed in him.
Jeffrey Heine:Or perhaps they were just people who kind of believed in Him, whatever that means. They were sort of followers of Jesus, more like a Facebook way or subscribe to His Twitter feed kinda way. They were kinda out in the periphery, but they noticed Him, they sort of followed Him, but is this really belief? If your Bible has the same headings as mine, you're gonna realize at the end of this, the next section is labeled you are of your father the devil. So so they really don't believe.
Jeffrey Heine:We're gonna see that next week when Jesus calls them children of Satan. But we we don't know this right here or not. Their their belief is still kind of up in the air. So he's talking to a people who maybe previously believed, might maybe sort of believed, or maybe are falling out of belief, and how can these people know if they are really Jesus' disciples? And Jesus says, you need to abide in my word.
Jeffrey Heine:If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. What does this word abide mean? We we just sang about it, this this notion of abide. Jesus certainly had other words at His disposal that He could have used here. He could have said, if you listen to my word, you're my disciples.
Jeffrey Heine:If you maybe heed my word, you are my disciples. But instead he uses this word abide, which which means to stick with or or to remain. He's telling those people who had previously believed him that if they were really his disciples, then they would stick with it. They would remain with His words and they wouldn't let His words offend them. And so we saw this a couple of chapters ago, when He had 15,000 followers, believers, if you will, and He tells them, unless you drink My blood and you eat My flesh, you will have no part of Me.
Jeffrey Heine:And people hear that and they fall away. They didn't abide. They didn't stick with Jesus in His words. They didn't remain with Jesus in His words, but they left Him. And if you remember, he went to his own disciples, and he said, are you going to stay?
Jeffrey Heine:Are you going to go? Basically, are you going to abide? And we love Peter's words when he says, Lord, where would we go? You have words of eternal life. Where would we go?
Jeffrey Heine:You have words of eternal life. Where would we go? We're gonna stick to your words. We're gonna abide with you. To abide, it means to stick with, it means to remain, but probably the best picture of what it means to abide means to make your home with, to make your home with.
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus is saying that we must make our home with his word. We must come and live in his word. This is a a gracious, it's a compassionate invitation for people to come and to live in this magnificent home of Jesus's word. For his word to be a place of rest, our place of comfort, for his word to be our place of shelter, that we go there for refuge. Now Jesus doesn't tell us the the hows, the the how we're supposed to do this.
Jeffrey Heine:He doesn't hand out His, you know, through the through the bible in a year reading bible plan. He he doesn't say, well, the key is you gotta wake up early 5 o'clock every morning, and you know you gotta have your quiet time. He doesn't give you any techniques to try. He just simply says you need to. It's up to you how to decide how you do this, but you need to abide in my word.
Jeffrey Heine:It needs to be more than just a weekly shelter for you. It needs to be a daily shelter, daily refuge for you. Make your home in my word. I have a picture of what abiding in Christ's word means. I'm I'm a little hesitant to to share it with you, but but hopefully it will be helpful.
Jeffrey Heine:My dad, he was a a man who abided in the word of the Lord. His life was really shaped by God's word, and every morning he would get up early. He had to go off to his job around somewhere between 5:30 and 6 every morning. And so that meant if he wanted to spend time in the word of God, he'd have to get up around 4:30. And so 4:30, he would get up every morning, and I can remember as a child, I would be snuggled up in my bed, and I could hear him stirring in the morning.
Jeffrey Heine:It was a great comforting sound to me. I could hear the shower coming on. I could hear the, the coffee percolating. Sometimes I could I could hear him cooking bacon and that sizzling. And then it would go quiet.
Jeffrey Heine:And I knew that at that moment, my dad was sitting at the kitchen table with an open Bible, and he was reading and he was praying. And there was, there was a few times I didn't do this often, but but several times I did, and I don't know if it was because I smelled the bacon or if I, if I just wanted to be with my dad, but I would get up and I would go in the kitchen, and my dad, he would he would take me and he would put me in his lap. He'd pour me a little bit of coffee, probably mostly milk with with a little bit of coffee there. And in his lap, he would read to me God's word. That is a picture of abiding in the word.
Jeffrey Heine:It's crawling up in your father's lap and letting him love on you through his word. It's having that that word just kind of wash over you. After day after day, these words begin shaping our entire life. It's what it means to abide. This is not an arduous task that he's asking of us, although it does take effort.
Jeffrey Heine:It's not a discipline, although you do have to be disciplined and do it every day. It's it's an invitation. It's crawling into your father's lap and listening to his words. Now Jesus says that if you abide in his word, you will be his disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. I don't like 3 point sermons.
Jeffrey Heine:Those who have been here for the last 7 years know I've maybe done 2 of them. But Jesus gives us a 3 point sermon here, so I'm gonna have to go with it. I've gotta go with what Jesus has laid out before us. At least He doesn't end with a poem or some acrostic. He just he gives us 3 things.
Jeffrey Heine:He says, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciple. If you abide in my word, you will know truth. If you abide in my word, you will be set free. Abiding in His word is what makes a disciple. It what brings one to truth and is what sets someone free.
Jeffrey Heine:I was trying to think of an acrostic, and I've been out of my baptist heritage for so long, I've I've kind of forgotten it. I did think of follower in fact and freedom, but, but I'm gonna just put that aside. Let's look at these three things. Let's look at the first two rather quickly and then we're gonna land on the last one for a while. The first is that abiding in Jesus' word will make you a disciple.
Jeffrey Heine:Actually, Jesus says that you are truly a disciple if you make your home in His Word. And the word truly is important here because once again, Jesus is scared of false discipleship. Plenty of people had followed Him and then left. And Jesus says, those are false disciples, but a true disciple is one who makes his home in my word. A false disciple is one who picks and chooses what he wants to believe from Jesus's word.
Jeffrey Heine:A false is one who chooses what he will obey from God's word. But a true disciple abides, listens, obeys. Jesus then says, if you abide in my word, you will know the truth. So a disciple of Jesus does not get their truth from the culture, but receives their truth from Jesus. The word of God tells you the truth.
Jeffrey Heine:It tells you about who God is, tells you who you are, tells you what your purpose in this life is. So if you wanna find yourself, you you don't have to like, you know, take a year off, go go to Colorado, whatever it is. Find yourself. We find ourselves by by looking into the word, and hearing Jesus tell us who we are and who we are to be. And Jesus tells us who He is.
Jeffrey Heine:When He's talking about the truth here, He's not talking about a truth in some kind of abstract. Truth is a person. Truth is the person of Jesus Christ. Later he's gonna say this, actually says it several times, but I am the way, the truth and the life. Jesus is the truth.
Jeffrey Heine:And so the Word of God leads us not to some abstract truth, but leads us to a person. And this is Jesus saying, if you abide in my word, there can actually be a real relationship between us. You can know me if you abide in my words. Finally, Jesus says that if you abide in my word, you will be set free. You will be set free.
Jeffrey Heine:I found that this notion of freedom, something that either really resonates with people or it kinda turns them off. So some people love this idea of freedom because they they readily get, they they admit that there are things in their life that are holding them down, that are oppressing them, that are keeping them from being the person that they really want to be. These are the people who who understand that there are burdens that they carry, and that they need to be freed from these burdens. Perhaps it's a burden of past failure. It's a burden of shame.
Jeffrey Heine:Perhaps this is you, maybe a burn for you is that you have done things in your past that you are not proud of, and you wish you could be freed from those things. You wish you could just start over. Or perhaps something was done to you. Perhaps, as a child, your parents didn't love you the way they should have. And instead of being encouraged by them and built up by them, you were demoralized by them.
Jeffrey Heine:They consistently put you down and they they share their constant disappointment of you. And so this day, you still have their voices in your head constantly putting you down. And you're like you're thinking, I I just I'd like to be free of that. I'd like to be free of that. And so when you hear Jesus talking about freedom, this really resonates with you because you want to be free from shame.
Jeffrey Heine:You wanna be free from guilt. You wanna be free from your past. Now we we live in a culture that says that the way that you go about being free of these things is to simply let them go. We we just you just gotta let go of your past. You just gotta decide to move on.
Jeffrey Heine:Be free from your past. Wash your hands clean of of other people's expectations of you. Release yourself from that burden. Nobody should tell you what you should do, who you need to be. It's one of the reasons we love Elsa's songs so much.
Jeffrey Heine:Let it go. Just just just let it go and and be whoever you're supposed to be. I mean, Pearl Jam even covered that song. It's so permeated into our culture. And the reason is it's it resonates with so many people.
Jeffrey Heine:If they could just let go of these things and be whatever person they're really supposed to be. But here's the deal, you you can't just let go of these burdens. You you can't just let them go. You You can't just be absolved from sins, just because you want to be absolved from them. I don't wanna feel guilty over my past, so I'm just gonna let go of guilt.
Jeffrey Heine:It doesn't work that way. You you can't just cast off shame, cast off guilt. The truth the truth has to be what sets you free. You must let the word of God confront you, confront you with your sin, confront you with your shame, and then lead you to the person of Jesus who can heal you. Only the truth can set you free.
Jeffrey Heine:Now for others of you who, when you hear Jesus saying the truth will set you free, it really rubs you the wrong way. It's likely because you think you are free already. Nobody needs to tell me to be free. I do what I want, when I want, however I wanna do it. Nobody I don't need freedom.
Jeffrey Heine:This is what the people said to Jesus here in verse 33. Said they answered Him, we are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone, which maybe they didn't have Exodus. I don't understand how they can even say that. But we are offspring of Abraham and we have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free?
Jeffrey Heine:These people, they don't understand what Jesus is talking about. They've never been enslaved. They get to do what they want, when they want, however they wanna do it. And Jesus says, exactly. I call that slavery.
Jeffrey Heine:That's exactly what I call slavery. You doing what you want, when you want, however you want to do it. And I call it slavery because you have no idea what you used to be before the fall. You had no idea the beauty and the freedom there was in the garden until you said, I wanna do what I want when I wanna do it. Pre fall, that was freedom.
Jeffrey Heine:But what you're living in now, that is slavery. That is slavery. Now if there's anything that you have heard me teach over the years, it is that every person here serves something. Every person in here has a master. I can't tell how many times I have taught on that.
Jeffrey Heine:Whatever you live for is your master, is the thing that you serve. So if if you are living for your career, then your career is your master. And if your career is doing really well, you're firing on all cylinders, you're doing things right on your job, and your career is just skyrocketing, well, then you have this relative sense of of purpose and of well-being and of happiness. But if it's not doing well, then you feel like your life is falling apart. And what's happening is is your happiness is chained to your career.
Jeffrey Heine:As it rises, you rise, and as it falls, you falls, but it is chained to it. That is called slavery. If you have to have the approval of others in order to be happy, then approval is your master. If you live to be a parent, then children are your master. If you're a student and you live for grades, then performance is your master.
Jeffrey Heine:A grade either validates your existence or it tells you that everything you've been doing is meaningless. Often, we are a slave to things that, we are best at or the things that we consider our best features. Somewhat of a silly example of this, although it's not. Women, let's say that somebody comes up to you and compliments the outfit you were wearing. Makes you feel pretty good.
Jeffrey Heine:And even goes so far to say, you know, and you've got you've got great legs. You're like, wow. Thank you. I've I've wow. And you you're feeling pretty good about yourself.
Jeffrey Heine:Somebody just complimented how you were dressed, and even pointed out you have great legs. And so when you get home, you actually begin to look in the mirror, and you're like, you know what? You're right. I've I've I've got some great legs, and you begin to admire them. And then it begins affecting the way you dress.
Jeffrey Heine:You need to dress in a way that's gonna accentuate your legs. And so now looking at your legs and dressing for your legs becomes a regular part of your ritual, of when you dress, how you present yourself. And it also becomes a source of great anxiety for you. You begin noticing the flaws in your legs. Even though they're great legs, you're thinking, well, how can I work out?
Jeffrey Heine:How can I tone them to make them even better? It's both a source of your pride and it's a source of your anxiety. Do you know what's happening now? I know that's a silly example, but do you know what is happening? Your self image as manifested through your legs here has become your master.
Jeffrey Heine:It's become a defining thing in your life. It's both a source of pride and anxiety for you, and and we have 100, if not thousands of things like this in our life. For some of us, it's beauty. For some of it's wealth. For some of us, it's education.
Jeffrey Heine:For some of us, it's a need for approval, But we all have a master. Whatever becomes your source of pride or your source of anxiety is something that you are chained to. And hear me. These things are cruel masters. And Jesus is saying, wouldn't you like to be freed from those things?
Jeffrey Heine:Would wouldn't you like those things to be cast off you? Says you can if you abide in my word. Now, please hear me. Jesus is not he's not saying that you're free to do whatever you want to do. That is not freedom.
Jeffrey Heine:That is not freedom. Freedom is is not doing what you want to do. Freedom is doing what you were meant to do. Freedom is doing what you were created to do. And actually there If you think about it, freedom really can't be the ability to do whatever you want to do because the honest truth is you really don't even know what you want to do.
Jeffrey Heine:You have so many desires and they are all over the place, and half of your desires are contradictory to one another. For instance, I I really would like to have a healthy heart. I wanna have a healthy heart. I also really like butter. I like bacon.
Jeffrey Heine:If I could put butter on bacon, Emmy, I would want that, and so I have this desire for a healthy heart, and then I have this desire for for butter and for bacon. Now can I have both of these desires, both of these wants? They're they're in contradiction to one another. One of them goes against my design. Listen, some of you, you you're thinking, you know, I really want freedom that comes with with singleness, but I really want this this commitment that that comes with marriage.
Jeffrey Heine:Which do you want? Some of you are thinking, I really wanna hang out on the lake every single Sunday, but I really want also a church community. Desires against one another. Some of you want to sleep in every day, but you also wanna get up early and run. Our our wants are all over the place, and and half the time they're contradictory to one another.
Jeffrey Heine:Listen, freedom is not trying to do whatever you want to do. It's doing what you were designed to do. Sometimes the things you want are going against your design. Like my desire to eat butter and have a healthy heart. The key is to find the desire that matches your design.
Jeffrey Heine:Think of it this way, an eagle is not free when it tries to swim, even if it really wants to swim. An eagle is free when it is flying and it is soaring in the air because it is doing what it was designed to do. The key is, what are we designed for? That's freedom. How can we find what we are designed for?
Jeffrey Heine:Jesus says, well, it's easy. You abide in my word. You abide in my word. I I I will give you the blueprint. I will tell you the blueprint for your soul, what what you were designed for.
Jeffrey Heine:And Jesus, He he knows what our blueprint is because He is the one who created us. This is the truth that Jesus is talking about. The truth of who he is and who he has created us to be. He says, when you understand who I am and who I've created you to be, there is freedom. There is a freedom.
Jeffrey Heine:So the question is, wouldn't you like to be free? I mean, really free. Free from shame, free from guilt, free from other people's expectations, free from your own expectations, free from the need for approval, free from insecurity, free from sin, even free from death. Jesus says, then just crawl in to my father's lap and listen to him. Listen to Him tell you who I am and who He has created you to be.
Jeffrey Heine:Listen to Him tell you that you can truly be free because of my atoning work on the cross. And let him tell you the new life he now gives you through his spirit. If you let the son set you free, Jesus says, you will finally truly be freed indeed. Pray with me. Our father, we ask that freedom would reign in this place.
Jeffrey Heine:Not a freedom that comes by doing whatever we want, however we wanna do it, whenever we wanna do it, but a freedom that comes when you are our master and Lord. In which we are animated by your spirit to do what you have created us to do. May that kind of freedom reign in this place. Those who are in bondage to sin, Jesus, break it. Break it.
Jeffrey Heine:Through the power of your blood, break it. And through the life of your spirit, breathe that life into them. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.