Free Indeed | Sermon 06/04/2023

Apologia Utah

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Turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel according to John. We're in chapter 8.

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We've been in an expository series for the past 8 months in the Gospel according to John.

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And it's been really good. We're going to be in verses 31 through 36 in John chapter 8.

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The title of this sermon today, church, is Free Indeed. Free Indeed.

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So, starting in verse 31 of the

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Gospel according to John chapter 8, hear now the inerrant and infallible words of the living and true

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God. So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed him, if you continue in my word then you are truly disciples of mine.

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And you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. They answered him, we are

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Abraham's descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free?

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Jesus answered them, truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.

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The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son does remain forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

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Thus, ending the reading of God's glorious and magnificent word, let's pray quickly, church, that God may bless our time now.

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Lord, I ask you that you would speak to your people today, Lord, that you would teach us according to your word and by your spirit.

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God, we need you with every single passage to make sense of these things,

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Lord, to absorb them in ourselves and, Lord, to not let them just go one ear and out the other.

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Lord, we pray that you would help these things to stay in us, that they would encourage us, Lord, that they would embolden us to share the gospel more,

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Lord, that we would be able to enjoy the freedom that we have now in Christ.

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So Lord, please help me today as a mere man to properly exposit these words.

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I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. So in the Old Testament, during the time of the judges, the people of Israel, there was great turmoil.

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There was a lot of foreign invaders and foreign occupation during the time of judges.

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That was before they got their first king in Israel. And during that time, these judges would help be sort of mediators or deliverers for God and God's people.

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And there was a man named Samson. Samson was to be one of the greatest leaders in all of Israel.

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The angel of the Lord appeared to Samson's mother, who was previously barren, and said,

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She will give birth to a son, and she shall never take a razor to his head, nor shall he ever drink of the fruit of the vine, he shall never drink wine, or touch anything that was dead.

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And if you look in the book of the law, that means that Samson is to be what's called a Nazirite.

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He made the Nazirite vow that is especially set apart for God's own purposes.

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He was to be a man of purity and righteousness. And as Samson grew, these unique physical capabilities that allowed him to defeat the enemies of Israel started coming upon him.

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He was getting this amazing strength. Something started happening to him.

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In Judges 13 .25, it says, And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir Samson in Mahanedan between Zorah and Eshter.

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Samson was becoming the hope of the people for deliverance against the

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Philistines. Philistine army. Tragically, however, if you know the story, which

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I'm sure many of you do, Samson started to let his devotion to God fall apart.

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He allowed it to fall apart. His issues started with one woman and his last issues came with another woman.

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He desired a woman as his wife from among the Philistines, from among their own enemies, a

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Gentile, an idol worshiper. And Samson not only ignored his parents' objections, but he ignored the

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God who blessed him with those spirit -wrought capabilities. Everything started falling apart.

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Everything started falling apart for Samson. Samson began to associate with these 30 companions, these 30 young men who were of the immoral kind.

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He would use his powers and strength selfishly, impulsively, and wastefully.

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And lastly, he lost everything after fulfilling his final temptation with a woman named

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Delilah. He lost his power. He lost his strength. He failed his

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God. And when the Philistines came upon Samson, he declared confidently this,

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I will go out as the other times as I did before and shake myself free.

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I'll make myself free. He's like, oh, the enemy is here again. No problem.

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I've delivered myself before and I'll do it again with my great strength. I'll make myself free.

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However, Judges chapter 16 verse 20 says, But he did not know that the Lord had departed from him.

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He didn't know that the Lord had left him. He was so confident in his own abilities that he did not recognize that they weren't his own to begin with.

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They were God's. And he was so self -absorbed that he could not even detect that the

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Lord had left him. Right? He's so confident in himself, he doesn't even sense that the

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Spirit of God had left him. So the text says in Judges that the

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Philistines seized Samson and they gouged out his eyeballs. He was blind.

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He was bound and blind. The one who was to be the people's liberator was now enslaved.

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It says he was shackled to bronze chains and he worked in the prison with slave labor, forced.

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Samson was no longer a deliverer, but a slave. He was a slave.

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And if you look behind it all, apart from God, Samson was a slave already.

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His sin led him to these low points, especially his womanizing.

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In our passage today, we will see the realities of slavery and the hope of the true liberator.

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The one who won't set us free for only a time and then the enemy will come back, or a liberator who will set us free for a time and our sin will come back and we'll be enslaved again.

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No, we're going to see a liberator who's going to bring deliverance and it will come and it will be always and forever.

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It will be indeed, it will be truly. So let's take a look. Now before we look at verse 31, actually, remember

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Jesus has been in Jerusalem since the Feast of Tabernacles. He's been in discussions with crowds of people.

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He's been in hard conflicts and confrontations with the Jewish authorities. And we even saw that he evaded the temple police.

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Why is Jesus always so good at evading people that want to kill him, right? He's just amazing with that.

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Only then when he offers himself up is when, of course, it is accomplished.

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And so from what we can tell in our passage today, Jesus is still in Jerusalem and he's possibly near the temple or inside the temple itself in the courtyard in the temple grounds, okay?

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That's the background. Verse 31. You also should have a little scripture list in your thing there if you didn't bring your

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Bible. You can look through that as I go through the sermon. So it says,

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So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed him, If you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine.

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Jesus gives the test of faith for those who state that they have belief in him.

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You see, up to this time, many said that they have believed, but we found that it was superficial.

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And John chapter 2 is based on his signs and his wonders. It was superficial faith and belief.

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Many believed him after he even multiplied the fish and the bread and they followed him all the way from the east side of Galilee back over to Capernaum.

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And these people, tons of people were following him and they said they had some sort of level of belief in him.

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But then in John chapter 6, when Jesus gave these hard sayings, where he said, eat my flesh and drink my blood, and we went over that, and if you haven't heard that exposited, go back to our sermons, listen to what

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Jesus means there. But he said, eat my flesh, drink my blood, and it says that all the people who had believed him, all these disciples who had been following him, left him.

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And from what we can tell, only the twelve remained. Only the twelve apostles remained. All these people left him.

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And so, how many thousands, if not millions of people, have said that they've believed on the

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Lord Jesus Christ, but then they turn away? Or they despise his words, they don't continue in his words, they avoid him, or they leave him, or whatever.

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There's been many people throughout history who said, I've turned to Jesus, I was one of those people. I was one of those people in youth group going,

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I will follow Jesus forever. And then I went into a life of drugs and alcohol and all those things, and my life was empty.

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But I was one of those people. I believed in Jesus. There's many people who do that.

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You see, God knows who truly are his disciples, but the test of faith for us in this life, the unavoidable outward manifestation, the evidence of something real in us, will be if we remain with him and with what he has spoken.

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That won't be the catalyst of what gets us saved. It'll be the result of after he saved us.

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He will perform that. Remember in John 6, he says, I will lose none that the

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Father has given me. So while he doesn't lose you, you will continue in his

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Word. You'll continue and abide in his Word. This salvation that we get to walk in, as the

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Apostle Paul says, you see, a genuine believer seeks out Jesus' words, desires to understand them, finds

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Jesus' words dear to them, and seeks to obey them only by the grace of God.

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We must hold tight to Jesus and his words if we are to endure.

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That's what it says. The Bible says that over and over again. It said, hold tight to Jesus and his words.

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I don't know why, but when I was looking at this, I thought of this movie in the 90's with Bill Paxton and Helen Twister.

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You know, the tornado movie? And at the end, when this F5 tornado is coming towards them and Bill and Helen can't get away, they're in this barn, right?

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And there's this metal pipe that goes deep into the earth. That's what he said at least.

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And he found these leather straps that I think were for horses or something. They looked like thick, thick belts.

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And they wrapped themselves with the belts and around the pipe. And the F5 Twister came over them and the roof shot off the top.

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And literally, they're in the eye of this Twister and they're upside down hanging like this.

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That's a wild movie, right? And so the point is, why I thought of that is we've got to hold on to Jesus and his words.

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We've got to hold on. Our sin and the world and the devil try to pull us up like that tornado.

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And we're anchored down, not of our own power, but by Jesus' power. He says, I'll lose none that the

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Father has given me. He'll do it. And it's this amazing aspect where they're pulling, but they can't get us.

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They can't. Jesus won't let it. But His words, His words especially, abiding in His words, they help us to be anchored.

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This word continue in, in the Bible there, is meno in the

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Greek, meno. And from meno, we get words like remain, abide, or continue in.

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And there's actually three sort of meanings to meno depending on context, and we'll kind of look at that real quick.

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One of the meanings for meno is remain, stay, or live in His Word.

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In fact, this is the exact word that is used in John 1 when it says that Jesus stayed with the apostles at their place of lodging.

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He remained with them. The point is, don't stay with another's words.

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Don't camp out on the words of another religion. Don't build a figurative house to remain in with any words but the words of Christ.

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Make a fortress for yourself with Jesus' words. Make a fortress with His words.

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Build your life in all the places you remain on the foundation and building blocks of the

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Word of Christ. Another meaning here for meno is remain, persist, or endure.

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Remain, persist, or endure in His Word. Continue to live your life according to Jesus' words and commandments.

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If you have become regenerate and heeded His words to come to Him for eternal life, then you will also come to Him for instruction on how to finish out this life.

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Jesus will later say this in the Gospel according to John in chapter 14. He says, if you love

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Me, obey My commandments. What He commands, what He teaches,

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He wants you to persist in. He wants you to obey. Do you know what

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He has said? Do you know what He wants? If you and I are

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His disciples, we ought to find out. We should find out what He said and remain in His words.

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And lastly, with meno, there is also wait for or await for something.

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Await for His Word. Wait for Jesus' Word. One day you will leave this life, brothers and sisters.

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I will leave this life. We will enter the Kingdom of Heaven after our deaths.

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And His sweet words of comfort will be there. Do you know that?

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Just wait for His Word. When you close your eyes for the last time on this earth, you will wake up to the sweet voice and assurance of Jesus Christ.

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Await His Word that day. It will be the greatest moment of peace washing over you.

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He will instruct you also on that final day. One day in the future,

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Christ will return. And He'll speak a word and all the dead will rise, it says.

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He'll speak a single word and all the dead will rise and those who are still alive will be caught up because His Word is so powerful.

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That will be the last day. And all the living and the dead will come and it says they will be judged.

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We saw that in John 5. And so we await His Words. We await for His Words.

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We look to His Words now. We await for them in the future. The point of all this is perseverance has always been the mark of a true believer.

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Persevering. It's all through the epistles. It's all through Jesus' words.

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Those who endure. Perseverance. It matters just as much that you're abiding in Christ tomorrow in a year, in five years, in 20 years, in 50 years as you are today.

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It matters. The faith of today supplied by God is to build up the faith of tomorrow.

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Jesus' statements also show us that He has never been concerned in multiplying converts.

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Never. He says, He doesn't say, please come back.

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Be My disciples. He says, all know if you're My disciple if you continue and abide and remain in My Word.

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He's never been concerned about multiplying converts if they aren't true believers. He wants none of the tricks and carnal substitutions for the

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Gospel proclamation. He doesn't want the biggest religion in the world. He wants the truest one.

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And because of that, it will be the biggest one in the world. Because it's real and it's true. And He says the word disciple here, that is mathetes in the

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Greek. And that mathetes, disciple, has the root word for learn. Learn.

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Are you willing to be taught by Jesus' words? Are you moldable?

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Are you teachable according to His words and the words that He gave the New Testament writers?

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You see, we must, and I do this sometimes too, we must be willing to put away all eifelisms.

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All eifelisms. To throw them away. The truly disciples of Christ will put their feelings and inclinations and presuppositions and tainted rationalities, all of those things, they ought to be brought before Jesus into subjection to His Word.

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Are we willing to accept both the easier and harder sayings of Jesus? We talked about that in John 6.

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Are we willing to go beyond John 3 .16 and the beatitudes in the

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Sermon on the Mount? What about when Jesus speaks to our sin? You see, the

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Pharisees hated His Word because He often confronted their own hypocrisy and lawlessness.

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He exposed their evil deeds that they thought were perfectly disguised as righteousness. You see, if you've started with Jesus, you continue with Jesus, you end with Jesus, and this includes

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His Word. Go now to verse 32. He said,

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If you continue in My Word, then you are truly disciples of Mine. And here it is. And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

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Believing Christ and remaining in His Word will result in two glorious benefits right here.

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Two things. Knowing the truth and being set free.

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Knowing the truth and being set free. And that's the glorious aspect about Jesus' words.

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They are truth. They are true. And if you heard Him, and continue in what you've heard, you will know the truth.

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You will know the truth. What did the prologue say in John 1? And the

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Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten, full of grace and truth.

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Later in John 14, Jesus will give Himself the title, the truth. He'll call

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Himself the truth. He is truth embodied. He is the

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Word made flesh. What is the word truth? He is the Word made flesh. Jesus is the embodiment of honesty, integrity, veracity, dignity.

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And God can never lie. In fact, what comes out of His mouth is always true and accurate.

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And look, it's not that God desires to speak what is true, and then He speaks.

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It's that whenever God speaks from His very own nature, it is true. You see?

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He doesn't go, I'm going to say something true right now. God speaks, and out of His own nature and volition comes truth.

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It flows out of Him because that's one of His attributes. Absolute truth comes from God.

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Notice in verse 32, it doesn't say truth alone.

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It says what? It comes with the Greek definite article. It says what? The truth. You will know the truth.

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The truth. In a day with so many people saying I've got my truth, you've got your truth, there's a lot of truths out there.

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Look, there's the truth, and He says you'll know it through Him. That's His promise.

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The Lord Jesus precludes any notions of alternative truths that mankind may come up with.

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Following Christ and continuing in His Word will make you know the truth. But here's something everyone must understand.

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It's absolutely critical. Anyone seeking to know and believe on Christ will not know the truth by mere intellectual examination.

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That's not what Jesus is saying. Look, mankind, if you study

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My Word enough and you work hard enough to do what My Word says, then you'll know the truth.

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That's not what He says. It's not an intellectual examination. It's a moral commitment.

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It's a faith commitment. You'll know the truth because of Christ and the faith that He supplies us.

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You see, the most daring and relentless seekers of truth will only possess it through Him. I've said this before, but the faith -filled grandma in a

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Southern Baptist church who has only an eighth grade reading level and knows her

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Bible, knows the truth more than a secular theologian who studied the

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Bible in original languages. That's true. If we consider

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Jesus and what He's saying that He is the truth, then we could rephrase verse 32 like this, if you continue in My Word, then you are truly disciples of Mine and you will know

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Me and I will set you free. You see that? You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

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But since He is the truth, you could say you will know Me and I will set you free. Now, He may not be going for this, but you can't divorce the attributes of God from His being.

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And so this statement, I think, could be well received. Because you know what? It's not the concept of truth that makes you and I free.

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It's not a concept. It's not a word out there that makes us free. It's the one who is truth and gives truth that sets us free.

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This also demonstrates that Christ won't lead us into untruths or error.

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Many suggest we Christians follow things that are make -believe. Christians follow fanciful tales.

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But the Lord assures us that's not the case. In fact, those who reject

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Christ and His Word are the ones living in the fantasy lands. They don't abide in truth.

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They don't live in reality. They're living in a fantasy that this world of sin has created.

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They say they're woke. They're not. They're spiritually broke. We know the truth.

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We understand it. He's made us to learn it. He's opened our eyes. Suppressing the truth in unrighteousness is the only way to continue that false worship of other things that are not the one true

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God. You see, untruth will not set you free. Error keeps one bound and shackled.

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Always. This is one of the many benefits of being born again by the

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Holy Spirit. He goes on to say here, you will know truth, which if we go back to some of the things

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He said, He said you will be taught of God. You will be taught. Jesus said you will know that I am

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He. You will not have to tell someone born again, know the

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Lord, for those bought by Christ in the New Covenant will know Him from the least to the greatest, and you will forgive all our iniquities and remember them no more.

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That's in Jeremiah, the promise of the New Covenant. You will know. You will know truth. You see, when

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Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and they disobeyed

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God, of course sin came into the world, then they became bent on doing the evil despite knowing evil and good.

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But we, reconciled, saved by Christ, we now have the spirit -wrought capacity to do good even though we know evil and good.

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We have the capacity to do good. We're not bent on it anymore. God restored to us a will given to us from Him that can do good.

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The curse has been lifted from us. The evil is no longer appealing, or it should be. Christ did something that day for us that has had many glorious results.

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This whole salvation process then results in freedom.

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Freedom spiritually. Freedom emotionally. Freedom mentally. Freedom physically.

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Freedom intellectually. Everything. If not now, fully consummate later, we will be free.

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We're free in many ways. Even for the person bound in a prison in China for being a

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Christian, they're more free than the people outside of those bars. We are free.

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In rabbinic tradition, that is rabbinic oral tradition, the Pirkei Avot, this is

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Jewish tradition, number 35 says, whoever takes upon himself the yoke of the law, the

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Torah, they remove from themselves the yoke of the government and the yoke of worldly concerns, but whoever breaks off from himself the yoke of the law, they place upon themselves the yoke of government and the yoke of worldly concerns.

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In other words, what these Jews are saying in their rabbinic traditions is that if you take on the yoke of the law, if you take this heavy wooden thing that they would put on a beast of burden and you put it on yourself and you're bound to this yoke of the law, the law of Moses, He says you'll be free.

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You'll be free from worldly concerns. You'll be free from even governmental control. You'll be free.

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But here, in our text, Jesus is saying He Himself, the

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One filled with grace and truth, the truth embodied, only He can remove yokes and burdens and slavery of sin of the world.

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Only He can make one free. The law doesn't make one free. The law enslaves sinful people.

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This is a freedom, by the way, to something and this is a freedom from something. Freedom to Christ and eternal life.

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Freedom from sin and death. This is freedom. A freedom that changes our position in the most radical ways.

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Absolutely. So now the Jews have a response for Jesus. Verse 33, look in your

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Bible there. Verse 33, the people answered

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Him, We are Abraham's descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone.

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How is it You say You will become free? If Jesus is offering freedom, then their understanding is

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He is calling them slaves to something. They get it. They're quick. He didn't even call them slaves yet.

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He said He offered freedom and they caught on and they're like, wait, we're not slaves of anything.

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How could we become free when we're already free? And they respond speaking of their covenant with God through Abraham.

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We are Abraham's descendants. By the way, literally in the Greek, that is the word for seed.

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They say we're Abraham's seed. We are the special chosen people of God. What it means to be a child of Abraham is freedom.

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They're like, we're already free, buddy. We're already free. Promised land.

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Escape from Egypt. Escape from the slavery of Egypt. Covenantal blessings. But they don't realize it.

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They have lived in an illusion of freedom. And when you think about their history, they've had political slavery and occupation from Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Syria, and Rome.

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And those are only the big ones. But what do they mean then if they've been enslaved before by those nations?

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What do they mean we've never been enslaved? What they probably mean is we've never been spiritually enslaved.

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They see themselves as the sons of God. Heirs to the kingdom that will be ushered in by the

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Messiah. They see no problem and therefore no need for a solution that Christ offers.

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The point is, Jesus is trying to show them that there is a much greater force that has kept them enslaved beyond these nations.

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And so these people are arrogant. They're arrogant and they're confident. They say, how is it that you say you will become free?

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It even has possibly a challenging and mocking tone. So you're going to set us free? What you say you're going to do for us, we already have.

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Verse 34 shows the Lord's response. Take a look at that in your Bible. Jesus answered them,

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Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.

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So Jesus starts that with His powerful, authoritative, divine statement where we've talked about this, when

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He says, truly, truly, I say to you, it's like God Himself declaring something that's true.

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He doesn't need to say, thus saith the Lord, because He is the Lord. So He says, truly, truly, in truth,

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I say to you. And He says, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.

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Let Me relieve you of your delusions. You are not free. You are slaves.

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They think they are not, that they are enslaved to no one, but Jesus shows their slavery is fully intact.

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You see, mankind is shackled, enchained to its sin.

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If this doesn't speak to the depravity of man, I don't know what does. Because He says, everyone...

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He doesn't talk about simply the covenantal Jews. He says, everyone who sins is then a slave of sin.

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That's our predisposition in Adam. The curse of the fall.

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Paul says in Romans 6, do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?

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Either of sin resulting in death, so when you are a slave to sin, it's going to result in death.

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Or you are the slaves of the one whom you obey, slaves of Christ resulting in righteousness.

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Peter confirms this as he says in his epistle, for by what a man is overcome that to which he is enslaved.

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If you are overcome by something, if something is more powerful than you, then you are enslaved to it.

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And sin has become so pervasive and powerful. Boy, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, one of the best preachers ever upon this earth truly, he preached on this passage in John 8, verse 36.

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And he says, they call the Negro in America a slave, but men who prostrate their reason before the throne of superstition are slaves through and through.

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He says, they call the Negro the slave, but these masters are slaves. They're slaves.

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They're slaves to their sin. They've kidnapped these men and these women, and they've put them to slavery.

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They don't even realize that they're slaves, Spurgeon says. You see, no matter how hard one tries, the taskmaster of sin keeps coming back to us, driving us.

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It promises this sin, that sin, this act, that act, drunkenness, fornication, adultery, homosexuality, lying, coveting, idolatry.

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This one finally will give you the freedom you're looking for. This time you'll finally be free.

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This one will finally make you happy. Only the person doesn't realize that they've only put further restraints upon themselves.

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They've made them more enslaved than they were before. More slavery, more slavery. You see, don't ever believe a person who says they are very happy in their sin.

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There's some element in which they find pleasure in their sin, but in some capacity, as fallen people who are suppressing the image of God in them, they're also equally joyful and in great despair and tragedy.

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You and I both know, having come from that old master, that as tempting as it is to believe that, it is self -deception.

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This makes me happy. No, that's deceiving ourselves. I remember one time

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I asked a man on the streets. We were giving the Gospel, and I asked this man who was a self -professing homosexual who said he had many partners of men.

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And I said, Are you really happy? Does this really bring you joy?

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And for the split second, his face dropped, and he looked dead in despair.

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I mean, just complete tragedy and depression hit him for an instant.

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And all of a sudden, it's as if he snapped out of it. He looked at me in bold, and he said, Yes, this brings me much happiness.

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In fact, I was looking at possibly how we could be loving to our

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LGBT neighbors, loving and giving them the Gospel with grace. And I was looking, today they're having some sort of parade and march downtown.

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And I thought, I wonder if we could get there and just tell them we love them, we want them to know the truth, and the truth can set them free.

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And when I wanted to see at what times and what location it was,

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I googled it, and it said click here. And clicking upon it opened up something to me that was deplorable.

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Advertisements even in that event get information of men, and it's unspeakable to even say clothed in such a way where they're even wearing clothing as if they're slaves.

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They have chains on. It's just horrible. With children in the background.

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I just wanted more information to see if we could bring the Gospel there. They're doing that today. That's happening today right now.

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They're enslaved. I'm praying one day those doors open and those people come in, and we'll love them, and we'll give them the

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Gospel. We'll show them the truth. That the truth can set them free. But look, it's a numbing effect.

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It's a sedative. Jesus isn't concerned about slavery to a political entity as the

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Jews thought. Mankind's moral failure enslaves it to a rebellion against its

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Creator. Although some may manifest this slavery in varied degrees of malevolence, everyone, everyone who sins are under this same slavery.

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Everyone according to the Lord. No one is in the exception. Everyone has a sin problem that needs a

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Jesus solution. Everyone. And look, it's not that Jesus' coming has no impact on political slavery or sex slavery or social justice issues.

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It's that if Jesus came solely for those things, if that was His sole pursuit in coming was to resolve those social issues and slavery issues, then the slavery of sin would continue.

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What does He need to do first? Jesus came to change men, women, and children in their innermost beings.

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And out from there flows the ability and capacity with the power of the Gospel to shut these other foundations of slavery down.

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It's going to be the Gospel. It's going to be changed hearts. Yeah, Jesus cares about slavery.

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Yeah, Jesus cares about sex slavery in this world and all these horrible, horrible things going on.

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But if He just came for those, sin would still be an issue. He came for the root, not the stem.

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The stem will wither away. And so the

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Gospel is Jesus Christ taking the form of a slave. That's amazing. Jesus took the form of a slave to set free the slaves of sin, you and me.

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And then when that is completed, that changes the other forms of slavery around us. Think about slavery too in the form of ownership.

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Those who are slaves to sin have been sold to it.

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They often sell themselves to it. They don't regard the true Master, the merciful

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Master. In Jeremiah 3 .14, the Lord declares, Return! Return, O faithless sons!

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For I am a Master to you and I will take you to Zion. What's Zion? Peace and freedom.

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Come back to Me and I'll give you what you need. I'll be a Master to you.

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Jesus says what in the Sermon on the Mount? You can't serve two Masters. You will either despise one and love the other, or hate one and be devoted to the other.

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So for sin to be one's Master, that means God isn't. And on the inverse, for God to be one's

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Master, He must no longer be under the yoke and slavery of sin. The Lord must purchase him or her.

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That's actually, by the way, what redeem means. We throw this word redemption around in Christianity.

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Redeeming something. You ever gotten a ticket for something and you go to redeem an item? That's what

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Jesus did. He purchased you. As if we were on these slave blocks.

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And He purchased us with His blood. He became like you and me. He became a slave and died on a cross so that we would no longer be slaves.

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We're free. Purchased with blood. Righteous, divine blood.

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Look at verse 35. The Jews said that they are a seed of Abraham, but Jesus is going to demonstrate something damning about their heritage.

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Say, we're of the seed of Abraham, man. We got it. We got the blood rights.

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This is ours. We're sons of God. He says, you're slaves of sin. But then

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He says this, the slave does not remain in the house forever, the son does remain forever.

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They're not truly sons of Abraham. They mention Abraham, so Jesus then mentions and alludes to Genesis 21 -10 that the son of the slave woman did not become an heir, but the son of the free woman remained in the house and became an heir.

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You remember Sarah told Abraham, drive out this maid servant and her son for the son of this maid shall not be an heir with my son

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Isaac. And that was prototypical. That was pointing forward. What Jesus is saying is they have become slaves to sin and therefore they would be cast out out of the house, out of the

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Father's presence if they are not set free. Many, many from this time are not truly

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Abraham's descendants according to the Spirit. Maybe by blood, but not by Spirit.

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The free son remains with the Father forever. And what do we become? We become sons and daughters of the living

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God by the work of Jesus Christ and we remain with Him forever. We get to remain in the house.

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You see, the Jews had a proud assurance based on bloodline and heritage, but the seed of Abraham is actually

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Christ. It's Christ. And He offers that inheritance and that covenantal blessing, that new covenantal blessing to those whom

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He makes the spiritual seed. The ones saved and set free are now the spiritual sons and daughters of Abraham.

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They think they are, but even Gentiles would become sons and daughters of Abraham. But what's interesting about verse 35, though, is if you look at that verse, the son, ha -huyos in the

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Greek. Ha -huyos is always used in John's Gospel for Jesus, the son.

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While ta -tekna -tutheyu, the children of God, is referred to Christians.

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So in Jesus' analogy, He is the Son who's always been in His Father's house.

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Jesus is the genuine Son. He is the heir. Jesus is the one with the title firstborn despite being eternal.

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That is, He has preeminence. He is in the rightful position to release us.

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He is the true heir. He is the Son. He has the power to do what you and I can't.

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And as rightful Son, He can bring us into His house. He will pay the slave debt for you and me.

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We will owe not a thing any longer. And on that day, Christ said it is finished.

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It is equally saying, debt paid in full, no longer a slave, free, you're mine.

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Free indeed. The royal Son came to bring freedom to those enslaved to sin.

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In fact, that was long prophesied even hundreds of years before Jesus came. In Isaiah 61, it says, the

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Spirit of the Lord is upon me, speaking of Jesus, because the Lord has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted.

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He has sent me to bandage up the brokenhearted and what? To proclaim liberty to the captives and freedom to the prisoners.

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Jesus came to set the captives free. So since the

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Son is Him and He's remained in His Father's house forever, He is the true seed, both divinely by His Father and physically through the long prophesied seed of the woman and the seed of Abraham.

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Therefore, Jesus has all the power to set you and I free.

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So what does He say? If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed, truly free.

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When you think about a slave, he is considered not as worthy as family.

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In 2 Corinthians, Paul quotes the Lord as he says, I shall be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me.

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In John's first epistle, he says, see how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God and such we are.

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You see, in Christ, we've been given the right to be called children of God. The slave has no rights.

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The slave has no legacy, but we now have rights. We now have an inheritance. We now have a legacy.

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But being justified by grace, we have become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

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In Him, we've been raised up, co -heirs with Christ. We are seated with Him in the heavenlies according to Ephesians 1.

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What was once only Jesus Christ has now become ours because of His grace.

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Solely by His grace, the New Testament writers say over and over again, you have an inheritance.

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You have eternal life. You see, church, we were outside the house, and now we're inside the house.

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We were not a people, but now we are children of God. We were once slaves, but now we are free.

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And so this is unspeakable grace because He didn't have to do it. He didn't have to do any of it.

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We're outside the boundary. We're outside the Father's house, covered in muck and sin, slaves to our own unrighteousness and sin.

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And He says, I'm going to clean you up, and I'm going to set you free simply because He desires to do so.

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It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. A free gift gives freedom.

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And so when you think about a slave, he is compelled to labor, forced to work for another master. Sin works in such a way that even when we thought we were our own masters, we weren't.

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Like a dog that is compelled to go back to his vomit, as Scripture says. Like a vulture that chooses rotting meat over vegetables.

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Like the Leviathan that swims in the ocean and rather walks on dry ground.

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That is our nature. So man's nature is fallen. But when the

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Son sets you free, you are free. Romans 8 says, after it says that there is no longer any condemnation for those in Christ, it says,

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For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has set you free from the law of sin and death.

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The Spirit of life set us free in Christ because of our fallen disposition.

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That one law, the law that we could never measure up to, that law only gave us death.

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You see, imperfection measured up against perfection always comes out wanting. And so life becomes an endless struggle of works and sin.

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Works and sin. Works and sin. Laboring, laboring, laboring. Trying to be good.

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Your head's down. You're just trying to be good, but you keep sinning. Trying to be good. Doing works in some capacity.

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I'm a good person. Then you go over here and you sin, and you sin, and you sin. And you build this rut, and you're digging, and you're a slave to sin.

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And you look up, and you try to see if any of what you just did paid to the account of your sin.

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Did it pay for anything? Did it amount to anything? Does what

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I owe, did that shrink with all those works? And you look up in despair, and you see no matter all that you've done, you look up and you still owe the same amount.

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Never paid for. By your best works. Because that sin always brings us back to that old master.

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Jesus Christ bought our freedom by His own work. His own perfection.

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And in that He broke the chain that compelled us to sin. And so what do the

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Christians of the New Testament start calling themselves? This is radical. What do the

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Christians in the New Testament era start calling themselves? They knew what Jesus said. He says if you sin, you're a slave to sin.

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They start calling themselves after Jesus saved them, they call themselves doulos.

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That is, slave. Say what? They were slaves to sin.

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Now they want to be called slaves again. And that's how much they are devoted to Jesus.

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They were willing to be called no longer slaves of sin, but slaves to Christ.

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It was like a badge of honor. Some translations say bond -servant. But no longer a sin.

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Slaves of Christ. Slaves of righteousness. You remember when we did the epistle of James?

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James started his letter. James, a doulos, a slave of God and of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says to the Romans in chapter 1, Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, an apostle set apart for the

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Gospel of God. Jude, in the letter from Jude, Jude calls himself a slave of Christ.

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And even Jesus in the Revelation, He says, you and I, He calls us slaves of God.

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Peter admonishes us, act as free men and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as slaves of God.

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You see, when the Son sets you free from sin and death, we are all at once truly and completely free.

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We have liberty. We have freedom. But also our desires shift.

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They change. What we did out of compulsion, trying to do good works, thinking they earned something, the sin that we committed, that old slavery, we now good deeds out of our own desire.

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And He prepared them beforehand, that we would walk in them. He prepared them.

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My life, your life, is hidden in Christ. He bought us with a price, His blood, and so we can gladly do the works that He has set for us beforehand.

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They don't make us even more enslaved. They make us free now, because He set us free. He says, we could say it this way,

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My Lord owns me, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm a slave. I'm a doulos.

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I'm treated, though, like a son. I'm treated like a daughter. He took my burden that I couldn't even lift with a single finger, and He says that His burden is easy and His yoke is light.

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He cares for me now. He gives me an inheritance. And for what Jesus did for me,

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I'd gladly give myself to Him for all eternity. And so we say, Lord, command me.

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Lord, lead me. Lord, teach me. Point me somewhere and I'll go. Our lives are in Christ.

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We are His doulos, His slaves. So, what does it look like to be a slave to Christ?

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To be a free man? To be a free woman? I put the whole chapter of Romans 6 in your bulletin there.

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We're not going to read through the whole thing. But just grab that real quick. Grab that sheet with Romans 6 on it.

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This is, of course, right after Romans 4 and 5 where Paul establishes we're only saved by grace.

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We're justified by no works of our own. And then people would say, well, then can we continue in sin?

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And he says, may we continue in sin? That grace may increase. And he says, may it never be. And so what does it look like to be a slave of Christ?

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Read Romans 6. Because we've died with Christ, our passions have died with Him.

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Because we've been raised with Christ, we are raised to newness of life. Our old selves were crucified.

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And then if you look down, he says, we are no longer slaves to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin.

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Then it says even further down, death no longer was master over him, so now death will no longer be a master over us.

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And it says, for sin shall not be master over you. You're no longer a slave to sin.

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You've experienced grace, he says. But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you became obedient from the heart.

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That form of teaching to which you were committed and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

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And he says, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

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You have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, he says. You see that at the very end of Romans 6.

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But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification and in the outcome, eternal life.

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And then he gives us that famous verse, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. And so when you read through Romans 6 later, what is all this saying? Because Christ has set you and I free from the bondage to sin and death, you have now become a slave to God and righteousness.

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Laboring never saved you nor I, and so our Lord had to gift us freedom so that we would then be slaves of righteousness.

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A master transfer, a debt payment was given. Now with the power of sin broken in us, we made by His Spirit obey

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Him. See? When He broke the curse and slavery of sin,

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He didn't just give you an inheritance, He broke a power in you. There's a new power at work in you.

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You can now obey Him by His Spirit. The first was wages of death for our slavery, and the second is free gift of eternal life.

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And so what Paul is saying is, if this has become your reality and you are a child of God, stop trying to go back to your old slavery.

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Walk in the newness of life. In the letter to the Galatians, you remember the church of Galatia, they were starting to believe some of the

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Judaizers, and they were willing to add circumcision to the Gospel. And he says, you're going back to your old ways of slavery to sin.

01:00:07

Adding things to the finished work of Christ that you could never bear in the first place. He says in Galatians 5 .1,

01:00:14

it was for freedom that Christ set us free, therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.

01:00:24

Don't fall for that slavery to sin anymore. Don't think that any of your slavery and righteousness bought you this freedom.

01:00:36

For it was Christ that set us free, Paul says. Then D .A.

01:00:43

Carson says, true freedom is not the liberty to do anything we desire, but true freedom is the liberty to do what we ought.

01:00:56

And it is genuine liberty because doing what we ought now pleases us.

01:01:02

You see? Our hearts changed. It's true freedom because it's doing what we want to do because we've been changed.

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We want to obey our Lord. And so last part of the text here, going back to it real quickly,

01:01:19

I just love what Jesus says. He says, you will be free indeed. That word indeed in the

01:01:27

Greek is antos, which means something pertaining to reality that is actually true, certain, and real.

01:01:35

If the Son makes you free, you will not be figuratively free. You will not be sort of free.

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You will not be possibly free. If the Son sets you free, you are actually, truly, really, and certainly free.

01:01:53

Completely, you are free. There is a certainty to it. If Christ purchased you with His blood,

01:02:00

He makes no returns and no exchanges. Why? Because He makes no mistakes.

01:02:08

So He doesn't return you. He doesn't exchange you. He bought you, and He wants you, and He makes no error.

01:02:16

If you are saved now, you have assurance of that salvation now. It is wrapped up in this promise and not in your abilities.

01:02:26

If the Son sets you free, you are truly free. So don't come in here condemning yourself.

01:02:36

We know we deserve prison forever, but if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed, and live in that reality.

01:02:46

We need to remember that. Because sometimes we try to go back to the old slavery ways.

01:02:52

We sin. Because we all sin. John says, if you say you don't sin, then the truth is not in you, and you are a liar.

01:03:02

We all sin. We are going to sin until Christ returns. We are going to fail. And so we think, am

01:03:09

I back with my old master? No. You are not. You are not. I mean, of course, some people leave

01:03:18

Christ, and they never come back. They stay with the old master. I would be concerned about that if they were ever set free in the first place.

01:03:27

But if we look to our Lord, if we remember who we are, if we remember our freedom, then we will have the strength only in and by His Spirit, then we can be slaves to Christ.

01:03:41

Slaves of righteousness. Do you remember actually in James, the brother of our

01:03:48

Lord, James called it the perfect law of liberty. And apart from Christ, honestly, law and liberty in a theological context would seem at odds.

01:04:02

Right? James calls it the perfect law of liberty. Freedom and law, in Christ those things come together.

01:04:10

In Christ those things come together, and they are freeing. They are freeing.

01:04:18

When we obey our Lord, we are acting in the way that He meant us to be. Free. Free.

01:04:24

Free to obey. Free to please Him. So let's wrap this up, church. I know this has been a long one.

01:04:31

I appreciate your patience. The reality is there are so many people enslaved.

01:04:41

And the idea is that we live in a free world. As Americans, we live in what?

01:04:48

The land of the free and the home of the brave. What an illusion.

01:04:57

You know, the founders of our country only considered us free insofar as that we have

01:05:02

Christ. Revolutionary soldier and U .S.

01:05:07

legislator Noah Webster wrote, Christianity is the basis, or rather the source, of all genuine freedom.

01:05:16

Sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams said, My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the

01:05:23

Gospel of Christ. The signer of the Declaration of Independence, John Witherspoon said,

01:05:31

There is no salvation, no freedom in any other than in Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and the one who wants liberty ought to be for the true and undefiled religion that Christ gave.

01:05:43

You say, Pastor Wade, why are you quoting political figures? I'm quoting Christians.

01:05:48

I'm quoting Christians who understood what it meant to be free. Men that were set free by Jesus who knew what it meant to be free and desired that freedom enough to fight for it so others could hear the

01:06:02

Gospel of freedom and experience that same eternal freedom in Him.

01:06:10

Unfortunately, much of what they fought for has been squandered.

01:06:17

We see people enslaved to their lust, internet images that imprison men, confused and mentally sick people mutilating their children's bodies, adulteries galore, fornications galore, body count bragging, drunkenness, revelry, drug idolatry, pills, getting high, seeking to escape the slavery reality.

01:06:40

All of it and more keeps people bound. They think they are free when they do these things.

01:06:47

They've never been more enslaved than they are. It's like people are willingly lining up, put shackles on me and binding themselves.

01:06:58

But this issue started in the garden and it will only be finished and remedied in an empty garden tomb.

01:07:08

The tomb of Jesus Christ where He lives no more, where He's been raised.

01:07:18

My friends, this is the main point of the text. Everyone, and it says everyone, is a slave to their sin and only

01:07:26

Christ is the true liberator. And so if you don't know Him, people may be watching later, turn to Christ for deliverance.

01:07:35

Whatever you're enslaved to today, Christ can set you free from. There's not one thing that Christ can't set you free from.

01:07:44

You're not so far away in your slavery. You're not so far down in your deviancy and sin that Christ can't pull you out of.

01:07:54

That's a fact. He can save anyone and make you free and you'll be free indeed.

01:08:00

And it won't simply be a label. Freedom will touch every part of your being and you will enter the most free place ever, eternity with your

01:08:09

God. And if you are a believer today and you've been set free, as the

01:08:17

Word said, don't use your freedom as a cloak for sin. And if you're sinning, what's the solution?

01:08:25

The solution is always the same, Christ the liberator. That's it. Maybe you're just not looking at Christ enough.

01:08:33

And so as He said, continue in His Word and just know that if you're trapped in your slavery today, there's a way out.

01:08:41

His name is Jesus Christ and He calls Himself the truth. And so know the truth and the truth will set you free.

01:08:50

Amen? Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, Lord, we praise

01:08:58

You for today. We praise You for this text. Thank You, Lord, that we got to receive even 2 ,000 years later what

01:09:08

Jesus had said. And the only way that we've been able to receive it is because we're free.

01:09:15

We understand it because we're free. We rejoice in it because we're free and we've been set free because of Christ.

01:09:25

He became imprisoned. He became shackled. He was nailed to a cross.

01:09:31

He became the highest form of a slave so that we would no longer be the one who has the inheritance, the one who has everything, became nothing so we would have everything.

01:09:48

Thank You, Lord God. Thank You. We praise You. Thank You for setting us free,

01:09:56

God. Praise be to Your name. Thank You for setting us free.

01:10:02

And for those around us, Lord, and those in our lives who have not experienced this freedom, those who are at that parade today,

01:10:10

Lord, God, we desperately pray that You would set them free like You did for us.

01:10:16

Lord, if it weren't for Your intervention, we would still be slaves.