John 8:31-32 (To Continue With Christ)

Today's message is shorter than normal. It's not because I'm leaving for vacation today.

I try really hard to let the text speak, and if the text is easier to understand, then there's less that we need to cover but magnify and revel in what

God has said, and if the text is harder, well, like last week, we might be here an hour and 15 minutes, but today

I think will be a shorter message because it's a little bit easier to understand. Now, I want to start by an example.

When I was in the Army, there was basically two ways that you could live your life, and they were totally dependent upon where you were located.

If you were located in this arena called garrison, then that meant that you were not at war, that you were at peace, that there was no active hostile threat looming upon the horizon, that you showed up to work and you went home.

And when you're in garrison, life is all about appearances. It really does feel almost like a dog and pony show.

It's very different in the military when you're in garrison than when you're in combat. For instance, one of the most important things that you can do in garrison is not be really great at firing a weapon, but have really shiny boots when you show up to work.

I would actually take my boots off post and have them dipped and have them basically turned into fake patent leather, just so that I would always, no matter what, pass an inspection.

My boots would always look good. I would also take my uniforms off post and let them dip them in liquid starch and then press them until you could cut most stakes with the edge of my sleeve, because I wanted to be set apart from the rest of the troops.

You would have a beret that was perfectly flat to your face, and if it hangs lower, especially if you're in the airborne, then that is especially desirable.

And you look like that you really know what's going on. You may know nothing at all about anything at all, but if you look good in garrison, that covers about 70%.

You would do equipment. Your equipment really is secondary, and it's everything, you know, along with your appearance.

You go to work and you talk about your equipment. You clean your equipment. You inventory your equipment. You pull it all out and look and make sure you have it all every week, and then you put it all back in, and every week it's a new adventure on how you're going to pack it all up and get it all to fit, and every week somehow you're there until it does.

You maybe buy new equipment every now and then, and you do mock drills and training, but basically the

Army, when you're in garrison, is a 9 to 5 job. You show up at 9 o 'clock in the morning. You go home at 5 o 'clock in the afternoon, and there's really no responsibilities after that.

I would go for weekends away up in the Colorado mountains, and we would ski and we would snowboard, and we would do whatever we wanted until Monday morning formation, a lot of times going to sleep just 30 minutes before Monday morning formation.

You make your bed. You exercise. You shower, and you go to work. That's what garrison is. But all of that comes to a stop when you get orders to go to war.

I remember when I was in Colorado. This was 2002, late 2002 going into 2003.

I remember when we got orders that we were going to be going to Iraq, and everything changed in that moment.

We stopped shining our boots. We stopped making sure that our hair was perfectly off our ear.

We stopped having uniform inspections. We stopped all of that because now it was time to do what we were actually called to do.

It was time to stop wasting time with all the busy work and all the other things that they had created for us to do. It's time now to get to work and to get to the essentials, and you live every moment in those days like it's your last.

You pack up your stuff. You send it on a boat overseas, and you wait until the moment where you're going to board a plane, and you're going to be shipped over to some foreign country.

When you get there, life is totally different than anything you've ever known before. You wake up in your uniform.

You go to sleep in your uniform. You do life in your uniform. You're not worried about whether your beret looks nice.

You're not even wearing a beret at that point. You're just worried about, am I going to make it home to my family?

Am I going to do what I'm called to do? Now, hygiene is another thing that's very different when you are in combat.

When you're in garrison, you can wash yourself. You can take a shower. You don't even take for granted water, but when you're in a combat situation, your water is for drinking, and if you don't have drinking water in 130 -degree

Iraqi heat, then you're going to be shipped out on a gurney to a med tent, and hopefully you're okay.

I actually had heat exhaustion one time. It was awful. So you don't have water to really brush your teeth, so that thick fur that maybe you know about grows over your teeth.

You don't have water to shave, so you look a little grisly. You don't have water to take a shower. It was 45 days from the time

I landed in Kuwait and went into Iraq that I had my first shower. And I will attest,

I've said this before, but it's true, there comes a point when you're incapable of smelling yourself anymore, and that is a grace.

Other people might smell you, but you can't, and that is a good thing. The quicker you realize, though, that your mindset needs to shift and that you're not in garrison, you're not in Kansas anymore, the quicker you will adjust, the more healthy -minded you will be, and the better your time will go.

You'll be more aware of your situations and surroundings. Now, I think that this is actually a really appropriate metaphor for where the church is today.

For the last 50 or 60 years, the church has been a church at peace, and the world has basically left us alone, basically ignoring our existence.

Let us do our thing. We go to work. We come home. We've had a nine -to -five Christianity and an era of basic religious freedom where we've built big buildings, massive colleges, seminaries.

We've wrote millions of pages of Christian books. About 900 ,000 of them are not worth reading.

We've made corny Christian movies, and we've made a couple good ones. We've created positive and encouraging radio stations.

We've basically built an entire Christian subculture in this era of peace, but the time for comfort,

I think, is growing very quickly. The time for cozy

Christianity and easy believism is drawing to a close. The nine -to -five

Christianity is ending, and I think it's time for us to stop shining our proverbial

Christian boots and to start polishing our sword. And by sword, I mean the Word of God.

I mean the weapons of warfare that is listed in the Bible. I'm talking about the Word of God, prayer, fasting, evangelism, gatherings, spiritual disciplines, courageous living, having the courage and the mental fortitude to stand up against tyranny and to stand up against Caesar when he says, you can't do this.

You can't obey God. You can't say that to me. You don't have jurisdiction for that.

It is time for us to stand as Christians and realize that the battle is coming.

We're not being attacked right now like our brothers and sisters have been in the Middle East and other places, but we are feeling increasing pressure.

All of us feel it. All of us know it. And it's time for us to get ready. Now when

I say that, I want to be very clear. I'm praying for revival. I'm praying that this nation would repent and they would bow their knee to King Jesus, and I'm praying that they would understand the reality of who

He is and that our nation would actually turn from the way that it's going and turn from the direction that it's going and that we would see a new great awakening because that's happened here before in this part of the country.

When religion and morality were waning, when the thoughts of God were at an all -time low, men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were preaching the gospel and thousands and thousands of people were getting saved because God supernaturally breathed

His life into this part of the country. It emanated out of New England. I'm praying for that, and I hope that you're praying for that.

But if that does not happen, if by God's sovereign will the storm clouds overtake us, we need to know how to live.

We need to know how to live not just in comfortable Christianity. We need to learn how to live as Christianity at war, as soldiers for Christ.

Again, we're not aggressive. We preach the gospel. That's our warfare. We cling to the gospel.

We cling to the word of God. We're humble, and yet we're courageous. Now is the time for us to prepare, to take our stand with the spiritual warfare, the spiritual weapons.

Instead of putting our heads in the sand, it's time to put on the helmet of salvation, to joyfully don the breastplate of righteousness, to strap on the belt of truth in a post -truth culture, to don the sword of the

Spirit, and to live lives consistent with who the Spirit is, to lift up the shield of faith, to lace up the boots that will send you and I to proclaim the gospel.

It's no longer time where we can remain silent. We cannot be silent anymore.

We must be His witnesses in our Jerusalem, in our Judea, in our

Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And the only way that we're going to be able to do that is if we know what it means to be truly

Christian, which is what I want us to do today. Now last week, we talked about the opposite.

We talked about what it meant to be truly separated from Christ, meaning that you don't know who

Christ is. You go on living forever in the flesh. You go on resting in your inability, and then ultimately those things begin here.

Your confusion begins here. Your abandonment from God begins here, but it continues on into eternity so that in eternity you'll have an unending, never solvable sort of abandonment.

You'll have inescapable confusion for eternity. You'll have an utter inability to know and rescue yourself from the hell that is there, and it will last forever.

That was what we talked about last week. This week, I want to talk about what does it mean for us as Christians. What are we supposed to be doing right now even as we prepare for eternity?

Who are we supposed to be? Who are we called to be as pressures, as an intensity continues to rise?

And what I want us to look at is four basic truths in this passage. Number one, we're called to continue in our faith.

The second thing that we're going to be called to do is continue in obedience. The third thing that we're called to do is continue in the truth.

And then the fourth thing that we're called to do is continue in freedom. Now, if you will turn with me to John 8, 31 through 32, as we examine these truths together.

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed him, if you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

Lord, I pray that we would understand what it means for us to be truly Christian today. That we will understand what it means to continue in the faith that you have given us as a gift.

That we would understand what it means to continue in obedience, and how obedience is not a requirement for our salvation, but it is a testimony of what you've done for us in our salvation.

And Lord, I pray that you would be raising us up as people who would joyfully obey you. It says in your word that if we love you, then we will obey your commandments.

Lord, let our love for you not just stay locked in our hearts, but be manifest in how we live our lives.

Lord, I pray that as we consider these truths this morning, that we would not live in slavery, that we would not live in fear and anxiety, that we would not live in depression, that we would not live in confusion, that we would not live in ignorance.

Lord, I pray that we would consider the truth of your word, and that we would live in freedom.

It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Now, today we're going to be talking about what happens after you're saved.

Now, a lot of times what you'll notice is that I share the gospel from various different angles. Like, I don't always share it exactly the same way, but I try to share the gospel every single week at the end of the sermon, because that's what

I want us to consider. That's what I want us to have on our minds as we're walking away from here, is the gospel of Christ.

I'm going to actually share what the gospel is right now, because we're going to build upon that foundation as we move forward.

Because you cannot be a Christian if you don't have the gospel. If the gospel has not saved you, if Christ has not saved you by his gospel, then you are not a

Christian, and this sermon would be no good for you. It would be like trying to tell you to build a bathroom on top of no foundation.

You can't do it. You build a foundation first, and then you build the house. That's what we're going to be doing today.

The gospel is the message that you and I have broken fellowship with God through our sin.

We were born into sin, and we have perpetrated sin every single moment of our lives. And Jesus Christ, in his grace and in his forgiveness, came to this earth to purchase us on a

Roman cross so that we would be set free, so that we would have freedom from our sin, freedom from Satan's tyranny over our lives, and freedom eternally, as when he comes back, he's going to set us free forever, to live in that glorious freedom.

What we're talking about today is after all that happens, after God has eternally chosen you in heaven, after Jesus Christ has died for you on Calvary, after he rose from the dead in fulfillment of Holy Scripture, and he rose in victory after that, after he ascended into heaven, and he sat down on the throne of his

Father, and he's reigning over the kingdom of God, after the gospel was preached first in Jerusalem, and then

Judea, and then Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, and all the way down to the fact that when you and I heard the gospel, after even that, after that gospel hit us in a certain way that we've never heard before, and it regenerated us, and it made us new, and it gave us a new beating heart, it converted our heart of stone into a heart of flesh, after that, after you woke up and saw who

Jesus was, and you loved him, and you worshipped him, and you ran to him, and you clung to him, and you said, I want you to be my

God, like Thomas said at the end of the gospel of John, my Lord and my

God, after you said that, after you declared to Christ that he's your Lord, that he's your God, after you saw that you were a sinner, and you repented, and you turned to him, after he justified you, making you righteous, giving you

Christ's righteousness, and taking away your sin, after he made you into a new creation, and he made you heirs according to his promise, and co -heirs with Jesus, members of his body, new creations, a new man and a new woman, and after he came inside of you and indwelled you by the

Holy Spirit, you see all that God has done before you even get to do anything? He's done all of that, beginning in eternity, culminating at the cross, and then for 2 ,000 years, he's been working with you and I in mind, so that when you and I heard the gospel, our eternal calling collided with our temporary destiny.

God has done all of that for us before he ever asked us to do a single thing, and what he's asking us to do is to live according to the

Spirit, to let the Spirit fuel us into obedience and continuing in the faith.

That's the first thing. Once you've been reconciled to God through the eternal work of the triune God, now you're called to continue.

That's our work that we're going to be talking about today, and that's what we're going to be building upon, continuing in the faith.

Jesus says in John 8, 31, If you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine.

Now, I want to point out something here. This is what's called an if -then statement.

If -then statements are really important in the Bible, and it's what you learn in classes called hermeneutics.

It's a really dorky word. It just means the science of interpretation. How do you interpret the Bible? That's hermeneutics.

And hermeneutics tells you that if -then statements are really important. They create conditional realities that once the conditions are met, certain truths are going to be given.

So in this particular statement, if you continue in my word, then you will truly be my disciples.

It's like if I say, if I jump in the water, then I'm going to get wet. One logically follows from the other.

One is the intended result, and one is the condition when those results are met. Now, John 8, when he says, then you will truly be my disciples, he's saying what all of us want to hear when we get to heaven.

Well done, my good and faithful servant. You've been my disciples. You've done unto the least of these.

And we're like, Lord, when did we do this? And he's like, if you did it for me. And he says, welcome into my rest.

And he says, well done. Those are the things that we want to hear, that we are truly his disciples. But we're only truly his disciples if we continue in the faith.

That's what he says. He doesn't say, great. You wrote your name down on a card.

Or you profess belief in me at a Christian camp. Or some pastor motivated you with Chipotle, and he was going to buy you a burrito if you gave your life to Jesus, and you did it.

And you're like, okay, I guess I'm saved. Jesus doesn't look at that and say, great. I guess you're my disciple now.

He says, if you continue in my word, then you will most assuredly be my disciple.

Now, this can kind of sound like a works -based faith, if we don't understand what it's saying.

It can kind of sound like that we need to earn something, that we need to do something, and then Jesus will accept us. That's not what this passage is saying.

He's not saying, if you continue in my word, then I'm going to accept you.

He's already accepted you. He's saying, as someone who's accepted, then you must continue in my word, then you are my true disciples.

What he's doing is he's showing us the proof of what a true disciple is, the proof of what a true

Christian is. You see, a true Christian always continues with Christ.

And a non -Christian, who maybe thinks that they're a Christian, doesn't. The reason that a

Christian continues with Christ is because the Spirit of God is protecting them from apostasy. The Holy God himself is protecting them and holding them, just like Jude says in 24 of his book, that he is keeping us from stumbling.

He is actively guarding us. That word there actually means he's got us locked up in his grace.

It's a word that you would use if you were in prison. That I'm kept safe. That's a really nice way of saying

I'm locked up in his grace. I can't escape. That's what it's saying. So if you want to talk about eternal security, if you are truly in Christ, you have it.

And if you are truly in Christ, you will continue walking with him for the rest of your life.

You may have seasons. We all have seasons. Where it's hard, where it's frustrating, where you fall short, where you fail, where you struggle with a particular sin.

But I'm not talking about struggling, like I struggle to take a nap on Sunday afternoons. That's when

I'm giving myself over to something. I'm talking about actually struggling against our sin. Christians struggle against their sin and continue walking with Christ because the

Holy Spirit is keeping us safe in his grace. John 10, 27 through 28 says,

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give eternal life to them, and they will never, never perish.

And no one will snatch them out of my hand. No one can snatch you out of Jesus' hand.

Not even you. You are not that powerful to wrestle yourself out of the hands of God.

Paul tells us in Ephesians 2, 9, It is by grace that you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God. What Paul is saying is that this is not from yourselves.

This is not something that you can do. If you could do it, then you could lose it. But it's not your work.

It's God's work in you, which means that you cannot lose it. Paul proves this to us in Romans 11, 29 when he says the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

So if God has given you the gift of salvation, it's an irrevocable gift, and it cannot be taken from you.

And you cannot lose it. Do we not think that the infinitely sovereign

God who foreknew us before the foundations of the world didn't know how stupid that we are?

Did He not know how much like a toddler we are and that we'll escape anything?

My daughter Addison, this girl is unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it before.

We had a baby gate installed. I installed it. It was at the top of her head.

Her tallest curls could barely touch over the top of this gate. I watched her.

She lifted her foot up above her head. She put her ankle down on the top bar of this crib, and with only the strength of her ankle, pulled her body up and over.

Don't you think that we are a lot like that? If we could escape the grace of God, we would.

And don't you think that God, who is eternal and infinite and knows all things, could not make promises like that if He did not intend on making sure that we could not extricate ourselves from them?

He was smarter than me. He built the wall higher than Addison could climb over. He built the wall so high that we could never escape.

And praise God for that. That's a good thing. Because we are people who run from God, forget

God, fall short of the glory of God, and would try to escape if we could. Praise God that He has done the work to keep us from leaving

Him. Philippians 1, or Romans 8, 1 says,

Therefore, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Philippians 1, 6, we read this earlier, says, For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it.

That means that God is not going to start the work in you and then not finish it, because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

He's righteous, and He's holy, and He keeps His promises. He's not saying, if you continue in the word, then you will become a

Christian. He's quite literally saying, if you are a Christian, then you will continue in my word, and you will be known as a true disciple.

Now, obviously, there's false converts. There's people who say that they're

Christians, and they're not. That's a reality in the church today. Theologians call this the church visible versus the church invisible.

The church visible is everyone who gathers on a Sunday, everyone who sits in the pew, those who raise their hands and say,

Amen, and Hallelujah, and praise the Lord, and we sing the songs, and we go home. That's the church visible. That's the church that claims that they know

Jesus. And then there's also a reality called the church invisible, which is those who are, in fact, Christians.

I remember Billy Graham once said that he would be shocked if more than 50 percent,

I think it's 50 percent, but the statistic really isn't that important, but he would be shocked if more than 50 percent of the people who sit down on a

Sunday morning are legitimately saved. I think he's pointing out the fact that apostasy exists in the church, and there's really two kinds of apostasy in the

Bible. There's the one who just leaves the faith completely, like we saw last year or two years ago.

I can't remember when it was when Joshua Harris, the guy who wrote the book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, he just left.

He was a pastor of a sovereign grace church. He made an Instagram post about it, and he left the faith, and he's not come back.

That's one kind of apostasy, where you preach the gospel, but yet you don't believe it yourself. A guy named

Marty Simpson, who was a worship leader at Hillsong, who sang about faith millions of times, left the faith that he sang about because he did not have it himself.

We could go on and on. The examples are actually more numerous than makes us comfortable, but the point is that it wasn't that they were

Christians who left their faith. It was that they were never Christians who had deceived themselves into believing that they were

Christians. Because if you continue in my word, then you are truly my disciples, which means the inverse is also true.

If you do not continue in my word, then you were never truly my disciples.

I know that this is a shocking thing, but I want us to understand the point behind it. The point behind it is that we don't have the ability to keep ourself in the love of God.

If it were not for a supernatural act of God's grace, none of us would be here.

If it were based on human effort, like I said last week, then we would have to diagnose the fact that we had a heart of stone that does not beat and does not keep us alive, so we're dead, can't make decisions.

And then we would have to operate on ourself, remove our stony heart, put in a heart of flesh, and then start living again.

It's impossible. I don't know if you've ever been to a funeral and you watch someone laying in a casket. They don't move.

They don't talk. They don't respond. They don't do heart transplants on themselves. They're dead.

So if you've convinced yourself that you're a Christian by your own effort, you can't keep yourself there.

When it's fun, you'll stay. When your attention moves to something else, maybe you'll leave.

You'll keep yourself for as long as you possibly can, and then you'll abandon Christ because it's not your faith that was deposited into you.

It's something that you've deceived yourself. There's many reasons why we would do this. Our parents want us to be Christians, so we go as long as we can.

Or maybe we think that our children need to be brought up in a church so that we want them to learn the

Bible so we make a profession of faith and we go to church, but we haven't really been converted. There's many reasons why people would live in this sort of state, and they will leave eventually if they are in that sort of state.

John, the same guy who wrote the gospel that we're in, also wrote an epistle. He wrote three. The first one says this.

They, that's the apostates, they went out from us, but they were not really of us, for if they had been of us, then they would have remained with us.

But they went out so that it would be shown that they were not really of us.

That's the first way you can be an apostate, is to leave. The second way you can be an apostate is to harden your heart and stay and convince yourself that you're something that you're not.

You think about Judas. He was with Jesus for three years.

Every time Jesus preached a sermon, he was right there. He was the guy in charge of the money.

He was the guy in charge of responsibilities. And in this comparison, I'm not saying that those who are apostates are all going to do what he did and sell

Jesus out. I'm just saying that if you look at Judas' heart, Judas' heart was never there, but none of the disciples recognized it.

They all thought that he was a legitimate believer in Jesus, and until the very end, they didn't even recognize that he was the one who was going to betray

Him. The night that Jesus was betrayed, they were all asking themselves, is it I? He was so good at pretending that he loved

Jesus that no one understood. No one recognized it. No one had a conversation with him to see where he was at, and because of that, it was a shock, but he didn't finish the race.

Many are motivated by the same love for Jesus that Judas had 2 ,000 years ago, and I'm not talking about, you know, selling him out for 30 pieces of silver.

I'm talking about your heart is attracted to something other than Christ. Maybe it's money and health and wealth and fame, but whatever it is, just like Judas, you will not make it into heaven if you are not truly converted.

If you are the one who is holding yourself in the faith, you will not be able to hold yourself forever.

Now, there's hope. There's good news in that because Christ can save you.

I'm just saying you can't save you. That's the point. Look at the other examples from the

Bible like the chief priest. The chief priest didn't remain with Jesus because he challenged their authority.

The Sadducees didn't remain with Jesus because he challenged their politics. The Pharisees didn't remain with Jesus because he didn't give them lip service and make them feel special.

Pilate didn't remain with Jesus because his career and his reputation was more important. Barabbas didn't remain with Jesus because Jesus wasn't revolutionary enough.

The crowds didn't remain with Jesus because He didn't do enough signs and wonders and because they were probably afraid of their government.

turning on them and telling them that they could not worship him. The Pharisees had an iron grip upon the first century

Jewish state and many people abandoned Jesus out of fear over what the government would do. Now, this is one that I'm actually really concerned about for the church today.

And actually, when I say concerned, I think that it might end up being a blessing because when the church shrinks in size because of persecution, it's always healthier because all of the people who thought that they were

Christians who weren't leave. So the church is healthier and more efficient. But this, this is one that's going to affect many people today.

Because while I know that many have said that Christianity has got a love affair with the Republican Party, and I'm willing to admit that many, many, many

Christians are all about America and they say that, you know, Donald Trump is the next savior and they say all these things and that's wrong because he's not.

Jesus Christ alone is savior. And the only reason why Christians tend to vote a particular direction, either

Libertarian or Republican, is because we don't believe in the slaughter of babies. It's not because we think the

Republican Party is somehow going to save us. But the opposite is also true if we're talking about the idol of government.

The idol of government has caused many Bible -believing Christians to stay at home on Zoom meetings instead of coming to the church and gathering with the people of God.

Because we think that the government has some sort of authority to tell us that we can't gather, that we have to follow their rules when they tell us to gather.

Jesus said, render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar, unto God the things that are God's. The gathering of God's people is not

Caesar's territory or jurisdiction. And if it becomes illegal to meet, we'll be right here.

You have my word. Our hearts are deceitful above all things.

There's many reasons why we might think that we're Christians and really not be Christians at all.

The point is that we cannot save ourselves. We cannot keep ourselves. We cannot redeem ourselves.

We cannot do anything for ourselves. What we have to do is to bow before the

King of Glory and say, rescue me. I can't. That's what it means to be a Christian.

And those are the ones who are going to continue with Jesus all the way to the very, very end.

The world and false converts will not continue with Jesus. They will eventually quit. Christians will never quit.

They will never stop. They will pursue Him until the bitter end. And if they kill us, to live is Christ, to die is gain.

You just sent me home. That's the sort of attitude that we have. When all throughout history they've persecuted the church, there was a joy on their faces as they died.

You can only have that if you're in Christ. Because if you're not in Christ, then your life is the only heaven that you're ever going to get.

If you're in Christ, though, this is the only hell that you're ever going to experience. You can have joy with courage.

You can have joy with boldness. You can have joy not living in garrison anymore, but standing up for Jesus. You can have joy even when people hate you and they persecute you and they say all men are evil against you because you know

Christ. And He said, in this world you're going to have many problems, many troubles, but fear not,

I've already overcome the world. That's what it means to be a Christian. That's the first point.

If you're a true Christian, you will continue with Jesus no matter what. The second point is that you will continue in obedience.

John 14, 15 says it like this. If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Here's another if -then statement. If you love me, then you will keep my commandments. So those who keep

Jesus' commandments are those who love Him. Those who continue in obedience to Jesus are those who love

Him. And let's just ask the question, how do we love Jesus if not for Him first loving us and depositing

His love inside of us? So for all those who have been bought by Jesus and the love of God pushed into our dead stony hearts, awakening us and giving us new hearts of flesh, we love

Him because He first loved us. And because we now love Him, we obey Him and follow

Him and joyfully obey Him. Like we read in Deuteronomy earlier, willingly obey

Him. A true disciple of Jesus not only continues to the bitter end, but they do it joyfully.

And they do it passionately. And they do it with a song in their heart. John 8, 31 again says, if you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine.

Jesus is saying that if you continue in my word, what is His word? He's not just saying a morning

Bible study. He's not just saying memorizing a few scriptures. He's not just saying the Gospels, by the way, because Jesus opened up the

Gospels in the end and He said how all of the Bible was all about Him. So when we're talking about Jesus' word, we're talking about the

Bible, the whole word of God. What's it mean to continue in His word? I think it means obedience.

Look at what John 15 lays out for us. This will kind of show us what Jesus is talking about.

I am the true vine, Jesus says. And my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit,

He takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine.

Neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, it is he that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Jesus, when He even preaches the word, follows that up with, you must do something about that. You must respond to the word, and that response is abiding in Christ.

Based off what He said to us in His gospel, we must continue with Him. We must keep following Him.

A non -obedient Christian is a contradiction in terms. Jesus has no category for it.

And a Christian who bears no fruit or little fruit is also a contradiction in terms.

Jesus never made that point. He said that if you abide in me, you will bear much fruit.

Now when we think about that, we're like, what does that mean? Do I have to go share the gospel with a hundred people this week?

And that's what bearing much fruit is. Well, first you should repent of your attitude. But that sort of love that raises up in your heart that wasn't there before you were a

Christian, that makes you love your spouse, that worship in your heart that you came here this morning, and you adored

Christ, the God that you used to hate, now you love, that's fruit. The fruits of the

Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control. These are the kinds of fruit that Jesus is producing in you.

It's not that you go out into the world and you have to do all of these things in order to be pleasing to the

Lord. It's that the Lord himself is the gardener who's working these things into you and producing these things in you.

You are at best the recipient of infinite grace.

It doesn't say that now because you're a Christian, you have to produce the fruit. It's saying if you abide in him, he will produce the fruit.

And not sparingly, great fruit. Mark 13, 8 says it like this,

And others, that is the seed of the gospel, fell on the good soil and yielded a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, and some thirtyfold.

Jesus is saying that the abundant fruit that he has planned for you is multiplicatively more than you could ever imagine.

The minimum standard is thirty times. Jesus is saying that even a modest

Christian will look like a cornucopia of God's grace to the onlooking world around you.

The point, again, is not for us to try to be fruitful. The point is for us to continue abiding in him, and he will make us fruitful.

That's what he's saying. Now, he connects obedience to discipleship. He says, if you continue my word, then you will be my true disciples.

So one of the ways that you and I can be obedient to this Christ is by being disciples ourselves and by making disciples.

That's what he says in verse 31. Matthew 28, 19 through 20 defines this a little bit more fully for us.

It says, Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and lo,

I am with you always, even to the end of the age. The word of Christ culminates in the final chapter of Matthew to say that after all that I've done for you, make disciples.

Be yourself discipled, meaning be baptized into the fellowship of the Christian church.

When you're baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, you become a member of Christ's body, and then learn how to obey everything

Jesus commanded. How do you learn how to obey everything Jesus commanded? That's the next obvious question.

You've got to read the word. The word and obedience are not disconnected from one another. They are intrinsically tied to one another so that if you want to know how to please the

Savior who saved you, you've got to be in the word. The last commandment that Jesus gives recorded in the gospel is make disciples.

So we not only become disciples ourselves, we also have the gumption and the courage to walk up to someone else and say,

Hey, how are you doing right now? How are you doing in your relationship with Christ?

Can I walk alongside you? Can I take you out to lunch? Can I help you in a certain way? We are not just to focus on ourselves as Christians because of all that Christ has done for us.

Part of the fruit that he wants us to bear is to come alongside of other people inside the church and help them also learn how to obey everything

Jesus has commanded. If Jesus has commanded, if you love me, then you obey my commandments, then we help other people love him better.

If he's commanded us to remain pure in our eyes as men, then we help other men in the community with lust and remaining pure.

And we come alongside of them and help them. If it's gossip, then you help someone else with gossip. If you see something in a neighbor or a friend or someone who's a

Christian that offends Jesus, you come alongside of them and you help them so that their lives can also be in alignment with Christ.

That's part of what we do as Christians is we help each other walk with him because of all that he's done for us.

So being a Christian is continuing in the faith, it's continuing in obedience. Obedience looks like discipleship.

The third thing is to continue pursuing truth. Like we said earlier, we live in a post -truth world.

Up is down right now. Left is right. Men are women for one of the first times in history.

A person who gives birth is a birthing person on the floor of the Senate or House of Representatives.

This was said. Our reality right now is so mangled that the world has no idea their left hand from the right hand.

We are to be people of the truth. We are to be people who are willing to look at the culture and say, that's not true.

That's not right. This takes courage. And I'm not talking about having your keyboard sword at home, just plucking away, blasting whatever thing you want to blast on social media.

I'm talking about having the courage and the conviction to live a life of moral integrity in a culture that is begging you to compromise.

And I'm talking about having the honesty about you that when your boss asks you what you believe about homosexuality, to tell them that I don't hate anyone, but I know that what

God has said in His word, and His word says that it's a sin. I can't apologize for that.

That's not my standard. That's God's standard. Having the honesty and the integrity to say that without fear of losing your job.

I understand that jobs are important, but also know that God owns cattle on a thousand hills, and He can provide for you and pay your bills even when you don't have a job.

On His way up the hill of Calvary, He didn't compromise a single second for us. So how, therefore, could we ever compromise when it relates to Him?

We continue in the truth, and that truth will set us free. That's what Jesus is arguing.

You see, if you don't continue in the truth, and you continue in fear, and you continue in anxiety or depression or whatever else, you're afraid to speak the truth of God.

If you do that, you're not free. You're bound by fear, you're bound by struggle, you're bound by money, you're bound by whatever else, but you're not free.

The truth of Jesus Christ will set you free, even if the world hates you for it.

Remember, we said if -then statements are really important. If you do this, then that. Verse 31 and 32 is a very interesting if -then statement.

It's an if -then -then -then statement, actually. Because Jesus is not just saying, if you continue in my word, then you will be my disciples.

He's saying, if you continue in my word, then you will be my disciples, then you will understand truth, and then you will be free.

Jesus is promising us a truth that will never leave us hanging.

Last week, we talked about the people in hell who would go on into increasing confusion. Not so for the

Christian. If you're truly in Christ, you'll have increasing clarity. You'll have increasing conviction.

You'll have increasing understanding of the word of God. I know it's hard. Try opening up to the middle chapters of Ezekiel.

It's not an easy book to understand all of the time, but I know the God who wrote it will be with us and help us understand it, if we will just endeavor to read it.

He will help us continue in truth, and his truth will set us free, and that's the point

I want us to end on. What do we mean by freedom? I think for starters, it means freedom from the tyranny of Satan himself, who for your entire life held you captive until you understood the gospel.

So when you understand Jesus' truth, then it sets you free from that, and Satan is no longer your taskmaster, but Jesus is your

Lord. So that now you bow the knee to him and not the knee to Satan, not the knee to temptation, and not the knee to brokenness and pride and confusion and lust and everything else.

You are free from that tyranny to follow God and to continue with him.

You are free from the slavery to sin, and I'm not saying that you're going to be sinless.

That won't happen until eternity. Paul says, I do the thing that I don't want to do, and I don't do the thing that I want to do.

We are people who still struggle with sin, but the power of sin has been killed by Christ.

And we know that because of verses like Romans 6, 3 -4. He says, or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death?

We think about our baptism as the moment when we got wet in a tank. Jesus is saying, you were baptized 2 ,000 years ago on the cross.

Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death.

And that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so too we might walk in the newness of life.

What Jesus is saying is that there's two kinds of baptisms. There's a physical baptism and a spiritual baptism. And spiritually speaking, you were on the cross with Jesus 2 ,000 years ago before anyone ever knew your name.

It says, we have been crucified with Christ. That means that Jesus was not only hung between two thieves.

You, if you're a Christian, were there on the cross with him, being crucified into him. And not just that, he drug you, he dragged you.

Got a southerner here today, I'm reverting back. He dragged you into the grave with him so that your old flesh died 2 ,000 years ago.

You were crucified with Christ and you were buried with Christ. And when he rose from the dead, he didn't leave you in death.

He brought you up out of death and he resurrected you out of death so that you were made alive 2 ,000 years ago.

That reality might not have become known to you, unless someone here is much older than I ever knew.

But that reality didn't become known to you until you became a Christian. But that doesn't mean that that reality doesn't predate you.

It does, by 2 ,000 years. When you became a Christian, your life intersected with what

God has been doing for you for thousands of years and even on into eternity. Our body definitely needed to catch up, but that doesn't mean that we were not made free.

We were freed from Satan. We were crucified with Jesus to be made free from the power of sin.

We were dragged down into the tomb of Christ so that the power of sin would be suffocated over 72 hours and killed and mortified by Christ.

And we were resurrected with Jesus so that the power of sin would no longer have any power over us.

So that when we stand before God, the power of sin has been broken and only what

Jesus has done for us remains. That's why you will be said, Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter into my rest because he killed the power of sin before you made a single choice.

All of that was done for you so that you could be made free. The final freedom is what we're still waiting for.

We're waiting for Christ to return. I don't know if it's going to be five years or 5 ,000 years or 100 ,000 years.

I have no idea. But we're waiting on our

Lord and Savior to return and set us free so there's no more heartaches and no more backaches. Both are awful.

So that there's no more sin and no more pain and no more suffering. So that the only thing that we know is intimacy with Christ for all of eternity.

Right now, today, you and I are called to live in that freedom. Even though we have not yet experienced it.

In the same way that our soul was made free 2 ,000 years ago before our body experienced it, we are called today with our bodies to live like heaven until Jesus Christ returns to take us there.

That is what the church is. We gather to celebrate the freedom of Christ.

We gather to celebrate the fact that he overthrew Satan. We gather to celebrate the fact that he crucified our sin.

And we gather, no matter if they tell us not to, to celebrate the fact that our

Lord and Savior one day is going to return. That is what it means for us to be a Christian.

And that is the kind of Christians that the world needs to see right now. The world does not need any more examples of us hiding our head in the sand like ostriches.

The world doesn't need any more examples of us compromising and us following right along with their protest or championing the same sin that they are championing.

The world needs to see something different. The world needs to see Christians. And that is what

I pray for this church, and that is what I pray for this region, and that is what I pray for this country, and that is what I pray for this world.

That as Christians we would stand up for Christ and we would live for him boldly, passionately, lovingly.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for the fact that you've told us what you want from us.

Lord, thank you for the fact that this is not something that we could do on our own. Human experience alone tells us that we can't do anything.

But Lord, I pray that by the power of the Holy Spirit, in light of what

Christ has done on the cross, because of the decision that God made in eternity, and by the power of the triune

God at work in us, his church, that we would continue in the faith.

Lord, I pray there would be no one here that apostatizes, that leaves the faith.

Lord, I pray that you would convert anyone here who is not yet a

Christian. Lord, I pray that you would raise them to life in Christ. Lord, I pray that we would continue in obedience, that we would be marked as a church by holiness and by worship, and by the things that you've told us to do.

Lord, even I pray that we would be marked as a church that loves discipleship because you commanded it.

Lord, I pray that we would continue in truth, and that we would not devolve into error or follow after the world and the ways that they're telling us to go.

And Lord, I pray that we would continue with freedom, gathering here each week, celebrating here each week, waiting for the moment where we see you face to face.