John 8:33-36 (Covenantal Freedom)

Growing up, my grandpa had a lot of different phrases that he would use, like that dog won't hunt, which

I think I know what that means, meaning whatever you're doing right now is not working.

A bird in the hand's worth two in the bush. Have you ever heard of that one? What about putting your cart before your horse?

Yeah, it kind of conjures up these ideas of the ridiculous. In your mind, you see this kind of old dullard of a man who's busy packing his bags and getting his suitcase ready, and he's running around, tying the horse up and getting it attached to the cart.

His wife's looking on with confusion, like, what is this man doing? He's getting ready to go on this long journey.

He kisses her goodbye. She's staring there with bated breath, watching to see when he's going to figure out that his horse is actually behind him.

And you're like, how could this possibly survive the English language? How could this be a metaphor? How could anybody put their cart ahead of their horse?

And yet, this metaphor has had lasting power in the English language, not because we've messed up in horse -drawn carriagery, but because we often do things very similar to that, indeed.

For instance, you think about marriage. Marriage is a covenant between one man and one woman in an eternal type of bond, here on earth at least.

It is a forever sacred bond between a man and a woman. And yet, often, even in the church, we get the cart called sexual union ahead of the horse, which is marriage.

And then we end up going nowhere, and we end up introducing pain and suffering into our marriages and into our relationships, because we've gotten the cart before the horse.

There's many other examples of things that we have done or things that we can do, but I use that one because it's covenantal.

And I think that in John chapter 8, the Jews have gotten their covenantal carts before their theological horses.

Now, if you remember, we have a chapter that is filled with confusion about who

Jesus is. And it should not surprise us that in a chapter that is thoroughly saturated with the

Jewish confusion of who Jesus is, that they would also be confused about their law, they would also be confused about their standing between them and God, and they would also be confused about covenants.

I think at the heart of John 8, especially in this argument that is happening between Jesus and the

Pharisees, or in the Jews, there's a misunderstanding about covenant and where they actually stand in relationship to God.

Now, this is a specific kind of confusion. There were people in the crowds who hated Jesus. There were people in the crowds who wanted to kill

Jesus. This group that we're talking about in John 8 believed in Jesus, and yet they had a false faith, they had a false belief.

Their belief did not cause them to be in right standing with Jesus, it caused them actually to reject

Jesus. It was a belief that was masquerading as true when it was false, and I think the reason that it was false is because they didn't understand their covenants.

John records this in verses 28 through 30 when he says, When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am

He, and I do nothing on my own initiative. But I speak these things as the

Father taught me, and He who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.

And as He spoke these things, many of them came to believe. So again, we see this false belief is happening here.

A group in the crowd is starting to believe in Jesus, and we don't know exactly what their false belief is. We just know that it's false.

Maybe it's like in John chapter 2 where they had a false belief because they wanted Jesus to do signs and miracles and wonders.

Maybe it was like John chapter 6 where they had a false belief because they wanted Jesus to be a political savior and a king, or maybe it was something else.

We're not quite sure what kind of false faith that they had, we just know that it was false.

And the reason that we know that it's false is because the way Jesus defined what true faith is.

That's really the heart of what this debate actually is all about. Jesus is telling them, if you continue in my word, then you will be my true disciples.

If you do not continue in my word, then you will not be my true disciples. So He's laid out the terms already of what true belief is, and true belief is a belief that continues with Him.

Now in this passage, they reject Him about as fast as He can get the words out of His mouth.

Before He finishes His last breath and He's inhaled another one, they're already rejecting

Him. They didn't continue with Him, that's the point. That's how we know that they had false faith, because as soon as they got the opportunity, they were abandoning

Him. This is what they say in verse 33. Jesus has promised them that if they will continue with Him, they will be

His true disciples, and if they're His true disciples, then He will lead them into true freedom. And because they're not believing in Him, they don't have true freedom.

So this is the crux of the argument. They believe with all of their heart that they're already free, and Jesus is saying, no, in fact, you are a slave.

They've got their covenantal carts before their theological horses. They don't understand what true freedom is.

They don't understand why they're a slave. They don't understand the covenants. It's like a child.

This example is relevant to me because we just went on vacation. About 15 minutes into a thousand -mile journey, you hear the child say, are we there yet?

Like, we're not even out of Merrimack County. No, we're not there yet. And then another 15 minutes later, you hear the same thing, and then the child doesn't realize the distance between where we are and where we're going.

They don't understand that we still have six states, 12 pee breaks, four gas fill -ups, one hotel, a surprise

Slurpee machine in Indiana, six fast food meals, and a few arguments to go before we get there.

They have no clue. Well, the Jews didn't either. The Jews had no clue the distance and the gap that existed between them and freedom.

They were children of Moses. They were under the Mosaic Law. They didn't have freedom like they thought they did.

There was a chasm between them and the freedom of Abraham that they could not pass.

It would be like trying to pogo stick across the Grand Canyon. It's impossible. They had their covenantal carts before their theological horses.

Now, what I want us to do today is I want us to examine three things, and it's in light of what we talked about last week.

I want us to understand first why they were confused about their covenant status before God, or how they were confused about their covenant status before God.

Then I want us to understand how the two covenants, David and Moses, that Jesus had not yet fulfilled were actually holding them captive, and they didn't realize it.

And then I want us to see at the end how true freedom comes from Jesus Christ and Christ alone. So with that, will you turn with me to John chapter 8 as we examine these verses together.

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

How is it that you say you will become free? Jesus answered,

Truly, truly, I say to you. Every time Jesus says truly, truly, it's really true.

Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever.

The son does not remain forever. So if the son makes you free, then you will be free indeed.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, in the midst of this debate that you were having with those of false faith,

Lord, I pray that we would be able to see what it is that you were teaching. Lord, I pray that as we examine the underpinnings of this conversation and the covenant theology that's underneath it,

Lord, I pray that it would be clear. I pray that we would get a chance to see a deeper glimpse of what your covenant people

Israel saw, and what they believed, and what they held to, and that we would be able to see kind of the whole

Bible being held together in a verse like this. Lord, I pray that we would see how these covenants actually held your people captive.

Lord, I pray that we would see how in Christ, in Christ alone, may we have true freedom.

Lord, I pray for us as Gentile believers, that we would get a glimpse of all that Christ has done in making us free.

That he didn't come on a whim just to save his people. He came intentionally to fulfill specific covenants and promises so that we, his people, could be free, and that means something for why we're saved.

Lord, I pray that we would understand that today. It's in your name we pray. Amen. Again, before we can get very far along, we need to understand why this debate was actually happening.

We need to understand what they were misunderstanding, and they were misunderstanding the covenants. Now, the first thing

I want you to know about that is that there was a certain pride that existed in the first century on being a

Jew. If you were a Jew, you had an ethnocentrism about you. You had a pridefulness about your ethnicity, and it was so much so that you looked down your nose upon other societies and other peoples and other cultures.

Like, they looked down upon the Samaritans. They looked down upon the Gentiles. I've said this before,

I think in John 2, there was a sign inside the temple that said, if you're a Gentile or Samaritan, you cannot enter beyond this point under the threat of death.

That was not, hey, welcome, we're glad you're here. That was, we don't want you here, and the only reason that you are here is because God said we have to let you be here, so we're just going to fill your area full of stuff so that you don't want to come.

They had an ethnic pride about them because they were descendants of Abraham. That's really the point.

Because they were descendants of Abraham, they thought that they were better than all the rest of the world, but yet the

New Testament begins to carve out a theology that being a child of Abraham is not a genetic thing, and it's not a physical thing.

Being a child, a true child of Abraham is a spiritual thing. It's not about your bloodline.

It's not about your chromosomes. It's not about your DNA. It's about a spiritual reality that God is working that we will get to see over the course of this message.

That begins in Matthew 3. John the Baptist is speaking. The Pharisees, who loved their

Abrahamic lineage, ran to John. They were wanting to understand things from John.

They wanted to know what John's purpose was, why he was there, what he was doing. They wanted to investigate John, and this is what

John says to them, to the Pharisees. He says, bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

He's not impressed by them. He says, bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, we have

Abraham for our father. For I say to you that from these stones,

God is able to raise up children of Abraham. So he's saying that the

Abrahamic line and the Abrahamic family is less to do about genetics because God could raise up stones to be children of Abraham.

And what has he done for the church? For those of us who have hearts of stone, he has given us hearts of flesh.

He has raised up children of Abraham from stones. It's not about your genetics.

It's about your proximity to Christ. It's about repentance and faith, which is far more important than lineage.

In the Old Testament, God says that to obey is better than sacrifice.

I desire mercy as opposed to your sacrifices. It was always about a spiritual reality with God, not a physical reality of your bloodline.

Jesus says roughly the same thing. We'll get in this verse next week in verse 39 of chapter 8.

They answered and said to him, Abraham is our father. Jesus said to them, if you're

Abraham's children, then do the deeds of Abraham. But as it is, you're seeking to kill me, a man who has told you the truth, which

I heard from God, this Abraham did not do. He's saying, you

Pharisees are the illegitimate children. We'll see that the Pharisees accused

Jesus of being an illegitimate child, which is a dig because they say that Jesus didn't have a reputable mother because she got pregnant as a virgin.

They made a story up that said, yeah, yeah, she got pregnant as a virgin. That's kind of what they said. And this sort of criticism of Jesus pops up a couple times here and there in the

Gospels that he's the child from a sinful relationship. That's what the

Pharisees accuse him of. Of course, that's not true. The Pharisees are always twisting things to try to manipulate the situation.

When Jesus rose from the dead and there was an empty tomb, they spread a lie and a report about it that the gospel writer says has existed until this day.

The Pharisees are constantly taking what Jesus does and they're lying about it. But the point that Jesus is making is that genetics is less important than obedience.

He's saying, if you really were children of Abraham, then you would obey like Abraham obeyed, and you would believe like Abraham believed, and you would walk like Abraham walked.

And as a result, you are not children of Abraham. Paul defines what a real child of Abraham actually is in Galatians 3 .7.

He says, therefore, be sure that it is those who are of the faith who are the sons of Abraham.

He's not saying it's those who are born physically in the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. He's saying that it's those who believe who are the children of Abraham, so that if you're here today and you believe in Jesus Christ, you now are children of Abraham.

Again, in verse 29 of chapter 3, if you belong to Christ, then you're

Abraham's descendants, heirs according to the promise. Isn't that a breathtaking statement?

That if you believe you're children of Abraham, and if you are children of Abraham, then you are heirs of the promises of God that God made to Abraham.

They're yours. That he would make you into a blessed people, a blessed nation, a people who had a great name, and a people who would bless the entire world with the spreading of the gospel.

You and I are children of Abraham and heirs of the promises of God, not because of our lineage and not because of our obedience, but because of Christ.

Paul clarifies this in Romans 9. It's not as though the word of God has failed, because a lot of promises were made to Abraham about his family, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

He's saying that in the history of the Jews, there were some who were genetically Jewish, but who were not spiritually

Jewish. If you remember, the word Israel is not an ethnic title at all.

Israel was the name given to Jacob when he wrestled with God. The name

Israel means to wrestle with God. So when you and I grab our Bible, when our eyes barely open in the morning, we've got a cup of coffee and we're trying our best not to spill the coffee on the

Bible, because that would be bad. Maybe that's just me. But when we're wrestling through the text and when we're studying the word of God, we are doing what

Jacob did. You and I are true Israel if we wrestle with God.

Not just because we have a bloodline. There's many men all throughout the lineage of Israel in the

Old Testament who abandoned their faith, abandoned God. They weren't true

Israel. We are heirs according to the promise. If we're in Christ, we wrestle with God.

And it's not just us. Paul says in Galatians 3 .28,

there is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ.

That means that the definition of Israel in the New Testament has expanded beyond just the

Jews. It has expanded to male, female, Jew, Greek, all who are in Christ Jesus now are a part of the family of Abraham, true

Israel according to the promise. The Jews had no category for this though, when

Jesus was talking to them. As He's communicating these things to them, they had no idea what

He was about. They actually, right in front of Him, rejected the fact that He said it was going to be a future freedom.

He says that you will become free. That's future tense. They said, we already are.

They rejected the fact that they needed something future to themselves in order to make them free.

They rejected the fact that they needed something external to themselves in order to make them free.

They didn't believe that they needed any help in obtaining the reward. They didn't believe that they needed anything, almost like an ancient version of a participation trophy.

They get the prize just because they showed up, which is not true.

Jesus offers them future freedom in Him, and they reject it based off of their faulty understanding of the covenants.

They say to Him, we are Abraham's descendants. We've never been enslaved to anyone. That's ironic.

They were a nation born out of slavery. They were a nation most of their time subjugated to another nation.

Most of their entire existence was in captivity to someone. It's clear they're not understanding this rightly.

Now for a moment, I want us to briefly go back over what we talked about last week, and I think it's important, because we need to understand how covenant works.

Last week, we talked about this idea called progressive covenantalism. I looked this up on Google this week, and there's a book titled that.

I don't know if they agree with what I'm saying or not, but don't take what they're saying. I'm saying that this is what

I mean by progressive covenantalism. Progressive covenantalism is that God writes the story of history through progressive covenants.

He starts with Adam. He ends with David. And then God fulfills history and draws history to a close, not through human obedience, because we could not obey.

We could not believe. We could not do the things of God. He brings history to a close through the obedience of Jesus Christ.

That's what the covenants are all about. And if you look at the covenants, you can see the entire story of Israel in the

Old Testament. And if you look at what Christ is doing, he's fulfilling those covenants in successive order in the

New Testament, so that the entire Bible is a story of covenants. We can go through this really quickly.

God made a covenant with Adam for his people to be fruitful, multiply, and live with God in the garden, but they sinned.

They weren't fruitful. They ate the wrong fruit. They didn't multiply faithful people. They multiplied sinful people until the whole world was filled with sinners, and God destroys the world.

And out of that, he saves one family named Noah. He repeats the same promises that he repeated to Adam.

He says, I'm going to bless you, and you're going to be fruitful and multiply and spread out to the ends of the earth.

What does Noah do? Does he obey God and everything goes good and well and the rest of human history is wonderful?

Absolutely not. The Bible tarnishes every single person except for Jesus Christ.

Every single person is all of their sins are listed out in a way so that we can understand that humans cannot do what

God has called us to do. It is only Jesus Christ. So like Adam, Noah is a man of the soil.

He drinks from the vine. He gets naked and ashamed. His son is cursed.

It's the same thing all over again. His ancestors or his descendants, excuse me, I mixed up that word last week, forgive me.

His descendants gather together at this little plain called Babel, and they build a mud tower to their own dim glory, and God has to come down in order to see it.

It's that in spectacular. Now, out of that, God scatters them.

God sends them to the ends of the earth just like they were supposed to be doing in the first place, but this time, instead of just a vertical break between them and God, they have a horizontal break with them and man, and humans are struggling under the weight of their own sin.

They are alienated from God, alienated from one another. They speak all of these different languages, and it looks like a mess after just two covenants.

God gives a third covenant. The third covenant is when he picks one family, the family of Abraham, and he pulls them out, and he calls them into his land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Isn't that interesting? It's like God is bringing them out of the death and dust and brokenness and putting them in a garden.

That's kind of the point, and he's bringing them into a garden to have continuity with what he did with Adam.

He's bringing them into a garden to make them fruitful and multiply. All of these covenants kind of work together, and Abraham, unlike Adam and Noah, was not required to do anything for this covenant to be successful.

Abraham believed God. It was credited to him as righteousness, and that was it. Everything else is on God. God himself does this beautiful covenant ceremony in Genesis 15 that's really strange and really weird to our modern sensibilities where God shows up as a smoking fire pot that goes between these broken pieces of animal parts, and as modern readers, we're like, what is going on?

It's like some kind of peyote moment or something. I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's weird, and yet in the ancient world, we understand and we realize that when animals are split apart like that, it's an act of judgment.

To walk in between the animal pieces is to show that if I don't fulfill my covenant, I will be judged, and normally the two partners in the covenant walk through together, but God leaves

Abraham in a deep sleep. That word deep sleep is the same word that came upon Adam when

God knocked out Adam and made his wife, so here you have Abraham sleeping while God is doing this covenant ceremony showing that if I fail to bless you and to make you a blessed people and to do all of the promises that I gave to you, then let me be ripped apart and let me be cut apart and torn apart and ripped to shreds.

Abraham has no skin in the game in this covenant until Genesis 17, but that's a different story.

Circumcision. After this, this family is supposed to be faithful as they wait on the promises of God, and as they wait on the promises of God, God writes the fourth covenant.

He allows them to move down to Egypt to 70 people. They are fruitful. They multiply. They become millions, and then he rescues them out of slavery, brings them through the parted waters of the

Red Sea, brings them to Mount Sinai, and at Mount Sinai, he gives them the fourth covenant, which was the covenant of the law, and that covenant was to help them live in relationship to a holy

God because God was not ready to send his son, as we learned last week. The Abrahamic covenant is all about Jesus and the coming of Jesus, so God wasn't ready to send

Jesus in the Old Testament, so the Israelites had to live in relationship with God for about 1 ,500 years, and how do you live in relationship to a holy

God unless you have a holy law that's going to keep you in holy status with him? So they had sacrifices, and they had temples and priests and all of these various things to help keep them in relationship with God, but they did not obey.

Do you see the theme? Four covenants. Three are on human beings, and all three times they fail.

They don't even fail after they get to Israel. They fail before. An entire generation's bodies are laid out on the border of Israel because they can't obey.

Their leader, Moses, doesn't even get to enter into the promised land because he has an anger problem and he strikes this rock with a stick, and God says no.

So the sinfulness of human beings are so deeply rooted in their own psyche that they can't get out of their own way.

Things don't get better when they get to the land. The book of Joshua, they're supposed to conquer the Canaanites, and if you look at the language of that passage and if you look at the covenantal structure of that passage, it's almost like the people of God are going back into the garden land to cast out the serpent peoples who worship the enemy.

There's a covenantal continuity. It's almost like they're reclaiming the promised land, and yet they don't.

They don't conquer the people they're supposed to conquer. They don't cast out the people they're supposed to cast out.

They end up infected by their sin, worshiping idols. The book of Judges is no different.

They don't rule over the land or subdue it. They are ruled by the Philistines. Judges is a dark and awful book for a lot of reasons.

The main thread is sin. By the end of the book, it says that they don't even know their left hand from their right hand.

They don't know right from wrong. They are so morally compromised that they're anti -Eden, anti -God.

God's not finished, though. We have Ruth and Samuel, and in the very beginning of the book of Samuel, David, the king, is prophesied that there would be a king who

God would put over his people, and that king was supposed to help his people live according to the law. The king was supposed to write his own copy of the law.

The king was supposed to memorize the law. The king was supposed to praise God for the law. So that he could help the people live according to the law, and Saul did not do that.

David, for most of his life, did that, but David failed egregiously.

Solomon, his son, this high point of Jewish history, the temple is built.

The presence of God descends down for the people. Everybody's excited. The nations are streaming to Israel to hear what's happened of this great

God and king. By the end of his life, Solomon's bowing down to idols. He's married a couple thousand women, and he himself is an idolater.

His son, born in Solomon's late age, saw the idolater dad and not the faithful dad, and he became an idolater just like his dad.

The kingdom itself was ripped in half. Northern tribes, southern tribes.

The northern tribes were completely and utterly decimated in the 700s BC, 586

BC. The southern tribes were exiled, and they never returned to their former glory.

By the time you get to Malachi, the people are so morally confused they don't know up from down.

The book of Malachi ends with a promise of judgment that the sun is going to come, and who can endure the day of his coming?

And then the Old Testament closes, 400 BC, with 400 years before Jesus gets there, silent.

There's no word from God after the book of Malachi all the way to the book of Matthew. And if you think about the contrast here,

Genesis begins with God speaking. Malachi begins with God being silent. Genesis begins with God living and dwelling with his people.

Malachi begins with his people abandoned. Genesis begins with a garden. Malachi ends with this desert, anti -Eden abandonment because of covenantal unfaithfulness to God.

Every covenant tells the story and pushes the story forward, and the main part of the story is that human beings are unfaithful to God.

And had the story ended there, the whole thing would have come crashing down into chaos, which is another anti -Eden theme.

God made the world orderly. Malachi, it's very chaotic. So what is

God going to do? He's going to send his son. Five covenants human beings could not themselves fulfill.

Jesus Christ, in perfect order, will fulfill them all. The first thing that the New Testament says is that Jesus comes as king.

That's Matthew 1. He comes as king from the line of David, born in the city of David, because he's going to be heaven's true king who's going to fulfill the covenant of David.

He dies on a cross. He's buried in a royal tomb. He rises into heaven sitting on the right hand of God.

He's the king that was promised in 2 Samuel 7. So he fulfills that one.

Because he's king, he also fulfills the royal law of Moses. He's the true temple, the true sacrifice, the true priest, the true mediator.

He's the true festival and feast. Every part of the law Jesus Christ fulfills so that thing that's standing between God's people, that chasm that's standing between God's people in relationship with him and inheriting the blessings of Abraham, Christ fulfills.

He went down into the chasm. On the cross, Jesus fulfilled every aspect of the Mosaic law so that freedom could come to the people of God.

That happened in the first century. Right after that, like God chose Abraham and his family,

Jesus chooses a church. And he chooses that church to be a family and a nation. And he sends that family out to be fruitful and multiply and spread out to the ends of the earth.

And when that has happened, when all the families of the world have been blessed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, like God destroyed the world in Noah, he'll destroy the world again.

The first time it was for judgment. The next time it will be for purification. And then we, at the end of the

Bible, will enter into the garden where we live with God forever. Five covenants of failure in the

Old Testament. Jesus, five covenants of fulfillment in the New Testament. That's the whole

Bible. And they didn't understand it. They lived as though they were free right then and there.

And they had no idea that the covenant of Moses and the covenant of David was still hanging over their heads.

Jesus says to them, rightly, you are in slavery to sin. Anyone who sins is a slave to sin.

Therefore, you are slaves to sin. The reason that Jesus can say that is because they're committing sin.

The reason they're committing sin is because sin has been defined in a law. And that law still hangs over their head.

It's a noose around their neck. And they've not experienced the freedom that Christ can offer. So the second point we're going to deal with today is that they're held captive under the law.

They're held captive under the covenant of David. They're held captive under the covenants that they themselves do not understand.

First point, they don't understand the covenant. Second point, they're held captive to the covenants.

Again, they say, we are Abraham's descendants and have never been enslaved to anyone.

How is it that you say you will become free? This is an ironic statement of epic proportions.

Let's just start with Israelite history. In 586 B .C., God sent the armies of Babylon and burned

Jerusalem to the ground and carried them away in captivity for 70 years where they lived in Babylon imprisoned to a foreign empire.

The gold and the artifacts of the temple were stolen. The nation was reduced to rubble. They said they've never been enslaved to anyone.

Eventually, they return and Persia takes over. Persia conquers Babylon in 559

B .C. And Persia rules over the Israelites. Now, Persia was a massive empire, but Israel never had a king sitting on the throne.

So Israel's not free. They're under the auspices of the Persian empire. And the

Persians allowed them to build a temple, but they didn't allow them to have a king. So they weren't free. So now this is several hundred years.

Persia's conquered by Greece. Anyone heard of Alexander the Great? By the age of 32 years old,

Alexander the Great had conquered most of the known world in an act of unbelievable military intelligence.

Then Alexander the Great died. His kingdom was broken up into four different kingdoms.

In Judah, they were ruled by this group called the Seleucids. Forgive me if I'm mispronouncing that.

This Greek empire lasted all the way until about the 60s B .C., 60 years before Jesus was born.

So now you have about 500 years of captivity right here and there. In the 60s,

Roman general Pompey conquered Jerusalem, transferring Judah out of the rulership of Greece and into the rulership of Rome.

A few years later, Rome became, instead of a republic, it became an imperial empire with Octavius in 27

B .C. becoming the first Roman emperor. And by the time Jesus is born, the first Roman emperor is on the throne,

Caesar Augustus, that's Octavius. So they've been almost 600 years without a king.

If you factor into that the 400 years of slavery that they had in Egypt, Israel spent 1 ,000 years in captivity and maybe 200 to 300 years in freedom.

And they said, we've never been enslaved to anyone. It's an impressive, impressive statement.

The reason underneath all of that that they were enslaved and in captivity and all of these things is because they failed to uphold the covenant of David.

The kings were wicked. They sacrificed their own sons in the fire and God sent the

Babylonians to conquer them because they had gone so wicked and so bad that they were irredeemable.

They had never been enslaved to anyone except for everyone. And even that is not the full depth of their slavery.

See, Jesus, when He says that they're a slave, He doesn't say that politically you've been a slave, although they had, which adds up to the irony of the statement.

Jesus says that you're enslaved to something greater than geopolitical forces. You're in slavery to sin. Sin is a far more menacing beast than any of the nations that they had ever served.

Sin, under the tyranny of Satan himself, is a far worse kingdom to be a part of than the kingdom of Greece and Persia and Babylon and any of those.

They didn't realize not only that the vast majority of their history, they'd been in physical slavery because of failure to keep the

Davidic covenant, they had also been in spiritual slavery because of failure to keep the Mosaic covenant.

They were responsible ever since the mountain of Sinai for obeying the moral law.

The moral law is, I am the Lord your God. Do this. Be holy as I am holy. Live like this because I am holy.

And they didn't live like that. Their entire existence, they failed in the moral law.

They were responsible for obeying the ceremonial law, which is this is how you worship God. This is how you come into a relationship with God.

And they failed. At the book of Malachi, they're offering dead, sick, and diseased animals to God because they care so little about God.

They were responsible for the civil law, which made them a nation among the other nations, a shining example of justice in a violent world.

We think our world today is violent. Do some research in ancient history. Violence that you've never even imagined.

If they didn't like you in Nineveh, they would put fish hooks in your back and drag you behind a chariot until you expired. Or they would get you right before you die, let you heal and do it again and again and again.

And this was in the streets. And Nineveh wasn't even the worst. They had a civil law that was supposed to make them stand out from the nations and look holy in comparison to the nations to be a light to the

Gentile world. And yet, they joined the Gentile world in all of their sin. At every chance that they got, they did this.

They were responsible for temple worship. They didn't worship God. They were responsible for offering sacrifices when they sinned.

They didn't offer sacrifices. They were responsible for attending festivals and feasts. Almost every aspect of the entire law

Israel failed at while God was being gracious and patient with them. They had been enslaved their entire existence in every possible way, both physically and spiritually.

I want to mention something that is not immediately obvious. God rescued

Israel out of slavery in Egypt. And the idea could come across to us that he rescued them out of slavery to make them free.

He didn't do that. He rescued them out of slavery for slavery.

He transferred their slavery from one taskmaster to another. Just like in the

New Testament, we are not free in the sense of we have no master. We are slaves of Christ.

The Israelites were slaves to God and to his law. So he transferred them out of slavery into a better slavery that would help them and heal them.

And they rejected him. Deuteronomy 6, 10 -15 says, Then it shall come about when the

Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you great and splendid cities which you did not build, and houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and hewn cisterns which you did not dig, vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant, and you eat and you're satisfied.

Then, watch yourselves, that you do not forget the

Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. You shall fear only the

Lord your God. Notice he doesn't say you're free. Do whatever you want. He says, I brought you out of slavery. Now, you shall fear only the

Lord your God. And you shall worship him and swear by his name.

You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the people who surround you. For the Lord your

God in the midst of you is a jealous God. Otherwise, the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled against you, and he will wipe you off the face of the earth.

This is a people who just came out of slavery to Egyptian taskmasters who said, if you don't obey me,

I will wipe you off the face of the earth. They were wicked taskmasters. God is calling them to righteousness.

He's calling them to faithfulness. He's calling them to obedience, but he's not calling them to libertine freedom, meaning that they have freedom without any responsibilities.

He's calling them to the kind of freedom that's bound to the law of God. Paul teaches us in Galatians 3, 22 through 24 that they were actually held captive under the law.

He says in v. 22, that the Scripture has shut up everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law being shut up to the faith, which was later to be revealed.

He's saying that we were imprisoned by the law. We were brought out of slavery into imprisonment, but it was a good imprisonment.

It was a imprisonment that would help them and heal them and keep them safe until Jesus came. And they didn't live that way.

They rejected the imprisonment of the law, which was healthy for them, and they chose death. We've got to get it out of our mind that being imprisoned is a negative thing in this sense and that libertine freedom, meaning we do whatever we want whenever we want, is a good thing.

It's not. It will rip you apart. True freedom. A friend of mine said this to me once. True freedom comes when you're bound to the law of God.

That's when true freedom comes. That's when true happiness comes and true faithfulness comes. And this is what

God is doing. He's holding them captive under the law to bless them. And they're breaking every command.

They're rebelling in every way. They're not only held captive under the law, but because of their sin, they're being crushed under the law.

Romans 8, 6 -8 says, For the mind set upon flesh is death. Meaning that your captivity under the law can be a blessing to you or it can be death to you.

But the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile towards God.

For it doesn't subject itself to the law of God. It's not even able to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please

God. Paul is revealing to us the simple truth that although the law would have been a blessing to them even if they obeyed it, just like Jesus when

He obeyed it, they couldn't. In their sin, they couldn't. In their sin nature, they couldn't.

They were unable to please God because they were unable to obey God. They were not only held captive under the law and cursed under the law.

I'm being a really good Baptist right now and giving you a bunch of C's, so take that as you will. They were not only held captive under the law, crushed under the law, they were cursed under the law.

Paul says in Galatians 3, 10 -11, For as many as are the works of the law are under a curse.

For it is written, Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all the things that are written in the book of the law to perform them, so that no one is justified.

Paul is saying that if you don't obey, then you are not justified. You are damned under the law.

James 2, 10 says, Whoever keeps the whole law and stumbles under just one point has become guilty of it all.

And James is simply saying the same thing that Paul has said all along. In Romans 3, Everyone has sinned.

Everyone has fallen short of the glory of God. Everyone has turned away from Him. Everyone has become useless.

No one is righteous. No one understands. No one seeks God. No one is good. No one fears

God. Not even one. Which means that all people, both you and Greek, are on even playing field when it comes to God.

We have all fallen short of the glory of God. Now the

Jews did not realize that they were held captive, crushed, cursed, and convicted under a waiting law.

They thought they were free, as many in our society do today. But if they remain in their sins, they will experience an eternal condemnation.

Paul says it like this in Romans 3, 19 -21. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law.

So that every mouth may be closed. And all the world may become accountable to God.

Because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in His sight. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

Paul is saying that there is no defense for those of us who are apart from Jesus Christ. Because apart from Jesus Christ, you are under the law.

And you can't work your way out of the law. And you can't justify yourself under the law. You cannot obey God in order to be accepted by God.

You're not that good. If you believe that from the moment that you were born until the moment that you die, you can obey the law, then you have a severe mental disorder or you're lying to yourself.

Because we know we don't. Just take the Ten Commandments. Have you lied?

Have you cheated? Have you stolen? Have you murdered? Maybe you haven't murdered. Jesus defines that and says that if you've hated someone in your own heart, you've committed murder.

If you've lusted after someone, you've committed adultery. If you've taken God's name in vain, or if you've loved anything ever at one point more than you love

God, we have all broken every single one of the Ten Commandments, not to mention the 613 that are listed out in the

Old Testament. Hell is awaiting men and women who don't smoke, who don't cuss, who don't drink, who don't do anything like what we think a traditional sinner is, and yet, they will still be in hell because of the sins that they have if they don't turn to Jesus Christ.

It's that important. Paul says in this verse that through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

So, if you are truly looking at the law, then you will have a true knowledge of sin.

Which means that if you don't think you're a sinner, then you have a false relationship with the law. He's indicting the

Jews here who had a false relationship with the law, who thought that they were free. You can't read the law and come away thinking that you are free if you're actually reading it the way that it's written.

The only hope that these Jews in John 8 have is if they turn to Jesus Christ. That's it.

Jesus says to them as much in 34 -36 of chapter 8, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.

And the slave does not remain in the house forever. Meaning that you will be cast out.

The son does remain forever. So if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

In John's Gospel, we've talked about election a lot and predestination. And we've talked about these concepts of God choosing and drawing.

And God doing the work of salvation in us because we can't do the work of salvation ourselves. We don't come to God begging

Him for salvation. God seeks us, finds us, converts us, breathes life into us, and when we open our eyes after all of that and we see

Him standing there, the One who has saved us, then we say, Abba, Father. Here we have another example of this.

If the son makes you free, then you will be free indeed. Meaning that if the son does not make you free, then you will not be free.

Because you can't do it on your own. A law stands between you and God that you can't obey.

So unless the son makes you free, you have no freedom. Now, if you're here today, that might be confusing, and you might be saying, but I want to know

Jesus, so you're telling me that I can't know Jesus unless Jesus comes to me? And unless Jesus chooses me?

And unless Jesus gives me freedom? Let me say it this way. If you are here desiring Jesus, it's because Jesus has already sought you.

You are not here wanting Jesus if Jesus has not first come to you. Your heart hates

God naturally in your sin, so therefore you desire Him because He's opened up your heart.

Praise God for that. Turn to Jesus for that. Tell Him thanks for doing that because you were dead in your trespasses, but He's made you alive in Christ.

We need Jesus to be free, which is where we're going to land our plane this morning. That's our third point. They've mixed up the covenants.

They didn't realize that they were held captive under a waiting law. You and I have the benefit now, 2 ,000 years later, of seeing that true freedom comes from Christ and Christ alone.

Let's begin with Galatians 3. If you notice, I've almost quoted the whole book of Galatians today, so we might not have to read that one in church.

It says, Therefore the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ so that we may be justified by our faith.

Paul said that no one is justified by the law, but yet God uses the law only for the believers to lead them to faith in Christ.

He's saying that the law is our tutor. It's our guide. It teaches us that we're insufficient to save ourselves.

It teaches us that we can't do it on our own. The law is like a mirror that we look into and we finally see the state of things and how we really are and we say,

Dear God, I need you. The law is meant to show us our sin and in showing us our sin, propel us to Christ.

So the law is a good thing. That's why we read the law every single week at the Shepherd's Church. Not because we want to be condemned under the law or not because we think we can obey the law.

We want the law to show us where we fall short of God, so that we can repent and turn back to Him.

The law points us to an external hope outside of ourselves. Namely, Jesus Christ.

And Christ uses the law in every believer's life, in their conscience and in their guiltiness to point them to Him.

Paul confirms this in Romans 7 when he says, What shall we say then? Is the law sin?

May it never be. On the contrary, I would not come to know sin except through the law.

For I would not have known about coveting if the law had not said, You shall not covet.

Paul is saying that the law teaches us that we're sinners. Teaches us that we've fallen short of the glory of God.

Teaches us that we need a Savior. We wouldn't have known those things if it weren't for the law. You know, there's a method today of preaching the gospel that's only good news and only happy thoughts.

And God just loves you so much just the way that you are that just accept Him and He'll love you forever.

He just said He already did. There's a way of preaching the gospel that doesn't tell us the law.

That doesn't tell us that we're a sinner. That doesn't tell us that we need to repent. That doesn't tell us that we need to turn from our sin.

It just says that God loves us just the way we are. I hope not, because if He does, He has no standards.

The gospel is both the good news and the bad news. In fact, the good news can't even make sense until you understand the law.

That you've fallen short and you're opposed and at war with a holy God. The gospel can't make sense until you know that.

Jesus is pointing to the fact that for the unbeliever, the law is a terror. For the

Christian, the law is a guide that points us to Jesus Christ. Galatians 3 .13,

remember we said that the law was a crushing curse upon the people who are not in Christ? Well, the people who are in Christ get that curse taken away.

It says in Galatians 3 .13 -14, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us.

For it is written, and this is from Deuteronomy, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham...

You see that? In Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the

Gentile because the gap between us, that curse of Moses has been removed. And that is the promise through faith.

We have been brought across the curse of the law, have the curse removed from us, transferred into the family of Abraham because of Christ.

Not because of us. Either you will try to fulfill this law at your own peril and die, or you will turn to Jesus Christ and you will let

Him fulfill it for you. So that all that's left for you,

Christian, is not the law. You're not waiting on anything that you need to do.

What's left for you is the promises that God made to Abraham, which is what we talked about last week. While the

Jews in John 8 thought that they were children of Abraham, they would receive none of the blessings of Abraham because they were enslaved to sin.

And yet for us, as Christians, we will inherit all of the promises of Abraham because of Jesus Christ.

We will be made a blessed people, and we have been. We will have a great name, and we do.

For there's no name under heaven that's greater than the name of Jesus Christ, and by no other name can anyone be saved.

We have a great name. We will be a blessed people who go to the ends of the earth carrying the gospel, and, as we learned last week, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

God hasn't fulfilled that promise yet, and until God fulfills that promise, Christians, we have something to do.

We have something to do. We don't just receive the promises of God and say, thank you, now

I get to live however I want. Remember, we just said earlier that salvation doesn't lead to libertine freedom.

Salvation leads to responsibility. He's transferred our burdens from sin to burdens of righteousness.

He's transferred our obedience to Satan to obedience to God. We still have something to do. Jesus himself could have stayed on the earth, and he could have done this.

He could have went through all the earth and told everyone the gospel so that all the families of the earth would be blessed while we watched.

Jesus didn't die to create a spectator sport. He died so that you and I could get in the game. He died empowering us to be true children of Abraham so that we, you and I, could take the gospel to the ends of the earth, so that we could share the hope of Christ to the nations, and so that through the gospel being declared, the nations will come to know

Christ, and the world will be blessed through him. There's so much more we could say.

Christ takes our condemnation, Romans 8, 1 -3, therefore there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, amen.

Christ gives us a new righteousness. He doesn't just take away our sins. He gives us righteousness.

Look at Philippians 3. More than that, I count all these things to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing

Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish, so that I may gain

Christ and may be found in Him. Notice this, not having a righteousness of my own that was derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ.

The righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. Dear Christian, you have been forgiven of your sin, and you have been given

His righteousness that He obeyed the law on your behalf. You've never obeyed the law.

He perfectly obeyed the law, and He shared with you His righteousness, so that you are not just set to zero.

You have been given infinite grace and righteousness in Christ, so that when you go to heaven, and you stand before God, He'll say,

Well done, my good and faithful servant. He doesn't say, Look, your bank account has been put back to zero.

All your sins have been forgiven. He says, Well done, my good and faithful servant. The reason God can look at you and say that you are faithful is because the faithfulness of Christ lives inside of you.

It's His faithfulness that God is praising through you when you stand in heaven. Praise God that we've been given an alien righteousness that we can stand before our

Father. We're no longer orphans.

Look at Galatians 4. So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the earth.

But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, so that He might redeem those of us who were under the law, that we might receive adoption as sons.

The curse has not only been removed. The crushing burden of obedience has not only been removed.

You've been made sons and daughters of God. The Bible also says that we're in Christ.

In human relationships, a marriage can have problems. A marriage can have distance.

We are all the bride of Christ. In human relationships, our parents to our children relationship can have distance and can sometimes be broken.

So God goes a step further. He doesn't just call us the bride of Christ. He doesn't just call us children of God.

He gives us a metaphor that we can understand that there is never a distance ever between us and God, and that's that we are in Christ.

We're not just on the outside of Christ, in relationship with Christ, like a bride is to a husband or like a child is to a father or mother.

We are in Jesus Christ. He has brought us into Him through what He did on the cross.

And as a down payment of that, put His Spirit inside of us so that while we live, we have

God living in us and when we're in heaven, we will be with Him and in Him for all of eternity. There's no distance there.

There's no separation there. There is no separation between us and God because of what Christ Jesus has done.

We are treated as Jesus by God because of what Jesus did for us. He will make us bear fruit.

He doesn't just free us from the burden of the law. He makes us bear fruit. Look at what Romans 7 says, Therefore, my brethren, you were made to die to the law through the body of Christ so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead in order that we might do nothing.

Is that what it says? No. In order that we might bear fruit. As a

Christian, we've been given the Spirit of God so that we can bear fruit, love, true love, God's love.

You may have been a loving person in the worldly sense before Christ, but after Christ, you can begin learning how to love like God loves.

Be patient like God is patient. Be joyful like God is joyful. These are fruits that come from the

Spirit and they're not replicable by the world. It says in 1

Corinthians 15, 55, we're not just freed from the curse, not just freed from captivity, not just freed from the crushing weight of the law, not just adopted, not just in Christ, not just all these things.

He says, oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting?

The sting of death is sin. The power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us victory through the

Lord Jesus Christ. I'll make a claim that I think is true.

The New Testament is the story of victory. The New Testament is not the story of defeat. The Old Testament is the story of defeat.

Five covenants were given. Five covenants were broken by human beings. The New Testament is the story of Jesus who through his power and his power alone is victoriously completing these covenants one by one by one.

The New Testament is the story of victory. And because Christ Jesus has elected us to be his family, the family of Abraham, and has told us that we will go into all the world and he will not return until the families of the earth are blessed, church history is the story of victory as well.

We don't have an expectation of defeat. We don't have an expectation of the world is gonna continue to get worse and we're gonna continue to get smaller and then

Jesus is gonna return to a failed project and then he's gonna set the world on fire that way. That's not our view.

I don't know if we know this or not, but every generation in church history, the church has grown. It started with 70 in an upper room.

It's grown now to where it's on every continent. It's grown to where there's faithful people who bow to the knee to Jesus in almost every country.

And I believe it will continue to grow. I believe it will continue to be faithful. I don't think that every year the church is gonna grow.

We live in some pretty terrible years right now in American history. But America's gonna die and the church is gonna remain.

America will not outlast the church. Rome thought they could. They didn't. The British Empire thought they could.

They didn't. When America falls, when you and I are dead, the church of Jesus Christ will remain and it will continue to remain until every tribe, tongue, and nation has heard the gospel, until all the families of the earth are blessed, and then the end will come.

The New Testament is a story of victory. And I share that with you because we live during a moment where we feel like being defeated.

Do not be that way. Christ has done everything to redeem you. He's forgiven you, saved you, lifted the curse off of you, brought you into his family so that you are now in him.

You have everything in the world to be joyful about even while the world around us has none.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I pray that you would not let us live like the

Jews of John 8, where we believe that we're free but we're not.

Lord, I pray that we in this room would have true freedom in Christ, a freedom that is not our own, a freedom that cannot be bought and purchased by us, a freedom that cannot be won by us, a freedom that cannot be executed by us.

Lord, I pray that every single person in this room would have a sincere and authentic faith in Jesus Christ.

Lord, if there is someone here who has not yet become regenerate, meaning that they have not yet pronounced faith in you,

Lord, I pray that they would be part of your elect and that someone in this room would be able to share the Gospel with them before they even leave today and they would bow their knee to King Jesus.

Lord, I pray for us as your servants who are commanded to go out into the world. Lord, I pray that we would find our place in the story.

Lord, I pray that our lives would not be consumed with health, wealth, and happiness, but our lives would be consumed with the

Kingdom of God. We have been done a disservice, Lord, and that the church for too many years has tried to tell us that our job is to believe only and to come back each

Sunday. Lord, let us understand our responsibility before you, that you have saved us not to spectatorism.

You've saved us to faithfulness. You've saved us to obedience. You've saved us by your obedience, for our obedience, so that we will do what you've called us to do.

Lord, let us be about your work, each and every one of us, in whatever way that we can find.

Lord, I pray that by your Holy Spirit that you would convict our hearts that when we're on the phone with the telemarketer that we would bring up the

Gospel. Of course it's awkward, but heaven and hell stand in the balance, and it's far more necessary for us to share the

Gospel than for us to live in our fear. Lord, I pray that when we're out and about that you would even bring conversations about so that we can share the hope that is in Christ.

Lord, I pray that maybe none of us in this room will stand on a street corner with a microphone and preach, but Lord, all of us can be a part of your story.

All of us can be faithful in some way or another, whether it's with friends or family or coworkers or whatever. Lord, the world does not know

Christ. We know him. Lord, I pray that you would equip us with the passion and the courage to share it.