Abiding in Christ

I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to John chapter 8 and find your place at verse 31.

John chapter 8, verse 31, be where we begin this morning.

There are several marks of true discipleship, but one might say that the definitive mark of genuine discipleship is the mark of perseverance, because perseverance proves the other marks over time.

A profession of faith can be made hastily, and we have all seen that happen. Love can be faked temporarily, and we've all experienced that.

Even fruit can appear to bloom for a season, and yet, as in the parable of the soils, it springs up and then withers away because it has no root.

A true disciple is not one who simply begins well, as many men begin well, but a true disciple is one who finishes well.

And those are not my words, those are the words of the Scriptures. We are admonished throughout the

Scriptures to not give up, to persevere, to press on, as Brother Andy often says.

And this morning we are going to, in our continued study of John's Gospel, we're going to see

Jesus say to a group of people who have just believed in him, he is going to say to them that a temporary acknowledgment of who he is is not the same as being his disciple.

Because to be his disciple means to abide in his word. And so let's stand together and read

God's word, beginning in verse 31, it says,

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

They answered him, We are the offspring of Abraham, and have never been enslaved to any one.

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

Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever.

So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Father in heaven, I thank you for your word. I pray now that as I seek to give an understanding of it,

Lord, that you would keep me from error. As you know, O God, that I am a fallible man, and I fear preaching falsely more than anything else.

For your word says, Not let all presumed to be teachers for teachers who would be held to a higher standard.

So I pray, Lord, that you would keep me tied to the post of your word, and do not let me stray.

I pray that as we examine this text together, that you would give us insights, Lord, through your spirit, and that your spirit would be the teacher, as I have so often said,

Lord, may I decrease, may Christ increase, and may your spirit be the one who teaches us today. And for the believer,

Lord, I pray that this would be an encouragement to stand fast in their faith, but Lord God, for those who have not believed, that today they might hear of this blessed gospel, and this

Lord Jesus Christ who comes and tells us to believe in him, for apart from him, we will not have life in heaven with him at all, but we will be separated in hell forever.

So Lord God, may it be that we hear the call of the gospel today, and the ones who have not believed it would, in Jesus' name, amen.

John's gospel is filled with these extended discourses of Jesus where he either goes on and on on a specific subject or a specific doctrine, or he is going back and forth with those who he is engaging with, and we find ourselves here in this discourse in chapter 8 where Jesus is interacting with the

Jewish people, and this interaction began during the Feast of Tabernacles, which we learned about several weeks ago as we've been going through John's gospel verse by verse and chapter by chapter.

We know that he is now in the Court of the Women, which is a place that would have held around 6 ,000 people, and we know that Jesus has already made very specific statements about who he is.

He said that if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink, identifying himself with the water of life.

He has said, I am the light of the world, identifying himself with the glory of God and the very light which drives out the darkness, and he says that there is a danger in rejecting him.

We learned this last week, the last time we looked at this text. He said if we reject his word, if we reject him, we will die in our sins.

This is what he says to his opponents. He says, you will die in your sin, and if you remember what dying in sin means, it means to die in unbelief.

It means to die in unforgiveness. It means to die unfit to meet

God, and there is no worse way for someone to die.

There is no worse condition in which someone can die than to die in sin.

And then in the last part of what we looked at last week, we got to verse 30, and verse 30 it says, as he was saying these things, many believed in him.

And I cautioned you last week, if you remember, I know it was right before the lunch, so your mind may have been on the food, so let me remind you again what

I said right before I closed my message last week, right before our fellowship meal. I said that in verse 30, it seems as if it ends on a high note, that they believed in him, and many of us would throw our hands up and say, praise the

Lord, many have believed in him. But as we are going to see, beginning in verse 31, that not every time that the text says that someone believes in Jesus, is it referring to what we would call a saving faith, because there is a temporary faith that wells up in the hearts of men at times, and it does not persevere, it does not last.

And these same people are the people that Jesus is going to address, and if you follow the argument down, and we're going to look over this the next three weeks, we'll be looking at the rest of chapter 8,

I don't find a place in the text where he's addressing anyone else.

Now there is a possible point, and I'll mention it next week, where he may shift his attention to the leaders or the unbelievers or whatever, but beginning in verse 31, if you look at it with me, notice what it says in verse 31,

Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him. So that is the audience he is speaking to, and that's the audience that responds to him.

And by the end of this chapter, they are picking up stones to stone him. So the question is, did these people have a temporary faith that was not a genuine faith, or does the audience change at some point?

And I'm going to argue that I am not absolutely certain, but it seems to me, based on my reading of the text, that it's the same audience throughout, and we'll talk about that the more we go.

But at least we know right now, he is addressing specifically the audience of those who believe.

Whether or not this audience changes down a few verses from now, we will talk about in the weeks to come.

Everybody with me so far? That wasn't confusing? Because you see my point, right? If he's talking to people who believe, some of the things that they're about to say are going to sound very unbelieving, and they're going to sound very argumentative, and they're going to sound, at a certain point, very angry.

And so it just is a good reminder to us that there is such a thing as false faith.

And I've said this many times. In fact, I want to say this about this, because I have said this sometimes. One of the blessings of preaching verse by verse through the

Bible is you don't pick what you preach. You just preach what the text says. Right?

You know, guys who preach topically and choose their topics every week, well, they get to choose, well,

I'm going to preach on this topic, I'm going to preach on this topic, I'm going to preach on this topic. But when you preach verse by verse, you commit. Right?

Like, we're committed. We're, what, 15 months into John now? We're only in chapter 8? I mean, we're committed.

This is going to take a minute. And I say that because you may have heard me already talk about false faith.

Well, that's because John deals with it many, many times. If you go back to chapter 2, and you'll remember that it says the people believed in Jesus, but he did not commit himself to them.

What was he talking about? Because he knew their hearts. So John has already dealt with people who have expressed a temporary faith.

And hear me now, and hear me with the most amount of sincerity I can tell you, temporary faith is not saving faith.

The Bible describes saving faith in a much different way than it describes what we would call a temporary faith, a fleeting faith, a faith that does not last.

It's the very thing Jesus talks about in the parable of the soils. And I know

I mentioned it last time, and that's why I say the problem with this is you're going to hear me say these things over and over. Well, it's in the text over and over.

It's not that I'm just being repetitive or because I'm riding my hobby horse all the way to glory. No, I'm actually,

I'm just saying what the text says in the reminder of the text over and over, is you are saved by faith, but it must be real faith.

When I went to Cornerstone this last week, I was up in Michigan, I got to preach at Cornerstone University, preached two messages, one on the doctrine of Sola Fide and one on the errors of Rome and their view of justification.

So I gave two messages. One was in the chapel and one was in the lecture hall. It was a very good opportunity to get to go, and I was glad to be able to speak to the students there.

But I preached a message on justification by faith alone. And I believe this is, I believe this is the battle of our day, as it was in Luther's day, because I believe it's the heart of the gospel.

And to give up justification by faith is to abandon the heart of the gospel. As Calvin says, it is the very hinge upon which everything else turns.

And Luther said, it literally is the article upon which the church will stand or fall, that we are justified by faith in the finished work of Christ and not of ourselves, not of works, not what we do, but in the work of Christ.

But it must be true faith. And one of the arguments that Rome often uses to attack the

Protestant position of Sola Fide, justification by faith, one of the arguments it's often used to argue against us, is they argue against something called easy -believism.

Easy -believism is the idea that all faith is, is a one -time temporary ascent of the mind.

A one -time temporary, I believe in Jesus, I raise my hand at a crusade,

I walk the aisle at a church, I shook the hand of the preacher, I signed a card and maybe even got wet. And that's what it means to believe in Jesus.

And my heart to you today is to tell you that is not all that faith is. Does it include believing and confessing and coming forward and being baptized?

Of course, I'm not saying don't do those things, but if that is all we have is a one -time temporary faith, it's not genuine faith, it's the very faith that James actually says doesn't save.

Because if you read James chapter 2, he says there is a faith that doesn't save and it's a dead faith.

The Reformers referred to, referred to sola fide, they referred to the faith that saves as a, as a living faith.

And that's what it is, it's a living faith, it's not a dead faith. And so that's what

Jesus is addressing in this very, in this very few verses that we're going to look at. The very first thing we're going to look at is he's going to talk about what it means to be a true disciple.

And what it means to be a true disciple is one whose faith continues, not one whose faith is temporary and fleeting and gone in an instant, the one who springs up for a time and withers away because it has no root.

So with that, let's look at verse 31, verse 31. So Jesus said to the

Jews who had believed in him, who is the audience? The Jews who believed in him, that's, that's the audience. We know that in this verse.

If nothing else, we can know that for sure here. And he uses the conditional clause, if. If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.

If you abide in my word. So who is he speaking to? He is speaking to people who have just confessed belief, who have just said we believe.

They have just made that confession of faith and Jesus says, if you abide in my word, then you are truly my disciples.

So first of all, let us ask this very simple question. What does it mean to abide in the word of Christ?

What is it? What is the word abide even mean? The word abide here is the Greek word minnow. It is the word which means to remain or to stay or to continue to dwell or to persist.

It carries the idea of ongoing, enduring, not a momentary association, but a settled, continued state.

That is what the word abide here is referring to. And Jesus says, if you abide in my word.

Now I thought about this one, because if he said, if you abide in me, I think we, we would all understand that in the sense of our faith in him, right?

If we abide in him, but he says, he specifically says, if you abide in my word, well, what does it mean to abide in the word of Christ?

What does it mean to abide in his word? Well, I take a step back and I say, well, let's think about this for a second.

Let's actually think about what the Bible says throughout in regard to the word of Christ.

We are commanded to be obedient to his word. We are commanded to follow his word.

Jesus says, if you love me, you're going to do what? And keep my commandments, right? And he says that those who reject his word, he talks about those who build their houses.

He said, you can build your house on the sand or you can build your house on the rock, right? And the one who builds the house on the rock is the one who's building it on his word, on him, on his truth.

And I do believe that's really the heart of this. It's abiding in the truth of Christ, which begins with faith in who he is.

You cannot be saved if you have a wrong understanding of who Jesus is.

Now, I don't mean that you have to be able to clearly articulate and explain the

Athanasian Creed, because Lord help us if that was what was required, because that is a full and while I would say accurate, it is a comprehensive confession.

But I will say this, if we deny the nature of Jesus Christ as being the son of God, right away, we have walked away and have said, we do not have

Christ. We are not abiding in his word. Because he said he was the son of God.

He says the father sent him. If we say as the Muslims do, curse it as though who says

Allah has a son. That's what the Quran says. It says, curse it as everyone who says Allah has a son. If we say that, if we say

God does not have a son, then we are not abiding in the truth of Christ. We are not abiding in the word of Christ, because Christ said he is the word of God, or the son of God.

But it's not only that. Not only do we confess that Jesus Christ is the son of God, we also confess that Jesus Christ is fully divine in and of himself.

That one is harder, because people begin to think, well are we polytheists? Do we believe that there are many gods?

And the answer is no. And this is why the articulated confession of the church has been that God is one in essence, therefore we are monotheistic.

But he is three in person, therefore we are Trinitarian. That's why we call ourselves Trinitarian monotheists. We believe that God is three in person.

Meaning that there are three persons, three subsistences, as the

Confessions refers to, that share the essence of God. The Father is fully God, the Son is fully

God, the Spirit is fully God. And these three persons are not three parts of God. It's not like you have a third of the

God who is the Father, a third of the God who is the Son, and a third of the God who is the Spirit. No. All three of them share the fullness of God, and we see this in John 17, when

Jesus is praying to the Father, and that's how he can pray to the Father, because they are persons, they are individual persons who can deal and interact with one another.

And yet he says, glorify me with the glory that we had together before the world was created.

Number one, Jesus confesses in that statement that he existed before the world. Two, he says he had the glory of God, and the

Old Testament says God shares his glory with no one but himself. So that tells us that Jesus is God, because he shared the glory of God.

And he says glorify me again with that glory, because he had humbled himself, came to the earth as a man so that he could die on the cross, and then go back to the

Father, where he would again be glorified, and every knee will bow to him. So this is the expression, when

Jesus says, if you abide in my word, we have to first abide in the truth of who he is. We have to first abide in the truth of who he is, because that's his word.

If we deny what he says about himself, we've denied his word, we're not abiding in his word. We're not abiding in his word.

Number two, we also have to abide in his commands of what he calls us to do.

Now here's the difficult part, because I don't know about you, but in all these years of being a Christian, I ain't stopped sinning yet.

Now I ain't bragging, because what a horrible thing to brag about, but I am confessing that in 27 years in the

Lord, because I got saved in 99, I know right where I was sitting when I believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, and I believed

God saved me, and in that moment, my life changed, but I am still being sanctified every day, still being conformed to the image of Christ.

And you know what's funny about now? I actually recognize my sin more now than I did then. As I heard, a guy gave an illustration the other day,

I thought it was so good, he said, if you think about it, if you think about the fact that God is here and you're here, right, and God is holy and you're not, and when you get saved, you don't think about that gap in between, he says, but the more you get sanctified, the more that gap begins to get wider, because you realize how holy

God is and how unholy you are, and it's like eventually you can't even stretch your arms, and he said what's great is that makes the cross bigger, because the cross is what fills the gap, the cross is what brings you to God, is not your goodness, but as you recognize more and more your sinfulness, the mercy and glory and wonder of the cross becomes ever more present in your life, and you realize you need

Christ even more every day. That's what sanctification is, it's conformity to the image of Christ, but it's recognition of the need for Christ every single day.

You didn't go a day without needing Jesus. You haven't gone a minute without needing grace.

We confess every Sunday how much we need the grace of God, and how this week we have at times had cold hearts.

Some of you may have a hard time reading those confessions, like well I don't feel like I had a cold heart this week. You didn't, at no time this week did you feel like you had not worshipped

God as you should or thought about God as you should or prayed as you should. Was there no time in your life this week that you could say those things and be honest with yourself?

So having said all that, we are called to obedience, but we know it is an imperfect obedience, amen?

Because we still have to deal with the world, the flesh, and the devil, we still have to deal with the great enemies of the soul, and therefore when

I say that we are to abide in his word means to abide in obedience. I'm talking about that practical, daily, walking out of our faith, trusting in Christ, relying on him, following after him, and here is the thing about sanctification.

It is not you start here, you end here, and there's a straight line because that ain't how it is.

Sanctification is a line that looks like a stock, right? Like if you ever look at the stock, you'll have a good day in the stocks, and it will kind of bottom out.

But it's a steady growth. It's a steady growth. I'm not what I ought to be, but thank

God I'm not what I was, and God is sanctifying me and growing me in Christ, and that's what it means to abide in the word of Christ.

It means every day trusting him with the failures and thanking him for the successes because I know that any good that I do

I'm doing because God is working in me both to will and to do his good pleasure. Philippians chapter 2 tells me that, right?

It says, work out my salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do his good pleasure.

So abiding in his truth is one abiding in who he is, or abiding in his word is abiding in who he is because he has given us his word, who he is, but it's also abiding in his commands.

It's abiding in his call to holiness.

We are called to live holy lives, and we're abiding in that. But there's a third thing in this abiding in his word.

It means resting in him as well. It means resting in him as well because our sanctification is not just from our own, you know,

Michael, Michael, I don't call you Michael, Mike, Michael, Mike, Mike and I talk about white knuckling it sometimes, right?

White knuckling it means you just bear down and do it, right? Because life is that way sometimes. Sometimes you don't want to do something but you white knuckle it, you get through it, you got to do it.

But there's also a sense in which we have to rest in Christ, right? We have to realize at certain points that Christ is our

Sabbath. He says to us, come to me all ye who are weary and are heavy laden and I will give you

Shabbat, I will give you Sabbath, I will give you rest. I think one of the most difficult things in the

Christian life is this constant treadmill of try, do, try, do, try, do and never finding a place where we can just rest in what he has done.

What does his word tell us? If you trust in me you will have eternal life. The thing that must persist in us is trusting in him.

And honestly, most of the time when people come to me for counseling and people need to be walked through in the area of counseling, whatever the issue is it will almost always come back to helping them learn to trust

Christ more in that circumstance, whatever the circumstance is. Because as we learn to grow in our trust of Christ, we will learn to grow and rest in him.

And that will, that will carry us through. This is what it says, he is able to keep us from stumbling, but do we rest in him?

I love the last verse of Jude, to him who is able to keep you from stumbling.

What a blessing it is to know that he is the one who keeps us from stumbling, but are we resting in him who upholds us?

Are we abiding in his word? His word is truth. His word is comfort.

His word is rest. Are we abiding in that? These are the things, and he says if you abide in these you are truly my disciple, which means if we don't we are not truly his disciple.

And the word I want to point out to you is the word truly, because there is such a thing as a false disciple.

I said that already and I don't want to beat that horse, but the reality is there is true discipleship, there is true disciples of Christ, there are those who are truly following after him, and there are those who are not truly following after him.

I'll give you a few verses on this just to consider. The first one is probably the one that is most used often when we think of people who fall away.

This is 1 John chapter 2 verse 19. It says they went out from us but they were not of us, for if they had been of us they would have continued with us, but they went out that it might become plain that they are all not of us.

Now I want to say something very quickly about that. That's not talking about people changing churches.

Just in case anybody might misunderstand and think that if you leave one church and go to another church, for whatever reasons you might be, someone might say, well he's saying if you leave our church you're not saved.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not in any way. But what it is saying is that if we depart from Christ, they went out from us.

When this was written, there was not first Baptist church and second Baptist church and third Baptist church. There was the church at Ephesus, right?

They didn't have all these different churches that you could leave one and go and join another. They had their church in that city.

So when someone left the church, they were leaving the only church in the area. They were leaving the only place they could go to be a part of the body.

And it says they went out from us, but they were not of us. How does he know that?

How does John, by the way, same John who wrote the gospel is writing this epistle, 1

John 2, he says they went out from us, but they were not of us. How does he know that?

How does he know they were not of us? Because they were with them. They participated with them. They probably had fellowship with them, took communion with them, probably were baptized in their midst.

But he says they went out from us, but they were not of us. How does he know they were not of us?

Well, he says, for if they had been of us, they would have continued.

That's how he knows. Now, again, I'm not talking about somebody changing churches. Please keep that in mind.

But I am saying this. If someone walks away from the faith, if some, and I know people who once confessed

Jesus, some of them even preachers, who have walked away from Christ, and John says, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.

Apostasy is the mark of a false disciple. Apostasy is, apostasy means what?

Departing the faith. Not someone who's caught up in sin. You can be a Christian who gets caught up in sin.

Galatians 5 tells us if someone is caught in sin, what are we to do? We are to restore them.

We are to pray with them, walk with them, counsel them, seek their confession and their change, and be with them, love them.

This is what church discipline is all about. It's about coming to someone in their sin and calling them to repentance, and by God's grace seeing them repent, that's the blessing of that.

I'm not saying that if you're struggling with a sin that you have departed from Christ, but I will say this.

I've seen many men who confess Christ with great confidence, only to in a very short time have nothing to do with Christ, have nothing to do with his church, and have nothing to do with his word.

And John says they went out from us, but they were not of us, because if they had been of us, they would have continued.

That's what Jesus is saying. If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.

Hebrews 3 .14, for we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.

We are called to end well, not just start well, and by the way, the word confidence there, you know what the word confidence means?

With faith. Confide, fide, faith, with faith. Confidence means with faith.

Now what are we holding to the end? What do we hold to the end? Perfection? Sinlessness?

No, because if that were the case, we would drive ourselves mad. No, we hold the same faith we had at the beginning.

The same faith that justifies us when we believe is the faith that will carry us through to the end, and this is why

Paul says that I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

As it is written, the just shall live by faith. Why does he say from faith to faith? Because it is from faith first to last.

Paul even says in Galatians, he says, you who began by faith, are you being perfected by the law?

No. It is faith that carries us through from beginning to end, and it's faith in the finished work of Christ that carries us through.

So Jesus says, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples.

And then verse 32 gives us the great blessing of being his disciples. Verse 32, this one could be a sermon by itself, because he continues and says, here's the blessing of being my disciple.

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

First of all, I just, I want to address the idea of knowing the truth. We must have an understanding of who

Christ is to believe. This is where Romans 10 says, how can they believe if they haven't heard, right?

They have to hear. There has to be what we would call the essence of what we believe has to be told to us so that we know what to believe, right?

There has to be content to our faith, right? It has to be true content. This is why if you're, if a

Muslim witnesses to you, or you're a Mormon witnesses to you, or a Jehovah Witness to you, they're giving you the wrong content.

If you believe in what they're telling you, you're believing the wrong thing, right? It has to be the right content. So there has to be truth in the message.

There has to be truth in evangelism. There has to be truth in what we tell people, and they believe in the truth. But here's the thing, if they believe, and God truly changes their hearts and gives them a new heart and a new life, the result of that now is knowing

Christ, who is the truth, and knowing him will set us free.

Understand this, this is important. I genuinely believe that one of the most problematic issues in our world today is the desperate search for truth that men have, and they are convinced that everything is a lie that is told to them, and they have to find the truth in some hidden place.

And we call this like the idea of the conspiracy theorist. Now, I want to say this, there are truly conspiracies out there, because there's truly a conspirator.

There's a devil. And next week I'm going to be preaching on the devil, because you know what, Jesus is going to tell these people, these same people, you know he's going to say, you're of your father the devil.

That's why I have to believe this is, he's very serious about their condition. He says, you're of your father the devil.

So, next week we're actually going to talk about the fact that the devil does exist, and he is out there, and there is a true conspirator, and there are truly conspiracies.

I mean, we learn every day about things where our government has lied to us, and our leaders have lied to us, and things like that.

So, I'm not saying there aren't true conspiracies out there. But here's the thing that I do want to address, and that is this constant, constant searching that people have for something to fulfill that need for truth that they have, and not being satisfied in Christ.

We want to find something. We want to find anything we can to tickle our search light in our mind, to try to find something that's exciting.

Oh, I want to talk about the COVID shots, or I want to talk about the flat earth, or I want to talk about the, did they really go around the moon?

Did we really land? Okay. I'm saying these are the things like, these are the things that work us up.

You are given precious little time on this planet. You live to an old age, you might live to 100, but the average age is about 75 to 80.

And we are not called to waste what little energy we have in the pursuit of things we'll never know.

But we are called to seek after Christ, because in him we will find a truth that is more precious than anything else.

He is the pearl of great price. And so this whole seeking out truth, do you spend as much effort seeking out the truth of Christ as you do wondering about the moon landing?

And I'm not necessarily talking to anybody in this room. I'm just saying over in general, you know what I'm talking about.

We're all guilty of it from time to time of being fascinated by the question marks of our world.

The question marks of our world may never be answered. You may never know if Trump really won in 2020.

I got your attention, but Christ is

King. And no matter who's in the white house, Jesus Christ is on the throne. That is the truth.

Throne of David, baby. That is the truth that sets us free, is knowing him.

Because I know that if I know him, everything this world has is second and third and fourth.

It is nowhere near what I need to have my focus on in the main thing. And that's him. Because the freedom that I have in him is so much more precious than any freedom

I could have by knowing the truth of the JFK assassination. That's what

I'm talking about. There is truth here that is so precious and life changing that we mustn't abandon this truth in the pursuit of something else.

I just want to tell you a few things. Just think of this. It says that truth will set you free.

What are we set free from? Because he says it again. By the way, he says this again in verse 36. He says, if the

Son sets you free, you are free indeed. What are you free from? Three things right off the bat.

And you need to be able to say this because this is what you need to be able to tell people. If you are in Christ, you are free from the penalty of sin, which is death and hell and punishment for eternity.

And you are set free from that. Number two, you are set free from the power of sin because the

Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you and walk with you and to be the pericletos, the one who strengthens you and comforts you and gives you strength for the day.

You are set free from the penalty of sin, from the power of sin, and you are set free one day from the presence of sin when you have shed this mortal flesh and you'll be given a new body and a new heaven and a new earth.

And you will live freer than you've ever been. You know, people talk about it sometimes.

They say, I just don't know what heaven's going to be like. And I've even heard people say, I don't even know if I'll be able to enjoy it because it's going to be so different than this life.

Let me tell you what it's like. This is a simple illustration. And I heard this from an eight -year -old boy. I've carried this with me for 20 years because I remember when he told me it was so...

it was eye -opening for me, from an eight -year -old kid. He said, you know,

Pastor Keith, he said, when a baby's in the womb, it can't move very much.

And it's very constrained. But it got everything it wants. It's got food coming in through the umbilical cord.

It's got the warmth and comfort of its mother's womb. And it hears her voice. You know, the babies can hear the voice of the mother.

So there's all this comfort in the womb. And when the baby's going to come out, you know what the mother has to do? She's got to shove him out.

She's got to push him out because he don't want to come out because he's in a position of comfort. But now that he's out, he cannot imagine going back to that constraint.

Because now we've experienced the freedom of life not in the womb. And now we have the freedom.

Can anyone imagine going back to the constraints of the womb? We couldn't possibly imagine that. And that's what it's like when we shed this mortal flesh and we put on the new body.

We will be freer than we've ever been in a freedom that will know no end.

And we won't be able to imagine coming back to this mortal plane. We won't be able to imagine coming back to this earth with all of its sins and sorrows and struggles.

We will have a freedom that is beyond comprehension. And the

Son sets you free. You will be free indeed. Free from the penalty of sin. Free from the power of sin. And one day, by God's grace, free from the presence of sin.

Free from condemnation. Free from the dominion of sin. Free from the curse of the law. Free from the fear of death. Free from the power of Satan.

Free to approach

God boldly. Free to live unto righteousness. Free to call God Abba, Father.

Free to have no separation from the love of God in Christ Jesus our

Lord. Those are the freedoms that we have. That's what it means when Jesus says, the Son will set you free and you will be free indeed.

But you know, they didn't want to hear his message of freedom. And we'll end with this here.

Verse 33 and 34. They answered, We're the offspring of Abraham. We've never been enslaved to anyone.

How is it you say you will become free? Now right away, I just want to say, either they're lying or they're being somewhat spiritual in their use of language here.

Because when they said, we've never been enslaved to anyone. If the Jews had known anything it was slavery.

They knew slavery in Egypt. Slavery to the Babylonians. Slavery to the Medo -Persians. And currently, they are under the boot heel of Rome.

And yet they're willing to look at Jesus and say, we have never been enslaved to anyone. What are you nuts?

You've been enslaved to everybody. Sorry. That's what I'm thinking. I'm like, what is it?

And some commentators think that what they were trying to say is because they were God's chosen people, they have always had a spiritual freedom.

Even in their bondage. Maybe or maybe they were just denying the obvious.

That they had in fact been slaves. Throughout their existence, they had been slaves over and over.

And they say, how do you say we'll become free? And Jesus nails the very thing for which they were not free from.

And that was sin. Notice what he says in verse 33. Or verse 34.

Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. You want to talk about your slavery? You don't think you're a slave?

You don't think that you've been in bondage? Yeah, we won't talk about the

Egyptians. Yeah, we won't talk about the Babylonians. We won't talk about the Medo -Persians. We won't talk about the Romans. But here's what we will talk about.

You're a slave to sin. You're in bondage to sin.

And there's only one who can set you free. And that's the Son of God. People want to talk all the time about free will.

And honestly, I've talked it enough. Free will is an interesting topic.

We can talk about moral agency and the ability of men to make choices and the ability whether or not those choices are ultimately consequential in the plan of God.

We can talk about all those things, secondary causation and how that works within the confessions that we hold to.

But let me say this. If you think outside of Christ that you're free, then you don't understand how in bondage you are.

Because the Bible says outside of Christ, we are enslaved to sin.

We are in bondage to sin. And the only one who can set us free is the one who himself has the keys to sin, hell, and the grave.

And that's Jesus Christ. He is the one who sets us free. So I would say to you today, if you are a believer in the

Lord Jesus Christ, you have been set free. You have been set free to run.

You have been set free to live. You have been set free from the penalty, from the power, and one day from the presence of sin.

Hallelujah. Praise God, the freedom that you have. Go and walk in it. But if you are here today and you've never believed in the

Lord Jesus Christ, then my call to you today is to recognize the one, the only one who can set you free, and that's

Jesus Christ. Only Jesus Christ can give you freedom. Only Jesus Christ can change your life.

Only Jesus Christ can take you from being in bondage to sin to being free in Christ and being a son of God.

Are you a son of God today by faith in Jesus Christ? If you are, praise the

Lord. If you're not, I want to pray for you. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for your truth. And I thank you, Lord, that you in fact say, if the

Son sets us free, we are free indeed. But we know that every man who is not in the

Son is in the bondage of sin today. And only you can take them from the bondage of sin and give them life forever through faith.

And I pray today that you would open up hearts, regenerate hearts and spirits, and give them a desire for your

Son, that they might come to know him, and that they might have a life forever changed by the gospel.

Not a fleeting and temporary faith, but a faith that abides. And I pray that in Jesus' name.