True Freedom - Pastor Tom Loghry Rockland Community Church Download

True freedom is found in Christ as we have been liberated from the power of sin, being born again by the Spirit.

Transcript:

To the Jews who had, to the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold my teachings and you are really disciples, then you will know the truth, and the truth, and the truth will set you free. They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?" Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to the sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, then you will be free indeed."

Let us pray as we come before God's word.

Dear Father, as we come before the scriptures this morning, as we hear again the message of the gospel, that good news which is ours in Jesus Christ, we pray, Father, that you would remind us as we've put faith in Him of the liberty that we've received from sin. And that, Father, if we have not yet put our trust in Christ, that you'd open our eyes to see and our ears to hear the sweet freedom that you offer to all those who would turn to Him.

We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. You may be seated.

In celebrating the birth of this nation, we also celebrate those truths which inspired its conception. We celebrate those truths that are articulated in our declaration of principles, where it says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

For the sake of justice, for the sake of our common good, it is right that we uphold these rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This means that we should strive to protect every human life, every innocent human life, even including those who have done wrong things, but who do not deserve to be punished with death by any human authority. That means that we should strive to protect the liberty of every human being in accordance with the liberty that God has given to each one of us, as long as exercising that liberty does not trample the rights of others or injure the common good of society. It means that our government should do nothing which would unreasonably hamper a person from building a life in which they can thrive and flourish. We do not close these doors in America. Our doors are open to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But while America is a land of opportunity, it is not a land that promises to deliver a complete fulfillment of these goods. Life as we know it is protected. But in the end, we all die. Our political liberty is secure. We are not prevented from choosing to do anything that is within the bounds of justice and liberty, but we are not ensured that we can do everything that we might desire to do. I might aspire to have a career in the NFL, but just because I might desire to be a football player doesn't mean that I will be playing anytime soon in the league. But more importantly, just because I might desire to become a better person, a truly virtuous person who walks in God's ways, and while I'm left at liberty to pursue such a life, I'm not ensured that I will in fact become that sort of person. Rather, again and again, life shows how we are captive to sin. I can pursue happiness in America, but can I actually obtain true and lasting happiness? Something more than a half loaf, can I actually get for myself full and everlasting joy? America is a land of opportunity, but in itself, it cannot give us that kind of happiness.

True life, true liberty, true happiness is only found in Christ. And I could spend quite a bit of time this morning fleshing out each one of those goods. But I want to center in on liberty because I do think that true life and true happiness hinge very much on us obtaining true liberty. We're gonna anchor ourselves this morning in John 8:31-36. And in this passage, Jesus is engaging with those people who have believed that He's the Messiah, and yet we see them grappling with embracing the full teaching of Christ. They are eager for a Messiah who can free them from Roman rule. They do not yet perceive how their captivity goes beyond that empire. They have not yet the, grasped the depth of their slavery to sin. So Jesus, in speaking to them, says, once again in verse 31, "To the Jews who had believed Him, Jesus said, 'If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.' They answered Him, 'We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say we shall be set free?' Jesus replied, 'Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.'"

Jesus' audience is pretty sharp here, because they pick up on the fact that what Jesus is basically implying in saying that they can be set free is that they are slaves. And the freedom that he is offering to them he says comes when they truly believe in him, when they embrace his teachings. Now, his teachings actually include believing in Jesus. If we were to survey through the Gospel of John, both before and after, we hear Jesus fill out his teaching in various ways, and it all centers on the, his own person. It centers on himself. John 5:24 says, "Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life."

In John 6:29, he says, "The work of God is this to believe in the one he has sent." In verse 35 of that chapter, he says, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." Then later on in John 14:6, he says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." So what Jesus is offering to them is not so much a philosophy, even while Jesus has many good teachings. What Jesus is really offering them is himself, that he is the one who can save them, that he is, in fact, the savior of the world. And what they're really reckoning here with is, what does that mean?

Because at this time, the Jewish people were subjugated by the Roman Empire. And when the Jewish people were looking towards the hope of a Messiah, they were really very often looking towards the hope of one who would bring political liberation. And while certainly Jesus is going to bring political liberation, and Christ is going to return and rule as king on earth, he's a savior in a much deeper sense than politics. Now, this comes to a head because they take exception to this implication that Jesus has made that they are, they are slaves. They say, "We're Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?" Now truth be told, they are kind of slaves because, once again, they're subjugated to the Roman Empire, and they might wanna be freed from them, but they wouldn't be willing to accept the status of a slave because they wouldn't want to think of themselves in that way.

And we can understand that. This is a, a sort of pride that every human being has possessed. You think it, it's funny, there was a song written in England in 1740 called Rule Britannia, maybe some of you are familiar with it, and one of the lines goes, "Rule Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never shall be slaves." So they wrote that song in 1740. Well, if you're singing that song, not gonna be surprised if your British colonists across the sea are gonna say, "Oh, I, I'm not really content with the situation of paying these taxes without representation, and we're not going to be slaves," and so they rebel. So it's just in the human spirit.

We don't like to think of ourselves as being a slave. We want to think we're free, that we're independent, that we make our own choices for ourselves. And while we can secure a measure of political liberty, when we examine our lives more closely, we see that in fact we're enslaved in, in many ways. We see this most vividly often in the cases of those that have struggled with drug addiction, substance addiction. You know that you don't want to be dependent on those substances, and yet you're drawn to go back to them again and again. We see this in all kinds of ways, not just drugs, though. We see it in our, how we're given over to lust, how we're given over to greed, how we're given over to our anger, our pride. And even while we maybe are able to deal with one thing, so maybe you deal with your lust and you set that aside, what you'll find is the further along that you go in following Jesus, he uncover...