Sermon series: AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

John 8:31-36
"Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed.
And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
They answered Him, "We are Abraham's descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say, "You will be made free?"
Jesus answered them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.
And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever.
Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed."

The tension between the Jewish religious leaders and Jesus is increasing each moment. The confrontation has become very personal...they have accused Him of being a liar, imposter, and a breaker of the law. But Christ has held his ground and some in the crowd at this temple scene in Jerusalem have started to acknowledge that maybe, just may be, some of the things He has been saying just could be true.
Verse 30 says: "As he spoke these words, many believed in Him." But it is plain from the exchange that their faith did not go very deep. In fact, it can scarcely be called faith at all. We are reminded that there are degrees of conviction which Jesus talked about in His parable of the Sower. In Matthew 13:3-8 we read:
"Behold a sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them.
Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth.
But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them.
But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop; some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."
Verse 18 of Matthew 13 explains this parable:
"Therefore hear the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom, and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside.
But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. Now the one who received seed among thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty." (Matthew 13:18-23)
There is the hearer whose mind is shut with prejudice or sealed with an unteachable spirit.

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Other hearers fail to think things out and to think them through. Others have so many interests in life that certain things, and often the most important things, get crowded out. But, there are those whose hearts are wide open and hungry for truth...it is in these hearts the truth of God's Word can grow and produce spiritual fruit!
The hearers in our text were so prejudiced against Christ that whatever He said, they rejected or selected just what they wanted to believe. Evidently some of His hearers had been impressed by some of Jesus' sayings...they believed them, and counted themselves as followers. The Greek construction John uses to describe these hearers could mean no more than they accepted as true what Jesus had said.
But Jesus made it very clear that to be His disciple, there must be a total acceptance of His word and a commitment to live by the commandments contained in His teachings. And then He added...You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free!
To know the truth is something more definite than to know what is true; it is to understand that revelation with regard to the salvation of men, through the mediation of the incarnate Son of God. Truth is closely connected with the person of Christ, so that knowledge of the truth is naturally associated with being His disciple. What is essentially part of Himself He communicates to His followers. The truth of which John writes is the truth that is bound up with the Person and work of Christ...it is saving truth! It is the truth which saves a man or woman from the darkness of sin.
Luke tells that Jesus saw fulfilled in His ministry the prophecy that "He hath sent Me to proclaim release to the captives." (Luke 4:18). It is this kind of freedom of which John writes.
In our text, Jesus is saying that it is from His word truth is revealed and it is in this truth man really enjoys true freedom.
In that the Bible is the Word of God, it can contain nothing but truth. The authority of Scripture means that all the words in Scripture are God's words in such a way that to disbelieve or disobey any word of Scripture is to disbelieve or disobey God. It is one thing to affirm that the Bible claims to be the words of God. It is another thing to be convinced that those claims are true. Our ultimate conviction that the words of the Bible are God's words comes only when the Holy Spirit speaks in and through the words of the Bible to our hearts and gives us an inner assurance that these are the words of our Creator speaking to us. Just after Paul has explained that his apostolic speech consists of words taught by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 2:13), he says, "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. 2:14).
It is important to remember that this conviction that the words of Scripture are the words of God does not come apart from the words of Scripture or in addition to the words of Scripture. It is not as if the Holy Spirit one day whispers in our ear, "Do you see that Bible sitting on your desk? I want you to know that the words of that Bible are God's words." It is rather as people read Scripture that they hear their Creator's voice speaking to them in the words of Scripture and realize that the book they are reading is

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unlike any other book, that it is indeed a book of God's own words speaking to their hearts.
It is helpful for us always to remember that the Bible is historically accurate, that it is internally consistent, that it contains prophecies that have been fulfilled hundreds of years later, that it has influenced the course of human history more than any other book, that it has continued changing lives of millions of individuals throughout its history, that through it people come to find salvation, that it has a majestic beauty and a profound depth of teaching unmatched by any other book, and that it claims hundreds of times over to be God's very words!
The words of Scripture are "self-attesting." They cannot be "proved" to be God's words by appeal to any higher authority".
There is no higher authority!
Since the words of the Bible are God's words, and since God cannot lie and speak falsely, it is correct to conclude that there is no untruthfulness or error in any part of the words of Scripture.
We find it affirmed several places in the Bible. "The words of the Lord are words that are pure, silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times" (Psalm 12:6).
Here the psalmist uses vivid imagery to speak of the undiluted purity of God's words: there is no imperfection in them.
In Proverbs 30:5, we read, "Every word of God proves true; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him." Note! It is not just some words of Scripture that are true, but every word. In fact. God's Word is fixed in heaven for all eternity: "For ever, 0 Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens" (Psalm 119:89). Jesus speaks of the eternal nature of His own words: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away" (Matt. 24:35).
God's speech is placed in marked contrast to all human speech, for "God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should repent" (Numbers 23:19).
GOD'S WORDS ARE THE ULTIMATE STANDARD OF TRUTH! In John 17 Jesus prays to the Father, "Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth" (John 17:17). If we could read this passage in the original language (Greek), Jesus is saying that God's Word is not simply "true," but it is truth itself!
The difference is significant, for this statement encourages us to think of the Bible not simply as being "true" in the sense that it conforms to some higher standard of truth, but rather to think of the Bible as being itself the final standard of truth. The Bible is God's Word, and God's Word is the ultimate definition of what is true and what is not true: God's Word is itself truth! It is the reference point by which every other claim to truthfulness is to be measured.
Now, in our text, Jesus has just declared...
IF YOU ABIDE IN MY WORD, YOU ARE MY DISCIPLES INDEED. AND YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE.
Question:
What is freedom? Or, more particularly, what does the Bible mean by freedom?
"What is freedom?" --first, freedom from ignorance, and second, freedom from sin. Moreover, we are told that a person becomes free only through Christ, through the truth that He brings and through the redemption that He achieved at Calvary.

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In the first place, the freedom of which the Bible speaks is a freedom from ignorance, by which is meant primarily an ignorance of spiritual things. We are all aware of bondage where natural ignorance is concerned. Someone who does not know is limited. An individual with no education has certain doors barred and his potential for success in our society has little possibility. If this is true on the purely natural level, it is at least equally true or ever more true spiritually. A man who does not know the teachings of the Word of God cannot thrive spiritually. A man who does not know the fundamental truths of the Christian faith cannot come to Jesus Christ for salvation.
The really upsetting thing about this situation, however, is that many persons who are not knowledgeable about Christian truth and who are therefore bound by their ignorance are nonetheless unaware that they are ignorant and so resist any attempt to help them to become free.
We do not have to go far for an example either, for one is found in the verses we are studying. Jesus had spoken of freedom to those who were listening to Him. But no sooner had He mentioned the word "free" than they reacted violently. Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
But when He said that, they immediately responded, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves to anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?" (v.33).
This is patently ridiculous, of course. For years the Jews had been slaves in Egypt. During the period of the Judges there were at least seven occasions when the nation fell under foreign rule. Later there was the seventy-year-long Babylonian captivity. Even as they were talking to Jesus, these men carried coins in their pockets that bore the image of the Roman emperors and thereby testified to Rome's dominion. Yet they said, "We have always been free."
They are self-deluded! And so the sinner today! People are slaves to ignorance in spiritual matters, but will not acknowledge their slavery. They do not know God. Yet they think they know all there is to know and so will not learn about Jesus or come to Him!
Freedom from ignorance is important because it is through a knowledge of spiritual truth that God saves people from sin, from themselves, and from Satan.
Secondly, the Lord Jesus spoke of a freedom from sin. This is involved in verse 34, where Jesus declares, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin." Notice that Jesus is not talking about the penalty of sin in this verse. It is not that we are to be set free from sin's penalty. Jesus is talking about sin's power, about the hold that sin has over us, about a defeated Christian life. His point is that He can set a person free from this bondage also!
Proverbs 5:22 says: "The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast."
Paul writes extensively on this subject of sin's bondage in Romans, chapter 6.
"Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

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"For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him.
For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not!
Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness. But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness." (Rom. 6:4-18)
In our text in John 8, there is no doubt that Jesus is referring to slavery to sin, the subject that Paul has so clearly discussed in the above passage. But the way He puts it gives emphasis to "SLAVE." The sinner is not free! The more we think about it, the more we see that is true.
The first time anyone commits a particular sin there may have been a terrible struggle with temptation. But if the person gives way, then the next time there is not such a hard struggle. And if he continues in that path, there comes a time when there is scarcely a ripple of temptation. The person has become the slave of the sin that once was so strongly resisted.
We see the same thing if we reflect on what happens when we try to break a bad habit. It is not easy. We are well aware that we are in the power of the evil thing. It may be that by God's grace in the end we succeed, but that does not alter the fact that until God helps us we are in the grip of the habit. In our own experience we know what it is to be enslaved to evil.
EVERY ONE WHO COMMITS SIN IS A SLAVE OF SIN! Please note...the subject is qualified by WHO COMMITS SIN, or, one who is constantly doing sin; one who lives in sin. Such a person is called a slave of sin. He is a slave, for he has been overcome and taken captive by his master, sin, and is unable to deliver himself from this bondage. He is as truly chained as is the prisoner with the iron band around his leg, the band that is fastened to a chain which is cemented into the wall of a dungeon. He cannot break the chain. On the contrary, every sin he commits draws it tighter, until at last, it crushes him completely. That is the picture which Jesus draws here of sinners as they are by nature.

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Then Jesus said something very interesting...NOW THE SLAVE DOES NOT REMAIN IN THE HOUSE PERMANENTLY, BUT THE SON REMAINS PERMANENTLY..."Jesus has been picturing His enemies as slaves in chains, lacking all true freedom. Now—changing the figure slightly—He dwells upon another aspect of this condition of slavery: a slave may enjoy the privileges of his master's house for a while, but not forever. At any moment he may be dismissed or sold! The Jews, who pride themselves upon their descent from Abraham, must bear this in mind. The old dispensation with its special privileges for Israel has ended. Abraham's true children will remain in his household and enjoy its privileges permanently, but Abraham's slaves (think of Hagar as noted in Galatians 4:21-31) will be driven out! Only a son enjoys freedom. The conditional sentence leaves the responsibility with them, but the action (that of making free) with Him! The expression FREE INDEED, probably refers to the fact that the freedom given by Christ is the only real freedom.
Here is what Jesus was saying to His listeners..."You, if you are disobedient and rebellious, may at any time be rejected from being the people of God, and be deprived of your peculiar privileges as a nation. You are in the condition of servants, and unless you are made free by the gospel, and become entitled to the privilege of the sons of God, you will be cast off like an unfaithful slave!" Being sons of God is not by natural descent, but is a spiritual transaction accomplished through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord! "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 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 Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Galatians 3:26-29).
THEREFORE IF THE SON MAKES YOU FREE, YOU SHALL BE FREE INDEED! Listen to the words of Jesus: "The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:18).
Paul writes in Romans 8: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2)
The person who is made free by Christ will be "really free." John uses a word for "really" that he uses nowhere else.
It carries the idea of "in essence"; there is that about Christ that means He can give a freedom that is qualitatively different from the lesser freedoms people enjoy.
Freedom in Christ! We have been delivered from the condemnation of sin, the penalty of the law, and the wrath of God. We have been delivered from Satan's power! "He has deliver us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love" (Col. 1:13).
"Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ" (Gal. 4:7).
"You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature, rather, serve one another in love" (Galatians 5:13)