Monthly Archives: November 2024

The Source of Freedom is the Truth, John 8:31-36

The idea of freedom, or the principle of being free, is one that is particularly indigenous to Americans.  It’s not limited to Americans, of course, but much of our history is based on the premise that man is designed to be free.  Our country was founded on that principle.  As the Constitution declares, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Liberty means the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views. 

So the American Revolution was fought over those truths, that we had a right to be free from tyranny.  And to some extent the Civil War continued that fight, eventually taking on the context of freedom from slavery.  Then in the 1960’s, we experienced a cultural revolution called the Hippie Movement, which espoused the idea of freedom from social mores. However, not all the freedoms that generation sought were necessarily based on truth, as history has made evident. But nonetheless, the entire history of the United States has this search for freedom interwoven in it’s story, from generation to generation.

Yet after 300 years, I would suggest that we are still trying to come to grips as a nation with the notion of freedom.  We are still trying  to obtain it. For that matter, we are still trying to define it.  And so it is to that question that we come to today.  What is freedom, and how does one really achieve it?

Well, I believe that this passage teaches us the answer to that question.  The blueprint for freedom was written long before the Constitution of the United States.  And it’s author was no less than Jesus Christ.  I believe that this passage before us today is one of the most important in the gospel.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that this is the heart of the gospel.  

Making freedom a reality was the purpose of Jesus Christ’s visitation to Earth.  In His first message that He preached, He quoted from Isaiah concerning Himself, saying that this prophecy  was fulfilled that day in their presence.  This is what He read from the scriptures prophesying about Himself.  He read from Isaiah 61:1 which says, “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners.”

The obvious question then is how was that freedom realized?  What does it look like?  Is He talking about social freedom, or political freedom, or freedom from slavery, or spiritual freedom?  Because there are people that have interpreted these statements in all those various ways.  But remember, Jesus said that they that worship God must worship Him in Spirit and in truth.  So we cannot just apply any template we want to these statements.  We must apply them according to the truth.  

Well, I suggest that Jesus is speaking primarily about spiritual freedom.  But I will add to that the caveat that the spiritual is the fountain from which all other freedoms flow.  You can attempt to find freedom outside of the spiritual, but I would suggest that if you do that, then you are being deceived.  You are still held captive, still enslaved.  Jesus says  that in our text in vs. 34, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.”  So until you take care of the spiritual issue of sin and become free in that regard, you cannot know any other freedom.  You are still in your sins, and as such, you are still held captive by the devil, and are a slave of sin.

That is why three times in the previous passage we looked at last week, three times Jesus says to the Jews, that they would die in their sins.  Because they had rejected the truth, and as a result, they were still in their sins, still enslaved. 

So what is the solution then?  Jesus said if you are going to know freedom, then you must first know the truth.  Jesus said in vs.32, that when you know the truth, then the truth will make you free.  So knowing the truth is paramount to becoming free.  You cannot be free and live a lie. As became evident in the Hippy Movement, things that they thought provided freedom, like drugs and sex, only served to further enslave them, because they were not founded on the truth.  And I would suggest that many of the new social mores which are being expounded today are simply more of the same kind of deceit; they promise freedom, but they only will produce greater bondage. 

And that was the scheme of Satan from the beginning wasn’t it? To lie against the truth and as such enslave men to sin.  Satan appeared in the Garden of Eden to seduce mankind to sin by telling a lie, by selling Eve an untruth.  As Jesus says in our text in vs. 44, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

So Satan, in his rage against God – his rage that God would choose to shower His affection on man, and make man in God’s image, according to God’s likeness, when Satan himself had desired to be like the Most High and was rejected – so Satan came to man disguised as a creature of God, and he deceived the woman by making her think something evil was good, and he invoked her to pride because she desired to be autonomous like God, and as such mankind fell from their sinless state in God’s presence just as Satan had also fallen.  And mankind has been in bondage to that lie all throughout the history of the world.

That is why Jesus calls him the father of lies. And he did not stop with that lie, but he has sold the world a lie ever since.  Satan, who controls the world system, has so engineered the world so that according to 2Peter 2:19, he is “promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.”  What he means is that they are being promised freedom but instead they end up becoming slaves of sin.

So what is truth?  Well, to start with, God is truth.  Truth is defined in God and by God and there is no truth apart from God. In Isaiah 45:19 God says, “I the Lord speak the truth; I declare what is right.” Psalm 119:160 says, “The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting.”  And vs. 142 of the same Psalm says “your law is truth.”  And one more, Numbers 23:19 says “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?”

Now I cannot overstate this doctrine.  God is the source of all truth.  His word establishes the standard of truth.  All philosophy, all science, all the wisdom of man must be examined in the light of God’s truth, and only when it conforms to God’s truth, is it true.  As Paul said in Romans 3:4, “Let God be found true, though everyman found a liar.”

So as God is truth, Jesus also is truth.  As we have seen in our studies in recent weeks, Jesus speaks the things of God, He does the works of God, He does nothing that the Father isn’t doing.  So if God is truth, then HIs Son is truth.  In fact, Jesus says that He is the personification of truth in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

Notice in that verse, that Jesus doesn’t say He sometimes speaks the truth, but that He is the  truth.  That means nothing less than perfect truth comes from God.  And as Jesus personifies the Word of God, then He is the truth of God, and no one can come to God except through Him.  One must come to accept Christ’s word, in order to come to God.  God has chosen to reveal Himself in His Son.  And what God has revealed is truth.  So coming to know the truth, will make you truly free. 

Now we saw that in vs.30, many people listening to Him had come to believe in Him.  That simply means that they believed that He was speaking the truth.  They believed that He had come from the Father.  Vs.26 Jesus had said, “He who sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world.”  So some people listening to that believed in Him.  Some did not, as we see in the later verses.  But some did believe Him. And I think that means that they became Christians at that point.  Some commentators think that these people were superficial believers.  They didn’t really want to follow Christ, but they just acknowledged that what He said was true.  I don’t buy that.  I think that what Jesus was saying was so radical, so outrageous, that they had to either acknowledge Him as a lunatic, or acknowledge Him as God come in the flesh.  So when John says twice that some believed in Him, I think they truly had their eyes opened to the truth, and they believed in Him and they were saved. That is the way that we are saved, we are justified by faith in Christ. Romans 5:1 “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

So then now that some have been justified by faith, then in vs.31, Jesus speaks of the next step in salvation, and that is sanctification.  There are three phases in salvation; there is justification, then sanctification, and finally glorification.  All must exist for salvation to exist.  If you are justified, and then you are sanctified, but there is no glorification, no eternal life, no heaven, then your salvation is worthless, isn’t it? Paul said in 1Cor. 15:19 “If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.”  And the same thing is true of the other two phases in our salvation.  If we are not justified, then our attempts at  sanctification through works can never save us, can they?  Because Ephesians 2:8 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”  So if you skip over justification by grace, and try to become sanctified by works, then you cannot be saved.  And by the same measure, justification without sanctification is worthless. As James said, “faith without works is dead.”  And Hebrews 12:14 warns us that without sanctification, no one will see the Lord. All three then are necessary for salvation. 

That’s why Jesus turns to those people, the people that had believed in Him, who believed that He was the Son of God, who were justified by faith, and to them Jesus said, ““If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”  Now I believe that these people were saved by faith in Him, as I said.  And so Jesus now is instructing them how to be His true disciples.  That is the consequence of truly being saved.  We not only believe, but we follow.  We join Him, fellowship with Him, allow Him to teach us as we go through each day and every circumstance.  It’s not just “I have faith, so I’m saved, and now I can go on with my life and do what I want to do, live like I want to live.”  It’s not like Jesus is now my genie and so He’s going to make sure that everything I do works out.  He’s going to keep me safe as I go about my business.  

No, that’s not discipleship.  A true disciple recognizes that Jesus is the source of life, the source of truth, the way to God, and so he follows Jesus wherever He leads us.  Most Christians today have it backwards.  They think salvation entitles them to have God follow me around and work out any difficulties I might encounter, but stay far enough behind me so as to not hinder my freedom to do what I want to do.  That’s not biblical discipleship.  Christ doesn’t follow me, but I need to follow Christ.  

How do we do that practically speaking?  Well, Jesus says how, He says you do it by continuing in His word.  He’s talking about relying on the word of God for your day to day situations.  This is the way of sanctification.  Read the word, and apply the word.  That’s called wisdom by the way. Wisdom is the application of knowledge.  So we don’t just become hearers of the word, but doers of it.  

Jesus said in His high priestly prayer to God in John 17:17, speaking of His disciples, He prayed, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”  That’s a tremendous doctrine.  The word then is the sanctifying agent in my life. It’s like the old adage, “sin will keep you from the Bible, or the Bible will keep you from sin.”  David in Psalm 119:11 says, “Your word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”

Here is the thing that Jesus is teaching at this point.  Justification is taking away the penalty of sin.  Sanctification is taking away the power of sin.  And one day, glorification will take away the presence of sin.  But let’s just focus on sanctification for a moment.  Sanctification is deliverance from the power of sin.  This is the true freedom that Christ brings.  It’s not just taking away the penalty of sin but leaving us to live in sin.  That would not be true freedom.  Christ gives us the power over sin, the power to be delivered from sin.  That is the hope of Christianity in this life.  That we have victory over sin.

Now the reality is that as long as we are in the body and living in a fallen world we are going to feel some of the effects of occasional sin. No one is going to achieve sinless perfection this side of glorification.  But as a Christian we can be delivered from continual sin.  That is the meaning of the word used there for sin. It is continual, habitual sin.  That’s the good news that Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 61 which we quoted earlier; “the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners.”

That’s the same thing that the old hymn Rock of Ages is talking about when it says, that the blood of Christ will “be of sin the double cure, save from wrath, and make me pure.”  That double cure is speaking of being saved from the wrath of God, and then the sanctification that produces purity towards God.  Justification and sanctification.  

So that is the path of sanctification.  Sanctification is progressive, by the way.  There is a sense in which we are sanctified, consecrated, and set apart at salvation by the blood of Christ.  That is positional sanctification whereby we have been set apart from the world for good works.  But there is also practical sanctification, and that comes from continuing in the word.  As God reveals truth to you through His word, then you apply that truth and it becomes a sanctifying agent that works to conform you to the image of Jesus Christ. That is why the text doesn’t just say the truth sets you free.  That’s true, but it’s not once and done.  It’s continually making you free.  Each day continuing to apply the word, and that continuance working in us that which is pleasing to God.  That’s discipleship.  Sanctification is discipleship.  

And that’s God’s goal for His church. When Christ commissioned the church, He said go into all the world and make disciples.  Not just believers.  But followers of Christ in conduct and in truth which is doctrine.

Well the Jews answered Jesus back by saying, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, ‘You will become free’?”  Now first of all, I don’t believe that this “they”  who John refers to are the same people that became saved.  I think these people are the Jewish religious leaders who have been having this running debate with Christ all throughout this whole passage.  Because these people obviously do not believe in Him.  They accuse Him of being a liar, and in vs.41 they even accuse Him of being born of fornication, of being illegitimate.  So obviously these cannot be those who believed that He was the Son of God.

But the really confusing part was what they said.  They said they had never been enslaved to anyone, when in fact, they had been enslaved numerous times, starting with Egypt and then in Babylon and they were under a form of bondage even then to the Romans.  So it is difficult to know what they were talking about. Except for to note the irony that when you are enslaved to a lie, the lie is that you are not enslaved. Many times I meet people who are obviously weighted down under the bondage of sin, and yet they extol the virtues of their freedom.  I suppose there is no lie like the lie you tell yourself.  

That is the curse of sin which brings condemnation.  To refuse to acknowledge it and thus refuse to repent of it.  For instance, to be an alcoholic and deny it is obvious folly to everyone but the alcoholic.  But that is very often the case.  They say, “I can take it or leave it.”  But in actuality, they only take it.   Perhaps that unwillingness to face their sin caused them to deny their enslavement and to blind themselves to their reality.

So Jesus gave an answer designed to prove HIs point.  He said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.”  Again, this is speaking of habitual, continual sin.  In other words, if you are living in sin, then you are obviously a slave of sin, and you have not been set free.  You may tell yourself you are free, you may tell others that you are free, but your actions say otherwise.  You are still in your sins, and you will die in your sins, unless you believe in Him, which Jesus said meant to continue in His word and follow Him.

And then Jesus says, “The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son does remain forever.”  What Jesus is saying was in response to their claim as Abraham’s children.  He is saying that their actions demonstrate that they are not Abraham’s children, because Abraham’s children are the children of faith.  They believe God and He counts it to them as righteousness.  But these men demonstrate that they are not Abraham’s children because they are not children of faith.  So Jesus says that they are slaves.  And like Ishmael in the house of Abraham, they will not inherit the blessing of the son Isaac.  They will not stay in the house forever, because they are not true sons.  These men had a temporary stay in the household of God in the sense that they belonged to the tribe of Israel.  But when they were judged according to their works, they were found to be doers of wickedness, and thus slaves of wickedness, and not sons of righteousness.  

That was the judgment.  But thank God Jesus doesn’t stop with the judgment.  He offers once again salvation.  He says in vs.36, “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”  This is the reality of salvation, that we are truly free if Christ has made us free.  If the spirit of man has been freed, then he is free inwardly, in a way that no earthly chains can contain.  Because if Christ has made us free, then we have fellowship with God in a realm that cannot be ascertained by those who are not free in Christ.  

In a simplified way of looking at slavery and freedom, we might say that those who are slaves have someone else take advantage of their labors.  If they make money, it’s not really theirs to enjoy, it’s their masters.  If they have possessions, they are not really theirs to keep, for they are their masters.  The master owns everything that the slave has.  Such is the reality of the lie that Satan has foisted upon the world.  He has promised that you can enjoy the fruits of a sinful life.  but the fact is, that he owns all that you do.  All that you do in that world ends up being left behind when you die in your sins and face an eternity in hell.  

But if the Son shall make you free, then not only are you made free, but you receive the adoption as sons, and consequently you receive an inheritance that will never fade away, reserved in heaven for you.  As a result of that hope, we know that our labor is not in vain. That what we do in this world will be used for the glory of God.  So we find our freedom in service to God, knowing that He keeps track of our works, and will reward us in the day of our glorification.  

Listen, today is the favorable year of the Lord.  Today the Lord offers freedom from the captivity of sin that has kept you hostage.  The Lord is ready to save all that call upon Him.  Believe in the truth and be saved.  That is the offer extended to you today.  Receive all that God has prepared for those that love Him.  Or continue to believe the lie of this world and you will die in your sins.  There is a very clear choice, and the choice is yours.  There are two paths, two possibilities before you today; the truth and the lie.  God is the author of truth, and Satan is the author of lies. One path leads to freedom, and the other path leads to further enslavement. I pray you will believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord. May today be the day that you are made free indeed.

The litmus test of heaven, John 8:21-30   

Today is the Lord’s Day.  It is the day when Christians worship the Lord.  It is the day set aside each week to honor Jesus Christ, who laid down His life for us so that we might be truly free. Jesus Himself said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends.” The remarkable thing about Christ’s sacrifice is that He did not just lay down His life for His friends, but He laid down His life for His enemies.  Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”Jesus said He did not come to save the righteous, but sinners.  Sinners are by definition the enemy of God who is holy and righteous.

The essential fact of the gospel that is so often missed however, is that all men are sinners.  Romans 3:10 says, ”THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE;  THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS,THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD;  ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS;THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD,THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”  That’s the bad news.

The good news however, is found just a couple of chapters later in Romans 5:8 which I read to you a moment ago;  “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

But a lot of people are so offended at hearing Romans 3:10 that they never get to know the benefits of Romans 5:8.  They are so offended that the Bible says that all men are condemned because of their sinfulness, that they never come to know the salvation that is offered through Christ’s death as our substitute.  But the fact is, that if you do not acknowledge your need for forgiveness from your sins, and trust in Christ’s atonement on the cross as the propitiation for your sins, then you cannot know the freedom from condemnation that comes through salvation.

Now that is really the crux of the passage we have before us today. This exchange between the Jewish leaders and Jesus which is recorded here for us is due to the fact that the Jewish leadership trusted in their own righteousness and rejected salvation through Christ. As a matter of review,  Jesus had been preaching in the temple for a week at this point, during the weeklong celebration known as the Feast of Tabernacles.  And He has presented through many different messages the truth of the gospel.  That truth simply stated was that He is the Messiah, the Son of God, the eternal God come to Earth in human form, so that men might have the spiritual life that God offers to them that believe in Him.

And Jesus has used a couple of metaphors to illustrate that truth,  which we have looked at in detail in previous weeks. In the first metaphor He says He is the source of living water which if anyone drinks of, out of their innermost being will spring up living water. Then His other incredible claim is that He was the light of the world, and that the world was in darkness, but for those that follow Him, they will have the light of life.  In both of those metaphors, Jesus is teaching that He is the source of life, abundant life through the Spirit of God, and He gives it to those who believe in Him.

But at every point that Jesus makes in His messages during the Feast, the Jewish religious leaders want to find fault with Him and argue over some technicality.  And at the heart of their response is their fervent belief that they did not need a spiritual Savior.  They believed that they were inherently good people.  They were obviously very religious people.  They thought that they knew what the scriptures taught.  They thought that they had been given entry into the kingdom of God through their heritage and that they insured it by their adherence to certain laws such as circumcision and keeping the Sabbath. 

In many respects, they were not unlike many Americans today.  According to a recent Pew Research survey, 70% of Americans claim to be Christians.  They believe in God.  They go to church on somewhat of a regular basis.  They believe in the golden rule.  They have a few Bibles in their possession.  They are what we would call “good people.”  And the real danger for these people is that they have never come face to face with their sinfulness and as such have rejected the idea that they need a Savior.

This was the predicament of the Jews who listened to Jesus that day.  He had told them repeatedly that He had come from the Father in heaven and as such had been doing the works of the Father and speaking the words of the Father, shining the light of the truth unto the world so that men might have life.  But they had repeatedly rejected His claims. Therefore Jesus says in vs. 21, “I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.”

Their response is that of disdain, again missing the significance of what He is preaching, and focusing instead on trying to discredit Him.  So they respond with dripping sarcasm, “Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?”  I think there is even a hint in their response of their intention to kill Him, but they phrase it as if He will commit suicide.  Suicide by the way in Jewish culture of that period, was considered the most egregious sin, and they believed that the bottom level of Hades was reserved for those who committed suicide.  

The question must be asked – why do they have such hatred towards Christ?  I’ll tell you the answer. It’s the same answer that Jesus gave for their hatred in John 7:7, He says, “[the world] hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.” It’s the same hatred we see vented towards those who proclaim the truth today; it’s because of the conviction of sin.  If you dare call anyone a sinner today, or suggest that the Bible condemns certain activities as sinful, then you are going to be the object of intense hatred.  And by the way, this doesn’t just come from atheists, it also comes from those claiming Christianity.  The late Bishop Desmond Tutu said that he would rather spend eternity in hell than a minute in a homophobic heaven. Well, he just might have gotten his wish. Because that statement reveals his hatred towards God. Jesus said that God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.  That means that God gets to make the rules, not us.  We must worship who He is, and not who we want Him to be.  The world does not get to define God.  God has defined Himself in His word.  And we must love God more than we love the world. 1John 2:15-16 says, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”

The essential principle that Bishop Tutu fails to understand is that God’s law is a reflection of God’s nature. It is how He reveals His holiness.  I read another quote by Bishop Tutu in which he said, “We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”  I have news for him,  God’s standards are anything but low.  God’s standard is absolute perfection.  And there is only one person that has been able to meet God’s standard, and that is Jesus Christ.  All the rest of mankind is dead in their trespasses and sin. That is why Jesus says three times in this passage, “you will die in your sins.” Unless you repent and call in faith upon Jesus Christ – that is the only way for your sin to be forgiven.  

And listen, your sin is not forgiven because God just decided one day to get with it – just go along with the culture and forget about all that sin stuff,  just live and let live.  No, God still counts sin.  God did not do away with the requirements of the law.  Jesus kept every law perfectly so that He might be the blameless, spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  No, God didn’t stop counting sin, He just counted it against Christ.  He transferred our sin upon Jesus and beat Him for it with a whip within an inch of death.  He transferred our sin upon His Holy Righteous Only Begotten Son, and pounded nails into His hands and feet and let Him hang on a rough cross for hours bleeding to death.  He transferred our sin upon Jesus and let Him die and descend into Hades to pay the penalty for sin.  He transferred our sin upon Jesus so He could pay the price of our sin, and only when His justice was satisfied could He transfer Christ’s righteousness upon us.  God’s standards are anything but low.  No one comes to heaven, to the Father, except through Jesus Christ and by His righteousness alone.

So in spite of their unbelief and sarcasm,  once again Jesus shows compassion by restating His warning to the religious leaders. In vs.23 He says, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.”  

Now what Christ has done is give a litmus test of sorts for belonging to the kingdom of heaven.  That was the primary message of Christ.  He was preaching about the kingdom of heaven.  And the Jewish leaders recognized that the requirement of citizenship was righteousness.  So Jesus is in effect giving a litmus test for righteousness.  He says they are of the world, and as such they are still in their sins, and they will suffer the consequences of that sin, which is death.  How do you know whether someone is of the world or of heaven?  How do you recognize those belonging to the kingdom of darkness, and those belonging to the kingdom of heaven?  I mean, anyone can claim to be of the kingdom of heaven, can’t they?  People all over the world claim to be of the kingdom of heaven.  We already said that 70% of Americans claim to be Christians, that is, belonging to the kingdom of heaven.  So how do you know? What is the evidence? 

Well, to find out the truth, I’m not going to quote Desmond Tutu, but instead quote the Apostle John once again.  As we read earlier, 1John 2:15-16 says, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”

And Paul says virtually the same thing, that those who are of the world set their mind on worldly things.  In Phil. 3:18-19 he says,  “For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ,  whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.”

That’s the litmus test.  If you love the world, if your focus is on worldly things, if your passions are in the world, if your pride is in the things of the world, then you are of the world.  You cannot serve God and mammon.  That’s why James says, show me your faith by your works.  Show me.  Don’t tell me.  You say you have faith, but show me your faith.  Faith is not an intellectual exercise, by which we gain heaven.  Faith is an exercise by which the will of heaven is worked out in my life.  Where God’s will supersedes our will.  Faith is praying, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

That’s the litmus test.  That is why Jesus was able to point to His works as the litmus test that proved He was sent from God.  Three times in this little passage He says that He does the works of God, as evidence that He is not of this world, but of God.  Look at vs.26, “the things which I heard from Him, these I speak to the world.”  Then again in vs.28, “I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.” And third, vs.29, “I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.”

It’s noteworthy that Jesus categorizes things in threes. Three times He says “You will die in your sins.”  And three times Jesus says He does the works of God. The principle is clear; if you are of the world, then you will die in your sins.  If you do the works of God, then it’s evident that you are of the kingdom of heaven.

 Now I hope no one here today tries to weasel out of this principle of your works being evidence of where your heart is by saying that Jesus did the works of God, but grace makes us free to do whatever we want. Grace is the means by which our guilt and punishment are expunged. And grace is the means by which we are given the Holy Spirit to lead us in paths of righteousness. But all through the New Testament we are told to imitate Christ.   Peter said in 1Peter 1:15-16  “but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior;  because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.”  And again in 1Peter 2:21 he says, “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.” We are to follow the pattern that Jesus laid down for us. That is what it means to be a disciple by the way.  We follow the pattern of Christ. As He did, so do we.  That’s what Jesus is saying in vs.31, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine.”  To continue in His word is to continue in obedience to His word.

And Paul also makes it clear in Ephesians that we are saved to do the works of Christ. Eph. 2:10 “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” So the principle that Jesus is teaching is clear, how you live illustrates where your citizenship is.  Is your citizenship in heaven?  Then you will be about your Father’s business.  A ceremonial tip of the hat once every couple of weeks is not indicative of where your citizenship is.  Jesus said in Luke 12:34  “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

You know what disturbs me though is when Christians, who have been set free from the enslavement to the world by the death of Christ, try to keep one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom of God.  They claim to be a citizen of heaven, but their priorities are all about the world. Everything seems to take priority over the things of God. I worry about such people. 

That reminds me of the prophet Elijah, who seeing the double mindedness of the Israelites, who worshipped the idols of the world while claiming to be the people of God.  And so he cries out to them in 1 Kings 18, “How long will you hesitate between two opinions?  If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.”  If you say you are the Lord’s people, then serve the Lord with your whole heart.  But if you are people of the world, then continue to serve the world.  But don’t think you can live in two places at once.

Well, back in our text, the Jews respond to Jesus’ words with more sarcasm, more condescension, saying “Who are You?”  In a more modern way of speaking they may have said, “Who do you think You are? We have to believe in You or we die in our sins?  Just who do You think You are?”  That question was obviously intended to be sarcasm as well, but nevertheless, Jesus responds to them by saying, “What have I been saying to you from the beginning?” 

What had He been saying from the beginning?  Well, let’s remember what Jesus has said so far;  that He was the Messiah, He was the Son of God, He was the resurrection and the life, He was the Temple of God, that God has given Him the power to execute all judgment, that He is the source of eternal life,  that He was the one of whom Moses wrote, that He was the bread of life which came down out of heaven, that He has seen the Father, that He had the words of eternal life, that He was the supply of the water of life, and that He was the light of the world.  I think it’s pretty clear who He was.

But since they asked, Jesus gives them another clue.  In vs 28 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.”  Now what is Jesus referring to in this statement?  I believe that He is speaking of going to the cross, being lifted up as the serpent was lifted up on the pole in the wilderness.  Jesus is saying, when you see Me lifted up on the cross, then you will know that I am He.  

What a tremendous statement.  Not only was His life indicative of His deity, and not only was His words indicative of His deity, but His sacrifice for sinners was the ultimate indication of His deity.  The crucifixion was the expression of God’s love for the world.  And the magnanimity of that act revealed a love that could only be that of God. I’m reminded of the centurion who seeing Jesus give up His Spirit on the cross said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

But sadly, many of those who were debating with Him would still not recognize Him even when He was lifted up.  They should have seen the parallel with the serpent in the wilderness which Moses lifted up for the healing of sting of vipers upon the Israelites.  And they should have understood that the serpent on a pole symbolized that there would come One who would be lifted up on a pole for the healing of the sins of the world. And perhaps some did make that connection  during the crucifixion such as the centurion.  But as I have pointed out before, I believe that by the time of the crucifixion, the scribes and Pharisees and the priesthood not only knew that He was the Son of God, but they deliberately, purposefully put Him to death because they hated Him so much by that point that their hatred had blinded them.

And that is born out by the fact that He says, when I am lifted up, then you will know that I am He.  Now in the Greek there is not the pronoun He. It is simply “that I Am.”  And many theologians suggest that He is making a direct reference to the same “I AM that I AM” which spoke to Moses out of the burning bush.  This is the name that God gave Moses to tell the Israelites and Pharaoh who it was that gave him his authority.  It was the name of God that refused conventional definitions.  So in answer to the Jews question of “Who are You?”  Jesus  answered, “When you see Me lifted up, then you will know that I am the I AM.” He is telling them who He is in terms that they were very familiar with.  

See, for the Jews, Moses was their guy.  He was the greatest prophet.  In fact, the Sadducees only recognized the writings of Moses, nothing else.  So it’s interesting that in every evidence that Jesus gives to His deity He uses something that happened during the life of Moses.  He was the source of water from the rock.  He was the manna from heaven.  He was the pillar of fire over the tabernacle.  He was the serpent lifted up on the tree.  And He was the I AM from the burning bush.  Yet these champions of the law of Moses would not accept what He was saying, because they believed that  they were justified by the law of Moses.  

But Paul tells us that the law was not given to be a stepladder to heaven.  But the  law was given to be a tutor to lead us to Christ.  The law was given so that our sin became even more sinful.  Even more apparent.  But when Jesus showed them that, in the Sermon on the Mount for instance, then they became indignant, and rejected the idea that they were sinners.  And that disdain of the need for forgiveness would condemn them to die in their sins.

From our perspective though it should be clear, that Jesus was not only sent from God to be all the things that we stated earlier like the light of the world, and the source of eternal life, etc, but the characteristic that really completes the picture is that He is the Savior of the world.  This is the basis for John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”  

Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus is the exact representation of God. So as Jesus declares that He is Savior, it completes the picture. It completes the picture of God.  God is holy, righteous and just.  God is the judge of the earth.  God is the source of life.  And God is also the Savior of the world because God loved the world.  He loved His creation.  But for God’s love to be enacted, His justice had to be satisfied.  God’s law had to be upheld.  And so God sent Jesus to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God through Christ.  

Well, for a few people in Jesus’ hearing that day, the light suddenly came on.  They saw the light of the truth.  So it says in vs.30 that as He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him.  I can only pray that someone here today has suddenly had the light of truth dawn in their hearts.  You recognize that you are a sinner in need of a Savior.  And perhaps you have come to believe that Jesus Christ is the sinless Son of God who gave Himself in your place on the cross so that you might be saved.  If that is you, then simply call on Jesus to save you, believing in all that He says He is, and God promises that He  will transfer you  from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of heaven.  You will become a citizen of heaven, but even more than that, you will be made a son of God by adoption.  And as the result of that adoption, you are guaranteed an inheritance in glory and eternal life.  I pray that today will be the day of your salvation.