The Dangerous Word (John 8:31-47) Myles Holmes | July 6, 2025

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you have your Bibles, you can take them out and open them up to John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

We're going to be beginning our time together in verse 31.

If you don't have a copy of God's word, the ushers are making their way to the front now, and you can just flag one of them down.

They would love to get a copy into your hands.

We want to hear God speak in this church.

And so you can keep that as our gift to you and hear the voice of God yourself.

As you're turning to John chapter 8 and finding verse 31, I want to direct your attention to an image that I think helpfully captures what Jesus is seeking to accomplish in our lives this morning.

John 8 · chapter mention

And that is the image of fire.

You've sat around a fire before, and you know that as warm and comforting as fire can be, as necessary as it is for us Canadians in the winter months to heat our homes, it is also an incredibly dangerous thing.

Get too close to a fire, and you will be destroyed.

Fire has this miraculous power in which you can put the put whatever metals you'd like or put you know gold into it and it can refine that gold into something that is more beautiful.

However, fire can also destroy.

In a mere matter of minutes, it can wipe out whole entire cities.

It is an incredibly helpful thing, but it is an incredibly dangerous thing.

And I want to suggest to you that as we've walked through the Gospel of John, we've found that Jesus' word is like a fire.

It's fitting that when the prophet Jeremiah reaches for an illustration to try to describe what God's word is like, he says, Is not my word like a fire, says the Lord.

It is a fire which if you will sit in the furnace of, it can refine you and purify you, but it is also a fire that if you don't do anything with, it can destroy you.

Whatever it is, what we've come to understand is that Jesus' word always accomplishes something.

It either forms or hardens.

It either shapes or destroys.

It either sets free or exposes enslavement.

God's word is always doing something.

Loved one, do you believe that?

Do you believe what Mike read this morning in Isaiah chapter 55, that the word of God, whenever it goes out, accomplishes something.

Isaiah 55 · chapter mention

It never returns void.

It forms or hardens.

Now in John chapter 8, we find that Jesus has finished speaking at the Feast of Booths and He's gathered around him a unique group of Jewish people.

John 8 · chapter mention

John tells us in chap in verse 31 that these Jewish people believed in him.

But what we're gonna find as the word of Christ presses into the hearts of these Jewish people who believed his word to some extent is the same thing we'll we'll find by the conviction of the Holy Spirit in ourselves this morning, and that is that the word often exposes in our hearts that there is no desire for change.

That the word calls us to freedom, but in our flesh we are often resistant to that freedom.

We are like prisoners with the gospel.

The gospel has flung the doors open, but we remain in the cell.

And as the Holy Spirit examines our heart, we're gonna find, if we're honest with ourselves, that each of us have areas of our heart, if not our whole being that is like this.

We like the comfort, but not the furnace.

And what Jesus is teaching us this morning, this is this is the main idea, this is what I want you to take away this morning, is that the word of Christ will either free you or expose our enslavement, but it will never leave you the same.

It will never leave you the same.

Let's read the text together.

You can stand with me as we read.

I'm gonna read from verse 31 to 36 this morning.

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 offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone.

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 sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can grab your seat.

We begin our passage this morning really with a promise.

Look at it in verse 31.

This promise is this if you abide in my word, Jesus says, if you abide in my word, you are truly disciples.

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

There is a great promise before us for freedom.

And as a culture that loves freedom, you would think that anytime we are given a promise of freedom, we would not only walk through those doors, but run through them.

But what we find in this text is actually the exact opposite.

That as Jesus, the Son of God, speaks to us about freedom, what we will find in our heart is a resistance to change, a resistance to the freedom that Jesus offers.

We know that about humanity, we know that about ourselves, and we know that about our world, that often we are very resistant to change.

We don't love that.

There are areas, I'm sure, in your life, like there are areas in my life where you deeply want to change, and you even make commitments.

Maybe you made a commitment last night, like I'm gonna change in this way.

Tomorrow is going to be a different day.

But then you wake up and nothing has changed.

And as you look at your heart, how do you make sense of that?

I mean, I trust I'm not the only one here.

I trust that that's also in your heart, but it but you also see it in the world, that there is this resistance to change, that we long for freedom, but whether it's confusion, whether it's our will, we just don't embrace it.

Jesus here is making it clear: if you abide in my word, you will know the truth and you will be free.

We respond to that.

We want the truth, we want freedom.

Here's the issue we don't want to pay the cost.

And the problem with our human heart is that we want the blessing without the cost.

The issue with our human heart is that we want God's promise, but we want to cherry-pick his commands.

And Jesus here is saying this: that you must abide completely.

The crowd turns on Jesus.

When they're offered freedom, they turn on him.

It's not what you'd expect, but it's a reality of our human heart.

And I want you to see that the word of Christ is what drives this change, that it is either forming you or hardening you, that it's either setting you free or revealing your enslavement.

Notice the first thing that the word of Christ does here.

I want you to notice that the word will test your discipleship.

The word will test your discipleship.

That's the first thing I want you to see in this passage.

Notice here that this horrifying reality that John tells us in verse 31 that Jesus is saying this to a group of Jews, that is God's people throughout the Old Testament, who not only were they Jews, but in distinction to the crowd that Jesus was speaking to before, these Jews had believed.

Now, as we go on in this text, we're gonna find something that should be unsettling to us, and that is this that not all belief is saving belief.

That there is a kind of belief that is comfortable to be near Jesus, but not comfortable with Jesus pressing in.

There is a kind of belief that likes to hear the words of Jesus, but does not like when Jesus picks up his scalpel and makes an incision in our heart and requires change.

Love one, can I suggest that that is in each of us?

Like if you're if you're listening to this right now and you're saying, oh, it's not me, can I just say it is you?

I'll just give us all a condemning application of this right now.

Are you ready for this?

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to listen to a sermon for someone else?

Have you noticed that?

I know I'm not the only one.

You hear a message, and man, application, it comes flowing like the Niagara Falls for your husband.

The nudge, like, yeah, you gotta listen to this one, okay?

This is good for you.

Now, why is it, loved one, that application is so easy to apply to other people's life and so difficult to apply to your own life.

It is because there is a resistance in our hearts that a disciple or not a disciple of Christ, believer or not a believer, there is a resistance in our hearts that is part of our flesh to change.

That's why Jesus makes a distinction here.

He's testing their disciples, he the his disciples, he's saying, if you are truly my disciples, you will abide in my word.

You will abide in my word.

Now, loved one, we see it here again that the marks of a maturing disciple.

We didn't make this up in our church as we use this language.

It's all over scripture that you cannot be a disciple apart from abiding in Christ.

But I want you to understand here what Jesus is making a distinction in.

You cannot, you are not a disciple if you just like being around his word.

You not you are not a disciple just because you like attending church.

You are not a disciple just because you like quoting scripture.

You are not a disciple just because you have a knowledge of scripture that you know is at hand, that is memorized, that you can use at any time.

The test of discipleship is do you abide in it?

I mean, the the illustration here is this you know, you can cook a great meal.

You can put the healthiest ingredients into that meal, you can know how to make it taste good and serve it to others.

The question is this: do you eat it yourself?

Do you allow the meal of God's word to nourish and transform your soul?

Do you abide?

It's the very meaning of this word, that this word abide.

It means to stay in something, it means to submit to something, it means to live in something, to be marinating in something.

Jesus is looking at each one of us and asking this question do you abide in my word?

This is the test of discipleship.

Do you abide?

Now we want to apply this, we want to apply this to our lives.

And so can I ask you a few questions as we diagnose our hearts?

Are we disciples who abide in God's word?

Let me ask you this.

Do you rearrange your schedule around the word?

Is the reading of God's word, is it something that fits into your schedule when it works, or is it something that your whole schedule revolves around?

When life gets busy, what is it in your life that pays the tax of that busyness?

You see, so often for us, isn't it, the word?

The word is the first thing to be sacrificed for the pursuit of other things in life.

It's the test of discipleship.

Do you abide?

What about this?

When God's word confronts you, maybe it's in a sermon, maybe it's in your own personal reading, maybe it's in the word of encouragement or exhortation from a brother or sister in Christ, when God's word confronts you, is your first response a response of, well, yeah, but is it a response of deflection, or is it the response of submission that says, yes, Lord?

That before I even know what you're going to say, Lord, my life is a blank check to you.

That there are no closed rooms in my heart.

When you hear God's word, are you looking for the convenient pieces of it?

I mean, we all do that, don't we?

Don't we all have our hobby horses?

You know, when the preacher starts going about this, this is this is when I give my amen.

It's like this is the part of life I'm doing well.

It's the convenient things we hear, it's the things we've got down pat.

But then when God's word confronts us, do you abide in it?

Or do you run from the pain?

Do you run from the scalpel of God's word?

Now, why why is Jesus doing this work?

Why is Jesus trying to expose in us the areas of our heart where we are unwilling to abide in his word?

It's painful, isn't it?

Like I just want you to know, as we continue to go through this sermon, it only gets more painful.

And you're kind of here now, because it's kind of awkward if you just stand up and leave right now at this point.

Okay, so you're kind of locked in with me.

It only gets more painful.

Jesus has his scalp out, he's doing open heart surgery, he's showing us the mirror, he's showing us the wickedness of our heart here.

He's showing us the rooms that maybe you didn't even know at walking in, but the Holy Spirit, because of his love for you, is drawing up this conviction, showing you the problem that is inside.

It is incredibly painful.

And so, you know, we might you might be coming in with this attitude of like, why is it so hard?

Jesus, why don't you just have like a fluffy word for me?

And I want you to see it's it is because Jesus is inviting us to obedience, and his invitation is an obedience that leads to life.

Do you see that here in the text?

Look down with me at the text.

Look at verse 32.

Notice what Jesus says.

If you abide in my word, you are truly disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

The abiding in the word of Christ leads not only to a knowledge of truth, it leads to a freedom in truth.

And Jesus this morning is after our obedience, he's very willing to press into the darkness of our hearts and call us to obedience because ultimately he is after our freedom.

Now we conflate these two things in our modern day society, and it's been happening ever since the Garden.

We think that so long as we are free from the constraints of rules, from the call to obedience, then we are free.

And Jesus wants to flip the script and show us here that true freedom is not in the freedom of constraint and the freedom of regulation, that true freedom is in finding the master that will lead you to life.

I love what Elizabeth Elliott says.

She says freedom is not the absence of limitations and constraints, but it is in finding the right ones, the ones we were designed to live with.

This is where freedom is.

And I want you to understand that ever since the beginning of humanity, ever since the beginning of the sinful fall, we have been buying into this lie that obedience steals our freedom.

So that when you know what the f what the Jewish people say in verse 33, doesn't it sound so much like our culture today?

Isn't it shocking to you that what the Jewish people say in verse 33 was said in the first century and not the 21st century?

Because listen to what they say.

We are offspring of Abraham, we've never been enslaved to anyone.

You know, just that just yesterday I was speaking at a wedding and someone pulled me over after and kind of was saying this like, isn't it wild that religion has controlled so many people?

That people are kind of like looking to be controlled by religion.

And you look throughout history, and so many people just want to submit themselves to these kind of just like made-up man-made rules, just so that they can be a part of a culture.

Isn't that wild?

And the what he was saying in that is this listen, I'm free, you're not.

It is exactly what our culture says.

We're not enslaved to anyone.

And it's fascinating that that began in the garden.

You remember in the garden, Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 are with God, and what does God say about their freedom?

You are free to eat of any tree in the garden.

I made them for your life.

I made them for you to delight in.

But here's the regulation.

And I want you, loved one, to see that that in this command there is freedom.

What God says to Adam and Eve is this you shall not eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, for if you do, you will die.

Now that sounds to me like freedom.

If you invite me over to your house this afternoon, and you've got ten pizzas out on the counter, and you tell me, listen, the one in the green box, that's the poison box.

Do not eat that.

I gotta tell you, I will be incredibly thankful for you.

I will thank you that you gave me this sort of warning that listen, nine of these ten pizzas are good to eat, but one will kill you.

And that is what God does with Adam and Eve.

He he shows them that obedience to his word is only leading them to life, and that even in the negative commands, you shall not do this, it is always for their good.

It is always for their flourishing, that God is a master in the garden who can lead Adam and Eve to life.

But then what happens when the serpent comes into the garden?

Now, by the way, I just gotta hit a pause button on the sermon here to ask you this.

Did you know that two weeks ago in the back of the worship center there was a snake?

Did you hear about this?

There was a little gardener snake that had snuck into the worship center, and our sound guy on that morning grabbed two cups and he took them outside, and we've created a policy now that, like Genesis 3.15, you just crushed the head of the serpent.

Okay?

No more Satan getting into the worship center.

Anyways, let's continue back to the message.

I just needed you to know that as we talk about serpents in the garden, it's a little relevant for us as a church these days.

Now, listen, when the serpent comes into the garden and Adam and Eve had been told that obedience would lead to life, what does the serpent say to Adam and Eve?

Did God really say you can't eat of any tree in the garden?

No, no, no, no.

Listen, he got it all wrong.

If you eat of the tree in the garden, then you will be free.

Then you will be like God.

And you see what the lie is that began with the serpent in the garden and has been, uh it has been prom it has been pushed throughout every age for all of humanity.

The lie is this that our freedom is found once we no longer need to be obedient, that obedience to God steals freedom.

You don't have to look far in our culture today to see that that is still the note that we ring, that that is still the belief that we have.

You you hear it everywhere.

Speak your truth.

You do you.

Who am I to judge?

You It's everywhere we look.

This belief that if we want to enable other people's freedom, then we must just allow them to do whatever they want apart from our word.

Loved one, we would be foolish to think that this is in our culture and not in our church.

To think that as believers, we have not been we have not bought into this lie that our freedom is found in obedience to anything other than God.

We see it in ourselves.

There's a willingness often to obey God until it costs our comfort.

Until it starts to press into me time.

Until it starts to press into family time, until it starts to press into work time.

There is a willingness to follow Jesus until following Jesus begins to confront our control.

Until Jesus asks something of us that we don't really want to give, whether it's time, whether it's in our finances, whether it's in our gifting.

We're happy for Jesus to be Lord.

We're happy for Jesus to increase.

But we certainly don't want to be like John the Baptist in the process who says, He must, I must decrease so that he can increase.

We want the status, we want the power.

We will even claim to be free as Christians while we chase the approval of people, saying that we desire the approval of God, but living as though it's the approval of people that matters.

And do you see, as the Holy Spirit holds up a mirror to our heart, do you see the ways that we've fallen into the lie of the serpent, that obedience is stealing our freedom?

Jesus is looking at us, he's saying, obedience isn't an option here.

Obedience isn't like a feature in the Christian life as though it's a car.

It's like a side feature.

It's nice to have.

Obedience is at the very heart of discipleship.

If you abide in my word, you will know the truth and you will be set free.

Then you will know that you are truly a disciple.

The question is this for us Who is Jesus in your life?

Is Jesus your consultant or is Jesus your Lord?

Yeah, I love, I was talking one day to I think it was someone in the church who was describing what their role as a consultant is, and they they said Jesus or being a consultant is kind of like being someone that being someone who's paid for that person not to listen to you.

And I thought that's kind of you know a really funny way to describe what a consultant is, but it that but that's true, isn't it?

We love a consultant to look into our life, to take the wisdom we want to take and leave the rest.

And and the question for us this morning is this is is Jesus functioning like that kind of consultant?

Are you coming to Jesus for blessing without submitting yourself to him entirely?

And Jesus wants us to know it just does not work.

It doesn't work like that.

You must submit to him as Lord.

Now, now the issue is that as Jesus' word is spoken to us, our response to it is always revealing something deeper.

You think about this in your life.

Every time you have heard the word of Christ, something is revealed.

Maybe you don't even know it, but something is revealed deeper inside of it.

Even a word you've chosen to do nothing with, it always forms or hardens.

It always sets free or exposes slavery.

And Jesus is looking at these crowd of Jewish people who say they believe, and he's telling them this listen, if you don't do something with this word, what's gonna be exposed in you is a deeper allegiance of your heart.

What's gonna be exposed is the fact that I am not your Lord.

I'm just a consultant.

That you like to listen to me when you agree with me, but when when it gets hard, when the words confront your life, you're unwilling to follow because I'm not your Lord.

Your response to Jesus' word always reveals something deeper.

In other words, Jesus is saying this, that this isn't about our behavior this morning, it is about our heart.

And the second thing I want you to see in this text is this that the word will reveal your master.

The word will reveal your master.

It unveils your heart.

What Jesus' word does is like what you do when you start to smell something funny coming from the basement, from that room that nobody goes in, and you go in with a flashlight, and you prepare yourself for the mold, for the rot, because this needs to be dealt with.

And I just want you to know Jesus is going through the rooms of our hearts, through the cellars that we don't want anyone to come in.

And he has a flashlight this morning, and he's shining it on the walls to see where the mold and the rot of sin is so that he can take out his scalpel.

Jesus is unwilling this morning just to treat your symptoms.

He's not just after your behavior, he is after the root cause, he's after our hearts this morning.

So notice then what Jesus says when these Jewish people respond, no, listen, we are free.

Notice what Jesus says.

He's so confrontational in love in verse 34.

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

If you have sin in your life, Jesus is confronting you this morning and saying, the problem is that you have another master.

Behind the action is always an allegiance.

Behind the behavior is always a heart that is filled for affection and passion for someone or something else.

You're always mastered by something.

Now, this confronts us because you and I, especially as 21st century individuals, we want to be autonomous.

But Jesus here is pointing out something about our human nature that we just cannot be.

That you will always find yourself submitting to something.

I love what David Foster Wallace says.

He's not a Christian, he's not a pastor, he has a very popular address you can find on YouTube.

He's speaking at a commencement graduation at a college, and he says to this, to a group of adults who are now graduating and going into the workforce, he says this in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as not worshiping.

Everybody worships.

David Foster Wallace says this the only choice we get is what to worship.

And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

You know, as someone who's not a believer, he recognizes this.

We've got to hitch our trailer to something.

We will be pulled to something.

And the way you decide, he says, this is the you know, this is we agree with him there.

And what gets really sad is he says this the way you decide is you try to determine what will not destroy you.

Because listen, he says, there are some things that will destroy you.

And so he goes on to point out listen, if you if your God is money, if you're chasing money, you'll never have enough.

You'll never have enough until you go to the grave.

Like it'll always be just a little bit more.

He continues to point out, you know, if your thing is beauty, if you just want to be beauty, beautiful, you will never be beautiful enough.

It will never be enough for you.

Whatever you worship will eat you alive.

So if you want power, it will always be exposed in your life that you're just a little bit too weak.

If you want to be smart secretly, you might you might wear that facade, but you'll always feel a little bit like a fraud because the more you know, the more you realize you don't know.

What you worship, he says, will eat you alive.

And so the problem is where his application is.

The problem that is, then he says, then choose the thing that will kind of like eat you the least, that will destroy you the least.

And Jesus then makes the same observation that everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin, but he drives us to something different.

I want you, do you see this in your own life?

You know, if you are a slave to work, that is a master who will give you no rest.

If you are a slave to approval, that is a master who will make you wear a mask so that you can be vulnerable with no one.

Because if someone sees you, they may they may know who you really are, and they'll no longer approve of who you are.

If you are a slave of comfort, if comfort is your master, you will be unable to make a sacrifice for anyone.

It is a master who will not let you sacrifice.

You see, the the things that we are enslaved to, the sin that we practice points, it reveals a master that is in charge, that at the end of the day rules our life.

And what Jesus wants us to know this morning, this is so important.

I mean, I just pray this that the Holy Spirit sinks this into your heart, that freedom, freedom isn't the right to choose your master.

If every master leads to death, then freedom is not the right to choose your master.

Freedom is the grace to be ruled by the right one.

It is the grace to find the master that will lead you to life.

That is what true freedom is.

If we cannot help but to live under the rule of something or someone, then freedom isn't in being able to choose who I want.

Freedom is in the grace to realize which one of those masters will lead me to life.

And loved one, do you see the love of God this morning that brought you here so that you could hear the word of Christ and He could expose this reality that everyone who practices sin is enslaved to sin and then call you by grace to the one master who will bring you life.

It is God's grace for you this morning.

It is God's love for you this morning that He's inviting you to life.

Now, notice what he says then in verse 35.

He paints this picture.

Look at verse 35 with me.

He says, The slave does not remain in the house forever.

In other words, he's saying this.

Listen, slaves, they will move from house to house.

Throughout their life, they will have different masters.

Now, as we speak about this, uh, you know, we don't have to spend too long saying this, but I want you to understand that biblically, slavery is something much different than what we comes to mind when we think about the kind of slavery that's happened in North America.

Slavery was actually something that in many ways, while there are signs throughout history, especially around this time, that it could be destructive, in many ways it was actually incredibly helpful to people who were in poverty, and it was meant in, in a sense, for freedom.

And Jesus is pointing at this role in society and saying that as they move from house to house, they always have a different master.

That so long as they are a slave, they have a master.

It might not be the same master, they might move from house to house.

The distinction with the sun here in verse 35 is this: that the sun remains forever.

The sun does not move houses.

Now, here's what Jesus is pointing out in our lives that throughout the duration of your life, apart from Jesus, you will change.

You know, you can do this.

Without Jesus, you can change your life.

The gospel never makes this sort of claim that you cannot change apart from Jesus.

It says you certainly can change, and the way that you change is just by swapping functional masters.

Maybe you've seen that in your own life.

Like maybe there's been a serious change in your life that had nothing to do with Jesus, but was just a swap of who really your master was.

Let me illustrate how this works.

You know, we see this with children all the time.

You might see a young boy crying, and what might their parents say to them to stop the crying?

And in a moment where you know they need some emotional security, a parent might say, Listen, little boy, man up.

Man up, stop crying.

And what happens?

Well, the crying, it stops.

And that boy might even become emotionally resistant, and change might be produced so that they're less emotionally, you know, overflowing with tears.

The problem is that the masters have been swapped.

Now their allegiance is to sort of this attitude that real manhood never displays emotion.

Now they have a new master.

The master has dealt with the crying, but it has created other problems.

You can change without Jesus.

The way that you do it is you just swap functional masters, and what the Holy Spirit is doing this morning is shining the light in our heart and asking us to look inward and to consider what is your functional master.

What is the thing that rules you?

What is the thing that obedience to be comes easily?

My prayer for you this morning is that the Holy Spirit, maybe even now, is shining light on something that you walk out of here with, like walk out with something tangible.

Be unwilling in this moment to just say, Well, I don't think it's anything.

Because if that's what if that's how you're walking out, you are walking out saying, Well, I don't practice any sin.

I'm not a sinner at all, so I have no master.

But if in this moment there's this conviction, where maybe even before we talk about some examples, you already know like what your functional master is.

I want you to see that it's the love of the Holy Spirit that does that in your life.

It's the love of the Holy Spirit that brings out that conviction so that you can then hear the invitation of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps it's overwork in your life.

Is overwork your functional master?

You know, anytime something comes up with work, you just have no choice but to say yes.

You have the inability to say no.

You have the inability to protect other things in your life, whether it's your family, whether it's your marriage, whether it's your church, whatever it is, you have the inability because anything that comes in from work gets an immediate yes.

And the question that I have for you in that scenario is this Who is the master?

You think you have control, but your work is your master.

Is it distraction?

Is it is distraction your functional master?

So that anytime there is sort of silence or space in life, you just turn to your phone and you begin scrolling, or you open one of your subscriptions and you begin streaming.

You do everything you can to distract yourself from stillness, from space, from silence.

In that scenario, my question for you is this: who is the master?

If you are unable to sit in sort of nothingness and be with your own thoughts, who's in charge?

You are ruled by the God of distraction, by the God of comfort.

Maybe your thing is perfectionism.

Everything has to be the right way, every detail has to go the way that I want it to.

And when it doesn't happen like that, there's this sort of crippling despair that comes over me.

In that scenario, who is the master?

And the call right now is to let Jesus press in, to let him take out his scalpel and cut open your heart so that you can see the functional masters that are there and see that they are always lying to you.

This is what Satan does.

He pulls us away from obedience to God.

He shows us bait, but he hides the hook.

Every time.

He draws us to something that can never deliver what it promises.

It's why freedom for you is always just around the corner.

It's why you always keep telling yourself, well, it's just a season where I need to do this, but soon, you know, soon I'm gonna be able to be obedient in this regard.

Because the thing that Satan is promising will always be just around the corner.

He promises peace, but what is cultivated in your heart is anxiety.

He promises approval, but more and more your life is surrounded by insecurity.

He promises control, but the longer you let the master of control rule your heart, the more terrified you are to let go of it.

The word is always doing something to you, it is forming you or hardening you to the work that Christ wants to do.

And so listen, this is my prayer right now.

Do you have knowledge?

Has the Holy Spirit turned on the light in your heart and shone in the darkness of the cellars of your heart to show you the mold, the rot that is there, to show you the functional masters that rule your life?

And if still you don't have one, let me let me just ask you this what are you afraid to lose in life?

What is it in your life that you just you I just cannot live without this?

Now the Holy Spirit brings conviction of sin, and the question then we that we then ask is this do you want to be free of it?

Do you want to be free of it?

Everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

Do you want freedom?

And this is where the invitation of Jesus comes.

I want you to see this, third, that the word will demand a response.

The word will demand a response.

Look at what Jesus says in verse 34.

Truly, truly or sorry, verse 36.

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

If the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Freedom, Jesus is telling us in this passage, is not in autonomy.

Freedom comes when your life is abiding in his word.

Freedom comes when you are bound to the one master that can lead you to life.

This is exactly what Paul says in Romans 6.

I love what he says in Romans 6.

He's talking about being under sin, and he says in verse 21, it says, For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness, Paul says.

We know that, right?

When you were pursuing sin, you are free in regards to God's word.

You live as though God's word has no bearing on your life.

You are a slave to your sinful master, doing what they will.

But then Jesus, then Paul says this, but what fruit?

Such a good question for us to consider.

What fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death.

Paul asks us to consider in Romans.

6, what is the fruit of living under the functional masters that you have?

And if in a moment of clarity we can step back in honesty, if we have the confidence in God, that He will carry us no matter what, we can step back in honesty and say this: that our idols have never gotten us anything.

That they have only done what happened to Adam and Eve.

They've only invited death into our life.

They have only invited despair into our life.

That's what our idols do.

They promise a fruit that never comes.

And what Jesus does here in this passage is he offers us a new enslavement.

He offers us to hitch our trailer to the one master who can pull us into eternal life, Jesus Christ Himself.

It's why Paul says in Romans chapter 6, verse 18, he says, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

Romans 6:18

There is one place you can find freedom, Paul says.

It is when you are set free from sin and then enslaved to Christ.

Enslaved to righteousness.

It is why Paul, in almost all of his letters, says, I am a doulos, the Greek word for slave, I am a slave of Christ, because he wants us to know at the very beginning, his identity is found in the Lordship of Christ, that he believes that freedom is the path, that surrender is the path to true freedom.

This is the paradox of the gospel.

The paradox of the gospel is that you will not be free unless you enslave yourself to the gospel.

The paradox of the of the gospel is that you will not be free.

You will not ever live unless you first die to yourself.

That you will not be free unless you enslave yourself to Jesus.

I want you to know, loved ones, that Jesus is the only master who can lead you to life.

You know, in our freedom we have so many options in terms of what to pursue.

And I look at my own life, and the terrifying reality is that as I think about idolatry, whether it's comfort or control or approval or success, there are times in my life where I've chased all of them.

I feel guilty of every single one at times.

And you know what I've learned as I've experienced these things is that none of them can lead you to life.

All of them always ask for more.

Jesus is the only one who lays down his life.

Jesus is the only one who surrenders himself fully to his servants, who asks nothing of them because they can bring nothing but the sin that made his coming necessary and his death necessary.

Jesus is a good master.

Maybe you're here this morning and you've never looked to Jesus as your Lord, and I would urge you, even in this moment, to surrender in your heart and say, Jesus is the only one who will lead me to life.

I don't know what look life looks like with Jesus, but my life is a blank check to him.

My life is his.

I want the freedom he promises.

If you're a believer this morning, you are reminded of this reality, that this abiding that Jesus is talking about is a daily choice.

It is a daily choice to put off the functional masters that are fighting for the rule of your heart and to abide in the word of Christ, to turn to Jesus and say this to him: I surrender to your will.

I seek freedom in obedience to your word.

And to find that his word confronts our old masters and offers us life in a new master.

Did you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for your word.

God, since the beginning of creation, you have been a God who loves to speak and to reveal yourself to us.

And as we hear you, Lord, we are reminded of this reality that your word has incredible potential to shape us into something that is beautiful and glorious.

And yet, Lord, if we will not listen, there is a reality of condemnation for those who will not heed your invitation.

And so, Lord, we find ourselves at a crossroads where even this morning, God, we have opened your word and heard directly from Christ Himself.

And it demands a response.

It demands that we stand, that we declare your praise, that we give honor to the one to whom honor is due.

And we declare, Lord, that you are a God who is worth following.

That there is no other master that we want to be ruled by but you alone.

And so I pray, Lord, that you would give us strength.

Give us confidence now in this time to stand and declare that you are all that we want.

God, we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Could you stand and worship with me?