Learning to Listen: Day 8 - John 8 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medichurch podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medicurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life, that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

How's it going so far, reading through the Gospel of John?

Yeah?

If you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here.

I think you've joined us at the perfect time.

I kind of want to give you some context for what we're doing as a community here at MetaCurch.

We're in a 21-day journey called Learning to Listen, where every day for 21 days, we're reading a chapter of the Gospel of John, which has 21 chapters.

We'll read the whole book at the end of those 21 days.

Every day we are spending time intentionally in prayer.

And every week for these three weeks, we are fasting from something in our life, which means we're intentionally giving something up to grow our dependence on God.

And so you may feel like you're kind of walking into the middle of something, but I want to encourage you that now is the perfect time to jump in.

There's a couple options how you could do this.

You could just start with us today on John chapter 8 and continue out through the next 14 days.

John 8 · chapter mention

Or if that will drive you crazy because you're not fully caught up, over the course of this week, you can simply do two chapters a day, and by the time we all get here next week, you'll be fully caught up with us.

I don't care which route you take.

I'll just really encourage you to do this.

And uh you can do it really simply by going to metachurch.tv slash listen.

You can get your smartphone out right now and sign up for this if you want to.

Um there you'll find a newsletter you can sign up for.

Hopefully that's been helpful, sending you a daily reminder and links to the blog.

The blog is how we're organizing this journey.

Every day we have a video that will help you understand the passage.

We have the actual passage on the blog, so you can read it right there on your smartphone or computer.

And we have prayer prompts.

We know a lot of people are new to the faith, or maybe you're not even convinced yet of the journey of Christianity and all of our claims.

Um, but there's guides there to help you if you are new to prayer or maybe you are uncomfortable praying.

And I I gotta tell you, um, it is such a joy to be the pastor of Metachurch.

And um I never lose sight of that.

And you know, I have pastor friends uh who are um often frustrated, and one of the main sources of their frustration is when they call people to action in their faith community, very few people respond.

And it's just uh it's the most dynamic thing to me that every time you guys are called to action, when we say we're going to clothe the homeless in our community, you guys show up in such force we have to rent trailers to get all of the stuff downtown.

When we call you guys, when we call you guys to make a huge habit shift in your life and start reading and praying and fasting, giving things up from your life, a very difficult call.

I want you to know we can see the metrics because we run the website.

Um, we're averaging over 500 people a day visiting the Learning to Listen blog.

On any given Sunday, we have around 700 people here, and that includes our children.

Like almost all of you are doing this.

That's unheard of statistically in the church world.

And I think it's because, you know, Jesus just really led us to begin from day one understanding that we will not be primarily measured by our meeting, we will be primarily measured by our moving.

And you guys are a community that moves, and I commend you, and I'm so, so glad to get to be a part of this movement alongside of you.

Um, we're we're reading through the Gospel of John, and what we decided to do in our Sunday service is to just follow along and to do exactly what we're doing on our own, but just to do it as a community.

And so last week we started, we did John chapter one, we read through it, we prayed together, and we committed to a fast for the coming week.

Today we're gonna do the same thing.

We're in John chapter eight.

And I don't know how much you guys are paying attention to this.

It's actually made the national news at this point.

Um, but there are revivals breaking out all over our country, and it it seems to have started in Asbury in Kentucky, and people don't really know what to make of this or how to think about it.

And uh, I'm not gonna pretend to be the expert on it, but I know that for like weeks at a time there are young people and people who have been attracted from all over the country and all over the world who are showing up and they haven't stopped praying and they haven't stopped singing and they haven't stopped reading God's word, and people are confessing their sins and believing in Jesus, and it's spreading.

And right now it's primarily on college campuses.

There's over a hundred college campuses who are reporting similar things that are going on all around them.

And I want to give you um one perspective on revival because uh one of the metaphors that we often use is for the Holy Spirit to come like a flood, right?

We even have a song like a flood, like a flood.

Um a flood is a result.

Okay, it it's not it's not the beginning, it's the result.

And it's the result usually of massive rain combined with different rivers and tributaries and lakes, and they all come together and create a flood.

And every single raindrop contributes to that.

That's actually the catalyst for it.

And I think a lot of times we think about revival as something that just happens magically in a building or in a space or in a service and then grows out from there.

And I think the opposite is true.

I think revival starts in the heart of God's people, and God's people come together like all of the individual drops of rain that it takes to eventually make a flood.

Revival starts inside of you and flows out of you into your church and out into the community.

And that's why we all have to be in on this.

We cannot be Sunday to Sunday spiritual seekers.

We have to be every day in the word, every day in prayer, learning how to eat by ourselves spiritually, learning how to dress ourselves spiritually, learning how to crawl spiritually so we can walk spiritually, so we can run and make a difference in this world spiritually.

I think this is one of the most important things that we've ever done together is actually just going individually, but we're not losing that as individuals, we come together.

And together, our impact will be multiplied and magnified exponentially.

And that's what happens when the individual members of the body of Christ all get active and all get moving and all start making a difference in our world.

And I just think, why not here?

Revival's breaking out.

Why not here?

And so let's pray.

Holy Spirit, I don't even uh want to pray for revival.

I want to pray for whatever you want.

However, you want to use this movement that we call meta church, however you want to use our individual lives, however, you want us moving in our families, in our community, in our places of work, in our places of recreation, we want whatever you want.

And I think in turn, what you want is a revival like we've never seen.

And so we're just trying to be open to you.

And God, I pray that as we have started off strong, that we would not lose steam.

That all of the tricks and temptations and distractions of the enemy would not get us off course from daily getting in your word and spending time with you in prayer, and proving our dependence on you through the giving up and fasting in our life.

We know that you're here, Holy Spirit.

You're in the life of every believer, you're in this space.

It says metaphorically that you stand at the door of our life and you knock, and you knock, and you knock.

And I pray if anyone is here and does not know you, maybe today they would let you in.

We love you.

I pray you would help us, uh, just guide us through John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

We pray it all in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

Let's get going.

John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

Last week uh was crazy, John chapter 1, because there was 50 verses, and I've got great news.

John 1 · chapter mention

There's 59 today.

So um just get comfortable and John 8, verse 1 makes no sense.

John 8:1

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

Um, and it's weird because that sounds like the end of a story, not the beginning of a story.

And if you don't know this, I want to tell you quickly.

Um, when the books of the Bible were written, they weren't written with chapters and verses.

Uh John didn't go, and that's chapter seven.

Now, chapter eight.

Um, all of these were inserted later to help congregations get literally on the same page faster.

And they're not always super precise.

Uh, John chapter eight, verses verse one is really the end of John chapter seven.

John chapter seven ends like this.

Uh then each went to his house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

So, all of that to say um we have to read the Bible in its context.

Because where people get in a lot of trouble is they take a verse, they remove it from its context, and they make it say whatever they want it to say.

And this is how scripture has been abused.

This is how scripture has been used to abuse other people.

This is how people have taken scripture and used it to throw a lot of shade on the name of Jesus and on the movement that he started.

Uh, we start by understanding a text inside of itself, and then we expand out from there.

We understand it in its immediate context and in its chapter and in its book and in any other books that the author wrote, and inside of its testament, the new and the old testament, and then how it aligns with all of Scripture.

That's how we read it.

It's why we're reading all of John's gospel so we can get the full context of it.

Context taken out is very dangerous.

So, really, the the first story in John chapter 8 starts in verse 2, and it goes like this At dawn, Jesus went to the temple again, and all of the people were coming to him, and he sat down and began to teach them.

John 8 · chapter mention

Now you'll remember yesterday when you read John chapter 7 that Jesus is in Jerusalem, which is the heart of the Israelite culture, and he's there at the festival of shelters.

John 7 · chapter mention

And so there are probably hundreds of thousands of people who have descended upon the city.

And, you know, the name and influence of Jesus has already spread greatly.

And this was common that rabbis, the Jewish teachers, would go to the outer court of the temple, and their disciples would come along with them, and they would help them understand what it actually means to follow after God.

And so Jesus goes in and it says, all of the people were coming to him.

And this was kind of par for the course.

Like everyone wanted to hear from Jesus.

He was the premier teacher at that time.

And you've also noticed over the last seven days that the tension between Jesus and the religious leaders is growing and growing and growing.

And you're gonna see it come to a head in John chapter 8 today.

John 8 · chapter mention

John chapter 8 gets nasty.

John 8 · chapter mention

It is an all-out fight with name calling and everything else.

And what you're gonna notice throughout the book of John is they're so desperate to entrap Jesus.

They want to arrest him.

Many already want to kill him, that they're going to start setting up traps.

And we see that right away in John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

In verse 3, it says, Then the scribes and the Pharisees, those are the religious leaders, brought a woman caught in adultery, making her stand in the center.

Teach her, they said to Jesus, this woman was caught in the act.

Caught in the act of committing adultery.

They didn't dig up some DMs.

She was caught in the act.

There's no way out of this of committing adultery.

The ultimate embarrassment, the ultimate shame already.

Verse 5, in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.

So what do you say?

And they asked this to trap him in order that they might have evidence to accuse him, to arrest him, maybe even if they're lucky, to kill him.

Now you'll notice a few things right off the bat.

The woman was caught in the act of adultery with another man.

And yet the man does not get brought before Jesus.

And there was a massive double standard.

And if if you're not really sure about the movement of Jesus and who Jesus is and all of his claims, but you want to understand part of the influence that Jesus has had on our modern world.

The lifting up of women to where they have equal rights and are seen as equal citizens.

That started with Jesus, and this moment right here is one of the foundational movements for women who, for all of human history, all around the world, were seen as second-class citizens, often seen as property, to be elevated to where they belong as image bearers of God themselves.

This is a huge, huge moment.

And there was a massive double standard.

In Jesus' time while he was walking the earth, and he corrects this in Matthew's gospel, there were debates around the idea of divorce.

And many of the men in the Jewish culture thought that they could divorce a woman for any reason at all.

That they could just kind of shuffle women around like property.

She burnt the toast, she's done.

You could get rid of her that easily.

And Jesus says, when two are married, they leave their father and mother, and the two become one.

And what God has brought together, let no man separate.

It's the elevation of women in the trap that they are trying to get Jesus in is Jesus is in a Jewish context.

And so if Jesus just condones her behavior, he is flying in the face of all of the history and all of the presuppositions that they lived with.

He is, in a real sense, rewriting the entire moral code, the entire cultural code, everything that God has bound us by when it comes to our relationships, when it comes to our sexual activity, when it comes to our understanding of how life actually operates.

If he condones her behavior, then he is a heretic and they will arrest him and they will try to kill him.

On the other side, if he condemns her, if he throws the first stone, if he lets her die, then he delegitimizes the very message that he has traveled his country preaching, a message of unconditional love, a message of grace, a message where he was sent not to those who are healthy, but to those who are in need of a doctor, not to the righteous, but to those who are trapped in sin.

And they feel like they really have him trapped, like he's inside a sort of a false dichotomy.

Either he condones her behavior, either he condemns her.

It is a dichotomy, and everyone is wondering how Jesus will get out of it.

In verse 6, they ask this to trap him in order that they might have evidence to accuse him.

And every time they try to trap Jesus, his response is so creative.

It is so masterful.

You have to remember this because we think about Jesus and we know he's like, you know, all-wise and he's all powerful and he's all loving.

You also have to remember he is all knowledge, he is the smartest person who has ever walked the face of planet earth.

It's so creative.

It says Jesus stooped down and he started writing on the ground with his finger.

And for 2,000 years, there has been debate about exactly what Jesus was writing in the sand.

And there are all kinds of thoughts.

Some people think that he was writing out some Old Testament scriptures in order to convict them.

Some people think that he was writing the names of the religious leaders and then some of the sins that they themselves had committed that week.

Some people have an idea that Jesus started writing down a few of the religious leaders and then the names of women that they had secretly had affairs with themselves.

None of that is substantiated, and probably our best course of action is to try and not guess.

We don't actually know, and we have to let scripture speak for itself.

What we do know is that in the beginning, the word Jesus was with God and was God.

What Jesus does is what God does.

And what we know when we let scripture interpret scripture is there is one other place in all of the Bible where God writes with his finger.

And it's on Mount Sinai when Moses brings the two tablets, and God says, Bring the two tablets, and I will write the law with my finger.

It's the only parallel that we have in Scripture.

And one of the things that is obvious is Jesus is the new lawgiver.

Jesus is establishing something new.

What he did on Mount Sinai with Moses, he is now starting something new in the era of grace.

And Jesus came preaching a new law, the summation and fulfillment of the law, that you love God and you love others, even as you love yourself.

That you love God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your strength and all of your might, and you love others radically and unconditionally.

And he put those at the same level.

We don't know exactly what he wrote, but we know one thing that it shows us that Jesus had come to do something new, that Jesus was giving a new law.

In verse 7, when they persisted in questioning him, he stood up and said, The one without sin among you should be the first to throw a stone at her.

And then he stooped down again and continued writing on the ground.

And when they heard this, they left one by one, starting with the older men.

And only he was left with the woman in the center.

And when Jesus stood up, he said to her, Woman, where are they?

Let me pause real quick because when you start a sentence or a question with woman in today's day and age, you better duck.

You know what I'm saying?

I've been in San Antonio going on 11 years.

I've learned about the chunkla, right?

We hear it through the lens of misogyny, like woman.

Um in the Greek, this is a term of endearment.

Some of y'all might have been confused in John chapter 2, when Jesus, his mother, was like, You need to make some new wine.

John 2 · chapter mention

And he said, Woman, and y'all are like, Jesus, I love you, but no, you didn't.

It was a term of endearment.

It was something like, my dear.

And you gotta hear this because Jesus' tone actually matters in this moment.

And you gotta try to maybe put yourself there as a bystander.

And just the cringe you would feel.

This woman is probably partially, if not fully nude.

She was caught in the most shameful act.

She's scared to death because she might get stoned to death.

The shame of the entire city is focused on her.

And maybe you can put yourself in her position.

Like if the worst things that you've been involved in, the things that happen in the darkness of your life, the things that if they were exposed, you're not sure how you could go on living, if they got put on the front street and everybody knew about them, and everybody got a say about them.

There was uh maybe five, six, seven years ago, there was a website, and the whole point of the website was to help men have affairs on their wives.

And someone hacked that website and listed all the names of the men who used it.

Many of those men killed themselves.

Can you imagine standing before Jesus, not knowing what comes next?

One by one, those of you who wanted to tell you who walked away, and Jesus isn't the left.

Jesus is saying the word ended your life.

Where are they?

Because no one condemned you.

No one, Lord, answered.

And Jesus said, Neither do I.

He does not condemn her.

That was option one.

And yet, before she leaves, he says, Go.

And from now on, do not sin anymore.

He does not condemn, but he does not condone.

And religion will try to convince you that those are the options.

That we live in this dichotomy where either the sin you bring in, we will condemn you for it, and we will shame you for it, and we will run you out of the church for it, or we are forced to fully condone your behavior, to affirm it, to say that it's good, to rewrite the scriptures, to say that you can keep living that way.

And what does he say?

Jesus is willing to live in the tension between condemnation and condoning, between anathema, which means cursing and affirming, rewriting God's law.

Man of church, we have decided to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and be a movement that is willing to live in the tension because all of us have sin in our life.

And all of us fall short of the glory of God.

And all of us are good at rationalizing our own sin and casting judgment and dispersion on others.

And yet, although we are not a place of condemnation, we are not a place that is seeking to condone what God has obviously said in his word is sin.

And he says, Go now and leave that behind.

You're free, your life has been spared.

And we'll get there.

But we are the woman caught in our sin.

We are the sinner worthy of death.

And Jesus has taken our place.

And the saddest thing that we can do is to take our freedom and live as if it's a license to continue in the sin that he gave his life for.

In verse 12, Jesus spoke to them again.

And when it says them in the passage, it's referring to the large group that is gathered.

I am the light of the world.

Anyone who follows me will never walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life.

This is a callback to where we were last Sunday in John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

In him was life, and that life was the light of men, the light of the world.

Remember what John the Baptist said last week?

He said, I am not the light.

I have come to testify about the light of the world, Jesus.

Jesus affirms that here.

I am the light of the world.

Anyone who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Anyone who follows me.

Believing in Jesus is absolutely free.

That's John's word.

Believe, believe, believe, believe.

And to all who did believe, they were given the right to become children of God, to be back in relationship with him.

God loved this world so much that he gave his one and only son.

You read this on day three.

That anyone who believes in him will never perish, but will have eternal life.

You believe and you are guaranteed eternal life with God.

Believing in Jesus does not cost you anything.

Following Jesus just might cost you everything.

Jesus is willing to live in the tension for those who do not know him, who have not believed in him, who have not experienced grace.

But just because he has taken our condemnation upon himself does not mean he is condoning our behavior.

And Christians, believers in Jesus, can still find themselves living in the darkness, straying from the light.

And so often we use this expression like, man, I'm just in the dark.

We say that when we're confused.

It's like my life is so stressful and so unfulfilled, and I have so much anxiety, and I'm so angry all the time, and my marriage sucks so bad, and my kids drive me so crazy, and I hate my job, all of these things, I'm just in the dark, man.

I'm trying, right?

I feel like I'm trying, and I just cannot figure it out.

One of the things that I found is when we're in the dark, we're confused and we're living in patterns where our life just keeps cycling through chaos, our life just keeps cycling through these phases where we're not experiencing all those fruits that come from a spirit-filled life, like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Scripture says those are the fruit of a spirit-filled life.

When like none of those are present, very few of those are present.

Often we will say, I have no idea what to do.

I'm in the dark on this.

I don't know what to try, I don't know what to change.

Here's what I found.

About nine times out of ten, if you ask that same person who was so in the dark about their next steps, if you just say, What advice would you give your best friend who is in your same situation?

Nine times out of ten, they know the right answer.

People who have grown up in the church or been around the church a little bit or at least sat under good teaching for a little while or been in the scriptures for a little while, nine times out of ten, the very things they need to adjust to get back to actually following Jesus, if you put it outside of their context, they have a pretty good guess at the answer.

Their marriage is terrible and they know, like, I am just still lusting after women all the time, I'm still watching things all the time, I'm not respecting my husband, I never show him respect, I put him down all the time.

As soon as you switch it, they can usually give a good answer.

They could actually counsel their best friend out of that, they could counsel their sibling out of that, and yet they are staying stuck in the dark.

Not because they don't know the answer.

In Romans, Paul says that all men, all mankind stands without excuse.

That God has not only revealed himself to us in his word, he has revealed himself to us through how he speaks through creation.

That the moral law is written on the heart of mankind, that intrinsically we know right from wrong, good from evil.

It's often not that we are completely in the dark, it's that we know the answer, and the answer will cost us something.

And Jesus doesn't say, I'm the light of the world, and anyone who understands that theoretically, anyone who sings songs about that while listening to K-Love, anyone who goes to church every Sunday will never walk in darkness.

He says, anyone who follows me, I'm the light, anyone who follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Jesus does not care about the thumbs up that you give him on Instagram.

He doesn't need fans, he needs followers.

If you want revival in your own life, if you want revival in your household, if you want revival in your marriage, if you want revival in your career, if you want revival in your mental and emotional health, you have to begin following Jesus.

Believing in Jesus costs you nothing.

Following him will cost you.

You will have to lay down some pride.

You will have to lay down some priorities.

You will have to lay down building your own kingdom.

You will have to lay down some bitterness.

You will have to give some forgiveness to those who hurt you.

Following Jesus means denying yourself, picking up your cross, taking on the suffering of life, and actually going after him.

It will cost you, but that's where the light is.

And the other option is living in the darkness.

Jesus is saying this in the temple in Jerusalem during the festival of shelters.

And all throughout the week of the festival of shelters, everyone gathered in the temple at night.

And everyone sang the same song.

And then they lit four massive lamps, lamps that illuminated almost the whole of Jerusalem.

Jesus stood amongst people who believed the temple was the light, the law was the light, the religion was the light.

And he said, I am the light of the world.

If you're tired of walking in darkness, make the sacrifices necessary and come follow after me.

In verse 13, so the Pharisee said to him, You are testifying about yourself, so your testimony is not valid.

Jesus was like, I am the light of the world, and anyone who follows after me.

And the Pharisee's argument is basically like, nah.

Like you say that, but nah-uh.

You're only testifying about yourself.

And in Jewish law, when you stood in a court of law, you had to have at least two people give the same testimony for it to be valid.

And they're trying to get him on a technicality.

Jesus says, even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true because I know where I came from and I know where I'm going.

But you don't know where I come from, and you don't know where I'm going.

Verse 15, you judge by human standards, I judge no one.

And it's implied, I don't judge the way you judge.

You judge by what you can see.

You walk by sight, you judge according to the flesh.

You looked at the woman caught in adultery, and all you could see is her circumstances.

I could see her soul, Jesus is saying.

You don't know where I'm from.

And all throughout the rest of John chapter 8, he is going to make this clear that you guys are from here on the earth, and all you think is earthly things.

John 8 · chapter mention

And I am from heaven, where my father is.

And I am thinking on a spiritual plane.

I am thinking on a higher level.

And the Israelites are blind to this.

The religious leaders are blind to this.

Everything Jesus says, and y'all have been reading John 1 through 7.

He's been preaching the same thing the whole time.

The Father and I are one.

I came down from the Father.

The Father is your heavenly father.

It is God Himself, and they can't see it.

They're blind to it.

Tomorrow, we'll read at the very end.

He tells them, after he opens the eyes of a blind man, he says, Y'all are the ones who are actually blind.

You're spiritually blinded by your religion, by your tradition, by your power.

They're blinded to what is so plainly right in front of them.

In verse 16, Jesus says, If I do judge, my judgment is true, because it is not I alone who judge, but I am the Father who sent me.

Even if your law is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true, I am the one who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me.

Jesus is the word who was with God and who is God.

When he testifies, it's automatically a testimony of two.

Jesus is like an ambassador.

Every single word he says is cosigned because he was with God and he is God.

And they don't get it.

Verse 19, they asked him, Then where's your father?

See, Jesus is trying to talk about heaven and earth, the spirit and the flesh, eternity and right now.

He's trying to draw these parallels, like desperately trying to have a higher conversation, and they can't get it.

They're like, remember when you were seven and you ran out of things because you weren't very good at trash talk?

And so the only thing you had left is like, yeah, my daddy can beat up your daddy.

The Pharisees are like, bringing, you get your dad, I'm gonna get my dad, we'll leg wrestle and see who wins.

They just are so lost.

And Jesus says, You know neither me nor my father.

Because if you knew me, you would know my father.

And he spoke these words by the treasury while teaching in the temple, but no one sees him because his hour had not yet come.

And the tension is gonna just keep ratcheting and keep ratcheting.

And Jesus is gonna keep trying to speak these truths.

And you're gonna notice by verse 30, those who were able to lay aside their religion and their tradition and their cultural bias, they were able to take the blinders off.

They got it.

And they believed.

But the religious leaders and a majority of the people there, they just couldn't see it.

And their minds were already made up.

And they already decided in John chapter 5 and John chapter 6 and John chapter 7, their minds were made up about Jesus.

John 5 · chapter mention John 6 · chapter mention John 7 · chapter mention

They're not trying to listen, they're only there to try and trap him.

And we've got to be really careful because sometimes our own ideas and our own cultural bias and our own traditions and our own desires and our own attractions and our own worst ways will make us approach the scripture, not to try to hear from God, to be challenged by God, to be corrected by the Holy Spirit.

We will approach scripture looking for a rationalization of the ways that we already want to live.

We will put ourselves with the same blinders on that the religious leaders and many of the Israelites had in addressing Jesus.

Jesus begins to talk about his overarching purpose.

In verse 21, he said to them again, I'm going away, you will look for me, and you will die in your sin.

Where I'm going, you cannot come.

Listen to listen to just how blind they are.

So the Jews said again, he's not gonna kill himself, will he?

Since he says, Where I'm going, you cannot come.

Jesus says, You are from below.

He doesn't mean hell, he just means earth.

And I am from above, you are of this world, and Jesus says, I am not of this world.

Therefore, I told you, you will die in your sins, for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.

If you don't believe, verse 25.

So who are you then?

If we don't believe, and you're from above, and you're not of this world, and you have some mysterious father that none of us seem to know about, then who are you?

Jesus said exactly what I've been telling you from the very beginning.

It's the same message I've been preaching.

You're just not willing to hear it.

I have many things to say and to judge about you, but the one who sent me is true.

And what I have heard from him, these things I tell the world.

And they didn't know that he was speaking to them about the Father.

And so Jesus said to them, When you lift up the Son of Man, you will know that I am he, and I do nothing on my own, but just as the Father taught me, I say these things.

When you lift up the Son of Man, this whole passage, Jesus is calling his shot, he's predicting his death, he's predicting his crucifixion.

Oh, I can't tell you how fun it is to preach when we've all read the context already.

In John chapter 3, verses 14 and 15, what did Jesus say to Nicodemus?

John 3:14

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

The Son of Man will be literally lifted up on the cross when he is crucified.

And the same word that means lifted up also means to be exalted.

And they don't understand it.

They're trying so desperately to stop Jesus, but every time they try to stop him, they only exalt him even more.

Every time that they bring contrast to his message, they only bring him more glory.

And even in the end of the book, when they think they finally won, by nailing him to the cross, when the Son of Man is lifted up, he will be exalted and glorified and draw all people to himself.

And when the Christian movement is actually moving, not just meeting on Sundays, but actually moving, the more the enemies of God come against it, the more it grows.

The more you try to kill it, the stronger it gets.

Verse 29 the one who sent me is with me.

He has not left me alone, because I always do what pleases him.

In verse 30, as he was saying these things, many believed in him.

And Jesus said to the Jews who had believed, If you continue in my word, you really are my disciples.

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

And we talk about this a lot at MetaCurch because in our culture right now, people are not looking for the truth, they're looking for my truth.

They're not trying to live in God's world, they're trying to build their world.

They're not going to the Holy Spirit to determine their identity, they are making their identity out of whole cloth by looking at just what makes them temporarily happy.

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

And the inverse is true.

You can create your own truth, and that truth will hold you captive.

You will know the truth.

If you are my disciple, if you follow after me, if you continue following my words.

Jesus briefly addresses those who had believed, and then we go back to the they, the large group.

And they say, We are descendants of Abraham, they answered, and we've never been enslaved to anyone.

So how can you say you will become free?

Let me give you a little history lesson to show you how this might be the stupidest sentence in the entire Bible.

We're children of Abraham, we've never been enslaved to anyone.

Here's a short list of the people that the Israelites have been enslaved to: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Syria, Greece.

And right then, in the moment that Jesus is having this conversation, they're enslaved to Rome.

They're enslaved right now.

We're descendants of Abraham.

That's who our daddy is.

Our daddy can beat up your daddy.

I don't know who your daddy is, but we're descendants of Abraham.

And we've never been enslaved to anyone.

I mean, technically, we've been enslaved a couple of times, but that's what hubris does.

It's like they are deceived to the point that they're not even able to address their current reality.

And a lot of times we can get like this.

Like, look, I'm a Christian.

I don't have any issues in life.

I'm not trapped by anything.

I'm not enslaved to anything.

Nothing has any power over me.

I go to church.

I'm there almost every Sunday, except when it's inconvenient for me.

I go to church.

And we get this hubris, and y'all have experienced this, and you've probably been hurt by this.

This Christian hubris.

Like nothing can touch us.

Like we got it all figured out.

We have all of the answers.

And what did we say last Sunday?

Your local church is not the light.

Metachurch is not the light.

Worship night is not the light.

The sermon's not the light.

It's only Jesus.

And if you want to walk in the light, you have to follow after him wherever he goes, and whatever he calls of you, and whatever he asks you to give up, and whatever he asks you to sacrifice, the call to follow him will cost you.

We've never been a slave to anyone.

And remember, Jesus has already said, You're thinking down here, I'm trying to talk to you up here.

And Jesus responded, Truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.

And a slave does not remain in the household forever, but a son does remain forever.

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

We sing that song, Who the Son Sets Free is free indeed.

I know you are descendants of Abraham, but you are trying to kill me because my word has no place among you.

I speak what I have seen in the presence of the Father.

So then, you do what you have heard from your father.

Let me just say, you don't see it yet?

Shots fired.

I know what I know from the presence of the Father.

They've said my father's Abraham, and he says, No, you're doing what you've heard from your father.

And we're gonna find out who Jesus thinks their father is in just a minute.

And they said, Our father is Abraham, they replied.

If you were Abraham's children, Jesus told them you would do what Abraham did.

But now you're trying to kill me.

A man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

Abraham did not do this.

Jesus uses the analogy of being a slave to sin.

And all of us sin.

All of us miss the mark on God's design for our life, on the commands He's given us, the framework that we're called to live within.

And Jesus is willing to live in the tension for us and to break down any barrier of entry.

All you have to do is believe.

And we're all the woman caught in our sin.

We all deserve death.

That's the punishment for sin, and not just physical death.

Jesus isn't all that concerned with physical death.

The kind of death that Jesus is talking about is eternal separation from God and therefore from all that is good.

That is the price.

In Romans, Paul says, the wages of sin, what you've earned from your sin is death.

And Jesus stands in the gap and he lives in the tension.

And when the Son of Man Jesus was lifted up, when he was crucified, he died the death we deserve.

He paid the price for our freedom.

And whom the Son sets free is free indeed.

And I have to imagine the woman who was caught in adultery, she went forward and she was just overwhelmed by the love of Jesus.

That from that day on, She hung on every word that he said and was willing to sacrifice anything he called her to give up.

And the saddest outcome would have been if he had spared her life and given her freedom and she walked right back into the sin that she had been set free from.

It was over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, when officially and legally all slaves were freed.

It was two years later that the last slaves in America got that message on what we now celebrate as Juneteenth.

Over two years later.

For those two years, legally, they were free, and yet they still lived every day as a slave.

And I think one of the things that grieves the heart of God is that there are believers in Jesus who have been set free, and because of ignorance, are still living as slaves.

And maybe you have sat under bad theology that tells you you have to keep working.

Maybe you have sat under fear-based teaching, and that fear just drives guilt, and that guilt just keeps driving you back into the very same sin that is causing that guilt in the first place.

But there is another option.

And when you read about what happened after the Emancipation Proclamation, you hear the heartbreaking stories of people who had lived for so long as slaves in America.

That even once they knew they were free, they chose to continue living on the plantation and continue living as slaves.

Because the only thing they were more afraid of than being enslaved was the possibility of what freedom might actually mean for their life.

And many Christians are still living, even though they know they are free, and they will sing the songs, but we're still living not chained anymore to our sins, but still grasping onto them.

And from the outside looking in, it might look like, man, they are just still caught.

Sin just still has a hold of them.

But the truth in Christ, the truth of our salvation, is that when we are willing to let go of the sin that we have put our hope in, the things of this world, Jesus says, You're thinking of this world, I'm not of this world.

You're thinking here below, I'm from above.

I'm calling you up.

I'm elevating your life.

I'm elevating your purpose.

I'm elevating your calling.

The truth is, if you have put your faith in Jesus, but you're still sinking your hope into the things of this world, you're living like a slave to sin, even though you've been set free.

The chains have been broken, but you're still grasping onto them with all that you have.

And the truth is, it's not that the sin won't let us go.

It's often that we just won't let the sin go.

And where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

And the spirit of the Lord isn't magic to find.

The spirit of the Lord is wherever Jesus is moving in your life.

And if you're just a fan of the things of Jesus and continue holding on to the things of this world, you will end up in darkness.

And Jesus says, You're not doing what Abraham did.

I knew Abraham.

Jesus was there from the beginning.

Jesus walked and talked with Abraham.

You're not doing what you heard from Abraham.

You're doing what you heard from your father.

Our father is Abraham, they replied.

And in verse 41, Jesus says, You're doing what your father does.

And they say to Jesus, we weren't born of sexual immorality.

We have one father, God.

You'll miss it if you don't slow down.

But what they're doing is calling Jesus a bastard.

Some English translations actually translate it that way.

They are questioning his paternity.

Like, uh, we've heard some rumors that the timeline with Mary and Joseph and the marriage, that didn't quite line up, Jesus.

There's some rumors circulating about you out here.

They just are so blind to it.

Jesus is calling them to understand what their father in heaven is offering them, a free gift of eternal life.

And the Israelites are wanting to call in Jerry Springer with the paternity test, like, and Joseph is not the father.

They have missed it entirely.

And Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me because I came from God and I'm here.

I didn't come on my own, but he sent me.

Why don't you understand what I say?

Because you cannot listen to my word.

You are of your father, the devil.

And you want to carry out your father's desires.

And here's the devil's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

And when he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature because he is a liar and the father of lies.

And yet, because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.

The devil, Satan, is real.

And Jesus is trying to speak on a spiritual plane, that there is a spiritual battle, not just for your soul, but for your time, for your attention, for your purpose.

And when you become consumed by the things of this world, entrapped by the things of this world, and enslaved to the things of this world, you will over time become blinded to the things of God.

Verse 46, who among you can convict me of sin?

If I'm telling the truth, why don't you believe me?

The one who is from God listens to God's words, and this is why you don't listen, because you are not from God.

And the Jews responded to him, Aren't we right in saying that you're a Samaritan and have a demon?

They can't win the argument, so now they're just slobbing personal attacks.

I don't have a demon, Jesus answered.

On the contrary, I honor my father and you dishonor me.

I do not seek my own glory.

There's one who seeks it and judges, and truly I tell you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.

And the Jews said, Now we know you have a demon.

Abraham died, and so did the prophets.

And you say, if anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.

Are you greater than our father Abraham who died?

Are you greater than the prophets who died?

Jesus says, If you keep my word, you'll never die, and all they can think of is earthly death.

They're going, look, Abraham died, Moses died, the prophets died.

They just can't see it.

If I glorify myself, Jesus answered, My glory is nothing.

My father, about whom you say is our God, he's the one who glorifies.

You don't know him, but I know him.

And if I were to say I don't know him, I'd be a liar like you.

But I do know him and I keep his word.

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day.

He saw it and was glad.

And the Jews replied, You aren't 50 years old, and yet you've seen Abraham.

And Jesus said to them, Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.

Jesus uses the Old Testament name of God, I am.

Not only am I older than Abraham, not only did I walk and talk with Abraham, not only did I know Moses, I am I am.

I am God.

And so they picked up stones to throw at him.

But Jesus was hidden, and he went out of the temple.

And that is John chapter 8.

John 8 · chapter mention

I told you, things are heating up.

Things are getting spicy between Jesus and the religious leaders, and we know where it's going.

It will end with them believing they have victory by nailing Jesus to a cross, completely missing the point that when they lift up the Son of Man, they are actually exalting the Son of Man.

Remember where we started with a woman caught in sin.

A woman who Jesus risked it all to stand in the gap for.

If you haven't believed in Jesus, you need to know that right now, he is ready to do that on your behalf as well.

That he has covered us, he's paid the price, he's done the work, and all he asks is that we follow him.

If you're a believer in Jesus, you need to know you have been set free.

But if you stop at belief and you don't go on to follow him, you will end up a free man, a free woman, still holding on to your chains.

You will end up, although you have access to the light of the world, living in darkness.

Let's close with a time of prayer.

This is what we're doing every day.

If you're new with us and you're just gonna start joining us, we have these prayer prompts at the end of every day that we're praying through together.

I'm gonna read them together.

The first one says, Jesus was expected to either condemn the woman caught in sin or condone her actions.

Either way, were he to condemn her, his message of grace would be jeopardized.

However, if he condoned her sin, he'd be changing God's standards.

Instead, he forgives her and commands that she no longer live in that way.

So, in a moment, I want you to spend time thanking Jesus that he forgives us when we sin and asking the Holy Spirit to show you the things in your life that don't line up to God's standards and commit to the process of allowing God to change those things.

And I mean really.

And if you feel stuck, you feel in the dark, what advice would you give to someone in your exact same situation?

Odds are you know the answer, you know the sacrifice required.

Are you willing to do whatever it takes to see where Jesus might be leading you?

The second is this Jesus claimed to be the light of the world.

Get honest about what areas of your life you feel like you're in the dark.

Where do you lack clarity?

What things are you hiding?

Spend time confessing these areas to Jesus.

He already knows, but there's power in confession.

And last, when the culture attacked Jesus, he was calm yet direct.

Our culture, our culture is hostile to many truths about Jesus as well.

Ask the Holy Spirit to give you courage to boldly stand for truth while still being loving to all people.

We're gonna put all of these prompts on the screen and we're gonna give you a few minutes to spend time in prayer, going through those, spending time with Jesus.

This time is yours to use as you see fit.

Let's pray.

Remember, we're giving something up that's in our normal rhythm of life, something that we depend on or crave.

We're using it to grow our dependence on God, and we're using our cravings as catalyst to remind us to pray.

Last week we did a food item, our food category.

And this week is a little bit more broad.

We're gonna give up an activity.

Maybe there is uh some rhythm you have every morning you watch the news, or every evening you watch Sports Center, or every night you watch shows.

That's something that's a part of our rhythm that we're gonna sacrifice this week.

Maybe you have different habits, different hobbies, something that you can give up.

I've had some people say they struggle with what to do with this one.

One activity you could give up might be painful, might be a real sacrifice, is setting your alarm clock one hour earlier, 30 minutes earlier, giving up some of your sleep to spend time with God.

But I want to give you just a minute or so to really pray, to decide, and to commit.

Jesus, this week, as I am learning to listen, I am going to fast from.

Just make that commitment to Him as we close out today.

This is your time to pray and commit to you.

Jesus, we give you this time.

We thank you.

God, I thank you for this movement here at MetaCurch.

Every single person who makes up this movement.

God, we are praying that your will would be done to the maximum degree.

God, that you would bless our efforts in just digging into your word and just digging into what it means to pray and to listen, to actually begin to hear from you.

God, I pray we would not lose steam, but that our momentum would only grow through these 21 days.

We would give it all to you, that we would be willing to do whatever you are calling us to, to sacrifice anything in the way of following you, to line our lives up to your word and your commands.

We love you, and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast, you can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps, you can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.