©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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10/17/99
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Freedom In Christ Pt. 2
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John 8:31-36
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10/17/99 Freedom In Christ Pt. 2
Two weeks ago we started a study
about the true nature of our freedom in Christ.
If you were with us then
you may remember that we spent most of the
morning
clarifying the difference between
what our culture offers us in the name of
freedom
and what our Lord offers us.
We were looking at Christ's comments
to a group of His followers
in John 8:31-36.
We heard the Lord say,
John 8:31-32 "...If you abide in My Word,
then you are truly disciples of Mine; and
you shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free."
And we heard His listeners object to His words by
saying that
they were already free.
They were not enslaved to anyone,
they had control over their own lives,
and the freedom to do what they wanted to
do,
when they wanted to do it.
In other words,
they defined "freedom"
the same way our culture does today.
Freedom means that I have the right to choose
what I want to do, when I want to do it
with no external force restricting that right.
Then we heard Jesus respond by saying,
John 8:34 ... "Truly, truly, I say to you,
everyone who commits sin is the slave of
sin."
And as we spent time in that passage
we saw that Jesus forced his listeners
to face the true sources of bondage
and slavery that control our lives.
He showed us that the real slaveries
that control our lives
are the ones that come from within us.
The slaveries that grow out of our own inner fears,
and insecurities,
and addictions,
and loneliness,
and unmet needs,
and bigotries.
Those are the slaveries
that really dominate our existence.
And we began this study by making
what I hope was a clear distinction
between what our society is peddling as
"freedom",
which is nothing more
than the social right to live out our inner slavery,
and what our God is offering as freedom,
which is the wisdom
and the inner strength
to make those choices in life
that will bring us the kind and
the quality of life we truly long for.
Now, we are going to move on in this study
to look at the two foundations for freedom
offered to us through Christ -
freedom from the law
and
freedom from sin.
But before we leave these comments of our Lord
recorded for us in John chapter 8
I want to spend a few minutes
clarifying one more thing.
Jesus' comments in these verses in John 8
make it clear that there is a huge difference
between being granted freedom by Christ
and actually living in the reality of that
freedom on a daily basis.
At one point in Jesus' conversation with His
followers in this passage
He tells them: John 8:36 "If therefore the
Son shall make you free, you shall be free
indeed."
In that statement
I hear Him telling us
that He grants freedom to His people.
He makes us free.
He frees us by His own sovereign act.
When we get farther into this study
we'll here Him saying to us:
"You have been freed from the law."
and
"You have been freed from sin."
In context we will see those statements
as being in the past tense.
They are sovereign acts of God
accomplished in the lives of Christians
at the time we came to Him in faith.
However...
in that 8th chapter of John
Jesus links our experiencing
the reality of that freedom
to a conscious,
progressive learning process in
our lives.
He says,
John 8:31 ..."If you abide in My word,
then you are truly disciples of Mine;
John 8:32 and you shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free."
Clearly, our knowing and understanding His truth
is a crucial ingredient in the freeing process.
EX.
Our dog Pepper owns our house, and he knows it.
Supposedly there are certain places
he is not to go unless we invite him.
He is not to get up on our bed
unless we invite him.
He is not to get up on the couch in the living room
unless we invite him.
But we all know
this is just a little game we play
when Sandee and I are home.
Frequently when we have been gone
and return to the house
we will find a place on my pillow
where some furry thing
has curled up and slept while we
were away.
And sometimes when we come back
we will find that somehow
the throw-pillows on the living room couch
have mysteriously jumped off the couch
and onto the floor in our absence.
The truth is,
Pepper is totally free to go anywhere he wants
and do anything he wants within our house.
But it was not always this way.
Many years ago
when Pepper first came to us as a puppy
we were new to the ways of dogs
and we were very uncomfortable
with the thought of Pepper roaming
the house while we were gone
or while we were asleep at night.
So we made a little bed for Pepper in the entry way,
and then we attached a chain to the bench
and then clipped it onto his collar.
Every night for the first several months of his life
with us
my last duty of the night
was to carry him down to the entry way,
tuck him into his little bed,
and hook the chain to his collar.
It didn't take long before Pepper learned this routine
and accepted it totally.
As soon as I would hook the chain to his collar
he would lay down and not move
until I unhooked him in the morning.
Then, after a number of weeks of this routine,
one night I decided to try something
just to see what would happen.
When I brought him down to his little bed,
rather than hooking the chain to his collar,
all I did was to rattle it a little
so that he could hear it.
Then I patted his little head
and told him "goodnight".
Pepper never moved from that spot
until I came down in the morning
and rattled his chain a little.
From then on
I never hooked his chain again,
and for a number of weeks
he never moved from his bed
until we came down in the morning
and rattled his chain.
Now, there he was,
unchained,
and absolutely free to roam the house all
night long if he chose to.
But he didn't.
Why?
Obviously, because in his little doggy mind he
still thought he was chained.
Before we come to Christ
every one of us has our own personal chain
depriving us of the freedom we long for.
We know the sound of it.
We know what it means.
We know we cannot break free from it.
Our two great masters, Sin and the Law,
clip that chain onto us
and we just drop down and accept it
as the only reality we know.
Then, when we come to Christ,
one of His many first acts as our new Master
is to reach over and unclip that chain
and set us free.
And when God unclips our chain
no one ever again has either the right
or the power to clip it back onto us.
But do you know what Satan does?
He does just what I did to Pepper -
he rattles that chain,
and with that rattle
brings back to us the memories of our bondage,
and with those memories
he tells us that nothing has changed.
And we believe him.
Having known only bondage
nothing else feels right to us.
Several nights after I stopped chaining Pepper
in the middle of the night
I suddenly woke up and found our little dog
silently standing next to my side of the
bed.
Somehow he had come to realize
that the chain wasn't hooked.
But rather than using his freedom to roam the house
or curl up on the couch for the night,
he came straight up to me
to tell me I had forgotten to put the chain
on.
I took him back to his bed,
rattled his chain,
and he slept until morning.
When Jesus says,
"If you abide in My word, then you are
truly disciples of Mine; and you shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free..."
He is telling us that
experiencing the reality of our freedom
takes more than just His reaching into our
lives
and unhooking our chains.
It also takes an active process
of His teaching us the truth
about what He has already accomplished in
our lives.
When we come to Christ
His Spirit tells our spirit
about the reality of our new freedom in
Christ.
We know something huge has changed within us.
We know the reality of freedom
deep within us.
But we soon discover that what we experience in
our spirit
is not being duplicated in our daily lives.
We continue to struggle with
many of the same sin patterns
that dominated our lives
prior to our submission to Christ.
And unless we understand
what's happening
and why
it can be a terrifying experience
in the life of a young Christian.
Jesus' words here in John 8
make it clear that
the growing practical reality of freedom in the
Christian's life
requires both the Lord unclipping the chain,
and also our abiding in Him
in a way that allows Him to teach us the
truth about this freedom He has given us.
And I don't want to leave this
until I clarify one other thing.
I mentioned it two weeks ago,
but I want to reemphasize it
especially in the context of where we are as a
culture.
And before I say what I want to say here
I need to warn you
that I know what I'm about to do
is risky.
It's possible that it will sound as if
I'm simply intellectualizing
or philosophizing about the nature of
TRUTH.
But I'm going to do this because
unless we approach the concept of truth
from the same perspective as God does
the power of what He is offering us
will be greatly diminished in our
lives.
Now obviously
in these words Christ offers us in John 8
where He says,
and you shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free...
two crucial concepts are linked together -
TRUTH and FREEDOM.
He tells us that the one
has the ability to produce the other in our lives.
But we live in a culture in which
strange things have happened
to the concept of truth.
We live in a culture
and at a time in history
in which the concept of TRUTH
has been separated from logic and
reason.
Throughout most of our cultural history
the concept of truth
has been inseparably linked
to the correct use of human logic and
reasoning processes.
In the past in order for me to understand or discover
truth
I would have to gather verifiable facts,
examine them honestly and correctly
and reach my understanding of truth
on the basis of where those facts led
me.
But that is no longer the case
in our society today.
We now live in a society in which
we commonly believe
that truth can be discovered
on the basis of experience alone
apart from reason and logic.
In our culture it is assumed that
if I FEEL something
then it must be true.
In fact, we have gone so far down this road of
separating truth from logic
that we now even tend to look at logic and
reason as being a hinderance
to the pursuit of truth.
EXPERIENCE
produces FEELINGS
which then become our validation of
TRUTH.
This is especially true in the world of religion.
Everyone's religious experiences
are accepted as valid and TRUE.
EX. When that last big earthquake hit San
Francisco a few years ago
I remember someone asked
one of the prominent New Age gurus
what she thought about it.
She said she just felt as though
mother earth was so upset with us
for the way we were abusing her
and she was lashing back at us.
EX. When I was still in school
I had a close friend
who was actively involved in the pursuit of
truth through psychedelic drugs.
I can remember talking with him
late into the night
about his drug-induced experiences
and how he "almost saw God"on his
trips.
Not only did he not require his "God"
to meet any logical,
verifiable tests,
he felt it was necessary to remove the barrier of logic
and reason through drugs
so that he could then pursue truth.
Now, we tend to think that
once we come to Christ
that kind of thinking no longer affects us,
but the truth is
we bring exactly the same experience-based
attitudes towards truth
into our walk with Christ.
Every time we trust what we feel
more than we trust what God has said
we are simply continuing to live out
our culture's sick, twisted concept
of the pursuit of truth through
experience.
We are so certain that what we feel
is more real that what God says
that we live out that pattern again and again.
EX.
I enter into some sort of religious experience.
It's "real", meaning I really did experience it.
It feels good.
Then I look at God's Word
and discover that it's not there.
But because I experienced it
I accept it as being true and valid and right,
rather than trusting what I see in God's
Word.
EX.
God tells me in His Word
that He has designed me in such a way
that my needs can only be truly met
within the moral framework
He has revealed to me through the
Bible.
Then I find myself in a situation
in which I suddenly feel deeply,
intensely that some need in my life
can only be met
by my stepping outside of God's
moral framework.
I have to choose -
do I accept as TRUTH what God has said,
or do I accept as TRUTH
what I feel intensely.
In our culture today
most Christians will trust what they feel.
EX
God says to me as His child,
"I have created a new heart within you,
I have made you a new Creation in Christ,
you are now and forever my HOLY ONE."
But then we suddenly feel some powerful pull
toward evil within us.
We look at what God says.
We look at what we feel.
And most Christians opt for believing
what they feel
rather than what God says.
"I'm not really a new creation.
I'm simply the same old sinner,
saved by the grace of God,
and hanging on as best I can
until God brings me home."
For, you see, in our culture
what I FEEL is a more reliable basis for truth
than what God has revealed to me.
Now the problem with this whole experience-based
perception of truth is two-fold.
1st, we end up living out our lives
being driven by our feelings.
Whatever I feel must be true.
And we end up intensifying our bondage with
each feeling-based choice we make.
2nd, our acceptance of an experience-based concept
of truth
causes us to burn up our energies
asking the wrong questions.
EX.
Here I am as a Christian.
God says I am a new Creation in Him,
His HOLY ONE.
All of the sudden I find myself feeling strongly
drawn to some evil.
If I accept God's Word as being true
the question I will ask myself is this:
"Why are my feelings
so inconsistent with the truth?
Why, if I am really God's HOLY ONE
do I find myself so drawn to evil at this point?"
That is a healthy and proper and valid question for a
Christian to wrestle with,
a question for which Scripture can provide clear
answers.
But in our society,
given our experience-based concept of truth,
we will tend to believe the feelings,
accepting as TRUTH
the belief that we really are not a new creation in
Christ.
We then ask ourselves the question,
"Why didn't God do in me what He promised He
would do?
Why didn't He make me a new Creation?
And what can I do to get Him to do what He said
He would do?"
All of those are questions for which
we can never find answers
because the questions themselves are rooted
in lies.
Now, I brought all of this up
simply because,
if we ever have any hope of living in the
freedom God has already given us in Christ,
that hope begins with our choosing to
return to the pursuit of truth that has as its bottom
line
not what we experience,
but what God Himself has said to us.
That is what Christ is saying
when He says,
"If you abide in My word, then you are
truly disciples of Mine; and you shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free."